A lot of great discussion goes on in the comments section of this blog, it really does. I was reading something written by one of my readers and had one of those eye opening moments. When describing Warhammer Online compared to other mmorpgs I’ve been using terminology like “The player is more removed” and “The focus of the game is shifted from here to there”. Those are decent ways of explaining how the game feels, but not quite as good as this: Warhammer Online is a MMORPG without the RPG. We’ve seen games adapt and use “MMOG” and “MMOFPS”… well now it’s time to create a new one. WAR is being unofficially labeled as a MMORvRG or a Massively Multiplayer Online Realm vs. Realm Game.
What does taking out the RPG do? In WAR it seems that we’re presented with a role reversal. Usually the players are the ones starting out in the world as fledglings and work their way through the game, the story, and the levels on their way to becoming a hero. Your character will advance and parts of the game will begin to unfold before you as you continue to discover what role you are playing in the game. I’ll use EQ2 as an example because that was/is, in my opinion, one of the best games for the feeling of immersion and “belonging” in the world. My character began in the world by taking his first steps on a grand journey. As he progressed, so did my immersion in the world. I would be lead to bigger cities, outposts, and posts naturally in a world that was fairly seamless.  I owned property, obtained items of great ‘value’, and felt like I was firmly grounded in a ‘real’ world along with the rest of the population. In many ways, the style of game I am referring to feels more like I am living the life of my character – hence the “role playing”.
In WAR I am not taking on this role of living the life of my character and entrenching myself in the world. As I have said before, I am more removed and in control. The scope of the game is such that, in many aspects, it almost takes on an arcade feel; but then at the same time it doesn’t.  I’m participating in events and battles taking place in the broader scope of the world but at the same time doing quests and dungeons. WAR is somewhere between the arcade the the rpg feel. Not a bad place to be, but definitely different from anything we’re used to so far in the industry.
It’s very interesting to analyze stuff like this. It makes me wonder where the future of the industry is going. These games are slowly — slooowwwwly — evolving (or trying to evolve in some cases) from what they were a decade ago. Is the EQ2 style (I consider this a “standard” mmorpg – not to be confused with the “EQ Model”) on the way out and a more hybrid form taking its place? Now that the genre has officially taken another step in the evolutionary process, it’s up to the next wave of games (I’m looking at you 38 Studios and Bioware!) to decide if these are traits they want to adopt or if they’ll rule them out and strike out on their own path. Fascinating stuff!
There’s probably plenty of people who like games that are more about socializing and doing things with other people than slaughtering everything you come across. I think there will always be games like EQ2 to balance the PK games.
I don’t know what a next generation MMO would be like, but I would expect to find the signs of ones in the smaller, indie games, where they can be refined and later copied by other games.
I’m still not convinced that squad based PvP is a great fit for an MMO, despite WAR’s success so far.
I enjoy Warhammer very much don’t get me wrong, but I really do miss a strong immersion, I like nothing more than to feel like my character is me, or vice versa. I feel Warhammer overshot it a bit. Not enough immersion, I don’t feel connected enough to the game to play relentlessly as I’ve done with games in the past. I hope future games find a better balance.
I think it (WAR’s style) found a niche, and quite a healthy one based on the current stagnant state of the mmo market. It’s even more than the PvP style though that separates it. It’s the lack of the roleplaying game elements that have me in this state of flux saying “I wants my immersion!” and “I love the pickup and go nature of WAR!”
You phrased it well saying that they overshot it a bit. Now whether or not this can be considered a “bad” thing is totally unforeseeable right now. We’re seeing a lot of people uncomfortable, myself included, with their comfort zone changing. Where the next mmorpgs to come out take us will decide if we have to adopt a new style or continue down the same path.
One thing is for sure, immersion be damned, the game is fun.
Nice read Keen and I agree WAR is fun. My question is which one of these types of mmo’s will hold your attention longer?
One with immersion and storylines that intrigue or ones where you whack players with clubs and tactics? I guess I’m just old school D & D…I want to be a part of a different world where things change from day to day and mysterious figures come and go. A place where magic is alive. I also think there is a mmoRPG launching very soon that may just fit my wishes 🙂
@Russel: I think the “WAR Model”, as I will call it, has a lot of staying power because of its simplicity. It has the longevity of a never-ending struggle for territorial domination and the staying power of realm-pride. This is precisely what the “standard model” lacks. However, the “standard model” has all the things you just listed that give it staying power.
