What went wrong.

[Mrbloodworth]

There's maybe a bug but it's not a simple reverse order thing.  I did 6 keeps last night, did slightly more damage each time and moved up the rankings before the dice roll each time to finally finish 3rd.

Don't forget the bonus for NOT getting loot the last time, i think its +100 each time you participate, and get no loot. Get no loot 5 times, and you automatically have 500 before contribution.

[Arthur_Parker]

Um, Six different keeps...

[Warskull]

There's maybe a bug but it's not a simple reverse order thing.  I did 6 keeps last night, did slightly more damage each time and moved up the rankings before the dice roll each time to finally finish 3rd.

Don't forget the bonus for NOT getting loot the last time, i think its +100 each time you participate, and get no loot. Get no loot 5 times, and you automatically have 500 before contribution.

That bonus doesn't actually occur with keep sieges.

[waffel]

More Mythic shit-ass programming exposed:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190135

Basically, your contribution for taking a keep is already determined as soon as you zone. Jawesome!

[Trippy]

Highly unlikely that's the case. Much more likely is the random roll when the objective is taken "overwhelms" whatever other calculations they are doing to determine the final ranking value. People don't understand statistics well enough to realize that with large enough populations highly unlikely events become likely. So even though it sounds highly unlikely that a single person would randomly roll well twice in a row, given enough people or enough opportunities it *will* happen.

To give a more practical example of how this works look at state lotteries. The odds that you or I will win the lottery *twice* is incredibly small. And yet every few years somebody will in fact win it twice. That's because a large enough population of people play it regularly that almost certainly *somebody* in that pool will win it twice within a given timeframe.

[waffel]

Did you check the screenshots that have been posted on that thread?

Same people, same warband, two different keeps in the same zone, same people on the top 10 contribution EXCEPT for the one guy that relogged. Didn't matter what either of the people 'did' during the keep takes, they their contribution was already determined.

It's broken and has nothing to do with what you do during a keep. I noticed it on about 6~ keep takes tonight. What I and a friend did didn't matter, it was always the same for every keep in the zone.

Christ, one keep I zoned in, ran to the keep, noticed both doors were down, made it to get on the keep lord ramp when the lord died and got +200 contribution. The next keep in the zone I did nothing again and got +200 again.

[Trippy]

Did you check the screenshots that have been posted on that thread?

Same people, same warband, two different keeps in the same zone, same people on the top 10 contribution EXCEPT for the one guy that relogged. Didn't matter what either of the people 'did' during the keep takes, they their contribution was already determined.

It's broken and has nothing to do with what you do during a keep. I noticed it on about 6~ keep takes tonight. What I and a friend did didn't matter, it was always the same for every keep in the zone.

Christ, one keep I zoned in, ran to the keep, noticed both doors were down, made it to get on the keep lord ramp when the lord died and got +200 contribution. The next keep in the zone I did nothing again and got +200 again.

Order wasn't exactly the same though. If all of them (not including the adds) were in the exact same order both times I might buy into the theory but even then that's not proof. Some of the ordering could be contribution related while others are strictly based on a really really good roll.

If they had, say, 3 people who did nothing that all placed 1,2,3 two or more times in a row then I would start to believe something other than a random roll for each capture (plus their contribution) was in effect.

[Fordel]

They are saying the ordering is adjusted by new players leaving or entering the zone. Would that account for the discrepancy?

[Trippy]

No cause Eiak, Zeta, Fluxx and Mesail and Arxtar are in different relative orders.

Just looking at the common list of players you get:

First reward table
1. Gomez
2. Setsu
3. Fingol
4. Eiak
5. Zetx
6. Masail
7. Fluxx
8. Arxtar

Second reward table
1. Gomez
2. Setsu
3. Fingol
4. Zetx
5. Fluxx
6. Eiak
7. Masail
8. Arxtar

The first 3 are actually in the same order both times but Gomez was the only one not doing anything at the second keep so Setsu and Fingol may have been 2nd and 3rd simply cause their non-random part of their contribution was the same relative ranking as the first keep and their random rolls (if they in fact are rolled each time) wasn't enough to switch that order.

If Setsu and Fingol also didn't do anything in the second keep, then I would be suspicious.

[Arthur_Parker]

Interesting Blizzard interview

TM: Going back to some of the other MMOs, when you guys are playing Warhammer Online or Age of Conan or whatever and you see a game mechanic you like, is there pressure to make a change to WoW that responds to it? Take, for example, the Warhammer Online Public Quests. That's a great idea because it allows people to throw in with a group without the obstacle of conversing and asking for an invite.

