I did what I normally do and canceled my subscription when I want to ensure that I do not get stuck into a recurring cycle. My WAR subscription will run out on July 17th and given my current game interests, the state of my guild (mass exodus to other games), and the state of the game, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to cancel and be asked to renew instead of just forgetting about it. Seventeen days should be enough to check out Tomb of the Vulture Lord and see if Mythic will fix the T4 content quick enough – if I like what I see then I’ll stick around.
This time when I canceled my account I was asked to take a survey. What the heck, sure.
The usual questions were presented and I clicked away. One of the pages had me chuckling though.
I don’t think I could possibly make a better list of Warhammer Online’s biggest problems and how to fix them if I tried. There you go Mythic! You already know what you need to do.
It’s missing “Make compelling PvE gameplay”. More of what they have wouldn’t be any better unless they improve the baseline.
or “Remove Scenarios from the game”
i don’t think that the pve is not compelling its just players are so spread out you don’t experience alot of it.
They need the missing cities… and AFTER that, they need some separation between the campaigns for those cities to discourage zone-hopping RvE. Maybe a short “campaign timer”… say a 5 minute “time out” at the capitol before being allowed to fly to another campaign… but only after they have the missing capitols in place.
They need better methods for balancing populations… perhaps allowing dynamic server swaps at login time. (Choose to play on over-balanced ServerX with login-queue or play instantly on under-balanced ServerY… either way, you’re character progression is saved independently.)
They need more “there” there… as my brother puts it. The RvR lakes should have a variety of high-value PvE content… to draw small groups and solo players into the vulnerable zones.
What’s the issue people has with scenarios ? I love those as it’s always even numbers on both teams and it’s small scale PvP. What drove me off WAR was RvR tbh, fights where AoE is more important than picking the right target and using your abilities carefully to make sure you bring key targets to the ground.
Though I did play a Marauder so 90% of the time I got to run around spamming Demolition and Concussive Jolt. BOOOOORING 🙁
I would fill that out quite differently. Just goes to show the challenge Mythic has to please everyone. I don’t have much interest in anything PvE.
As for scenarios, I like them every so often.
There is only so much the developers can make the players do. If players want to zerg, they will zerg… unless you instance everything.
6 man’s do exist in WAR and are effective. Most players just seem to want to join the big group though.
Im still on board till JGE comes out, aion is just to wowish to me, no matter how polished it is, its still the same ole shit.
Just prettier.
Ive never been a fan of pvp, but I like the WAR pvp for some reason:P
Basically . . . Mythic needs to make a PvE game with PvP side content. Guess War is Everywhere premise didn’t catch on.
WAR doesn’t need a higher level cap. Everything else on the survey is why I quit.
Woah, deja vu!
I just took this survey myself last night. I have been paying monthly since release even though I went down to 3 hours per week from Jan-Mar and 0 hours per week from Mar-present.
I can’t justify giving them money for a game I don’t find fun, nor have any faith in. Lots of great people over at Mythic to be sure. Unfortunately, they couldn’t pay me to play another one of their games.
Uhm… I just realized… You actually want them to increase the level cap? Are you mad!? 😛 Vetical progression is the debil and very definition of lazy design.
I am surprised “Bring Mark Jacobs back” was not on the list.
Increase level cap and introduce higher level PvE? Talk about diametrically different outlooks on the game from my own. That said, the new PvE content in LotD is a LOT of fun if you want that sort of thing.
Too much PVE for a game that was supposed to be centered around RVR. Our internal polling and data suggested that Patch 1.3 was going to make or break our guild effort, and Mythic had promised a lot of balance changes that we felt would have moved the game forward. Instead of creating Land of the Dead, Mythic should have fixed the core issues with the game.
Across two factions I have invaded capital cities 40 times, and there was just too much of a PVE focus and Ward Gear requirement focus for them to remain fun. The two hour wait timer for zone flipping slowed RVR to a crawl, the supply lines mechanic screwed over organized events, and the RVR token system brought every PUG out of the woodwork while creating supply line bottlenecks in Fortress battles.
DAOC – New Frontiers RVR is more strategic and more fun than Warhammer’s version, and DAOC is 7 years old. New Frontiers is like 5 years old or pretty close to it.
Its like Mythic took every bad thing that people disliked about other games, crammed it into Warhammer, and then thought they could keep 1 million subscribers.
According to Warheap’s updated data (June 24th)
http://www.warheap.com/servers/?s=health&o=desc&l=all
Dark Crag = in decline, will have big AION exodus
Volkmar = Order dominated, in decline
Ironrock = dunno
Phoenix Throne = in decline
Skull Throne = toast and barely alive
Those are the five most active servers and most of them are in trouble due to poor activity as well as the fact that many guilds are declaring themselves to other upcoming games.
So Warhammer is in big trouble, and they can’t patch their way to success before other games release. Players gave them nearly a year to fix their game, and they kept piling on more junk while not fixing the core issues that they have known about for months. That producer’s letter #3 could have been written 9 months ago.
Poorly managed games get what they deserve, and the players are speaking with their wallets.
So looking over your survey, the direction you want Mythic to take WAR in is forced-group (no on improving the solo experience) PvE (more dungeons, more non-PvP activity, more high-level PvE) with an increasing level cap? And you feel crafting should be a priority? I believe a game like that already exists…
Aside from saying “I want everything” in that survey, it also indicates to Mythic you want them adding more PvE instead of just focusing on fixing RvR. I’ll take a revamped T4 over another LotD.
