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12/14/09 8:29:19 AM#61
Originally posted by MMO_Doubter
I still contribute the EA acquisition of Mythic as the downfall to WAR, but that's just a scapegoat much like Mark Jacobs once was. He's obviously no longer a part of Mythic and there are fewer and fewer places to point the finger of blame. Honestly, after playing DAoC for a number of years, you could really feel the same sluggishness of combat/movement/animations as well as the overall buggy features of that game in WAR. DAoC was a different time in gaming, however, and people seemed to be a tad more tolerable back then. I'm currently ashamed to call myself a former Mythic fan but I am still willing to give them another chance at redemption. There was that tidbit about DAoC being in the focus a few months back so maybe we'll see a revamp. That's looking more and more like a fading dream as WAR continues to close servers, however. |
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12/14/09 8:33:55 AM#62
Seriously, I believe many people haven't and probably never will get to taste what this PvP game has to offer. Think about those memorable moments you get from a typical PvE game like the first time you ever took down a particularly difficult boss after many attempts. You know the ones, where vent goes crazy. Just last night, our 1.5 warbands managed to take down 124 people with good manouvering and working as a team. It felt fucking awesome, one of those moments where all the work and effort came together and made us shine. Later the same night, we were charged unexpectedly by 2 warbands while we were strung out and dissorganised. We pulled it together under real threat of wiping, reformed, held, and then pushed them back wiping them all and winning just by being the better team. 2 memorable moments in 1 night that will stick with the 40 or so people from our alliance that were there. War could never achieve wow numbers because many people won't get to experience what it was built to provide because their expectations are based on half baked pvp implementations in other games that added "pvp" as an after thought. War is not the same and should not be played with the same mindset. PvP is not the negative thing that previous mmorpgs have painted through their poor implementations. It's the core of the game and it doesn't require a hardcore ganking mentality to enjoy it. On the subject of polish, I can't argue that war had it's problems which undoubtably decreased the population. |
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12/14/09 8:34:48 AM#63
Nobody cares about Euro servers. Especially not the developer, Turbine, who really doesn't get much from the Euro servers income wise. European players leaving the Euro servers (run by Codemasters) to play on the American servers (run by Turbine, Atari has all but dropped out of the game) would actually result in a substantial revenue increase for Turbine.
http://www.massively.com/2009/10/16/switch-to-free-to-play-working-very-well-for-ddo/ Straight from the horses mouth. Personally though, for me, the proof is in the pudding. Since going F2P they've added 2 new servers. To a game that's almost 4 years old. That's all the proof I need. |
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12/14/09 8:40:59 AM#64
Originally posted by Vagrant_Zero I think the article is a bit outdated now. It might rised by 40% at that time during the highest hype, but now it's back to whatever it was before going F2P - based on Xfire. They added 2 servers, but that could be the players from 2 EU realms, that are now basically desolated. Sure I might be wrong here, because I put high importance on Xfire. REALITY CHECK |
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12/14/09 8:43:23 AM#65
Originally posted by Eraserhead
I have to disagree with you again as I do think people got a chance to taste some of the better moments in warhammer. Including the warbands, etc. The problem was that those moments were not the result of the games design, but rather dumb luck on the players part. Almost everything in the design of the game works at odds with itself and delivered such a jumbled experience that people just walked away from the game. Note that I am not talking about people losing and leaving, but not having a consistant and decent experience. Maybe it was overwhelming odds, lack of enemies or any other number of problems that plagues warhammers design. It just didn't produce a decent enough experience for many people to feel worthy of spending time and money on.
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12/14/09 9:22:40 AM#66
Originally posted by Eraserhead
I can't agree with a lot of this.
Server forums are mostly that. Places you talk with the community of a game, you could play hello kitty online with failing servers and whack a mole pvp and still have server forums be a great place to be. That's because community can be anywhere, good game or bad. People make the game, that statement remains true no matter what you play. And to *some* extent you can argue a game shapes people.
