It's been a few months since Warhammer was released to the foaming at the mouth PvP'ers in MMO space.  Turns out that all this Open World RvR hype wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  Since it's release, WAR has been in steady decline in activity in both my guild as well as other metrics.  Of course like any game with a rabbid fanboy following, there will always be Mythic groupies in denial of that but there's not much logic and reason can do to help these people.  It's hard to point to any one thing that is causing the massively hyped Warhammer to scream "WAAAGHH!" as it plummets in activity (and likely subscribers).

Obviously, like every other MMO launched in the last few years, it wasn't quite up to snuff with the big kid on the block: World of Warcraft.  It's inevitable that comparisons were going to be drawn between the two yet there are people that insist that WAR shouldn't be compared to a game that's had 4 years to mature.  While this is a wonderful idea in lollipop land where the clouds are cotton candy and filled with lovable puppy dogs, that's a pretty good distance from reality.  People forking over $50 for a game and spending $15 a month for the right to play it are simply not going to give two **** whether the game is new or not.  WAR isn't competing with WoW 4 years ago, it's competing with WoW now and if it's going to be a sub-par game than it's going to suffer because of it.  No amount of wishful "but WoW had 4 years to get this polished" thinking is going to change that.  WAR has had those 4 years to see the improvements WoW made (and raised the bar because of) and if they choose not to meet that bar, then they (Mythic) has to suffer the consequences.  Welcome to reality.  Players just want the game and whatever class they play to work and be fun.  Two things WAR struggles with in more than one spot.

Mythic was touted around as the masters of "open world PvP/RvR" but it seems like for being so savy at it, they made some pretty obvious mistakes in how it was designed.  First of all, when you design such a massive RvR world with so many huge zones that require massive amounts of people to make them "work", it's probably not a good idea to create instanced PvP areas (Scenarios) that yield better rewards (faster RP/XP) that have repeatable quests in a war-camp ensuring no one ever leaves the war-camp.  I'm not a game designer but it didn't take much deduction to realize that's completely counter productive to Open World RvR.

Now they're in quite the pickle because there's a bunch of RP farming crazy people that adore the grindtastic appeal of this "queue for a scenario, turn in repeatable quest, queue again" style of playing the game which are in starch contrast to the people wanting to do Open World RvR but being screwed out of it because people are busy humping the Scenario quest givers.

This brings up another point entirely though.  I constantly hear people saying how much the LOOOOVVVEEE open world PvP/RvR just for the sake of it, but when push comes to shove, they don't do it.  They prefer the scenario grinding.  It's pretty obvious that most people are full of crap and they are just going to do what yields the most personal reward; in this case the best renown/XP (Scenarios).  WoW had it's dirty little hand in making this gaming mentality flourish but that's the truth of the matter and it seems like Mythic is in denial of this along with the players themselves.  It's almost like it's just become cool to say "I love open RvR" just so you fit into that "I was an old school PvP'er" crowd.  It's like when your parents tell you how they had to walk to school uphill both ways in the blistering heat summers and frozen tundra winters because they didn't have nice things like shoes, bicycles, cars, etc.  It adds a sense of validation to sit in some fantasy high chair so they can look down on the "WoW kiddies" or whatever.  It's all bull-crap, they need a scoobie snack to PvP just like everyone else.  Most people that do take keeps avoid fighting just to farm the keep lords for loot bags.

Of course there are those rare gems of bizzaro people that wear shoes on their head and actually do PvP for PvP's sake.  Once in a while the stars align and there's another tribe of these aliens on the opposing faction and a fight does break out in a keep.  This is when things really go *** up.  Melee DPS is reduced battering ram duty, manning a ballista that does less damage than pissing on a dark elf or my favorite keep taking tactic.  Putting your thumb up in the upright position and then inserting it into your anus.  That's pretty much the options you have as melee DPS in keep/open world RvR.  Meanwhile the ranged DPS battles it out until whichever side has the biggest zerg (and brought the most Bright Wizards/Sorcerers) claims victory.

There's many other problems like abandoned public quests for example.  This is mostly due to there simply being too many of them and people busy feeling up the Scenario quest givers in war-camps.

Hopefully Mythic can get their crap together so this doesn't end up on fail-boat isle along with AoC but a lot of things will have to change in both design philosophy as well as technical things like people still having massive crash to desktop issues, performance problems on good hardware (let's face it, WAR's graphics don't look good enough to be demanding) and lots of bugged abilities for a variety of classes.

Wrath of the Lich King launched yesterday and that sure as hell isn't going to help matters for Warhammer.  Of course there's those people that think it's a good idea to cheer along as people abandon WAR for WoW as if they've somehow purged their holy land of a heretic.  In a game that's so dependant on masses of players for it's ORvR mechanics to work, you'd think a hint of common sense would strike them that it's bad for ANY player to leave their game.  Nothing like cheering for your own game's demise.