What went wrong.

[Nebu]

Fuck levels.

If you need a grind crutch then make capping out skill/ability wise impossible - Eve.

Levels will go away as soon as players stop creating a demand for games with them.  Seriously though, levels are really pretty meaningless in WAR just as they were in DAoC.  This is the case since everyone will be playing the majority of their gametime in the endgame.  Reknown are the true levels in WAR. 

[Seanzor]

A) Renown.
B) The levels are absolutely not meaningless, in that they are the thing most likely to prevent people from ever getting to the endgame.

[Righ]

If people could just level 1-40 on their pairings quests alone it wouldn't have been so bad but once you have to start doing chapter 10 orc,chaos,dark elf your quests per level triple and then you can see the giant hamster wheel around you.

As somebody who has done an unreasonable amount of PvE on one character for the story and 'complete the tome' reasons, I'm pretty sure that you can do 1-40 on your native pairing only - you just have to complete every PQ influence line as you do it as well as all the 'flagged PvE' scouting and collecting quests in the RvR areas. Nobody in their right mind (I'm prepared to concede that I'm doolally) would do that, especially when there's nobody else doing the PQs and it involves solo-killing stage one twice each time. Despite this unpleasant grind, I still felt it was less painful than killing furbolgs and undead in WoW. However, those were about 'rep' and not 'getting to a maxed-out character' so I understand why the WAR grind kicks more people in the goolies.

[Khaldun]

Well, whether it's gone wrong for other people or not, I'm about done with it in terms of personal fun, pretty much as I'm done with it in terms of looking at how the internal culture and social practices of the game have come together in the first month of live. I logged on last night, joined the queues, one scenario popped in two hours of waiting, and it was Tor Anroc. There was no open PvP happening, nobody in the very large guild I'm in felt like doing PQs. Everyone was just plugging away at PvE hoping that scenarios or RvR would start up, but nothing really did in the two hours I was on. That was two hours I could have been playing any number of other things, even WoW. Having nothing to do but WAR PvE is like getting stuck carving a bar of soap in your prison cell.

[Midama]

97% of all their servers being Medium Population during prime time should light a fire under someones ass over there to get things going.

This, basically. After thinking about it more, I've decided to go ahead and cancel until i see some patch notes. I feel like I've hardly played the game and I'm already bored and frustrated with it. Which is a little troubling, I think i have a high tolerance for MMO issues.
 Aside from the ghost town feeling, its class balance and lack of meaningful combat. It feels like button mashing. I also feel like i can't really enjoy my character because i see a mountain of re balancing and whatnot in the future, and i don't want to invest in a character that may be completely different in three months.  Sadly i don't have much faith they will do a great job, after seeing what they went live with. T4 pvp is repeatedly described as a race to see who's Magus or Eng can do their AE pull the enemy into a ball and kill them all first.

 I'll try and throw in some ideas instead of being completely negative. Get rid of the AE/enemy pull garbage. If anything, change it so they can toss their allies into combat from a distance. Knockbacks are out of control, stop it. At best, knockback should push characters back a few feet, not so far as to take them out of meaningful combat. Too many roots and snares as it is, people hate this. Give squishes other tools like blink, shields, invis, etc. With so many people favoring range, give melee a better means of closing the gap. I hate to keep stealing from WoW, but they did a good job. Charge, real stealth etc are a good thing in this kind of combat, imo.
 Make counters and strategy meaningfull.

[raydeen]

I think this pretty much sums up the experience most are having with the game. It seems really fun at first and then BAM!

[Righ]

I hate to keep stealing from WoW, but they did a good job. Charge, real stealth etc are a good thing in this kind of combat, imo.

Not with PvP they didn't. And stealth in any form is bad for class based PvP. Sure, everybody loves sneaking up on people while invisible and killing them when they pull a mob. Its not so much fun for the victim. Arms race. Before you know it, everybody wants to be a stealthing, flying, unrootable AoE'ing class and nobody will play anything else. Its bad enough that ranged DPS is grossly overpowered in this game and picks up the best reward rate for both XP and renown. Lets not encourage them to bring in other BAD ideas to 'fix' the game.

[Midama]

 Fair enough. Only reason i tossed stealth in was to give melee a chance to engage without getting blown up by all the waiting range classes. If they can come up with better, im all for it.

[Nebu]

Fair enough. Only reason i tossed stealth in was to give melee a chance to engage without getting blown up by all the waiting range classes. If they can come up with better, im all for it.

Resist gear, resist buffs, and healers do the trick.  That's why they have the large hp numbers. To survive the time needed to close distance.  They are the go between in no man's land.

[Ratman_tf]

Fuck levels.

If you need a grind crutch then make capping out skill/ability wise impossible - Eve.

Levels will go away as soon as players stop creating a demand for games with them.  Seriously though, levels are really pretty meaningless in WAR just as they were in DAoC.  This is the case since everyone will be playing the majority of their gametime in the endgame.  Reknown are the true levels in WAR. 

