Death and Rebirth: Warhammer Online
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- In 2008, Warhammer Online emerged as a daring challenger to the MMO throne, threatening the dominance of World of Warcraft. Drawing from a rich and expansive source material that even inspired the Warcraft series itself, Warhammer Online launched to immense success. It sold over a million copies and peaked at 800,000 subscriptions, providing strong competition for WoW at the time. But what went wrong?
So, what caused Warhammer Online's downfall? An article from PCGamer offers a comprehensive analysis based on player surveys. Factors such as EA's acquisition of Mythic during the game's development, rushed development and launch, excessive server openings on day one, lack of endgame content, slow response to game-breaking bugs and class imbalances, and a misguided attempt to compete with WoW instead of focusing on Warhammer's uniqueness all played a part.
I agree with many of these points, and population decline was a crucial factor in exacerbating the game's problems. Warhammer Online didn't reinvent the MMORPG genre, but it did introduce some innovative elements, such as Public Quests and the RvR lake system. Public Quests aimed to remove barriers to questing by allowing players to participate without the need for formal grouping. However, these quests heavily relied on a sufficient player population, and as the player base dwindled, they lost their appeal and became glorified side quests.
Similarly, the game's PvP suffered from population drop-off and struggles with faction balance. World PvP, a core element of Warhammer Online, couldn't thrive without enough players actively engaged. Endgame content was closely tied to PvP, exacerbating the balancing and population problems. The game attempted to fix these issues in subsequent patches but struggled to find a clear focus, leading to a cascade of problems.
Furthermore, Warhammer Online was plagued by bugs, server stability issues, and poor NPC AI, among other technical flaws. While other MMOs also faced issues, Warhammer's population decline was drastic and swift. Just a few months after launch, the player count plummeted from a peak of 800,000 to around 300,000.
Adding to the game's challenges was the release of World of Warcraft's highly acclaimed expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, just two months after Warhammer's launch. While I'm not implying that Wrath of the Lich King single-handedly killed Warhammer, it certainly provided a solid alternative for players unwilling to endure the growing pains of Mythic's game.
In December 2013, Warhammer Online officially closed its doors, five years after its original launch. Empty servers, slow development, unresolved issues, and deserted RvR lakes and Public Quests contributed to its demise. Attempts were made to salvage the game through a free trial, a slow transition to free-to-play, and server mergers, but the damage had already been done. By that time, players had moved on, and the game struggled to keep up with the evolving MMO landscape.
Shortly after the official servers closed, rumors of an emulator, a private server, began to circulate. Return of Reckoning emerged as one of the most successful private servers, providing a functional recreation of Warhammer Online with its own unique touches. The team behind Return of Reckoning actively works on the game to this day, introducing quality-of-life improvements and focusing on RvR gameplay.
Return of Reckoning has garnered mainstream recognition within the MMO community, with content creators like @TheLazyPeon and @MitchManix dedicating videos to the game, and websites like MassivelyOP and MMORPG.com frequently covering its updates.
Play Warhammer today at @ReturnofReckoningWAR www.returnofre...
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It's so hard to explain just how incredible Return of Reckoning is. I was a big fan of the original during the live servers, and I still play on the private server almost every day. I've experienced a lot of different mmos over the years, but to be able to play a completely free mmo with a healthy community in 2023 that is focused on PvP is so difficult to come by. And by completely free I mean, every armor dye, every trophy cosmetic, every unique mount, every event item, every piece of everyone's gear, and every player's renown rank has not been influenced by a single real world dollar.
It is extremely difficult to think of any other comparison to modern mmos, and older mmos that are still around, as they have mostly become monetized with some form of either subscriptions or cash shops, or both. It's an amazing accomplishment what the Return of Reckoning team has done, and that it happened to be the mmo that I loved and played during the live servers is incredibly lucky for me.
There are new players joining all of the time and you can jump into the PvP experience early, I really recommend anyone that enjoys PvP focused mmos to try this out. It is still my favorite mmo all of these years later.
Well said. I keep Return of Reckoning installed on my PC to scratch that itch for the world and experience of it. Still remains some of the coolest aesthetics of any MMO I've played and I do like jumping into some RvR scenarios and lakes from time to time.
