Patch 1.0.6 - Highlights and more

[Jimbo]

Thinking that WoW didn't raise the bar for future MMOs is an example of selectively viewing the MMO landscape for the past couple of years.

It IS selective.  I do not like WoW because it doesn't have anything that represents fun for me.  I was drawn to WAR because it was supposed to have things that sounded like fun, for me.  To say the bar is raised for WAR because of WoW is just not true.  If someone wants to make a game just like WoW then the bar has been raised by both WoW and LotRO, if someone wants to make an RvR game the bar is still DAoC.  

Mythic is the RvR expert.  You can't claim to be an expert at something and then not excel at it.  

I've meet a ton of "experts" that can't do what they teach or advise about.  Mythic and DAoC failed the first month they were out when they increased the grind to horrible levels (let alone all the other B.S. they did).

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm gonna need a mod to keep up with all my new experience bars.  I'm so stoked.......

They could add a skill to manage all your experience bars, possibly a skill would have to level up.

[Trippy]

From a post on VN

MJ:

In terms of our numbers dipping, all I can say is yesterday we had the highest peak concurrent users we've had on a weekday for a number of weeks so that made me smile. As always, we're in this for the long-term and patches 1.1 -> ? will certainly show that committment.

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109611216/p1/?28

I think we're in the detractor phase, probably similar to when Mythic boosted Midgard, accidentally, and the nerf whining continued for a week or so until the biggest detractors finally figured it out.  Most important, though, is the first round of 1.1 patch notes is near.

Please don't take that as glowing praise or anything, Mythic is blundering toward something, not sure what.

Totally meaningless statement without numbers. He didn't say they set a new peak concurrency record only that it went up from what they were getting for the last few weeks.

E.g. let's say (totally made up numbers) on October 15 they had, say, 60K peak concurrent users. On November 15 they got 20K PCU. And then after this patch they went up to 25K. Yeah it went up! Woohoo!

[ghost]

I'm gonna need a mod to keep up with all my new experience bars.  I'm so stoked.......

They could add a skill to manage all your experience bars, possibly a skill would have to level up.

Maybe, if we are very lucky, that "leveling up" would include one or some of the wonderful crafting skills that the game has.  I like cultivating.

[tolakram]

Totally meaningless statement without numbers. He didn't say they set a new peak concurrency record only that it went up from what they were getting for the last few weeks.

E.g. let's say (totally made up numbers) on October 15 they had, say, 60K peak concurrent users. On November 15 they got 20K PCU. And then after this patch they went up to 25K. Yeah it went up! Woohoo!

I'm not sure what meaning you're looking for.  I know what meaning MJ is looking for and it worries me, as I pointed out in that post.  I've never been on the other end of a game so I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect a quick rise in numbers if something goes right.  A rise is better than a fall, right?  And even if we had exact numbers it might simply be a regular bump all games see during holiday periods.

[UnSub]

In terms of our numbers dipping, all I can say is yesterday we had the highest peak concurrent users we've had on a weekday for a number of weeks so that made me smile. As always, we're in this for the long-term and patches 1.1 -> ? will certainly show that committment.

Heh. Weekday. Directly after a massive patch.

Problem solved.

This. It makes me wonder how low concurrent numbers have gotten on weekdays.

Also, having read that thread, doesn't Jacobs have something better to do with his time than post on VN forums? I'm still amazed that his job appears to Mythic CEO / CM.

[d4rkj3di]

Nothing says “catass” more than having a statue with your name on it in the capitol city of your realm.

But it is a carrot none the less, and does partly satisfy the "Why cant i change the world" thing.

I'd like to see something like it in LotRO. Of course, there are boss trophies for your guild yard already... but something central would be nice and it wouldn't have to be catass awards in LotRO. More like fluff.

I actually got to see these statues in place during a visit to Mythic last March. There will be a generic one for each class and the plaque will show the name of the player with the currently highest RR points for the server for that class. When you sack a city, they will be able to be destroyed for some sense of "I just broke your little statue" and points toward your own RR.

