Warhammer?

[Jolly Roger]

Anyone playing Warhammer online? How is it? I can get a copy in 20 minutes (yes, I live that close to the PX) :) I'm off this week and my wife is going away tommorow for Thanksgiving with her mom, so it would be an easy time to install it and have time to play as I'll be alone for a week.

[Koldanar]

Eh...I played for a bit, but when I went on vacation, everyone in my guild had dissapeared, and WoW's xpac was around the corner. Decently developed PVP game, but can suck royally if you aren't in a populated realm.

[wolfman]

I tried it, and it just didn't hook me. The game is set up for RvR, and tries to empahsise it, but every battle I got into was uneven. One side totally outclassed the other, and it was a slaughter. I was on both dominated and dominant sides, and it wasn't much fun. Other servers might be better, but to be honest I havn't heard many positive reviews from anybody.

I'm back on LOTRO with the new Mines of Moria release. :) So much better for my play style. I just finished a historical instanced quest(ones where you play as somebody else to see the story unfold first hand) of the fall of Moria. Playing a badass Dwarf of old in a scenerio that was "Make a stand worthy of song against the tide of orcs" it was a blast.

[Snowboarder Bo]

WHAOR was, IMO, a terrible game.

We had a thread about it when it came out http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=484619&highlight=warhammer

Headrush042 had a good post in #10 in favor, and I started bashing the game in post #17. :D

If you want a MMORPG, get WoW and get the xpacs. Great game, lots of fun, and lots to do.

[Cubsfan]

I tried it. I played WoW for 6 months or so a few years back and liked it.

This game is much like WoW. Decent graphics and the controls are identical. I made the mistake of picking the good guys on an underpopulated realm. Big mistake. There was no PvP to be had and there were no players to party with on the good guys side so it was like I had my own MSPORPG.

Good game but I don't know if anyone can pull WoW's install base with another fantasy inspired MMORPG. It's going to have to be futuristic or current times or something. There's just no reason to switch. Even if the game is AS good as WoW why bother switching?

[DigitalC]

The game is designed to only be fun when theres a critical mass of people playing it. They don't have anywhere near this amount of players. Therefore the game is not fun, leading to even less people playing. Its a shame really, theres a lot of good ideas here but they waaaaaaay over estimated their appeal and designed the game with a lot of flawed asumptions in mind. Also leveling is quite slow and grindy.

[Cubsfan]

The game is designed to only be fun when theres a critical mass of people playing it. They don't have anywhere near this amount of players. Therefore the game is not fun, leading to even less people playing. Its a shame really, theres a lot of good ideas here but they waaaaaaay over estimated their appeal and designed the game with a lot of flawed asumptions in mind. Also leveling is quite slow and grindy.

They messed up by creating too many servers. They need to start consolidating them NOW before everyone quits like me.

[wolfman]

They messed up by creating too many servers. They need to start consolidating them NOW before everyone quits like me.

I hope they bought cluster servers, because even on a not full one lag was nearly unplayable, if they put more people on them I would be really pissed.

[DigitalC]

They messed up by creating too many servers. They need to start consolidating them NOW before everyone quits like me.

Too many servers was one of the problems but not the only one. Theres too many zones splitting up the already lowish population and even those zones are way to big. You can run around most of the pvp zones and not see anyone anywhere below tier 4 for hours.

[Snowboarder Bo]

I hope they bought cluster servers, because even on a not full one lag was nearly unplayable, if they put more people on them I would be really pissed.

this too. In addition to the game sucking, the server lag was almost unbearable.

[Jolly Roger]

Geez...this makes Age of Conan look good. And it sucked because of lag issues.

[Grumman]

It's going to have to be futuristic or current times or something.
A Gorkamorka or Necromunda MMORPG could be awesome, if they did the vehicles right.

[Headrush042]

WHAOR was, IMO, a terrible game.

We had a thread about it when it came out http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=484619&highlight=warhammer

Headrush042 had a good post in #10 in favor, and I started bashing the game in post #17. :D

If you want a MMORPG, get WoW and get the xpacs. Great game, lots of fun, and lots to do.

Hehe, the glimmer has worn off a little.

WAR is a decent game, with a lot of good ideas, and improved on many things that WoW either got wrong or didn't think of doing.

Having said that, it's still not quite enough due to some of the issues mentioned above. As a massive RvR game, population management is critical, and they're just not doing it well enough. There's only a select few realms where the RvR is consistently fun, challenging, and rewarding for both sides, and they're full. On the lesser-populated realms, it's either a ghost town, or so one-sided it's not even worth playing.

Server lag on some realms is unbearable, especially the mail servers.

It's a shame, because I enjoy PvP; the PvP in WoW sucks a ridiculous amount, whereas the PvP in WAR is amazing fun when there's a balanced population, which isn't often enough.

