One of the WAR producers recently posted a letter which discusses not only the recent release of patch 1.3.2, but also gives some information about what to expect in the near future.  The link is here:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=948

If they're able to pull most of this off, with a greater focus on quality as well, it sounds like very good news for Warhammer players.

Still sounds like crap to me.  Nothign they do can save the over hyped multion million dollar sham of a so called next gen mmo.

Originally posted by Demz2

Still sounds like crap to me.  Nothign they do can save the over hyped multion million dollar sham of a so called next gen mmo.

A very well constructed and thoughtful reply....

Which ideas in the letter did you think sounded bad as it regards Warhammer today?

I think the 'crux' here is it 'sounds' great. The game's been 'sounding' great ever since they starting hyping it, and every time since release they mentioned stuff it 'sounds' great.

Problem is they have failed on implementation, a lot.

That's not to say they aren't trying. They're definitely trying, and you can really see some of them have their heart in it. But on the other side, I don't think you can fault anyone for being skeptic. Too many times has Mythic been talking about great stuff and not ending up delivering.

(biggest example probably being PB's podcasts. It 'sounded' great but the wordpictures are just that, wordpictures, until they end up in game)

If you want something specific to the newsbit. They talk about 'fixes' 'improvements' 'enhancements'. Great... a lot of hot air. I'm not saying there aren't any, of course there are, but people have been hearing those words every single month for over a year with too little to show for it (for the amount they used it, again not saying they didn't do any of that).

People want results, not words. Mythic has been too high on words, too low on delivering.

Also, on a particular note. I think it's kind of wonky how he's talking about upcoming graphical enhancements when they just nerfed graphics in their 1.3.2. It's probably better to name them tweaks rather than enhancements.

Originally posted by Rohn

Originally posted by Demz2

Still sounds like crap to me.  Nothign they do can save the over hyped multion million dollar sham of a so called next gen mmo.

 

A very well constructed and thoughtful reply....

Which ideas in the letter did you think sounded bad as it regards Warhammer today?

Lol, i love when some one flames for no damn reason with nothing intelegent to say...

I won't be coming back until they announce that classes have true mirrors of each other.

when a sorcerer is just like a bright wizard, with just a different feel, and same with every other pairing, I'll come back, till then they can shove any thing they try to call career balance up their... well kids read this stuff too, so I'll let them use their imagination.

(Hint: sun doesn't shine there)

When I read their big plans for 1.3.3 I LOL'd. Ability to walk and sit? UI fixes? Pathing improvements? Bloom?!

For God's sake, guys, get a clue! All this stuff would seem right for a game that is already popular and does great. And even in such cases, there are more important things that require attention. Always.

WAR, on the other hand, is already dead, and it will literally take a miracle and a lot of hard work to raise it from its grave. Yet, instead of a complete overhaul they're going to put more makeup on the corpse.

Way to go, Mythic...

Originally posted by wowfan1996

When I read their big plans for 1.3.3 I LOL'd. Ability to walk and sit? UI fixes? Pathing improvements? Bloom?!

For God's sake, guys, get a clue! All this stuff would seem right for a game that is already popular and does great. And even in such cases, there are more important things that require attention. Always.

WAR, on the other hand, is already dead, and it will literally take a miracle and a lot of hard work to raise it from its grave. Yet, instead of a complete overhaul they're going to put more makeup on the corpse.

Way to go, Mythic...

Those are simply examples of the "bug fixes and polish" emphasis they are placing on the next patch.

A little further down, he mentions that a few new systems are also being considered for the patch, one being the Underdog system, which is a realm balancing system - a system designed to address one of the most complained about problems the game has had since launch.  They also appear to be working on more RvR enhancements, class balance, and performance improvements in the next proposed patch.

What's your list of "more important things", Wowfan?

I have to agree with some of the other posters, I wasn't impressed by that letter. It doesn't make me want to come back and the overall impression I got was the work in the future is of a skeleton crew.

Originally posted by Rohn

One of the WAR producers recently posted a letter which discusses not only the recent release of patch 1.3.2, but also gives some information about what to expect in the near future.  The link is here:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=948

If they're able to pull most of this off, with a greater focus on quality as well, it sounds like very good news for Warhammer players.

Problem is... Mythic never stick to the plan. This is the kind of letter they been feeding to players every 3 months or so, and what's funny is that the next patch they will do the opposite.

One letter was about smaller and faster patches... Funny how it turned out

Another was about rebalancing classes... Most funny, they nerfd all AoE by 10 feet, how do you rebalance classes if you nerf everyone equally?

