Strange....... Why does no one find it odd, that the devs of a game supposedly built for and around RvR,have to hold live events to get their players to partake in RvR ?
They wanted the WOW crowed and now they got them... only problem is that there is particular mindset / experience that makes these people prefer grinding scenarios over going out in the RVR areas. Which is weird, if you think about it, as the main thing in WAR is raiding keeps and stuff, which you can do already in Tier 2. Really, it's totally beyond me.
"I think more accurately, people wanted pvp. However, when they saw how easy it was to get more epic battles in scenarios, they all went there.
It's not fun wandering around a rvr lake and not seeing anyone. It is more fun to immediately be put into queues and get immediate (and for the most part balanced) battles."
Which comes down to design.Instead of making it so "scenarios" were open missions inside large RvR zones, they choose to pull people away from those RvR zones into instances.
And instances that amount to capture the flag,that you dont even have to enter an RvR zone to access.
Imagine how full the RvR zones would be, IF scenarios were re-occuring RvR missions in the RvR zones....
IE -Order captures Bugmans,this triggers a caravan of weapons and npcs to leave Bugmans heading for some Order warcamp/point inside the RvR zone (or a connected RvR zone).Players can now sign up to guard said caravan,for order, and destroy said caravan for Destro.....
Tie the damn RvR missions to events and conditions inside RvR areas .....Put 4 or five of each tied to each RvR point,have them fire 1 of the 4or 5 on a regular basis , with those who sign up getting rewards in addition to any kills when the mission succeeds...
I am also on Ulthuan, but my experiences last night could not have been more different.
I was really excited to participate in an event that encouraged open RvR. I first logged in on my T3 character and high-tailed it to the PQ area, which I never found, although it had a lot to do with the fact that there were a ton of order players running amok pretty much everywhere in the zone, making any travel inside the RvR lake neigh-impossible.
After an hour of being farmed for kills I decided to switch to my new T1 alt. I ran to Chrace, found the zone, but the place was completely deserted. There I sat, a naked rank 7 sorceress, when finally a rank 11 archmage showed up. "Finally, someone itching for a fight!" I thought to myself. The archmage spotted me, then proceeded to do an about-face and run back to their warcamp.
A few guildies joined me, two random people joined us, and we combed the area for another 30 minutes or so. Not another soul.
So, my two hours was completely unsatisfying, which is a huge bummer because I was very excited for this event.
But, on the upside, I did make some fun progress in Fallout 3.
They should of never created mini-game scenarios. Instead they should of took a page from DaoC and had the scenarios be "mini" keeps. That way people could relate more with keep seiging. Also, they should add a control dungeon to the mix. Like what DF was to DaoC. But on an even larger scale, with raid bosses at the end for guilds, and solo mobs at the beginning for solo players, and the middle being for groups. I loved DaoC dungeons, and wish they had stuck with the same design.
"What an MMO is has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years, mostly after the introduction of games like World of Warcraft. "
That you can say such a thing without bursting into flame,or having it littered with uncontrollable LOLs is Absolutely Amazing.Amazing Straddon....hmm......has a ring to it.....
I forget, was it Koster who said (paraphrased)"Its important that the people who speak for you, believe" way back during EQ ?
Outside of graphics and amount of people in a game ,very LITTLE has changed in MMOs since the first days of The Realm and Meridian.In fact the industry has lost a few features.Where oh where has the mob looting defeated players gone ?Where oh where has being able to use "loot" as bait, to "pull" a mob gone ?
They are still just the modern day equivilant to badly done graphic muds .
Of course, people didnt blindly defend MMO companies back than, so we have that in the way of change ......and of course there was little to no MMO "journalism" .......
Outside of graphics and amount of people in a game, very LITTLE has changed in MMOs since the first days of The Realm and Meridian.In fact the industry has lost a few features.
Gonna have to throw a QFE in right here. It's sad that people still fail to grasp this, or treat recent MMOs as if they are the genesis of the genre.
All in all, I am discouraged and saddened to say that my personal belief is that WAR is a failure. I was too busy to join in the beta and kept my hopes that EA/Mythic would take to heart the Warhammer feel and game-play. I should go back to Shadowbane.
While every company ultimately makes any game for the big dollar, I had hoped that they did not sell out to be a WOW clone; they even sold the kitchen sink.
Getting to these PQ's was just too weak to entice me into the supposed fun. Participating in the subsequent RvR was a far second with even less enticement.
I am sure John only participated in all of this due to his 'job' of being editor here at MMORPG. I feel for you.
Well, the question of Open RvR is a difficult and the reasons for the Lakes being empty are Multifold.
Permit me to share a couple, the major ones, that I got from people and I have observed in my time since Open Beta to now and as a Guild Leader.
#1 Reason, is Performance, many people are having performance issues with this game, Open RvR for them is simply unplayable and we are talking about people with 64bit single core computers Gforce 7000-8000 series video cards and DDR 400 Mghz memory, 1-2 gigs. It is disheartening to many that want to participate and just can't. The game is not optimised for fluidity yet, it just overloads PC's, and even higher end computers have issues, I myself am on a Triple Core (AMD) with 1066 Mgz Memory and Gf9600, and I still, since beta play with Lowest Settings (Albeit I can put on all effects and have maximum viewing distance) yet that is it, no lighting no Specular not even Grass. And in a protracted RvR battle my framerate slowly drops to 6 or a CtD insues, I still have to restart the game every 1.5h of play.
So performance is a big issue for many, and it keep them off the RvR lakes.
