…resulted in a server crash right as the Fortress Lord was at 50%! Doh, not the headline you wanted to read and not the headline I wanted to write. This was the first Fortress siege that I’ve been on in launch that got anywhere near taking the fortress down. We had easily 200+ people sieging the fortress and took down all the doors very, very quickly. The lag was… intense does not justify it. I was getting 1fps and seeing a lag delay of 10-15 seconds on all actions. I would cast a heal and be able to run around and watch it fire off while I was moving. The whole server eventually fell out of sync and the crash happened. Before the crash almost everyone CTD’d at least once from the massive overload.
It was ridiculously laggy, totally a letdown that we were unable to take the fortress lord when we rightfully deserved it, but it was actually exactly what I want from WAR RvR – just minus the lag and stuff.  Really, can you imagine it? You have 30 people RvRing in Reikland and the zone flips. The calls go out to siege the fortress and 200+ people show up and lay siege to a Fortress with defenders.  Rams go up on multiple doors – arrows and spells fly overhead – comrades shouting for heals from mighty shaman spreading their Waaagh! around the battlefield. In a perfect world this wouldn’t lag and in a perfect world this experience would be unparalleled by any game out there.
After the 1.0…whatever (1.0.6?) patch today the game is in a very ideal position. We just need a very thick and glossy layer of polish now. People are finally RvRing for the sake of RvRing in open-world. We had a war going on multiple fronts tonight before everyone converged on the fortress and crashed the place. Let’s move with this momentum and sieze the day!
Okay, that’s my update for tonight. I’m going to try to log back in again but so far all attempts have bounced me back to character select.  I sure hope we still have the zones locked!
pretty common issue across all servers. IMO, massive PvP stability is the single most important issue facing war right now, with wonky Zone control mechanics a distant second.
Azazel Order crashed the Maw no fewer than 7 times in our latest attempt to siege a fortress during the alotted window.
The ORvR is increasingly awesome each week, but the epic parts of the endgame aren’t playable yet.
Order on Azazel has had 4 of those. 🙁
This last time at least the zone just reset.
Was that today? if so sad to hear, I was hoping it would be fixed.
So frustrating, not only because WAR was made for those kind of battle but all the wasted time and effort on both sides
hey another azazel player! yaay
This is a major problem that I don’t believe will be fixed anytime soon. I mean, AoC had the very same issues and was in even worse shape because it already had ridiculous system requirements. I truly believe that the team is hard at work trying to solve this issue, but I’m not sure that it is actually an issue that can be solved.
Part of the problem is definitely client side (our side) where our computers are not what the devs tested it on. The real test to see whether this is an issue that can be solved or not is to have Blizzard face it. (I don’t think there are quite equal opportunities in WotLK but I don’t know) It’s just too much happening at once.
Keen, and all other beta testers, maybe you can tell me if this type of huge sieges was tested during beta. This was (and is) a major selling of the game, and if it doesn’t work out like we (and the devs) want it will be a huge letdown.
Aside from that, what do people think about the class changes?
I recently changed my main to a Sorc and I feel we got nerfed to shreds. Makes me feel like my marks hunter on WoW all over again. The major complaints were about BWs and much less about Sorc (even though we share the same mechanic), and BWs got nerfed too, but not nearly as much.
I have practically no survivability now. I’m liable to die to an even conned mob solo. OH well, I guess I’ll just wait it out.
Also, has anyone tried out the new classes yet? I’ve heard great things about the Blackguard, and I’ve already fought a few KotBS in T2 scenarios and they seem ok.
Eve has had this problem ever since its release and only just lately been able to address it with some serious hardware and its latest patch.
I still cannot believe they did not cover this in Beta, and if they knew of the issue, assuming it is an issue, why have they not addressed it in a better way? I’m guessing we go to instanced fortress sieges or tuned down graphics. Fingers crossed.
Great story!
I can relate to that. Recently rerolled a character on a new server (one that has medium/higher) population, and I’m enjoying the game again.
WAR sucks on a low population server.
Yeah, it is sad. Be it EVE or WoW, or WAR… the true enemies in such epic engagements are connection, hardware and serverside limitations.
Do not tell me about epic scale battles – I am always glad if they are not so epic, I want to play without too much lag and too much hardware issues, not experience an epic lag and crashfest instead of an epic scale battle that cannot live up to the hype.
They tested this with Elder beta testers, but I don’t think they had anywhere near the same kind of numbers they are seeing in a live environment. Heck, the most I ever saw online at once in beta was about ~400 spread across many areas. I doubt they ever tossed 200+ people a side in a focused fortress sieging test because they just couldn’t generate enough interest. I know I was asked to participate but I didn’t feel like bothering. Blame me for being a bad tester, but I didn’t get my new computer until just before release and playing on my old PoS wasn’t even worth the time.
Even if I could have seen the mass amount of destruction and the server didn’t crash, I don’t think it would have been all that fun.
