In my recent post about DAoC2, I mentioned that if DAoC 2 were to ever appear, while I think it would be very successful, I don’t believe that it would be a WoW beater and in fact neither will any RvR or PvP based MMORPG ever. So what’s my reasoning behind this?
It’s really quite simple. People don’t like to lose.
Games were not created to favor the loser. It is strange to think people are sitting in video game design classes and dreaming of games that punish the victor, even if those designers are not the best gamers. Especially as games become more involved and advanced, those playing will spend days or even weeks working past what is giving them trouble.
In a PvE centric game like WoW it’s completely possible to play the game for years and always win. You will clear the dungeon, beat the bosses and emerge victorious. Even if learning new raid content and having to spend a few days wiping on a boss, you can be assured that you will eventually beat it to a pulp. No matter how difficult a particular PvE challenge is, a player knows they have a 100% chance of beating it should they put the time and effort in. You also know that you will have it on farm status at some point in the near future. Whether you win or lose is entirely down to you.
PvP and in particular RvR is very different. They might not like to admit it, but even the biggest epeen waving prick loses fights in RvR and bloody often too. I know because I’ve seen them lose :P Situations will arise that are impossible to win, it doesn’t matter how well you play or how well you’re prepared, you will lose and there’s nothing you can do about it. At some point your elite warband of doom will ride round a corner and straight into 4 warbands of OMFGZERGDOOM from the enemy faction and BLAM! You lose, simple as that. Sure, you can put up a good fight, get some kills, stay alive a long time and perhaps claim a moral victory, but it will still boil down to you respawning. Battles and campaigns will be won or lost and whilst you can influence the outcome, you cannot decide it with 100% certainty.
That huge mass of casual players that in reality bulk out the big name game’s subscription fees don’t want the results of their valuable gaming time taken out of their control. They want to consistently achieve and have a sense of progress; they need to be in control. They log in, do their daily quests and log out, safe in the knowledge that they’ve taken a step further towards item A, B or C. They do a dungeon, they want item X, but if they don’t get it they know if they go again and eventually they will. And hey, they still got a token/plaque/whatever, so no time was wasted, the winning end result is inevitable. They don’t want to log in and get their arse kicked for an hour and come out of it with nothing and have no guarantees that this won't happen again tomorrow, or every day for ever... where’s the fun in that? What a waste of their precious time and I don't mean that sarcastically at all, because yes time is precious. And while I say this regarding casual players, it also applies to a great many more hardcore gamers, they will quite often be even more demanding of constant and reliable progress. What they are winning is relative to their different goals in-game and the time and effort associated varies, but the expectation of consistent winning crosses the boundary of casual to hardcore players.
Whereas the dedicated RvR gamer is far more comfortable with just taking part in the challenge itself. They of course will also be interested in character progression and winning their campaign, but they will also revel in those moral victories where the only reward is a smile, a bit of epeen bolstering and perhaps some banter. To play RvR games for a long time means you must have accepted defeat and enjoy what may turn out to be impossible challenges. Perhaps they are playing for the fun of the fight itself and the utterly valueless epeen internet glory.
I don’t mean to imply that the RvR gamer is better than PvE gamers in any sense, it’s just people have a different set of desires, levels of patience and just what they’re willing to accept and enjoy in life. The majority of people want to win and given the choice between two good games where one supplies reliable victory, but the other you are only able to influence a result, then obviously more people will opt for the fun victory. For most people that question would be a total no-brainer.
Just look at EVE, a game that is rampant with RvR in the form of player run Corporations battling each other for territory and power. EVE is an extremely well made, very high quality and all round excellent game. On the pure quality stakes I would say it can comfortably stand next to any other MMO. It also has regular FREE expansions. Yet, it isn't even vaguely close to WoW's sub numbers. It's just too harsh for most players. You can get your arse kicked, have everything you own destroyed or stolen and the perception amongst non-EVE players is that this happens all the time and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Which is potentially true, it's the nature of these type of games and as EVE's infamous history shows, no Corporation is invincible... That's a horribly risky style of gameplay for most people. The masses want their win and in WoW, RIFT and other PvE centric games everyone is a winner!