KAPLAN: I do look at some of the things you brought up; Warhammer as an example. I think there are some great ideas in that game and we'd be silly not to look at the things they did and see if we can improve on any of them. Obviously they were looking at WoW for inspiration and ideas.

TM: And wisely. Why not look at the elephant in the room.

KAPLAN: Of course. And Public Quests are a great idea. They're really the best example of directed gameplay. Ultimately I think that's what it's more about than anything else; that you go to an area and the game tells you what to do. I think there are things that could be smoothed out with the Public Quest system, but really I look at Public Quests as how can we in World of Warcraft give you a better directed play experience where people don't have to ask, "What am I supposed to be doing right now?" They can just see, "Oh, kill 100 orcs," or whatever.

TM: I played WoW for a long time but one of the things I didn't like about raiding was the repetition; the idea that in order to get the best loot you have to play through these dungeons over and over and over. It's almost like you're playing a slot machine and it takes three to four hours to pull the handle. Is that something that you've tried to fix? Making the raids smaller helped but for the next expansion is that something you've tried to get away from?

KAPLAN: I wouldn't say we're trying to get away from it because I don't think it's an inherently flawed system. I think the system often gets mistuned and it feels like an inherently flawed system. So what we've tried to do in Wrath of the Lich King... first there was the change made to the raid lowering the number of raiders to 10 and 25. So you feel like you can pick who you want to play with and just go rather than feeling pressure to fill a bunch of slots. In the 25 person raids we're dropping way more loot than we ever have before. There's actually more items because we want to see more people get those items.

TM: Have you implemented a system that can detect what classes are in the raid? That was always something that was frustrating in our raids. The big loot drop is for a mage and there're no mages in the raid.

KAPLAN: We actually do have systems in place where we know what classes are there but what I was going to finish on is that we're also doing the Badges of Justice from Burning Crusade, but now they're called Emblems of Valor and Emblems of Heroism depending on what tier you're doing. We have that system in Wrath of the Lich King from the get go. And I think what's nice about that is that even if you're in a raid and you get no loot the entire time, you're going to get enough of those badges that you're going to be able to buy something; maybe even at the end of the raid. We're also trying to do larger raid zones, so we went back to Naxxramas, which I think is 14 or 15 bosses in the dungeon. The odds, especially on a 10-person run where each boss is dropping two items and an Emblem of Heroism, of each person in the raid getting something are pretty good. There's a high likelihood that you're going to spend that night and get at least one item. We just tuned it to be a little bit more forgiving so people will see the items a lot more.

I checked my old WoW account, I thought I had played it for about six months, turns out it was ten.  Never thought I'd be tempted to play WoW again, but now after only 2 months in WAR, it's very weird that I'm actually considering it.

It's also strange that Blizzard can see potential for improvements in some of the best features of WAR, while Mythic is dicking about with class balance and new classes while trying to add even more grind.

[schild]

It's also strange that Blizzard can see potential for improvements in some of the best features of WAR

No it's not. We're a forum of unpaid amateurs and we see the potential for improvement.

The only people that don't are at Mythic, really. I'm sure every major (and maybe minor) game dev studio in the world is like "Wow, now that, that right there, that's a train wreck." I know of at least 3 or 4 that are in fact doing that.

[Trippy]

They probably do see things they could improve it's just they have more pressing things to fix first.

[Arthur_Parker]

They probably do see things they could improve it's just they have more pressing things to fix first.

I don't agree with whatever list they have of what's most important. 

Class balance for example, they intend nerfing melee classes & healers, when people are already showing signs of being reluctant to log in, nobody likes nerfs.  That's exactly what they did in AC2.

Scenarios, fixing the queuing system to make more than one pop at each tier should have been a top priority, while boosting the other scenarios to reward similar exp/realm points for time taken to play so people don't mind being forced out of the most rewarding ones.

Just minor shit that annoys me, ignore me I'm just venting.

Scenarios
Serpents Passage
Why do I have to jump off the boat?  We've been stuck on that island for weeks now, put a bloody ram down, how about spawning me facing the down ramp just so I don't have to turn around and then change direction to avoid that rope thing.
Grovod Caverns
Put a longer tunnel in and get rid of the spawn barrier, its annoying, clicking it sometimes does nothing.  While we are on the subject, which idiot decided it would be fun to put a trench under the spawn barrier?  Also what's up with those little steps you get stuck on all over the place?  Is having to jump over annoying 4 inch ledges meant to be fun?

