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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Interviews: What Difference Does a Year Make? Q&A
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller had the opportunity to send along seven questions to Wrhammer Online's Jeff Skalski to discuss the game's progress as it nears its one year anniversary.
By Garrett Fuller on August 19, 2009
| MMORPG.com: | Warhammer has now been on the market for one year. Please tell us the story of the game's lifecycle. |
| Jeff Skalski: | In May 2005, Mythic signed a deal with Games Workshop to bring to life the rich universe of its fantasy-based Warhammer IP. The challenge we laid out in front of us was creating a fresh new MMORPG that stayed true to the IP, unlike any other to date, for gamers and loyal hobbyists across the globe. A little over three years later, an EA acquisition, and almost 289 pounds of baby weight created, we shipped Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning on Sept 18th, 2008 (a few days earlier for those who pre-ordered). It has been one of hell of a ride, and the talented developers here at Mythic haven't taken a second away from pouring their love and passion into WAR since. If you go back and review the patch notes over the past year, what we've accomplished is rather astounding. What I find even more interesting is seeing how the players have adapted to our game over time, and how the various servers matured in different ways. We are an RvR game at our core, with two Realms--the forces of Order and Destruction. At any given point, one side will win and one side will lose. It's been interesting watching servers go back and forth between who maintains control, and challenging at the same time as we tweak system mechanics to help foster Realm balance. We've made some progress, but we have more to do. Coming up to our 1 year anniversary, I couldn't be more excited for WAR. We've learned so much about our players, and are now beginning to improve certain aspects of the game that, months ago, we would have hesitated on. City Siege end-game experience, CC and AoE enhancements, Fortress rework, along with new user improvements, are just a few of the things we're focusing on. Keep an eye on our patch notes and dev articles! |
| MMORPG.com: | What changes to the end game do you have planned for the future patches? Will players' concerns be addressed? |
| Jeff Skalski: | We've made quite a few changes, actually. My most recently released Producer's Letter covered some of these changes, many of which are going live with 1.3.1-those big-ticket items being City Siege enhancements and Keep Ramp additions. Past that, we'll be introducing open RvR incentives such as the Keep difficulty system, which will better reward players (both attackers and defenders) for fighting one another in and around Keeps. Additionally, we have the upcoming Fortress revision, and more plans in place for continuing to improve the RvR experience in city siege and open RvR population balance. I want to spice it up a little more, and this is, of course, all on top of performance improvements, bug fixes, and plenty of polish. Will players concerns be addressed? Of course not 100% completely, but I want to be more transparent with our community with where we're at and where we're going. I play the game and I'm still not fully satisfied. We have more work to do. |
| MMORPG.com: | There have been many player requests to make changes to the city siege and capture systems, when can players expect those changes? |
| Jeff Skalski: | Starting now in 1.3.1! And that trend will continue moving forward into future patches. We're just getting started. Next up is focusing on the role of Fortresses in the Tier 4 campaign, and continuing improvements to support more RvR situations in our city end-game. |
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| MMORPG.com: | Class balance is an issue in any MMO alive today. What are your methods for working through class balances and eventually implementing them in a live game? |
| Jeff Skalski: | When it comes to career balance, the Combat & Careers team work with an iterative process that cycles through many stages until we have a result which we feel is ready for the public. The stages are essentially: Identify, Propose, Change, Test, and then repeat until we're satisfied. The first step is identifying the issue, since we can't solve a problem until we determine what the problem is to begin with. In identifying a problem, we pull from several different resources, including player reports from forums, feedback from our Community and QA teams, concerns brought up by other developers, and our own personal play experiences as well. Once we have identified a problem, we sit down and work through how we'd like to solve the issue. The Combat & Careers team discusses the issue back and forth, polls metrics, gathers information, and works out the results until they're happy with the proposal, then they run it by both the Design Director and myself for approval, as well as discussing it with Community and QA. As concerns are raised, the proposal is adjusted to account for any issues which came up, then it goes through another round of discussions until everyone's satisfied. One of the key parts of this stage is realizing how the change will affect the rest of the game, since an MMO is a living product and no change exists in a vacuum. This can often be the most difficult part of deciding what to do, since the ripple-effects tend to keep going and going, and we have to take a hard look at even the smallest change. From here, the plan can diverge a bit. Before the C&C team actually makes the changes, we have to assess several factors. What's the scope of the change? What's the risk (how many other systems does it interact with)? How high of a priority is it? This allows us to determine whether it's a change that we'll be making immediately, or whether it's something that would be better off scheduled for a future patch down the road. Once the agreed-upon time comes, the C&C team makes the change and hands it off to QA for testing and verification. If QA gives it the green light, then off into the patch it goes! If problems crop up, though, then it comes back to the C&C team who has to determine whether the issue can be fixed, or whether a new proposal will be needed. |
| MMORPG.com: | Talk about Land of the Dead and how it has impacted the game. Has it changed faction control and open world warfare in the game? |
