Warhammer: Its own worst enemy?

So this evening an old Guildy (old in all senses) turned up out of the blue. He had returned from Warcraft on a 30 day trial period designed to get those who had left the game to return. Surely this is a triumph for Warhammer, he will get to experience the many improvements in the game.

He was enthusiastic and eager to learn what had changed.

Unfortunately for him, most of the feedback on vent was negative. It is is not the case that there haven't been many improvements. His class, the disciple is great fun to play and is far better than it was when he left. He loves to pvp so wasn't interested in PvE improvements but was glad to hear about influence rewards for RvR. He loved the fact that scenarios that he had never got to play were popping (you remember when only Serpent's was played don't you)

Yet for all these improvements his first experience on the game on return was negative.

The problem was once again server performance. The inevitable city was seiged on Karak Norn and the game was nigh unplayable.

As this has been the case for sometime the general mood in guild and in our alliance and in deed in general on the destruction faction was very very low.

So here we had a player returning looking for PvP finding that the game that promised so much in terms of mass PvP was still not delivering and the players he was coming back to were talking about upcoming games they could migrate to.

He will play during his 30 day period but how many other will quit if there isnt a solution?

Many people waited for patch 1.2 and have been disappointed by it. The next patches may address issues and indeed they may bring about an improvement.

The real issue is that their may be too few people left to benefit from the changes, leading to a downward spiral, as the end game is population dependant.

Its very easy to stop the rot.

Alknowledge that their is a problem, apologise, disclose whats being done about it and then actually fix it.

A quick thanks

A quick thanks to all the GOA guys for a great night out, especially Nic and Magnus.

I hope you all made it into work.

It was great to meet the people who are going to be the communiity managers for the various forums, such as the french forum manager Madam Tullé. I think it is taking her some time to come to terms with our drinking culture.

I was very much taken with how enthusastic everyone I met was for the game and the esprit de corp(as Mde Tullé would say) was excellent. They really seem to enjoy their work and hopefully we will see that in the forums.

It was also great to meet some other bloggers and gamers on what was nerdtastic evening.