Why did Warhammer mmo 'W.A.R.' never become big?

[Cowabungaa]

Completely agree with you on the polishing bit - I, too, hate rushed games. But when we say industry standard are we talking about the game as a whole or individual aspects of the game? WoW doesn't have any feature that I can compare to WAR's public quests or Rifts invasions and I do not consider WoWs lore anywhere near as good as Lord of the Rings lore therefore, in the industry, WoW is surely trailing behind with these two individual aspects of the game even if it is still considered the industry leader.

Or am I now the one looking like a muppet? :/

For why it's the industry's standard you have to look at the more technical bits; the fluidity and responsiveness of the animations, the effectiveness of the UI, the way the player interacts with the elements in the game, that sort of thing.

Things like lore and art direction are more flexible, though art direction a bit less so. I think that another reason WAR wasn't that succesful was it's intens brown-ness. Whether you like it or not, WoW offers an incredibly varied pallete of environments and atmospheres. I think that really helps keeping people playing, keeps them more curious about what's next.

I don't judge quality by sales figures. If an artist is striving solely for the latter, they are irrelevant.

The videogame industry is just that, an industry. It's a business in which artists find work. Developers still have to make money, and MMO's also have to keep making money.

Also, while I agree with you that the insults against your person are uncalled for and very unconstructive, you at the same time seem to ignore the actual ontopic responses to your posts and spend all your time pointing out the people who insult you. 'Sup with that my friend?

 

[Tim_Buoy]

The part about WoW being the industry standard is a fact. Thats right. Not an opinion, a straight up fact.

Oh, it is? And you can prove this how?

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html

Glad I could help.

You judge quality by sales figures? So you must see Twilight as the industry standard for movies.

actually harry potter is the highest grossing film series of all time

 

[Gamer_152]

Like a lot of MMOs it seemed the problem was that it just didn't offer enough different from what WoW was already doing. Seeing as how the final product turned out so different from initial expectations, I do wonder if the development direction had anything to do with meddling investors.

 

[Anjel]

Whether you like it or not, WoW offers an incredibly varied pallete of environments and atmospheres.

Maybe making people think they are on an acid trip with the brightest colours possible is a good way to keep people playing?

Thanks for the insight, nice to hear from someone clued up on the business.

 

[Rottweiler]

Honestly, the reasons for Warhammer to fail have been pretty much stated.

To compete with WoW, you either have to have something it doesn't, or do something WoW doesn't already do.

In a very real sense, Warhammer simply came across like a mod of WoW- factions, magic, swords, etc. It didn't do anything WoW didn't already do (and arguably better).

I couldn't get into it, and I'm an actual tabletop Warhammer player. And you know, that's part of the problem.

The Warhammer games tend not to focus on Individuals. 40K does it a little more than Fantasy, but frankly the Warhammer Fantasy game focuses on units, to the point where many players put their units on square trays to move them all at the same time. Leaders are a bit more individual, but even then their abilities tend toward things to make the Army better, not run around like a badass. (Yes, some exceptions exist, but not many.)

In addition, the Warhammer universe is not 'balanced'. It never has been. Since in the actual tabletop game everything is based on Points, races have different strengths and weaknesses, one major one being 'they cost more points'. That is effectively impossible to do in an MMO- you can't effectively let someone play a Space Marine while someone else plays an Imperial Guardsman, because the Space Marine is an 8-foot tall genetically enhanced biological cyborg who could take a shotgun blast to the face naked, whereas the Guardsman is, well, a man. With a helmet. And a low-powered laser rifle.

How would you balance that in an MMO?

 

[RSparowe]

Art is subjective.

The subject here is industry standard. The "Art Industry" is the purchase and sale of art. It is quantified, like any industry, by units. Not quality. As such, the industry standard, like any other industry, is bench-marked on units. (Or in this case, subscribers.)

If one were to evaluate the artistic merit of MMOS, one wouldn't use the term "industry standard" as you, yourself has pointed out that "Art is subjective."

If you can't understand this simple principle (or more likely, just feel like defending yourself), I really can't explain it any simpler.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

Presumably because they chose the wrong Warhammer franchise to make an MMO out of.
They should've gone with the futuristic one. You know, the good one. The popular one.

The one that's getting all the other games.

Hey, wait a minute, Warhammer is awesome! I do like a good bit of 40k but Warhammer is far more tactically stimulating, and the background isn't nearly as hurr durr as everyone makes it out to be.

OT: Yeah, the reasons have pretty much already been stated.

Also I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who finds that particular poster irritating to the extreme.

 

[A Free Man]

Because it was a poorer WoW clone.
You do not beat WoW at its own game.

