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According to a post made on the Warhammer Online beta forums by Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, the developers will be closing down the beta servers on October 10, 2007, with plans to reopen the servers in early December 2007. Before we posted this news, we called the folks at EA Mythic to make sure we weren't breaching anything from the NDA. They gave us their blessing.

Warhammer Online fans....take a deep, deep breath. To me, this doesn't sound like anything that you need to concern yourselves with. In fact, I'd suggest the opposite and this may be just the little "break" that WAR needs to become a truly amazing game. That said, Jeff Hickman finished off his post to the beta community stating that the Realm versus Realm experience has been a totally fantastic experience and it'll only improve over this short break.

For those of you that were already in the beta, I'm sorry you couldn't continue to play the game that a whole host of people are looking forward to. The rest of us can now sit back and relax until early December, when it sounds like the next phase of the beta will roll out. Until then, let's give them EA Mythic team a round of applause for having the guts to do what they feel is necessary to create a fantastic game.

In fact, I'd suggest the opposite and this may be just the little "break" that WAR needs to become a truly amazing game.

I was following WAR really closely, then it became more and more obvious that they were only shooting for WoW with slightly better PVP.  Don't get me wrong, WoW's a great game but I have zero desire to play it again, in the end I couldn't even be bothered to fill in the beta application, I just lost all interest.

They clearly need to rip out some of the guts and re-design.

If not for the giant wallet of EA, I would be getting Wish vibes from this. Can anyone tell me (without violating the NDA) if there was a copious number of goats in the game?

You have gotta be fucking kidding me. I just plunked down $1200 on a new rig specifically for Warhammer.

My leaving had zero to do with Warhammer; I was never on that project, and I left because someone offered me a position I couldn't turn down (lead design role) in a city I wanted to live in (Austin trumps Suburbia, Virginia). Given that I had lunch with Mark Jacobs this AGC and he didn't poison my food I suspect the parting was amiable.

No, this isn't good. Even if it ends up being good this is not good. You do not shut down betas after they've started. Ever. As said above that implies that the info you would be getting is not useful. Assuming they launch 08 it's way, way too late in the game for a drastic overhaul.

I knew Lum and Tweety had left. Has anyone else?

Did Tweety see this coming?

What? A two month beta hiatus, or Mark Jacobs going about poisoning the programming staff?

Neither would be a good reason for a community rep to leave, in fact one of them would provide unique opportunities.

I am pretty sure Tweety, just as Lum, was never involved with Warhammer.

Kaa

I am pretty sure Tweety, just as Lum, was never involved with Warhammer.

The specifics are and will remain a mystery until EA buys Mythic wholesale

Tweety was involved, she was seen at shows, and wrote the grab bag, and a whole load of junk on the herald wotsit, and generally did her thing in forums. She was doing more UO toward the end, which may explain something.

What? Again? Wouldn't they have to sell Mythic first?

Unless I can get a mole.

Send FreshFruit. He's as shifty as the desert sands.

To be honest, something smells rotten in Mythicland. Employees are being replaced/leaving left and right, and with Paul's highly entertaining rants promising everything but the fucking moon I was starting to feel it was too good to be true. That something rotten smells like EA, methinks.

As for this little stick in the eye, most of you are looking at it much too rosy.  My suspicion is more on a "It's not WOW-Enough!"  than the "It's too WoW, change it!" side of things.

A long while ago Mythic claimed that EA would have little to no bearing on the game's design. EA butting in more would make sense as to why this is occurring. For a company with as much experience as Mythic it seems odd that they'd be disorganized to have to do a major overhaul this far into the beta cycle without something going on behind the scenes.

Also, given that we're still lacking more concrete details on SEVERAL classes and elves only just got finished enough to announce (or else why delay it for 2 months.)  a delay should come as no surprise at all.

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There's no such thing as "starting the beta too early", the longer the better. And there is no sense in shutting down the beta unless they're major changes. We're talking fundamental changes to either the backend or gameplay. Which wouldn't bode well anyway.

Yes and it's too late in the development cycle for this game to make sweeping changes and have it turn out well. Delays are never a big deal. Shutting down a beta portends a lot more. I can't think of a single A class MMO which has shut down beta and told folks to come back in three months. Even assuming they did the exact same thing in March for the same reasons it still sucks because that was six months ago; sweeping changes and a massive version upgrade were absolutely expected.

Prepare the elves for their release into the world!

Elves aren't even in the game yet? :-o

There's no way this game is going to make their Q1 2008 release date unless they are willing to release it in a Vanguard-like state.

That's not a defense. They should've learned from DAoC. Even Blizzard did the same mistake with WoW where the Horde-side got short-shrifted because they did the Alliance side first.

In Mythic's defense, Hibernia was a very late add to DAoC's beta too. Of course, that isn't a good sign either considering the number of problems Hibernia had at DAoC's release...

The problem with a real beta is that a real beta is done when you believe that you've fixed most of the major issues and have a good handle on the rest, which means beta is essentially downtime and takes place after the core development is over. Then you sit around and wait for feedback. It represents what you consider to be a good effort in need of outside feedback.

Problems doesn't even cover it.  It was horrible to be Hibernia at release.

There's no way this game is going to make their Q1 2008 release date unless they are willing to release it in a Vanguard-like state.

If the suits have learned anything at all from the Vanguard debacle, I'd imagine the game will get pushed back to around Q3.

Well, I guess the guys over at FunCom just got an early Christmas present.

WAR has been in beta for a long ass time and AoC is just starting this month. They're not in the same boat. I'm sure they're happy about it, though.

I don't think anyone is concerned about the release date. Take all the time you need. At this stage, shutting down beta entirely is pretty unusual, that's all.

Mark is a tricky one, he switches out his poisons.

Tangent: What's with the "We want non-instanced PvP combat only" crowd anyway? That's an incredibly bad/stupid idea for a Red vs Blue PvP MMOG.

We can't win, no matter what we do it seems, when it comes to some peoples' perception.

Mark

Saying you don't personally find instanced pvp fun, is not the same as saying instanced pvp is unpopular.

The reactions have been kinda funny. 

I said "Red vs Blue MMOG" for a reason. Team based PvP with two teams will have an imbalance, that imbalance will get worse with time, and that will wreck any sort of non-instanced (or, to be more accurate, non-number-capped) PvP.

See: Tarren Mill.

I said "Red vs Blue MMOG" for a reason. Team based PvP with two teams will have an imbalance, that imbalance will get worse with time, and that will wreck any sort of non-instanced (or, to be more accurate, non-number-capped) PvP.

See: Tarren Mill.

Plus anyone who played AC2 knows that "balance" is one of the worst things you can impose on a game, it's like a vortex of negative fun.  Two factions means it's guaranteed there will be a lot talk about "balance".

People are lazy, it's easier to balance boring classes than interesting ones, so that's what normally happens.  When I see talk of balancing I take it as a bad sign and always will, AC2 was the most balanced game ever, right before they pulled the plug.

Last I looked all the key members of the *Warhammer* team are still there

The reactions have been kinda funny.

The way I see it is WAR is doomed to be a mainstream game because of the zone layout.  It might be very popular but, it just doesn't appeal to me, I can already forsee it's just going to be a meaningless light pvp ladder game, with zones switching upwards and downwards depending on who is winning.

1) Making it more like WoW:  Nope, if anything the exact opposite is true.

Yeah, you are saying Warhammer will be Red verus Blue, therefore not having instanced pvp is a bad idea.  I was pointing out that saying you don't like something, doesn't mean you have to offer a better solution, nor does it imply you think the current solution will be unpopular.

Edit to go further.  If instanced pvp is one of the main complaints from beta testers for not enjoying the game (I have no idea if it is or not) then the defense of, "it's the best solution we have" does not help a normal person enjoy the game more.  The devs need to come up with a something and not blame the players for not seeing the benefits of a system they don't enjoy.

...

Mark

Having non-instanced battleground in a two-team game will generate far more complaints about balance and lack of fun from the playerbase as a whole than keeping instances in and hearing the gripes from the ex-DAoC players.

Seriously, did you miss the time between WoW's launch and AV being added or something? On 95%+ of all servers, PvP consisted of the Alliance zerging TM/Crossroads with numbers 2:1 in their favour, and the Horde having no chance at all to defend for any significant length of time (and this was back when shaman was one of the alpha classes, most paladins were retadins, and Horde racials were at their most powerful).

Logging in a character on losing_side and finding all your NPCs slaughted, no allied PCs in the same zone and you have no way to change things is Not Fun. Hell, even logging in a character on winning_side and finding that your team massacred the nearby enemy outpost by steamrolling it under, leaving you with nothing to do, isn't particularly fun either.

Given that, with the best will in the world, most servers will have a population bias to one side or the other anyway, there needs to be some sort of population limit...and the easiest way to do that is instanced battlegrounds. You could do something with world PvP like AC Portal Storms, or NPC reinforcements for the less populated sides, or whatever, but that's just window dressing in the end.

(Tangent: Yes, I fully expect the World PvP zone in the WotLK WoW expansion to be a cataclysmic failure on the majority of all servers, for the same reasons mentioned above).

This pop balance problem really irks me, I hope they take drastic measures, like hard locks.

I know of someone who got into beta less than 48 hours before the shutdown was announced. Boy was he pissed when he found out he couldn't finish downloading before the beta was shut down.

You are still missing the point, you started the derail by saying "What's with the "We want non-instanced PvP combat only" crowd anyway?"

Some people don't like instanced pvp and they won't like it any more after you explain in great detail why it's great solution to other problems.

LOL @ your friend's shitty Internet. Other than that,  :nda:  :-D

Do you honestly think that "No, you can't join the zerg. Go be cannon fodder with the rest of the losers" will work? You already got people who don't want numberically even fights in battlegrounds - what on earth makes you think that character caps will fly?

And that's not even going in to the "I just want to meet up with my friends and play" issue, of course.

All MMOs with instanced pvp, dunge instancing need to just die now. At the very least they should no longer be called MMOs. How about "LMO" or "Limited Multiplayer Online (game)".

