Drastic changes needed for Warhammer Online

I promise this won’t be a depressing entry.    I want to start off though by setting the tone for why some of these changes need to come to the game and why action taken sooner, rather than later, is mandatory.  Today was another rotten day for me because I was notified that yet another person I know is quitting WAR.  All around me my friends, brother (yep, Graev quit a little while ago), and guildmates are calling it quits and either hanging up their mmorpg hats until the next ‘next best thing’ or closing the door on mmorpgs altogether.  WAR -has- lost a decent number of people to WotLK, although the game is holding up remarkably well I must admit, and it’s really caused me to stop and look at the game as a whole.  Drastic changes are needed in WAR if the game will survive.

It’s time to pick up the hatchet; the time for using a scalpal has come and gone.  I think the following fixes, changes, and additions need to be made.  Some of these will come off as drastic and over the top, which they very well may be, but I want you (those of you playing WAR right now) to visualize in your minds what the game would be like if the game were this way.  Also, do not interpret my tone as “bitchy” or “angry”.  Read this as constructive criticism from someone who loves the game’s potential from what he saw in beta and feels that the game is moving into dire times.

Remove the zone control/locking from the game. The system was neat on paper and it worked in beta, however it is not working right now.  Flipping zones is entirely too messy and the process is strenuous and devoid of strategy and fun.  Having a zone sit stalemated for a week, with no major action going on at all to keep it contested, can not possibly be working as intended.  What we need is a far more simple and streamlined process for moving from one zone to the next after capturing the keeps and battle objectives.  If there is a large force of players moving on enemy keeps and taking them one after another then the army should not be stopped by a little lock symbol on the interface saying “sorry, you can’t go any further”.  Alternately, if you leave zone control/locking in the game then it should involve Keeps and Battle Objectives ONLY!  None of this scenarios, PQ’s and PvE counting rubbish.

If the enemy chooses not to defend then the fight should make it to their capital city.  A city siege has never once happened on Wolfenburg or Phoenix Throne (two “very populated” servers with supposedly active RvR).  If players are going to stay then they need to experience city sieges and be faced with a truly imminent realm war.  This is a realm war and players need to feel the pressure of losing territory to feel motivated.  Mr. Jacobs, tear down this wall!

Make keep taking meaningful by adding a Darkness Falls type dungeon. Warhammer Online, back in November 2007, was delayed in order to transform the game to align closer with DAOC’s RvR but it forgot that one crucial element… the PURPOSE.  Sure, city sieges are a purpose but let’s be realistic – a keep is under attack in Praag… why would I go defend if it poses no threat to our city?  It’s going to take like 8 keeps, 2 fortreses, and a TON of RvR to make our capital city vulnerable.  As of right now a city siege is not going to happen.  So, we come back to the PURPOSE.  I strongly feel that Darkness Falls provides that purpose.  Find out more about Darkness Falls here.

Remove renown and victory gain from T4 scenarios. Scenarios should not be a means for progressing your realm rank when scenarios can hardly be considered RvR.  They are unbalanced mini-games that have been abused by the players (whether intentionally or not) to level up and race to the end.  I don’t think the solution is to remove them altogether, but removing or curtailing the ability to advance in what is considerably the “end-game” player progression (realm ranks) in these arcade-like mini-games is necessary.  Removing victory gain from scenarios is also necessary because these should not influence the realm war.

Merge the servers and merge them now. Let’s face it, WAR was designed in such a way that a lot of players participating in the realm war is mandatory.  Right now, especially in light of recent mmorpg competitions’ releases, we’re seeing the populations dwindle.  Merge the freaking servers and you will improve the enjoyment of the game globally for all players.

Revamp the PvE in the game. This one has multiple levels.  It’s already apparent that the PvE itemization in the game is becoming arguably more trouble than it is worth.  The ward system has gone from being nonexistent to moderately important in RvR to WoW-treadmill and back to moderately important again.  Just remove wards and do an itemization pass on all gear to improve stats.  Additionally, move to a token system for gear.  Also, the PvE gameplay in the game needs to be revamped.  Right now I feel like I’m playing a single player game when I go out to PvE 90% because of how shallow and dumbed down it feels.

Additionally, the PvE in the game is not at all what was promised.  I’m talking mostly about questing.  It was hyped up to be different from the average mmorpg but I can find absolutely no different in the quests here from WoW or LOTRO or pas iterations of the questing system.  The idea of having already killed bears to satisfy a quest giver’s desire to have you go kill bears before you’ve met him never made it into the game.  I feel somewhat lied to here.

The Tome of Knowledge is great but we need substance. This isn’t to be taken as a slight to the ToK because I feel that it was really well designed.  However, I feel like too much emphasis has been placed on the ToK as the end-all-be-all of accomplishment.  Going to Chucky Cheeses or the carnival and walking away with a few knicknacks is fun and all… but it doesn’t beat a trip to Toys R Us for that awesome GI Joe action figure.  Know what I’m saying?  Expand the substance of the game.  Bring the player in deeper.

Add content to the game! This one is simple and many of you will probably go “wtf does he mean?! WAR has tons to do!”.  For those of you who would say that, can you answer me the following?  What dungeons have you done or can you do?  What, other than scenarios, does your average day involve?  I’m willing to bet that for most of you it’s PQ’s, quests, and scenarios.  Some of you may experience open-rvr but for most of you it’ll be those three things (the holy trinity of WAR?).  I think it’s time to stop looking at PQ’s and quests as content but as concepts for methods of delivering content.  There needs to be much, much more content.

Find some way – any way – to make the world have more ‘place’ and less ‘utility’. Discussion on this topic occured in the comments of this post.  The game lacks the immersion that DAOC had.  What exactly happened here to cause this problem is probably rooted in the core design of the game.  However, I think a lot of this can be fixed from changes recommended above.   The game being truncated into all these tiers and pairings and flight paths has done a lot of harm to make the world feel incongruous.  One way to perhaps give players the ability to magically forget this problem would be to develop the gameworld to be more immersive.  Expand it somehow and help the players to feel lost in the world.  Yes, I actually like getting lost in a world.  I remember one time when I was playing Midgard that I wandered too far off the path and ended up getting lost in the forest.   I was turned around and couldn’t find my way back to the road and wandered in a random direction.  It was then that I first found Spindelheim (a dungeon).  I’ll never forget that.

If you thought I was joking when I said that a hatchet, rather than a scalpal, was needed… perhaps you see that I was serious now.  These changes wouldn’t be the end-all-be-all fix and maybe they aren’t even the right way to go at all.  However, I think that something like this is needed if WAR is going to survive long-term for a lot of people.  Big change is needed for WAR one way or another.

The people I talk to, my friends, etc, all mirror the same sentiments towards WAR right now:  The game has fun parts that are extremely well done, however getting to that fun requires that I spend the majority of my time online doing stuff that I find completely boring and horrible.

WAR is in an odd place right now.  It’s a game that is really unlike any other out there even though it’s obviously trying to be several games at once.  It needs to find itsself right now because, more than anything, I think the game doesn’t even know what its supposed to be at heart.   It has hit a few bumps… or boulders… on the road right now but it still has the potential to keep moving.  The best thing that Mythic can do is acknowledge that its time to rethink a few things and set the game back on the path that it was on during beta.

I’m not ready to surrender and lose this ‘war’ just yet.

