Short version: MoW is pay-or-grind TBS game with severely unbalanced PvP, boring and repetitive PvE without real endgame objective and rewards, bad map design, long list of gamebreaking bugs, poor social features and no new major content after 1 year of release. It has good art and rare diesel-punk setting (6 unique factions). It was promising game during beta, but incompetent development killed it.

15.10.2015 UPDATE: development of MoW officially halted. Last major update rolled back in early September "due to gamebreaking bug". Expect server going offline in 2 months. I just regret I spent too much time testing new big maps (where faction balance becomes an issue as I predicted).

MoW playerbase was in decline since release. Game lost 95 % of players in 1 year (from 2600 to 130 peak players), another 45 % in July - Sep 2015. Only 50 average players are online lately: http://steamcharts.com/app/234310 These numbers are extremely low for MMO.

Amount of racial and political slur you get here is immense. Game promotes racial and national hatred because every faction represents some sort of totalitarian real history state (fascist Europe, communist Russia, militaristic Japan etc). Some players are pure megalomaniacs believing they are ruling real empires.

#

I am experienced MoW player, I have 6 lvl 30 + characters and played 400-1000 games each (mostly pvp with 77-84 % winloss ratio). I am doing long breaks (for 3-4 months) and return to see if anything changed. Few old friends, beta participation and hopes for improvement kept me playing but MoW has reached point of no return. User reviews are for a long time mixed and it’s pretty obvious warning sign for anybody who wants to invest time in MoW.

Keep in mind MoW consumes too much time. You will spend a LOT of time passively (alt-tab) - waiting for someone to join PvP queue for 30 mins, waiting for AFK players or playing against slow opponent (4 mins each turn). Without real money you will spend HUGE amount of time building your army (hundreds of hours per char).

I will address balance, quality of development, community and support issues.

1). Balance (PvP and PvE). Well described issue, you will feel it right after few games starting second. On absolute majority of maps (after 2 years in development!) player who starts first have great advantage. On small assault maps player who starts first will not only capture nodes on his side of map but contest nodes on your side. So on second turn it will be already 3-4 nodes (which allow to field more troops) of player who starts first against 2 or even 1 node of player who started second without any chances of comeback for him.

Few bigger maps are more balanced in this way but first turn is still major advantage because even with equal numbers of nodes starter will always have more troops at the start of each new 2 turns cycle (unless he is completely bad and tend to sacrifice everything). In addition, on bigger maps faction balance became an issue: it is much easier to control flanks with long-range sieges of EA or cannon walkers of SU compared to other nations.

Blitz pvp mode looks more balanced but first turn player can attack your deployment zone or use powerful AOE damage command card before you can even move.

There is no matchmarking system in game – too few people playing; you already can wait for pvp match for 20-30 minutes. So expect meet lvl 30’s if you are level 1. Also expect to meet equal levels with much bigger and better army (bought for real money).

There are few units that needed to be nerfed long ago (spies, cossacks, assault bus to name a few) or buffed but compared to first turn advantage and bad map design this is non-issue really.
If you are good you will quickly end in situation where 1st turn win gives you no satisfaction and 2nd turn predetermined loss leads only to further frustration.

AI in PvE is non-existent. To make it harder, devs made PC cheat like there is no tomorrow – it spawns hordes of units regardless of any nodes controlled which just move at your side of map without any tactics involved. In siege mode waves of AI units march into your command structure not firing at your troops unless you block their path. PvE doesn't even have a some sort of endgame objective, global map just changes colors after all these grindy 1000's of battles.You conquer nation only to see it revolted and expanded back in no time.

2). Quality of development and bugs.
First of all, developers are amateurs, they have only some mods, one browser tactical game and primitive 3d shooter-tower defense in their resume. March of War started as browser game too so don’t expect good graphics, powerful engine or any extraordinary features. At least several of developers are ungraduated students (Damion etc). This fact defines their life experience and level of professionalism.

Development of this rather small game is incredibly slow. Every major patch brings game breaking bugs (new ones or restores some old). MoW was released almost one year ago (+ 1 year of beta). Since then THREE new units were added, some maps where changed and we have witnessed also few minor unit balance patches. They released so called expansion in the form of DLC. Right now it contains ONE PvE map with 2 more coming in distant future.

