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Vrashk
Member Posts: 56
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/552/gameID/239
What do you guys think?
Personally.. well I'm dissappointed. Some cool stuff in there, but most of the stuff described are what I expected, but hoped it wouldn't be. All about killing, no cross-faction communication etc. And that guy they're talking about seems to be a total moron. Sadly game companies have no guts and are afraid to deviate from the RvR-concept and tweaking it in order to support a broader range of customers.
Companies used to provide online worlds for players to live out their fantasies in, but the only ones doing those nowadays are obscure companies with little financial backing, or rather boring campaign settings.
Awesome events and RP situations such as this will never be possible (Wonder how soon I will run out of bandwidth ^^), which would fit more than well into a warhammer setting
http://imperial-garrison.com/Images/silverstarsexecution.wmv
Event features:
- Communication with ones enemies
- Player housing
- Guild-wars (Well, there would be, but the rebel roleplayers were too intimidated by our two walkers to dare put their plan in action ^^)
- Extensive crafting and item customization
- A whole plethora of Civilian Roleplayers who were following careers which did not involve fighting.
SWG gave the options to make a living, breathing world. This will just be a big arena where players can duke it out like any other fps.
I'm getting tired of companies mismanaging massive licenses and turning them into extremely limited MMO games.
Now I'm going to go cry myself to sleep.
Comments
This IP is hardly one I would look to for a sandbox type game. That would be a diservice to fans of Warhammer.
In general, I'd like to see more veriety too and I am not trying to say WAR is perfect, there are many areas of concern. I just think that what your looking for is the exact opposite of what Warhammer is, so it is a touch unfair to expect it from that quarter.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
From my perspective. I'm truly excited about this game now. As much as I'm excited about Hero's journey and that's saying something for me.
Also, for the first time ever I'm excited about PvP aspect of an MMO.
I'm an old SWG player too and I understand the want of a truly sandbox game. But let's be real. at the costs of making MMOs now companies just don't want to take chances anymore. It's almost impossible to fathom that SOE actually did but see how that turned out.
Warhammer is all about the slaughter and mayhem. Nothing fancy or pretty. Just out and out war.
finese(sp) and subtly are not Warhammer's strong points. It's about large battles with guts everywhere and goblins taking a crap in pies. heh
Hail CHAOS!
http://www.blackindustries.com/default.asp
Limiting it in this way is a diservice to Warhammer roleplayers and those who enjoy the Warhammer Lore.
http://www.blackindustries.com/default.asp
Remember the "Batman" section of my article? This is one face of Warhammer, and definitely not the difinitive one. I suppose they could have gone this route, but would you really expect the average figure painter to identify with this over a war game?
I just think you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole here. I'm all for the type of game you described (I did help design Wish afterall), but I'd like to see it done in a situation that makes sense. Warhammer - to me at least - is not that situation.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
I do not see my proposal in any way stopping the
figure painter who just wants to play a army vs army game from doing
what he wants to do, apart from not forcing every single player in the game to be a soldier.
I see my proposal as providing options to those who would like to do
something else, but still within a massive online enviroment based on
the tremendous warhammer franchise. Those who want to play the life
outside the battlefields as well.
I'm treading on dangerous ground now.. but shouldn't the fans of the battlegame be more satisfied with something like Mark of Chaos (in a MMO-version) where you actually play armies? Rather than a game where you play an individual character?
Anyhow, let's continue this tommorrow. 7:48 AM and I haven't slept. ^^
You can't have all eggs in a basket, Vrashk.
While it is true the SWG created a more living world, it was lacking in the GCW department. Yes, it was there, but it never became the actual focus of the game. It was more like a side thing in which some people was involved.
Having something like that for a Warhammer game would simple not fit. the conflict should take precedence and the game seems designed around this principle.
Beside the RPG, which is not at all as famous or widespread as the tabletop game, there isn't much concrecte information about non-combatants. All Warhammer stuff is about the combatants, having a warhammer game where you can be a non-combatant seems..... odd. Even in the RPG, most careers could do something useful in a combat, be it slash with a sword or heal the wounds afterward (is no surprise that most stats, even in the RPG, all deal with combat, now is it?).
This do not mean that I would have been sad to see a more open world environment, but i wasn't really expecting one. So I am not disappointed in that regard.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
The GW guys seemed pretty set on the idea that Warhammer was largely about killing stuff.
There are always ten ways to skin a cat, but I think the one they picked here has the most traction among the most warhammer fans. As the above poster pointed out, look at SWG. That is the danger of trying to do the whole "world" thing in a situation where the IP is really about fighting.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but a 'sandbox' type world doesn't fit at all; the grittiest Ratcatcher in Altdorf has little in common with a Bretonnian peasant or Asrai spellsinger (not to mention neither would understand his Reikspiel!). The Warhammer world (as presented in WFRP) is extremely segregated and xenophobic, with most characters having little or nothing to do with folk outside their little world.
Open player communities, like in SWG, wouldn't make any sense. Where would you start a town? How would you eke the crowns out of a tight economy? Why would the Elector count or local Graf allow a new economic base in their territory? It just doesn't fit, or make sense (in my opinion).
The closest thing to a 'sandbox' is also what WAR is emulating; newer Warhammer Fantasy Battle background, like the 'Storm of Chaos' invasion where you had Archaon's Chaos horde allied with Grimgor's Orcs, attacking the 'Grand Alliance' of Ulthuan, the Empire, and the dwarf kingdoms. That gives the flexibility and 'roleplay opportunities' of various races in close proximity that, I think, you've described.
