Warhammer Online's Paul Barnett Comments by Oli Welsh

"It's funnier than WoW"

No it's not.

"They've done it in a very European way?"

Presumably that means shrugging their shoulders when players don't understand what pre-order bonuses or head-start periods were available, forgetting to check the local price of World of Warcraft in the UK, whilst wearing man-bags.

Mr Barnett is my favourite demagogue. He's the reason I first took a look at WAR all those years ago because he had a genuine passion for the game. And now I'm playing and I love it.

Still want the Choppa and the Hammer back, though. And those other capitol cities, though I expect they'll be in later patches.

I have to say, that's probably the best interview i've ever read. I'm sure he'll get some stick from his bosses for some of it, but it was a genuine and fun read.

I'm 90% sure i'll buy this on thursday. :)

1 million?
:/
id say if they can keep half that past the first 3 months they have reason to pat themselves on the back.
If they do 1 million then Kudos tbh, its about time that someone shook things up.
Competition keeps things interesting, keeps innovation happening etc.
Good luck Mr Barnett and co :)
hope to see you in about a month - if you pass the Funcom test :P
(never buying an mmo at luanch again).

"we're not a game, we're a hobby"

Probably an accurate description of the MMO genre.

@Popsimax

"It's funnier than WoW"
No it's not"

No its not, in a WAR-doesnt-have-Haris-Pilton-funnyhaha-way?

WAR is funny, in context to its material. Its not funny because of some random, MTV, pop culture references.

Big difference.

It's mildly amusing, I'll give you. The greenskin starting stuff is fun.

But it's not as funny as WoW.

G.O.A.

FUCK YEAH!

they did an awesome job of making lots of people dislike them, you and your game :D

This guy gets on my tits nowadays.
I used to like him alot about a year ago, in the video-preview-thingies.



No, I dont play wow and I dont hate war.

What's funny in WoW?

"English who don't really like the Dutch"

Eh?

'It's lucky - or some would say, factual - that Warhammer has a very similar look to World of Warcraft. That's just fluke. It's not our fault it has the same look. We would have realised the game the way we did even if WOW didn't exist.'

Probably the nicest way I've ever seen someone say 'Blizzard flagrantly raped the Warhammer Fantasy IP as a basis for Warcraft'

That interview set of a LOT of alarm bells with me. He thinks GOA did a good job with DAoC? He says the game is "the greatest hits of MMO?" Why not just say, "Yeah, we just nicked everything from everybody else and threw it all together."

The problem is WAR does seem to have some original ideas, but it's like he's more obsessed with the "me too!" school of PR than he is on selling us on HIS game.

@El_MUERkO

oh look another lets jump on the goa hating bandwagon

yes open beta was bad at the start they fixed it started again and everyone got a few more hours to TEST a game and gave everyone who signs up for real 7 extra days.

so far GOA have done themselves proud in the way they have handled the mistakes so far , so to date headstart is going great just need a few more servers to cope with the influx of people wanting to leave the crapness of wow but still cant find a game to rival it yet which for me is this one.

WoW has been compared to as McDonald against a steak. Now, as Blackpool against Vegas.

The truth is, they came up with these comparisons but with no argument to back it up. Nothing in this guy's argument that tries to make people believe WAR is Vegas to WoW's Blackpool. Just empty hyperbole.

I don't mind people talking up their game but to do it in such a hollow way ... /sigh

GOA can feck right off, and Barnett shouldn't defend them or big up them in anyway.

However, the last paragraph is spot on for me,. WAR is the first MMO I have bought and plan on playing seriously.

I do like Barnett though, he's enthusiastic and passionate without sounding like an arse.

I am playing the game and am genuinely impressed. As a long time WoW player I did feel the need for something fresh and this looked like it. Its familiar enough not to be a chore and different enough to keep me interested. Its got great ideas and shows huge amounts of promise. As it is its an extremely good MMO already. I am sure they can make it an awesome MMO if they keep this up.