As for the population argument. Yes, of course it's better at the moment because just like you said, they just merged another 2 servers into the last remaining four. The problem still is though, will it remain stable this time or keep going down like it has for the last 60 servers? So far I've seen no reason to believe the population problems are suddenly resolved, it just temporarily looks that way. Also, by going through the server forums, it's still pretty clear not all servers have decent balance.
I especially don't agree with your 'PvP' game argument. Arguably the most scorned populace that went into WAR MOST ready and willing was the Daoc population, which is exactly the population that was most ready for PvP yet those are some of the first who bailed and pretty much have a common consensus that WAR was mostly 'bleh' *especially in comparison to Daoc, the holy grail of PvP for many old time MMO'ers.
Not to mention just a bit less than half the servers in WoW are tagged 'PvP'which provides for arguably a 'harsher' 'PvP 'environment than anything WAR has on it's servers, even the 'PvP' server is pretty carebear in comparison. (Mind you I am *not* arguing WoW PvP is better here, just 'harsher' when a level 80 can walk by and bonk you on the head)
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12/14/09 11:56:25 PM#67
Originally posted by Pheace Not too sure about this one. If you simply extrapolate the current trend then it can't be too much longer before WAR winks out of existence. Thing is though WAR wouldn't have even survived this long without players like Eraserhead. Players that genuinely enjoy what the game offers exist currently, and are excited to see where the game will go to the future. The number of these players clearly isn't enough to support 60, 10 or even 6 servers, but maybe that number is just right for 4 servers. Or maybe 2 is the magic number. Or even 1. Maybe not even that, and the game will really die. The point being I don't think we can extrapolate how many people will stick with this game through thick and thin just by judging how many subs the game has shed in the past. The real danger for WAR is that as a population based game, declining subscription numbers tends to have a (reverse) snowball effect. MUNDO!! |
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12/15/09 4:17:21 AM#68
Originally posted by Amarok44 Not too sure about this one. If you simply extrapolate the current trend then it can't be too much longer before WAR winks out of existence. Thing is though WAR wouldn't have even survived this long without players like Eraserhead. Players that genuinely enjoy what the game offers exist currently, and are excited to see where the game will go to the future. The number of these players clearly isn't enough to support 60, 10 or even 6 servers, but maybe that number is just right for 4 servers. Or maybe 2 is the magic number. Or even 1. Maybe not even that, and the game will really die. The point being I don't think we can extrapolate how many people will stick with this game through thick and thin just by judging how many subs the game has shed in the past. The real danger for WAR is that as a population based game, declining subscription numbers tends to have a (reverse) snowball effect.
I'm not saying I can somehow extrapolate how many people will stick with the game, I know there's people who stick with something despite it's flaws, but even they sometimes need a break, or real life comes in the way, or, or .... and the smaller a group becomes, the bigger the effect of even a small group leaving will become, and that will have an effect on the people who remain again, which might cause them to leave, etc etc. Take PT for example, especially roleplayers are arguably some of the generally more loyal people to stick with a game, given their propensity for a strong community.
It's, like you said, the reverse snowball effect, which has basically been happening from the moment the game came out, and simply has shown no sign of stabilizing, yet.
Now naturally, it's nowhere near where it used to be anymore, if that were the case the servers left would have run empty in a month, but It's still possible that overall, the numbers are still shrinking, if ever so slowly. Let's hope for the people of WAR it stabilizes somewhere around here though. And for me... WAR is the last game I really followed the development of... if it dies out I won't have a place to discuss MMO's anymore (with any hint of knowledge about it anyway)... and I never really enjoyed strolling the WoW forums much, and Daoc is ancient history, lol.
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12/15/09 5:29:07 AM#69
I've been trying out the Endless Trial (a LOT) and have been very surprised at how good this game is.