#2 Reason, is Scenarios. Scenarios trump Open RvR, it is a faster way, and a more accessible way for people to have fun PvPing and Devellop their Characters. Given the choice between queuing for a Scenario or trying to Coordinate with 100 people of different guilds from the Same realm, people just choose the Scenario.
#3 Reason, is RvR Perception. It seems that many people just don't associate RvR with PvP. And the way that the Game rewards Open RvR participation is more conductive to PVE activities rather than PvP activities.
Every single night there is guilds and warbands that form, on both Realms, and just avoid a direct clash with eachother taking turns Assaulting Empty fortresses and Keeps and "Raiding" Boss NPC's for a chance to roll on Purple Gear.
The PvP fun comes from Scenarios anyways, the Drops from Killing Keep Lords, which help one to be better...in the Scenarios for a better ranking in the damage meter.
These are the three major reasons why Lake RvR is not more busy than it is or is not taking Off.
---
Possible solutions? There are many actually.
Personally I think, first of all that Renown should come from Open RvR only. Second Gear Rewards should be made considerably better, with set bonuses as well, and these should either be obtainable from Renown vendors or Drop from slain players at much higher frequency that it is now inside the RvR lakes only.
No more Rolls for Gear from Keep Lords. Instead what Keep Lords or Successfully assaulting a Keep or a Fortress should do is give Trophies and Brag Rights. That guilds and Individuals can display for their acheivement, and these can also be better depending on if the Keep/Fortress was defended by players or not. If it was an empty Keep it should not reward anything other than permitting to complete the quest from the Capitals and the Tome Unlocks as well as Realm Contribution.
It could even be rewarding Bestial tokens. But no gear in the fashion it does right now.
Scenarios on the other hand, should reward Influence and experience rather than Renown and Experience. They could become the PvP way to obtain Influence which gives access to Influence Gear, as an alternative to Renown gear, and in the same spirit that WAR was built upon catering to both styles of play under the RvR premise, and common goal.
Puting all that together, it would mean that Renown only comes from open Conflict between the Realms, coincidently those that participate are also going to be those that get rewarded with the better gear.
Armaggedon, will result, and maybe, just maybe, tales of 3 days long Sieges will spill over the Internet calling upon all avalable warriors to aid in the effort, and Fun.
Right now as it is, most people would laugh at the thoght of a Siege lasting 3 days, and it really has to do with the prevailing mentality result of the trends and habits of most players today.
To be just, the game is still in its infancy, and hasn't been around for much either, so hope is far from being lost. Much can change for the best, and 1.1 is just around teh corner.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Originally posted by tkobo Strange....... Why does no one find it odd, that the devs of a game supposedly built for and around RvR,have to hold live events to get their players to partake in RvR ?
Because they went to such drastic measures to not make "DAOC 2.0" that they shot themselves in the foot.
They made scenarios instead of just open rvr. They didn't even have open rvr originally, they cobbled it in later, unfortunately.
What happened is that scenarios are quicker, easier, you still get xp and renown. It is much easier than organizing a huge warband to go take a keep. So people that only have an hour or two do that instead of RvR.
Plus everyone is still stuck in the "I have to get to the endgame" mindset, so they grind pq's and scenarios to get to lvl 40 so they can complain about a lack of content.
They should have just done DAOC battlegrounds, with a DAOC frontier, and pasted the Warhammer IP'ness overtop of it= instant win.
I had the same experience than some others, mostly negative (T2). The orders camped near the Destruction camp and it was no coordination possible to get out (mostly as orders outnumbered destruction 2:1, also I think this was because of the frustration of many players). I quit after two hours, constantly dying, and quite frustrated. The lack of possibilities to organise a warband are quite frustrating.
Another word for the event: the other quests (for the masks) are like 95% of the other Warhammer quests: kill 50 of that, 50 of that, 50 of that. Boah! ANY quest in Warhammer involves killing and is quite uninspired (like the PQ: kill 100 of them). I think the forcing to PvP is ok, as this is thefirst goal of War, but hell, although beeing a PvP fanatic, I do not want these uninspired kill X quests if I go PvE all the time. There MUST be interesting quests or even funny stuff inside War in the future in my opinion.
"What an MMO is has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years, mostly after the introduction of games like World of Warcraft. " That you can say such a thing without bursting into flame,or having it littered with uncontrollable LOLs is Absolutely Amazing.Amazing Straddon....hmm......has a ring to it..... I forget, was it Koster who said (paraphrased)"Its important that the people who speak for you, believe" way back during EQ ? Outside of graphics and amount of people in a game ,very LITTLE has changed in MMOs since the first days of The Realm and Meridian.In fact the industry has lost a few features.Where oh where has the mob looting defeated players gone ?Where oh where has being able to use "loot" as bait, to "pull" a mob gone ? They are still just the modern day equivilant to badly done graphic muds . Of course, people didnt blindly defend MMO companies back than, so we have that in the way of change ......and of course there was little to no MMO "journalism" .......
I wouldn't call it Amazing. I would call it paying careful attention. MMOs used to be more about the sandbox style and the sandbox feel, there used to be a bit more diversity in the way that design was approached. This is typical of a genre that has had some successes, but no real breakaway hit. That was pre-WoW. Anyone who doesn't think that WoW changed the way that the MMO industry makes games is deluding themselves.
I am sure John only participated in all of this due to his 'job' of being editor here at MMORPG. I feel for you.
Nope, I actually really like the game. I play it for a few hours every day.
