Hmm. I happen to disagree with your statement that T1 is "as good as it gets" in Warhammer - it's my least favorite of the tiers. I find characters really come into their own with their powers and abilities in the 30's, T3-4 were the exciting ones for me, with the game starting to become fun in T2. Then again, I suppose offering your subjective opinion is the point of an op-ed piece. Still, I find it odd that this site crows about how DDO's F2P model is "revolutionary" and "saved the game" yet when Mythic tries something different-yet-similar - an endless trial of the first part of the game - it is supposedly done out of desperation. The twinked out characters in T1 didn't bother me at all, by the way. A little strategy and a partner playing with you - as my wife often does with me, sitting about a foot away at her own PC, I found was more then enough to counter the very minor "twinks" you can actually use during T1. Reading a piece like this makes me wonder if you have had the pleasure of playing the game recently in anything other than the T1 free trial zones? I found T4 quite hopping and alive on Badlands, during prime-time. As for merging servers, let's check on where Aion is in a year with server numbers, shall we?
After just playing through T1 your post has me very excited!!!
For me the biggest problem is that I consider Warhammer Online just generic fantasy MMO, that has only the same name and graphics as the original Warhammer. And its getting worse. I still remember those bald statements about main cities added during time. Do noone remember this game was crippled from start? And now what? Now the races start in the same zone? Where the hell is warhammer lore? Elves and Dwarves starting in the same zone? Yeah, right, very "warhammerish". So in the end I dont complain about the game mechanics, I complain about the rp efficiently destroyed. Its just my opinion, but when I was playing WO, I didnt feel like being in universe of Warhammer.
WAR is and will remain fail. It has no social utilities (housing, diplomacy, guildwars, nada) It has no economy (crafting, gold has no value, everything is BOP) this game is not worth monthly subs. You are better to go play some dota. No sandbox, strictly brainwashing game.
I agree with this also the restrictions on t1 trials makes it hard to stick around for any period of time no access to any auction house and when you ask in chat to buy capes and helmets no one is selling , they made rvr loot rank 11 so you get loot in pvp that you can never use i rather go play some thing else.
WAR is and will remain fail. It has no social utilities (housing, diplomacy, guildwars, nada) It has no economy (crafting, gold has no value, everything is BOP) this game is not worth monthly subs. You are better to go play some dota. No sandbox, strictly brainwashing game.
I agree with this also the restrictions on t1 trials makes it hard to stick around for any period of time no access to any auction house and when you ask in chat to buy capes and helmets no one is selling , they made rvr loot rank 11 so you get loot in pvp that you can never use i rather go play some thing else.
If you want to start using those things pay up. This game isn't f2p.
Aside from the game's lamentable performance issues (like another poster already said, the game was originally built around scenario fights then they changed course mid-development to go more open world, due to pressure from beta players already enamoured by daoc's gameplay - so the engine was okay for scenarios but choked on open rvr with numbers) it simply is too thin on content for a AAA MMO subscription game.
The PvE is decent enough quality but there is just too little of it, the PvP is far too static & not dynamic, it rapidly becomes terribly boring after you've done the same thing a million times, I really loved the game for 3 months but increasingly the server & engine performance got worse & worse as numbers increased, servers crashed constantly, fortress doors became indestructible & their solution? remove fortresses,
I know there have been many small improvements made, but the engine is still bad, instead of the game stuttering & chunking along it now has a strobe like effect, it made me physically ill playing it on a system well above their minimum specs, I persisted & resubbed & while crashing has got better & the end game city siege is better, it's still a million miles awat from being the game it should be, this game simply lacks depth, it is by far the most superficial; game I've played in years & I almost regret getting suckered into it, if not for some great moments in it's early life I would be truly bitter about it, but instead i'm just disappointed because I love the IP the characterisations & the feel of the game, it just fell short on providing a deep & involving experience.
When they "streamlined" this as an MMO, they lost a lot of the charm an MMO has, leaving a bland & shallow game that's just not worth the asking price of it's sub.
