The Warhammer Online Saga Ending In December 2013
September 19, 2013 by brennon
Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, the online MMORPG is leaving the hands of EA and Mythic at the end of the year and this points to the game being shutdown as a result.
I never actually got fully into this game due to lack of funds but I did play the Free Forever trial and had a lot of fun with friends when playing. It will be sad to see it go as I was holding out for the whole thing going Free To Play soon.
Through an open letter they talked about some of the awesome things that were in the pipeline that never were, including a F2P model that would be rolled out to impress the Asian market. As well as that an expansion looking at the Vampires of Sylvania was on the cards too. Why none of this happened, I guess we'll never know.
While this is certainly a video gaming story it was still ace to be immersed in the world of Warhammer Fantasy with your friends and they told an ace story. I guess EA were afraid of putting more money into this, especially with Creative Assembly and Sega picking up the Warhammer Fantasy license.
That seems to be where the future lies for Warhammer Fantasy. A Total War style game would go down well I reckon!
Did you enjoy your time in Age of Reckoning?
Had real fun playing this MMO from its start and in its heyday, the Tier 1 & 2 sieges were loads of fun. IMO, this games main failure was with the early developers mindset of get a big subscription base and fleece the game and get out. They never really had the plans to make the game flourish and were happy with 500k subscriptions as long as they stood around for 2-3 years. That is prob why MARK JACOBS left, amongst other reasons. He saw what was coming and would rather not be a part of it.
Mythic dropped the ball. Bioware had a great idea with Wrath of Heroes but couldn’t sustain it I assume. I really really hope that SEGA & CA can do other games in the Wfb world that are not just RTS, which makes sense for Wfb, but this world needs more games that will draw people into the lore and fluff. Immerse me in a narrative has never really happened for Wfb, so please deliver us from this darkness !!!!
I’m sure that it’s not the case for some of the employees but it does feel like they just completely disregarded the game and left it to rot. Paul Barnett, when he first did the interviews for this game was absolutely filled with enthusiasm for it and then once it had hit and been out for a while the game just kind of lingered.
I’m fairly sure, if not 90% certain that if they had invested the time and money into making this a F2P title it would have done well. This has worked for plenty of MMO’s in the past including Lord of the Rings Online, Conan and The Old Republic. I just think there was no care or attention put into building this into a continued opportunity.
Wrath of Heroes was fun but lacked any kind of meaningful substance and I reckon that if they had done what Turbine did with LotRO they could have been on to a winner.
It’s F2P and you can go anywhere you like building up your levels where you see fit but if you want to access quests and content in some areas of the game world, you have to pay…and it’s not like people wouldn’t have done this.
As you say it’s a shame really that a game that had so much potential kind of drifted off into nowhere for so many years. I had a lot of fun on it with friends as I said and I’m sure I would have spent the money I have now spent on LotRO on this if I’d had the chance to play it a certain way.
Creative Assembly and Sega should be able to make something good out of this I would hope. People have been crying out for a proper strategy game since Mark of Chaos (and before that…and during) and I think they could deliver it. The Old World as a starting point – choose a race and fight it out but have mechanics in it that set it apart from just a glorified mod of Total War. Then you can just add on the New World with an expansion 😉
I started playing WAR when it launched but unfortunately it didn’t keep me for too long (think I got to about lvl21-22?) before I stopped. I gave it a second go a while later, when all the starting zones had changed, but again didn’t keep me for long. For me it was a shame as I was really looking forward to the game and being able to wander the Old World.
What put me off initially was the server lag – walk into Altdorf and the game would grind to a halt – it was just horrific watching the screen update 1 frame at a time. The monster of a crafting system was also an issue, I believe this was later massively revamped. But for me the final nail in the coffin was RvR – not being a big PvP fan (or mainly sucking at it! :)) I much prefer the PvE content, and the RvR focus of the game left me a bit wanting. Again a shame.
Just have to wait and see what happens to 40k Eternal Crusade…..
It wont be missed, the game wasn’t all that fun from launch until now and wasn’t worth a subscription fee for what you got. It was too PvP oriented with many balance issues that were never addressed.