I loved the letter about fixing path to IC then the next letter was about removing Fortress... Basically you remove something that has to be fixed and then you tell everyone it's fixed?

There are so many reasons this game failed, hell 900K players could list you some reasons LOL.

Originally posted by Rohn

Those are simply examples of the "bug fixes and polish".

What's your list of "more important things"?

You're either not too bright or just trolling, my friend. Or both, which wouldn't surprise me either.

Bloom and new character animations are probably the last things that WAR community (what's left of it) is concerned with right now. How exactly they're going to help with realm balance and with the lack of original PvE content and really massive RvR?

What's important, you ask. Right now, the most important for Mythic should be fighting against their own bureaucratic corportate reflexes. They desperately need to stop acting like clowns and finally offer their fans some truth (for it would at least prove that they're off crack finally). First and foremost WAR players want a clear statement, something like this:

"Our dear customers.

We admit that we made so many mistakes and bad design decisions during the development of WAR that one could pile them up till they reach the Moon. We admit that instead of making a good game our first priority was to count imaginary future profits which WAR IP was supposed to guarantee. We admit that even when our failure became obvious to everyone we still didn't try to come with a serious and viable redesign plan and continued to screw the game up with every patch.

But we have balls to accept the truth and apologize for offending you. In order to make amends we offer you (everyone who's been faithfully paying us in spite of everything mentioned above) 3 months of free play. Within 3 months we can and WILL deliver:

- fixes for the following major bugs: <insert the list of bugs here>;

- THE SAME class abilities for both realms (so basically both realms will have the same classes from now on) thus eliminating any Order vs. Destro class imbalance, factual or perceived;

- de-instanced city sieges so that they could become a mixed PvE/RvR experience;

..."

Anyone familiar with WAR issues could continue the list but the general idea is simple: Mythic and EA should scratch their "everything is fine" attitude and show some responsibility.

But they won't. it's not their style.

Originally posted by Navydt

Originally posted by Rohn

Originally posted by Demz2

Still sounds like crap to me.  Nothign they do can save the over hyped multion million dollar sham of a so called next gen mmo.

 

A very well constructed and thoughtful reply....

Which ideas in the letter did you think sounded bad as it regards Warhammer today?

 

Lol, i love when some one flames for no damn reason with nothing intelegent to say...

lol i love it when someone flames a flamer 

Originally posted by wowfan1996

"Our dear customers.

We admit that we made so many mistakes and bad design decisions during the development of WAR that one could pile them up till they reach the Moon. We admit that instead of making a good game our first priority was to count imaginary future profits which WAR IP was supposed to guarantee. We admit that even when our failure became obvious to everyone we still didn't try to come with a serious and viable redesign plan and continued to screw the game up with every patch.

But we have balls to accept the truth and apologize for offending you. In order to make amends we offer you (everyone who's been faithfully paying us in spite of everything mentioned above) 3 months of free play. Within 3 months we can and WILL deliver:

Reconstruct the zones and introduce a 3rd realm like we should have done at the start !!

- fixes for the following major bugs: <insert the list of bugs here>;

- THE SAME class abilities for all realms (so basically all realms will have the same classes from now on) thus eliminating any Order vs. Destro class imbalance, factual or perceived;

- de-instanced city sieges so that they could become a mixed PvE/RvR experience;

..."

Anyone familiar with WAR issues could continue the list but the general idea is simple: Mythic and EA should scratch their "everything is fine" attitude and show some responsibility.

But they won't. it's not their style.

If a letter like that happened, I would hope the line I inserted would be in it :)

Originally posted by wowfan1996

Originally posted by Rohn

Those are simply examples of the "bug fixes and polish".

What's your list of "more important things"?

You're either not too bright or just trolling, my friend. Or both, which wouldn't surprise me either.

Bloom and new character animations are probably the last things that WAR community (what's left of it) is concerned with right now. How exactly they're going to help with realm balance and with the lack of original PvE content and really massive RvR?

What's important, you ask. Right now, the most important for Mythic should be fighting against their own bureaucratic corportate reflexes. They desperately need to stop acting like clowns and finally offer their fans some truth (for it would at least prove that they're off crack finally). First and foremost WAR players want a clear statement, something like this:

"Our dear customers.

We admit that we made so many mistakes and bad design decisions during the development of WAR that one could pile them up till they reach the Moon. We admit that instead of making a good game our first priority was to count imaginary future profits which WAR IP was supposed to guarantee. We admit that even when our failure became obvious to everyone we still didn't try to come with a serious and viable redesign plan and continued to screw the game up with every patch.

