Quitting all MMOs? Warhammer at least.

I'm back from my trip! Nothing gaming related from my travels other than seeing some cool medieval weapons; halberds don't really look usable, you know? But if you're curious about me in the real world I have some notes from my trip on my other blog.

When I left I was juggling two MMOs: Warhammer Online and Champions Online. Coming back from my trip I started to jump back into those games and realized I just don't want to invest the time anymore. I'd played a lot of Warhammer; about 175 hours in 5 months, or 8 hours a week (!) My Warrior Priest ended up at max level and Renown Rank 43 and I had a couple of level 10 alts.

When Warhammer works well, it's pretty fun. It's best at large scale PvP, battles of 100 vs. 100 players fighting over a tangible, persistent location like a keep or city. Small scale PvP in scenarios (typically 12 vs 12) is also fun, although less interesting to me personally. PvE is less inspired: adequate, but nothing special.

The problem is Warhammer doesn't often work well. Large scale PvP battles are fraught with game design and balance problems. It's rare to get a really good fight. The server implementation is terrible, full of 300ms+ lag, occasional lag spikes where everything disappears, and random gameplay bugs with new ones coming as fast as they can patch the old ones. Mythic really failed at executing the engineering of the game and it robs Warhammer of a lot of fun.

I was going to quit months ago but I lucked into joining the Legends guild, a really strong PvP guild on the Iron Rock server. These guys play very well and aggressively. Our set piece was taking our warband of 20 people and looking for the group of 60+ enemy, then running in and crushing them because of our superior organization and gameplay. It's a lot of fun beating 3:1 odds. There's a couple of people in Legends who are really good leaders, too, pushing people to play well and keeping things moving fast and fun. Frankly I was a bit out of my league being such a Warhammer n00b, but they needed healers and I enjoyed being able to learn so quickly. I would have quit a lot sooner if I hadn't found such a good group.

Here's the thing: I can't think of any MMO I really want to play now. I can keep playing them casually (like I play Champions), a couple hours here and there twice a week. But MMOs should be more engaging than that, in some sense a second life. But all the MMOs out today are too much like Warcraft (except Eve, which is different but boring). Having done Warcraft as a second life for a couple of years, I'm not keen to reproduce that level of time investment for more of the same. Also Warcraft is still the best implemented MMO out there, even if I did get bored of it. But why would you play a second rate Warcraft clone when Warcraft is still going strong?

I'll probably play Champions a couple more weeks until the subscription runs out. Then if the MMO itch strikes me again, maybe I'll try Aion. Or pick up Lord of the Rings again. But I think I won't get really excited about an MMO again until something really innovative comes along.

In the meantime, there's a lot of other games to play. Borderlands is good mindless fun and Torchlight looks promising for similar click-and-loot gameplay. And I'm pretty excited about DJ Hero; I've never played Guitar Hero or Rock Band because I hate cock rock, but I'm all over Daft Punk. 

Comments

[Andrew]

All I'm playing for MMOs right now is DDO.... which, BTW, is wildly different from Warcraft or any of its ilk. It probably helps that I'm playing permadeath-style, and very casually. Give it a try some time. $0 at the door.