f13.net

Highlights:
With 1.1a, we have been working hard and listening to player feedback to make the great game of WAR even better. We're proud to introduce to the game several exciting changes that you requested! These changes include the following:

* Two New Careers - The Knight of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard have joined their allies and are now available to play for everyone!
* Open RvR Influence System – As part of our ongoing effort to encourage people to take part in oRvR, we are pleased to announce the release of an Influence system geared solely to oRvR. Players who participate in this part of WAR will now have additional incentives for fighting for their realm. As part of this patch we have also made quite a number of changes and fixes to oRvR places and NPCs as well.
* Easy Public Quests - PQs are great but sometimes it's hard to get enough people together to complete them, especially in the lower tiers. So, we are redesigning one PQ per chapter so that it can be completed by 1-3 people.
* Chat Hyperlinking - One of the most requested features by the community has been adding the ability to hyperlink items, abilities and quests in the chat window and now it has been added.
* Itemization Improvements – As part of our continuing support to improve item rewards in WAR we have released a number of new item improvements with 1.1. These improvements include re-vamped armor sets for all levels, new item drops for a number of harder dungeons, and improved drop rates of PQ rewards.
* Main Assist - RvR is exciting, chaotic and always challenging but this feature will make it just a little bit easier to help your group fight the good fight.
* Player Statue System - Nothing says "you've made it" more than having a statue with your name on it in the capital city of your realm.
* New Content - Whether it is new lairs, new quests and changes to items, this patch is full of lots of fun new content additions to the game.
* User Interface - Lots and lots of fixes, changes and new additions to our user interface and API functionality, new additions to the chat system and graphic options incorporating community requested features a channel flashing on activity, the ability to turn the chat bubbles on/off, a gamma slider and so much more.
* Player Responsiveness – We have added a number of additional features to improve the responsiveness of the game client. These changes include items that will lessen the "Pause" period in casting due to high lag, as well as fixes for a number of animation glitches and issues players experienced while rapidly activating abilities.
* AddOn Management - WAR now officially supports many great User Interface mods! You can now access your AddOn management window via the 'Customize UI' window. This window will allow you to view information about and enable/disable any AddOns you may have installed. This window also contains an ‘Advanced’ screen that gives UI mod developers access to some of the same development tools Mythic uses to create its UI. In coming versions we will continue to improve the UI Modding systems in-game and plan to launch a UI Mods specific section of the Warhammer Herald.
* Improved Performance and Stability - We have made additional improvements for both the client and the servers.

Armor Set Improvements:
This patch represents a pretty significant improvement to Armor Sets in all Tiers. We have made a number of adjustments across many sets to ensure that these items remain both highly competitive and desirable. Changes to these items will automatically take effect on existing items in the game.:

* Armor Sets are now represented with their own special item type represented by “Gold” Text
* We have looked carefully at all sets to ensure that their bonuses are attractive to the careers they are designed for.
* We have looked carefully at all sets to ensure that their bonuses are attractive to the careers they are designed for.
* The bonus on many individual set items have been increased in power to make them more competitive with other Rare and Very Rare drops at their level.
* Some set items have had their equip level decreased, allowing them to be used at an earlier level.
* Crafters will be able to salvage most set items. Only set items that are available for purchase from a merchant will be flagged as “No Salvage.”
* We have added an additional item to the following armor sets: Redeye, Devastator, and Keeper.
* Starting in 1.1 the following set items have been made bind-on-equip: Sentinel Belt, Conqueror Boots, Invader Boots, and Warlord Boots.

Encounter Ward System Adjustments
After continued testing, we have revised the way that the Ward System works. Encounters will now be slightly harder for players without wards; however, players will need less total ward items to become competitive, and will gain an extra benefit if they complete the entire ward set.
* Players without warded armor will continue take up to 200% additional damage from certain monsters. Each appropriate ward worn will continue to reduce that damage by 40% per item.
* Players without warded armor will now have 40% damage output against certain monsters. For each piece of appropriate ward armor worn, the player’s damage output against those monsters will increase by 15%.
* Players who wear all five pieces of warded armor will deal an additional 15% bonus damage to certain monsters.

Open RvR Influence:
One of the most recently requested items by our community has been incentives for open RvR. The open RvR system is the first of many new features and improvements we have slated to ensure that WAR is the best RvR experience on the market. :why_so_serious:

Influence can be earned both by killing players as well as capturing or defending Keeps and Battlefield Objectives. When a player participates in a pairing’s open RvR, they will earn Influence with that race in that Tier. The more Influence you earn, the better the rewards you can obtain by speaking with the Rallymaster located in that area’s warcamps. For more information on rewards please see the detailed notes below.

* Each open RvR Influence area offers basic, advanced, and elite rewards for a total of 9 rewards per Tier
* New "Rare" items are available as rewards for more casual RvR players.
* New "Very Rare" items are available as rewards for hardcore RvR players.
* Open RvR Influence introduces many new weapons and accessories that players can earn exclusively in RvR!

I like the update and am looking forward to trying this out tonight unlike 99% of the whiners that camp this site who never have anything good to say

I like the update and am looking forward to trying this out tonight unlike 99% of the whiners that camp this site who never have anything good to say

I like the update and am looking forward to trying this out tonight unlike 99% of the whiners that camp this site who never have anything good to say

people never used the dragon zones

I like the update and am looking forward to trying this out tonight unlike 99% of the whiners that camp this site who never have anything good to say

Are you kidding me?

Or are you talking about different dragon zones to the ones that contained a dragon that dropped dozens of respec stones which could be killed by less than twenty players in less than an hour?

