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Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning: WAR Review
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com reviewer Michael Bitton finally takes a look at Mythic's Warhammer Online, looking at the good and noso-good points of the RvR game.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has been out for almost 7 months now, and for whatever reason we haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet! Alas, it was probably for the better. The launch of Warhammer Online was marred by myriad issues that you've likely heard about by now. In the past few months, we've watched Warhammer Online go from a hotly anticipated launch to a hemorrhaging of the player base that would most closely resemble rats fleeing a sinking ship. Is the ship still sinking, or is WAR now the game everyone expected it to be?
;)
Read the WAR Review
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Im sorry guys I enjoy aspects of WAR but the the god damn bait and switch Mythic pulls in the game at tier 4 is truly epic.
I dont mind Pve in WAR, the personal quests, PQs, Tok Unlocks and Pve influence are all well done. But why did Mythic have to f**k up a good thing by half assing Crafting and dungeons? Why even have that shit in the game? And having to run Pve dungeons at tier 4 is so messed up I can't put it into words how pure fail it is. It's so bad the person who decided to pull this terrible bait and switch on the playerbase needs to get fired from Mythic and never work in the industry ever again.
WAR is amazing when you first start, your grouping in PQs, ORvR and SC's. The quests are good and the classes are fun. If the game continued like this I swear so many more people would be playing it.
Then mythic Tosses in dungeons......... Why the hell would I want to run dungeon content for my Armor sets so I can participate in City siege?????
And I thought WoWs bait and switch was Epic.
Recently Mythic added in the token system so getting these sets arent as bad anymore but damnit its a grind and a half.
Imo I would delete both crafting and dungeons from the game. Add in more Pvp options like dueling, more SC's, Flesh out Pvp quests, hell even toss in a 6v6 arena option. Get rid of the half assed shit please!!!!!!
I'm just glad Im a casual player and only dedicated 5+ hours a week to the game. If i was hardcore this semi rant would be 10 pages long followed by a ./unsub.
TLDR version? WAR would be epic if mythic dropped the Dungeons and crafting.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
So im reading this review, and for the most part, the reviewer nailed the problems, and got the good aspects of the game down. So how in the hell is it a 8.4 or whatever? Honestly over 50-60% of the review is going over most of the real problems the game has, yet it got such a high score?
I play all ghame
I'd give WAR a 6 or maybe a 6.5 at best even with the current version.
You call the fact that Tier 4 is the same as tier 2 refreshing but that is exactly what makes it boring. Nothing changes. They might as well have stopped at tier 2 and pushed the game live 6 months earlier and the game would have probably been funner. The RvR zones are un-fleshed out and really need to include PvE areas with quests to do in them to get people out into the zones all the time...not just when there is a zerg to surf. The career mastery system is far to simplistic as is the renown ability system. RvR gear should be gained solely from renown and keep/fort/cities sieges should offer other loot/gear/trophies. The City sieges are just awful(I'll assume you haven't done them but they are). You mention PQ's being a cool part of the game and they are until about tier 3+ where generally no one does them and in Tier 4 where no one does them because the gear is pretty much crap.
You also mention the 2 "new" classes but you forget to mention that ALL of the classes should have been in at launch. You also fail to mention Mythic ignoring major issues to develop new content. Instead of fixing current T4 boringness and the dung heap that is city sieges. They are adding an RvEvR dungeon. Granted the dungeon will take the spotlight off major problems for a little while(two weeks->Month) but it just sidesteps the games major issues. Those "class fix" patches you mention were only needed due to Mythics incompetence and apparent lack of planning.
I'm somewhat in agreement with the previous poster. WAR needs to cut out what doesn't work for this game.
Crafting could go away completely and I don't think anyone would mind. It doesn't even fit within the original genre. Does anyone really think a Choppa is going to be knitting talismans together?! Talismans would be fine as drops and potions would be fine as in-game purchaseable items.
