Do you think Warhammer (fantasy) could create a new MMO?

[Norsok]

Do you think Games Workshop could create a new MMO based on Warhammer Fantast? I know they made one, and I'd like to ask you why do you think it failed?

I believe Warhammer Fantasy is the only fantasy universe that could challenge World of Warcraft. If they did things right, it'd be one of the best MMOs ever made.

Imagine playing as a Skaven, or as a Dark Elf, or as a Chaos Dwarf...

What classes do you think there could be?

[Cosmic Janitor]

With GW's track record?

*snort*

[Rendark]

After what they did to fantasy and the crap came after i don't want them to make one.

[Dakhath]

Like one in every 10 GW games are enjoyable, I wouldn't hold your breath.

[Razion]

Warhammer MMO felt like it failed by not adopting a f2p model at the time. But other MMOs like Wildstar seemed to have the opposite problem, where they seemed fine with sub but apparently weren't, and then f2p didn't seem to help.

I liked the Warhammer MMO but the one thing that turned me away from it at the time was the pricey sub basically competing with WoW. Maybe the sub could jave been less and made up with other shop options..?

I feel like the people who would want a Warhammer MMO are kind of playing WoW already, and for WoW players to commit to Warhammer it has to be accessible and not too or as expensive so they can justify playing both.

I don't really have an opinion on classes, but I remember liking the 2H elf with the stances in the MMO they did before, so I'd like to see that again.

[Luxeley]

Forget the name and the creator, but there's a pretty good video out there on why Warhammer failed as an MMO. Keep in mind Warhammer leapt into the coffin pretty quick, it wasn't a long and drawn out death scene, even WIldstar hung around longer than Warhammer. The idea of another Warhammer MMO isn't a terrible one, the right question is whether or not the idea of another Warhammer MMO is a practical one, based on how long it will take to create and deliver as well as the overall costs. Perhaps one of the best lessons we learned from the long line of former WOW killers is that MMO's cost a ton of $$$ to create and develop nowadays. SWTOR cost in the neighborhood of $200 Million and that was 10 years ago. Not a lot of companies out there want to shell out that kind of $$$ for something that may or may not succeed in 3-5 years, let alone be relevant. It comes down to a risk vs reward thing and that's extremely difficult to count the beans on when it will be delivered no sooner than 3-5 years down the road. I don't believe we'll be seeing a rush of new MMOs until the Development time and costs come down a bit as a result of the implementation of a new technology designed to do just that.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Like one in every 10 GW games are enjoyable, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Don't forget the odds of MMOs succeeding in general, which is probably equally bad or worse.

[Stardrift]

WildStar had everything it needed to be successful.. except for the playerbase. It had such low numbers, iirc, only one or two guilds actually did the raid a few months after launch. I remember being among the first to hit max level and for the following weeks, there just wasn't enough max level players to fill guild rosters and actually do things, then devs lost interest and put the game on cruise control.

What a successful MMO needs is an actual playerbase. Enough hype to get enough players on all at once, and fun enough content to keep those players online. If GW can find a studio that can manage this, that'd be great. But not likely.

[Lochton]

Do you think Game Workshop could create a new MMO based on Warhammer Fantast? I know they made one, and I'd like to ask you why do you think it failed?

I believe Warhammer Fantasy is the only fantasy universe that could challenge World of Warcraft. If they did things right, it'd be one of the best MMOs ever made.

Imagine playing as a Skaven, or as a Dark Elf, or as a Chaos Dwarf...

What classes do you think there could be?

First, you are sadly in the wrong section but your thread should be moved too.

Secondly, I don't believe they could.

Third, then again, Final Fantasy could scrap and remake, so what is stopping them?

[jellmoo]

I liked the atmosphere, classes and overall narrative of Warhammer Online. But it was also a very, very flawed game. PVE was hot garbage. Like, almost without exception, the PVE content was terrible.

It had good PVP potential, even if it had really bad balance. Granted, it was definitely a PVP oriented game, but it still really struggled to get balance to a point where classes weren't just entirely useless.

