The Warhammer Mistake

[Zeli]

The Warhammer Mistake - The Same Problem Aion Encountered

Date: 09-03-2009 Views: 360

Summary: I was discussing upcoming MMOs with a friend a few weeks ago when she mentioned a term I hadn't heard before: The Warhammer Mistake. She explained that the Warhammer Mistake is when an MMO developer decides to make PvP the only viable means of end-game entertainment. She argued that this same problem was to plague Aion, a PvPvE game.

Read the rest here: news.mmosite.com/content/2009-09-03/20090903225235519.shtml


I don't think WARs problem is the PvP focus. I think the problems are more around how they implemented specific ideas, a great lack of polish, and an inability to make corrections in a time that their customer base found reasonable.

WoW is a freak. It's unlikely that another MMO will hit those numbers any time soon. The player base is comfortable and Blizzard regularly provides quality expansions to keep them entertained. There's no reason to leave. It's not my preferred style of gameplay though and I am thankful for the niche MMOs that provide me with something else to play.

[Takzenen]

Yeah, pretty sure everyone here can agree that PvP being the only form of endgame content as a mistake is well...wrong.


Example? Planetside, and of course DAoC.

Wonder what her MMO experience is.

[Pazzolupo]

Sept 4, 2009 20:13:02 GMT -5 Takzenen said:

Wonder what her MMO experience is.

See: WoW Whore - Someone who is so obsessed with World of Warcraft. Not just addicted, but extremely obsessed with the game. That someone begins to develop fanboyism towards World of Warcraft and thinks its better than other MMORPGs that he/she, most likely has never played. He/she begins to tell everyone on message boards, chat rooms, and in real life to get World of Warcraft, detailing how it is the perfect MMORPG.

source: www.urbandictionary.com

[Takzenen]

Sept 4, 2009 21:05:39 GMT -5 Pazzolupo said:

Sept 4, 2009 20:13:02 GMT -5 Takzenen said:

Wonder what her MMO experience is.

See: WoW Whore - Someone who is so obsessed with World of Warcraft. Not just addicted, but extremely obsessed with the game. That someone begins to develop fanboyism towards World of Warcraft and thinks its better than other MMORPGs that he/she, most likely has never played. He/she begins to tell everyone on message boards, chat rooms, and in real life to get World of Warcraft, detailing how it is the perfect MMORPG.

source: www.urbandictionary.com

Hilarious how you knew exactly what I was thinking

[Winin]

It's almost like he can't quit you. Uncanny.

[Rer]

Hell, if anything, WAR's "Hey let's focus on PvE expansions and endgame dungeons" attitude that pissed me off more than anything.

[Veleuk]

WoW is a freak

WoW is popular because of Battle.net. The pre-existing player base transitioned over to it and bam! People to play with.

WARs problem is that the RvR has no goal. DAoC there were relics, WAR there is..... crap? There are no roaming groups of people splattering everything out there, no place for solo'ers to go, no excitement in killing someone.

It is back up to $14, but for a long while WAR was $10 on Amazon.

[Zeli]

^^ /agree

[Big Hoss]

I think Maeve said that all of the fortress siege and current state of rvr was not what they originally intended from the game. I though she said you just roamed around fighting for control nodes or something like that but i may be wrong. I think they totally missed what the DAOC magic was and after the beating they took on feedback from the old players decided to make it like DAOC. But as mentioned above they missed all of the things that made it fun, have they even added pve content to the rvr zones yet? I mean when i got into my first rvr zone i couldn't even hear a cricket chirping it was that devoid of everything.

[Whiskey]

I don't really understand the RVR lakes myself. In theory, I suppose it would be a great place to go to find the ORVR. But in practice...

When I was playing last fall the lakes were often empty, as many folks were parked in the Warcamps queuing for scenario after scenario. Now that you can queue anywhere, I don't even see folks in the camps very often unless they're waiting for a domination tick. Granted, I'm only in T1 presently. The game really feels empty.

