PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download,Retail | Retail Price:$39.99 | Pay Type:Subscription
Desktop Client | System Req:
| ESRB:T
WAR: Jeff Hickman Interview
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood sat down with Mythic's Jeff Hickman to talk about a number of issues including: Rally Call, Career Balance, the game's 10-Day trial and more.
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mythic Entertainment’s Jeff Hickman to talk about a number of different issues that have come up recently about Warhammer Online.
In an article that we published last week, I talked a little bit about my impressions of Patch 1.2, a pretty hefty little update in which Mythic made changes galore. My mission: to find out exactly what the team’s “rally call” feature was all about. . We know that it’s a new system that will prompt players to port to the nearest Warcamp for some Open RvR goodness, but we wanted to know how it worked, and what we can expect from it in the future.
During our conversation, we also talked about issues like: Mythic’s current 10-day free trial, balancing careers, and other Warhammer issues:
Rally Call
As mentioned before, Rally Call is a new button on WAR’s UI that lights up occasionally and will, if pressed, teleport the player to the nearest Warcamp. The feature itself has been fairly well received (though not universally, there are still a few who don’t like it), whereas it does seem to improve the number of players in ORvR, but the fact of the matter is that no one really knows how it works. To players in-game, it seems more or less random.
“Rally call is almost always time based,” Hickman answered. “All that it is at this point is an effort to pull people into the open RvR lakes. It’s not currently based on any kind of queuing or population-based criteria so it doesn’t attempt to balance sides or anything like that.”
“We have a second phase of that that’s coming with the next major patch,” he continued. “It’s more of an Open Field Queuing System where you just sign up for a Rally Call and when it gets to a certain max, it fires off. That’s the intent for the future, but it doesn’t do that currently. We didn’t want to hold back on what we had, so we put it in.”
)
Balancing Careers
Next, I asked Jeff a general question about the balancing changes that have been made in 1.2. What worked, and what didn’t:
“It’s really tough to balance because there are two pieces to it. The first is the perceptual piece from the players, and then there’s the piece that we get from our data that we pull from the game. Things like: time to kill, damage output, DPS, one on one fights between specific careers and how they play out with each other, what abilities are being used more often than not, these kind of things.”
“It’s difficult balancing careers,” he explained. “I always say that I wish we never did anything with careers. The problem is that this makes the players unhappy too, so you go in, you be as careful as you possibly can, and you look at the facts and you glean from them what needs to happen and then you try to help players understand so that perception is good.”
“In actuality,” he said, turning back to the specific question, “it’s gone very well. There are a couple of pieces that I’ve looked at and said I’m not sure if we tweaked it just right, but this was on public test for a month. We were constantly listening to and reacting to what the players were saying. We were analyzing every little piece, but it’s so complex that I think there are a couple little things that probably need a little bit more tweaking and we’ll of course be ongoing looking at that stuff but overall, if you look at the data that we have, everything looks really, really good and in general we’ve had positive feedback about it. There are a couple of little places… Witch Elves aren’t happy, but when you look at the facts, their DPS is still outrageously high but in line with where it should be whereas before it was way out there. There’s a lot of pieces that are difficult to stomach because you have to balance somebody down, or balance somebody else up who is their enemy which makes them feel weaker. No matter which way you go, you never seem to make everybody happy, but I think we did a pretty good job this time.”
)
Communicating Systems to Players
One of the gripes that I have had with Mythic about WAR has been that while there are some great and complex systems at play in their game, they don’t always do a great job of explaining them in-game to their players. The rally call system is a good example of this, I saw a lot of people responding the same way: it’s great, but how does it work? Same goes for the Twisting Tower Scenario added into the game for this last live event. Similarly, players who are new to the game often tell me that they find the Experience vs. influence (two different kinds) vs renown advancement system difficult to understand. I asked Jeff to talk about this a little:
“That’s a great point,” he said. “There are a couple of ways to look at it: Certain systems we don’t want to explain. We don’t want to tell you the exact ins and outs of how exactly everything works but there’s a point at which you need to know how to use it. I think Twisting Tower is a really good example of that. I don’t want to slam my team; Twisting Tower is a really cool scenario, it’s also very complex and when you go into it, it’s just like any other scenario. It works in pretty much the same way: you come to the loading screen, it tells you that you need to capture the Atrium and the Loft to capture the Oculus of Change… and you’re like ‘great… what does that mean?” I get in there to play and it’s like I have no idea what I have to do so I play it three or four times to figure it out. So I think definitely, we can work on it. I think for the simpler systems in the game, what we have works really well, but when you get more complex, I think we need to improve on how we give that information to players. It’s difficult, because we can run into tooltip overload where the solution is just to put a tooltip in because that’s how we generally explain things… Sometimes we try to do this with our more complex systems and we find that it’s just too much so then our recommendation to our team becomes, ‘don’t be so complex, keep things simple because we want players to understand.”
