Patch 1.0.6 - Highlights and more

[ghost]

Even without the bugs the toon movement is sooooo painfully slow.  It takes forever to turn and move in this game.   I feel like I'm riding a bantha in starwars..........

[Lakov_Sanite]

My point was and I believe Merusk was mirroring is that competing with wow is NOT pointless. It can be done and it can be done effectively but what it requires is mmo companies to evolve and grow, it requires professionalism and growing up. Mythic made an 8 year old game with warhammer, following the same design philosophies as eq/daoc/aoc and all the like and now they are reaping the rewards for that philosophy whish is, ten year old subscriber numbers.

You don't NEED to make a niche game, large companies could get millions of subscribers but they have all psyched themselves into thinking otherwise. So instead they try to latch onto niche markets while making very bland and derivative games. For instance aoc and war promising to be pvp centric and turning out to be all about the pve raids and purple loots.

It's not we the gamers who fear change, we welcome change with open wallets, it's the gaming companies themselves who fear it.

[Ingmar]

I wonder what would have happened if Mythic never sucked the EA cock and got bought out. Mythic announced in May of 05 that they were starting work on a new MMO with the Warhammer IP, and they were bought out by EA in June of 06.

No doubt EA pushed the game to release early. I just have to wonder what would have happened with Warhammer Online if Mythic wasn't pressured by the EA cockswingers and the money EA threw at the projects. Would they have focused more on RvR, realizing competing with WoW was pointless? Were they pushed by the greed of EA to PvEize the shit out of their game as to pull WoW subs?

Because sometimes I wonder if there isn't two warring sides in the Mythic offices. One side working on RvR and making it fun/enjoyable/the point and another side that thinks up bullshit armor sets, scenario grinds, and T3-T4 leveling.

Under this scenario, that just means MJ has *more* pull with what happens. *thumbs up*

[Arthur_Parker]

Didn't Mark say the EA buyout allowed them to delay the game and throw more money at it?  From the EA quarterly report it sure looks like EA forced WAR out the door in the end, but the original release date, before the EA buyout, was a full year earlier.  Anyway, Mark wanted to make a PVE game of Romans in space, at this point I think any hopes of WAR actually turning into a game about WAR in the next couple of months are fairly remote.  I also think its going to get worse before it gets better, assuming EA doesn't wind funding down to just let it die. 

I imagine it's pretty tough for a company to recover their focus after aiming for over x number of subscribers and failing far short, they could maybe learn from Turbine who seem to have recovered somewhat with LOTRO now, Turbine said they were shooting for 1 million subs before release.

[Morfiend]

Didn't Mark say the EA buyout allowed them to delay the game and throw more money at it?  Frothey could maybe learn from Turbine who seem to have recovered somewhat with LOTRO now, Turbine said they were shooting for 1 million subs before release.

I agree they could learn from Turbine. At this point, I think thats the best they can hope for. Find that niche and shoot straight for it. It still seems WAR is trying to be to many things and failing at all of them. As I have said many times, WAR needs to focus on RVR and getting people to RVR and stop it with the stupid PVE and Scenario grind.

[waffel]

EA is all about releasing new games, not fixing their current ones.

Maddens every year with updated rosters? The battlefield series? ect. ect.

I really wouldn't be surprised if EA pushes Mythic to release an x-pac sometime before Q3 of next year. Or they just say fuck it, cut funding, and let warhammer coast into the sunset.

[Arthur_Parker]

MMOZine Issue 8

Issue 8 of MMOZine is out now for download and for the growing legions of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning fans we have a special, exclusive treat. Every reader can get an in-game item, exclusively in this issue (it's an EU only item you muppets). The Vanquisher's Band allows you to cast Touch of Nature, improves stats and damage, and you can only get it inside this issue of MMOZine.

We’ve bagged an exclusive interview with WAR Art Director Adam Gershowitz and Associate Producer Josh Dresche
....
Warhammer includes all sorts of PvP and RvR gameplay. How is the scenario play working out? As you have a new map or the Heavy Metal live event, they must be very popular?
Scenarios have proven extremely popular, and we’ve been very pleased with the positive response we’ve seen to them since launch.  Players really enjoy earning XP, renown and cool loot via RvR, and the scenarios have offered a really streamlined, scalable method for doing that. If you’ve got 30 minutes to play, you know that you can get in a couple of scenarios in that time. We’ve made some adjustments to try and incentivize openworld RvR a bit more in recent patches, but we remain committed to offering new and exciting scenario combat to our players both now and also in the future.
................
Is there any innovation in the game that you don’t think you’ve got enough credit for?
We’ve been getting really positive reviews, and people have been pretty good about recognizing all the ways that WAR has helped to push the genre forward. That we’re already seeing our competitors adopt some of our innovations is certainly amusing as well.
........
Since RvR was a core component of our designs from the beginning, we knew we wanted to pick strong, iconic races that made ‘sense’ in terms of how they’d pair off against one another.

