The second month of my subscription to Warhammer Onlines expires tomorrow and I don't plan to renew. It's not that it's such a bad game, in fact it's pretty good and has just the right level of accessibility for a casual player. The biggest reason why I can't bring myself to renew is that this Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game is lacking one crucial ingredient.... players. It wasn't the most over populated game to begin with but the recent WoW expansion kind of killed things from what I could see. Previously it could be a 20 minute wait or so to get into a Scenario. Post WOTLK I haven't been able to get into a single Scenario and that is with joining all queues as soon as I log in and staying in the queue for the duration of the time I play. Something tells me this is not because there are too many people playing the scenarios (as happened with battlegrounds a lot back when I played WoW).
Wandering around the large, and attractive game environments it feels empty even in the main areas of each zone. There are some fun things to do and see and although the quests are a bit 'grindy' I don't mind that at all. For a few weeks it had been possible to hook up with some other players in Public Quests and for it to almost feel like a MMORPG but no longer. Another thing impacted by the low population is the in game economy. Granted, the drop rate of decent equipment is suprisingly high and reward items quite useful but while early on the Auction House seemed to make sense recently, it is almost impossible to sell anything and prices are either ridiculously hopeful (high) or barely worthwile (low, a bit higher than you'd get just selling the item to a vendor). Crafting isn't great in the game from what I have seen but could be easily changed. Increasing the populations of their servers to more viable numbers to make the game work as more than just an average single player game is going to be a whole lot tougher.
I'll keep the disk handy and probably leave the game installed for now but wont go back until I hear better things about it in the forums if at all. I actually fancy giving SPORE another go it was good fun and had just started getting challenging when WAR came along...
As you know I stopped playing long before my sub ran out but, I did just read this, it's an interesting article about the problem with WAR... being the players!
http://syncaine.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/warhammers-major-problem-the-players/
Posted by: kevin | November 28, 2008 at 04:33 PM
Seriously though, I am dying for a new MMO to keep my interest. WoW has gone boring after 3-4 years and LOTRO was terrible, was gonna consider this game but now I read your post I think I might give it a swerve. Guess I'll just sit here waiting for Star Trek Online to come out!
Posted by: Damo | December 15, 2008 at 03:48 PM
Which is the sad thing because basically it is a good game.
Posted by: Chris | December 15, 2008 at 07:48 PM