)
Servers (population and such)
A while back, EA announced that Warhammer Online had roughly 300,000 subscribers currently in the game. I wanted to ask Jeff how they felt about the numbers and whether or not those numbers held up to the number of servers that the game currently supported. Jeff told me that Mark Jacobs had already answered those questions and that his answers should stand, but he also wanted to give us a little bit of color for them:
“In general, we’re very happy with our numbers, in general, with the servers that we have right now, we want the most populated servers we can get (up to a point) and we’re very happy with how we’ve pushed population to a core set of servers. Those servers are where we want people and on those servers, we have great populations. They’re not perfect, some are too high and there are I think one or two that I think are too low but we have a core number that we want, a number of players we want on the server to make it feel good, and we’re constantly pushing for that. I think some of the things you’re going to see with some of the things we’re doing: We’ve got a 10-day trial that we just put up, we’ve got a re-acquisition campaign coming up… We’re already seeing populations rising on those core servers and we push all of our new players to those servers. So I’m very happy with where we are with those servers, with the population numbers that we have on those servers, and the direction that our population is going.”
)
10-Day Free Trial
There is always a lot of debate surrounding MMOs and free trials. Some people think that a free trial should be available at launch, others think that there shouldn’t be free trials at all. Some think it’s an arbitrary thing, some think that it’s an indication that the company is finally happy with the product that they have released.
In any case, I wanted to talk to Jeff a little bit about the 10-Day free trial that Mythic is now offering for WAR. This is in addition to the current Recruit-a-Friend promotion that the company has been running.
“We really looked at this 1.2 Version, the start of the Call to Arms, as a chance for us to play catcher on a baseball team. We’re sitting, right now, with our giant catcher’s mitt out. 1.2 was a focal point for us to pull the glove out and say we’re ready to catch everybody.”
Up until this point, I was with the analogy, but here’s where it became a little bit more amusing:
“The people who we are hoping are flying through the air,” he continued, “are people who are: coming from other games, who went out to play… oh, I don’t know… Lich King, and who have done what they wanted to do and are bored with it. We hope they are people who tried our game when it first launched and for whatever reason didn’t subscribe, or new players even. So we’ve targeted a whole bunch of different subsets of the population and said ‘Ok, we’re going to do everything we can to lower the barrier of entry to get those people to come and play the game.’ And so it’s things like putting the buddy key system in place and making sure that we motivate you to say ‘hey friend, I want you to come play this game with me. And if that friend says ‘I don’t know if I want to go out and buy the game’, you are now able to tell your friend that there’s a 10 day trial and a fairly small download, it’s not even the full game. And then, beyond that, there’s re-acquisition: ‘hey, you’ve played our game in the past. You should come back and try it again, and here is X for coming back and trying our game again. Oh, and here’s version 1.2, the new classes… all of the things that we’ve done. So, if you look at [all that we’re doing] they all come together in this 1.2 and 1.3 version over the next couple of months, it’s just a matter of doing everything we can to make the game accessible to everyone.”
To clarify, the trial itself is for 10 days, but it limits players to teir 1 and capital city content only (thus the download not being the full game). I was told that you can do everything in T1, but nothing else. It all comes out to about 6 Gb for the trial (out of 12 or 13 for the whole game).
Jeff hit the nail on the head with me. I bought the game and played the free 30 days, really enjoyed it but had some issues and with WOTLK just round the corner I didn't feel it was worth subscribing. Even though WOTLK is probably WOW's best content to date, it's still more of the same and I got bored after a few months. So I thought, hey, I bet Mythic have fixed a lot of the issues I had with Warhammer at launch, I'll give it a spin for 10 days and if I like it I'll subscribe... they had, I did and I did! I haven't got a level 40 character so I can't talk about end game, but so far I'm really enjoying it. The live event was fun and rather predictably I've rolled a new Choppa but that is fun too! When I overdo it I just play a little Wizard101 to chill out hehe and then I'm back on it :) Keep it up Mythic!
So Mythic has done it...he finally pulled me away full time from WoW and LOTRO....I can not describe the fun I am having with this game. No complex guild network to keep up with fun Dunegons to run when Im not in RVR cool scanarios that giev that Warhammer tabel top vibe. Awesome job Mythic keep up the good work
this one of the best games out there, my friends and family have a ball with it.
Keep it coming Mythic!
