Woah! Mythic's schedule works for me ;)

First off; leading up to their big announcement, I have to say I've really liked the way Mythic did the teasers with the parcels they sent out. A bit of creativity in marketing is always good. Anyway...

So basically we're getting everything I hoped for in my post: Bring on the 29th ! Well except the Cities, but then I was expecting Darkness Falls to be in a paid expansion. Result IMHO ;)

If you've not seen it already, go check out: A call to arms!
And then a post by Mark Jacobs with a bit of extra confirmations here.
I'll post about the new classes, live events and Tomb Kings later, but here's my thoughts on the numbered topics in Mark's post:

1) Bug fixing AND 4) Career balancing
Obviously we were going to get bug fixes and character balancing (why some people assumed there wasnt going to be I don't know...), but I was pleasantly surprised to read there'sa whopping 15 pages worth of "bug fixes/balance changes patch notes" coming our way. There's a range of things I'd like to see addressed, but in particular I hope the CC/disorientating effects get sorted.
I'm sure every player has been effected by bugs, but then that's MMO launches for you. Up to now, Mythics patching has been pretty good. Lets hope it continues.

2) RvR code fixes
I totally understand that they need to get the stability of Fortresses sorted out first, but I really hope they then go on improve the layout and general meh of the fortress design. They currently feel just like bigger versions of the other keeps, this is not good. They need to feel more epic, be more interesting and not just a 3 frames per second zerg headbutting session.

3) RvR changes/improvements
I have high hopes for Zone domination, it should break up the zerg. Great for guilds like mine where we like to work as a unit away from the zerg.
Keep upgrades I presume will be like DAoC where if a guild owns a keep it can upgrade the NPC guards, the strength of doors, etc. Good start, but let's get some destructable walls ASAP please. Though of course I'll be interested to see on this "rather lengthy list ".

5) Changes to "quality of WAR" such as new armor and mount color diversity for high-level guilds.
I am VERY pleased to read this. The way a player's character look is so key to getting the player to feel attached to it. More diversity in appearance can onlybe good. And mount colours, yay ;)


On a side note, there's been some really unpleasant shite spouted in reaction to Mythic's news on this. Usual doom calling, naysaying stuff, but bloody hell some folks take it too far. It's like people are trying to stop Mythic communicating on forums. If you're looking to see what WAR's like, don't let those forum ranters drag you down. WAR's certainly not perfect, but it's also not anything like the overly vocal Mr Angry minority make out.

I'm feeling pretty damn positive about WAR at the moment and I'm still enjoying playing it right now. The new content and improvements coming our way should only make things even better.

Are playable Undead even an option?

Undead... recently it seems everytime I've had a discussion about future expansions or new patch content, someone says they want playable undead. But in WAR is it actually possible to add Undead as playable race?

I'm not so sure you can, because the warhammer lore just doesn't support it. Undead in Warhammer are not like Warcraft's "we're not really evil, undead have feelings too" horde thing.

With only a few exceptions, Undead in Warhammer are mindless creatures with no free will. They are animated by a Necromancer or Vampire magic. A skeleton in Warhammer is not something that goes to Inevitable City to socialise.

So what about those Vampires and Necromancers then?

Necromancers? They summon whole armies of undead, clearly that's no good, you can't have 1 player soloing Altdorf :P So it would have to be a fairly weak Necromancer.. Hmm obviously a pet class, but summoning multiple pets? Bad, bad idea, we've got enough lag problems as is. Summoning 1 pet? Based on warhammer lore, woah that's a reaaally lame Necromancer, you'd be laughed at, well if the other undead were sentient enough to laugh.

Vampires... Absolutely no sodding way without ruining the background. Vampires in Warhammer are rare and ridiculously powerfull. You do not get armies of Vampires, if you did it would be game over for EVERYONE. As much as it's always cool to play vampires in games, to make a warhammer vampire playable, you'd have to water them down soooo much, it'd suck. Plus there's a big, bright, warm problem. Sunlight... Imagine the chat spam ;)

Welcome to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Sunlight crits you for 100,000,000

You have been killed

WTF?

Sunlight crits you for 100,000,000
You have been killed
WTF????

Sunlight crits you for 100,000,000
You have been killed
AGHHH!

So what's left?

Ghouls? If you like grave robbing feral cannibals with no opportunity for character development. Level 1 for ever!

Banshee? They're ghosts, nuff said.

Wraiths? Basically ghosts of necromancers tied to mortal world.

Wights? Not sentient, has no free will.

