Author Topic: Why Warhammer Failed (Read 3301 times)

erious · « **on:** October 14, 2010, 12:12:28 AM »

Warhammer Online was the only mmorpg I really looked forward to, and followed all developments on with great interest - so I was rather disappointed when it turned out a failure.
So the knowledge of the few of the reasons why it turned out how it did is highly interesting:
http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/
and follow up:
http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/and-another-things/
It probably requires some knowledge of people involved in development and of the game itself to get the full message, but even if you don't have either of those it's still an interesting look inside the world of game development.

Meomix · « **Reply #1 on:** October 14, 2010, 12:27:23 AM »

Just heard of the news on reddit, i was laughing my eyes out. I knew MMORPG's always had this dead feel to them over the years but for it to be confirmed in being this bad.. i find it an insult on how they keep misusing our time.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #2 on:** October 14, 2010, 02:53:13 AM »

last time I checked (way back)
Wow was on top with like 14 million players and right after Wow was Aion with like 3 million . . .
I know warhammer, age of conan, d&d and eq 2 were fails

xfreidax · « **Reply #3 on:** October 14, 2010, 04:33:59 AM »

AoC is actually doing ok nowadays, they launched their first expansion not too long back. D&D after going free to play has been doing well too. EQ2 while not the most popular has always had a decent and loyal following.

The only one you listed I'd agree failed is Warhammer. It's doing the worst.

I think people have a skewed idea of what is successful because of WoW's 14 mil numbers. You don't need millions for a game to be successful. A couple hundred thousand is plenty to keep games going forever.

newy · « **Reply #4 on:** October 14, 2010, 05:39:25 AM »

14 mio Wow members = 8 mio Chinese multiaccounts?

Meomix · « **Reply #5 on:** October 14, 2010, 06:14:38 AM »

Quote from: newy on October 14, 2010, 05:39:25 AM

14 mio Wow members = 8 mio Chinese multiaccounts?

Assholes like these have finally wrecked the marketing system as we know it.
In other games not only do i yawn at the repair bills i cannot trade items, cant drop them, maybe it would be abit reasonable if they allowed betting pools but thats another story.

DLTE · « **Reply #6 on:** October 14, 2010, 06:19:18 AM »

Lol seen many mmos that have hype that go all " oh shit, this is gonna be the wow-killer fer shure! ". All crash and burn.

lol@warhammer

lol@hellgate london

AceHigh · « **Reply #7 on:** October 14, 2010, 03:16:02 PM »

APB must be the biggest fail.

With only 2 months server uptime, I really think it's the most short live mmo in history. Luckily Global Agenda did a sneaky move on the APB players and recruited a lot of them to GA. Now I have even more noobs on my /ignore list.

AoC is an excellent game right now. All because Craig Morrison took over and he knows his shit (same guy was behind Anarchy online). I say put him in charge of Secret World and it will be successful from the release date.

Also the reason why WOW has so many millions of players is because you need no skills. Attracts casual players, so WoW is usually the game we send noobs to who complain that aiming with sniper rifle is hard, enjoy your tab targeting, bitch!

fohfoh · « **Reply #8 on:** October 14, 2010, 07:28:46 PM »

Quote from: DLTE on October 14, 2010, 06:19:18 AM

Lol seen many mmos that have hype that go all " oh shit, this is gonna be the wow-killer fer shure! ". All crash and burn.

lol@warhammer

lol@hellgate london

Hellgate london was an MMO directed towards WOW? I thought it was directed as being something like diablo 2 LOD. Due to all the fights and controversy with the developers in regards to Diablo 3/Warcraft 3 etc. way back in the day.

Meomix · « **Reply #9 on:** October 14, 2010, 07:37:07 PM »

Ooooooh Anarchy Online. That game had so many armour levels money rained from the sky!
Leveling really became a pain after lvl 50, had to go into more ridiculous mission grids, those torrent guns eeeeeeaaaaahhhhhaat e them! Those guns strike fear into even the most experienced of fighters.. so much despair.

Riding my spacecraft over level 200 areas was so awesome, and then are missions in places with a level gap of 1 to 30 ahaah the lovely wipeouts, da lost xp, da trains ohooh da trains.

