Wednesday 10 February 2010

Blogger challenge – If you were Mythic what would you do in 2010?

A challenge for my fellow bloggers!
 
First take the assumption that the game isn’t in the alleged maintenance mode and there’s not only money for new content, but you have access to new content that’s been in development over the last year. So we’re writing this in a happy place. Now then, if you had control of Mythic what would be your plan for WAR in 2010?
 
Broken down into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, what would be your strategy for changes, improvements and expansions to the game?
 
Here’s mine…
 
In case this is not completely clear … Everything that follows is completely made up by me and most probably has no bearing on reality. Of course if by strange coincidence any of it turns out to be true, then clearly Mythic are very sensible people and should be commended, well... apart from whoever is in charge of their marketing/advertising/promotional/thingy strategy these days, as they need dragging through a hedge infested with angry Squirrels. Bring back the teasers, clues and hype please. It may have led to false expectations, but at least it was interesting and gave us positive ammunition. Aaaaaaanyways, here goes:
 
Spring
With the first major patch in a long time, Mythic unleash a cunning plan. A plan that will make realm pride a factor once again. The patch will change the way the campaign works, with simultaneous locking of all 3 zones within a racial pairing required to lock the area and count towards a city siege. Combat is spread across the zones, individual guilds and warbands become more important than one single zone crashing zerg, the game lags less and WAR makes a huge step towards having a truly epic campaign. In tier 4 no longer do you have a maximum of 1-3 active zones to fight in, oh no sir, now you have 3-9! Not including Land of the Dead! Once more it becomes difficult to actually siege a city, making city sieges something that actually feels like an achievement. Plus roaming world PvP and genuine strategic play return.
 
Then in late Spring, the Fortresses make a triumphant return. Ex-DAoC players get what they wanted; Relic raids… Each fortress can be attacked and a relic stolen from the central keep, the player carrying the relic then has to be escorted all the way through that pairing’s RvR zones to their own fortress. Owning a relic provides a small realm wide buff. The more relics you have, the greater the buff. To stop fortresses getting in the way of accessing a city, when a pairing is locked in the new improved campaign, the fortress is left open, the relic unavailable.
 
Summer
Leaping out of the shadows like a ‘shroom fueled goblin in a ninja suit, Mythic deliver the first of two new live expansions. The 4 cities removed before launch are coming back baby! This live expansion introduces the Dwarf and Orc cities. Each racial pairing now has a city for each faction and control of the 3 RvR zones provides access to siege the relevant city. But new cities bring new risk and reward… Now if a king is killed, there’s a proper downside as that city is unavailable for 24 hours. If a faction loses all of it’s cities, then sorry chaps you’re based in warcamps for a day. Risk and reward... now go find that realm pride we’re missing.
 
Autumn
And it’s the next live expansion, that naturally follows on from the Summer of Orcy fun. This one bringing in cities for the tree huggers and emo-kid pointy eared elf gits. This now means WAR has 9 RvR zones and 6 cities. WAR is indeed everywhere.
 
Winter
The main event… Winter and with a Christmas release, will see the WAR’s first paid expansion. It will introduce Skaven and Lizardmen as playable races for Destruction and Order respectively. The campaign will be expanded to include the south American themed land of Lustria, home to the Lizardmen and also a segment of the Skaven’s secret underground empire. New zones for each tier and of course 3 new tier 4 RvR zones, 2 more cities. WAR now has 12 RvR zones and 8 Cities.
 
I’d love a third faction as regular readers will know, but I’m starting to think it’s just not feasible at all. So the above is what I’d do, assuming I had the money and the backing. How about you?

5 comments:

  1. Challenge taken.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can I get an amen! That is the best idea I've seen yet for how to make the campaign more fun in a plausible way. Kudos!

    ReplyDelete
  3. U guys seen testpig's ideas? Good stuff for improving the game overall.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-ZKpM3U30U

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bam! http://www.heartlessgamer.com/2010/02/challenge-free-idea-and-warhammer.html

    ReplyDelete

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Half man half pixel. Music obsessive, likes a drink, occasional bastard.