WAR to be released...

[HRose]

At the end Warhammer's success depends on ONE thing:

- Whether they manage to keep the RvR as accessible and noob friendly as it is now, and keep elite groups far away.

DAoC was destroyed by specialized 8vs8 that became all Mythic's focus. All depends if the game will encourage again selective playing, or if it will remain an open, massive thing for *everyone* as it is now.

[Azaroth]

Kind of like how WoW is forcing everyone to have full top tier gear before competing, and placing additional hurdles on a system that already requires months and months of constant play to progress to a level resembling anything like competition?

E-Sports + MMOGrind = Two of the stupidest things in the world, combined.

[Rasix]

I'd like to have a cup of coffee with whomever designed the Dwarven/Greenskin area.  So I can toss scalding liquid straight into their eyes.

And why do I have to go to tier 2 keeps to buy gear I'm going to use in tier 1?   

[Trippy]

It builds character

[HRose]

It seems there are decent-gear NPC seller right in the RvR area camp. With some silver you can at least equip something.

[Modern Angel]

There are PvP vendors in the tier 1 warcamps. They sell weapons and armor. The kooky, crazy thing is that they are labeled weapons and armor.

[Rasix]

And they cap out at 4/4 gear.   

To be more specific. My ironbreaker felt balanced against most sub R10 people.  Most R10/R11 people were sporting their gear from tier2 keeps and were kicking my ass fairly routinely.  This seems like a mistake or bad design decision. 

[Venkman]

At the end Warhammer's success depends on ONE thing:

- Whether they manage to keep the RvR as accessible and noob friendly as it is now, and keep elite groups far away.

DAoC was destroyed by specialized 8vs8 that became all Mythic's focus. All depends if the game will encourage again selective playing, or if it will remain an open, massive thing for *everyone* as it is now.

If they want to break and keep a million subs though, they need to do a few more things, most of which fall under the "a better WoW" flag. Yours is definitely a part of it, but only for the very small minority of DAoC-at-its-peak playerbase.

- More casually-appropriate raiding, something that is modelled around RvR but which is PvE instead (event-based assaults, for example).
- Normal raiding.
- Easier travel. WoW wins for mass transit here hands down. WAR needs more of everything, from horses to devices to teleporting to the flight points they have now.
- Class variety. There really isn't all that much right now. You can't grind to the endgame and then radically adjust your class in a meaningful way.

That last bit, the grind, is the other part of my concern. This is corollary with player migration as it applies to playable PQs and RvR a few months after launch. I don't think there was a lot of testing done on just how long it takes to reach the top tier. There were a lot of phases, and at the end of each, there were wipes. Some phases we started at 1, and others we started with pre-rolled classes. But none of them in my experience lasted long enough to get a gauge on a) how long it takes to hit the cap; and, b) where the Hibernia/AoC-type content holes are.

Thankfully, XP from PvP can help get around some PVE content holes, but there's still the time factor to consider. This isn't important for launch, but it's huge for when players roll another class. And I agree with someone earlier who said this game is more alt-y than others. This I think is because of #4 also. You don't have a Fire/Frost Mage-type class differentiation here as far as I've experienced. So to actually play something different is to require an alt be grinded.

[eldaec]

People were bitching just last week that WAR had too much class variety.

Personally I think you are right, I'm unexcited by the small number of classes (in reality there are 10 classes and 2 races, anyone who tells you otherwise is a blaggard and a charlatan, pay them no heed); and by the restricted amount of individual choices within a class.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I have a LOT of gripes with warhammer but I'll start with what I think is the worst offense.

Zone specific scenarios.

All my problems seems to stem from the fact my wait times for scenarios are upwards of an hour.

1.the world rvr objectives are often empty or if you're playing solo as i do you better hope there's a group of your side out there, world rvr at lower level <20 seems a waste of time.

2.Class Imbalance: Now I'm not sure if 'overall' the classes are imbalanced but in scenarios I'm only seeing 'mostly' dark vs light elves and light seems to kick our asses 9/10 times. Since the classes aren't mirrored by race I'd assume this is a trend in other race scenario's.

3.Shitty-grindy PVE. Don't get me wrong, it's fun to an extent but while the gameworld is big it's taking me WAY too long to level on nothing but kill ten X, collect 20 Y bullshit quests. I WANT to pvp but since I can't I'm forced into really bad grinding.

I almost wonder if scenario's were nearly instant, people wouldn't bother with the pve grind at all....i know i wouldn't. Maybe they intentionally want to stick you on the treadmill?

