Proposed changes for WAR’s RvR – a step in the right direction

Mark Jacobs made a “Our goals and plans” post yesterday outlining what Mythic plans to do with Open RvR over the next few months “and beyond”.   In his post and subsequent replies he provides sever large spoonfuls of information to the hungry community.  As usualy though, the posts can be a bit daunting for the A.D.D. – you know, the type who post “TLDR” and all that wonderful forum drivel.  Since I think it’s worth restating, I want to bulletpoint the changes/goals/etc and include my own brief thoughts.

1) The RvR Influence System – We’ve seen this mentioned before.  We’ve actually seen this in action before too.  This will basically attract people into the RvR lakes to actually fight one another.  However, this system will only work if the influence rewards are enticing enough.  Additionally, Mythic may find themselves in the position of having to frequently update the rewards to continue enticing players to participate in the influence system.  The whole “seasons” system that Blizzard uses may find a cousin in WAR.  I can’t imagine the influence system having a long life unless the rewards are upgraded on a regular basis.

2) Making RvR easier to find, get to, and participate in through…

a) Wide-ranging changes going into our map and travel systems – How they’ll change the travel system eludes me, but I’m anxious to see what they do.
b) 2 Rally points instead of 1 – I like this change. One for a Warcamp to jump into the RvR and one for the Quest hub you’re questing in. I would certainly be able to RvR faster with this change, so consider it a good idea.
c) Campaign HUD improvements – Couldn’t hurt. I think giving people more information here would be your best bet, Mythic. Being able to see who is fighting, for how long they’ve been fighting, and the threat level all from the world map could be cool.
d) Tier-wide messaging – Extend this to world-wide messaging. Some servers have already taken it upon themselves to create RvR channels so that people can all be communicating in one place about where the fights are going on. This wouldn’t hurt.

3) Better incentives…

a) Keep Quests, “Daily Event Quests”, Chained RvR Missions – Yes, Yes, and Yes. I’m liking this idea of daily event quests. It gives me a reason to log in and do something. Get me involved with RvR and provide me a purpose, a mission, and you’ve provided me incentive.
b) Improve ToK Unlocks – Probably best. I think Blizzard’s achievement system might be kicking your butts a little right now. I think having some ‘major’ ToK unlocks that bring rewards and prestige would be cool. Having them announce to your immediate area and guild can’t hurt.
c) Battle Objective itemization – Winning idea

4) Guild Keep upgrades – This should have been in since launch. Guilds taking keeps are already paying out the nose. Allowing them to upgrade keeps and have large incentives for owning them are vital to the guilds feeling important in the realm war. You can’t possible devote enough time and attention to this one. If anything, overdo it. I would love to see guilds having access to special rewards and goodies. Perhaps better cloaks, standards, tabards, etc. Make owning a keep and having it upgraded distinguish the guilds!

5) A global oRvR “Fame” system – This could be what I was talking about with making ToK unlocks better. Mark says that it will be “tied to the Tome of Knowledge” and give “more rewards, titles, experience, etc.” More incentives are already nice. Mark also replied that many people are underestimating the fame system: “This is not a minor addition to the game by any stretch of the imagination.”

I think if Mythic wants all of this to succeed then they need to jump on it right away. Don’t let the month of December go by without half of this stuff being implemented. A lot of people (myself included) started out as being super hyped about open rvr and feeding off the realm pride we still had from DAOC. As we hit T4 in release and realized that realm pride didn’t exist in WAR, we started losing interest and, more accurately hope, very quickly. Giving the open rvr a much needed and intensive/overwhelming upgrade will hopefully kick-start things in the right direction.

The 1.1 patch, where I assume and hope much of this will come from, is looking more and more like a make-it-or-break-it patch. Make it a good one!

  • Do eet, do eet now. I am hoping that the Happy Fun Guyz all transfer to Dark Crag. The server looks promising. Hopefully the oRVR changes, coupled with a higher pop server, will revitalize the guild.