I didmt want to get into another MMO, paying for but not playing Wow at the moment, but I'm starting to warm more and more to this game just from the comments from the people playing it etc. I havent seen any videos or screenshots, but compared to AOC which had its fair share of positive and negative, it seems on the whole people are impressed with this game.

To be honest I got WOW without knowing anything about it, except knowing it was popular and I had alot of fun with it.

Question is whether to get it on release or wait till early next year.... hmmm

I've been in since sunday.

this game, so far, shits on WoW. For the simple reason that i actually feel part of the world. Unlike WoW, which dumps you in a big empty starting zone, and has you kill big birds for 10 fucking levels to feed some lasy bastard, from quest two, you are in the deep end.

Every quest has relevance to the story. Every.Single.One

Moving on from that, PQ's for me have redefined what i expect from multiplayer gaming. Last night, i started a small group to help with one stage on a pq, that snowballed into a five hour session where i led a waeband across three of them, in some of the most epic, and intensive mutliplayer fun i have ever had.

when you play War, you'll see what pvp is.

basically, there are a lot of people, shit talkers, bad mouthing the game, WHO HAVE NEVER PLAYED IT. Quite frankly, they are determined to hate it. WoW will never see me again. Ever.

take a chance, get hooked. If all you've ever been fed is WoW, its a culture shock, but for those of us that played MMO's before WoW, before it completely standardized the genre, this is a real blast. It reminds of me when i first started playing MMO's, great new lands, great communities, its filled with 'fuck me' moments

i'm basically raving now, but i took the week of work for this, and it is simply stunning

yea, it sucks goa are in charge, but so far, since the headstart, no major hiccups.

Nice read. Coming from wow i agree with him 100% and have been loving WAR for many of the reasons people here have already said. Problem is wow has been around for a long time. I asked a RL friend of mine to join me, and he said "no". When i asked why he said that; "he's invested too much time and effort in wow to just throw it away". Interestingly when i asked him if he still enjoyed wow he said not as much as he used to, but (you guessed it) that "he's invested too much time and effort in wow to just throw it away".

I think this is now the biggest problem for WoW players. People don't really enjoy it as much as they used to anymore, but to pull the plug on their account, wel... its like pulling the plug in RL.

Its sad, but i hope one day my friend will see the light (and come to WAR ;)

It's funny i see people going "Oh yea it's a blast! I have been playing since Sunday!"

May i remind you how fun the 20 level's were in Age Of Conan. You have 80 levels to go, Enjoy it, It will fade.

@gremly

"It's funny i see people going "Oh yea it's a blast! I have been playing since Sunday!"
May i remind you how fun the 20 level's were in Age Of Conan. You have 80 levels to go, Enjoy it, It will fade"

Why do you assume that WAR will suffer from the same problems that AoC did?

Just curious...

@gremly

Also, regards 'having a blast', I fail to see why levels have any kind of purpose being mentioned.

I've just spent the day in Open World RvR, at levels 7-9, and have had some of the best fun i've ever had in MMORPG PvP. The sense of solidity in the player characters is amazing. To have a plate-clad, shield wearing, Chaos warrior coming stomping (and clunking, parrying and blocking attacks) towards our line of Dwarfs and Lions is just something ive never experienced in an onliner before. Especially with our archers flinging arrows over the top of our line. Leagues and leagues ahead of WoW. By a mental mile.

The mere fact that player models are solid adds a new depth to PvP. Tanks can actually barricade doorways and fences, preventing the enemy from even getting through.

Theres just so much that Mythic have got right with WAR. There really is. If anyone is sitting on the fence over this, after being burned by previous MMORPG releases, believe me (and it seems many others on this thread) when I say that WAR is absolutely and without doubt worth the effort.

This is by far the best MMORPG out, been playing since closed beta.

"Because if you look at Europe, you realise that WOW took months and months and months to get there. It's really really hard to find a company that understands how to put servers in, get bandwidth, speak loads of languages, co-ordinate with all the different countries, realise that the Italians don't like the Germans who are suspicious of the French who don't talk to the English who don't really like the Dutch who don't understand the Spanish."

