WAR on the Web

There were several interesting WAR-related stories posted today and I thought you’d enjoy them:

Darren, over at the Common Sense Gamer writes about Fighting the WAR. He speculates on what existing a soon-to-be-released MMOs will need to do to remain competitive with WAR, the most highly anticipated game in its genre since WoW. Titles for comparison include: Everquest 2 (EQ2), Vanguard, World of Warcraft (WoW), EVE Online, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan (AoC), and Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS). Keen of Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog wrote his own version, inspired by Darren.

“WoW has done great things for the MMO industry and for gaming in general…but it’s also just sitting on it’s fat ass.” — Quote for truth!

“LOTRO’s PvE is a lost cause and the PvP is … yeah.” – I haven’t played it personally, but just from what I’ve read around the Web, I never gave this game a chance, which is startling because I’m a huge fan of the books, movie, lore in general, and played a LoTR-based MUD for 6+ years…

WAR really is starting to attract more mainstream media attention these days. Perhaps this merger with EA was a smart idea after all, because EA is always in the spotlight (for better or worse). Wired seems to agree with the BBC, naming WAR one of three new MMORPGs to challenge WoW in 2008 (Age of Conan and Pirates of the Burning Sea are the other two).

“Unlike World of Warcraft’s player-versus-player combat, which takes place in pocket dimensions away from the daily life of Azeroth, battles in WAR will be raging constantly, and each fight will have strategic and economic impacts on each faction’s day-to-day existence.” — This is the main draw of WAR for me…

There’s a community column article over at WarCry explaining the nuances of competition and PvP in MMORPGs and how it can draw communities together rather than divide them. Let’s face it. There are two extremes in MMORPGs, the ultra carebear who cares about nothing more than PvE and the ultra ganker who cares about nothing more than ruining your day in PvP. Fortunately, most gamers land somewhere in the middle and it would appear that EA Mythic has realized this, and is allowing for both PvEers and PvPers to contribute to the overall game design evenly.

“War is waged not just with blades, but also with coin. Battles of economy are quite common in MMOs, although we may not think of them as PvP.” — Ironically, Mythic’s RvR podcast uses coins and a balance to represent the different ways people can contribute to the WAR effort… coincidence or genius? You decide!

And the WoW vs. WAR comparisons keep on coming (and yes, I even have my own article in the works)! Tobold wrote a piece titled, WotLK against WAR, where he predicts the outcome of a battle between WoW’s Wrath of the Litch King expansion due out sometime in 2008 vs. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, due out, we hope, by June 2008. I don’t agree that Blizzard will sell a copy of WotLK to every current subscriber if they maintain their current expansion model:

“Every WoW expansion adds 10 new levels to the top of the game, resets the raid progress of everyone, and then provides a new set of raid dungeons for the top players.” – When you consider that less than 5% of WoW gamer’s have made it into Black Temple one year after their Burning Crusade expansion, the model seems ridiculously flawed…

Yet even more 2008 predictions! The blogosphere is full of ‘em these days. I predict that I won’t write a prediction post at The Greenskin just to stand out from the crowd! Anyhew, here’s a pretty unique one from The Ancient Gaming Noob. Do you think EA could have an MMO network similar to SOE? They’ll have Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, The Sims Online, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and a new one from Bioware released sometime in 2009ish, though probably later. Am I missing any EA MMORPGs?

“…EA-Mythic will announce the “Mythic Ticket” subscription plan that will allow players access to all EA-Mythic online games…” — That actually sounds remotely feasible, however, they’ll probably want to beef up their MMO offerings first. It may breathe new life into their older games, riding on the success of WAR.

Yowza, lots to discuss… so discuss!

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