War Rock

The Good
At first glance War Rock comes off as little more than a generic FPS mash of Counter Strike + the Battlefield series and while on the surface it does stay true to its FPS roots there is something unique underneath that really makes this game stand out.

First off the speed and control of the game is bent more towards "arcade action" than either CS or BF, with players able to move quickly and roll to dodge behind cover (it uses stamina to prevent it from being over the top silly with non stop rolling). This feature alone makes it far more playable for me than either CS or BF series.

Beyond that; the easy to switch play styles and map options make it possible to jump in and out of different game types much faster than is typical in this genre. Simply changing from one lobby to another and trying another game type could make it feel like an entirely different game.

What really made the game shine though was the community. With servers covering wide regions you were playing and accessing a much larger pool of players without having to rely on hoping someone local to you was hosting a server to play on. The forums were also a constant source of community building with interaction from the publisher and in-game moderators. (whether this community continues to hold together after all these years is still an on going struggle)

In-game events with real world prizes, clan ranking tournaments and all the bells and whistles you would expect from a company that was catering to an active community made this a very fun experience for the first couple of years after its release.

The Bad
The #1 complaint about this game: cheaters.

While I played on and off for nearly 4 years, there were months at a time where the game was simply not playable due to the sheer volume of people cheating (on the official servers) with the company always playing catch up and often taking weeks or months to fix the latest round of cheats only to be hacked again within hours by a new wave of cheats.

Since you could not run your own servers, this made the game unplayable sometimes for months at a time where the official servers were entirely over run.

Complaint #2: The price... While technically "free" to play, there was a massive variety of weapons, maps and gadgets that required real world money and the cost was over the top for a game of this type. ($15 a month for "everything".. which is high for an FPS, many full scale MMO's did not charge this much at the time)

Both complaints #1 and 2 could have been solved by making the game NOT free, and lowering the monthly subscription to less than $5 a month. (compare the typical CS or BF server that requests a $2-3 a month service fee for dedicated log in spots and security against hackers)

With a lower subscription model it would be viable to keep paying to play the game AND it would have provided better tracking methods for banning cheating players.

In the current model, the game was never really worth $15 a month and the hackers who were banned had free reign to make 1000+ accounts every time they were banned, since there was no cost involved.

Truly a shame, this was a really good game and the first FPS that I've played to attempt a true community, they simply failed at securing their servers and tried to charge way too much.

Complaint #3

The game always had glitches, bugs and a variety of obviously unpolished content. While these are the types of things we as gamers often overlook for the sake of fun, they stand out in a game with a monthly subscription. The expectation that you are supposed to be paying for updated content monthly means the big obvious bugs should get fixed sooner rather than... never.

The Bottom Line
This was an arcade revamp of CS and BF with a full suite of community features tacked on.

If you wanted a fast paced FPS with interesting community features, this game was worth a try.

In the end, I really did love the game and enjoyed being a part of the community from beta and for a couple of years after release (I even paid for premium content a few times). But in the end, the lack of bug fixes, the ridiculous costs and the sheer volume of cheaters pushed me away from the game.

Sadly though, to this day I cannot find a game to replace War Rock. There simply is no other FPS which offers quite the same mix so I still occasionally log in and play for free (with crappy default weapons), only to be sadly disappointed again after getting shot by some cheater sitting up in the sky with a sniper.