WAR - another newsletter - more RvR, less sport PvP

[HaemishM]

I see his angle, but I still think its getting worked up over some thing so minor. Its not worth the blood pressure increase the huge red text implied.

Big red text is fun. Also, not really that worked up over it, just think it's colossally stupid. Maybe eye-rolling worked up with a good FOR FUCK'S SAKE thrown in. You'd think the guys who skullfucked Black Snow Entertainment over RMT wouldn't put something like that in their new game. But I suppose it's now EA policy to start charging for shit that makes you better in game. See Battlefield: Bad Company allowing you to purchase weapons that cannot otherwise be obtained in the game.

[IainC]

Edit 2: Oh man, it includes a spot in the OPEN BETA. Which begs the question, are Europeans just daft? Do they go for stuff like that? The Gamestop email didn't even mention silliness like that, and Gamestop is pretty stupid.
http://war.onlinewelten.com/uploads/News/03_08/cover_3.jpg

There won't be an open beta in the usual sense where anyone who fancies downloading the client will be able to give it a razz. The 'open' refers to the fact that that particular phase of beta won't be under NDA. You'll still need an invite to take part.

Haemish: I guarantee that anyone who buys the CE specifically for the +XP item will be entirely missing the point. The CE is 7lbs of beautiful stuff and hardbound gorgeousness, 3 hours worth of marginally increased PvE experience is not the main event.

[Montague]

Edit 2: Oh man, it includes a spot in the OPEN BETA. Which begs the question, are Europeans just daft? Do they go for stuff like that? The Gamestop email didn't even mention silliness like that, and Gamestop is pretty stupid.
http://war.onlinewelten.com/uploads/News/03_08/cover_3.jpg

There won't be an open beta in the usual sense where anyone who fancies downloading the client will be able to give it a razz. The 'open' refers to the fact that that particular phase of beta won't be under NDA. You'll still need an invite to take part.

Haemish: I guarantee that anyone who buys the CE specifically for the +XP item will be entirely missing the point. The CE is 7lbs of beautiful stuff and hardbound gorgeousness, 3 hours worth of marginally increased PvE experience is not the main event.

SHILL!!!

hehe

Hey Iain tell them to get cracking on the KOTBS info, will ya? I need something concrete to bitch about.

[IainC]

SHILL!!!

I've avoided this thread like the plague for precisely that reason (plus some other very valid reasons). However I'm just back from the Paris event, I have a bad case of 'convention feet' and I'm recovering with tea from the flight from hell so my defences are low.

[Signe]

Preordered the CE for Righ but I'll just get the regular one if I decide to play.  I preordered the regular AoC, too.  Only one copy, though.  For a laugh. 

[Montague]

SHILL!!!

I've avoided this thread like the plague for precisely that reason (plus some other very valid reasons). However I'm just back from the Paris event, I have a bad case of 'convention feet' and I'm recovering with tea from the flight from hell so my defences are low.

Nah, that was in jest. If you start opening your posts with "Folks," then we'll start to worry.

[Aez]

Call me a purist but the way I see it :

Haemish: I guarantee that anyone who buys the CE specifically for the +XP item will be entirely missing the point. The CE is 7lbs of beautiful stuff and hardbound gorgeousness, 3 hours worth of marginally increased PvE experience is not the main event.

                                     JAY
                         Eww! You eat the cock?!?

                                     GUY
                         Yeah. If it'll get me a few hundred
                         miles across country. I'll take a
                         shot in the mouth.

                                     JAY
                         Yeah, but we ain't gay.

                                     GUY
                         Well, neither am I. But have you
                         seen the price of bus tickets lately?
                         Shit--I don't wanna cough up two
                         hundred bucks just to get to Chicago.

                                     JAY
                         Well, I don't wanna cough up some
                         dude's sperm!

                                     GUY
                         Don't be so suburban--this is the
                         new millennium. Gay, straight--it's
                         all the same now. There're no more
                         lines.

[Triforcer]

Interview (well, paraphrasing of an interview) about the delay with Mark Jacobs over at only-war.  http://www.only-war.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=59

Clever EA, having a guy with an actual soul front WAR 

[UnSub]

Interview (well, paraphrasing of an interview) about the delay with Mark Jacobs over at only-war.  http://www.only-war.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=59

Clever EA, having a guy with an actual soul front WAR 

You are confusing soul with "talks a good game".