That doesn't mean I don't see problems with it and it doesn't mean I can't see why others may not like it, but I really am enjoying it.I'm sorry it wasn't for you.
Last night I logged on to go check out the event. I play on Skullthrone which is one of the highest pop servers in the game. I went to the T4 RvR lake and could not find the designated area for the PQ. I was shocked that they confined it to a very small area. Off and on through the night I went back to the area. Almost everytime I went there, either one side or the other had a hug force just standing there waiting for the other team to come fight them, most of the time it didn't happen. You would have the occasional stragglers come over and get steamrolled, then lose interest and leave. After a few hours I gave up to go play Fallout 3.
Something is not quite right with this game at the moment. I am in an alliance of about 4 large guilds, and I am noticing their numbers online at peak hours are becoming low. There is a real lack of interest starting to set in. It is looking like their first big patch might not be until December 1st, and honestly I am concerned about whether or not people will stick around that long to see if this whole thing is going to pan out.
Yep Paragus I had the samething last night when I was trying to do it,I cant put the blame all on mythic though for this not working,Yes the pq area is very small but so is all the pq's in the game and sometimes players are there own worst enemies,last night when the desto guys did show up as soon as 1 or 2 of them were seen a group of about 10 order guys would chase them all over the map and started to camp the warcamp,We kept telling them to allow them to come to the pq area but it fell on deaf ears.
Yes mythic could have made it zone wide but they never and kept to the formula that every pq has and if player's had just stuck to that it could have been alot more fun last night.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
Here are my comments, and several echo others mentioned.
First the bad -
PQ has no downtime notification. It should include normal PQ timer, even if we're talking an hour timer rather than just a few minutes. At least then everyone would know they were in the right place. If you don't want to give too much away, then suggest at least displaying "Restarting Soon" instead of an exact time. Just give the user a notification that they are indeed in the correct location, but the PQ is not currently active. PQ exemption boundaries appear to be around normal BO/Keeps. Remove those exemptions. Current system allows for exploitation, where players can stand within the exempted zones and kill others that are in the PQ area but still get credit, while those within the PQ cannot get credit for killing players in the exempt areas. Make the entire RVR lake part of the PQ. PQ Rewards are far too few. When there are three warbands worth of players rolling against eight bags... you've got to be kidding. It was nice to see a gold bag and a purple bag in the mix, but the total number of bags should reflect a legitimate portion of the number of participants, evne if it is just green bags.
Now the good -
I had a lot of fun. This is what has been missing in Warhammer. I expected WAR mechanics to entice mass battles, even at the lower tiers and I unquestionably support making this a permanent fixture. I don't really have a #2, because my first item is really the whole point in playing any MMORPG.
I suggest not only making this a permanent fixture, but rotate the PQ to different lakes. Each week or even each month, swap up the location of the PQ so that it keeps things a little more exciting and also encourages a greater experience. This worked for WoW with it's rotational battleground reward system and should work for the RvR lakes as well. I am looking forward to more innovative ideas to encourage RvR Lake interaction.
Both my husband (T4) and I (T2) went to try and take part of these PQs. Both were failures. Destruction had managed to camp the entire T4 area and with not enough Order high into T4, they held it all night. In T2, wandered through the entire area and had a lot of trouble finding where the PQ area was supposed to be. Once I found the PQ area, I wandered some more, all while RvR flagged, for about 30 minutes... and there was not a single player anywhere. This was because that PQ had finished and was going through its invisible X hours cooldown period. The thing was, there was no way to know where the PQ was, when it would start again, or even why I was there. Now this isn't to discredit Jon or his experiences in the least. What I'm saying though is that, in my experience, this event seems too rushed and lacking. I think events like these need to be more spread out, or at least have "major" locations as well as "minor" ones where people can choose between clashing in huge armies or simply sticking to smaller groups to get things done.
Wow just the opposite on the RvR server Order had Destructiuon camped for last 3 days in Troll country many more order of the lv 16 to 30 range it seems and this wasnt just random times was most of the day and into the early a.m. hrs.
We just finished the T3 Event in Black Fire Pass and it had problems too. The PQ area seemed to extend approx 75% of the lake, which is acceptable, but the main action was focused between the relativly close Warcamps, and resulted in a dozen Order farming a full warband of Destruction on the Order Guards. It was impossible to organize Destruction. Every time an Order BW baited, the melee went for him and we got 2 kills while their guards slaughtered entire groups. I understand that the point is to play smarter than allowing them to farm us like that, but it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth when you're supposed to have fun regardless of win/loss. Easiest fix would be to exclude guard killing blows as counting towards the PQ. More complicated fix would be to center the PQ around some sort of focal point away from the warcamps. Also, apparently Order spawned some sort of Epic Nurgling which they had to kill, but Destruction killed it instead. I dunno what happened from there, but I never saw any chest for Order.
Yea you killed the last stage mob so they couldnt win the quest.
I play Order on Sylvania (currently in T2) and had a blast! At times, there were so many people on each side, it was mass confusion, but it was FUN. All during the PQ, a bunch of us would run and defend the keep or cap the BO's, so it was almost two objectives in one. I spent the entire evening in the RvR lakes because it was so active. We had to travel in groups to avoid being overtaken by wandering Destros.
The only problem we had was the PQ boundaries. We had to make kills in Troll Country for them to count, so it meant that we couldn't rush Destro too far out of the zone. Lots of people either didn't want to worry about it or didn't understand, so the PQ took much longer than it should have. Kinda funny seeing some not-so-bright Wizards trying to tank on the front lines.
