MMO Gamers

Or “Why I quit Warhammer”.  Originally I was going to call this post “What’s wrong with WAR” but that really is an objective view, and what I would consider its flaws others might think of them as the game’s strengths.  So I’m going to cover what I consider the main areas of an MMO and discuss my experience with those areas in WAR.  To simplify it, I’m going to break it down to four broad areas; Player versus Environment, Player versus Player, Crafting and Economy, and Social.

Player versus Environment (PvE)
This is a big area in any MMO.  It includes questing, travelling, grinding, dungeons; the whole virtual world really.  So how did I find WAR’s PvE?  I didn’t care much for the quests at all.  After the first five levels or so I mostly PvP’d my way through the tiers.  Questing was very boring, and a lot of quests would take you to the Public Quests area, so you couldn’t complete the quests unless you did the Public Quest, or were particularly careful and lucky.  But it was more than that.  The combat itself wasn’t all that fun, nor did it have the feel of combat.  The sound effects, the combat animations, the graphics style; none of it leant to that combat feel.  It’s hard for me to express exactly what the PvE felt like for me, other than just going through the motions.

There is nothing I like more than a good dungeon crawl.  Of the three dungeons I ventured into, Saccellum, Gunbad, and Bastion Stair; the first two were pretty close to awful.  Bastion Stair was my PvE highlight and I did all three wings, but when you compare Bastion to the dungeons available in games like EQ2, Vanguard, and as I’m discovering, Age of Conan, it really falls short.  After doing the three wings a couple of times I was done with Bastion.  I also prefer a six man instanced dungeon to the zerg of warbands I experienced in Bastion.

Public Quests, WAR’s evolution in questing, has proven to be a bit of a fizzer.  For me, the novelty wore off pretty quickly and I didn’t bother with another PQ beyond Tier 2.  The PQ’s in Bastion I did, because I was in there with a warband.  It was a dissatisfying experience to have another warband run past you and start hitting the boss.  Sure, you all get a chance on the loot roll, but with 20, 30, or 40 people in on a loot roll it does not make the odds great.

So PvE, the largest and my favourite part of an MMO, is practically a non event for me.

Player versus Player (PvP)
Or in WAR, Realm versus Realm (RvR).  Believe it or not, I’m not really a big PvP’er.  I did play Dark Age of Camelot for over a year and enjoyed that game immensely.  I played on the PvP server in EQ2 for about 4 months before getting sick of the ganking and moving to Antonia Bayle.  I played Pirates of the Burning Sea, which is primarily a PvP game.  And I played Age of Conan’s PvP mini games.  For me, PvP is second next to PvE, but a feature that, if done well, I enjoy.  WAR, as I have learned, is a PvP game first and foremost.

The PvP in WAR can be fun.  There is a lot wrong with the PvP however, and I’m not sure I know where to start.  One thing that clearly was a mistake was attaching loot to keeps.  The Tier system is wrong as well.  And having so many keeps per Tier to conquer is another mistake, with players deliberately avoiding each other to go and take undefended keeps in the hope of winning loot.  Dark Age of Camelot had Battlegrounds with a level range of five and only one keep and some towers to take.  The reward for successfully taking the keep was a big hunk of XP and Realm Points (renown).  Personally I think that was a better system for those lower levels, because everyone fought over the one objective.

Other things that are proving a problem is the faction imbalance that we were seeing on Phoenix Throne, with Order zerging Destruction in Open RvR.  Crowd Control spells like stun, silence, knockback, and fetch are taking away any fun you might have hoped for in an encounter.  For a soft target like a Witch Elf, a stun or fetch is as good as a one shot kill button.

The game seems to cater to the casual gamer, with easy travel, quick scenario pops, instant access to PvP (you can take a level 1 character into the PvP zones and scenarios) and yet it is the more serious PvP’ers that the game rewards, with the casual gamer merely cannon fodder for premades (an organized group of players using voice communications), geared characters, and higher Renown ranked players.  Honestly, at level 37 and wearing a full set of Annihilator gear, RvR was practically unplayable for me, with me being stunned, fetched, silenced, and burned to a crisp by Bright Wizards.  In many cases, I would spend more time watching my rez timer go down so I can respawn then I would in actual fights.

Crafting and Economy
Does WAR even have crafting?  I really can’t speak about the crafting because I didn’t do any, but that’s worth mentioning.  From what I heard of the crafting in WAR I had absolutely no desire to partake in it.  Can you even call it crafting?  You make potions or talismans; talismans or potions.  Where’s the armour, the weapons, jewellery, furniture; where’s the desire.

As for the economy, I have, and have always had, plenty of money.  The guild tax rate is an excellent idea, and I have a guild vault with over 600 gold in it that I have nothing to spend on.  I’ve claimed keeps many times, which cost gold, but the longest I ever held a keep was about 5 hours.  Usually it gets flipped within the hour.  If there is one thing that Pirates of the Burning Sea did right it was the entirely player driven economy.  With some games, crafting and the economy is a mini game in itself.

Social
There is a serious lack of fluff in this game.  There is no player housing.  Each race can only have one type of mount, and you can’t even choose a colour or get a different looking saddle.  There is only one city per faction to hang out in; otherwise there are the unimpressive warcamps to loiter about.  You can’t even walk or sit.  There really is nothing to do other than run scenarios or flip keeps.

That’s it
For me anyway.  WAR is a PvP game and little more, and for me it’s a frustrating game because I can’t get away from the PvP.  The PvE is dull and poorly done, as is the crafting, so there is little else to do but PvP.  I have no desire to try another class because none of them excite me enough, and I dread having to level up a character again.  Where are the interesting classes like Dark Age of Camelot’s Animist or Minstrel?  If I just wanted to PvP I could load up Halo or Call of Duty 4 and it wouldn’t cost me $15 a month.