The Public Quest idea is nothing short of inspired - I am a habitual soloer, and these give me the experience of grouping without all the attendant bitching and whining that generally goes with grouping. Rolling for items at the end of a PQ is also great - nothing to bitch over for ANYONE. Finally, I've spent entire PQs just standing and healing players, doing no damage whatsoever, yet I still get considered by the game system as having been eligible for loot rolls, the same as the most kill-happy tank. I hate Crafting in games, because the stuff initially made is utter, worthless crap, and yet find the Potions and Talismans in WAR actually USEFUL for a change. Hell, when I got a couple of items with Talisman slots, my puny armour class jumped from 35 to just under 200, which makes a big difference. I also like to experiment with new potions, and will while away a happy 15 minutes just juggling ingredients and noting the results. That's about 13 minutes 59 seconds more that I'd be Crafting in any other MMO. The macro system is shit, sadly, and can't do anything even faintly useful, but maybe they'll fix that. I don't want any macro to run my game for me, and trigger 5 skills with one key-press, but chaining a couple of abilities to a couple of presses of ONE key would avoid the "playing the piano" routine I have to go through to use 5 or 6 abilities. My fingers are a tad stiff due to mild arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome, and it can get a bit much tinkling the ivories of keys 1 to 10. :( The community seems good, the population seems healthy, so do yourself a favour and skip antiquated bore-fests like Aion and try this out. It can't hurt, and at least it's free (with restrictions) up to lvl 10. |
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12/15/09 5:36:09 AM#70
"The Public Quest idea is nothing short of inspired - I am a habitual soloer, and these give me the experience of grouping without all the attendant bitching and whining that generally goes with grouping. "
Just summed up the bad side of PQ's imo. The initial idea was to get people grouping more to build communities, get to know people etc. But since I'm like you, very much a soloer, I already saw the same thing coming as you experienced. It actually makes it easy to group *without* socializing which is the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do :)
Still a good idea though imo.
As for macro's ... it's only a good thing if they can do as little as possible I assume, don't want UMC's running around everywhere ... not that these days they don't just simply make bots to do what umc's used to :(
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12/15/09 7:30:53 AM#71
I think it's a good thing that you have to use different keys for different skills. How easy do we want to make the game, so anyone can win a fight only bashing 1 key? No offense meant to anyone with medical problems. Having said that, there is a mod that does just what you ask. It switches skills into a skill bar slot so you only use the one key. |
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12/15/09 9:05:10 AM#72
Originally posted by Daffid011
That's one way to alter the game and get peoples attention. The game definitely needs to do something major or it's going to become more and more crippled as each new game and expansion release is made. There just isn't enough people to support every P2P mmorpg on the market, so some game has to give. My guess is the less populated unpopular games are those games that will give. |
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12/29/09 9:53:41 AM#73
Warhammer's future is dependant on more races and careers (and a bit more PvE solo content) - IMHO. That in turn is going to depend on how much more resources and money EA are willing to commit. The problem with big companies is that they live to make money and if a decision is not going to make enough profit - then they won't do it. The reason that Mythic kept DAoC going for so long was that a release made enough to pay for the development; I suspect that EA has more "overheads" and it is therefore more difficult to make a profit for a similar player base. Don't get me wrong, I love WAR and still play it (and subscribe) but it does not have the "pull" that DAoC had. Dispite some lovely and well implimented ideas, there are few discision I feel that cost them long term player commitment. 1-10 a blast, 10-20 good, 20-30 ok, 30-40 at least it was "relatively" quick to level :) 40+ Well some of the epic battles are epic - but it's had for a single player to find a bit of PvE that you can do in an hour (that's fun). I used to love doing Stonehenge dungeon for leveling up alts and loot, for example. Land of the Dead is truely exciting, but try doing it solo? Forget it :) Not that everything should be soloable - just some stuff. Three realms (and we said this all along), also there is no real attachment to zones (at T4), where in DAoC and ememy tower in "your" lands was an affront that would get the whole population annoyed enought to drop PvE and go and retake it. Not that should detract from what is on offer, WAR is solid and enjoyable, don't let me put anyone off it; but it needs Skaven, Undead, Vampire Counts, Brittonian Knights, Wood Elves and Lizardmen to keep running and growing. Let's hope that EA can see that if they pumped some resouces into this game, which has a much better foundations than most MMOs, this game could run and run for years, just like DAoC. |
