Mythic-EA shuts down Warhammer beta, tells players to come back later

[Venkman]

Effort, in my opinion. Open PvP in UO is very different from levels-decide-all PvP in a DIKU. So WoW open-PvP servers would be very empty after the first three months. You'd have this core community that loves it, but a steadily declining number of targets to prey on, and then that many less people to group/raid with at the end. Without extra effort made by Blizzard, you'd find some seriously bad balance problems that wouldn't be worth their time addressing because of the percent of people playing on the server. So you'd have a constantly pissed-off core community or one devoid of anything but three classes, meaning an inability to access certain content.

In my opinion, it's sort of a lose-lose.

[BigBlack]

I know, WoW's rules aren't really suited to it, but at the same time that hasn't stopped DAoC, EQ, or EQ2 from setting up special servers.  If you don't spend much dev time on the full-PvP servers, as those games seem not to, it doesn't seem to be a lose-lose.

[Nebu]

Players love new servers with a fresh race to the endgame and a clean economy.  I think even small changes in the rules would be enough to populate a new server.  This worked well for DAoC at a time when subs were dropping off at a staggering rate.  The "Classic rules set" servers revived the game for many people for nearly an additional year.  Of course WoW doesn't need reviving, so there's not much reason to do this... yet.  Maybe someday.

[Venkman]

They only really love new/fresh until they realize the people who beat them to "dominating roles" (always perceived) on old servers beat them on the new ones too

I think DAoC or EQ1 doing special rules servers is different from WoW, mostly because of scale. WoW has a lot of work supporting the game in as many territories as they do and then in supporting their partners in other ones. SOE had only themselves and DAoC themselves and only one other partner, with a mere 200k-300k at peak. But aside from that, Blizzard doesn't have as much willingness as the earlier companies did to sacrifice playability, content completeness and bugs all to give some small percentage of players something new to talk about for a few months.

This is big business now, and unless they hired people to support special-rules variants, whatever they do for those types of servers takes away from the core game. And they cannot afford to rest on their laurels at this point. Their skyrocket growth faze is done. Everyone's now waiting to SirBruce the inevitable Press Release that announces something less than their highest reported number, or removes the number altogether in favor of "millions". You can see their conservatism in Wrath of the Lich King already, though I'm not complaining. Burning Crusade was sorta kitchen-sink for features.

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.

[Nebu]

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.

I agree with you completely.  They have no reason to make a new server type so why bother to invest the resources.

[Xanthippe]

Here's something I cannot figure out about WoW though.

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.

Seems like most of the work's already been done.

I bet people would play it.  I don't know how many, though.  I would.  Not constantly, but it would be nice to be able to have the choice.

[schild]

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.

[shiznitz]

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.

It's all about retention after a few years. It used to be all about retention after 1 year but WoW and EvE broke that rule.

[Rendakor]

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

[Ratman_tf]

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.

[geldonyetich2]

Blizzard could decide their game is free and run it for centuries and still be doing well.  The money hats they can build with their millions of subscribers defy mortal comprehension.

[slog]

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. 

[Vinadil]

They seem to be going the route of "get a friend to come back and get a free month" rather than the "let's build new rulesets for our servers" routine right now.  I guess it is working well enough.

[Ratman_tf]

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. 

Yeah. The crying orc peon when I cancelled my account last month was a dead giveaway. 

[Venkman]

Everyone's focused on retention. And other things. Blizzard right now seems focused on retaining so they can attract back with expansions. The pace they seem to want to do them feels like an annual re-attraction. And if they can keep it interesting and with good quality, they can prevent a lot of first-time MMOers from getting too invested in other games to never come back. Considering the slate of games coming, there's one, maybe two on the outside they have to really be worried about. The rest are older titles for veterans.

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.

Again, related to any sort of special-rules, what would be the point? So the same problems that compelled them to the various forms AV has taken re-emerge but please the 80 people worldwide that like it just that much? They couldn't just do AV-old. They'd need to adjust the Honor point payouts within, and the reward at the end. And they'd have to do a pass through AV-old to adjust it for the current post-raiding 70 crowd. And they'd need to create some method to key people to access it. And then they'd have to fix some of the bugs that went away when the redesigned it.