It really is a good move on Mythic's part holding off on the free trials till they've gotten out a few patches. Good that they have a game plan for getting people back and some new folks too.
I'm still waiting on Slayers myself. I'll be playing MadWorld/StarOcean/HaloWars/DawnofWar2/etc until then (been a damn good month for gamers).
Well, I'm not all sunshine and roses about the game. I feel obliged to give some of the downside to the current state of the game post 1.2.
I currently play a Chosen (tank), Knight of the Blazing Sun (tank), Shadow Warrior (ranged DPS), Witch Hunter (Rogue) and Witch Elf ( Rogue). All in all, the 1.2 patch was more of a problem than a fix.
Essentially all of the player testing that Jeff describes went into the two new classes that they are pushing into the game...the Slayer and the Choppa. These new DPS classes are fun, but they came at the expense of many of the classes that players have devoted loads of time to.
Prior to this patch, Bright Wizards were smashed with the Mythic nerf hammer (those that played DAoC will remember their heavy-handed approach to "balancing classes") destroying many of their direct fire lines.
The complaints flowed in.
In response, Mythic reduced resists for this patch which allowed those same Bright Wizards to destroy entire warbands of players with AoE (area of effect) spells making playability in the last Tier of the game nigh impossible. So once again, Bright Wizards are back on the chopping block. New players may want to avoid them until Mythic decides whether they want to "balance" them again.
The unhappy Witch Elves that Jeff talks about are in full revolt after 1.2. The Witch Elf was the equal to WoW's dagger-specced rogue (notice I said "was"). High burst with one huge disadvantage...no armor. They were glass tigers that were eay to kill if you saw one coming. It should be noted that stealth does not work like other games. It is limited in time and can be seen by anyone standing still. It also breaks if one is hapless enough to walk into an AoE spell (that most players can't see due to the lag issues caused by server-side feeds). Jeff notes that their damage was off the charts, but what he fails to mention is that the average Witch Elf got one shot at a target before they died. So with patch 1.2, they removed the damage capability but failed to add any survivability. This is one class I would not advise anyone to play. If you enjoy playing assassin classes, this game has none in the first three tiers of play.
The Witch Hunter received some love with this patch, but the backwards thinking of how rogue/assassin classes work leaves them still lacking.
The White Lion class is still suffering from multiple bugs in their lines which makes them less of a threat than they should be...really, all the DPS classes are suffering from poor judgement on Mythic's part. I would not advise rolling any of them, even the Choppa or Slayer, as most players expect they will be "balanced" soon. At least don't devote any time to them if you do.
If you play, play a tank or a healer. A healer you say? Yes, they are some of the best killers on the field in the first three tiers. They are able to melee and can often out heal any dps done to them. Tanks are tanks. As a Chosen, I can MDPS at around the same level as true MDPS classes and have a higher survivability. The only problematic part to the Chosen is that Mythic carried over the "twisting" mechanic used by Bards and Paladins in DAoC. So with this class, you have twice the keyboard work to be as effective as your peers.
As for classes as a whole, the biggest drawback to this game is the development team. They appear to be number crunchers...not players. With each patch we see "adjustments" or "balances" to classes based on stats that really do nothing more than break something else. And when it breaks, it really breaks as Mythic "balances" with a very heavy hammer.
As for the general gameplay...well, it gets stale. After Tier 2 (there are 4 tiers of play to keep differing levels of players separated accordingly) it becomes a grind-fest. The RvR system actually promotes less PvP play. There are few rewards to glean from killing a fellow player and the loot system is horrible at best. Some of the best items come from taking strongholds located in the RvR sections of each Tier. The system is completely random (which means anyone has a chance of getting loot), but that also means it's a crap shoot. The player that contributes most (this appears to be soley based on damage done) gets a bonus to their roll which often means nothing. Plus there is no pass on this to give someone you think is deserving, a chance to acquire anything. Additionally, the upper tiers tend to be dominated by Zergs (large masses of one side wiping everything in its wake). This means that players that enjoy PvP in small groups have to wait for the zerg to pass before they can go back to playing in the RvR/PvP sections. Mythic's intention with this game was to avoid the zerg-fest, but they failed. Add to this server imbalance, forced server changes without warning and low daytime populations on most...well, you get the idea.
Overall, it's still a decent game. The first two tiers are a blast to play and some of the old, loved items from DAoC were carried over. Even with all of the issues facing the game, I still pay money for it because the good does outweigh the bad. It's a new game and growing pains are to be expected. PLUS...we have another patch coming up. Mark Jacobs promises some big changes to some of the issues I've outlined here and I'm willing to give him a shot at it.
I would recommend giving the game a shot for the trial. You will enjoy it.
