Death of a Game: Warhammer Online 

*Death of a Game: Warhammer Online *Shows EA logo at the start of the video "well that was fast.." *closes video

WoW did indeed feel threatened by this games release, in fact, the entire achievements system was basically stolen from Warhammer.

This game was revolutionary. The Tome of Knowledge was the first rewarding achievement system. Everything this game innovated was later appropriated by WoW.

I downloaded Return of Reckoning about three weeks ago and have been playing religiously. So glad the fans resurrected the game and are actively developing it. I'd say the RvR balance is superior now compared to the retail version, though I wished they could figure out how to add all the missing Tome entries.

This was honestly the MMO I had the most fun with by far, I miss it often. I honestly believe if the game had a rerelease with slight tweaks, balancing and engine+graphics upgrades it could be successful. I'm not really sure why but this MMO just gripped me far stronger than any other PvP game I've played.

The saddest thing about this game is that it had a few really really AMAZING ideas.

STILL one of the best intros for any game, ever.

I'm playing this game 2020, there are thousands of players, massive battles. This game got resurrected!

0:01 - EA's logo. Mystery solved.

how to destroy a game: let EA touch it

This game was worth its existence because it allowed me to play as a Warrior Priest. Hands down the best healing class I've ever played - because it didn't feel like a healing class!

I wish they would come out with a 2019 version of this game. The pvp was so good in this game.

It hurts my soul how many games EA has ruined over the years. SWTOR being mentioned briefly in this video reminded me of when they had the balls to claim if SWTOR maintained 500k subscribers, it would be considered "successful". If it maintained 1 million subscribers, it would "very successful". Then the moment subs dipped below 1million, they slapped one of the worst F2P business models I've ever seen on the game. So much for being successful at 500k....

Why can't EA just fucking stay with their sports games, they had to jump in and fuck up every good game franchise .

Saw the EA logo at the start and then thought " case closed".

I remember being a Realm Captain under the character named Anatharion. I ran a warband, and had four other warbands in communication with me during peak times. For a while I decided what Realms all the RVR Order would attack, what keeps we would defend, and which enemies I needed flanked and such. I had a great time running the server Order side for weeks on end until I realised I'd best get back to college before I flunked out. lol Warhammer Online PVP as amazing for its time when it came to experiencing battles with over 300 players at once. Even though the FPS drops were huge. Guild Wars 2 was the only other game where I experienced anything as close to real war in a video game again. Warhammer Online did it best though.

It should be DAOC made in 2001 in the beginning, sorry for the flub. But hopefully you guys enjoyed the rest of the video. Thanks.

Give the developers some credit. Games Workshop ended up running the entire 30 year old IP into the ground in 2015.

Shortly after this came out WoW reached its peak. I was too young to appreciate what WAR did and joined the WOTLK bandwagon (which was also great.) If this game could have survived until Warlords of Draenoir and had texture and a Tomb King/Skaven/Lizardman/Vampires expansions, it would still be alive today I think.

Never been so hyped for a game before. I was truly saddened by the failures and lost potential. EA earned many a grudge for the treatment of this beauty.

Man I miss this game.

EA already ruined SWTOR, Rehashed raids, and cartels are considered "content". SWTOR took a steep dive when EA acquired Bioware.

Warhammer games don't get enough attention.

Wow, Return of Reckoning, the Warhammer private server, currently has 1018/1400 players currently playing. That's a ton! I played it when Tier 1 was released only, but now I believe Tier 4 is released and fortresses maybe coming?

Warhammer online (Fan Project Server) Is still booming btw. I believe the Project was called "Return of Reckoning".

I really miss this game..I remember staring a Pauls vids pre and mid launch over and over.. Also one of the few games where I could try out and enjoy both factions, though I prefer destruction ofcourse, now there's talk of private servers etc, any experience with that? I still have my old collector's edition box..but I guess the key's are unusable.. I really wonder if anyone would dare to make a Warhammer mmo again..or for that matter revive and refurnish Warhammer Age of Reckoning..

Well, it's a good thing Warhammer had PvE, because the public quests completely changed MMOs forever. The Tome of Knowledge was also the first MMO achievement system I can remember, and was later adopted by...well...everything? Revolutionary game if you ask me, and a buttload of fun, despite its issues and mismanagement.

