What went wrong.

[Slyfeind]

Bad Slyfeind, extending your impressions of a game based on the first few levels. Bad! You get the timeout Ard doesn't need to apply to himself

Ah yes, but I can already see where the deficiencies will be.

In support of "finding the fun," another way to look at it is, if there's a "trick" to finding the fun, then it's doing it wrong.

[Kirth]

Way, way too early for this thread.

I agree.  

[tommh]

Generally you want various activities in your game to have equivalent risk/reward ratios over time invested.  Since WAR has essentially eliminated the risk component it becomes a simple reward equation. As has been pointed out by many posters time spent in open RvR doesn't provide the sort of in game rewards other activities provide.

That being said, I agree far more with Ard then Checkers.  True, its better game design to make the RvR more rewarding, but you as a player have to take some responsibility to "find the fun" in this or any game. This is especially true of any activity that requires other players to cooperate or compete with you.  A good argument can and has been made that Mythic is not doing all they can to facilitate this process, but its always going to be harder to get to the good stuff in a PVP centric MMO then a PVE based one,  and still harder then any single player game.

Typical marketing blather aside ("War is Everywhere!") instant gratification and PVP mmos are never going to be synonymous

[Nevermore]

Way, way too early for this thread.

*Inserts Thane joke* 

[Checkers]

I don't feel that I should have to go out of my way to make the very thing happen that is supposed to be the central focus of the game.  For one thing, being new, I didn't even understand exactly how you would do that.  I'm a computational chemist.  Drug design is more intuitive than the RvR system in Warhammer.  There is almost nothing in the game that suggests to the player that they should do anything in particular, at all, other than the standard quest grind until eventually they notice that little orange button on the left of their minimap and click it.

[Righ]

Way, way too early for this thread.

Clue: OP has been religious about his pursuit of disdain for this game. It touched him in a bad place.

Response to OP: no difference from any other game - this is f13. We leave games and post the hate before we've even started most of the time. By this point in WoW's history, Bat Country was finished.

[Kamen]

Okay, maybe it is a bit early for this thread, but many of the gameplay design issues people are bitching about really should have been identified ages ago.

I mean really, the fact that the crafting design sucks should have been obvious before the first line of code was written.

[tazelbain]

Way, way too early for this thread.

I agree.  

Looking at my dwindling guild roster I got to say, this can't be Mythic's plan.

[khaine]

Possibly a minor thing to others , but to me everything about PVE screams boring and beyond bland

The blaring mechanic that shows this to me is zero social aggro , as in I can walk up to a packed humanoid camp of mobs , pick the named captain out , hit him and nothing is going to help him , even the 30 other guards standing around him/her

I prefer PvP/RvR but do like to dabble in PVE also , but once I figured out there was even less danger than usual (compared to other games) , it made me want to do PVE even less , thus further eliminating the chance of some random open field RvR going on

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'll let the three pages here and the many pages in other threads speak to the merit of this.

I'm not saying 'war is dead' but clearly things have gone and are going wrong. You cannot deny that people are jumping ship nor that many servers have the 'ghost town' effect.  If you want to argue against that then I feel you're simply not paying attention.  

I myself did want desperately to enjoy warhammer, I played in beta for the entire free trial and quite frankly once release hit and they nerfed exp I was hit with a ten ton truck of 'unfun' my own final straw was when I had finished all my level range quests for all three pairings on my chosen and then it was either grind mobs or grind tor anroc a few hundred times.  Neither option seemed fun in the least to me.

People say I'm negative and to be true, I am but I also like to think I'm also fairly good at seeing where things are headed. I could tell AoC had issues when I hit 50, not many believed my then and I 'know' warhammer has many as well.

edit:much like aoc i think people are so hungry for meaningful pvp they are just ignoring some glaring problems that would be unexcusable in other games. Good pvp can make up for a lot but I think even the pvp is starting to lose it's luster now that it no longer has that new game smell. As previous poster mentioned: crafting....how in hell should that get a pass? or pve...sorry but pve is half this damned game. in FACT all the pvp in warhammer is so you can...PVE raid kings and cities.

[Righ]

You're right. I'll stop having fun at once. WoW is the one true game.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You're right. I'll stop having fun at once. WoW is the one true game.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, I'm just saying you are in an ever dwindling minority.

[lamaros]

Paying my respects to the illeterate master of MMO prediction: Hail lakov_sanite!

 

[naum]

Wow, just as I was all set to start play.

Oh well.

Back to WoW for expansion time.

[Jimbo]

I get a lot the complaints people bring up about WAR

I personally think it is the incentives for ORVR that are most lacking


the one thing I don't get is "omg the leveling is soo slooow" 

Sorry, but the leveling is really really not slow. I have no idea where people get this from. My time /played to 35 is around 3-4 days. That is nothing in an MMO environment!