Hey I enjoy it. I also think this patch is a good one. :oh_i_see:

With Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's first major content update set to go live today, December 11th, four members of the WAR team - Associate Producers Josh Drescher and Spyke Alexander, Designer Brian Wheeler, and Combat & Careers Strike Team Lead Adam Gershowitz - found some time in their busy schedules to speak with WarCry Editor John Funk about Patch 1.1 and the goodies inside it - new live events, an overhauled RvR system, and of course the addition of two previously cut careers.
...
As Gershowitz explains it, "When it comes down to it, it was all about quality for us. When we were looking to launch the game, we were looking to launch a complete product. We stopped working on these careers in the first place because they simply weren't the quality we wanted for launch - they weren't bad concepts, they weren't bad ideas, the mechanics were fine, but they weren't the quality we were looking for."
...
Drescher echoed the statements, stressing that the Warhammer that launched in September was a "complete product, not deficient in any way." He compared it to a film, where for whatever reason, shots and scenes that sounded good on paper didn't work out for whatever reason and get left on the cutting room floor, but the film that releases is still a finished product anyway. "This is like a Director's Cut," he said, noting that Adam and their team had worked on the Black Guard and Knight for months to get them to a point where Mythic was satisfied with the quality. "They weren't 'must have' boxes on a checklist or anything." When asked if the other two classes - Hammerer and Choppa - would ever be released, Drescher further affirmed that approach, saying that "if the time ever comes when those two careers are on the same level as the others, absolutely - but it isn't a 'must have.'"
...
Another change coming in WAR 1.1 is the tweaking of some mid-range Public Quests, allowing one quest per chapter to be done either solo or with a small group. Drescher explained the rationale, noting that PQs were one of the most-talked-about features that WAR offered, and that they didn't want new players to be stuck. "As the game matures, as the population finds its way into the higher tiers, we wanted to make sure that you as a new player who may have heard about PQs, will be able to do them and not get stuck because you can't find a party ... they shouldn't be impossible tasks; we don't want it to be like raiding where only 25% of the population can ever do it. "

However, there weren't any plans to add further incentive to the quests. "We're not looking to provide incentive because they have incentive by design," he continued, and Gershowitz agreed. "Easy PQs are focused on giving the PQ experience to small groups ... the rewards are appropriate for that; we don't want to take away for the medium-difficulty or harder PQs."
...
Still, for all the attention paid to open RvR in the patch, we asked the team what they were going to do to curb the unfortunate phenomenon of "keep swapping," where large guilds on opposite factions would agree to take each others' keeps and switch on and off for large amounts of renown and other rewards. Wheeler said that they'd been looking through the data and had realized that the renown reward for actually defending a keep was far less than it should have been, meaning that there was little incentive to defend something once you'd taken it. In 1.1, he said, "defenders are going to get a lot more renown and influence in RvR by defending a keep. I think we'll see a more doggish mentality where you go out, take a keep, and dare others to attack it."

There were other things in the works that would work towards eliminating keep swapping, he said, though they couldn't discuss it yet. The big change, though, would be that there would hopefully be much more incentive to take a keep and work to hold it.
...
Josh Drescher was particularly eager to talk about his personal favorite addition in 1.1, what he described as a "little nugget of joy" - Chicken Run. It's a quest offered in the Greenskin and High Elf Tier 3 areas (for Destruction and Order, respectively) that sends high-level characters down to the first tier open RvR areas ... where they get immediately turned into a chicken, and are tasked with completing special chicken objectives. "Which is mainly," he elaborated, "like trying to get through as fast as possible without getting killed."

"Players were doing this sort of thing anyway," he joked, "so we made this a little gag that we could throw in and give them actual quest rewards. Also," Drescher added, "any rank 1 character that gets ahold of a high-level chicken and kills them is going to get a reward like they killed an actual high-level character - everybody wins!"

So, that covers 1.1 mostly... what about 1.2? Or beyond, even? "We can't tell you much!" Gershowitz laughed. "The things that players can look forward to, and be assured that we're listening to, are improvements to the heart and soul of our game, RvR. We are dead serious about being best PvP game on the market. The things that we've been getting back - feedback on the forums, on the Public Test - are all things we're taking to heart. So whatever comes in 1.2 is the same 'we're listening, we're improving this game' content that we've done in 1.1."

The one thing that would have made this a success, particularly for people here? 
Increase PVP experience gain.
Did this happen?  Pretty sure it didn't. 

Wheeler said that they'd been looking through the data and had realized that the renown reward for actually defending a keep was far less than it should have been, meaning that there was little incentive to defend something once you'd taken it. In 1.1, he said, "defenders are going to get a lot more renown and influence in RvR by defending a keep. I think we'll see a more doggish mentality where you go out, take a keep, and dare others to attack it."

Good to see that the designers are only, oh, 8 months or so behind their players in figuring out the problems with their game design (we told them repeatedly at least 8 months ago if not even earlier that there needed to be incentives to hold BOs).

I wish they would listen to their playerbase. They lost the WOW players when people realised it was an unpolished, poor copy of WoW PvE without the promised "WAR is everywhere" PvP.

WoW is ripping all the good WAR ideas and building them into their game. Why isn't Mythic looking at Wintergrasp's current success (destructables, good design, incentives etc) and ripping those ideas to put into WAR?

Lol, they must subscribe to the Adam Carpenter line of thinking, which is literally "Players don't know what they want".  A lot of designers literally believe this and use this logic to reason why they don't listen to player feedback.  And people wonder why our games today are so craptacular  :oh_i_see:

The reality is the best way to earn influence, renown, and xp is to battle against other players over keeps and objectives, the cumulative sum of rewards is generally greater.

