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The amazing producer's update letter
Jigsawz
Member Posts: 115
http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=1065
Lol, we are virtually in April and this is the best they had to say.
hahahah, oh man only like 2 people left working at Mythic? Sounds like it...
Comments
So bug fixes and armor dye eh? Wowzer! I better resub right away.
They better come up with something big soon. EA is investing heavily in Star Wars and may just decide they don't need Mythic studios or WAR dragging down their numbers.
Im sorry, but did i miss something where they were claiming this was going to be some amazing letter giving us all kinds of new info we were unaware of and sharing amazing new changes to the game with us?
The last one gave loads of info about their current and future plans, and this letter pretty much said that the plans have been working well, the recent patch did what it was supposed to do and theyre continuing to work on the next 2 patches. They gave us some info about the improved dying system and a little bit of extra info on scenarios and map system. I dont see whats wrong there.
Exactly.
Maybe the sentence of "Obviously this doesn’t include any information about the massive city changes; those are too extensive to detail here." is only a hint, and you can neglect it for good, and even *some* details would have been appreciated indeed, but honestly, this is *not* an "update letter"; it's just a producer's letter – nothing less, nothing more.
So what's a producer's letter supposed to be then? If not an update? He even specificially says "it’s time to give you updates on the progress the team has made since the last producer's letter"
Armor Dyes? This was a waste of any sort of newsletter. I'm not expecting much in the way of fireworks from Carrie Gouskos. Oh well, this will likely look good on her resume.
Farewell, WAR. We hardly knew ye!
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Bug fixes, armor dyes, massive city siege changes and marauders getting dualwield, I see a good sum of changes.
You're right, it is amazing, not to informative, but it does provide enough info to know the game is on the right path and not stuck in maint. mode.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I think there is a difference between an "update letter" as a genre and a letter "gives updates on the progress since the last letter". An "update letter" should cover every tidbit and give a deep insight into the process, while a letter which "gives updates on the progress" can be as selective as the author wants it to be.
On the other hand, I can agree that she should have given SOME details about patch 1.3.5's really important parts, such as the City Siege Revamp.
(And, feel free to cast stones at me, but I like the new armor dyes; it's apparently not as important as other gameplay changing things, but anyway - I want my toons to look great
)
Definitely not enough information imo.
What about guild vault,extra bag space, guild heraldry changes she was talking about n Feb.
Stiil no information about City changes, ok we know it will change but no informat,ion about how it is gonna change.
For Carrie /expectations lowered
They just finished the selection of Guilds/ Alliances for the testing of City changes; hopefully information will come soon.
((Moreover, Carrie (and prolly other devs too) was (were) in Korea and China in the last couple of weeks (she can be followed on Twitter), and I guess the trip was related to the upcoming Asian release of WAR, and maybe gives an explanation to the shallowish producer's letter too...))
Yes that is probably the reason for this insufficient letter but shouldnt have been (imo) .
WAR is not in a bad shape actually. Of course it needs some fixing , new content etc. but still it is in a pretty good shape and still has potential.
Indeed, what WAR needs most is "hope". They(devs) need to take care of this negativeness in mmo/war community about WAR's future.
And the best way to do this is those Producer's Letters. Yet this letter is not even close to that (the one before this one was a good one and kept me playing this game). It feels like one step forward then one step backwards now.
Anyways, hope this upcoming City/end game changes make us all happy. Looking forward to get more information soon.
I absolutely agree.
I am just happy that they don't make empty promises anymore and paint us pretty pictures, they are actually delivering solid stuff and at least I will stay subbed until SWTOR comes, there is nothing even remotely interesting in the pipeline coming.
The only way Warhammer could and would be better is if they implemented the whole DAOC rvr system as they should have. However they didn't and even stated it will "NEVER" happen, this is slow now to be short death of the game. Sometimes developers should listen to the community before it's too late.
I also find it funny that I see a trend with some of these companies, long standing dev teams whom prove themselves finally get a contract with great pay and suck it dry to release their "new vision" of what should be when in fact everything says not to do so. Mythic as with other developers who get to big in the head did the same things that all of them seem to do, get a wad of cash and blow it on to many ideas and not enough implementing on actual core mechanics. Their whole wow approach was ripped apart at beta, warned during that time and even pleaded with not to go the rout they did. Thou to late for many of us, we where not informed that in fact there would be no chances as discussed in beta and it will take this rout down the road.
The only thing we lost was our initial investment in the game, what they lost was a dedicated mass of people to keep it viable. I say, they lost more then any of us ever did due to this very issue to begin with. As many of us have said to Mythic, you made your bed now sleep in it, nothing will make the good old days come back, you wouldn't listen this is what you get.
*rant off*
ps. sony is coming out with a new planetside game, while not the exact same genre, they are taking imput from the old,new and still playing members of that game, You "mythic" should have done the same and actually stuck to the survey's you took prior to development. You ignored and you got what you got, but watch sony (One of the most hated developers out there) turn everything around just by listening and changing their tune from not listening to waiting for each breath to be said. The community makes your game viable in the end, not the game itself, (thou that does bring the community togather so it best be good, see how that work?)