All and all, it was a great success for me. With that many people in the RvR lakes, it made battles seem epic and there was lots of fun for all. Met some great people and had a ton of laughs.
I think overall, it was a great idea from Mythic to pull people into the RvR areas. I know I'll be hanging out there much more often.
_________________________________ JonMichael
Currently: AION, an MMO Beta under NDA Played: WAR, LOTRO, Hellgate: London, CoX, GW, SotNW, DAOC, EQ2, SWG, WoW, AO, Horizons, Second Life, There, TSO Beta'd: There, Second Life, EQ2, DAOC:LotM, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, Gods and Heroes, Hellgate: London, Requiem:Bloodymare, AoC, WAR, DDO, Fallen Earth
I play on Chaos Waste a med/med server and here is my opinion. I think if they added some sort of in game voice system it would go a long way to helping overall communications. There were a lot of people that wanted to get into the fight and could not find out where the fight was. I could not tell you how many people were wanting invites and getting no reponse. When I finally got there it reminded me much of those old days of WOW and the huge fights at Tarren Mill before battlegrounds came out. I will say it was not clear where the line was between order and chaos where you got experience I think that needs to be more defined. But here is the most dragging feature that comes up in any PVP group situatuions is the players themselves. I have no idea how to fix that problem is you have one or two or three people all trying to tell everyone else how to play. They do this by yelling and screaming and berating other players telling them how stupid they are for not listening to them. It sure would be great if our side actually used army tactics line up tanks in front and casters in back and everyone move together. Is that ever going to happen? no. People need to remember that this is a game, entertainment it is no like real life where if I screw up I might get someone else really hurt or killed. But if I want to rush the caster and get myself killed that is my entertainment.
Strange....... Why does no one find it odd, that the devs of a game supposedly built for and around RvR,have to hold live events to get their players to partake in RvR ?
Personally i think rvr will begin to take off when more casual players reach end game. When there are enough bored level 40s to actually compete with one another we will see more action. Right now there are still a lot of people attempting to level and scenarios are far more appealing and convenient than rvr in that regard. I believe the reason so many people are harsh on warhammer for rvr is because it is the only mmo that comes to mind, my mind atleast, that actively encourages lower leveled players to participate in pvp. This is ussually reserved for end game players.
I would love to see them test different variations on xp gains through pvp. Perhaps test making scenarios give double renown but little to no xp while orvr and questing gives double, or even triple the current xp.
Not to compare everything to WoW but when its players first reached 60, on my server atleast, everyone starting with exploring the current end game instances, scholo etc. and then when we got bored their was constant random raids on tauren mill crossroads etc. BGs didnt even really kill it until they implimented dishonor kills which was the final nail in the coffin for WoWs world pvp. Atleast War seems to encourage orvr compared to its competition.
Well, the question of Open RvR is a difficult and the reasons for the Lakes being empty are Multifold. Permit me to share a couple, the major ones, that I got from people and I have observed in my time since Open Beta to now and as a Guild Leader. #1 Reason, is Performance, many people are having performance issues with this game, Open RvR for them is simply unplayable and we are talking about people with 64bit single core computers Gforce 7000-8000 series video cards and DDR 400 Mghz memory, 1-2 gigs. It is disheartening to many that want to participate and just can't. The game is not optimised for fluidity yet, it just overloads PC's, and even higher end computers have issues, I myself am on a Triple Core (AMD) with 1066 Mgz Memory and Gf9600, and I still, since beta play with Lowest Settings (Albeit I can put on all effects and have maximum viewing distance) yet that is it, no lighting no Specular not even Grass. And in a protracted RvR battle my framerate slowly drops to 6 or a CtD insues, I still have to restart the game every 1.5h of play. So performance is a big issue for many, and it keep them off the RvR lakes. #2 Reason, is Scenarios. Scenarios trump Open RvR, it is a faster way, and a more accessible way for people to have fun PvPing and Devellop their Characters. Given the choice between queuing for a Scenario or trying to Coordinate with 100 people of different guilds from the Same realm, people just choose the Scenario. #3 Reason, is RvR Perception. It seems that many people just don't associate RvR with PvP. And the way that the Game rewards Open RvR participation is more conductive to PVE activities rather than PvP activities. Every single night there is guilds and warbands that form, on both Realms, and just avoid a direct clash with eachother taking turns Assaulting Empty fortresses and Keeps and "Raiding" Boss NPC's for a chance to roll on Purple Gear. The PvP fun comes from Scenarios anyways, the Drops from Killing Keep Lords, which help one to be better...in the Scenarios for a better ranking in the damage meter. These are the three major reasons why Lake RvR is not more busy than it is or is not taking Off. --- Possible solutions? There are many actually. Personally I think, first of all that Renown should come from Open RvR only. Second Gear Rewards should be made considerably better, with set bonuses as well, and these should either be obtainable from Renown vendors or Drop from slain players at much higher frequency that it is now inside the RvR lakes only. No more Rolls for Gear from Keep Lords. Instead what Keep Lords or Successfully assaulting a Keep or a Fortress should do is give Trophies and Brag Rights. That guilds and Individuals can display for their acheivement, and these can also be better depending on if the Keep/Fortress was defended by players or not. If it was an empty Keep it should not reward anything other than permitting to complete the quest from the Capitals and the Tome Unlocks as well as Realm Contribution. It could even be rewarding Bestial tokens. But no gear in the fashion it does right now. Scenarios on the other hand, should reward Influence and experience rather than Renown and Experience. They could become the PvP way to obtain Influence which gives access to Influence Gear, as an alternative to Renown gear, and in the same spirit that WAR was built upon catering to both styles of play under the RvR premise, and common goal. Puting all that together, it would mean that Renown only comes from open Conflict between the Realms, coincidently those that participate are also going to be those that get rewarded with the better gear. Armaggedon, will result, and maybe, just maybe, tales of 3 days long Sieges will spill over the Internet calling upon all avalable warriors to aid in the effort, and Fun. Right now as it is, most people would laugh at the thoght of a Siege lasting 3 days, and it really has to do with the prevailing mentality result of the trends and habits of most players today. To be just, the game is still in its infancy, and hasn't been around for much either, so hope is far from being lost. Much can change for the best, and 1.1 is just around teh corner.
