Originally posted by melmoth1

Ok, I don't give a flying shuttle-cock about when NDA was lifted. I am with Jacobs on this one because - after reading the articles - the WOW developer was out of order criticising the competition in such an underhand and sleazy manner. I like it best when games developers show a bit of respect and decorum to one another, it shows a decency of spirit and respect for the bigger picture: the improvement of mmorpgs in general, which benefit from healthy competition.

Now, it's even more disgusting that the Goliath that is WOW drew first blood against a relatively new-born pup to the market. I side with the underdog everytime and, despite my own criticisms of WAR, it only made me feel instinctial loyalty to War - at least as far as this issue is concerned.

 Jacobs was correct to respond in the way he did, he was responding to a rather snide and below-the-shorts blow by a heavy-weight that should know better. I used to be a wow player and I had a lot respect for Blizzard, this has made me a lot less impressed with their representives: to any intelligent human being, they scored an own goal here. Why are they so frightened of competition?

Regards

Melmoth

edit for spelling

 

My 2 cents, which, with the current state of the world economy, is worth about half a cent...

I read the article.  I fail to see anyone getting owned.  I fail to see any below-the-shorts blows.  This article reads like every single other marketing interview I have ever read, with some variation of:

"Oh, their guys are great, we're actually friends...blah blah...their product is ok, I actually play it, but here's what I dislike...blah blah...Oh, and of course, my product does those things to the nines, you should come try it."

Have you guys never read these types of articles?  Most would consider them marketing pieces/propaganda.  I don't care if the iterviewee is a developer or janitor, when they go for an interview, they are groomed to market the product.  Hell, it's an election year in the US, you guys should be used to this sort of posturing. 

Unfortunately, especially on this site, attitudes have become so polarized and partisan that there can't be any fair exchange of information or ideas from one game to the next.  Say anything positive or negative, regardless of tact and information provided, and the "people from the other side of the aisle" are going to crucify you as an extremeist fan or troll, depending on thier position.

Originally posted by Zionnax

.........Unfortunately, especially on this site, attitudes have become so polarized and partisan that there can't be any fair exchange of information or ideas from one game to the next.  Say anything positive or negative, regardless of tact and information provided, and the "people from the other side of the aisle" are going to crucify you as an extremeist fan or troll, depending on thier position.

Isn't that the TRUTH of the matter?  (rhetorical question)

i 2nd that...

Originally posted by girlgeek

Originally posted by Yeebo

Originally posted by Azrile

I found this article funny.  Apparently Jacobs didn't.  He is fuming over on another forum.. and has vowed to take the 'gloves off' when talking about WOW.

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/16/world-of-warcraft-game-director-on-warhammer-online

Apparently the offending part of the article was when the WOW developer questioned why a game would keep up an NDA until the launch of the game.  In my opinion, this is a very valid question.    You see this decision playing out on Warhammer since every city seige that has happened so far has been bugged and exploited.  When beta testers are 'hushed' there is no bully pulpit to get get glaring exploits fixed.

I also found it amusing that the WOW dev experienced a lot of what the rest of us did.   Very little RvR and the majority of the game is spent grinding scenarios.

I think the state of Warhammer is pretty apparent when the first 'state of the game' speech will come the day before first renewals and will amount to  'please don't quit'.   Maybe the second 'state of the game' speech will have a mop in the background and you can sing Baby come back..

 

They lifted the NDA well before launch.  Anyone could get into the open beta.  This doesn't make any sense.

 

Correction on the HIGHLIGHTED bit there....

Anyone that paid 50 bucks could get into the open beta.  You had to essentially buy the game first via pre-ordering it.  I got mine from Direct2Drive.

Actually if you had a File Planet account you got into open beta. But the cheapest method by far was to go to target and get the Pre-order box for 90 cents. This box included a 5 dollar off coupon for the game which worked at most major retailers.

WoW is making a classic mistake in marketing.