Key binding
Is it really that difficult to group the key bindings into sections instead of one big ass list that you have to scroll through?
Get rid of the annoying "respawning" box on death, it means you can't change key bindings while waiting to respawn.

Quests
Why have I completed over 1000 quests?   I actually got an achievement unlock for it.  I've had to do about 40 of the chapters out of 66 just to level up, how many quests did you think I would need?  How about you up the exp value for quests so I'll actually consider rolling an alt.  Do you know it's depressing to arrive at a new area and see 10 new quest givers?  Also boring, I should have been able to level up purely in my own pairing.  Is it any surprise that people don't read quest text, 1000 quests, really, sometimes less is more, I think I read 4.

[Trippy]

They probably do see things they could improve it's just they have more pressing things to fix first.

I don't agree with whatever list they have of what's most important. 

From what I've seen they like to do the "easy" stuff first (stuff that can be done in a relatively short amount of time) and postpone the "hard" stuff (stuff that takes a comparatively long time) till later. Unfortunately their list of easy stuff is apparently so long they haven't gotten around to the hard stuff yet.

[dd0029]

So, I gave up and went back to WoW.  I was struck by how WoW just works.  No little annoying bugs.

Getting stuck on some piece of geography requires something really bizarre, like finding the narrow slot that lets me in behind some piece of terrain that is clearly supposed to be wall decoration instead of a fence you are walking by out in the middle of a plain and decide to try to jump over just because its a game and jumping fences is what you do. 

If I am in a party and I want to know where Bob is, I can click on him and get a mouse over of his location instead of a "Bob's too far away to be targeted" or I can open the map and see Bob's little blip anywhere on Azeroth or even another planet.  For that matter, I can tell what Bob is by his unit frame instead of having to guess what those tiny buff icons mean.

Getting things out of the mail are a couple of easy clicks without any waiting.  I can actually mouse anywhere over a buff on a player, enemy player or NPC and see what it does instead of hoping that my pointer found the sweet spot and my mouse did not move a fraction of a centimeter. 

I can target moving PCs and NPCs with a single click instead of clicking repeatedly and hoping. 

Starting the game is a 20-30 second process instead of 2-3 minutes.  Ending the game is nearly instantaneous, 5-10 seconds from "Exit Game" to desktop.  No pointless 20 seconds to logout process.

I believe one of the biggest problems Warhammer faced is the fact that so many little things just don't work or work right.

I did find myself missing three Warhammer mechanics that did just work.  Que anywhere for a scenario is really, really nice and it needs to be in WoW.  Short scenarios that have a guaranteed 15 minute time limit have really ruined me for hour plus Warsongs.  Complete aside, I do like the fact that no one really explodes in Warhammer.  I took my brand new, well geared Deathknight into a BG and no kidding, I routinely died in 5 seconds max if I got focused by two or more people.  The last thing I miss is the quest map.  That is really excellent and only let me down once or twice.

Edit - One additional thing they did right.  Lvl 11 in Scenarios.  For a very brief moment, everyone gets the opportunity to be a god on the battlefield.  No gearing necessary really, just be level 11 and you are an unstopable force in the T1 scenario.  And the thing is that everyone gets this brief experience.  Not just the hardcore or the dedicated, everyone.  There is really something to be said for that.  I think you can make a good argument that that brief experience carried many people for a longer time that makes any sense trying to recapture it.

[ffc]

Uninstalling it today - look at the addons I used just to make the game playable:

Mouse button targeting fix:  Select a target in PvP upon pressing down on the mouse button, not upon releasing the mouse button.  I will never understand how Mythic got this backwards.
LoyalPet:  To fix my stupid broken pet.
BuffThrottle:  Stops my computer from exploding due to Mythic's default buff updating method.
Join All Scenarios:  Join all scenarios with one button, instead of scrolling and joining them all individually.
Join Selected Scenarios:  After Mythic added a way to join all scenarios, I needed a way to skip Tor Anroc/Basin but join the rest with one button.  Crazy talk, I know.
WindowCleaner:  Removed the 9800 buffs under my health bar which would cover up my pet's health bar.  Hides the unhideable group buffs.  Makes pancakes.
AutoDismount:  Click on an ability to dismount.  You know, how things should work by default.
AutoLoot:  One-click auto looting at release.  Groundbreaking concept.  Also helps fix looting after random patches break it.
Preciousss:  Compare jewelry items all at once.  How is this not in the game.
*I think Squared should be on here, but non-healers can skip it although it is better than the default group/warband layout.