  • /agreed with everything you say

    I’m losing the urge to log into the game, due to the lack of open rvr (which is the reason i bought the game after all).
    Keeps should be much more important, so that you really want to keep them and feel sad and filled with revenge if the enemy faction captures one of yours. the main-purpose of your faction is completely absent at the moment – too few players really play in order to capture the enemy city one day.

    mythic needs to change some rvr and scenario mechanics or remove scenarios altogether (and we know they won’t do that).
    I hope that one day WAR will become the diamond it deserves to be.

    (sorry for my average english)

  • I began my break from WAR this weekend. I really think you hit the nail on the head with your suggestions. Unfortunately, everything you talked about would require a *massive* overhaul to the game that I doubt they’d be willing to do. It would involve massive risk of losing more players.

    I’m in support of it but if they were to make those change-ups and they didn’t work, how many more people would bail? There’s always the chance things could become worse as they attempt to reach the goals you stated above.

    That being said, I do think they could get there but that it would take a long time which, unfortunately, they don’t have. The beginning of an MMOs life is incredibly important. They need to make the changes and quick but it may already be too late.

    I can say honestly that I hope it’s not.

  • This is a paraphrase of a comment I posted on Waaagh, but it’s relavent here too.

    I’m feeling like something is missing in WAR right now and that thing is addictiveness. WAR is no where near as addictive as WoW was for me. I think Mythic in their attempt to be the “greatest hits” of MMO’s and throw away all the bad stuff has ended up with a game that is in no way addictive. I remember very clearly Paul Barnett saying he wanted to create a game that was a “total hobby experience” and I’m REALLY not getting that feeling right now. The one lesson they should have taken from WoW was how to make an addictive game and they haven’t come close. I used to spend hours reading WoW blogs and forums and looking for that next piece of gear or non combat engineering pet on Wowhead.

    Right now I only have 1 daily task and that is to quest to gain experience. Having something else to do would go a long way towards making me want to play the game. Keen, your suggestions are great ones and would probably help push the game away from scenarios and quest grinding and into what we were promised, open RvR.

  • i liked War but it needs major work its not going to get it anytime soon so i took a break and so glad i did.

    i get WotLK rolled a death knight, man i just had the most fun i have had in 10 years of mmorpgs. the death knight start area quests rocked so much fun 🙂

  • At first I believed that WAR had smartly trimmed all the fat from its game. All of the annoying traveling, 10 minute travel trips, searching from the one mob you need to kill to complete a quest, searching for hours in order to get that one skirmish of PvP.

    Upon further examination, it seems that in cutting all of this fat, making their game SO stream lined and lean, that they cut off the very thing that immerses people and creates an experience.

    I don’t have a solution to the problem but I would just like to point out how the stream lined system that WAR is built off of has left more of a skeleton than it has a living, breathing body.

  • I’m sorry, but keep sieges are never going to become enjoyable. They get way too many people way too fast, and either end in 10 minutes (no defenders) or last far too long to honestly reward the players involved (guy comes in for the last 2 minutes and snags a gold bag).

    WAR is STUCK between two designs. The original, heavily instanced, game that it was originally designed to be. And the open-world RvR game they tried to add half-way through.

    I honestly hate to admit it, but I fear the game’s core design can not have open world elements tacked on to it. Honestly, Mythic should just instance the keep sieges to 40 vs 40.

    The city sieges are already instanced, there is no sense in having this tiny little stop gap of open world RvR that runs absolutely horribly when twenty players get on screen.

    I think Mythic had some really good ideas, but they never actually put them in the game. I go back to my question about how much Paul Barnett hurt this game. He talked about some really refreshing ideas. NOT A SINGLE ON OF THEM IS IN THE GAME.

    Healers that DPS first, heal second. NO
    Smart quest givers that realize you just killed eight bears instead of sending you to kill eight more. NO
    Risk vs reward for venturing into an RvR zone. NO
    WAR is everywhere. NO

    We’re not talking about hype here. We’re talking about lessons we thought Mythic had learned from other games. I completely understand Paul Barnett now and the reasoning as to why he didn’t want his developers playing WoW. People get lazy and just steal what they already think work, but do a really shitty job of copying it. To me, that is WAR in a nutshell. A great set of ideas, all tested separately in beta, but never put together to make a coherent game worth playing past a few months.

    I think we were all fair in our love for this game prior to launch. Mythic really nailed the beta phases. They just never put the game together into a single package and the many gaps left open are very very obvious now.

  • Yep, I’m into my “six months’ off” phase too. WAR has a lot going for it, and I know that in just a little while, servers will have been merged, populations will have been managed, and just maybe there’ll be “meaningful” Open RvR (whatever “meaningful” means).

    I too would love to see PvE quests “pre-completed” (i.e. you’ve killed ten thousand bears, so when you visit the quest giver, you have credit for the kills already). Just this one simple change would get me to re-up, because I love to do quests just as much as I love to kill players.

    Make Open RvR just as easy to engage in- and as engaging- as scenarios, and I’ll be back too. Add mini-objectives to the Open zones, have actual quests in the Open zones that give minor bonusses to your side when completed.

    Cuz as it stands now, Open RvR loses fun factor when compared to quick, painless, fun scenarios that you can access from anywhere in the Realm at a distance of two mouse clicks. To do Open RvR, I have to work to get there. Why should I get a free teleport to AND from Tor Anroc but it takes ten minutes or more to get fully set up in an Open RvR zone (travel time, buying siege equipment, setting up warbands)? Of _course_ I’m gonna choose the option with zero downtime!

    I know WAR is a fun game. I know it’ll get even better. And when it does, I know I’ll be back. Hopefully, enough others will have the fortitude to stick it out until then, which I sadly don’t have.

  • “The game has fun parts that are extremely well done, however getting to that fun requires that I spend the majority of my time online doing stuff that I find completely boring and horrible.”

    Another problem I had is I didn’t feel like I accomplished anything at the end of some playtime. I would do some kill quest and play the token scenario and really not make a dent in the xp bar.

  • Having never played WAR, I can’t comment on this, but I do have a question. How would you guys feel if the game had shipped with 0 scenarios? Would it be a better game?

  • Wow Keen, you are on a roll.. 2 excellent articles… It’s nice to see you have lost the blinders you had on from beta. Objective and honest writings, keep it up.

    I also hope War can turn it around, although i doubt Mythic is sweating. I still think their subscriber numbers are way over what they hoped for.

  • @ Mordiceius: Yes, as long as there were things other than objectives and keeps in RvR zones that gave renown. Scenarios are a great low commitment way of getting renown in a game that requires high renown ranks for the top gear. Something needs to replace them in the RvR areas, like doing quests and/or public quests for renown. Otherwise I’m afraid with no scenarios, things would degrade into one giant zerg like we saw during Witching Night.

  • I agree with all of the above – I stopped playing WAR when WoW 3.0 patch came out and got me full-on back into the addiction. I’m still subbed, cause I think Mythic needs the support to get their game to where it needs to be. I’m going to give it about 2-3 months while I play through WotLK and then give it another shot, cause I love Warhammer as a setting too much to just quit the game.

