War Was Everywhere! Or Riding The Wave Of Hype, Expectation, And Good Will.
By: Craythur
What do I say about War's launch? I look back on those days with bittersweet memories. I rolled destruction on Uthuan with some friends from Warcraft. That sounds simple enough. There was plenty of hand ringing over which faction to play. In the end, we went with side that excited us most visually. Picking a server was no easy task. Everytime we had a consensus the server list changed or news from a huge zerg guild made us doubt our decisions. Some of us had beta/headstart status which affected our planning. In the end, we over thought things. Gotta love gamers. :)
After months of anticipation the big day came. War was Everywhere!
Thinking back, it's not all the bugs and strange development decisions that plagued the game I remember most. It's the excitement of seeing the Warhammer world in a new way. There were people everywhere. EVERYWHERE. How can I begin to communicate how cool that was? Nearly every T1 PQ was being played. Not by individuals mind you, but by groups. Warbands. You could literally go anywhere and there would be people to group with. I'd often wander off to explore the map. Working my way to strange out of the way places to see what was there. As often as not, other players were! Players were everywhere. The world was oddly silent though. Each tiny corner of racial pairings had their own "region" chat channels. While the channels were silent the echos of war, strife, and fun were everywhere. The world seemed full despite the segregated zones/pairings/tiers/chat regions. War Was Everywhere!
My first toon was a zealot named Whateley. I wanted to be darn sure my guild (The Coconut Club) had healers at end game so we could run instances. When folks saw how much fun I was having in scenarios and rvr several re-rolled the class as well. rather than compete for the same drops and to help round us out I later switched to a Squig herder. The squiggies are godlike now. Back at launch however they were a joke. There were a couple of dwarves who would literally laugh at me anytime I was shooting them. Gobbos were however a ton of fun to play. So in my mind it balanced out. My new main was "Dabean" (The Bean). The Greenskin - Dwarf pairings blew me away! They were so much fun. Every corner just seemed to be lovingly developed. I happliy began all over again and had even more fun with this second toon. Grouping as a non healer was a little more work on my part, but there were still plenty of people around looking for a good time. My meager dps and group utility was welcome while the parties remained open.
The RVR lakes were hopping. Anytime of day. Any day of the week. You could level through RVR and PVE with no problem. The renown my little zealot raked in before the healer RR nerf... Zomg! I had forgotten about that. That nerf really, really steamed me at the time. Jerks were exploiting it though, so something had to be done. The RVR was like to old open field pvp in wow only a hundred times more fun. This! THIS was why WAR had me hooked. Objectives! Keeps! Open field fighting! That first Halloween event with the mobs spawning in lakes was a blast. Why wasn't there more of that I wonder. Mythic is just now getting back to that successful formula now. The running, and the shooting, and the dying, and the dotting, and the snaring, and the hiding in bushes, the adrenaline filled runs through enemy territory hoping I'd make it to my warband before order found me. There was an order zerg guild named Grudge. They would come out into the lakes 2 - 3 warbands strong. How we hated them! How we loved them! There was always someone to fight early on. The fighting was good.
By the time I was leaving T2 the second time, everything started to change. The initial 30 free days was over for most people. Many of them would never return. Abrupt nerfs to grouping exp led people away from PQ's and open PVE groups. The rise of scenarios slowly strangled Orvr. scenarios offered better xp and renown. So it wouldn't be uncommon to see dozens of people standing at a warcamp next to quest npc's queuing for scenarios over and over. And over. Orvr was over. Don't bother asking them for help defending a keep. They know the fastest way to 40 is scenarios. Everyone knows the game doesn't actually start until 40. So they played arenas all day long. It made me a sad squiggy. Combined with my lingering dislike of WoW arenas this is why I still don't like WAR scenarios to this day. They eroded something that I loved and replaced it with a grind. It was an efficient grind to be sure. But I was here for the fun. T3 found me chasing Orvr, boycotting scenarios (which kindly assumes that any scenario other than Tor Annoc "lava punt lulz" ever popped), questing, exploring, and trying to find PVE parties.
The server mergers had begun. I was now playing on Red Eye Mountain. It was, at the time, one of a handful of servers which still had a "High" population according to the server select screen. There was much doom and gloom on the internet as to what this meant.