I love the "amusing" comment, also I was clearly wrong but I bought this game because I thought RVR was meant to be the core component, not a core component.  There's more in the magazine if you want to download it, it calls external swf files though which I found annoying.

[Tarami]

Didn't Mark say the EA buyout allowed them to delay the game and throw more money at it?  Frothey could maybe learn from Turbine who seem to have recovered somewhat with LOTRO now, Turbine said they were shooting for 1 million subs before release.

I agree they could learn from Turbine. At this point, I think thats the best they can hope for. Find that niche and shoot straight for it. It still seems WAR is trying to be to many things and failing at all of them. As I have said many times, WAR needs to focus on RVR and getting people to RVR and stop it with the stupid PVE and Scenario grind.

But that would require less posting of goofy videos and more hard work. That's no life for an MMO developer.

[UnSub]

Based on what we've seen, WAR would have been in trouble, EA or no EA. As I've said, the core problem with WAR is that Mythic appear to have no idea at all how players behave and designed their systems around some mythical idea of player behaviour. RvR is so underdone and had no driving motivation to get players into them, yet was meant to be the core of the game. Scenarios were quick, easy and rewarding, yet Mythic thought they'd be a sideline mini-game. And so on.

[Zzulo]

They never designed scenarios to be a "sideshow". They designed them to be the meat of the game. The game did not even have keeps in it until later in closed beta, and the only reason they put keeps in the game at all was because an uproar of old DAOC beta testers swayed them in that direction. This is why keeps are so underwhelming - they never really had the time to put in anything but a basic keep siege idea.

Now though, they're going in the opposite direction by reducing the importance of scenarios in ORVR, and buffing ORVR in general. It's clear that they had to change philosophies just recently and are now struggling to make ORVR into everything it should have been.

[UnSub]

If scenarios are the "meat" of WoW, then why was Jacobs discussing No Scenario servers? Why not No ORvR servers?

[Zzulo]

Because of popular demand from the fanbase. The same reason they are changing direction now and reducing Scenarios importance in favour of ORVR.

They completely misjudged what the people wanted when designing the game.

I believe their original "vision" was RvR lakes with only Battlefield Objectives on them (those flags you can cap nowadays) for zone control, with scenarios being the defining Victory Point system for unlocking an enemy zone and capital.

Since then they have gradually changed this and today it looks like they're finally giving ORVR the attention it needs.

[tazelbain]

>reducing Scenarios importance in favor of ORVR.
This isn't being because that's what players want.  What players want is to not be cockblocked be empty scenarios.  Moving vp from scenerios to ORvR was one hamfisted way to handle it.  Changing the idiotic way vp are calculated would have been much better.

[Jherad]

I don't think scenarios were intended to be the meat though Zzulo - yes, there were no keeps, but my gut feeling is that Mythic believed that the lakes were all that ORvR required. Make a killing zone, and people will kill in it.

Of course, it doesn't work like that - and they still don't have a handle on it. Do the minds at Mythic even know what made DAOC RvR popular?

Someone on these forums said that they could have seriously benefited from an in-house psychologist - that applies just as much now, they don't seem to understand what players want OR how they will react to some of their announcements/PR.

[ghost]

I don't think scenarios were intended to be the meat though Zzulo - yes, there were no keeps, but my gut feeling is that Mythic believed that the lakes were all that ORvR required. Make a killing zone, and people will kill in it.

Of course, it doesn't work like that - and they still don't have a handle on it. Do the minds at Mythic even know what made DAOC RvR popular?

Someone on these forums said that they could have seriously benefited from an in-house psychologist - that applies just as much now, they don't seem to understand what players want OR how they will react to some of their announcements/PR.

They also didn't seem to understand that one of the strongest aspects of RvR in DAOC was the implementation of 3 factions.  Population imbalance is cured right there, one fell swoop.

[Trippy]

Yeah cause that worked so well for DAoC

[Jesper]

They never designed scenarios to be a "sideshow". They designed them to be the meat of the game.

Beta1 and 2 were so smooth that i've never played a scenario once, but RvR was so packed, especially in tier1. Suddenly they started changing things: scenario bonus, removal of unique abilities, insertion of a shitload of knockbacks and AoE CCs, toon advancement (from the innovative one on beta1 to the so-so in beta 2 to the crap that we have now), crappy RvR rewards (both gearwise and abilitywise...beta2 RvR gear rewards were all epic from tier1 and with unique stats like crit % and wounds; they traded a lot of pve stats for a lot of RvR stats and bonuses. Renown Abilities were still undecided, but beta1 ones were supposed to be more like daoc's RAs than this ability pack crap).

So, yeah, i'm all for a suddenly change in game direction. EA anyone?

EDIT: crappy writings.

[eldaec]

No, even the very early design videos were clear that scenarios were intended as the meat of the game. People RvR'd in beta before scenarios were available, but at that point players were not working as intended.

There are many many 20 page threads in this very forum written during WAR development that went into great detail about how this was a bad decision.

Mythic's explanation was that they did not wish to repeat the successes of DAoC.