They are talking about their closest competition. That is a major no-no. You can do this in sports, but when talking about an active subscription base you are giving the competition the best form of publicity.

They have 10mil subscribers, they don't need to prove anything to anyone. They are a billion dollar industry changing entity.

That being said, they acknowledge WAR as a threat by acknowledging them in any fashion. They became popular by maintaining a following through marketing to their fanbase specifically. Now they are pointing the finger to the closest position from the top. (in this specific genre. WAR doesn't even come close at this point)
 

While it would take forever for another game to even come close to WoWs success, they just did Mythic a huge favor by pointing non-WoW players in a dissimilar direction. They've effectively said that all roads do not lead to WoW; not by criticizing the flaws, but by acknowledging them so quickly.

Originally posted by Azrile

open beta was only up to the first 20 levels and the NDA was not lifted for the people in the closed beta who could access city seiges.  Exactly the same way AOC launched.

Why do you think we've seen 3 city seiges and all of them have been broken and exploited beyond belief

IT is not exactly the same by any means... in Warhammer you got to see 1/2 the content .. not 1/4... try understanding the concepts before you post ffs.

Originally posted by Striph

Everything Kaplan said is true though, Warhammer to me is still very beta. I was in since before the first Chaos phase, i'm an elder tester and was SHOCKED to hear a Sept release date, and would've been shocked if they pushed for anything before 2009 and here we are. Everything he said hits the nail on the head, scenario grinds, no people to do PQ's, nobody to group with unless you have a group of people, good luck on randomly finding people.

No, everything he said did not hit the nail on the head. What he did was he took some very ligitimate issues that you can find on the forum, blow them out of propotion in an attempt to make WAR looks bad.

Read very carefully, he said his character was level 13 and it was slow to the point he want to quit. As an elder tester and a player, did you find any leveling slow down at level 13? At level 13, PvE progression and RvR progression are still pretty balance, you can actually leveling at the same speed doing just PvE or doing just RvR. The scenario reward does not become noticable superior until late 20's. And he said at level 13 scenario was the only viable leveling method.

It's an irony to see a ex guild leader of one of the most hardcore guild of Everquest complain about leveling slow down at level 13.

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Striph

Everything Kaplan said is true though, Warhammer to me is still very beta. I was in since before the first Chaos phase, i'm an elder tester and was SHOCKED to hear a Sept release date, and would've been shocked if they pushed for anything before 2009 and here we are. Everything he said hits the nail on the head, scenario grinds, no people to do PQ's, nobody to group with unless you have a group of people, good luck on randomly finding people.

No, everything he said did not hit the nail on the head. What he did was he took some very ligitimate issues that you can find on the forum, blow them out of propotion in an attempt to make WAR looks bad.

Read very carefully, he said his character was level 13 and it was slow to the point he want to quit. As an elder tester and a player, did you find any leveling slow down at level 13? At level 13, PvE progression and RvR progression are still pretty balance, you can actually leveling at the same speed doing just PvE or doing just RvR. The scenario reward does not become noticable superior until late 20's. And he said at level 13 scenario was the only viable leveling method.

It's an irony to see a ex guild leader of one of the most hardcore guild of Everquest complain about leveling slow down at level 13.

I wondered about that too.  My highest  character got to lvl 22 before I got bored to tears of queueing for scenarios.  But then again, I'm not developing an expansion for a billion dollar game.

I'm glad I'm not singing for either game now.  Wow is same ol crap with the expansion and I don't like how they're shamelessly adding dumb things from WAR.  I mean it might make it slightly better but they need to fix so much and add so much more than they are in wrath.  WAR is just plain horrible on all fronts and I'm glad they're catching crap on decisions.  Beta was released way to late and was way too exclusive for an open beta.  We knew this in the beginning.

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Striph

Everything Kaplan said is true though, Warhammer to me is still very beta. I was in since before the first Chaos phase, i'm an elder tester and was SHOCKED to hear a Sept release date, and would've been shocked if they pushed for anything before 2009 and here we are. Everything he said hits the nail on the head, scenario grinds, no people to do PQ's, nobody to group with unless you have a group of people, good luck on randomly finding people.

