State of the game: Warhammer Online

By David Hollingworth
Oct 31, 2008 | 12 Comments
Tags: warhammer | mmo

What's been happening in the world of non-Warcraft?

So, we’re well over a month into playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and that’s always an interesting time to have another look at an MMO. For one thing, at this stage you’re usually pretty familiar with how a game works, any serious issues at launch should by now have been fixed, and server populations should be pretty stable and humming on toward a stable economy.

Another important thing about this time is that it’s the end of the honeymoon. Your free month is up, and now you have to decide if the game is good enough to justify parting with hard earned cash every month.

We played WAR pretty heavily at time of launch, and even through the many and rather serious issues that game had locally it seemed an excellent new entry into the MMO pantheon. And boy, were some of those issues doozies. We mentioned some in our First Look at the game out of the box, but on top of those there were rumours that Australian servers had an incorrect version of the game on them that was causing log on problems for a lot of people. There were random crashes, ongoing mail bugs, and all kinds of performance quirks, all made far worse by the curious decision on EA’s behalf to not host any official forums for the game.

But the game, when we could actually log on, was fun. The innovations of Public Quests and the focus on PvP and very rigidly defined classes for each race made for a fresh experience. The only early hurdle was the lack of population on the Oceanic RP server – call us fruity, but we like our RPz. A quick switch the better populated US RP/open RvR server fixed that, though, and with the greater pop we were able to more fully enjoy instanced battlegrounds, open world PvP and public quests.

But the niggles started to set in a couple of weeks ago.

It can be hard to find time to dedicate to a game like WAR, and moreso than its MMO cousins WoW and LotRO, it’s easy to fall behind the levelling curve. As the initial population started to outlevel us, we found it harder and harder to find open groups for questing or drive by faction kills. That, combined with being on a US server and out of sync with the high pop times stateside, left us feeling lonely and more than a little frustrated.

In fact, that might be the case for anyone who signs on after the initial blush of launch, and in a game that relies heavily upon having the numbers to enjoy the key features – bloody murderous rampages on an epic scale – we can only imagine a lot of people feeling similar to us.

Want to check out the first Australian review of Final Fantasy XIII? We got in this month's Atomic!

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12 Comments

Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.