| Jeff Skalski: | The Land of the Dead (LotD) shook things up and, in my opinion, in a positive way. We knew going into it, that it would split player population for the short term as players flooded to the new content for its shiny new appeal. This caused a lot of intense, memorable fights for many in the LotD when control flipped. It also gave PvE-centric players more reason to participate in the RvR campaign, as their exciting new content was gated by RvR. Lastly, this gave certain servers the opportunity to access their enemies' capital city for the first time in months since their opposing Realm was off exploring the Necropolis and the Tomb of the Vulture Lord. Now, fast forward to today, and the Tier 4 campaign is very active and populated with people from both Realms. LotD flips hands several times a day, which is great, and players are fighting each other in every corner of the Tier 4 campaign. |
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| MMORPG.com: | MMOs seem to be trending to a more casual friendly play style with the end game scenarios. Does Warhammer have anything planned for this type of game play? |
| Jeff Skalski: | One could argue that we currently already do this in some capacity with our Scenarios and Public Quests, but we have more things in the works to better support social networking and accessibility to the game. The New User Experience is a current area of focus for us that covers the Tier 1 experience, and sets the tone for future evaluation of Tier 2-Tier 4 content. The recently added Summoning Stones, upcoming Apprenticeship/Hireling system we are adding that will allow players to play with anyone regardless of rank, continued dungeon improvements much like we recently did with Gunbad, new Friends List feature we added in 1.3.1, and the RvR token system are just a few of the things we currently have in the works to improve the overall player experience. |
| MMORPG.com: | Can you talk about the launches in Asia and how the game is growing? |
| Jeff Skalski: | In May we launched in Taiwan, and it's off to a good start. They are a massive group of hardcore RvR players over there, and are really pushing our campaign system to its max. ;) My wish is to one day see the best of the best from North America, Europe, and Asia go head-to-head is an all-out battle royal to see who reigns supreme in RvR warfare. Other than that, we just released LotD, so it will be interesting to see if they follow the same habits we did over here in NA and EU. Next up for us is Korea, and we are dedicated to making that as successful as it can be. What's great about learning more about other player audiences is being able to take that knowledge and apply it to ideas and solutions here on the other side of the pond where applicable. I wish I could say more, but I will share with you is that the work we are preparing for Korea will be beneficial to our entire global player-base in one way or another. We have some cool things in the works! Finally, we are currently in beta with the Mac client of WAR, and we're very happy to say that the interest in it has far exceeded our expectations. Stay tuned for more details, and should you be lucky enough to cross paths with a player with the title of iPwner, you'll know they are a Mac user. ;) |
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Wonder if that cheer is followed by a concoction of bourbon and pepto bismol....
I hope they keep the enthusiasm up and make some solid changes to the game.
(Fortress...city siege....Renown skills) cough...cough...cough...
I'm sure others will voice their long laundry list of items shortly after me. I hope this game makes a comeback. I had fun for awhile, and would like to come back to it some day.
So after a WHOLE year!
Their 1-year aniversary quote is pretty much this: "We now feel confident. We are now going to fix the game"
Shame that GOA has pretty much killed the game here in Europe (about 4-5 servers left).
I don't know how bad it is in the US region at the moment for WAR? If it's in the same sorry state?
But I think this asks for a classic quote: "A little too late!"
i bet games workshop is still kidking themselfs for allowing mythic for roayally fucking up their game. I mean it was all their for them basiclly they needed to just slap a UI on it and they had a solid mmo. If this game stays alive another year I will be surprised.
What did GOA do to you in WAR that makes you write that? I have nothign to complain about regarding GOA this time around...they did a crapjob on DAoC thou..
PS. I don't think it's to late... I checked last night and europe had about 15 servers up with Med/Med and Med/High saw two with low/med pop, all others servers are of the list.
HA!! I see you duck man!
Yes, our beloved game is in deep trouble. The guy who wrote this article is kinda like how the '09 presidental election quote from the losing side " The fundementals of our economy is essentially strong" then a week later wall street emplodes and everyone starts losing their homes, cars, throw in a couple trillion in stimulas money into it and we still have unemployment of 10%.
Back to Warhammer- I waited for this game. I got the collectors edtion. I love my guild. But my faith in EA/mythic is gone.
ASC will spread in games to come. NO MERCY!
Hey, ive Collector's Edittion of WAR too. Mine is covered by layer of dust and i'll not touch it anymore.
WAR has had major issues in this first year, no doubt. Some would say this most recent round of fixes is "too little, too late" but I'd have to disagree there.
Lots of games have rocky starts and still go on to be successful. The last two patches have gone a LONG way to correcting some serious issues in the endgame that players have been griping about since almost the launch (AOE, CC, and fort/city sieges being the big ones). They are definitely on the right track, and need to continue working towards fixing the bugs and tweaking the core element of the game (RVR), but as long as they keep as they are they will endure and eventually come out of this in a decent state.
Right now I'd say their biggest issue is the bad publicity and bad reputation they've garnered. Players have left in droves, bad-mouthing the game on their way out and no matter what improvements Mythic makes, they've got that huge hurdle to get over.
It's the lack of realm balance, driven by player dissatisfaction that is killing the game. On Phoenix Throne, Order has been DOMINATING all summer, and from what I hear the same is true on other servers. This constant cycle of one side beating the living crap out of the other side just makes people not want to play. Most of the decent players on the winning side get bored because of the lack of challenge, and of course the people on the losing side get tired of getting their arses handed to them on a regular basis. Players leave in droves, wash rinse repeat.