But we have balls to accept the truth and apologize for offending you. In order to make amends we offer you (everyone who's been faithfully paying us in spite of everything mentioned above) 3 months of free play. Within 3 months we can and WILL deliver:

- fixes for the following major bugs: <insert the list of bugs here>;

- THE SAME class abilities for both realms (so basically both realms will have the same classes from now on) thus eliminating any Order vs. Destro class imbalance, factual or perceived;

- de-instanced city sieges so that they could become a mixed PvE/RvR experience;

..."

Anyone familiar with WAR issues could continue the list but the general idea is simple: Mythic and EA should scratch their "everything is fine" attitude and show some responsibility.

But they won't. it's not their style.

Did you read it? you only mentioned 3 things and the letter has 2 of them in it. Then you start rambling about how they need to write you an appology letter. Seriously, I disliked the game and gave it only 2 months (as I do with all games) but at least if you're going to critisise a specific thing (the letter) at least read it.

I will most likely give it a try again down the line but there are a lot of promising releases atm so it will be at the back of them, plus I've got FE now so it will only ever be a 2nd game.

Originally posted by mrw0lf

Did you read it?

I did. And I included 3 things only to make an example, the actual list can be different. I could mention something else, e.g. that commonly discussed '3-rd realm'. But such a thing would require an expansion pack and that would take about a year under favorable circumstances. Probably more since the current situation is anything but favorable.

Also a vague promise to "knock out bugs" isn't the same as the actual list of major fixes that will make it into the next patch.

But my point is: they should care much less about their 'image' now and much more about the credit of faith. It would take drastic measures to recover the latter and the deadline for such measures is right now.

Originally posted by wowfan1996

Originally posted by Rohn

Those are simply examples of the "bug fixes and polish".

What's your list of "more important things"?

You're either not too bright or just trolling, my friend. Or both, which wouldn't surprise me either.

Bloom and new character animations are probably the last things that WAR community (what's left of it) is concerned with right now. How exactly they're going to help with realm balance and with the lack of original PvE content and really massive RvR?

What's important, you ask. 

You ask about how it helps with realm balance, when they specifically talk about the Underdog system which is designed to do so, as well as further class balancing.

You ask how this helps with the lack of PvE, where the letter talks about the permanent addition of Hunter's Vale (PvE instance) to the game, and the New Player Journey program which has changed, streamlined, or beefed up the PvE experience at the lower levels.

You believe they haven't addressed RvR, yet the elevation of zone keeps and removal of Fortresses (which are slated to be retasked in the near future), the aforementioned Underdog system, and previous changes to City Sieges making them more PvP than PvE, do in fact address RvR.  And if you're trying to claim that oRvR doesn't happen right now, you couldn't be more wrong.

Are these changes the way you think they should be?  Probably not.  But your opinions aren't "truth" to anyone but you - I've seen countless suggestions on how to improve the game, many being quite different from yours.

Given your selective reading, it's pretty clear that no matter what Mythic says or does, you're going to kneejerk a Tourette's-like "WAR bad!  Mythic bad! Too... late!"  Your mind appears to be set, and nothing Mythic does will change it.  I understand the sentiment, since Mythic has made plenty of mistakes with WAR, and had some wrong priorities through the game's development.  But they have done some things right as well.

While it is nice to seem some fixes for stuff (and the introduction of second ramps make keep taking much less tedious), I'm not sure that this is going to "sell" more subsciptions. Of course we could have told Mythic that having three starting zones was not a good plan, although they knew that from DAoC, having made the same mistake -doh!

Having said that, business is booming on European servers, and I'm seeing as many players in low tiers as I did at launch. But those of us who have had our subscription a year are asking is all about expansion and more races/careers? My wife was bored after about six months and I have stuck it out, but I've played most classes (mostly to T2) and I'm looking for some new stuff.

Land of the dead was good, but most of need a good group. Again, Mythic knows that big group PvE (al la TOA) doesn't work; thank the Gods (Chaos probably) they they revamped the PQ to have an easy option (er .. I can only find one person who fancies that chapter). I suspect that LOTD will get a nerf so we can actually play it :)

Finally, the introduction a global chat channel, and a start guild. Both of which were suggestion that many of us we making within hours of playing the game (again, Mythic were well aware from DAoC how popular the beginner guild was - many of us never left it).

So, Dear Mythic, er ... expansion? I have my lovely shinies here waiting for you :) Goblin fanatics and doomdivers FTW please?

