POST STUFF
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 by Sol Invictus, Level 53
Last updated at December 20, 2008, 11:43 pm
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I've had sufficient time to reflect on my experience with the game, and what I have to say isn't good.
I played WAR for over two months and while I had a good time early on, I grew increasingly bored with the game and I finally lost my patience with it. My frustration for the monotonous end-game content that's offered is shared by much of the game's formerly large community. The release of games like Fallout 3 and Dead Space grabbed a huge chunk of players. Blizzard's World of Warcraft expansion pack recalled its wandering lost back into the grip of the Lich King. It was Left 4 Dead that finally stole me away.
Maybe I'm just burned out.
Strong Premise, Poorly Executed
Needless to say, participating in Scenarios will dampen any excitement you had for the game.
Don't Expect Darrowshire and Death Knights
Public Quests, Nonexistent Public
How Epic is Warhammer?
I enjoyed WAR during the early levels, where the game honestly seemed pretty fun. That's until I discovered that it was all the game had to offer. By the time I hit Rank 40, I discovered that there was nothing else for me to do besides besiege keeps all day or hit up the scenarios.
If you've played World of Warcraft and want to imagine what WAR's endgame is like, just imagine that the only thing you could to do all day was kill people in the Alterac Valley battleground while occasionally hitting up Warsong Gulch.
Heavily populated realms do not exist at the time of this writing, with only medium (or low) populated realms to go around. Each presently existing realm consists of the many consolidated realms that had to be shuttered due to the game's sudden demise in population over the last couple of months. If you do not play the game on one of the higher populated realms, you can expect wait times to take upwards of 30 minutes before you get a Scenario to appear.
Don't Expect Darrowshire and Death KnightsOpen world quests are pretty straightforward as most of them consist of fetch quests or hunting down and killing specific monsters close to the questgiver area. In comparison to World of Warcraft, the quests in Warhammer are dull chores that fail to engage or entertain in any manner whatsoever. With the exception of the Greenskin quests (WAAAGH!), most of the chores you perform are unmemorable, uninteresting experiences that serve to waste only your time and effort.
Needless to say, most of the quests and the few story arcs available for one to pursue can't hold a candle to the quests that one might encounter in World of Warcraft. There are few scripted events and those that exist aren't terribly interesting. The characters you meet are not even half as interesting as anyone you might run into in World of Warcraft. The quests they offer are even less compelling.
WAR does not have a heart-wrenching tale of Darrowshire. It does not have van Cleef or an Onyxia. It does not have much of anything. Those of you who've played World of Warcraft will know exactly what I'm trying to get at. To put it simply, you should not expect to participate in an epic storyline experience with WAR because it's just not there.
The Tome of Knowledge and the quality of the art are about the only exceptional things that the game has to offer. These are elements that I can truly speak of in praise and in awe. Pity that the philosophy that went into its design and writing was not extended to the rest of the game in the form of quests or character development. Beautiful art and fluff content are no substitutes for compelling gameplay.
It's a missed opportunity, especially when one considers the general quality of work housed by Games Workshop's Black Library. I personally couldn't be bothered to do many of the quests because any effort I put into them was rendered useless by the limited array of rewards available, and the fighting equipment one receives will always pale in comparison to anything one can get from Public Quests, Area Influence or PVP renown.
Doing quests isn't going to help you raise your PVP renown, either, so why even bother?
Public Quests, Nonexistent PublicWhen you play WAR, you'll want to hit up the Public Quests to attain proper equipment.
Public Quests are impossible for anyone to complete on their own. The Champions, Heros and Lords that you encounter in Public Quests have several times the hitpoints and slam you harder than the usual trash mobs. Beyond that, they're just like any other monster because Mythic's idea of boss mobs happens to be along the same lines as Blizzard's Elite mobs.
The challenges are easy enough for any group of players to traverse through, but players intending to do so are going to run into a serious hitch: there's usually no one else around for you to play with. Everyone who is online is probably going to be in a scenario.
To phrase it simply, the population is scarce. It is exceedingly difficult to find people with which to do Public Quests. If you're playing at odd hours or operating in a different timezone, consider it to be an impossibility.
To be fair, the game's population would not be in peril if there were more players in fewer and less divided realms. As it stands, the realms are barren and this problem is compounded by the sheer number of large zones in the game world.
Each tier, four in all, is split into six different zones per tier. Players are divided into each of these zones and rarely have little chance of running into each other. Most players are either in the Tier 1 zones or the Tier 4 zones. There's few players in Tier 2, and fewer still in Tier 3.
The game's population is stretched and stressed to the limit.
How Epic is Warhammer?The only thing epic about Warhammer is how hard it fails to meet expectations. I don't think it's too much to ask for an MMORPG to be only half as compelling as World of Warcraft, but I'd be extremely generous if I said that it was even a quarter as enjoyable.
The instances and their associated challenges range from 'really tedious' to 'completely f**king tedious' with boss fights that consist of fighting buffed up regular mobs that do a lot of damage.
The Player-versus-Player (PVP) Keeps are no different, and gave me a strong, painful sense of
Déjà vu each and every time I participated in a Siege. The Keep Lords in this case are nothing more than strong regular NPCs with a lot of health. If there was ever a spark of creativity to be found during the game's development, Mythic never applied any of it to the design of boss mobs. If there is anything to admire about how they designed the boss mobs, it would have to be Mythic's persistence in assigning the same template to every boss encounter in the game.