    Re: Mordiceius: This is hard to say, because they have so many zones for the same level range, and such a low player cap, that even on an RvR server you could go without seeing someone for a while. The RvR lakes are terrible at the moment. The very first Empire/Chaos one is great, but that’s because of its small size and the higher population of T1. The later ones are too big to reliably find someone to fight in any sort of group combat. So basically, I’ll take the scenarios for what they are as a way to get some fairly quick, somewhat balanced pvp. As a more casual player I probably would get a lot less enjoyment if I couldn’t queue for Nordenwatch.

  • Some of that looks nice, but im here to tell you I have the most fun since it launch this weekend. None stop Orvr on Ostermark. It was crazy!!

  • I think new MMOs need to take a lesson from EVE Online. Get good enough hardware and network code to run ONE server. There you go, no worries about x realm has no players while y realm is full, can’t find anyone in my tier, not enough people to do a city siege. No problems with your buddies playing on a different server.

    Not that EVE isn’t without its own share of problems, or that the model would work well with WAR’s server types.. but I guess my main point is that WAR has been epic fail from the start with regards to number of servers and server size. You can’t have meaningful RvR with the size the servers are now.

  • I problem ill give you is that alot of this game is player made. We have a strong guild leading RvR, yea there from DAOC and its non stop. Keep and ob taking.

    But it is boring when dest never shows up but this weekend they did thank god. Would love a df style dungeon.

    My guild as it stand right now has 215 members, played by about 100 people. We have on week nights still 45 to 55 on.

  • @Scott: That’s one of the best and worst parts of the game. The content is largely player driven. The experience is largely player driven. The entire end-game activity relies heavily on player driven activity, desire, etc. It’s all up to the players. Right now on some servers this is showing to be a marvelous thing and on others its showing to be the bane of the game. I moved from Wolfenburg to Phoenix Throne and my fun shot up by 100x.

  • @Keen and @Heartless,

    Paul Barnett wasn’t lying about the “get credit for killing bears even if you didnt meet the guy yet” thing. He was talking about Kill COllectors, and they’re all over the place. And they work exactly like he said they would. Some people got the idea that he meant that ALL quests in the game would be like that, which to my knowledge he never said.

    If you kill 8 bears and then go meet the bear kill collector, you get the credit for it. Just like he said…what’s the confusion here?

  • I’m not saying he lied, just that I feel lied to. Slight difference there but let me explain.

    It’s all in the delivery. The system could have been presented as it is: “We have normal quests and kill collectors”. Everyone would have known what to expect. Instead, it was honestly played up to be this grandiose new way of questing when in reality nothing in WAR’s system of questing is new, innovative, or different aside from the Public Quests.

  • But Keen what would you have them do? All quests are going to be the same thing, they have been in every mmo, From daoc to wow, to Star Wars, there all the same, not sure what you could do and not have them.

    Kill collectors could use some explaining for sure.

    I think sometimes we want everything. I love Wow but if I had to raid I would rip off my arms. I HATE IT! But love what wow has to offer but I cant compete without raiding so i left.

    I think War is so pop dependent but so was DAOC, coming from a sever that the pop was horrible, some days there was just nothing to do at all but camp bridges.

    I will agree that War needs some rewards for defending and could use some more “fun” stuff but I think thats coming.

    Its a diff beast then other games out there for sure and I think Mythic will come thru for us.

  • I was a full supporter of WAR for the first month — but towards the end of that month, when I was going thru Tier 3 and into Tier 4, I ran into the same sorts of issues your article talks about.

    So I took a week break from the game, and that week stretched to two weeks, then three… and now my sub’s cancelled.

    I have to agree with a comment I heard you reference once: I’ve played MMORPGs since Ultima Online, and this is the first MMO that I took a break from and didn’t miss. There was nothing “pulling” me back in — even FFXI and EQ2 both had a “pull” to me.

    Maybe it’s the lack of Open RvR that’s doing it. Maybe it’s a combination of that and being massively dissatisfied with my Swordmaster (and I don’t have time nor energy to spend re-rolling). But this is a game I both can’t hate and can’t bring myself to love, and I’ve never felt this sort of apathy towards an MMO.

    And on the Kill Collectors thing from Paul: Oh yes, he WAS definitely misleading, the way he presented them. It irritates me even more when the collectors don’t want just “bears”, but a particular type of “bear” that you don’t actually encounter unless you go out of your way. In reality — because you can max them out, something else not disclosed by Paul — it’s just another quest, without the log entry.

  • I think a lot of us are feeling the same way right now Keen. Good post!

    My buddy and I have been talking about this general issue for the last two weeks or so. We’ve seen populations dropping off even prior to WoTLK, nevermind this weekend.

    You hit the nail on the head when you said that WAR has to determine what kind of game it’s going to be. We all know what WoW is – you do dungeons to get gear to do the next dungeon to get the gear to do the next dungeon, etc. It’s a PvE paradise, and it does it in an excellent way (as does EQ2).

    With WAR, PvE is there, but it’s fairly shallow and simply a way to help you level up. The “real” game is supposed to be RvR, and not scenarios, but open world RvR ala DAoC. But we’re just not seeing it, at least not as it was “intended”. Right now we’re simply seeing “keep flipping” with people wanting to get gold bags, not defend. And a city siege? Gimme a break. Not only is it not happening, but why should it? Why does it matter? Why defend Altdorf or IC?

    And that’s what WAR is lacking – there is no purpose. It’s feels more like a series of mini-games than a world. At least in DAoC there was realm pride and real differences. You cared about keeps being taken and relics stolen (which granted PvE bonuses). You had an amazing PvE/PvP dungeon in Darkness Falls.

    To me, WAR needs purpose – give players a reason to care, something to fight for over time that is meaningful and changes the game in some way. Becuase right now people really *don’t* care if a keep or objective gets taken. We glance up when Praag is locked down and then go back to grinding our PQ. That’s just wrong for a game that’s supposed to get us all into massive, open world RvR battles.

    I also strongly believe that a third faction would really improve things as well, but that will probably never happen due to the Warhammer lore and the core design of the game. But just the dynamic of a third “faction” in the battles would really shake things up.

    WAR needs work, and it can’t come fast enough. There are a lot of things to enjoy, but even now I’m starting to get where I don’t have the desire to log in as much and play. I think a lot of folks are in the same boat.

  • 1) Make keeps and BOs the only items to determine zone control. PQs and Scenarios can apply buffs only at most to those winning them (i.e. so strengthen a side).

    2) Remove NPCs from all keeps and BOs and make it required that you have to hold it for 15 minutes before being captured (like Planetside). This promotes PVP interaction.

    3) Introduce more siege pad items that can variety the strategy of keep battles. The single chokepoint to the 2nd level keep lord is so boring. Obviously don’t allow for zerg rushes but hell even adding an Orc Thrower siege weapon for getting people slowly up on a battlement would spice things up. Another idea could be a siege tunnel item that lets you tunnel to under an outer siege wall (again slow access thru it though to avoid zerg rushes). Again this eye is taken from Planetside with it’s deployable items.

    BTW EVE definitely does it right. Looking forward to CCP’s fantasy MMO, whenever that comes out.

    Oh and my friends wanted to try out WOTLK, so I got it as well. Pretty much as I expected. The visuals, environment, and feeling of being in a mythical and epic place within Northrend are incredible. Blizzard’s art people are amazing without a doubt. Yet as I expected, I can’t force myself to do any quests. They’re just boring and have no meaning. I mean if the quests were like do this and get some new gear, hell I’d do that. But most are do this quest and make 4 gp. Think I had more enjoyment from quests doing Burning Crusade because lots of nice gear was dropping.