On a few occasions fellow players wrote a code for free to cover specific bugs for developers because they couldn’t do it themselves. Every iteration of MoW had major gamebreaking bugs. Right now we can list bugs such this (UPDATED. Some not fixed for months, some new):

A). Instant captures of contested nodes on around 3 maps. Most likely on all maps starting nodes can be instantly capped/contested (but match usually ends before you can test it).
B). "Superfog of war" bug. Sometimes for both players in pvp it's not possible to see any actions of each other, regardless of vision etc.
C). Unit "paralysis" bug.
D). Visual bugs. If your unit is killed sometimes you can see it survived on low health only to find on next turn that it was destroyed indeed (and node captured because instant capture bug exist). Direct hits of AoE sometimes doesn't damage units.
E) Some units are bugged. For example, EA engineer give free AoE heal for friendly armor (2 years old bug, extremelly annoying), pathfinding works strange sometimes etc.
F). Game is very unstable, it usually crashes.
All of this bugs confirmed by Adj (some sort of unpaid moderator) but not listed in known issues. False advert?

So game doesn’t really progress, both in quality and quantity.

3). How good is support?
Well, I still remember that comical situation around 10 months ago when it was possible to reach and destroy enemy command unit by chain medics and bazookas if UR player started first (in blitz) before his opponent can do something. I did dozen of reports with screenshots and finally got answer from one of the developers (Damion) that he DIDN'T find any mentioned games in my history.

Support is very poor. Some developers just don’t understand reported bugs or imbalances, some of them just don’t listen at all. In last months devs pretty much stopped to answer individual tickets.

4). Quality of community. Well, there are two main tendencies here. First – quickly dwindling numbers of casuals who are main source for real money for devs in MoW. Second – small but stubborn group of veteran players, most of whom are fanatical followers of developers and their creation. Dare not to cross them with some balance suggestions or bug reports – they will troll you extensively, citing how long they are playing and how many battles they have.

I will finish this with words of another reviewer dedicated to previous project of same team of developers:
“Yet another promising game becomes a shipwreck due to incompetent, greedy developers”

