Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
The Most In-Depth Re-oh wait.
This project has been canceled.
This is a follow up to blog post I did, when I came to realise the reason I don't enjoy WoW any more is mainly because of the lack of end-game depth that has been stripped due to the highly dynamic face Blizzard has given the game to keep the learning curve low, and the player base high.
Then I thought why I wasn't playing WAR currently. Mainly, because it felt like the same old shit. But I can't really say that, not when not having playing it nearly long enough to be able to say that.
So, basically I my self was complaining about the steep learning curve of the game, while at the same time, saying steep learning curves are what make MMO's fun and enjoyable in the end.
Expanding on that, I decided I should log what exactly I like and don't like in WAR while I play it from start to finish in a daily blog style fashion.
That way, I can accurately go back through the entire game playing process, and figure out exactly what it is I like, and don't like. In the end, summarize my findings into an extremely in-depth review of the entire game.
See, even though I've changed my career away from gaming, I still have a strong fascination and passion for it unlike any other activity. I still hope to at least contribute to making better games, if not one my self eventually.
MMO's are little universes in them selves and getting things right is impossible the first time round, if ever.
But how is it I feel that some of the best MMO experiences I've had are from an old-ass Korean rip-off game called Helbreath?
Helbreath was my first MMO, it had shitty parts, but also the most enjoyable MMO parts that I have yet to find since.
Granted, it was my first MMO, and perhaps some of these feelings are due to the novelty of the genra, however I don't believe it to be that simple.
As I suggested in that blog post, it has to do with learning curves, and the lack of core game mechanic changes.
The steep learning curve weeds out a lot of noobs that subtract from the enjoyable experience, which means you're typically playing with players of greater skill, or at least, are patient enough to figure the game out.
The unchanged game mechanics is, not screwing with the core elements that brought your original player base to the game. This allows players to get better at the game, skill wise. Not gear wise.
Also, in the case you know a little something something about Helbreath, the game had flaws. A lot of them. In all it was much less enjoyable, overall, compared to WoW or the lot. But the good parts were extremely enjoyable, and unlike anything I have seen since. And dealing with the crappy parts of the game in Helbreath was often times worth it since you could get to those really good parts.
So using all different kinds of media, and resources, off I go to document, extensively, the way I view playing through Warhammer Online. In part to sort out what specifically makes a good MMO, and in an effort to find an MMO worth playing, that is, one that has highly enjoyable bits.
March 12th-
So I've been playing off and on for the past week now. I decided to play me a glass cannon.
Which is different, as I originally played Dest, so finding where to go was new, but that was pretty much it.
After Level 5 when I found I could kill more than one mob at a time, things got a bit more difficult.
If you've seen this all before, and you're in it just for the end-game, its all a normal grind to max level. Except I'm playing the game in the same manner as I do WoW, grind PvE quests, get through those levels as fast as possible. Except, when you do that in WAR, you run into this issue of running out of quests to do at your level, and quickly progress into content that is a few levels higher, then you start dying.
A lot. At least when you're as impatient as me, and think you know the game well enough because you followed it closely for an entire year before it was released, and want to just see how it plays at max level.
But then, you just fly to other areas from the other two race's content, and do their quests. It requires loads of running, but what MMO doesn't have you running all over the place...?
I decided to play on one of the most populated servers, in the hopes I'll have plenty to do at max level. Except, interestingly enough, I almost never run into anyone, and I'm currently level 14 at the time of writing this. Towns, public quests, roads, major cities, they're all empty. But that's just what it seems like right now, perhaps I'm in the wrong areas. Yes, that must be it.
I must have died five times trying to get to that quest objective from those damn birds in the image above. Normally I would have said, this is dumb, then blame it on the developer of the game, but instead I thought, maybe this is how they want it to be like. And perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way. Maybe I should be doing all the content to increase the speed in which I level, then I remember something from all the time I spent following the game before launch. The best way to level is, indeed, playing bits of all the content, RvR, scenarios, and PvE. And those stupid birds keep killing me because I've only been playing PvE and so, are much lower level than them.
I know a lot of people that would have given up, or raged over dying over and over from the same mobs, I mean, the kind of shit that was happening was pretty dumb. I would kill two birds, and on the third or fourth, the first would respawn. I incountered this problem dozens of times before and after this quest, and I'm sure I'll be able to enjoy it again. The respawn rates are very high. Great for AoE'ing mobs down.
That gives me an idea actually. Time to go to lower level content and AoE the crap out of things.
