State of the game [Fucked]

[Arthur_Parker]

That thread is great, it's got everything.

Mythic can't possibly intend that the best way to level your guild is to leave and rejoin every day. I am not going to call it cheating, but it cannot possibly be what Mythic intended.

[Hawkbit]

I resubbed begining of March because I wanted something to play and I though maybe they improved the game. Also I wanted to try the choppa.
Well they did on a few front improve it but not quite enough.

The stuttering and performance issues are mostly gone, for me at least.
The UI issues are mostly gone as well, no more clicking morale 100 times to launch it.
The combat animation and stuff feels less disconnected from your actions but its not quite perfect.

Once I figured that and have done a few scenarios, the game still has that little thing I can't quite describe but that spoils the fun for me.

Cancelled my subscription and will probably never return to this game..

I intended to resub for a month to check things out.  I install and patch, input my CC info and log in.  They don't even have the Choppah available yet for anyone that wasn't subbed before the word went out about the reinvites.  So mythic again caters to whatever catass players had to do to get access to them first.  So I can fight them in RVR but can't actually play them. 

Played my SM for an hour, realized that it took me that full hour to get 1/4 a level (w/ rested) and I logged in disgust.  I also canceled my sub so I don't get billed at all once the 10 days is up. 

I don't understand how one company can so monumentally fuck up. 

[Hindenburg]

They don't even have the Choppah available yet for anyone that wasn't subbed before the word went out about the reinvites. 

Will be available for everyone tomorrow.

[Kirth]

They don't even have the Choppah available yet for anyone that wasn't subbed before the word went out about the reinvites.

Wow, I would love to hear the justification for that.  

considering this is a quote taken from the "come back for 10 days" email they sent out. And there is nothing in the FAQ about the availability of those classes.

Call to Arms, our first live expansion, will introduce an incredible array of new content to the game, including two highly anticipated new careers - the head bashin' Orc Choppa and the oath-sworn Dwarf Slayer

[Hindenburg]

What they tought was "Hey, they'll come back, see all those slayers and choppas, kill and get killed by them, get pumped, and then, come next tuesday, they'll be able to create their very own.".

As usual, they failed to correctly understand what players would think.

[waylander]

Sadly there wasn't enough kids in beta calling bullshit on mythic changes. The pve xp decrease was suppose to funnel more people into rvr according to the logic the fanbois kept spouting anytime someone tried to explain how dumb that change was. Even till today any xp decrease to pve is considered game destroying, along with any attempt to funnel people away from banging their dicks against a keep door.The beta was filled to the brim with fanbois, mythic listened to fanbois, fanbois are the only ones still playing. mythic is obviously not listening to anyone sensible, but for their credit, there wasn't enough sensible people willing to start flame wars with the fanbois.

Here is some examples;
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266401
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=267565

There were plenty of us who brought up "constructive" counter arguments. But the problem was that threads would be locked or we'd be threatened with the ban stick if we tried to defend our position from the fanbois.

I'm never going to be a "yes man" beta tester for a game, but I won't sit there an incite forum flame wars either just to be disruptive like some hardcore testers do. The bottom line with War Beta is that there wasn't a good guild beta test phase. You can't throw a bunch of PUG players together for mass PVP, and get the same findings you would as if you put a bunch of organized guilds in there to go at it for a while. Maybe from a data mining standpoint you can pick up on some things, but organized guilds will develop organized strategies to deal with end game content and end game PVP. PUG's will just show up, wander around, spam some buttons, die a lot, and give you 10,000 different results.

No beta is perfect, but I think Mythic missed the boat with how they handled (or didn't handle) the guild beta.

[Evildrider]

I resubbed begining of March because I wanted something to play and I though maybe they improved the game. Also I wanted to try the choppa.
Well they did on a few front improve it but not quite enough.

The stuttering and performance issues are mostly gone, for me at least.
The UI issues are mostly gone as well, no more clicking morale 100 times to launch it.
The combat animation and stuff feels less disconnected from your actions but its not quite perfect.

Once I figured that and have done a few scenarios, the game still has that little thing I can't quite describe but that spoils the fun for me.

Cancelled my subscription and will probably never return to this game..

I intended to resub for a month to check things out.  I install and patch, input my CC info and log in.  They don't even have the Choppah available yet for anyone that wasn't subbed before the word went out about the reinvites.  So mythic again caters to whatever catass players had to do to get access to them first.  So I can fight them in RVR but can't actually play them. 