Skeletons? Again, not sentient, has no free will.

Zombies? Guess what? Yup...

And that's the problem, none of those could make a playable class in this game. You've not got equipment to upgrade, you can't talk to each other and you cant even control your own character for most of them. Which all boils down to the only vaguely viable option is Necromancers, albeit shite ones. No thanks... I'd rather keep the quality warhammer background intact and have something that actually could work. Like Skaven...

Trapped Magus

Got a better screenshot of yesterday's amusement from a guildie. Poor Arch's comment sums it up ;)

Wrong place, wrong time :D

Classic moment earlier tonight. We'd just won a scrap with Order over the Defensive Boon battle objective in Dragonwake, we capped the flag and then one of our guildies says he's got a bit of a problem...

When you cap the flag on this BO some graphics appear, including a cage. Which is a right bugger if you're stood exactly where it spawns :D

To make it more amusing, it turned out he was actually stuck in there and couldn't move. Which was unfortunate when the Order turned up again shortly afterwards :P

Classic ;)

Bring on the 29th!

Not long until the big announcement from Mythic... lets hope its not being built up too much eh ;)

Bug fixes are always great (and probably top priority for a lot of people), but I'm particularly interested in what oRvR improvements and new content is added. Here's the things I'm expecting/hoping to see:

oRvR

• Zone Domination, well we already know this is coming. It sounds great to me, having to do PQs for a zone lock is dull, dull, dull! I'm not a big fan of scenarios either, so anything promoting oRvR is all good.
• On top of Zone Domination, I'd like to see further importance placed on holding objectives. Certainly more incentive to hold them. Keep and BO swapping needs to go.
• Emphasis on the hope here, but Darkness Falls please :D I think most people that played Dark Age of Camelot will be with me here. Darkness Falls was awesome. An epic sized oRvR dungeon with access to it controlled by what you own in the outside world... Which means you can lose access whilst you're inside. That can get pretty crazy :D

New Content

• Slayer and Choppa. This is as good as confirmed it seems. I can't wait to start my Choppa :) I've been putting off properly starting a melee DPS alt to wait for this.
• The missing Cities. I'm expecting to see some kind of release schedule for these, probably one pairing at a time. I'm hoping these also bring more dungeons with them and make the tier 4 greater wards less of a pain to get.

All in all I don't think I've said anything different here, lots of people having been saying the same and with those missing bit's it would seem fairly obvious what new content is to come. You never know though.

The Darkness Falls bit I'm actually expecting to come in an expansion, a few of us have talked about how we'd make an expansion for WAR and something of that scale could make sense there. I'll be posting over the next couple of weeks about our idea for an expansion. Obviously there's a lot of work to be done first, but there's no harm in a bit of speculation ;)

More mythic mailings

It seems Mythic have been at it again... with more clues sent out to a selection of bloggers. Check out the link below to walloftext to see the latest.

http://www.walloftext.info/2009/01/mythic-was-right-no-official-forums.html

I have to agree with the post there too. I've certainly not missed official forums, Mythic are far more active on non-official forums than Blizzard are with their official ones. And with teasers like this, it's all just a bit more interesting.

Hidden behind a monitor

Watching Obama's inauguration today got me thinking about a lot of things, most of which had nothing to do with gaming, but it did lead me to think about racism in MMOs.

It's something I've seen in every MMO I've played and alas WAR has not proved to be the exception. It's strange that when you have someone hidden behind a monitor they consider it acceptable to be try and insult other people online with racial slurs. And nearly always in region chat to make sure they get as wide an audience as possible.. You can bet your arse they wouldn't shout it out on the street in real life. But thanks to the protection of their monitor, its all safe and well, worst they get is a ban from a game. If people said some of the crap I've seen online on the street here you would most likely get nicked and/or or a slap.

So far in WAR I've only seen this sort of crap once and thankfully the GM's responded quickly and got rid of them. I'm hoping that will be my only experience of this in WAR, because in WoW I saw racist nonsense far, far too often. Particularly against Jews, which considering the events that happened in Europe not that long ago, I find particularly disappointing to see on our servers. I used to think sometimes WoW needed footage of Belsen included in it's manual.

Is it a sad fact that racist twats are inescapable or is it just ignorant kids trying to show off? I dunno... but I just wish that part of the real world didn't make it into our online ones.

Slayer teaser...

One of my favourite online reads is Keen and Graev's gaming blog. Check out this post about a package Mythic sent them this morning...

Electric shaver, orange hair dye? 29th January more news? Bring on the 29th!