Sounds like great stuff, but the biggest problem with the game I saw when I tried it again was that there were no players in T1 or T2. This game had and still has way too many problems.

Too little, too late.

A lot of these changes should have been in since beta.

The only thing that would bring me back at this point is the addition of a 3rd faction. That would probably take them another few years to implement at the rate they fix things though.

Originally posted by Rohn

they specifically talk about the Underdog system

the letter talks about the permanent addition of Hunter's Vale (PvE instance) to the game

You believe they haven't addressed RvR

your opinions aren't "truth"

it's pretty clear that no matter what Mythic says or does

'Underdog' is a handicap system, that is, a painkiller, a pair of crutches for their poorly designed RvR. Do you think it's a step in the right direction? If so, I disagree. It's not said to be temporary, so I assume it's their permanent 'solution'. And I fail to see how it helps to eliminate the cause of the problem. Even as an ersatz it must yet prove its reliability. And they promised no RvR redesign as of now.

Now about PvE. Most complains that I've seen on the official forums were not about quantity but rather about quality of the related content. To be more specific, PvE is dubbed boring and generic. It'd be more logical to start with fixing what you have currently rather than building more upon a shaky basis, wouldn't it? Yet, adding another instance of better quality can still help. Let's see if it'll be the case.

Show me where I wrote "they haven't addressed RvR." Even the phrase itself sounds utterly alien to me, because I dislike vague and meaningless words like 'addressed'. Everyone can imagine what a 'complete redesign' could look like (even if different people will get different pictures of that), but 'addressed' is empty. If you fixed a typo in a skill description - does it mean you "addressed" the issue of this skill being broken? What I actually said was: too little, too late. And even the majority of current players will agree with me (not to mention those who have already left).

I'm not a Mythic representative. All I can offer is a mere suggestion. Speaking of truth, people want to hear it from Mythic. The developers must prove that at least now they understand how deep the issues lie. And even that's not enough. They must present their customers a viable redesign plan. On top of that Mythic must do something right now to stem the anger of people who's been paying for their subs.

I'm pretty sure that Mythic managers have no balls to initiate something of this scale, apologize to their fans and at least partially recompense their expenses. So, you're correct. All that Mythic will say or do in reality will be the same old "everything's fine with WAR, so we give you some shiny bloom." The downward spiral will continue.

Reasons for me to considering going back.

1....Redo graphics engine, so like no biggie there...

2....Redo entire class system, from the ground up so it get done right..So no biggie there either huh.

3...Redo the entire PVP from ground up, instead of in design phase chopping back and forth with ideas and ending up with no ideas working well, a classic example of PVP designed by commitee...So yet again no biggie.

4...I just aint feeling the conflict, I aint feeling the WAR at all, its all so patchy, yet again designed by commitee and lack of focus on one solid core idea.

See where i,m going with this, the reason why so many left, and when I say so many the numbers were staggering is the game lacked focus, lacked direction and lacked fun, it needed to be redone, relaunched and seeing as the damage is all ready done, they should release the ip to someone else.

I agree with most of the posters in this thread. The unfortunate part is that Mythic have talked a good talk, but as always actions speak louder. they really havent done anything to fix most of the ongoing problems with the game. I am not going to try to assign blame as that would take way to long, but as the above post mentions, the game needs a massive overhaul. Its suffers from general lack of direction. These issues have been mentioned since the game came out and basically nothing has been done besides the occasional nerf or re-organisation. This news posted by the OP just seems more of the same cosmetic fixes. They need to do more. It is really such a shame as this game has one of the biggest IP's out there besides ST and SW, and god i hope they get them right.

Originally posted by Morgaren

I won't be coming back until they announce that classes have true mirrors of each other.

when a sorcerer is just like a bright wizard, with just a different feel, and same with every other pairing, I'll come back, till then they can shove any thing they try to call career balance up their... well kids read this stuff too, so I'll let them use their imagination.

(Hint: sun doesn't shine there)

Well, time to resub then. BWs lost their M2 stun and sorcs got their "Burnout" ability, BWs got the Frozen Touch 75% proc tactic as well.

Classes are well mirrored now, one could say that edge is now to sorc with higher burst capability.

I re-tried it recently & whilst there are a lot of great updates to the game it's still far too shallow an experience to warrant a monthly sub.

However my biggest gripe always was & sadly still is the absolutely s**t performance, maybe it's due to the 65 trillion things that the Tome of Knowledge monitors because before it was implimented the game ran quite well in beta.

When the game doesn't play like running in flippers on a treacle-covered road in fall I'll give it more credit, until they sort the performance they are just polishing a turd.