They're still not learning. Focusing on making the game World of Warhammer with casual friendly and simplistic everything, and still ignoring the DAoC players. The fact that they're still focusing on fixing things by itemizing them rather than actually making them deep and fun is a perfect example of this. Itemization is what got them into this mess in the first place. Keeps should NEVER EVER EVER have been itemized. It was a completely stupid move anyone could have seen, and yet they did it anyway because people like grinding gear, even at the sacrifice of the whole war effort.
Also, clever girl, limiting the trial to tier 1, the most interesting part of the game since it isn't completely barren of content like tier 4. Though it makes it almost completely pointless for anyone with a character in tier 4 when they left to try out the trial given that they're only going to see the same sugar coated entry content they saw the last time, not the changes they're actually interested in.
Notice how after your posts, the positive posts stop. There are things that WAR needs to fix, give them some time. I understand fixing the main issues is more important than slayer and choppa but they need to get in the game because of the large fanbase. I do agree that keeps need to not drop pvp sets but instead become more epic like in DAOC. Equipment should be vendor bought fully offa renown due to its hard nature to level at higher ranks. Or at least to a token system like in beta, fck contribution <,<. But in the end when these issues are worked out, this is gonna be one hell of a solid mmo.
Notice how after your posts, the positive posts stop. There are things that WAR needs to fix, give them some time. I understand fixing the main issues is more important than slayer and choppa but they need to get in the game because of the large fanbase. I do agree that keeps need to not drop pvp sets but instead become more epic like in DAOC. Equipment should be vendor bought fully offa renown due to its hard nature to level at higher ranks. Or at least to a token system like in beta, fck contribution <,<. But in the end when these issues are worked out, this is gonna be one hell of a solid mmo.
Assuming these issues are worked out. As I said, they're still running full speed in the wrong direction, looking to itemize RvR even more and doing nothing about the "musical keeps". They've also had how long? About six months if not more? Yeah, they've squashed some bugs and finished the other half of the content they were already mostly done with before they cut them at launch, but the crippling problems that make RvR a complete joke still remain.
I think jeff you messed up man for the Witch elfs I dont think they are Unhappy. I think that is WAY of a understatement!!!
People are so mad in your fourms but you guys wont respond on simple questions asked about the nerf such as
1 what is the role of a Witch elf when u cant kill a healer or a caster?
2 Why do choppas have the same skills as witch elfs before 1.2? you deamed the same Skills as OP and nerfed them so why give them to choppa unnerfed?
3 Why is all the damage we do mitigated by healers?
4 why is slayers debuffs unremovable?
5 why is order people on the WE fourms asking why the WE are nerfed so bad?
6 How can a healer /lol at you wile they outheal you and wait for a buddy to come kill you?
the list goes on jeff and the Witch elfs want answers!!
Maybe you can talk Mark jacobs in renameing the game to NERFHAMMER!!!!!
I just subscribed to the 10 day returning player offer and am having a bit of fun at the game again. The only balance issue for me are the slayers and choppas. They are kind of ruining it for those who aren't playing those classes because they tear through everything in about 2 seconds. When you aren't dealing with them (which is kind of hard currently because they are everywhere), the game is pretty ok.
There is a bit of choppa madness at the moment but it will die down over the next few weeks. I'm playing one to see how it compares to my nerfed witch elf.
WAR pvp has been a lot about ranged fights or standing back and waiting for someone else to initiate a push, then climbing over their corpse to victory.
Now is a pretty exciting time for the game and my server is totally full with a lot of action in T4 every night. Can't wait for the new shared dungeon and whatever Mythic think of next!
Assuming these issues are worked out. As I said, they're still running full speed in the wrong direction, looking to itemize RvR even more and doing nothing about the "musical keeps". They've also had how long? About six months if not more? Yeah, they've squashed some bugs and finished the other half of the content they were already mostly done with before they cut them at launch, but the crippling problems that make RvR a complete joke still remain.
Yes, musical keeps always about summed it up and ORVR pre T4 is still a ghost town. The game has been out about 6 months, how many mmos fixed all thier problems in 6 months? Im sure that its mythics fault to bolstering about this epic "ORVR" which turned out to be a pve fest to get your gear since get a peice of deva is like winning the lottery, which forces the musical keeps factor. Keeps need to be totally reworked. And about those WE, QQ more, this game is a teaem game not a 1 shot win for you nobo WE. Learn to play with a friend, cant solo kil healers? Work as a team :D And damage mitigated? How do you expect someone to survive 700+ crit spams in T3??? Welcome to WH my friends :)
I play a Squid Herder, and the Slayer is the best thing that ever happened to me, I've been killing lots of them lately! Ranged DPS is the counter to the 2 new melee DPS classes.