So then, what'll it be for you? The taking part or the winning?
Me, I like a bit of both.
Showing posts with label PvE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PvE. Show all posts
Monday, 23 May 2011
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
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.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 ;)
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.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 ;)
Monday, 27 September 2010
Bootae interviews Andy Belford at Gamesday UK
Gamesday UK was a great day out, we got lots of solid news about WAR and there was a truckload of WAR EU players in attendance at the main event. However the highlight was I got absolutely drunk as a skunk with Andy and a collection of people from the EU servers. Well I say a collection of people, there was one representative from Azgal, one infamous Norn player and a bunch of people from my alliance that went out on the beers. Andy proved to be a quality bloke, a good laugh and a seasoned drinker, important to fit in over here which he did admirably.
I could tell you all about the many, many hilarious and at times totally bizarre events that happened, but there’s just too much mentalness to type. Let’s just say it featured a copious amount of beer, a real life pirate, about 100 extremely drunk and glammed up women from a Hairdressers convention and a very rude south African lady. Oh and I got lost for an hour at 3am trying to find my hotel and almost decided to sleep alongside a motorway, thankfully that worked out ok though and I did find the hotel...
Anyways, thanks to an epic hang over and delayed trains, it’s taken ages to get back home and meant I missed breaking the main news of the day. I won't repost what has already been covered very well on both Bruglir’s blog and WAR Aura, be sure to check out the news AND then come back here for further goodies... However we also found out a lot of little bits and had many interesting debates through the night, so there maybe some more things I post about as my brain gradually recovers.
I did however get an interview with Andy. Questions were obviously all focused on the new changes and the future of WAR.
Bootae- First thing I was wondering about, you know you talked about the resource gathering from the BOs, is that going to be the current ones so you’d have multiple resource gathers moving around at once?
Andy- It’s gonna be all the current BOs, so there will be four resource nodes open at any point and they will be capturable at any point in time. So you’ll have to actively defend them all, if you want to hold them all then you’ve got to spread out and defend them.
Bootae- And defend the resource gathers themselves?
Andy- Exactly.
Bootae- So you’ll have multiple groups of people all over the zone guarding or attacking different things.
Andy- Yup. Because even if the resource runner is moving, the resource node can still be captured. So you’ll need to protect the resource node, the runner and probably your warcamp as well.
Bootae- You mentioned the resource runners being upgradeable. Does that reset if their node is lost?
Andy- No, that’s based on what rank your keep is.
Bootae- So now we’ll never again have a situation where you’re attacking both keeps, because we’ll always start off owning one and have to capture the other, while managing and controlling everything else in the zone.
Andy- Yup.
Bootae- The campaign itself then, this continues with the one zone open in each pairing, that locks, moves onto next zone, etc? We won’t have multiple zones open per pairing?
Andy- That remains the same. We had considered changing that, considering revamping how that works actually, but we decided it would be too radical a departure from the way things currently work and that it may actually having a negative effect on the game for people that were comfortable with the way the campaign progresses, but not happy with the zone locks. So we thought we’d change how zone locking works first, see how successful it is, see how it goes over with the players and then if we need to continue with adjusting the campaign mechanism we’ll go from there. But it’s part our approach incremental changes, it’s how we approach our development. We change things incrementally one step at a time.
Bootae- Regarding the Fortresses and the revamped campaign, is there a planned way they’re coming back into the new system or is it still very much up in the air?
Andy- We have it in our mind yeah, but we’re not set in stone or prepared to talk about their implementation just yet. It’s definitely one of those things on the forefront of what we want to do, the reintroduction of fortresses, however it’s not something we doing right now. That’s not to say the next patch set afterwards wouldn’t reintroduce them. Is that possible? It’s possible if we have all these changes go according to plan, everything works out brilliantly then if something falls into place with the fortresses that allows us to reintroduce them in a way that we think will be fun and dynamic then yes, we’ll move forward on that. So while it continues to be a priority right now, no we don’t have any definite plans.
Bootae- The next bit then for the campaign, the new Skaven zone… How does that fit in? The general idea in the community is about a tunnel system linking up all the zones, is that anywhere near the truth or is it more like a Land of the Dead entry?