[ghost]

Nothing says “catass” more than having a statue with your name on it in the capitol city of your realm.

But it is a carrot none the less, and does partly satisfy the "Why cant i change the world" thing.

I'd like to see something like it in LotRO. Of course, there are boss trophies for your guild yard already... but something central would be nice and it wouldn't have to be catass awards in LotRO. More like fluff.

I actually got to see these statues in place during a visit to Mythic last March. There will be a generic one for each class and the plaque will show the name of the player with the currently highest RR points for the server for that class. When you sack a city, they will be able to be destroyed for some sense of "I just broke your little statue" and points toward your own RR.

This sounds really, really lame.   

[rk47]

Ahahahah

Catass Statue ftw

[Jesper]

Open RvR Influence System – As part of our ongoing effort to encourage people to take part in oRvR, we are pleased to announce the release of an influence system geared solely to oRvR.  Players who participate in this part of WAR will now have additional incentives for fighting for their realm.  As part of this patch we have also made quite a number of changes and fixes to oRvR settings and NPCs as well.  And as always, we have a lot more going in for oRvR over the next couple of months as well.

Patch 1.1 is going live tomorrow and still they can't tell us what those rvr changes are going to do. I think that's maybe the more hyped patch change in WAR's short story and they have to hype it even more. Well, i'm more angry than excited at this point.

Woot, an influence bar. What will this bar do?

And, woot! New Incentives! What incentives?

[Bismallah]

It's probably all part of their strategy. Release 1.1 with a bunch of neat "they'll probably get bored in a month or two" stuff. Then throw the Choppa/Slayer in there for another couple months of subs while folks level those up. Then you've bought enough time for a total revamp of your Keep take/Fort situation.

I highly doubt they really give a shit about a good product anymore they are just scrapping to hold onto whoever is still subbed and try to get that 5-10% to re-up during the next 3-4 months.

[tolakram]

Patch 1.1 is going live tomorrow ...

No.  Test Server.

[Zzulo]

Open RvR Influence System – As part of our ongoing effort to encourage people to take part in oRvR, we are pleased to announce the release of an influence system geared solely to oRvR.  Players who participate in this part of WAR will now have additional incentives for fighting for their realm.  As part of this patch we have also made quite a number of changes and fixes to oRvR settings and NPCs as well.  And as always, we have a lot more going in for oRvR over the next couple of months as well.

Patch 1.1 is going live tomorrow and still they can't tell us what those rvr changes are going to do. I think that's maybe the more hyped patch change in WAR's short story and they have to hype it even more. Well, i'm more angry than excited at this point.

Woot, an influence bar. What will this bar do?

And, woot! New Incentives! What incentives?

Have you actually played the game? Like at all? The influence bar is there for you to fill with influence. IE from doing stuff in RvR lakes. Whether this will be PvP quests or taking over keeps/BO's remains to be seen, but it kind of speaks for itself. Once you start filling out the influence bar you get access to rewards, like in any PQ

[Jesper]

Have you actually played the game? Like at all? The influence bar is there for you to fill with influence. IE from doing stuff in RvR lakes. Whether this will be PvP quests or taking over keeps/BO's remains to be seen, but it kind of speaks for itself. Once you start filling out the influence bar you get access to rewards, like in any PQ

obviously my question was about "what you get with rvr influence" instead of "what does influence means".

Being a naive dreamer, i still hope for something different from "yet another equip grind". Who knows? "Realm" Abities is a nice dream.

@ tolakram: yeah, that's right:P i was meaning that this patch is almost on us and still unrevealed.

EDIT: with patch revealed, yes it's another gear grind.

[rk47]

Gears probably. They kinda screwed the pooch a bit with set gears. They told us they're going to make set stat adjustments so I'll see where it goes.

[Arthur_Parker]

Interview - Destin Bales, Live Producer

Part two of that interview is online.

Tamat : If I were a new player to MMORPGs and noticed the Warhammer Online box on the store shelf, next to the Wrath of the Lich King box, why would I pick up the WAR box and not the WOW one?