This was the first mmo i played as a kid...my dad played it all the time and i’d watch him play all day. I literally had no clue how to play but the idea of an open world and created character was just so revolutionary for me that i didn’t need to know what to do. just learn from my dad and run around

You should talk about the cancelled Warhammer 40k MMORPG game next. As a die hard 40k fan, I got so upset when they pulled the plug on that game when THQ died :,(

I remember how hyped I was for this. I played Chaos and Dark Elves, though I tried a few Order characters as well. It was a complete and total travesty. While I met some great people, playing as destruction became more and more frustrating. Trying to take a keep, when there were just three bright wizards inside it, became impossible. They'd spam Rain of Fire in overlapping fields through the gatehouse, and not even a fully geared Black Orc being actively healed could make it through without dying. It became impossible to play, and people started leaving in droves. I was gone for a week and a half at one point ... when I came back, the server had gone from destruction struggling hard but -barely- managing to hang on to at least some of their keeps and their capitals, to having lost everything. And I do mean everything. Not a single keep stood. There were more order-players in the capital than destruction players at any given time. It was impossible to move without being butchered by griefers and gankers. It happened -really- fast. Within two weeks of that, my entire guild had disbanded and eight out of ten players had left the game. Around that time, a rumour started going around on the destruction side that the reason why Bright Wizards were so ridiculously overpowered was, that the development team universally played them and kept buffing them with every weekly down-period, to do slightly more damage. It seemed every time we got a patch designed to fix one of those stability issues NerdSlayer mentions in this video, we also saw a buff of the damage done by Order-characters, primarily the Witch Hunter and Bright Wizard classes, and a decrease in damage done by practically every destruction class. In the end, people who played Dark Elf Sorceresses (don't get me started on the whole sorcerer fuckup), were generally advised by their guilds to swap to different classes or be rendered completely obsolete. Their Pit of Shadows-spell or whatever it was called, was so underpowered that even bright wizards, with no armour, walked into them, danced a jig and walked back out practically unscathed. I agree with almost everything said in this video, except that it was my experience that the unbalancing issue was -a lot worse- than what NerdSlayer presented it as. It was absolutely crippling and made so many destruction-players simply quit the game that they lost a significant part of their fan-base. People almost always prefer to play good guys. The developers, as NerdSlayer points out, WERE made aware during Beta that this was already a serious problem -before- release. All they did was fob people off with some vague promise of "intelligent NPCs" who would make up the difference in numbers on any PvP battlefield and that their "revolutionary new AI" would allow them to easily make up for the differences in players. What did we get? AIs that could barely use their abilities, routinely ran into walls and more often than not simply stood around getting slaughtered while the enemy hacked them to pieces, before coming for the tiny handful of -actual- Destruction-players trying to hold on to their capital for what ... ten more minutes? It had so much potential. This -could- have been the game that had given WoW serious competition. Warhammer has a massive fan following world-wide and it could have been so damn good if the developers hadn't screwed the players over so badly. It's one of the great "what ifs" of gaming. What if ... Warhammer: Age of Reckoning hadn't been so pissing awful.

"I hope bioware doesnt die under EA" At this point, I wish it would fizzle out so we can remember what they were I stress of their deteriorating reputation.

i remember playing this until they finally released the big pvp siege of the enemy city everyone was waiting for. instead of the promised epic battle it ended up being 50 instances of the same battle, no enemy players in half of them and the half that had players was a laggy mess. after that shitshow 90% of the guild logged out and never came back.

Apart from all its (deserved) "Bad Guy" rep, EA generally had a horrible record with MMOs in particular going all the way back to pre-WoW days... Half-baked launches, a few years (or even months) of languishing in neglect and a shutdown... Motor City, Earth&Beyond, The Sims Online... My personal feel is that EA simply doesn't get that MMOs aren't like the kind of games that made them rich. With MMOs the launch isn't the moment when you can more or less coast from then on, and transfer most of the team and money to work on BigFranchise: 2019. It's where the really difficult part begins. And people really, really don't like bugs in MMOs, things that are less than ideal, but tolerable in a single-player game are MMO killers.

People still play this tho? look up Return of reckoning

You hit the nail on the head with the overabundance of CC effects and massive faction imbalance that they made no effort to correct. I suffered through as Destruction for the entire run of this game, and it was soul crushing at times.

adding another Return of Reckoning comment, because that server rocks. Order needs more please! :D

Return of Reckoning private server is here and its awesome!