Dude, RvR with my Engineer was the most fun I’ve ever had in an MMO.
Capturing a keep (were they called keeps?) in RvR lakes was so much fun.
You missed the main thing that killed the game for myself and all of my friends. The RR100 patch. watching a rr100 solo a full group of 80s was it for us. At RR100 you were actually 5 levels higher than other players. They hit you like you were a low level player and you hit them back as a higher level. Meaning big bonuses for them and big minuses for you. The power gap was worse than a fresh level 40 vs a top geared RR80. My entire guild quit within a month.
Warhammer private server still going strong today
as bas as It could be
Still as bad as it once was.
Paul Barnett really sold the game like a champ. I loved his enthusiasm.
One of the best things are capital sieges. Words can't describe how awesome huge group of players rushing through the city feels and looks like
Try Cyrodil pvp on ESO with full on sieges.
@@dustywilder1204 fr
A lot of Dark Age of Camelot veterans were looking forward to this game as a better, more modern reincarnation. But most were shocked that mythic had failed to understand why their own game worked and reduced the number of factions to 2. With 3 factions, the two losing ones would most likely sort of team up on the wining one, thus informally creating a balancing system, that even worked with uneven server populations - up to a point. When a server on Warhammer was starting to get onesided - there was no such mechanism, no way to pull it back. People just left.
Going from 3 to 2 factions was madness.
The algorithm recommended a video you made on loneliness in mmo's...which I rather liked...and I instantly scrolled down to see if you had a video on WAR...and here it is!
Im an old gamer, and even when EQ launched, I was a regular flight sim enthusiast and didnt see the appeal of MMO's at all. My friends would drag me along to EQ and WoW, and I would quit after a month or so. When WAR launched however, I was mesmerized. My irl friends left, frustrated with PvP, but it was an old hat to me from simulation games... so for the first time, I truly dove into an MMO in 2008 and became invested.
To this day it remains the only game I made real, life long friends in. My buddy in Germany remains a close friend, and I still catch up with friends in Australia and Canada.
The problems with the game are as you say. I was fairly resilient to it, because I do find the PVE aspect of MMO's in general unsatisfying in a multiplayer format. I really enjoyed games like Monster Hunter and Warframe besides flight sims like DCS...so im probably not your target audience...but Ill never forget this one MMO, the long nights, long talks, camraderie and even tears. I conquered Altdorf main tanking as the Black Orc Bioya raising my axe in triumph over the skulls of order. Ill probably never play an MMO again, but this one I wont forget
Warhammer Online was amazing
I loved it. Still hop in Return of Reckoning every now and then to have some fun.
Was being the keyword. It is still 'was' sadly.
I don't play it anymore because I'm old and slow but Warhammer Online is the best MMO I've played in my active years 2002-~2017 followed close by Runescape,Rift, Global Agenda,SWTOR and to a less extent Anarchy Online. God save the Return of Reckoning.
hope some big dev will pick it up someday and revive the game to the potential it had. The game can be one of the best mmo's on the market if fixed couple of issues and continued it with a flow of updates with new locations, battlegrounds and etc. I am honestly sad about the fate WAR. Incompetence of devs and pride of gamemasters killed it.
jesus bro anarchy online is the best of the best...i miss this game so much
Man, I absolutely loved WAR. When me and my guild neared the endgame only to hear about (and then see firsthand) how much of a utter disaster the capital city sieges (one of the unique endgame selling points) were, it was hard to keep playing, especially with updates coming pretty slowly. That, coupled with several key members of my guild leaving to go back to WoW, spelled the end for us. Such a shame.
Since you mentioned swtor... I had bought the game, really loved the story, the voice acting, even the support line you called with issues sounded amazing. Went to Afghanistan for a year, came back tried to play... they had gone full free to play, all my characters were locked behind a paywall except one, classes were locked behind a paywall. The whole thing had become a shameless aggressive cash grab, and that's a hard switch for someone who had paid for the game, paid for a sub at launch, and had access to all of it at the beginning. Dropped the game and never looked back.
