As the launch of Warhammer Online draws closer we have decided to begin work once again on Goblannoyed, the webcomic based on the in-game adventures of Keen and Graev. To start things off we’re going to periodically begin introducing the characters you’ll see regularly in Goblannoyed.
Let me introduce you to our characters, a Goblin Shaman and Squig Herder, whose names are being withheld for now because we’re still in the decision making process.
We’ll be introducing more characters over the next few weeks and ‘hopefully’ begin creating actual comics once the NDA Drops… soon®
You can see all of our Goblannoyed concepts and more here.
looks cool so the reson you withheld name was so no one could steal it? also is there going to be a open beta or 14 day trial kinda thing like for WoW if so how would i get into (open beta) or where would i get it (trial)
Name withheld because we’re still deciding on the names for the characters and debating whether or not to use our actual in-game characters’ names.
As for the beta, Open Beta for WAR will be like Open Beta for most games now. That means it’s not truly “open”. It’s going to be more like… a less restrictive and more publicized/free to speak about/relaxed closed beta. The people who pre-ordered the collector’s edition get in and I assume the closed beta testers get in. Beyond that perhaps EA will partner with Fileplanet or give certain networks/fansites keys to give out.
The free trial hasn’t been talked about to my knowledge. I’m willing to bet that there won’t be one at first but might be eventually.
this does not fair well for me….. only hope would be to get in closed beta which i doubt so ill jsut ahve to gamble and waste 100 bucks(AUS) (or not) …..
Well Malic, several months ago you could work the system and get into open beta WITHOUT actually buying the collectors edition. I got one of the sheets with the various codes on them just for putting $5 down on the collectors edition. More than likely, I’ll shift that money onto a different game at a future date because I have no huge interest in the other stuff that comes with it. I just wanted the codes for the beta, the items and the early start.
Well I think it took WoW about 2 years to get a free trial, so I don’t see that happening anytime soon with WAR either. WoW did have buddykeys though, I hope we get to see something like that with WAR too! (with every copy of WoW u got a key you could hand over to a friend so he could play for 7 days free)
But on the other hand, how do you usually go about buying stuff Malic? Do you ask to watch the movie first before you pay for the ticket to the movies? Do you taste that soda before buying it? It’s not like we’re talking about buying a car. Read some about it, watch some videos, if it looks interesting then buy it and try it! Worst case scenario you can ebay your account afterwards to make up for some of the “lost” money.
My 2 Cents.
Haha, awesome! 🙂
Hey this is a little off topic, but I was wondering how you guys feel about the lopsidedness of the Faction Popularity. I guarantee that the first week (at least) will see a hige disparity favoring Destruction (because they are percieved as being cooler. Look out especially for tons of marauders (WOWzors I can morph my arm, that’s so leet!!!1)
I for one, and I’ve heard of other as well, am probably gonna roll Order just because they seem to be the underdog, and who knows, maybe it will work out like in wow that all the good players will go to it.
I think part of it comes from the fact that darker factions have what are perceived to be cooler, less standard classes. Marauder is the best example of this, although witch elf and squid herder count to I think.
That is not to say that the Order doesn’t have interesting classes. I, for example think that the Engineer will be pretty cool, and the idea of a melee pet class is interesting, though from what I’ve seen a lot of people are turned off by it.
So what do you guys think?
I believe we’ll see a high Destruction population on some servers for sure but I think some servers will actually have high Order pops. In the end however I don’t think it will be as much of a problem anymore. I’ve seen a lot of interest for Order drumming up over the past couple weeks.
Destruction definitely does have the “cool” factor.
Gotta a throw in a couple more nickles here…
Yes the majority of the fanbase of the game prior to release is heavily shifted towards destruction, maybe partly due to Paul Barnett and Co. painting a picture of them beeing cooler. But take a look at WoW as an example (yes I’m using WoW as an example, but not in a bad way :P):
How many percent of WoW’s total playerbase do you reckon followed the game closely prior to launch writing blogs about it forumposts about it etc etc. I’d guess somewhere between 1 and 2 percent at best ^^.
Now with WoW making MMO’s a broad business a lot more players are alert to new games coming and thus a larger amount of people will be following WAR through to release, but i still think these will be the minority in the end (if the game catches just a glimpse of WoWs success).
Put simply, the majority of WoW’s playerbase are people who didn’t know jack shit about what races where available until launch, and the majority of these more casual players tend to want to play “the good guy” as they can relate to them better.
I think we will see the same in WAR, large numbers on destruction during OB and headstart, 1 month after release we’ll have a totally different situation with Order being more popular.
My 3 cents.
Ohh I’ll add some more… ^^
While I had my heart set for Destruction since the first second I laid my eyes on this game, I need to admit that some of the Order classes does seem pretty darn awesome! The Witch Hunter, Warrior Priest, Dwarven Engineer, Swordmaster and Archmage all seem mindblowing tbh!
Maybe you guys are right. But I’m a little concerned with WAR repeating my experience in WOW. aka Log queue times for 1 faction, instant for the other + game starting with uneven sides. That, for now, is my main concern.
I don’t know if the WAR development team has said anything about how they are going to try and avoid those issues. So if anyone does, please post it.
How bout “hey here’s 1000 order chars and only 400 destruction chars, lets put a lock on making order chars until we have more balance” ?