Warhammer Online died for me the moment I saw "EA"

It really was warcraft in a way. The AOE packs where made possible when mythic nerfed resistances. Tanks would load up on spell resistance, usually fire if you were destruction, which allowed them to be legitimate pvp tanks. The game was balanced around high resistance tanks in the beta. Bright Wizarda complained because that wasn't how things worked in WOW. Mythic nerfed resistance then BW ran into entire war bands and blew them up. While BW, who BTW were all pricks, argued that resistances should be more in line with WOW they never once argued that damage coefficients on AOE should be in line with WOW. In wow damage scaled at only about 20% for instant cast AOE all spells in WH scaled 100%. It didnt matter if it was direct damage or aoe. When you included that BW had a tallent that added additional fire damage, creeping flames I think it was, that damage also scaled at 100%. So BW got 200% spell damage on all targets on instant cast AOE. It was the high tank resistance that kept this major oversight from ruining game balance. Once BW succeeded in getting the devs to agree that tank resistance was too high BW literally blew up the fricking game.

I loved this game. The first 2 months. I had a dark elf witch that had basically a suicide-build, there was a spell where you did AOE damage in a radious from yourself, by basically exploding your own spirit in dark warp energy. But you took damage when doing so. I basically sprinted and jumped straight into the enemy clump on stalemate battles, and just spammed my self-explosion ability, super satisfying kill sound effects, got 5-10 kills, then jumped back out with 5% health remaining xD Then saw my team break through the stalemate in the formation splitting chaos that ensued. It was hilariously fun. But then i realized that the endgame basically DIDNT exist at all at launch, and at that point i was just like, whats the point of continuing to play if there is nothing to look forward to at the endgame (zones and quests and even gear didnt exist for the last levels). So i stopped my subscription.

I miss a number of things from that game a great deal. I enjoyed how depressing and helpless some of the areas felt, I liked all the hidden things throughout the world, how there were things that could kill you even in the main city, the music, and the art. The art was dark, jagged, and corrupted. The quests were done with gory details and gave a sense of helplessness. Elves being frozen by cockatrice but being able to feel while their eyes were pecked out, nurglings pouring out of wounds, the dying Order npcs crying in pain and for their mother, etc. I liked RvR but I loved the quests and exploring. It was disturbing and I miss it. I still have my Warhammer Online avatar/banner active on here, don't have the heart to change it.

This game was a lot of fun and had amazing ideas. If they would just do something about bugs and performance it could be still an amazing piece of MMO. The universe of AoR is so incredible i wish they do redo someday. If they would just develop it a little bit longer or at least do something about bugs and performance...

At the moment (end 2018) 400-600players are online at primetime. I wish we get 1k+ to Return of Reckoning, that's would make a lot of fun :)

Now, technically it's not dead. EA no longer runs it and Return of Reckoning is a fan server that has a HUGE amount of players. Huge enough to still have massive battles on the higher level battlefields and even massive battles on the 10 - 19 battlefield where humans and chaos fight. It's great. I just started and have a level 27 dark elf. Game is super fun and playing as assassin classes is great for player hunting.

This is for me the reason enough to forever hate EA. I haven't bought or played a single game that bears their logo since 2013 and have pirated and will continue to pirate their entire catalog and upload it to a seedbox I've bought exclusively to torrent them for ages so no one will have to buy their filth ever again.

the reason the owner got "booted" when EA bought them is simple, these kind of people are expensive and are the BOSS, but when EA buys them, they need to get rid of the expensive people, and replace them with an in-house person.

Do the return of Reckoning Private server I want to know is if there is any difference and if so is it improvement?

Good Job on this one my dude, This one really broke my heart. Love this game.

As an aside, I lead a guild called Beards of Glory that was a 300 member dwarf only guild back at its zenith... and fucking choppas ALWAYS were superior to slayers, like holy shit were slayers bad lol

32:20 "But EA didn't treat it like it was successful." Seems to be a common theme with EA. There was this MOBA named Dawngate which was published by EA. It definitely wasn't a bad game based on quality. Sure it was no LoL oder DotA 'killer' but has trying to 'kill' well established games ever been successful? Many people spoke rather positively about the game's quality and style. However, apparently that wasn't enough for EA and the game was canned in beta. 'Somewhat successful' isn't enough for EA.

You can still play this, it's called Return to Reckoning now. They got only one server but is quite populated, check it out if you all feel nostalgic.

Well, 4 years later it's called now:" Warhammer Online - Return of Reckoning".

You can still play the game. There's a fan revive of the game called Return of Reckoning

Screw that. Total War carried on the torch of Warhammer Fantasy.