A few more short opinions.

Tome of lore: Awesome, every mmo needs to copy, title/achievement system too.

PQ's: Awesome Idea, needs tweaking. Very frustrating when you're doing a normal quest and someone completes a phase of the pq only to have a horde of mobs spawn on top of you from nowhere. Also had some pq's bug out on me but that's nothing new. I would say the number of them could be cut down a bit, they're great if you have a group as I assume that's what they're for but again if solo it's a pain in the ass(at least right now) to find people in your area since everything is so spread out.

Graphics: Some things look awesome in concept, like the inevitable city but I don't like the actual rendering of things in the game. Like the dev team couldn't keep up with the art direction. Things all seem to have a washed out look I'm not liking.

Hmm, well I think that's it. In the end I don't think I'll get it come release and I may want to play it after wotlk is out for a bit but my biggest concern with that is the grind. Warhammer is just not a game I want to play 6 months after release because it seems designed from level one to be a lot more enjoyable with people at your level around. without that? it seems like it'd be even more painful.

[pxib]

2.Class Imbalance: Now I'm not sure if 'overall' the classes are imbalanced but in scenarios I'm only seeing 'mostly' dark vs light elves and light seems to kick our asses 9/10 times. Since the classes aren't mirrored by race I'd assume this is a trend in other race scenario's.

There may be class imbalance... this is Mythic, so I wouldn't be surprised... but remember that the underpopulated realm will always beat the overpopulated realm unless they can zerg. Period. It's got nothing to do with player skills and everything to do with quality PvP time and player distribution.

The underpopulated realm gets to play scenarios more often, has shorter queues, and can form relationships and trust with people they recognize.

If gear is based on PvE and has a STRONG effect on gameplay, then the overpopulated realm may eventually come close to par with their underpopulated brethren, but they'll still be screwed over in PUGs because only the well-geared will still be a minority percentage-wise, outnumbered by their inferior cohorts. They'll still have huge queues and won't get a lot of opportunities to practice... especially if they stick to pre-formed guild groups.

[Lakov_Sanite]

2.Class Imbalance: Now I'm not sure if 'overall' the classes are imbalanced but in scenarios I'm only seeing 'mostly' dark vs light elves and light seems to kick our asses 9/10 times. Since the classes aren't mirrored by race I'd assume this is a trend in other race scenario's.

There may be class imbalance... this is Mythic, so I wouldn't be surprised... but remember that the underpopulated realm will always beat the overpopulated realm unless they can zerg. Period. It's got nothing to do with player skills and everything to do with quality PvP time and player distribution.

The underpopulated realm gets to play scenarios more often, has shorter queues, and can form relationships and trust with people they recognize.

If gear is based on PvE and has a STRONG effect on gameplay, then the overpopulated realm may eventually come close to par with their underpopulated brethren, but they'll still be screwed over in PUGs because only the well-geared will still be a minority percentage-wise, outnumbered by their inferior cohorts. They'll still have huge queues and won't get a lot of opportunities to practice... especially if they stick to pre-formed guild groups.

Oh I'm talking about scenario's mostly, since I couldn't actually find much open world pvp in my 1-16 jaunt.  9/10 order will just stomp dest so badly that I'm left wondering why. I really think each 'side' may be balanced but when you make the scenario's zone specific they seem to be weighted heavily by one race or another and i don't think the racial pairs are balanced at all.

[pxib]

Oh I'm talking about scenario's mostly, since I couldn't actually find much open world pvp in my 1-16 jaunt.

That's precisely what I'm talking about. There isn't much world PvP because the underpopulated Odrer knows they'd get zerg'd if they hung out there... so they take the other option, scenarios, where they get to play more frequently and with a smaller, tighter group of the same players over and over again. They win because they've had time to learn how to win... and because they get to play with the same teams and execute the same strategies almost every time.

Overpopulated Chaos gets the worst of all worlds. World PvP, where their number advantage would be obvious, is totally dead... because it has no specific advantages for Chaos over the scenarios where numerical superiority actually hinders  Order. Witness similar problems in World of Warcraft.

Again, I'm not saying that the scenarios aren't unbalanced... I haven't played the game. I just see no reason to assume the problem is specific when it could be endemic.

