WAR Closing down 2/3 of its servers

Apparently Warhammer Online shut down 63 of its 121 servers earlier in the year, and today announced they'll be taking down another 43, leaving it with 15 servers.

 

Info about it:

Yesterday Mythic announced further character transfers from servers that will be eventually closed. Since Warhammer Online was released in Sept 2008, there has been a steady exodus of gamers causing Mythic to close down servers.

 

All characters on the servers listed here will be consolidated onto another destination server, with all source servers eventually closing.

 

Items in your character's inventory (equipped or otherwise) and bank vault, bio, quests, tomes, friend list, and guild info will be transferred with you. Auction items, guild alliances, and in-game mail and attachments will not be transferable. This includes any promotional or collector's edition items, so be sure to get them out of the bank or mail or you'll lose them.

 

After this latest character transfer announcement, it leaves Warhammer Online with 15 servers. Even though 15 servers is a decent amount, losing 2/3's of your players base is not good news for Mythic.

 

I never played it, but I wonder why it didn't stick. It seemed to have quite a big base and a cool concept. /shrug

Apparently Warhammer Online shut down 63 of its 121 servers earlier in the year, and today announced they'll be taking down another 43, leaving it with 15 servers.

 

Info about it:

Yesterday Mythic announced further character transfers from servers that will be eventually closed. Since Warhammer Online was released in Sept 2008, there has been a steady exodus of gamers causing Mythic to close down servers.

 

All characters on the servers listed here will be consolidated onto another destination server, with all source servers eventually closing.

 

Items in your character's inventory (equipped or otherwise) and bank vault, bio, quests, tomes, friend list, and guild info will be transferred with you. Auction items, guild alliances, and in-game mail and attachments will not be transferable. This includes any promotional or collector's edition items, so be sure to get them out of the bank or mail or you'll lose them.

 

After this latest character transfer announcement, it leaves Warhammer Online with 15 servers. Even though 15 servers is a decent amount, losing 2/3's of your players base is not good news for Mythic.

 

I never played it, but I wonder why it didn't stick. It seemed to have quite a big base and a cool concept. /shrug

Short answer: Wrath of the Lich King.

Rofl =P

 

What was its biggest drawback? (if you played it!)

 

It was billed as a PVP answer to WoW, and I thought it did do that. Maybe it was just too buggy or after you win the castle a few times it didn't offer anything more? /shrug!

I played it for awhile. I played with Ajax's brother, it was fun but it wasn't as smooth as WoW, the characters moved like robots and the quests were hard to complete in some instances. The User Inferface was awkward and players who started out got bored easily.

EVERYTHING shared a GCD. It just seemed too slow. A lot of the things I really liked from WAR are being implemented in WoW (Queueing for BGs from anywhere, stat-tracker/achievements, ect...). Plus everyone was destruction so you never saw any Order people.

I played it for awhile. I played with Ajax's brother, it was fun but it wasn't as smooth as WoW, the characters moved like robots and the quests were hard to complete in some instances. The User Inferface was awkward and players who started out got bored easily.

Bliz has always seemed really good about tinkering with their UI to perfect it. I remember when WC3 came out, what a huge improvement it was over Starcraft or previous Warcraft games (autocast spells, control groups, etc.) It really did a good job of pushing the micromanagement and can't-click-fast-enough-gah! into the background, and letting the player get more into the game.

I've been impressed with their attempts to mainstream various successful user-community-created addons into WoW (scrolling combat text, extra action bars, etc), even if they didn't always catch on (WoW voice, that is a great idea conceptually at least).

 

Staying the best in an industry as competitive and progressive as gaming takes more than a catchy vision - It requires a whole lotta ongoing attention to detail, even (especially?) for stuff that seems really menial. And deep pockets. Does anyone do those better than Bliz?

Edited March 11, 2009 by Fatherpeteus

i played it grinding 20-40 was the biggest pain in the butt imaginable so i was like nope... back to wow

what is it good for!

Bliz has always seemed really good about tinkering with their UI to perfect it. I remember when WC3 came out, what a huge improvement it was over Starcraft or previous Warcraft games (autocast spells, control groups, etc.) It really did a good job of pushing the micromanagement and can't-click-fast-enough-gah! into the background, and letting the player get more into the game.

I've been impressed with their attempts to mainstream various successful user-community-created addons into WoW (scrolling combat text, extra action bars, etc), even if they didn't always catch on (WoW voice, that is a great idea conceptually at least).

 

Staying the best in an industry as competitive and progressive as gaming takes more than a catchy vision - It requires a whole lotta ongoing attention to detail, even (especially?) for stuff that seems really menial. And deep pockets. Does anyone do those better than Bliz?

