5 years and 3 months, that’s the lifespan of the Warhammer IP as granted by Games Workshop. How the internals of this have worked out in years past is, and probably always will be, a mystery. This really should come as no surprise to anyone, the game has been languishing for a while now. The last news post on the main site went up in March. The short lived spin-off MOBA Wrath of Heroes never made its way out of beta. The support staff has been shrinking for years, and the leadership has changed hands multiple times.

When I quit playing a couple years ago patch 1.4.1 had released (they’re up to 1.4.8 now). With it came all sorts of changes to the tier structure in order to justify the top tier gear and level escalation from previous patches. It was a breaking point for me because unless you were over renown rank 80, it screwed over your ability to play competitively in tier 4, while also blocking you from playing in tier 3. In a single patch I had a pile of viable t4 characters made insignificant and obsolete. My only recourse with them was to grind out being slaughtered, our reroll in the new meta that destroyed any semblance of using the PvE content to effectively gear up.

WAR has tons of PvE content. The focus on the game was NOT all RvR all the time at launch, it was on recreating the points of interest in the lore of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and having it represent a playable world. RvR happened for sure, but the game was simply not designed around it (unless you literally mean the RvR lakes). Granted, the remaining playerbase by the time 1.4.1 rolled around were hardly the sorts that gave a damn about PvE. They were hardcore powergamers, interested almost purely in that next ding. With the RR90 and RR100 gear, all of the PvE content was laughable. I don’t really need to rehash criticisms of the past, you can find that in my older posts I’m sure.

There came a point of no-return in the lifespan of WAR when you no longer gave the new players a reason to wander through your realm. It stopped being an MMO when the most interesting parts of the game were tossed in the bin. Cash shop elements tacked onto the game, along with a full subscription fee, really made it too much to bear. I’ll be posing the question of who the hell is still paying for this game when I make my way back into the world, because honestly it’s a question that baffles me.

Yes, I’m resubbing to ride out the rest of the game. I’m streaming it live at twitch.tv/grimnir_ as well. I’ll be archiving the videos and preserving it all as homage to what could have potentially been the best MMO to date. 5 years ago it certainly had that potential. 4 years ago, not so much. 3 years ago the aching wounds were painfully apparent. How it’s lasted this full 5 years, I’m not sure at all. Join me, perhaps, on the last bitter days of a failing MMO. I’ll be playing Order on Badlands.