Why Warhammer Online cannot attract players as good as WoW? Jeff Hickman works in the Mythic Entertainment tell us some reasons. Because of the biggest mistakes made with Warhammer Online. It is not the reason of no free War currency (copper, silver and War gold) to players, the real one is making the game too easy was among one of the big flaws according to Hickman. Not inspiring more social interaction and a less than flattering in-game economic market also attributed to some of Warhammer's mistakes.

Three Major Mistakes of War

Hickman says there actually were three things have haunted them for a year with War. As a success MMORPG, keeping players are extremely important. There are various ways to keep playrs, such as present free Warhammer gold, items and equipments, but the most important part is gameplay. Despite having a successful MMO in the form of Dark Age of Camelot, Hickman says there were "mistakes we made with Warhammer that we should not have made." He described them as "three things have haunted us for a year with Warhammer," and later acknowledged a lot of effort has been put into dealing with them in patches -- sometimes subtly, as they're fundamental and systemic.

If there are no quests and combats to challenge players, the game will lose support in a short time. However, Challenge of play was a problem for Warhammer. Hickman said "There's a big difference between easy play and ease of use. And one of the lessons that we thought we learned from ourselves and other games, was that it's important to have ease of use, and it's also important to hit the right balance between easy gameplay, challenging gameplay, and too difficult. We thought we hit that, but Warhammer, in PVE, in the beginning, is too easy. Sometimes, the easy PvE can offer more War gold and War power leveling to players, but it means that players will lose challenge at the same time. It doesn't make you thrilled to do it."

In matter of fact, the MMORPG is just like real social. Players are able to grow up with experience and War money. And the most fun is to play game with your friends. The social nature of online games can confound even experienced developers, Hickman argues. The team built "social tools" but the game gave players "little reason to socialize." Says Hickman, "We all talk about online gaming as 'social'. It's a thing we'd call probably foundationally the most important thing about these games. It's fun to play these games with friends." However, he says, "We had great ideas for all of these really cool social tools, and we built them into the game. But the game doesn't require friends. Part of it is that it's too easy." You can design in the need for players to have to work together, but Hickman warns that "you shouldn't force friendship, but it's important, and there's a balance there. You can do so many things solo, that friendship, at least in the beginning levels, is not necessary, and it's super dangerous for your games."

As a good MMO, a special and complete economic is extremely important. However, the economic models are the biggest problem with War. It is not to say, War gold is not good. Hichman said "Our economy... we just missed the mark. If you look at the reasoning behind the economy, you'll see things like, 'Hey, we're not going to let gold farmers in our game.' 'We're going to try to make sure we have controlled inflation.' We had all the best reasons in our game, but what it caused us to do was build a game where economy is not important enough. Economy brings people together." Hickman later acknowledged that fixing the game economy is essential to the game's upcoming South Korean launch and that these fixes will propagate globally. When entering that market, "We want to identify the big things that are important and change them. Economy specifically -- it's one of our weaknesses, and it has to be a big strength when we hit Korea. And it's a focus that pours over into North America."