I will not repeat the problems this game has that everyone but Mythic seems to clearly understand.  Leaving a game with great potential is hard to do, but that decision is made easier when a company repeatedly ignores its problems and refuses to correct course.  I won't be back.

Now I shall take the $15 I had set aside for a second month and rescue the economy with it.

[khaine]

The most amusing current hope/blind faith/delusion I see on the various boards at this moment is

"Just wait till Xmas , lots are going to be getting it and the population will explode then"

Yes , I'm sure gamers from 10-60 have WAR on the top of their Xmas list and that the servers will magically fill up Dec 25th

[Grim]

Nothing to see.

[Arthur_Parker]

My EU guild.

http://www.wardb.com/guild.aspx?id=994

Stats on my guild.

http://utils.lmstudio.ru/GuildStatistics.aspx?id=994

Figures seem fairly accurate, result is 87% of the guild hasn't logged in during the past 7 days.

[Zzulo]

well I'm not entirely with you guys

I don't mind WAR at all. The only gripe I have with it is that the city sieges seem borked right now. Other then that, the reason I'm not playing much is because I have six (yes SIX) other PC games to play. All of them major titles and incredibly fun. And tomorrow, Left 4 Dead will release so I will get even less time to play WAR!

WAR isn't in a great position right now, but I enjoy it most out of all the fantasy MMO's on the market. Only EVE comes ahead as an MMO in my personal rankings. :)

I got bored of WoW as soon as I reached 70 in BC and haven't played it since. I found that at 70 all I did was to farm BG's (since I didn't have a raiding guild and also didn't enjoy raiding). I am doing similiar in WAR, but there are more scenarios to play and I get to vary it with keep sieges every other night. To me, WAR is a lot more fun than WoW, which is why I'm staying with it for at least another month.

But alas, a lot of quality games are stealiing my time

[Khaldun]

Playing WoW now just makes you realize how utterly utterly shit the PvE in WAR is, to the point that they really shouldn't have tried to have it at all. It's worse than if the world was just empty except for players and RvR-related NPCs.

I think WAR is a case where they had a clear idea of the market niche, a clear idea of the central design combat, and lacked the guts to pull various triggers along the way in the design so as to end up with a product that serviced what they had in mind. So what they got instead was a very sub-par version of WoW with a slightly more promising core idea for BGs at its heart--and then once they went live, they solidly screwed up whatever little promise they had in the single distinctive feature set in the game.

Now this is still better than Age of Conan, which turns out to have made a sub-par version of WoW whose only distinctive design ideas were tits, decapitation and slightly more entertaining implementation of combat. But the mistake is the same in both cases: to try and mimic the already successful all-in-one behemoth product. I'm hoping that's the lesson that people come away from here, and that the money, if there is any left, flows towards a dev team that's prepared to try a genuinely different product design of some kind.

[Riggswolfe]

I remember I went to this restaurant and the line was wrapped around the building three times, and I said to my date, this wait is totally unacceptable when I could walk into McDonald's and eat in five minutes, I bet this restaurant is doomed.

Just for clarification, I wasn't talking about the queues. They annoyed me but weren't the major issue. I'm talking about massive server downtimes, loot lag, and other major issues.

[tazelbain]

I could forgive WAR's many sins, but the totally asinine way victory point are distributed and zone control is handled.  That one really negates the central premise of the game.   It's on the the scale of SB.exe.  When I hit the cancel button, it was "This could have been pretty cool, but they totally fucked it up."

[Sheepherder]

Just for clarification, I wasn't talking about the queues. They annoyed me but weren't the major issue. I'm talking about massive server downtimes, loot lag, and other major issues.

Downtime, loot lag, and queues are all symptoms of the same problem.

[Riggswolfe]

Just for clarification, I wasn't talking about the queues. They annoyed me but weren't the major issue. I'm talking about massive server downtimes, loot lag, and other major issues.

Downtime, loot lag, and queues are all symptoms of the same problem.

The queues weren't a problem so much as a fix to "jesus they're about to kill our servers with overpopulation!" But yes, they were signs that Blizzard underestimated the number of people who would play.