I really enjoy Warhammer. When the sides are balanced, it's the most fun I've ever had in a PvP environment; when you're working with your teammates, covering for each others weaknesses, the game's bugs and glitches are a lot less obvious and a lot easier to deal with. I think losing Mark Jacobs may have been the best thing that could've happened to Mythic, because these last few months have been the most productive since the game was launched.
I do have my own laundry list of items that has killed my enjoyment of the game, but they're mostly aesthetic, such as a bow string and I'd like the elves knees to bend realistically. It's the small things that give a game its charm, and Mythic's way of prioritizing places those small things at the bottom. Their process also takes too long. I remember people complaining for months about AoE dmg among other things before it was finally fixed. In fact, that took about 6 months. They need to revise their process, because on paper the process looks good, but in practice, it takes too long. Listen to the players, and try what they suggest. That's my advice.
WAR failed in my eyes, because I was a DAoC player with expectations of a game that'd be equal as good as DAoC. I never got into WoW before, but the failure of WAR pushed me towards playing WOW. I really appreciate WoW, because Blizzard pays attention to the little things, while continously working on the big things and adding content. WoW may not be everyones cup of tea, but Blizzard knows how to listen to their playerbase. They know who's paying the bills. Mythic may claim to listen to their playerbase, but it's only after trying it their way first.
I agree with you on your point about Mythic having a big hurdle to overcome. The genre isn't growing at a fast pace, unless you're WoW, which means first impressions count. Yes, Mythic will probably turn WAR around to a good game, but it won't matter by then. Even if they can claim WAR is a good game now, which I wouldn't argue, it'd be too late for most, because most of us have given the game a try after every major patch and have by now given up on WAR. I don't plan to ever give WAR another shot, because WoW is a good enough game for me, not to mention AION will release soon, and if that doesn't work for me, there will be other new releases in the coming years. My point is that WAR missed its chance to catch a sizable playerbase, and won't get another chance. The best thing they can do now is make their current playerbase happy, and cross their fingers in hope that future releases will tank, which will give them another shot. While many MMO's may tank in the future, it's hard to count against Bioware and Blizzard failing.
From the 30 or so english servers there are now only 5 english servers left in the EU. My server, Burlok, that was still Med/Med back in January, has been shut down in June.
That's why I am saying a little too late!
Cheers
I'm wif ya bruddah.
I miss my psycho greenskin Gorlik, but the game, to me, was lacking. Also, I don't think the market needs another fantasy based MMORPG, even one with the lore that is WAR.
"The Land of the Dead (LotD) shook things up and, in my opinion, in a positive way. We knew going into it, that it would split player population for the short term as players flooded to the new content for its shiny new appeal. This caused a lot of intense, memorable fights for many in the LotD when control flipped."
I find that funny. From what I remember there was nobody from the opposing faction in LOTD. One side was in LOTD while the other in the Capital City. The most intense fight I had after LOTD was against a mob... The whole "expansion" was not a positive experience for me. In fact, it was the last straw that caused me to unsubscribe from the game.
Once again, they're wasting their time and money on something that is not needed right now. Sure, a Mac version would be great, but should that be one of their priorities right now? I don't even want to hear about different teams working on different things. The fact is they're spending their time and money on something that will not make the game better.
Every patch Mythic comes out with is supposed to be incredible, and fix the problems players have been bitching about. So far, none of them fixed a damn thing (since I left, at least). Nothing but bandaid after bandaid. With Aion right around the corner, I sure hope they're serious this time. I definitely won't be back anytime soon. After supporting Mythic for so many months, I'm going to have to see a large amount of positive feedback from players, blogs, etc to get me back.
Lack of a playable end game made WAR a mythic Joke.
Having fought epic RvR battles across multiple lands struggled to hold an alliance together and finally made our way to the gates of the enemy city - the climatic epic battle for victory was some crummy instanced PvE, that was badly broken.
LAME
I was very very disappointed with this game. it couldve been so much better. Open world, better crafting, more cites etc.
This is almost verbatem how I feel. I'm not 100% aginst playing WAR again, but I'm not paying for shit until I see re-review after re-review and posts from returnees stating how the game has made a 360. On top of that, I won't be the first to return. I want to see a huge spike in the population first. Then, I'd consider going back. Right now, it's just to little, w/ to few people to play with, and to many things still wrong.
yes a year of lies betryal and well lets face it more 1 sidednes to a game , hmmm lets see we will give order more powers at less cost , that should work .... no lets also take alot of destro powers make them weaker and make there cost more ... yes that will work ........wait 1 more thing there dps calss lets make there dammage even less so the max dam they can do is so weak that a healer can heal double the amount than can do at max end game
this is why they went from 800,000 players to 300,000 now its around 200,000 and droping very fast, i am bitter this was suppose to be my ultimate mmo , and the funy thing is i played every other mmo longer than i did this one .
back to wow for me will aion comes out hopefully it will do better than war , not that you can do much worse
This kind of interviews with Mythic make me believe even less in the future of this game. Reading the interview gives you the impression that last year have been a success. This game struggle, but Mythic keeps saying it´s going great. I wonder when MMO developers will realize that hiding facts and making stories only make things worse.