It’s almost like “Which would I rather have tonight: Italian or Mexican?” Both are so dang good, sometimes I just can’t decide.
I’d like to see a fantasy MMO that has no level grind. So basically it’s like a FPS but with magic, bows, and swords (so your own personal skill, not your characters). Of course, the PVP combat could work (as I’ve seen multiplayer games like this before) but the big question is how to do you include quests with a system like this?
Agree. I was actually torn for a while because I love immersion, it’s one of my motivators for playing an MMO. But Warhammer does other things so well and is so neatly designed for it that I felt compelled to play it regardless.
But it’s near impossible to immerse in Warhammer. Too many metagaming things lift your focus away from being a character, and into ‘what should I, the player, do next?”
I’m glad a game like WAR has come along and left me to play and have fun without sucking me into immersion so far I can’t get out. For me, WoW did this to me and sucked me in so far I couldn’t get out…grinding and playing without really enjoying it for quite some time.
Now WAR has come along to give me the fun things I enjoy, questing and PvP, without getting too involved. Or maybe its the 6/7 days a week, 4-5 hour raids I miss, zapping all form of a functional life from me. NOT! Now a few days a week of keep-sieging that go on all day with people coming and going as they please. I’m loving it and hoping MMOs evolve this way.
As many have said, WAR is great fun but for me it’s great fun more like most single player / online squad games. It just doesn’t feel social enough to warrant the MMO tag. Right now as I type this I have WOW in the background, I’m just sitting in a city and the immersion is immense. I am so aware of other living, breathing players.
And so it comes down to this: both good games but which deserves a monthly fee? Wow, without a question.
Personally I don’t think that WAR really set some standard that all future games of the genre will adopt. As you said, it’s a somewhat different game anyway, targeting a different market segment. It might appeal to some people who used to play MMORPGs until now, but they did so because there just wasn’t enough diversity among the options they had. Now that the whole market is reaching maturity, we’ll see more differentiated games, WAR probably being the first.
Still there are different types of players, and not everyone will be drawn in by the WAR model, The comments here alone show this. And companies will try to bring out games for those as well.
For me, while I somewhat enjoy WAR currently, it has also severe drawbacks. It’s interesting that you feel like the player is more in control, because for me it sure doesn’t feel that way. I’m only at the end of tier 2 yet, lacking time to play due to RL constraints right now and also having severe, still unresolved performance issues. However, from the point my character entered the world until now I have been following ‘one’ road; there are no crossroads, no points where I have to decide which direction to go. Thus, I’m not really feeling ‘in control’, but rather constrained by the game which leads from tier 1 to tier 2 to tier 3 to tier 4. It appears frustratingly linear regarding the storyline. Jumping into a different pairing doesn’t help either, because it just means exchanging two linear stories; and there aren’t any real connections either.
Of course, I have different options in terms of what I’d like to do, but it’s just a decision among different types of gameplay, not among different directions.
All in all, it feels like I’m doing something here and something there, but there’s no greater picture and I’m just being tossed around by the game.
i read the numbers posted somewhere and i cant remember where, but there was an article tracking WARs numbers as well as several other games. WARs release didnt technically hurt wows numbers very much, it did really hurt team fortress 2’s numbers though. thats interesting to me. from the numbers in the article it appeared that WAR pulled players from tf2 and then a lot out of thin air, seemingly increasing the market instead of just shifting it around like everyone assumed it would.
i know that tf2 was the first game i turned to when i got tired of wow. i think its not far off base to say that WAR is a mix of tf2 and wow. more wow than tf2 i think, but still a mix.
keens article is interesting, but it leaves the question for me, “is my game ok without immersion?”. absolutely. i love tf2 and theres no immersion in that game for me. WAR is an mmo so people are looking for the immersion, but maybe they need to be looking at it like they look at tf2 instead.
anyone remember that knights tale movie with heath ledger? i remember going to see it and i got real pissed when the crowd starting singing we will rock you. i was like, wtf? this isnt realistic at all! as the movie went on though, i came to realize it wasnt meant to be historically correct, it was meant to be enjoyable. once i changed how i saw the movie i really liked it. this thing with WAR may possibly be similar, we just need to change our viewpoint on it.