Andy- You’ll find out this month.
Bootae- Moving on to Skaven, are Skaven something you can log in and play whenever you want or is there like a gated access of some form?
Andy- It is gated and it ties into the new Skaven area. How exactly it ties into the new area we’re not discussing right now.
Bootae- So will you be able to have both factions playing Skaven at the same time?
Andy- Yes.
Bootae- The four classes mentioned today, are there more to be revealed?
Andy- No, that is it.
Bootae- So no Stormvermin or things like that. It seems like the Skaven are being very much built around being a component of the new siege system.
Andy- The Skaven are there to enhance the ORvR experience. To make ORvR more fun and more compelling.
Bootae- So it’s not a third faction as such as we were thinking before, its more enhancement for the existing factions?
Andy- That’s correct.
Bootae- So Order players can have Skaven fighting alongside them?
Andy- Don’t worry, we got approval from GW (Gamesworkshop) on that.
Bootae- Hah, yeah you know people are gonna go for you on that.
Andy- Well the thing is if you read the Gotrek and Felix novels then there’s actually a point where the Skaven work with Empire. Even though the most recent edition of the Warhammer playbook has grouped them with Destruction, they really are very mercenary.
Bootae- They’re out for themselves.
Andy- Yeah, they’re out for themselves yeah. As long as you have enough warpstone to satisfy their craving, they’ll do whatever they can to get that warpstone. Including stabbing you in the back.
Bootae- So the RvR packs are one thing, but it sounds like from all this that it’s really 1.4 that needs to be in place to enable all of this.
Andy- Right now 1.4 is a component of the RvR packs, I would say that.
Bootae- You’ve talked before about how we’ll be getting these packs more often than a game would usually get full on expansions. So in future are we always going to see a major 1.4 style patch accompanied by a pack? So there will be the free patch and then the extra purchaseable components like the packs alongside that?
Andy- We’re not gonna stop free updates to the game, that’s not gonna stop. There’s always gonna be free updates to the game, we’re always going to be improving content, we’re always going to be making things better and some of that just happens to coincide with the RvR Pack. So yes there will always continue to be free improvements for players, regardless of if they purchase the RvR pack.
Bootae- So this current timing of pack and patch is just a timing thing.
Andy- Yeah, it’s kinda the logistics of the development schedule.
Bootae- PvE pack? Now I don’t give two monkeys about PvE really…
Andy- Neither do we.
Bootae- …but some people will do. So is the future of PvE pretty much out of the window?
Andy- The immediate future. You know, we’ve embraced the fact that we are an RvR game. Some people say it’s niche, some people say its you know, it is what it is, but people play Bioware Mythic games because they like to kill other players. That’s what we’re good at, that’s what we do. We are dedicated to making our RvR experience the best it can be.
Bootae- So thoughts of dungeons and lairs gone?
Andy- No, no, no. There’s actually a lot of lairs that are attached to the RvR lakes. Like the one in Chaos Wastes near the north keep. It’s kinda hard to get there, it’s like a jumping puzzle to get up.
Bootae- Ah yeah like the one in Norsca.
Andy- Personally I would love to see some of the lairs and stuff repurposed into RvR fights, I think that would be very cool.
Bootae- Like the invadeable Land of the Dead style?
Andy- yeah.
Bootae- We were talking earlier about a PQ in tier 1 Orc/Dwarf, where for whatever reason it’s RvR enabled. That’s probably the best PQ in the entire game, but then it doesn’t happen anymore.
Andy- We should have done more of those. We should have continued to build upon the PvP foundation interspersed with the PvE. Unfortunately that one PQ is one of the only places in the game where that happens with a PQ, up until the city revamp of course. So you know, it’s lessons learnt, no development team gets everything right, no development team is perfect. And I know a lot of people like to point at warhammer online and bash warhammer online, it’s the cool fashion. But you know, we’re still here, we’re still going, we’re still developing and delivering a visceral, heart-pounding experience for our players. And you know, our community is right now in a better place than its been in the last 2 years. The players, while they’re critical and while they still let us know what they think, they really do love the game and you can see it, you can see the passion.