  • 4) Make BOs objective provide global buffs to the zone so everyone benefits from them immediately (no need to go to the Sergeant). Makes them more valuable to everyone (even those doing PVE), so hopefully more people will want to maintain them. Even if this isn’t done, the idea is to provide a very very strong LOCAL incentive to do RVR. As you said, cities are a distant thing that have no local meaning or incentive for people.

  • agree on all points, good post. i am loving war most of the time i play still, but addressing these issues would definitely make the game better

  • The Kill Collectors are the quests you get credit for without needing to speak with the NPC first. These did actually make it into the game.

    Other than that, great criticism! Let’s hope 1.05 begins these changes.

  • @scott – I for one do feel lied to .. directly. I still am amazed at how many people took the torch and pitchfork to AOC for misleading claims, and are willing to give WAR a pass.

    Maybe I expected less from AOC.. the zoning and itemization was pretty poor, but the combat was a step in the right direction. Visuals and sounds were great.

    The sound in warhammer is TERRIBLE, the itemization way too linear, the character customization is awful. I just started a new char in WOW after 2+ years, was re-addicted in a day, I got none of this feeling from WAR.

    So back to the lied to – Dynamic world, living cities: NO just NO… more rooms in the cites that have no purpose, walkways you can’t get to, etc. They need about 10x less PQ’s with more epiqness to them.. was a good idea, but failed in the delivery. The kill collectors is a joke for something revolutionary, I might as well be turning in wool or silk. Hidden lairs and going off the beaten path?? THIS IS WHERE PAUL REALLY PULLED THE WOOL OVER… there is absolutely no reason to explore or get lost in this game..

    need a rant! thanks

  • you should give AoC a go again if you need something to play once you give this up before the wait for knights of the old republic MMO, remember what you said to erlling.. the game has gotten tons better.

  • How to make oRvR more enjoyable:

    1. Automatically bring people to the combat. I think that each week WAR needs to set up the frontline of the war. Add some travel mechanism that automatically takes you to the frontline to fight.

    2. Add mini games to the frontline. Each week Mythic should create a mini game a oRVR lake for each tier. This would be similar to the Witching Night event. This would add some more purpose.

    3. Give me XP and RP for oRvR kills. People are still doing scenarios because they can consistently get better XP and RP from them. This is because they know that they will have people to fight. Up the XP and RP rewards for oRvR so that people choose them over scenarios.

  • I for one dont find the sound terrible at all, its fine, but the game does need more music if you like that type of stuff. Horizons had amazing music.

    Ill agree with the pq thing, they put WAY to many in the game. Agree to the explore part of the game is not all that great. But for me I don’t care about that at all.

    I wanted a great pvp game, and I think I got it, but it does have issues, the 25+ leveling speed is really bad. The gear is not all what it could be.

    My point is that the game is 2 MONTHS OLD!! Heck alot of daoc dungeons did not even have loot after 2 months. Give Mythic time, Heck give Aoc time to they might fix that.

    I just dont get all this complaining about a game that is 2 months old. Sit back play something else and give them time to put stuff in. They did not have the time that Blizz had with Wow before it came out, heck I was playing wow in the friends and family alpha almost 2 years before wow was released.

  • “3. Give me XP and RP for oRvR kills. People are still doing scenarios because they can consistently get better XP and RP from them. This is because they know that they will have people to fight. Up the XP and RP rewards for oRvR so that people choose them over scenarios.”

    Amen totally. If there is one place they screwed up bad it was this. I dont play SC very much, dont really care for them at all but your so right.

  • Zone locking is fine, actually it should NOT be removed. Unlike other games taking a city should not be a 4am to 8am weekday affair.

    What has to happen is that they need to add VP trickle from all objectives and Keeps. Just holding those over a period of multiple hours should lock the zone. How long? My guess would be 2-3 hours.

    On Ostermark real T4 war is really just starting but it has been glorious so far. It makes me wonder if I am gona get any sleep in the next few month, since I feel almost guilty loggin off when Destro is pushing through the Kadrin’s valey.

    BTW ganking reinfocrcements and rez returns, is just as fun as it was in DAOC. WHen 4-5 wabrands are battling all over the zone, there are tons of singles everywhere in between to gank and there are no real stealth classes! it is pretty awesome

    I agree with scenarios, no RP over RR40. Server merges and other stuff.. probably merge servers. However I do not want them t spent a single minute of their time of TOK or pure pve. They got a ton of things to fix with campaign first.

  • “On Ostermark real T4 war is really just starting but it has been glorious so far. It makes me wonder if I am gona get any sleep in the next few month, since I feel almost guilty loggin off when Destro is pushing through the Kadrin’s valey.”

    Yea I had to log to watch my Cowboys and felt bad about it.

  • When I first heard Paul talk about how if you ‘go off the beaten path you’ll find this cool little cave with a reward for going off the beaten path’ I was really excited about the PvE content for this game.
    But that’s not really in the game that much.

    I remember how AWESOME Mithra’s Tomb was in DaoC. I remember exactly how to get to it, and seeing more dungeons like Mithra’s Tomb and the Catacombs and other dungeons was something I Was really excited about for Warhammer.

    Sadly, it doesn’t exist.

    So ok, maybe that’s because at the core, WAR is a PvP/RvR game. Ok, sure. Well, I can’t stand that part either, mostly due to the fact that there are SO MANY freaking classes and the balance is just totally whacked. Oh, and plus I Don’t like feeling I have to grind scenarios, and so many of them at that.
    I miss battlegrounds. Oh how much fun I had in Thidranki trying to take that central keep, or trying to keep out attackers. (Ground targeted AoE for the win!)

  • I’m still having fun. There is always room for improvements though.

    World RvR, as Heartless said, will always have issues. Unless they add friendly fire, it will be hampered by too many people and other population issues.

  • I had concerns about the depth of the “end game” for this game when I was reading about it in its beta stages. But I wanted to buy the game anyway thinking it would take me a long time to grow bored before having to worry about that, and by then maybe they would have added more content.

    After seeing my friends quit and less of my guild members logging in regularly I canceled my sub too. Those of you who are still playing are brave, and you have a lot more patience than me. It is sad that the game is in this state 2 months after release. I hope they do make these drastic changes so I can come back, but if I’m let down again I may just quit MMO’s completely this time.

  • An accurate appraisal.

    Personally I’m on a EU RP-RvR Server which never really reached Med/Med pop but Mythic/GOA for some reason opened another RP-RvR Server the day after launch and diluted all further players across the 2. The result is one low-activity server and one wasteland.

    They have said people can transfer from the latter to the former but they really need to bite the bullet and merge them (and perhaps even more) or both servers will simply die.

    I’ve almost stopped logging in now because when I do it’s a case of queueing for Serpent’s Passage (the ONLY Scenario that appears despite multiple “fixes”) to get burned alive by a class that’s been blatantly overpowered for over 2 years, or going to the very dull, stupidly easy Bastion Stairs to watch useless loot drop.
    I would avoid the PvE wholesale if the Ward system did not make it mandatory. Alas there’s no RvR alternative unless I want to sit on THAT beach again.