More PvE? Are you crazy? Isn’t LotD already proof that people who still play this game could care less about PvE?
Before I switched to Dark Crag months ago I felt on my low pop server that PvE was a forced method of gearing up since RvR was so slow, but on Dark Crag you rarely see anyone wanting to do crypts, tunnels, LV, or LotD. Who wants a 3 day lockout for an hour of your time when you can spend 18 hours in the Inevitable City farming gear, and probably get your whole invader set in one farming session.
I’m trying to hang on until Aion. I had some fun last week with the RvR on DC and said they had me for another month, but that luster is wearing off now since it’s just the same thing over and over again.
Huge zerg takes out keeps and BO’s, don’t let BO’s get ninja’d, wait around until zone flips. If you’re defending you just run around in a smaller zerg trying to ninja stuff from the people pushing. Even with LotD thrown in the mix, it’s the same shit. It just isn’t fun long term. It’s not bad if you quit and come back after a few months, but the fun only lasts for a week or two before you realize why you quit in the first place.
@mikesayno: I would not bet on Aion’s PvPvE (Abyss). It is surprisingly similar to what WAR launched with.
I should have clarified my options to ease the “Zomg he wants the level cap raised” responses.
My choices were less about scrutinizing the details and more about saying “Improve it all” (except the Scenarios which I wish had a “Delete” option).
The survey should have allowed us to order them in terms of importance. Obviously I don’t think the solution is to add all of that at once, or to do it all right away, or to even do some of those things this year.
As for the PvE comments, I do indeed want more PvE. I really, honestly, love PvE. I love it maybe more than I do PvP. WAR’s style of PvE though sucks (which I’ve bitched about dozens of times) and so does a lot of PvE in MMOs out there right now.
I just enjoyed a good laugh over seeing an entire list of things that would ALL benefit the game in some form – some a heck of a lot more than others – even if I don’t agree with them all. In a way it shows the state of the game more than the developer letters when an exit survey has a page like that.
Compelling PVE gameplay would definitely be the biggest thing for me. Some decent dungeons would be nice too. I got sick scenario grinding fast.
Yea I unsubbed a few weeks ago and to be honest completely forgot about the game until reading this. (Not a good sign).
I got soooo freaking bored Im actually trying the WoW free 10 dayer for WotLK. I still hadn’t tried it yet, so figured WTH.
Went in with LOW expectations and have actually had a good time thus far. I don’t know how long I will stick with it to be honest, but it probably depends on how much fun the new BG is.
I can’t believe there is NOTHING to play, and I’m back to a 5+ year old game. geeeesh!
Their obsession with RvR has unfortunately made them turn a blind eye towards the economy of the game. It basically didnt exist. I havent found the need to auction off or buy from the market. I missed the days where I used to sit in the auction house of WoW, where there were loads of toons crowding both the bank and the auction house, not to mention the auctions were actually fast moving.
well at least I am not into Aion, so I am back to EvE for now, until Mortal Online and EarthRise gets going. Oh wait, I might start a sub for Saga of Ryzom, once I am done with EvE come August. Interestingly, it would be nice if there is a short article on Saga of Ryzom, coz I found that I actually liked the crafting system and creature AI (flocking of creatures).
Hilarious post.
“The survey should have allowed us to order them in terms of importance”
You are indirectly putting them in order of importance. They are going to combine everyones scoring who fills one of these out, so the items that have the most 3’s checked will end up going to the top of the priority list. Checking every one as 3 was on par with just not filling it out.
It just wants to know what your major problems with the game are, and this:
“I just enjoyed a good laugh over seeing an entire list of things that would ALL benefit the game in some form – some a heck of a lot more than others – even if I don’t agree with them all”
Doesnt help them at all.
Not supposed to help them, that’s the point – don’t you get it? They’re surveying to find out what people want, and what’s wrong with their game, when essentially EVERYTHING on the survey would satisfy that inquiry. It’s like back to square one.
I think the folks who prepared the survey might come from a QA department that focuses on a broad spectrum of issues at a higher level, so hence the vagueness of the survey.
They should have added “I don`t care” to the poll.
I left the game months ago for many of the reasons on the poll. During those months, they haven’t fixed any of the core issues with the game. At this point, I don’t think they ever will.
Someone compiles this data and looks at it. So checking everything as 3, essentially saying they are all equally important, does nothing.
“Not supposed to help them, that’s the point – don’t you get it?”
I guess I don’t. If it’s not supposed to help them, then why even fill it out? Just so you could post an article about it?
Do you really think more dungeons and an increased level cap is equally important to add in to the game as better career balancing?
I think from all the comments, we can deduce, that you can’t please all the people all of the time.
Everything can’t be addressed, it’s just not possible. Personally I will just keep plodding along with warhammer, mainly because I still find it fun.
Though I agree totally with Hades, regarding DAOC. Like ignore all that we learnt from DAOC and balanced up relatively nicely, lets start again from scratch with a completely new model and re invent the wheel.
Honestly, one of the worst things about this game was the natural lag and poor performance/coding. If the game feels like every single move is a WoW’s Warrior’s Heroic Strike(Damage on next auto attack 2 sec. later), something is definitely wrong.
The pvp option from level 1 is definitely a great idea, but most everything else suffers from bad design and implementation.