WAR-Colored Glasses

This year's MMO competition has finally been kicked off this week with the genre's first major player, Funcom/Eidos's Age of Conan, finally being released to the general public amidst great fanfare, the inevitable launch issues, and press. Aside from the 800-pound (or 800g) Gorilla known as World of Warcraft, AoC has been widely regarded as WAR's greatest competitor in the fight for subscribers and interest in "something new".

I have to say, watching the community post on the various things that have happened with the AoC launch this past week, including Early Access controversy, pushbacks, and other problems with perceptions of the game versus its reality, you'd think the game was dead in the water or soon on its way to be. Affected by whiners, unproductive posters, notions of immaturity, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement, the Age of Conan looks to be well on its way to the Age of Complaining.

EA Mythic has been quiet about the AoC launch, but that isn't preventing fans of WAR from speaking about how the WAR release will outdo AoC's, that WAR is doing right where AoC is doing so much wrong, and that once the WAR machine gets rolling, nothing will stand in its way. In fact, not surprisingly, so much right is happening with WAR that people are more than willing to plant a flag in the ground and declare it the MMO that will get everything right.

As a person who is excited about the WAR release and what it has to offer, totally confident in the amazing things promised by its developers, as well as a forum sucker - I mean, volunteer - for one of the major WAR fansites, here's what I have to say.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Look, I'm behind the folks at EA Mythic and WAR all the way. It's going to be good, I get it. But if you seriously think that WAR is going to be some kind of messiah or utopia of online gaming, you are terribly mistaken, and you should probably be disappointed now and just quit, because you're going to later anyway. While the standards of a good community and good game design are certainly changing and are being raised every day, they are nowhere near a sudden renaissance of awesome MMOs, WoW be damned. The people who are sitting there laughing their asses off at the problems that AoC is having are the same people who will probably be upset or inexplicably surprised when WAR goes through some of the same.

I'm an admitted cynic. As much as I'd like to believe in the best when it comes to this, I have to really prepare for the worst. The MMO community is evolving, but it's a slow, arduous process. There are certain things that are far from being gone from MMOs, even WAR, and believing otherwise means you're wearing WAR-Colored Glasses that blind you worse than Paul Barnett's cheap dimestore versions. Here's some of the more ridiculous claims of idealism I've seen:

-The community is going to be mature - This is one of the more common ones I see. People think that with good game design will comes a maturing of the community that plays it, that jerkoffs and malcontents will not bother to apply. Actually, the opposite is more likely to be true. If a game is good, more people will play. The more people that play, the more likely any of them are mouth-breathing little who like to refer to private parts every other sentence and who make XBox Live a cesspool. The MMO audience has become larger and more diverse - don't expect any game, even WAR, to have any good way of weeding out the crap of the crop.

-The launch will be stable - After playing a number of games and going through a bunch of launches, none of them have been without any problems. Server crashes, bugs, last-minute messups with access - these are the norm and companies can only prepare for so much. Minimizing the stupid last-minute nonsense that happens on launch, including people who declare failure for the game because they had to login at 12:02AM instead of 12:00AM, is a dance that many developers have learned to deal with. If you think for one second that WAR is not going to launch without at least one or two messed-up things happening, I have a bridge, a house, and an oversized lizard to sell you. The devil is in the details - don't expect a flawless launch, but expect that EA Mythic will address problems right away and provide updates.

-The game will be balanced (or insert unrealistically perfect game mechanic here) - There are certain things that are incredibly subjective and frankly aren't able to be achieved just because you can never please everyone. Game balance is one of them. Game developers have tried their best to do this, but don't kid yourself - nerf and buff posts and threads will happen, people will show that they exploit the mechanics of a class to the point of having everyone play the same way, and the obsessive min/maxers will expose a lot of weaknesses. Prepare yourself for the inevitable "Armchair Development" posts that will probably make Combat and Careers strike team lead Adam Gershowitz want to reach through the screen and whack people across the face to match posting about how the class balance is like being slapped. Any MMO, even WAR, that has any kidn of differentiation in classes will always have balance problems.

-The game will steal away most subscribers and cause other games to die - By merit of the fact that WAR is going to be a unique entity in the MMO business, this claim is made even more ridiculous. No game has ever stolen subscribers, really - the fact is, a good game comes along, people will play it, and if the games already in the industry can't stay relevant, they sink. The landscape is also greatly changed with how WoW has dominated the industry. Lofty predictions that WAR will be the MMO to end all MMOs are better made after the results show themselves and not before. If EA Mythic wanted to guarantee failing on some level, they'd make the cardinal mistake of having one eye on their stuff and the other on the competition's, instead of having both damn eyes on their development. Don't look for the "WoW-killer" - look for a decently designed game.

There are so many more of these, but they take up so much space I'd probably bore people more than I already am with this wall of text. The point is, combine this idealism with a healthy dose of the WAR Bubble I mentioned in previous articles, and you have a recipe for disappointment, if not outright disaster when it comes to community postings. There's nothing like a person who expects unrealistic things from a game, suddenly having their hopes and dreams crushed by a healthy dose of reality and soberness. It's safe to say that WAR will be a solid game. Just don't delude yourself into thinking it'll be perfect.




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