No, everything he said did not hit the nail on the head. What he did was he took some very ligitimate issues that you can find on the forum, blow them out of propotion in an attempt to make WAR looks bad.

Read very carefully, he said his character was level 13 and it was slow to the point he want to quit. As an elder tester and a player, did you find any leveling slow down at level 13? At level 13, PvE progression and RvR progression are still pretty balance, you can actually leveling at the same speed doing just PvE or doing just RvR. The scenario reward does not become noticable superior until late 20's. And he said at level 13 scenario was the only viable leveling method.

It's an irony to see a ex guild leader of one of the most hardcore guild of Everquest complain about leveling slow down at level 13.

 

I wondered about that too.  My highest  character got to lvl 22 before I got bored to tears of queueing for scenarios.  But then again, I'm not developing an expansion for a billion dollar game.

Comming from a WOW fanboy, I find that really ironic. Did you get bored to tears queue for battleground to get your wellfare epic? Did you get bored to tears running the same instances over and over and over and over and over and over again to get a single piece of epic armor?

Leveling in WOW isn't that much faster either. It took me way longer to get from 1 to 30 in WOW than to get from 1 to 20 in WAR.

Before even attempt to critisize someone else, take a look at your self.

Originally posted by melmoth1

Ok, I don't give a flying shuttle-cock about when NDA was lifted. I am with Jacobs on this one because - after reading the articles - the WOW developer was out of order criticising the competition in such an underhand and sleazy manner. I like it best when games developers show a bit of respect and decorum to one another, it shows a decency of spirit and respect for the bigger picture: the improvement of mmorpgs in general, which benefit from healthy competition.

I don't play MMOs anymore at the moment but I want to stop in here and agree with the portion I quoted.

Leave the war between competition with the users and keep the civility with the developers. The professionals. I think that was the whole thing forgotten in the thread.

 

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Striph

Everything Kaplan said is true though, Warhammer to me is still very beta. I was in since before the first Chaos phase, i'm an elder tester and was SHOCKED to hear a Sept release date, and would've been shocked if they pushed for anything before 2009 and here we are. Everything he said hits the nail on the head, scenario grinds, no people to do PQ's, nobody to group with unless you have a group of people, good luck on randomly finding people.

No, everything he said did not hit the nail on the head. What he did was he took some very ligitimate issues that you can find on the forum, blow them out of propotion in an attempt to make WAR looks bad.

Read very carefully, he said his character was level 13 and it was slow to the point he want to quit. As an elder tester and a player, did you find any leveling slow down at level 13? At level 13, PvE progression and RvR progression are still pretty balance, you can actually leveling at the same speed doing just PvE or doing just RvR. The scenario reward does not become noticable superior until late 20's. And he said at level 13 scenario was the only viable leveling method.

It's an irony to see a ex guild leader of one of the most hardcore guild of Everquest complain about leveling slow down at level 13.

 

I wondered about that too.  My highest  character got to lvl 22 before I got bored to tears of queueing for scenarios.  But then again, I'm not developing an expansion for a billion dollar game.

 

Comming from a WOW fanboy, I find that really ironic. Did you get bored to tears queue for battleground to get your wellfare epic? Did you get bored to tears running the same instances over and over and over and over and over and over again to get a single piece of epic armor?

Leveling in WOW isn't that much faster either. It took me way longer to get from 1 to 30 in WOW than to get from 1 to 20 in WAR.

Before even attempt to critisize someone else, take a look at your self.

I have bought and played every MMORPG that has been released since EQ for at least the first month.. this includes such winners as AC2 and Vanguard.   I've always had a main game ( UO for 5 years, and WOW for 4), but I always played other games just to try them.