When they "streamlined" this as an MMO, they lost a lot of the charm an MMO has, leaving a bland & shallow game that's just not worth the asking price of it's sub.
They came right out before launch and said they were making a game, not a world. Honest, but a terrible design choice.
MMORPGs need to be worlds. IF you want people to pay month after month to play in them.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Awwwww...WAR simply didn't get better over time. They didn't solve the core problems to make it worthwhile for a monthly sub e.g. characters all the same appearence, effecting the game world for longer than 10 minutes, increasing the numbers in a keep seige, static seige engines. I hoped WAR would add MMOGame items over time but they just threw out crafting and turned it into a frag fest in T1 and flag flipping foolishness. Never even tried the Tomb area because I heard it just made the battles even thinner.
My biggest issue w/ WAR is the community. Or lack there of. I dont think the people are jerks or elitists (though, theyre there too). Its more that there is such only small group of dedicated people still playing in T4, and with gear, wards, and campaign advancement being so dependent on mass populations, the community just feels defeated to me. Like theyre playing b/c they dont feel like starting over in another game, and not b/c its a blast to be in WAR.
Faction in-fighting, side switching, guilds falling apart or folding up shop It just seems like the end of the game is so close to the horizon. It reminds me a LOT of the last months of Tabula Rasa: Tons of improvements that helped the current player base, but nothing that truly excited new blood. All the while a small vocal and close community began to shake and crumble under the weight of naysayers and fear of the games sustainability.
I wish the best to the players of WAR, and Id love for the game to be fun, b/c I truly enjoyed playing problem is In WAR, you cant pick the playtimes. Youre forced to play when tons of others are playing, or its boring.
The PvE is decent enough quality but there is just too little of it, the PvP is far too static & not dynamic, it rapidly becomes terribly boring after you've done the same thing a million times, I really loved the game for 3 months but increasingly the server & engine performance got worse & worse as numbers increased, servers crashed constantly, fortress doors became indestructible & their solution? remove fortresses
Exactly. You see...unlike some, I don't think RvR is their worry. Decent PvE has to accompany PvP at least in a scale that is somewhat tolerable. PvE is absolutely neglected in WAR after T1. I've said it before, but when you craft a game that is wholly focused on RvR or PvP (with only two conflicting factions) it becomes a numbers game and Population becomes a primary factor; if there aren't enough order/Dest to fight back...people log off. Why? Because there is no other alternative. There is no PvE to go grind in to get more powerful and come back even stronger. The people in RvR already have the better/easier gear..and so it becomes a population battle and nothing else.
I've had no performance issues at all and the server seems well populated with many people playing. I find groups easily.
It's a lot of fun, it may get boring over time but I haven't found any reason to agree with the naysayers as yet.
I can find faults with every single MMO especially the repetitive play of WoW and LOTRO but I don't choose to do that. Instead I have found a game that is extremely polished and is fun to play whether you play for 10 minutes or 10 hours.
Every game gets boring after a while and they are all repetitive in some way.
Darkfall is the most epic PVP game on the market currently. Also its third person when meleeing and first person does not blow.
Having to aim shots takes skill. I have been playing Darkfall for almost a year now and I played warhammer for like 2 months. Warhammer was just an amusement park of the same pvp encounters over and over again with almost no penalty for losing. Darkfall has real natural world PVP. World pvp of epic proportions with real consequences for losing. Last night we won a siege against a city on one of the worlds continents and it was epic as hell. One guy wrote on the forums that it was his first siege in Darkfall and it was the most fun he has ever had in an MMO. More fun then he had ever had in playing WoW for 4 years. And Id have to agree with him. Darkfall was a WoW killer for me after 5 years of hardcore raiding and PVP in WoW. Its a niche game and has a limited playerbase but jesus its fun.
I've had no performance issues at all and the server seems well populated with many people playing. I find groups easily. It's a lot of fun, it may get boring over time but I haven't found any reason to agree with the naysayers as yet. I can find faults with every single MMO especially the repetitive play of WoW and LOTRO but I don't choose to do that. Instead I have found a game that is extremely polished and is fun to play whether you play for 10 minutes or 10 hours.