Immersion…
I think WAR is about being immersed in, well, a war. They added all the PvE, cutesy stuff because it just works within an MMO and people need that to fall back on, but overall, this game is an endgame, player run war. That’s how I see it anyway.
Exactly, Odius. That’s how I see it as well. I think WAR, in many ways, is closer to an action game than a RPG. “RPG-Lite” I guess? It’s an interesting mix of action and massively multiplayer.
How weird. I had just responded to a post you made on commonsensegamer.com regarding “WAR or EQ2” trying to verbalize how WAR seems much more like a traditional “game/video(?)game” to me than other MMORPGs I’ve played–when I came across this blog entry where you basically address a similar sentiment.
I wonder if the social tools WAR gives us (whether PQs, scenario grouping, etc) have any impact on that RPG-lite feel? Basically anything we want to do is a mere keyboard tap or two away. If you think of any standard MMORPG, grouping and getting things accomplished en masse (unless you are in an established guild) can often feel like an epic saga in itself. Not the case here, IMHO.
I mean, WAR has the history and the lore and it certainly isn’t glossed over in-game with things like tome unlocks and xps for exploring certain areas and discovering new regions. My experience with the WAR community thus far has been great. My only complaint is there hasn’t been enough of it.
In a sense, there might be something to sitting around a city with a half-full party spamming “LFM blah blah blah.” It’s tedious, frustrating, and I hope to never have to do it again. But that’s where some of my bonds were formed–B.S.ing with the other unfortunates in my group.
I know I may be TOTALLY off-base with this, but do you think there is some element of how grouping works in WAR (and the ease of it) that may actually DETRACT slightly from that random socializing–which in turn may lead to that RPG-lite feel?
It’s rare, but I’ve actually been in a random PQ where NO ONE said ANYTHING to anyone else. They make it SO easy sometimes that we can forgo the random “meet-and-greets” and jovialities and get right down to bidness.
I absolutely think that the ease at which everything happens in WAR has detracted from the socialization. In a way, WAR has removed a lot of the tedium yet removed a lot of the, ironically, good things that came as a result.
I have to disagree I think the immersion is different. Last night I and 40+ destruction rolled through order keeps, and when we were mounted riding to the next keep, man I felt like I was a part of something. It felt good…real good. I think the immersion is different, it’s more built around realm, and/or guild immersion instead of self immersion. Just my 2 cents.
@Keen: That’s the conclusion I’m coming to as well. Many of the core differences between WAR and other MMORPGs are about convenience. Less tedium as you say (though that’s subjective). And it turns out, convenience is the bane of social interactions, or at least certain social interactions… and that leaves a feeling of being less immersed.
There’s also no central place where everyone is standing at the same mailbox or AH. The Guild Hall (Viper’s Pit) is supposed to be the social nexus, but it doesn’t open until Guild Rank 6 and no binding there until Guild Rank 17… by the time most players have that available they’ve never had the chance to form social habits there.
Oddly, some of the social stuff is inconvenient. D’oh.
To me, the proof that it’s still an MMORPG with the RPG included, is that this actually concerns players. I’d hardly call it an MMORvRG because honestly on my server, not much RvR goes on aside from the late night easy exchange of Keep. Maybe you could call it MMOScenarioG. =P
It’s funny, i was discussing this at lunch with a coworker.
WAR definitely feels more like an arcade or console game. Especially with the tiered system where you can’t really go back. In a way, it’s so much more two-dimensional than a traditional MMO.
But i think this comes from the fact that people want to do something useful while leveling up. Not just rush to level cap, and then start playing the game. Mythic had to balance the game around that, and the Tiered 2-D feel was a consequence of their implementation.
I think the MMO genre will quickly evolve in a MMOFPS. I mean, hell. Take warcraft for instance, the game doesn’t start until you cap, the material before then is just subscription-fee-padding.
Warcraft has introduced something else too: The MSORPG: Massively Singleplayer Online RPG. You level alone, grind alone, quest alone. In fact, grouping before 70 is usually detrimental to your progress. Then when you hit 70, the massively single player content continues in the Battlegrounds… and now they are pushing 1 vs 1 arenas too. I miss the old EQ/DAOC days when you basically HAD to group up to progress quickly (that ended with the necro in daoc).