For me (who is more interested in AoC, honestly), the issue is none of what was discussed in that interview so much as if the release dates are set in mud, why the hell does EA Mythic keep gold plating them and holding them up to the world? It's moving into joke territory at this point. "We'll release when it's ready polished" is a nice catch phrase, but it means little when it's used to deflect comment about yet another dropped release date. If EA Mythic aren't absolutely 100% certain about when WAR is going to be ready to launch, they need to shut up about release dates entirely. Saying that most MMOs take around 4 years to develop isn't a particularly good defence either - if that's the case, why keep announcing dates for WAR that try to shortcut that? Just say that WAR will definitely launch in 2010 and if it happens to be ready before then, great, make your big announcement.

The issue is managing player expectations. Continually indicating release dates that you then defer doesn't do a particular good job of that.

As for the interview, my eyes practically rolled out of my head at this bit:

Beyond all of the marketting, the interviews, the Press Releases and Press Events, beyond all of the podcasts and beyond even this article of this interview with the one and only Mark Jacobs...all anyone involved really wants is a great Warhammer MMORPG that does the IP justice, does the company justice, and does the genre justice.

Well, duh. Good luck in finding a game designer who wants his MMO to flop, to screw the IP, to destroy his company and to be the laughing stock of the industry. They may end up there (hi Brad McQuaid!) but they certainly don't intend for it to happen.

[rk47]

Call me a purist but the way I see it :

Haemish: I guarantee that anyone who buys the CE specifically for the +XP item will be entirely missing the point. The CE is 7lbs of beautiful stuff and hardbound gorgeousness, 3 hours worth of marginally increased PvE experience is not the main event.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YujSd3HhLvo

[Triforcer]

Interview (well, paraphrasing of an interview) about the delay with Mark Jacobs over at only-war.  http://www.only-war.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=59

Clever EA, having a guy with an actual soul front WAR 

You are confusing soul with "talks a good game".

For me (who is more interested in AoC, honestly), the issue is none of what was discussed in that interview so much as if the release dates are set in mud, why the hell does EA Mythic keep gold plating them and holding them up to the world? It's moving into joke territory at this point. "We'll release when it's ready polished" is a nice catch phrase, but it means little when it's used to deflect comment about yet another dropped release date. If EA Mythic aren't absolutely 100% certain about when WAR is going to be ready to launch, they need to shut up about release dates entirely. Saying that most MMOs take around 4 years to develop isn't a particularly good defence either - if that's the case, why keep announcing dates for WAR that try to shortcut that? Just say that WAR will definitely launch in 2010 and if it happens to be ready before then, great, make your big announcement.

The issue is managing player expectations. Continually indicating release dates that you then defer doesn't do a particular good job of that.

As for the interview, my eyes practically rolled out of my head at this bit:

Beyond all of the marketting, the interviews, the Press Releases and Press Events, beyond all of the podcasts and beyond even this article of this interview with the one and only Mark Jacobs...all anyone involved really wants is a great Warhammer MMORPG that does the IP justice, does the company justice, and does the genre justice.

Well, duh. Good luck in finding a game designer who wants his MMO to flop, to screw the IP, to destroy his company and to be the laughing stock of the industry. They may end up there (hi Brad McQuaid!) but they certainly don't intend for it to happen.

Well, people in this community far wiser than me (Lum, etc.) know this Mr. Jacobs and have said repeatedly that he's a pretty good guy.  That's good enough for me, even if I would laugh at the same words coming out of an_ea_suit_00.

[HRose]

Mark Jacobs, in interviews, is pure redundancy and demagogy.

You can't find anything he says that's informative in a decent way. Of course what he says isn't all that wrong. Because he carefully avoids to say something at all.

[Johny Cee]

I dont know how much time you guys spend on various mmog forums, or in game in the *shudder* general chat channels. But there is a lot of talk about "waiting for Warhammer".

At the time there was a whole lot of "waiting for Dark & Light".

And "waiting for Vanguard".

Mythic will surely do better than that. It remains to be seen how much better. 200-300k would severely disappoint EA.

The amount of penetration WAR has in non-dedicated MMO players market is much, much greater than anything since SWG or WoW.  The store I go to to play MtG occassionally,  they all know that WAR is in the works and might be interested in trying it.  These people aren't even aware that there was a Vanguard, TR, Dark & Light, EvE, etc. 

Conan has some buzz, too, but not nearly as much in the "generic dork" segment of the population.