CoX (City of Heroes and City of Villians) has revamped leveling and made it, "If you wanna go nuts leveling you can do it in about 50 to 75 hours to make level 50."  WoW is just a blur now when I make a new character and level up like mad.  Both games have ways to help play with your friends and boost your leveling speed (or soon to have).  I haven't purchased this game for me and my son yet, and if I keep hearing the stories that leveling sucks, why the heck should we buy it?  72 to 96 hours to make it to level 35 doesn't sound that attractive, since you still have 5 more levels to go (how long will those levels take?).  Plus is it going to be a ghost town next month if we do decide to get the game?  Plus I hated EQ and DAoC for the grind.

[waylander]

When there are less than 5 "high" population servers out of 55 during prime time after the free month wore off, I'd say that people are voting with their wallets. Major changes are needed fast, or server clustering will need to happen within 6 months.

[Righ]

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, I'm just saying you are in an ever dwindling minority.

Next thing you know, I'll be listening to music that isn't sung by Pop Idol winners and runners up.

[Nebu]

When there are less than 5 "high" population servers out of 55 during prime time after the free month wore off, I'd say that people are voting with their wallets. Major changes are needed fast, or server clustering will need to happen within 6 months.

This is correct.  WAR has a ton of potential (just as AoC or worse, PotBS does/did).  If something immediate isn't tossed to the wolves to cull losses now, their losses to WoW will be even more extreme than expected when the expansion hits.  

[khaine]

I get a lot the complaints people bring up about WAR

I personally think it is the incentives for ORVR that are most lacking


the one thing I don't get is "omg the leveling is soo slooow" 

Sorry, but the leveling is really really not slow. I have no idea where people get this from. My time /played to 35 is around 3-4 days. That is nothing in an MMO environment!

CoX (City of Heroes and City of Villians) has revamped leveling and made it, "If you wanna go nuts leveling you can do it in about 50 to 75 hours to make level 50."  WoW is just a blur now when I make a new character and level up like mad.  Both games have ways to help play with your friends and boost your leveling speed (or soon to have).  I haven't purchased this game for me and my son yet, and if I keep hearing the stories that leveling sucks, why the heck should we buy it?  72 to 96 hours to make it to level 35 doesn't sound that attractive, since you still have 5 more levels to go (how long will those levels take?).  Plus is it going to be a ghost town next month if we do decide to get the game?  Plus I hated EQ and DAoC for the grind.

There's really not much of a grind in terms of total xps needed to level - comparing this to say EQ / Lineage 2 / and so on , its actually very fast

The problem is the by far and vastly efficient/quick way to level is by far the most boring (to me and my playstyle anyway)

You can play Tor Anroc in tier 3 and Serpent's Passage in Tier 4 (if you play Order on most servers) and get instant scenario pops every 15 minutes - they give more by far more money , more xps , more realm points than anything else , nothing comes even close

At tier 4 , I've gotten a level each night playing just a few hours , problem is it's mind numbingly boring

But I can't go do keep takes or open field RvR because , well everyone is standing around the scenario quest givers , and PVE is just as mind numbingly boring with less xps reward by far

So there really isn't much of an xps grind total wise , it's just that it's doing the mind numbing boring way is the quickest and takes the fun out of it

[HaemishM]

And what do you do if you there isn't anything going on?

Build a group, take some keeps, get the other side's attention, profit?

I'm obviously arguing from a newbie point of view without much experience with open RvR in this game, but if it's like DAoC and you want something to happen, then you make something happen. Organize a war party and start taking keeps and light up the map. It seems the system is in place and you're more than welcome to use it. Now if you want to argue that the rewards aren't up to snuff, that seems fair from what I've read. But complaining about nothing going on and then not doing something about it is silly.

It's hard to put something together across 3-6 warcamps when 90% of the PVPing player base is trying to level up via scenarios. That doesn't even go into the fact that not everyone has the ability to organize. Hell, I'd reckon less than 3% of the population has the ability to organize groups in an MMOG even halfway competently.

[Numtini]

What went wrong was a profound misinvestment of development and testing on PVE.

[slog]

And what do you do if you there isn't anything going on?

Build a group, take some keeps, get the other side's attention, profit?

I'm obviously arguing from a newbie point of view without much experience with open RvR in this game, but if it's like DAoC and you want something to happen, then you make something happen. Organize a war party and start taking keeps and light up the map. It seems the system is in place and you're more than welcome to use it. Now if you want to argue that the rewards aren't up to snuff, that seems fair from what I've read. But complaining about nothing going on and then not doing something about it is silly.

It's hard to put something together across 3-6 warcamps when 90% of the PVPing player base is trying to level up via scenarios. That doesn't even go into the fact that not everyone has the ability to organize. Hell, I'd reckon less than 3% of the population has the ability to organize groups in an MMOG even halfway competently.