Short version: "EA"

I miss this game so much. Getting together with the guild to go flip the zones, to battle the boss while fighting off players at the same time. It was the best. I loved this game so much. Even the last hours before servers were shut down are burned into my memories.

return of reckoning has become one of my favourite mmorpgs!

the fault was cleary by the lack of content, no way around that but it didnt help that games like WoW pretty much instantly stole the Warhammer PvP system a few moments later which, i thought, was a really scummy thing to do

I was in the Alpha for this game and I knew after 3 days of playing and with the conversations I had with the lead game devs this was going to fail miserably. Mainly after my conversations with Mark Jacobs....after those it was easy to see it was going to fail badly.

I miss this game so much :(. From the public quests, to the amazingly unique builds, this game was EPIC!

Am I the only one who loved Warhammer Online mostly for its PvE and not only its PvP? They had some great quests, and awesome looking zones. And the public quests was a great way to start interacting with other players. I''d been a fan of the warhammer fantasy universe for a long time when the game came out, so an mmorpg set in the warhammer world was a big thing.

You got most of these correct. Players did not sign up to run same pve 5 man instance 30 times, but would do them anyway for the gear. Also in open RVR terrain plays a huge role and there were no natural bottlenecks, some zones were not designed for open pvp just the geography of them was very bad. Lastly the city siege was a pve raid mostly. A big item you mentioned is bad itemization, such as pve sets being superior and also stats on items were completely randomised with casters getting melee stats and so on. I would say that most of these could be easily fixed if someone on the team actually cared. Really brilliant class design and system, most everything relating to pvp was great. As for ways to make a game have long term potential from pvp alone, they could have monthly events that changed the setting to bring variety.

"The Warhammer IP" -> shows age of sigmar logo. That's a grudge and goes into the book!

I had almost forgotten how hyped I was leading up to the release of this game. I was a long time USKO (knight online) player looking for a new PVP based game. You hit so many points on this game and reminded me how sad and abandoned I felt. I still had my fun on my BW doing "nuke crew" or "bomb squad" as we called it. Cheers nerdSlayer. Thanks for the write up and trip down memory lane.

I weep for this game and what they did to it and what i could have been.

Man, I remember being so goddamned hyped over this game.

I actually really really really liked this game, I was really upset when it died.

Can we just acknowledge for a moment how fucking good Warhammer Online looks even for todays standards? It's incredible. Ofcourse it's not Crisis, but damn, I still love going onto the private server and bash some Order heads from time to time in a big fucking siege. 250 players fighting over the control of a fortress in t4 is amazing.

This is so sad. I wish GW supported their products more.

Still have great memories of this game. I loved the diversity in classes and lore.

This game had some of the best classes to play in any MMO. I've been playing MMO's since Ultima Online (MUDs,MOO's and MUSH's before that) - still pay for a WoW Sub and drop in and play Neverwinter, DDO, LOTRO, The Div2, ESO amongst others still installed on my system. Always been a Pve 'Raider/Carebear' as PvP wasn't my thing ... except in Warhammer Online. This was the only game where I was not only happy to do some PvP but actively ran plenty of battlegrounds and RvR, and it was for both factions, I loved playing all of the classes, especially those Melee Healers! Coincidentally the only MMO I have ever had healer toons. Thanks to this video I am downloading that private server to give it a go over this Easter long weekend, bit of nostalgia and re-experience those awesome Tier 1 melee healers ;) I would re-buy this game in a heartbeat if it was ever re-launched in an updated format ;)

I know I am years late but, I loved this game, but it was painful to play, tons of lag and zones crashed and reset frequently. Also the exploits.. The reason why the performance issues is, the engine was the DAOC engine, heavily patched..

Whoever misses playing WAR should look into the very much active private server under the name Return of Reckoning (RoR).

I totally forgot that I played this game and now I have no idea why I stopped playing.. I was around lvl 20 or so if I remember right. I remember buying it on the release day...

This game also had outstanding music! Too bad that after Tier 1-3's fun and mostly balanced pvp you were dumped against max RR murdermachines who could walk over you and not even notice.

Slightly late to the party but thanks for rubbing salt into my wounds with your accurate commentary. I had high hopes for this game, spend a lot of time, made friends up until the potato i had back then for pc couldn't run it. keep it up!

I mostly agree with this video, except the last part, a PVP only game is doomed to fail, and three factions does not equal more balanced PVP. Elder scrolls online proves this by A LOT.

I played both Camelot and WAR. I loved both games. Imo no other game has captured the same excitement i felt during those years.

Playing Return of Reckoning (Warhammer online private server) in 2020.

