WAR: Impressions – Returning

It’s been about 3 months since I stopped playing Warhammer Online, but yesterday I resubscribed for a month and spent a good few hours playing.

Why I left

Gameplay

Getting bored with the barrier of access into Tier 4, no open warbands etc, and not noticing guild running.

Lack of interest in Bracket 3 scenarios with PUGs, and the general dislike of forming pre-mades.

I also found Tiers 2 and 3 very repetative, and disliked levelling a zone, taking a keep, moving to the next, most of the time without seeing the enemy.

Not much to do when enemies don’t show.

Other Games

Yeah, Guild Wars 2 came out, and I enjoyed that for a while, running events and the World vs World was great for a while, then it just hit me and I couldn’t find the motivation to log into the game.

The end-game for me is the World vs World, and once you have the gear from that, it all seems a bit pointless, apart from the enjoyment of the fights running around with my guild, which was enough for a while, eventually decreased. After playing Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot, a game without Realm / Renown points and abilities feels a bit bland, there needs to be progression in RvR.

As an altoholic I spent a bunch of time leveling up alts, but in the end it is just repeating the same process, my main character had completed most of the other races content, and the only difference would be the story. The story isn’t enough to justify playing something (SWTOR).

Why I Came Back

I spent a month playing Dark Age of Camelot but tuned down my playing (Still have a month left on account) for similar reasons to why I left WAR in the first place, the barriers of entry into RvR were too great, and I couldn’t actually break into it to actually enjoy it.

I missed instant fights – Tier 1 was the best experience (Yeah yeah, there is Wrath of Heroes, but that is essentially group fights, I live for large scale).

I missed open warbands – the hop in and hop out style of play, other games it feels like you have to make a commitment to forming groups etc.

I missed the combat mechanics – things you take for granted, casting knockbacks vs always interruptions, mounted speed vs super speed spells and sprint.

I missed the atmosphere and art – the Warhammer world is great and I love it.

3 months is enough time to feel like things are new again.

There is a new live event that I want to experience.

City Sieges players have been reduced and instances have been limited, promoting fights.

Single currency changes are incoming.

What I did

Naturally, the first thing that I did when I came back, as many others do, is log into the game, look around, not see any actions and then log out. Granted this was in the morning UK time, you can’t expect much action to be found then. (Lets have some content we can do in the RvR lakes when other players aren’t here please)

Later I came on and did about 4 zone captures in Tier 3, some we had fights which were nice, others were empty zone takes 😦

Finally I came on for a city siege on my main to test out the new reduced size and 3 instance limit, I entered a city with only myself as Order and faced over 30 Destruction, my guild formed a group and I left the instance, eventually we joined one where only a few destruction were. After we defeated them they didn’t come back. Once we finished that instance we found another with a ton of destruction, we had to call for help and a warband looking for a fight (I know right???) joined us and we had a few great battles. My internet disconnected at the end of Stage 2 so I went to bed and didn’t finish it.

So after my first day back, I had a mixed experience. I know why I left, and many of the problems are still here. I don’t hold out hope for any big fixes to this, but know that Keaven is doing his best. Even so, it’s nice to be back and experience the world even if I will change up again next month.