I think Shadowbane was a game on the right track… Infinite levels, and diminishing returns.
@dyabeetus
Speaking of knights tale, I like that movie because it gives a great blend of immersion (great scenery, props and modeling) and weird immersion-breaking anachronisms.
Anyway, I feel plenty immersed in WAR, not as much as other games i suppose, but yeah – I can pretend i’m an orc just spawned from fungus, rumbling about and clobberin’ stuntees.
What if the game was all “generic” – good graphics, but you’re just a guy with cool armor and weapons. The abilities are named like “Attack 1 – 10” “Bolt 1-10”, “Heal 1-10” and the monsters are all the same.
Would that game get boring because of lack of immersion, or because of lack of flavor? Is immersion and flavor the same? Can they exist without each other?
Howdy,
I’m confused by what exactly immersion is. I don’t see me feeling any less immersed then say WoW. I feel a greater need to “learn the land”, know where the Green smelly pigs from hell come from, and where I can cut them off. I’m always evaluating how Order is doing in our battle overall, and getting together with the guild to see where we can cause havoc.
The only reason there was a ton of folks in the major cities in Wow was because there was NOTHING to do. And you had to be there to be there per the Goblin in the Tux. And if I remember correctly there wasn’t a lot of folks in the major cities when WoW first game out, because everyone was leveling/raiding. (*Side note memory: Oh that first time seeing Ragnarock was a great moment!)
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Blizzard, and I paid wow every month from WOW launch until WAR launch. But I just am missing the point/confused on what exactly is more immersive about WoW then WAR.
And how is WAR more arcady then WoW? Are they not basically the exact same model?
Man I love this site, so many great topics to make ya think.
Oh well, I guess it’s time for me to quit playing these games since I’m a roleplayer. 😐
I feel the same way as Howdy Doody. These posts do make my head spin; they are very thought provoking.
I logged into WoW yesterday and found myself chatting with some friends while standing in Shat doing nothing. I wonder how much of my WoW time was spent standing in a city waiting for a queue to pop.
I refuse to over analyze this game. My criteria for determining whether or not the game is good, is quite simple for me. I am having a blast with WAR. I really do not have a desire to play WoW atm. As far as the immersion issue is concerned, to each his own. The game is great, I love playing it.
@tenfoldhate – I agree with what you said there. Standing around looking for a group was definitely a good social expierience.
@Pierre – MSORPG, nice. I come from playing a P2P MMO and always having Guild Wars on the side for when I want something new, so I understand the solo feel of an MMO. I went from Uo to DAoC, so I don’t have the EQ expierience, but DAoC was definitely more group driven which I really liked for the PvE content. But like I said earlier, WAR is about war, so most ‘hardcore killers’ don’t care about who they meet in PvE; they want to meet people in PvP/RvR. Don’t get me wrong. I feel the shell shock. It’s like waking up to a new world, but I like it and will stick around a for a while.
@Wickidd – Just saw your post after I posted mine, and I agree with the standing around thing. Exactly how much time did I waste not just chatting with friends but looking for a group. I love being able to just enter a PQ and accomplish something. I know my curiousity/desire will take me to the PvE dungeons, but I have a guild for that and am not too overly worried.
@Cedia – Also wanted to address this. If what you mean by “these games” is MMOs, you don’t need to quit them. EQ2 was awesome for RP due to the incredible immersion you had. There was so much to do and SOE releases content for it constantly (at least it did). WAR seems a little bit more difficult to RP in because of the lack of tools they give you, but it is possible. Phoenix Throne (as crowded as it is) has a great RP community so far.
I think what the “WAR model” is about is what we see in many countries today, pride for your country and your fellow countrymen more than pride for yourself as a single individual. I feel that I’m part of something much much bigger in WAR than just myself and my urge to enlarge my epeen heroism.
“Ask not what your Realm can do for you, but what you can do for your Realm!”
@Keen
Hi keen i would like to hear ur opinion, but you dont think that WAR is always the same?? I dont see really pvp, i just see zerg vs zerg, i dont see player with real skills.
Dps do damage without stop, healers heal from the back, and tanks thrown into the crowd, thats all… I dont know if people understand for rvr this zerg vs zerg, but i tough it will be more fun, with more skill, i think that alterac valley or any other bg in wow has more of rvr that war :S
I dont know why, but all my chars are at lvl 13, and the only thing i do are bgs 5 hours x day, and always the same routine, zerg, zerg, and more zerg, and if the oposite team has more lvl than us, sure is lost..
