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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Interviews: 1.3.2 Interview
MMORPG.com's Jon Wood recently had a chance to ask Warhammer's Jeff Skalski a few questions about the recent 1.3.2 update and what it means for the game.
By Jon Wood on October 23, 2009
| MMORPG.com: | 1.3.2 is a patch that makes some pretty major changes to the way that WAR plays. Can you run us through a few of the changes that might surprise people who haven't played the game in a while? |
| Jeff Skalski: | Yeah we definitely made some changes that might catch a few off guard, but let me break them down and explain.
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| MMORPG.com: | Are you at all concerned that the new Apprentice System is going to prevent many people from enjoying the full scope of content available to them and simply spend their time apprenticed to a max level character? |
| Jeff Skalski: | Not at all. The way I look at is, why should a player who's paying for our service be restricted to play with whomever he or she wants to because they are not within the "right" range of ranks to enjoy the content? I'm happy we got apprenticing up in for 1.3.2 and we're working through the bugs we encountered on PTS a few weeks ago for apprenticing down right now. The team is trying to get those kinks worked out for 1.3.3, so hopefully all T2-T4 players can enjoy the new low level dungeon Hunter Vale with their higher ranked characters |
| MMORPG.com: | Why the decision to have each realm start in the same zone (Order = Empire, Destruction = Chaos)? Doesn't this change leave the other four starting zones pretty much irrelevant? |
| Jeff Skalski: | Pretty much covered these two in an early question, but let me take the opportunity to add some more. ^.^ The team also re-itemized EvC T1 along with making adjustments to the quest flow, added an improved tutorial system and made a couple of tweaks to the RvR lake. We'll continue to push through the chapters and make improvements. Our goal moving forward is too see how the players react to the changes we made so far and move into Tier 2 and beyond. |
| MMORPG.com: | Are you at all concerned that this move could lead to critics complaining that this narrows the game's scope considerably given that the other race's Capital Cities were cut pre-launch and 1.3.2 sees their starting areas severely scaled back? |
| Jeff Skalski: | Like I said earlier, the other starter areas still exist and you can go visit them whenever you want. We didn't summon a chaos orbital strike on them. We're just encouraging players to play in EvC tier 1. |
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| MMORPG.com: | How does putting all new players into a "New Player Guild" facilitate communication any further than the communication methods already available in-game? |
| Jeff Skalski: | For most current MMO players I can see why you would scratch your head at this, but we have new players coming into the game every day and some come to WAR with little none MMO experience. By automatically placing them in a guild that helps introduce them to the world and its various game mechanics it's not such an overwhelming experience, plus it helps fosters relationships among the players. |
| MMORPG.com: | With the major city sieges hitting more often after 1.3.2, are you at all concerned that this will belittle what seemed to originally be intended as a special, or rare event? |
| Jeff Skalski: | Nope, because we run the numbers each week and simply not enough players are getting a chance to see the endgame content. On top of that, just getting to the city is one thing, capturing the city, raiding the dungeons, defeating either two of the warlord encounters, or attempt to capture the king is plenty of special moments as well. And over time we'll be incorporating even more RvR experiences into each of those. |
;)
These are great ideas that should have been implemented a year ago.. have only 2 factions and 3 starting areas was really a bad design. I waited for 3 years for this game, I loved the action and PVP in DAOC but WAR really did not deliver the same feeling. I think their main failure are their maps... they have the worst map design I have ever played on. A starting area makes sense in any MMO, however, trying to make both sides run closely together to "encourage" PVP was really a bad idea... People that want to PVP will PVP, you don't need to lead the players by the nose the entire game. All of the RVR lakes felt forced in all the Tiers. They placed them right next to eachother I think in an attempt to get people running back and forth between them? another bad idea. MMO's should feel open and chaotic, no one wants to walk a straight line all day.
The other major failure is 2 factions and forcing every to look the same. That doesn't make you feel unique and the player doesn't own the toon they are playing. You feel like you are playing a cookie cutter class that at level x you look like z. Really poor design.
