An injection of life

Today I'm posting something a little different. It's a comment a mate of mine made on my blog recently about what he would like to see changed in WAR. It's an excellent suggestion and something I though deserved highlighting.

Venorath writes...

If I could change only 1 thing I'd get rid of the static feeling in the various zones.

After a shot at the Rift beta I remembered how hectic and involved you feel in a zone when you get rid of the if/then scripted events and encounters. the same was valid in Tabula Rasa, even though the game itself was rubbish, you felt like you were fighting for control in whateve zone you were in.

So... I'd add in invasions of factions fitting the pairing, with a sprinkling of skaven ontop of that. Both in the RvR and PvE areas. The invasions would pretty much be a copy of the rift mechanics seen in Rift, but with a Warhammer flavor. to make sure a zone was not overrun with invasions during periods of low activity (such as night times) I'd scale the frequency and power of the invasions to the number of active players in the zone.

By making sure that there was a clear message and indicators on the map whenever an invasion started, players would be aware of the fighting going on all over the zone, and be able to jump in to defend or attack a staging area.

Add ontop of that the PQ mechanics to reward participants with rewards based on wether it was a PvP or PvE invasion.

The end result should be a more engaging PvE experience, with oppertunities for PvP, both fun and rewarding.

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I think this is an excellent suggestion. Putting aside the detail of copying RIFT's dramatic improvement of the Public Quests (which is well worth considering), I think the core concept that Veno alludes to is an important one to grab hold off if WAR wants to better cater for it's playerbase. While at times we may deride some of WAR's past and present attempts at combining PvP and PvE, we must remember that at times Mythic have pulled it off rather well. For example the new city sieges are very good when you get a proper fighty instance. But the prime example is DAoC. The game that all us vets hark back to is a PvE/PvP hybrid in ALL of it's RvR frontiers, dungeons and more.

Regardless of if there are players around, DAoC always feels like a living, breathing and very much alive world. This is due to a mixture of things, but not least amongst those are the mobs everywhere. WAR just doesn't have that same sense of world within it's limited RvR lakes, it feels much more desolate. The recently added Thanquols Incursion is a prime example of this; a Skaven infested tunnel network that er... isn't infested with Skaven. Which reminds me, instead of being in the crappy dungeon why can't those bosses actually attack the RvR lakes? Think about that for a bit. Roaming skaven nasties, hordes of rats, etc.

What about something like in the city sieges where NPC heroes like Engra charge across the battlefield capturing things? Mix it up, breath some live in.

Making things more dynamic, with a greater sense of scale and most importantly, feeling more alive is something Mythic should give serious thought to. Oh and weather effects like in DAoC pls ;)