I agree. The way the rewards work now for keep lords is lame. The fact that you have to defeat the keep lord on the chance that there may be a gold bag and on the chance that you happen to win it in order to complete your tier set is ridiculous. Most people I know have out leveled the armor set by the time they actually win the thing.
I also have to agree - this event is a bust and another clear example that Warhammer just isnt that fun until you hit max level. From what I heard from guildies, T4 was hopping. But where I was at in T3 - completely dead. A handful of destruction fighting a handful of order until everyone gets bored and quits.
Oh, and the event also completely brought out the jackass in a lot of people. Ok, I got lured too close to a hero and died. Yes, it was a dumb mistake and I shouldn't have followed the guy into the bushes where I couldn't see. But I was cursed at for 5 min over it. Why? Because I had gotten in the way of people getting their precious little goblin masks or witch cloaks.
Holiday events should offer plenty of PVE and mini-game content - not simply content that requires players on both sides to show up. Also, give out at least a few goodies relatively easily - I feel like most of the stuff for this event is an epic raid grind, only with PVP content.
Last night, it was so boring I logged off and went over to Guild Wars for the Mad King Thorn event. Yes, it's totally cheesy, but at least I got some cool stuff and had fun.
I have to say the event was a blast for me. I ran the rvr PQ 5 times, tier 2. It would have been nice to know where the boundaries were, but the action was fairly constant. I think it needed comparable numbers on both sides to work right, one of the times we ran it, order outnumbered destruction by a fg+. This one ended up an order win, but we had them pushed back against their warcamp the whole time.
I don't really care about the masks and things, although they're funny. Some nice loot did drop from the pq though, saw purple and gold bags a couple times. Closest I got was placing 7th, and then rolling 21st hehe.
Anyway, good hunting and I hope everyone has fun somewhere, I'm really enjoying this game.
I spent some time in the T3 RvR PQ, and it was pretty active on Azazel server. I think that over all it was a good idea, but it had some flaws in execution. The only really solid complaint I had during the whole thing was that having two fairly even sized armies facing off in RvR, once you had a winning side there was no way to keep the other army off your backs long enough to loot the reward chest. My Squigherder came in 3rd in one of the events and I never got my reward bag for it. I am just hoping that I can run a PvE PQ and have the bag pop there. If I can actually find a PQ with enought people who are not just farming up enough renown to move on to the next chapter, but the discussion of empty PQ's could fil a topic on its own. All I am saying here is, you give people an inch to be petty and mean and they will push it as far as they can. Makes me sad, but I actually had to walk away from the event when I started feeling genuine animosity toward the Order players. What makes me even more sad is I found out my own side was doing the same screwed up thing earlier that same day, which makes it hard for me to take a moral high ground.
I just sent Mythic feedback based on your suggestion (PQ on all the ORvR lake). In the feedback I put too that they should consider some perma PQ too so that will be another incentive for people to go into ORvR.
I sent them feeedback again requesting them to consider to put an in game voice in the game. I think MJ said in VN that is not a minor thing to do and they will consider in the future... he didnt make any promise, of course. But more feedback about a subject, more Mythic's attention get focused on that subject.
I think other people should sent Mythic feedback too, if they have suggestions or like other people's ideas.
Comments
They wanted the WOW crowed and now they got them... only problem is that there is particular mindset / experience that makes these people prefer grinding scenarios over going out in the RVR areas. Which is weird, if you think about it, as the main thing in WAR is raiding keeps and stuff, which you can do already in Tier 2. Really, it's totally beyond me.
"I think more accurately, people wanted pvp. However, when they saw how easy it was to get more epic battles in scenarios, they all went there.
It's not fun wandering around a rvr lake and not seeing anyone. It is more fun to immediately be put into queues and get immediate (and for the most part balanced) battles."
Which comes down to design.Instead of making it so "scenarios" were open missions inside large RvR zones, they choose to pull people away from those RvR zones into instances.
And instances that amount to capture the flag,that you dont even have to enter an RvR zone to access.
Imagine how full the RvR zones would be, IF scenarios were re-occuring RvR missions in the RvR zones....
IE -Order captures Bugmans,this triggers a caravan of weapons and npcs to leave Bugmans heading for some Order warcamp/point inside the RvR zone (or a connected RvR zone).Players can now sign up to guard said caravan,for order, and destroy said caravan for Destro.....
Tie the damn RvR missions to events and conditions inside RvR areas .....Put 4 or five of each tied to each RvR point,have them fire 1 of the 4or 5 on a regular basis , with those who sign up getting rewards in addition to any kills when the mission succeeds...
I am also on Ulthuan, but my experiences last night could not have been more different.