[UPDATE!]
GOA confirm Hammerer is out and to be replaced by a new class... See this post for links.

Domination

Good news for oRvR! Mythic are implementing an additional way to lock zones, called domination. Basically if you capture all the keeps and battle objectives in a zone and then hold them, after some time it will lock the zone. You can still do the other normal victory point lock down (farming PQs, scenarios, etc), but you don't have to anymore :)

I presume if you dominate a zone and do the other stuff it will lock a zone down even faster. All told this is great news. Finally a good reason to take and hold keeps and objectives. This could lead to some really interesting battles on multiple fronts.

Bit of worry about how this will work with no lifers taking fortresses at 4am, but have to see how it works in practice.

Paul Barnett's video talking about it linked over here.

If Order do need a boost, give them Slayers

I mentioned earlier that I hope the announcement from Mythic will include them dropping the Hammerer class and replacing it with the Dwarf Slayer as Order’s missing melee DPS class. I’m not alone in thinking this, there’s been a lot written all over the place saying the same for a while and for good reason.

All Warhammer classes are based on the tabletop game’s background, which means options for the classes can be very restrictive. Particularly when it comes to their appearance. Dwarf Hammerers wear heavy armour and wield massive, you guessed it, hammers. Which isn’t that different to great weapon wielding Ironbreakers. Sure the background story for the two is very different, but visually and gameplay wise they are in danger of being very samey. People don’t get very excited about Hammerers, sure they’re the elite royal guard type dudes, but they’re still just heavily armoured dwarves with hammers.

Slayers are a totally different kettle of fish. A Slayer is a dwarf that has committed some terrible crime, like breaking an oath, failing to avenge an ancestor or having it’s beard shaved by goblins. They then dye all their hair orange, shave it into a mohican and take the slayer oath. This oath is to die in battle against the most dangerous foe possible, the catch however is they can’t just suicide (that would be dishonourable), they have to test themselves to the utmost and get the most spectacular death possible. That and they can’t wear any armour, so just walk around in their kecks. They also have a tendency for face paint and lots of tattoos. So basically a Slayer lives a life of constant battle, roaming the world in their pants, getting in fights with pretty much everything, Now that sounds much more interesting than a Hammerer. Which is only a good thing for boosting Order’s numbers on servers that need it.

Q) So how do you implement equipment for a class that doesn’t wear armour?
A) Easy! Face & body war paint, eye patches, nose chains/rings, bandanas, nails hammered into their head (yeah I’ve read the Gotrek series ;) ), chains, strapping, piercing, studs, more trophies, etc, etc.
No reason why any of those can’t have stats on them.

Bit more info on the "announcement"

From Mark Jacobs:

Folks,

It will be a pretty good announcement as far as announcements go. Basically, we'll be laying out the major initiatives that the development team is going to be working on for the next five months along with a rough monthly schedule. And yes, more bug fixes and career tweaking/balancing is part of it along with a whole lot of new stuff. It's a pretty aggressive schedule (with updates coming fast and furious) and I think, based on what I've been reading here and elsewhere this month, that there will be a lot of happy people after they read what we've been working on.

Mark

source

That's exactly the kind of announcement I was hoping for. When it arrives lets just hope the plan is what we want to hear ;)

My money is on the Orc Choppa and instead of the Order getting a dwarf hammerer, it to be changed to a Slayer. Which is a way cooler class to do and people have been asking for it.

Hopefully the missing cities will be included too.

Choosing Chosen

I really like the Chosen class in WAR; in fact I’d say it’s my favourite PvP tank class from any MMO I’ve played recently. I like the fact that it’s not a class for personal glory; it’s all about working with your group and being a team player. I can charge straight in to the enemy, chuck on some of my funky debuffing auras, hit people with my 65ft range cone AoE knockdown (the Quake ability from discord mastery, it’s a must have IMO) and start messing with healers and squishy types. I create opportunities for my groups DPS, screw up the enemies healing and generally be a pain in the arse. I might not get the kills, but I can create the winning situation. And crucially, unlike the tedium of WoW’s protection specs, the Chosen remains dangerous enough that the enemy can't really ignore you.
1v1 I have a good chance against most classes, but I’ve got to be on the ball or I’ll pay for it. Also there are some classes that are nigh on impossible assuming an even skilled or better player. Ironbreakers are a real pain… But then all classes have their nemesis. Unless the class I’m fighting is very squishy fights can take a while, but that’s more fun than 1 shot instant kill crap.

