WAR Elf classes

[eldaec]

First 2 elf classes from each side:

Boring Elf classes...

Swordmaster (tanker)
Archmage (healer)
Videos :
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/videos/Paul-swordmaster_1000.zip
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/videos/Paul-archmage_1000.zip

Army blurb : http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/gameInfo/armiesofWAR/HighElves/HighElf.php


Naughty Elf classes...

Witch Elf (scrapper)
Black Guard (tanker)
Videos:
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/videos/Paul-witchelf_1000.zip
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/videos/Paul-blackguard_1000.zip


Army blurb: http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/gameInfo/armiesofWAR/DarkElves/DarkElf.php


Grab bag questions that aren't retarded:

Q) You have said in early editions of the Grab Bag that the eight winds will work as resistances. As there is only the Bright Wizard as an arcane magic career, will players have options in "skill trees" or "magic trees" to assume other stereotypes of magic users like shadow wizards, beast wizards etc? And will we see the Imperial Colleges of magic in action in WAR?

A) Not skill trees, per se, but players will be able to specialize fairly significantly via the tactics and morale systems. We’ve completely overhauled the advancement system over the previous couple of months to greatly expand the opportunities for differentiation and specialization within a career-path. In most cases, this will involve providing two major lines of specialization (more for certain careers) and offering players the option (not just with magic users) to choose to push their character in one direction or another, or create a hybrid of the two. Stay tuned for an upcoming podcast that runs through all of this in exhausting detail.


Q) I have read that you are going to avoid instances where possible (except for the big boss battles in PVE) but I was wondering if the "dungeons" are going to be instanced?

A) There is minimal instancing in dungeons. Dungeon instancing is generally restricted to final boss encounters.

So, yeah, more instancing in pvp where it hurts casual players, less instancing in pve where it would help casual players. Genius.

[Venkman]

Can you rename "video" to something like "a guy giving a podcast about the class while holding the same piece of artwork they showed in the newslater from a few days ago"? I was hoping for ingame footage... :P

[Tannhauser]

As a player who enjoys healing and nuking, that Archmage is right up my alley.

[Modern Angel]

Can you rename "video" to something like "a guy giving a podcast about the class while holding the same piece of artwork they showed in the newslater from a few days ago"? I was hoping for ingame footage... :P

No kidding. I know all sorts of people who were going apeshit and saying how 'refreshing' it was to see a game company guy who was 'excited instead of giving a boring technical presentation.'

What? Excuse me?

Barnett's act is starting to wear thin. Thanks, I saw a picture of a dark elf trooper when I picked up their army list ten years ago. Give me some MEAT.

And less instanced pve/more instanced pvp? My boner is fading...

[Soukyan]

Perhaps it has already been said, but it is DAoC re-skinned as Warhammer.

Not that that is a horrible thing, because I highly enjoyed DAoC and RvR.

Just don't get your hopes up.

[eldaec]

Perhaps it has already been said, but it is DAoC re-skinned as Warhammer.

Not that that is a horrible thing, because I highly enjoyed DAoC and RvR.

I really wish it were daoc reskinned for warhammer.

Unfortunately, they seem to want to abandon the key selling points of daoc and take more inspiration from that other MMOG.


As for the videos, well, yeah, it's just Paul Barnett talking about each class, but in all seriousness, it's a dkumud, the classes being revealed are tank, smite cleric,  rogue, tank. Apart from the flavour based spin Paul wanted to put on it, and given that they were never going to discuss detailed mechanics, what else could they put in?

[sam, an eggplant]

Totally disagree, Barnett does a fantastic job at making dry boring information dumps entertaining. WAR's pre-release community building and marketing as a whole is second only to Blizzard, and they didn't even have a NDA.

Hey, here's something I couldn't say if I was in the beta. WAR's PvE is pretty damn uninspiring. One of the fansites had a 30 minute shakycam video of the greenskin's intro quests, going all the way from level 1 to 5 or so. The quests went something like- kill 5 dwarfs. Or click on 5 dead orks to get their cleavers. Or click on 5 barrels to explode, 50% chance of a dwarf popping out and attacking. Or click on 5 stinky mushrooms, 5 slimy mushrooms, and 5 sneezy mushrooms. They pretty much sucked balls. Why not have well-scripted lore-laden quests in the first 30 minutes of the game? Why not tell a ongoing story? And most importantly of all, why not offer the players choices? It was just plain lazy design.