Can I pop in and tell Kaa to stop signing his posts before I burst a brain vessel and fill with impotent rage?

I believe Mark Jacobs!  I very disappointed in the lack of drama involved, however.  I was hoping for a wee bit of doom and, maybe, some violence.  Someone running off with someone else's husband would have been awesome.

All,

   It's really simple.  We got lots and lots of data (some great, some good, some not so good) and we are going to act on what we got.  That's one reason we started beta as early as we did so we could gather that data now, not later, when we have a chance to fix/change/improve things.  As an FYI, the tools we are using now I would have killed for with DAoC, if we had then what we have now, a lot of dumb stuff would not have happened.  In terms of possible reasons (raised here) for the delay:

1) Making it more like WoW:  Nope, if anything the exact opposite is true.

2) That we are yanking out whole systems: Nope, we are adding new systems (as planned) and balancing the existing systems.  Here's a shocking bit of news, the game isn't balanced yet.  Thanks to the tools we have now, we are able to identify what is messed up and we can now fix it ahead of time, as opposed to the past.  Trying to fix these things while we have lots of beta testers running around is not conducive to getting a game out on schedule.

3) In terms of whether this move was EA-induced: Not a chance.  They have not been involved in the design of the game at all and still aren't so I can't blame them for this. 

4) That it was caused by lots of people fleeing Mythic: Umm, no.  Last I looked all the key members of the *Warhammer* team are still there and very few people have left that team to go elsewhere.  People come and go, probably at a higher rate than when we were independent but we are also a heck of a lot bigger than we were in those days.

5) That we are now on a death march: Hardly.  If you look at most of the great games that have been done by other developers, they usually are delayed or a date isn't announced as early as we did with WAR or DAoC.  If we were putting this game in "turnaround" mode, then it's time to play taps.  For now, we are simply taking a break from the beta testers so we can focus on the game with as few distractions (inaccurate or conflicting reports, build/debug/test time before a version goes to the players, etc.) as possible for the next couple of months.  This is a critical time in our development cycle and we want to make sure that we are doing it the right way.

In terms of the Elves, they are being put in but they weren't supposed to be playable at this point anyway.

The reactions have been kinda funny.  When we said we could do the game in about 2 years (we didn't even have a contract for WAR till the summer of '05), people said we should take more time, spend more money and do it right.  When other companies take extra time to do it right, lots of people jump up and down and say that shows that they really care about making a great game.  When we announced our delay last year so we could make the game even better than we originally planned (thanks to the level of competition from Blizzard and elsewhere), people said the game was doomed.  When we don't invest enough time and money into the test/iterate cycle for DAOC (since we didn't have any extra money to do so with that game), people said correctly that it caused problems and that next time we need to do it right.  Then, here we announce that we want to hold off on the next stage of beta, for among other reasons, because we want to fix what was broken before the next group of invites, some people again say it is a sign that we are doomed.  We can't win, no matter what we do it seems, when it comes to some peoples' perception.

In terms of beta serving no purpose, not in our case.  It's why I wanted it to start early even knowing that we would shut it down at some point (we've done this before, we just didn't talk about it).  It is precisely because we knew that the guilds and lots of other people were waiting for admittance that we even talked about this publicly. The beta has been going extremely well but that doesn't mean that everything is perfect.  We expected that the beta would point out both strengths and weaknesses of the design and now we are acting on what we've learned so far.  Since we have more than enough to keep us busy over the next two months, nothing would have been served by opening it up to lots of lots of new people, many of whom would say that exact same thing as the groups that have gone before them.   From a purely business perspective, that would make no sense at all.  I want people to be excited by what they see in the game and not to point out the same bugs/issues/etc. that the group before them did.  We also want our current crowd of testers to be able to come back in 2 months with fresh eyes to see all the things we've done in the interim.  One other thing to keep in mind is that the game has been pretty much up 24x7 since we began letting in people so we really do have a ridiculous amount of data and private and forum feedback to work with.  Most other games early on don't do that.

This last point may seem a little obvious or even self-serving but if we were really in trouble why wouldn't we simply say that beta is closed until further notice or until it's ready?  We chose 2 months precisely because we have a good handle now on what needs to be done and how long we need to get ready for a really major infusion of players.

Mark

Props to Mark for the concise and to-the-point explanation.

That said, if I were from Mythic, TBH I'm not sure why I'd still post here.  Yes, we talk about MMOs a lot, and Mythic is making a MMO.  But are we really their audience?  A significant chunk of the posters here, if not a majority (myself probably included) will probably dislike WAR entirely independent of whether or not it succeeds at what it aims to do -- simply because what it aims to do (large and small-team structured PvP in a familiar, DIKU-ish shell) is something we're not looking for at the moment.  I wouldn't describe us as 'jaded', because that term has too many positive connotations.  Our tastes are just (again, averaging here across the posters I see) different.  I imagine WAR will be released as an at-the-very-least-good game that's simply 'not for us'.  Given the fact that we're a tough crowd and not even really in the market for what they're selling, I'm impressed so many red names will still play ball with us.

Then we spend the next 3 years bitching about it  :-D

even though the diaspora has several orders of magnitude less significance than LtM

Tangent: What's with the "We want non-instanced PvP combat only" crowd anyway? That's an incredibly bad/stupid idea for a Red vs Blue PvP MMOG.

The diaspora is less significant largely because it's dispersed, not so much the cult of personality around Lum.

Mark's post has been re-posted on MMORPG.com.  (not me!)  Prepare for incoming!  DUCK!   :lol:

PS  What Ras said.  More shiny crafting talk will distract us from the doom.

I don't know if I agree. Sure, we may be looking for the NEXT GREAT GAME, but A LOT of people here buy and play most major MMOGs for at least the free month. Then we spend the next 3 years bitching about it  :-D

WoW has a low-impact sideshow at Alterac Valley, it is not the achiever end game. Achiever elders do not dominate AV in WoW because they are too busy dominating the raiding scene (which at least has the benefit of being more inclusive than sport pvp)

Ultimately my real irritation with sport PvP in WAR is that Open RvR worked in DAoC, and nobody else has tried it since.

There are lots of threads on this board that retread the argument, but in short...


Sport PvP with fixed team numbers encourages organised teams to exclude new players.

Like in GW, regular even-sided instances are predictable and fair enough that they will almost always be won by the most organised side.

The battlefront system means the realms are competing in a zero sum game. It would appear that by entering an instance your group 'antes up' battlefront points, so if your group is not better than the average opposition, your realm is better off if you stay the hell out of pvp.




Open field RvR is more inclusive, the realm can only benefit when new players go RvR. This gives elder players a direct incentive to include newer players. The opposite effect of sport pvp.

Asymmetric battles give newer players an occasional chance to win, and give losers an opportunity to gain a moral victory by performing well against odds.

Plus open field RvR allows players of all abilities to take part in the key realm war events. Wheras sport pvp works on the basis of limited seating



None of this is comparable with WoW.

WoW has a low-impact sideshow at Alterac Valley, it is not the achiever end game. Achiever elders do not dominate AV in WoW because they are too busy dominating the raiding scene (which at least has the benefit of being more inclusive than sport pvp)

The more relevant comparison is GW. GW has many fine qualities, but it does not build realm community, and it is not even a little bit accessible to players who arrive guildless.

Ultimately my real irritation with sport PvP in WAR is that Open RvR worked in DAoC, and nobody else has tried it since. As such, it is annoying to see Mythic take the same GW/WoW route as everyone else, espeicially with an IP that is so perfectly suited to open field RvR.

DAoC's frontiers, etc. were the prototypes for the WoW battlegrounds, IMO. There's no fundamental difference between "Zone into WoW BG, acheive goals, kill enemies" and "Zone into DAoC frontier, achieve goals, kill enemies" other than WoW's BGs enforce a level(ish) playing field.

The main reason I'm not really buying into the doom and gloom? With most shitty delayed MMOG's like Vanguard, there were NDA-leaks which pointed towards shittiness for months ahead of time. For Warhammer? I've seen none. Sometimes, no news is good news.

The negative leaks are starting as of today, now that they can't immediately kick anyone out of beta. I saw a couple at various sites.

The moment you use instancing you lose the persistence of the objectives. So the meaning of the war.

I don't know if I agree. Sure, we may be looking for the NEXT GREAT GAME, but A LOT of people here buy and play most major MMOGs for at least the free month. Then we spend the next 3 years bitching about it  :-D

The reactions have been kinda funny.  When we said we could do the game in about 2 years (we didn't even have a contract for WAR till the summer of '05), people said we should take more time, spend more money and do it right.  When other companies take extra time to do it right, lots of people jump up and down and say that shows that they really care about making a great game.  When we announced our delay last year so we could make the game even better than we originally planned (thanks to the level of competition from Blizzard and elsewhere), people said the game was doomed.  When we don't invest enough time and money into the test/iterate cycle for DAOC (since we didn't have any extra money to do so with that game), people said correctly that it caused problems and that next time we need to do it right.  Then, here we announce that we want to hold off on the next stage of beta, for among other reasons, because we want to fix what was broken before the next group of invites, some people again say it is a sign that we are doomed.  We can't win, no matter what we do it seems, when it comes to some peoples' perception.

The one thing I'd like to know though, and only folks behind real NDAs could probably answer, is just how many people were in DAoC RvR?

But I just look at how many folks are capable of dabbling with the separate advancement ladder of Sport PvP in WoW versus the numbers DAoC ever had and see a disconnect.

5) As to Scott and my supply of poisons, nah, I like Scott, always have and always will.  We might not agree on everything but I respect his intelligence even when we disagree.  He was a part of the reason DAoC succeeded and I'll always thank him for that.

