I remember buying it at launch, and there was quite a lot of excitement surrounding it (as with all major MMO launches). It was fun in the first tier (levels 1-10), but after hitting tier 3 (level 20) it got notoriously tedious and boring to level, and the lack of item variety got irritating (almost ALL the armor looked the same). Ordinary questing got extremely slow after level 15, so you were basically forced into either public quests or scenarios in order to level at a decent rate.

- Public quests were often deserted and impossible to progress past step 1, and those that were populated got boring once you had to grind them over and over again to level. Seriously, how fun is it to kill 100 dwarfs in order to get to step 2, and then failing step 3, bringing you back to the 100 dwarfs again? Rince and repeat...
 - The scenarios were mostly decent, but got repetetive really fast. The problem got worse when the server just decided to play the same map over and over again (some gave more EXP and thus got more popular).

It didn't help that the games major selling point (outdoor RVR) was always deserted.  There was no incentive to go out and battle, the EXP from outdoor pvp was CRAP compared to scenarios, as was the item rewards... Travel also became to slow. You were un-mounted just by entering combat, and not entering combat was often impossible as mobs and creatures often walked across roads and had long aggro ranges... The lag in sieges was in 90% of the cases so bad that I think most players just stayed the hell away from them.

While the motivation to level was already low, it didn't help to read the forums on how the endgame was. Frustrated posters whining about AOE grinding Magus groups owning everyone or city raids being pointless because of the lag (or just simply pointless because there wasn't any incentives to do it) didn't really give me or my friends enough "carrot on a stick" to push through the tedious levels past 20. So we quit.

It was easy to get enthusiastic watching Barnett and Co. giving interviews and hyping up the game. The problem was that it didn't really deliver on many of it's key points, the biggest one being the most crucial: the open world RVR. The game world just ended up feeling lifeless. It was a bit anticlimatic to run by large keeps that were completely deserted... No fighting, no "WAR everywhere". The game should really be called Warhammer: Age of Scenarios. Also adding to the lifeless feel was the lack of a global chat, let alone a zone chat... I can count on one hand how many times I saw someone talk. The only thing that filled the chatbox was LOADS of monster emotes and the occasional whisper from a friend.

....

Holy hell this turned out much longer than I planned... Anyways, do anyone still play it, and has any of these issues been sorted out? How is the game doing now?

All I've heard is that they consolidated the servers and fleshed out the lower levels so there's more stuff to do.  I've also heard endgame is shit and that you want to stick to T1 and T2.

Where to begin...They increased exp so the 20+ grind aint that bad, but still a grind. They made Public Quests have an alternate option of "easy mode" where it's beatable by just 3 people now. Scenarios que a lot faster. There's now a "rally call" button that alerts any nearby players of an RvR zone that someone's trying to capture a keep, so then when you click the rally button you get TPed right into the action (But it is kind of broken and has some false alarms) And I have no idea what end game is like because I only got to level 25 and quit :D

Also Keeps are a lot more varied and can be leveled up if a guild is holding one.

Also they closed like 40 "realms" (servers) so Low pop servers had to join Medium servers which made them a lot more populated.

2010, Warhammer Online: Not like this..

But seriously, I think its doing alright, not as good as WoW but it has a userbase and their improving it over time.

" 2010, Warhammer Online: Not like this..But seriously, I think its doing alright, not as good as WoW but it has a userbase and their improving it over time. "

When I played it, there were a lot of problems and it just got plain boring at 20 so I quit, I may go back and try it again but I'm not sure.

" @KillaMaStA said:

" 2010, Warhammer Online: Not like this..But seriously, I think its doing alright, not as good as WoW but it has a userbase and their improving it over time. "

Huh it doesn't appear that unlikely, really. After some googling I've gathered that they had 300k subscribers as of December 08 (200k less than what Mark Jacobs said they needed in order for it to be profitable). That is a pretty substantial dropoff considering how many copies the game has sold. I just quickly read the IGN VN boards for the game, and it appears that it has gone more downhill since then when it comes to servers turning into ghost towns... "

We've got a few guys that still play it up here where I work, and they still love it.  They've said that the improvements have been substantial enough to keep them playing, and the RvR is incredibly rewarding for them...but strictly on the terms of fun factor.  Aside from that, they compared it a bit to Guild Wars:  you can level up and get your gear pretty quickly, but it's the PvP that keeps them going.