People sometimes like to attach the word failure to our game, but you know we are not a failure, we are profitable, we are making money for the studio, we are still developing new content and we’re doing something that a lot of games are afraid to do, you know we’re saying yeah we made a lot of mistakes when we first launched the game and we’re gonna take 12 months, 16 months, we’re gonna take however long it takes to go back and fix these things.
My recording went a bit dodgy from here and I’ve got a horrible hangover clouding my memory, but I asked a cheeky question about sub numbers and while Andy wouldn’t divulge the numbers, he did confirm that subscription numbers are increasing. We also talked about the amount of people in one zone and Andy mentioned recently Badlands saw over 700 people in one zone, 500 of them attacking a keep. I also learnt a few things that I've been asked not to blog about, but lets just say I'm very positive about the next few months and the future of WAR.
And that was that for the interview, Andy had to head off to do yet another presentation to the masses and I went and joined the mass debate amongst WAR players about all the announcements. I'll post thoughts and stuff over the next few days.
So thanks to Andy for his time, the beers, chicken wings and a bloody comedy gold night.
I could tell you all about the many, many hilarious and at times totally bizarre events that happened, but there’s just too much mentalness to type. Let’s just say it featured a copious amount of beer, a real life pirate, about 100 extremely drunk and glammed up women from a Hairdressers convention and a very rude south African lady. Oh and I got lost for an hour at 3am trying to find my hotel and almost decided to sleep alongside a motorway, thankfully that worked out ok though and I did find the hotel...
Anyways, thanks to an epic hang over and delayed trains, it’s taken ages to get back home and meant I missed breaking the main news of the day. I won't repost what has already been covered very well on both Bruglir’s blog and WAR Aura, be sure to check out the news AND then come back here for further goodies... However we also found out a lot of little bits and had many interesting debates through the night, so there maybe some more things I post about as my brain gradually recovers.
I did however get an interview with Andy. Questions were obviously all focused on the new changes and the future of WAR.
Bootae- First thing I was wondering about, you know you talked about the resource gathering from the BOs, is that going to be the current ones so you’d have multiple resource gathers moving around at once?
Andy- It’s gonna be all the current BOs, so there will be four resource nodes open at any point and they will be capturable at any point in time. So you’ll have to actively defend them all, if you want to hold them all then you’ve got to spread out and defend them.
Bootae- And defend the resource gathers themselves?
Andy- Exactly.
Bootae- So you’ll have multiple groups of people all over the zone guarding or attacking different things.
Andy- Yup. Because even if the resource runner is moving, the resource node can still be captured. So you’ll need to protect the resource node, the runner and probably your warcamp as well.
Bootae- You mentioned the resource runners being upgradeable. Does that reset if their node is lost?
Andy- No, that’s based on what rank your keep is.
Bootae- So now we’ll never again have a situation where you’re attacking both keeps, because we’ll always start off owning one and have to capture the other, while managing and controlling everything else in the zone.
Andy- Yup.
Bootae- The campaign itself then, this continues with the one zone open in each pairing, that locks, moves onto next zone, etc? We won’t have multiple zones open per pairing?
Andy- That remains the same. We had considered changing that, considering revamping how that works actually, but we decided it would be too radical a departure from the way things currently work and that it may actually having a negative effect on the game for people that were comfortable with the way the campaign progresses, but not happy with the zone locks. So we thought we’d change how zone locking works first, see how successful it is, see how it goes over with the players and then if we need to continue with adjusting the campaign mechanism we’ll go from there. But it’s part our approach incremental changes, it’s how we approach our development. We change things incrementally one step at a time.
Bootae- Regarding the Fortresses and the revamped campaign, is there a planned way they’re coming back into the new system or is it still very much up in the air?
Andy- We have it in our mind yeah, but we’re not set in stone or prepared to talk about their implementation just yet. It’s definitely one of those things on the forefront of what we want to do, the reintroduction of fortresses, however it’s not something we doing right now. That’s not to say the next patch set afterwards wouldn’t reintroduce them. Is that possible? It’s possible if we have all these changes go according to plan, everything works out brilliantly then if something falls into place with the fortresses that allows us to reintroduce them in a way that we think will be fun and dynamic then yes, we’ll move forward on that. So while it continues to be a priority right now, no we don’t have any definite plans.