Unfortunately the path of least resistance is also tempting, rest assured though we'll continue to improve RvR to make it so that conflict is a common occurrence as best we can, but players adjust to massive RvR may still have yet to learn that a lot of the fun of RvR has to do with what you make of it. We expect to see players naturally migrate towards conflict as the initial influence frenzy calms down :)

I would love to see some new sub numbers for WAR, but I wonder if they could push back up near 500k after the New Year if they can keep working positive changes into the game.  I suppose I have forgotten the T3 grind already since I have been T4 for so long and don't roll alts (never have in any game).  But, last night on Ostermark was by far the busiest and best open RVR night we have seen since launch.  On a server that normally sees 24 v 24 at best we had easily 80-100 players in the RVR zones last night for a good 3-4 hours (maybe more... I logged around 11pm EST).

My server is crazy busy every night and had alot of fun yesterday with the new patch.  I filled about half a bar of RvR inf from keep takes and BO's.  Warhammer is holding its own currently and I know 3 people so far that left for WOW and are already 80 there and came back to Warhammer.  If they continue to address problems at the rate they are within 6 months Warhammer will be a solid RvR MMO.  Its better today then it was at launch and I expect that trend to continue.  My guild has a solid WB full + every night and we all have a great time rolling destruction

My guild has a solid WB full + every night and we all have a great time rolling destruction

If the basic design of the modern MMO is analogous to an amusement park, the most nightmarish portion of the development team's job doesn't even begin until after the game launches. Prior to that, the development team can still make major changes and tweaks without worrying about affecting people who are currently paying the bills. Post-launch, however, that all goes out the window by the incessant demands of the player-base that screams for changes without service interruptions. Extending the analogy, it's like asking the designers of Disneyland to completely re-do the Pirates of the Caribbean while people are still riding it. EA Mythic's Warhammer Online MMO launched this year to considerable critical acclaim but even the game's most ardent supporters won't claim the game itself was perfect. We sat down with several members of the development team to discuss the launch and the frenzied road to Warhammer Online version 1.1.

"1.1 represents our very first iteration patch," said Warhammer Online's Associate Producer Josh Drescher. "It's the first major addition of new content and a significant overhaul of our core systems." According to Drescher, one of the most difficult things for a development team to do during the first days after the launch of an MMO is nothing. Apparently as the first players rush onto the system and spread out across the servers, a ton of information and feedback will come flooding in via game forums, initial reviews as well as raw internal data. The temptation then is for the team to rush in and immediately start fixing things based on extremely small data sets and subjective interpretations. What the Warhammer Online team did instead was what might be referred to as "game triage." They needed to decide which problems were truly game-threatening and focus on those and which could wait.

"When we look at game balance, we look at it in terms of realm vs. realm balance," said Jeff Skalski, Warhammer Online's RvR Strike Team Lead. "As long as we're hitting that realm balance, we're happy. Factional, racial or career population imbalances aren't as critical." In fact, the team asserts that one of the biggest criticisms and fears around launch time -- the potential for population or class imbalance -- hasn't really materialized. While there is a perception among Destruction players that there are too many Bright Wizard players and amongst Order players that there are too many Destruction players, that perception simply isn't borne out by Mythic's own numbers. While they wouldn't discuss specifics, Drescher said that population imbalances on servers are usually within single-digit percentages.

Drescher is quick to add that even such low percentages are a cause for concern for the team, but rather than taking a reactionary stance, they believe in getting ahead of the problem as quickly as possible. "We're very proud of the incentive structure we've built to encourage players to spread out. Every time you log in, you'll be greeted with a message that, say the High Elves on a particular server could use some help and we're offering incentives such as extra experience points to join." The team also takes message board and player feedback very seriously and will address issues when they reach certain critical thresholds. A recent shift to healers, for example, occurred because the complaint by healers that their big healing spells were essentially useless in combat was backed up by internal data that showed how often such spells were used. As a result, many big healing spells were jazzed up to become more attractive for players.

The focus on moving with deliberate haste extends even to the business environment that Warhammer Online operates in. When the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft's latest greatest expansion pack, hit the MMO world the way only a game with 11 million subscribers can, the reaction with Mythic was muted. "Wrath of the Lich King is a big marquee product," said Drescher. "Clearly we were aware of it but you can't let a competitor goad you into a rash move that ends up being bad for the game." As a result, the development team took on a policy of pseudo-blindness where Lich King was concerned. "Our general take is that we need to continue to move on with our own plans. We've got the 'Keg's End' event (a drinking-themed in-game holiday event) coming up and if we continue to make our game as good as it can possibly be, the players will be there."

The result of the team's initial focus on staunching critical issues quickly and getting ahead of small leaks before they became big ones seems to have paid off. After only a few months, the 1.1 patch will see the beginning of major structural changes to the game including the launch of two new classes that were cut from the initial release -- the Knights of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard. "There were a lot of reasons these two classes were cut from the game," said Adam Gershowitz, Combat and Careers Strike Team lead. "While they were farther along than the Choppa and the Hammerer, they were missing huge chunks of artwork and they weren't balanced at all." According to Gershowitz, the two classes were always on the short list for returning to the game, but once they were cut, the game had to balanced without them and regardless of how much the team liked them, they wouldn't be coming back until the team was sure the game could handle them without losing that.

It's Associate Producer Wheeler who segues from discussion of the two new classes to the other major change coming in the patch -- the addition of a new incentive system for Open Realm vs. Realm combat. Of all the problems the most crucial one the game had was one that many players doing other things missed -- there weren't enough people playing in the lower tier open realm RvR. While this had always been an anticipated problem as the player base aged and leveled up, all the data indicated that it was happening faster than it should. It was clearly something that needed to be addressed.

"What we've found is that Scenarios tend to be their own reward," Drescher said. "People who really want to do Open RvR, though, were falling behind PvE and scenario players in terms of gear. We needed to do something to draw people back into the 'RvR lakes.'" To encourage this, the team introduced a new "influence" system similar to the one in place for Public Quests that would reward those fighting in the open fields. "However players decide to play our game, we want to make sure they can all get equal rewards," Drescher said.