Even my grandma that never played a MMO in her entire life, realize that loosing 600.000 subscribers in NA/EU in less than a year, is a disaster.
For god sake Mythic, tell us the truth and earn some respect, because right now hardly anyone have faith in you.
The main diffrence that a year makes is that ppl have seen all the flaws - Some so big that many doubt they can ever be fixed.
PPL have also seen the badly designed PVE content that is totally meaningless cause Laggy RVR is supposedtly all this game is about. And then ppl have seen very slow reactions from Mythic regarding gamebreaking issues like abilties of some classes that ruined the entire game for thousands of ppl.
This is the diffrence... And to put it mildly - this game is history.
I have never been more upset by any MMO than I was with Warhammer, such a great IP and a company with DAoC under its belt spewing out this piece of crap, caving in to be more and more like the industry leader, WoW. The way to get customers is to attract people who want something different from WoW, hence the initial 800k subs number.
I started off in beta and fromt he beginning played to the cap with a Sword Master, throughout massive changes were made which made it impossible to keep up with and frustrating to play. I left. I saw that the new patch was coming and I truly only enjoy the game for the scenarios so I thought I'd create a totally new character on a new server (my old server had been removed anyhow) and roll destro sorcerer since I had played only order initially. I really enjoyed it again, I levelled him up to about 12 and had a blast playing in T1 scenarios. Then three things happened: 1. I remembered how terrible the levelling/quests become in the early to mid game (and seeing how this is the bulk of the game since endgame is not my thing with the RvR that is always a pain) 2. I realized that nothing was going to *begin* to be useful to this class until at least around lvl 18-20 3. The patch came out and for all the test servers and time was buggy and kind of a letdown
These were my experiences the first time through with 3 chars, I left, came back months later rolled a new char on a new server with a solid balance and *nothing* had changed appreciably. That's a problem. When a game I pay for and them continue to pay for is best described as tedious, then it just is time to call it quits. And I did. I hit the cancel account button for the last time today on this one.
Maybe someday the tabletop game of Warhammer will be created electronically and I will gladly fork out my money again, but outside of that my online Warhammer gaming is over.
(My suggestion to anyone listening is to create a MMO that is all about strategy and tactics, give me scenario-like games and characters that can be built from universally available pre-set spells and abilities and gear at a lesser monthly price like $4.99/mo and I will endlessly tweak and play and enjoy it. The grinding and PvE and RvR is unnecessary to many adults with less time. I played with tons of people in WAR who felt and played the same as myself so the market is there.)
lot of people (including me) thought that WAR will be a sandbox expierience with battles, RvR, player created content with alliances and guilds in constant fight for cities and keeps...
well its wasnt, and that's why they dopped to 200K subs... game is a theme park, glorified WoW battlegrounds and the worst thing is that it's based on one of the coolest and most respectable fantasy IPs... well i hope WAR dies soon so it can be bought out for pennies and done right by some1 else.
I have played the table-top version for 15 years now. I was very excited when i heard there was going to be an online game made. I have not been let down. This game is great and constantly gets better. Mythic is doing a great job at adding content and improving the game. For those that have not played in a while or nrver player should go and check it out. I only wish they would offer a lifetime membership!
The problem with that is people don't have to take rocky starts anymore. There are so many long running MMOs that are solid at this point that when I new game releases and it's balance and gameplay is all out of whack people won't stick around. If you look at the beginning graphic MMOs that reached success (UO, AC1, EQ). They didn't have rocky starts and they are all still being played today.
In the rush to get in on the market after that all the games released with server issues, major bugs, and balance issues. During those times though the whole market was still fairly new and exciting to most people so they would stick around and wait for the game to be fleshed out.
However all those games (including the first 2 major ones) are all running now without issues and have loads of content. So most players will pick up a new MMO in the hopes of something fresh and new and instead they get recycled material with major flaws and bugs. So they ditch the game and go back to what works. It is just too late in the game to be putting out MMOs that have loads of issues, even more so because when everyone rolls up the unbalanced class and then it gets nerfed a bunch of them leave since their character they worked on now sucks.
I don't even buy new MMOs now. I sit back and let the people who make the same mistake of preording everytime to post on the forums, about 3 months after release when the new feeling has worn off, and see what the game is really made of. And in every single case lately I've saved money, the one I didn't was WAR. And the only reason I tried WAR was I was looking for something new to play and it had been out for a few months with very mixed reviews. I played for 3 weeks and just couldn't stand it anymore, no matter what "improvements" come out now I will never go back, they had their chance.
When a game like WAR that is so much like the other cookie cutters out there, and a lot like the biggest kid on the block, releases with issues. Everyone is going to go back to those other games to get the same style gameplay but in something that works how it should. Crappy launches are just not good enough anymore.
I posted in their developer's section, future features, a suggestion to help save their game. It is drastic, and would hurt in the short term, but the upside would be huge as well IF they can provide a stable product;
As noted above, trust is an issue with the game right now. My wife quit before I did, and will not pay another dime to Mythic for that game (she started as a zealot, made a DoK when it became apparent that DoK's were best/ essential healer on Destro, and then played a BW up to around 20 when she quit in disgust seeing the blatant op'd nature in comparison to a Sorc she also had of higher level). Patch after patch was disasterous in that game. Endgame was a bad experience, server performance was so terrible that they had to cap the number of players that could participate in their War is Everywhere world.