Dungeons are not nearly as enjoyable as they could be. And when they're so big you can't complete them in a weekend gaming session, and then you're locked out from participating with anyone that didn't leave the dungeon at the same point you are, it's much more hassle than it's worth. Maybe if dungeons were the PvE equivelant of PvP and control contributed to Tier control, then maybe it'd be worth the hassle, but the personal locks need to go away.
PvE xp is also borked. You have no problem hitting lvl 11 right at the end of tier 1, but you'll never make lvl 21 at the end of tier 2 without serious grinding, cross-realm questing, or RvR. Tier 3 is even worse. The xp rewards don't scale appropriately between the 4 tiers.
And why can't the prefomance issues be resolved for fortress and city siege? I used to play RFOnline, and they had this working much smoother with far more detailed graphics 5 years ago. If the original concept and intent is massive scale PvP, then why does the engine have so many issues with the very game element it was supposed to have been created for in the first place?
I still greatly enjoy scenario RvR, and with a coordinated, voice-connected team, it's a lot of fun. In-game voice-chat would be a welcome addition, and is painful in it's absence. Public quests are also extremely well done. For those reasons alone, I still enjoy playing and staying a subscriber, but holy cow, I wish Mythic would just focus on what their target player base really wants out of this game and blow us away with how good it could be.
Maybe it got a 8.4 because the good stuff like Orvr, SCs, PQs and ToK heavily out wiegh the bad stuff?
I have a problem with the Dungeon focus of the game at endgame level but other then that I think WAR is rather good.
The stability of the game is improved, I'll actually disagree with the reviewer and say the game is more then bareable.
my two negatives are dungeons and crafting and imo both of those features shouldnt be in the game considering not one god damn person picked WAR up with the intentions of actually using those features lol. Crafting is mostly ignored and dungeons are forced on people.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
8.4 is way to high for me considering the text that the reviewer wrote there. The game is more like a steady 7 atm but needs quite abit of work to be considered something "fresh" in the MMO market.
Like often happens in reviews - when one reviewer is playing - some parts of the content isn't played and therefor not reviewed. I will try to point out few of those features and make my own verdict.
PVE content
This aspect of the game was talked about quite alot by the designers in the 2-3 months before the game launched. After that tho - everything has gone very quiet on the PVE fronts. I personally find that kinda sad cause I consider WAR to have all the aspects of creating smashing PVE content - if only they would improve the AI and rethink abilites and pulling mecanics in the game.
I have often said that Mythic is lying on a goldmine when it comes to the game craphical engine. The sad part of it all is... they are not using the stong points of that engine at all. PVE content in the game is UNIQE cause unlike most MMOs out there atm - Mythic engine is creating diffrent looking mobs and enemies. Even if a mob has the same name of another standing next to him he can look wastly diffrent. Diffrent dress - diffrent head - even diffrent weapons. Perfect for PVE content. How much WOW would pay for this now when you look at the same looking mobs in WOTLK as were in lvl 10 content in orginal game. But again - Mythic does not realise this at all. And are certainly not playing to their strength.
The obsession that Mythic has about RVR is costing other aspects of the game alot. PVE is hit the worst and personally I think thats the main reason why WAR has been loosing subs for the past 6 months. Personally I think Mythic needs to take a step back from their game and start to listen to other players than those that play siege combat - cause quite frankly - the RVR content simply is not strong enough - not massive enough and defently not stable enough (and will not be for long time) to be worth doing long term. Why not use the other aspects of the game to create more variety and offer more than just pointless PVP killing ?
Public quests
Public quests are a good concept in many ways. The main problem with PQs in WAR is that they somehow dont add up. And they become repetitive cause they are all build on the same basics. It doesn't matter how many varieties of 3 stage Public quests you create - Its still 3 stages. Its pretty much like RVR sieges. Its always the same. Ok - Tier 4 combat has 2 doors to break down compared to one - but the rest is the same small room with alot of ppl fighting in endless lag and performance issues. Just not worth it in the long term.
Classes.