Every game gets boring after a while and they are all repetitive in some way.
I completely agree with you Maendauron. I'm having a blast in Warhammer since coming back in December. I played for a full year before leaving to try Aion. I quickly found out why I hate boring, grind fest PvE games. I tried it for two months and tried to give it a chance but, the excruciatingly slow pace of advancment made me want to stick a fork in my eye.
So, I came back to Warhammer to find that, even though there are only four servers now, the population appears to have stabalized and even see new people playing all the time. There is always something going on in T4. Scenarios pop constantly and in between scenarios, there are tons of people out in the RvR lakes.
The performance issues have all but disappeared. This past Sunday on Badlands, there was an announced intent on Order to push stage 2 in IC. There were between 8 and 10 warbands just on the Order side, with pretty much the same on Destro, out in the lakes trying to flip zones or prevent zone flips. I never crashed, I never slowed down to the point of not being able to get off abilities and I had an absolute blast when we finally got to the city.
I'm happy with the niche that Warhammer has carved out for itself and I don't see myself playing anything else that's on the MMO horizon. I love the fact that I can log on for an hour or half a day and have fun. I don't have to set my clock or mark my calendar, to be online for some scripted instance raid.
And they don't need anymore PvE crap. That's what hurt DAoC with the Trials of Atlantis expansion.
Agreed, it's a very fun PvP game, but it needs 5-man dungeons a-la WoW. I know, I'm the anti-Christ for saying WoW did something right. But honestly, a content-rich PvE experience could only help the few PvP'ers left in WAR.
No...a game doesn't have to be a clone of Wow to succeed. Viva la difference. ..thats what modern day gamers don't get.
Online games existed LONG before Wow was a twinkle in some Blizz dev's eye. That gets totally forgotten in the mindthink "if it doesn't have 11 million subs it FAILS".
Mythic failed us, because they forgot how DAOC SUCCEEDED. DAOC (back in the day) was all about REALM PRIDE..not how many shiney cookies you got if you participated..(ala Wow)
We fought to protect our territory, our keeps..because they were OURS ...not because we won shinies. The pvp fights in DAOC were unpredictable...non-linear..enemies sneaking up on you from behind trees in the Old Frontiers.
Yeah I died alot in those days, but I also had some mini triumphs and I gained alot of friends. There would be system messages when someone was killed by a "bad guy"....multiple tells coming my way...where is he? What direction did he go? I'm coming to avenge your death.
We had a TON of fun in those days..and Mythic forgot what that was all about.
First off...scenarios............ugh. PVP in a little box. Just like Wow. Why??? Mythic? Didn't you trademark Realm vs Realm (tm) Yeah you did. It was supposed to mean something.......it turned into a copycat of Wow battlegrounds.
The dungeon in Daoc, where one faction could own it one day, another the next, ..etc That was fun, exciting. If you went in there solo, you would be sure to get your behind handed to you by the faction that "owned" it for that time period.
It was fun wandering or running around out in the Old Frontiers...running through the snow down to the gates, expecting to be ambushed any second...
Mythic shot themselves in the foot...instead of Realm vs Realm..it was Scenario vs Scenario....with "certain" overpowered classes.
Thats why I left Mythic....get back to what you know..get rid of trying to copy other games, make it fun like it was back in the day...and I'll come back.
Like the author suggested, I find Tier 1 to be the most fun. Tier 2 is still fun, and adds new elements, but not as much fun as tier 1. Tier 3 is pretty much the exact same as Tier 2, except with new locations and rewards.
T2 and T3 pretty much amount to constant flying between zones to capture whatever keep is not defended, and lots of Battle Objective taking which is tedious and gets old very quickly.