I love Return of Reckoning. the small dev team has done a far better job of polishing Warhammer online than Mythic ever did, going as far as obtaining files for the game that were never in the game when it was released. Like the Dwarf and Orc major cities, which are now in the game thanks to these amazing, passionate Devs that are keeping this game alive. I highly encourage any one who liked this game to look into RoR.
Man this has gotta be the best mini-history piece I've seen on Warhammer Online. Great work!
I have the collectors edition Box, books, arts, figurine etc. Its perfect condition. I was also in the Beta. I was one of the first max levels.. but there was a lot of issues late game
Worked on this game for 4 years 😊 its was so much fun and I still love it :) What happened broke my heart 😢💔😭😭😭😭😭
Exact issue was the lack of endgame raid content at launch and for ages after launch. We LOVED the RvR but we need breaks now and again and people wanted pve raiding which was non existent. However Warhammer Online would have done better as well with a 3 RVR system rather than just 2 factions as well as a realm won raid dungeon like DAOC had. RvR needed a bit more of a boost to do it and not only for slaughter sake. Gaining various realm boosts that would carry over to other content would have been better which was pretty boring in WO with non existent raiding.
I wish this had lived up to the hype. I wish this had grown bigger than WoW. Maybe we would have gotten a Lizardman expansion. Can you imagine playing a hulking Saurus, or maybe even a Kroxigor? If only...
You and me both. I hope one day another company can come back and utilize the Warhammer IP. Sounds like we'll be getting a 40k mmo sometime in the future, though!
I have the collection editions for warhammer online as well. It's on my shelf right now. If warhammer had a 3 realm system in lace it would still be live today imo like DAoC is now.
Just reinstalled Return of Reckoning again.
It keeps taunting me from my desktop, encouraging me to play.
Great job covering this gem of a game Red! You hit alot of the issues right on the head. I played myself for quite some time, but as you brought up in your video, pvp sort of drove me off due to the balance issues. I played mainly a Disciple of Khaine, and I remember always outnumbering the Order players and watching our Sorcerers all group up, float across the battlefield and just delete anyone unfortunate to get close enough to them. It was a bit ridiculous. I do have to give a big shout out to the Swordmaster on the Order side. They were pretty fun to play. I did try the private server a couple of time some years ago, but from what I saw, everyone is at end game, so the leveling experience is not fun. Maybe Ill take another look at it sometime. The game was alot of fun before its decline. What class did you play Red? Looking at your hairstyle and knowing you like your melee, Im guessing the Dwarven Slayer! Haha! Keep up the awesome work Red!
Dwarven slayer wasn't out when I played (I don't think anyway) I believe it came later? Maybe I'm mixing it up with one of the other expansion classes. I was actually went back and forth between Disciple of Khaine and Chosen but ended up mostly Disciple of Khaine because i liked the playstyle.
Thank you for the kind words on the video!
I jump back in to the private server every now and then. Still very active and they create new content.
Whole game needs a graphics overhaul, shame a company cant pick it up and continue on :(
Warhammer did directly influence Warcraft. Personally I love both as now-a-days they both fill different niches, Warhammer is far more dark and gritty/brutal and Warcraft is more classic "hey im going on an adventure!" levels of fantasy, not that Warcraft doesn't have its dark moments. Starcraft was even supposed to be the original Dawn of War
private server is a total mess and rampage is still the most overpowered skill
omg LazyPeon! His RoR videos broke their private server because so many people went to try it out, so heartwarming to see the old corpse of a game getting some new life lol.
I remember that, I was surprised to see him cover a private server game. I'm honestly glad it's managed to keep going. Warhammer and SWG are examples of some games that closed too early that have dedicated fan-bases that have beautifully re-created the games.
I agree with most of your points on what this game's initial problems were but would add the following (if you mentioned these I apologize since I listened while working)...
1. They release some pre-order early access servers and obviously when the game fully launched 3 days later everyone wanted to play on those servers either because their friends were already there or just because they were the most populated. This led to huge queues to log in while other servers were nearly comparatively empty.