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12/29/09 10:19:54 AM#74
There are alot of "stories" going on about WAR. For example you could read the letter from the new producer and find out that WAR has a great year... Then you can look at stats like number of servers - stats on Xfire (down from 25-30 last January to 65-75 this week). The fact about WAR is that its a game that needed HUGE amount of work after release. At launch - tweaking and balancing should have been a priority. Instead Mythic did absolutly nothing in that department - focused entirely on adding classes and launching events and new zone. Most ppl gave up on the game long time before they even were able to enjoy events, new classes or new zones. Cause they balance of the game was absoluty horrendus - and still is. Just at this point in time you are likely to see a range magic class do up to 5-6 times the damage of any other dmg class in the game. Last night two sorceress did 250k dmg each (500k dmg total) in a scenario where the next dps class did 50k). And this ofc is multiplying since dmg and deaths are the main factor of renown giving. Leading to these dmg classes to gain renown faster than everyone else - and that gives them EVEN more advance than before. How to fix it ? Its not possible anymore. From this point of view - WAR is already dead. You simply can not fix this. Renown system in WAR is ofc a chapter on its own. There are alot of ppl talking about AION as a grinding game. The fact of the matter is that WAR is the biggest grinder of any game on the market today. 80 levels of Renown that give players EXTRA STATS and EXTRA ITEMS means that as a PVP game - its pointless to play it unless you are gonna grind .. and grind.. and grind... And ofc - then you grind it as a dmg dealer since other classes take years to grind. As for PVE... the game stops progressing at rank 40. This means that its absolutly pointless to continue playing the game if you are not gonna play PVP and are not gonna grind your renown for better gear. This is a fact that Mythic tries to keep quiet about as long as possible. BUt ofc.. when ppl reach lvl 40 and find out that next 2 years of playing WAR is about grinding... then they quit. Heres the fact... WAR is dead as a sub based game. The game is now in maintainance mode with a skeletal crew trying to fix the billions of cracks with ducktape. Only chance for WAR is that the game goes free to play and ppl will be allowed to buy ways to double... triple or even gain TEN times the amount of Renown. WAR is one of the biggest failures of any MMO game ever. EA will try to keep this quiet until Bioware releases their MMO (with help of Mythic) but then WAR will be shut down. Do not waste your time grinding for the next 2 years... Go to a game that has some future. Thats all I can say to players that are looking for a good MMO experience. WAR is as far from a good experience as you will ever find. |
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12/29/09 2:13:45 PM#75
I played the WAR beta and didn't purchase it when it came out. I found the pve to be extremely boring, the graphics subpar, the combat not fun to play and the animations clunky.
WAR has one of the best world atmospheres I have ever seen in an mmo. The world is beautifully hand crafted and alive (as opposed to the dead worlds like Vanguard) with NPCs bustling with activity and traveling everywhere. There is always something to do; when I grow tired of something I can just take a dragon to fly to another part of the world and do something else. Awesome (surprisingly I haven't found this diversity with Aion which is a pve+rvr game as well - this is probably due to the fact that Aion is a linear game whereas WAR has several stater zones/pairings).
- Aion: I played only 2 weeks during the 2 months I was subbed and couldn't bring myself to login anymore. - and during the past month I had AoC, EQ2 and Lotro welcome back weeks (or even 15 days). Tried these games again during about 1 day each and couldn't force myself to log in. I have currently my lotro and EQ2 accounts open (welcome backs) but I purchased WAR and play it every day.