So...
Nearly a year later and they have started to fix things (if patch notes are to be believed). City Siege is all rvr with pve as an option, keeps have two ramps, fortresses are not even necessary to invade the city, cc has immunity timers that (are supposed) work, AoE damage is reduced (globally which was a mistake but its an improvement nonetheless), there is a token system for getting upper end gear rather than the enigmatic contribution system.
My Wife still won't pay them a dime.
But
If the game is better, if the performance is so improved lag is not really an issue, if the balance is addressed,and testing it out was free, I bet she, and many others would be tempted to try it again.
So my original suggestion was no hassle, no questions asked, auto re-activate for all accounts. Use it or don't it would be free for a month. Current users as well would get an entire month free. The game would net zero sub dollars for one month. A huge hit I know but.. for a time I think the servers would fill up, the game if improved would catch the interest of its old players. I even suggested doing it by way of a live event leading up to the return of old friends and enemies. If Mythic/ EA really believes in the changes they have made, in the difficulties they have overcome, they would take the risk. if the game were fixed, they would lose a month but gain back thousands of subscriptions.
At the very least, Mythic should offer re-activation with a money back guarantee as in, re-activiate today, play for a month, if at the end of the month you want to keep playing we bill you two months (the one you just played and the next) if you don't well sorry we could not entice you back. The risk this time around should all be on Mythic, not its tortured ex-player base who still spit bitterness when confronted by what the game should have been, and what it actually was.
One final note in the interest of accuracy, the comment that the servers have a back and forth domination is nonsense. Order has been on top consistently for the past six or so months. Before that there was much Destro domination, but not everywhere and where it did occur it was a population thing. Patch 1.2, should the game survive, should be carved somewhere in the game as a holy ward against Destruction. All BW's should have it on their armor, and Sigmar's statue in Altdorf should bear it on the end of his hammer.
First post here, what a doozy.
@sebsonfire: if your account is expired for more than 30 days Mythic gives you a free 10-day trial when you re-activate. If you cancel before the 10 days is up there is no charge... that's how I went back to try it out for a couple days before and after the new patch. It wasn't enough to keep me, but I did try it out again.
Aion doesn't interest me much, and sadly I will be dusting off my WoW install disc and going back to see how that is now. It really is the only option these days. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
This POS gets worse with each patch.
Very well written. Best 1st post in years at mmorpg.com
I agree i played this game since beta, and yeah its close to being in that sad ass state, MOST of the people who play the game are assholes... they are really rude, and that turns the whole game off to me, plus all the fucking bugs it still has after this long, it was buggy in beta, and we told them what needed to be fixed but they still didnt fix it, then with these new live events it has only gotten worse... truthfully i believe this game is dead... i was in a guild full of about 60 lvl 40s and all of them left the game becuase of the bugs and the b/s u have to put up with... so the only difference a year makes, is weither the game is gona make it, and this one did not....
I'd play again if they ever fix the issues with there only being 2 capital cities (out of 6), broaden the story a bit more (so many unexplained ruins of skaven and other things), fix the balancing and stop tip toeing around it, etc..
After LotD, I had had enough with the excuses with class balancing. Played destro and just could not understand why Mythic loved giving the BWs so much power that they could (and still do) roll over an entire party of destro with a bunch of OP'd spells. Most classes in MMO's start off weak, then get stronger by end game. WAR is the opposite with a lot of the classes. Never fun playing a class and get knockdown, stun, knockback, dot, dot, dead.
Sigh. Would really like to see the other capital cities back in the game.
My guild still has a couple members in WAR but they will be joining us in Aion now. I suspect IF Aion is successful it will pull more people away from WAR.
I very much doubt WAR will see large increases in population in the future and the best they can hope is to keep existing customers. No-one i know who played WAR has any interest in ever going back now.
Well I had to read the interview twice, and thought long and hard how best I could put my feelings across about Warhammer, (had high hopes, got collectors edition, fell for that)...But found that paragraphs of discourse wouldnt convey my feelings at all, but one word would.......HA!!!!
I like the way they all virtually pat themselves in the back *puke* this game has at most 1 year to live, it's on life support right now and the 1.3 changes are pissing people off over at the other forums.
First you guys knew that the destro side had way more people because of their looks therefore dominating the servers.
People leave indroves after been wiped out by the zerg machine (destro)
Thennnnn you guys overpower Order side shifting the power over to them once again obliberating the servers....
Again people leave this time destro players....tsk tsk tsk
I can go on and on and on RIP WAR you never stood a chance.
ahh once Guild Wars 2 comes out Aion will be but a distant memory too many.
Apprenticeship/hirelings already? Wow, the population must be hurting even more than I thought. Those are last ditch efforts.