The gameplay itself was polished, and it had tons of atmosphere, and yay warhammer is cool, but if you don't offer any new gameplay in the first couple hours, whyever would Mythic expect veteran MMO players to stick around? If I want to collect waterbuffalo uteruses for fun and profit, I can do it in WoW.

[Venkman]

Why not have well-scripted lore-laden quests in the first 30 minutes of the game?

Because unless you can continue that feature all leveling, you'll get players bitching about how the content devolves into a grind.

And eldaec, I honestly haven't kept up much on WAR. Yea, next big shiny and all, but I can wait for it, having played it already in various other forms. So I missed that the videos you posted were part of a tradition. No slight on you man :)

Finally, thinking about this from the other side, I think I get why they're not releasing the sort of details the veteran set expects: they're not talking to us. They're trying, like so many others have, to reach out into "everyone else" land, where such things about specific abilities and stats are not seen as important. Considering how many people went to WoW blind and flailing and hit the 50gp-per-respec pricepoint by their mid-20s, I think it's fair to say that saying nothing or revealing everything doesn't increase the player's abilities to make the right choices anyway.

[sam, an eggplant]

Because unless you can continue that feature all leveling, you'll get players bitching about how the content devolves into a grind.

No shit, and that's exactly what they should do. My uterus collecting days have sadly come to an end.

[Venkman]

Hehe, and I'd agree normally if this was a PvE focused game. But aren't they still pushing it as a PvP-for-the-restuvus? If so, I'd rather they focus on that than go the WoW route of PvE-to-raids or PvE-while-getting-ganked-to-BGs-then-Arenas.

[sam, an eggplant]

Kinda. WAR is a hybrid, where every quest in the PvE tier supposedly helps your faction win the RvR battles. PvE is a major component of the game.

[Amaron]

The thing about the dungeons sounds possibly stupid.  At first it sounds all elegant and everything because they get rid of most of the instancing but they still have the boss instanced so you don't have to deal with some schmuck killing it right before you get there.

I'm imagining camped out dungeons totally cleaned of mobs possessing no challenge whatsoever though.  Plus timers on the boss instance to stop people from farming him over and over.  It depends on how they do it but timers + camped out dungeons leans a bit too much toward EQ1 for my tastes.

[Venkman]

Kinda. WAR is a hybrid, where every quest in the PvE tier supposedly helps your faction win the RvR battles. PvE is a major component of the game.

Oh, yea, that does sound predominantly PvE. Wonder when Lich King will launch...

[Comstar]

What's wrong with instacing, and why the hate?? I thought WoW's dungeons I did up to level 30 were fine, they had quests you needed to do in the non-instanced area, and then a long one for a group.

This is different from raids where you need 20-40 people.

[lamaros]

I hate instancing as it tends to stop community building in a way. My lame hankering after a MMOG having a 'world', perhaps.

WAR seems like it's going to fail though.  More of the same with a focus on areas that people havn't really indicated they care about that much.

[Kail]

What's wrong with instacing, and why the hate??

I think the griping is due to apparent trends towards less instancing in PvE and more instancing in PvP.  What I'm hearing is that instancing in PvP helps the ubers, because in an even match between ubers and casuals, the ubers will win every time (without instancing, the ubers will generally be outnumbered by the zerg, so it's not as crushing).  Instancing in PvE helps the casuals, because it means they can get to see the content and complete their quests without having to compete with the catasses.  So with less instancing in PvE (nothing but the last boss being instanced, apparently, as opposed to WoW where the entire dungeon is instanced) and more instancing in PvP, it seems like the balance is shifting away from the casuals towards the hardcore.  At least, those are the arguments I generally hear, I claim no precognitive ability of my own.

[Amaron]

What's wrong with instacing, and why the hate??

Theres quite a large group of people who hate instancing for various reasons.  A lot of them are bullshit reasons but most people probably have some valid complaints.  Of course it's a two headed hydra for dev's because a larger group of people who do like instancing often hate uninstanced stuff for exactly the same reasons.

[pxib]

Instancing works when the players are involved in a storyline which progresses over the course of the instance. Missions in Guild Wars and storyline instances in LoTRO pull this off with varying degrees. Events occur, the players take part, and belief is suspended. This sort of thing would be silly (and IS silly when WoW tries to do it in non-instanced world events) when it repeats over and over again for everyone to see while people queue to do their own version of it.

