Since I took the free week from Blizzard, I thought I would return to WAR for a bit and see what changes this game has undergone. Mythic offers 2 free weeks to returnees in an effort to re-hook interest.
When I had left the game, the patch that was supposed to change everything did. The change it wrought was a hemorrhage of remaining players. The new gear led to the creation of god like player characters that could practically fight warbands single handed. The BO timers, NPC guards and zone points were taken away. Which meant people wandered around a bit aimlessly then finally coalescing at a keep. Even then only war machines could take down a door, since they were now resistant to range and melee damage. That led to people just standing around the keep door. I left the game.
Since then Mythic has taken considerable power away from the end game PvP armor sets, warpforged and doomflayer. That has eased up on lower RR players a bit. However checking my damage against other players, I still see opposing players immune to ALL of my attacks. This is wrong. There should never, ever, ever, never, ever be full immunity to attacks in a PVP game.
The campaign is still in a shambles with aimless wandering. Even more distressingly, the standard of private warbands and private groups is now the only standard. Open warbands are left out of the loop. Since the Realm 4 chat channel is only open to guild leaders, no one can send messages out on it to report on activity. During my heyday in the game the chat channels were filled with chatter and skirmish updates. Open warbands were always in creation. Even I was able to lead a few warbands. Those days it seems, are over. And for what reason? Because a few control freaks were pissed off that there were renown leachers sitting at BOs, keeps or at the entrance of the RvR lake. Was that problem annoying? Yes. Did it need addressing? Maybe, but more likely not. Because now that there are no clear cut goals, no points to rally, no group synergy, the game is now truly fading.
Warhammer Online has become a private club kind of atmosphere. Which means you must join a guild, a very big guild and a popular one at that. Because that is the only way you will see action. Otherwise, a player will just have to wander, hook up with various wandering groups that will allow tagalongs and expect no heals. And all of this because a few screechers couldn't stand renown slackers. You know what, I would rather have the old campaign, warts and all rather than this silent, asocial atmosphere.
The game is now down to 2 American servers. That should tell the game developers, that yes, you do need fricking renown leechers. Those leechers are paying for this damn game. That should tell the game developers to stop listening to the top level players and bloggers. These people are too close to the fire to give a well rounded view of the actual game. And considering the last few recent updates, I can only seeing it get worse before it gets better. The players in the developer talking circle are still screeching about renown leechers. But are unable to connect the empty RvR lakes, no campaign rally points, and ridiculous immunity advantages to the fact that they are encouraging the developers to make the game as unfriendly to new players as possible. The fact that the server Badlands went from overpopulated to now needing to be merged to the last server Gorfang, should tell these "elite" players that they don't know how to give good advice to this game's developers.
The latest boogaboo among the elites is the PvE areas. Which they say are wasted. And yes I agree they are wasted. But I doubt any of them have played the PvE areas like I have. And I say, the PvE quests were wonderful. The story arcs in the quests were fantastic. The only thing that needed addressing in these areas were that they needed to be integrated into the campaign more, to have them give a nice amount of renown but not as much as the RvR lakes. They also needed to be examined for bugs and NPC damage tuning. That was all. If the PvE area had been useful, I doubt the game would have bled players so profusely. Now it looks as if all that hard work for the quests will be thrown out the window. So that it can all be RvR area. Will that get back more players? Not a bit.
To the developers of this game, I would say go back in time and objectively look at the previous campaign ideas. During which iteration encouraged more player activity, which did not and which led to players fleeing. Seriously consider the advice elite players have given. Did any of them lead to more player retention? Honestly?
Time is of the essence now for this game and I hope they can pull it back from the edge.
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