I really like Warhamer so far in the first month I've been playing. The only bad things I've found in this game are people's attitudes. Noone seems willing to learn team based tactics and everyone runs around trying to solo the entire other army. The end result after nearly every scenario are a bunch of people crying about OP'd this, I wasn't healed even though I ran my BW all the way into the enemies back lines etc. It remninds me of when DAOC launched. Tons of people came in ran around with no clue and quit. That's when the game finally got good. It is true that most people don't like having to put in the effort to compete well in RVR and that's why WOW is so big. I played that game for a short time and where most people who would have quit in WAR, they have tons to do in PVE in WOW. I think that's where mythic has failed big time. There just aren't enough people to care about a game that only has rvr to offer. Aion will suffer a similar fate if they don't put enough effort into PVE because whenever you have competition against other players people will server stack to make up for a lack of skill and with nowhere in game to turn, the people getting owned every night will just quit.
"Apprenticeship/hirelings already? Wow, the population must be hurting even more than I thought. Those are last ditch efforts." I guess the makers of Guild Wars must have seen their game failing before it came out because they put that in at launch...
He can say all he likes, but it rings hollow , and it will take a lot more to get me back.
/signed,
a pretty typical customer
ahh once Guild Wars 2 comes out Aion will be but a distant memory too many.
any idea when it will come out?
The game is close to a year old now and it isn't going to change much over the next year. What you see now is going to be the majority of what the game offers for a long time. Sure they will tweak systems and add some new content, but the core of the game will remain unchanged. Mythic didn't spend the last year putting half-hearted efforts into their work, it was their best shot to resolve the issues of the game. Going forward Mythic is only going to have less resources to dedicate to the game than they did over the last year, so I wouldn't expect more over the next 12 months.
It is a cycle with games that release like this. Server mergers, win back promotions, "expansion" that are just a normal content patch. This letter is just another step in the cycle about the ever elusive future changes and keeping a positive outlook despite the obvious nature of the situation. It is little more than selling hope right now.
Eventually when the game finally stabalizes to whatever population it ends up retaining over the next year or so, posts will start popping up about how much the game has changed and how great it is now. How warhammer is the best pvp game on the market and servers are swelling with returning players and even entire guilds. How everyone and their mother needs to return and give the game a second chance.
When that does happen, and it will happen, the game will play almost identical to how it does now. Maybe some new classes or races. Some new content to kick around and a little better balance. Essentially the game will play just as it did before. It will be better for sure, but the overall experience will be the same. If the core gameplay wasn't entertaining enough to capture players today it will not magically change over the next year.
Personally I think that is why they are going after Mac users, the asian and other markets right now. There just are not a lot of cases where an mmo rebounds and regains a substantial size of their lost playerbase and I think Mythic recognizes that. If mythic doesn't start talking about some sort of real expansion for the game over the next 6 months I would be really worried.
Well, been back for some 20 days or something now. Just started out with T3 and that stuff. T1-T2 rvr where a blast, both in scenarios and open rvr.
That said, game still got its load of issues, the first and foremost is server balance. Since this game depends on that for successful rvr, it really shows the imbalance at times.
Second thing is lag at keeps. Most of the time it's ok and the lag is not noticed that much but when there is alot of orvr activity yhe lag become very noticable.
The siege thing before the keeps is a sad thing too. Sure, rvr is fun to play but the keep sieges could've been done so much better thinking destructable walls/alternate routes to keep lord and so on. Now you get some dude to slap down a ram, blast that door to smitherens and zerg the keep lord. One issue with that is that the keep lord got a big tendency to reset himself all the bloody time when the opposite side is defending, the other part is the obvious chokepoint the stairs up to him is. It take absolutely no skill at all to defend the lord. Just keep aoe nuking the crap out of the people on the stair and heal the tanks blocking it, the biggest zerg wins. Jeez...
Well, that's my main issues so far with the game. It was horrible at launch, I admit that, but I want to give the game a real chance now to see if they fixed all the stuff they said they fixed. Besides, I want to see T4 and LotD with my own eyes and decide if the game's worth it or not.
One last note though, don't listen to the naysayers. They are as clueless about what they're talking about in any game. They pull facts and words out of thin air with barely a hint of truth to it, like all the 'omg wow is dead' threads we see now and then around here. Bullshit from one end to the other.
I agree i played this game since beta, and yeah its close to being in that sad ass state, MOST of the people who play the game are assholes... they are really rude, and that turns the whole game off to me, plus all the fucking bugs it still has after this long, it was buggy in beta, and we told them what needed to be fixed but they still didnt fix it, then with these new live events it has only gotten worse... truthfully i believe this game is dead... i was in a guild full of about 60 lvl 40s and all of them left the game becuase of the bugs and the b/s u have to put up with... so the only difference a year makes, is weither the game is gona make it, and this one did not....
That is also the whole problem and why, at least in Europe, it's pretty much over and done with.
Burlok was the English RP server. It was a blast to play on. Great community. Sure you had some idiots, but overall the community was really great!
Now this server has been shut down back in June, you only got like 4-5 english standard servers left to play on. Full of idiots and L337 kiddies.
All the people I knew on Burlok are gone and have quit. They rather go live with their mother in law, then roll a toon one of those standard servers that are left. lol.
This game will never rebound. The 4 capital cities that were cut, will never be added to the game. And not just because of the low subcriber state the game is in now. But simply because the servers and the game engine can't handle it.
They will have to double the cap at least, to support 4 more capital cities per server, if you don't want to turn all the cities into ghost towns.
The server still can't handle the current cap. That's just sad, for what should be a massive RVR game.