The superior Chat system in WAR should mitigate this problem

[Nevermore]

There's really not much of a grind in terms of total xps needed to level - comparing this to say EQ / Lineage 2 / and so on , its actually very fast

Saying there's not much grind compared to Lineage II is like saying it's not really cold outside compared to the frozen reaches of Pluto.

[khaine]

There's really not much of a grind in terms of total xps needed to level - comparing this to say EQ / Lineage 2 / and so on , its actually very fast

Saying there's not much grind compared to Lineage II is like saying it's not really cold outside compared to the frozen reaches of Pluto.

Agreed , bad example , but still even compared to WoW pre -"bring a friend and level to 60 in a day" promotion , it's still possible to level very fast in WAR ,

It's just unfortunate you have to choose to do the most boring part of the game to do so

[Brogarn]

It's hard to put something together across 3-6 warcamps when 90% of the PVPing player base is trying to level up via scenarios. That doesn't even go into the fact that not everyone has the ability to organize. Hell, I'd reckon less than 3% of the population has the ability to organize groups in an MMOG even halfway competently.

Assuming your generalization of "3% of the population has the ability to organize groups" is correct, that's not exactly the game's fault. There's really no way to get past that without holding everyone's hands every step of the way which doesn't allow for freedom or in my opinion, fun. So I think blaming the game for that is unfair. In DAoC it took leaders to step up to get anything done and they did. It'll happen in WAR, too.

Putting something together across 3 - 6 warcamps can be an issue, but that seems to be where guilds and alliances step in. Join one if you're not in one and use those lines of communication to set up defense and attacks.

As far as people being in scenarios instead, I think if the rewards were where they need to be, they would leave the scenarios to participate. You just need something to give the realm a vested interest in defense or attack. And there doesn't seem to be one right now that I know of. But that's a tweak, not a redesign.

[HaemishM]

It's hard to put something together across 3-6 warcamps when 90% of the PVPing player base is trying to level up via scenarios. That doesn't even go into the fact that not everyone has the ability to organize. Hell, I'd reckon less than 3% of the population has the ability to organize groups in an MMOG even halfway competently.

Assuming your generalization of "3% of the population has the ability to organize groups" is correct, that's not exactly the game's fault. There's really no way to get past that without holding everyone's hands every step of the way which doesn't allow for freedom or in my opinion, fun. So I think blaming the game for that is unfair. In DAoC it took leaders to step up to get anything done and they did. It'll happen in WAR, too.

It is the game's fault if it doesn't give us good tools to mitigate the lack of organizational skills. Raiding in EQ1 is a perfect example. I managed to lead a lot of successful, multi-guild raids in spite of the fact that I had no tools with which to accomplish this: No voice chat, no raid chat channel (had to use /shout or /ooc), party size of 6, no way to know if my target was available or not, horrible travel times, serious level disparities in players, etc. etc. etc. I did it, but fuck's sake I wouldn't want to wish that on ANYONE. It almost broke me on MMOG's completely. Yet, the EQ design was centered around raiding almost exclusively after a certain level.

WAR provides some decent help to RVR - the open groups mechanic, markers on the map for PVP action, even the scenario queue. Why isn't there an RVR queue? Hit a button to register yourself for attack or defense (or both), you get notified when RVR gets kicked off (only when a character on your side is involved in PVP combat in an RVR lake), and you get the option to teleport to the warcamp nearest the action. If there is an open warband with the RVR flag up, you get put into it, or you have the option of starting one and advertising your intention in the RVR queue.

The scenario queuing system shows much of this can be done. Hell, if it takes instancing the RVR lakes, I'm all for that though that may be a case of the horse having left the barn already. But as it stands now, the oRVR system doesn't do nearly enough to draw people in while the scenario systems is offering free blowjobs door-to-door.

[Vinadil]

There's really not much of a grind in terms of total xps needed to level - comparing this to say EQ / Lineage 2 / and so on , its actually very fast

Saying there's not much grind compared to Lineage II is like saying it's not really cold outside compared to the frozen reaches of Pluto.

Agreed , bad example , but still even compared to WoW pre -"bring a friend and level to 60 in a day" promotion , it's still possible to level very fast in WAR ,

It's just unfortunate you have to choose to do the most boring part of the game to do so

Of course... if WoW is your major competition, then perhaps following their current level curve might be a good idea.  Seriously, the biggest thing they could fix is tripling XP in T2/3.  Let people fly through those levels and leave the zones thinking "Dang, I did not even get to see the other pairings... and now I am ready to move on.  Oh welll, maybe I will roll and alt to see that content later."  That was my experience in WoW even BEFORE they made levelling faster.  I did not have to do the whole "zone jump to find the next quests" thing just to keep finding content.