Played my SM for an hour, realized that it took me that full hour to get 1/4 a level (w/ rested) and I logged in disgust.  I also canceled my sub so I don't get billed at all once the 10 days is up. 

I don't understand how one company can so monumentally fuck up. 

Yes, how dare they reward players actually playing the game!  I mean OMG it was a live event that probably took at most 3-4 hours to do everything.

I love how people here still whine about XP in the game.

[schild]

I love how people here still whine about XP in the game.

It's not whining, it's why almost Everybody Quit. I don't know if you're trying to make a point.

Why are you defending them on such stupid points anyway?

[Nebu]

I love how people here still whine about XP in the game.

The xp in the game is terrible.  You get bored with a tier before you level out of it.  That's a problem in a pvp game.  So much of a problem, in fact, that most people who bought the WAR box failed to resub after the first few months. 


EDIT: Damnit Schild and his fast typing skills.

Why are you defending them on such stupid points anyway?

Apparently we aren't as HARDCORE as he is. 

[Evildrider]

Oh yeah I'm hardcore lol.

Because the XP isn't as bad as you all make it out to be.  If i was hardcore I'd have a level 40 slayer already.  There were ones floating around 2 days after they released.  It takes longer to powerlevel a character to cap in WoW.  Oh ya, that's a PvE game, my bad.. yet it's still the endgame that people want to do there.

I like the game, does it have problems?  Sure like every mmo does.  Sorry if there aren't 11 million subs, maybe you all would worship the game more.  Or if you could level while offline, would that help? 

But I find it funny that you still bitch about the game, considering I doubt there's going to be anything that will even draw you back to the game.

[schild]

Because the XP isn't as bad as you all make it out to be.

Dude, like 80% of the playerbase fucking disappeared after the first month. What are you talking about? It's worse than we could EVER make it out to be.

[Evildrider]

I'm sure Wrath of the Lich King had more of an effect then.  OMG XP TOO HARD.

[schild]

I'm sure Wrath of the Lich King had more of an effect then.  OMG XP TOO HARD.

I'm sorry, I don't know when you took a left turn from rational into crazyfuckland but plz to be getting back on the train to reality.

Wrath or not, something had to drive them somewhere else.

"OMG XP TOO HARD" is not an acceptable response. Mostly because it makes you sound like a gibbering retard.

[Bismallah]

I would have been happy with being able to stick to ONE racial pairing and level all the way through. <shrug>

[Hayduke]

/Played hours should never be a measurement of how grindy a game is.  If leveling feels stale and repetitive, it's grindy.  That the mass exodus of players in the first months were probably people who never made it past T3 and saw the terrible endgame says a lot of people felt that way.

[Lantyssa]

I would have been happy with being able to stick to ONE racial pairing and level all the way through. <shrug>

Ditto.  Level 24 and almost done with Tier 3 racial content.  No thanks.

And I didn't start WoW back up until almost February.  I prefered doing nothing than playing WAR.

[Arthur_Parker]

I like the game, does it have problems?  Sure like every mmo does. 

“Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.”

*shuts 63 servers*

[Lakov_Sanite]

I would have been happy with being able to stick to ONE racial pairing and level all the way through. <shrug>

That's exactly why I stopped playing, well before wotlk came out.  If I could have stuck with one consistant storyline from start to finish not only would it have gone faster but it would have been more immersive.

Even with all the bugs in beta I was having a lot of fun levelling chaos and sticking with the storyline. Once I bought the released game though not only were many of the same bugs present but suddenly I had to run to hell and back to do other racial quests or just grind battlegrounds and that was NOT fun.

Even if it's a pvp game how hard is it to make a cohesive line of quests and areas so that you never have to 'stop' stopping by hitting a brick wall of high level mobs where you either have to go to another racial pairing(which didn't make sense for any races because of the storylines) or just grind.

 It's that hard stop i encountered while levelling the live game that eventually made me quit. After hitting t3 and realizing i'd have to do even MORE running back and forth to dorf/greenskin area that i could give fuckall about on my chosen I quit.

[Hindenburg]

Or if you could level while offline, would that help? 

Fuck yes.

Let me put things in perspective for you. I love WH lore and can play the game for free. I don't.

[Seanzor]

/Played hours should never be a measurement of how grindy a game is.  If leveling feels stale and repetitive, it's grindy.  That the mass exodus of players in the first months were probably people who never made it past T3 and saw the terrible endgame says a lot of people felt that way.