I'm not saying you're not thinking this through Xanthippe. But I do think a lot of people who say "just give us what we had" don't realize how many other systems have changed since the "had" existed. When the amount of work to deliver that is factored against the amount of work that could otherwise go towards retaining everyone anyway (including the 80 who'd like AV-old for a month or so), it just doesn't add up.

[eldaec]

November newsletter is out, nothing of note except in the Paul-talking-about-Sorcerors (dark elf nukers) bit.

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.

[Nebu]

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.

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. 

[Yoshimaru]

For those of you who were wondering...

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.

[Nebu]

This site is for critical thinkers rather than marketing whores.  This leaves me doubtful that we'll get any invitation to beta unless it's VERY late in the testing cycle.

[Merusk]

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.

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. 

I'd agree to that.

It's one thing to have a contingent or a few units in your massive miniature battle blow themselves up based on an unlucky roll.  When it's your only unit and you die to the whimsy of the RNG, you're going to be pissed.

[Morfiend]

Just got this in my mail box. I like the trophies idea, also being able to specialize is fantastic. If they do it well (like wow) then the amount of preceived classes really goes up.

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.

[tazelbain]

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.

[geldonyetich2]

That actually sounds pretty good.  I guess it goes to show that there's nothing like a dose of stark raving terror to get them to suddenly work really hard at innovating enough to establish some worth.

[Draegan]

Ive been in BETA for a long time now.  I can't wait to see what the reopening beta brings.  However I can't state anything else.

[Johny Cee]

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.

Depends how keeps are implemented,  and how tough it is to take/defend.

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!"

I'd love to see a PvP adapted Tabula Rasa approach,  where control points/keeps or NPCs aren't godly but provide a decent buffer for the solo or small group player.  Even throw in timed/scripted npc assaults balanced by server populations,  so small groups can piggy back on the npc activity.


Of course,  the dominance of premade groups of dedicated players over many times their number is another problem feeding into the fun of open field combat that goes back to the high level of skill and profession specialization in DAoC.

[Typhon]

I also think they need to do something about targeted fire.  I'm thinking of "formations", which should apply some benefits/penalities.  (I'm not saying that the group needs to stay in a certain formation, I'm suggesting something more like warrior stances for RvR groups)

For instance, the "Shield" formation could take each incoming attack on a single character in the formation and distribute a portion of that damage to the rest of the formation (maybe with a penalty to the damage).  It would have a penalty of reducing the damage output of everyone in the formation (by, say, 10%).

Another formation could be "Lance", where the lance leader (not necessarily the group leader) does 50% (or whatever) more damage, but he sparkles (making it clear which person is the lance leader).  The idea here is that you make the tank the lance leader so that enemy troops have to be more careful about which target they choose (i.e., "don't always go straight for the healer class, cause that tank will rip us up").

Another coud be "Quick March", where the formation movement speed is increased with a penality of reduce armor.

[eldaec]

Or collision detection and line of sight rules.

Which wouldn't result in developers having to pre-design each strategy and counter.

[eldaec]

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

Not in daoc they weren't.

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

[Nija]

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?

[cmlancas]

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?

Diablo is on another thread, if you'd like to discuss it. Personally, i think it is fucking stupid that general_mob_1 can dodge my huge burst of fire I produced while twenty yards away.

I don't think I'd be against the melee part though.

[Lt.Dan]

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

[AngryGumball]

can't we get a new thread with the reopening of beta. so avoid the splash of junk in this thread by now? let alone with outdated info?

[eldaec]

Rumour has it there is a button you can press on the thread index to do that.

But tbh, with so little new info, I've never felt it worthwhile. You'd get people saying how great it is that Mythic want to copy WoW in any thread, and there isn't anything that is out of date in this one. But if you want a new thread, go for your life.

[Simond]

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

If you hate WoW, why are you looking forward to WAR? 

[Nija]

My guess as to what the beta re-opening will look like:

They'll let in some new people who haven't played yet.

They'll only enable a handful of classes for testing in the Dark Elf area.

Since these new people don't know that every class is copied a couple times, they'll think the game is brilliant for 3-6 weeks.

Rest of the classes/races get enabled, a bunch of characters go stale, bad vibes start recirculating, after 3-6 weeks of "omg this game is good what were you guys talking about"