Because WoW was the first MMO with quests, classes, PvP, different races and various crafting skills.

Oh wait... It wasn't.

But it is the biggest and arguably the best so it does not matter if something similar came before it.
People always use "Like God/Gears of War but..." even though they were not the first.
WoW is the MMO industry standard. Deal with it.

I'm sorry, it sounded like everything you said was an opinion, but you stated it like a fact. Am I making a mistake there? Obviously you wouldn't try and put forth your opinion as if it were fact. I mean, that would be silly.

Let me read it again.

Nope. Definitely opinion.

Also: because other people make the same mistake, it's okay for you to? Oh dear...

Hmm well if a majority of people that play a certain genre all make the same mistake maybe it is time to change the answer? Granted I only played WoW for like a week and didn't find anything about it make me want to continue but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people that play that genre do like it a lot.

OT: I never played it because I haven't actually heard of it until now, maybe they should have done a better job advertising it.

 

[NLS]

Because it was a poorer WoW clone.
You do not beat WoW at its own game.

Because WoW was the first MMO with quests, classes, PvP, different races and various crafting skills.

Oh wait... It wasn't.

But it is the biggest and arguably the best so it does not matter if something similar came before it.
People always use "Like God/Gears of War but..." even though they were not the first.
WoW is the MMO industry standard. Deal with it.

I'm sorry, it sounded like everything you said was an opinion, but you stated it like a fact. Am I making a mistake there? Obviously you wouldn't try and put forth your opinion as if it were fact. I mean, that would be silly.

Let me read it again.

Nope. Definitely opinion.

Also: because other people make the same mistake, it's okay for you to? Oh dear...

WoW isn't the first MMO to introduce those features, but it's still the industry standard. Warhammer Online tried to copy it, and well it couldn't really beat the original product.
No matter how much I dislike World of Warcraft, it's still the Industry standard with 62% of online subscriptions.

 

[MasterV]

It depends who the creator is. I don't consider the ability for something to sell well to be a defining ruler of its success. If you set out to make money and fail to do so, you have failed, yes. If you set out to make something you love and end up creating it at the cost of your money, you have still succeeded.

True, true. But when we're talking about business and videogames, then that means your entire life depends upon that game. As in, if it doesn't sell, you don't get paid and you and your family will be hungry. So I believe money does play a big role in developing a game, even if some developers like to think otherwise.

 

[RSparowe]

Getting on topic:

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning did one thing above average: the Public Quest system. However, they never really expanded upon it the way Rift has.

The game did a number of things extremely below average:

The graphics engine is very poor. What I like the most in any game; well beyond storyline and graphical quality is graphical performance. As an example, World of Warcraft's aged graphical quality is naught compared to how fluid it plays. Even when in a raid with 24 other people with particle effects flying every which way, the game runs extremely fluidly. While playing WAR, even with the same system, everything stuttered and felt jagged. Granted, it's only noticeable if you're looking for it - but that's what I look for in a game.

The rest of the game was mediocre. A lot of elements from the genre were present, such as crafting and mounts, but no effort was made to set WAR's apart.

Though, the most crippling element of the game is the "Free Forever" trial. You can play the game, as a trial which caps you at level 10, without a paying subscription. This probably sounded like a great idea to the marketing team, but I don't think they would anticipate that there would be so many trial players. There is such an abundance of level 1-10s that most of the fun in the game I had was in RvR with them. Once I got past the first chapter, I could literally play for an entire gaming session without encountering a single player character. The action picked up once I was in chapter 4, but it was mostly R40s with an insane PvPRank (read: access to the best gear) that made RvR frustrating, if not an exercise in futility. I slowly went through the grind of ranking up in PvP until I was nearing the top. What I had realized was the fact that I was having nowhere near the amount of fun I was having at level 10, so I canceled my account and play on a free trial with non-stop action.

TL;DR: The game is actually a lot more fun to play as a free trial player than it is to rank up your PvP level to compete at endgame.

 

[ChaoticKraus]

I anticipated it's release for a year or two, and was massively disappointed when it was released.

It felt unfinished, and it ripped off too many elemts from WoW. The combat didn't feel satisfying, the graphics were sub-par for the most part (Beautiful Aestethics in some places though), the PvP wasn't as unique as promised.

It felt like an early tech demo instead of an complete game. I played WoW before WAR and overall it was a far better experience.

 

[blizard0am0i]

I think they tried to hard to copy WoW, which they did an excellent job of, but unlike what Rift seems to be doing they did not add enough freshness and improvements on their original clone material.

My 2 cents, played the game for like 3 months, some friends played it for a longer, all quit before a year was up.