This is where Evildrider's missing the point.  Yes, in absolute terms, it doesn't take that long to get to cap in WAR.  It's the process that did them in - I personally had the realization that I would rather be at work for no pay than leveling my character, and I quit.  However, if the absolute time to hit cap were heavily reduced, I could easily have hit cap and never had that realization. 

(Of course, in all likelihood, I instead would have realized that the endgame was re-hashed dog shit and quit over that instead; but, y'know, maybe I'd have rolled an alt?  At least there'd be a chance of my playing past the free month)

[HaemishM]

I would have been happy with being able to stick to ONE racial pairing and level all the way through. <shrug>

Yeah that. I didn't mind the PVE being boring as shit. It WAS boring, but as long as it fed me quests that let me level without noticing the xp bar, I could tolerate it for the small moments of joy the PVP gave. But it didn't. I had to hunt all around the fucking world for quests and PVP was almost nonexistent outside of the same shitty goddamn scenario everyone was running ad nauseum.

EDIT: Also, I certainly did quit for Wrath of the Lich King. Hell, I've never even bought Burning Crusade. I wasn't playing any MMO until I found a great deal on LoTRO.

[Merusk]

ED hates wow with a passion. A passion so hot he has been looking for ANY game to find a stake in to continue to scorn WoW.  He's apparently decided the standar he'll be carrying is WoW instead of AoC or any of the other failed games of the last 14 months.

Trying to argue anything with him is pointless.  You are wrong, he is right.  That is the view and the response of every post.  Best to ignore it and move on, unless you just feel like trolling him.

[Lantyssa]

It's so easy!

[Tannhauser]

I think they did one major thing wrong that caused the population to disappear;  they nerfed xp gains at release.  If you hate pve, at least you can get thru it fast to get to the pvp.  If you hate the story or in a sucky area, you can get thru it fast and move on.

Their mistake was thinking that we wanted to soak in their crap pve.  But more likely they just didn't have the endgame anywhere near ready.

[Morfiend]

In Beta I had a blast with WAR. It was pretty fast to EXP, and you didnt feel stressed to do it. The real EXP bar was your RR level. Why they basically cut EXP gain in half a week from release I dont know. But it was a very very bad move.

Honestly, if they made it easy to level, I would go back to the game. I would make alts, and just RVR.

[Redgiant]

Well, they also should have kept scenarios from becoming God and leaving them as a side-show when you want quick PvP.

In Beta, everything was so energized and new and ORvR was sort of self-regulated by the players doing it as their first choice.

Once scenarios became known as the thing to do to get rewards as opposed to ORvR, it went downhill. Certainly for anyone that favored DAoC's brand of total focus on the frontiers and ORvR-life, it was waaaay downhill.


Edit: Now, if they had done Thidranki-style open BGs by tiers instead of what scenarios became, you wouldn't have seen the massive drop-off in subs perhaps (XP issues aside). Yeah, I know they had ORvR by Tier, but its the overall mix with scenarios, PvE grinding, PQs to confuse where people should be to fight other people. Too much damn instancing nowadays for a world that one wants to feel is open and a bit sandboxed for strategic and community reasons.

[UnSub]

WAR's biggest problem, bar none, was the expectation of fans thanks to Mythic's promotional material. "War is everywhere!" and "RvR is the core of our game!" were taken as being true and a lot of people wanted. Instead there was a massive PvE grind and PvP (outside of scenarios) was incredibly poorly incentivised.

... but I'm repeating myself.

[Tarami]

... but I'm repeating myself.

Not only you.

[Sjofn]

I'm sure Wrath of the Lich King had more of an effect then.  OMG XP TOO HARD.

If I remember right, it wasn't even WotLK that there was a huge drop. It was the patch PREPPING for WotLK.

In any case, I didn't leave FOR WotLK. I have had multiple MMO subs before, and would've been perfectly happy keeping a WAR one going for my "PvP MMO" game, if it didn't make it clear that no matter how badly I want to like a Mythic game, they will eventually do so much boneheaded crap that I will have to stop playing. I just picked up the warning signs REALLY EARLY this time, what with having danced this dance before in DAoC.

[Ashamanchill]

I would have been happy with being able to stick to ONE racial pairing and level all the way through. <shrug>

Ditto.  Level 24 and almost done with Tier 3 racial content.  No thanks.

