Warhammer Wrath of Heroes

I’ve given up trying to keep track of what to call them these days.  It’s not Mythic Entertainment, EA Mythic, or EA Bioware-Mythic.. I guess it’s just “Bioware” now that handles the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning brand.  Whoever they are, they announced Warhammer Wrath of Heroes at Gamescom.   It’s part of EA’s Play4Free push.  An exciting idea.  A new Warhammer game?  No, it’s not.  Despite the “3 teams” thing that is being pushed, it’s the exact same game.  Just watch the video and it’s plain to see that everything about Wrath of Heroes is just WAR Scenarios re-boxed under a different name.  It’s like saying “play WAR’s scenarios for free and let us find a way to add microtransactions”.

What would have been neat is a Thidranki (DAOC zone, small, coined the term “battleground” and was always open rather than being instanced) style zone.  My DAOC veteran readers will know what I’m talking about.  What we have here is, in my opinion, a waste of rehashed resources.  I don’t mean to come off insensitive, but it does seem like there are people left over from WAR with nothing to do, so they’ve been tasked with this little project instead of being re-tasked to new teams or let go.

If someone can make sense of this, by all means clue me in.  What about this game isn’t just WAR 6v6v6 scenarios?

Update: Some more details I’m collecting make it sound like an attempt at being DOTA.  I still can’t shake the re-purposed WAR, though.  Had this been -any- other game but WAR I would probably think it’s a great idea.  Perhaps just the horrific stigma attached to all things WAR is tainting any opinion I have about this, but I won’t deny the validity of such stigmas or my reason for feeling them.  I still think that this should have been an idea built from the ground up without all the recycling.

– Abilities on cooldowns, instant cast
– No armor, just skins.
– Tactics (LoL’s Rune System)

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  • I agree with everything you have here, yet I’m still a bit excited to play a 6v6v6 style game….just probably not for very long.

  • i cannot wait for this
    love warhammer online just havent found a reason to go back since the game has such a low pop its not fun

    this is going to be fantastic

  • I think this has potential, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

    I wonder how a MOBA/MMO gameplay hybrid will hold up.

    I’d have to see these things to get remotely excited:

    * Customization options
    * Some sort of mini-progression that rewards you for doing well
    * Simple gameplay that’s hard to master
    * A fun mode and a competitive mode
    * GOOD MAPS with interesting objectives
    * Some variety but not too much – quality over quantity

    PS. WAR is really starting to show its age graphically.

  • Looks lame and boring. Why would you play an MMORPG that had the MMO and RPG stripped, leaving you with a crappy and archaic, tab-target style combat system?

    “Because it’s free” isn’t a valid answer.

  • It looks as if EA wants to join on the DoTA band wagon and decided to recycle a license, engine and some prior art assets. From there they’ve already announced some new art assets, some new zone work has been done and more is on the way. It sounds as if this actually is WAR’s saving grace. It gets the benefits of all the work on WoH while WoH gets a huge bucket of assets it gets to steal and use for it’s own game and sell in little pieces like you see in LoL. So in other words, it got a 6 months head start on the project but with all the done sides as well. If we’re lucky, this will actually translate into some real work on WAR’s graphics engine. Anyone else notice the screenshots look a little cell shaded?

    I don’t expect it to have the polish of LoL (The WAR game engine is crap, to start with), but I know some friends of mine and I are looking forward to at least giving it a shot.

  • I would not even waste the time that it takes to download. It will however have a following for a short time only because it is FTP.

  • I feel like comparisons to LoL’s polish are a little unfair because the engine for this kind of gameplay is immensely more complex. I also thought scenarios were actually very enjoyable in small spurts in WAR, so a game stripping out all the rest of the garbage that WAR turned into and focusing on getting you into destroying people asap sounds like it could be a neat little diversion =)

  • Scenarios were public enemy number one in WAR. They are a huge reason it failed. Extracting them and creating a game around them is ironic.

  • I liked W:AoR pvp…but strangely all this announcement does is remind me of the missed potential of that game and saddens me for the community that still supports it.

    It feels like an estate sale…only they haven’t announced W:AoR is dead yet, but we all know what’s coming now.

  • It feels more like they are trying to salvage their very expensive IP. The game looks cool… it only took them how many years to go “Oh 3 factions WAS a good idea!”?

  • I feel like these resources could have been better used to just make WAR free to play. That’s a game that would be great for the F2P model considering it’s content just doesn’t justify a subscription and it needs numbers to be worth playing. But instead…this. Oh, Mythic.