Yeah, right. The Germans, French, Spanish etc all enjoy servers where no-one really ever speaks a different language and the language rules are enforced. The 'English' ones are filled with people refusing to speak English despite it practically being a universal language, ridiculous amounts of national guilds, etc. They refuse to make it a rule to speak English even though it is on the forums and whatnot, and refuse to create servers where you can only speak English.

It's also just not handled that well at all. The Europeans are treated as second class customers, the devs only respond to/read American posts, the Americans usually get patches and services earlier, etc. And with Warhammer Online, this is only going to be worse considering GOA are handling it.

It is funnier than WoW and a lot better written. It's also a lot more polished on its release than WoW was even on the burning crusade, let alone it's release.

The question is how the endgame holds up, how they improve the social system and making sure the factions stay fairly well balanced.

WAR is amazing. Best MMO at launch I've seen. A couple days of OPEN BETA validation issues with real bonuses for the live game as compensation? Good on them! Should it have happened? Ideally no, but they paid the players back.

The content is amazing. The questing is varied. The PQ's are awesome. PvP is great fun.

The game is polished far beyond what you expect of a typical launch MMO.

And the best bit is that it is fun from login to logout... there is no login, travel for 20 minutes, wait for group for 20 minutes, travel for 20 minutes, grind scenario for 3 hours, repeat. It does away with annoying things - item repair, long travel times, bought bags, re-buying the same skill 5 times etc. You simply login, immediately kill something, find a group and drop in, click on pvp from anywhere to join in...

It also has great PvE, its just that it gets brushed over often because it isn't the games main focus. It has dungeons and hard PQs and great loot for all.

If you haven't tried WAR, please do - you literally won't be able to go back to WoW. I was in the WAR closed beta and I simply could not bear to play WoW when that shut down. The thought made me cringe. I watched TV instead and read WAR forums.

I'll say it once and I'll say it again.

Lastability is WAR's biggest problem.
Already people are entering their Rank 20's, almost ready to leave for tier 3. So let's say you have 2 months to get your char where it should be. Sure, plotting and planning to take on the capital city will be a moth or two of entertainment. Add another two months to find all the gimmicks & dungeons. That's 6 months of play before you've seen it all., perhaps extend it to a year to get two alts up and running.

I hope I'm wrong, but if they don't implement some serious amount content every 6 months, the game will be doomed to be a short but entertaining blast. Because honestly: in essence, this game IS a marvelous beauty regarding fun factor. Good roleplay (alas, not cross-faction), great PvE and RvR experiences... it's got it all. Here's hoping it will be a major player for a while to come!

@orakio

But the original wow launch was no different. Within a week or two there were level 60s running about. With BC there were level 70s with mounts just TWO DAYS after it went live. There is no way for MMO developers to cater for these 'no lifers', but for us mere-mortals (and in WAR so far :) we have content coming out of our ears and not enough time in the day to do it in!

I must admit that i enjoyed AoC from 1-30 and i agree that it sucked long term, but i sense something different about WAR, as Barnett has said, they've concentrated on a few small things and they've done it really well - so i see no reason why end-game will be any less polished.

Ive actually slowed down my leveling in WAR to enjoy the content. That's the opposite of my time in WoW where you needed to rush to the end to experience the decent stuff.

I hit the "teens" levels in WAR yesterday but there weren't enough people around at those levels on my server to do the PQ's and scenarios. The content is too good to just rush past so I'm actually tempering my thirst for more WAR to enjoy it as intended.

When the people that are in their 20's now eventually re-roll another character they will have a different experience from playing in zones that have active PQ's going on. This is the first MMO I have played where being the fastest to max out your level means you've missed out on a big part of the "spirit" of the game.

"It's lucky - or some would say, factual - that Warhammer has a very similar look to World of Warcraft. That's just fluke. It's not our fault it has the same look. We would have realised the game the way we did even if WOW didn't exist"

He almost says it. World of Warcraft stole the Warhammer art style, but since you can't really copyright a style there aint anything Games workshop could do except make their own. I still think they should have just done a MMORPG version of 40K, its really their strongest setting and they should do it before someone else "borrows" their style again.

