WAR’s Trumpet Fades

I just got the automatic notification that my Warhammer Online account expired yesterday.  I thought it was going to expire last week, which I’m sure says something.  I did not even notice I had an additional week.

Overall, Warhammer Online is not a bad game.

There is a reasonable PvE game in it that takes you through a lot of very nice landscape, and once in a while you get a decent piece of equipment from a quest.  But for that part of the game to be my main focus in any way, three or four other MMOs would have to cease to exist.  I’m not going to complain that it doesn’t push the PvE envelop because, frankly, it isn’t quite at the state of the art in my opinion.  Two hours of running solo quests in WoW or EQ2 can be fun and compelling.  Two hours of the same in WAR becomes a drag for me.

Scenarios were fun, while I could stand them.  There is a reason I don’t play FPS games or do WoW battlegrounds.  I am not big on repetition.  Once I have spotted the decision point for a given scenario I can generally call the winner about two minutes into the match with 80% accuracy.  After that point I am generally not interested.

Open RvR was a lot of fun, when it happened.  At its peak, it was the best time to be had in the game.  A desperate defense against long odds (people who say they want a fair fight don’t know what they’re talking about… or they’re lying) can be a moment to remember.  As has been pointed out though, the stratification of the population through tiers means that if you are behind the leveling curve, you may find yourself searching long and hard for those desperate battles in open RvR, which is a shame.  That, on any sort of regular basis, might have kept us playing the game.

One regret I have is that I did not get to do much with the big guild I had joined.  However, half of our regular group couldn’t get in, so it came down to playing with the guild or playing with my regular group, the regular group won out.  You stick with who brought you to the dance and all that.  On deciding that our group was going to leave the game, my character was removed from the in-game roster.

In the end, I think the most telling piece of evidence for me is that I have not bothered to log back into WAR since our last Saturday night excursion.  There are just too many other games that I would rather play.

Maybe in a year Mythic will have worked out some of the issues it faces tuning the game to make it fun to a broader group of people.  I read about people having fun in the game, a lot of fun, but it seemed to be difficult to find on my part.  I’ll keep reading the news about the game.

And, finally, my friends at Ideazon would like to point out that Mythic told them that the L key should bring up the quest log as well, so it is printed on their Warhammer Online edition keyboard.  Damn you Mythic!  Damn you!