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

[Super Kami Dende]

Could they? yes.
Should they? fuck nooooo.

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My guess as to why the Warhammer MMO failed would probably be due to its at the time massive focus on PvP. Most MMO players in my experience care more for PvE.

Their 'mistake' was releasing it during a time where WoW LITERALLY reigned surpreme, Age of Reckoning tried to compete with god damn WRATH OF THE LICH KING WOW, back when the game had like 10 million players. Just completely impossible to keep up with.

As someone who still holds age of Reckoning as one of his favourite MMO's. Their main mistake was releasing about 3 months too early and only testing the the first few tiers of content properly.

Most People I played with in the massive Clan we built on release fizzled out and left purely because of the mid-endgame being an absolute buggy nightmare. People left in droves due to the game being a mess especially in T4+, Had the game been properly QA'd and with the large following Warhammer had, the game likely wouldn't have tanked so hard within a few months and held a properly steady population.

[jellmoo]

As someone who still holds age of Reckoning as one of his favourite MMO's. Their main mistake was releasing about 3 months too early and only testing the the first few tiers of content properly.

Most People I played with in the massive Clan we built on release fizzled out and left purely because of the mid-endgame being an absolute buggy nightmare. People left in droves due to the game being a mess especially in T4+, Had the game been properly QA'd and with the large following Warhammer had, the game likely wouldn't have tanked so hard within a few months and held a properly steady population.

I worked at EA for a few years a ways back and one of the dudes I worked with was one of the QA leads on WO before release (he had moved out of QA when we worked together) and he told me about how damn near every bug they found was being marked as "Known shippable" prior to release.

QA was definitely finding the bugs, the management team was just pushing so hard to release the game that they waived them to make deadline. This was trademark EA strategy back in the day. Release buggy as fuck, fix in a patch.

[Ohvul]

Honestly I think any mmo to "compete" with wow has to corner the opposite side of the market. Right now wow has such a huge time commitment towards individual character power & collection, the largest competition i can see, comes from an mmo that doesnt care for either of those things as intensely as traditional.

I saw mention before of wow being a lobby where you queue for different things. Could the Warhammer universe be more of a lobby / garrison / housing / war base camp lobby game where you queue out different functions directly. Less commitment to individual characters. I want to play as 10 different units living out 10 different stories and functions as I build myself as a player / leader in the game. Similar to swtor but you're gaining insight on how to command the units in your army as you level. Then at cap it can either manifest as small scale ops choosing your unit being the option everybody has inherently as an aspect of the game. Or large scale accumulation of effort by working multiple units towards the same ends. I think a major drawback to the past mmo and any for that matter is how much you get stuck doing the exact same thing (rotations) and things like that have to be impeccable if its a game you expect your player base to sinks days played on one character into.

[Deferionus]

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.

WAR was pretty good and you outlined its issues pretty well. I think EA pushing its release early was a big part of the problem. They were not polished enough, did not have enough end game, and they released just in time for their players to get thru the content right as WOTLK came out. Not a recipe for success, and if they had left the product in the oven another year and a half they would have likely had another outcome.

[Super Kami Dende]

I worked at EA for a few years a ways back and one of the dudes I worked with was one of the QA leads on WO before release (he had moved out of QA when we worked together) and he told me about how damn near every bug they found was being marked as "Known shippable" prior to release.

QA was definitely finding the bugs, the management team was just pushing so hard to release the game that they waived them to make deadline. This was trademark EA strategy back in the day. Release buggy as fuck, fix in a patch.

That Strategy rarely works for MMO's which I'm sure EA has likely learnt after both AoR and Swtor having rocky starts and massive population dives.

[Nerph-]

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.

Oh I agree with you 100%. The class mechanics were dope af, and the public events were indeed amazing. It just failed in so many other places, like you say.

[dlld]

Could? Sure, will? Doubt it, with that said GW seems to be ramping up production of their IPs in both games and visual media, they claim to have several unannounced 'AAA' games in the works for the warhammer IPs.

But I think we'd probably see a 40k mmo before another fantasy one.

Personally for me the old mmo failed because it ran like shit on my PC at the time of release while wow ran fine.

[pfbe]

My guess as to why the Warhammer MMO failed would probably be due to its at the time massive focus on PvP. Most MMO players in my experience care more for PvE.

For some reason, that brought me back memories of this:

https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news...-Failing-Marks

I bought the collector's edition of Warhammer Online. It's not that I regret that very much (hell, I regret it less than buying the collector's editions of Conan or Tabula Rasa), but jesus christ, Warhammer Online lost its shine really fast.

[KrayZ33]

Oh I agree with you 100%. The class mechanics were dope af, and the public events were indeed amazing. It just failed in so many other places, like you say.

I remember that it had a huge problem when it came to gear balance.
You could basically not do a thing if you are in fresh max level gear and faced off people who did several invasions already.
They were doing like 200-500% more damage than you

I still enjoyed the game a lot. It was one of the earliest games that went with actual proper DPS-Healers and shit like that. Like.. proper healer rotations were possible and actual ressource/debuff management that wasn't purely based on "mana and HP".
It was *way* ahead of WoW in that regard imho.

