All Posts by Digna

If you are going to re-sub make sure you get a med/med pop server. Then it will be as much fun as possible. What still confuses me was when Mythic started allowing voluntary server transfers from dead (essentially )servers to low pop servers. I suppose they were counting on low pops becoming regular/steady med pops but it didn't happen. If they had just done server merges as soon as it became apparent that some of the servers were turning into ghost towns, they would have saved a lot of cancellations.

I do see where there are a few 'helpful/hopeful' changes coming but for me after reaching Order 40 and re-rolling several to middle 30s then re-rolling again and leveling Destro toons, the end game is lacking. Not to say that the head to head isn't fun but it's essentially the same thing over and over, even with a better queuing system in place. Also, the last thing I heard when the multiple 'gold bags' started dropping, teams were essentially allowing turnovers back and forth to get the good 'leewt' (this from talking to friends after I left the game).

I still have a month and half on the 3 month sub I signed up for after the Early Access (3 days?) and the initial 1 month. It's unlikely I will re-install even if the new classes are solid and on-time.

I'm glad I bought the CE edition for Warhammer. Looks good on a shelf. AoC CE I felt was a bit better in that the sound track was very good and lasted even after the demise of the game (for my playing). Of course I played WAR longer than AoC so I liked the actual game more. *shrug* oh well. Here's to hoping for the next title.

I think that for the sake of safety (avoidance of wife aggro) I  might not be scoop up CEs quite so fast next time around, HAHA!

Locking repeat threads is pretty common action in most forums. Saves bandwidth, storage and the possibility of someone ranting and getting offensive slipping by undetected in the landslide. They even do it here, now and again.

Originally posted by Getalife

For all the idiots crying doom and gloom must realize that Warhammer opened with 50 servers.

 

How are these people idiots?

The massive roll-out of servers was a mistake right from the beginning. Poor project planning. People have been asking for server consolidations (and not freebie transfers from dead pop to low pop) for weeks now seeing WAR coming down because of the vast expanses of unused servers quietly collecting dust/cobwebs. (To say nothing of money sinks for the company to maintain essentially unused servers. Even if they are server clusters using virtual machines there's still bare metal out there somewhere.)

The pricing model/limited hours covers NCSoft in the area of certain Asian laws. Botters will still exist and when thier limit is up, they will switch to a different account and keep going.

You can't assume a small startup company is doomed in the products it puts out. Sure practice makes perfect but if you get a couple of good project management heads onto a team of folks who have the abilities if not the experience, many good things can happen.

 My biggest concern is server/cluster deployment (or lack of). I've read that US players are testing it and that likely so but theres a big difference to routing 50K or 100K people to a single point that a few thousand testers. I don't care how much stress testing you do.

I've been burned buy some of the impulse buy game DnL esp but also AoC. I certainly won't be playing it unless they offer a free trial.

IMO AoC is lacking at the core and unless there was an AoC2 with a complete revamp of the underlying systems, it will always be lacking. I was in from day 1 with the CE edition and out as soon as the boredom set in (best part was the soundtrack). Personally I never had any issues with CS so I can't remark on that but the game as a whole is a beautiful but empty time sink. Again, IMO.

Define fail. There are two views. The company who puts the game up and the person defining 'fail'. A company might see 200K regular subs are a complete success depending on how much they have invested while 3rd party might see this as a failure comparing to the greatly over discussed numbers associated with the WoW title.

Then of course you have actual failures like TR but even those might meet certain needs like taking away a market share from a competitor. I would tend to label TR a full failure but again, not being inside MCSoft, who really knows? Lots of special insurance might actually make such a 'fail' at least a wash other than the time sink factor (which is in an of itself a factor of fialure measurement, I know).

I did read it but I am not sure of your point.

The post quoted didn't confirm or deny anything. It just says the statement happened. Which was the point I was trying to make.

Most notably, OB is something no company would fail the announce regardless of the form it took or how it might affect their 'marketing position'.

OB doesn't mean what it used to. OB these days just means a larger flood of people can be invited in based on certain criteria, as opposed to the old definition of OB which anyone who signed up could test.

