MMORPGs are extremely complicated games. They need enough gameplay variety to entertain hundreds of thousands or millions of different people. They must be amused enough to either maintain a subscription or regularly purchase perks or premium features. This is no easy task, and there are many ways and opportunities to mess it up. Some MMORPGs mess things up worse than others. Warhammer Online messed things up pretty spectacularly.
An article that discusses where WAR went wrong is obviously going to evoke a lot of anger from dedicated fans of the game. They will be tempted to accuse the writer of "barely playing the game", "being a noob", "crying about getting rolled", or simply "needing to learn to play." In an attempt to head off such easy, hackneyed accusations, I will say the following.
1) WAR is not a horrible game. It did many things right, and some things extremely right (Public Quests, for example). The problem is, a few critical mistakes can easily overshadow and overpower good things in an MMO.
2) I played WAR extensively. I absolutely loved Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) and I am a fan of the Warhammer franchise. I wanted to love this game. I had four level 40 characters, and I had many characters in both realms and on multiple servers and server types. I believe I experienced most aspects of the game.
3) In general, I am definitely an MMO fanatic. I play tons of MMOs and I like to think I play them pretty well. The fact that I am the Managing Editor of the MMO channel here is no accident. I love MMOs. I make them professionally. I play them with great fervor.
4) When I say WAR failed, I mean it failed to meet expectations or reach its potential. Keep that in mind as you read on.
As already noted, there are many ways for an MMORPG to go wrong. In this article, the mistakes made by Warhammer Online have been broken down into two sections: Major and Minor. Within each of these divisions are additional sections for each of the specific mistakes.
If you were only allowed one reason why WAR failed, this would be it. A number of the subsequent failures hinge on the absolute disaster of a decision to go with only two realms. With two realms, the realm you hate most is always the same. The realm to blame for every unfair or cheap maneuever is always the same. If the other realm has an advantage, there is no recourse. The two weaker realms cannot team up to balance things out.
The net result of this is every player's hatred and disdain is always focused like a laser beam on the same realm, the same classes, and the same players. In a PvP/RvR oriented game, this amplifies misery and guarantees that players never have any relief from it. Social engineering is an important part of managing an MMO community. Allowing players to focus all of their hate in the same direction all the time is not healthy.