The war is apparently over

[Antonok]

http://www.warhammeronline.com/article/Warhammer-Update

Warhammer Online is shutting down come December. Sucks cause I was thinking about getting back into it =\

[Togath]

That's.. depressing.. I'd been thinking of giving it another go recently as well, it was a fun style for an mmo.

[Tengu_temp]

Sad but not unsurprising, really. This only shows that, unless your name is WoW or EVE, the age of pay-to-play MMOs is long gone.

[Togath]

Sad but not unsurprising, really. This only shows that, unless your name is WoW or EVE, the age of pay-to-play MMOs is long gone.

Most free to play ones have subscriptions in order to get certain content, or beyond a certain level, and both EVE and WOW have free/demo-esc versions :smallwink:.
More seriously; I get what you mean, Warhammer Online had an oddly low cutoff point for free access. Even WOW is more "level limit" than region limit, and it has the Uber Open Environment thing going for it as well(on a related note, I'll be curious to see how Archeage ends up being, if it really does have connected zones like WOW)

[Tengu_temp]

Well yeah, that's how F2P MMOs usually generate income. They're still running a business after all.

There's one more big P2P MMO, and that's FF14. But with how much money Squeenix already sank into this game, and the ridiculous financial losses it brought them, I don't see it as anything but a lost cause.

[Togath]

Well yeah, that's how F2P MMOs usually generate income. They're still running a business after all.


Aye.
I was more being sarcastic with that crack:smallsmile:

I am going to be interested in what sorts of MMOs come out in the next few years though, more in regards to their content/style than f2p/p2p methods(taking WOW as an example, I'll be interested to see if anyone else gives the seamless continents concept a go, or if anyone gives the "100% dungeons" concept of Neverwinter/DDO another try)

edit: just noticed your edit, aye, FF14 is an odd one, from my understanding, a large amount of the loss came due to it having been very buggy around launch(I remember hearing something about even in the last week of beta, a bug which caused death to be permanent, unless revived by a GM), combined with having(at least at it's launch) very very grindy gameplay, as well per-week limits on xp gain for some reason(making a game grindy and then adding an xp-per-week limit?:smallconfused:).

[mistformsquirrl]

That sucks. I'm not surprised necessarily, but it still sucks. Really enjoyed that game back when it came out. Swordmaster was great fun once it got going heh

[Zen Master]

What games developers fail to realise is that MMO's are not games - they are social networks. WoW is Facebook with more interesting graphics.

Once they get their minds around that fact, they may eventually find a way to challenge WoW.

WAR made a pretty decent stab at getting it right, tho. They made every effort to have lots of players from day 1. They just didn't get enough - once you left the starting areas of the game, you could wander for hours and never meet a living soul.

The age of pay-to-play is far from over. Developers just need to realise what the genre is really all about.

[Togath]

What games developers fail to realise is that MMO's are not games - they are social networks. WoW is Facebook with more interesting graphics.

Once they get their minds around that fact, they may eventually find a way to challenge WoW.

WAR made a pretty decent stab at getting it right, tho. They made every effort to have lots of players from day 1. They just didn't get enough - once you left the starting areas of the game, you could wander for hours and never meet a living soul.

The age of pay-to-play is far from over. Developers just need to realise what the genre is really all about.

That's.. a bit of a weird interpretation.
The point of a game is to be a game, and what WoW and Guildwars 2 have done right is make very fun team based games.
Various aspects have helped to contribute to that though, such as neither one punishing players for doing quests in the same area(in WOW, respawn speed adjusts to the number of people there, and in guildwars all resources are player specific, harvesting a node won't remove for other players, just yourself), vivid graphics(far too many games just look washed out nowadays), epic battles(raids, or the new world bosses, for WOW, or pretty much any dungeon in Guildwars 2), as well as the often overlooked benefits of humour(a lot of American and European medieval rgs seem to be almost afraid to add in humourous aspects. Oddly more and more first person shooters are becoming comfortable with it[Bioshock{1 & 2 mainly, but there were quirky bits even in 3}, Fallout, Borderlands, to list a few])

[Tehnar]

WAR failed because it couldn't deliver the promised end game. A truly mass PvP battle.