Ok.. lets chat about 'what you can do at endgame' in WOW

1.  10 or 25 man guild raids ( 8 of them in BC, about 10 in Wrath)
2.  Heroic endgame dungeons ( About 20 of them)
3.  Battlegrounds ( 4 of them, soon 5)
4.  Lake Wintergrasp (open world RvR zone)
5. Achievements
6.  Daily Quests
7.  About 10 fully fleshed out craft skills.
8. Arena ( I have 2 and 5 man teams)

It's funny that you mention people grinding BG's in WOW considering that is 1 of about 8 different things you can be doing.. but if you look at Warhammer.. what percentage of players are doing nothing BUT grinding scenarios.  You see posts about it everywhere from players.

If people chose to grind BGs in WOW, it's because they are chosing to, not because there aren't other viable aternatives.   But as most people who tried warhammer will tell you.. on most servers (the ones that are med or low).. grinding scenarios IS the only option.  PQs can't be done, RvR doesn't happen unless you count destro taking things that aren't defended.

Do you think it's a coincidence that Jacob's just announced that they will be allowing transfers off of low population servers?  What do you think is going to happen a week after that?  Those servers will be turned off.  We are not even out of the free month and they are already planning on turning off servers.

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Striph

Everything Kaplan said is true though, Warhammer to me is still very beta. I was in since before the first Chaos phase, i'm an elder tester and was SHOCKED to hear a Sept release date, and would've been shocked if they pushed for anything before 2009 and here we are. Everything he said hits the nail on the head, scenario grinds, no people to do PQ's, nobody to group with unless you have a group of people, good luck on randomly finding people.

No, everything he said did not hit the nail on the head. What he did was he took some very ligitimate issues that you can find on the forum, blow them out of propotion in an attempt to make WAR looks bad.

Read very carefully, he said his character was level 13 and it was slow to the point he want to quit. As an elder tester and a player, did you find any leveling slow down at level 13? At level 13, PvE progression and RvR progression are still pretty balance, you can actually leveling at the same speed doing just PvE or doing just RvR. The scenario reward does not become noticable superior until late 20's. And he said at level 13 scenario was the only viable leveling method.

It's an irony to see a ex guild leader of one of the most hardcore guild of Everquest complain about leveling slow down at level 13.

 

I wondered about that too.  My highest  character got to lvl 22 before I got bored to tears of queueing for scenarios.  But then again, I'm not developing an expansion for a billion dollar game.

 

 Did you get bored to tears queue for battleground to get your wellfare epic?

Lol, there are no queues

Originally posted by Azrile

 We are not even out of the free month and they are already planning on turning off servers.

Servers that should have never been there in the first place. Honestly, there were way too many servers.

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Originally posted by Striph

Everything Kaplan said is true though, Warhammer to me is still very beta. I was in since before the first Chaos phase, i'm an elder tester and was SHOCKED to hear a Sept release date, and would've been shocked if they pushed for anything before 2009 and here we are. Everything he said hits the nail on the head, scenario grinds, no people to do PQ's, nobody to group with unless you have a group of people, good luck on randomly finding people.

No, everything he said did not hit the nail on the head. What he did was he took some very ligitimate issues that you can find on the forum, blow them out of propotion in an attempt to make WAR looks bad.

Read very carefully, he said his character was level 13 and it was slow to the point he want to quit. As an elder tester and a player, did you find any leveling slow down at level 13? At level 13, PvE progression and RvR progression are still pretty balance, you can actually leveling at the same speed doing just PvE or doing just RvR. The scenario reward does not become noticable superior until late 20's. And he said at level 13 scenario was the only viable leveling method.

It's an irony to see a ex guild leader of one of the most hardcore guild of Everquest complain about leveling slow down at level 13.

 

I wondered about that too.  My highest  character got to lvl 22 before I got bored to tears of queueing for scenarios.  But then again, I'm not developing an expansion for a billion dollar game.

 

Comming from a WOW fanboy, I find that really ironic. Did you get bored to tears queue for battleground to get your wellfare epic? Did you get bored to tears running the same instances over and over and over and over and over and over again to get a single piece of epic armor?