I miss this game a lot. I played sorceress and PVP was so incredible. I remember sneaking up on hordes of order forces, and unleashing shadows on them all. I lost most of my HP by straining myself, and somebody would finish me off - but I'd take down 10+ people. It was crazy. People were so focused on the blob of enemies in front of them, that they wouldn't notice me.

>Set up a company to specialise in MMOs >Fails every attempt at making an MMO Imagine being this inept

I would so love a new Warhammer Fantasy Game MMO sort of.

Came looking around for old MMOs I played and was taken back to a better time with this one. I think some things in this video were right, but a few notable things: - About the only thing EA ever does well is advertising, and this was probably one of the first games I remember with an active dev blog describing all the systems they were working on. I was pretty impressed seeing all the good ideas being discussed, up until I realize why companies don't do this: other companies steal shit. things like the tome of achievements, public quests, and a ton of new features added in warhammer I saw added into WOW during cataclysm, Guild wars 2, and other MMOs very shortly after warhammer came out, almost copying done its UI design in some cases. If they had waited the 5 years, they might have been even accused of being the copy cat, despite already selling the cow in their promotional stuff. - The witch elf verses witch hunter balance I think is one of the best examples of how melee/ranged and pure melee should never be balanced 1 to 1; and something I point out to a lot of other games trying to give excuses why ranged should be equal to melee DPS - There were poor implementation issues that pissed off a lot of the PVE community, including: badly designed dungeons, lack luster rewards, the dungeon invasion system, the scaling up of the land of the dead event world boss with low level characters, cross faction sabotage of maps to make sure RVR lakes flipped at inopportune hours, RR farming between characters, and so, so much more. A lot of these issues led to social conflicts that Mythic, and more notably EA, totally ignored and tried to purge from the forums multiple times. Anyway, thanks for the trip down memory lane!

I been buying PC games all my life and this was one of the only ones where I ordered the special edition or w/e... Still have the hardback book "Art of warhammer online" which showcases a lot of the concept art that went into the games design phases.

I was in the best guild both beta and live. I was there when the devs blew it. We told the devs not to release the patch. They didnt listen to us and the game blew up.

Return of reckoning! Still playing it now. Loved and still love this game, haven’t been able to find an mmo better yet.

For Nostalgics who dont know, try out free to play the Return of Reckoning project european custom server based on the game

God, I miss this game. I remember back in the beginning being with one of the largest guilds on the server and wrecking Order weekly. Was so much fun... and then ... nothing. There was nothing new to do. I had all the classes maxed with max gear and there was just no new content. :(

you obviously didnt play at release because chaos was far more populated, and witch elves were far far more powerful than witch hunters due to their poison being broken with insane damage.

Oh wow. You've been doing this for awhile, eh? Love how the format is evolved. Ive always thought the whole "clue" aspect of the series was an absolutely genius way to hook people into not only listening, but also watching the video to its conclusion. Not many channels have this kind of active engagement aspect to them. Not that I can think of anyway.

Real shame what happened to this game. The Archmage was my favorite healer in any game. Using damage spells to be able to use your healing spells and vice versa. Such a great mechanic meant it was always fun to play. I loved going to pvp with her. Mythic did pvp in ways a PvE pleb like me actually wanted to take part in. Another casualty of EA

Warrior priest was my choice. One of the most fun classes I've ever played in my MMORPG days. I loved everything about it. I joined the private sever for a while but I just dont have enough time anymore sadly.

Dam dude... this game was a gem... Thank god we have the private server "return of reckoning" o///

This game was and will be my favorite MMO of all time.

Playing as a Black Orc in a public quest I met this Shaman, we leveled from like level 10 to level 40 together, ran into a cool guild, left that guild with some others to form a new guild (middle of bastion stair run), then transferred servers together (Magus) and we were on the same raid team. We got the server first Lost Vale clear together, and were first raid group in full fortress ward (Dark Promise) gear in the World.

Thanks to Return Of Reckoning game is alive and better than ever before

I'd love to see if you could ever do a similar video on Hellgate: London. It was a great concept and started out well and then completely died off fastand was abandoned by the devs. Thanks!

The moment I found this series I knew this episode was coming. I'm not sure my heart is ready.

War hammer by Marc Jacobs, for Marc Jacobs developed by Mythic entertainment owned by Marc Jacobs

Magus also had a unique ability when it came to fighting Order, that being their disc made them instantly identifiable and thus were likely focused down and killed by a swarm of Ordertide players.