Instancing also works to turn PvP into a bloodsport rather than a bloodbath. Zerg vs. Zerg is just one awkward, disorganized crowd of people yelling at eachother as they try to fight another awkward, disorganized crowd of people yelling at eachother. When the dust clears and the FPS get back into the double digits, one side is victorious.

Emain Macha. Rinse. Repeat.
Tarren Mill/Southshore. Rinse. Repeat.
The Ettenmoors. Rinse. Repeat.

Dedicated gank groups and keep capture/defense add some flavor to that mess, but ultimately they're just players trying to create what instanced PvP does all the time: Small group combat where the ubers triumph over the casuals... Stranglethorn Vale on any WoW PVP server. At least in an instanced bloodsport nobody's just trying to level, or gather herbs, or have simulated jungle sex.

[eldaec]

Hehe, and I'd agree normally if this was a PvE focused game. But aren't they still pushing it as a PvP-for-the-restuvus?

I believe that is what they think they are doing.

Unfortunately the focus on instance-based-sport-pvp suggests it will lock out all but the most organised from end-game content, like guild wars.

In fact, it could be worse than guild wars, since WAR group v group sport pvp is a two faction zero sum game, new players even entering sport-pvp will likely have the effect of 'anteing' up victory points to the other side. Then when they get stomped on by gank groups, all they will have done is given points away to the other faction.

OTOH DAoC style open RvR ensures nobody can ever hurt their faction, this builds a more inclusive community where elder players encourage new players to come RvRing. But in the WAR design the realm appears to be better off if any group below the average standard of the opposition stay the hell out of group v group instances. This encourages elder players to exclude newer members of the community.


It is important to understand the difference between WAR/GW and WoW pvp instances.

WoW pvp instances are not dominated by organised groups because they are not the achiever end game - raiding is. BGs are trivial, people only play them to have fun.

WAR/GW pvp instances are intended to be the achiever end game - GW endgame instances exclude newer, casual, or guildless players, WAR is almost certain to do the same.


The solution to this is pretty obvious.

You make open field RvR the 'real' end game. You make pvp instances the trivial fun diversion.

That way your real end game is an inclusive activity where elders seek to recruit newer players. The pvp instances with more trivial rewards don't attract the vets, but give new players somewhere to mess around (like Alterac Valley or the random-teams all-comers 4v4 maps in GW).

[Numtini]

I wonder if they're getting the feedback they need. Most people I know who care about War seem to match people here--looking for open field RVR. I think there's going to be a lot of anger if it turns out to be WOW with someone keeping score of the instances.

[eldaec]

To be fair, if you browse a WAR fansite, they seem split between DAoC players and WoW players.

The problem is that the WoW players don't seem to realise that they are getting Guild Wars, not WoW.

[Venkman]

Thanks for the explanation. I can understand the concern. The one part I'd debate though is the Achievers things in WoW BGs. I haven't been in Netherstorm nor done any Arenas since BC launched, but prior to that, the BGs were where it was at for anyone who didn't want to, or couldn't, PvE raid. You weren't going to get the absolute best gear evar from a BG faction or HP grind, but you were going to get a far shade closer than you would if you didn't have many many hours per week to dedicate to the raid grind from MC to Naxx.

The cumulative time invested to get a substantial upgrade was more than if you had a dedicated raid group for PvE, but the incremental (per-session) time needed with a lot less. You could make meaningful progress in an hour or two of play pockmarked by random AFKs. Not so with a PvE raid though. At least, that's what I found after having grown bored of PvE raiding with the dedicated alliance we had in my guild.

BGs are a sport, but they are also more appropriate to casuals than any amount of PvE raiding could be, due to the PUGs. Yea, I've gotten rolled by VOIP users in endgame gear, but that was rare. For the most part, I'd pick an instance, join a PUG, get in and get some honor points.

It was sport, but so what? I've long felt immersive PvP has narrower appeal than when competition is treated as sport anyway. But to your and Numtini's point, that may put off a lot of WAR fans that currently exist, and that is a concern.

[angry.bob]

WoW pvp instances are not dominated by organised groups because they are not the achiever end game - raiding is. BGs are trivial, people only play them to have fun.

That is incorrect for the most part. Premades completely dominate the battlegrounds with the exception of AV - when they play at any rate. Honor weekends are a pretty good illustration of this. And that's only because you can't join AV as a group.

WAR needs to model every one of their PvP instances on AV. Instanced PvP that allows premades to fight PUGs will fucking kill the game. They need to keep the two types of groups separate with low/no queue times. Just set it up like that and share instances with all the servers together.