Working on the Open RvR system also allowed the team to try and get ahead of another problem -- the aging of the player base. The first element of this is the addition of "chicken content." This is a series of quests that encourage higher tier player to revisit lower-tier zones (where they get turned into a chicken) in exchange for a fun series of Tome unlocks and quests that also provide interesting content for lower level characters as well. Apparently players will get experience for killing high level player-chickens and according to the team, there are as many Tome unlocks involving them as there were for fighting while naked.

The patch has a whole host of other additions as well. They include things like a "player statue" system in which players who get the most renown points for the week are rewarded by having statues of them placed in the capitol cities. They're also including chat hyperlinking and introducing lower difficulty Public Quests that will help players do them even when there are not many others around. "In the end, adding a patch like this is all about giving the players what they want, but in a way that preserves the game they love," Drescher said. For the Warhammer Online team, the proof is in their success so far. "If you had said we'd be where we are just a few months after launch last year, we'd have called you a liar," Drescher concluded. "We're ecstatically happy with where we are, but we're not sitting on our laurels. We're never going to be finished with this game."

linky (http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109693678/p1/?30)

Game is fine, players need to be patched.

And then the slap in the face are the keeps, retro keep takes ftl. Hell WoW has at least moveable siege that is fun and innovative, destructable walls, etc... why did WAR not use their own old design from DAOC is just beyond me.

Good to see that the designers are only, oh, 8 months or so behind their players in figuring out the problems with their game design (we told them repeatedly at least 8 months ago if not even earlier that there needed to be incentives to hold BOs).

There is something fun about punching a hole in a keep wall, or climbing up the walls to keep the mundane part of keep takes fun.  DAoC did have some fun elements and I'm at a loss to know why they were so readily discarded. 

Got on for a bit today and did six keep takes and like 9 BOs.  At level 20 I got a bubble and a half..............................


That just isn't going to cut it.  I would have to do like 800 keeps to get to 40.

but players adjust to massive RvR may still have yet to learn that a lot of the fun of RvR has to do with what you make of it.

Go take part in the thrilling and exciting PvE, then.

Good to see that the designers are only, oh, 8 months or so behind their players in figuring out the problems with their game design (we told them repeatedly at least 8 months ago if not even earlier that there needed to be incentives to hold BOs).

Unplayable. You rush up there to a room full of 100 players and a NPC lord that literally 3 shot people without wards. While those wearing Wards are hardly protected against the 100 players bunkering up at the keep lord. The only chance of a fortress attack is probably 3 AM++ where most of the defenders are asleep. Because climbing a stairs riddled with 30 land mines while 30 Bright Wizards are spreading happy aoe is not gonna work out for any zerg.

Mythic just needs to make the fortress zone change into a 2d top-down zoomed out view so we can have super awesome views and battles like this:
(http://www.g4g.it/g4g/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/warhammer_mighty_empires_01.jpg)

It fits the IP, would fix the lag (they just need to tone the graphics down) and it wouldn't be any worse than what they're dealing with now.

The boards are speaking loudly this morning across the interwebs... same shit. Forts crashing, end game is useless, lagbeasts galore, etc...

I think its great for the Genre.  It's a big guide to who not to hire and what not the fuck to do.

Phase II
Axe Bite Pass, Karak Orrud and Karak Dron can transfer to Karak Hirn or Karak Azgal

This. Maybe, in some parallell universe, where unicorns wear massive strap-on dongs and invite eldery women into the back of their Volkswagen vans for a last good time, a game developer has learned that even MMOs need to be good games.

To be fair, there are MMOs that are good games. Not games that will satisfy your needs for all eternity, but good and fun to play for a few months and come back to check the updates.

WAR isn't one of those MMOs.

Really?  I would have said it was (excluding maybe the first sentence).  I found it fun for a month or so, playing through the first two tiers.  That's when the game was most fun for me.  It's not something I'd like to devote my life to, even if they ever get the endgame working, but it's fun to do scenarios and muck around with alts.  If they ever lowered the experience curve, I'd be back for a month or two, no question.

Towards thee I level, thou all-destroying but unconquering game; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

Yack, I was on a good little spree back there. The iron hammer that is the 30-40 grind finally shellacked me at rank 36. It saps my will to play every second that I'm logged into the game. Every moment, whether in a PQ or scenario or keep or Bastion Stair is consumed with the thought of how my actions relate to that damned bar.

Towards thee I level, thou all-destroying but unconquering game; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

I also used to ice mine 8-10 hours on the weekend with 3 Macks, Hauler, and support (till the g/f threw in the towel on that one).

I am trying and failing to understand what you are talking about here.  Not being snarky, genuinely interested in what you are talking about.  Ice mining?  Macks? like Mack trucks?

Really?  I would have said it was (excluding maybe the first sentence).  I found it fun for a month or so, playing through the first two tiers.  That's when the game was most fun for me.  It's not something I'd like to devote my life to, even if they ever get the endgame working, but it's fun to do scenarios and muck around with alts.  If they ever lowered the experience curve, I'd be back for a month or two, no question.

Tier 3 killed this game for me.  I enjoyed the first two tiers.  Actually I enjoyed the game up until rank 18.

Scenarios were either totally wtfpwn Destro or get totally wtfpwned by Destro.

Yep, I think that each server has its own experience, I just wonder how many people they will need to continue to support the game at a high level.  Ostermark sounds about the same as your server currently, as we will have RVR on a nightly basis that goes from 24 v 24 to 100 v 100.

Lots of people seem to be overcomplicating why this game sucks.

It sucks because even the theory depends on all tiers being highly populated throughout the life of the game, but there was no reason to expect this to ever happen.

Lots of people seem to be overcomplicating why this game sucks.