Why do warbands avoid each other and mostly go for undefended keeps? If you pit one Warband against another, the one inside the keep defending will beat the one outside the keep on offense 9 times out of 10. Oil is overpowered and can be HEALED, and 2-shots people trying to enter a keep. It's too easy to defend, and too hard to attack. So instead of engaging PVP/RVR, you PVE and avoid the other sides players. Kind of counter-intuitive for a PVP game, there should be incentives to fight rather than avoid.
---------------ENd QUOTE
This is another reason I got fed up...whats the thrill in taking an undefended keep? (another reason I left) I don't know about players nowadays...thats not how we played. The more defending a keep..the more exciting the battle was..in DAOC at least. There you could repair damaged gates etc and keep pushing the battle more.
I don't know how many warbands I left because of this mindthink "oh its defended..lets jet to such and such a zone..for an undefended keep" Huh? This is supposed to be pvp..not a race for shineys.
Again I think this is partially Mythic's fault, and the rest is..well the generation that played Wow. Eleven million subs coming to a game near you.
There's no heart in the game, nothing interesting about it..if your peers insist on running away from battles. Onto the next undefended shiney!! Sheesh
The keeps and BOs are spaced far apart, requiring lots of running around, and now there's 6 for each pairing, instead of the 3 or 4 in T1. If you check the maps and see where they are, by the time you all fly over and get everyone organized, they're all done and gone.
This is one of the fundamental problems with WAR IMO - the zone design.
The zones seem to be deliberately over-sized and difficult to navigate. Why would anyone want to make it difficult for players to get from point A to point B when you *should* be trying to get them together so they can fight?
Most of my memories of open-world RvR the game involve running around rather than fighting. Or getting lost trying to find the fight until I could learn the convoluted zone layout which the inaccurate maps did not help.
Or sitting around waiting for that 3min BO timer to run down. Never once did I have an opposing force attack my warband during the 3 min timer, it's a useless mechanic.
I liked the Scenarios in WAR but the PvE, Crafting and open-world parts of the game need serious work. The lack of RP mechanics doesn't help either, I understand you can finally /sit in the game. Simple things like that should have been in from the start.
Perhaps Mythic's directed beta-testing is partly at fault. They did not leave the servers up but instead used 'focused' beta-tests. Maybe a MMORPG needs a closed beta-test where the servers are up 24/7.
I was in the closed beta for Warhammer.....they were very strict and you sometimes could NOT ask certain questions ..or be labelled as "speculating".
We often pointed out what we saw as problems..with class balancing etc ..but I got the sense we were largely ignored.
The crafting definitely needed work, although at the time, they didn't figure it would be fleshed out any more than it was. Scenarios became areas where the same folks would hang out ..all the time with their "pre-templated" classes...owning over and over again with certain over powered classes.
I don't know if thats still the case today..if those issues have been fixed or not. I am going on what I saw before I left. It seemed sometimes that the things we pointed out in closed beta, were "fixed" to Mythic's liking..but exactly the opposite of what was required. They weren't listening then. I give them credit for patches produced soon after release and all that..but I think the damage was already done. The class imbalances remained at release and continued on for many months after.
My whole guild left......fed up, disappointed. I felt the same way. It COULD have been a massive, exciting great game.
Agreed, it's a very fun PvP game, but it needs 5-man dungeons a-la WoW. I know, I'm the anti-Christ for saying WoW did something right. But honestly, a content-rich PvE experience could only help the few PvP'ers left in WAR.
No...a game doesn't have to be a clone of Wow to succeed. Viva la difference. ..thats what modern day gamers don't get.
Online games existed LONG before Wow was a twinkle in some Blizz dev's eye. That gets totally forgotten in the mindthink "if it doesn't have 11 million subs it FAILS".
Mythic failed us, because they forgot how DAOC SUCCEEDED. DAOC (back in the day) was all about REALM PRIDE..not how many shiney cookies you got if you participated..(ala Wow)
We fought to protect our territory, our keeps..because they were OURS ...not because we won shinies. The pvp fights in DAOC were unpredictable...non-linear..enemies sneaking up on you from behind trees in the Old Frontiers.