 

I would have to disagree on the StarCraft side of things. Although, I rarely used the mouse to click and only hotkeys, I've played StarCraft since release, I've won Eastern Canada WCG Qualifiers three years in a row and been invited to nationals. I would have to say that the UI for SC is vastly superior to WarCraft III. I can understand the differences, and the non-auto-casting features StarCraft has is what makes competitive gaming so intense, and that's what I love about it. That is why the majority of the StarCraft community wanted it to remain that way for SC II and not take the WC3 approach.

 

However, as old as StarCraft is we are still seeing updates from Blizzard. They are definatly a company that likes to satisfy it's users (except Diablo 1? ) The WoW UI is awesome, the ability to customize it is vastly superior, in my opinion, to any other MMORPG. They really do listen to criticism and what the community wants, it's why community sites like teamliquid.net and gosugamers.net have played such a large part in forming the changes we see coming from Blizzard.

 

So yeah... I agree with pretty much everything you said except about StarCraft! I r haz to defend mah game.

what is it good for!

 

Absolutely nothing! Uh-huh!

 

 

i always see beorn playing warhammer 40k is that this?

I would have to disagree on the StarCraft side of things. Although, I rarely used the mouse to click and only hotkeys, I've played StarCraft since release, I've won Eastern Canada WCG Qualifiers three years in a row and been invited to nationals. I would have to say that the UI for SC is vastly superior to WarCraft III. I can understand the differences, and the non-auto-casting features StarCraft has is what makes competitive gaming so intense, and that's what I love about it. That is why the majority of the StarCraft community wanted it to remain that way for SC II and not take the WC3 approach.

Clickity-clicking on each of my swarm of zerg queens in turn to zap enemy siege tanks with their spawn broodling instant-kill thingie... Was maybe the most horrible example of painful click-festing I've ever experienced, in 30-odd years of gaming.

In WCIII, you'd do the same thing with the whole group selected, and each unit would cast their spell in turn, picking whichever one was closest to the target for you. Now I'm sure at your play level you have mastered the SC interface to a point that these micro tasks don't give you trouble... But I need the help. Hey, I turn 40 next month - Cut a geezer some slack!

 

I played both games *a lot* (thousands of ladder games), and can't think offhand of a single thing the SC interface had over the WCIII one. Now if you said that the factions were more interesting, gameplay had a certain je ne sais quoi, or whatever - I might be inclined to agree. SC was an awesome game, and I await SCII with baited breath! (When the heck is that coming, anyway?) But the interface was simply - Dated, imo.

 

We may just have to agree to disagree on the "non-auto-casting features StarCraft has is what makes competitive gaming so intense, and that's what I love about it". I know some people think this way, but you'll never convince me that fast reflexes and optimized keyboard configurations are what makes the best strategy gamer!

Keep in mind too, that "The majority of the Starcraft community" are probably silently playing WCIII and waiting for SCII to come out and draw us back. (Or SCII may be their first RTS game!) Not to diminish the expertise and contributions of truly hard-core SC folks who have stuck with it all these years, but I'm sure Bliz wants to make a game that will sell to many more than the current regular SC players.

 

The best games of any sort are intuitive and accessible. A perfect RTS will translate the "general"s strategic thoughts into unit responses as seamlessly as possible. As the player, I want to concern myself with asessing the enemy's moves and organizing the best counter - Not worrying about what button to push or losing a huge army simply because my hand slipped on to the wrong key. I want to command an army of reasonably intelligent units who know how to fight and just need my direction at the strategic level - Not "Unit one, attack enemy unit B with your gatling gun. Remember to turn the safety off! Unit two, move to point X and then attack enemy unit C with your missle launcher." I think it was Sun Tsu who said something about how real wars are won off the battlefield - i.e. by Strategic thinking, not individual unit tactics.

 

Telepathic interface go! For WoW too!! (I know I'll never be any good at WoW PvP because I can't be bothered learning the keyboard tricks you need to use to properly kite while shooting, etc. That stuff just isn't my idea of fun, and I play games for fun.)

 

Maybe WCIII (the interface, that is) just suits a player like me better, and SC just suits a player like you better. Vive la difference - And let's hope Bliz is successful at satisfying both groups (as much as you ever can)!

Edited March 11, 2009 by Fatherpeteus

Things that went wrong with warhammer:

 

• Population balance between order and destruction wasn't addressed well; led to VERY skewed sieges
• If you didn't have a solid group at the ready, you miss out on doing public quests; The population was spread too thin.
• Lag fests at sieges
• Lack of PVE content: Though it's a PVP game, you need solid PVE to fill the gaps.
• If you think the CC in WoW is bad... try Warhammer. Everything was a knockback, knockdown, disarm, stun, etc
• Overall the game was just not that polished.

 

Very cool concepts, just not implemented well.