2. Performance issues in larger fights. I remember at times fighting in the Cities it would turn a bit into a slide show and I also remember them having to nerf the visuals on some spell effects like the Bright Wizard AOE spells since it was making people's graphics cards struggle.
3. Population balance between the factions which I think you touched on. But Destruction tended to outnumber order on almost every server which turned things into steamrolls.
Oh wow I completely forgot about the pre-order early access mess. I remember that being a *huge* issue early on. People were furious.
Still remember watching sword master guides and mastering the “bubble build) and at level 13 beating 2 level 22s who tried handing me
Playing ROR now. Love it.
Squig herder is the best class ever! Those white lion dudes always tore me up though.
I really wanted to enjoy this game but it did not focus enough on the rpg elements of the game which is what gets people emotionally invested in their characters and the world. This really made the game feel hollow and turned me off from the game, among other things. Lets hope the new one learns from these mistakes
Unfinished is how I think I'd put it. They could have expanded more in a lot of areas, including the RPG elements like you're saying.
It's a shame, too, I love the Warhammer world. It's so gritty.
Same issues. Devs got worse to responding to the imbalaces. I showed a chart of 5 slides where Order won 38 of the 50 times. That's too imbalanced for comfort. The devs are at fault.
The way I see it is when you start an mmo 4 years after your main competitor, you have missed out on 4 years of innovation and direction. I started on WoW and played a AoR when it came out, and as much as I love the warhammer IP, Wow was already evolving. It has to be hard to catch up when starting that far back.
Good vids man, love your deep dives on MMOs
So glad you enjoyed. Thank you!
I quit when they nerfed Bright Wizard into uselessness, which they didn't fix for a very long time after. Not sure how long after WotLK that patch was, but I went directly back to WoW at that point.
EA rushing Mythic ruined WAR. All they needed to do was DAoC with Warhammer IP, they weren't give the time to do it, and it's a fucking shame, because it totally ruined the RvR MMO.
At the time everyone was competing with WoW trying to make the next big "WoW clone" and rake in all the millions of WoW subscribers and it had to be appealing enough game to cater to them.. At the time, WoW was considered a very casual game, but it was also expert, slick, polished and fun and many games before it were buggy sandbox games with really bad user interfaces.. You had EVE, UO, Asheron's Call, Everquest etc.. The only game that was trying to not be anything like WoW at the time was Darkfall Online and that failed miserably, there wasn't any crowdfunding yet and the budget just wasn't there to make the game more complete and it ended up being just a PVP battle royal with harsh death penalties, it did leave a mark on the MMO industry though and now we have games such as Albion which is crazy popular and yet, as far from WoW as you can get.. I think Warhammer AoR just got overshadowed by WoW and ended up in the category of all the WoW clones..
EA loves to kill their good games.
Seems like alot ppl dont understand what rly happened.
Everyone who play Warhammer Tabletop know that GamesWorkshop radicaly stopimg stuff which dont bring them money, this is how they are and warhammer online were one of this. This is one of the most important stuff. The dev had alot new feature before game was closed.
Another point is ppl dont get that warhammer wont be a copy of wow they main idea were rvr from beginning but ppl are pve focused and didnt get the idea behind it. How we can see at NewWorld. We knew it would be pvp rvr too but ppl dont get it and were upset.
There was an interview with one of the lead WarCraft devs about shopping their idea for a real time strategy to Games Workshop and getting turned down before they created an unique IP. I found an article about it on Kotaku, and there are other sources. Otherwise, people can argue about how much it was influenced by Warhammer, or if WC was just a rip off. Blizzard was a small studio at the time, and trying to get any advantage for recognition.
Because some "Genius" put PVE as alternative means to get a gear opposing mean theme of RvR, and as a bonus there was bad-bad balancing team, i mean VERY bad balancing team, so even "pseudo-mirror" classes were like day and night difference, when Marauder with throw axe does more damage than SW a ranged class, when Destruction population of classes mostly melee VS Order that mostly range - guess what? best anti-melee goes Order tanks while Destruction has no ranged support because BW >> just so happen be better than Witch in everything, game was a fun but then GW license on Warhammer runout and price skyrocket so devs decided to not continue it.