Some of fights can be truly epic. I was scrapping a Rune Priest for literally 10 minutes recently; in the end we both saluted each other and went our separate ways, which was actually a kind of cool moment. Of course I realised after that I’d completely forgotten the whole fight to remove his blessings, doh :P

That said, I’ve been rather disappointed with great weapons. I’ve tried them in RvR a few times (with Dread mastery) and I just can’t get on with it. Mainly because the trade off between increased damage and survivability seems nowhere near worth it. In WAR shield blocking is a big deal, without a shield you take a LOT more damage. I did ok with great weapons fighting 1v1, but as soon as I got into warband+ RvR I got battered, it was like playing a squishy. Perhaps it’s a play style thing, or I need to dramatically change my stat balance to make the most of it. In fact I’m building a set of armour based around strength talismans to test this out a bit. I’m using the oRvR influence rewards as they’re all about DPS. The idea is to mainly use this set and a great weapon when a guild group is short of a DPS for an instance, so I could at least half fill the role. But I can’t see this

working for RvR at all.

Before the game released I was planning on playing a great weapon wielding Chosen, so I’d be interested to hear other Chosen player’s thoughts on great weapons.

Great weapons are my only real gripe with Chosen, I really hope they get improved somehow, but regardless it hasn’t diminished my enjoyment of the class to any real extent. It’s an awesome class to play, as long as you’re not too obsessed with epeen stato crap. Chosen also happen to look totally kick arse, which (if you’re a sad git like me) is very important.

A word of warding

Mythic's ward system on armour is a strange beast... I like that it creates a clear path of dungeon progression, so I don't need to worry about getting stats to some magic number like most games for the next level of dungeons. I just get the next level up of 5 Wards and I'm all sorted.
I think it has the potential to be a really good long term system for dungeon progression, but there's a few things that bother me.

1) Dungeon lock out timers
City dungeon lock out timers being 3 days is a real pain in the arse. I can't go to Lost Vale because I don't have enough Greater wards, but for the next 3 days I have NO way to get more Greater wards. I'm stuck waiting for Bloodwrought Enclave and Bilerot Burrow to unlock.

2) Random drops
Combine the lock outs with the random drops and mix in my history of crappy luck, and you get... AGGH! I might not make it into Lost Vale for a while.

Now I understand why developers put in the random loot, it's to drag things out, keeping us playing and subscribing, but it doesn't have to work like this. I've got a LOT of issues with WoW's heroic badge system, but the basic idea is sound. If you have crap luck you'll still get a token, then save up enough and you can exchange for a good item. Why not have something like this in WAR so you can exchange them for the Sentinel bit you're missing?

3) Availability of Lesser wards
This is impacting on open RvR and encouraging RvE. Keep Lords drop lesser ward gear, the fastest way to kill a keep lord is if there's no defenders, therefore... A lot of people will drop anything to go take an undefended keep. Even if it means leaving a zone under serious attack undefended. When I was struggling to get lesser wards I too would go for any keep I could. Most of my guild was doing the City Dungeons and as a Tank I have to have lots of lesser wards to go. It sucked to have to do that, maybe I should have been patient, but there you go.

It's also encouraged people to try and take keeps on the sly with their own small group. This is fine when nothing much is happening, but when people do it while others are distracted on Battle Objectives it can lead to bad feeling amongst your faction. And unlike WoW you can't beat the game with just your guild, instead in WAR the community on your server is of extreme importance. Your faction needs to work together, this should be encouraged at all times and not hindered by bloody loot.

Of course Bastion Stair is an option for lesser wards, but I'd rather punch myself in the face while watching R Kelly's "HipOpera". I hate fast respawns as much as I hate pony arsed fiddlers with delusions of grandeur.


Solutions?

I'm really hoping that when the missing cities are added, that they include 2 city dungeons in each and each city's dungeons offer alternative greater ward sets. If that happens then the 3 day lock out doesnt matter, different city each night until you get your ward set. I think this would also negate the random drops enough to keep me sane.

As for lesser wards. I've no problem with them being available in RvR, I think that's a good thing, but they must be more reliable to get (again tokens perhaps?). Also as an aside there should be bigger incentives to take defended keeps.

Fortresses and a little bit more...

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Mark Jacobs posted about their plans for fortresses. In case you've not seen it here's the key info and a link to the source.



Over the next few weeks, we will be working on a number of initiatives that I can now talk about.

