State of The Game - Mark Jacobs

[schild]

A starfuck is one who delights in making a positive impression on those in a position of power, usually of some celebrity or high political status.

(v) Starfucking

Aka Leg-Humping, Obsessive Stalkers, Armchair Game Designers, Whores, etc.

[Goreschach]

What exactly is starfucking?

I think I have a general idea, but every time I try to get a solid hold on it all that comes to mind are japanese  cartoons.

[tommh]

heres a example:

"Mark! Mark! Hey Mark!
Whats your favorite color? Whats your quest?  Please have my babies!"

[Venkman]

I would like to see both scenarios in WAR and bgs in WoW have a stiffer respawn penalty. One minute should be the minimum in my view, because anything less just creates situations where you just killed somebody, only to have them be right back in your face the next second. It also throws a lot of tactics or smart play out the window because you can suicide into groups with almost no downtime.

The hell?! One goddamned minute?! After taking 2-4 minutes just to get back to the action you want the newly respawned and unbuffed to get instastomped back to sitting on their ass for a full 60 seconds? Fast track to the Cancel Account link that.

Forget downtimes. People hate them and rightfully so. Go with diminishing returns instead. Needing to kill the same player over and over is often a reality in Scenario/BGs with 5 or 10 opponents. At some point their role is more important than their nature as an XP faucet, so you shouldn't be slapped for continuing to harangue the healer, for example.

[hal]

I am a pve type who has never had such a great time pvp as this. I haven't rvr as of yet but scenarios are so much fun. I like your vision and await with bated breath the adjustments to rvr. Really nice game guy.

[Merusk]

From: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158809&highlight=14972&page=7

If only Psychochild still posted here to give us some cred with the super-wide M59 crew. Oh dear.

As far as I know, at least a dozen former MUD devs and admins still post here. We should really get colored names though. In a monospaced font. ESC[0m.

As the former Arch of World on Ancient Anguish, I endorse this plan. 

I was an IMM on several MUDs.. I vehemently disagree with this plan! 

[Azazel]

Let's play a game, who can we blame for this?

Warhammer Alliance (11 threads about this, 3 threads about us, and counting)
The French (Canard PC & Jeuxonline)
The Vault
Kotaku - twice
FoH
Clan Scum
The Google Translator (Starfuckers of the world unite)
Something Awful
Stratics
Hrose (SHOCKING)
Old Timers Guild
MMORPG.com
Darkstar
Lum (huh? he blindsided peole with a link)
uoforums.com
Eternal Keggers
TTH
Warcry
Brutality

So far somewhere around 90% of the posters that have posted have been deleted. What does this say for the internet at large? Are we too strict? Or should they not be let out of their bubbles? Discuss.

You forgot to add Mark and Mythos in big, bold flashing letters at the top. If they'd had official forums, we'd not have been inundated with starfuckers and idiot freaks*, and Mark's posts here would have just been considered a footnote instead of WTF TEH DEV IS POSTING ON TAHT LAME SITE OF ELITISTS AN GOL D FARMERZ BUTT WE R TEH WARHAMSTER ALLIUANCE!

(* Besides our own, of course.)

Admittedly, this clusterfuck trainwreck is far more amusing than seeing what tidbits Blue lets loose, but so far more unprofessional and amateur of MJ/Mythic.
 

[Paelos]

I would like to see both scenarios in WAR and bgs in WoW have a stiffer respawn penalty. One minute should be the minimum in my view, because anything less just creates situations where you just killed somebody, only to have them be right back in your face the next second. It also throws a lot of tactics or smart play out the window because you can suicide into groups with almost no downtime.

The hell?! One goddamned minute?! After taking 2-4 minutes just to get back to the action you want the newly respawned and unbuffed to get instastomped back to sitting on their ass for a full 60 seconds? Fast track to the Cancel Account link that.

Forget downtimes. People hate them and rightfully so. Go with diminishing returns instead. Needing to kill the same player over and over is often a reality in Scenario/BGs with 5 or 10 opponents. At some point their role is more important than their nature as an XP faucet, so you shouldn't be slapped for continuing to harangue the healer, for example.

2-4 minutes to get back into the action? What scenario are you playing? In 2 minutes I can ride back and forth to any objective on the map, not to mention jump into at least 2 frays I would have passed up. What's the timer at now? 15s? Why not just make them instantly jump up and kick people in the ass right after they die? I just get sick of killing Legolassx, only to get plunked with his arrows 20s later.

[Ard]

As far as I know, at least a dozen former MUD devs and admins still post here. We should really get colored names though. In a monospaced font. ESC[0m.

As the former Arch of World on Ancient Anguish, I endorse this plan. 