@Marcus:
Try something new then, try playnig a scenario with a group of friends, try using tactics (like who does what, not the passive buffs tactics). Yes in PUGs there’s zerg vs zerg, but when we enter as a guild we work together, communicate and destroy Order unless there’s a group of Order players doing the same only better 😛
I agree in that todays MMORPG is definitely catering to the faster “arcade” style compared to pioneering games like EQ1. I enjoy both styles and both have their positive and negative aspects to them.
One big aspect I feel todays MMORPG is missing, and that is key in these games, is community feel. People just don’t talk in todays games. Unfortunately WAR suffers from this quite a bit. Plain and simply I blame the mechanic of leveling todays MMORPG uses. Allowing players to solo from 1-max level in these games IS a problem. I’m sure there are many people that totally disagree with me here but this is my reasoning behind it.
Solo questing is just that solo questing. Todays MMORPGs use this huge chain of quests that really end up being a blur of “Okay so now I gotta go here and kill 10 of this to get some exp”. Rinse and repeat a good 500 or so times and you’re max level YAY! Saddly given the ability to complete all of these quests alone you’re likely to not meet many other players.
Now let me go back to EQ1. For those that never played this game questing really didn’t exist other than 1 really long quest each class got that finished with them getting a really nice class specific item. Leveling therefore was not a huge blurry mesh of quest after quest. In fact you couldn’t level without omg grouping, and omg there was downtime.
So you say omg no quests how do you level?? You did it the old fashion way of finding a nice group of people to exp with and find a nice spot to exp at. Sprinkle in named npcs that dropped usually good specific loot to spice up the exp grinding and you got yourself a good time. Add to that some downtime waiting on spawns etc and you’ll find some fun stuff to chat about and make either friends or foes with those people. This all adds to the community feel of the game. Gives the player another reason to log in and maybe see the person they exp’d with last night on again today so they can group up and explore a new dungeon today. This is something I personally miss from EQ1 and think is key in making a GREAT MMORPG period.
Saddly it’s hard to see this type of MMORPG mechanic again with huge name studio titles that focus on money as THE priority. Sure lets make the game easy to level up in so that jimbos grandma might play it and not find it too hard. This kind of attitude really kills alot of good ideas out there by putting the dollar above all.
Don’t get me wrong I understand the whole catering to the masses strategy but give me back the need to group to accomplish things instead of the never ending solo quest grind. This easy mechanic makes communities become communities in these games. I mean if I didn’t already have friends to play WAR with I really don’t think I would have made any yet in the game and that’s leveling a 33 dok and a 27 sorc so far, I can’t say that’s a good thing to say when playing an MMORPG. Anyways I’ll end my epic novel with a short cliff note for those that don’t want to read paragraphs.
1. Today’s MMORPGS lack community feel
2. Reason: easy to solo level off never ending quests
3. Solution: force players to group to level
4. grouping = player communication = community omgz
One more note. This is how I analyzed why EQ1 was so good in it’s early years. Leveling required the ability to play your class well enough to group and for the player to not be retarded as well. You ask how? Well since leveling could only be accomplished by grouping you either A. could not play your class well or B. were a jackass or a retard. You simply would not level because no one would group with you. The leveling system, in essence, was an anti noob filter. If you were 10 chances are you would never see the end game in EQ1. If you were a total retard, you would never see the end game in EQ1. This, in turn, made the community that much better by weeding out the majority of bad seeds in the leveling process. K I’m done, time to A. sleep. B. wait for this scenario to pop. C. play fallout 3 because I’m bad like that. or D. wait for the scenario while playing fallout 3. D it is!
@Marcus: WAR is definitely a lot of the “same” in the early levels and much of it does feel like a zerg. The skill vs. skill comes later when organized groups wander around and find organized groups. Skill comes into play when taking keeps in lightning fast strikes. It comes when you queue for a scenario with your full group (or queue 2 at the same time to try to get both in together) and happen to go against another pre-made. HFG (Happy Fun Guyz, my guild) has had several of these skill vs. skill encounters and we’ve both won and lost them. They are a lot of fun and they most definitely exist.
