State of The Game - Mark Jacobs

[Nebu]

Wait... Isn't Warhammer lore just a big rip off of Warcraft?

[tolakram]

"It's not a worthless IP, it's big in Europe!"

Wait... Isn't Warhammer lore just a big rip off of Warcraft?

That never gets old.   

[Azazel]

I assumed that wasn't in green for extra effect.

[Arthur_Parker]

linky

Folks,

Let's see, we've fixed the slowness of the mail system, put in another round of open RvR changes and have more stuff coming. We've been working on changing healer renown and experience based on feedback and I've been looking into some of the class balance stuff that's been brought up as well. Yep, I've been ignoring the Vault all right!  

Mark

Can't say I care about that much about class balance (except that magus/engineer mass pull ability), hopefully something incoming to reduce the level grind.

[Ingmar]

What is this, the passive-aggressive school of PR?

[Sjofn]

Mark has always been a bit of a bitch.

[Arthur_Parker]

Well there's a link to the thread there so you can decide that on the context if you want.

linky

Folks,

Over the last few weeks the team has implementing a transfer system to allow both players and guilds to move between our servers. This technology was not available for WAR at launch and building it has proven to be a little more complex than originally expected. I’m happy to say that starting next week we will begin public testing of the service and if things go well, we will be able to offer it free to our players (for a limited time) either next week or the week after that. I apologize for the delay in making this service available but again, it did take a little longer than we originally expected.

We will be posting details next week about the public test and then the parameters for the free service.

Mark

[Ingmar]

It will be interesting to see if the effect is to cause people to pile on to already populated 'winning' realms. There was a bit of that when WoW first implemented the go-anywhere transfers (not the specific Server X->Server Y ones), I seem to recall?

[trias_e]

Well, this might work.  Everyone transfer to the popular servers, and we can merge servers on our own.  I sure as hell am getting off of ulthuan and on to one of the most popular servers if they give me the option.  I'd rather have a 30 minute queue and have fun when I play rather than play in a ghost-server.

[schild]

That is... very clever.

[Sanvar]

New to this site
--
Sanvar Soulblight
Marauder of Drifting Castle

Obviously.
--
Schild
Your Lord and Master

[tazelbain]

Bat Country is fucked then

[Arthur_Parker]

Sanvar Soulblight
Marauder of Drifting Castle

How, exactly, does your castle drift?

[trias_e]

Bat Country is fucked then

Well, if Ulthuan is allowed to transfer to higher pop servers, it's pretty much assumed that everyone is going to leave.  

So, bat country will simply move to a different server.  Where's the problem?

What I'm worried about is that Ulthuan will be designated a medium pop server, thus no transfers will be allowed off of it, and since we're aren't high population no one will transfer on to it, leaving us in ghost-server land still.

[khaine]

Wouldn't the faster and more effective solution be to just merge servers ?

In essence that's what they are doing by sounding the death knell for low pop ones currently , if they are afraid of bad press for that what are they going to do once everyone abandons ship on the low pop ones , leave them open just to be able to say they havent shrunk in subs at all ?

[squirrel]

Folks,

Over the last few weeks the team has implementing a transfer system to allow both players and guilds to move between our servers. This technology was not available for WAR at launch and building it has proven to be a little more complex than originally expected. I’m happy to say that starting next week we will begin public testing of the service and if things go well, we will be able to offer it free to our players (for a limited time) either next week or the week after that. I apologize for the delay in making this service available but again, it did take a little longer than we originally expected.

We will be posting details next week about the public test and then the parameters for the free service.

Mark

Well, if transfers from Ulthuan are allowed and the bold bit is accurate can't BC just move en masse?

[Goreschach]

What is this, the passive-aggressive school of PR?

Anyone getting the feeling that pretty soon now we'll be seeing Mark go the way of Gaute?

Maybe when Lord British gets his head out of the clouds they can start a new MMO company together. 

[vex]

What I'm worried about is that Ulthuan will be designated a medium pop server, thus no transfers will be allowed off of it, and since we're aren't high population no one will transfer on to it, leaving us in ghost-server land still.

I for one welcome our ghost-server overlords... or something.

[Arthur_Parker]

What I'm worried about is that Ulthuan will be designated a medium pop server, thus no transfers will be allowed off of it, and since we're aren't high population no one will transfer on to it, leaving us in ghost-server land still.

If the transfer is quick and easy I don't see the reason for any restrictions on it at all.  If everybody piles on the same server, they will just get pissed off by the queue and transfer somewhere else anyway.  

Again, if the transfer is quick and easy, this will let them experiment with different server types on the very low population ones without much negative reaction.  I wouldn't like to play on a "no scenario" server because I like the odd scenario, but I wouldn't mind playing on a server that had scenarios deactivated at the weekends.