I was an IMM on several MUDs.. I vehemently disagree with this plan! 

I was a fake IMM on one, and I endorse this plan only if the font is also pink and blinky, like every god damned spammer on every mud I ever played on used 

[Typhon]

I would like to see both scenarios in WAR and bgs in WoW have a stiffer respawn penalty. One minute should be the minimum in my view, because anything less just creates situations where you just killed somebody, only to have them be right back in your face the next second. It also throws a lot of tactics or smart play out the window because you can suicide into groups with almost no downtime.

The hell?! One goddamned minute?! After taking 2-4 minutes just to get back to the action you want the newly respawned and unbuffed to get instastomped back to sitting on their ass for a full 60 seconds? Fast track to the Cancel Account link that.

Forget downtimes. People hate them and rightfully so. Go with diminishing returns instead. Needing to kill the same player over and over is often a reality in Scenario/BGs with 5 or 10 opponents. At some point their role is more important than their nature as an XP faucet, so you shouldn't be slapped for continuing to harangue the healer, for example.

2-4 minutes to get back into the action? What scenario are you playing? In 2 minutes I can ride back and forth to any objective on the map, not to mention jump into at least 2 frays I would have passed up. What's the timer at now? 15s? Why not just make them instantly jump up and kick people in the ass right after they die? I just get sick of killing Legolassx, only to get plunked with his arrows 20s later.

Not in Tor-fucking-Anroc, you can't.  Fucking hate Tor Anroc! HATE!

[Venkman]

2-4 minutes to get back into the action? What scenario are you playing? In 2 minutes I can ride back and forth to any objective on the map, not to mention jump into at least 2 frays I would have passed up. What's the timer at now? 15s? Why not just make them instantly jump up and kick people in the ass right after they die? I just get sick of killing Legolassx, only to get plunked with his arrows 20s later.

30s on a rolling clock. Could be 29s or 5s or whatevs depending on when you die. Feels like an eternity above 20s. Getting from the respawn point in, say, Nordenwatch, to the Fort (where it usually is going on) feels like about 45s (never timed it and cancelled so probably won't). Life thereafter depends on the number of people in the fight and how long until they notice I'm beating on the healer. And that's just one player.

Extrapolating that across 20 players would have the immediate affect of ensuring Nordenwatch (to continue the example) ends at 15 minutes rather than a team reaching 500 people. It would not force people to play smarter, as any 3 players focus-firing is the death of anyone no matter what. It would instead mean battle avoidance, requiring forced-makeup groups thus requiring healers thus require the very classes that aren't played because players voted them out as largely unfun. All in a game where things are still pretty unbalanced.

All of that makes more sense in RvR where organization can counter a zerg as long as the ratio isn't too nuts. But for Scenario/BGs where the team sizes are not imbalanced and where organization already is key, better to employ diminishing returns so people are stuck watching the respawn timer. Downtime sucks and chases people away to games that aren't so arduous about it.

[photek]

I'll lay it out with you honestly from a veteran gamers perspective : It takes too long to level. People are fucking lazy and need to be catered to a certain degree where things seem achievable and within reach with regular effort and don't have to break their balls (read:grind) over stuff. Rewards are currently weak and itemization seems randomized at times. Decent at best. The words "balance the budget" comes to mind. I got it installed, just stopped at level 21 as now its taking way too long for me to bother and World of Warcraft offers more bang per buck at the moment since Blizzard has made everything available. You can do the million, just not in the current state.

[Firstborn]

Another Idea is to add various mechanisms to spy on the other side, as well as ways tgo interact more. All of these could use expended items and thus also double as money sinks

 Mark players that kill you so that they show up on the map.
Ability to locate a specific "enemy" player - MAYBE even have the ability to challenge him or his party to a duel?
Guild wars (ala EVE) Guilds have to pay a war fee but the members of these guilds can engage each other anywhere

Some other ideas:
Guilds have a associated set of NPC squads. These squads can be stationed at keeps (maybe only where the guild has a banner?)
When a guilds squads are attacked the guild members are alerted and get some ability to respond (ala guild teleport scrolls)
Squads earn guilds exp points

This morning I logged on and spent a couple of hours playing. I was qued for all three Tier 2 Scenerios for the entire time I was on and never got called for my turn. I am Destruction on Heldenhammer. I had about reached my limit on questing for the day. I wanted some RvR. So I wandered down to the RvR lake, and ran around. Just looking for someone, anyone to fight with. I didnt see a soul. Pretty discouraging but it got me to thinking about what would make these lakes "worth it". This is what I came up with.