I don't see it working as an MMO, largely because the sheer investment for an MMO is so bog and so few of them ever taste success. It's just a bad investment, especially since the genre is not exactly the hot commodity it once was. I could see them taking some of the seeds of the game though and making something entirely PVP focussed, ignoring PVE altogether.

[Triceron]

No point to it. All the best stuff came before the End Times, and it'd be pointless to have an MMO based on the End Times since we know the eventual result of it all.

[Nerph-]

I liked the atmosphere, classes and overall narrative of Warhammer Online. But it was also a very, very flawed game. PVE was hot garbage. Like, almost without exception, the PVE content was terrible.

It had good PVP potential, even if it had really bad balance. Granted, it was definitely a PVP oriented game, but it still really struggled to get balance to a point where classes weren't just entirely useless.

I don't see it working as an MMO, largely because the sheer investment for an MMO is so bog and so few of them ever taste success. It's just a bad investment, especially since the genre is not exactly the hot commodity it once was. I could see them taking some of the seeds of the game though and making something entirely PVP focussed, ignoring PVE altogether.

I'd have to agree with this. Warhammer Online had both it's positives and (more so) negatives. Like you said, the classes, atmosphere, world etc were really good and I was enjoying it a lot. As you also say, the endgame PvE was pretty bad, I remember trying to kill some boss and it was such a bugfest that it became hilarious. Also the fact the servers couldn't actually handle mass World PvP, which was one of the major selling points of the game... yeah, endgame was pretty bad. And last but not least, if I remember correctly, the EU side of things were at first run by some "not so trustworthy" company (I forget their name... Frogster or something? Dunno) and it was a mess. I remember one of their community managers having a shitfit on the forums because the EU launch went terrible and people were complaining, pretty much the opposite of how someone in that role should act and compose him or herself.

I'd love to have a Warhammer MMO but I fear like others have said, it just wouldn't hold up like Warhammer Online didn't.

[StillMcfuu]

Warhammer Online was a really good MMO. It had some issues but with support it would have been fixed.
There was one major problem with WarOnline... It came out like 3 weeks before the Wrath prepatch. And once the prepatch dropped, everyone and their congressman played WoW for the next 2 1/2 years, and WO promptly died. Not helping it were the only people who were playing it were the ones "escaping the wrath prepatch" and since that was probably the greatest thing Blizz has ever accomplished, the general people who were on WarOnline were borderline knuckle-draggers.

There are decent private servers for WO if you want to give it a go, but as it's been unsupported for over 10 years, it hasn't aged well. Still better than SWTOR or LOTRO in terms of ageing though.

As for them making another MMO, unless Blizz wants to pivot onto that IP instead of doing a WoW2 or a major studio like Amazon wants to throw a hundred million at it to maybe bottle lightning, its just not going to happen. And anyone that tries that isn't a major MMORPG player or a studio that can fuck up a major project and not care, you aren't going to want to play that game.

[Edge-]

https://warhammerodyssey.com/

There's already a mobile game out. I've played it a touch and...it's alright? No autoplay or anything, actually seems like an actual game of sorts.

But real...the market is oversaturated with WH games, most of which are hot garbage - https://kotaku.com/there-are-too-man...mes-1846271179

65 games over 7 years, that's almost 10 bloody games a year. Granted it's both 40K and not, but that's still insane.

Games Workshop needs to start protecting their bloody IP and not just license it out to anyone who promises them a minimum guarantee of like $5K. It dilutes the IP and makes anyone not super into the IP to begin with roll their eyes when another seemingly low budget garbo games with the license gets announced.

[Gaidax]

WildStar had everything it needed to be successful.. except for the playerbase. It had such low numbers...

I've been in Wildstar since day one, it had literally millions of players first month or two.

It lost all of them because Carbine bought into this whole "hardcore" bullshit - they thought they can put shit like attunements to just about everything and other player hostile time burning crap back from 2004 WoW in a game in 2014, when the gaming scene moved away from that BS.

Then, there was that stretch of chorebore after level 35ish too. They actually had content at level cap and not a bad one at that, but they failed to learn the lessons of TBC dungeons, where the whole playerbase was doing one dungeon and a half because it was by far fastest and most optimal. So everyone and their mothers did that one adventure - Crimelords, while all other adventures just rotted there. Heck it was even worse, not only Crimelords was by far easiest and surest one as far as rewards are concerned, you had it contrasted with shit like Malgrave Trail which was a one hour slog, where one little fuckup could leave you without best rewards.