Are you serious? All MMO trials restrict the content to the low end. Most trials have a level 10 or 20 level limit and confine you to the first tier or noob zones. To say WAR is "completely barren of content" in T4 is ridiculous. There is more things to do in T4 then any other tier in the game, where do you come up with this stuff? Just in T4 you have PvE content such as the 3 high end instances (2 city dungeons and 1 outdoor zone Lost vale), Lairs with a boss (another 2 more we're added with 1.2), quests with at least 5 epic quest lines in T4, tome of knowledge unlocks (the jewelry sets are nice) and PQs.
On the PvP side you have the majority of the content... since this is a PvP game. You have quests based around PVP, Influence rewards, Scenarios, Keeps, Battle Objectives, RvR Influence, Fortresses and finally the City Sieges/Defense. Add in the PVP based events they've already done and the ones to come as well. Finally you have the Tomb King RVR dungeon in the next couple months which is adding RVR battlegrounds, new PvE stuff, PQs, Quests and more all for free.
Another thing, if people had a tier 4 character then they don't need to play the trial. They can activate their old account and get 10 free days to play with their Tier 4 character. So your point about the trial is moot. I do not think WAR is perfect and i've given my fair share of feedback and criticism to Mythic on another site. Any sane person knows MMO's are an ongoing process and Mythic has shown that they are in it for the long haul as every part of the game has gotten tweaks or improvements since launch. Mythic has not rested on their laurels because if they had I would have unsubscribed. But they've kept at it and that should be acknowledged. We all complain about how companies let their games die, don't add anything to them and etc. so give credit where it is due. The whole point of the free trial and the free 10 days for former subscribers is to show people that WAR has been worked on non-stop since they've left.
How much did you get paid to write that? Or was your last favorite MMO WoW and thus you have an undying love for what is essentially WoW with more PvP? More content in tier 4 than any other game, um, what? Are we talking PvE content, which is a joke in itself? I'm sorry, I thought this was supposed to be an RvR game, and don't try to backpeddle on that since you said yourself several times "this is a PvP game". Because there sure as hell isn't any decent RvR content. Scenarios are RR factories and should never have been implemented in the first place, and ORvR only currently exists to farm loot from each other. The ORvR areas are fairly drab and uninteresting at that. The battlefield objectives aren't even worth acknowledging.
In addition, after reading what MJ said about Origins and there "not being enough interest" as an excuse to finally bail out of the promise they've failed to uphold for over a year, Mythic has offically no more respect from me.
Class balance in this game is not so good right now. For example, they took a warrior priest and disciple of khaine which are 2 healer types and made them exact opposites so they would be somewhat balanced. That is all good but what they forgot to do or it seems is take those classes and balance them with the rest of the classes. The game is getting better though but slowly. If Jeff is back peddling then so be it, this game needs more interesting pve content in order for this game to be alot better. ORVR is nothing more than zerv vs zerg which is imo a waste of time. Scenarios are a much better source of pvp for this game as it stands now.
God i cannot wait till DAOC 2 comes out.. maybe we will get a better game than Nerfhammer.
Yeah good luck with that. Considering even origins has been shelved, we will never see DAOC 2. To be honest, I expect that, when EA realizes that DAOC is taking away sub numbers from WAR, they will say that it is no longer financially feasible to keep the game going. Seriously, I expect that, within 1-2 years, DAOC will be no more.
And I find it funny that you refer to WAR as Nerfhammer - if you played DAOC, you know Mythic's "balancing system" and should be very familiar with it and expect it in WAR.
The system is to buff the hell out of one class, 3-6 months later realize they went too far, nerf the class into crap mode, 3-6 months later realize they went too far and finally put the class back where it was. Rinse and repeat for every class and that is how they do it.
I haven't played in a good month or two, but i played for about 3 months just after the release. and people playing Witch elves then had issues with getting comparable damage to any ranged dps. mainly due to them having less defense than mage types, they should put out some serious over the top damage when they do actually get to hit, or at least buff up their defense so they can actually get in for a few hits before they are toast. seems like the whole rogue fiasco all over again from DAoC. But at least rogues did have *some* armor.