First, the team will tweak the settings for the Fortress Lords to make sure that their power is in line with the current numbers of players expected to participate in the siege. Second, the team will continue working on optimizing the code’s performance in large-scale battles so we can increase the population cap over the next few weeks. Third, the team is looking at additional tweaking of the pop cap to ensure that it is where it needs to be in order to allow these battles to be as well-balanced (from a design perspective) as they can be.
+++
Most importantly, the team will also be looking at moving the fortress areas out to their own zones to allow an even a greater of number of players to participate, while also maintaining a high level of performance. While they are doing that, they will also be looking at ways to enhance the fortress areas to take advantage of having their own dedicated zone.
+++
However, we won’t move the sieges into their own zones unless we are sure that we can get either some deign and/or performance improvements by doing so.
+++
Oh, and expect a major announcement from us at the end of the month regarding our plans for the next few months and beyond. It’s going to get even more interesting around these parts soon.


Source: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109912617/p1/?0
If you have read this already and it's old news, sorry, have a picture of the world's sexiest Orc.
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Orc artwork created by the genius(?)of Durtbocks...

Dungeon Y needs class X, what about class Z?

Something I was really hoping would not be in WAR that featured heavily in WoW, was the old must have class X to do instance Y. You know the bit where you have to take a Warlock because a certain boss needs something banishing, or you need a hunter for tranq shot, or bloody mages and sheep. It's something that can be really frustrating when your class isn't perfect for certain instances and you struggle to get groups (unless you're in a good guild that's not full of numpties).

It seems WAR almost escaped it, but a bit has sneaked in. Bilerot Burrow... Thanks to thier monstrous damage dealing aura type thing, those bloody Plaguebeasts are only really doable if you take some ranged DPS. Not so long ago there was a night where we had no ranged DPS online, but we tried Bilerot anyway with just melee DPS. As anyone that's been there before will know, uh uh, bad idea. After enduring repetitive pain not dissimilar to an N-Dubz track (nice hat btw.. init), we gave up. Other times I've been to Bilerot those mobs have been a pain at times, but with some ranged DPS they're easily kiteable, or with a bit of luck and good gear, you can just tank and spank.

Which sucks for melee DPS players that are not in a decent and/or active guild. If it's anything like WoW then random pick up groups just wont take them along... Surely it's not impossible to put in mechanics to the fights that a melee DPS could do, say having something in the environment they could trigger to do damage, a puss bomb of doom or something.

I've not been able to go to Lost Vale yet due to crap luck with Sentinel drops in Bilerot, but at least as a tank I can get groups no problem...

Welcome to WAR: The Age of Blogging!

I saw this advert on Warhammer Alliance the other day and thought why the hell not ;)

The guys at http://blogwarhammer.net/ have an initiative going to help new WAR Bloggers get started. So if it's something you fancy having a go at, or you just want to find some new blogs to read, go check out their website.

http://blogwarhammer.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=146

Crap player=Cocky twat?

One of my guildies was in Caledor with his Witch Elf yesterday when he got jumped by 2 Witch Hunters. While the fight was going on, a Swordmaster strolled up and watched. The guy from my guild is well known on our server as a good player, and managed to kill both Witch Hunters, but as you can imagine he had barely any hitpoints left. So the Swordmaster walks up and kills him. Fair enough, this is WAR after all, but then the guy feels the need to spam /laugh and /point emotes at the corpse.

Of course we’re all on ventrilo and hear about it, and as I’m in Caledor anyway, as soon as I see the Swordmaster I chase him down and start hitting. Turns out that I kill him with very little difficulty… The guy was doing stupid crap like running in circles around me (the mighty strafe turn! Reminds me of Mechwarrior 4 ;) ), despite the fact I put Touch of Palsy on him 3 times...

I’m not complaining about it, it was funny as hell for us and made him look like a proper tool, but why is it the cocky twats that spam emotes on people almost invariably turn out to be... well, a bit rubbish :P School bully syndrome?

Fortress battles, lag and server crashing no more?

Your faction’s guilds pull together, Keeps fall, Objectives are claimed and scenarios are won. The tier is locked and the enemy fortress is there for the taking… You battle inside, slowly of course because the 3 FPS lag has kicked in, but the Keep Lord is in sight! BLAM! Zone crashes. Doh!

Mythic’s original plan for Fortress takes didn’t work out. Hardly any (defended) fortresses have been taken, on our server it’s only happened once I believe when the Keep Lord bugged down to the lower floor. It’s been a big disappointment for a lot of people and as one of the big sells for WAR, quite understandably. However, people (Mythic included) should have realised this wasn’t going to work straight away. It was always going to need testing in a live environment before it could get sorted out. You simply cannot get 500+ players in a small area like that without making servers and code cry. I can’t think of any MMO that’s done it successfully yet.