Leveling in WOW isn't that much faster either. It took me way longer to get from 1 to 30 in WOW than to get from 1 to 20 in WAR.

Before even attempt to critisize someone else, take a look at your self.

 

I have bought and played every MMORPG that has been released since EQ for at least the first month.. this includes such winners as AC2 and Vanguard.   I've always had a main game ( UO for 5 years, and WOW for 4), but I always played other games just to try them.

Ok.. lets chat about 'what you can do at endgame' in WOW

1.  10 or 25 man guild raids ( 8 of them in BC, about 10 in Wrath)
2.  Heroic endgame dungeons ( About 20 of them)
3.  Battlegrounds ( 4 of them, soon 5)
4.  Lake Wintergrasp (open world RvR zone)
5. Achievements
6.  Daily Quests
7.  About 10 fully fleshed out craft skills.
8. Arena ( I have 2 and 5 man teams)

It's funny that you mention people grinding BG's in WOW considering that is 1 of about 8 different things you can be doing.. but if you look at Warhammer.. what percentage of players are doing nothing BUT grinding scenarios.  You see posts about it everywhere from players.

If people chose to grind BGs in WOW, it's because they are chosing to, not because there aren't other viable aternatives.   But as most people who tried warhammer will tell you.. on most servers (the ones that are med or low).. grinding scenarios IS the only option.  PQs can't be done, RvR doesn't happen unless you count destro taking things that aren't defended.

Do you think it's a coincidence that Jacob's just announced that they will be allowing transfers off of low population servers?  What do you think is going to happen a week after that?  Those servers will be turned off.  We are not even out of the free month and they are already planning on turning off servers.

I guess I'm not sure what your goal is with this little tantrum you're having.  You're perfectly willing to forgive WoW for it's imbalances and imperfections, but not WAR's?  Yes, I've read one or two of your posts on the WoW forums. 

Based on your reply here, you seem to be stating that because WAR doesn't have all of the different activities WoW does, it is not a good or successful game.  If we apply that logic, WoW was not a good game when it was released, because when it was released, it  didn't contain items 4, 5, 6 or 8 on your list, only had 3 bgs and not nearly the number of dungeons and raids as today.  Therefore, it didn't have nearly as many things to do upon release as it does now.  WoW must have sucked up until the past year or so?

It's a good thing you're list doesn't represent the truth, or WoW wouldn't even be here because everyone would have been bored and left the game.

And the turning off servers comment?  Well, I guess you can say whatever you want and not have any evidence or rationale for it.  At best, it makes you look intellectually dishonest, at worse, just stupid.

I'm a big WoW fan and I'm still on the fence with WAR.  I'm not crazy about the game but I want it to be successful and bring needed competition to the market and diversity of style and taste to the genre.  It boggles the mind when people put their personal paranoias in play when it comes to other games.

Originally posted by Azrile

 Maybe the second 'state of the game' speech will have a mop in the background and you can sing Baby come back..

 

ROFL, that commercial cracks me up!

 

Originally posted by Azrile

 

I have bought and played every MMORPG that has been released since EQ for at least the first month.. this includes such winners as AC2 and Vanguard.   I've always had a main game ( UO for 5 years, and WOW for 4), but I always played other games just to try them.

Ok.. lets chat about 'what you can do at endgame' in WOW

1.  10 or 25 man guild raids ( 8 of them in BC, about 10 in Wrath)
2.  Heroic endgame dungeons ( About 20 of them)
3.  Battlegrounds ( 4 of them, soon 5)
4.  Lake Wintergrasp (open world RvR zone)
5. Achievements
6.  Daily Quests
7.  About 10 fully fleshed out craft skills.
8. Arena ( I have 2 and 5 man teams)

WAR has been out a month, WoW for years.

what was there to do, endgame wise, when WoW was 1 month old?

I'll tell ya...........nothing.