  • @Drezzah: Can you provide some examples of WOTLK quests that you enjoyed (maybe with a Wowhead link)? If they sound decent, I’ll go right too them. Hehe, or maybe that’s what I should do. Go look at all the quests on WoWHead and make a list of the few that interest me. 🙂

    @Scott: “I just dont get all this complaining about a game that is 2 months old.” This is pretty obvious isn’t it? People really wanted WAR to be awesome right from the get go. They had really high expectations of it being truly “different”. Thus the higher the expectations the higher the letdown.

    @Korlyth: “…but if I’m let down again I may just quit MMO’s completely this time.” Hearing this more and more. It seems people want to collectively work together on larger more meaningful realm goals. More importantly, the success of these goals though has to benefit them at their local level in some very important way, otherwise why do it?

  • @Scott: I have never, ever, been one to sit back and “wait” for changes to be made in mmorpgs. That’s just not how I play them. I do expect a certain degree of polish and completion when a game releases. WAR hit this degree, however it failed to define itself. Now WAR needs to go back to the polish and completion stage and pick one path and go with it.

    On top of that, WAR came with certain promises and expectations that were not even assumed or unfairly expected by the players that Mythic has yet to fulfill. They’ve set the foundation and I applaud and recognize them for that, however it’s not enough – yet.

    On a side note, last night I had a ton of fun RvRing. I enjoyed simply fighting other players in a really well-balanced battlefield.

  • I agree with most of what you said, except removing all the rewards from the T4 scenarios. I like to spice up my PvE quest grind with the occasional scenario. They pop rarely enough for me as it is, and while I would continue to queue even without renown rewards, plenty of other people would not, and I’d probably never see another scenario again.

    Also, if you remove renown rewards from the scenarios, you need to either dramatically increase the renown rewards from open RvR, or reduce the renown required per renown level.

  • I would have say I got caught up in the hype. As much as I enjoy Paul talking and presenting, there are things that did not deliver as I expected.

    Too many PQs that were all the same. There are some good ones out there which have some interesting events, but most of them are the same format.

    Too many quest hubs. You never stayed in one area long enough to feel like you could explore before you had to go to the next quest hub.

    Too much space in RvR. Well sort of. This one really depends on there being a critical mass of players in one area. On some servers there is quiet a bit of RvR. Others, the lakes are dead.

    I have enjoyed playing WAR. But I never got that feeling that I was doing anything important or that my character was doing anything more than giving the other player RPs. The War did not feel alive.

  • I think the question most people are asking themselves…is, What is WAR’s endgame? Does anyone know? Does Mythic? Why isn’t Mythic giving us information as to what is the endgame? They are fixing quests and tweaking things that no one in their right mind would request (e.g., making scenarios pop longer so we can level slower in a dying world? huh…player feedback really asked for this?)

    If you put something in the game that makes leveling faster and then nerf it…you’re going to lose a lot of subscriptions, period. Plus, along with others, i’m reading about how Blizzard has yet done another great job and all we have to look forward to in WAR is quest grinding, slow scenario popping, dying population, gear that gives stats to something you don’t use (WS on a BW?), BOP gear (so you can’t twink your alt…OMG), keep swapping, etc.

    Bottom line that everyone who has quit has stated though…why should i defend my realm? The ad stated WAR is everywhere. No, it’s not. WAR isn’t keep swapping, WAR isn’t no popping scenarios, WAR isn’t weird zone flipping.

    WAR should be facing off against other players and developing strategies for defeating them. Where is that in WAR? WHERE IS THE WAR? G (-:

  • @Greggy: “What is WAR’s endgame?”

    It’s funny I keep hearing people asking this, yet in my opinion, WAR doesn’t have an end game, compared to something like WoW. For example, with WoW, the end game is raiding, so if you want to participate in it, you have to grind to 70th level. With WAR, what you do in Tier 4 is for the most part what you do in Tier 2. Don’t believe me? Take your Tier 2 character to Tier 4, which you can do, and play there. I did it with my 25th level Shadow Warrior and was able to contribute quite well (and if you have a healer who can rez, people will like you even more). Therefore, you don’t need to grind ALL the way to see if there is an end-game or not, just travel to Tier 4 and see for yourself.

    @Drezzah: I checked out the new WOTLK quests on WoWHead and Kaliban’s Class Loot Lists. Looks like for people who did a lot of end-game raiding (which I did), you won’t really get interesting quests (i.e. chain quests with 3+ people needed that provide better raiding gear) until you reach the Grizzly Hills area (lvls 73-75) of Northrend. So looks like I’m going to head there directly which should be good as it will be more challenging.

  • that’s the thing though…i think people want an endgame…or at least something of a sense of accomplishment…

    did we really spend our money only so that we can see tier 4? i know i didn’t, and i guess a lot of other people feel the same way and are talking with their money…

  • What really is any games end game? Daoc it was the same thing over and over, and at the end it was the same bridge over and over. In wow its raiding and I cant stand that.

    Right now the end game in War is what people make it, just queing for scs is not it. War is like DAOC its what the people bring to it. Right no ill agree that Mythic made some mistakes and really needs to reward people for the open RVR and hopefully a DF style dungeon is in the works and some more FUN stuff to do. I have faith but then again same people who made TOA 🙂

    Im not going anywhere, and I dont think there is that much wrong with the game, a tweak here and there and boom!

  • I really hope this is read by MJ, I’m sure it’s not the first of it’s kind, but your use of expression echos strongly with what I think a lot of players are feeling right now. I’ve been seeing friends become disinterested and even leaving the game.

    That in itself does the game even more harm, if you were hanging on, but your friends start to leave the game, you’re going to start to struggle to stay there yourself.

    The whole gear treadmill they are trying to put us on? What the hell, that is NOT what most people came to this game for, I was trying to avoid exactly that sort of crap when I jumped on board with Warhammer.

    I also agree that the world they have created does not give you a real sense of immersion, Everything feels very scattered, I run to and from a flight master to go anywhere, everything feels so disconnected.

    Big changes are needed. I’ve thrown in my lot with a number of MMOs the past few years and the disappointment is starting to turn me off them altogether.

    The industry is new and growing, but it needs to grow up and be more accountable for misleading and lying to it’s customers. I don’t feel as cheated by Mythic as I have in the past, but I think the industry as a whole has a LOT to improve on.

  • Okay interesting read, but to sweeping. I see the problem as being a couple of things.

    1. Population, this game is all about high populations. The lands swallow up people. I remembering PMing Requiel in the Beta and saying, god I hope the server cap is high, you are going to need alot of people to fill up the lands, along with the scenarios.

    If technically feasible, raise the server caps. However don’t moan if your hardware can’t handle having alot of people on screen. Since by raising the cap, thats what we will get.

    BTW merging servers creates a long term problem if the game begins to grow, demerging very high population servers to create the basis for 2 medium population servers. You can imagine the whine from here. Allow both sides of a demerged server to high xp bonus.

    2. Population maturity, people are constantly comparing what was going on in DAOC in the glory days to Warhammer 8 weeks in. There is alot to learn in warhammer and it takes time to be familiar with the various facets of the game.

    You also need leaders. As alot of people have pointed out, you make of ORVR what you will.

    3, The problem with gold bags and cap/recapping keeps is very subtle and you ultimately have to make holding the keep worthwhile.