An expansion? Will never happen. The amount of Mac users that might buy this game is so low, I am still baffled why they even try. As the Mac users that are also avid gamers, pretty much have the latest Mac's that are intel based and just run Windows in dualbood and play the normal PC games. (Just like me. I got both PC and Mac's at home).
And in Asia. You can pretty much count on that it will fail there too. Even faster. The Asian market is even more saturated then here in the West. And those Asian players are really crazy and very hardcore. Much more unforgiving then us. They will be over and done with the game within a month!
And last but not least. We all know the reputation of Electronic Arts. They are a ruthless and cold hearted company. For that fact alone, you can be pretty much sertain that not much will happen to this game anymore and sertainly not an expansion!!
The sub numbers have dropped to a too low level already for that! EA never gonna give them the resources and funds needed for a paid expansion!
Cheers
What the hell is this? “What a difference a year makes?”
With that title I think I am fair to expect to find out what Mythic has done to improve the game in the last year.
There were fourteen paragraphs in this article. Only two dealt with what has been improved in the last year. Twelve paragraphs on every thing from what they are going to do in the future to how important listening to their player base is.
Nearly a total waste of time for anyone who is thinking that now might be the right time to give Warhammer a try or retry.
This game should have been a slam dunk for me
but it seems Warhammer + MMO != win
I started having misgivings when they announced they were using the gamebryo engine.. After p;laying from beta til about a month ago It became pretty clear that things were just not going to get better quick enough, so I canceled my sub. Out of a guild of 70 I think we only have about 5 or 6 people still playing the game...
I just hope this game doesn't poison people against the 40K mmo....
Sheesh, had to scroll through all the negativity to get to the good few posts. If you dislike the game, good for you, but please, please, please stop informing us all again, again, and AGAIN.
I've been playing WAR on and off since launch in the USA, I'm from UK and decided it was for the best I play on Mythic servers rather then the awful GOA servers. This game has come alongway since launch in my opinion, new SC's, new items and areas, new classes, a better PVP reward system, and now armour and RVR updates are great improvements. I'm looking forward to see what else they have in the pipeline.
The whole concept of the game was and it still is an unique one .. i loved every single part of game . With that beeing sayd .. the lagg issues and class balance , server crashes , ETC .. the devs screw it up BAD .. and they seem proud of it :) so ironic .
If the number of people that closed beta had back in the days , will go up again I whould be glad to get back to this game .. because like i said its an unique game ... what more can i say ..
I am Very glad to see your optimism. It's hard to come by these days.
Seriously though, The auction house is now broken with the last patch.
"Coming up to our 1 year anniversary, I couldn't be more excited for WAR."
Aside from Mark Jacobs touting that WAR would be the best MMO ever (and eating crow afterwards), this comment reassures me that Jeff had very low expectations. That's just sad.
In a real, non (I wont even say this POS company's name) reads...
How the players have "PUT UP" with our half broken game over time and how merging servers has matured who ever is left to play our game.
Their own class descriptions and the way they sold the game lied to hundreds of thousands of people. Their own lack of judgement cost them Subscriptions. Finally their lack of commitment to the feedback they received and saying "we are only human," (as their excuse) is the downfall for having so many bugs each and every patch.
They keep lying about what is going on and don't fool anyone except naive or desperate for pvp content players base.
War was to be a great rival to any MMO out there, specially WoW because it was PVP rather then PVE, but thats all lies. Their main Content is PVE and that lacks a Lot in the End Game. You have only 4 choices on what to do after lvl 40 and 3 of them are PVE.
What would be nice is if they BALANCED THE DAMN CLASSES.
If they had done that 2 months ago me and my entire guild of 25+ members would still be playing.
See what Mythic fails to mention is their C&C balance team is run by mostly order devs and they care VERY LITTLE about destructions input.
Before that giant patch came in destruction was already gimped and nerfed.
Certain classes were so poorly nerfed that they were beyond unplayable in pvp.
Ask any witchelf or marauder how bad their class was.
And then the new patches came out and they nerfed those nerfed classes even MORE!!
meanwhile certain order mirror classes got buffs *cough* witch hunter *cough*.
They nerfed witchelf to the point where certain abilities did 40-45% LESS DAMAGE then previously. AND THEY WERE ALREADY GIMPED. they were the SECOND least played destruction class. and for a reason.
even their DIRECT mirror abilities didn't stack up to witch hunter mirror abilities.
Now Witchelf has an entire mastery tree that is not usable in pvp because it does almost HALF the damage it used to do before the patch.
and this is all great if i want to play my witchhunter alt but my main char and guild was DESTRO.
They have lost the majority of their subscribers due to bad class balances and they will continue to do so till someone grows up and learns to balance the game properly.
LMAO...you are unbelievable. You are what is WRONG with MMO player bases. I'm so glad you are in WoW so I dont run into you in a good game.
Cmon, I dunno about NA but Europe: loads of servers closed. Daily server crashes. For every thing they fix in a patch, they break two totally random things what shouldnt even been touched. Two days since last patch on euro servers... 5 crashes so far.