Bootae- The next bit then for the campaign, the new Skaven zone… How does that fit in? The general idea in the community is about a tunnel system linking up all the zones, is that anywhere near the truth or is it more like a Land of the Dead entry?
Andy- You’ll find out this month.
Bootae- Moving on to Skaven, are Skaven something you can log in and play whenever you want or is there like a gated access of some form?
Andy- It is gated and it ties into the new Skaven area. How exactly it ties into the new area we’re not discussing right now.
Bootae- So will you be able to have both factions playing Skaven at the same time?
Andy- Yes.
Bootae- The four classes mentioned today, are there more to be revealed?
Andy- No, that is it.
Bootae- So no Stormvermin or things like that. It seems like the Skaven are being very much built around being a component of the new siege system.
Andy- The Skaven are there to enhance the ORvR experience. To make ORvR more fun and more compelling.
Bootae- So it’s not a third faction as such as we were thinking before, its more enhancement for the existing factions?
Andy- That’s correct.
Bootae- So Order players can have Skaven fighting alongside them?
Andy- Don’t worry, we got approval from GW (Gamesworkshop) on that.
Bootae- Hah, yeah you know people are gonna go for you on that.
Andy- Well the thing is if you read the Gotrek and Felix novels then there’s actually a point where the Skaven work with Empire. Even though the most recent edition of the Warhammer playbook has grouped them with Destruction, they really are very mercenary.
Bootae- They’re out for themselves.
Andy- Yeah, they’re out for themselves yeah. As long as you have enough warpstone to satisfy their craving, they’ll do whatever they can to get that warpstone. Including stabbing you in the back.
Bootae- So the RvR packs are one thing, but it sounds like from all this that it’s really 1.4 that needs to be in place to enable all of this.
Andy- Right now 1.4 is a component of the RvR packs, I would say that.
Bootae- You’ve talked before about how we’ll be getting these packs more often than a game would usually get full on expansions. So in future are we always going to see a major 1.4 style patch accompanied by a pack? So there will be the free patch and then the extra purchaseable components like the packs alongside that?
Andy- We’re not gonna stop free updates to the game, that’s not gonna stop. There’s always gonna be free updates to the game, we’re always going to be improving content, we’re always going to be making things better and some of that just happens to coincide with the RvR Pack. So yes there will always continue to be free improvements for players, regardless of if they purchase the RvR pack.
Bootae- So this current timing of pack and patch is just a timing thing.
Andy- Yeah, it’s kinda the logistics of the development schedule.
Bootae- PvE pack? Now I don’t give two monkeys about PvE really…
Andy- Neither do we.
Bootae- …but some people will do. So is the future of PvE pretty much out of the window?
Andy- The immediate future. You know, we’ve embraced the fact that we are an RvR game. Some people say it’s niche, some people say its you know, it is what it is, but people play Bioware Mythic games because they like to kill other players. That’s what we’re good at, that’s what we do. We are dedicated to making our RvR experience the best it can be.
Bootae- So thoughts of dungeons and lairs gone?
Andy- No, no, no. There’s actually a lot of lairs that are attached to the RvR lakes. Like the one in Chaos Wastes near the north keep. It’s kinda hard to get there, it’s like a jumping puzzle to get up.
Bootae- Ah yeah like the one in Norsca.
Andy- Personally I would love to see some of the lairs and stuff repurposed into RvR fights, I think that would be very cool.
Bootae- Like the invadeable Land of the Dead style?
Andy- yeah.
Bootae- We were talking earlier about a PQ in tier 1 Orc/Dwarf, where for whatever reason it’s RvR enabled. That’s probably the best PQ in the entire game, but then it doesn’t happen anymore.