    However you need to make it worthwhile for the other side to want to take it back as quickly as possible. I have wracked my brains for combination of rules that allow a big reward but cannot be exploited. Its tough, but I do feel a time lock on a switch should be applied to flips. Also the new keep lord should need to be protected as he levels up. Maybe the amount of death and blood shed in the area of the keep effecting his leveling.

    Its dealing with abuse that is the problem.

  • @Scott: “What really is any games end game? Daoc it was the same thing over and over, and at the end it was the same bridge over and over. In wow its raiding and I cant stand that.”

    I used to play a massively multiplayer WWII flight sim called Warbirds Online. The basic concept was that one country had to eventually capture all of the air bases in the world map and when they did, they were considered the winners and reset. Thus it may sound very boring but the gameplay was incredible because of the variety of roles you could play and the variety of tactics/strategies that you could implement. Even more so, it has probably the best community I’ve ever seen in a game.

    Therefore, that’s what I think is missing in WAR. People want the experience to be like playing Chess, with a lot of depth and tactics to it, but instead we’re getting checkers, or maybe even worse, tic tac toe.

    @Neil: A decent population, good leaders, and good attitudes abound on Phoenix Throne which is why there is a lot of Open RVR activity there. Your third point of making holding the keep worthwhile is the key thing that’s still missing though. Open RVR as a whole needs a lot more incentives and meaning to it. It’s just meaningless right now but people are still trying to make the best of it (especially on Phoenix Throne).

    @Reg: “I also agree that the world they have created does not give you a real sense of immersion, Everything feels very scattered…” Which is why I think they need to redo the world maps. I think if there was a global map, something like what you see in WoW, that showed the current territorial control for all regions in one viewpoint, it would give people a much better picture of what’s going on in the world and where to help out.

  • Another big reason I feel this game is suffering is a conglomerate of ease ability of leveling to max, combined with lack of quality pve, combined with poor pvp mechanics/poor pvp goal execution. If Mythic was smart they would have made leveling more challenging so they could ramp up the pve and end game pvp content so when people got there they actually had depth to their game.

  • I couldn’t disagree more with the premise.

    WAR gives me EVERYTHING I was lacking in WOW:
    – PURPOSE (the Campaign)
    – Skill-driven PvP (as opposed to gear-driven PvP)
    – Easily accessable content (as opposed to buying Wrath of the Lich King, knowing that as a working bloke I’ll NEVER see >= 50% of its high end content)

    etc. etc. etc.

    Basically what this whole post has been is: “Please make WAR like WOW.” No thanks… go play WoW.

  • I think what’s truly needed is a solid LFG mechanism. I am a frequent organizer of outdoor RvR… and I’d LOVE to be able to browse a list of ALL the people on the server either DOING or LOOKING for outdoor RvR.

    That seems like a no-brainer to me.

  • @nolland : Great idea on the world overview map. That little graph/bar at the top is a terrible representation of zone conquest.

    And yeah, maybe wow nailed pve but if you have to have pve in a game at least make it interesting. Right now tiers are just something you strive to level out of. Every tier needs an instance to provide challenging pve content.

  • @Damien: Basically what this whole post has been is: “Please make WAR like WOW.” Don’t really think that’s what Keen’s getting at. I mean if anything he’s emphasizing points that Mythic hyped about yet really didn’t come through as advertised. Keen’s just wants, as do I, the features to be more as originally advertised. I mean I remember reading about how keep battles would play out on Massively’s website and the reality is far from what was described by the developers. If anything, I want WAR to be more like the WAR that was originally described to me by Mythic. So better PVP (variety/tactics) with more PURPOSE to it.

    “I am a frequent organizer of outdoor RvR… and I’d LOVE to be able to browse a list of ALL the people on the server either DOING or LOOKING for outdoor RvR.” I couldn’t agree more! At the very least makes RVR groups viewable from all three realms in a particular tier because most RVR warbands roam realms to try to attract more recruits.

  • Aren’t the cities WAR’s Darkness Falls? If the city content was really interesting, expansive, and had great rewards; people would want to have access? Mythic just needs to make the cities be sieged (much?) more often, and make people want to defend their and attack the other.

  • The PvE lacks, lacks, lacks. It’s 2008, it should be BETTER than WoW’s, not 5 steps backwards from WoW.

    Purely PvP-driven MMORPGs are too shallow. Even if you mostly PvP you should be able to see that the world needs to be rich and full in PvE to add depth to the PvP. Otherwise we might as well play smaller, more focused games.

    We can all get great PvP from a variety of other non-MMORPG games (that don’t take a monthly subscription fee).

    WAR is both close and still way too far. From launch this game has needed some BIG changes ASAP, not the maddingly tiny baby steps Mark Jacobs has been rambling on about. It frustratingly hasn’t met the minimum requirements.

  • @Rog: “Purely PvP-driven MMORPGs are too shallow.” Really depends upon the type of gameplay you’re looking for. If you’re into PVP, then the gameplay can be fantastic. There’s a thread on Warhammer Alliance with people talking about Planetside being an amazing PVP experience and the lessons learned from it. It obviously had issues as well but practically ever poster in the 10+ page thread who played Planetside raved about the PVP experience in it and how it was definitely “done right” for the most part.

    “We can all get great PvP from a variety of other non-MMORPG games (that don’t take a monthly subscription fee).” Couldn’t agree more. It’s amazing that developers don’t look at these basics when they are building MMOs in the first place. I mean take the basic FPS experience in games like CS2, TF2, and so on then expand upon them to add a persistent ongoing experience. Then start asking questions like “Where does the gear come from? Who makes it?” and so on. When you start creating these connections that how you INTEGRATE (not just plop on) PVE into the game. Everything should be connected and interdependent of one another (i.e. PVP players are just as reliant upon PVE players as PVE players are reliant upon PVP players).

    “It frustratingly hasn’t met the minimum requirements.” Ya, I’d say it definitely hasn’t met my minimum expectations of what I read prior to the game launch.

  • “We can all get great PvP from a variety of other non-MMORPG games (that don’t take a monthly subscription fee).”

    No, Rog. Not really. Not at all.

    WAR PVP is vastly superior to the competition, however it needs improvement regarding (the above mentioned) LFG and campaign.

  • I totally agree about the kill collector thing and I’ve been harping on that for a while. The way it was hyped, from press releases to the podcasts, was that it was a revolutionary way to do questing in a game. He even poked fun at normal quests in other games, as if WAR quests would be different. He pointed out how it makes no sense for a guy to ask you to kill 20 bears when you just killed 30 getting to him. Lo and behold, it only applies to one guy in certain areas who wants you to kill a mob you hardly ever encounter in most cases. The way it was presented was definitely not truthful.

    What would I have them do differently? Not hype the hell out of a system that isn’t that revolutionary. Not act like this is a complete questing system, rather than something that only applies to a single quest per camp. I’d probably have them only make a passing mention of it, if AT ALL since it’s such a tiny part of the game.

    That’s not game-breaking at all, but it just adds to the feeling of being mislead when it’s all stacked up. I actually am surprised that this is the first blog I’ve seen ever mention this.

  • Howdy,

    I think part of the reason is WoW just burnt be to the bone on tolerance for boring crap. I can’t handle the stupid quests. I can’t handle the same things I have been doing for 4 years prior in WoW….that’s why I loved the Keep battles….BUT….