[cmlancas]

I always enjoy a little bit of anecdotal evidence over "X game will suck because I feel like it will."

The rest of this has already been done; most of us played Fanguard.

[Morfiend]

Lots of info in these two long preview events done by IGN and Gamespy editors. It sounds really cool, but as always, needs to be done right.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/warhammer-online/862691p1.html

http://pc.ign.com/articles/862/862680p1.html

Good stuff.

[Triforcer]

Lots of info in these two long preview events done by IGN and Gamespy editors. It sounds really cool, but as always, needs to be done right.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/warhammer-online/862691p1.html

http://pc.ign.com/articles/862/862680p1.html

Good stuff.

I agree, but stuff like this

Each will also have a built-in mini-game. Dark Elf rams, for example, will use a golf-style swing-meter and players who use Orc catapults will need to input the proper velocity and angle against prevailing winds to have their rocks land in the proper place.

just screams feature creep.  I've ocassionally gotten a very mild "crack-fueled design doc version of Horizons" vibe from WAR, but here's hoping they keep the goals realistic. 

[Ratman_tf]

I agree, but stuff like this

Each will also have a built-in mini-game. Dark Elf rams, for example, will use a golf-style swing-meter and players who use Orc catapults will need to input the proper velocity and angle against prevailing winds to have their rocks land in the proper place.

just screams feature creep.  I've ocassionally gotten a very mild "crack-fueled design doc version of Horizons" vibe from WAR, but here's hoping they keep the goals realistic. 

Sounds like siege engines are boring enough that they have to tack mini-games on to try and make it more interesting.

Just to jerk a knee. I could be mistaken.

[Miasma]

The countering empire side write-up says that the devs are only thinking about doing that.

[tmp]

Sounds like siege engines are boring enough that they have to tack mini-games on to try and make it more interesting.

Just to jerk a knee. I could be mistaken.

Sounds quite sensible though. Just having a 'siege machine' foozle that sits there until long enough time passes for the system to decide it broke through wall or whatever... that's not really much fun in itself. If the operator of machine is given something to do to determine the performance instead, then if nothing else it gives extra field to show off for these players who want "skill" mean something, in addition to plain dice rolls.

[Ratman_tf]

Sounds like siege engines are boring enough that they have to tack mini-games on to try and make it more interesting.

Just to jerk a knee. I could be mistaken.

Sounds quite sensible though. Just having a 'siege machine' foozle that sits there until long enough time passes for the system to decide it broke through wall or whatever... that's not really much fun in itself. If the operator of machine is given something to do to determine the performance instead, then if nothing else it gives extra field to show off for these players who want "skill" mean something, in addition to plain dice rolls.

I'm reminded of those mini-games in platformers where you rapidly spam the "A" button to complete some task, like moving a log or whatever.

Hopefully, if they do this, they'll find a fun way to do it.

[tmp]

I'm reminded of those mini-games in platformers where you rapidly spam the "A" button to complete some task, like moving a log or whatever.

Hopefully, if they do this, they'll find a fun way to do it.

Well they mention golf game mechanics and the worms/scorched earth aiming system both of which are kind of fun. Remains to be seen of course...

[Triforcer]

http://www.only-war.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22206

A good sign, I suppose.  If they strick to the 60k NA/55k Europe limit, I'm betting they will sell them all out pretty quick.

[IainC]

http://www.only-war.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22206

A good sign, I suppose.  If they strick to the 60k NA/55k Europe limit, I'm betting they will sell them all out pretty quick.

It was also the number 1 selling item on Amazon.de about two hours after it was officially announced.

[eldaec]

I'm not sure massive early sales are such a great thing, at least in the EU region.

Based on the abject performance of GOA hosting DAoC, I don't see how they hope to deliver something an order of magnitude bigger.

[Baldrake]

I'm reminded of those mini-games in platformers where you rapidly spam the "A" button to complete some task, like moving a log or whatever.

Hopefully, if they do this, they'll find a fun way to do it.

Well they mention golf game mechanics and the worms/scorched earth aiming system both of which are kind of fun. Remains to be seen of course...

I was about to type something positive, about how introducing skill into this sort of task makes a lot of sense. I enjoyed hacking in Neocron, for example.

But then I remembered that as a casual player (all I ever have time for), I will never, ever have the opportunity to man a catapult.

Sigh.

[IainC]

I'm not sure massive early sales are such a great thing, at least in the EU region.