   Just an FYI, Jeff's letter is under NDA.  The site that did posted it originally, TenTonHammer, did so in error and has since taken it down.  There's nothing earth-shattering in the letter  but it was a letter than was sent out to the beta community and not to the general public (that's why we posted a different letter on the Herald) and I've posted here and WA site.  Any other site that is posting it is breaking our NDA as nobody at Mythic has declared it non-NDA breaking.  As a general rule, all communication between beta testers and the company/product that they are testing is always considered confidential.

6) As to crafting, I would love to talk about it but it's still too early.  It's a neat system, mostly evolutionary but with a couple of really cool twists.  I do promise though that I will come back here if people want to chat about it once I start talking about it publicly.  I'll reiterate though that it is not carpal-tunnel inducing, you will not have to make stack after stack of useless stuff just to advance.  That is not fun for 90+% (if not higher) of the people who play these games and I don't want that kind of system in WAR. 

Mark

I agree with this, although I'd say that instancing itself is not the culprit. Rather, it's the design choice to reset the instance. But that's largely semantics.

Dave Rickey could tell you numbers about the DAoC RVR usage.

again soz for putting the letter here.. i shouldnt beleive what other say before getting it from the source itself.

And WoW has zero innovation over EQ or AC, it just has more polish

Personally, AC and EQ1 are pretty different. And WoW didn't copy EQ1 as much as it took many of the most popular features from the DIKU side of the genre and rolled them into one game. This has been discussed ad nauseum, but at EQ1's height, they didn't have stuff that WoW ripped off from the likes of DAoC and CoX, for merely a few examples.

I think this is worth noting because of what you said in that post about DAoC RvR. You quit if you didn't RvR and you RvR'ed when you hit the endgame. What percentage of the playerbase did that before the days of new capped players every 24 hours? The pace of advancement was more akin to EQ1 than it is to WoW. And what players weren't lost to that were lost to the downsides of persistent RvR (backing the wrong side, playing the wrong class, playing at the wrong time, not having a lot of time, etc and so on). Compare that to WoW where, sure, PvP is just another ladder, but at least it's accessible. And I'm openly wondering if that accessibility is intrinsically tied to the concept of sport PvP that makes it fundamentally more viable for a larger audience.

PvE is all about personal achievement. You may need friends to help occasionally, and you're there for them as well, but even after community, you're there to grow characters. It's not about owning the world, kicking other players out, waving your e-peen over others who are less fortunate. All that shit's been tried in other games and we know their comparative level of appeal. So if you've got a highly polished PvE game about achievement that unlocks further achievement potential, what sort of PvP is appropriate for it?



Further, in a game with no ongoing story, what sort of "immersion" is appropriate? That's what I never understood about the original persistent vision for AV in WoW. It seemed anathema to the premise of the game. You're not there to move along a story. You're not there to affect the outcome of a timeline. From a story standpoint, WoW is more about witnessing a single chapter in one of the books than actively partaking in the rolling storyline. RPG it is not and they seem to make no bones about it. So Sport PvP seems appropriate to the lack of immersiveness of WoW.

I'm sorta all over the place there, but this all is connected somehow. I swear it! :)

The only people I've spoken to that don't want instanced PvP in WAR are the people who played the "winning" realm (generally Albion, but I know Mid and Hib were the winners on a few servers). I played Midgard on a realm where we were incredibly underpopulated compared to the other two realms. Moral victories? Sure, once in a while that would make you feel a little better, but generally speaking, knowing the other realms could come and take every single one of your towers and there was not a single damn thing you can do about it because the guard spam is informing you that there are more people hitting your keeps than your entire realm has on /who? That sucked, and I am really not interested in experiencing that again.

Instanced PvP may solve many of the problems of world PvP, but for many people it is still not as fun as world PvP.

To me all world pvp means is "ganking people as they quest or run to instances" and is the most worthless/boring/annoying pvp there is.  If im not fighting even teams that are ready to fight back then its not worth it, and the best way to get that is instances.

I enjoyed the Hillsbrad battles far more than I enjoyed playing in BGs.

It's not that I despise battleground pvp but more (maybe, I think, perhaps) that I'm tired of the sort of game that indicates. It's not war. I want war.

Me too, but the only difference between that and a bg is that occacionally tm turned into a zerg fest when one side way outnumbered the other.

I think the problem is that hardcoded 'sides' in PvP just aren't interesting.  The games that have had an interesting PvP atmosphere - UO, AC1, Shadowbane, and EVE, IMHO - all allowed you to form your own sides and fight over scarce resources as you saw fit.  They provided the rules, stood back, and let human nature do the rest.  DAoC tried this too, but it was too little, too late, and the game rules just weren't as conducive to it.

Aye, it's a sort of Utopian feature. Everyone loves the premise of non instancing on paper, when we're armcharing game design months before release or such. But at 6AM when you cannot find anyone to fight or when you're getting star bashed by an overwhelming zerg, it's a different story -- one that rarely gets cited in said design discussion. Which isn't to say it's the only possible solution [or part of a solution], and I'll certainly always be one of the first to support experimenting with ways to make as much non-instancing work as possible, but nonetheless it's something too often looked at as if its a perfect painting.

To me all world pvp means is "ganking people as they quest or run to instances" and is the most worthless/boring/annoying pvp there is.  If im not fighting even teams that are ready to fight back then its not worth it, and the best way to get that is instances.

Example: In one of the TBC zones for WoW, there's a city capturable by PvP in the middle of one of the PvE zones. Whoo, world PvP instead of that fake BG stuff, right?

Wrong. On normal servers, Alliance controls it 95%+ of the time. On PvP servers, Horde controls it 95%+ of the time. "Might makes right" doesn't make for fun games...and WoW has 9 million+ subs because it's a fun game most of the time to most of its players.

This is a classic example of the problem Mythic have trying to develop a more involving pvp game than WoW while retaining WoW's sense of fun gameplay.

The WoW example you have given doesn't actually mean anything because there is no real world affecting pvp gameplay left in WoW.

To go back a few pages, you listed (the pre-honour system) Tarren Mill as a bad thing, there's no doubt a awful lot of people hated Tarren Mill.  But I do know at least one person (me) who thought it was the best zone in the game, I played Horde, maybe I would have been bored on the Alliance side.

So you're admitting that world PvP isn't fun to most people?  :-P

Apart from the part where whoever controls Halaa gets all the rewards, quests & faction items from Halaa, you mean? It's exactly what the 'World PvP' people are asking for - whoever wins the fight controls the city until the other team can take it back. Or, more accurately, until the underdogs either capture it at ohgod o'clock in the morning or (as above) the dominant side let the underdogs win so that the zerg can farm some pvp tokens when they steamroller it back in fifteen minutes.

It's a failure, as are the Spirit Towers in Terrokar, as were the towers in EPL, as the new open PvP zone in WotLK will be. The two sides will be unbalanced, the more numerous side will win all the time, the losing side will not find this fun.

It was fun for most people for about a week, then it was just an honour grind mechanism after that. Note how quickly the TM fights stopped dead after WSG/AV/AB opened.

Sure world pvp isn't popular as yet, just as when EQ was around pvp wasn't popular.

It doesn't mean anything for designing a new game, even if the system wasn't broken.

I was referring to pre honour system, which was pre battleground. 

And again unless WAR is being aimed exclusively at WoW players, what WoW players like or dislike shouldn't dictate the WAR design, as it's the most popular game, it should only steer it.

  DAoC succeeded because it ignored EQ and made pvp a central part of the game, if DAoC was a purely PVE clone of EQ it wouldn't have been as successful.  WoW succeeded because it ignored one of the central parts of DAoC and EQ (grind keeps subs) and made a fun game instead.  If WAR pays too much attention to how pvp is implemented in WoW it will make the same mistakes.

DAoC succeeded because it ignored EQ and made pvp a central part of the game

Compare that to WoW where, sure, PvP is just another ladder, but at least it's accessible. And I'm openly wondering if that accessibility is intrinsically tied to the concept of sport PvP that makes it fundamentally more viable for a larger audience.

It's a large jump to say that WoW proved instanced PvP, when I played the instanced PvP in WoW was looked down upon by PvP veterans and was mostly just seen as another PvE grind for loot.

In games with mezzes, roots, and stuns, with projectiles that you can't physically dodge, zerging becomes a lot more effective.

"Community" of that sort in MMOs is for fuckers without friends, or people who want to enforce their way of seeing/ doing things across a wide swath. 

If you have PvE safe spots then ultimately all of your PvP areas are glorified battlegrounds as your opponents can quit fighting at any time and run back to Empire/Trammel/whatever.

"Community" of that sort in MMOs is for fuckers without friends, or people who want to enforce their way of seeing/ doing things across a wide swath.   Screw that, it's a game and a hobby, I don't need some council of asshats deciding how I should be doing things.  I'm much happier without "server community" in WoW than I ever was with it in EQ.  Micro-communities, AKA "guilds" and "friends lists" FTW.

That's been troubling me for years, glad I finally said it.

PVP vets are NOT the main audience. They are a niche. See Shadowbane for an example of a game that catered to them. They are not the mainstream. Sport PVP is for the mainstream. World PVP is not.

It doesn't change the fact that DAoC-style RvR was still niche while GW and WoW-style pvp is more mainstream. 

I'm not sure what it would take to make RvR mainstream, but perhaps i's just not possible.  I prefer RvR to sport PvP, but it's easy to see that I'm in the minority.

It doesn't change the fact that DAoC-style RvR was still niche while GW and WoW-style pvp is more mainstream. 

I'm not sure what it would take to make RvR mainstream, but perhaps i's just not possible.  I prefer RvR to sport PvP, but it's easy to see that I'm in the minority.

If WoW would've had RvR instead of sport PvP it would be considered "mainstream". I think it's mostly a misconception created because of the fact that there's been no good MMO who has tried doing world PvP right for a very very long time. Not so long ago DAoC was one of the major games and it's pretty much centered around RvR.