Andy- We should have done more of those. We should have continued to build upon the PvP foundation interspersed with the PvE. Unfortunately that one PQ is one of the only places in the game where that happens with a PQ, up until the city revamp of course. So you know, it’s lessons learnt, no development team gets everything right, no development team is perfect. And I know a lot of people like to point at warhammer online and bash warhammer online, it’s the cool fashion. But you know, we’re still here, we’re still going, we’re still developing and delivering a visceral, heart-pounding experience for our players. And you know, our community is right now in a better place than its been in the last 2 years. The players, while they’re critical and while they still let us know what they think, they really do love the game and you can see it, you can see the passion.
People sometimes like to attach the word failure to our game, but you know we are not a failure, we are profitable, we are making money for the studio, we are still developing new content and we’re doing something that a lot of games are afraid to do, you know we’re saying yeah we made a lot of mistakes when we first launched the game and we’re gonna take 12 months, 16 months, we’re gonna take however long it takes to go back and fix these things.
+++++++++++
My recording went a bit dodgy from here and I’ve got a horrible hangover clouding my memory, but I asked a cheeky question about sub numbers and while Andy wouldn’t divulge the numbers, he did confirm that subscription numbers are increasing. We also talked about the amount of people in one zone and Andy mentioned recently Badlands saw over 700 people in one zone, 500 of them attacking a keep. I also learnt a few things that I've been asked not to blog about, but lets just say I'm very positive about the next few months and the future of WAR.
And that was that for the interview, Andy had to head off to do yet another presentation to the masses and I went and joined the mass debate amongst WAR players about all the announcements. I'll post thoughts and stuff over the next few days.
So thanks to Andy for his time, the beers, chicken wings and a bloody comedy gold night.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Hunter's Vale, the top Dog, Lion, Wolf, etc of WAR's PvE
With the Wild Hunt live event the Hunter’s Vale dungeon is once again available in Tier 4. Normally the dungeon is only accessible for Tier 1 characters and I’ve not been in there myself since the last Wild Hunt event a year or so ago. I’ve been in a couple of times this week and I have to say that I think this is probably the best dungeon in WAR. In fact if more were like this then I’d be saying PvE in WAR was pretty damn good, but they’re not and it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, the PvE in WAR is not terrible (as some make out), but it’s not great and is far too glitchy with it's (at times) over complicated bosses and pathing issues. However, Hunter’s Vale is a very noticeable exception and is utterly spot on.
For a start it takes no more than 30 minutes to clear, which in my book is ruddy marvellous. I like a bit of PvE now and again, but I don’t like being stuck in a dungeon for 4 hours. Faster dungeons just put less time pressure on people in so many ways; it’s no big deal if someone has to AFK, less hassle if things go wrong, its less of a rush organising it and is also a lot less of a pain in the arse to fit around real life. So for me, while I do still enjoy big dungeons, given the option, I would much rather have a wider range of short but sweet dungeon instances to choose from.
The boss fights in Hunter’s Vale all have something a little different. They’re certainly not complicated and compared with Tomb of the Vulture Lord they are rather basic, but neither are they all pure tank and spanks. And that’s fine with me. I don’t want to explain tactics for 15 minutes each boss whenever anyone is new to the dungeon, its dull and just time wasting. I hated it in WoW and, well everything bloody well else too. Also in general terms it seems like the more complicated a boss fight is made, the more random, luck or specific class based it becomes. Hunter’s Vale avoids all of this crap and each fight is a quick explain with just the odd thing here and there to watch out for. Perfect.
Visually it’s just so on the money. It’s a really nicely themed and designed dungeon, that despite actually being very linear, it somehow feels a bit wild and larger than it actually is. I particularly like with both Hunter’s and the Lost Vale instances that Mythic have moved well away from the traditional underground or inside building dungeons that so much of WAR and other game features. Actually that’s something I liked about Age of Conan, it has some great looking outdoor “dungeons”.
Mythic for the foreseeable future are very much focussed on RvR and I think that’s a good thing, WAR’s strongest point is that RvR after all, but if Mythic decide to do more PvE one day (which they no doubt will) I would like them to consider Hunter’s Vale as the template. I really do think it’s the best PvE instance in WAR.