one thing from the interview that got to me was this:
“That’s a great point,” he said. “There are a couple of ways to look at it: Certain systems we don’t want to explain. We don’t want to tell you the exact ins and outs of how exactly everything works but there’s a point at which you need to know how to use it. I think Twisting Tower is a really good example of that. I don’t want to slam my team; Twisting Tower is a really cool scenario, it’s also very complex and when you go into it, it’s just like any other scenario. It works in pretty much the same way: you come to the loading screen, it tells you that you need to capture the Atrium and the Loft to capture the Oculus of Change… and you’re like ‘great… what does that mean?” I get in there to play and it’s like I have no idea what I have to do so I play it three or four times to figure it out. So I think definitely, we can work on it. I think for the simpler systems in the game, what we have works really well, but when you get more complex, I think we need to improve on how we give that information to players. It’s difficult, because we can run into tooltip overload where the solution is just to put a tooltip in because that’s how we generally explain things… Sometimes we try to do this with our more complex systems and we find that it’s just too much so then our recommendation to our team becomes, ‘don’t be so complex, keep things simple because we want players to understand.”
So i guess he thinks the players are to much of simpletons to understand complexity? I guess the dev team is so thick headed that they can't think of using the Internet and post a web page detailing new and upcomming scenerios before even going live and then giving tool tips in-game for certain key reminders!?
Mythic has really lost it...
Do you even read what your replying to?! I did not say "more content that any other game". I said "more then any other Tier." I said it is a PVP game ONCE, not several times. PvP = RvR and you know it. Your still fighting other players, your just being facetious now. Stop adding in stuff that was never said. You did not even respond to the trial thing 'cause you know every MMO does it and you just wanted another paragraph to QQ about war. It sounds like you don't even play WAR. I am not the biggest fan of WAR (server population issues and class balancing need work ASAP) but the stuff you said was plain false. At least spout valid criticisms, not stuff you are typing just to see yourself post.
sadly, this game is approaching its choke point, and its bacause of stupid developer and management decisions. they just follow the path set by others, denying any existing issues, ignoring reasonable player feedback and trying to please whoever cries most in they hope to keep them subscribed. 1.2 was a complete disaster, game is far worse now. it takes enormous amount of time and force to take a keep now, and it there are more than 5 mages defending you can forget about it. AoE is totally out of control, to the point most sorc/bw just spam the same skill over and over and over again, no matter the target, the range to it, or anything else. and they get rewarded for doing so by insane amounts of renown, kills, kbs and all that. 2 weeks after the changes, they have yet to acknowledge its out of hand, they're looking at it lol. reasonable players (mostly BWs from what ive seen) have already provided numerous videos, combat logs and general oppinions on the matter, but thats not enough to even get a freaking answer from someone at mythic, besides the usual crap. not to mention people were guessing it would come to this month before it went live, guess they take a lot of note on how things work on the PTS... not.
and the fcked up balance isnt the only thing we got in 1.2. some people made tons of money thanks to mythic overlooking the craft changes, while in general apothecary sees no market demand at all (I play on Azgal, easily one of the most populated servers... no one buys stuff, im happy to make 5g profit per day). engame? nothing changed there, same old boring crap. add to it how hard it is to lock a zone with some defense now (lol domination system), the insane buff to city invasion PQ, which (again, note the trend) makes it almost impossible to beat when there is any kind of defence and you can see why we're down to 5 servers in EU. but dont you worry, MJB is assuring us people are not leaving the game, while in the same time they already have a return program, which is pretty sad for a game that young. eh well, I got 10 days left, hope they get some brains by then, cause im not planning to give this game third chance (first time deactivated cause of dead server, took GOA only a month to realize the server is actually dead lol)
oh forgot to add, the SW, which is considered by almost everyone the most undeveloped class in the game, is still not getting attention from the developers, and its not even mentioned for the incoming patch. ofc, we got the usual 'we're working on it' crap )
Jeff Hickman says, "we try to help players understand so that perception is good"
That is a complete and utter lie. Players have been asking for an explantion and have gotten nothing but silence.
During the testing of these changes you locked the threads that were not inflamatory at all, when the Devs were shown to be wrong time and time again about the changes, or had no idea about the class and skills the class had, that they were changing. And then class changes still going in based on a skill a character class did not have, not being reversed.
What you can expect in T4 RvR... PvE.
Warbands avoiding each other to PvE the latest open target, and again Devs locking no inflamatory threads discussing this issue during testing. Devs ignoring that its easier to PvE RvR rank and avoid fights than the reward to actually fight.
6 monthes should have been more than enough to fix their endgame content.
And sure they've fixed some bugs, the problem is they keep re-introducing the bugs they fix, and adding far far many more than they fix.
And again, its easier to PvE to rank up in RvR and avoid fighting than it is to actually fight still, and the train goes on... well not for me anymore.
wow i had a nice post until i used spell check yikes!
DAoC is still running today. I see no point being upset that WAR isnt DAoC2. Go play DAoC its a great game I still play it every once in a while.