Edit:typo

[Zzulo]

Wouldn't the faster and more effective solution be to just merge servers ?

well I prefer server transfers to server mergers

gives us players more choice. For example, I'm hoping my guild will end up wherever another guild I like ends up. Stuff like that.

[tazelbain]

Really Mythic is going allow me to force everyone in BC to switch servers?

More likely they are going to allow me to move the Bat Country tag and guild rank to a new server so we don't have start over.

[Zzulo]

best thing is if they use that cloning system they used before

so I can have my characters on multiple servers 

[Sparky]

Make them timestaking, like collecting 100 pieces of wood, with random spawns of wood all around the RVR area (outside the safety of the keep).  Have a wood pile inside the keep with a mouse-over signifying turn in progress:  100 of 1500 needed.  Each player could do the quest once (per cycle), encouraging more players to come and collect the damn wood. 

I can endlessly play with my wood without WAR.  Makes DAOC crafting sound fun by comparison (your wood quest, not playing with my wood).

[Nebu]

I loved DAoC crafting.  Buy stacks of materials, start macro program, go to bed.  It was perfect. 

[Sparky]

See I actually pressed a button and waited for the ding like a sucker.  Got a lot of reading done though.

[Nevermore]

Sanvar Soulblight
Marauder of Drifting Castle

How, exactly, does your castle drift?

Laputa

[EWSpider]

When Mark previously discussed server transfers he mentioned they would work similar to how they work in WoW.  In other words, only designated servers will be allowed to transfer, and you'll only be allowed to transfer to servers designated by Mythic.

[Arthur_Parker]

When Mark previously discussed server transfers he mentioned they would work similar to how they work in WoW.  In other words, only designated servers will be allowed to transfer, and you'll only be allowed to transfer to servers designated by Mythic.

You have a link to the exact quote?

[Morfiend]

When Mark previously discussed server transfers he mentioned they would work similar to how they work in WoW.  In other words, only designated servers will be allowed to transfer, and you'll only be allowed to transfer to servers designated by Mythic.

You have a link to the exact quote?

I fail at finding the link, but I also remember the quote.

Some thing like "We want to offer people the opportunity to transfer from Low pop servers to medium population ones. We also would like to offer people on high pop servers to also transfer to medium population ones."

[Arthur_Parker]

linky

Other changes for 1.1 include major additions to the chat system (item linking and more) as well as continued work on our targeting system, including adding Main Assist and Target of Target.  In addition to the server balancing methods that have worked so well over the last week, we will also be offering the first server transfers to our players to continue to help even out the server populations.  These transfers will be free of charge but they will be limited to moves off high-population servers to select mid-population servers or off of low-population servers to a selection of mid-population servers. Much like we are doing now, we will select certain mid-population servers and let people transfer there.  Once they reach a certain population level, we’ll remove them from the list and give their spot to another server.  We will publish the list ahead of time so players can plan their moves accordingly.

Yeah, I forgot about that, ignore my earlier comment.

[lamaros]

Sanvar Soulblight
Marauder of Drifting Castle

How, exactly, does your castle drift?

It's on an iceberg, obviously.

(It's not an outlier! The next ice age is coming!)

[Goreschach]

linky

Other changes for 1.1 include major additions to the chat system (item linking and more) as well as continued work on our targeting system, including adding Main Assist and Target of Target.  In addition to the server balancing methods that have worked so well over the last week, we will also be offering the first server transfers to our players to continue to help even out the server populations.  These transfers will be free of charge but they will be limited to moves off high-population servers to select mid-population servers or off of low-population servers to a selection of mid-population servers. Much like we are doing now, we will select certain mid-population servers and let people transfer there.  Once they reach a certain population level, we’ll remove them from the list and give their spot to another server.  We will publish the list ahead of time so players can plan their moves accordingly.

Yeah, I forgot about that, ignore my earlier comment.

So their intent is for every server to be listed as medium population? 

[Vinadil]

For end-game that is probably best... as their servers cannot handle high vs high come Tier 4.

[JWIV]

Wait... Isn't Warhammer lore just a big rip off of Warcraft?

 

Me and my dolls are not amused.     

[Venkman]

Wouldn't the faster and more effective solution be to just merge servers ?

This allows them to avoid the bad PR of server merges mere months after a hugely hyped launch. Nobody ever says "server merges = successful business". Even when it actually improves the game, it really is only needed a) when you rapidly lose population; or, b) over estimated the popularity of your game.

So here, they can allow players to chase population themselves, watch some servers clear out, eventually not allow new players to make characters on those servers, and then slowly and silently phase them out.

Win win. Gives players the option to find the action at all tiers (instead of just the cap) and allows Mythic to avoid bad press until people calm the hell down.