Based on the abject performance of GOA hosting DAoC, I don't see how they hope to deliver something an order of magnitude bigger.

We had the most successful EU based MMO operation ever with the sole exception of WoW. Our fantastic performance in Europe was a major factor in Mythic choosing to work with us again for WAR.

You can keep saying it was terrible if you like and you clearly will but repeating it at every opportunity won't make it true.

[tazelbain]

I'm not sure massive early sales are such a great thing, at least in the EU region.

Based on the abject performance of GOA hosting DAoC, I don't see how they hope to deliver something an order of magnitude bigger.

We had the most successful EU based MMO operation ever with the sole exception of WoW. Our fantastic performance in Europe was a major factor in Mythic choosing to work with us again for WAR.

You can keep saying it was terrible if you like and you clearly will but repeating it at every opportunity won't make it true.

DAoC NA never had the service complaints that DAoC EU,  that's as apples to apples comparison as you can get.
Since you guys are in denial about how crappy the service for GOA was, it doesn't leave much hope for WAR EU to be better. 

[eldaec]

I'm not sure massive early sales are such a great thing, at least in the EU region.

Based on the abject performance of GOA hosting DAoC, I don't see how they hope to deliver something an order of magnitude bigger.

We had the most successful EU based MMO operation ever with the sole exception of WoW. Our fantastic performance in Europe was a major factor in Mythic choosing to work with us again for WAR.

You can keep saying it was terrible if you like and you clearly will but repeating it at every opportunity won't make it true.

In terms of sales numbers that may or may not be true. I don't care and it isn't what I meant.

In terms of patches running three to five months late, the inability of GOAs network architecture to support more than 40 players in one place, the inability of GOA to provide *any* ingame support (seriously, get stuck in the geometry, you had quit out and send a fucking email), the inability of GOA to prevent people stealing their admin passwords and spawning npcs in emain (ok, not often), the inability of GOA to provide a web prescence that wasn't an unusable piece of flash-only crap, the inability of GOA to provide the promised community XML output something like 70% of the time (somehow was never a problem for Mythic), and the inability of GOA to provide players with simple security tools like the ability to change your fricking password (until the day GOA decided that they had to arbitarily change everyone's password, because, err, totally secure, honest, we're just doing this for shits and giggles).... in terms of all of that, and the 101 other things I'm sure I could think of given time... GOAs involvement is not something anyone who played DAoC is glad about. Sorry. But that is how it is.

I know the above is nothing you personally were involved in because I appreciate that you clearly weren't with GOA at the time. You know how I know that? You can speak English.

[IainC]

DAoC NA never had the service complaints that DAoC EU,  that's as apples to apples comparison as you can get.
Since you guys are in denial about how crappy the service for GOA was, it doesn't leave much hope for WAR EU to be better. 

We aren't in denial. If we were running another MMO we would do it differently to how we did DAoC - and in fact we are running WAR differently to how we ran DAoC. Regardless of all of that however we did have a massive success with DAoC and we continue to have better retention numbers than many other operators even today.

Most of the issues with DAoC revolved around the limitations that we were forced to work within - contractual ones, legal ones and technical ones mostly. For WAR, we don't have any of those limitations - we have a stronger agreement with EA Mythic, we have moved our offices to a foreign country to be able to provide the service that we couldn't offer for DAoC due to the labour restrictions in place in France.


Eldaec:
Sadly most of that still isn't true. Here's the thing, back in the day I was the CS manager for the English DAoC servers. I joined Goa in early 2004 and took over as the lead GM in 2005. We sorted nearly every single support request within an hour. If it needed further investigation it would be done within a max of 24 hours. We had GMs on servers, you could PM them if you had an emergency and they would help you live in game within minutes. I know because I was one of those GMs. When I used to see reports of our bad service on forums I'd follow it up because if my team weren't doing their jobs then I wanted to know about it. Almost every single case turned out not be valid - either it had been embellished and inflated well beyond the actual truth or it was simply invented completely. In all my years on DAoC Europe I only found a half dozen or so cases where someone really had slipped through the cracks.

The patch delays, different ingame support modes etc were entirely down to the limitations of our licence and as such we had to work with what we had. The rest is frankly bollocks. Someone got hold of an admin password because one of our (now ex) staff members was careless and broke some of our security rules. We changed all the passwords because it wasn't initially clear what had happened and our first priority was to make sure that player accounts were secure. You can try and turn that into a negative against us if you like but frankly I don't see how we did wrong there. That happened once so when you say 'ok not often' you mean it happened precisely once and we locked everything the fuck down as a result to keep everything secure.