    The part that has really hurt for me is the Keep fights. This was supposed to be THE thing to do. Some days it’s pretty good, but most of the time it’s just a ball of people attacking another ball of people. There isn’t really any strategy that I have seen to date.

    I just don’t understand (and am still shocked) by the fact that the two Objective Points in each area are USELESS. What a missed opportunity.

    Why not have a reason to take them.
    Why not have that Iron Clad ship periodically fire a huge fireball at the opposing army if you own it. Or make some of those fantastic giants they already have in the game attack the keep if the team attacking the Keep owns both OBs. Give me a reason to fight for the OBs as much as the front door of a Keep. And make each Keep have 2 unique reasons to fight for the Objectives, not just a generic reason that all the keeps/Obs have.

    Why not have the siege engines attacks add blow back effects. This game has amazing blow back effects and this game doesn’t utilize them. Add more stuff that constantly scrambles the battle field. Make it so when I see a green pig’s catty rock coming at me that I care, and not just another heal I need to do. Blow people off the ledges, Blow people away from the front door.

    Just make war crazy and moments that make me laugh like hell in battle.…not 2 balls of zerg fest.

    For me the scenarios have more strategy then the Keep fights, and that’s why I haven’t been playing.

    Doody

  • My #1 beef is the PQs. Day 1 Empire PQs were hopping. Never a problem getting a group, or taking down the third phase boss. Most importantly, it wasn’t mindless grinding.

    Great idea…if you have the players to support it.

    Fast forward to T3 where there’s NOBODY doing PQs. Want the influence rewards? You get to grind phase 1 mobs over and over…but you’re throttled by 1) the phase 1 mob count, 2) the phase 2 failure timer, 3) AND the PQ reset timer! So, what started as a fun, non-grindy experience turns into a grind that is beyond boring.

  • @Nollind Whachell: I wouldn’t seriously use PlanetSide as an example of PvP-MMO success, it’s never been on much of a mass-market scale. I’ll stick with my “shallow” comment, though I wouldn’t use it in a non-MMORPG context. The point is, an MMORPG needs to be rich and complete and it’d be awfully difficult to achieve that with PvP alone.

    @esky: No offence, but you need to get out more. PvP is so standard it’s just been called multiplayer for decades now and everyone would assume some sort of deathmatch, teamplay or tactical type PvP game. Now it’s even transitioned to the consoles. Great PvP is everywhere, just not well represented in the MMORPG space.

    If WAR actually dominated the PvP market compared to non-MMO games, it would have sold in the millions. I think most of us realize that.

    I’m not saying WAR’s PvP is bad. IMHO it’s the best yet for an MMORPG, but that’s not saying much. And PvP does not stand alone in this genre. It’s a great asset, but the entire point of the genre is to have many things to do within a rich virtual world. WAR lacking in the other areas drags its PvP down.

    The proof is in the pudding on this one. The enjoyment of PvP in WAR is highly population dependant, which places it in a Catch-22 situation: It must be more inherently enjoyable to attract those crowds. It isn’t working.

    What’s been more rare is quality cooperative play, but demand for that pretty much highlights the huge success of WoW, plus arguably the Wii. Left4Dead is now a great example, outselling the Orange Box on preorders alone.

    WAR has had potential, it still does, but it isn’t the game that’s gone over the top. I’m still convinced that’s coming. Sooner or later, an MMO will push the market past WoW. Strong PvP will likely be involved, but WAR is just proof that it won’t be the only factor to succeed.

  • Very well Put again Keen. I agree with ya 100%. Have to admit I am having Age of Conan flashbacks already hehe.
    I was on for a bit on Sunday on Volkmar and it was actually
    alot of fun! Got into a warband and we took several keeps, and B.O.’s.. Would have been more fun if we actually ran into the enemy rather then playing tag with the keep takes. The week before I also got into a gunbad raid which was a first. Hard to find much after 2nd shift est time. I have found if all else fails make a toon on any of the aussie servers 🙂
    Still the one thing that I find that the game lacks for me
    is the “camaraderie” factor on a regular basis. Maybe when I get to 40 it will change when ppl will optimally work together to strive for larger goals.
    Hang in there folks, ride dem waves!
    LJ

  • Todd Ogrin said, ‘Fast forward to T3 where there’s NOBODY doing PQs. Want the influence rewards? You get to grind phase 1 mobs over and over…but you’re throttled by 1) the phase 1 mob count, 2) the phase 2 failure timer, 3) AND the PQ reset timer! So, what started as a fun, non-grindy experience turns into a grind that is beyond boring.’

    I have to agree here. This is one of my major problems. Since open RvR happens so rarely and when it does, there is NO resistence, I usually queue like the rest while questing and doing PQs. I’m in T3 Dwarf right now and I don’t think I have completed an entire PQ this tier other than the Witching Night one.

    PvE Quests: I just find them boring like many others. Hell, if there were just a few long running, epic feeling (and reward) quests, it would probably help.

    PQ: They just don’t happen. It’s nothing but an influence grind and I don’t think I’ll do any more unless there is a guild group going out to complete them. I have been grinding these through Chapter 13 and I call it a halt there.

    Scenarios: At least we do have more variety with the previous patch. It does give decent xp. Though, they need to work on the balance of them. Recently, very few have been close. They are usually a slaughter one way or the other.

    Open RvR: All I see now are the keep flips. While it is at least some action, that will not sustain.

    Maybe if most of the server population was already in T4, we would see some difference. I plan on keeping my sub open longer to see how it goes, but my game time is not dedicated to WAR now. I have Fallout 3 to play through. I even re-upped EQ2 as even that feels more alive that WAR. If I need a PvP/RvR fix, I can load up an FPS game for 30 minutes. I’ll probably be down to one night a week to say hi to the people I know on two servers.

  • I notice that many people are asking for better rewards for RvR, keep defence, PvE dungeons etc. etc. But this will result in gear dominated RvR and general greed dominated play. Also there are only a limited number of gear slots (less than in other games) and Mythic have somewhat shot themselves in the foot by allowing players to get renown gear, with little effort, by grinding scenarios. That reduces their scope for giving meaningful gear rewards even further (and what other types of reward are there?).

    The problem is that a PvP game doesn’t work well with large gear disparity. Guild Wars addresses this problem somewhat with status rewards – e.g. armour sets with the same stats, but different appearances. However, adding this to WAR would require a huge development effort and wouldn’t work, as WAR currently is, since players don’t gather anywhere to show off their kit and socialise.

    I think gear (and incentivisation in general) is a central problem with the current design of WAR and there are no easy solutions that I can see.

  • Keen,you are spot on and I agree with everything you said.I’ve been having this feeling since last week.I tried to log last night and the spirit was not there,I can`t feel connected to the world.WAR world just exist,it’s not alive,the oversimplification of the game has definitely kill it’s soul.

  • @Rog: “I wouldn’t seriously use PlanetSide as an example of PvP-MMO success, it’s never been on much of a mass-market scale.” Some of the best massively multiplayer PVP games are those that aren’t “mass-market” (i.e. something for everyone) but instead those for a specific target audience. For example, I mentioned Warbirds Online before, a WWII flight sim. It was amazing but obviously required a high degree of skill, since it was a WWII flight simulator. Therefore a PVP MMO doesn’t have to be mass market to be “successful”. EVE Online is a perfect example of this, as it’s definitely not for everyone.