I approached T4 with some trepidation. My guild was vanishing out from under me. The T4 players ahead of me had nothing nice to say about t4 Orvr. I found out why soon enough. The best way to defend a zone was to not show up to fight for it. It took some time to discover that. I participated in a couple of late night raids/fort pushes. Points decayed faster than we could accrue them. Entire regions of T4 players howled at the poorly designed mechanics and the seeming injustice of not being able to capture an empty zone. Inevitably, with no way to move forward and no enemies to fight the players fell to tearing one another apart. There was a lot of frustration. On the rare occasions our server did trigger a fortress fight the results were heart breaking. The invader could be stopped by flooding the fort with low level characters, banners, emotes, fireworks, etc. Slide show. Server crash. Good luck getting back in while everyone else is trying. Success! Load in. What's this, the Fort timer didn't reset? Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. The forums and the chat channels rage. Open CSR tickets for great justice!! We are assured things are working as intended. Or maybe not quite, but they are watching it. There are metrics which tell them what they need to know. All will be ok. We can't say when. We value your feedback. Is there anything else we can do for you today? Thank you for playing Warhammer Online.
The remaining population is bleeding out by this point.
My own frustrations, while lagging well behind many other players, and enjoyment levels were reaching a tipping point. There were many aspects of the game I enjoyed. Open field rvr being the greatest. While my little gobbo was gimp as hell, I loved range snaring someone so that a bevy of Witchelves could murderize them. I loved setting up in a good spot in a scenario and plink away at targets. I liked firing from keep walls at bright wizards even better. Then out of the blue my class was buffed. Buffed! Suddenly I could kill people. Obviously RVR became even more fun for me. When I could find it. To this day I think the Squig Herder is the funnest class I've ever played in an MMO. It's a testament to just how cool the Tuatha is that I've stayed here with you on my Healbot Dwarf instead of leveling my Gobbo. A toast to you all!
Eventually my joyful life as a cowardly greenskin wasn't enough to keep me playing anymore. Everyone in my guild was gone. None of my previous friends were playing anymore. My friends list was empty every night. Those who were talking in region/warbands were full of rage, bitterness, and vitriol. It was increasingly difficult to find groups. When I did get into one, no one was talking. It was, strange. I tend to be be chatty in text. I like the social aspect of these games. I digress. I was now four levels short of 40. I figured I'd stick it out that long before making a decision. I loved this character and I wanted to get him to 40. Then came yet more mergers. Red Eye Mountain was going to be merged into another server. Really? Red Eye Mountain was like the third most populated server at the time. Why aren't other servers merging into us instead? Meh. Such things are beyond my kenning. This time I'd be transferring without a guild, and without any friends. I just didn't have it in me to move again. It was late December. My wife & friends were playing in Northrend now and keen to have me rejoin them. Alas Ekrund.
So I took "Dabean" back to the tier one greenskin starting zone. Some new player was begging in chat for help with a PQ. No answers. the zone was empty. Empty. Where had all the greenskins gone? Empire maybe. Maybe back to Azeroth. One last fling then! A final time to kill the dryads threatening the lobba mill. Once more the bitter glass and watching the drunken giant blow himself up along with the dwarf fortress gate. After helping some folks level into chapter two/three I rode my wolf to the Ch 1 camp and parked Dabean in the slop. He was so happy there as a little spore. It was the least I could do for him. I mailed a ton of loot and coin (including a Battle Brew Backpack) to a nice couple that I had met the day before working on the live event. They were the first people I had been able to have a conversation with for days. I wonder if they ever got the stuff? /wave. Log off. 20 seconds of wistful reflection and it's done.
Account canceled. Long letter to Mythic written. WoTLK grudgingly purchased.
This game had so much potential at launch. Somehow it just didn't work out. Essays could be written as to just why Mythic/EA missed the mark. I'll leave that to smarter, better informed people than myself. I saw what I saw. I road the wave of anticipation and excitement as far as it would take me. It broke somewhere in T3. I rode on. Momentum carried me up onto the broken beach that was T4. The wave washed back into a sea of potential and what might have been. I had fun for as long as I could. That's not bad for one little gobbo.
I fully expected Warhammer Online to die before it reached it's first birthday. I'm quite happy to have been wrong about that! War had it's hooks in me. I'd be back.