It sucks because even the theory depends on all tiers being highly populated throughout the life of the game, but there was no reason to expect this to ever happen.

The game should have made the 1-40 process very easy. And by easy, I mean something on the order of 50-80 hours played MAX. The entry point here should have been simple, get everyone (and your alts) to the START of what SHOULD be the core of the game.

PVP or RVR as the case may be. If t1-t3 is shortened so much, take the PVP lakes from those areas out and use them as t4 areas.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just remove those levels? and if so, doesn't that make 40 the new 1, and put it all right back to square one.

I agree.  Remove the pve levels and just have reknown be the only leveling in the game.  Lots of content for everyone that way. 

Truth: NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

Renown are just levels by a different name.

That's where you need to start asking "then what?".

Not sure why people keep rehashing this.  There is very little about this game that isn't complete shite.  The combat system sucks, the world is bland and boring and then you tack on the the harebrained idiocy of having to have all four tiers fairly populated to make it work.  Levels of any sort work fine in other games, they just don't get it here for some reason.  And then they decide to make the game "better" by adding other fucking experience bars.  It boggles the mind.  It just seems like a bunch of new guys got ahold of some money to put together a game and hired a bunch of programmers without fully thinking things through before they started. 

I didn't see anything wrong with its combat system, or PvP for that matter. I quite enjoyed it.

Class balance was an issue at release.  Too much CC with too few counters.  CC immunity timers too short or nonexistent.  Ability to 1 or 2 shot players (bad when accompanied by crippling lag). Several game breaking ways to manipulate lag.  Shall I go on?

To me, that's normal stuff...

This is my biggest complaint with MMO consumers.  They set the bar too low and are rewarded with a product that meets these low expectations. 

Game/class balance, in a PvP game? That shit NEEDS a live trial by fire.

I think beta is a great forum for this.  Beta... not just for bug reporting. 

The combat as a whole was quite good. Much more actiony than many others IMO. PvP was also quite enjoyable.

I agree.  Remove the pve levels and just have reknown be the only leveling in the game.  Lots of content for everyone that way. 

Truth: NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

Really, you enjoy slow, buggy game combat?  Why?

Seriously, if you enjoy it great, but I think it is putrid and is still putrid after multiple patches.

And don't forget, most of the CASUAL players are already RR50+ so they have burned through almost 3/4 of their Renown in less then 4 months. That's where you need to start asking "then what?".

Its not that i had low expectations, its just simply i understand that such things need a live trial by fire.

Yes yes yes. You dislike the game. k.

The combat was not slow. Like i said, more actiony than most others.

Wrong person to quote there.

That's one of the things betas are supposed to be for.

In fact a "trial by fire" is a bad way to insure a no-fail system.  Fire is inconsistent and is not sufficient to prove that something cannot fail (ie. that failures are accounted for in an acceptable manner). 

The bad thing is I spend 70% of my time being disabled, knocked down, knocked back, or dazed. Crowd control in this game is simply out of control.

I did notice that the last NPD sales charts over recent weeks didn't have Warhammer anywhere in the mix, so its going to be interesting to see their reaction when the 3 and 6 month prepay's are gone. With little new blood coming in, bad word of mouth on the internet, and a shrinking player base things can still get dicey over the next few months.

I'd like to see the game get turned around, but I still think its going to get worse (population wise) before it gets any better.

Fanboi at its finest... she starts the thread about WARs pop and slowly descends into madness debating WoWs numbers. Why do people do this?

This.

I leveled 3 Order characters to 20 on an Order underpop server. I just couldn't make myself trudge any further into T3.

PQ's were ghost towns.

Scenarios were either totally wtfpwn Destro or get totally wtfpwned by Destro.

Order complained that Destro were:
1. People with no life living in parents' basements.
2. More organized than Order.
3. To chickenshit to defend keeps.

So I decided to roll Destro on a server with an overpop of Destro.

PQ's were ghost towns.

Scenarios were either totally wtfpwn Order or get totally wtfpwned by Order.

Destro complained that Order were:
1. People with no life living in parents' basements.
2. More organized than Destro.
3. To chickenshit to defend keeps.

 :uhrr:

Well, since you are just now 34 I'll cut you slack. Be prepared to enjoy the disarm, disrupt, root, fetch/magnet show you'll be attending soon. I was 38 two months ago and I considered myself above casual, just now hitting Tier 4 is hardly casual that's "I don't play for weeks on end"... oh wait... yeah.

Hell, ask the other players here on the forums.

Did Schild take away the "quote" button from the new guys ?  :why_so_serious:

WAR Radar is out. It detects stealthed players too.
Activated a trial account and gave it a try. It worked.  :why_so_serious:

WAR Radar is out. It detects stealthed players too.

WAR Radar is out. It detects stealthed players too.
Activated a trial account and gave it a try. It worked.  :why_so_serious:

WAR Radar is out. It detects stealthed players too.
Activated a trial account and gave it a try. It worked.  :why_so_serious:

I don't think DAOC's radar programs caught the stealthers, interesting that this one does...

They could see the player pop up on the radar when they unstealthed, but that was it. But yeah I expected to see this at least a couple months ago right after release.

Now, I wonder how quick they will be finding the users?

I still liked the dude on our server who was a terrible, terrible skald. He used radar, but all it really did was give the other side RPs, so no one bothered to even report him.

God-fucking-damnit. If it wasn't so ridiculous, it would be funny. Every single lesson of DAoC seems to have been forgotten or ignored.

God-fucking-damnit. If it wasn't so ridiculous, it would be funny. Every single lesson of DAoC seems to have been forgotten or ignored.

I'm just having a free look trial from some of my friends who still told me 'There's nothing as good as this game for RVR'.

Okay, more "actiony" than LOTRO or not, in your opinion?  Just curious.

