In Memoriam

In Memoriam

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of Warhammer Online, and much to the surprise of many people it was seemingly unmarked.  I even retweeted a comment from Sypster that essentially said their ignoring the game was disgraceful.  That they should either support the game or pull the plug.  Well it turns out that is precisely what they had in mind.  Thirty Minutes or so later we got this post on the front page of the official Warhammer Online page.  They were pulling the plug active as of December 18th 2013.

I can’t say that this shocks anyone really in the gaming circles, because the game has been in a constant state of decline since its very early subscriber peak.  A few months back I placed it as the game I was most disappointed in on my list of five biggest gaming disappointments.  The game as a whole just had so much potential, and I enjoyed playing it for quite a while, until myself and my friends ran out of PVE content to consume.  This was he game I had wanted to see the most rebooted as a free to play experience.

Ultimately they are stating that this is the point at which they are losing the license to Warhammer fantasy, and I believe that the statement can be taken one of two ways.  Firstly you could conclude that like Star Wars Galaxies… getting a reissuance of the license by Games Workshop was an unlikely thing.  However I tend to take the point of view that they were likely contractually obligated to run the game at least to the point at which the license period ended.  Considering the complete and total lack of support shown by EA for the game, I feel like this is more than likely.  The game as a whole was just a loss on their balance sheet that they were all to happy to take off as soon as they were able.

Free To Play Wishes

I feel the best case scenario would be for some asian game operator like perfect world to swoop in, buy the game assets, renew the license and resurrect it was a free to play game.  I of course find this highly unlikely, but games like Hellgate: London have seen very unlikely resurrections in such fashion.  Back in April I took Mythic up on one of their 14 day renewal passes and gave the game a spin again.  I have to say overall Warhammer Online held up extremely well.  They had greatly streamlined the leveling experience, which destroyed a lot of the originality of the game.  Essentially they funneled everyone down either the Empire or Chaos path to try and make up for lack of subscriber numbers.

The world still looked good to me, and the ”stylistic realism” still very much fit the Warhammer world.  The game innovated on so many things that have now become part and parcel for an MMO game.  The game map was light years ahead of World of Warcraft at the time, and was the first out of the box map that provided a significant amount of information about what your quest objectives where, and where they could be fulfilled.  If you like Rifts or GW2 events or even FATEs… we can thank Warhammer for giving us the first viable public questing system.  The game still felt like a vibrant modern MMO to me when I played it… which only makes the severe neglect over the years that much more disappointing.

Not Designed For Me

For me… Warhammer Online was a game destined to be something I did not want to play.  Everything sold about the game was pushing it into this “hardcore pvp” niche.  This was not me at all and not even something I was vaguely interested in.  However upon testing the game I found that the PVE experience was extremely good.  I loved playing my Dwarven Ironbreaker, and it will go down in history as one of my favorite tank classes.  The dual Grudge and Stamina mechanic meant I could regenerate resources as the fight went on allowing me to spend one while the other was recovering.  I loved the fact that tanks had physical mass, and that you could in theory create human barricades to protect your team mates.

The only problem for me is that around level 25 the forced PVP started… and I simply did not really enjoy this.  Keep raids were entertaining, but it added a level of unpredictability to my game play experience that I just did not enjoy.  Could I complete the quests I had for X zone because we had recently lost it?  I found myself leveling through an ever decreasing path of content, until there just was no meat left on the bone for me.  I had enjoyed the low level scenarios, but as we leveled we kept getting pushed into new tiers of scenarios… and quite frankly the later ones were not as well designed as the first few.  My favorite scenario was Mourkain Temple… aka “Kill the dude with the thing”.  When I stopped being able to play that, I lost interest in the PVP aspect of the game.

Finality

I guess the most depressing part about this entire experience is that it is now over.  Prior to yesterday I could always hold out a sad glimmer of hope that someone would decide to love this game and make it something that players would want to play.  I realize this was a wholy unrealistic hope… but it was something I could hold onto.  There are always games that I wish I could return to those heady days after launch.  This was really the first game that House Stalwart broke out into in a big fashion.  So many of us thought it would be our “new wow” and we stormed into the game with at least 40 active players.  By the three month mark, very few of us were actually playing the game, and the large majority had slinked back into World of Warcraft.

We were PVE players, so each and every one of us hit the same level 25 wall where the content began to shift drastically.  I had some friends that played Chaos that made it at least a year before quitting.  However in the end… everyone DID quit, and move on to other things.  The launch of Age of Conan was ultimately drew my PVP friends away from the game.  However by that time, Mythic had already long since become a neglectful steward of the title.  With no real new content being released and no viable hope of it… folks moved on.  Ultimately Warhammer will always be an example of why I believe that no matter what players may say… they don’t actually want a PVP centric gaming experience.

No Petitions

 

Unlike the shutting down of both Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes… I don’t forsee much of a reaction from the community, if there is actually a Warhammer community left at all.  Mythic killed this game long ago by forgetting about it.  It has just been an animated corpse walking along in a stilted and syncopated rhythm for the last few years.  I can’t say it is ever really “time” for a game to be turned off, but if there was this would likely be the poster child.  So much of the brilliant things about this game, require massive armies of players to really pull them off… and quite frankly after about the year month mark they lacked that.  This feels to me so much like the ending of Old Yeller… when you know the dog has to be put down, but you are still immensely saddened to see it get shot.

Wrapping Up

As soon as the news broke, I realized that it would likely be what dominated todays post.  However I did not quite realize that I would ramble on about it for an ENTIRE post.  I am sad to see the chapter drawing closed on the game but I guess at the end of the day I understand, and halfway expected this announcement to occur.  Just sad to see it happen on the fifth anniversary of the game.  I hope you all have a great day, and that whatever game you are really into manages to stay healthy and vibrant.