[Jherad]

So guild wars, with a grind, and a subscription model then.

[Modern Angel]

So guild wars, with a grind, and a subscription model then.

Well, you can jump.

[waylander]

So lowering the VP contribution of scenarios to promote ORVR is good. But the best way to defend your zone is to not show up at all because it takes forever to lock a zone with no opponents, the the VP decay is so fast that just capping keeps/bfo's/PQ's won't keep up with the decay.

NOT SHOWING UP IS THE BEST WAY TO DEFEND A ZONE. There is something wrong with that statement.

[Zzulo]

Yeah, there needs to be some form of passive VP generation if you own all the appropriate zones.

[Special J]

Mythic's explanation was that they did not wish to repeat the successes of DAoC.

 

[eldaec]

NOT SHOWING UP IS THE BEST WAY TO DEFEND A ZONE. There is something wrong with that statement.

Losers being motivated by mechanics to not play is another inherent design failing pointed out on this forum two years ago.

Just sayin.

So guild wars, with a grind, and a subscription model then.

Exactly.

And you've hit the nail on the head by comparing this to Guild Wars, not WoW (which I suspect is what Mythic intended). Since scenarios are the achiever end game, not the fun diversion.

[Arthur_Parker]

NOT SHOWING UP IS THE BEST WAY TO DEFEND A ZONE.

I like to think I'm doing my bit to help.

[Gurney]

NOT SHOWING UP IS THE BEST WAY TO DEFEND A ZONE.

I like to think I'm doing my bit to help.

Yeah I have been defending zones like crazy since I canceled my sub.  I think I should get a statue.

[Fordel]

They also didn't seem to understand that one of the strongest aspects of RvR in DAOC was the implementation of 3 factions.  Population imbalance is cured right there, one fell swoop.

Wat. 



The only thing the 3 realms ensured was the small realm getting it in two holes instead of just one.

[HaemishM]

But the small realm always had some action! 

[Nebu]

Screw you guys.  I liked having three factions.  It gave variety in gameplay (realm hopping when boredom set in) and I loved playing the underdog... it made for a target-rich environment. 

[Fordel]

Nothing terribly wrong with having 3 distinct factions, I'm just saying it didn't actually fix shit and in some instances, made shit even worse.

[Nebu]

Nothing terribly wrong with having 3 distinct factions, I'm just saying it didn't actually fix shit and in some instances, made shit even worse.

Point taken.  It would be even worse for WAR.  Spreading people out even thinner than they already are would make a bad situation worse. 

[Ingmar]

Nothing terribly wrong with having 3 distinct factions, I'm just saying it didn't actually fix shit and in some instances, made shit even worse.

Point taken.  It would be even worse for WAR.  Spreading people out even thinner than they already are would make a bad situation worse. 

Well, I dunno if it would have necessitated spreading things more thinly. They just had too many zones to start with. A 3 side war with half the number of zones that WAR currently has would probably feel acceptably crowded (or would have when I was playing.)

[ghost]

They also didn't seem to understand that one of the strongest aspects of RvR in DAOC was the implementation of 3 factions.  Population imbalance is cured right there, one fell swoop.

Wat. 



The only thing the 3 realms ensured was the small realm getting it in two holes instead of just one.

So now you have only one side getting it in two holes.  Not much different then, really.  Certainly a third faction wouldn't "fix" the game.  There are way too many things wrong to fix with one simple change. 

[waffel]

3 Realms was perfect in so many ways. It gave a lot more unity in your own realm and caused realms to be more competitive. Psychologically it probably had a lot of benefits too, ones that I'm not smart enough to think of right now.

Regardless, it doesn't matter at this point.

edit: really fucked up a word.

[Fordel]

They also didn't seem to understand that one of the strongest aspects of RvR in DAOC was the implementation of 3 factions.  Population imbalance is cured right there, one fell swoop.

Wat. 



The only thing the 3 realms ensured was the small realm getting it in two holes instead of just one.

So now you have only one side getting it in two holes.  Not much different then, really.  Certainly a third faction wouldn't "fix" the game.  There are way too many things wrong to fix with one simple change. 

No, you have the small side getting it in one hole. They only have to deal with one 'enemy' at any time.



Having more then two would give you situations where if you were assaulting one realm, the 3rd realm would come take your keeps since they knew you weren't home.

Trying to take a relic? Not only do you have to beat back the people you were taking it from, you have to ensure the 3rd realm doesn't just steal it from you.

Trying to hold your own relics? Now you have two realms, one at each Relic Keep, working you over with no way for you to possibly defend both.



There are a lot of pluses to having 3+ realms, but population balance isn't among them. I know Mythic intended for the two weaker realms to gang up on the strong one, but for every time that actually happened, there were 5 times where the number 1 and 2 realms, would just kick around the 3rd one.

The only thing that saved the weakest realm most of the time, was the total lack of things to actually do to them.

"So we have all their keeps and relics, and farmed them so mercilessly that they aren't leaving the Border keeps anymore... now what? "