Please cover more private servers of old MMOs. As jank as they were back then, the social aspect was really something else and is sorely missed these days.
i had fun with this game. enjoyed the pvp too.
Pvp happened
It wasn't just pvp. Pvp in the beta was amazing, the pvp tiers allowed for a power progression, and owning/controlling the pvp lakes in order to have access to your pvp gear mattered as the power of the gear (gated by level requirement for different set pieces) scaled your character in power through the tier.
I still have memories of matches in Nordenwatch, dropping in at level 5 or 6, being able to contribute, but would get totally stomped by somebody who was level 11 totally geared out in their tier set. Though, once I hit level 11... I turned into that god for a while. EXP earned from the matches would eventually level me out of the tier, and being the newbie to the next tier of play, I found myself in the same power struggle through the tier. It never felt bad (getting totally shit on constantly by twinked out pre-mades), and was quite rewarding once you progressed your character through it.
As far as I remember, it was not possible to twink a character and stay in a tier by shutting off exp.
Fighting for the pvp lakes mattered, as controlling them was how you accessed the vendors to get the gear. So, there was a point to world pvp... and people played it... A LOT.
THEN. EA stepped in, literally the week between when open-beta ended and early access launched. They changed ALL level requirements for PvP gear, making it so you couldn't equip it until you leveled INTO the next tier of play, e.g. Tier 1 was from 1-11, but the level requirement for Tier 1 gear was 12, making it effectively worthless. This, along with other last minute "balancing" decisions, totally killed the game week 1.
Don't even get me started about win-trading city raids, bot farming Public events, people single handedly being able to tank whole auction market economies due to server transfers (this happened later in the games life)... the list goes on.
Long story long... EA fucked this game HARD.
PvP was fine. The problem for me was lack of content after I wanna say lvl 25ish iirc
15:10, oh man... to have a discussion regarding the launch of EQ2 vs Vanilla WoW in 11/2004. You could do a whole video/video-series on this topic alone.
It wasn't that WoW specifically _did_ anything to EQ2... EQ2 did everything to itself.
In my opinion, if EQ2 had succeeded in everything SOE tried to accomplish with it on launch, history would look quite different in the MMO realm.
Heroic opportunity, the immersive music, landscape, ambiance("gather round people, gather round... I'll be warming up my voice in just a few minutes"), betrayal questlines, questing in general was better, collections(gotta click the shinies), the quest journal overall, having dedicated support classes, class/spell diversity and just the vast differences in feel between sub-classes (just look at Mystic vs Warden vs Templar for example), by nearly every account... content-wise... EQ2 was a better game than was WoW was on launch day.
buuuuttttt... then there were corpse runs, exp debt, getting trained public dungeons, the lack of instanced content, graphics optimization, and the terrible server stability... oh god, the servers. I outright avoided South Keynos like the plague as a rule.
I lament EQ2 for what it should/could have been... Blizzard shipped a much more simple, but better product and EQ2 got destroyed because of it.
Interesting stuff! Keep it up
When I saw the title of this video, the "Death and ReBirth..." I had assumed this was a new game called "The Chronicles of Roenick". Can you imagine my disappointment ? Anyway glad you got Warhammer back, (or at least Return to Reckoning) it may have died too soon. You know ... like Roenick... I'll see myself out.
Haha!
There's a new warhammer server coming called interbellum, trying to rival return of Reckoning.
Interesting
one of the most fun games I have ever played was so sad closed down
It's different, but Return of Reckoning is still fun to jump into and scratch that itch, but yeah I'm sad it shut down too.
i was there, the exodus started when the devs removed orcs ability to physically knock players back, we all quit and the crybabies weren't big enough to keep the game going...
It snowballed quickly. It was so dependent on player numbers.
I was there during game version 0.0.2 closed beta, when no more than a couple hundred people had touched the game. I could see what a horrible mess the game was going to become and when I talked to Paul Barnet and a few other devs about the game, EA-Mythics most senior community manager banned me for having opinions that were counter to what they wanted to hear. The community team and top dev's were extremely blinded to issues and arrogant. Some people had totally ridiculous, unearned promotions like Jeff Hickman was promoted from community support to LEAD game design despite being inexperienced and unqualified. Mark Jacobs completely lost control with greed and was incapable of leading such a massive project. Paul was great but this game was lead by the marketing team and the hype wagon they generated completely overtook the reality of the situation, promising things they could not come close to actually achieving, e.g. saying every race would have its own capital city and then then reducing that from several to 2.
