I got a notice today that my 60 day time card for Warhammer has run out, and my account is now closed.
My reaction, frankly, was a huge sigh of relief. No more guilt over not playing a game I’d paid for a subscription to. Followed by a touch of sadness. I still have a Warhammer Online Poster on the door to the office (yes, I am still 12 in some ways, plus it covers a hole in the door!) I have Warhammer novels strewn all over the house. I have a head full of memories of all the great times I had in beta and those early days. I have a tag cloud on this blog that still features Warhammer most prominently.
But it just never clicked with me. It was like one of those “love at first sight” encounters that fizzles as you get to know the other person on a deeper level. You try to cling to that early passion, but you know that things just aren’t working out. And yet you hang on, go through the motions, hoping for…what? The world to flip on its axis or something? Nothing is going to change, so finally, you have The Talk.
So Warhammer and I have had The Talk. I can’t visualize ever going back to the game, unlike so many others that I do return to every now and then: City of Heroes, Guild Wars, WoW, EQ2, etc. With many MMOs I go back to see what’s changed and sometimes I end up staying a while. But with Warhammer, I’ve come to like the Mythic Message less and less over the months. I’ve come to like the community less and less. When I joined CoW I was naive enough to think those good folks represented what the Warhammer community would be like, but over time the testosterone-fueled e-peenery that always follows PvP seems to have taken over.
That sounds pretty hostile. Well heck, I guess it *is* pretty hostile. But everyone deserves a place where they can gather with like-minded individuals, and that extends to the testosterone-fueled e-peeners of both sexes. So, hostile or not, I’m glad they have Warhammer Online because quality PvP games are few and far between.
So, farewell, Warhammer Online! I’m really sorry things didn’t work out for us, but I know you’re going to be OK, because you have plenty of enthusiastic fans. As for me, first I have to eat a huge helping of crow because I was a fierce defender of the game back at launch (but I swear, the beta really *was* fun!) Once I choke that down, I’ll be OK because I have a skillion other games to choose from, and now I don’t have the ever-present guilt of “I really should be playing War…after all, I paid for it.”
Freedom!!
Yeah but Pete you had to know that was coming in a PVP game. Actually it may be in every MMO. I always run into it as I level cap in any game really. PVP is just going to make it worse.
Did you not liking grouping in the game with people or did you just not like the game overall?
I keep telling myself I’ll give it a shot again someday. I was sorta kinda hoping for the 6-month “anniversary” that it will have turned itself around but from what I read on blogs that are not the driveling, drooling fanbois, it doesn’t seem destined to be. Maybe the 1-year. Maybe never.
AoC on the other hand, I’ve actually been hearing good things about. Perhaps their 1-year I’ll give it a shot again. More to the point, I’m very interested to see how they manage to adapt the game to the 360!
Sorry to see you go, Pete. Warhammer is wearing on me lately, as well. My favorite now is when one side or the other doesn’t get a good footing right off the bat in a scenario they just leave the scenario. Happened all day yesterday. If I wasn’t on such a quest to try and play the game out, I would probably be hanging up my bow and quiver, too.
WoW solved the leaving a scenario thing by making people get a “coward” debuff which prevents you from doing any PVP for 15 minutes. Sounds like this game is heading in that direction.
Things like that are what amazed me from the moment I first loaded WAR — did Mythic literally hide themselves away from the world in Vault 101 for 4+ years that they had NO CLUE that so many glaring issues they launched with had been solved for quite some time by other studios?
The classes had personality, that was probably the best part for me. The PvP was same ol’ same ol’ but at least more (total) variety even if the populace wasn’t taking advantage of the variety those first few weeks. Everything else about the game was a step or few backwards to me.
I felt very similar to this when I let it go. It was more fun at lower levels and in the beta, I wonder how come it changed so much so fast for me, but there’s alwyas a lot of things we don’t understand because they are controlled by many many factors. I am glad I gave them money for the time I spent and I’m glad I’ve stopped spending time there. Simple as that I guess.
Yeah, it was a blast during the beta. But I think that’s because you had a large concentration of players there, so it was nonstop action in Scenarios or PQs or what have you. Once everyone leveled up, it turned into a ghost town real quick. Scenarios took too long to pop. PQs were empty except on rare days when the planets aligned and a bunch of people happened to be your same level at the same place with the same goals in mind. I think that’s why people left; at any rate, that’s why I quit.
Don’t feel bad Pete, I was the same as you. It’s not your fault the game has issues. I’m sure they’ll get fixed eventually, but you shouldn’t have to pay for that. You did the right thing 😉
Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply. Been a long day. Bottom line probably boils down to War focuses on grouped PvP. I tend to solo or casually PUG, but I quickly feel ‘behind the curve’ and PUGs and open groups got really hard to find. I did have some fun doing PvE, but with so many of the mobs solo and predicatable, PvE got a bit stale. Every fight was the same sequence of skills (which is true of a lot of MMOs as long as you manage things…but in War you could almost *always* manage things).
In beta everyone was forced to do the same stuff to test different systems, and it was great fun, huge masses of players swarming at each other for the joy of it. No one got pissed off if our side lost, and no one took it so seriously that tempers started flaring.
Flaring tempers isn’t my thing. *shrug* I just thought I was really, REALLY going to love War. So it’s a bit sad admitting that, nope, it isn’t the game for me.