I was really excited to participate in an event that encouraged open RvR. I first logged in on my T3 character and high-tailed it to the PQ area, which I never found, although it had a lot to do with the fact that there were a ton of order players running amok pretty much everywhere in the zone, making any travel inside the RvR lake neigh-impossible.
After an hour of being farmed for kills I decided to switch to my new T1 alt. I ran to Chrace, found the zone, but the place was completely deserted. There I sat, a naked rank 7 sorceress, when finally a rank 11 archmage showed up. "Finally, someone itching for a fight!" I thought to myself. The archmage spotted me, then proceeded to do an about-face and run back to their warcamp.
A few guildies joined me, two random people joined us, and we combed the area for another 30 minutes or so. Not another soul.
So, my two hours was completely unsatisfying, which is a huge bummer because I was very excited for this event.
But, on the upside, I did make some fun progress in Fallout 3.
They should of never created mini-game scenarios. Instead they should of took a page from DaoC and had the scenarios be "mini" keeps. That way people could relate more with keep seiging. Also, they should add a control dungeon to the mix. Like what DF was to DaoC. But on an even larger scale, with raid bosses at the end for guilds, and solo mobs at the beginning for solo players, and the middle being for groups. I loved DaoC dungeons, and wish they had stuck with the same design.
"What an MMO is has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years, mostly after the introduction of games like World of Warcraft. "
That you can say such a thing without bursting into flame,or having it littered with uncontrollable LOLs is Absolutely Amazing.Amazing Straddon....hmm......has a ring to it.....
I forget, was it Koster who said (paraphrased)"Its important that the people who speak for you, believe" way back during EQ ?
Outside of graphics and amount of people in a game ,very LITTLE has changed in MMOs since the first days of The Realm and Meridian.In fact the industry has lost a few features.Where oh where has the mob looting defeated players gone ?Where oh where has being able to use "loot" as bait, to "pull" a mob gone ?
They are still just the modern day equivilant to badly done graphic muds .
Of course, people didnt blindly defend MMO companies back than, so we have that in the way of change ......and of course there was little to no MMO "journalism" .......
Gonna have to throw a QFE in right here. It's sad that people still fail to grasp this, or treat recent MMOs as if they are the genesis of the genre.
All in all, I am discouraged and saddened to say that my personal belief is that WAR is a failure. I was too busy to join in the beta and kept my hopes that EA/Mythic would take to heart the Warhammer feel and game-play. I should go back to Shadowbane.
While every company ultimately makes any game for the big dollar, I had hoped that they did not sell out to be a WOW clone; they even sold the kitchen sink.
Getting to these PQ's was just too weak to entice me into the supposed fun. Participating in the subsequent RvR was a far second with even less enticement.
I am sure John only participated in all of this due to his 'job' of being editor here at MMORPG. I feel for you.
Well, the question of Open RvR is a difficult and the reasons for the Lakes being empty are Multifold.
Permit me to share a couple, the major ones, that I got from people and I have observed in my time since Open Beta to now and as a Guild Leader.
#1 Reason, is Performance, many people are having performance issues with this game, Open RvR for them is simply unplayable and we are talking about people with 64bit single core computers Gforce 7000-8000 series video cards and DDR 400 Mghz memory, 1-2 gigs. It is disheartening to many that want to participate and just can't. The game is not optimised for fluidity yet, it just overloads PC's, and even higher end computers have issues, I myself am on a Triple Core (AMD) with 1066 Mgz Memory and Gf9600, and I still, since beta play with Lowest Settings (Albeit I can put on all effects and have maximum viewing distance) yet that is it, no lighting no Specular not even Grass. And in a protracted RvR battle my framerate slowly drops to 6 or a CtD insues, I still have to restart the game every 1.5h of play.
So performance is a big issue for many, and it keep them off the RvR lakes.
#2 Reason, is Scenarios. Scenarios trump Open RvR, it is a faster way, and a more accessible way for people to have fun PvPing and Devellop their Characters. Given the choice between queuing for a Scenario or trying to Coordinate with 100 people of different guilds from the Same realm, people just choose the Scenario.
#3 Reason, is RvR Perception. It seems that many people just don't associate RvR with PvP. And the way that the Game rewards Open RvR participation is more conductive to PVE activities rather than PvP activities.
Every single night there is guilds and warbands that form, on both Realms, and just avoid a direct clash with eachother taking turns Assaulting Empty fortresses and Keeps and "Raiding" Boss NPC's for a chance to roll on Purple Gear.
The PvP fun comes from Scenarios anyways, the Drops from Killing Keep Lords, which help one to be better...in the Scenarios for a better ranking in the damage meter.
These are the three major reasons why Lake RvR is not more busy than it is or is not taking Off.
---
Possible solutions? There are many actually.
Personally I think, first of all that Renown should come from Open RvR only. Second Gear Rewards should be made considerably better, with set bonuses as well, and these should either be obtainable from Renown vendors or Drop from slain players at much higher frequency that it is now inside the RvR lakes only.
No more Rolls for Gear from Keep Lords. Instead what Keep Lords or Successfully assaulting a Keep or a Fortress should do is give Trophies and Brag Rights. That guilds and Individuals can display for their acheivement, and these can also be better depending on if the Keep/Fortress was defended by players or not. If it was an empty Keep it should not reward anything other than permitting to complete the quest from the Capitals and the Tome Unlocks as well as Realm Contribution.
It could even be rewarding Bestial tokens. But no gear in the fashion it does right now.