I like alot of the ideas behind WAR classes. Balancing issues were obviously a big problem in early days of the game and sadly it seems like the testing from Mythic side is not strong enough yet cause alot of annoying "bugs" have been going on - something that players have been using to exploid content - specially in PVP. And thats probably another reason why ppl give up on the game. Noone wants to be on the end of exploids that are not fixed for weeks and months.
Final verdict.
I consider WAR to be a good game atm. Raiting tho will not go beyond 7 at this point and will probably stay there since Mythic is to focused on fixing RVR content. For me tho.. RVR is not - and will not be the game strong points considering the teqnology that Mythic has available. They can do alot better than spend their entire power on 100 ppl fighting out in lagfested finalbattle siege room. But like with so many other factors of this game. It simply wont happen...
I like the dungeons myself. Im not sure what you guys are talking about you have to do them in order to compete or play rvr?
You get rvr gear from players and gold and massive bags off keeps, fortress and city sieges. I have a full set of annihlator on one tune minus shoulders, 3 pieces of conqueror, 1 invader. I have done sigmar crypts only 3 times could have done it more, but bagged 3 pieces of sentinel. You dont have to go the dungeons. But I find them a nice get away if you are bored of pvp or what not. Its not like we have a ton of dungeons compared to every other MMO out there.
WAR is a really good game, that could be super if they keep on fixing it. They are trying. And to be honest were is someone like me supposed to go to play rvr like WAR? Four areas if the improve WAR will be great.
1. Meaningful pvp, they need to make the end game better, RvR needs to branch out from BO, Keep, Fortress, City... They are some good ideas floating around.
2. LAG>. Big time need to fix this in raids, it has gotten better though.
3. Class balance - They are working on it, I give them that.
4. Crafting, simply put they need more crafting skills. Like to see Jeweler as an option myself.
I dont know why this review suprises anyone, if you look at all the Reviews of WAR on the major game sites, it gets Great Reviews. Players are the ones who give bomb reviews. A game site cant do that an be legit. MMORPG.com couldn't put a review out like players or do or they would be dismissed as immature.
Before everyone comes crashing down on MMORPG for their review, lets see how the rest of the game review sites reviewed Warhammer?
IGN 9 / 10 Oct 9, 2008
Thunderbolt 8 / 10 Jan 22, 2009
Worth Playing 8.9 / 10 Dec 25, 2008
Game Chronicles 9 / 10 Oct 26, 2008
GameZone 8.8 / 10 Oct 20, 2008
Gamervision 8 / 10 Oct 13, 2008
1UP B Oct 1, 2008
Eurogamer 8 / 10 Sep 11, 2008
GamePlasma 7.2 / 10 Jan 1, 2009
GamersHell 8.5 / 10 Dec 7, 2008
Fragland 80 / 100 Nov 22, 2008
GamingTrend 89 / 100 Nov 2, 2008
Computer Games RO 85 / 100 Nov 1, 2008
Gamers Temple 92 / 100 Oct 31, 2008
PALGN 8 / 10 Oct 30, 2008
Gaming Target 8.8 / 10 Oct 30, 2008
GamerNode 8 / 10 Oct 24, 2008
AceGamez 9 / 10 Oct 16, 2008
UGO A Oct 16, 2008
AtomicGamer 88 / 100 Oct 14, 2008
Armchair Empire 8 / 10 Oct 13, 2008
Game Revolution A- Oct 10, 2008
Gameplayer 8.5 / 10 Oct 3, 2008
GameShark A- Sep 30, 2008
G4 - X-Play 5 / 5 Sep 27, 2008
GameSpy 5 / 5 Sep 26, 2008
Cheat Code Central 4.7 / 5 Sep 23, 2008
Gameplanet 8 / 10 Sep 21, 2008
PC Gamer 86 / 100 Dec 25, 2008
Game Informer 8 / 10 Dec 1, 2008
PC Gamer UK 88 / 100 Sep 19, 2008
Edge Magazine UK 7 / 10 Dec 25, 2008
PC Format UK 87 / 100 Dec 1, 2008
PC Zone UK 92 / 100 Dec 1, 2008
gamesTM 8 / 10 Nov 1, 2008
PC Power Play 7 / 10 Dec 1, 2008
Total PC Gaming 8 / 10 Nov 1, 2008
Average Critics Score 8.6
MMORPG Review Score 8.4
In my opinion I think it deserves a 70 out of 100. I dont think it should be up there with the high ranking games. Its a good game don't get me wront. But I don't think its great.