  • Yeah, I’ll post about the server transfer after I get back from class. I think the free transfer is the best thing Mythic has done for the game yet.

  • A question from someone who never played DAoC, but is enjoying WAR (even the PvE) on a casual level.

    What was the motivation/generator of realm pride in DAoC, and why do you think it’s missing in WAR? What were people fighting for/over in the DAoC “endgame” that kept it going, in particular once you were at max level and had “high-end” equipment?

  • I did not play DAoC, but I would imagine a large majority of playerbase never played DAoC. they came from another game with another attitude.

  • @Chris – I think it was mostly realm pride mixed in with a bit of guild ego. People were also simply interested in a good fight and building their renown rank, which made their characters more powerful.

    The RvR campaign of DAOC was heavily focused around towers, normal keeps, and relic keeps. Whoever owned the most keeps also had access to the Darkness Falls dungeon which for a long time was a viable level 15-40 RvR dungeon. The ultimate goal was to own all the relics, which boosted your realm’s performance but I never felt as though they were the main reason people were out fighting.

    The main reasons was to prove that their individual characters and groups were better than others.

  • @Chris – I played DAoC for a long time, and while it may not have been polished at first, the game really shined in realm pride.

    Realm pride came from many directions from my expierience. Firstly, this was either people’s first MMO or they were coming from games like UO (myself) and EQ. Minds weren’t polluted by the treadmill/me, me style of thinking. When DF was implemented, everybody wanted that dungeon. Think…three realms fighting for one place. You could lose it anytime, and while people would be in the dungeon doing their thing, others would be out there defending keeps to make sure your realm kept it. Relic Keeps…these were nice. WAR would benefit from these. You take these keeps and you gain the relic inside (stuff like the holy grail, spear of destiny kind of thing…arthurian lore version tho), and the relic would give the whole realm a bonus to exp or stats or whatever (been a while). Right there is major incentive to participate in endgame oRvR. The last thing I can say that is notable is the presence of PvE in the oRvR area. It was the best way to grind out those last levels but you always had the threat of being killed, so you would have ‘hit squads’ that wpuld go around just keeping the peace while others did some grinding.

    Overall, it was very well done.

    Oh…high end equipment didn’t really show it’s ugly face until ToA. That expansion introduced the gear treadmill and ultimately the downfall of the game.

  • @Snafzg – Ego… I guess you’re right. I always did feel pretty awesome/invinceable after one shotting some clothie with my Nightshade.

  • Heh, I had a pimped out Shadowblade once ToA came out but I think they were better before ToA to be honest. Dual masterpiece 4.0 axes FTW!

    ToA ruined everything! 😛

  • 1,2, and 3 = meh.

    4 and 5 are good in theory, but not really enough. 1 2 and 3 seem all about just getting people to get on the loot tredmill. If they are just going make this a loot tredmill game with a PvP focus, you can include me out thank you.

  • Couple of significant differences that contributed to more RVR in DAOC: zones weren’t instanced (which made border and cross-zone fights a lot of fun) and the frontiers were all connected. Some of the juiciest PVE mob camps (liches?) were in the frontiers too.

    Also having 3 different realms was pretty cool – it’s one thing I miss in WAR and WoW.

  • The RvR-influence system strongly reminds me on honor in WoW. This is a weak incentive for doing rvr in my opinion. They must add a zone like Darkness Falls and special realm abilities which you get through oRvR (not just stat-improvements but real abilities like in DAoC).

  • Based upon Mythic actions in the past, I’m assuming the following.

    1) What actually gets implemented will be a far cry (let me repeat the word “cry”) from what they are vaguely implying here (which kind of reminds me of the dev discussions on Massively that I got hyped about).

    2) Patch 1.1 will probably only include a very minor update to open RVR with the other changes coming over the following months. Honestly I don’t expect really decent open RVR until late spring or early summer at most.

    I mean I’m really really hopeful that I’m wrong but I got this uneasy feeling in my gut “folks” that tells me I’m probably right. 🙂