Anyone else feeling that's it, it's over? Packed away the DVD's never to be found again, its been removed from my HDD, don't really care anymore to read the newsletter.

We're almost 4months in (heck a full quarter) and I have yet to see improvements from peoples comments on how the game has improved substantially from launch.

Just like all new MMO releases, give it 6-12 months.

We're almost 4months in (heck a full quarter) and I have yet to see improvements from peoples comments on how the game has improved substantially from launch.

If you want accurate info on the game Id recommend other sites to get it where people are a little more mature about their opinion with real comments other then "THE GAME SUCKS I PEED ON MY DVD!". 

I find that warhammer does hold vast potential, just not exactly realized at this point.

A few MMOs back, I told myself that if I find myself using words like 'potential' to describe a MMO, I should give up on it. It took AoC to really drive that home. If the potential isn't being realised by launch, it probably won't. Ever.

Launch is really the worst time to play a MMO - you get an audience full of players who are the hardcore grinders of MMOs, systems that haven't had large-scale testing (even open betas aren't generally large enough to properly battle test a system) and you face a future of some pretty harsh patching.

I think this is unfair - MMOs can improve dramatically over time as new systems are brought in and other things altered. I intend to play AoC (as well as a whole heap of other MMOs when they offer free trials) to see if I enjoy them.

Its nice to see some intelligent conversation here for a change. 

I am sure the message will be filled with 'WAR numbers have increased over the holidays, servers are more stable, lagbeasts have been slain', etc... typical PR bullshit.

[...]Intelligent conversation has been here as long as I have.  [...]

Dude, get over  yourself!    ...   (giggle!)

Most sieges that we've seen in the last 3 weeks have not exceeded the cap we have implemented. [face_love]

So, they're going to 'allow even more players to participate' by allowing less players to participate?

Those are not server shutdowns and mergers, they are free character transfers to pre-determined servers.

So, they're going to 'allow even more players to participate' by allowing less players to participate?

So, they're going to 'allow even more players to participate' by allowing less players to participate?

WAR is everywhere, but please don't all go at once.

I double checked, if you include the EU it's 53 I believe.

Rufio, that's an excellent suggestion and one that I will pass along to the devs.

I'm not sure how feasible it is from a coding standpoint, but it's a good idea nonetheless.

I thought this was funny (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3189418#post3189418).


If they can't put a queue in, starting in the warcamp, maybe they could replace the road from warcamp to the fortress with a massive wheel.  Maybe add influence rewards and an exp bar for time spent running in the wheel.

After monitoring the Fortress population changes we implemented on several North American servers yesterday, we are happy to say that none of the servers experienced Fortress siege crashes. We are also pushing this change live to all servers during today's update.

Ahm, why don't they just instance the forts?

What's the real hard # of players for a fort?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiv0Pw7-CEM

Folks,
Also, we are working on creating additional oRvR opportunities for those that are "capped out" to participate in the main fortress battles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiv0Pw7-CEM

To state the obvious, but didn't Mythic think that the whole "WAR is everywhere, with huge RvR battles in a massively multiplayer environment" hype they were going for would need a game engine that would allow for such combat to take place?

Barnett:  "An other day, some dollars... <awkward pause>"


Ouch.  Ya.

Mythic once again shows its mastery of psychology.

So, Mythic has solved one issue (even temporarily) by creating at least 3 more - 1) getting booted to the warcamp is no fun, 2) getting booted because you aren't the right level is no fun and 3) it again destroys ORvR and the whole tier rank thing by making level the only thing that counts.

I like the change, it keeps the lowbies out while the grown ups do the work.  Problem you get when a fortress is being assaulted is you get lowbies from all over coming to watch, basically not helping and causing additional lag.  This is a way to keep that under control, they even said if you were already in the zone and are <40 you can stay.  They are basically stopping a lowbie zerg on a fortress and thats good cause I want level 40's on the assault, not level 31's. 

Hardcore guild, all players with two accounts, have your low level Order alt log in at the fortress, log main Chaos character in, attack fortress.  1 less defender for every alt bot.

Debuff fortress defender bots replace DAoC buff bots.

I like the change, it keeps the lowbies out while the grown ups do the work.  Problem you get when a fortress is being assaulted is you get lowbies from all over coming to watch, basically not helping and causing additional lag.  This is a way to keep that under control, they even said if you were already in the zone and are <40 you can stay.  They are basically stopping a lowbie zerg on a fortress and thats good cause I want level 40's on the assault, not level 31's. 

YOU MUST BE "THIS" TALL TO RIDE THIS RIDE!

If they didn't want level 31's participating, they could have installed any number of mechanisms to prevent it.  The selling feature of WAR was to be that levels mattered less because the gameplay was broken into four tiers.  Instead the game is devolving into the usual MMO faire where only those that have "earned" the priviledge to play the endgame, get to. 

It's a shitty solution to a problem that was created by a severe lack of forethought.

I think sub numbers will drop by another 20-30% in the next month or two due to this, especially as more people approach the level cap.

I think sub numbers will drop by another 20-30% in the next month or two due to this, especially as more people approach the level cap.

keeping out people who have no business being there or no hope of surviving the fight (i.e. anyone below level 39 and no ward gear).

So I heard the sky is falling, any input?  I know there will be cause this is the doom n gloom board!  lol you guys kill me

If this is true and not typical "IAMHARDCOREPK!" bravado, that signals a pretty epic failure in game design. No surprise really.

So I heard the sky is falling, any input?  I know there will be cause this is the doom n gloom board!  lol you guys kill me

From the patcher:

Experience Enhancements - Phase V:
01/9/2009

It's been a while since we've done a round of experience enhancements but with the new year comes some good news for those players working their way through Tier 3 and eager to join their friends in Fortress raids and capital city sieges.