Destin : First and foremost, Warhammer offers the following game play features that no other MMO has.  RvR, Public Quests, Tome of Knowledge, city sieges and zone control battles on a massive scale.

Furthermore, Warhammer is a player-driven game that is different every night.  The more you play, the more experiences you’ll have.  Our end-game is player initiated and moves on forever, just getting more and more exciting the longer you play.  Once players get a taste of the Warhammer world there’s no going back.

I bolded the only bit I thought was funny, the rest of it is just pure marketing speak.

[Bismallah]

No amount of marketing or PR will help threads like this:

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109640463/p3/?55

Mark is asking if folks are still having these end game issues with Forts, City Sieges etc... wow. His game is completely borked, he's losing players MUCH faster then he could ever dream of gaining them, and his end game is complete and utter garbage. EA is not going to think kindly of issues like this especially in today's US economy.

[raydeen]

No amount of marketing or PR will help threads like this:

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109640463/p3/?55

Mark is asking if folks are still having these end game issues with Forts, City Sieges etc... wow. His game is completely borked, he's losing players MUCH faster then he could ever dream of gaining them, and his end game is complete and utter garbage. EA is not going to think kindly of issues like this especially in today's US economy.

I blame Sir Bruce. He probably had some sort of crazy chart rendering in the background that accidentally the whole server.

[tolakram]

I don't understand what you all are saying.  They're paying attention and trying to fix the issues.  DAoC has a lot of the same problems ... ha the memories ... we ran to Excalibur to defend the relic but most of us were new and ran to the wrong side .... 1 frame per second ... hibs ... flashes of light ... dead, maybe, crash to desktop.

Anyone from Galahad here who remember the crash that sent a lot of albs to the hib starter areas?  You talk about a good time.  :)

The fact we're now into the siege crash phase is a positive, too bad the post siege phase is such a let down.

[tazelbain]

I don't understand what you all are saying.  They're paying attention and trying to fix the issues.  DAoC has a lot of the same problems ... ha the memories ... we ran to Excalibur to defend

Contribution being completely broken in RvR 2 1/2+ months is not sign of them paying attention.  Running into same problems as DAoC is not sign of them paying attention.  Designing their game like WoW never happen is not sign of them paying attention.  Not noticing that there was no reason to RvR is not a sign of them paying attention.

[Fordel]

When ever you start off a sentence with "DaoC had that problem too..." 

[tolakram]

Contribution being completely broken in RvR 2 1/2+ months is not sign of them paying attention.  Running into same problems as DAoC is not sign of them paying attention.  Designing their game like WoW never happen is not sign of them paying attention.  Not noticing that there was no reason to RvR is not a sign of them paying attention.

Cute.

[raydeen]

Contribution being completely broken in RvR 2 1/2+ months is not sign of them paying attention.  Running into same problems as DAoC is not sign of them paying attention.  Designing their game like WoW never happen is not sign of them paying attention.  Not noticing that there was no reason to RvR is not a sign of them paying attention.

Cute.

No it's not cute. it's plain fucking ugly. None of this should have seen the light of day even given a rushed schedule frpm the almighty EA. Mythic chose to look at all the little discreet parts of WAR under a microscope and refused to look at The Big Picture. It's like taking trying to make a complete jigsaw puzzle one piece at a time instead of taking the whole picture and then cutting it into it's parts. They may have had good ideas and intentions but went about everything ass-backwards and are continuing to do so.

[eldaec]

Destin : First and foremost, Warhammer offers the following game play features that no other MMO has.  RvR, Public Quests, Tome of Knowledge, city sieges and zone control battles on a massive scale.

I'm never sure whether this kind of ignorant nonsense is helpful or harmful in marketing. You'd have to imagine most readers of allakazam have played the other mmogs with these features.

[Bismallah]

I don't understand what you all are saying.  They're paying attention and trying to fix the issues.  DAoC has a lot of the same problems ... ha the memories ... we ran to Excalibur to defend the relic but most of us were new and ran to the wrong side .... 1 frame per second ... hibs ... flashes of light ... dead, maybe, crash to desktop.