EA launched a broken to hell unfinished (in a thousand different ways) still in early/mid beta game just 2 months before WOTLK just so they could get high Q3 numbers and SHOCKINGLY the game failed. i was in the beta for the game for a long while and when i heard the release date i was like wtf it only had 2 cities at launch and they had promised all races would have one at launch hell the high elves didnt even have full proper models yet EA killed the game and dont get me started on the shit ass in house game engine they put both AoR and SWTOR on. BUT with all that said i was a paying sub from start to finish because i love the Warhammer setting so much ( i did take about 8months off to play WOTLK but still had a sub to AoR). as far as the new RoR server goes ive played it for years but with stupid changes they have done and so many of the devs being just complete ass hats AND with a MEGA fuckup they have just done with people getting fucked out of 10+RR because of a server reset i see that server NEVER getting back the population they once had. but again i still play RoR most days because its Warhammer
I played this game a ton when it came out, for about 2 years
what happened? EA bought mythic just as they were about to go bankrupt, pressed them HARD to launch the game ASAP, come what may, then they slashed their budget, milked the game for all they could while mythic basically had to trickle in half-baked content because that's all they were financially allowed to do and when the sub count finally dropped below the 'MUH PROFITS' line EA shut down both the game and the studio, because they couldn't turn EA's crap into gold.
you know - typical publisher business model happened
Well done buddy
Thank you so much, your kind comments never go underappreciated.
To be fair..Gates of Discord was a terrible EQ expansion (maybe the worst?). It literally killed my EQ guild right at the moment that EQ2 and WoW were releasing. Really bad timing to have a bad expansion. My EQ guild actually split. Half went to EQ2 and half went to WoW. Anything was better than those trials and GoD raids. Blech.
A Warhammer MMO could still work. You don't copy another game, you make something new. I absolutely think it could work. You just need the right setup.
They haven't got the Devs or look the last time. They hired the worst company for the job. They need a hungry and innovative group.
There are rumours that we are getting a Warhammer 40k MMO someday in the future but yeah I agree with you. WAR had a such potential if devs didn't break things up. I love the grim gothic feeling of the universe and would've love to play it again if it had a big online and fixed some issues.
Once Mark Jacobs lost his three faction vision to GW the game was doomed. If you dont have three factions you dont have anything WoW doesnt have.
Still the best pvp game I've ever played. Private server is great with strong pop.
Great video!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate you saying that!
Dude, mercy. Please show the whole of your T-shirt.
Im gonna give this a try
It's a pretty easy set-up! Hope you enjoy the game! It's got some nice quality of life features that weren't there in the original.
I have vague memories of this game. I remember they got rid of a class that's focused on Hammers and I said well go fuck yourself that's what I wanted. My brother bladed a lot till just wasn't playable
Genuinely don’t remember anything like this and don’t think it was a thing ever. Psure you’re either thinking of a different game or misremembering.
@@beefnerd473it was talked about in beta or around when it first released. They just never ended up going through with it. It was the dwarven hammerer
It never stood a chance against WoW.
the game by itself is a gem.maybe the best open pvp game ever together with a couple oldschool ones. gw2 is out of competition its too casual and pointless but it has zero unbalance issues in terms of toons cause everyone can play anything cause its based server wised and not faction wise.
Still this private server has 1 yes 1 major prb:
The devs may "work" alot to provide events etc but...they are tottaly and 100% biased. the game as a result is tottaly unbalanced and the win ratio of one faction is over 90% in terms of sieges.
They also ban everysingle one who dares to say so in their forum or ingame...perma.
it is already proven that all of them are ex one faction (i wont name which) players that sadly couldnt avoid being biased and they never even tried actually.maybe a couple of years before there was 1 dev of the "other side" but quickly he got frustated of everything he suggested to be refused by the majority of the biased devs ,that he ragequit ...and ofc they found something else to say that happened.