Yeah I died alot in those days, but I also had some mini triumphs and I gained alot of friends. There would be system messages when someone was killed by a "bad guy"....multiple tells coming my way...where is he? What direction did he go? I'm coming to avenge your death.
We had a TON of fun in those days..and Mythic forgot what that was all about.
First off...scenarios............ugh. PVP in a little box. Just like Wow. Why??? Mythic? Didn't you trademark Realm vs Realm (tm) Yeah you did. It was supposed to mean something.......it turned into a copycat of Wow battlegrounds.
The dungeon in Daoc, where one faction could own it one day, another the next, ..etc That was fun, exciting. If you went in there solo, you would be sure to get your behind handed to you by the faction that "owned" it for that time period.
It was fun wandering or running around out in the Old Frontiers...running through the snow down to the gates, expecting to be ambushed any second...
Mythic shot themselves in the foot...instead of Realm vs Realm..it was Scenario vs Scenario....with "certain" overpowered classes.
Thats why I left Mythic....get back to what you know..get rid of trying to copy other games, make it fun like it was back in the day...and I'll come back.
Nice post, however i don't think we'll ever see it again. DAOC zones felt like daoc zones, anyone remember mulspheium(Sp?) you couldn't friggin SEE in that zone, it was like it was real. Just like the snowy zones of upland, odins gate or yggdra....
IT WAS IMMERSIVE.. And i am a hardcore pvp'r not even an RPG'R but i was IMMERSED in the old school daoc graphics/zones
Comments
After just playing through T1 your post has me very excited!!!
For me the biggest problem is that I consider Warhammer Online just generic fantasy MMO, that has only the same name and graphics as the original Warhammer. And its getting worse. I still remember those bald statements about main cities added during time. Do noone remember this game was crippled from start? And now what? Now the races start in the same zone? Where the hell is warhammer lore? Elves and Dwarves starting in the same zone? Yeah, right, very "warhammerish". So in the end I dont complain about the game mechanics, I complain about the rp efficiently destroyed. Its just my opinion, but when I was playing WO, I didnt feel like being in universe of Warhammer.
I agree with this also the restrictions on t1 trials makes it hard to stick around for any period of time no access to any auction house and when you ask in chat to buy capes and helmets no one is selling , they made rvr loot rank 11 so you get loot in pvp that you can never use i rather go play some thing else.
I agree with this also the restrictions on t1 trials makes it hard to stick around for any period of time no access to any auction house and when you ask in chat to buy capes and helmets no one is selling , they made rvr loot rank 11 so you get loot in pvp that you can never use i rather go play some thing else.
If you want to start using those things pay up. This game isn't f2p.
[Mod edit]
Aside from the game's lamentable performance issues (like another poster already said, the game was originally built around scenario fights then they changed course mid-development to go more open world, due to pressure from beta players already enamoured by daoc's gameplay - so the engine was okay for scenarios but choked on open rvr with numbers) it simply is too thin on content for a AAA MMO subscription game.
The PvE is decent enough quality but there is just too little of it, the PvP is far too static & not dynamic, it rapidly becomes terribly boring after you've done the same thing a million times, I really loved the game for 3 months but increasingly the server & engine performance got worse & worse as numbers increased, servers crashed constantly, fortress doors became indestructible & their solution? remove fortresses,
I know there have been many small improvements made, but the engine is still bad, instead of the game stuttering & chunking along it now has a strobe like effect, it made me physically ill playing it on a system well above their minimum specs, I persisted & resubbed & while crashing has got better & the end game city siege is better, it's still a million miles awat from being the game it should be, this game simply lacks depth, it is by far the most superficial; game I've played in years & I almost regret getting suckered into it, if not for some great moments in it's early life I would be truly bitter about it, but instead i'm just disappointed because I love the IP the characterisations & the feel of the game, it just fell short on providing a deep & involving experience.
When they "streamlined" this as an MMO, they lost a lot of the charm an MMO has, leaving a bland & shallow game that's just not worth the asking price of it's sub.
They came right out before launch and said they were making a game, not a world. Honest, but a terrible design choice.