[Koyasha]

Oh I'm talking about scenario's mostly, since I couldn't actually find much open world pvp in my 1-16 jaunt.  9/10 order will just stomp dest so badly that I'm left wondering why. I really think each 'side' may be balanced but when you make the scenario's zone specific they seem to be weighted heavily by one race or another and i don't think the racial pairs are balanced at all.

The elf scenario, at least, are very imbalanced.  Light elves have the full array of classes.  Tank, healer, ranged damage, melee damage.  While Dark Elves have no tank, inferior ranged damage (elf ranged damage can move while shooting, which is huge, sorceresses have to stand still) and a melee based healer.  The Witch Elves may be superior to the White Lions, but if they fix lion pathing issues they probably won't be.

Dwarves and Greenskins are a little more even, and so are Empire and Chaos (despite the lack of an Empire tank).

Putting a flight master in the newbie area so you can switch starting zones AT level 1 might help even this out some.  I've noticed when a few Greenskins or Chaos are in the Elf scenario, Destruction wins a lot more often because there's a better mix of classes.

[HRose]

I had some huge battles in the tier 1 open RvR zone (the usual standoffs). Both in dark elf and Chaos zone. But this only in the most populated zone and with about 2500 players logged in.

The problem is another: I could rack MUCH more xp and renown by doing a scenario than the open world RvR.

We've seen in WoW that both can't coexist. Either the devs decide to promote one or the other, and the players will later pick one of the two and forget about the other. Especially if the rewards from open RvR are SO MUCH slower.

[schild]

The rewards from RvR are not that much slower if the RvR zones are stacked well. They are in fact awesome for it.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The rewards from RvR are not that much slower if the RvR zones are stacked well. They are in fact awesome for it.

Open world will always be slower unless artificial constraints are put in. What you have to do is somehow make the rewards for open world that much greater, thus far I'm not sure what the rewards actually are besides a zone wide buff.

Personally I think they have just way to much useless in the game. Things are so spread out it make the world feel empty expect with billions of npc's. Hell I was level 14 and I had already killed over 1k elves alone, i know because i got an achievment for it. this isn't even counting the thousands of other foozles i've whacked. Just get me to the fun stuff, the pvp, instanced or not. Problem is everyone's just so spread out, sure the world is big and that's awesome but all that content is for levelling up which in a game like this you want to get done as soon as possible. They really could have cut the levelling world in half, added the other four cities and worked on end game rvr instead of having three seperate levelling experiences, a half dozen level based scenarios and rvr objectives that will be bypassed soon.

[kildorn]

Oh I'm talking about scenario's mostly, since I couldn't actually find much open world pvp in my 1-16 jaunt.  9/10 order will just stomp dest so badly that I'm left wondering why. I really think each 'side' may be balanced but when you make the scenario's zone specific they seem to be weighted heavily by one race or another and i don't think the racial pairs are balanced at all.

The elf scenario, at least, are very imbalanced.  Light elves have the full array of classes.  Tank, healer, ranged damage, melee damage.  While Dark Elves have no tank, inferior ranged damage (elf ranged damage can move while shooting, which is huge, sorceresses have to stand still) and a melee based healer.  The Witch Elves may be superior to the White Lions, but if they fix lion pathing issues they probably won't be.

Dwarves and Greenskins are a little more even, and so are Empire and Chaos (despite the lack of an Empire tank).

Putting a flight master in the newbie area so you can switch starting zones AT level 1 might help even this out some.  I've noticed when a few Greenskins or Chaos are in the Elf scenario, Destruction wins a lot more often because there's a better mix of classes.

This is the issue. More specific than the DPS, Dark Elves have a melee semi healer in their pairing, while high elves have a core healer. Also a tank.

I'd love cross pairing queues for scenarios. As is, everyone just runs to Empire vs Chaos to pvp, and pves in the others (the dwarf v greenskin lands have by far the easiest leveling, due to influence rewards almost always being nice new blue weapons as opposed to EvC's shoulderpad fetish)

Scenarios if they're popping fast are better XP than open RVR simply due to the flat bonus at the end of the scenario, balanced teams meaning more kills, and less "this player is worth less" spam you get in open world after an hour. Open PVP if you can find a battle line is fun and doesn't feel like grinding xp however.

[waylander]

In RvR we're back to the guard camping stuff that people didn't like in DAOC. This happened in both T1 and T2 RvR over the preview weekend, but to be fair it happened to both sides.  When this happens everyone sits there and tries to fire from range, and its just one big stand off that can go on and on and on...........