We are pleased to announce the fifth phase of our ongoing experience enhancements. In response to the valuable feedback of many players, we have reduced the required experience needed to attain ranks 20 through 33. As a result, it will now take you less time to advance through Tier 3 and the earliest ranks of Tier 4.

We hope you will enjoy the brisk new pace of advancement, as well the many challenges and rewards that await you in Tier 4!

I don't know why this wasn't the case at release and was dumbfounded when the game launched with a steeper xp curve than beta. 

So I heard the sky is falling, any input?  I know there will be cause this is the doom n gloom board!  lol you guys kill me

They have really learned nothing from DAoC.  This was the norm in DAoC for years... fast leveling from 1-40, slower to level 50.  I don't know why this wasn't the case at release and was dumbfounded when the game launched with a steeper xp curve than beta. 

Folks,

   The first step in improving the oRvR experience of fortress taking went LIVE across all servers last night.  The good news is that there were lots of fortresses captured and defended.  The even better news is that there were no fortress-related crashes last night while these battles raged and were completed by the players.  Performance in these battles was also improved, but still not where we want it to be of course.  While this is a good start, continuing to improve the mechanisms behind these battles remains one of our top priorities now and going forward.  Over the next few weeks, we will be working on a number of initiatives that I can now talk about.

   First, the team will tweak the settings for the Fortress Lords to make sure that their power is in line with the current numbers of players expected to participate in the siege.  Second, the team will continue working on optimizing the code’s performance in large-scale battles so we can increase the population cap over the next few weeks.  Third, the team is looking at additional tweaking of the pop cap to ensure that it is where it needs to be in order to allow these battles to be as well-balanced (from a design perspective) as they can be.  In the end, it is up to the players to decide to defend and/or attack a fortress but it is our job to make sure that the pop cap is set properly to ensure that the maximum number of defenders/attackers that can *choose* to participate is set up so that if the population hits max cap (and assuming that both sides are equally powerful), neither side has an advantage over the other.  Most importantly, the team will also be looking at moving the fortress areas out to their own zones to allow an even a greater of number of players to participate, while also maintaining a high level of performance.  While they are doing that, they will also be looking at ways to enhance the fortress areas to take advantage of having their own dedicated zone.  This might also allow us to get slightly lower-level players into the action, either directly in the fortress sieges, and/or in supporting roles around the main action.  However, we won’t move the sieges into their own zones unless we are sure that we can get either some deign and/or performance improvements by doing so.

  As always, we appreciate your feedback, suggestions, patience, and participation as we continue to work on these issues and initiatives.  What we’ve done so far is only the first step and we have a lot more coming in the next few weeks.

  Oh, and expect a major announcement from us at the end of the month regarding our plans for the next few months and beyond.  It’s going to get even more interesting around these parts soon.[face_thinking]

Mark

I think they mean that they'll move it from being connected to the T4 Tier.  Make you have to actually zone in instead of just crossing a boundary line.

We'll find out what brisk is soon, I suppose. I don't think their definition falls in line with what I said... in what, September? Maybe it was October.

If an area is blocked by an arbitrary delimiter, it's functionally instancing.

Zone only accessible to Party A
Zone only accessible to Raid A
Zone only accessible to First 40 people
Zone only accessible to people with the Item of Access, but otherwise no limits

The first three depend upon some arbitrary selection of people.  No one else can enter.  For all intents and purposes it is a private zone to them, which is what I would define as an instance.

The fourth has a gate mechanism, but otherwise the entire server could pack into it.  I could probably quibble about whether it, too, qualifies, but would let it go with being a "world zone" at that point.  (I wouldn't be arguing about the gate so much as how the game's architecture is designed.  Atlas Park in CoX is a "world zone", yet it is also an instance, even if only one is active.)

It would also behoove them to allow everyone who wants to participate in a Fortress seige to be able to do so in some fashion.  Either their population will fall to the point where it doesn't matter, or they'll need additional copies.  This is the perfect first step towards that.

You're looking at things through your WoW googles. Instancing a Fortress could simply imply that there is a dedicated server to handle the area. You could perform a handshake to allow any spare server (as they do now have many) (also, assume they're taken offline and held only as fortress servers) to handle the event, character data can simply be transferred (as it is in Guild Wars...all the freaking time). Either that or yes, each server gets its own dedicated transparent instancing server as well.

An instance doesn't mean "raid", it also doesn't mean 40, and it doesn't mean there *has* to be multiple parallel instances - that's just how they've been used thus far.

If they zone it, fix the performance issues, and make it fun, then it would be fixing the epic fail that they began with however.

If.   :awesome_for_real:

Q: How did you achieve 80 so "fast".
A: Let me start by saying it sure didn't feel fast!

59  days played in a game that has been out 117 days.  Got rr80 by pve in a game supposed to be pvp centric. 

If this isn't a wake-up call to the Mythic development team, then I don't know what else will do it. 

EDIT: some of the WHA posters frighten me.  I guess the concept of the catass is destined to live on forever.  They sure seem to love this guy's "achievements" over there.

We're gonna need a new title past hardcore. 

Yep, he played too much. honestly. He grinded for it.

To be honest i seriously doubt his claims that he did it alone.

I'd be happy to learn that he did it alone.  That would at least demonstrate that the game was somewhat solo friendly. 

I'm more interested by the fact that he got the rank killing more mobs than players.  It's a sign that keep swapping is far easier than the developers had previously thought.  It also shows that players are far more interested in grinding to a goal than they are enjoying the mechanics of WAR.  Far less of a surprise given the history of MMO's. 

Q: What do you get for being RR80?
A: 1 Renown point, 1 Passive ability

 :ye_gods:

whee.

And +20% on pvp damage. Clearly a completely balanced perk.