http://steamproxy.com/id/gremmerz/recommended/31740

Short version: MoW is pay-or-grind TBS game with severely unbalanced PvP, boring and repetitive PvE without real endgame objective and rewards, bad map design, long list of gamebreaking bugs, poor social features and no new major content after 1 year of release. It has good art and rare diesel-punk setting (6 unique factions). It was promising game during beta, but incompetent development killed it. 15.10.2015 UPDATE: development of MoW officially halted. Last major update rolled back in early September "due to gamebreaking bug". Expect server going offline in 2 months. I just regret I spent too much time testing new big maps (where faction balance becomes an issue as I predicted). MoW playerbase was in decline since release. Game lost 95 % of players in 1 year (from 2600 to 130 peak players), another 45 % in July - Sep 2015. Only 50 average players are online lately: http://steamcharts.com/app/234310 These numbers are extremely low for MMO. Amount of racial and political slur you get here is immense. Game promotes racial and national hatred because every faction represents some sort of totalitarian real history state (fascist Europe, communist Russia, militaristic Japan etc). Some players are pure megalomaniacs believing they are ruling real empires. # I am experienced MoW player, I have 6 lvl 30 + characters and played 400-1000 games each (mostly pvp with 77-84 % winloss ratio). I am doing long breaks (for 3-4 months) and return to see if anything changed. Few old friends, beta participation and hopes for improvement kept me playing but MoW has reached point of no return. User reviews are for a long time mixed and it’s pretty obvious warning sign for anybody who wants to invest time in MoW. Keep in mind MoW consumes too much time. You will spend a LOT of time passively (alt-tab) - waiting for someone to join PvP queue for 30 mins, waiting for AFK players or playing against slow opponent (4 mins each turn). Without real money you will spend HUGE amount of time building your army (hundreds of hours per char). I will address balance, quality of development, community and support issues. 1). Balance (PvP and PvE). Well described issue, you will feel it right after few games starting second. On absolute majority of maps (after 2 years in development!) player who starts first have great advantage. On small assault maps player who starts first will not only capture nodes on his side of map but contest nodes on your side. So on second turn it will be already 3-4 nodes (which allow to field more troops) of player who starts first against 2 or even 1 node of player who started second without any chances of comeback for him. Few bigger maps are more balanced in this way but first turn is still major advantage because even with equal numbers of nodes starter will always have more troops at the start of each new 2 turns cycle (unless he is completely bad and tend to sacrifice everything). In addition, on bigger maps faction balance became an issue: it is much easier to control flanks with long-range sieges of EA or cannon walkers of SU compared to other nations. Blitz pvp mode looks more balanced but first turn player can attack your deployment zone or use powerful AOE damage command card before you can even move. There is no matchmarking system in game – too few people playing; you already can wait for pvp match for 20-30 minutes. So expect meet lvl 30’s if you are level 1. Also expect to meet equal levels with much bigger and better army (bought for real money). There are few units that needed to be nerfed long ago (spies, cossacks, assault bus to name a few) or buffed but compared to first turn advantage and bad map design this is non-issue really. If you are good you will quickly end in situation where 1st turn win gives you no satisfaction and 2nd turn predetermined loss leads only to further frustration. AI in PvE is non-existent. To make it harder, devs made PC cheat like there is no tomorrow – it spawns hordes of units regardless of any nodes controlled which just move at your side of map without any tactics involved. In siege mode waves of AI units march into your command structure not firing at your troops unless you block their path. PvE doesn't even have a some sort of endgame objective, global map just changes colors after all these grindy 1000's of battles.You conquer nation only to see it revolted and expanded back in no time. 2). Quality of development and bugs. First of all, developers are amateurs, they have only some mods, one browser tactical game and primitive 3d shooter-tower defense in their resume. March of War started as browser game too so don’t expect good graphics, powerful engine or any extraordinary features. At least several of developers are ungraduated students (Damion etc). This fact defines their life experience and level of professionalism. Development of this rather small game is incredibly slow. Every major patch brings game breaking bugs (new ones or restores some old). MoW was released almost one year ago (+ 1 year of beta). Since then THREE new units were added, some maps where changed and we have witnessed also few minor unit balance patches. They released so called expansion in the form of DLC. Right now it contains ONE PvE map with 2 more coming in distant future. On a few occasions fellow players wrote a code for free to cover specific bugs for developers because they couldn’t do it themselves. Every iteration of MoW had major gamebreaking bugs. Right now we can list bugs such this (UPDATED. Some not fixed for months, some new): A). Instant captures of contested nodes on around 3 maps. Most likely on all maps starting nodes can be instantly capped/contested (but match usually ends before you can test it). B). "Superfog of war" bug. Sometimes for both players in pvp it's not possible to see any actions of each other, regardless of vision etc. C). Unit "paralysis" bug. D). Visual bugs. If your unit is killed sometimes you can see it survived on low health only to find on next turn that it was destroyed indeed (and node captured because instant capture bug exist). Direct hits of AoE sometimes doesn't damage units. E) Some units are bugged. For example, EA engineer give free AoE heal for friendly armor (2 years old bug, extremelly annoying), pathfinding works strange sometimes etc. F). Game is very unstable, it usually crashes. All of this bugs confirmed by Adj (some sort of unpaid moderator) but not listed in known issues. False advert? So game doesn’t really progress, both in quality and quantity. 3). How good is support? Well, I still remember that comical situation around 10 months ago when it was possible to reach and destroy enemy command unit by chain medics and bazookas if UR player started first (in blitz) before his opponent can do something. I did dozen of reports with screenshots and finally got answer from one of the developers (Damion) that he DIDN'T find any mentioned games in my history. Support is very poor. Some developers just don’t understand reported bugs or imbalances, some of them just don’t listen at all. In last months devs pretty much stopped to answer individual tickets. 4). Quality of community. Well, there are two main tendencies here. First – quickly dwindling numbers of casuals who are main source for real money for devs in MoW. Second – small but stubborn group of veteran players, most of whom are fanatical followers of developers and their creation. Dare not to cross them with some balance suggestions or bug reports – they will troll you extensively, citing how long they are playing and how many battles they have. I will finish this with words of another reviewer dedicated to previous project of same team of developers: “Yet another promising game becomes a shipwreck due to incompetent, greedy developers” http://steamproxy.com/id/gremmerz/recommended/31740