Honestly I don't know how to fix it other than giving people a way to spawn in different spots other than the normal rally points. I do know that it wasn't fun in DAOC, and its not fun in Warhammer.

The scenarios were pretty fun, but I didn't like not being able to que up a full war band. Having half your team as clueless PUG's who run around and lose the match for you is quite frustrating.

[tazelbain]

The scenarios were pretty fun, but I didn't like not being able to que up a full war band. Having half your team as clueless PUG's who run around and lose the match for you is quite frustrating.

That would destroy them as a casual PvP.  Warbands would be required.  As it is right now, PUG are have a big hill to climb when there is just one premade on the otherside.  Just vent alone gives you a massive advantage, anymore is just silly.

[Triforcer]

The scenarios were pretty fun, but I didn't like not being able to que up a full war band. Having half your team as clueless PUG's who run around and lose the match for you is quite frustrating.

That would destroy them as a casual PvP.  Warbands would be required.  As it is right now, PUG are have a big hill to climb when there is just one premade on the otherside.  Just vent alone gives you a massive advantage, anymore is just silly.

Seconded.  Letting guilds play pubs would absolutely destroy scenario PvP.  I don't mind warband queues, however, if they can only fight other warbands.  Otherwise, the guilds aren't interested in competitive pvp- they just want to farm the sheep. 

[Falwell]

The scenarios were pretty fun, but I didn't like not being able to que up a full war band. Having half your team as clueless PUG's who run around and lose the match for you is quite frustrating.

That would destroy them as a casual PvP.  Warbands would be required.  As it is right now, PUG are have a big hill to climb when there is just one premade on the otherside.  Just vent alone gives you a massive advantage, anymore is just silly.

Seconded.  Letting guilds play pubs would absolutely destroy scenario PvP.  I don't mind warband queues, however, if they can only fight other warbands.  Otherwise, the guilds aren't interested in competitive pvp- they just want to farm the sheep. 

Guilds get their goods in RvR. They can keep the scenarios to one group max queues as far as I'm concerned.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The scenarios were pretty fun, but I didn't like not being able to que up a full war band. Having half your team as clueless PUG's who run around and lose the match for you is quite frustrating.

That would destroy them as a casual PvP.  Warbands would be required.  As it is right now, PUG are have a big hill to climb when there is just one premade on the otherside.  Just vent alone gives you a massive advantage, anymore is just silly.

Seconded.  Letting guilds play pubs would absolutely destroy scenario PvP.  I don't mind warband queues, however, if they can only fight other warbands.  Otherwise, the guilds aren't interested in competitive pvp- they just want to farm the sheep. 

wow has an interesting system where premades are first matched with other premades if any are available but that said i don't think war should let you que as a group at all, that's what RvR is for. And for the love of god allow cross-chapter que-ing for scenario's this alone would make me buy the damned game, I'm just SO close to liking it but all thos little things make me think twice about it because more often than not I just got frustrated/bored and logged off to play wow for a bit last weekend.

[waylander]

I see and understand the points, and I don't have any serious heartburn over how Scenarios work now. I actually enjoy them, but it would be nice to allow organized groups to join a que to fight other organized groups.

The RVR is basically a slightly modified version of DAOC RVR, but certainly quite enjoyable and better than anything the other games have to offer right now.

[cevik]

As I've said before, my system for judging a company's confidence in its product is based on how early the NDA is lifted. I give the game one point for every week before launch that the NDA is lifted. A score of 1 or less means big trouble, 2-4 is okay but not great, 4-8 is good to great and anything higher than that is nirvana.

So, given the big NDA switcharo, and now that the CE beta servers are closed and only the Elder servers are open (I hope at least) and still under NDA, where does that put us on Mark's scale?

Should we add a new category for "pretends to lift the NDA at just under the 4 week mark"?

[Triforcer]

Don't be HRose.  You hate the game.  We get it. 

[cevik]

Don't be HRose.  You hate the game.  We get it. 

Don't be Falconeer. You love the game.  We get it.

[Draegan]

My Blog Post on WOW vs. WAR on a very basic level. 

I think it's very close where I think we'll see WAR dominate pvp and WOW dominate in pve on equal levels.  I also think Europe might end up having higher subs than North America.

[amiable]

Don't be HRose.  You hate the game.  We get it. 

Don't be Falconeer. You love the game.  We get it.

You know, the "slightly-alter what the person said before you in a way you think is very pithy, but really isn't" got old after the first dozen times you did it.  Just saying.