Clickity-clicking on each of my swarm of zerg queens in turn to zap enemy siege tanks with their spawn broodling instant-kill thingie... Was maybe the most horrible example of painful click-festing I've ever experienced, in 30-odd years of gaming.

In WCIII, you'd do the same thing with the whole group selected, and each unit would cast their spell in turn, picking whichever one was closest to the target for you. Now I'm sure at your play level you have mastered the SC interface to a point that these micro tasks don't give you trouble... But I need the help. Hey, I turn 40 next month - Cut a geezer some slack!

 

I played both games *a lot* (thousands of ladder games), and can't think offhand of a single thing the SC interface had over the WCIII one. Now if you said that the factions were more interesting, gameplay had a certain je ne sais quoi, or whatever - I might be inclined to agree. SC was an awesome game, and I await SCII with baited breath! (When the heck is that coming, anyway?) But the interface was simply - Dated, imo.

 

We may just have to agree to disagree on the "non-auto-casting features StarCraft has is what makes competitive gaming so intense, and that's what I love about it". I know some people think this way, but you'll never convince me that fast reflexes and optimized keyboard configurations are what makes the best strategy gamer!

Keep in mind too, that "The majority of the Starcraft community" are probably silently playing WCIII and waiting for SCII to come out and draw us back. (Or SCII may be their first RTS game!) Not to diminish the expertise and contributions of truly hard-core SC folks who have stuck with it all these years, but I'm sure Bliz wants to make a game that will sell to many more than the current regular SC players.

 

The best games of any sort are intuitive and accessible. A perfect RTS will translate the "general"s strategic thoughts into unit responses as seamlessly as possible. As the player, I want to concern myself with asessing the enemy's moves and organizing the best counter - Not worrying about what button to push or losing a huge army simply because my hand slipped on to the wrong key. I want to command an army of reasonably intelligent units who know how to fight and just need my direction at the strategic level - Not "Unit one, attack enemy unit B with your gatling gun. Remember to turn the safety off! Unit two, move to point X and then attack enemy unit C with your missle launcher." I think it was Sun Tsu who said something about how real wars are won off the battlefield - i.e. by Strategic thinking, not individual unit tactics.

 

Telepathic interface go! For WoW too!! (I know I'll never be any good at WoW PvP because I can't be bothered learning the keyboard tricks you need to use to properly kite while shooting, etc. That stuff just isn't my idea of fun, and I play games for fun.)

 

Maybe WCIII (the interface, that is) just suits a player like me better, and SC just suits a player like you better. Vive la difference - And let's hope Bliz is successful at satisfying both groups (as much as you ever can)!

 

I see your perspective, and I agree with your statement to an extent. I think StarCraft is a game that has various levels to it. If I were a casual gamer, even when I first started playing, I remember that there was a lot of clicking and Spawn Broodling'ing Siege Tanks would take forever and most likely they would be killed by Irradicate or Air units before you got them all off. However, you can do what you said about WCIII in StarCraft once you group your Queens (Say Ctrl Grp 1) and by using the Shift+Select key you can run through them very fast. Here is an example.

 

Boxer vs Nal_ra -

 

At a casual, play for fun level I believe that WarCraft III is more simplistic and straight forward, probably a lot easier to understand what's going on in the interface where as all the StarCraft buttons are the same color, yellow. However, I do think that the speed at which you perform / react would still play a factor in WCIII in terms of Micro Management. I don't want to come off as if I'm taking anything away from WCIII, I've played it a little and it was alright, I didn't find it as fast paced as StarCraft and that kind of turned me off. I also didn't care for the defensive options the game held. I think another factor is what you said before, WCIII is newer, the interface is more advanced.

 

However, StarCraft at a competitive, league gameplay (SC ladder was the same as regular melee, except ranked) such as International Cyber Cup, World Game Tour, Team Liquid Tour, etc where general knowledge of the keyboard and hotkeys are second nature is where I want to argue that StarCraft is more strategic and an overall in depth RTS. I totally agree with your take on RTS being intuitive though, and a pretty cool game which loses the base buildings and lets you build from one structure and is based more on positioning and squad makeup vs. opponents is Dawn of War 2. I've really liked playing that game lately, it reminded me of a mix between SC and WCIII without stepping on each others toes.

 

I think my ranting is pretty much a repeat of your post now that I look at it, and I think we should play some SC 2v2 for fun sometime soon! You should also check out DoW2, which I've annoyed the crap out of Ajax with over the last two weeks. But yeah, to each game their own, if we all liked the same thing I guess we'd all be playing the same game.

 

PS: Sorry for off-topic reply!