Make the lakes places to hang out and experience. I pictured a base camp on each side of the lake with standard mobs to kill mobs in the center. The experience and renown gained should be significant and the % of random rare drops should be about four times that of PvE. This would accomplish three things.

Incentive for people to hang out in RvR.
Greater rewards for the for greater risk. (Rare Drops)
Eliminates the feeling of wasting your time in a lake if you make the trip and no one is there, you can still experience.

I even thought about a spawn mechinism to control the mobs in the center. Picture a lever at each end of the area, both have to be changed to your side or you do not get mob spawns. If you die you respawn at the RvR base camp.

I am sure someone has probably thought of this before, but I figured I would throw it out there anyway.

I love this game, I want it to succeed in the worse way, but I am not sure how long I can keep playing in a RvR game where I only see my enemy in a scenerio.

Give me a reason to hang out in RvR and I will be a happy subsciber.

[Azazel]

What I really like about this whole thread, and the cross-border incursions that the WHA forumites (including the normal hu-mans, starfuckers and manifesto writers) pretty much agree with the f13 crowd in terms of what they want out of the game, how fucked the pre-release supernerfs were, the lack of official forums and so on and on, yet MJ still keeps talking about scenario-free servers, not alienating WoW players and how everything else needs to be superslowgradual but is coming soon.

bleugh.

[Kamen]

I just realized that I'm finding myself spending more time reading this thread than playing WAR.

[NiX]

I just realized that I'm finding myself spending more time reading this thread than playing WAR.

I think that happens to everyone at F13 at some point in time.

[UnSub]

Well, he's right, I *have* played Shadowbane, DAOC and WoW.

I haven't played Shadowbane. I am incomplete. :(

I played Shadowbane South-East Asia, run by En-Tranz. If you thought Wolfpack / Ubisoft were bad ...

Heh, I get annoyed because I spawn facing the wrong direction, you guys want more downtime?

OMG this. How annoying is this? And why is it even happening in the first place?

What I really like about this whole thread, and the cross-border incursions that the WHA forumites (including the normal hu-mans, starfuckers and manifesto writers) pretty much agree with the f13 crowd in terms of what they want out of the game, how fucked the pre-release supernerfs were, the lack of official forums and so on and on, yet MJ still keeps talking about scenario-free servers, not alienating WoW players and how everything else needs to be superslowgradual but is coming soon.

bleugh.

I really do question why Mythic made a lot of decisions regarding WAR that seem completely counter what they said the game was going to be. And no, I don't have an answer for any of those questions.

Someone send MJ a fruit basket as thanks for this thread. We'll all pitch in a few bucks to show our appreciation.

[Megrim]

I just realized that I'm finding myself spending more time reading this thread than playing WAR.

I think that happens to everyone at F13 at some point in time.

c.f. EvE online.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You think we'll see numbers for warhammer anytime soon?

[Trippy]

Only if they break 1 million subs.

[Meldrath]

Been playing PVP games since 1990 - Muds (Nodeka/Medievia/Diku Godwar Muds etc), LOTRO, WoW, Guild Wars and I'm just going to interject this opinion in here, I've read alot of this and the direction you plan on taking your game, this is dumb. Period. I've scenarioed my ass off, ran BS many times for those 1 in 100 chance of getting loot from bosses due to the horrendous drop rate rewards and messed up pq contributions, open RVR, 200 tali (the time/money sink of the game)/salvaging... and guess what? It's stinking. It smells like rotten tomatoes in the distance. If you don't clean up the gameplay, streamline the pvp to more openRVR, and fix itemization. More loot from PVP, more XP, MORE FOCUS/CONCENTRATION OF PLAYERS IN THE PVP AREA OF A ZONE.

Seriously, if this ever gets read, and you want one thing to take out of this post:

MAKE OPEN RVR FUN AND REWARDING

[Lakov_Sanite]

Only if they break 1 million subs.

I totally see this happening.

[Goreschach]

Seriously, if this ever gets read,

You're in luck, I just read it! You can now return to whence you came, satisfied that your voice has been heard, and your mission complete.

[Arthur_Parker]

Only if they break 1 million subs.

There's a comment from Mark on vnboards that states they will be releasing sales figures after the end of this month and will continue to do so in future.  It's all to do with the stock market or something.

[Trippy]

Sales figures are (mostly) pointless. What's interesting are the sub figures.

[Margalis]

Look, I agree with you in theory 100%.  However, what we've seen so far is that a sizable percentage players don't want to leave the scenarios.  We will keep upping the rewards but my concern is that a sizable percentage will still want to stay in the scenarios because that is what they are used to doing so I want to be prepared for that.  It doesn't mean we will do it but it would be foolish of us not to prepare for it. 