Too many people too close together is always a bad recipe. Nothing in WAR really makes your spread out and have smaller engagements on a large scale.
I’m really liking a lot of the character changes. Admittedly I have only tested them in large scale fights. In smaller battles (like Scenarios which I rarely do anymore) things may be more obviously unbalanced but so far so good.
I remember these issues in WoW. The good ole’ days when 60+ Horde would come to Iron Forge and we would come out with 50+, only to engage in an epic battle of a 2 fps slide show until the server crashed. But 4 years ago it was still amazing.
Today I have finally decided to just get used to my resolution being lower. I was running the game in 1400×900 beautifully all the time, until big oRvR which would crush my system. So I just decided to lower the res and get used to it. It has helped a ton for me.
As far as the new classes. My main is now a lvl 18 SW and I love the changes, ahahhaha. As soon as I found out you can run/circle strafe Counter Strike style, I found my character, and now that they got some love I’m enjoying the hell ata this game.
Is this only T4 stuff? It was dead in T2 and T3 zones. What happened to WAR is everywhere.
In T2 on Sylvania the oRvR is kinda rare. Most (like me) are just trying to grind to get to t4 with Scenarios, which kinda sucks. I’ll jump in any oRvR when I can, but its rare and most times a big waste of time.
But I did notice a group of ~8 of us took 2 keeps in T2 last night. Did they nerf the Keep Lords? I don’t remember ever getting close to killing a KL with under 20.
T4 is so crazy active the servers crash. Technically, when you level up, T4 is all you got so “everywhere” becomes relative.
Something else that helps me is turning off all enemy and teammates names/guilds/etc from over their heads. That really helped me see what the hell was going on, and improved performance a lot.
I was there after the crash on Order side – at some point while being zerged to death in Saphery, I noticed that the fortress was contested and flew my rank 23 ass out to help defend. At that point the numbers had swung the other way, and Order counter-zerged and routed the remaining destruction players away from the gates.
Sucks that you guys got crash-blocked, though. I just reactivated my sub last night in hopes of finding more world activity than when I quit. There was some nice, if imbalanced, ORvR happening in Elf T3, although nothing was going on in Empire/Dwarf. Hopefully the faction imbalance doesn’t start causing issues like it did on Averheim.
My reasons for resubbing both seemed to be worth it, tho – better population after the merges, and some great changes to Warrior Priests, particularly the Grace line. We’ll see if I there’s enough consistent RvR to actually get me through the levels, now…
By the way, welcome to Dark Crag, Keen! I hope Destruction is as enjoyable for you as Order has been for me.
I also wish this game only allowed names over head if you had them selected. Seems it would be a lot more fun if you could hide, lol.
I was there defending on the order side. I took screenshots because I could not believe the size of the destro zerg! We were trying to rally more defenders but it soon became apparent that the fortress was lost.
Then bam!–the zone crashed. I should have been happy that the destruction assault was thwarted, but I found myself angry and sad. Even though I was defending to prevent an assault on our capital city, a small part of me wanted to see the fortress get taken, if anything–just to see what happens.
The lag was absolutely horrible and made the game pretty much unplayable. I hope that Mythic overcomes these problems, because it is a real drag that the game can’t support the core of what Warhammer is all about.
I was shocked at the size of our force too. We went from about 30 people to 200 in under 5 minutes.
You know one thing that I have to give WOW is the best mmorpg engine ever. Things like what you just described are reasons I’m not playing WAR anymore. I must say going back to WOW makes me appreciate the game engine even more and I have to give mad props to the people that made it.
No , While WOW engine is better than WAR (in term of network data management) , it cant handle massive amount of player in one place.
remember the nude gnomes protests that lag IRONFORGE and nearly causing server crash ? the GM threaten those gnomes to cease and desist or face a temporary Ban lol.. or the horde raid to stormwind harbor (hundreds of baby taurens) that crashed the server ?
even EVE with their ‘supercomputerserver ™’ faced with server crash in Jita when the number of player reached hundreds..
now this kinda give me bad premonition about WAR’s future.. to be successful WAR servers need players. skip forward 5-6 month later when everyone is lv40 and oRVR-ing everyday.. without server/network improvement it will be HELL in T4 lol
cheers
Yeah RvR lag is one of the main reasons I left WAR…that and the lack of story. I can’t have any lag when playing or I get massive headaches and so far the only mmo to really be smooooooth is of course the Great Satan.
Ya Azazel took it hard the other day in The Maw.
You guys arent the only Azazel players. I may not get to play much due to work, but I am the GM of The Fallen.
We have lost so many players in the past month due to boredom that its not even funny. We’ve been trying on our boards to sway people back, but when our players are complaining about what Galithor and Lumio are speaking of above, they just say “see, why should we play, its broken?”
It needs to be fixed, or the players will just keep leaving.