I was in the same boat.  I had literally done every quest in every racial pairing in tier 3 and it still wasn't enough to get out of that hole, so I had to bend over, clench my teeth, and do some Tor Annroc. 
I honestly think, at this point they should just feed us a Level 40 at the character creation screen.  Or better yet, an exp cappped max level for tier 1.  that was the games pinnacle.

[Mavor]

I'm sure everyone is probably already thinking this but...

To successfully launch and maintain a game, you have to first make your core userbase happy. These core players are the people that bought and played WAR because of the promised RvR content.

But because mythic started out the gate trying to please the MAINSTREAM, they left their core userbase high and dry.

Mythic cannot understand currently, that in order for WAR to be successful, they have to build OUT from the core players... WAR feels like a mishmash of options and motivations that tries to please all gamers, but does not excel with a single set.

[fuser]

But because mythic started out the gate trying to please the MAINSTREAM, they left their core userbase high and dry.

No, it's because the game is broken in various aspects that touches all users. No matter if you we're core/mainstream you had to be willing to overlook some major warts.

 * Animations
 * Slop timer/queuing system (has effect on their animation but speaks of how it is a broken design)
 * Chat system (if your social interaction is broken in an MMO you have issues)
 * Game engine (pick anything, window dragging, RVR performance, stability, general performance for rending quality)
 * XP Curve
 * Broken timesinks (crafting, one area you could of put more bars :) )

I'm probably missing some but you can see if your a "core" or "mainstream" your game experience is badly broken.

[DLRiley]

I'm sure everyone is probably already thinking this but...

To successfully launch and maintain a game, you have to first make your core userbase happy. These core players are the people that bought and played WAR because of the promised RvR content.

But because mythic started out the gate trying to please the MAINSTREAM, they left their core userbase high and dry.

Mythic cannot understand currently, that in order for WAR to be successful, they have to build OUT from the core players... WAR feels like a mishmash of options and motivations that tries to please all gamers, but does not excel with a single set.

Mainstream my ass, they made a crappy game case closed. Mythic problem was their "core player base" was 100k subs, for a game by nature that needed 1 million subs to be moderately fun and needed 500k subs to be profitable.

[DLRiley]

Sadly there wasn't enough kids in beta calling bullshit on mythic changes. The pve xp decrease was suppose to funnel more people into rvr according to the logic the fanbois kept spouting anytime someone tried to explain how dumb that change was. Even till today any xp increase to pve is considered game destroying, along with any attempt to funnel people away from banging their dicks against a keep door.The beta was filled to the brim with fanbois, mythic listened to fanbois, fanbois are the only ones still playing. mythic is obviously not listening to anyone sensible, but for their credit, there wasn't enough sensible people willing to start flame wars with the fanbois.

Here is some examples;
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266401
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=267565

There were plenty of us who brought up "constructive" counter arguments. But the problem was that threads would be locked or we'd be threatened with the ban stick if we tried to defend our position from the fanbois.

I'm never going to be a "yes man" beta tester for a game, but I won't sit there an incite forum flame wars either just to be disruptive like some hardcore testers do. The bottom line with War Beta is that there wasn't a good guild beta test phase. You can't throw a bunch of PUG players together for mass PVP, and get the same findings you would as if you put a bunch of organized guilds in there to go at it for a while. Maybe from a data mining standpoint you can pick up on some things, but organized guilds will develop organized strategies to deal with end game content and end game PVP. PUG's will just show up, wander around, spam some buttons, die a lot, and give you 10,000 different results.

No beta is perfect, but I think Mythic missed the boat with how they handled (or didn't handle) the guild beta.

lol, WAR didn't even let people test beyond tier 2. The beta was closing when they open up tier 3. The beta at best was a stress test. Mythic was hoping to god that by sheer numbers the game would be active on all cylinders. Come launch that didn't happen, and when WAR isn't populated on all cylinders the game suffers as a whole and eventually empties out players left and right simply because it takes so long to get shit done. They had 500k subs and still manage to make the game feel empty. They just didn't plan for players ignoring certain proportions of the game, and they simply refuse even now to accept it and move on with what works. Honestly if you have to pull players by the balls to do shit than your in deep shit and no amount of rp/loot increases will help you out in the end. If you have to beg players to pvp your not in a pvp game.

[Bismallah]

I dunno, I beta'd Tier 4 with a Shadow Warrior, boring as all get out. AI was horrid, end game was horrid, I still dont know why I bought the game.