The WAH, 9/18/09 - One Year Later, Two Months Forward

[PhoenixRed]

It was one year ago today that Warhammer released to the general public to great fanfare and the kind of craziness that you'd expect from an MMO release. Filled with excitement and giddiness over new shiny, hundreds of thousands of players logged into WAR, eager to get started with plans of endless RvR and an optimism to try a new product in a genre that had high hopes and big expectations.

Hindsight is definitely 20/20. As someone who has been following the game prior to release and up until now, I think I've had a unique perspective from the view of someone who has been involved in the fan community as I have this past year. I've seen optimism, pessimism, and everything in between. I've been privy to the rise and fall of servers, guilds, and discussions of core issues. I've had some limited exposure to the workings of Mythic, and how they interact with sites like this one. It's been a long, strange journey, and one in which myself and the staff here at the site have received praise, flames, compliments, encouragement, hate mail, and opportunities. If you have a chance to live this, you should. It's definitely unique.

It's no secret that WAR has struggled during its first year of release, and that it now has to deal with an increasingly hostile MMO market with tons of alternatives that players are anxious to try with the same gusto as they did with WAR. There have been a ton of topics talked about on the forum that are specific to WAR's difficulties, with dipping subscriber numbers, class balance, stability, and endgame being among some of the most prominent thoughts that are passed around the discussion table. I won't rehash them here as they are well-known. But if I had to pick some retrospecitive thoughts about the causes of the major issues surrounding WAR that have plagued what was an otherwise decent launch, it would be these:

Player Perception is Powerful, and Must be Managed
In any MMO, there are going to be a number of players who post on forums, write on blogs, and otherwise opine in places about some very strong opinions and perceptions about the game. Whether a class is overpowered or underpowered, whether the game is broken or not, or whether or not developer faith can be maintained is all contributive of the perception that players feel depending on what others are saying in the community. Here at Warhammer Alliance, we've always encouraged players to talk constructively about the topics that are eating at them, whether or not they are of a positive or negative slant. In the years that I've been around, I've seen all sorts of opinions flying about, from ideas about the development cycle of the game, to the developers' motivations for doing certain things, to whether or not a server or population was balanced.

In many cases what the players feel about a game is borne out of a small nugget of truth wrapped around a cloak of perception, feelings, and emotions. Metrics and hard data may prove this to be otherwise - however, the perception that players have about a game still needs to be managed and addressed. Key elements in WAR's perception as it related to how players thought about it were not addressed as directly as they could have been by Mythic. An example is that the perception that developers play one side more than another. Another is class balance, and the perception of certain classes (BW/Sorc anyone?) being massively overpowered compared to others. The problem is, as much as hard data and metrics say otherwise, and as much as a developer might want to stick to their guns because of this, a player's perception of what they see the game in must be addressed. It's not always a player's imagination.

When in Doubt, Overcook, Don't Undercook
Last year, I wrote an article following Mythic's decision to release in September, before Wrath of the Lich King, citing that while the decision to release was not the most ideal situation, that it was the best decision that could be made to avoid having an "overdone" product along the lines of a Duke Nukem Forever. Now, I'm not above admitting that I was wrong over the Internet, so I can say now that I was mistaken. The inevitable growing pains that any MMO goes through within its first year are things that any sensible MMO player will go through, but even the most patient of players can only deal with so much with the explanation that "it's a new MMO, give it time".

WAR's leapfrogging of Wrath of the Lich King and ensuing unnecessary PR battle between it and Blizzard did more to hurt the game's tolerance for being dealt with as a new game than anything else. While WAR enjoyed a massive spike in subscriptions, the lure of WoW tourism was too great for many players who left WAR to go back to an expansion despite it having much of the same as previous content additions. Cut classes and cut content had to be retrofitted into the game at later dates, and problems normally reserved for a more extensive beta, such as stability issues, lag, and a more scrutinizing look at the RvR campaign were forced to be experienced in the live game with an increasingly impatient and frustrated customer base. While progress has been made on this front since launch, the constant issues that could have been worked out with a few more months of beta testing have led to a lack of faith in Mythic by its community to fix, well, anything these days.

Great and Fallen Expectations
Perhaps one of the greatest contributors of WAR's struggles this past year has been the failure to meet expectations that many fans had when playing the game. Hype, marketing, and several key statements made by Mythic personnel about what the game would bring to the general public were things that haven't really panned out as well as they thought they would. Several examples of this include thematic declarations such as "WAR is everywhere", quantified metrics such as "if we're not adding servers six weeks after launch, we're in trouble", and the explanation of RvR mechanics and ideas regarding keeps and city sieging that had to be modified as recently as a couple patches ago.