The game needs some polish, but it has come a long way since launch.
One thing to note in regards to your review. They just added in a token system for the RvR gear, so the gold bags in keeps are not the only way to get the gear now.
The original Septimus circa 1995
So people who don't like the game disagree with a reviewer who does like the game? Alert the media!
The game has definitely come a long way since launch and I gave it another fair try but I gave up for almost the same reason as I gave up at launch, it got boring. The PVP is tedious and repetetive and as has already been pointed out, the game feels the same at T4 as it does at T2.
I play the trial, and i dont get this critic about the graphics, give me a list of games that have better graphics, and show me how outdated WAR is, WoW has hideous graphics but no one seems to notice it here. Show me the graphic standard for games.
The single issue that ruined the game for me & led to my quitting it was game performance, it was noticebly choppy & stuttery even as a single player doing PvE quests in a barely occupied zone, even though my system wasn't cutting edge it was way above minimum specs (which are wrong imho, dual core cpu & nvidia 8xxx + level gfx card is a requirement).
Any kind of RvR with more than 2 wbs would induce chronic performance problems & in large keep fights (which became a bigger problem than forts after the fort caps were introduced) the servers regularly crashed after having catastrophic lag, framerate, & general performance issues, you could be dead minutes before you realised you were even getting hit.
Considering the game was focus on Large-Scale RvR battles the engine performance is frankly disgusting at doing what it set out to offer.
There is a lot to love in the game but the performance kills that.
Read the WAR Review
You forgot to mention that there is virtually no solo / small group PvP / RvR. It's all aobut raid sized mobs of people. The lack of vrariety is very obvious and quite irritating. It get old really fast having to run around in mobs all the time in order to get anything done in PvP. Let alone trying to get any rewards when constantly competing against 24 to 48 other people for loot. Leveling outside of scenarios for PvP is even more irritating. Also, the fact that more than half the classes are nothing more than fodder for classes like Sorceror / Bright Wizard / Choppa / Slayer / Witch Elves is also a huge negative. There is nothing fun or rewarding about being pure support in a PvP centric game and yet that is exactly what they've done with too many of the classes.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
I will withdraw the comment about the hideous WoW graphics, i did play the game long time ago, and now checking some screenshots there are in here, i remember that the art style is cartoonish, and that they look like improved somewhat, but that doesnt make a difference about the judgement on the graphical quality of WAR.
I don't think the reviewer had his game graphic settings turned up. That and he compared WAR to AoC, which is like compairing apples to oranges. Some folks don't understand the difference between "realistic" and "cartoonish" graphics.
BO's and Keeps no longer give out the exp/renown/influence that they once did. This last patch took care of that. You now get more for killing other players than you do for playing RvE (Realm vs. Enviornment) or Keep trading. So over the last week, I've seen a TON more open field RvR.
Either I missed it or the OP/Reviewer fails to talk about LE's (Live Events). This is one of the reasons you have seen a TON more open field RvR recently. The LE forces people from both sides out into the same area's of an RvR lake to complete quests/PQ's in order to gain the influence needed to obtain the LE items. BTW, LE's are one of my favorite things in WAR, just like arcs in DAoC.
You will not find another gaming company out there that listens to it's playerbase as much as Mythic does. They have made great improvements to the game since launch and most of those changes have come from player input. For those of you questioning why Mythic puts out new content when they haven't addressed older problems... you do realize that Mythic has more than one department working on the game dont you? And no, putting more people to work on the same issue is NOT a smart idea. It creates larger problems and makes it even more difficult to troubleshoot issues.