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
This, my friend, is how innovation and in fact, multi-millionaires are born. If you want to make it big, you do what everyone tells you not to do. You might fail a few times, but there is no success without failure.
and thats exactly the problem with WAR, they don't tell you anything, their communication with their playerbase is crap. they should patten the phrase "oh there is lots of amazing, fun and cool stuff coming .... we just can't tell you about it". I was an early beta tester and bought their CE the first day it came available and thats all i heard through beta and through months of the game going live.
from Mark Jacobs to the next spokesman, to the next all the way to this person .... its the same song and dance
awesome stuff .... can't tell you about it
Cool stuff coming ... just can't tell you
super fun stuff coming soon ... just wont be able to tell you about it.
100% agree, I am a business owner, but their communication on what was and what was to be , etc was just the wrong way of going around it . Let's also be perfectly frank here, there was no inovations beyond 4 things I can think of (The open group questing was top notch for sure) that actually made the game "Unique" , other then that is a clone and a sub par one to that.
Point to my whole rant was, so much can be done with the old daoc rvr and so many good ideas where thrown out there during the beta of this game, that would have been inovative. What they gave the community was a re-hash of a beaten idea done in another game to get those masses to join their game. However the people that joined this game where on the idea of pvp concept more then not, even the game was promoted as such. Yet, beyond all these "unique" concept ideas and selling points, most was not working or broke (heck cities still are) and so many more issues. I would agree if there was something actually new beyond the "added" flavors mentioned before, but the base mechanics of this game just failed in to many levels.
This game was based on the concept of pvp and in the end that was its most base mechanic and again failed horribly. Only thing I personally think they got down descent enough was the 6man instancing, but then again it's pretty hard to screw that up. The whole open world pvp was a joke and sadly I won't get into that here. You know most thougths on that I am sure and that's been re-hashed over and over.
I bought the collectors edition in the day in hopes of what was to come, when they announced "it will never have daoc pvp" after launch I was devistated. That was the main issue for me leaving, but a broken game and broken servers didn't help that much as well.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
There is another path to success: to refine and polish repeatedly, until your product/service outshines its competitors despite a lack of innovation.
A little company named Blizzard did that.
Innovation does not trump quality.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Pretty sure more often than not they do what no one else thought of, which makes it innovation. Like the use of the PQ's in this game.
This is a WAR topic, so I don't want to refer my experiences with developers' communication in other games; but I'm pretty sure that Mythic's communication with their playerbase is far from the worst I've met so far.
It sounds like you guys don't read the offical forums because they have given INFO on 1.3.5. BW/Sorc and Zealot changes + Marauders getting duel wield. IB Moral bubble getting nerfed in 1.3.5 and weapon DPS didn't go into this patch because they listened to feedback. The said the city is going to be 100% ORVR and have selected a few guilds to closed test the city but we are not under NDA so we can share it with everyone (I Got in the closed city testing.). Then they give little good tidbits like how the new dye system looks amazing.
I got the letter in the mail and wasn't impressed. Basicly they said that "We are working on some interesting things with the cities but we wont tell you anything about it, we will talk about some fluff instead".
It proves nothing but the producer's ineptitude to write these things.
They left out the most interesting part.
How many is "we".
These guys can't do miracles with 4 servers left on each continent. 1 server = 10K maximum non concurrent players and ... how many play the free 1-10 bracket anyway?
Time that GW ends the franchising agreement. That will probaby happen after WAR 40K MMO will launch (and the contract between them and Mythic).
War was never about WH TT Lore. It was another universe with a bad engine and simply wrong RvR mechanics.
In fact WAR could be a case study of what can go wrong in every way in a AAA MMO.
Even 3 volumes would not be enough to cover an in depth analysis.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
I like the game, but this producer's letter is pretty much like all the rest. It's talks about relatively small changes and tweaks to existing systems. There is literally nothing in it to get excited about.
Even the change in the City Siege from PvE to RvR can only get a lukewarm response because it should have been that way all along, and it's taken them over a year and a half to get around to fixing it. The City Siege is arguably the worst part of the game. This might not be a big deal, if it wasn't for the fact that it's THE ENDGAME of WAR.
Is there any news of truly major new systems being injected into the game? A major expansion perhaps?
Maintenance mode continues.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
wonder if they made a thread either Mythic or GOA (you didn't think Mythic controlled the europeans, no we get shitty GOA for that)
asking the community:
do you want a new dye scheme (i thought this was an early april fool joke) or content which isn't a live event. (for WAR this is about as epic as jesus being born).
Come on... Mythic are now enjoying removing content than adding anything meaningful;
dev1: "you know those cool scenarios in tier 1.. what if we make those available in tier 2, 3 and 4.... and get rid of the rest, but we'll keep the praag thing there"
dev2: "genius"
sigh.
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
Exactly. You have no idea how pissed I was at the major mistakes by this studio and, quite frankly, the butchering of the WH universe. Right now I am going to resub to WoW and play that plus GW(and GW2 next year). I love the WH world and the 40k one even more, so I am def going to buy the 40k mmo when it comes out, even though it is not for a long time.
Only thing I wish Blizzard would upgrade the character models for some of the original classes.
But back on point, I just don't understand how some people are in such denial about maintenance mode for this game. When was LOTD released? No new content since then, truly a sad story.