In any MMO, there is going to be a clear disjointed feeling between what a game promises and says it will deliver, and what it actually pans out as delivering in the game's execution. Knowing this, the very real problems that could crop up during execution of a game's vision needed to be managed a bit better. Perhaps the greatest example of this was in fortresses, keeps, and the T4 RvR campaign, where what was set to be a back and forth battle quickly became one of the path of least resistance, with players favoring undefended keeps and being demoralized on the receiving end of constant city sieges due to population imbalance. Were the expectations for the experience set a bit better, and the adjustments to fix inevitable flaws performed in a manner that assured players that their feedback was being listened to, players may have chosen to soldier through expectations not met.

What Now?

All of this is nice and all, but it's really just, as I said earlier, 20/20 hindsight. Dwelling on WAR's struggles this past year (along with its few successes, because there have been some in the form of UI modification, the ToK, PQ's, and PvP experience) is, after a certain point a meaningless exercise, simply because "what's done is done". What's critical is the now and the near future. More than any time in its development cycle, WAR's one-year anniversary and the next two months are absolutely critical, as many players flock to new releases such as Aion, Champions Online, and Fallen Earth, while others bide their time with old favorites. If I've seen one thing that is at least a constant, it's that even though some people are disappointed with WAR, and they've since unsubbed, that they've kept one eye on the game as it develops. If WAR does have a hope of acquiring some of its lost subs, it's in the idea that WAR's former players, at least from most accounts and conversations I've had with people, are at least watching the game to see what will happen.

To deal with the three harsh lessons learned above, and to ensure the game has long life, my suggestions are:

Alter Perception With Results
At this point, talk is cheap. If there's a trend I've personally been seeing lately in the community, it's that every interview, every notion, every quote is dissected in a negative light, with very few positive posts in a sea of negativity and lack of faith in delivering on the words spoken. Unfortunately, there's really nothing that can be said to really fix this kind of perception, so Mythic finds itself in a curious position opposite than it was a year ago - now, they can do no right, as opposed to doing no wrong. To take advantage of this, Mythic needs to exceed expectations, not have patches that have stability issues such as 1.3.1, and simply execute on what they've set out to do. While we like to hear from the developers, what players probably want is more "doing" from the developers. Fixing class balance problems and CC, making the T4 campaign engaging and fun, fixing stability and engine issues, and actually doing the work to change certain key, core flaws in the design will speak volumes louder than any producer's letter or interview.

Cautious But Efficient
There's a certain catch-22 that exists with regards to introducing the kinds of fixes that I outlined above, and that's the fact that you have to test and tinker with such changes on the PTS and internally to ensure they don't break more than they fix. At the same time, however, waiting too long to fix certain things will introduce a perception that nothing is being done and that the glacial nature of patching belies an indifference on the part of Mythic. While there's no easy answer to this dilemma, simply making incremental changes, such as surgical ability modifications and buffs for underpowered careers such as the Shadow Warrior and Magus might be a good strategy. They may not require that much testing as they don't massively change the design on a global level, and can therefore be rolled out more quickly. There are some changes, like the movement of fortress roles to something better for T4 or the continuing city siege modifications, that are simply too large to be rolled out in one patch. But making marked progress towards these, as well as communicating to players constantly about status updates, will show the community that something is being done and that a timeline has been established for it.

Expectations Set Through Honest and Direct Communication
Even though expectations might be set pretty low for WAR on the part of some of its playerbase, they still need to be set at a manageable level, and it needs to be communicated directly to the playerbase in developer communications. In the last two months, Mythic has shifted to more of this transparent policy, which I find refreshing and more in line with how they feel about how things are going. That communication of expectations, however, needs to translate itself into the regular correspondence with sites like ours and people playing. If a frank and honest assessment of WAR's issues, such as the continuing problem of client stability and lag, are to be stated to players, then realistic ideas about what can be done about said problems will go a long way towards building back some equity in the community. The hype of wild success needs to give way to an optimistic, yet acknowledging tone towards the WAR community about the struggles of the game in the past year and currently. I say optimistic because putting one's head down and admitting total and utter failure is ultimately meaningless to the game and to the community that continues to play it.

