Despite our enthusiasm for the upcoming Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) MMO, we decided weeks ago that we wouldn’t be participating in the game. This fact has nothing to do with previews of the game, which actually entice us to give it a go rather than succumb to the comparably poor World of Warcraft (WoW) experience. In short, everything we’ve heard and read about WAR makes us drool over the excellent PvE experience for everyone but end-game raiders, as well as the complimentary PvP focus that WAR offers. Frankly, WAR sounds like a more casual-friendly MMOG, with an excellent theme, decades of established lore, and a user experience that should appeal to the majority of WoW gamers.
Why aren’t we playing, then? While a fraction of the reason is recent time constraints, the more pressing reason is the egregious system requirements that put WoW’s requirements to shame. On top of that is Mythic’s lack of support for OS X, and while we have the ability to run WAR under Bootcamp, the fact that we would need to annoys us to no end. To top it off, while WAR’s release date is perfect timing for shaking up the MMOG scene, it’s rather poor for those vested in console gaming – the number of highly-anticipated releases on the XBox 360 over the next couple months is simply mind-staggering, and truly shows how the 360 has matured as the platform of the current generation.
In the end, we’re passing up on WAR (no worries, we passed on the overhyped Spore also), with the disclaimer that we’re pretty sure we would have enjoyed it. WAR looks like a step in the right direction for fantasy-based MMOGs, and while it may not be eons ahead of WoW, it’s an important evolution nonetheless.
Now that you’ll soon have extra pennies in your wallet, Mythic, perhaps you’d care to hire some OS X developers for your next game. Or, you could send us one of those snazzy media accounts so we can keep writing about your content!
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WAR does not support OS X? WoW supports OS X. Guess I’ll stick with WoW. I wonder what percentage of WoW machines are OS X? And of those, what portion is still PowerPC (like me — no Boot Camp for me!)?
Even the brand new Spore supports OS X.
It wasn’t long ago that we commented on how foolish developers are to ignore the OS X platform. To be fair, perhaps Mythic didn’t anticipate Apple’s market share to climb the way it did when Warhammer was first being developed, but one would expect Mythic to announce an OS X port should it succeed in penetrating into World of Warcraft’s market.
At the very least, we can say with even more confidence now that developers are dumb to ignore OS X for the next MMOG generation.
Just heard about WAR – thought it looked interesting but without an OS X port (PowerPC or Intel) there is no way they are getting me off of WoW