[khaine]

Right now the #1 problem is population ,

Even if tomorrow they came out with the best patch ever , fixed combat issues to class issues to lag/server issues , what would that do to fix the fact there are 15-20x the number of servers there needs to be

I don't see how they ever fix this glaring problem without immediate server merges down to 1/10th of what they have now

I could put up with some of the bugs much better if I knew I was about to login to a high/high server every night with at least some people running around fighting for the hell of it

But a slow trickle of transfers (that have in some cases made the pop balance worse on some servers) isnt going to cut it

[tazelbain]

Right now the #1 problem is population ,

Even if tomorrow they came out with the best patch ever , fixed combat issues to class issues to lag/server issues , what would that do to fix the fact there are 15-20x the number of servers there needs to be

I don't see how they ever fix this glaring problem without immediate server merges down to 1/10th of what they have now

I could put up with some of the bugs much better if I knew I was about to login to a high/high server every night with at least some people running around fighting for the hell of it

But a slow trickle of transfers (that have in some cases made the pop balance worse on some servers) isnt going to cut it

It's really quite funny that Mythic would rather move population around than fix the game mechanics that require minimum a population to work.

[Nebu]

Perhaps Mythic thinks that Christmas will automagically fill their servers with new players?  A combination of this and avoidance of bad press from server mergers would be a strong motivation to maintain the status quo.  Server queues are the least of their worries right now... consolidation would be a good start in stopping the bleeding.  With as many negative threads being started on WHA (a known fanboi site), it's obvious they need to change something fast.

[khaine]

I'm curious what the meetings at EA about WAR are like , not the development ones but the financial and future outlook ones are

As in ,EA isn't  exactly known as the mmorpg experts or even have much experience in the area, so do MJ and the other Mythic folks have the ability to snow them into believe they are in the right track because they are  "the experts"

I imagine in a month when game card subs run out (they were all 60 days) and the ones who hung on one more month then cancelled are gone the mood might turn a big ugly

MJ said 250k would be a failure , and as of right now that's about what I would put it at in a couple months

[Arthur_Parker]

MJ said 250k would be a failure , 

You need to back that type of comment up with a link or a direct quote.

[khaine]

MJ said 250k would be a failure , 

You need to back that type of comment up with a link or a direct quote.

"With EA and the resources backing “Warhammer Online,” I asked Jacobs how one would measure a successful MMO in the age of “WoW” with its 11 million worldwide subscribers. “I would say we don’t have to get anywhere near that number to be considered successful,” he said. “Would I like us to be number one? Well, of course. Do we have to be number one to be successful? No. I want us to be no less than number two; that would make me very happy.” For the number two spot, Jacobs reasoned that “Warhammer” would need at least a half-million subscribers, which he guessed was close to what “Final Fantasy” and “EverQuest 2” have now. “Let’s just say north of half a million would mean we’re successful. Now how a far north? I wouldn’t mind being a little bit cold.”"

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/08/29/ea-mythic-activision-world-of-warcraft-estimate-is-overblown/

"2) Since WoW’s initial launch the market has seen a number of high priced properties crater spectacularly as well a number of MMORPG studios shut their doors. While back in the day, 100K monthly subs would have been seen as quite a success, if you are spending 50M or more on a game all in, 100K doesn’t quite cut it. Even 250K subs (30M gross + box sales for let’s say 10M in profit pre-tax), doesn’t look great to investors when you are spending 50M or more on a game and have continued high expenditures for updates, xpacks, etc. and lots of new competitors coming online."

http://onlinegamesareanichemarket.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/what-does-wars-success-or-failure-mean-for-the-mmorpg-market/

[Bismallah]

So he makes mention a lot of this coveted number two spot, is he even that high on the chart? What does Eve have, 200k?

[Shatter]

I was hesitant but have now purchased WOTLK and fired it up Sunday.  While I love Warhammer and I enjoy the PvP more then I do in WOW, the game is lacking in too many ways for me to dedicate to it full time which is what I would prefer to do.  Once you hit 40 there really isnt anything to do.  If there are no keep sieges happening then all you can do is repeat scenarios and those often pop slowly.  I leveled my DoK to 40 and now my WH is 32 and once I hit 40 on him I will probably go to about 90% playtime into WOW and just kinda keep tabs on my guild in Warhammer.  Ill hold onto Warhammer until January to see what fixes come over the next 6 weeks but they really need to get their sh*t together and fast.  The game is losing people fast if I look at my 2 guilds as reference of that.  my guild leader in one disappeared 3 weeks ago and my other guild has lost 5 people in the last week, most to WOTLK. 

[Arthur_Parker]

Yeah, I'd have loved him to have said 250k would be a failure, but he didn't, the closest he got was saying 250k "doesn’t look great to investors".

[Bismallah]

I don't know much about the gaming industry from a management perspective but if it "doesn't look great to investors" what would that really mean? Layoffs? Fewer expansions since they don't have people putting money into the game? Who's head would really roll?