I get the feeling I'm not getting your point, though.
As a longtime fan of Warhammer, I think this game is a very solid interpretation. It's exactly halfway between WFRP 2nd and WFB 6th (especially in respect to the stylistic presentation of the last few years' miniatures). I don't think you could've made a game out of the Realm of Chaos books, 1st WFRP, or a John Blanche painting... not and keep it as anything more than a maddening FPS with swords and flying skulls. Not that I wouldn't play a game like that with great glee.
But I think a game in this form leaves so many important aspects of the warhammer world out. This text doesn't quite give me the feeling that someone cannot be safe anywhere, there's strife and conflicts everywhere in the warhammer world after all, and RvR games have a tendency to force players into the same side in their specific Empire.
How will the Imperial Criminals vs Law, Ulric vs Sigmar, Pious vs Cultist conflicts play out? Will we all be forced into serving the Pious, Lawful Sigmarite approach (in quests etc)? If they provide opposing faction "quests" within the empires, then that's one step in the right direction, but I have my doubts about this.
And there's similar differences within all the factions, possibly more tame in High Elf and Dwarf civlizations, and most certainly more wild in Greenskin and Chaos factions (which are more or less in a constant state of internal war unless unified in a campaign).
Anyhow, I have no doubt this will be a great game and I will definetly play it, but I'm dissappointed because it could be so much more.
Hmmm, what you're going for could really only be done on a niche product using todays tools, communication between enemies in a PvP environment alone is something that would require an 'R' rating in the US and quite a few european countries and it would still require a much higher number of live support in game. If you've ever been in a beta with PvP and communication with the enemy allowed you know what I'm talking about, and all the players from WoW that now have a taste for MMO's and a really bad attitude would make this even worse.
I think the kind of game you're looking for will be available in the future when the technology allows for part of the online support to be automated in an efficient manner and the MMO market has grown big enough to support niche product requiring higher maintenance. Expect the cost to be higher than current MMO's though, $15 a month just won't cut it.
The preview left me feeling excited about the game, it won't be a roleplayers nor a tabletop gamers dream per se but if they pull it off it should be a very good MMO set in the Warhammer world and staying true to the core of the Warhammer IP.
R-rating for cross-faction communication? Is that something new? Because it's been done in the majority of mmorpgs on the market.
Admittedly, I've never been in Betas with it, just retail games ^^.
And the kind of game I'm asking for has been done before, plenty of times, for "standard" subscription fees.
Great Preview!
Good to read a little more info about the game, although there really ain't that much info yet.. As people say.
Looking forward to the beta indeed.
Communication between factions that are on opposite sides in PvP is essentially an endless lithany of insults and consists mainly of various misspelled curses repeated thousands of times with some graphic descriptions of what they will do to your mother/sister/gf/wife/dog/cat again repeated ad nauseum. I can't really see why that would be interesting? And in a game with hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users you would need more support people "patrolling" and dealing with excesses which translates into higher cost, of course you can reduce development staff or something else but I don't think that's a good idea.
In case you have missed the latest trends there is an increasing drive towards making content providers/service operators responsible for all content provided by their service, a forum provider being responsible for posts on the forums and a game provider responsible for verbal harassment. This trend is mainly focused towards content available to non-adults (hence an 'R' rating would pretty much leave the provider in the clear) and is gaining more momentum in many states as well as in many european countries. The sheer numbers playing WoW has made MMO's move from a niche market to being just as much in the crosshairs of this movement as forum operators aimed at teen audiences for instance. The increase in messages and posts containing racial, sexual or other types of messages requiring disciplinary measures comes at a direct cost in support staff handling them in a timely fashion.
In addition there is the simple fact that getting spammed by racial slurs and what the person is going to do to my mother and other persons or animals close to me whenever you kill someone in PvP gets old very quickly and detracts from the game experience for most people. Cross communication also facilitates cross teaming and other forms of cheating.
Cross communication between PvP factions increases this type of message traffic dramatically, in an FFA or guild/player created faction environment this is built in but in a game with the battlelines drawn between existing factions the question becomes if this adds to or detracts from the game experience and what it costs.
I can see how cross communication would be highly desirable from a roleplaying perspective but full time roleplayers are a relative minority among MMO players, a lot of people that play MMO's roleplay their character after a fashion but the exclusiveness of the hardcore roleplayers is a very effective way to keep the focus away from roleplaying for most players.
GW and Mythic seem to want the premiere PvP game on the market; and look set to take it, if the promises are fulfilled. That just wouldn't be possible, considering the expectations of the public. Also, this way, WAR doesn't step on the toes of anyone who might want to run a proper WFRP game.
Don't let it go to your head, but I think that's possibly the best computer game preview I have ever read.
Reserve your copies NoW!!
lol
But yeah, excellent preview, this game will drive alot of players to it.
I"m more than excited after reading the preview. With all of the unique classes per race, there will be something like 24 different classes to run through, and I love that you can't talk to your enemies. Who would casually converse with who they're killing? Emotes are more than enough to give the idea that you want to kill them, not to mention trophies that you can wear.
I love the screenshots because they are a much higher polygon count than some MMO's, but it doesn't seem like they're going to bog most systems down like EQ2.
I also love that there is only going to be some instancing, and that most of the pvp will not be instanced, but at the same time it will minimize ganking by having certain areas.
PVP quests are going to be awesome as well.
This is the only MMO that I've been interested in to the point of preordering. Kudos to Mythic for creating a game that does the Warhammer world justice, but at the same time has it's own flare and unique style.
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I live to fight, and fight to live.