Newsletter; Nov 2008

[tolakram]

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Greetings, warriors of Order and Destruction!

By now you've no doubt seen the big news about our fast-approaching feature update, aptly named Heavy Metal. The event, the introduction of two new careers, and our first major patches will include a multitude of exciting improvements to Warhammer Online. Most notably, the addition of the Knight of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard will change the landscape of the battlefield. Now both armies have serious "heavy metal" on their sides.

While much of the attention of the past several weeks has been focused on the arrival of WAR's new careers, there's a lot more to look forward to in upcoming patches, and in this newsletter we’re glad to offer you a sneak peek of some of these other highly anticipated features. Many of these have been added because YOU asked for them, and we here at Mythic take player feedback very seriously. We’re able to give you this advance look only with the caveat that we are still working on these items, and we are not going to release any features until we are completely happy with them.

A hotly requested addition is slated for an upcoming patch: item linking! With this feature you can drag an item into your chat window and send a link to friends and guildmates. By clicking on the link, other players can view your item's stats and drool at the awesome power of your loot!

If you're an explorer and adventurer at heart, be on the lookout for new lairs that will be making their debut. If you're the terror of the battlefield and want to show off your accomplishments in the Realm war, you could have a statue of your likeness erected in the capital city to honor your achievements. Only the top RvR players will get them, so it's no small feat, but just think of the glory of having your statue be a landmark for all to gaze upon in wonderment!

More performance optimizations, scenario tweaks and improvements, immersive sound effects and animations, exciting new quests, and fun new Tome of Knowledge unlocks are all on deck for our upcoming versions. We are also including a multitude of bug fixes for minor but pesky issues.

We're excited about the upcoming launch of Heavy Metal, of two new careers, and of our first major patch and we hope you are too! We think these updates have something for everyone, whether you're a PvE adventurer, an RvR warrior, or both. We've only covered a few highlights here - there's even more to come, so keep an eye on the Warhammer Herald for more updates soon!

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Yep, that's all that's mentioned.  I've so been waiting for item linking ...   

[Arthur_Parker]

Statue grinding sounds neat.

[tazelbain]

>drool at the awesome power of your loot!
Totally lost touch with reality.

[Soln]

Statue grinding sounds neat.

too bad they probably won't let you choose the pose 

[Hindenburg]

Nice to see that they're buffing xp gains accross the board.

Has anyone here ever done a lair? They don't show up on the map, so you gotta check a wiki to find them, since, let's face it, almost no one will walk all over the world. Then there tends to be a trick to open the door to get to a named hero mob that MAY drop some, as usual, badly itemized loot.

The mechanism to open the door is broken for a few of those. The xp/time is shit. The rewards are bad.

Yeah, I'm sure glad they're adding more of those before even fixing the ones that are already in.
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Neenja edit

Hotfixes Today
General Changes and Bug Fixes

    * Based on player feedback, we have adjusted the way our End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) is presented. With this update, this window will only become visible in cases when we have made modifications to the contents of the EULA.
    * Additional improvements have been made to client performance and stability, particularly during periods of intense combat.

Hey, only took them over 2 months to fix the EULA. Go Mythic!
Will be kinda tricky to test the second change.

[Mrbloodworth]

I found a lair once, in the green skin zone, but i found no way in. The door didn't work.

[Shatter]

Glad to see no mention about how they will fix RvR.  Statues will probably be of players being bent over

[waffel]

we here at Mythic take player feedback very seriously.


hahahaha. No way. The SAME company that would lock and close all threads on the beta forums that contained feedback? The SAME company that banned anyone that said anything negative about the game?

hahaha. Oh man. Mythic is awesome.

And item linking? Seriously. Why? There is no player to player trading in this game other than the AH, no trade channel, nothing, and most items in the game are BoP anyway. What good is item linking other to show off your super sweet-ass items to people?

Tome unlocks are pointless, I can't even do a lot of them because I play on an Open RvR server and going to tier 1 or 2 = instant chicken. New quests? Whoop de do. Unless the reward is jewelry or a weapon, I'm not going to do them/care because I'm 40 and I obviously NEED to get the armor sets. And more Lairs? I did gunbad twice, and after 4 hours of wasted time with no loot at all I swore I would never, ever go back in that shithole again. Fuck lairs.

Bug fixes, performance tweaks, scenario tweaks are all good things. Statues... we'll see.

[Arthur_Parker]

Guy on vn, in response to a thread about the EA dude saying subs are going up.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank EA guy for giving me my own server to play on.

An amazing virtual world that I can run around on alone and quest, untarnished by other players.

[Nebu]

Wow... something said on VN just made me laugh.  Who knew?

[tazelbain]

One can only hope they are putting on happy face for their customers, but actually are in the process of taking serious steps to fix WAR.  But I doubt it.  I'd still be subed if I felt they actually understood that game is in trouble and the dire need to fix it.  Sadly, they are acting like the game is great and customers are picking them by not agreeing.  By their logic, they just need to add bells and whistles until customers realize their mistake.

[khaine]

Guy on vn, in response to a thread about the EA dude saying subs are going up.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank EA guy for giving me my own server to play on.

An amazing virtual world that I can run around on alone and quest, untarnished by other players.