All in all though, WoW's level of polish, amount of PvE content, and friendliness to low-end systems is going to keep it on top for a long time to come. I still have my WAR account, and I hop in from time to time for some good old fashioned slaughter, but primarily, I've gone back to playing WoW -- Wrath of the Lich King is an amazing expansion :) Once I've seen all the content from WotLK, I'll probably go back to WAR more often, mostly because I'm tired of the WoW grind, and I find WAR to be a palatable #2.

If it survives long enough for them to figure out how to balance the servers and fix the lag, I think WAR can eventually turn out to be a great game (if a bit niche). Right now, though, it's just fairly decent, and under a very dark and domineering shadow (WoW).

ETA: Oh, and AoC doesn't even compare. I'd rate it way below anything else I've tried in recent years. Which is also a shame, because it's absolutely gorgeous.

[Sitnam]

On the box is says it offers one month free yet I had to pay for the first month which pissed me off. I'm not a huge fan of MMORPG's but I like the Warhammer universe and a friend and I were looking for something we could play online.

I gotta say, I'm really not all that impressed. I think I wasted my money.

[E-Sabbath]

I'm quite enjoying it as a vacation from CoH. The Public Quests are inspiring gameplay, and I love the scenarios.

[Antinor01]

I'm loving it so far. I have two order characters on Vortex, a high elf archmage and an empire bright wizard. (What can I say, I love magic characters)

[DigitalC]

I'm quite enjoying it as a vacation from CoH. The Public Quests are inspiring gameplay, and I love the scenarios.

Thats one of those things that are great when theres people around, but a complete dud when there aren't. It goes for a fun little activity with good rewards to a mindless grind of stage 1 for crappy rewards.

[E-Sabbath]

They're merging servers again. There's still 20 destination servers left.

How many servers did they _start_ with?

Still, this should fix most issues.

[DigitalC]

They're merging servers again. There's still 20 destination servers left.

How many servers did they _start_ with?

Still, this should fix most issues.

58 i think.

[MJinks]

I was playing Warhammer before Fallout 3 came out. The server had a very active Tier 1+2. After a week or two of playing Fallout 3 I returned to find the place deserted. Tier 1, 2 and to a lesser extent 3 were empty. In Tier 4; Destruction outnumbered Order by a factor of 2.2:1. I checked the server forums and it was as I feared, the server was as good as dead. The better Order guilds were either quitting or joining the 'organised' exodus to another server.

I decided not to bother sticking it out (I'm Order) and re-rolled on the highest population server with reportedly balanced sides... The lower tiers are buzzing! I've worked my way through the first two and it's as busy as my original server was at launch. I love it! It seems everyone on the 'dead' servers are migrating here.

So yeah, I still like it. They created way too many servers at the start though, and seem slow to merge (the European ones anyway). I think they have to act very quickly or the game will just be considered a failure, which is a shame.

I don't have any problems with the PvP, I love it. My original character was a Bright Wizard, I decided to make a tank after it seemed there was a shortage. Now it seems we're low on healers! Bah. I just know as soon as I create a healer all the other tanks will disappear. Ahh well... At least I'm not an Elf.

[Antinor01]

The only thing that sucks is the Heavy Metal event has "kill 15 players in open RvR" as one of the daily tasks. Finding open RvR opponants is not exactly easy sometimes.

[Jolly Roger]

Does Warhammer have SecuROM on the disks? My laptop is reacting to it like it did with NWNII:SOZ. Its not reading the disk. I suppose I could wait until my main PC arrives here yo install it, unless theres a fix anyone knows about. Its not the drive. I installed GaCiv II and Sins of a Solar Empire last night.

[DigitalC]

Does Warhammer have SecuROM on the disks? My laptop is reacting to it like it did with NWNII:SOZ. Its not reading the disk. I suppose I could wait until my main PC arrives here yo install it, unless theres a fix anyone knows about. Its not the drive. I installed GaCiv II and Sins of a Solar Empire last night.

MMOs dont have anti piracy protections because you need an account to play them anyways. Most of them even let you download the game if you wanna play. If you are still having problems it might just be from installing nwn 2, securerom is not exactly easy to get rid off.

[Jolly Roger]

MMOs dont have anti piracy protections because you need an account to play them anyways. Most of them even let you download the game if you wanna play. If you are still having problems it might just be from installing nwn 2, securerom is not exactly easy to get rid off.

I had to install NWN SOZ via digital download. But maybe the download included some kind of copy protection to keep me from burning it to a disk. I can run a Norton sweep but i'm not sure what I'm looking for. Any advice you can provied would be appreciated. This laptop is pretty new. I can't believe the drive is at fault.

[DigitalC]

Im not sure exactly how to remove the latest version of securerom since i try to stay far away from that kinda DRM but googling "removing securerom" would probably point you in the right direction. You might wanna check out the nwn2 support forums for some help also.