Edited March 11, 2009 by Lonjuruder

Things that went wrong with warhammer:

 

• Population balance between order and destruction wasn't addressed well; led to VERY skewed sieges
• If you didn't have a solid group at the ready, you miss out on doing public quests; The population was spread too thin.
• Lag fests at sieges
• Lack of PVE content: Though it's a PVP game, you need solid PVE to fill the gaps.
• If you think the CC in WoW is bad... try Warhammer. Everything was a knockback, knockdown, disarm, stun, etc
• Overall the game was just not that polished.

 

Very cool concepts, just not implemented well.

 

^ I agree completely.

 

I was very excited for Warhammer and absolutely LOVED the beta. Everything was so much fun. You can just PvP to level! Group quests were AWESOME! Instant queues, fairly balanced PvP and a much better mana/energy/rage system than what WoW uses. This game is going to kill WoW! Everyone that was in Beta with me seemed to agree!

 

Then the servers went live.

 

Queue times were completely broken. Now you can PvP to level, but wait 46 minutes between matches. This meant pure PvE in order to level up. Not so bad, it'll just be like WoW. WRONG! If you wanted to level up via PvE you were FORCED to do EVERY quest in EVERY zone and you'd still have to grind out the rest of your level. It got so bad that me and Beorn would just run around and AOE grind since there was nothing else to do.

 

It really is ashame that they didn't just wait til after Wrath to bring out a more polished game. If they would have given the Order just SOME cool character models I think the population problems would have been fixed. Order looked horrible. I wanted to play a Bright Wizard but I couldn't bring myself to having red hair and a funky beard. Such a shame.

 

In all it is kind of like Bang said, once you hit level 22 the game became more of a chore than anything. The PvP was broken. The PvE was broken. The game became useless.

I said a bunch of times. The reason why I wasn't interested in the game past beta was because SO many problems I had with the beta were things that weren't being addressed. The BIG one was the fact that it seemed like only a large endless grind was waiting just around the corner. Also there was a VERY clear lack of intrest in the beta for the order side. Once the game went live, with the enormous amount of realms it was clear it was going to get it's player base spread too thin, and too one sided.

 

I find it funny that EVERY Game that has been proclaimed the next WoW Killer has slowly started to flop within months of it's release.

i tried it, i played until like 30something, all the problems stated above are true, plus.. it didnt have that wow feel, i think all mythic did was give blizzard ideas to implement into their game......

 

.......

Unfinished game, enough said. After reading this post it looks like everyone's covered the downfalls of this game. I have to admit though, before I started playing Wrath I kinda wanted to start playing again on my new comp to see if it would still lag.. plus I really enjoyed the Zealot class =(

Yeah, I was incredibly sad that Warhammer turned out the way it did. I had a lot more fun in Warhammer pvp than I had in WoW pvp since pre-bc. It's a shame that the fun ended after beta.

Yeah I remember once when I was leveling like a fiend I queued for all the BGs at about 5pm my time, and I got my first pop at about 9am. Well brutal.

 

It is a crying shame though, because we did have some great times. Bob, Phoenix Gate goooo

This gets added to the long list of WarHammer / WarHammer 40k video games that "could have" " would have" been great if just given more time and polish. I think this really was their last push to save the company, if I remember correct they were going bankrupt while the game was being made or close to it ( Games Workshop)

Bob, Phoenix Gate goooo

Man... Phoenix Gate suuuuccckkkeeddd as a Witch Elf.

With WoW so polished in its current state... and people still managing to find reasons to qq about it, i don't think there'll be another big mmo for awhile.

 

WAR was awesome in so many ways... Beorn and I will attest to that... some fundamental flaws were present, just like WoW when it first started, but i think the next-gen developers need to stop making games/ideas they 'think' are cool or 'worth' bringing out, instead they need to make a game more polished than WoW... Blizz has already done all the work in figuring out what makes a mmo popular - which is why they've already started developing the next mmo to replace WoW. The developer that brings out the next 'WoW' through improved graphics, even smoother gameplay, proper advertising and marketing and all that crap will be the next to take the crown.

i always see beorn playing warhammer 40k is that this?

Different game! 40k Dawn of War 2 is a strategy/rpg. I stopped playing WAR a while ago.

 

I agree with the above statements with the overwhelming problem being broken queues upon release (beta was a ton of fun!). Itemization is so critical and although frustrating with gear always changing very well done by Blizzard. Mythic's armor progression system was all kinds of balls with gear that rarely had a set of stats you wanted. Added on to this was for end game gear had to be obtained from different places...dungeons(which sucked), bgs, city fights. Generally this gear was even or lower with random world drops. It was just odd. I loved my Blackorc with his iron eye and as Dag stated there are a ton of things I loved about War. Sadly the amount of time Dag and I gave to Mythic expecting some miracle fixing patch never came.

 

Dag/RH/Brandon...you guys playing WoW?

Edited March 13, 2009 by Beornwarrior

thanks beorn! no one was answering my question =/