For me it’s been a bit of a let down, but not the OMFG WAR EPIC FAIL crap spouted by some. For a start it was no shock as I’d played things like DaoC and Planetside from beta/launch and I was expecting it to take a good few months for it to stabilise or for an alternative solution, but a big factor is because the server I play on is very active. Keep takes don’t happen very often because both sides aggressively defend to stop the enemy getting to that point. Whilst this means it’s probably a bigger disappointment when we get to a fortress and it crashes, it also means I’m having a great laugh in the rest of the oRvR (Open Realm vs Realm combat), which actually takes up the vast majority of my game time. Though I’m sure given time it would become more annoying…

Thankfully Mythic are acting. Their interim solution has gone live and they have confirmed they are throwing everything at a long term solution and have also apologised and acknowledged the problem. They certainly put more effort into communicating than I ever saw from Blizzard, SOE or Funcom to name a few. Of course now they have to deliver on what they’ve said…

It’s going to be an interesting few weeks as we see how this interim solution pans out.

Just found some more news too. Check this link out :)

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109912617/p1/?59

Sounds promising for sure. Also the "Oh, and expect a major announcement from us at the end of the month regarding our plans for the next few months and beyond. It’s going to get even more interesting around these parts soon." is more than a little intriguing...

The WoW gamer and the WAR launch

I’ve been on beta and launch for most of the major MMOs since Ultima Online, I have to say other than GOA’s open beta cock up, this has been the smoothest MMO launch I’ve ever been on. The servers are very stable (with the exception of fortress raids, more on that later), the classes & factions are much better balanced than you would expect at launch and the CTDs (Crash to Desktop) were nothing compared with the likes of Age of Conan… Following on from the launch day Mythics patching has been excellent. Content of the regular hot fixes and larger patches have been well communicated, and noticeably have rarely introduced other problems. So certainly in my mind, the best launch I’ve ever been on. However in this post WoW age, is this probably best ever MMO launch good enough?

The veterans of other MMO launches were playing games with subscription figures of up to around 430,000 subs (EQ for example), but with WoW you’re talking over 11 million subs! Today’s MMO publishers want a piece of that 11 million pie, so when launching a new MMO a developer is now dealing with WoW’s monstrous subscription numbers. But the vast majority of those WoW players haven’t been on an MMO launch before; WoW was their first MMO... They don’t give 2 shits that this is a great launch, even when compared with WoWs, they weren’t on the WoW launch anyway. They are comparing WoW NOW with WAR at launch. They expect WAR to instantly be on par with a game that’s had 4 years of patching and live testing, so that’s barely any bugs and 4 years of patched content included please! Clearly that’s just not possible, but is the new breed of players from the WoW age wrong to expect this?

Yes and no. WoW’s horde of new MMO gamers are here, they expect their MMO to be faultless (anything else would be EPIC FAIL!!111), they’re very loud about it and they are paying your subs fee. If you want to compete then as a developer you must accept that and deal with it. It is what it is. Which means you need a damn well polished game and a shit load of content. But those gamers that write off WAR because it’s not as “polished” as WoW (yet) are also missing out. If they chill out with the rage about the odd bug or things working differently, read up about MMO launches, listen to what Mythic are saying (and importantly are doing) and look at the game objectively, they’d see this game has massive potential. Potential that on active servers is starting to be to kick in. Of course people just argue, they’re paying for this game, so why should they care about MMO history.

It’s impossible to launch a flawless MMO, but it seems to me that these days only a flawless MMO will be an instant hit, if what qualifies as a hit is judged against WoW’s subscription numbers. A new MMO needs time to develop in a live setting, but it’s now imperative that development is of a high quality. It needs to be tempting people away from WoW, not just an alternative, it needs to be a temptation.


However, I think WAR will end up having millions of subscribers and establish itself as the clear second place MMO. EA are not stupid, they know that Mythic are on the ball, they know that they’ve got the best licence in gaming and they sure as hell will understand the MMO world today (EA owns Ultima Online for example). If you are on an active server the game right now is awesome fun, I’ve had more memorably epic moments in the last few months than I did in all 4 years of WoW. Then if you look at the content additions we know about for this year… we have 4 major cities to be added, which judging by the current cities should mean another 4 end game and 6 mid range dungeons for each faction. And then we’ve got the last 2 missing classes apparently coming in the next few months. That’s sure as hell going to draw some attention.