[Zig Zug]

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.

Concur completely.

I didn't recognize they were mirrored until I thought about it, but they "covered" it so well that it wasn't relevant.

The story was so gripping, thematically it blew me away. I was WH aware, but this blew it open.

I tried Return of Reckoning, but I just felt I was playing solo.

Granted, the other shoe as you pointed out is important too. For all the potential, innovation and whatnot, the game played like a hair dryer in a washing machine.

[Easo]

Hell no. Games Workshop HAS gotten better over the years and especially recently with giving their IP to "reasonable development companies" create games, but most of those are still barely mobile gaming level crap with almost no AAA level games. And MMO's are quite volatile market with very few main players and the rest dying fast.

[Fencers]

Unlikely. GW are licensing whores.

[Gaidax]

GW are licensing whores.

Dat be true, they throw license at every passerby studio for 5 bucks. Maybe that's why despite having so many games, they have so few actually good games.

[VinceVega]

Never got over the mismatching styles of warhammernline. Greenskins looked like they are from a completly different game. Not menacing just... comical. Like a caricature.

But honestly that is basically the same over all of the warhammer franchises.

Other than that it played fine. Was a bit boring tbh. Not enough endgame at the start and their obvious attempt to be a wow killer by being the basically a wow clone in the warhammer universe just made it not competetiv on the market. Why would i play a copycat when the better version is out there with a huge playerbase?

I think that basically killed it for a warhammer MMO for decades to come. MMOs fail in 99% of cases. The only once who survive are either really good and unique in a way or have a huge popular unvierse before they are developed.

Warhammer has the universe. But i don't think the interest is there.

[KrayZ33]

But honestly that is basically the same over all of the warhammer franchises.

Other than that it played fine. Was a bit boring tbh. Not enough endgame at the start and their obvious attempt to be a wow killer by being the basically a wow clone in the warhammer universe just made it not competetiv on the market. Why would i play a copycat when the better version is out there with a huge playerbase?
.

That is always an odd argument to read for me. (For MMOs in general whenever they are compared to WoW)
WoW had completely different class-design, that alone is reason enough already because it was *vastly superior* to what WoW had to offer during that time:

WoW was never as PvP focused as Warhammer Online was, with actual siege equipment, large scale PvP and actual tanks in PvP that could actually body block you from reaching healers or hold a line and stuff like that.
It had dynamic open-world quests and events that WoW also didn't have.
It had RvR and a PvP campaign system which wow didn't have and so on and so forth.



Not sure what the copy-cat factor was other than that it had quests, classes and abilities? (like most RPGs and even MMORPGs before WoW?)

[Shakadam]

A 40K MMO would make more sense, seeing as how the 40K franchise is massively more popular than the Warhammer Fantasy franchise.

[VinceVega]

That is always an odd argument to read for me. (For MMOs in general whenever they are compared to WoW)
WoW had completely different class-design, that alone is reason enough already but:

WoW was never as PvP focused as Warhammer Online was, with actual siege equipment, large scale PvP and actual tanks in PvP that could actually body block you from reaching healers or hold a line and stuff like that.
It had dynamic open-world quests and events that WoW also didn't have.
It had RvR and a PvP campaign system which wow didn't have and so on and so forth.



Not sure what the copy-cat factor was other than that it had quests, classes and abilities? (like most RPGs and even MMORPGs before WoW?)

It basically played like a slightly different looking wow. Sure they have been a few different mecahnics and the focus of the game on PvP or PvE is not what i mean. But everything was always a blanket over the basic wow model of how stuff works.

I honestly think ESO and Black Desert are way Different in that regard. Swotor not so much. Same "problem" but they have a bigger universe behind them and the move to f2p saved their butts.

Overall i was really disappointed back then. Played it a bit. But not even close to the amount i played other MMOs like ESO or FF14. They way back to wow is a give for nearly every MMO player who started with wow. But the intermissions in other MMS will always be there for me. Warhammer was the biggest disappointment for me.

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A 40K MMO would make more sense, seeing as how the 40K franchise is massively more popular than the Warhammer Fantasy franchise.

Big agree!!! But the MMO fanbase is more fantasy aligent in general... that is why nearly every singel MMO is fantasy and scifi always FPS or ARPG sadly

[KrayZ33]

Meh... I don't quite get it yet.

It basically played like a slightly different looking wow. Sure they have been a few different mecahnics and the focus of the game on PvP or PvE is not what i mean. But everything was always a blanket over the basic wow model of how stuff works.

Which is... you press the ability and the enemy takes... damage? Or what is that below the blanked you speak of?
I think that's kinda weird and unfair.
it's like comparing CS:GO and Titanfall or Battlefield and Quake and say one is just a different version of the other because in the end, all of them use guns to shoot people.

[select20]

I love Warhammer lore, Warhammer 40k specifically, so I'm hoping we see some in my life time. As another poster mentioned, only like 1 in every 10 Warhammer games are good. GW has a horrible track record and seems to only make games just good enough to make a profit every now and then.

[Lost controller]

It could but the license would be a bad fit for a mmo.

The scale of warhammer is just to massive for the kind of story telling and gameplay a mmo pushes.