I hope that Mythic can pull it together, if they do I would return. But for now, the game just isn't finished. Playing AION right now and having a great time. Well thought out design, but that is for another forum
Granted this post started only 9 hours ago but I sense the sound of crickets mostly.. Over a year later and desperate grasps at salvaging.
To the poster above, even with the RVR lakes, you still couldn't cross over to the other side because a level 55 super stallion elite muthfugga would one shot you for event trying to kill someone in a game about killing someone lol.... Ironic isn't it?
i found an old gamecard, repopped it. played for like 2 weeks.
its a lil more fun, population is low though.
this game honestly got me to repop my wow account. and i think wow is a better warhammer than warhammer is. ironic isnt it?
This game felt like it was being ran by a bunch of lazy developers. Cash in and sit around. I am sure they are only touching this game because something new is on the horizon that will make a few bucks.
When I say lazy it's not just the big problems never being looked at. The friendly unit frames scale to 75% (font and all). Instead of taking a few minutes making a new version they copy paste and move on. This may be small but just think what else is like that.
So much potential in the game and it was ALL squandered by a crappy engine, poor balance, and lazy developers
I don't know if you care or care to know, but lets just say there were only 2 beta testers that made it on the beta T-shirt. both of which were Bright Wizards..... I wish I could find a picture of that shirt and make a demotivational picture out of it.
If you know anyone still subscribed to this game tell them to unsub so it can just die already.
The killer of enjoyment was the bloody awful performance in RvR, but it was pretty bad even solo in an area with nobody else around, had it not (& still continue to) perform so badly I'd still be playing it despite it's rather shallow content.
Yep the engine it ran on was absolute crap.
Scrap it and try making a new Warhammeresque game, if nothing else the art style and lore would bring be back <3 Greenskins
Starting a new character is more fun now, you can actually find groups doing PQs. In a game where you need 9+ players to do hard PQs to get decent item rewards, having all 3 pairings split up really hindered anyone from pursuing a lot of the content. And now with the PQs lighting up on the map when people are doing them, you don't have to hover your cursor over em all.
There's still a little oRVR in the dwarf and elf T1 zones, because of those nice influence rewards.
Butchering got a nice upgrade in the patch, now it's worth getting.
More frequent city sieges are a nuisance if you want or need to get in the capital, being locked out for significant periods of time.
Changes were made to T2 items, influence rewards that formerly didn't have a Talisman slot now do in many cases, some even have 2 where they had none before. Even if you got the items before the patch, they still got upgraded.
Cool! It is nice to read this interview. Reading on onRPG, I see nothing but negative commentary on WAR. I missed all the hype when it was launched and it is nice to read about WAR still being developed and improved.
(I have never played WAR.)
Funny to see this. We warned them in Alpha that these things were needed.
So no matter what they do, they're flogging a dead horse and I ain't coming back because the killed it along time ago. It did have it's moments but they were far between and not enough like having people that would stand and fight.
Boring, as for endgame, NO COMMENT worth a mention.....
Honestly... great moves. Too little, too late? Probably.
The game had a lot of potential. It really did. IMHO, the game just cut too many corners to really fill the gaps and make it a solid MMORPG.
As others have said... the populations are low. They are so low at this point that I wonder more about the game's longevity as opposed to whether or not I would enjoy playing it again.
They need to fix the PVP.
Add a DAoC frontiers type PVP endgame and you'll attract the rest of your niche market. Why mix PvE and PVP? There are PVE players and PVP players, simple as that. Each type of player knows where to go to find what they're looking for so cookie cut the PvE, get a nicer engine to support all the graphics and focus on a solid open PVP/RvR ruleset and you're back in business.
Unless you plan on doing PvE better than WoW, don't even try to come close to it, so fix the PVP!
most of you are wrong saying the servers are dead... its all on medium medium population... during primetime. lower tiers are the big problem as not many to queue up...
tier 4 is quite busy on all servers.
its not too little too late... Age of Conan made a nice comeback and this game is doing a nice job coming back. They have made some significant changes in the one year it has been out.
its great you guys dont want to give it a second chance... thats your choice... but on the other hand dont be giving misinformation about a game you dont play anymore.. your feelings are from when you last played and not what it is in its current state.
this game is quite fun now.