There is at least one constant to WAR currently as opposed to it one year ago, and that is the idea that WAR's future is uncertain. The fog is almost too thick to see in front of the WAR ship that continues to sail, with the likelihood of running into an iceberg just as possible as navigating through uncharted waters. However, I still err on the side of optimistic. I like WAR, think it's decent, still login, and am still a part of this community. There has been a lot that has gone right that simply isn't mentioned because it is overshadowed by glaring issues. As I've said many times, MMO death is rare, and games that can still operate at a perceived value, will do so, and in some cases, such as LoTRO and AoC, enjoy an increase of subscriptions.

To be honest, it isn't players who keep playing that need to be convinced. It isn't players that have long since quit and who refuse to believe in WAR's future that need to be convinced either. It's the players in the middle - the ones who continue to play but are having a hard time feeling encouraged, or the ones who have left but take a peek at the game every so often, that need to be shown that Mythic has what it takes to keep the game viable and appealing in a saturated MMO market. Will they do it? Time will tell - but the past and the future must be taken into account going forward, no matter how things turn out. Either way, Warhammer Alliance and its community will do its part.

[Cathen]

Nice write up...mostly right on, imo...

One major thing I believe Mythic has become better at, but are still a longs ways off, is their community communication. While I realize they don't want to divulge any long term goals, etc... At this point in WAR's life, I think they need to, and in some cases specifics are necessary to keep peoples interest in the game (both subscribers and non-subscribers). Things such as....what is being done, aside from "optimizing" WAR in the current game engine to improve large scale battle performance? Is a new/different engine being toyed with, do you think you can get where you need to be with this engine, etc...

All I ever see are things such as "We continue to work and improve our performance". Imo, that just isn't nearly specific enough to convince the community there is any hope (at least in regards to this specific example).

Just an example...

My oh my, how much things can change in a year....lol

[foacault]

Since 1979 I have loved a game! Continue to play, complaine, experience, make change and stay with Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe we are too quick to expect changes and instant fixes from such games as that or this one. Maybe, having to wait months to years for changes to take place instead of instant gratification for all of my wants and needs, made me realize that some things take time. I have big hopes for this game, and will to stick around to see where it will take me and my friends. If you stay to play, maybe we will cross paths and experence the excitement that games like this offer from our Mundane lives.

[Trennet]

That post should have been one paragraph long -- two at the most. Talk about epic babbling . . .

[dovnehund]

I really liked the write up and i agree on most of it. One thing though. The lore behind warhammer is massive! The tabletopgame has been around for a long time and many of us ( players ) are really into it. Warhammer online is much more than just endless ( and sometime pointless ) RvR.
Mythic needs to add more lore/ history into t4. As it is now, there is absolutely no point in doing the quests, if you are level 40 ( who needs xp at level 40? ). Sure there are quests that give some medalions, but this is a minor thing. Yes you can get some tome unlocks, but it gets boring really really fast and you get almost nothing to show for it.
What mythic should do is add some playerkill quests, like : This Black guard called ****** has been roaming the elven lands far too long ( like a bounty ), bring his head to me ( the questgiver ) and you shall recieve this token/ crest/ cloak..whatever+ a renown bonus for killing him.]
They should also introduce some groupquests that gives renown. It is a damn shame that most of the quests in t4, will never be played, since most people dont care for them ( the xp thing again ).
Yes i know most people talk about lag/ game engine/ low fps/ class balance / abilities and such, i just want to tell Mythic that there are some of us, that care about other things too.
See you all on the battlefields.

[Anon]

Good read

Sadly I dont see a very bright future for WAR. I have been playing trial accounts lately to follow the game cause I really can't be arsed paying for the game in current state.

After playing alot of MMOs - including some of the recent released "free to play" you start to feel how "dead" WAR is. Now - I dont mean it is finished - I mean it feels so cold and lifeless to play compared to so many games out atm. Look of the game, animations, gameplay, even the sound at times makes me feel that the game simply doesn't have "it". Thats what I think alot of ppl are finding too - and sadly there is no way this fundemental issue of the game will/can be changed. Small things that piss ppl off like getting stuck on rock fences - 1 year after the game has released.

I said this before somewhere and I will say it again here. What WAR really lacks is VARIETY. Its great to have alot of keeps - alot of PQs and alot of classes. But it is not the NUMBERS that make a game in the end. Its the QUALITY. Creating X amount of keeps that all turn out to be exactly the same when it comes to Zerging. PQs all in 3 stages... all over the place... everywhere...