Speaking of trains i was replenishing my mana when i see like 3 dudes zoom right past me. I'm like "Ok whatever." BOOM! 30 Temple Defenders come rushing out of the entrance, i dash for the exiting hallway.
The new wave of players manage to gain control of Temple Defenders.

This instance being 5 long levels deep i decide to go to the instance's main prize Guardian of Tomorrow, size can be compared to a building level 150. I'm like 4 and a half levels inside the Temple when i hear screams and curses rapidly flooding the chat. One dude rushes out from a corner then the room starts shaking, woooom Guardian of Tomorrow follows Chucky in close pursuit then starts shooting lasers, it was a looong journey back out through all those respaaawns.

It followed us all the way back to the first level of the Temple, everyone's like gunning for the exit.

xfreidax · « **Reply #10 on:** October 15, 2010, 04:46:33 AM »

That would be the temple of three winds or TOTW

I'm a long time AO player, 220/25 Clan MA. Stopped playing just before lost eden expansion.

I have high hopes for TSW. I just hope funcom can break away from the cycle of imploding shortly after launch.

Sosseres · « **Reply #11 on:** October 15, 2010, 09:34:16 AM »

WAR failed for one reason. PvE was empty. If you wanted to do something that required more than 3 people you had to be in a guild. There would never be above 3 people.

This forced you to do what the guilds wanted, or PvP, either in scenarios or mostly empty RvR. Which led to people not renewing after the first month. Which led to a downward spiral. Basically having 3 main areas to level up in per faction killed the game. They had too few people on servers to fuel so many large areas on top of the scenarios.

TorturdChaos · « **Reply #12 on:** October 15, 2010, 02:12:30 PM »

I tried playing the trial for Warhammer and it was a nightmare. Took me about 12hrs over the course of 3 days of screwing around and forum hunting to get the trial client to install, load, then patch correctly. I couldn't sign up and ask questions on their forum because it required me to log into the game and create a character first to post as. I couldn't get the game to load.....

As I see it the 10day free trial is a huge part of recruitment for any MMO. That's how I got hooked on WoW. So making that process painful is hard on business.

But during all my searching for answers I found pages of pages of complaints about so many MAJOR technical issues with the game. I was shocked by this, and even more so when I realized most of these people where paying customers, not just taking the game for a test drive to see if they liked it or not. Issues anywhere from not being able to log in for days at a time, to repeatably being booted over and over. Game client failing to patch for several days straight. And many other issues I can't remember now.
And I will admit with any piece of software you will find plenty of complaints for glitches and issues. And I know WoW has pages and pages of people with issues.
But I was still shocked at the shear number of complaints I found. Especially when you consider the smaller player base than WoW.
But after I finally got to log in, I played some for the rest of my free trial, but there was really nothing to pull me into the game and get me hocked. I got bored fairly quickly, and all those technical issues with it kept nagging at the back of my mind.
So I dropped it and uninstalled it after my 10 day trial was up.

xfreidax · « **Reply #13 on:** October 15, 2010, 05:59:09 PM »

Quote from: Sosseres on October 15, 2010, 09:34:16 AM

WAR failed for one reason. PvE was empty. If you wanted to do something that required more than 3 people you had to be in a guild. There would never be above 3 people.

This forced you to do what the guilds wanted, or PvP, either in scenarios or mostly empty RvR. Which led to people not renewing after the first month. Which led to a downward spiral. Basically having 3 main areas to level up in per faction killed the game. They had too few people on servers to fuel so many large areas on top of the scenarios.

War pve is a complete waste of time... Granted I left just before they patched in the desert zone with tomb of the can't remember what dungeon. But up to that point it's all crap. There's no reason to do them except to pick up wards.

The pvp for the first 3 months though was awesome. I started at launch so pretty much t1-4 I always found action in the RvR lakes.

I think what killed Warhammer was the fact they had no clear direction where they wanted to take the game and people got tired of waiting for them to pull their heads out of their asses. There was definitely a disconnect between the devs and the player base.