That said, my server is doing great, and looks to be doing great for some time to come.  We have a near perfect balance between Order/Destro and the RVR lakes are active almost every night across almost all of the tiers.  So... as long as Mythic can keep the lights on we will be having fun in WAR :).

[Venkman]

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, I'm just saying you are in an ever dwindling minority.

Next thing you know, I'll be listening to music that isn't sung by Pop Idol winners and runners up.

That'd be an appropriate riposte if this were SB or something even smaller like Endless Ages. However, this is a game intended to appeal to a similar market WoW is catering to, but is turning out to have missed the mark on a few areas critical to larger appeal. The last time this happened they up and redesigned the entire game three years in. But at least SWG had the virtue of being unique. WAR is a shade of WoW. If they can't get a wide enough appeal, it slows down the pace at which they can make the sort of changes needed to gain that appeal, and then to keep who they have.

The game can be fun. But they need to focus on the third leg and in a way that doesn't gimp the other two if they hope to retain a lot of interest. My own opinions of RvR aside, it is a great idea on paper and as positioned. It's just a PITA to partake in right now.

Assuming your generalization of "3% of the population has the ability to organize groups" is correct, that's not exactly the game's fault.

It is if you don't account for it. WAR doesn't have enough tools to let the 3% get groups together. That's fine of course because WoW didn't for a long time either. Except now it does, and that's just for a PvE game. For a PvP game where player funneling is the most important thing, you don't want to not have teleporting, meeting stones, better functioning chat, 'lock-like summoning, etc. There's fun to be had trying to find the enemy in a large-ish landscape, but only if you have enough people to do it on both sides after it not taking you so viscerally long to get there (on paper distances are always shorter in reality than they feel).

[RUiN 427]

Like others said, I feel it's too early to write WAR off, but I will share what helped me make my decision to end my subscription. Maybe it will give some usefull insight? bullets make it go quicker.

• tier 1, and 2 were fun from all aspects of the game at launch, not so much a month after

• tier 3 PVE sucked the fun out, nothing but kill quests

• since there were so many tier 3 scenarios I was left going to the one that was guaranteed to have people playing and would reward xp/renown regardless of win/loss

• personal outside influences like budget, time, and taking a break before wrath launch

• I can always come back when things have changed

The personal stuff has nothing to do with the game but might shed some light on circumstances for people leaving. The last one was a biggie, the game was no longer fun for me so  I will come back when it is.

[khaine]

I think one sign of danger is too abrupt of a shortening of playtime , as in every mmorpg has players going gangbusters at first and then slacking some after the newness wears off , but some are able to keep you playing lots while others suddenly lose interest far more

Example for me anyway
EQ/DAOC/Lineage2/WoW all had me still looking forward to playing/logging in far after the initial rush even

But games such as

EQ2 (at launch)/Vanguard/LotRO/and the most glaring for me - AoC , all had me suddenly not even looking forward to logging in much too soon which resulted in fairly early exits (and EQ2 was the only one I gave a second chance later on)

WAR is almost dead in between those two categories atm for me , and could teeter either way depending on how quickly they implement things

[Margalis]

That being said, I agree far more with Ard then Checkers.  True, its better game design to make the RvR more rewarding, but you as a player have to take some responsibility to "find the fun" in this or any game.

MMOs are first and foremost an optimization problem where you find the best strategy to maximize rewards. Like it or not players will predictably choose an activity they don't like over an activity they do like if the reward is better, because MMOs are geared far more towards optimizing than enjoying.

Asking players to find the fun is naive. If they were going to do that they'd choose a different genre. You can't blame the players for doing exactly what you should expect.

[Arthur_Parker]

People say I'm negative and to be true, I am but I also like to think I'm also fairly good at seeing where things are headed. I could tell AoC had issues when I hit 50, not many believed my then and I 'know' warhammer has many as well.

I could tell AoC had problems over a year before release, I know virtually nothing about it, I don't think I've seen a screenshot, I did see some guy on a horse kicking people off a cliff, that was funny.  As for WAR can you link me to a forum where people might discuss these "issues" that WAR has?

[Kirth]

  As for WAR can you link me to a forum where people might discuss these "issues" that WAR has?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14972.0

but watch out, the modz there are like dicks or someting, banned me after I posted my essay on WAR and how to fix it.

[tazelbain]

  As for WAR can you link me to a forum where people might discuss these "issues" that WAR has?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14972.0

but watch out, the modz there are like dicks or someting, banned me after I posted my essay on WAR and how to fix it.

It's so easy to join!

[wuzzman]

WAR never designed for reality, never expected for so few people to participate in open rvr. Wasn't expecting for their scenarios to get boring because their simple tool for grinding to 40 instead of a form of competition. If the player base was 1-2million, than WAR problems wouldn't be so obvious, but of course like any new mmo they never considered what their grindy game would be like without 1million foaming-in-the-mouth fanboys chugging the pathetic game along.