MMORPGs need to be worlds. IF you want people to pay month after month to play in them.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Awwwww...WAR simply didn't get better over time. They didn't solve the core problems to make it worthwhile for a monthly sub e.g. characters all the same appearence, effecting the game world for longer than 10 minutes, increasing the numbers in a keep seige, static seige engines. I hoped WAR would add MMOGame items over time but they just threw out crafting and turned it into a frag fest in T1 and flag flipping foolishness. Never even tried the Tomb area because I heard it just made the battles even thinner.
RIP WAR - You could've been something.
My biggest issue w/ WAR is the community. Or lack there of. I dont think the people are jerks or elitists (though, theyre there too). Its more that there is such only small group of dedicated people still playing in T4, and with gear, wards, and campaign advancement being so dependent on mass populations, the community just feels defeated to me. Like theyre playing b/c they dont feel like starting over in another game, and not b/c its a blast to be in WAR.
Faction in-fighting, side switching, guilds falling apart or folding up shop It just seems like the end of the game is so close to the horizon. It reminds me a LOT of the last months of Tabula Rasa: Tons of improvements that helped the current player base, but nothing that truly excited new blood. All the while a small vocal and close community began to shake and crumble under the weight of naysayers and fear of the games sustainability.
I wish the best to the players of WAR, and Id love for the game to be fun, b/c I truly enjoyed playing problem is In WAR, you cant pick the playtimes. Youre forced to play when tons of others are playing, or its boring.
Exactly. You see...unlike some, I don't think RvR is their worry. Decent PvE has to accompany PvP at least in a scale that is somewhat tolerable. PvE is absolutely neglected in WAR after T1. I've said it before, but when you craft a game that is wholly focused on RvR or PvP (with only two conflicting factions) it becomes a numbers game and Population becomes a primary factor; if there aren't enough order/Dest to fight back...people log off. Why? Because there is no other alternative. There is no PvE to go grind in to get more powerful and come back even stronger. The people in RvR already have the better/easier gear..and so it becomes a population battle and nothing else.
Want real PVP? Play Darkfall. That is all.
First-person viewpoint blows.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I've had no performance issues at all and the server seems well populated with many people playing. I find groups easily.
It's a lot of fun, it may get boring over time but I haven't found any reason to agree with the naysayers as yet.
I can find faults with every single MMO especially the repetitive play of WoW and LOTRO but I don't choose to do that. Instead I have found a game that is extremely polished and is fun to play whether you play for 10 minutes or 10 hours.
Every game gets boring after a while and they are all repetitive in some way.
First-person viewpoint blows.
Darkfall is the most epic PVP game on the market currently. Also its third person when meleeing and first person does not blow.
Having to aim shots takes skill. I have been playing Darkfall for almost a year now and I played warhammer for like 2 months. Warhammer was just an amusement park of the same pvp encounters over and over again with almost no penalty for losing. Darkfall has real natural world PVP. World pvp of epic proportions with real consequences for losing. Last night we won a siege against a city on one of the worlds continents and it was epic as hell. One guy wrote on the forums that it was his first siege in Darkfall and it was the most fun he has ever had in an MMO. More fun then he had ever had in playing WoW for 4 years. And Id have to agree with him. Darkfall was a WoW killer for me after 5 years of hardcore raiding and PVP in WoW. Its a niche game and has a limited playerbase but jesus its fun.
I completely agree with you Maendauron. I'm having a blast in Warhammer since coming back in December. I played for a full year before leaving to try Aion. I quickly found out why I hate boring, grind fest PvE games. I tried it for two months and tried to give it a chance but, the excruciatingly slow pace of advancment made me want to stick a fork in my eye.
So, I came back to Warhammer to find that, even though there are only four servers now, the population appears to have stabalized and even see new people playing all the time. There is always something going on in T4. Scenarios pop constantly and in between scenarios, there are tons of people out in the RvR lakes.