And EQ had very limited PvP because UO had few limits to PvP. Origin thought world PvP was a good idea right up until about a month after EQ launched.  :-D

RvR doesn't fit with the feel of WoW.  I consider RvR a much more "sandbox" approach to pvp which is about as far from the more directed, linear feel of WoW as one could get.  Maybe I'm wrong, but the mainstream likes to be pointed in the direction of what's next.  DAoC (in its current form) is very much about getting a toon to 50 and geared in a couple of days so that you can spend months in the sandbox.  Though some days there's a fine line between an RvR sandbox and the sandbox my cats use. 

I may be giving Mythic too much credit, but one of the greatest aspects was that it was easy to join the losing realm if you enjoyed playing the underdog.  Having 3 realms to choose from gave the game a large amount of replay value.  In the latter days of the game, the price of rerolling in a new realm became so small for an established guild that it offered players the option to play in whatever realm tickled their fancy.  I guess that this draws a finer line between RvR and sport PvP since the barrier to entry became so small that hopping realms made the PvP experience more changeable.

How long did it take for DAoC to go from Launch to the beloved RvR people remember so fondly?

It doesn't change the fact that DAoC-style RvR was still niche while GW and WoW-style pvp is more mainstream. 

It doesn't change the fact that DAoC-style RvR was still niche while GW and WoW-style pvp is more mainstream. 

How long did it take for DAoC to go from Launch to the beloved RvR people remember so fondly?

It's a large jump to say that WoW proved instanced PvP, when I played the instanced PvP in WoW was looked down upon by PvP veterans and was mostly just seen as another PvE grind for loot

If WoW would've had RvR instead of sport PvP it would be considered "mainstream".

2) A playground where the goals are constantly shifting.  In DAoC you would get very different pvp experiences nightly.  Keep takes to relic raids, skirmishes to tower capture, etc.

3) Ability to solo, group, or zerg all with meaningful roles and outcomes.

And till no one tries you can't say which one works best.

While I can understand why anything that is not typical may be cause for concern to some people it seems that these people are not currently in the beta.  Everyone that I know that is in the beta (myself included) thinks that this is a good thing and are not worried at all.

@MarkJacobs  Thank you for your post and don't listen to the very vocal haters/doom and gloomers (who are in a minority).  Based on the early beta stage of WAR it's doing fine, and I can't wait to see the next stage of beta 2!

Everyone that I know that is in the beta (myself included) thinks that this is a good thing and are not worried at all.

Well, not really. Mezzes, roots, and stuns (aka CC) is vital if a smaller group is to have the capability to defeat superior numbers.

Well, not necessarily.  In a game where player skill plays a big factor, and where there's an emphasis on defensive capabilities, a smaller group should be able to fight effectively through attrition -- take out one or two guys from the attacking force, and then retreat before they can inflict losses on you.  The key is making it far easier to attack an aggressive player than to attack is a fleeing player.

Also, it's pretty hard to add twitch skill into the mix when you have a skill that freezes someone into place.  For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of allowing many AOEs in a PvP environment for this same reason.  Or having distinct, separate classes to where you need to have an interlocking 'team' with distinct roles like CC, nuker, tanker, etc.  I think those sort of systems work better in PvE.

As has been said though, Arena PvP in WoW is different from BG PvP. But Arenas are the major leagues to BGs minor. And that's two of four completely realized endgames in WoW, rare for the genre. WoW does not have staying power because of just one thing.

I think any world pvp game should have 3 factions, which tends to be more upredictable and less likely to produce one uberfaction that dominates. I think this is a good choice that PlanetSide made.

I don't really think so. The larger group can inflict attrition losses quicker and easier through focus fire. Even if it's hard to catch/attack a fleeing player, once your smaller group stops for any offence, it becomes vulnerable.


Skill is not the same as twitch. I play Unreal Tournament for twitch and I play MMORGs for slower pace of fighting and tactics. If you want to rely on twitch skill and don't want classes to specialize and depend on each other, I suspect you're looking for an FPS.

Kaa

- as one side holds a given target for an amount of time, progressively increase the pve resistance to that occupation, giving the losing side a better chance of being able to reclaim it.

Using PvE to balance PvP is a bad idea because players don't want to engage one to enjoy the other.

I agree completely, and contend that by making sport pvp the 'real' end game and primary realm war driver in WAR, Mythic are making their sport pvp into arenas or guild wars, not WoW BGs

I agree with this except that NPCs can be used to offset population imbalances.

You don't need a PvP world where the factions are strictly distinct in Evil and Good. You can have less defined factions, that you can join, betray. Like medieval kingdoms. There's no definite "good" and no matter what race/class, you could always join whatever faction (through a system that keeps numbers balanced).

You STILL need a mechanism to prevent the snowballing of the winning faction. People like to win and don't like to lose. All munchkins will flock to whoever is dominating thus perpetuating the dominance. I don't see an easy way to keep things balanced.

The fixed pool of points so that the more territories you conquer, the harder it is to maintain them. Basically: the more you expand the more you show your side to the enemy, so become more vulnerable.

That will help with territory control, but not with battles. The dominating side will just show up, stomp the defenders into the ground, and then retreat leaving the territory. Rinse and repeat.

The problem is not preventing territory capture -- that's easy. The problem is preventing one side from farming the other one.

Another way is to make hardcoded PvP factions permeable

You STILL need a mechanism to prevent the snowballing of the winning faction. People like to win and don't like to lose. All munchkins will flock to whoever is dominating thus perpetuating the dominance. I don't see an easy way to keep things balanced.

You STILL need a mechanism to prevent the snowballing of the winning faction. People like to win and don't like to lose. All munchkins will flock to whoever is dominating thus perpetuating the dominance. I don't see an easy way to keep things balanced.

Kaa

I think you could implement some kind of damage bonuses to the underdog side ... scaling to how outnumbered they are in any given battle. Maybe even special abilities that are only usable when you are outnumbered significantly? Some kind of "desperation" meter that gives you a big glowy cool power or something - cool enough that you'd almost want to be outnumbered to be able to use those powers.

Maybe even special abilities that are only usable when you are outnumbered significantly? Some kind of "desperation" meter that gives you a big glowy cool power or something - cool enough that you'd almost want to be outnumbered to be able to use those powers.

I prefer the idea of a few zones that are normally closed that you can retreat to for extra resources.  Sorta like, we lost our 2nd major city, yeah that sucks, but you remember the lost mine of Xrytd?  Well we just found the entrance.  Lets go find some ancient weapons and kick those arseholes out of our city.  Once the city is reclaimed, the mine has a cave in, whatever.

(this has been said a bunch before, but is worth repeating every so often)

This seems to be a good looking game, can the engine support hundreds of folks in the same area at the same time without becoming a sideshow for a significant portion of the userbase?  There are reasons for instanced pvp beyond taste and balanced sides.

All,

   It's really simple.  We got lots and lots of data (some great, some good, some not so good) and we are going to act on what we got.  That's one reason we started beta as early as we did so we could gather that data now, not later, when we have a chance to fix/change/improve things.  As an FYI, the tools we are using now I would have killed for with DAoC, if we had then what we have now, a lot of dumb stuff would not have happened.  In terms of possible reasons (raised here) for the delay:

1) Making it more like WoW:  Nope, if anything the exact opposite is true.

2) That we are yanking out whole systems: Nope, we are adding new systems (as planned) and balancing the existing systems.  Here's a shocking bit of news, the game isn't balanced yet.  Thanks to the tools we have now, we are able to identify what is messed up and we can now fix it ahead of time, as opposed to the past.  Trying to fix these things while we have lots of beta testers running around is not conducive to getting a game out on schedule.

3) In terms of whether this move was EA-induced: Not a chance.  They have not been involved in the design of the game at all and still aren't so I can't blame them for this. 

4) That it was caused by lots of people fleeing Mythic: Umm, no.  Last I looked all the key members of the *Warhammer* team are still there and very few people have left that team to go elsewhere.  People come and go, probably at a higher rate than when we were independent but we are also a heck of a lot bigger than we were in those days.

5) That we are now on a death march: Hardly.  If you look at most of the great games that have been done by other developers, they usually are delayed or a date isn't announced as early as we did with WAR or DAoC.  If we were putting this game in "turnaround" mode, then it's time to play taps.  For now, we are simply taking a break from the beta testers so we can focus on the game with as few distractions (inaccurate or conflicting reports, build/debug/test time before a version goes to the players, etc.) as possible for the next couple of months.  This is a critical time in our development cycle and we want to make sure that we are doing it the right way.

In terms of the Elves, they are being put in but they weren't supposed to be playable at this point anyway.

The reactions have been kinda funny.  When we said we could do the game in about 2 years (we didn't even have a contract for WAR till the summer of '05), people said we should take more time, spend more money and do it right.  When other companies take extra time to do it right, lots of people jump up and down and say that shows that they really care about making a great game.  When we announced our delay last year so we could make the game even better than we originally planned (thanks to the level of competition from Blizzard and elsewhere), people said the game was doomed.  When we don't invest enough time and money into the test/iterate cycle for DAOC (since we didn't have any extra money to do so with that game), people said correctly that it caused problems and that next time we need to do it right.  Then, here we announce that we want to hold off on the next stage of beta, for among other reasons, because we want to fix what was broken before the next group of invites, some people again say it is a sign that we are doomed.  We can't win, no matter what we do it seems, when it comes to some peoples' perception.

In terms of beta serving no purpose, not in our case.  It's why I wanted it to start early even knowing that we would shut it down at some point (we've done this before, we just didn't talk about it).  It is precisely because we knew that the guilds and lots of other people were waiting for admittance that we even talked about this publicly. The beta has been going extremely well but that doesn't mean that everything is perfect.  We expected that the beta would point out both strengths and weaknesses of the design and now we are acting on what we've learned so far.  Since we have more than enough to keep us busy over the next two months, nothing would have been served by opening it up to lots of lots of new people, many of whom would say that exact same thing as the groups that have gone before them.   From a purely business perspective, that would make no sense at all.  I want people to be excited by what they see in the game and not to point out the same bugs/issues/etc. that the group before them did.  We also want our current crowd of testers to be able to come back in 2 months with fresh eyes to see all the things we've done in the interim.  One other thing to keep in mind is that the game has been pretty much up 24x7 since we began letting in people so we really do have a ridiculous amount of data and private and forum feedback to work with.  Most other games early on don't do that.