Basically, they tried to recreate TBC in age where the casual playerbase that carries MMOs were no longer into this shit and they did not even do proper lessons learned from the glaring mistakes of said TBC (Mechanar, attunements) that Blizz themselves rectified in WoTLK.

[Edge-]

Warhammer Online had both it's positives and (more so) negatives.

Still had the best damned class mechanics I've ever seen in a MMO. I play on a private server every now and then and I'm still amazed at how great the class mechanics are between each class (at least unique mechanics for each class on a faction, even if they're largely mirrored on the other faction), it pains me that we don't see anything remotely approaching this level of innovation/creativity. Public events were dope as hell too, and IIRC were one of the first remotely successful implementations of such a system in a MMO.

But outside of that...it was awful. Mythic was always a studio with big ideas and terrible execution, and the game being rushed by EA at the time didn't help things at all. Nor did their very aggressive statements about the game, like the entire presentation they did on The Hammerer (which was hilarious)...only for the class to get axed from the game come launch time. They're very similar to Funcom in this regard, and it's depressing as hell because if they had the time, budget, and talent to fully realize a lot of these ideas their games would be truly incredible.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Anyone who is interested in a WHF MMO is already playing one of the many AoR private servers out there.

[Gaidax]

Now as for a topic - I also happened to be on that infamous Warhammer MMO launch and I think it was amazing first 20 levels (or what they were called) and then it all went to shit. The problem was that its content was VERY player driven, very PvP oriented and there just wasn't enough players and class balance at the cap, as well as faction balance being atrocious.

It did not help it was MUCH less polished when it came to performance and combat feel compared to WoW.


Could Warhammer fantasy produce a good MMO? Yes, but only if actual studio/publisher with their head not deep in their ass, smelling their farts, would come around. As well as those having actual experience making Western MMOs, let alone successful ones - you could count those publishers/studios on one hand.

[Edge-]

Now as for a topic - I also happened to be on that infamous Warhammer MMO launch and I think it was amazing first 20 levels (or what they were called) and then it all went to shit. The problem was that its content was VERY player driven, very PvP oriented and there just wasn't enough players and class balance at the cap, as well as faction balance being atrocious.

It did not help it was MUCH less polished when it came to performance and combat feel compared to WoW.

There was a lot more content planned, including full cities that were supposed to be in the game at launch. Mythic just isn't a top tier developer and EA rushed the game hard. Hell, the cut like 4 classes from the final launch (2 per side I think) because they simply ran out of time to even finish those, much less the rest of the content they had planned. PvP was a big part, but there was plenty of PvE content on the development floor : /

It and Age of Conan ran into the same problem at launch: A generally solid starter experience that didn't last because funding and time ran out, so once you get beyond the "intro experience" everything felt like a huge downgrade that was held together with alligator clips.

[Gaidax]

There was a lot more content planned, including full cities that were supposed to be in the game at launch. Mythic just isn't a top tier developer and EA rushed the game hard. Hell, the cut like 4 classes from the final launch (2 per side I think) because they simply ran out of time to even finish those, much less the rest of the content they had planned. PvP was a big part, but there was plenty of PvE content on the development floor : /

It and Age of Conan ran into the same problem at launch: A generally solid starter experience that didn't last because funding and time ran out, so once you get beyond the "intro experience" everything felt like a huge downgrade that was held together with alligator clips.

See, the problem is hyping up stuff that's about to come goes only so far. Players gave it a fair shot - it fell short and everyone went on their way. Nobody really cares what they had in mind, everyone can build castles in the sky in their mind. What was there, simply was not enough and the real core issues like performance and balance killed it off fast.

It simply was not good enough, especially when you had bloody WoTLK releasing same time. Was like comparing a pile of shit to diamonds there, no wonder it exploded so fast. It had a few good ideas, just like about every MMO that imploded in existence, but it does not help that the whole package simply was not up to par to competition/expectations.