Massively

I really enjoyed WAR and have been thinking about returning in the future , Who's with me?

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Glass half full and all that, but WAR is still lacking that draw that makes players want to continue playing in the long term. Teir 1 has not and won't be their biggest problem. Launching an Xpack w/ the writers #1 suggestion would TOTALLY draw players in/back. But, it'll have to be soon. And done right. Two things Mythic is not known for.

Then again, the game has improved a lot since the firing of Jacobs. Not knowing how he ran his studio, I have to wonder how many of the ill-fated choices were made under his tutelage. The writer suggests more personality... but they've become much more proficient and productive since dropping the 'we're goofy and cool' attitude. I say stay shuttered and let the product talk for you.

All in all, as a former player and someone that would love the game to be fun, no matter how many low level revamps they add, no matter all the new skins &armor changes they unvail, until they make significant changes to T4 and how the population balance works in it... I won't be back.

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I'm with Zaniac -- I really do enjoy the game, but it's just too deserted once you leave Tier 1, and if you really want to get into the game via all the quests, it's impossible to do with the lack of players. Soloing through that content, when possible, is just defeating the purpose most of the time. I hope that the unlimited Tier 1 trials will bring in more people who decide to stick around without rushing to 40.

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In theory WAR could still be saved, salvaged and become a good game. However the effort to make the major changes would likely take several months (perhaps even 6+ at the worst) of development work and a good crew of developers and community folk to see it through to the end. Sadly a lot of good ideas were tossed around a great many moths ago (including pre-launch) that could have 'saved' the game, but many of them were essentially ignored.

Perhaps the simplest mechanism that could be employed would be to rework the character (and NPC) power curves by level so that all of the content of the game could be made relevant again. If a T4 character was not so significantly more powerful than a T1-3 character, then each Tier of the campaign could be used as a whole as a part of the RvR campaign. The lower-level Tiers thus would become alive and active again (and would remain so) as higher Tier players could travel back to fight and lock them down as a part of locking down an entire racial pairing.

However the development work to re-tune character levels, all the MOBs and likely even the equipment would be a very major undertaking. However at some point radical changes must be considered lest the ship sing, neh?

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It's very dependent on your server and time of day. Gorfang and Iron Rock are both the most active in the early tiers. Badlands and Volkmar are dead at those tiers, but have the highest amount of action at T4. Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne, the two servers with special rulesets are just dead at every tier.

If you're willing to coordinate on the forums, or use the new advice channel though I'm sure you could find high levels that would help you out through the apprentice system. Anyway more than most games, WAR is kind of what you make of it. I do still think the route from the middle of T2 to T4 should be accelerated though. I love T1. But I have to say I really enjoy T4 once my characters hit 40 (they feel useless below that though), I just can't stand the slog through T3 and early T4.

As to population balance, it swings back and forth. Servers were order dominated for months on end, then last week they came out with the 1.3.2 patch which reversed the balance when destro classes were ungimped finally. I think things are actually pretty balanced where it matters (scs, because honestly who wants to do the city sieges anyway), but the underdog system could really smooth out the edges. I enjoy the game for the easy access to scs at T4, but it's still not a game I'd recommend to most MMO gamers. Especially those looking for a lifestyle MMO.

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As far as I'm concerned, there's no perception turn around for me. Warhammer Online is just a parody of what Warhammer is supposed to be. Warhammer is supposed to be a grim, dark, adult setting. Warhammer Online is just a cartoon.

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For WAR to turn around they should just drop the rotting corpse that GOA made of WAR in Europe and try and expand this endless free trial to other Tiers but with limitations in what you can access, and create a shop to overcome said limitations like DDO did.

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Went back three weeks ago and have been enjoying it since. Gorfang is a good option if you are looking to start fresh. It's hard to bring players back if they already have their minds made up so no matter what Mythic does now ot strictly geared for bringing in new recruits.

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Crafting that >never< worked, tons of broken quests, lack of mid to high level quests (those that worked or otherwise) and a grind storm because of it.

Why release an MMO when it isnt ready, and not expect to see what everyone sees now? Ignorant devs, or suits not paying attention? Either way its in the toilet.

The Income DDO has touted is only a brief drop in the bucket and wont be representative of long term income, like a popular song it will go away. Even i threw 38 bucks in to see what DDO was about, i spend more than that at a sports bar in an evening. The result was that DDO does not meet my expectations nor my requirements for entertainment.

Will i try with Warhammer if they try this? No, i hadnt tried DDO, i have tried Warhammer, everybody gets one chance, the wallet is closed for business.

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WAR is such a sad story. There hasn't been a single MMO that I anticipated more. The Dev's were rock stars the year leading up to it's release, then for some reason they seemed to of completely lost sight of what they wanted to be at the end. Think their goals got too big.

Seemed to me at first they wanted to make a more PvP-centric WoW, one that eliminated all of the grinds, and focused on end-game PvP. Then halfway through they loaded it up with a huge level grind, an pointless dungeons, and released at the worst possible time right before WoW's biggest expansion. The game was so designed around players providing the content with Public Quests and the like, that once everyone left, the game had nothing going for it.

I don't even know what they were thinking with Siege battles... I was so excited for these open-ended battles for territory, when I found out all it entailed was 30 minutes of attacking a door, that was about it for me.

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Free to Play.

Massive battles are meant for the world F2P. Other than that its P2P.

WAR is good as dead already, so salvage while it can be.

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First, I think people are way too critical and expect far too much of MMOs these days. WoW was an anomaly. You can't expect every MMO to be the record breaking game that WoW was. With that said most of the complaints I see listed for WAR are similar too all other complaints I see on other MMOs. Balance of characters, not enough content, controls aren't to players liking, etc. I think an MMO boils down to whether you can tolerate the interface and whether or not you like the setting. Look are Star Wars Galaxies that game should have died from everything I heard about it and yet so many people played it and went back to it cause its Star Wars. Everyone is a diehard fan of something and thats what really draws most people. I have never seen an MMO where the majority of the players weren't trying to rush to 40. Never known anyone to say "Oh I better scale back my playtime a bit I might reach top level faster than I wanted." Thats why players roll new characters. As far as sieges being lame the only thing that could have added a little flavor was ladders to scale the walls or maybe a siege tower. But for the most part historically a castle siege mostly involves gettting through the door and over the wall. Sieges may be repetitive but the large draw of other players for the open RvR is the draw for me. Over all I think WAR is a decent MMO and honestly I think future MMOS could learn a lot from the way PvP was done in this game. Its as if all other games were made and the developers said "Wait, we better give them some PvP content" as a last minute thought. I'm not really sure how PvE could be designed different since the model is a derived from the adventure and RPG games of old. Even modern RPGs and adventure/action games involve a repetitive grind as you do the same basic quest with just a different facade to convince you that you haven't done this before. IMO best thing Mythic could do is add new content along with the patch fixes that they obviously so desperately needed and advertise it more as well.

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