 

[Anggul]

The gamer side of people doesn't like it because it's just not that fun to play.

The Warhammer fan side of people doesn't like it because it's completely messes with the story and makes no sense at all.

 

[Farotsu]

I used to play WoW pretty hardcode but I did enjoy the atmosphere and the feeling on WAR. Biggest problem for me was that it lacked decent UI feedback. When you pressed buttons things happened but the animations lagged behind giving the combat a sloppy feeling. If there wasn't that I would've probably switched over in a second. But I preferred the way WoW UI handled combat.

Oh and then there was this patch that completely killed high-end PvP...

 

[Iron Lightning]

In addition, the Warhammer universe is not 'balanced'. It never has been. Since in the actual tabletop game everything is based on Points, races have different strengths and weaknesses, one major one being 'they cost more points'. That is effectively impossible to do in an MMO- you can't effectively let someone play a Space Marine while someone else plays an Imperial Guardsman, because the Space Marine is an 8-foot tall genetically enhanced biological cyborg who could take a shotgun blast to the face naked, whereas the Guardsman is, well, a man. With a helmet. And a low-powered laser rifle.

How would you balance that in an MMO?

Easy, the same way it is balanced in the tabletop game: more Guardsmen. Instead of playing a single Guardsman, you would play a Sergent leading a squad of, say, five Guardsmen.

More on Topic: WAR was (and I suspect still is) unbalanced as all hell. For example: Bright Wizards. Just one good Bright Wizards could roast an entire keep raid. I played as Destruction (because I'm a complete whore for the Orcs and will play any game that allows me to play as an Orc or Ork) and the success of every keep raid I went on was entirely dependent on whether or not the defenders had a bright wizard. The side of Order was so overpowered that I never once saw Altdorf aflame, but I weathered through about half-a-dozen sieges of the Inevitable City.

The game lagged extremely during those keep raids what with the open world PvP not having any limits on the number of players involved the lag literally made the game unplayable.

The siege engines that were not either the ram or the oil were also completely ineffective. They barely did any damage whatsoever.

The game was released completely unfinished with 4 capital cities and 4 classes missing (although the missing classes were added in later.)

It could've been great but it squandered its potential. If only they had released the game when it was actually finished it might still be going strong today.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Nor can I explain any simpler that the industry standard isn't about sales figures. You made a statement that the art industry (as if video games weren't apart of it) is measured in units sold. I disagree; the quality of art is subjective, so the success or failure of it is also subjective. I'm pretty certain da Vinci never had a hit open gallery sale, but I consider his art to me a massive success.

An artistic succes, but were they a commercial success? Don't forget that many big artists like Rembrandt did not earn their money with the works we consider to be their grand works, no they earned money with commissions, portrets and whatnot, they made not for their artistic and creative merrit, but purely for the cash. Or not even that, Van Gogh for example was poor as fuck.

Still, you seem to forget that we're talking about an industry here. The videogame industry is still part of the entertainment industry, not of the art industry (if there is such a thing). And as with any industry, it has to make money.

And no matter what your opinion is, yes one of the grades of the industry's standard, in this case, is sale figures. This is how the industry works, this is fact your opinion has no influence over. Sale figures are indicators that your game works, that it connects with people. This is, no matter how much you talk about artistic successes, extremely important to any developer. And the fact is that in MMO-land, Blizzard did this extremely well.

Hence why every big MMO developer is looking at WoW when they're going to develop their game. That's an even bigger indicator for the fact that many aspects in WoW are the industry's standard than sales figures, the fact that any developer pays attention to WoW.

Also, you seem to forget that for a lot of videogame developers that's also a goal, not just artistic merrit or monetary gain, but to make something that people can enjoy, that people are happy about. It's the reason I might try to get into the videogame industry myself.

It depends who the creator is. I don't consider the ability for something to sell well to be a defining ruler of its success. If you set out to make money and fail to do so, you have failed, yes. If you set out to make something you love and end up creating it at the cost of your money, you have still succeeded.

True, true. But when we're talking about business and videogames, then that means your entire life depends upon that game. As in, if it doesn't sell, you don't get paid and you and your family will be hungry. So I believe money does play a big role in developing a game, even if some developers like to think otherwise.

Damn you, money! Always getting in the way. I guess that's where indie games come on; they can be cheap to make and don't need the approval of a publisher.

Depends. The fact that a game is indie does not mean that the developer doesn't have his whole livelyhood invested in making said game, even if he's the only person developing. Despite that, yes, small-time indie developers don't have to pay as much attention to industry standards. They indeed have a lot more freedom and can address a much smaller, niche market. This of course is not the case for MMO's.