Tell that to all the grey guys I ganked in the Midgard frontier.

[Nebu]

Tell that to all the grey guys I ganked in the Midgard frontier.

Leveling in the frontier was a risk/reward thing. 

Besides, gray ganking is lame.  You kill the guy PL'ing them and leave the gray to die to mobs and take an xp death!

[Khornish]

14 line paragraph, double spaces after sentences, block of text.

[Lantyssa]

Its a bit of both. Insert form tirade about levels in multiplayer computer games here. If the developers are copying bad designs you can't really blame player behaviour when they are copy 'grinding' practices from other games. You could make the 1-n9 experience as wonderful as you liked, but people will still want to circumvent it because your decision to use levels set a certain expectation based on prior games.

Levels will go away as soon as players stop creating a demand for games with them.  Seriously though, levels are really pretty meaningless in WAR just as they were in DAoC.  This is the case since everyone will be playing the majority of their gametime in the endgame.  Reknown are the true levels in WAR. 

Levels will go away when there is a successful game without them.  There is a small horde of us here who think it's crap game design.  We have red names who think it's a crap design.  Who is going to fund it though, when the only 'successful' games have levels?

Unfortunately, they're not meaningless.  My Swordmaster is level 23.  I've done all the quests through Tier1 to Tier 2 and am about to move on to Saphery.  I'm being sent to areas where mobs are four and five levels above me, and I cannot even use the quest rewards.  Levels are acting as a barrier.  My only option is to grind, which I won't do.  (Unlike Righ, I'm not willing to solo kill five hundred mobs in first stage PQs to advance.  I am doing a ton of exploring to look for quest unlocks, but their xp is minimal.)

[Nevermore]

Levels will go away when there is a successful game without them.

You mean like, say, Ultima Online?  Or Eve Online?

[Nebu]

You forgot... WoW changed the meaning of "successful".

[Sjofn]

Tell that to all the grey guys I ganked in the Midgard frontier.

Leveling in the frontier was a risk/reward thing. 

Besides, gray ganking is lame.  You kill the guy PL'ing them and leave the gray to die to mobs and take an xp death!

You bastard!

[schild]

You forgot... WoW changed the meaning of "successful".

No it didn't. It changed the meaning of "what you need for people on the internet to really give a rat's ass."

[Nebu]

No it didn't. It changed the meaning of "what you need for people on the internet to really give a rat's ass."

I'm guessing that by "people on the internet" you mean "investors"?

[Righ]

No it didn't. It changed the meaning of "what you need for people on the internet to really give a rat's ass."

Are you suggesting that there are people who are not on the Internet?

[Lantyssa]

What we're willing to call successful and what is successful enough to get funding is vastly different.  Or the people with enough pull can't think outside the level paradigm.  There are a multitude of reasons, but the end result is UO and Eve are more or less niche now, and while they might provide some good lessons and examples, the right people don't care.

Was Jacobs talking about how they were going to be a solid game looking to do as well or better than EQ2, LotR, or CoX?  No, he was telling us how they would be competing with WoW and making them shiver in their boots.  We saw the same thing with AoC.  When a game company comes out and says, "We're looking to make a solid game which makes a decent profit, but don't care about competing with the big dogs.  WoW numbers would be fantastic, but 200k would make us happy," then I'll think there is some hope.

DING, baby, DING.  DIKU 4EVAR.

[Nebu]

Are you suggesting that there are people who are not on the Internet?

Yes.  One of them is running for president.

[Kageru]

I like levels. It's one of the simplest mechanics for showing your characters progression from fresh-faced recruit to heroic champion. It also acts as a tutorial by allowing a gradual growth in the complexity of the mechanics available to you. Through questing it allows you to explore regions of the gameworld and the lore / factions etc. And getting the ding / quest completion is just addictive in itself.

The trick is that the pacing has to be tied to the content and the goal of the game. There is no point in having a slow levelling scheme if you aren't growing the gameplay through new abilities and don't have new parts of the world to explore. Grind is when you are levelling through pure repetition rather than acceptably concealed repetition. In a PvP game, where the point of the game is competiting with other players, the level grind should be shorter so you can get to the meat of the game on an equal footing. From what I have been reading War does badly on all of these as endlessly repeating a scenario cannot offer new environments to explore and the growth in character flexibility is also somewhat limited.

Warcrafts level, abilities and wealth / itemization growth is extremely impressive. They have even gone back and filled some of the holes they had on release so that a new player is confronted with a 30% reduced climb and a lot more to do. That's one of the advantages of rolling around in money of course, but it also means they are still attracting and retaining new players when the game is old.

And ultima online definitely had levels. Compressing "warrior" and "mage" down to one skill didn't make raising that skill any less of a grind. Skill based games also have the issue where you have to do bizarre and counter-intuitive things to level less used skills. Whereas levels let you focus on exploring the world knowing your skills while grow in order to support what the class should be able to accomplish.

[SuperPopTart]

Why do I always miss things? 

[Trippy]

Why do I always miss things? 