It's right, I saw the screenshot. +20% damage

I wonder if the bonus is the same for all archetypes.  Maybe tank classes get -20% damage taken and healers +20% healing, which would blow for the ones going for dps.

According to people on his server, the guy is a total douchebag. He constantly runs from all fights, bans people/guilds from his PvE warband if they suggest/fight other players, etc.

He also MADE A THREAD ABOUT HIMSELF GETTING RR80 AND ADDED A FAQ. How full of yourself do you have to be?

This is a hilarious disaster for humanity/warhammer. There are people in this world willing to devote 12 hours a day for 4 months playing a dogshit terrible game. Warhammer, on the other hand, is so bad that it only takes 4 months of PvEing keep doors and NPCs to get the highest PLAYER VS PLAYER rank. And didn't mythic 'claim' it would take at least 2 y ears to get RR80?

And didn't mythic 'claim' it would take at least 2 y ears to get RR80?

Well said.   This is exactly what people on this forum do.  Everything Warhammer is bad bad bad!  Its sad that some people here actually take their own time to look up stuff just so they can type up something negative about Warhammer, its like they are obsessed with wanting it to fail.  If you come here daily its the same people bashing over and over like an autistic kid beating himself over the head with a breadloaf. 

Well said.   This is exactly what people on this forum do.  Everything Warhammer is bad bad bad!  Its sad that some people here actually take their own time to look up stuff just so they can type up something negative about Warhammer, its like they are obsessed with wanting it to fail.  If you come here daily its the same people bashing over and over like an autistic kid beating himself over the head with a breadloaf. 

Well said.   This is exactly what people on this forum do.  Everything Warhammer is bad bad bad!  Its sad that some people here actually take their own time to look up stuff just so they can type up something negative about Warhammer, its like they are obsessed with wanting it to fail.  If you come here daily its the same people bashing over and over like an autistic kid beating himself over the head with a breadloaf. 

Its sad that some people here actually take their own time to look up stuff just so they can type up something negative about Warhammer, its like they are obsessed with wanting it to fail. 

"Obviously, you don't like the game. I dropped the game 3 weeks after I bought it and haven't looked back. However, to sensationalize non-events like this and hail it as doom and gloom only serves to diminish the collective argument."


Well said.   This is exactly what people on this forum do.  Everything Warhammer is bad bad bad!  Its sad that some people here actually take their own time to look up stuff just so they can type up something negative about Warhammer, its like they are obsessed with wanting it to fail.  If you come here daily its the same people bashing over and over like an autistic kid beating himself over the head with a breadloaf. 

I wondered how long you people were going to cut that astroturfing douchebag some slack.  You people have gotten soft.

 This is exactly what people on this forum do.  Everything Warhammer is bad bad bad! 

[LW] Can we expect anything big to roll out this week or anytime in the future that you could say? Are lips sealed?

[Andy] I can say we have some big plans coming down the pipe. We’ve got some great things that I’m sure players are going to be very happy about. I wish I could give you some specifics and let you know exactly what they are. I know everybody knows the two melee dps classes are coming up. Definitely keep your eyes peeled on The Herald for announcement regarding that.

MMORPG.com readers have voted and decided that it was the Best New Game of 2008 and because of its closest competition, the very least that you can say is that it’s literally better than nothing.

players who had been anxiously waiting for the new RvR offering from Mythic Entertainment were not disappointed as the game came online with few, if any, glaring hitches.

That needs to go up on the herald.  "Literally better than nothing."

Speaking of which - that XP requirement tweak. Noticeable, but not nearly enough. I'm messing around with alts while I wait for my better half to get bored, and tier 3 still requires trips to multiple racial pairings in order to advance through quests and whatever scenarios pop. I'm one of those weird freaks who actually reads the quest text, and that's a complete immersion killer.

I'm not even clear what the difference between dark elves and... whatever the hell the other elves are.  High elves?  One side is a self absorbed bunch of assholes, and the other are a palette shift + even more asshole.  I guess it's a matter of degree.

The high elves didn't really strike me as assholes. I mean, sure they're assholes in the sense that "every single faction is a bunch of assholes," but I actually thought they were the least asshole-ish. I didn't play Chaos very much though, fuckin' no female tank having (at the time) side.

You can only call them "good guys" because they do what they're created to do, following their insticts and whatnot. But by that definition, the Tyranids are also "good guys" since you know, they just want to eat people.

Just like the orks just want to tear people apart for fun

The high elves didn't really strike me as assholes. I mean, sure they're assholes in the sense that "every single faction is a bunch of assholes," but I actually thought they were the least asshole-ish. I didn't play Chaos very much though, fuckin' no female tank having (at the time) side.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvHFxbuQyuA

Oh and here's the latest youtube.

Hmm. Zone capture change - So if you hold all the keeps/BOs in a zone, you'll have a pretty good chance (?) of capturing the zone.

More reason to defend, but could be Interesting^tm on unbalanced servers.

Hmm. Zone capture change - So if you hold all the keeps/BOs in a zone, you'll have a pretty good chance (?) of capturing the zone.

More reason to defend, but could be Interesting^tm on unbalanced servers.

2.
PQ's only had 2 gold bags a pop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvHFxbuQyuA

Oh and here's the latest youtube.

They are band aiding the problem, yet again, so they can work on their new classes to hold everyone for the few months it takes them to roll out an entire new T4 zone structure.

That or more mergers and their dev team just says fuck it, game sucks, let's work on something else.

I'm sure no modern MMORPG actually trusts the client at all, but about the last thing mythic needs (with an already disaffected player-base) is the suggestion people are hacking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsYAnNlO4ao&feature=related

Why aren't there sanity checks?

Looking back at that screenshot it boggles my mind how much like wow it's trying to look and then it makes much more sense why things went the way they did.