Saw that one last night , made me chuckle also

With the Nov newsletter I'm wondering if they are .....

Genuinely so out of touch with reality they think things are going well enough where "item linking" is a nice enough plus to be happy about

or

They realize from looking at login times/% the ship is sinking and just have decided to put on a happy face until it's not possible any more to deny the ship has sunk

[Bismallah]

They more then likely made their initial investment back already, will they make huge profits? No. Do they really care at this point? Probably not. I bet EA wrote WAR off a month ago when they saw people leaving in droves so now its damage control to hold what little profit margin they can gain.

[Sophismata]

Nice to see that they're buffing xp gains accross the board.

Has anyone here ever done a lair? They don't show up on the map, so you gotta check a wiki to find them, since, let's face it, almost no one will walk all over the world. Then there tends to be a trick to open the door to get to a named hero mob that MAY drop some, as usual, badly itemized loot.

I spent an hour once getting a Warband together to go Lair hunting. This is hard, because you need players in a specific level range, in this case 9 - 11. Any higher and they will chicken, any lower and they won't have whatever skills / abilities they might need learnt yet.

But I did it, I got a group. We spent another 40 minutes trying to open one of the lairs, but it was buggy. We left, came back, tried a few different things, waited 10 minutes for CSR reply before leaving to try one of the other lairs.

The second, I had one party guard the entrance while the other split up and opened the lair. We did it, and got in. The lair boss inside was a banshee, who promptly one-shotted our tanks. Desperately held her off with roots while people were ressed, same result. She just did WAY too much damage for a Tier 1 boss. Remember, you cannot actually fight her after level 11.

We eventually won because she got herself stuck pathfinding in a circle. After... oh... 10min I think of pelting (got just under a dozen morale abilities off), she died. She gave a pittance in XP and dropped nothing.

Everyone split up and left in disgust. Never saw half of those players again. I was personally pretty pissed, I'd gone to a huge effort to get these done - PM's, organising people across all tiers and setting up warbands to clear the Nordland RvR zone so we could try to open that lair unmolested (banshee was Blighted Isle, which is always empty). I felt I'd let down everyone who ended up sticking with me, the whole thing was a massive disappointment.

(Eventually, the CSR got back to me with "working as intended").

[Hindenburg]

I *think* the banshee is in the Blighted Isles, gotta activate 3 runeswitches to open the door.
Did her with my lvl 9 SM. Got 3 shotted.
Along came a lvl 10 SM with chap 5 gear (yeah, he sorta twinked). He could tank her, but had a shit for brain and couldn't hold threat, so... fun times.
The fact that the damn thing has ungodly ammounts of hp also doesn't help. 6man party.

[ghost]

They more then likely made their initial investment back already, will they make huge profits? No. Do they really care at this point? Probably not. I bet EA wrote WAR off a month ago when they saw people leaving in droves so now its damage control to hold what little profit margin they can gain.

 


I read that they spent over $100 million on this project.  If so, they are nowhere near breaking even at this point. 

[waffel]

Not to mention GW is sitting back with a smile on their face asking for their cut, too. After all, it is their IP.

[Megrim]

They more then likely made their initial investment back already, will they make huge profits? No. Do they really care at this point? Probably not. I bet EA wrote WAR off a month ago when they saw people leaving in droves so now its damage control to hold what little profit margin they can gain.

 


I read that they spent over $100 million on this project.  If so, they are nowhere near breaking even at this point. 

That can't be right. I mean, i know that at this point it's kinda rhetorical asking this (since you know, hookers and blow), but there is not 100 million worth of content in this game. There just isn't and there is no reasonable explanation i can think of that would account for that much money being sunk into this failtrain.

Porsche upgrades and all that.

[ghost]

They more then likely made their initial investment back already, will they make huge profits? No. Do they really care at this point? Probably not. I bet EA wrote WAR off a month ago when they saw people leaving in droves so now its damage control to hold what little profit margin they can gain.

 


I read that they spent over $100 million on this project.  If so, they are nowhere near breaking even at this point. 

That can't be right. I mean, i know that at this point it's kinda rhetorical asking this (since you know, hookers and blow), but there is not 100 million worth of content in this game. There just isn't and there is no reasonable explanation i can think of that would account for that much money being sunk into this failtrain.

Porsche upgrades and all that.

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

Doesn't say exactly how much they spent on this boat anchor, but it is still a pretty interesting read.

[Takshaka]

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

Doesn't say exactly how much they spent on this boat anchor, but it is still a pretty interesting read.

According to Jacobs, another way to measure success is to look at the number of servers a game has added in a six-month period. “The corollary to that is if you’ve seen a game consolidate servers, you know it’s in deep, deep trouble — that’s not a healthy sign for an MMO,” he said, citing Sony’s January-released “Pirates of the Burning Sea” as a recent example. “It will be the same for ‘Warhammer.’ Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.”

Looks to me like MJ fortold the doom of WAR in the interview that he gave for that above link.  Not only are they not adding servers... the server moves could be considered consolidation.

[shiznitz]

Guy on vn, in response to a thread about the EA dude saying subs are going up.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank EA guy for giving me my own server to play on.

An amazing virtual world that I can run around on alone and quest, untarnished by other players.

Wow! They should raise prices for such exclusive service!