colganaitor Oct 31, 2008 9:17 PM	hehe . . .that makes me want to play WAR noww, I'm only lvl 8. /logs on to WAR
vulgrin Oct 31, 2008 9:58 PM	You are absolutely, 100%, spot on with this review. I am in the U.S., but after a few nights of playing, I got really busy with work. I managed to get back into the game a week later - but even by then, my friends had all leveled past me and the public quests were ghost towns. I went into an RvR or two, but we were so heavily outmatched it was pointless. And like you said, the PvE is just a treadmill to work out on while you wait around for that one good RvR match. Perhaps if RvR's ran more frequently, so you could jump into them CounterStrike style, one after another it wouldn't be nearly so bad. (At least you wouldn't have to wait for 20-30 minutes in the "lobby" to get on a crappy team.) I've been playing LOTRO since right after launch and even with a capped toon I know I can go in and enjoy doing stuff. Sure, my lvl 50 has about got to the point where he's out of solo quests, which makes it harder, but there are still a lot of other things to do. While I wait on Moria, I've been experimenting with other classes and even though I'm running the exact same quests over again, its still "fun." I'm thinking that WAR is going to struggle, because its in a weird middle ground between MMORPG and FPS. When it works, it works well, but it is walking a very thin tightrope. I suspect much of its population will head back to WoW and LOTRO once the novelty wears off and as expansions come out. People will leave for the expansions and then just forget why they played WAR in the first place...
Amiga4eva Oct 31, 2008 10:27 PM	So tempted to make several comments about the review cause you mentioned my name in it ;) But I'll hold off for now, although I will say while I agree with several points made, I believe the outlook is less bleak than painted :)
gyrus Nov 1, 2008 10:35 AM	"So, the question is, do we stick with it? We have to admit that we were tempted to let our subscription slide, and would have done just that were it not for the news that there’ll be a world event allowing players that complete a number of changing daily quests to have early access to the two new classes being introduced into the game. The event, called ‘Heavy Metal’, will last from November 17 until December 1, and here’s how it works, straight from the game’s newsletter:..." And so... you are a sucker :P You have actually been sucked in for another TWO months (or more?). ?? If you read what is actually 'promised' - the event from Nov 17 does not include the 2 new classes - merely the tasks which (if you complete them) allow you a CHANCE at early access. So, you are staying subscribed to a game which you otherwise wouldn't to get a week of early access to two new character classes when (if) they arrive? A week that will likely be plagued with bugs anyway? If Mythic said "pay $15 for a chance to play two new character classes..." would you? Just to be clear - I am not commenting on the game here - but rather the (clever?) marketing ploy which you and many players will fall for. It's not the first time a MMO has dangled a carrot like this and it won't be the last. But if history is a good teacher then you should consider how many MMOs have made 'offers' like this in the past and subsequently failed to deliver. And they don't actually promise anything - the word 'chance' takes care of that. My advice: If you like the game for what it is - stay subbed and have fun. If you were going to unsub - do. Come back when the new classes are actually in game. In the mean time you can use the money you don't spend on other games :-)
Hawkeye Nov 1, 2008 12:27 PM	"And so... you are a sucker :P" I think that's a little... harsh :) I'm well aware it's only the chance, but if more players log on for the event, it'll mean a much higher server pop in general over the period. So, kinda worth sticking around for. Also, you know, there's the whole journo thing, which means that as an event it could be worth covering. And Amiga, yeah, I thought you might have something to say :) I'm not trying to say the situation is bleak - I don't think it is - but certainly it's just not grabbing me longterm. In the first couple of weeks I was playing it before leaving for work, when I got home, and passionately on weekend mornings when I would be able to enjoy peak play time in the US. But now... not so much. Of course, it's also competing with Far Cry 2, Deadspace and Fallout 3 in terms of gamehours, so that's not helping either!
gyrus Nov 1, 2008 2:29 PM	Well, yes it is a little harsh... but David Hollingworth is made of tough enough stuff to take it in the spirit it is intended ;-) My point stands that MMOs always promise things that will come "soon" and it's enough to keep some people subscribing for months. So, it's good business for them. Now as for the "journo thing" - what's that old maxim? Report the news - don't be the news. ?? I'm sure if we could time travel a lot of journos would book on the Titanic - but I would be surprised to see them recommend that their readers buy tickets? :D
Ihsan Nov 1, 2008 5:14 PM	I'm getting anywhere from instant to five minute queues depending on the time of day and usually there's four to five hour non-stop oRvR in all tiers during prime time. You might need to rethink your server choice again. ;)
Azawrath Nov 3, 2008 10:56 AM	I agree with Ihsan in that alot of your issues could stem from your server choice. I'm currently lvl 32 so sitting at the low end of T4 and there is always something for me to do ^_^. The scenario queue's can be a little long sometimes (upto about 30mins) but if they are long it usually means the major players are out in Open RVR!. The open RVR in T4 can be a purly epic experience to say the least, on Ironclaw we've had several 50+ people warband clashes during keep sieges. Afew weeks ago I was part of a massive order attack that managed to capture all the T4 empire zones which then allowed us to attack "The Maw". The Maw is one of the fortresses you need to capture to be able to attack the capital ^_^... but sadly the lag monster attacked and we couldn't take down the keep 8^(. That and the 60+ destro that rocked up to defend! 0_o they were everywhere!. I do agree however that the PVE game has gone down hill ALOT since people have found its faster to level by farming scenarios. Mythic is trying to combat this by giving open RVR an exp bonus and its helped masively in t4 rvr not sure how its effected the lower tiers tho. I barly logged in this weekend tho 8^(, damn fallout3!.
Hawkeye Nov 3, 2008 12:00 PM	Yeah, I think server choice is definitely working against me, I freely admit that :) But that's also just how I want to play the game!
Ihsan Nov 3, 2008 12:54 PM	You're more then welcome to come and RP on my server. Of course, if you do it anywhere near me I will have to kill you... ;)
Hawkeye Nov 3, 2008 1:58 PM	/cry
pekkahead Nov 4, 2008 9:07 PM	Competitive griefer comments ought be banned! ;-p

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