Only a true hater would ever say WAR is just a Clone of WoW, last time I checked WoW didn't create quests, a ToK, Instanced combat or Open field pvp objectives.
So how exactly is this WoW with more pvp?
Is WAR easy? yeah. Does that make it less enjoyable? Only to people who take this shit too seriously and demand innovation with every new mmo.
Apparently Jeff, MJ and the rest of the dev still cant see whats really wrong with this game. They dont understand that players dont PVP all day, players dont go to secenerios all day, and players dont log in and "Ding!" level 40!....
But the bulk of the time is during PVE!!!
They need to brush up the pve content from level 10 onwards. More intreasting quests, more variarity of mobs and quests that leads you to instances...
But noooo, they have to keep focusing on the wrong side of things....
Remember Mythic! Players still need to journey from level 1 to 40, and if the journey is boring, no one will play....
I have play this game since the beginning of it, got 2 mal lvl toon ( 1 order and 1 destruction ). To tell the truth, you will enjoy this game for maximum 3 months ( about the time it take to reach max lvl in this game ). After that, if the ONLY thing you like is pvp, then it's the right game for you. And even then, pvp is kinda crappy. Ok, I know the game is still young, they are improving, bla blah blah... I participate in 3 city taking and 2 of the 3 times it happen I was stuck like 50% of the people to city door because population maximum have been reach. And the big deal about city capture, there is in fact 2 cities on ( on order it's the empire one Altdorf and destruction's side Inevitable City ), and when it'S capture, well it's capture and there is nothing more happening for a couple in-game min. Then it's the reset and boom back to beginning lol For me it's simply a game launch too quickly and dying quickly. Why start a game with 2/6 cities completed, tons and tons and tons of bugs ( my toon use to be stuck in motion casting spell...I'm a healer!!!! ). Quests have absolutly no point being done cause reward tend to be 5-10 lvl below the quest itself, so you'll end up doing quest for equipment salvage. Crafting is simply the worst I have seen. It was not so bad before the last crappy patch, cause there was some challenge getting high lvl and rare stuff, but I saw lvl 5 people making jewell purple quality max lvl lol
Don't loose your money on a game like that it's not ready yet. If Mythic continu doing stupid patch like adding the number of quests in your quest book ( there was already room for 20, why 40?!?! )
As a veteran of Warhammer, I give them a 1/10 on this game as it's slowly dying and is a future prospect for free game like it happened before with other game.
No matter what everyone else says, I am having a blast. I played in the closed BETA and got a little burned out, I left before the 30 days was up. Went and tried WotLK...same ole WoW, except now everything is easier than ever. Played around for a few on CoH/CoV, it's ok. So then I made my way back to WAR, and am having a ball. It seems everywhere there is a chance for ORvR, or quick popping scenarios. The thing that made it fun for me again, was to stop listening to all the complaints, take my time levelling, hang out with friends in game, and win or lose scenarios or RvR we just laff and go find another fight...most people only post when they just wanna complain about everything, to me it's a fun game....sorry to bring the sunshine.
Having a great ol time playing my choppa.
1/10? Come on now. There is good aspects and bad aspects of WAR. You are QQ'ing about changing the quest book to 40 haha. A lot of in game friends have said there wasn't enough quest space. The mmo I played before WAR allowed me to have over 100 so 20 is archaic when most of your XP comes from questing in this game. You can easily hit 20 quests in your book just with pvp quests. I am sure doubling the quest log was a small fix considering it was only a hotfix. So servers weren't even taken down for it and it was less then 500kb download.
You could have used a much better example then complaining about doubling the amount of quests. So they weren't supposed to fix that because they hadn't fixed what you wanted yet? QQ more. When something has been fixed, you get it out there asap if its something as simple as a quest log increase. That is the point of a hotfix.
There are seperate teams that work on various parts of modern MMos. One fixes bugs, another does RvR/PvP systems and it goes on. Just because the quest log was increased to 40 doesn't mean there was nothing else being worked on for WAR. Your review is obviously biased because you QQed the whole time then proceeded to give it a 1/10. I would give WAR a 7/10 when weighing the good and bad things about it.
No doubt, I'm having a great time. I've been playing since beta but I stopped two months after release but resubbed in January. They've been busting their ass to fix stuff and add stuff. It's impossible to appease everyone with the changes they've made, especially when some people are just chronic whiners. If the game isn't for you, stfu and go play another game. Also, play the game again and do a more thorough review if you're going to bash it because a lot of your QQ reasonings as to why you don't like it are old, tired and need a sponge bath.
Haha good one. These never satisfied people will then go and spend their own personal time to go on various MMO sites to complain about said game, spouting the same things over and over.