Anyone from Galahad here who remember the crash that sent a lot of albs to the hib starter areas?  You talk about a good time.  :)

The fact we're now into the siege crash phase is a positive, too bad the post siege phase is such a let down.

Tolakram, DAOC released in late 2001. This is late 2008. Things like this should not happen from the same company seven years later. We can debate the semantics till we are blue in the face. It boils down to the customers. They bought 1 million boxes. They also left in such massive numbers that you have witnessed the fastest server mergers, and most iterations, that I have ever seen in any MMO. They have good employees. They have EA to pull on to figure out what their subscription numbers would be like, how many servers they would need, etc... and they still lost so many people so fast their heads spun. They are in a massive tailspin.

Let's look at what has happened so far this weekend after their magical patch:

-Skull Throne Destruction made it all the way to Altdorf. Order couldnt see the Destruction players, folks were warping all over the place, PQs were empty of enemy players, good thread here: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109642607/p1/?45
-Badlands crashed their Forts, same issues as above.
-Red Eye Mountain crashed their Forts, same issues as above.
-Darkland crashed their whole server...

And the hits keep coming. Even the fanbois on the VN and WHA are having a hard time turning their cheek at the blatant fuck ups that Mythic keeps touting as successes. You can only fool the general masses for so long. This patch did nothing for most players, in fact it made it worse, and that's the underlying theme here.

[Zzulo]

I have one issue and one issue only with this game, and it is the fact that fortress sieges are still too laggy. Once they fix/instance that part of the game, it will be amazing. I'm not guessing either, as all the previous action before the for siege is the most fun I've had in a PvP game since EvE (which by the way also had severe issues with lag and server stability during high intense battles)

Here's hoping it wont take several months to fix the forts

[ghost]

I have one issue and one issue only with this game, and it is the fact that fortress sieges are still too laggy. Once they fix/instance that part of the game, it will be amazing. I'm not guessing either, as all the previous action before the for siege is the most fun I've had in a PvP game since EvE (which by the way also had severe issues with lag and server stability during high intense battles)

Here's hoping it wont take several months to fix the forts

Well, once they fix that they have to figure out how to fix the faction population imbalance which is no small issue.  They overlooked one of the strongest aspects of DAOC when making this game:  the third faction to help temper those imbalances.  Not sure how the Warhammer IP could have handled that but I'm not even sure RvR will work appropriately with just two factions. 

[eldaec]

I have one issue and one issue only with this game, and it is the fact that fortress sieges are still too laggy. Once they fix/instance that part of the game, it will be amazing. I'm not guessing either, as all the previous action before the for siege is the most fun I've had in a PvP game since EvE (which by the way also had severe issues with lag and server stability during high intense battles)

The difference is, they fixed the lag in EVE, because CCP recognised that it is no longer 2001.

I don't understand what you all are saying.  They're paying attention and trying to fix the issues.  DAoC has a lot of the same problems ... ha the memories ... we ran to Excalibur to defend the relic but most of us were new and ran to the wrong side .... 1 frame per second ... hibs ... flashes of light ... dead, maybe, crash to desktop.

Anyone from Galahad here who remember the crash that sent a lot of albs to the hib starter areas?  You talk about a good time.  :)

The fact we're now into the siege crash phase is a positive, too bad the post siege phase is such a let down.

If a problem was already visible in DAoC, how is that an excuse now?

By this logic, Mythic could intriduce ToA into WAR tomorrow, and you'd just be saying 'ho hum they made the same mistake in Daoc'.

They overlooked one of the strongest aspects of DAOC when making this game:  the third faction to help temper those imbalances.  Not sure how the Warhammer IP could have handled that but I'm not even sure RvR will work appropriately with just two factions. 

Eh? The warhammer IP would have been plenty happy with more factions.

Orcs and goblins have no place on the same side as Dark Elves or Chaos. Even Dwarf+Empire+High Elf is a hell of stretch under the IP.

