PWI not doing so well on Steam

herpderp1213

"mostly negative" that's not going to bring in new players. What do you guys think of this?

catgirldesu

Ehh a lot of the reviews can't even be taken seriously. I mean, they don't even bother explaining why "It sucks.". Not to mention that some of the people that wrote reviews admitted to having played "years ago" and probably don't know much about the current game.

Well, I don't think PWI is doing that great and there are a lot of problems with the game and PWE's customer service, but it's still a little sad to see so many people jump on the hate bandwagon. I believe PWI is still a good game at its core and it still has some features that newer MMOs lack or at least their features aren't as refined as PWI's.

PWI deserves to have proper reviews, even if they are negative.
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sasquatch87

lmao even when Wizzeled is not playing the dude is still notorous. The comments on steam are pretty funny to read, pwi should take notes. This game can be fun through pvp/tw and nw (xnw) if you decide to wise up and bring it back! But holy **** the comments are correct in that you need to spend a **** ton of cash to have gear that won't make you a one shot. As a cser I play to get most for my money but the game is dead because you need to cs, not just r9 but shards/refinement cards,etc. Unless the homestead and UP proves to be a great source to grind coins its about the only way to grind, the game should consider finding new ways for players to grind. The game dying because of this simple fact, the content that makes it fun can only be reached by spending an outrages amount of money.

razzzza

I mean what did you expect. No seriously.

People who quit long time ago because a free to play game went horrible into cashing your way to the top (yes it wasnt like this from the beginning and yes it changed drasticly when the pack nation attacked) are ofc writing bad reviews even though they played for 0.1hours on the review itself.
They didnt even try or look. they just remember it.

Also the complains about the "outdated" graphics are hilarious. ofc the graphics are not the top of the ladder most amazing effects around because the game is old. But honestly the game looks decent. I know alot of other game who aged very badly and PWI isnt one of them.

I have to agree with most of them complaining about end game PVP. The classes are rather unbalanced to some extent (duskblade for example) and the way there for a new player is close to impossible without spending a car.
The PvE on the other hand is very good balanced for free to play players and i cant complain here. PvE is nice and smooth, PvP not so much.​​

hypereccentrik

Well I'm not suprised, it's not like there's been a huge influx of new players on Etherblade.

silvasunrise

I'm not shocked by this outcome at all.

Being "released" on Steam was never going to create a booster of newbies flowing into the game beyond perhaps the first few minutes before the reviews flew in. Steam provides a fair (and deeply competitive) market where products are valued equally by consumer reviews, and I think the model is very robust because the good games survive and are well defended in the reviews by passionate, intelligent people. The good games find these people because these people are the type that the game impresses. If you don't impress intelligent people, then that has a clear impact on how your game does on Steam. For the consumer, it's a great system.

Unfortunately, that also means it's not a great tool for promoting an MMO which (let's put aside nostalgia and our emotional attachments and face it) has a glaring flaw the reviews talk about over and over - the ability to pay to get OP gear with real life money (other games do not mostly do this, so gamers from other genres mostly find it disgraceful). Microtransactions and "pay to win in PvP" models may be here to stay, but they are a hit with casual gamers, not the hardcore.

It's always been obvious from reviews on similar games that the Steam community, which is arguably made up of said hardcore gamers, loathe such models, with only a few very well crafted exceptions (most of which allow you to actually make real money or buy other games on Steam using the credit you earn in that game). Frankly, I agree with those who dislike these models. I only remain in PWI because I completely avoid cashing and simply enjoy the PvE aspects of PWI with friends. If I had paid to support the current model I would have quit in disgust, as have many who have written negative reviews on the site.

Beyond that, as someone who plays a lot of other games (and I consider myself a pretty multi-genre gamer, having been one for over 20 years), I don't see many other people in PWI's community itself who play other games. People don't understand references in world chat to other mainstream games very often, which seems to suggest that they don't play other games. Which makes sense, since PWI never meets the quality control standards of other games, especially when it comes to community engagement, fairness and rules enforcement.

PWI doesn't impress Steam reviewers because the game does not compare well to other games in general. Other games do not market as a PvP game then force you to pay real money to become truly competitive without extreme grind. Other games are well managed and have a good community. Other games do not intentionally throw up random chance pay-walls in order to tempt the "whales" into throwing thousands of dollars into a glorified poker machine, from which you literally cannot gain anything real. That hasn't cut it since the arcade era. If PWE wants to impress people on Steam with this old flagship MMO it has to lift its game, drop its prices, drop the pay to win BS and move to a new model or die trying. Unfortunately, we all know it never will, so instead it faces a slow decline as power creep and prices grow.

Just enjoy what's left of the beautiful core in the game engine and the people you know in it. Steam was never going to be a silver bullet. Anyone saying otherwise, I assure you, is selling something.

koudelkamorgan

The primary reason I stuck with pwi all these years is that I find the controls to be great. I tried playing MANY other games and often stop after an hr or less due to not being able to control it properly. If after fully remapping all functions with a controller AND a keyboard/mouse I can't get your game to control in anything resembling "not awkward" then you get uninstalled.

I've actually had to wait in some cases DAYS to get a client to download, only to spend 20 min fighting with the controls and immediately delete it. Sometimes they can be as awkward as playing Dark Souls with a DDR mat while juggling.

I've only found one other game with good controls that I actually play as well, and while its not perfect either at least the proces of actually playing it is good.