Late to this thread but I have to chime in. I don't get this at all.

People who like RVR aren't doing RVR because the rewards for it suck. Makes sense. (In MMO land anyway) The proposal is to make the rewards good. The new problem is that some people still don't want to do RVR...how is that a problem?

Isn't different people finding different things they enjoy a GOOD thing? Isn't that the whole point of having different activities in the first place? It's like building a road and then complaining that CARS ARE DRIVING ON IT!!!

If people running scenarios is in itself a problem then scenarios should be removed and your game design is fundamentally broken. But it sounds like the problem is that even people who don't enjoy them do them because they are compelled to.

[Simond]

Sales figures are (mostly) pointless. What's interesting are the sub figures.

Pretty much - the only press release from EA-Mythic so far is "We've sold 700K boxes!" which sounds pretty good...right up until the point you remember that Funcom said they sold 1.2 million AoC boxes. 

[WindupAtheist]

How is this guy not culled already? Addressing a developer directly without being involved in a dialogue or responding directly to something specific always reeks of Stratics trash. Or fansite trash in general, I guess, but that's my background and "Stratics trash" has a certain ring to it.

[Tarami]

How is this guy not culled already? Addressing a developer directly without being involved in a dialogue or responding directly to something specific always reeks of Stratics trash. Or fansite trash in general, I guess, but that's my background and "Stratics trash" has a certain ring to it.

Mr. Stalin and the NKVD are sleeping?

[ashrik]

Sales figures are (mostly) pointless. What's interesting are the sub figures.

Pretty much - the only press release from EA-Mythic so far is "We've sold 700K boxes!" which sounds pretty good...right up until the point you remember that Funcom said they sold 1.2 million AoC boxes. 

While it might be interesting to know how many boxes were sold and subscriptions kept from a pure scholarly standpoint, I'm much more interested in how it works in the context of the game.

I mean, 100k or 200k subscribers might be low in comparison to many other games, but if everyone is comfortable on their server, then it doesn't effect you at all does it? hmm That's not much more clear is it.

I guess I'm trying to say that I'm more interested in hearing about the ability to merge/split servers as needed to make sure that regardless of the size of the game, errvrybody is playing in a decently populated environment. There were 11 mil subs to warcraft, but my server only holds 30k-40k, so as long as there is 35k subscribed in total- it doesn't affect me so long as they're all on my server.

How is this guy not culled already? Addressing a developer directly without being involved in a dialogue or responding directly to something specific always reeks of Stratics trash. Or fansite trash in general, I guess, but that's my background and "Stratics trash" has a certain ring to it.

Dear Mista Mythic

I just first want to say I LOVE UR GAME OMG I TTTLY WOULD BUY YOU A BEER

And now that that's over with, let me list the 127 ways in which you must improve your game or fail immediately. Namaste.

[Arthur_Parker]

Sales figures are (mostly) pointless. What's interesting are the sub figures.

I can't find the two quotes now, vnboards search is complete crap, also no official forums continues to annoy. 

I said "sales" because I can't find the quotes to phrase it exactly as he did.  I got the impression that they needed to be very open about how the game was doing because of the EA stock price, the inference being, quoting figures like Blizzard does, but I don't think he specifically stated the numbers quoted would be the current/active subscriber totals.

[Azazel]

I just first want to say I LOVE UR GAME OMG I TTTLY WOULD BUY YOU A BEER

And now that that's over with, let me list the 127 ways in which you must improve your game or fail immediately. Namaste.

I would like to, erm, watch you buy Mark a tittily beer.
 

[Arthur_Parker]

Found the first quote

The thead is titled "Subscription numbers?"

There was a post by Mark Jacobs stating that now that Mythic is part of a publicly traded company, subscription/population info cannot be readily released for corporate reasons.

Blizzard releases their subscriptions and they are part of that larger company, starts with a V...god I can't remember the name.

Blizzard releases it's numbers at certain specific times of the year, as will mythic.
They are held to certain restrictions, being publicly traded.

Correct. 

Mark

Edit to add

More talk about WAR appearing on consoles here

When asked if he was specifically referring to SWTOR and Warhammer Online, Gibeau replied, "They're both under consideration." However, he added, "We're not really in a place to commit or announce anything specific with regards to those."

[WindupAtheist]

WAR is going to trail off into numbers lower than peak EQ1 and WoW shall be bestride the world as a colossus more than ever. And deep in our bitter little hearts we'll be glad that WoW is around, because without it the most successful game in Western MMO history would still be a ten year old relic that really only succeeded to that extent on a fluke.

[Azazel]

Are you trolling our new trolls, WUA?