I'm looking forward to DF but I find it curious in the article regarding the OB ending controversy where it's stated 'The announcement during ADW was that the open beta phase is scheduled to end early in December'. There isn't any followup comment (that I found) which states there is an OB, later phase CB or anything else going on. (I do believe there is something happening, not arguing that). Just that the statement was made which can also be be interpreted as...'someone said this but we're not saying anything yes or no or maybe so'. This is 'spin' allowing the reader to get what they will from from the article without having to go back later and deny they every said anything positive or negative.

http://www.curse.com/blogs/ahzeel/archive/2008/11/18/heavy-metal-task-list.aspx

That link is the list of the Heavy Metal tasks by day.

The thing that has always dismayed me about Mythic (from a professional standpoint) is that they assume we're all idiots. The downtimes for 'server stability' (as I see it) are all to add or remove the live event tasks/components. More importantly, they always over estimate their downtimes by such a wide margin as to make end users wonder if they are confident enough of their own team doing the roll-outs. Sure you build a margin of error into any server downtime but the majority of the server downs since Beta have been off by more than 50%. Bringing a server down during prime time play hours on a Saturday is just plain stupid but then to say it's server stability when in reality it's (IMO) they only way that can makes aspects of a special function (ie piece meal patches on a daily basis) is insulting.

If folks dont want to do scs..don't queue for them. No, I find them generally enjoyable asside from the bugs associated with the foolish attempt at forced delays rather than true forced round robin. But thats me.

I have an addictive personality. I get got hooked on them from an early age. I suspect it's because I alwasy wanted to play the pen and paper D&D game but within my rural community, I was the only individual who wanted to do so.

Then too I know I can always succeed at games if I try hard enough where  IRL some thing will always escape me.

Thus do I play MMOs.

NCSoft was leaking money like a boat with half a dozen holes in the hull. Garrett had them over a barrel so to speak and was able to mandate terms which lead to him being the 'sole' shot caller for TR. Regretful. I haven't looked at the NCSoft numbers lately but I would suspect they  shook out some of the deadwood while AION was up and coming..let's hope so or I would think NCSoft is going to have very real troubles very quickly.

Yeah I re-rolled on Gorfang about a week ago and the T1s have been popping right along. Same 'stupid' comments from the few numbskulls about 'Oh why do you bother healing, go delete and reroll..you have a level 6 shaman and only healed for 12K..I have a level 2 and heal for 25K'..otherwise the conversation is pretty good there.

I am curious. I've been on 3 servers though only one to T4 (the rest T1-3 depending on the character).

On all the servers (after the initial 2 weeks of game play..I've been in since CE early access) in the last 3-4 weeks it's been Nordenwatch, Mourkain's Temple, Tor Anroc and Serpent's Passage. In t4 I am quite frankly shocked and expected when something other than SP pops. Wondering if it's the same on the other servers? (Sure Troll's crossing and Phoenix gate are a bit more common than the others for but for the t4's, it's averaging 1 odd pop to 15-20 runs of SP)

I know folks who have been in for a month and have never seen Khaine's or Gates of Ekrund. One of my guildies rolled an alt (he was new to MMOs at the beginning) and after the 'Join all' button was put in, he had hit Rank 9 or 10. I asked him his renown rank after I sent him some 'junk' greens around 5-6 and said he probably had better renown gear by that point. He told me that all he had was level 3 gear...I asked what renown rank he was and he told me '0'. After asking what he was doing to get into scenarios, we found that he ws queuing for Khaines only. (Note: this guy only played on and off a couple hours a day at varied hours). Once I requested that he use the 'join all' button he immediately shot up to his max RR but playing Nordenwatch only.

Originally posted by strategy

Again, read my post on MJ on retention and susbcription.

They will NOT merge servers because it would hurt their " image". PR is more important than players for the moment for EA. They financed  the servers, so they will stay for the moment.

Also: they NEED to wait to make a decision after the WotLK and MOM launches, but only God knows how many will leave within a few weeks more. I expect a kind of Tsunami really.

Having a merge of already merged servers would look even worse than it already is. So they'll wait till the beginning of next year to merge servers quietly. And of course by then EA will have bought some other MMO's.

Poor Mythic.

Regretfully, I tend to agree with you. They are allowing to voluntary character transfers to help further depopulate the servers with the terribly low pops to begin with. I am hoping that means that when the transfers are done, they will merge the servers and take whatever flak is left over from the 'non-moving' players. I was surprised when I logged in yesterday and got a 'WARNING: This server is very underpopulated. You can use the Account button [__] here to go to your account management page and move to a more populated server, notice right at the character select window.