I’m not going to write some meta piece about how there is no WoW killer, though I do agree with that sentiment.  WoW has become the McDonald’s of MMOs, the best competitors can hope for is to become Wendy’s or Burger King.  They aren’t going to topple World of Warcraft.

I will address my history with MMOs, and how that history makes me believe that Warhammer Online (WAR) may pull a small portion of WoW’s subscriber base, it won’t be a significant part.  The history I am talking about is with Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC), Mythic’s previous MMO entry.

PTD’s Dark Past

WoW is far from my first MMO.  That mantle goes to Asheron’s Call (AC).  I played AC for about 2 and a half years, starting in 1999.  I still have fond memories of the game, and I’m glad to see that they recently had their 100th game update. 

Anyhow, the next major stop for PTD was Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot.  I remember being blown away by the game from the very start.  AC had fairly dated graphics at the time, and the look and feel of DAoC was leaps and bounds beyond AC.  The character models were far prettier, the spell and other animations were beautiful, and it had a huge number of classes to choose from.  (AC, different from most MMOs now, was a skill-based system.  You chose a race, you chose skills.  There really weren’t what you would consider "classes.")

Most of those differences, though, were on the surface.  The real differences were under the hood.  The real key difference was DAoC’s focus on what they called Realm vs Realm warfare.  There were a number of dungeons, many quests, and the common trappings of a PvE game in order to make leveling interesting, but in the end it was ALL about RvR.  The idea was to get to max level, and hit the battlefield.

The RvR had amazing potential.  There were many outposts and gates to take control of, massive keeps to siege, and even ancient relics to try to steal from opposing realms.  On paper, it was a fabulous system. 

In reality, though, in this author’s humble opinion, it never really worked.

Success in RvR too often rested on two different factors.  The dedication of the RvR players involved (ie, whether they were very hardcore players, tricked out in the best of everything) and sheer numbers.  I played on an "underdog" realm on my server, where we never had any real hope of challenging the might of the Midgardian players.  It wasn’t due to skill, but rather to the fact that they outnumbered us sometimes as much as 10 to 1. 

The imbalance was kicked into overdrive with the release of the Trials of Atlantic expansion, which essentially awarded the hardest of the hardcore with abilities and equipment less dedicated players couldn’t hope to achieve.

In a nutshell, that’s how DAoC failed for me.  I always felt it COULD have been great, but it never materialized.

WoW vs WAR

That’s all good and fine, but we aren’t talking about WoW vs DAoC.  Fast forward to today, and let’s talk a little bit about WAR.

Much of WAR looks and plays like WoW does today.  Cartoony graphics, ease of introductory play, a lot of quests to help you along and so forth.  Mythic was smart enough to recognize a lot of the things that made WoW a success and implement them in their own game.

And no, I don’t call this "stealing features."  Isn’t every game in a particular genre in some way derivative of those that came before?  Ok, back on topic.

Don’t let the similar paint job fool you.  At its core, WAR is quite a different game from WoW.  The focus of WoW has always been and always will be the PvE game.  The majority of their time is focused on instances, raids and so forth.  PvP was added to WoW almost as an afterthought. 

WAR is exactly the opposite.  The PvE leveling game will be fun and keep you interested, but in the end MOST goals in the game revolved around PvP.  Mythic built WAR around PvP, not the other way around.  You can start the PvP game right from the start, and jump into the various early scenarios (think battlegrounds) that are available.  And while there will be end game PvE, it will not and will never compare to that of WoW.  

Conversely, PvP in WoW will never compare to PvP in WAR.  I’m sure of it.  As I said when I discussed DAoC, Mythic’s PvP system had a LOT of potential, it simply never fulfilled it.  This time around they have hopefully learned their lessons about balance.  I still fear that there will be population imbalances, but perhaps they will come up with something to control it.

In the End

So PTD, enough blathering, what the heck are you talking about?

Well, WoW will lose a good number of players to WAR in the beginning. It is inevitable.  The apathy that I spoke of months ago has only grown stronger.  People are tired of BC and are itching for new content and in some cases a totally new experience.  They now have their opportunity with WAR. 

But hear me now and believe me later, many, many of them will be back with Wrath.  A good number of them will never be back, particularly those interested in PvP, but I believe the majority will find the PvE game only lasts so long with WAR. 

I should add that I do NOT think WAR is a bad game.  (For the sake of comparison, I DO think Age of Conan is a bad game!)  I know that Mythic was close to getting PvP right before, and I can only hope they get it right now.  I have played the game, and it is similar to WoW in many good ways, especially at the beginning.  Their Public Quest system is also very, very well done.  I don’t think you would be making any kind of mistake if you elected to jump ship for WAR, at least for now.

But if you love PvE and raiding in WoW, you won’t find quite the same experience in WAR.  And for me at least, PvP is never more than a brief diversion.  PTD is all about the PvE.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Meta WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.