Warhammer Online Sells .5 Million first week

[Ail]

cAPSLOCK said:

vlad321 said:

cAPSLOCK said:
a bunch of stuff

I think you are assuming too much there. I doubt many of the people that want PvP will switch from WoW to War unless they REALLY hated the WoW PvP. And how is the WoW PvP ignored? Maybe you missed the recent tournaments Blizzard has been hosting?

Tournaments? You mean the arenas which most PvPers hated from the word go? Most of us never liked them from the start. The problem is they were too "set" if that makes any sense. By this I mean essentially they're group duels that boil down to assist trains and hiding behind pillars.  Alterac Valley from the first day Alliance could bypass the whole Horde NPC defense and go right to the head guy AND HAS NEVER BEEN FIXED. And all of this you had to grind to get gear to be effective either in PvE or PvP with a ridiculous amount of time involved. 

Bring up the Southshore vs Taren Mill in a topic on the WoW forums and see how many people say PvP was better back then with no honor system, no arenas, no BGs. People went because it was fun.

Don't get me wrong I loved WoW when it came out, but from the honor system on up PvP has either been pooly implemented or given half assed solutions, and the class balance is still horrible and people are *still* on the forums saying "give it more time." There's not even a competition between PvP in the 2 games, just like there isn't for PvE where WoW is obviously better. How many dungeons were added with Burning Crusade? How many arenas? How many world PvP zones that were worth the time and effort to actually go to them? How many raid areas? How many quests? How many PvP quests? 

That's my whole point: WoW focused almost entirely on PvE, about a 90/10 ratio. The game is balanced around PvE, the mechanics (like being able to walk through people) was a PvE decision, the content when compared is heavily biased towards PvE. Imagine if you got 1 raid dungeon in Burning Crusade and the extra PvE "content" offered was a bunch of tournaments to see who could clear Blackwing Lair the fastest. As a PvP type you'd feel pretty pissed and ignored, too.

Hard numbers make the best argument:

WoW after 4 years

Raid dungeons: (16) Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Onyxia's Lair, ZG, AQ, Naxx, Kara, Zul Aman, Mag, Serpent Shrine, Gruul, The Eye, Hyjal, Black Temple.

Battlegrounds: (4) AV, AB, WG, EoS, 5 if you count arena. 3 of which came out in 1 shot before AQ.

World PvP: I dunno, Halaa? Does anyone ever care or play it or care, how do they have any real impact on the game world?

Balance: Balanced for PvE. A lot of specs are either 1 way or the other, and a lot of pigeon-holing of specs.

 

WAR after 2 weeks:

Raid Dungeons: None. Mythic knows they killed DAoC with ToA expansion that had raids with the best gear. Something they apologized for repeatedly and promised to never do again. They saw it as their biggest failing since people didn't play that game to raid.

Battlegrounds (Scenarios): (12) 1 per pairing per tier, giving you more PvP content in the first 20 levels of the game as WoW has 4 years later through 70 levels.

World PvP: Every single zone there are objectives to capture which have a real impact on the game: Allowing you to take over a capital city. All of it plays together very heavily. Even walking around cities and keeps you can see how they were designed from the ground up to be defended. There's so many strong points to hold and so many places to cause havoc. When the majority of players are 40, they'll be on the battle front, that's the end game the PvP types want.

Balance: ". . .when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it."

http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/05/28/pvp-vs-pve-ea-mythic-on-warhammer-age-of-reckoning/

Please don't read this the wrong way. I'm not slamming WoW, I had 2 accounts, leveled 3 characters to 70, and played since launch day. If you're a PvE type you'll see that my assessment is pretty damning of WAR. Yes there's some cool stuff as far as PvE but it just doesn't hold a candle to WoW, it never will. You will see PvE raids in WAR, but only as it pertains to the PvP (kill this giant thing so they don't have it for the city seige to come) and it will not reward you with gear beyond anyone else's.

I think the people who want PvP will make the switch. The content is too compelling for people who enjoy that aspect of MMOs. 5v5 arenas is nowhere near the same level as sacking an enemy city with 100s on 100s and tanks that actually hold the line instead of being blinked past on the way to an objective. There's already 500,000 players playing as opposed to 200,000 for WoW's first week with insanely stable servers and little to no lag. As far as the hard numbers who will I couldn't say and won't speculate, but anyone who rolled on a PvP server has potential to make the jump.

It's not going to kill WoW, but it is going to cannibalize the PvP community who have been asking from day 1 for PvP that means something beyond l33t purpz. I think both will live happily side by side, with the understanding that if you want PvP you play WAR, and if you want PvE you play WoW.

Wow, long post.

 

Wow might be based around PVE game but it does have competitive arena based pvp supported by professional leagues.

And I don't see the most skilled pvpers leaving that.  

For general 'I want to kill people and have fun doing it' WAR might draw a lot of pvpers away. 

But for those people more focused on ' I want to test my pvp skills against the best in the world without it being based on a huge time sink' wow arena is still going to be the prefered medium.

For a good player the time investment needed to fight the best in the world is actualy not that huge in Wow....

 

PS : World pvp does not require that much skills because the game does not match you with players of similar skills as you. Bragging you killed 500 players when most of them were noobs isn't that big of an achievement...Beating Pandemic 3vs3 team is however something that will raise some heads...

And I hate to break it to you but if you want to be successfull in huge pvp battles, no matter the game, you are going to learn to assist train ( and you will hate those more in 30vs30 battles than in 5vs5 arena..)