DLTE · « **Reply #14 on:** October 15, 2010, 06:03:03 PM »

Quote from: fohfoh on October 14, 2010, 07:28:46 PM

Quote from: DLTE on October 14, 2010, 06:19:18 AM
Lol seen many mmos that have hype that go all " oh shit, this is gonna be the wow-killer fer shure! ". All crash and burn.

lol@warhammer

lol@hellgate london

Hellgate london was an MMO directed towards WOW? I thought it was directed as being something like diablo 2 LOD. Due to all the fights and controversy with the developers in regards to Diablo 3/Warcraft 3 etc. way back in the day.

Hellgate was pretty much hyped up to be the next best "MMO" because it advertised itself as both a FPS (wow!!) and MMO at the same time. Not to mention the involvement of diablo2 developers too.

Too bad it turned to shit pretty fast.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #15 on:** October 17, 2010, 02:28:36 AM »

Quote from: DLTE on October 14, 2010, 06:19:18 AM

Lol seen many mmos that have hype that go all " oh shit, this is gonna be the wow-killer fer shure! ". All crash and burn.

lol@warhammer

lol@hellgate london

thing is that even if your game is a million times better than wow. . .you still got to win over 14 million players. . .out of which probably more than a half WoW is their first MMO and they dont really know much

for example PvP on Warhammer COMPLETELY PWNED wow's pvp. . .I havent played wow since a little after burning crusade got released so I dont know if it changed much. . .but still warhammer was far superior.

Aion completely pwnz wow in pvp and well I do agree pve isnt as fun as wow but hey what to do.

a lot of complains I heard about Aion and those other mmo's is that they arent spoon fed. Wow. . .go do an instance and get phat l00ts.
I did an instance like 10 times in Aion to see only 1 good thing drop out of the final boss. . .it was kinda pissing me off but . . .hey not everything is easy.

now go watch the trailer of Aion Vision. . .it looks too amazing!! tho I think that will never be released if they keep their population so low =/

oh! BTW if you want to compete with WoW you got to compete with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAibYnDUH6c

Meomix · « **Reply #16 on:** October 17, 2010, 02:42:29 AM »

Quote from: GoGeTa006 on October 17, 2010, 02:28:36 AM

Quote from: DLTE on October 14, 2010, 06:19:18 AM
Lol seen many mmos that have hype that go all " oh shit, this is gonna be the wow-killer fer shure! ". All crash and burn.

lol@warhammer

lol@hellgate london

I did an instance like 10 times in Aion to see only 1 good thing drop out of the final boss. . .it was kinda pissing me off but . . .hey not everything is easy.

now go watch the trailer of Aion Vision. . .it looks too amazing!! tho I think that will never be released if they keep their population so low =/

I think thats kind of the point. I log in to have a seamless fun experience, not to try for the 102th time at the battle barrens for a item i need to compete in the next raid that mainly does ganking than anything else.

Too many things in MMORPG's these days are time wasting time sinks that are more oriented at stalling you than anything else. Cause at the end of the day after all the killings and the quests there's nothing else there.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #17 on:** October 17, 2010, 02:45:46 AM »

also wow doesnt (or didnt) have any penalizations for death. . .Aion takes off experience. . .
I know in EQ you could loot someones corpse? that would be mean!

Meomix · « **Reply #18 on:** October 17, 2010, 03:34:30 AM »

Runescape moments here

. I remember i was doing this quest to get the most powerful sword in the entire game, went to restock on fire runes for magical attack cause fighting that dragon head on would just be plain suicidal.

The fire temple however was within the freaking wilderness, if you die there all your items are dropped.
Sure as hell did not want to lose 100k worth of armour i quadruple check to make sure there were no passerbys.
After finishing the quest i was returning back to the shack so i could teleport the hell out of there, i run into someone, come and see button mashing race towards the shack, i was something around 42 HP before i reached the safe point.

Sosseres · « **Reply #19 on:** October 17, 2010, 05:52:24 AM »

Quote from: Meomix on October 17, 2010, 02:42:29 AM

Too many things in MMORPG's these days are time wasting time sinks that are more oriented at stalling you than anything else. Cause at the end of the day after all the killings and the quests there's nothing else there.

Everquest was the king of things like that. Boss runs hours long...