I'd say it failed, for me anyway.  I think I got to level 26 or so I can't remember, and then I just couldn't take the leveling anymore and quit. 

I REALLY enjoyed the 2 week trial or whatever it was but during the last part of it I went away for a few days and when I got back I played it and got bored after about half an hour and then had no incentive to buy it after the trial. The first few days were so fun, especialy the places where a bunch of people banded together to do a outdoor quest it was soo much fun but as I leveled less and less people were at those quests and eventualy I barely saw anyone.

It was a good idea but I don't think it worked out when all's said and done.

" I REALLY enjoyed the 2 week trial or whatever it was but during the last part of it I went away for a few days and when I got back I played it and got bored after about half an hour and then had no incentive to buy it after the trial. The first few days were so fun, especialy the places where a bunch of people banded together to do a outdoor quest it was soo much fun but as I leveled less and less people were at those quests and eventualy I barely saw anyone.It was a good idea but I don't think it worked out when all's said and done. "

The games only $12 on Amazon. Haha. :D

I actually got back into this game recently; whether or not I will continue is uncertain. At this point I have a level 28 Slayer (DPS) and have just started a Warrior Priest (healer) alt.

What can I say about Warhammer Online? It's a fledgling MMO. It still hasn't hit its first year, and that inexperience shows. Though the class balance is better by far than in any other MMO featuring PVP, that doesn't mean there aren't classes considered to be "overpowered." At the present time, Sorcerers and Bright Wizards are the most prominently imbalanced classes, though a new patch was introduced recently that heavily nerfed their abilities. The recent server mergers really worked to the game's benefit, and I was lucky enough to roll my characters on what is currently considered to be the best server, population-wise (Iron Rock). I don't experience as much of the emptiness and long queue times that Scooper described, but again, that's likely due to the mergers.

Even as an MMO player that has always been all about the PVE, I'm enjoying Warhammer. The PVP, though possessing the ability to be incredibly frustrating, really shines when you get a group that works well together and keeps me coming back for more (despite the frequent desire to ragequit).

As for Kohe312's comment on outdoor PVP not yielding enough experience... Well... That might be because that's not the intention of outdoor PVP. Keep taking and skirmishing within the game world serves to increase your renown, whereas scenarios, dungeons and questing serve to increase your EXP.

There are still a large number of bugs and glitches that Mythic have yet to iron out, which is frustrating for a lot of players (myself included). I had meant to write a blog about all this, but god knows that will never happen. Anyway... As with all MMOs, if you're curious as to its state-of-being, just sign up for 10 free days and find out for yourself.

So is T3 leveling faster than it was? Doing Tor Anroc over and over again hundreds of times from level 20-27 (where I quit) was not fun.

I just want ToR to hurry up and come out :'(

I bought at launch and played with my guild "quality control", we rolled kids, tops charts, got world firsts and then i realized that individual skill was worthless.  small grp fighting was terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrribly unbalanced *some of the worst i've seen" and when in large rvr fights due to my name and guild tag i'd get targeted by 30 people at once.

I went back a while later and it was still pretty much the same.  im done with mmo's for a while, wow arena has been ruined, war kinda failed and age of conan... well was age of conan..

I think MMOs are starting to die and i tribute it to games like this. WAR was basically a failed copy of WOW like so many other MMOs comming out. MMOs werent very popular and they were mainly for the hardcore until WOW came out. WOW got so popular it atracted Millions of people (like me) who never played anything but maybe ruinscape for about an hour. But now that WOW is about to be what, 6 or 7 years old, i think people are craving for a different, more in depth experience that WOW isnt giving them. And with wow gettting sorta old to many people, its pointless for games like WAR to try to copy it. That is the main reason it dies. WOW was great to attract people, but now people like me want a new reinvented experience. I think that is the main reason this game failed, they tried to copy WOW without inovating at all.

