Today my Warhammer subscription officially lapsed. That means, my toons will be on cold storage until I decide to come back, whenever that will be.
I’ve followed Warhammer since the dawn of code. My Beta account was created as one of the triple-digit ones, I’ve played through the first and second iteration of the UI, watched my Warrior Priest change a few times, played Nordenwatch during the days of the “invisible” bug, captured Keeps, and rolled template careers.
In that time I filed literally hundreds of bug reports. Most were fixed. I can honestly claim, I care about Warhammer, love its concept, and love the idea behind it.
But, alas, some things just need fixing before I decide to spend money on this game.
The client is insanely laggy. There is a very discernible disconnect between action and display. Often my damaging attacks have long waned when the casting animation still ramps up. For a fast paced game like Warhammer, this is death. Cooldowns are important, and even more so in the case of Black Orc and Swordmaster, whom depend upon knowing what they just casted.
The game is linear and seems to actively discourage taking stops. If I have a story line to play through, I want to take my time. I want to see things I won’t be seeing anymore once I level up. RvR lakes, Scenarios, and many other areas are just inaccessible to anyone too high of level. However, the game’s dynamics (and the power-leveler mindset of its players) encourage quick leveling. Mythic really needs to re-think grading guilds on their members’ ranks and instead implement means to encourage staying and looking.
The games’ loot system is unusable for the open and dynamic nature of its grouping mechanisms. It promotes greed over progression and rewards soloists over group-minded people. Especially in Tiers with low population or for off-peak players, this is an issue.
Scenarios are not at all balanced. Playing a scenario in which three careers can decide the outcome through knockbacks is frustrating to say the least. Class balance in general is good albeit flawed. DPS-oriented healers and tanks dominate, while defensive tanks and healing focused healers often get the shaft.
I don’t expect Mythic to work on those things exclusively. But I’d have hoped to see these things fixed before new classes are introduced.
I’m not giving up on it, far be I from it. But I’ll be spending my time farming ridiculously nerfed WoW instances and complaining about Blizzard’s inability to balance the game until WotLK or Warhammer client fixes, whichever comes first.
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