You need to train HaemishM better

[SuperPopTart]

lol no he talks I just don't listen


P.S. - I see SOMEONE opened the floodgates and let (I missed a WHOLE WORD THERE) people in!

[ghost]

I'm assuming that many of you here were in the beta......

What happened?  From all accounts the beta was phenomenal.

[schild]

They set up the ideal environment for things to work and that environment never pointed out the problems with the fucking game. >_<

Theoretically, awesome.

20/20 Hindsight: Shit shit shit.

[Ashmodai]

They set up the ideal environment for things to work and that environment never pointed out the problems with the fucking game. >_<

Theoretically, awesome.

20/20 Hindsight: Shit shit shit.

Elaborate?  Some of the problems are just hard to miss.  How did all of the CC make it into the game?  "Uh we have this cool idea that someone should be able to suck every player within 65 ft to a single point!"  How does something like that get through beta as a good mechanic?  That's just one example of many, I can't think of many good things to say about WAR's endgame at all at this point, really.  Which is sad, because the concept is good and appeals to me.

[schild]

Most of the CC doesn't annoy me. Just that one ability does. I don't know how it made it to retail.

I don't know how half the shit made it to retail.

[Ashmodai]

I think this pretty much sums up the experience most are having with the game. It seems really fun at first and then BAM!

That sums it up for me too.  I've taken to rolling alot of alts - at least t1-t3 are at least moderately enjoyable, heck I even enjoy Tor Anroc, different classes are fun, and the grind isn't terrible up to 25 or so.  I guess the bright and shiny newness of the game was enough to distract for the first month or so but now that that veneer is wearing thin the problems come through and there's lots of them.

[ghost]

Well, sure they missed a lot of little things that are irritating, but to me the big picture is what is killing the game. 

They really missed something in the psychology of why people do things.

WOW clearly played on the "slot machine" psychology that gets gamblers.  WAR seemed to miss on the psychology of "ding, I leveled" and "hey, that is a 25 man zerg coming at me and I'm all alone............guess I'll do a scenario instead.

[BitWarrior]

Elaborate?  Some of the problems are just hard to miss.  How did all of the CC make it into the game?  "Uh we have this cool idea that someone should be able to suck every player within 65 ft to a single point!"  How does something like that get through beta as a good mechanic?  That's just one example of many, I can't think of many good things to say about WAR's endgame at all at this point, really.  Which is sad, because the concept is good and appeals to me.

Some (from speaking with my close friends whom have played the game) feel that what we were promised was a global war, and what we got were skirmishes. As it stands, the game doesn't do PvP any better than WoW's Battlegrounds.

[rk47]

There is actually something that could get Tanks and melee in close combat. Most of the time anyway.
Tanks hold the line and charge forward together. Attracting attention. This works very well since BW & Sorcs like to roast the tin cans. 50% disrupt and block rate should ensure them make it to the front. Heals on them to sustain their presence while the close combats flank. Ranged fire just keep pressure.

HOWEVER, sustained presence is impossible in the light of massive KB & Magnet pulls in this game as well as root. I was being ping-pong'ed left and right even tho I made it to their midst. Before I could twist my third Chosen Aura I was already flying. And I would be out of range of heals and die from 9 DOT. Playing guerilla warfare wouldn't work either with the way DOT work. Once they land, you're fucked till you're healed or hex removed. This needs to be changed to whenever a dot ticks, it has a gradual increase on disrupt chance. 2.5% increments per tick would ought to make it less bullshit for a fully dotted tank to just curl up and die in a corner waiting for heals after the BW does 3 keypress.

tldr version:
roots & knockbacks made it hard for tanks to do anything remotely useful except to spam the same thing blindly at other enemy grp. Please give tanks counters against knockback. I don't mind being stunned or disabled.
dots made it doubly hard for melee to survive an encounter as well. dots should come with a disrupt component per tick.

[Lantyssa]

tldr version:
roots & knockbacks made it hard for tanks to do anything remotely useful except to spam the same thing blindly at other enemy grp. Please give tanks counters against knockback. I don't mind being stunned or disabled.
dots made it doubly hard for melee to survive an encounter as well. dots should come with a disrupt component per tick.

I friggin' loathe being disabled.  Roots are really annoying, but I have Juggernaut.  I can handle the ping pong fairly well.  Dying in two seconds from eight people focusing fire makes me grumble, but I deal.  Being disabled makes me yell unpleasant things at my monitor at a volume which wakes the neighbors.

[rk47]

when you're 'disabled' you're stuck in that position till you get up in 2-3 second ready to pick a target
when you're 'knocked' you're flying in the air for 2-3 second, unable to do crap, target's range has changed and hence you're really clueless till you land. You need to visit Dragonwake T4 RvR map to understand what I mean. I had idiots running to the bridge to gank a swordmaster despite me telling them 'ITS A LONG WAY DOWN HE HAS AOE KNOCKBACK' Boom. 5 people just fell off the bridge. 

Now do you still prefer to be knocked than disabled?