This last point may seem a little obvious or even self-serving but if we were really in trouble why wouldn't we simply say that beta is closed until further notice or until it's ready?  We chose 2 months precisely because we have a good handle now on what needs to be done and how long we need to get ready for a really major infusion of players.

Mark

That'd be pretty cool, and interesting to watch be balanced. What happens when the dominant group beats the robots? :)

Ive seen relic raids consist of up to 500 people.  I don't remember lag being unbearable.

There were a couple of videos showing the first 5 levels greenskin play, and it looked and played exactly like WoW. Get a quest to kill 5 dwarfs, hand in. Get a quest to click on 5 barrels which spawned 5 dwarfs to kill, hand in. Get a quest to collect 5 stinky mushrooms, 5 smelly mushrooms, and 5 odoriferous mushrooms, hand in. Get a quest to collect axes off 5 dead orks, hand in. Etc. Same shit.

Maybe that's what they're retooling?

There were a couple of videos showing the first 5 levels greenskin play, and it looked and played exactly like WoW. Get a quest to kill 5 dwarfs, hand in. Get a quest to click on 5 barrels which spawned 5 dwarfs to kill, hand in. Get a quest to collect 5 stinky mushrooms, 5 smelly mushrooms, and 5 odoriferous mushrooms, hand in. Get a quest to collect axes off 5 dead orks, hand in. Etc. Same shit.

Maybe that's what they're retooling?

Dude, that's what EVERY quest based game is about. The way you make a better MMO is by making the "Kill 5 dwarves" part more fun. This idea that they are suddenly not have objective based game content is just silly.

The classes appear to be MMO archetypical except for the DPS/healer hybrids, and the combat system looks pretty diku standard.

This idea that they are suddenly not have objective based game content is just silly.

- take a message scroll to our scouts on that hill
- when you hand them the message, a little scripted event fires where a drunken dwarf runs up, sees the scouts, says "By Bruno's beard, I must tell the vanguard!" and runs away
- Then you have to chase him down, as he runs towards a signal tower. If you kill him before he gets there, you get a reward off his corpse, as well as another scroll talking about the upcoming dwarf offensive, and a second tree of quests opens up about gathering military intelligence to aid the local war effort. This tree is clandestine, so you don't get a great deal of faction, but the rewards are great.
- If you don't kill him before he gets to the tower (if you're a melee class and you can't catch him, say), a different quest tree opens up, where the dwarf vanguard sends in cannon, you have to sabotage them, poison their beer, etc. You don't get the rewards of the other tree (which are more focused on ranged classes) but you get more local faction and rewards more focused upon melee classes.
- If you know what you're doing, you can take whichever tree you want. Melee classes can still catch the dwarf, they just need to have a net ready. Etc.

...
...
Oh yeah, and saying that the newbie experience isn't worth developer time and shouldn't be cool? Think about that for a moment, Salamok. Yeah, that's pretty stupid.

after all you do spend at least .001% of your total time played going through that experience.

The only thing that stops quests in big budget single player RPGs being anything different is better writing, better animation, scripted triggers that change the environment, and more one off graphical effects.

You are so retarded it is obvious that they are shutting down beta to rewrite all the level 1 to 5 quests.

edit: after all you do spend at least .001% of your total time played going through that experience.

er... excuse me... but what the fucking hell are you talking about?

Apparently, he's not familiar with the 'first 20 minutes' theory. He's trying to say levels 1-5 are unimportant.

Get 5 of X doesn't bother me. It's the pointlessness why you are doing it.  Multi-steping it and putting pages of dialog is not going change that.  On the other hand, if a town was like a pet plant.  In order to grow town/plant, you feed it by completing "get 5 of X" quests for stuff in the area.  I'd eat those quests up.  Same silly quests, but with an in-game purpose.

I see... I know plenty of games I decided sucked before I was 20 minutes into them. lol

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

And I STILL don't agree. You've only got one chance to make a great first impression, and the amount of effort devs put into the first few quests is a good indicator of where the rest of the game is headed. If you pop in, get a welcome box, and are handed a sword and pointed at a "Monsters! -->" sign, that's a bit different than WoW's alliance dwarf/gnome begining that starts you in Dun Morough,  immediately embroiled in local wildlife incursion. Look at the entrance to WoW's Outlands, getting dumped right in the middle of a warzone.

It's a great way to introduce the local color of the game world and, while game mechanic introduction is necessary to new players, it should be heavily laced with interesting dialog and quests. If the devs don't put any more effort than "Welcome, fresh meat, go kill 10 wildlife_name and come back, and then take this note to your class trainer so we can teach you how to train", there is NO indication that the "fun" is ever going to be more than that.

...horde has no problems attracting players...

Um.

My point wasn't that the 1st 20 minutes don't matter, my point was that QUESTS that occur in the 1st 20 minutes don't need to be some world shaking scripted event.  A prime example of this is in Everquest where your 1st retarded quest is taking a piece of paper to your class trainer.  This isn't a "omgz how awesome is this game type of quest" but it does point out to you that yes here is the class trainer and he is important to the game.  It also tries to prevent a bunch of level 5's running around with zero class skills saying this game is teh suck because they didn't even know class skills existed. 

Computer games, MMOGs or otherwise, need to be more like Bond films.

By which, I mean one of the key, set piece OMFGWTFWASTHAT moments, should occur in the first 3 minutes.


Games should have teasers.

The entire game should consist of OMFGWTFWASTHAT moments interspersed with tons of exploration, meaningful decisions, and lore.

CoH's travel powers were like that, although not in the first 20mins.

I know why other games don't do this robust a character creation process.

The hook there was character creation.  I probably spent my first two hours in that game deciding what kind of hero I wanted by fucking around with it.  By that time, it didn't really matter what the game play was.  I was already over the 20 minute rule.  I know why other games don't do this robust a character creation process.  But I also think they're dumb.

However, CoH proved their system works

and is a huge draw.

Yes.

No.

Neither chain is superior, they give out different rewards in both items and notoriety. Adding scripted events and actual choices that have an impact on their own gameplay serves to immerse the player in the game. It would feel like they had an impact on the world.

The kill 5 dwarf quests I saw did not have anything like this, no. The newbie chain was kill 5 dwarfs, collect 5 axes, tip over 5 barrels, all in the same area, all boilerplate. Then once they finished that area, go to the mines and collect 5 stinky mushrooms, kill 5 caveslugs, etc. Very thinly veiled boilerplate MMO garbage.

Sorry if I misread your post Salamok. From what I've heard, the rest of the game is pretty much the same thing, but not being in the beta, I only had the 1-5 game to talk about.

And integrate the EQ2 "what you look like" system, as a separate element, with clothing that can only be crafted.

Personally I think a better approach is user customizable colors (armor die) combined with a greater variety of armor models and maybe some user customization available to the model itself.  In PvP I don't want to engage something that looks like a tank and turns out to be a squishy either.

There's enough gear choice in a game like WoW for a player to be unique to a degree without looking generic

There's enough gear choice in a game like WoW for a player to be unique to a degree without looking generic

Ahem, I disagree with what you said.

Ahem, I disagree with what you said.

lets agree to disagree. 

I want to be able to judge another players ability (by ability I mean game experience not fashion sense) by looking at them.  This helps me in PvP and to a lesser degree when forming a PuG.

You seem to want to see a bunch of fops running around putting on a fashion show. 

Even if you're not in the best uber gear, you still just look like whatever the best gear is you've managed to get.  I don't just want to have slightly different shoulder pads and thus be "unique", I want to be able to look how I want to look.

Item-centric games will have some degree of 'sameness' to them. It's just a given.

So what you're saying is that you don't like games where advancement is governed by time /played. I agree. Player skill is the way to go.

Jeez, a complaint about raids being repetitive and DIKUs being about gear?

What year is this?

:)

I agree Raids require skill. After you figure it out though, it requires less skill from the folks that follow :)

The only place where having a visual recognition of what a class spec/talents are in WoW, is the one place where everyone is exactly the same and it is impossible to tell what spec a class is from looking at their armor.

My point wasn't to find out their spec but to find out their class.  I do not want a 2nd paper doll of "visual outfits" where a warrior can dress up to look like a priest but still gain all the benefits of his nonvisual tier5 plate.

Although I do agree, I'd rather not be fighting people who look like priests but hit like warriors.

This reminds me of the dev commentary for TF2 where they talk about how important it was to see an enemy and instantly know what class it is, I totally agree, having appearances that don't match capabilities would be a big turnoff for me in any pvp mmo.

I call bullshit. Yes, it is nice to be able to tell with a look but only because that is what you are used to. It also makes it easier for PKs to pick their marks because class X will usually beat class Y so class X will look for class Y to the exclusion of all others. If one cannot tell the target's abilities, it makes the attacker - who ALWAYS has the advantage - less comfortable. This would be a good thing. 

Bottom line, if the game is good, you won't care.

Would kill the immersion factor hardcore.

See a guy in robes, you're thinking caster.

Guy in robes pulls out a giant, world exploding, firework shooting hammer with spinners and beats your face in.

Am I the only one who would see that as somehow a problem?

I read that as "I don't want to get wtfpwned by my victim." Poor you. I thought it was all about skill?

You know what'd be awesome though? Is that if every class had a fighting chance against any other class, assuming you didn't suck ass at it.

This reminds me of the dev commentary for TF2 where they talk about how important it was to see an enemy and instantly know what class it is, I totally agree, having appearances that don't match capabilities would be a big turnoff for me in any pvp mmo.

I'm sorry, do you think that if you look like a priest but are actually a warrior you won't get owned?

Or is this some form of reverse ganking?

I'd adapt either way, I just think it'd be a poor method of making a fantasy MMO based on class distinctions. Would make for some interesting stuff though. Couldn't pre-target the healer, since everyone would like a healer.

