Why Warhammer Online is Failing

Warhammer Online was seen as the first major contender for World of Warcraft's crown. Getting great reviews across the board, the game was set to take the world by storm. Designed from the ground up as a Player vs Player game (PvP), this was the real deal, the gritty MMO people had been clamouring for.

Only the game was released with classes missing, huge problems with just about every aspect of the game, and a massive reliance on instanced 'scenarios' which took much needed players away the main 'real world' aspect of the game. People preferred to play scenarios than take part in the 'epic' world PvP. Keeps were left untaken for days, if not weeks on end, and no one seemed to care about the war, which raged silently, if at all.

So, where did it all go wrong?

Development: It was the wrong time to release a new game. It was certainly the wrong time to release a new game that wasn't up to scratch. Filled with numerous bugs and major design flaws, Warhammer Online simply wasn't the game people expected it to be. They expected PvP from the moment they logged on, but instead they found a game which is primarily scenario driven (at least for the moment). Scenarios are great fun but when your guild is more interested in doing the Nordenwatch scenario than they are in taking back the Keep so you can buy new powers (available only at a Keep you control) you know you've got a problem.

People simply have no reason to take part in PvP, not when they get so many more rewards from scenarios (and they don't have to do more than click a button to get straight into the action). The scenarios shattered the already diminishing server populations, thus exacerbating the problem. You can't do world PvP if there's no one to fight...

The problems lie directly on Mythic's doorstep. No one could have foreseen these issues in beta. We only ever saw a small portion of the game and never the whole package. Was this intentional on Mythic's part? Who can say? All we know for certain is that the glaring issues with scenarios were impossible to spot until the game went live.

And now, some two months into the game's release, there are far too many servers with low populations (even at peak times). It's clear Mythic's developers have a major job ahead of them.

Mythic continually boasted than Warhammer Online had the shortest development time of any MMO in existence, and it shows. It needed another six months of development and the same amount of time in full beta testing. Right now, it's still littered with problems and it's not the game it 'could' be - one day. Like poor Everquest 2, whether there will be any players around to see its rebirth still remains to be seen.

Release Date: With the World of Warcraft flying so high, perhaps there isn't a good time to release a new MMO. If you are going to release a new online game, you need to choose your moment of release very carefully. You certainly DON'T want to release your game just two months before the behemoth that is Warcraft releases its second expansion. That's just asking for trouble.

Polish: As we've learned from so many other (failed) games in the past, you need to make your game as polished and 'ready for release' as you possibly can. That means game stability and a nicely balanced set of classes. Seeing all these far-reaching changes to the class system, huge revamps to the RVR system, it's clear Mythic still has a very long way to go if it wants to steal back some of WOW's player base.

Scenarios: Personally, scenarios were the worst idea ever. They're fine for games like Half Life 2, but WHO decided instanced scenarios in a MMO would be a good idea? They remove the player base from the rest of the game and when you're struggling to find players, that's never a good thing. They are fantastic fun, but they simply don't work. There should have been scenarios that worked like Public Quests slotted into the world, instead we've got an idea cloned from World of Warcraft.

To fix the game, Mythic needs to:

• Remove scenarios (sadly, never going to happen).
• Enhance the PvE questing. Right now the quests are boring and soloing isn't nearly as much fun as it could be.
• Consolidate the servers so the remaining players aren't walking through ghost towns.
• Make it easier to get from place to place (it's so arduous travelling from zone to zone).
• Boost World PVP beyond all recognition (give people a reason to fight / take back Keeps).
• Make the game as was promised (PvP right from the start of the game and influencing every aspect of the game).
• Get all the classes in game (releasing with classes missing is a huge no no in my book).

Warhammer Online is a great game that really does deserve to have a larger player base than it currently has. With Warcraft stealing every player in the galaxy, it's clear Mythic has been given some breathing room - they've got a couple of months before those Warcraft players who cancelled before the expansion grow bored of the new content. Then they'll be looking for something else to play, and whether Warhammer can get its act together in time to be that game still remains to be seen. If the developers make the right decisions, get all the content fixed and resolve the huge issues with PvP, then the game will have a very healthy player base in 2009.