I just really hope that AION or the new Star Wars MMO creates a brand new and inovative experience so we can finally get an MMO to play without haveing to go to WOW, because WOW has really gotten old, even with the expansions.

"

I think MMOs are starting to die and i tribute it to games like this. WAR was basically a failed copy of WOW like so many other MMOs comming out. MMOs werent very popular and they were mainly for the hardcore until WOW came out. WOW got so popular it atracted Millions of people (like me) who never played anything but maybe ruinscape for about an hour. But now that WOW is about to be what, 6 or 7 years old, i think people are craving for a different, more in depth experience that WOW isnt giving them. And with wow gettting sorta old to many people, its pointless for games like WAR to try to copy it. That is the main reason it dies. WOW was great to attract people, but now people like me want a new reinvented experience. I think that is the main reason this game failed, they tried to copy WOW without inovating at all.

I just really hope that AION or the new Star Wars MMO creates a brand new and inovative experience so we can finally get an MMO to play without haveing to go to WOW, because WOW has really gotten old, even with the expansions.

"

Im not saying Warhammer isnt a great franchise, if thats what you wanna call it, i love the games they make. But the fact is (whether they riped them off er not) WAR came out after WOW and was basically the same thing as WOW just not as good thats all im saying.

Just think about it, like 12 million people subscribe to WOW. So if you have an 80 on WOW and another game like WOW comes out, what is your motavation to leave all your hard work and friends in the dust for the same experience on a different game. And that is the core of the failures of these MMOs. Thats why i hope one of these new ones inovates, to a successful outcome too. Cause i am sick of WOW and its closely related games.

" @TheMustacheHero:

Just think about it, like 12 million people subscribe to WOW. So if you have an 80 on WOW and another game like WOW comes out, what is your motavation to leave all your hard work and friends in the dust for the same experience on a different game. And that is the core of the failures of these MMOs.

"

well some people crave better gameplay and more competition.

for example i went to war hammer with the best wow pvp guild to date at the time and some RL friends.  lots of people move to new multiplayer games in groups so essentially they don't leave anyone.

" well some people crave better gameplay and more competition.for example i went to war hammer with the best wow pvp guild to date at the time and some RL friends.  lots of people move to new multiplayer games in groups so essentially they don't leave anyone. "

of course, but my reply was to your comment regarding people being hesitant to try something new because they'd leave friends behind, when for many thats not the case.

i also went back to wow for a little wow after war and then quit for good.

" @Clbull said:

" Tbh, I've never played Warhammer Online (but have been tempted to by people saying that PvP is more balanced than WoW and theres a larger focus on world pvp.) From how everyone here is describing it, I take it as the PvE isn't that good, and that levelling through PvP gets repetitive quick. "

Actually, from what I'm reading, people are playing the game against the way it is MEANT to be played.  I'm hearing a lot about "I" and "me".  No mentions of guilds.  No mentions of teamwork.  All lone wolf play.  If you are solo playing Warhammer, then yeah...you aren't having any fun.  It's not like WoW where you can go in by yourself and accomplish everything.  Most MMOs aren't.  WoW's about the only one.  Even something like Guild Wars requires a good level of teamwork and online buddies to make the game really enjoyable and work the way it is supposed to.

@Kohe321 said:

" So is T3 leveling faster than it was? Doing Tor Anroc over and over again hundreds of times from level 20-27 (where I quit) was not fun. "

You have to be the kind of person who enjoys PvP and...again...has a good group going to make it truly worthwhile.  If you are going in solo and just expecting to walk through it like WoW, then you are in the wrong mindset.

I was in a guild for Warhammer Online, and it was very rewarding.  The only reason I didn't continue playing was because my IRL friends were playing WoW, and we all usually came up here to all sit next to each other and raid.  They didn't want to dump their 70s nor raiding in order to start over from scratch on a new game.

Needless to say, Warhammer Online is a damn good game.  It's just not the game everyone wants it to be:  easy, solo-friendly, and WoW.  That's why WoW is so successful - you don't have to have a high end computer to run it well, and you don't have to have friends to get epics.

"