You know what'd be awesome though? Is that if every class had a fighting chance against any other class, assuming you didn't suck ass at it.

This system would probably just homogenize the entire player base into wearing "generic armor A" to avoid giving anything away. In outdoor PvP in WoW you can already do this by using noggenfogger or some such. However these items are not usable in arena. Why? Because if they were, every serious arena team would make them required. What the hell is the point of making unique and interesting item models if everyone uses a generic camouflage system to hide them all the time?

By the way, what game are you basing this PK avoiding strategy on? I'm going to guess UO. Get ganked much?

I call bullshit. Yes, it is nice to be able to tell with a look but only because that is what you are used to. It also makes it easier for PKs to pick their marks because class X will usually beat class Y so class X will look for class Y to the exclusion of all others. If one cannot tell the target's abilities, it makes the attacker - who ALWAYS has the advantage - less comfortable. This would be a good thing. 

Bottom line, if the game is good, you won't care.

I like it. I loved that I could dress in any number of ways in UO and still be effective with my character. Even just having robes that cover armor would be a start.

Something i think planetside excelled at.

Wait, what? It was impossible to judge what the capabilities of your opponent in planetside was. You could be specc'd and react in any number of different ways; What
armor they were wearing told you little about what weapons they had or what their reaction was.

You could be facing an engineer in heavy armor, equipped with nothing but ACEs and a pistol, or you could have a soldier who preferred light armor because of the mobility. With the medium armor, they could be carrying literally any weapon, could be specc'd for and have the jackhammer, MCG, lancer -- all behaving very differently and requiring different tactics. Even with infiltrator, they could be a melee type, a grenade type, an ACE type, or just a guy who's trying to sneak in to hack a vehicle.

In fact, the only thing you could quantify on sight was the power armor and vehicles.

Something i think planetside excelled at.

Wait, what? It was impossible to judge what the capabilities of your opponent in planetside was. You could be specc'd and react in any number of different ways; What
armor they were wearing told you little about what weapons they had or what their reaction was.

You could be facing an engineer in heavy armor, equipped with nothing but ACEs and a pistol, or you could have a soldier who preferred light armor because of the mobility. With the medium armor, they could be carrying literally any weapon, could be specc'd for and have the jackhammer, MCG, lancer -- all behaving very differently and requiring different tactics. Even with infiltrator, they could be a melee type, a grenade type, an ACE type, or just a guy who's trying to sneak in to hack a vehicle.

In fact, the only thing you could quantify on sight was the power armor and vehicles.

Without repeatable entertaining content and everyone looking the same, my motivation to keep playing any game is... what exactly?

I actually like the idea of a robe caster pulling out that world-exploding fire hitting hammer.

The reason I'm burned out is that whereas pre TBC raid content was somewhat challenging technically (read 4 Horsemen) current raid content was completely cleared in 4 months. Thats 60-hi2u dead Illidan in 6 months. And all this was done for a miniscule gear advantage (especially given the new loot being added in the recent patch). There isn't a carrot anymore. We actually caught up and ate it.

Fourth MMO. I'm burned out because for the last 2 years with my guild, I and everyone else have had 90% raid attendance . Top 5 of every boss kill since BWL or something. And we're currently bored (I know, I know, bleeding edge guild beats game and quits from lack of stuff to do. Story at 11).

The reason I'm burned out is that whereas pre TBC raid content was somewhat challenging technically (read 4 Horsemen) current raid content was completely cleared in 4 months. Thats 60-hi2u dead Illidan in 6 months. And all this was done for a miniscule gear advantage (especially given the new loot being added in the recent patch). There isn't a carrot anymore. We actually caught up and ate it.

Which is really depressing since other games -still- have mechanics that promote motivation to keep going. For example DAoC is still somewhat fun.

Without repeatable entertaining content and everyone looking the same, my motivation to keep playing any game is... what exactly? At the same time, after I beat HL2:2, I still have untold hours of TF2 to keep me occupied. See the difference? ($40 CAD for 200+ hours of pew pew or $400 CAD over 2 years for.....)

Hopefully WAR will at least have PvP that doesn't suck. Or something. Yes the scripted encounters are a fun puzzle the first time. But the puzzle is sufficiently easy, and there are so few of them that the game runs out of content, and not even for the bleeding edge. We were a month ahead in progression of the closest guild on our server, and they and one other have already gotten to Illidan, killed him and had 50% of their raiders quit. MMOs are supposed to be enormous timesinks. That's WHY I play them. A timesink is only good when it you know, sinks your time.

IIRC, according to WoWjutsu the percentage of players that have killed Illidan is still under one percent. The problem with the raiding end-game in TBC isn't "There isn't enough of it", it's "There's too much of it which isn't accessable to most raiders". There's a brick wall somewhere in-between the early raids and BT/Hyjal, and it's keeping most of the ~20-25% of the playerbase that actively raids away from the TBC end-bosses.

The various Tempest Keep (etc.) changes in 2.3 will help, and I suspect that BT and/or Hyjal will also be tuned downwards in 2.4, when the Sunwell goes live.

They put a gateway fight in, its KT. There have been various numbers thrown around about how many guilds are stuck at that one fight. I think  sometimes about how they balance accessibility with the feeling of accomplishing something. 2.0 Gruul, Hyrdoss, Magtheridon were all entirely too hard for their position in progression where they were as the 2.1 Black Temple was too easy, in both cases people were defeating the content but in both cases they retuned it. They had a long keying process for SSC/TK entry and then removed it. I'll put money that theres a memo somewhere in Blizz headquarters with a bell graph and approximate time-lines on when to open each raiding tier to the masses.

The new content was consumed so much faster because people who raid are better now than they were when they were starting 1.0 content.

It's a lot harder for Blizzard to come up with something that's challenging for raiders now because they know all the gimmicks and have beaten them to death.

The "point" is to be the first one through the content.

Tangent: This thread truly has everything - started off with the Next Big Thing being delayed & generalized EA-hate, moved on to World PVP vs Battleground PvP vs PvE (with a side order of worldy game vs gamey world), and we're now doing Hardcore Raiders vs 'Casual' Raiders vs small groups.

Next up: Web2.0 flash MUSHs as the future vs Diku+ v4 as the future. :-D

I wonder how a "Competitive" dungeon raid would look... especially on a mostly PVE world like WoW.  Just off the top of my head I am thinking of a Raid that you enter much like the Arenas, IE you zone in and it matches your raid with another.  The "point" is to be the first one through the content.  If you kill a boss before the other side then their's just disappears.  Basically that would allow each boss to be a new "Match", and losing one boss might actually give you the advantage for the next depending on the dungeon. 

I'm thinking Emperor in EQ.

I'm thinking Darkness Falls in DAoC which, iirc, did exactly this. Semi-competitive PvP with those token things you collected to buy stuff. WoW AV is something like this except is has a specific end condition.

Did you manage to keep a straight face while typing that?

In addition, we’ll be making changes to the RvR (open field RvR FTW!) and Server Rule Set Systems. These changes bring WAR a step closer to fulfilling the promise that “War is Everywhere” while ensuring a great play experience for those that do not choose to engage in RvR 24x7. This is another example of how EA Mythic talks to the community, listens to what they have to say, and takes action. We will continue this process over the next three quarters as we continue to develop, expand and improve WAR.

So open PvP servers?  RvR focused servers?

EDIT: Also WAR release pushed to Q2  :angryfist:

It's also how you automatically increase your dev team size as you chase multiple bugs specific to different rulesets.

CEO John Riccitiello:

“Frankly, this is a pretty straightforward situation, and I want to emphasize to the team at Mythic: No, we are not having you be part of our re-structuring. That's not the plan. We are investing in the growth of that studio. Warhammer's [push-back story] is a simple one: they missed part of a milestone. Mark [Jacobs, EA Mythic VP] came forward and said that it would affect quality if he held the March date. We made the decision with the big investment we've got behind it and frankly the talent and inspiration of the team to invest behind quality. We gave them a little bit more time, a little bit more money and we think we're going to have a little bit more of a hit on our hands. So… simple. So, you're safe Mark.”

Also WAR release pushed to Q2

We all knew the beta postponement was more than just responding to feedback. As always, the real story never comes out upfront.

Was anyone seriously expecting it in Q1?

If Mythic/EA had led with "missed a milestone" then there would have been a lot less speculation about WAR getting shelved completely following the Bioware announcement.

Reading that interview, it suggests that Naughty realm and Sensible realm characters all walk about the same pve zones, like in wow......


......well that sucks.

They may have multiple rulesets to help deal with it, but I really don't understand what was wrong with the DAoC solution, where everyone has pve areas that the other realm simply can't get to other than through occaisional special mechanics.

I think the reason why they don't want to do walls again is because they, not only wall off players, but they wall off the landscape which makes the world feel smaller than it actually is.

It's also how you automatically increase your dev team size as you chase multiple bugs specific to different rulesets. I'm not against different ruleset servers per se. It's worked in the past and could here. It just isn't something you flip a switch on though.

It's two or three different games for the price of just over one.

My point is that if EA is going to eventually admit the real reason for the delay in a public conference call and that reason isn't a big deal, then why not lead with it?

Only until you launch, and only if the codebase is solid and never changes. After launch, and due to reality, you are supporting two to three different games. By not having infinite resources, at least one of those rulesets is not going to get supported like the other two. You can do that if you have a huge budget and team, but even then it's only worth it if you can prove the system will be used.

he FBI stated something like 50,000 people were playing on that fan hosted Lineage 2 server with adjusted exp rates.

I was never close enough to figure out what was on a guy's back when he was running towards me or crouched on a hill. What was in his hand, occasionally, but by then generally it was too late.

I, too, wish for planetside part 2. Done right. With infinite respecs (or maybe double the points given) to mesh with a squad on a moment's notice. The most fun I had in that game was the 7 day trial where you could respec.

I was trying to say that if Games Workshop saw a reason to intervene they would likely not shy away from it, and it was the first thing that came to my mind with regards to the the delay/suspension of beta...