I think WoW is actually funnier than WAR. War has that dark, Monty Python, British humour and not the American "it has to be simple enough for rednecks to understand" comedy style that WoW features. Plus after I levelled to 70 in WoW and was pretty much told:

"Now you get to grind the same instance encounters over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to maybe, MAYBE, get one piece of armour out of six that will become useless in the next patch where you do it all again!!"

Had me laughing all the way to the Cancel Account button....

@Krun

you know a 40K MMO is in the works right?

@Krun - I agree. Only a matter of time before Blizzard get round to bringing out 'Galaxy of Starcraft' featuring Space Marines, Tyranids and Eldar. Sorry, I mean Terrans, Zerg and Protoss...

Mind you, Vigil Games (a THQ owner developer) IS working on a 40k MMO - will just be a long way off before we see anything of it I reckon.

"That will be the hardest thing to predict. Along with the number of subscribers we're going to get. I've said 3 million - if I win the office pool, that's almost 27 dollars!"


LOL I love that he's psyched about 27 dollars in a bet than the subs coming in from 3 million subs. Go Paul!!!


And I agree it's funnier than WoW. But then, I hate the Shrek movies. Pop culture references just don't do it for it. Give me Finding Nemo or Wall-E any day.

"EA couldn't have done it, what the hell would EA know about it? They know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe, unless it's spending lots of money closing them down I suppose."

That has to be quote of the week. Damn you EA for closing down Earth and Beyond.

I like this guy :-)

as soon as i have a new pc im having this, should be great from what ive heard and sounds ideally suited to me.

@orakio

"I'll say it once and I'll say it again.

Lastability is WAR's biggest problem.
Already people are entering their Rank 20's, almost ready to leave for tier 3. So let's say you have 2 months to get your char where it should be. Sure, plotting and planning to take on the capital city will be a moth or two of entertainment. Add another two months to find all the gimmicks & dungeons. That's 6 months of play before you've seen it all., perhaps extend it to a year to get two alts up and running"

Thats quite a rough statement, don't you think? 2 months to get your char to 'where it should be'? Whats that? Level 40? Why is that where chars 'should be'? You need to get out of that WoW mindset, where only level 70 counts, because thats simply not the case in WAR. The fact that RvR, for example, auto-balances char levels renders a large part of having to 'gring the levels' moot. My level 2 Warrior Priest was pumped to level 8 stats in my first WAR PvP experience, which left me enjoying the game without having to grind it out first.

Any MMORPG that can give you 6 months of entertainment, based purely off the launch code, deserves respect. Additionally, within those 6 months we may also find more content patched in.

Put it this way, we certainly wont have months of critical bug fixes going in, because its the most solid MMORPG launch ive ever experienced. Sure, there are bugs. So far ive seen animations locking, equipped items not displayed properly (see Warrior Priest Willpower book), getting caught on terrain and random bins back to character select (2 so far). However, the meat and bones of the thing have so far been 100% in working order.


"I hope I'm wrong, but if they don't implement some serious amount content every 6 months, the game will be doomed to be a short but entertaining blast. Because honestly: in essence, this game IS a marvelous beauty regarding fun factor. Good roleplay (alas, not cross-faction), great PvE and RvR experiences... it's got it all. Here's hoping it will be a major player for a while to come!"

It's odd but I have a strange feeling that Mythic will go from strength to strength with WAR. Ive always maintained that if you work from a solid base, you can build and build and build without worrying about the whole thing collapsing. See Vanguard for proof enough of how wobbly and insecure a game can be, if the devs have to work on rocky foundations. WAR has none of that 'baggage' to work with and, in fact, we already know that a lot of extra content (the extra cities) were already in progress but couldnt be done in time for release.

He's pretty cocky and I haven't seen much to suggest that is warranted so far, I'll be trying it next year.

As for WoW, when you log in and park your character in AV for six hours whilst you do other things and press a key every five minutes I guess you know it's time to move on!