[Bacchus]

Tiers 1, 2, and 3 RvR lakes are fairly bust most of the day, you just have to find the zone its currently located in. At least on Volkmar, there tends to be 1 - 2 Destro Warbands going around to each paring one at a time to take control of it. Most of the time there is a fair chunk of order there to fight with. But, the fighting is not spread out across the pairings at all times, so you do have to go look for it. Tier 4 is a different beast all together.

[Keinermacht]

Sept 5, 2009 0:26:08 GMT -5 Rer said:

Hell, if anything, WAR's "Hey let's focus on PvE expansions and endgame dungeons" attitude that pissed me off more than anything.

Yeah, the writer of that article was maybe a bit misinformed about Aion's endgame... there are thousands of PvE (Balaur) mobs everywhere you turn in the Abyss, and some of them are quite powerful and drop good loot.

New 100% PvE dungeons will most likely also be patched in on a regular basis, hell we got three just in the open beta.

I can see how some WoW addicts will not like this game. You're not going to log in 3-5 nights a week at 8PM to hit Molten Core or Karazhan or Lost Vale like clockwork. You're going to have to wrest control of the entrances to a lot of the good PvE content away from the other side, first. And if you fail in doing so, well that's part of the play experience.

[Grok]

Sept 5, 2009 8:00:48 GMT -5 Veleuk said:

WoW is a freak

WoW is popular because of Battle.net. The pre-existing player base transitioned over to it and bam! People to play with.

I dunno, I think this doesn't give Blizzard the credit they deserve for creating a very good game. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, it's not mine either anymore, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Blizzard knows how to create games people love.

WARs problem is that the RvR has no goal. DAoC there were relics, WAR there is..... crap? There are no roaming groups of people splattering everything out there, no place for solo'ers to go, no excitement in killing someone.

It is back up to $14, but for a long while WAR was $10 on Amazon.

You might be right here. Personally I would have been fine logging in each night just for the sheer enjoyment of hanging with a good group of people and bashing in the heads of the enemy. Unfortunatlely Mythic wasn't able to facilitate that experience very well past T3. For me the real killer was lag, poorly constructed keeps and an ungodly amount of AOE/CC spam that simply sapped any enjoyment out of the game for me.

[Maeve]

Sept 9, 2009 18:27:38 GMT -5 Grok said:

For me the real killer was lag, poorly constructed keeps and an ungodly amount of AOE/CC spam that simply sapped any enjoyment out of the game for me.

That's pretty much what did it for me. It doesn't really matter so much to me if end game is PvE or PvP. What does matter is that end game is fun. I didn't have fun in WoW end game and I didn't have fun in WAR end game. If it isn't fun, I'm not going to make it long. While it is too early for me to tell if I like Aion end game or not, on paper, it sounds like a nice mix of both PvE and PvP and hopefully, will be fun.

[Wubbie]

The WH Mistake...

I only played beta but I'm in complete agreement regarding the PvP. The massive back and forth fighting got boring real quick. I remember that you could take and hold a post but it wasn't anything close attacking/defending a keep in DAOC.

I know DAOC is really based around PvP but the 3 realm system seems like the best. They have finally made the super cluster to revive the last bits of the dying game. When they made it where drops were better than player crafted items, the game took a big fall.

The game has gone completely to easy mode.
Just the other day, I went on an ML4 raid.....you can now port right to the big boss at the end.../sigh....and stood around for about an hour killing the boss and then collecting something called atlantean glass. You take the glass, buy a bunch of stones, and then turn the stones in for what?.....Just about the best armor and weapon in the game for each class.

It's been fun playing with the huge numbers I remember when I first started playing the game but everyone has the best gear now and there's no reward for either playing a long time, getting a huge number of people to go out and kill something, or for killing a bunch of enemies.

I think this last move by Mythic will give the game about 2 more years of good play. Maybe by then someone will come up with a 3 realm game where players really need to depend on each other and the RvR is rockin' fun.

Until then, I'm still shooting arrows into the unsuspecting hib or mid.