Also, the Paul guy seems to be pandering to the core Games Workshop customerfor about the last 10 years: retards who are scared to talk to girls and wear metal band shirts thinking that makes them as "hard" as the singer. The rules have been shit for a decade and a half and the people into the tabletop game at the LGS who still play it would eat those clips up.

[pxib]

I'm getting a bit concerned about a population imbalance.

They've got boring, goody-two-shoes races and wild, wicked races. It's not necessarily an ugly vs. beautiful thing (because the backstory automatically pairs folks up with similarly attractive individuals), so much as standard vs. awesome. Listening to Paul it's obvious what he really loves is the evil side... and looking at game art and world it's fairly obvious that the folks at Mythic (or at least thet Warhammer designs they've built upon) share the preference.

It'll be hard for players not to do the same.

[eldaec]

On the population balance thing, history has shown that you you need to work hard to make people play anything other than human/dwarf/elf. Maybe they've overshot a little, but I doubt it. tbh, I'd say human wizards and witchhunters have the most pizazz of the classes so far. Orcs look cool, but chaos looks 'meh', naughty elves only really have witch elves (which are female only, that'll drive some more people onto the dull team).

Look at WoW, it's also based on Warhammer, it also has a dull-but-facist realm facing off against naughty-but-facist. Yet people don't exactly go Horde in droves.


Regarding people saying there is a part of WoW where ubers dominate, well fair enough, I never played WoW past level 20, so I'm not bets placed to judge. Though of course, that makes my point even more valid. WAR won't be like Alterac Valley.

It's hard to imagine how an end game could be like AV...

'what? I can't play with my friends? in the end game?'
plus...
'what? the end game winners are largely determined by how well balanced my random group is?'
etc etc


Even if instances are random teams, you still have the problem that each realm is still best served by discouraging all but its best players taking part. That does not make for a positive realm community.


Open.
Field.
RvR.

Even that MMOG with pirates in it seems to have figured it out.

[angry.bob]

The problem with open field RvR is that it allows gank squads to get at casuals. Casuals in this case meaning soloers, people who play one night a week, or people who aren't good enough to compete, or people who just aren't good at PvP. Gank Squads did as much to keep DAoC subs as low as they were as PK's did in UO. People don't like being rolled 99% of the time when a game is free, let alone paying for it. Have open field PvP. Fine. But there must, absolutely must, be some system in place to to allow casuals to PvP without being exposed to gank squads. Making randomly queued instances like AV is the simplest, probably best way. Have a queue for "no groups" and another queue for "groups". Really, it's not that hard.

I like PvP. But I don't like grouping. I doubt I'll eve join another guild, or even group for that matter. I can still PvP to my heart's content in WoW in the battlegrounds. Unfortunately they've mandated forced fake friendships to get in the Arena, but the BG's still work. AV is the consistently best balanced due to people not being able to join as a group, and there's never a shortage of them going so I doubt that "no groups" is as big a deal breaker as people think.

[Venkman]

Open.
Field.
RvR.

Even that MMOG with pirates in it seems to have figured it out.

Yes and no. That's not a value call. It's just that the rules are a bit different and the game isn't strictly about PvP. Wish I could go further. A better reference would be Eve. That's open PvP all the way, with some constraints. But that game isn't really about PvP either, not for everyone. I use Eve as an example of a game where PvP is a strong part but mostly because it is an extremely immersive society-building experience of scattered finite resources. Contrast that with WoW where PvP is advertised and people play it in a long series of inconsequential sport matches (Arena or BG) to enhance their personal standings and get better gear to do it next time.

It sounds like in WAR, PvP is modeled more around sport than enhancing immersion and connection with one's own social group/affiliations.

[Merusk]

I like PvP. But I don't like grouping. I doubt I'll eve join another guild, or even group for that matter. I can still PvP to my heart's content in WoW in the battlegrounds. Unfortunately they've mandated forced fake friendships to get in the Arena, but the BG's still work.

So, I've got to ask.  If they didn't do teams for Arenas, how would you suggest they assign points and rankings in a game centered around team play?


Also, eldaec, people didn't go to Horde in droves because the races were deemed "ugly as fuck."   WoW was also primarily marketed as a PvE game, and Pve-types tend to go for "good" races.  Elves were predicted as being the most popular race for Alliance before WOW launched, and it turned out true.  Blood Elves were predicted as actually drawing player to Horde.. that also turned out true (and not just for Paladins) Hell, Blood Elves are the most popular race, surpassing even Undead now. 