I have been playing DDO since it released as F2P. I soon realised what it was that WAR was lacking compared to that game. It was lacking real content. The maps are tiny and million things are piled up onto them. The mobs in WAR are almost standing on top of each other cause there isn't enough space to get them there... and yet... you can litterally pull a mob from top of another without provoking it...

Sadly - I dont see a future for WAR. It makes me sad cause there are plenty of good things in the game. But there are just so many issues .. Way to many .. And no matter how "OPEN" the comunication is... Mythic can not turn this game around into anything else than a mediocer MMO experience. I think most know that by now. And mediocer is not good enough in todays world of endless new releases. Thats just how it is.

[Tarian]

Originally Posted by PhoenixRed

[
To be honest, it isn't players who keep playing that need to be convinced. It isn't players that have long since quit and who refuse to believe in WAR's future that need to be convinced either. It's the players in the middle - the ones who continue to play but are having a hard time feeling encouraged, or the ones who have left but take a peek at the game every so often, that need to be shown that Mythic has what it takes to keep the game viable and appealing in a saturated MMO market. Will they do it? Time will tell - but the past and the future must be taken into account going forward, no matter how things turn out. Either way, Warhammer Alliance and its community will do its part.

I agree with almost everything you wrote except this part.

To be honest, WAR - and every other game in this oversaturated, cut-throat market - should aim to convince every player of this. Obviously, the fans already believe this. But there's huge problems with having 800,000 dissatisfied ex-customers in the market who believe the product isn't very good and who quite often say it. Perhaps not for the immediate survival of the game, but for the reputation of the company and future releases, and to ensure a slow-but-steady influx of new players.

They don't need to be so convinced that they resign or anything... however, they do (I feel) need to reach a point in convincing them where the game gets the "buzz" of being improved. LOTR:O, AoC and Eve are three examples of games that have reached or are reaching that point.

The alternative was a game like Hellgate London who didn't manage expectations of customers and just shut down. Fast forward a good few months, and there are many customers who refuse to join games the lead developer now becomes involved in (including a recently released superhero MMO).

[Sagart]

Good write up. I agree with most points.

I think the problem is that some of these companies haven't had to face professionalism in their job like they do now days.

When the automobile was first introduced it was a problematic piece of crap. But it was new and cool and so it was tolerated. You can't get away with that in the auto market today.

When MMOs first came out it was ok to be half baked and buggy. They were new, and cool, and so alot of bugs and glitches would be tolerated.

But you can't get away with that in the market today. MMOs themself are no longer novel enough to be tolerated through any toil and trouble. When there's competition you have to step up the quality control.

MMO developers (or rather the employees they hire) are simply going to have to learn to go from sweat pants wearing, unshaven and ubathed with cold pizza rotting on my desk to being someone with:

-competance and focus
-serious organizational skills
-attention to detail
-self disciplined

I think the article from when Mythic fired a bunch of employees and Mark Jacobs showed his disdain for them shows that the coding/etc market is saturated with half asses and loners who have no sense of professionalism or work ethic.

As much flack as this is going to get me, they need to look for people with better physical appearance. I don't mean Brad Pitts or Megan Foxes, I mean people that shave now and then, bath now and then and don't look like something dragged off an episode of the trailer park boys.

Until recently a certain kind of person has been stereotypically more drawn to these behind the scenes type jobs in the coding/design world. And that's because anything that keeps their ugly, unkept mug out of the public eye is a good fit for them.

But someone who doesn't put any effort into themself isn't going to put much effort into anything.

The same rules for hiring employees in "the real world" are going to have to start applying to the gaming world as well.

Where I work I've seen some of these people that are typically drawn to the "code monkey in a dark closet" type jobs get hired into personel type jobs and they always make a bloody mess of it. They look the way they do because they are by nature, complete slackers. And people who slack on upkeep of themselves will bring that same slacker attitude to their job.

[Gaugamela]

Originally Posted by dovnehund

I really liked the write up and i agree on most of it. One thing though. The lore behind warhammer is massive! The tabletopgame has been around for a long time and many of us ( players ) are really into it. Warhammer online is much more than just endless ( and sometime pointless ) RvR.
Mythic needs to add more lore/ history into t4. As it is now, there is absolutely no point in doing the quests, if you are level 40 ( who needs xp at level 40? ). Sure there are quests that give some medalions, but this is a minor thing. Yes you can get some tome unlocks, but it gets boring really really fast and you get almost nothing to show for it.
What mythic should do is add some playerkill quests, like : This Black guard called ****** has been roaming the elven lands far too long ( like a bounty ), bring his head to me ( the questgiver ) and you shall recieve this token/ crest/ cloak..whatever+ a renown bonus for killing him.]
They should also introduce some groupquests that gives renown. It is a damn shame that most of the quests in t4, will never be played, since most people dont care for them ( the xp thing again ).
Yes i know most people talk about lag/ game engine/ low fps/ class balance / abilities and such, i just want to tell Mythic that there are some of us, that care about other things too.
See you all on the battlefields.