Needless to say, PVP Keeps are probably the game's largest disappointment, as they were the game's most hyped feature. There's scant incentive to actually control or take over a keep, and every keep shares the same design and offers the same challenge. Sieges are basically battles of attrition and while this would make sense in a game in the Total War series, it makes for an uncompelling waste of time in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.
I'd like to say that WAR was a game overflowing with potential. If they'd kept it in the hatchery for a year longer and added a few dozen layers of polish, it'd actually stand a chance to compete with World of Warcraft. As it is, WAR is a deformed hatchling, stifled by its premature release and lack of nourishment.
WAR is an clumsy, unpolished game. There is no single aspect of WAR that isn't somehow afflicted by bugs or a general lack of shine. To cite an example, one of the game's most touted features, trophies, are not even working as intended; most of these objects do not even properly display on your character, and those that do tend to look like utter sh*t.
I'd like to say that WAR was a game overflowing with potential. If they'd kept it in the hatchery for a year longer and added a few dozen layers of polish, it'd actually stand a chance to compete with World of Warcraft. As it is, WAR is a deformed hatchling, stifled by its premature release and lack of nourishment.
WAR is an clumsy, unpolished game. There is no single aspect of WAR that isn't somehow afflicted by bugs or a general lack of shine. To cite an example, one of the game's most touted features, trophies, are not even working as intended; most of these objects do not even properly display on your character, and those that do tend to look like utter sh*t.
The crafting system is almost entirely useless because it is just poorly designed. There's very little point to it, and it the crafting skills consist of nothing more than grinding a slot machine for several hours. And that's after you farm the materials you need for several hours, of course.
The Endgame
I enjoyed WAR during the early levels, where the game honestly seemed pretty fun. That's until I discovered that it was all the game had to offer. By the time I hit Rank 40, I discovered that there was nothing else for me to do besides besiege keeps all day or hit up the scenarios.
If you've played World of Warcraft and want to imagine what WAR's endgame is like, just imagine that the only thing you could to do all day was kill people in the Alterac Valley battleground while occasionally hitting up Warsong Gulch.
But hey, it's not all doom and gloom. Mythic's patching the game on a weekly basis, so I suppose there's still hope. Maybe things will change.
I'll check the game out in a few months time and we'll see if anything's different. It's not like it could get any worse.
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7 comments
StreetCleaner Dec 21, 2008 at 5:47 am
+1 votes
Good post and it couldn't have come at a better time I was thinking of buying Warhammer because I am looking for a decent MMO to play other then WoW but I guess this will not be the one.
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MIK0 Dec 22, 2008 at 9:55 am
+1 votes
Doh! I just bought WAR a week ago (still waiting it to arrive) following your entusiastic advice a month ago...
Seems like this is a year of unfinished game and too yearly release.
Seems like this is a year of unfinished game and too yearly release.
Sol Invictus Dec 22, 2008 at 11:23 am
+1 votes
Yeah, you know. The game's got the potential to be really, really good at its core. But it's simply unfinished; that's the problem.Â
Fortunately, I don't see the game dying off so soon, so I'll probably pick it back up in a few months time, once they're done with the refinements. I mean, hopefully they move the game in the right direction. Â
Fortunately, I don't see the game dying off so soon, so I'll probably pick it back up in a few months time, once they're done with the refinements. I mean, hopefully they move the game in the right direction. Â
cathl Dec 25, 2008 at 1:41 pm
+1 votes
A sucky MMO? Who would have thought? It's not like they are all waste of time grind-fests at their very core. Oh wait. Sol Invictus highlighted it a little bit in his post when talking about how the servers were empty, but its the players, not the games themselves that are the fun part of MMOs.
Intimidation Jan 12, 2009 at 5:32 am
+1 votes
Where Mythic horribly, horribly failed with Warhammer was it's PVE Endgame content. While they made no bones about it's initial intent: RvR > All else. To that, they did a great job in giving us a fairly well balance RvR experience. The problem that existed in that, was that 90% of everyone chose Chaos, so few stuck around for Order and folks got bored. When server pops start to (somewhat) even out, people were stuck in the "World of Warcraft" mindset that PVP/RvR = Scenarios/Battlegrounds and NOT what it should've been: World RvR. So, to a certain degree, I can blame both Blizzard as well as Mythic for failing.
But as I stated before: The lack of PVE endgame is what so many folks look towards doing, regardless if your initial goal is the best possible RvR/PVP experience in an MMO possible. But since everything from around 30th lvl is "PVE-lite", most folks I've known that once played WAR with a passion, grew bored of the RvR and looked to the PVE side of things for entertainment. When that failed to bear fruit, they returned to WoW and to this day, most have stayed there, letting their WAR subscriptions dry up.
Shame, really as WAR is the superior game (or at least had the potential to be).
But as I stated before: The lack of PVE endgame is what so many folks look towards doing, regardless if your initial goal is the best possible RvR/PVP experience in an MMO possible. But since everything from around 30th lvl is "PVE-lite", most folks I've known that once played WAR with a passion, grew bored of the RvR and looked to the PVE side of things for entertainment. When that failed to bear fruit, they returned to WoW and to this day, most have stayed there, letting their WAR subscriptions dry up.
Shame, really as WAR is the superior game (or at least had the potential to be).
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