[cevik]

You know, the "slightly-alter what the person said before you in a way you think is very pithy, but really isn't" got old after the first dozen times you did it.  Just saying.

Yet you still bite every time.

[amiable]

You know, the "slightly-alter what the person said before you in a way you think is very pithy, but really isn't" got old after the first dozen times you did it.  Just saying.

Yet you still bite every time.

What can I say?  I'm a sucker for the classics.

[cevik]

My Blog Post on WOW vs. WAR on a very basic level. 

I think it's very close where I think we'll see WAR dominate pvp and WOW dominate in pve on equal levels.  I also think Europe might end up having higher subs than North America.

The overall feel I'm getting from people is that Warhammer makes up for it's lack of, well, everything by it's dominance in pvp.  The problems I have with that are:

1)  Balance.  There hasn't even been a token effort put into balance and EVERYONE knows that things are out of whack.  I played several scenarios over the weekend where the order side was 8 or 9 bright wizards.  There is no game balance at all at this point, nor has there been any apparent effort into balancing the game.  When player versus player is your bread and butter, balance should be a primary concern, not an afterthought.

2)  Scenario Queues.  I was facing scenario queues of 20-40 minutes, easily doing 2 PQs while I waited.  And this was during preview weekend,  arguably when the most people will be on trying stuff out.  I can't imagine how bad it's going to be 3 months after release.  The only hope is that there is so little to do at 40 that everyone is forced to do nothing but pvp, so that the queues get better.

3)  World PvP.  World PvP was a ghost town every time I ran by, again on preview weekend.  Some of the world pvp areas I went into (greenskins tier 1) I never once saw an opponent player.  Other times I went and found players, but they were all hiding behind guards and there was not a large enough destruction force to make it worth the effort to try to take the objective.

4)  Bugs.  CTDs suck when you are pvping.  I actually think that one of the major CTD issues is tied to winning a Scenario, because inevitably I would wait in queue for 40 minutes and finally get into a game that wasn't all bright wizards, and just before the scenario completed, I'd CTD.  Not to mention other little annoying things like at one point I couldn't queue for any scenario except gates of elkuund no matter where I went in the world, and that was it, it was gates from that point on on that character.  Unless there is something I'm missing I have *no idea* why that occurred (it happened immediately after I completed a quest for a different scenario).

5)  The people who are going to play this game are the very people who were telling us that those who PvP in mmogs are nothing but sociopaths two months ago.  Suddenly my ENTIRE game experience is going to be hinged on those very people logging in to fight me every night.  It just seems not very likely to last if the entire game is dependent on schild being bored enough at 40 to pvp all night every night so I can finally get some good regular pvp.  If the PvP side of things does end up dying, there is nothing left to do.

[Khaldun]

I'm also concerned with balance, both between classes and between factions. I was trying to think why the casters have seemed so powerful, and I think it's partly because of the limits to stealth, partly because of terrain design: there just isn't that much of a rock to their scissors at present. If there were more terrains that created very narrow bottlenecks, you could march some tanks through to the ranged damage dealers with a healing brigade behind them, with collision detection blocking the attempt by offensive melee to get to the healers. But a lot of early RvR takes place in big open spaces where you can't use tanks to control enemy movement. In WoW, if you have a big battery of unprotected casters, the rogues are going to get in among them and rip them up. Another way to handle this is to have a melee class that has a very substantial speed burst that can get to casters quickly. I haven't gone above 20, and I know people can't talk about the Elder servers, so maybe there's some change later on?

[IainC]

Not to mention other little annoying things like at one point I couldn't queue for any scenario except gates of elkuund no matter where I went in the world, and that was it, it was gates from that point on on that character.  Unless there is something I'm missing I have *no idea* why that occurred (it happened immediately after I completed a quest for a different scenario)

FYI, that wasn't a bug.

I have no idea about the problems you had with PvP density, all I can say about that is that there's never been an issue with it on EU beta servers. There has always been constant scenario and open RvR action going on for most of the time. Perhaps people were busy exploring the shiny or writing up career reviews for blogs instead of melting faces?

[cevik]

FYI, that wasn't a bug.

Thanks, I was truly perplexed as to why I couldn't get back into the good scenario and had to play my least favorite of them.  I thought you guys just got sick of my trolling and were punishing me.

Perhaps people were busy exploring the shiny or writing up career reviews for blogs instead of melting faces?

I'm sure that's what it was, but again that makes me wonder what it's going to be like in 3 months.