It was a completely idiotic mistake to completely separate the RvR areas from the PvE questing areas. There should be PvE quests, roaming mobs and even PQs taking place in the RvR enabled areas to increase the mayhem and overall chaos. As well as to decrease the sentiment of linearity of the game and to make it feel more like a world.

[Boozed Beerchugger]

Originally Posted by Gaugamela

It was a completely idiotic mistake to completely separate the RvR areas from the PvE questing areas. There should be PvE quests, roaming mobs and even PQs taking place in the RvR enabled areas to increase the mayhem and overall chaos. As well as to decrease the sentiment of linearity of the game and to make it feel more like a world.

Absolutely agree. Right now the RvR zone feels very separated from the rest of the world. There's no reason to step into an RvR zone except to RvR, which doesn't make for anything exciting. If an entire world existed inside the lakes and there was reason to venture in the lakes other than RvR, it would be exciting. I know, people always respond with "Thats an Open RvR server, just roll on Dark Crag"...but everyone knows there's hardly any RvR going on in PvE areas.

[Gaugamela]

Originally Posted by Boozed Beerchugger

Absolutely agree. Right now the RvR zone feels very separated from the rest of the world. There's no reason to step into an RvR zone except to RvR, which doesn't make for anything exciting. If an entire world existed inside the lakes and there was reason to venture in the lakes other than RvR, it would be exciting. I know, people always respond with "Thats an Open RvR server, just roll on Dark Crag"...but everyone knows there's hardly any RvR going on in PvE areas.

That's one of main gripes along with having almost completely separate questing areas for Destruction and Order.
Even for immersion it would be so much better if there was an overlap of quests and PQs of Destro and Order inside and outside the RvR lakes. I'm of the opinion they could make this for the game to feel more like a world. People wouldn't be forced to do quests or PQs in the RvR lakes if they didn't want to...

[Boozed Beerchugger]

Exactly, they don't need to put all the PvE into the lakes, just flesh out some PvE stuff in the lakes, make them more than just a roped off area that holds 2 keeps and four BOs...and nothing else. Literally the lakes are terrain, keeps, BOs. Boring...

[Tunaghost]

Well-written article and I agree with most points.

Warhammer tabletop is among my favourite games ever, including computer games.

That's what mainly brought me in and what also made me leave. There were moments where you got a Warhammer feeling and they did a fairly good job with Dwarfs VS Greenskins & Empire VS Chaos. The Elven pairing in my opinion was very bad (the storylines were horrible), but then again I collected High AND Dark Elf armies and read up on their lore a lot. But what baffled me was that the coolest storylines and locations went to Destruction. Barak Varr, White Tower of Hoeth, Karak Kadrin & Tor Elyr...why didn't they make them part of RvR zones and with maybe a PQ thrown into the mix? They might have made Order classes more OP, but to me it seems art & lorewise Destro got most love.

I still keep an eye on the game, because I want to see if it manages to pull itself out of the mud, like Age of Conan has. Sadly, I will probably never resubscribe as I'm in Europe and GOA has not given me any reason to trust them at all with my CC info. And gamecards don't seem easy to come by.
I hope the game succeeds and that Mythic actually tries to follow PhoenixRed's suggestions and take a hard look at what fans are complaining about on fansites.

[Kheradruakh]

/applause

Very nice assesment of where the game is now. Also very good advice for Mythic to win back some kind of playerbase.

[Went]

Originally Posted by Gaugamela

It was a completely idiotic mistake to completely separate the RvR areas from the PvE questing areas. There should be PvE quests, roaming mobs and even PQs taking place in the RvR enabled areas to increase the mayhem and overall chaos. As well as to decrease the sentiment of linearity of the game and to make it feel more like a world.

Agreed, agree with all the other criticisms of the pve world. The biggest lie in my opinion is the maxim "WAR is everywhere" The game is so far from that. Honestly, it seems like a 3rd rate pve mmo with an expansion added on that put in the rvr lakes.