Sounds like a plausible system even though I havent heard those exact words (or numbers) from a dev. And ofc the numbers are just for show, how they balance is out of my league ^^
I would play order, but all the cool kids are playing destruction. 🙁
If I go to login on my character / class / career of choice and end up with a ‘realm queue’ or somesuch lockout, I’m not going to end up playing WAR for very long at all.
It’s a problem Mythic should have resolved much earlier in development. Queues to tell me to go play the other side will make me exceedingly unhappy in a very short length of time. Nobody likes queues.
I think Mythic has made the same mistake Blizzard did only in reverse: Instead of dorky Orcs, it’s dorky humans and dwarves (and slightly less so for elves).
I’m really concerned it’s going to be a whole lot of Destruction (especially Chaos) and then on the Order side not only will it be less populated, but it’ll be lopsided with White Lions.
I’m going to add this note: I’m not trying to predict doom and gloom, I just think they need to resolve the imbalance issue– fast. Queues are like putting your finger in the hole in the dam, they aren’t a proper solution.
And how would YOU solve the problem? I trust Mythic to be making the best possible system for balancing that they are able to make. If it means queues then I’ll live with that, its for the better for the game and balance in the end.
As for comparing WoW and what Blizzard did with Horde and Ally I just don’t see what you mean. I’ve ALWAYS felt Horde looked cooler and more interesting than any Ally race, and I can’t say I’ve seen Blizzard trying to tell me otherwise either.
(imo there are no races more dorky in WoW than Dwarfs, Nelfs and Draenei, but thats my opinion)
Well I don’t think the problem is very solvable at this late stage, but two things come to mind that they should have done.:
Slayers for the Dwarves (they ~are~ the most popular part of the Warhammer dwarf race).
Bretonnia instead of the men-in-tights Empire.
It’s a moot point now, just for arguments sake, because it’s not like they’re going to be able to reverse the decisions they’ve made on the races & classes.
Meanwhile, seriously.. go unbalanced and catch up. Don’t give people queues, they’re sick to death of those. I do think most people would actually prefer to play with population imbalances than sit and stare at a “you’re 76 out of 281 to login”.
I totally agree on the Dwarven Slayers, I’d love to see them ingame (especially since they have one in the cinematic ><).
Though on the Empire I can’t agree, the most appealing class to me on Order side is the Witch Hunter, and damn if they didn’t include them. I’m not familiar with the Bretonnians though, still reading up on the Warhammer lore. 🙂
Btw, they don’t need to reverse the decisions on careers, there will be expansions and patches, there WILL be new classes to play (they have said so in interviews at least), so the Slayers might be coming “soon®”.
@Rog: I can see where you’re coming from and can agree that in theory it would be a marvelous world if server balance could be achieved while in development.
But really… you don’t seriously think Slayers and Bretonnia would mean there wouldn’t be population balance issues, right? Honestly, for all we know, Order will outnumber Destruction.
I think Proximo’s question of ‘How would YOU’ solve the problem?’ is very valid here. I’ve written something on this before:
I’ve hit briefly on what must be done to ensure balance. There has to be in-game mechanics and systems designed during development to reward the underpopulated and/or losing side if the side is showing they can’t win. Mythic has already commented on this and stated that a system like this is indeed coming as well as individual realm queues.
I would rather sit in a queue than face enormous population balance issues. It’s a lesser evil. I can deal with it.
Choosing between queues and population issues is easy for me, I’ll take the queues!
But anyways, as I was reading Keen’s answer it hit me like a truck, I saw a interview with Josh Dreshner a couple of days ago where he was asked a question about balance in terms of numbers and/or one faction always winning (forgive me for not remembering at first, I’ve seen somewhere between 100 and 200 videos the last week as I’m compiling a thread on our guildforum about WAR ><).
Here it is:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39378
At just about exactly 5:00 the TenTonHammer(er) guy asks and Josh replies. Hope that fills out some blanks for y’all. 🙂
@Keen: First, sorry if this is hijacking your character thread (tho I didn’t fork it off this way, but still).. and also, if this whole debate hasn’t gotten repeatitive, heh.
I must point out though, the very obvious thing (well to me anyway) that would correct population imbalance better than realm-wide queues would be instancing with much smaller queues for the RvR overlap / areas.
But these days, you seem to treat instancing (which I LOVE it SOLVES this CRAP) as a dirty word, so it seems pointless debating it. =P
Anyone arguing for queues, geez seriously. No one, not a single soul, none of you, will be happy staring at a queue screen. Zero.
You’re all just assuming the usual, that it’ll be someone else in the queue besides yourself.
Queues are insanely, horribly, the worst thing you can do to any MMORPG short of shutting the servers right off.
Anyway, lol and I look like a lunatic multi-posting, but it’s beating a dead horse and what seems obvious to me isn’t for you. I guess and we’ll just see once the end of September rolls around and see how it is.
If Mythic can come up with other incentives that actually work and don’t suck, then good on them. I just think they could have avoided it a great deal with their art direction.
Necessary evils man. Necessary evils.
Queues > Instancing. That is if you mean making several instances for each zone like AoC and GW has. Hate that, I want a world as open and fluid as possible.
No I’m not assuming its not gonna happen to me, I’ve been sitting for 12-15 mins waiting in queue on WoW at some point, and yes it does suck, but I prefer that to the alternatives! It’s actually not THAT bad to me.