I will admit, I get frustrated at times with WAR, I am a Mythic fanboi, and I am one of the Elder Beta Testers. I've watched all of the changes made from Aug 2007 till now and I although WAR has many issues (Mostly with T4) I still think over the next year we will see it's population go up again.
My list of complaints:
*Too much CC... Mythic didn't learn from DAoC in the area obviously.
*T4 is still too laggy in zones with large (Epic) battles going on.
*Incentives for ORvR still isn't good enough. Personally I would fight other people even if we got nothing for it, but most people will only fight if there is something to be gotten. Kinda sad really.
*Crafting? I craft, but it isn't as usefull as the crafting in DAoC was.
*Seige warfare. This is suppsoed to be getting better in comming patches I think. Currently it's very dissapointing.
*CC... oops, already mentioned that.
~Tarqueth~
A quick note on the article.
Just to be clear, the reviewer scores the game. So, that is what he felt.
Also, it was reviewed based on how it is today not how it was at launch. So keep that in mind.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
You know posters don't work that way, they always work on the principle the game is stuck in the first week of release
it makes for far better drama to point out a games failings but not how those failings have been fixed, no matter what MMO it is.
Anyway good read and your score is very very close to the user score on this website that we the members have submitted.
Despite all WAR's problems, I see the biggest mistake that has occurred was when they opened all the servers for fear of a few complaints about queue's.
WAR is designed to be fun on an at-capacity server. Since most of them are nearly empty, it's hard to accept its flaws because it just isn't fun. If they hadn't messed this one up, everyone would still have had fun doing mass PQ's and RvR'ing after launch instead of quitting angrily. Then they woulda had more money and more confidence, a larger player base, and they could've focussed on tweaking the game.
You should edit that second to last sentence, because the very fact that I expected some good PvE dungeons along with good RvR stuff, proves that sentence wrong. I've always enjoyed a mix of pvp and pve. I found DAoC to be a rather fun PvE game, as did many at the time. I do believe you don't HAVE to do dungeons to get that gear, because I could have sworn that you can get that gear from PvPing too.
You know posters don't work that way, they always work on the principle the game is stuck in the first week of release
it makes for far better drama to point out a games failings but not how those failings have been fixed, no matter what MMO it is.
Anyway good read and your score is very very close to the user score on this website that we the members have submitted.
Except all of the major issues that were in the game at release are pretty much still the same and haven't been fixed. People say they added a token system for RvR loot to make getting it easier but fail to mention the drop rates can be quite bad and in a zerg you still have the problem of rolling against everyone. The problem is still the same yet they missed the easy fix of just making it RR based like it was in BETA.
Sure some people bring up the some of the launch issues since they didn't get passed them but in reality even if they did get passed them they would have hit a slew of issues that are currently still in the game. A lot of people quit in T3 back then. Do you think T4 would have made them stay? T4 only opens a whole new realm of bad design.
Sadly I would have to agree with this. I 'd probably give WAR a 7.0 at best. Think about it for a second the review say PRO: refreshing focus on RVR then in the same breath says CON: RVR is not there yet.
So if you want to be consistent you basically have to take out all the "PRO" points you awarded for that since you basically admited its not all that hot to begin with.
Basically the reviewer couldn't bring himself to admit the game basically screws itself up. Yet implicitly admits that is the case.
Sadly this is WAR and many of the people who play it in a nutshell. It is simply a matter of time. Some people take a month some people take 6 months but in the end they all realize on some level the game basically screws itself up.
The screwup is that PvP, in whatever form you want to take it, doesn't work.
Call it RvR or whatever, what MOST people actually want to play and PAY for is deep immersive PvE content with dynamic consequential storylines.
Kill me Kill you Kill me Kill you ad nauseum = mmo recipe for mediocrity.
Not true at all. To say that it's PVP focus was it's downfall is just plain wrong. It just wasn't implemented well. Look how mahy copies they sold at release. If it delivered on it's promises, it could have had mega numbers.
The boring part of PVP is if it is not meaningful in some way.