I completely agree though, 2 is quite obviously the wrong number of factions.

[tolakram]

You know I'm sorry I said I was happy with what they were paying attention to NOW.  I had no idea this would make so many post re-hashes of what we all already know.

I expected server crashes from day one, sorry if your expectations were higher.  The fact that they're happening now is at least a sign orvr activity is happening.  I have not changed my opinion about all the other bad crap in the game, including the PQ at the end, but I don't feel the need to rage about it every damn post.

[rk47]

without going into DAOC (since i've never played it)

it's like being promised in WOW of a massive raid. Let's say we get 40 people on Molten Core. It was a first time for me. but whenever we get to the boss,the instance just crashes. And we have to do a 12 hour quest to reset it again. Oh what? The quest is fun? Come on now. It isn't.

Now toss that in WAR's current fort crash and you tell me it's 'okay' ? What the hell man. I played for the fortrress siege. Not some terrible 6 mans instancing runs with gear checks in place or just battle grounds bashing each other to death in 12 v 12 setups.

'It's okay, I never expected the plane to make it to the destionation, as long I don't die and they land elsewhere or cancel my flight, I'm still paying the ticket.'

Re-think your statement.
Expected server crash? Have some standards man.

[ashrik]

What? You guys expected the most basic selling point of this game to be a properly functioning mechanic 2+ months after release? Talk about unrealistic expectations! 

Sorry if we're not sipping the fucking cool-aid without proof that it tastes good. WoW didn't raise the bar on what an RvR MMO was supposed to be, it raised the bar on what any MMO was supposed to be. Disagreeing with that point puts you, quite squarely, on the side opposite of everyone who "gets it".

[rk47]

What? You guys expected the most basic selling point of this game to be a properly functioning mechanic 2+ months after release? Talk about unrealistic expectations! 

Sorry if we're not sipping the fucking cool-aid without proof that it tastes good. WoW didn't raise the bar on what an RvR MMO was supposed to be, it raised the bar on what any MMO was supposed to be. Disagreeing with that point puts you, quite squarely, on the side opposite of everyone who "gets it".

I should throw some money at them while they improve things amrite?
No I'm not saying woW did the 40 man raids right, it was an example of 'here's what we got for you, if you buy our product' that they kept spewing in their interviews. I'd like to have some of their kool aid too. WoW promised quests & world of warcraft. And I got it, I never asked for PVP from that game. There were no tome unlocks, but I read most interesting locales quests for the sake of interest. Stranglethorn Valley was nice to explore and quest in. Darkshore -still the best PVE zone I quested in game. See? I quested. Because the game was selling that to me. And it was fun. It works. Gears, money , exp.

Now you tell me it's OK if they promise 'WAR IS EVERYWHERE U CAN PROGRESS UGAHGUAGHAUGHAUHG' but tell me 'Hell no, you can't expect fortress sieges to be stable within 2.5 months, so stick with keep capping, and scen VP grinding to victory and happy crashing'

In short: Server crash is not Okay.

[tolakram]

-- Re-think your statement.

re-read it, I hardly said anything.  I haven't played a game that didn't have crash issues when large numbers of people were involved.  Name a game that can handle as many people in the same area at the same time?  WoW couldn't and still can't.  Did you actually use a 40 man raid as an example?

The problem with Mythic is that this issue should have showed up sooner and should have been fixed by now, but not expecting it to happen is most certainly silly.  You know WoW will have a server crash if too many people try and raid a city, right?

WoW raised the bar for PvE, stop using that silly cartoon game as an example of all that is right in the world.  

[ashrik]

Yes yes of course. The high level of polish, massive amounts of development time, proper incentives for player behavior, large globs of unique art assets, and the ability to deliver exactly what you promise... these are things that simply do not apply when you're talking about RvR games. Nor are the players expecting them, because the bar has not been raised since 2001 when DAoC game out.

Of course, it all makes sense now.

[tolakram]

Of course, it all makes sense now.

Well good, I'm glad you've seen the light.