The performance issues have all but disappeared. This past Sunday on Badlands, there was an announced intent on Order to push stage 2 in IC. There were between 8 and 10 warbands just on the Order side, with pretty much the same on Destro, out in the lakes trying to flip zones or prevent zone flips. I never crashed, I never slowed down to the point of not being able to get off abilities and I had an absolute blast when we finally got to the city.
I'm happy with the niche that Warhammer has carved out for itself and I don't see myself playing anything else that's on the MMO horizon. I love the fact that I can log on for an hour or half a day and have fun. I don't have to set my clock or mark my calendar, to be online for some scripted instance raid.
And they don't need anymore PvE crap. That's what hurt DAoC with the Trials of Atlantis expansion.
First-person viewpoint blows.
QFT.
No...a game doesn't have to be a clone of Wow to succeed. Viva la difference. ..thats what modern day gamers don't get.
Online games existed LONG before Wow was a twinkle in some Blizz dev's eye. That gets totally forgotten in the mindthink "if it doesn't have 11 million subs it FAILS".
Mythic failed us, because they forgot how DAOC SUCCEEDED. DAOC (back in the day) was all about REALM PRIDE..not how many shiney cookies you got if you participated..(ala Wow)
We fought to protect our territory, our keeps..because they were OURS ...not because we won shinies. The pvp fights in DAOC were unpredictable...non-linear..enemies sneaking up on you from behind trees in the Old Frontiers.
Yeah I died alot in those days, but I also had some mini triumphs and I gained alot of friends. There would be system messages when someone was killed by a "bad guy"....multiple tells coming my way...where is he? What direction did he go? I'm coming to avenge your death.
We had a TON of fun in those days..and Mythic forgot what that was all about.
First off...scenarios............ugh. PVP in a little box. Just like Wow. Why??? Mythic? Didn't you trademark Realm vs Realm (tm) Yeah you did. It was supposed to mean something.......it turned into a copycat of Wow battlegrounds.
The dungeon in Daoc, where one faction could own it one day, another the next, ..etc That was fun, exciting. If you went in there solo, you would be sure to get your behind handed to you by the faction that "owned" it for that time period.
It was fun wandering or running around out in the Old Frontiers...running through the snow down to the gates, expecting to be ambushed any second...
Mythic shot themselves in the foot...instead of Realm vs Realm..it was Scenario vs Scenario....with "certain" overpowered classes.
Thats why I left Mythic....get back to what you know..get rid of trying to copy other games, make it fun like it was back in the day...and I'll come back.
Like the author suggested, I find Tier 1 to be the most fun. Tier 2 is still fun, and adds new elements, but not as much fun as tier 1. Tier 3 is pretty much the exact same as Tier 2, except with new locations and rewards.
T2 and T3 pretty much amount to constant flying between zones to capture whatever keep is not defended, and lots of Battle Objective taking which is tedious and gets old very quickly.
Why do warbands avoid each other and mostly go for undefended keeps? If you pit one Warband against another, the one inside the keep defending will beat the one outside the keep on offense 9 times out of 10. Oil is overpowered and can be HEALED, and 2-shots people trying to enter a keep. It's too easy to defend, and too hard to attack. So instead of engaging PVP/RVR, you PVE and avoid the other sides players. Kind of counter-intuitive for a PVP game, there should be incentives to fight rather than avoid.
---------------ENd QUOTE
This is another reason I got fed up...whats the thrill in taking an undefended keep? (another reason I left) I don't know about players nowadays...thats not how we played. The more defending a keep..the more exciting the battle was..in DAOC at least. There you could repair damaged gates etc and keep pushing the battle more.
I don't know how many warbands I left because of this mindthink "oh its defended..lets jet to such and such a zone..for an undefended keep" Huh? This is supposed to be pvp..not a race for shineys.
Again I think this is partially Mythic's fault, and the rest is..well the generation that played Wow. Eleven million subs coming to a game near you.
There's no heart in the game, nothing interesting about it..if your peers insist on running away from battles. Onto the next undefended shiney!! Sheesh
This is one of the fundamental problems with WAR IMO - the zone design.
