I admire Keen's persistence and passion, he so badly wants WAR to be the game he imagined it would be. He's created a map and an outline for what he hopes the Land of the Dead update will be.

The past few months WAR has seen a lot of changes, big and small. Some of it goes with the territory for any MMO release. The more game-changing stuff has been accoladed while my mouth is agape. If the game didn't need the changes so much, the playerbase might have revolted, but like Keen they're a persistent lot: They want their RvR that bad. And it still has a long ways to go.

WAR is so obviously broken to me. It can be fixed and it probably will be fixed, possibly over and over again. I'm not predicting any sort of gloom and doom, but there are frustrations and those will continue. Let's face it, this game hasn't just been beta-tested while we play, it's still being designed. Or redesigned, depending on how you'd like to look at it.

There's a school of thought prevalent in the community, that DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) was closer to the mark in RvR goodness. In that case, this community is even more stubbornly sticking with Mythic, because that taste is still with them and they want it again.

It does beg the question though, why didn't Mythic just upgrade DAoC? Aside from the updated graphics engine (with many of its own problems), is WAR a downgrade from their previous game? DAoC v0.9?

I burned out waiting for the outcome, but I find myself ever curious where this game is going to end up.

(Related: I Has PC has an article up regarding incomplete MMOs and the possibilities of commercial betas.)