The problem with posting immediately after reading something is you post your immediate reaction and not a more considered opinion. This is exactly what I've done with the producers letter. I was pondering on this today and then I read war4scrubs and it really made me want to revisit my post.
The removal of sponsored cross realming and the much improved armour system are 2 things that are important for me personally and as such I was so smothered in Happy Juice that I completely ignored the fact that this letter does not cover the things that I actually spend most of my time ranting about. Those being the ping-pong campaign, Zerg clumping terrain/zones and the WAR gamer's desperate need of rock solid news for the future.
However I'm not sure if the producers letter is actually at fault here. After all in it's current state it's meant to be a brief "this is what we've done and this is what we're doing" monthly update. Perhaps the problem is at the moment, as ever with WAR, there is just so much we need information (and in fact reassurance) about.
We've seen Mythic allude recently to sorting out oRvR, but it was all very loose and watery. We don't know anything at all. A lot of people are not convinced anything IS going to happen, perhaps after the city update that would seem overly cynical, but then so much was promised even before launch and MMO gamers have very long memories. Maybe the WAR community want too much info too fast or maybe Mythic just haven't got anything to say. I doubt the latter very much, but I do think Mythic need to stop playing Secret Squirrel and give us a real glimpse of the future.
With Age of Conan getting an expansion and not a sniff of news of that scale for WAR it's no wonder people are getting twitchy. Unless you count the Red Plague rumours, but that could just be a sign of our desperation. All we really know is that the Red Plague IS coming, but if it turns out to just be a live event or other such mediocre thing, well... Yikes the disappointment will be physically tangible. And that will be the fault of people like me that hyped it, but then what else have we got to go on? A bit worrying really, I don't want to be part of hyping a huge let down.
So it's not really the letter itself, it's the whole situation. We need Mythic to not rest on their city siege laurels and lay the smack down with more epic news. And soon.
No pressure Mythic.
I doubt we will see a full scale expansion before the majority of work is done on SW:TOR. You have all those devs and design people that would otherwise be dropped from the company after a game releases, I think it would make a lot of sense for EA to keep them around and push them over to WAR for a full expansion, then bounce them back and forth every year or so. Keeps a ton of developers working, and the same devs working with the same tools.
ReplyDeleteThis would be exactly the kind of news that would get people to stick around. That the devs working on TOR would be rocking out the next WAR expansion.
You could well be right Grim, but if we get all the way to the Star Wars launch and still have no news I would be very worried about the state of WAR's population.
ReplyDeleteThe big thing to consider is the scope of the recent patch. There was a lot of stuff in there. Should we expect 1.3.6 to be as monumentally good? I'm not suggesting we should set the bar low, just trying to be realistic.
ReplyDeleteCarrie had mentioned that they would be reaching out to the community via the Dev forum for our thoughts on forts and RvR. And there are some cool ideas out there not just on our various WAR blogs but also by players on the forums. So I am hopeful.
War4Scrubs makes good points ... looking at his points:
Zergs - been a problem since the game started and tough to control.
Rush to the City - we need that speedbump. I am hopeful that when/if forts return, they become that needed bump to stem the tide of cities.
Keeps & BOs - not exciting. I lump these with the RvR overhaul. Your DAOC posts have some great stuff in there to breathe new life into these.
Beating the Game - an expansion of either the game itself or a raising of the renown cap with enticing goodies could alleviate this. You wouldn't need a full-on expansion for this.
Grim makes a very good point, but we're probably not gonna see TOR until 2012. I feel that's far too long to wait to mention anything about a future expansion for WAR. I enjoy the game a lot but running ALTs through the game time and time again will not hold my interest for very long. We need some new goodness.
I truly feel they are waiting for the Korea launch ... whenever the heck that's supposed to be.
I think Mythic in general knows the bigger picture of whats planned for WAR's future. They're just being tight lipped about it.
ReplyDeleteIf they have'nt been working on a full blown expansion for at least the last six months, then I would have to guess there will not be one ever, or best case scenario it would'nt be released for a couple of more years and by then I don't think it would really matter anymore anyways.
I have subscribed since launch and my patience is growing thin. I'm starting to think that maybe we are being duped.
The reason we have a zerg is because of the super mobility we have in the game. It takes no effort to assemble everyone in the same zone at the same time. WAR is like watching two air cavalry divisons fight it out. To remove the zerg either reduce the mobility or do more with mobility. Removing some flight masters or increase flight times - Would encourage people to spread out, to think more about positioning. Giving peeps a reason to fight across multiple zones ie holdin 4+ keeps in a single pairing for 2 hours to unlock the fortress say.
ReplyDeleteI remember in T2 we used to use The book of binding to move about and to cap BOs! Even organising a WB to set the bind location to the same point. So you can take a distant BO and reappear in another zone entirely leaving desto walk about looking for you :)
vonplinkplonk
In an arcticle by gamasutra I wrote on about swtolast week, EA was specifically asked what about WAR. Brown's comment was, "War has a couple hundred subscribers.". That was it. Don't you think a comment like 'we have plans' would have been more soothing to the current sub base?
ReplyDeleteA "couple hundred thousand" is still nice change in the pocket each month. That guy at EA obviously doesn't have tact or know how to say the right things.
ReplyDeleteOf course a property like Star Wars would take precedent. If EA screws this one up what will their excuse be? Is there any other license as valuable and that sells itself?
Given the excellent city seige, if we don't cut Mythic some slack for that, then we never will. They listened on the same server both realms idea and cut it, except for those languages with only one server. Which I believe was the original design goal, rolling it out to other languages was going to be a bonus, which most people didn't want.
ReplyDeleteThe add on is being developed (I'll send Bootae a bottle of something if it isn't) and I'd be surprised if it isn't released this year. Of course that does depend on when WoW:Cataclysm is released. I don't suppose anyone at EA/Mythic wants to get done over by Blizzard again. Though given the near mortal blow they gave the game on it's launch, I doubt they are overly concerned with our subscription numbers.
Now if it's going to be out this year, I am a little bit concerned that we aren't being fed smidgeons of gossip at the moment. You only have to look at Blizzard to see how you can keep your title in the minds eye with an upcoming release :)
If we get a proper 3rd realm, I'll happily let it slide into next year and pay the penalty mentioned above.
I'm kind of banking on an annoucement at E3 15-17/6, which if we don't get, then I think I'll owe Bootae one.