Scenarios on the other hand, should reward Influence and experience rather than Renown and Experience. They could become the PvP way to obtain Influence which gives access to Influence Gear, as an alternative to Renown gear, and in the same spirit that WAR was built upon catering to both styles of play under the RvR premise, and common goal.
Puting all that together, it would mean that Renown only comes from open Conflict between the Realms, coincidently those that participate are also going to be those that get rewarded with the better gear.
Armaggedon, will result, and maybe, just maybe, tales of 3 days long Sieges will spill over the Internet calling upon all avalable warriors to aid in the effort, and Fun.
Right now as it is, most people would laugh at the thoght of a Siege lasting 3 days, and it really has to do with the prevailing mentality result of the trends and habits of most players today.
To be just, the game is still in its infancy, and hasn't been around for much either, so hope is far from being lost. Much can change for the best, and 1.1 is just around teh corner.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Because they went to such drastic measures to not make "DAOC 2.0" that they shot themselves in the foot.
They made scenarios instead of just open rvr. They didn't even have open rvr originally, they cobbled it in later, unfortunately.
What happened is that scenarios are quicker, easier, you still get xp and renown. It is much easier than organizing a huge warband to go take a keep. So people that only have an hour or two do that instead of RvR.
Plus everyone is still stuck in the "I have to get to the endgame" mindset, so they grind pq's and scenarios to get to lvl 40 so they can complain about a lack of content.
They should have just done DAOC battlegrounds, with a DAOC frontier, and pasted the Warhammer IP'ness overtop of it= instant win.
I had the same experience than some others, mostly negative (T2). The orders camped near the Destruction camp and it was no coordination possible to get out (mostly as orders outnumbered destruction 2:1, also I think this was because of the frustration of many players). I quit after two hours, constantly dying, and quite frustrated. The lack of possibilities to organise a warband are quite frustrating.
Another word for the event: the other quests (for the masks) are like 95% of the other Warhammer quests: kill 50 of that, 50 of that, 50 of that. Boah! ANY quest in Warhammer involves killing and is quite uninspired (like the PQ: kill 100 of them). I think the forcing to PvP is ok, as this is thefirst goal of War, but hell, although beeing a PvP fanatic, I do not want these uninspired kill X quests if I go PvE all the time. There MUST be interesting quests or even funny stuff inside War in the future in my opinion.
I wouldn't call it Amazing. I would call it paying careful attention. MMOs used to be more about the sandbox style and the sandbox feel, there used to be a bit more diversity in the way that design was approached. This is typical of a genre that has had some successes, but no real breakaway hit. That was pre-WoW. Anyone who doesn't think that WoW changed the way that the MMO industry makes games is deluding themselves.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Nope, I actually really like the game. I play it for a few hours every day.
That doesn't mean I don't see problems with it and it doesn't mean I can't see why others may not like it, but I really am enjoying it.I'm sorry it wasn't for you.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Good write up Jon.
Last night I logged on to go check out the event. I play on Skullthrone which is one of the highest pop servers in the game. I went to the T4 RvR lake and could not find the designated area for the PQ. I was shocked that they confined it to a very small area. Off and on through the night I went back to the area. Almost everytime I went there, either one side or the other had a hug force just standing there waiting for the other team to come fight them, most of the time it didn't happen. You would have the occasional stragglers come over and get steamrolled, then lose interest and leave. After a few hours I gave up to go play Fallout 3.
Something is not quite right with this game at the moment. I am in an alliance of about 4 large guilds, and I am noticing their numbers online at peak hours are becoming low. There is a real lack of interest starting to set in. It is looking like their first big patch might not be until December 1st, and honestly I am concerned about whether or not people will stick around that long to see if this whole thing is going to pan out.
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Yep Paragus I had the samething last night when I was trying to do it,I cant put the blame all on mythic though for this not working,Yes the pq area is very small but so is all the pq's in the game and sometimes players are there own worst enemies,last night when the desto guys did show up as soon as 1 or 2 of them were seen a group of about 10 order guys would chase them all over the map and started to camp the warcamp,We kept telling them to allow them to come to the pq area but it fell on deaf ears.
Yes mythic could have made it zone wide but they never and kept to the formula that every pq has and if player's had just stuck to that it could have been alot more fun last night.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
I think Jantis hit it on the head.
Wow just the opposite on the RvR server Order had Destructiuon camped for last 3 days in Troll country many more order of the lv 16 to 30 range it seems and this wasnt just random times was most of the day and into the early a.m. hrs.
Yea you killed the last stage mob so they couldnt win the quest.
Nice write up, Jon.
I play Order on Sylvania (currently in T2) and had a blast! At times, there were so many people on each side, it was mass confusion, but it was FUN. All during the PQ, a bunch of us would run and defend the keep or cap the BO's, so it was almost two objectives in one. I spent the entire evening in the RvR lakes because it was so active. We had to travel in groups to avoid being overtaken by wandering Destros.
The only problem we had was the PQ boundaries. We had to make kills in Troll Country for them to count, so it meant that we couldn't rush Destro too far out of the zone. Lots of people either didn't want to worry about it or didn't understand, so the PQ took much longer than it should have. Kinda funny seeing some not-so-bright Wizards trying to tank on the front lines.
All and all, it was a great success for me. With that many people in the RvR lakes, it made battles seem epic and there was lots of fun for all. Met some great people and had a ton of laughs.
I think overall, it was a great idea from Mythic to pull people into the RvR areas. I know I'll be hanging out there much more often.