Performance is terribad. I played beta and immediately recognized the unresponsiveness of abilities, npcs etc. I prayed to god it would be fixed by release. It wasnt ofc. Engine is lousy, and lots of design desicions make performance a joke. The game is basically designed to funnel zergs into smaller and smaller areas as the campaign progresses not only breaking the underdog realm's back but at the same time making performance issues even worse. WAR was released as a mass RvR game, which it cant deliver. Anyone who has played endgame knows this.
I was waiting for a long time for this game to come out.
One of the things from Open Beta that really, really ticked me off and not just myself but many people as well was the blind eye mythic turn when many of us reported there were some serious issues with the game perfomance.
1) the Memory leaks
2) server side lag and also client poor performance.
Many people including myself provided logs, after logs, some other folks when as far as building a new PC just for the game, top of the line gaming rig and they still had issues, come to find out by others that the game was barely using the GPU and was dumping everything into the processor....yet Mark Jacob said there was a small issue on "few" people....when there were soo many post on one of the forurms warhammaherllaince (forget exact url) the post for this problem reach well over 200k+ views and replies..
Sorry when you have EA backing you up, you better deliver your goods, SPECIALLY when you have the community supporting you, and he had the odacity to deny there was an issue with the game....sorry I work hard for my money as well as many other gamers, dont come and tell me is my hardware when I can run other MMO's with no issues period....
You would figure he had learn a thing or two from DAOC....
Hard-hitting questions there and some honest, insightful answers too. Kudos to both parties for a frank and open discussion.
No, wait. The other thing. Utter drivel. Yeah, that.
Well, I was going to start my post off with a quote from one of you above posters, but with there being so many posts that touched upon items that were quote worthy, it becomes a moot point. Matter of fact, I might go as far as saying this thread is probably one of the most productive, constructive and/or purposeful I've seen at this site. However, I would like to quote the following from Jeff Skalski:
"Will players concerns be addressed? Of course not 100% completely, but I want to be more transparent with our community with where we're at and where we're going. I play the game and I'm still not fully satisfied. We have more work to do."
For months now, I've been preaching the importance of the above statement (in regards to being more transparent with the community) to anyone at Mythic that would listen, including a couple of long winded letters to the powers that be. Unfortunately, their follow through in that one critical area may have come a little too late. I believe that of all of Mythic's blunders with this game, that may have been the absolute, most catastrophic. In business, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with your customers thoughts, wants, needs, wishes, etc., it's never a good thing to ignore them without acknowledging the fact that at the very least that customer matters and that you are at least somewhat concerned with their needs. This is all the more important when the very success of your business is riding on the success of one sole product and your customer base is directly held together and dependent upon the content of their fellow customers.
It kind of reminds me of when I used to work for the government and most of those around me would walk around with their nose stuck up in the air due to the fact that they held a position within an important function of the government, yet it seemed that I was one of very few employees there that would shrug my shoulders with the thought of the job I held, feeling that it wasn't my job that defined who I am. Needless to say I left that job amidst many people telling me I was stupid for giving up that job, even though I was working with a bunch of pompous people I couldn't stand and hating the work that I did. Point being, with the way Mythic seemed to treat it's customers, I couldn't help but envision those at Mythic walking around with their noses stuck up in the air after acquiring the rights to the WAR ip, all the while thinking that they were more important to the equation than they actually were.
Maybe I'm completely wrong in feeling that way. Maybe that wasn't it at all, but I am a paying customer however and Mythic has in some way caused me to feel this way. Like I said, I may be way off the mark, but for some very strange reason, players concerns, complaints and cries for answers, for the longest time seemed to fall on deaf ears at Mythic. Be it the rumored stubbornness of Mark Jacobs or maybe those he answered to, none of us outside of the Mythic family truly knows.
What I do know however, is that you don't go from having close to a million plus subs, down to around 200k as fast as they have without something very truly wrong outside of the typical MMO growing pains. Most of you I'm sure have been asking the very same thing I have been the last couple of months, "how do you screw something up THAT BADLY?" It is quite apparent given some thought, that Mythic may know a thing or two about game development for the most part IMO, but severely lacks in the area of business development. As I know from reading many posts, I'm not the only one that has shaken my head at some of the business decisions Mythic has made during the last year of this game. I can't ever remember doing that with Blizzard in regards to their direction with WoW as a business model, while personally, I despise that game.
Furthermore, when a large portion of your customer base has been giving you feedback that your Chef's Special tastes terrible, you don't keep feeding your customers the same dish thinking the recipe is fine. This is exactly what has happened with class balancing in WAR as players have been screaming for months that the game has needed balancing and yet we were witness to other severely less important areas of the game being addressed while balancing issues were either being pushed to the back of the line or sometimes getting no mention at all. That (pardon the pun) is a recipe for disaster and if this game does fail, it will become the poster child alongside SWG as to what not to do with an MMO.
I've been a WAR sub from the very beginning and still have an active account currently as my intent was to stay on until Aion's release. I truly love the WAR ip and like a lot of others have had more fun in this game, specifically with RvR than with any other MMO I've played to date. I believe that the game has made some good progress as of late and I do hope it not only survives, but succeeds. It certainly will have a huge mountain to climb. It can start that steep climb by excepting that some of their customers do have some valid points and great ideas that could help make the slope a little less slippery. If only Mythic could put their pride in check and reach out their hand to grasp those trying to help them up.