Warhammer Online: Wow killer?

[kazana]

Any MMORPG that wants to give WoW a serious run for its status would need to have revolutionary enhancements in gameplay. From what I've seen, Warhammer Online doesn't have that.

I could imagine a MMORPG with a more dynamic world, dynamic factions, and allowing more player interaction could succeed, but there's none in the making that I'm aware of.
Of course, the background story must be enticing and eye candy has to be top notch, too.

By "more dynamic world" I mean that mobs aren't bound to spawn points/areas, but would be able to roam more or less freely. One could have "beginner friendly zones" on islands or such, but you'd need some convincing natural barrier to put this into some logical sense. Moving out of that zone should be hazardous at the very least.

This would also go hand in hand with a more dynamic factions system. I haven't played it, yet, but it seems that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl has been moving in that direction. Basically the AI factions should be able to team up with other factions as it would make sense for them to maintain some sort of balance of powers in the realm. And not an computer AI vs all human players style as in most MMORPGs.

Last but not least, I would love to see a MMORPG that doesn't rely on game mechanics (read: prohibiting it) to avoid negative PvP interaction such as stealing from players, freely attacking other players, scamming players, and so on. These should rather be dealt with in-game mechanisms. Things like allowing bounties, having guarded zones, hiring NPC mercenaries for protection (or hire them for evil deeds), courts, prisons to get sentenced characters locked up, etc.

Unfortunately, I can't see any of those being offered soon. I wouldn't even be surprised if most players would prefer a safe no-losses-possible game such as WoW, albeit incredibly boring with no thrills.
FWIW, I had the most fun running from (when I had a weak char), or fighting PKs (once my char was strong enough), chasing thieves, or being a thief myself in Ultima Online before they killed all that fun by making a facet completely safe, where the only goal that remained was to amass as much gold as possible.

Sorry for the ramblings.

Cliff notes:
Nah, don't think Warhammer Online will give WoW a run for its money.

[BradleyT]

Anyway....

Sign up Here for the beta. I applied the first day they announced closed beta applications but if I don't get in I'll pay $20-$25 on stars or ftp for someones working beta key.

[BillNye]

Here is why WoW is good imo:

The combat is miles ahead of any other game out their, and SKILL can make the difference. (PvP)

[Dire]

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Any MMORPG that wants to give WoW a serious run for its status would need to have revolutionary enhancements in gameplay.

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What revolutionary enhancements did WoW offer over DAoC, for example?

[Thanir]

IMO it would take alot for any mmorpg to overtake WoW....it's just too big atm. What WoW did was make the game easily accessible to the casual player, something Eq and most other mmorpgs didn't do. Also they made it so you could enjoy the experience solo, grp'd, or in a raid.

Over time they listened to their player base and eventually added in their own form of realm fighting...battlegrounds. Sure DOAC had this but adding it to an already good/great game made WoW even better. Now even 'carebear' servers could go out and do some pve when they wanted, and even get good gear you could only get raiding.

Almost every new mmorpg is being introduced as revolutionary, and trying to take a piece of the WoW marketshare, but eventually these fail and they just carve out their own niche.

[Blarg]

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Any MMORPG that wants to give WoW a serious run for its status would need to have revolutionary enhancements in gameplay.

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What revolutionary enhancements did WoW offer over DAoC, for example?

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Not necessary. Starcraft was a big step back graphically and had rules-based instead of physics-based weapons firing and trajectory, which was a huge and fairly baffling step back from the head of the pack. It quickly shot to the top and has stayed there to this day.

[Blarg]

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IMO it would take alot for any mmorpg to overtake WoW....it's just too big atm.


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Very true and the main reason WoW continues to stay the market leader. Success breeds success in many types of games. RTS's are fairly pointless to play without a solid base of players plus at least a trickle of new ones. In a fragmented marketplace, with shoddy player-matching and games released before they're ready being typical, many RTS's have a very small window of time in which to succeed and get a critical mass of players. MMORPG's function somewhat the same way, except that you can't "fail" as easily as you can in an RTS due to bad gameplay or player-matching services; there are more things to do that don't destroy the service than fight. But still you need a broad base of people to build and sustain communities. New MMORPG's are less attractive than ones that have established communities unless they offer something very different.

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What WoW did was make the game easily accessible to the casual player, something Eq and most other mmorpgs didn't do.


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Yep, that's the something different that WoW offered. Very simplified and easy. Not necessarily the better for it at all, but that's at least partly a matter of taste, at least in the lower levels.

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Also they made it so you could enjoy the experience solo, grp'd, or in a raid.


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Solo, yes. The raid experience wasn't any better than the EQ one and often substantially worse, for the same reason grouping was often much worse in WoW than EQ. It took so little skill to advance through levels that by the time you got to not just grouping but even raiding, players extremely often didn't know how to run groups and raids yet, or what their characters' powers and weak points were -- and certainly had limited ideas of what other characters' abilities were and how they should be used in a group. This lead to the kind of loot squabbles and tremendous number of blown groups and raids that EQ tended to get rid of before a character went much past 15th level. WoW characters typically get well into their 50's before they have even the slightest idea what they're doing and how to add to a group, rather than subtract from it.

Normally in an MMORPG, this can happen after it's been around a while and item inflation makes it easier to buy and trade for items that make leveling very fast and easy compared to what it used to be when the game was fresh and zones were more properly matched to a character's real strength. So EQ level 50's had a fair chance of sucking, and staying at suck level for a very long time, only after the game had been around quite a while. In WoW, advancing to high level suckhood was almost immediate. In EQ, sucking hard at high level would ruin your chances to get into a good guild, sometimes so thoroughly that people would reroll. And that's when leveling was hard! Sucking in WoW is extremely low risk.

So I'd say WoW, with its easy soloability, is great for solo characters, but for grouping and raiding, the design of the game has made raiding and even grouping far less rewarding than it was in EQ and DAOC.

That's not even mentioning that WoW didn't have more than a small taste of high-level raiding on release and for a good while after, too, and is still limited in that regard.


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Almost every new mmorpg is being introduced as revolutionary, and trying to take a piece of the WoW marketshare, but eventually these fail and they just carve out their own niche.

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Yup. The size of the community is too big a burden to overcome.

[w_alloy]

This thread is getting sidetracked on the somewhat retarded "WoW killer?" part of the title when obviously it was not meant literally as "this game will kill wow".

I've been looking forward to this game since I heard about it a like two and a half years ago. DAOC was one of my favorite games ever, and switching to the PvP in that game to WoW was a little bit ridiculous (although there were a lot of things wrong with DAOC RvR and PvP, it was way ahead of WoW overall imo when I stopped playing MMOs a year or so ago).

Mythic is a very solid developer and I would trust them as much or more than anyone (except maybe blizzard) when it comes to making games of this type. There are a lot of aspects of this game game that could be really awesome or could not, and it's too early to tell even though it's been in development for what seems like a ridiculous amount of time.

I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that the RvR/PvP fulfills its potential.

[Blarg]

Warhammer is so thoroughly about fighting I think the female segment will be pretty much locked out of the world, and that will hurt the feeling of the world as well as the sales. It might make the world fairly hollow. Some people love nothing but fighting, but even some people who like fighting the most need a bit of pacing to it. I wonder at how much Warhammer's world will really be fleshed out into anything but a smash fest.

[BradleyT]

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Anyway....

Sign up Here for the beta. I applied the first day they announced closed beta applications but if I don't get in I'll pay $20-$25 on stars or ftp for someones working beta key.

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In like flynn - got my beta invite yesterday and downloading it now.