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12/29/09 3:52:06 PM#76
Originally posted by BigMango
so.. what class are you ? How high rank and how high renown ? How high is ranked is your guild ? Been to LOD ? Done Dungeons or just PQs ? Been to Capital war yet ? Killed the king ? .... Well - some of us actually have and can see the truth You played for two weeks and you think you know much about the game... Dig deeper and you will find the flaws - the bugs - the broken core systems like how renowns is handled.
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12/29/09 3:57:50 PM#77
Originally posted by Frobner
Though to be fair, so what? I played Warhammer, don't care about renown really but loved every minute of it. Well, except the sieges which were the real reason I was there. But flipping fortresses is not fun. I can easily see someone just wanting to play it for the scenarios which I really enjoyed. It's a shame the RvR aspect was a bit weak. but I didn't really have to many issues with the bugs, many of them seemed somewhat silly. Last time I checked it out they seemed gone. Still had a blast though. |
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12/29/09 4:15:21 PM#78
Originally posted by Sovrath With Pcs you never knows, it might play perfect on your machine but can bug all the time on someone elses because they have another GFX card or OS. But it seems like they found most of the bugs by now. As for the endgame RvR is the problem that they had a great endgame planned but the game was never really finished. 1 month before launch they said 4 out of the 6 cities were cut because they werent "polished" enough (probably a lie) and that they would be patched in as soon as they could fix them. The original idea was that you could take 2 of the 3 cities and control most of the other land and once you had all the cities you would have 1 days plunder and then the game would reset. The factions should also have the possibility to backstab each other so they could take a city and control it by themselves. There were a bit more around this too. I think the RvR would have been a lot more popular then even though I have no idea why they didn't have greenskins as their own faction instead of joining them with chaos, it goes against the lore and would have balanced the RvR better. The game never really had a chance when they cut so much stuff as they did. They also upset all Warhammer fans by making it levelbased and cutting out all that the horror and perversion from the setting, that killed it for the potential millions of GW fans. |
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12/29/09 10:24:13 PM#79
Originally posted by Frobner
so.. what class are you ? How high rank and how high renown ? How high is ranked is your guild ? Been to LOD ? Done Dungeons or just PQs ? Been to Capital war yet ? Killed the king ? .... Well - some of us actually have and can see the truth You played for two weeks and you think you know much about the game... Dig deeper and you will find the flaws - the bugs - the broken core systems like how renowns is handled.
No, I said I have played for 2 weeks and I'll have too "see how long it'll last".
I understand your concerns, but my experience is different from yours. You have played the game when it wasn't finished; whereas I waited for 1 year (it was in too bad a shape for me to start back then) and I am now starting fresh. And what I see today is: 1. the game has improved a lot. They had 1 year to fix the bugs, improve the graphics, etc... To me it now looks rock stable and smooth. 2. as point 1 is done, they now have more time to add content and improve the rvr system. By the time I will be at endgame I am sure it will have improved. 3. if endgame really will be as bad as you say, I don't really care (of course it would be great). Because currently I am enjoying the ride and smelling the flowers in this beautifully crafted world. If there is no endgame I'll just stop playing; the only thing I ask is for a couple months of fun leveling through the world. And if they manage to fix the issues you are pointing out by the time I get there then it will be even better.
Currently they are already revamping the armor set skins for all of the classes, I guess that if they even have the time to do this (I don't think this was needed) they are certainly also taking care of the "much higher priority" issues you are talking about - the devs aren't brain dead, are they? (at least we can hope so):
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12/30/09 12:28:38 AM#80
Originally posted by BigMango
Hahaha
Clearly you haven't been following this game for long. Feel free to read the OF and it's history to see if Armor revamp is proof they have time over from dealing with 'much higher priority' issues but that's so far off base, lol. What makes more sense is that the art department is simply different from the one working on the game's performance, mechanics etc etc. (Or at least we can hope so)
Also, if you'll notice, that armor revamp was mentioned almost *3* months ago, and has basically been in the wind since then which also has people wondering what happened to it.
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