_________________________________
JonMichael
Currently: AION, an MMO Beta under NDA
Played: WAR, LOTRO, Hellgate: London, CoX, GW, SotNW, DAOC, EQ2, SWG, WoW, AO, Horizons, Second Life, There, TSO
Beta'd: There, Second Life, EQ2, DAOC:LotM, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, Gods and Heroes, Hellgate: London, Requiem:Bloodymare, AoC, WAR, DDO, Fallen Earth
I play on Chaos Waste a med/med server and here is my opinion. I think if they added some sort of in game voice system it would go a long way to helping overall communications. There were a lot of people that wanted to get into the fight and could not find out where the fight was. I could not tell you how many people were wanting invites and getting no reponse. When I finally got there it reminded me much of those old days of WOW and the huge fights at Tarren Mill before battlegrounds came out. I will say it was not clear where the line was between order and chaos where you got experience I think that needs to be more defined. But here is the most dragging feature that comes up in any PVP group situatuions is the players themselves. I have no idea how to fix that problem is you have one or two or three people all trying to tell everyone else how to play. They do this by yelling and screaming and berating other players telling them how stupid they are for not listening to them. It sure would be great if our side actually used army tactics line up tanks in front and casters in back and everyone move together. Is that ever going to happen? no. People need to remember that this is a game, entertainment it is no like real life where if I screw up I might get someone else really hurt or killed. But if I want to rush the caster and get myself killed that is my entertainment.
Personally i think rvr will begin to take off when more casual players reach end game. When there are enough bored level 40s to actually compete with one another we will see more action. Right now there are still a lot of people attempting to level and scenarios are far more appealing and convenient than rvr in that regard. I believe the reason so many people are harsh on warhammer for rvr is because it is the only mmo that comes to mind, my mind atleast, that actively encourages lower leveled players to participate in pvp. This is ussually reserved for end game players.
I would love to see them test different variations on xp gains through pvp. Perhaps test making scenarios give double renown but little to no xp while orvr and questing gives double, or even triple the current xp.
Not to compare everything to WoW but when its players first reached 60, on my server atleast, everyone starting with exploring the current end game instances, scholo etc. and then when we got bored their was constant random raids on tauren mill crossroads etc. BGs didnt even really kill it until they implimented dishonor kills which was the final nail in the coffin for WoWs world pvp. Atleast War seems to encourage orvr compared to its competition.
I agree. The way the rewards work now for keep lords is lame. The fact that you have to defeat the keep lord on the chance that there may be a gold bag and on the chance that you happen to win it in order to complete your tier set is ridiculous. Most people I know have out leveled the armor set by the time they actually win the thing.
I also have to agree - this event is a bust and another clear example that Warhammer just isnt that fun until you hit max level. From what I heard from guildies, T4 was hopping. But where I was at in T3 - completely dead. A handful of destruction fighting a handful of order until everyone gets bored and quits.
Oh, and the event also completely brought out the jackass in a lot of people. Ok, I got lured too close to a hero and died. Yes, it was a dumb mistake and I shouldn't have followed the guy into the bushes where I couldn't see. But I was cursed at for 5 min over it. Why? Because I had gotten in the way of people getting their precious little goblin masks or witch cloaks.
Holiday events should offer plenty of PVE and mini-game content - not simply content that requires players on both sides to show up. Also, give out at least a few goodies relatively easily - I feel like most of the stuff for this event is an epic raid grind, only with PVP content.
Last night, it was so boring I logged off and went over to Guild Wars for the Mad King Thorn event. Yes, it's totally cheesy, but at least I got some cool stuff and had fun.
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I have to say the event was a blast for me. I ran the rvr PQ 5 times, tier 2. It would have been nice to know where the boundaries were, but the action was fairly constant. I think it needed comparable numbers on both sides to work right, one of the times we ran it, order outnumbered destruction by a fg+. This one ended up an order win, but we had them pushed back against their warcamp the whole time.
I don't really care about the masks and things, although they're funny. Some nice loot did drop from the pq though, saw purple and gold bags a couple times. Closest I got was placing 7th, and then rolling 21st hehe.
Anyway, good hunting and I hope everyone has fun somewhere, I'm really enjoying this game.
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I spent some time in the T3 RvR PQ, and it was pretty active on Azazel server. I think that over all it was a good idea, but it had some flaws in execution. The only really solid complaint I had during the whole thing was that having two fairly even sized armies facing off in RvR, once you had a winning side there was no way to keep the other army off your backs long enough to loot the reward chest. My Squigherder came in 3rd in one of the events and I never got my reward bag for it. I am just hoping that I can run a PvE PQ and have the bag pop there. If I can actually find a PQ with enought people who are not just farming up enough renown to move on to the next chapter, but the discussion of empty PQ's could fil a topic on its own. All I am saying here is, you give people an inch to be petty and mean and they will push it as far as they can. Makes me sad, but I actually had to walk away from the event when I started feeling genuine animosity toward the Order players. What makes me even more sad is I found out my own side was doing the same screwed up thing earlier that same day, which makes it hard for me to take a moral high ground.
Nice review of the event and nice suggestions.
I just sent Mythic feedback based on your suggestion (PQ on all the ORvR lake). In the feedback I put too that they should consider some perma PQ too so that will be another incentive for people to go into ORvR.
I sent them feeedback again requesting them to consider to put an in game voice in the game. I think MJ said in VN that is not a minor thing to do and they will consider in the future... he didnt make any promise, of course. But more feedback about a subject, more Mythic's attention get focused on that subject.
I think other people should sent Mythic feedback too, if they have suggestions or like other people's ideas.