IN few words:does it worth to play it?yes ofc ,for a small period cause if you chose to play the unbiased faction you will suffer 20 hours per day and the other 4 hours u will see that the winning faction hides perma at their keeps or warcamps to abuse the stupidity of the devs giving them tooltips that are unbeatable in terms of sieging.
If you play the winning side you will be able to hit doors 20 hours per day,lvling 10 toon to full gear and at the end become a complete noob in terms of skill and then complain that the losing faction is broken(believe it or no its the only game that the winning side cries nonstop about the massive losing side-paradox) ,cause they kick your ass everytime it happens for the 2 factions to fight with same numbers(rarely and mostly at EU prime time).
the game is no1 but sadly once more run from a bunch of biased noobz...nothing less ,nothing more.
I pre-ordered WAR and loved the experience but the death spiral was real. It hurt SWG too with how much social dependency there was. To me that's the unique draw of playing an MMO, you're in a mass of people all working together or against each other. Nowadays MMOs survive on making the core experience and leveling as solo friendly as possible and to me it always feels like I hit a ceiling fast. But you're never stuck and it encourages more fresh blood. Beyond private servers, the soul of WAR persists. Public Quests are common place as is the xp grind with pvp. I just tried FF14 and the minute a public quest timer popped up with a kill count, I felt cozy. FF14 gets around the issues by level adjusting everyone to the same for pvp and public quests. More often that not I feel kinda lost if I don't want to follow the main quest line but that's modern MMOs and how they maintain themselves. My hurdle with RR is just the scope and support. It's just not doable to have expansions to the level of an official product and playing something frozen in amber only holds my attention so long. Doesn't help that games workshop killed the Old World, the lore and fiction that WAR is based in, got replaced by a new world.
NGE bit gave me nam flashbacks.
Fair warning before downloading this provate server the installing proccess sucks.and probably the worse installing experience ive ever had if i ever get it to work properly ill give the game a far chance because i grew up playing this game and really want to play it again.
warhammer Online should of coped planetside NOT WOW BIG stupid MISTAKE i always wanted to see a WH40k /planetside style OR EQ in the future/planetside styel lol name hum everside or planetquest lol
By copy do you mean more lobby-based pvp focus? I think that's kind of like what Crowfall was going for.
@@Redbeardflynn no planetsides not lobby-based its opened would MMO sand boxy it broke recorders for most players in 1 zone in a pvp shooter mmo. im sad u didn't play it its 1 of a kind & won awards & in the guiness book of would records & still undefeated
I playeds Warhammer until 1 month before the last day. name was Banetek. I started with a sorc for two months than went with a Bright Wizard due to server imbalance of Order and Destruction. One of the things that people hate on a pvp server was not being able to chase someone into their enemy town without being one shtoted by a care bear guard. I can understand guards attacking you but 1 shot kill? Not on a pvp server... that ruined it for me.
If your an investor just stay away from MMOs they are dead money now. The fact the more popular ones are older ones tells you something.
i hop u no like all the olde school devs like raf dav jef .........u no the devs that made the best MMOs in all of history r all in the black boxes working on WEB3 stuff u might wanna research it OR u might not..... im pro crypto so im happy as long as thay do it right:) but some people that fear the unknown r not going to be happy:(
EA game’s killer
TBC > WOTLK by a billion.
This game had myriad issues. The largest problem: it being handed to Mythic after the original Warhammer MMO was canned. Mythic, while successful with DAoC, was not a great development company. WAR was barely an improvement over DAoC, and at launch the game already looked and felt (read: handled) dated. Furthermore, it focused on PvP (huge downside, especially during this era, where everyone was trying to be the next WoW, a PvE focused game). Classes were not distinct enough; there were too many of them and they all felt the same, and character customization was non-existent, so much so that everyone who played one class looked the same as everyone else who played the same. The zone layout was too similar from zone to zone; there was an Order side and a Destruction side with some middle ground scattered between, pocked by unoriginal, non-solo friendly quests. On that front, questing was extremely weak compared to WoW, it's main competition. While Public Quests were innovative, they were were not spectacular enough a feature to rest your laurels on. Class balance was non-existent. In fact, healing classes (Zealot and Shamans, namely) were unkillable for weeks after release. They were invincible even when outnumbered.