That drove the players away and started the downward spiral. Otherwise it was a great game that delivered the best PvP experience(s) I had in a MMO.

[t209]

Plus they really should focus on Strategy game, like Dark Omen (I heard that Creative Assembly got the right but I was not impressed by Rome 2 results).

[Wraith]

Plus they really should focus on Strategy game, like Dark Omen.

Why no-one at GW has thought of using an X-Com: Enemy Unknown style engine to create a Necromunda, Mordheim and/or a Kill Team themed game yet, I'll never know. Maybe one day, Tzeench will hear my prayers and grant us such a boon.... :smalltongue:

[Kesnit]

I really liked WAR, but have mostly gotten away from P2P MMOs. I was hoping WAR would come out with a F2P model, at which point, I would be back in a heartbeat.

[Tanuki Tales]

Pity that I never got around to playing this; ah well.

[Makensha]

I have the collector's edition sitting around somewhere. Haven't played it in years.

P2P MMOs might someday see a resurgence, but not likely anytime soon. Once people get sick of being nickled and dimed and attacked by ads throughout their gameplay enough to be willing to pay a subscription, then we might see some change. Right now, it isn't looking too good.

I have a feeling FFXIV will end up just like SWTOR: early positive response followed by a plummet into the abyss.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I played for a while, but the open world PvP just turned into Doorhammer. Sit there sieging the castle and wait for the door to come down. Now wait for the next door to come down.

[Antonok]

I have the collector's edition sitting around somewhere. Haven't played it in years.

P2P MMOs might someday see a resurgence, but not likely anytime soon. Once people get sick of being nickled and dimed and attacked by ads throughout their gameplay enough to be willing to pay a subscription, then we might see some change. Right now, it isn't looking too good.

I have a feeling FFXIV will end up just like SWTOR: early positive response followed by a plummet into the abyss.

SWTOR only got good positives before they released. Once they released, a s**tstorm the likes will probably never be seen again erupted about everything that wasn't the first 2 story chapters.

As long as FFXIV can keep going the way they are, it'll be one of the few P2P games that'll stick around for a while.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Warhammer suffered simillarly. The low tier zones were pretty rich in atmosphere. By the time you got the the higher tier zones were such a let down.

[Renegade Paladin]

And yet again we see what a huge mistake Games Workshop made when they turned Blizzard down when they asked about making a Warhammer RTS back before Warcraft I.

[Togath]

Warhammer suffered simillarly. The low tier zones were pretty rich in atmosphere. By the time you got the the higher tier zones were such a let down.

This. I actually did explore some of the higher level zones, and they seemed.. oddly barren, even of enemies(when a level 5* can explore the level 40 zones.. you might have made the area too empty:smallwink:)

*that's not to say my highest level character was level 5, it's just that that was what it was around the time I went wandering.

[Jonzac]

I liked WAR and it did a lot of things that others have imulated...Public Quests, "War Fronts" where PvP happened, ease in joining large warbands/"raids".

WARs problem was the end game was too repetitious and weird...the huge city battles were instanced and didn't happen regularly or only when one side had a HUGE advantage, and the way they locked areas from flipping after one side took them meant you couldn't get a force together and "raid their back lines" like DAOC did.

Frankly, I believe DAOC was the best large-scale war (not PvP) ever. The three sides made it hard, you could leave one area and hit people/groups leaving the safe areas to join main effort. You could slip by and start a quick castly seige and maybe get the enemy to react to you and leave your area. You could drop catapults and rams anywhere to attack walls and doors.

DAOC was wonderful until they tried to be WOW with the Trials of Atlantis, when they GEAR you had was more important than the TACTICS you used...that killed their game.