This got me to thinking about WAR's upcoming realm balance issues.   You know they're going to be there, it's just what happens in hard-coded faction-splits.

WAR has Elves on both sides, thankfully, so that should split some of that segment around.  However, PvP-exclusive types tend to go for the "EVIL" image.  Lord knows why, it just happens - so I expect plenty of hardcore PVPers to be Chaos, Orc and Dark Elf types. Hell, that even happened in large part in WoW.   Playing "evil" is more "manly" than those lolfagortelvz.   Then you toss-in the whole "Devs are Pimping evil stuff hardcore" factor.   Yeah, they are, I noticed it even before someone said something here.   That can't be a good thing, any more than it was a good thing when all you saw was tons of Albion in DAOC or Alliance in WOW.

So what's that mean for WAR's realm balance?  I expect more folks on the "evil" side of things.  I expect the 'evil' content to be much more finished and polished than the others.  great if you want to PvE the game.  But if you want to PVP and avoid the queues, roll "good"  It's going to be a flip-flop from WOW and that'll give me chuckles.

[Calantus]

On the population balance thing, history has shown that you you need to work hard to make people play anything other than human/dwarf/elf. Maybe they've overshot a little, but I doubt it. tbh, I'd say human wizards and witchhunters have the most pizazz of the classes so far. Orcs look cool, but chaos looks 'meh', naughty elves only really have witch elves (which are female only, that'll drive some more people onto the dull team).

Look at WoW, it's also based on Warhammer, it also has a dull-but-facist realm facing off against naughty-but-facist. Yet people don't exactly go Horde in droves.

- Elves are on both sides.
- Pretty characters are on both sides.
- PVPers love to play evil characters (in WoW look at PVP vs PVE realm population numbers, and a lot of PVP realmers are PVEers on a PVP realm).
- Order is going to be outnumbered.

That's how I see it. If the PVP is instanced I'm so going order just because the outnumbered team gets better queues and better co-operation from their allies in an instanced PVP game.

[Amaron]

However, PvP-exclusive types tend to go for the "EVIL" image. 

I don't really agree with this.  People who have a lolzgank mentality tend to go for the EVIL stuff but the "pvp is a sport" crowd probably end up 50/50 or so.

Regardless of their prefs though most PvPers will ignore lore/style stuff and pick whatever they think is more powerful in PvP.  Since we are talking Mythic here it's pretty easy to expect balance will be so horrid that this will be the largest deciding factor for PvPers.

I don't think population is going to be that big an issue though.  The PvP areas are instanced and unlike WoW people will be PvPing instead of raiding (supposedly) so the queue's would be short no matter how imbalanced the population is.   

[HRose]

Perhaps it has already been said, but it is DAoC re-skinned as Warhammer.

Not that that is a horrible thing, because I highly enjoyed DAoC and RvR.

Just don't get your hopes up.

Did you see it in some form? Or was it just a gratuitous comment?

That said, are you tired to redo the same discussions over and over and over? ;)

[eldaec]

Also, eldaec, people didn't go to Horde in droves because the races were deemed "ugly as fuck."

This is a Mythic game.

*Everyone* is ugly as fuck.

But only Order get leather jackets.


Can we think of a MMOG where the naughty team outnumbered the sensible team?



Where I certainly agree is that there will be an imbalance.

It's not really an issue in a sport-pvp based organised-guild-only endgame though.

If the end game were open field RvR you would have to worry about it to some extent. From the little know we know, it would appear Mythic simply resorted to locking casuals out of the end game altogether. This solves the problem, in the same sense that you can solve third world hunger by simply nuking the poor people.

[Big Gulp]

Can we think of a MMOG where the naughty team outnumbered the sensible team?

EQ.

Never underestimate the love of dark elves.

[Hoax]

However, PvP-exclusive types tend to go for the "EVIL" image. 

I don't really agree with this.  People who have a lolzgank mentality tend to go for the EVIL stuff but the "pvp is a sport" crowd probably end up 50/50 or so.

I totally expect the order side to have a slight population edge and totally less skilled overall playerbase @ pvp.

[caladein]

Can we think of a MMOG where the naughty team outnumbered the sensible team?

WoW PvP servers have Horde outnumbering Alliance on the whole. All servers though are something like 1.4:1 A:H.