The zones seem to be deliberately over-sized and difficult to navigate. Why would anyone want to make it difficult for players to get from point A to point B when you *should* be trying to get them together so they can fight?
Most of my memories of open-world RvR the game involve running around rather than fighting. Or getting lost trying to find the fight until I could learn the convoluted zone layout which the inaccurate maps did not help.
Or sitting around waiting for that 3min BO timer to run down. Never once did I have an opposing force attack my warband during the 3 min timer, it's a useless mechanic.
I liked the Scenarios in WAR but the PvE, Crafting and open-world parts of the game need serious work. The lack of RP mechanics doesn't help either, I understand you can finally /sit in the game. Simple things like that should have been in from the start.
Perhaps Mythic's directed beta-testing is partly at fault. They did not leave the servers up but instead used 'focused' beta-tests. Maybe a MMORPG needs a closed beta-test where the servers are up 24/7.
I was in the closed beta for Warhammer.....they were very strict and you sometimes could NOT ask certain questions ..or be labelled as "speculating".
We often pointed out what we saw as problems..with class balancing etc ..but I got the sense we were largely ignored.
The crafting definitely needed work, although at the time, they didn't figure it would be fleshed out any more than it was. Scenarios became areas where the same folks would hang out ..all the time with their "pre-templated" classes...owning over and over again with certain over powered classes.
I don't know if thats still the case today..if those issues have been fixed or not. I am going on what I saw before I left. It seemed sometimes that the things we pointed out in closed beta, were "fixed" to Mythic's liking..but exactly the opposite of what was required. They weren't listening then. I give them credit for patches produced soon after release and all that..but I think the damage was already done. The class imbalances remained at release and continued on for many months after.
My whole guild left......fed up, disappointed. I felt the same way. It COULD have been a massive, exciting great game.
What have you done Mythic?
No...a game doesn't have to be a clone of Wow to succeed. Viva la difference. ..thats what modern day gamers don't get.
Online games existed LONG before Wow was a twinkle in some Blizz dev's eye. That gets totally forgotten in the mindthink "if it doesn't have 11 million subs it FAILS".
Mythic failed us, because they forgot how DAOC SUCCEEDED. DAOC (back in the day) was all about REALM PRIDE..not how many shiney cookies you got if you participated..(ala Wow)
We fought to protect our territory, our keeps..because they were OURS ...not because we won shinies. The pvp fights in DAOC were unpredictable...non-linear..enemies sneaking up on you from behind trees in the Old Frontiers.
Yeah I died alot in those days, but I also had some mini triumphs and I gained alot of friends. There would be system messages when someone was killed by a "bad guy"....multiple tells coming my way...where is he? What direction did he go? I'm coming to avenge your death.
We had a TON of fun in those days..and Mythic forgot what that was all about.
First off...scenarios............ugh. PVP in a little box. Just like Wow. Why??? Mythic? Didn't you trademark Realm vs Realm (tm) Yeah you did. It was supposed to mean something.......it turned into a copycat of Wow battlegrounds.
The dungeon in Daoc, where one faction could own it one day, another the next, ..etc That was fun, exciting. If you went in there solo, you would be sure to get your behind handed to you by the faction that "owned" it for that time period.
It was fun wandering or running around out in the Old Frontiers...running through the snow down to the gates, expecting to be ambushed any second...
Mythic shot themselves in the foot...instead of Realm vs Realm..it was Scenario vs Scenario....with "certain" overpowered classes.
Thats why I left Mythic....get back to what you know..get rid of trying to copy other games, make it fun like it was back in the day...and I'll come back.
Nice post, however i don't think we'll ever see it again. DAOC zones felt like daoc zones, anyone remember mulspheium(Sp?) you couldn't friggin SEE in that zone, it was like it was real. Just like the snowy zones of upland, odins gate or yggdra....
IT WAS IMMERSIVE.. And i am a hardcore pvp'r not even an RPG'R but i was IMMERSED in the old school daoc graphics/zones