    “The point is, an MMORPG needs to be rich and complete and it’d be awfully difficult to achieve that with PvP alone.” Your right in that regards. I mean if you want an MMO to be mass-market, it does have to cater to a variety of people (i.e. social, killers, achievers, explorers). And I don’t think it needs to be “rich and complete” so much as “meaningfully connected”. Right now in WAR, everything seems to be a disconnected separate experience and there’s no real purpose or meaning to the different things that people do. Give the things you do some meaning, particularly in relationship to the things that others do, and I think WAR will take off. WAR does this to a small degree but it just doesn’t go far enough. There needs to be more interdependence between the different areas, yet right now they are almost totally independent of each other.

  • For the first time since you guys started drooling over WAR, you have *nailed* it. I’m glad you could wipe the fanboi sleep from your eyes and see clearly.

  • A lot of people misconstrue optimism and actual experiences in beta for fanboism. All the positive stuff I’ve ever said about WAR is absolutely true. Those who played in Beta – and I mean REALLY played – can attest to the fact that the game was entirely different and the mentality of the players was completely different. It wasn’t about farming realm points it was about winning the realm war. This shift in player mindset drove the game severely off-course The results of which are these drastic changes to realign the game with what I feel is the right course.

    I’ll call a spade a spade any day and I’m glad you all feel I ‘nailed it’. If you agree with me on this then hopefully you’ll understand that my understanding of the game was equally as ‘nailed’ months ago.

  • Rog: I need to get out more? Why, is there any PvP going on outside? You’re making very little sense, but thanks for pointing out that there are player vs player going on in other genres as well…
    I really thought the discussion was on MMORPG:s though, so I’ll give you one more pop here sport. What MMORPG has better PvP going on than Warhammer?

  • Well, I think you nailed it front to back. 3 years in EQ. Nearly 5 years in DAOC (Midgard!), some time in Vanguard, and what I see in War just makes me shake my head. Our guild waited a couple of years to get back together for this game and… meh. The key things in my view are the ones you mentioned: the world being carved up into little chunks hung off a remorselessly linear framework; scenarios; the complicated zone-locking mechanism. It’s about design talent, or the lack thereof. Mythic had it, and apparently now doesn’t. I don’t have any long term hope here, simply because they would have to make it a different game, and EA isn’t going to foot that bill.

  • i think you nailed it keen by talking about the lack of immersion…. that and the lack of community. it’s kind of sad when you see more players in the warcamps just waiting for their scenario to repop so they can turn in the same stupid repeatable quest instead of out there in the world, going to war with each other. they need to:
    1. get rid of repeatable scenario quests to get people out of the stupid warcamps
    2. make it so you can queue for scenarios in the capital city so people won’t avoid them like the plague
    3. make some mega crazy awesome quest chain that originates in the capital city so people will go there
    4. increase the xp you get in dungeons at least 6-10 times what it is now. no one does them because the xp is so sparse, you get like one % every hour or so in a dungeon, it’s RIDICULOUS.
    no one has heard of dungeons because there is little incentive to do them, sure you get good gear, but everyone is in a rush to level. that the dungeons give you far less xp than actually just grinding mobs by yourself in any given map at your rank is unacceptable.
    5. and i know you all ready said this, but they need to merge servers NOW. who cares what the “PR” implications are for merging servers, the good far outweighs the bad. i mean do you care more about what people who will never play your game, or what people who ARE playing your game think? because people leaving your game in droves is far worse PR than having to merge your servers.
    i for one all ready have given up, i cancelled yesterday.

  • @esky: Then you misread, so of course it’s not making sense to you. I’ll rephrase though if that helps clarify:

    WAR has IMHO the best PvP experience for an MMO, but that’s just not saying much. Compared to games that don’t take a monthly fee, it doesn’t have anything I’d consider exceptional. The one unique aspect, fighting over a virtual world (Open RVR / Keep sieges), is dragged down by the virtual world not being worth fighting for.

    So it’s caught in the Catch-22 I mentioned, where the PvP is only better if a lot of people show up, but not enough have deemed it worth showing up for.

    The point is, a PvP-only MMORPG isn’t much of an MMORPG.

    WAR isn’t really PvP-only, but Mythic failed to create the bare minimum in the rest of the game to support the PvP and that’s the entire topic isn’t it? The game world isn’t compelling enough, it needs more than just a few tweaks here and there.

  • I am one of those people who’ve cancelled my account. However, for the most part, I love the game. I’m not a ‘big’ gamer, and for the past 4.5 years, I’ve gamed exclusively in CoH. Tried WoW, LoTRO, Everquest, and can’t remember the other…and really only LoTRO interested me because of its splendor…so I played for 3 nights there. I never thought I would like PvP…until this game. LOVED the art, the animation—simply incredible world-immersion. Like the story…but ALSO the pvp. What I didn’t like was the imbalance of characters…and certainly the near dominance of character-types (as I perceive) for Destruction. If you’re not a select few character types, then you simply will not survive and don’t belong in the game. I happen to play an archmage and for a little bit played a wizard…but truly—these types are wet & used toilet paper on the field of battle. A level 26 witch elf or shaman or herder can challenge and kill my level 30. There’s something wrong with that. And while the wizard has some damage capability (before it is one-hit snuffed), the mage has nothing to either defend, escape, mitigate and certainly offer in terms of damage-defense (let alone damage). I don’t necessarily mind that as I enjoy being a varied type of character…but it’s certainly NO FUN to just be killed and rez’d and killed and rez’d repetitively with nothing great to offer except heals. And don’t get me started with the imbalance of tanks—there’s nothing on Order (until these rejects from a Tranny show with plumes on their heads finally decide to show up—with yet ANOTHER tank in addition for Destruction.) So there you have it…my primary beefs. The guys I play with play order side—2 have already left…3 remain (and that is until January 2nd when my sub runs out). I have no interest in being a Destruction Tank, Witch Elf or other. And so, I wait for “the next big game” to try and where I find adventure (and a little better balance). PS—it’d be nice if there were better customization of character’s looks, hair, height, clothing, armor, etc—and move the hell away from my articles of dress / weapons determining my bonuses. That’s just cheesy.

  • Ok…got home from a long day of clinicals and then a class (pharmacology) where we had a freaking major (stressful) exam. Planned to play some WarHammer to just sort of wind down. Re-examined what I wrote above and realize I need to clarify: lower ranking (other classes) can defeat me when leveled up in a scenario. However, they do remain 2 levels below me and can still easily kill me. So anyway, entered the Tor Anroc scenario…and was just repeatedly ganked…no defense, no escape, couldn’t respond in kind let alone in any semblance that would “leave a mark.” Not the way I wished to ‘relax’ this evening…so promptly signed out And that’s pretty much my experience with this game…at least for a few weeks to come.
    ~ Jonathan

  • Got to say I agree with a lot of the sentiment, and some of the changes would be most welcome, I agree that merging of the servers should be more of a priority in Beta and in the first few weeks the good level of population was making a massive difference to the plying experience, as time moves on the first waves have pushed on to the heady heights of 40 leaving the lower levels almost barren.

    Want to do anything and I mean anything that’s going to need a few bods its almost impossible and becomes self defeating and demoralising and ultimately boring.

    I am rapidly getting to the point where my subs are going elsewhere.