Well I finally cancelled my subscription to W.A.R. And it pains me to do so...The game had so much to offer and yet it delivered poorly in my opinion. Don't get me wrong. The game is incredibly stable, well designed, the classes are very well balanced and it has a lot to offer. Yet I feel the problem is how content is organized and made accessible to the general public, and the absence of a community in the game.

First let's have a look at what the game's main appeal is. The huge open PvP areas, castle and city sieges, which seem to call to massive online battles where you need to cooperate with other guilds to crush the forces of your opposing realm. That's what I payed to see and experience. Yet what do I get? Scenario grinding... Scenarios are good once in a while, since they offer the chance of battling against a balanced foe and don't last too long (god bless the timer). But after a while all you seem to do is scenarios and to top it off the same one, time after time. It gets so tedious. And the sad thing is that a lot of them have great game play mechanics, like the tier 1 scenario of the elves where the control points explode. That is probably one of my favourite ones. But what do scenarios end up doing? They simply negate the possibility of jumping into an RvR zone and finding constant ongoing control battles which would be much more appealing in my opinion.

Another problem is that the game lacks a sense of community. I don't really understand why though, it might be the lack of any official forums, even though the unofficial forums (war alliance for example) seem to act as official hubs. But this is a very serious problem for a game based in team efforts. On one side how can they expect to rally large armies into the RvR zones when all you seem to find are pugs ingame, and very few of them since most people just seem to spend the day grinding scenarios. The problem with a pug based community is that all classes in this game are designed to function in party, their roles are fixed and they need a balanced group around them to actually be able to shine. My main character for example in the game was a tank, and doing pug scenarios was incredibly frustrating. I found myself praying to actually land a group where the healer wasn't trying to act as a DPS class, since without a healer covering my back all I did was act as very quick meat shield till I got nuked a couple of times by an RDPS class. The only way of getting out of this situation was to find a well organized guild that did premades often, and you could say goodbye to that option if you weren't in the 31-40 lvl zone. The only viable pug class I found were actually the ranged DPS classes, as you could just sit in the back and nuke everything that moved, trying to gain as much exp and rep as possible. Not even healers were a viable class, as most classes were just too involved in trying to farm their own personal kills, so no one would think about looking back and defending the classes that kept you alive, hence the healers would end up going DPS and just healing themselves. This also reflects how deeply the "rock paper scissor" system is embedded into the archetype system. Classes are just too unflexible, even with the mastery system and even though each class has a different mechanic, it all falls down in the end in a "war of the archetype", each archetype would have it's main nemesis which you would have to steer clear of while you hunted down the archetype you were built to counter.

The PvE would also be hindered by this lack of community as even the party friendly PQ areas would be found barren most of the time. This could also be due to the fact of people favoring the alternative of grinding the easily marked solo quests. At first I really enjoyed the fact that you could basically solo any quest that didn't involve a PQ, but now I realize the flaw of the system. On one hand I think that having quests that make you stop in your tracks and start looking for other people around you to play with as a team would in the end enhance the game's community, at the cost of some time of maybe waiting around for a group. But once the group is made you'd have a chance to interact with other people, play your role in a team, and make connections. And the other side of the coin would be the easily marked quests. Again I was a fan of this system back in beta since you didn't have to think where you needed to move next as it was clearly stated in your map. But in the end this makes questing feel even more monotonous and hinders the exploration aspect of the game. Having such a large number of tome unlocks linked to exploration doesn't seem to have the desired motivational effects, and the game the way it's designed actually makes you choose between questing and moving or actually moving away from your designated objective areas just to find an unlock.

The loot system also seems to be broken and this affects the economy of the game, which still is non existant. Gear is just too easy to find in this game, and I found myself just slapping on any random gear I would find and moving on, not giving what stats I wanted a thought even, and if my gear was starting to get sloppy and I didn't get any through drops I wouldn't worry as I would always get a piece as a reward from a quest every 2 or 3 levels. Plus the epics and sets didn't offer that much a boost compared to the regular gear so I never found myself compelled to go to my nearest Auction House and see what they had to offer. And the crafting systems are just not worth the effort you put into them. Trying to maintain the best balance possible amongst classes, all the craft system has to offer are a set of small buffs which don't offer much of a difference overall. And if you also add that the filters in the AH for crafting materials have still not been implemented, the fact of leveling up your skill is not a gratifying experience enough to actually spend time with them, and they don't offer a significant bonus enough for them to be profitable. Anyways the only thing you need cash for in this game is for your mount (who's price is easy enough achieved just through regular leveling) and maybe to hold a keep for your guild, which doesn't seem to offer a big enough bonus to be worth the expense.

It hurts and stings me to admit that W.A.R is just not a great game, but it has loads of potential. It looks great and if you look at the big picture it seems like an awesome game that can take over the MMO market as there are not any mmos out there which blend PvP and PvE in endgame so skillfuly, yet the difference is in the small details which need a lot more polishing in this game for it to be worth my while.I trust mythic will be able to turn the tables in the upcoming months and I do not doubt I will return to give it another go, but the game "as is" is just not for me.