I take your word that my suspicion is mistaken, although as a long-time WH follower and disillusioned EA/Mythic customer that doesnt make me feel any better...

If Mythic/EA had led with "missed a milestone" then there would have been a lot less speculation about WAR getting shelved completely following the Bioware announcement. People wouldn't have connected the two events at all since missing a milestone is purely a production issue, thus game specific, and not a corporate development issue which is how it appeared.

Thanx for the clarification - it seems I put too much faith in GW then...  :-P

As it stands, this is Sporthammer, not Warhammer.  And if I were a sport-PvPer, I can't imagine why I'd choose this one over (correct me if I'm forgetting any that offer Sport PvP):

My experience with CoH PvP was everyone being able to escape everyone else at nearly all times, or 20:1 odds finally killing someone, or being transported into guards if you were asleep at the wheel and strayed to near the enemy base area.

At the time I left the acquisition was at "rumor we gossiped about at lunch" level; it wasn't a done deal until after I was gone.

The thought that had I stayed I most likely would have had some role on UO fills me with schadenfreude, though.

It's like everyone is a DaoC minstrel with permanent speed of sound.

If everyone has permanent speed of sound, then nobody does. It's Zen.

Seeing enemies I can't kill = I will never subscribe.

As it stands, this is Sporthammer, not Warhammer.  And if I were a sport-PvPer, I can't imagine why I'd choose this one over (correct me if I'm forgetting any that offer Sport PvP):

Puzzle Pirates

Christ, this game is such a massive abortion.

Which is ironic because the core Warhammer is sport pvp.

Similarly, if they want to allow everyone to visit all the  pve content (and I can understand why they would) but wanted to keep the DAoC style separation of the realms, then this would be a fine occaision to apply a little instance-sauce for the greater good.

I'm sorry, but PvP in CoH is terrible.  I had fun with it for about a day, but quickly came to realize that most people will only stay and fight if a) they have numbers on their side or b) they see that they are winning.  Other than that, it becomes a chase-fest.  I had a similar experience in EQ2 early on when everyone was playing stealthers.  I guess this is why I stuck with DAoC, shadowbane, EvE, and Planetside for PvP.  Those titles realize that iPvP needs to be well-considered rather than just slapped onto a pve framework. 

Eh?

I grant you this game won't be at all like WHFRPG which it is supposedly based on, but eh? what?

When did this term become popular? I've been using it for a couple of years.

"Sport PVP" is a good term, it connotes structure and no lasting consequences.

I'm arguing that using Sport PvP matches as the primary achiever end game and realm war driver is a bad decision. It is too susceptible to domination by uber guilds, and weak players entering can actively disadvantage their own realm.

If people disagree with me on what Sport pvp is I don't really mind what we call 'the-guild-wars-mechanic' instead.

I'm not saying Sport PvP isn't hardcore. I'm saying it is *too* hardcore, and as such, you have to avoid over-rewarding it.

You do realize that no matter what type of PVP there is, the "uber guilds" who can organize best win no matter how many roadblocks you throw in their way, right? Over time, they will win many more than they lose.

Until we know how Victory points are awarded,  I don't see how we can argue about this.

Couldn't you mitigate the "sport PvP having adverse consequences on the World" by either:

1.  Seperating Queues into PUG v PUG and Guild v Guild?
2.  Introducing a ranking system so that awesome teams rolling newbs will not earn many realm points?

You do realize that no matter what type of PVP there is, the "uber guilds" who can organize best win no matter how many roadblocks you throw in their way, right? Over time, they will win many more than they lose.

Sure, what we know so far is that you win a scenario you get VPs, and the bulk of the VPs are attached to scenarios.

We also know you accumulate n VPs to push the battlefront around, and that pushing the battlefront around is intended as the end game.

[
Only real way to keep PUG v PUG pure is to reduce the stake/reward. Otherwise people will start doing stupid shit like rushing the queues and dropping out of guilds to look like a mixed group.

Separate the ubers and the PUGs. Think WoW BGs vs Arenas. It works. The people complaining about this split aren't the type to be made happy anyway.

I like the concept of immersive server-spanning socioeconomic-compelled PvP. Unfortunately, the only two games to really get it right were either broken enough to piss off the core (SB) or just esoteric enough to never grow to enviable numbers (Eve, which mostly works because everyone is on one uniserver big enough to house sub-societies). Neither inspires companies to rip off their ideas, so the companies take the safer routes.

Further, "Approachable PvP for Casuals" and Levels do not mix without copious compartmentalization into sub-groups. SB was a good example. The only time people bothered fighting below the soft cap was to piss off someone else or because they stumbled across a grind group. That's not success. That's people adopting a behavior to make up for what lacks in the rules.

Umm.  Didn't DAoC rvr accomplish the same thing?  Casuals were your footsoldiers and cannon fodder,  while the rvr guilds, gank guilds, and serious non-aligned players did the things that required coordination?

What eldaec and others are screaming about is that Mythic had a system that worked for both casual and hardcore,  but the early PR seems to be moving away from it.

Because, as they constantly ignore or pooh-pooh, realm population imbalance always caused problems and was one of the biggest gripes I recall the majority having about the game. (After the bitching about group xp nerf)   The system didn't work unless you were on the winning side, or had the desire to find a server where your preferred side was larger/ winning and reroll.

Umm.  Didn't DAoC rvr accomplish the same thing?  Casuals were your footsoldiers and cannon fodder,  while the rvr guilds, gank guilds, and serious non-aligned players did the things that required coordination?

Not really. RvRing at anything below the level cap was an exercise in frustration. Most everyone I knew didn't even step into the frontier until they hit max level.

But the problem was the "play average pve grind for 20 days /played, then you can join the real game" design. It really didn't matter if the 'real game' was RvR or something else - you couldn't get to it without an almighty grind.

Also I really don't understand why people appear to be suggesting that fixed sides RvR in geographically locked areas of the world, plays anything like open pvp / Guild v Guild games such as EVE or SB.

DAoC had an open pvp server - it sucked and nobody played there.

If Mythic had just added a frontier pop cap similar to the Planetside continent lock system (before New Frontiers obviously) it would have solved alot of problems.  Maybe have it unlocked or doubled for the home team to mitigate getting double-teamed in Emain (yeah I was Hib from release).

Basically, that's a lot of words to say that I can't see how making any special rules server would really be worth it for them.

Eh?

How is that worth it? They have 10M subscribers. They wouldn't get 100,000 more because of it. Seems like a waste of time & money.

Blizz will worry about retention when subs fall, not before.

Captain Obvious!

WoW could fall down to one of their niche subscriber populations (PvP, alt-itus-ers, etc...) and still be doing as well, or better than any of the competition.

You are fooling yourself if you don't think that Blizzard is highly focused on retention. 

What's stopping them from having a new "classic rules" AV in addition to the other AV?  Classic AV was very different from AV Lite.

It seems sorcerers 'thing' is that they use actual Warhammer magic, by which I mean magic which is just likely to blow you up as to blow the other guy up. I'd be pleasantly surprised if they can make that (a) meaningful and (b) stop the whining about it in a MMOG.

Speaking of the new year, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be *finally* inviting a few thousand guild members (from specific guilds chosen in our Guild Beta contest) into the Beta in early ’08. They will be helping us test the newly implemented “Living Guild” features. Believe it when we say that guilds won’t just be a glorified chat channel in our game. They will have their own personality that the guild members can craft as they play WAR, and some significant new ideas make them a vital part of our game.

No and No.  Players by and large want to hit one button and watch their opponent die.  If Mythic makes this kind of a mechanic where you have no idea who your magic is going to hurt, people will scream bloody murder.  Players like predictibility.  Even in their slot machines. 

We’re almost ready to re-open the WAR Beta, and I know that our Beta Community has been gnashing their teeth in anticipation. Guess what? They should be giddy with excitement because we’ll have an amazing amount of new features and enhancements in the game for them to test, as well as brand new Elf content for them to experience.

Before getting into content specifics, I wanted to share a quick word about our testing process as we’ll be doing things a little differently in this next phase of Beta II. Instead of bringing up the Beta server and leaving it up 24/7 for free play, we’ll be moving forward with a series of focused Beta events set around a specific concept or two. These events will last anywhere from 3-10 days and will enable us to gather specific, detailed feedback from our Beta Community in regards to specific features and locations. We’ll be bringing the server down between each event for a day or two in order to prepare for the next focused event. This will also give us time to process the feedback we receive and incorporate it in future events.
When Beta reopens, players will be treated to what we’re calling our “Dark Elf Sneak Peek”. During the first weekend, the Beta Community will be able to play through the Dark Elf starting and Tier 1 areas with two new careers. We are going to ease players back into the Beta to spend some quality time with the Dark Elves, as well as with many newly updated UI elements, such as the Tome of Knowledge. We are looking forward to hearing the community’s thoughts on these areas of the game.
Much of the testing over the next three months will be focused on RvR and the enhancements we are implementing to this system. The team has been diligently working on the Open Field RvR experience while the beta has been closed and they are anxious to debut the expanded Battlefield Objectives with ... wait for it ... new RvR Keeps.
While we aren’t ready to publicly discuss Keeps and their siege mechanics in great detail at this time, anyone that has taken part in a Keep battle in Dark Age of Camelot® will have an idea of what we have in store for WAR (though it should be noted that this new Keeps system will differ from the one found in DAoC). The addition of Keeps will bring focus and meaning to Open Field RvR and beta participants should be able to experience this new system in its early stages by the end of the year.

Player Careers have also received a lot of love and attention these past couple of months. One of the biggest issues raised during the beta was the perceived lack of differentiation between characters of the same career and same level. Why should every level 30 Warrior Priest look and play the same way?
We are actually approaching this issue from two different angles:
First, we’re introducing the concept of Career Mastery to better differentiate character abilities. This new system allows a player to customize their character’s skills to suit their desired play style. It allows an archetype career (Tank, Ranged DPS, etc.) to stay true to its role, while giving the player the flexibility to pursue specialized skills to make their character more unique. To learn more about Career Mastery, please read this week’s Beta Update posted on the WAR Herald.