I too recommend you mix things up. Don’t always go at WAR from the same angle. Try doing scenarios and quests one day, and PQ’s and dungeons or open-rvr another. There is so much variety in WAR that it has made the game feel a little overwhelming to some. Mix it up!
@Sicc: I agree with the entirety of your comment and really appreciate you taking the time to write it up. 🙂 I agree that grouping = community and that having to work together, in something that took more than a decisions to actually do it, caused people to weed themselves out. I long for those days again.
I agree with Sicc as well, but it’s something I don’t think the clock can be turned back for.
It’s a lot like the initial PK days of Ultima Online, a lot of players found that fun, but it’s an era gone once other options were available. It just couldn’t be redone now with the same mechanics, very few players would have the patience / tolerance for it.
So what’s needed are new mechanics, to somehow magically give us enough convenience so players will actually play, but not in such a way that it breaks the social, immersion and just RPG aspects of MMORPG.
Its true that new MMOs like WAR and WOW have chosen a design philosophy that is solo-friendly, and in which leveling is generally easier and faster. In the process they have lost the community and the roleplaying that made the older games like EQ1, SWG and DAOC attractive to a large segment of the population.
Although I am part of the largest guild on Phoenix Throne/Destruction (Ravens of War), and although its primarily composed of players who played on Percival server in DAOC (which was a roleplaying server), and although they are all great people, I am experiencing zero actual roleplaying in WAR at the moment. Its not the fault of the people, its simply part of the game design and a lack of roleplaying is almost a necessary byproduct of the game design. The game is fast paced leaving little time to chat, there are no timesinks that encourage you to pause and chat with your group mates etc. The whole game is fast-paced and encourages you to be *doing something* right now. The PvE environment is shallow overall, and exploration is of limited interest.
I think this model has proven very effective in attracting subscribers (obviously since WOW is so tremendously popular) and will be the approach taken by most new MMOs (since profits are their ultimate goal as companies), but it does leave a real gap in terms of player enjoyment and immersion that most of the players of games like WOW and WAR will end up missing out on.
When I played EQ1 I was amazed at the sheer size of the world. I only ever saw a tiny portion of the entire world before leaving for DAOC. In DAOC I also encountered a large world although no where near on the same scale. The PvE environments were interesting enough to make me want to explore and immersion was only aided by the minimal reliance on instancing. SWG was the cream of the crop for immersive environments I think and its sad that it lost its great potential due to a badly designed and maintained game (It should be the largest IP MMO in existence if it had been well implemented as I swear there isn’t more than a handful of people who own a computer who haven’t also viewed Star Wars at some time. Instead it languishes as a sub-sub-standard game). In SWG you could wander over entire planets that would take days to explore in their entirety assuming you weren’t killed by the dangerous mobs there. The planets were not divided up into zones in the same way as they are in most modern games, and because there was essentially no instancing (with rare exceptions like housing), because the mobs seemed to follow a sort of ecology, and because of elements like player created cities, the game was extremely immersive. I have yet to find that level of immersion in any other game I have tried so far. The biggest destroyer of immersion for me is instancing. Games that keep it down to the mimimum seem more immersive to me. Games that have huge zones to explore, with massive PvE environments are more immersive. Games that encourage social interaction and grouping are more social and build a better community.
Games that are designed to let you log in, solo, engage in PvP/RvR immediately and never have to interact with another individual if you don’t want to are completely non-immersive. I think one of the essential features of their success is the fact that such a game design has attracted the same players who used to play FPS style games.
The average FPS player doesn’t ever view themselves *as* their character, their character is just a figure on screen that they could easily change for a different one without any sense of loss or association. Modern games seem to have given up on trying to encourage attachment to your character in the manner that more tradtional, immersive MMORPGs seem to have encouraged. Hell I feel much more attachment to my superheroes and villains in City of Heroes/Villains than I do to any of my WAR characters. Its not even close. However my superheroes/villains can’t hold a candle to my SWG character or any of the ones I played in DAOC even.
For this reason, while I enjoy WAR, I think it is ultimately a rather shallow game. I am sure it will be tremendously popular and successful, but I am not sure it has the long term staying power and attraction for me that any game with a serious amount of immersion will hold for me. I might have to break down and try EQ2 and I am seriously considering it.