The worst part was Mythic's main promotion guy, whose name I thankfully forget. This guy.... This guy was hyper-excited and over-enthusiastic in every demo, preview, and showcase he led. He was tasked with promising the world, only a fraction of which this game perhaps came close to achieving.
Lastly, this game was released in an extremely competitive era of western MMORPGs, at a time when everyone who could develop a game was trying to strap onto the MMO train in hopes of mirroring WoW's success. This was about 4 years before most of those same companies abanonded the MMORPG genre after realizing the success rate was abysmal and the cost of development was enormous. We presently still live in the MMO wasteland caused by that mass-exodus. By the early 2010's, MMORPGs had become a barren wasteland in the west, and they still are today. If someone told you, "Hey, let's invest a hundred million dollars into a stock with a 93% chance of losing your money" --- no intelligent investor takes that bet. But that's the bet companies took when embarking on an MMORPG development adventure. We see how it panned out for most of them, right?
Overall, WAR was a lackluster game tied to a stellar franchise. This game showcased how mediocre developer Mythic was. And regardless of all the toted WoW-Killers being released in droves, Warcraft was simply a better game. And this coming from someone who had played Warhammer tabletop from 1991, and who wanted nothing more than a great Warhammer MMORPG. Personally? I knew this game sucked after the first few days I played it. I could see it, sense it, feel it. I'd already been playing MMORPGs for a decade by that point, and had seen so many fail that the signs were clearer than crystal.
All that said, Age of Re-Reckoning (a private server) is around today and with an active development squad that has vastly improved on the original game. Not only is it very active and populated, but it's a great trip down memory lane, and a fun window back into time. WAR is a better game today, in hindsight, than it was at release. That's due to our ability to remove all the noise surrounding the expectations and competition of the time, and because we can look more fondly at games years down the road than we could at release. But that's how life, and time, work: everything is always better in hindsight.
Good vid, Red. Keep it up!
why warhammer failed: totally trash lore distortion (no archaon, dark elf ALLY, yes you read correct, ALLY with greenskins and chaos [lol]), no skavens playable, no undead playable. World was shrinked to bare minimum and with HUGE geographical incongruences. Put this with the competition of established WOW mmorpg (at the time wotlk came out) and you got a good recipe for utter fail. Glad Return of Reckoning salvaged what incompetent developers failed to make and at least made game enjoyable.
This game was doomed from the start. A more lethal combination than EA the corporate greed machine and the one hit wonders Mythic, I cannot think of. That killed the game. Nothing else. First of all the engine. It's shit. Total shit. The design of it and of the game seems to have been done separately. For example notice how most of the RVR areas were placed between maps? Those were the most stressed areas. And most fights would end up between maps. The engine would freeze briefly when you went from one map to another. So stupid. And their dealines? Mythic missed all of them. The game released incomplete, zones, classes and other things. Not to mention that it was meant to be a Warcraft Killer, they all but announced that officially. They tried to fix what they thought was wrong with WoW. For example how the stealth classes worked in their game. They made stealth so weak, the class itself so restricted to what they thought a stealth class should do that people simply don't want that class in their groups. Witch Hunters and Witch Elves are the most useless classes in that game by a large margin. They also fucked the balance between factions. They figured everyone would play Order so they made Order look like gimps and guess what? Everyone played Destruction and they dominated Order at every tier.
As a fan of Warhammer Old World stuff, I want to say from the bottom of my heart, Fuck Mythic and Fuck EA. Imagine what this game would have been in the hands of competent devs and passionate people who are just a little interested in anything but the profits.
If Warhammer was good people would play it simple as that.
EA killed our game we know it everyone knows it..also the bad pve didnt matter because all or everyone who played WHO came for the RVR/PVP it was all EA.
It did better than Mass Effect Andromeda lol
Lol.. I quit Warhammer to play WotLK as well.
I think it was a pretty common occurrence!