Our servers were always stronger than most MMO operators and we had industry leading server uptime, even if you discount the scheduled downtime that some operators use, our servers are still up more often and for longer than almost anyone elses.

This isn't 7 years ago anymore. We and EA Mythic have both learned a lot about working in partnership on an MMO. All of that experience and the (sometimes painful) lessons that we learned are going into WAR from the very minute the ink was dry on the contract.

[HRose]

we continue to have better retention numbers than many other operators even today.

If you can say that, then you can say everything.

You can't lose more subscribers than what DAoC lost. It's either that, or service being shut down. You have an average of 3k players logged in.

If you say that DAoC did slightly marginally better than US, ok. True. But it's again not your merit.

we have moved our offices to a foreign country to be able to provide the service that we couldn't offer for DAoC due to the labour restrictions in place in France.

Outsourcing for the win. I'm sure players will be pleased to hear this. "Labor restrictions" maybe meaning people had to be treated as people instead of beasts? Did you hire korean farmers to do online support?

[IainC]

Outsourcing for the win. I'm sure players will be pleased to hear this. "Labor restrictions" maybe meaning people had to be treated as people instead of beasts? Did you hire korean farmers to do online support?

I didn't say outsourcing. I said we moved. We bought an office and moved a lot of personnel to a foreign country so that we could do WAR. It's all still inhouse, many of us sold our houses and relocated to Ireland just so that we could do WAR properly. I think that players should be very reassured by that sort of thing, if that doesn't show our dedication to the game then I don't know what does.

Also you're very clearly not understanding what I mean when I talk about labour restrictions. In France, because of the rather strong employee protection laws, it's practically impossible to have people working overnight and at weekends. We moved to Ireland where wages are higher than in France to get around that. Less of the ignorant assumptions please.

[NiX]

Iain beat me to the reply. You seriously need to work on that reading comprehension. You've been here long enough and slapped around by a good number of people to learn that flailing wildly like an epileptic mongoose doesn't make your point valid.

[Rondaror]

Having an intermediate between you and Mythic gave you the feeling of being a second class players, compared to NA players. How could a european player discuss about a new class balance mess patch, if you are always a patch behind? Sure it's not GOA's fault for the delay of patches, but the feeling was there.

On the other side I can remember of a highly active GM on our German server. He even organised events and once we even (as Midgard) could raid the Albion and Hibernian epic raid dungeon (Caer Sidi and ....hmm forgot the name of the other).

[eldaec]

I'm not really sure what Hrose is getting at. But this is often the way in any thread about daoc.


Iain, well, I hope you are right.

Personally I think your retention on EU daoc says more about the quality of daoc itself, and how well it matches what the EU MMOG players go for, than it says about goa customer satisfaction. Even if we won't agree how good EU daoc CS and server performance actually was, I've never played a MMOG from Europe before where there was such a strong (or any) perception of EU players getting a 2nd class service the way there was across daoc. Obviously, I don't believe it was all our imagination. It is interesting you refer to contractual problems limiting you, since at the time the mantra was 'GOA have contractual access to all the tools Mythic do - so things will improve any day now'. I can appreciate that contractual access and practical access are not the same, but players will wonder, if GOA and Mythic couldn't figure out practical and contractual access to tools last time, why should I have any faith this time. Yes, we've heard how people are working together, and trying hard; but I'm pretty sure people were trying hard last time.

Anyway props for responding.


Both DAoC and especially WAR should be a much bigger success in Europe than in the US, because the game design (and in the case of WAR, the IP as well) is perfect for the European market.

[eldaec]

Sure it's not GOA's fault for the delay of patches, but the feeling was there.

I have no idea whose fault it was, and don't care.

Whether it was Mythic not being able to work with GOA, or GOA not being able to work with Mythic, the end result is the same. And you can't remove Mythic since they design the game.


However, it was pointed out a few times that the non-GOA, non-Mythic implementations of DAoC didn't seem to have the same extreme patch delay problem...

highly active GM on our German server.

And to be fair, the French and German live event GMs were highly thought of on all the community forums.

Unfortunately the English server GM couldn't speak English well at all. Which spoiled the effect somewhat. 'Events' would consist of NPCs speaking gibberish, and people would just randomly click on the [gibberish in brackets] in the hope of spawning the next bout of randomness. It was funny the first time.