Second, we are implementing our Trophy system which will allow players to visually differentiation their characters from others of the same career. This system has always been planned and is now being introduced into the game for the first time. In a nutshell, players are awarded visual bits, or Trophies, that they are then allowed to place on their character in pre-determined slots (the number of slots is determined by a characters level). Over the course of the game, you’ll literally be able to earn hundreds of these Trophies, way more than you’ll be able to equip at any one time, and display them in thousands of unique combinations.

This combination of the Trophy and Career Mastery systems, combined with our player creation options, numerous available armor sets, armor tinting system, and weapon variety will ensure that no two players will ever look the same on the field of battle in WAR.
One final system to discuss and that is Public Quests. PQs are an exciting aspect of the PvE side of WAR, and they are something new and completely unique to our game. They have been very well received in beta, but we’ve been tweaking and enhancing them to make them even more engaging and fun. One of the biggest changes to PQs are the way we divvy up loot. We’ve implemented a new and improved loot system and we’ll be very interested to hear what the testers think of it.
With all of these new additions and exciting new Elf content, we’re certainly going to be keeping the Beta Community busy well into the new year.
Speaking of the new year, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be *finally* inviting a few thousand guild members (from specific guilds chosen in our Guild Beta contest) into the Beta in early ’08. They will be helping us test the newly implemented “Living Guild” features. Believe it when we say that guilds won’t just be a glorified chat channel in our game. They will have their own personality that the guild members can craft as they play WAR, and some significant new ideas make them a vital part of our game.
That is all for now from the Beta. For those of you still waiting to get in, keep checking your inboxes because we’ll continually be bringing new participants into the game as we ramp up our testing efforts in the new year.

Ya, when I found out they are falling back to Keeps my interest in RvR faded.  Keeps are a mechanic that encourage people to hide from each other not fight each other.

Keeps are a mechanic that encourage people to hide from each other not fight each other.

They should just take out targetting completely. Swing your sword, hit a guy in front of you. Cast a spell, it goes where your crosshair points.

Further, are there any M&B mods that add magic?

Fark I thought I'd come in here and check out the latest on WAR.  What do I find?  Fucking more WoW rimjobs and useless WoW speculation-wankerery.

I hate you guys almost as much as I hate the blackhole that is WoW.

Edit : engrish

Instead of bringing up the Beta server and leaving it up 24/7 for free play, we’ll be moving forward with a series of focused Beta events set around a specific concept or two. These events will last anywhere from 3-10 days and will enable us to gather specific, detailed feedback from our Beta Community in regards to specific features and locations. We’ll be bringing the server down between each event for a day or two in order to prepare for the next focused event. This will also give us time to process the feedback we receive and incorporate it in future events

Not in daoc they weren't.

Keeps and towers were the simplest way to find the other lot.

All open field means gank groups run riot.  Casuals and PUGs get together in the zerg,  and you're then forced to jump in the zerg if you don't have an A++ quality group or risk getting run down by a premade group or a zerg.  In Old Frontiers,  it wasn't uncommon to sit around your portal keep or border keep for extended periods of time waiting to put together a group.  Usually while spamming "Looking for <bottleneck necessary class> for rvr!"

Warhammer online Podcast #13 (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/media/podcast/)

They talk about why they stopped beta, and what they are changing and whatnot becouse of player feedback.

Brief summary for those with no audio access at the moment? :)

Listening to people the people who want WAR to be DAoC2 is as big of mistake as listening to people who want WAR to have Open PvP.  Both groups are hardcore in their own way and are trying to pull the game away from mainstream appeal.

Listening to people the people who want WAR to be DAoC2 is as big of mistake as listening to people who want WAR to have Open PvP.  Both groups are hardcore in their own way and are trying to pull the game away from mainstream appeal.

Not sure how you got to that conclusion, i enjoyed the podcast and what it talked about..

Did you notice the section where they literally dragged items that where labeled under DAoC and put them under WAR RvR.

"Meh. We have run out ideas and time, so we're just going to copy-n-paste the keep code from Camelot and hope EA doesn't gut us." is what Josh really is saying.

Lets be real, almost all of us are dropping the $50 to try the fucking thing.  This is a huge, very cool IP and we haven't had a MMO worthy of being tagged AAA in forfuckingever.

Will the keeps be attackable without siege? Yes, players will be able to break open the keep doors, battle the guards, fight their way to the keep lord, and try to capture the keep.

Will Keeps change in appearance based upon which race controls them? In future patches (pre-launch), the appearance of the keep will change to reflect that the enemy realm has captured it. At this time, we are not planning to entirely replace the keep with a new structure with different geometry. So, an Empire keep captured by Destruction will still look like an Empire keep, but it will change to look like it's been under siege and show some signs of its new owners.

Will there be NPC guards and a captain to kill rather than a "run up and click the flag" we see in other games? There will definitely be more to capturing the keep than just interacting with an object or entering an area. There will be guards and a "lord", with the numbers of guards present based on factors players from both realms can affect. More details will be released closer to Beta re-opening.

Will there be non-typical types of keeps? (i.e. ships, trains, mountains) At this point, we aren't planning on using anything that deviates too far from a "keep" style structure.

Will keeps have multiple levels and if so, will they use ladders or stairs? The keeps will have several floors of combat space. Both the keeps and the outer walls will use stairs or ramps, with no ladders to be found.

Will Battlefield Objectives play a part in the keep system? Yes, there will be connections between the BOs and the keeps. Sorry folks, this is another one that we have to say "more details to follow later".

-RvR Team

Nah. My policy is, no beta time, no forking over of the cash for a month or two at a minimum.  It's saved me lots so far.  I will, however, enjoy reading what the rest of you are saying.

Will there be NPC guards and a captain to kill rather than a "run up and click the flag" we see in other games? There will definitely be more to capturing the keep than just interacting with an object or entering an area. There will be guards and a "lord", with the numbers of guards present based on factors players from both realms can affect. More details will be released closer to Beta re-opening.-RvR Team

Yeah, I'm very amused by the "we want a PvE encounter for the capture" nature of this question.  The flags are flags in WoW's BG becasue.. well..  PLAYERS are the "boss mob"  Once they're dead (or distracted, or CC'd) clicky clicky.   Seems much more PvPish than "Oh well the captian is still up we can run off on our merry way and not worry about defending."

The only reason I had any interest in WAR to begin with was because I hoped it would end up as DaoC 2. So Cool beans.  :-)

I still think all you DAOC fanbois are going to be in for a rude awakening when you encounter "RvR" without your rosey glasses.

DAOC's pvp "system" isn't shit to be excited about.  Never has been.  My biggest pet peeve on this sub-board is the people who insist on holding up "RvR" as some kind of great accomplishment in persistent world pvp.

I still think all you DAOC fanbois are going to be in for a rude awakening when you encounter "RvR" without your rosey glasses.

DAOC's pvp "system" isn't shit to be excited about.  Never has been.  My biggest pet peeve on this sub-board is the people who insist on holding up "RvR" as some kind of great accomplishment in persistent world pvp.

Name a system that did a better job of serving casuals, semi-serious players, and hardcores with single, small group, large group and zerg sized pvp action.  As Nebu said,  Eve is really the only other MMO in the same league.

And both have significant systemic flaws.

The only other game system that comes close to offering the same amount of flexibility and utility to varied playstyles is Magic Online,  and their big problem is on the technical end (hi2u Magic 3.0 and server stability issues),  with a side of pricing issues.

The info they got from beta was to widely spread to be able to filter out the meaning/helpfull stuff.

Two additions:

1. Talent trees for professions.
2. Adding persistent keeps, forts, and seige weaponry to open RVR.

So they are patching WoW and DAoC into the soulless turd? ;)

You're just talking out your ass.  DAOC RvR was very good.

Yeah, I'm very amused by the "we want a PvE encounter for the capture" nature of this question.  The flags are flags in WoW's BG becasue.. well..  PLAYERS are the "boss mob"  Once they're dead (or distracted, or CC'd) clicky clicky.   Seems much more PvPish than "Oh well the captian is still up we can run off on our merry way and not worry about defending."

My biggest pet peeve on this sub-board is the people who insist on holding up "RvR" as some kind of great accomplishment in persistent world pvp.

Clearly. As everyone knows, skill point based advancement systems were entirely unknown before WoW came along and revolutionised the genre with its truly ground-breaking advances in games design.

However, HRose is correct to say that WoW is the reason WAR now has the skill point tree mechanic.

I dislike it as much as anyone when HRose has a point, but I suspect this is one of those times.

However, HRose is correct to say that WoW is the reason WAR now has the skill point tree mechanic.

I dislike it as much as anyone when HRose has a point, but I suspect this is one of those times.

In never bothered with the RvR in DAOC because I've enough experience with online multiplayer games to know that the concept of a battlefield with different action and no population restrictions is ultimately fated to be a popularity contest.  It doesn't really matter how good of a player you are, it's mostly about seeing if Camelot can field the most players.

Your logic statement is flawed.  There were MANY times that the better players won in large scale battles.  Yes, numbers help... but the victor was often determined by both organization and skill.

Clearly. As everyone knows, skill point based advancement systems were entirely unknown before WoW came along and revolutionised the genre with its truly ground-breaking advances in games design.

WASD should be standard in everything. It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. I'm not defending them, I'm just pointing out how stupid that was to even mention.

ESDF 4 life!

However, HRose is correct to say that WoW is the reason WAR now has the skill point tree mechanic.

I dislike it as much as anyone when HRose has a point, but I suspect this is one of those times.

ESDF is subpar compared to RDFG.  RDFG lets you set hotkeys on all sides,  while also giving you the bump on the F key if you need to go up to the numbers with your left hand.

WASD is the best since you can hit tab quickly!

Read: Who could field the most AOE CC and/or stealthers at once.