Ony was bugged to all hell and MC wasnt even finished, there were no BG's.

it was eiher run UBRS(again...and again....and again....and again) or the TM/SS zerg fest.

they didnt get Ony/MC hashed out for about 3 months after release and tehre were and are still buggs in MC.

to be honest. people werent even doing MC/ONY/UBRS after a month as only a handfull of servers even had 60's then.

lets not kid ourselves here, WoW is a very good game. No doubting that. BUT, it had alot more problems at launch than WAR does.

server crashes, continent crashes, instance crashes, instances not working, zepplin crashes leaving you in the middle of the ocean and unable to retriev your corpse, falling "thru the world" at every staircase/room corner, instance bosses getting hung up on ANY obstacle and resetting to full health, etc etc

these are all problems WoW had in the begninning and many such problems still exist. thankfully Blizz did a pretty good job in removing the game breaking bugs, but anyone who plays on blackrock will atest to, server crashes are stil commonplace as are other bugs.

The test for Mythic will be if they can improve on the solid base they already have while continuing to add/tweak content with as much ferocity and efficiency and caring as Blizz did.

yes WAR is low on the content right now, but the gameplay is pretty bug free. I have yet to experience a server crash, CTD, scenario crash etc.

give Mythic some time and everytrhing will be hunkey dorey.

sadly alot of the people complaining probably didnt play WoW at the start thius have no idea that games start off slow/small and grow from there. and all they now is the BG grind so thats all they do in WAR

 If we apply that logic, WoW was not a good game when it was released, because when it was released, it  didn't contain items 4, 5, 6 or 8 on your list, only had 3 bgs and not nearly the number of dungeons and raids as today. 

not meaning to flame here because you're basically agreeing with me but you're proving my last point in my prior post.

you obviously didnt play WoW from the start as there were zero BG's and 1.5 non working raid encounters.

you can strike ech and ever number he listed as none of it existed at luanch or for atleast 6 months after launch for WoW

I just wanted to state my opinion one thing. The minute you have to pay for it (pre-orders, fileplanet etc) open betas lost the role of testing. Players want to get their money's worth so they just play the game. No bug reports  no nothing. I know the moment i stopped being volunteer work and became a service i pay for i said to myself screw them. Even if i like or dislike the game i m gonna get my money's worth playing as much as i can till launch. If the devs can test some things without interrupting my game time more power to them.

I think someone from the PR department at Mythic should tell Mark Jacobs to shut it already. This game has alot of  obvious flaws, and will never be as successful as WoW. Hyping the game up and throwing petty insults at Blizzard after they make 1 comment, to Mythics implied suggestions in everyone of their hype videos, shows why this game has problems. Because obviously the developers behind it are unproffestional.

Everything that the developer for WoW has said is 100% true, and has been mentioned tons of times in every War related forum. Most of the problems with this game should not of been in launch, for instance how can such a terrible chat interface just slip through a beta?

It is obvious that there would be problems with faction inbalance as well, you only need to look at what happened in WoW to see that it would happen again in War, so why wasn't something done about that?

They have also designed the world to the point where people are so spread out you do not see many people around, it is an obvious flaw that should of been dealt with in their beta.

Granted they are fixing it now, but it does not change the fact that these problems are so obvious they should not of been there in the first place.

Btw the comment about the NDA is true as well, what is there to hide if your game is supposedly so briliant? If there was not the backlash from AoC regarding the missing content I bet you they would of never told anyone about their missing content till a few days before release.

However I believe his comment about NDAs was aimed at the industry as a whole and not just Mythic who are obviously guilty of the same act.

All that said, Blizzard should not scoop to such a low level when they are the market leader and set the example nor should Mythic, whom MJ is obviously representive of, should not of responded to it.

Ive lost even more respect for both of these companies now. Its bad enough they make us pay for betas, but they need to act like children in a mud slinging match as well. It is quite sad that these 2 companies are the market leaders. Also puts into question how are they going to turn around actual design flaws if they act like this.