Ho my mistake, I though it was suppose to be a forum talking about the comment on the game interview and what people think bout it.
I have an opinion on the subject and post about it. I've been playing a bunch of mmorpg for almost 6 years ( and still are ) and like I said I had 2 max lvl toon on game. So you told me to grind the game a little more to discover new stuff? I can show you stuff in warhammer online that you never heard about and didn't even know they exist. And having 100 quests at the same time? Wow that's one of the nonsense thing I have heard in my life! ALL the mmorpg I have played had around 20-25. What's the ONLY one you have played you talking about?
Anyway maybe next time just focus on your opinion on THE MAIN subject of the forum discussion and not on people trying to do so.
btw, how many king captures we have 6 months after the game relased? I would like to hear them answering to this, I can imagine the amount of effort it will take MJ to come up with another 'you're all wrong, WAR is all perfect' post :P
truth is there is no endgame in WAR, its just the same boring crap every day. well actually no, 2 weeks after 1.2 and we're no longer even trying to lock zones, people just got tired of feeding sorc/BW with renown :)
Saying there is "no endgame" in WAR is like saying you know everything about it - it's false. There is endgame like any other MMO. There are a few dungeons, live events that pop up every now and then and of course RvR. Six months after the game's initial release and the cities haven't been sacked yet??? Wow, now lets think about that for a minute. Don't the people have to be atleast lvl 37 to even make a valiant effort in attempting it? Doesn't it take time to get to lvl 37 before they do even attempt it for the very first time? I'd say both sides have only had 3 months or so before enough people were able to even attempt to take a city. You then have to anticipate the learning curve, because there is no manual on how to take a city. Plus the shear difficulty that Mythic made it, which it seems is a good idea. I'm sure it'll happen soon as on my server, Badlands, people get closer and closer each day. Sacking a powerful city shouldn't be a weekly thing and I'd be afraid if that's what you really wanted. I'm sure the next thing you'd complain about is that the game is way too easy or that everyone has the same gear because everyone has earned it from sacking the city too many times.
dude, you sound like you have never played the game yourself. takes like a month 'relaxed' playing to get to 40, most people that stayed from the begining already have 2-3 lvl 40. there are 4 (or you count Gunbad/sewers as endgame content?) dungeons, NONE of which is worth doing after you get the final set piece, and in some cases not even for that. first city raids we did few month back, so maybe its hard for you to beleive but there are plenty of people running around with invader gear. what im asking is, how many have at least ONE sovereign item? cause this is what Mythic advertised as endgame, the ultimate encounter, first in MMO history and all that bs )
dunno how its on badlands, and how much population you got, but on my server, we have had situations like IC burning on monday and then Altdorf the very next day. we are sieging cities at least 3 times per week. err, we WERE sieging them prior to 1.2, no one bothers doing so now. the times people have gotten to stage 2 of a city siege on ALL SERVERS can be counted by a 3 year old. and fyi, mythic clearly doesnt think cities should be sieged once a year, the easiest thing to do is put a timer on fort sieges so they wont get captured every day.
the dumb, repetative, mindless grind city siege PQs are in a whole different story, 'learning curve' lol :)
Well I'm really enjoying playing my archmage.
I'm no hard core MMO player - I'm very casual and log in once or twice a month max
(I am a Warhammer fan though)
I dont care what gear everyone has and all that .. I just enjoy the MMO aspect of the game - getting on a server - meeitng other members of order and interacting.
The otherday we built up a warband of around 20 - which was plenty - this on a underpopulated Roleplaying server - it was loads of fun just seeing the varied group members all around - I even ended up naturally being assistant leader... - seeing a group consisting of ironbreakers slyaers, witchunters, engineers and archmages - was really fun - even though keeps was a bit musical - ..
someitmes we were out powered and outnumbered but we just went for a litle scout - got pwned but had fun! was real fun being the sole survivor of a 17 stong party in a conflict (enemy didnt notice me). wil play more - but I'm not bothered about people having great gear of whatever.
I play with what I have. Class balance issues - and ping pong nerfing boosting - dont care - makes the game mroe interesting maybe if things change a bit - . Maybe this is the attitude of someone on a roleplaying server...
Edit: as for quest rewards someone was flaing about - the quest itself is the reward - I enoy the story - the way the quests are part of the overall war stoy often - the tome unlocks etc - do some people only play to have the thrill of being "THE MOST POWEFUL" - - just play championship manager for 50 hours straight - you can try and acheive that same thing that way! (disclaimer this post in no way endorses playing any game for 50 hours straight - in fact you have a good chance of of dropping dead if you do)