PS: The Land of the Dead Lairs are also good examples of decent short burst PvE. I wouldn’t complain about more instanced Lairs either, one day anyway…
For a start it takes no more than 30 minutes to clear, which in my book is ruddy marvellous. I like a bit of PvE now and again, but I don’t like being stuck in a dungeon for 4 hours. Faster dungeons just put less time pressure on people in so many ways; it’s no big deal if someone has to AFK, less hassle if things go wrong, its less of a rush organising it and is also a lot less of a pain in the arse to fit around real life. So for me, while I do still enjoy big dungeons, given the option, I would much rather have a wider range of short but sweet dungeon instances to choose from.
The boss fights in Hunter’s Vale all have something a little different. They’re certainly not complicated and compared with Tomb of the Vulture Lord they are rather basic, but neither are they all pure tank and spanks. And that’s fine with me. I don’t want to explain tactics for 15 minutes each boss whenever anyone is new to the dungeon, its dull and just time wasting. I hated it in WoW and, well everything bloody well else too. Also in general terms it seems like the more complicated a boss fight is made, the more random, luck or specific class based it becomes. Hunter’s Vale avoids all of this crap and each fight is a quick explain with just the odd thing here and there to watch out for. Perfect.
Visually it’s just so on the money. It’s a really nicely themed and designed dungeon, that despite actually being very linear, it somehow feels a bit wild and larger than it actually is. I particularly like with both Hunter’s and the Lost Vale instances that Mythic have moved well away from the traditional underground or inside building dungeons that so much of WAR and other game features. Actually that’s something I liked about Age of Conan, it has some great looking outdoor “dungeons”.
Mythic for the foreseeable future are very much focussed on RvR and I think that’s a good thing, WAR’s strongest point is that RvR after all, but if Mythic decide to do more PvE one day (which they no doubt will) I would like them to consider Hunter’s Vale as the template. I really do think it’s the best PvE instance in WAR.
PS: The Land of the Dead Lairs are also good examples of decent short burst PvE. I wouldn’t complain about more instanced Lairs either, one day anyway…
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Change is as good as a rest (XP?)
Bit slow posting today due to dubious head making me a bit wobbly, so you've probably already heard, but anyway here's today's scoop.
Link to Mythic post about T2-3 RvR changes. And because I'm helpful, here's the info:
++++
We'd like to announce some additional upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. These changes are aimed to improve the ORvR gameplay within Tiers 2 & 3.
"Land of the Dead
Players may no longer be summoned to this zone.
Players must be Rank 32 in order to use the flightmaster to this zone.
Due to the above adjustments, players may now enter the Tomb of the Vulture Lord by interacting with a Window of Perpetuity within the Temple of Ualatp PQ area and are no longer required to progress the PQ to the final Stage. A Window of Perpetuity is only available to those who have previously entered the Tomb of the Vulture Lord.
Tier 2
Plague Rat sightings have been reported within the RvR lakes of Troll Country and Ostland. (Developer Note(s): there have been two encampments added within the RvR lake of fast-spawning Core-con monsters. These encampments are available at all times and grant increased experience.)
Tier 3
Plague Rat sightings have been reported within the RvR lakes of High Pass and Talabecland. (Developer Note(s): there have been three encampments added within the RvR lake. Two of these are filled with fast-spawning Core-con Plague Rats with an occassional Packmaster. Another is filled with Champion-con Plague Rats with an occassional Packmaster. These encampments are available at all times and grant increased experience. There is also a Gutter Runner scout who traverses throughout the entirety of the RvR lake. This Gutter Runner is stealthed but will break upon entering combat. Broadcast messages will be sent to all players within the RvR lake as to where this Gutter Runner has been spotted. The Realm who performs the killing blow (it's important to reiterate that it is just the killing blow) will have all active participants rewarded with Experience, Renown, and Influence equivalent of fully capturing all four Battlefield Objectives from the enemy Realm. The Gutter Runner will respawn somewhere between 30-60 minutes but will not do so if a Keep is currently under attack."
++++
These changes sound good to me. Land of the Dead had made Tier 3 in particular totally pointless, which was a shame, but at the same time it was far too slow to level in. This should address that. It sounds like it will also speed up Tier 2-3 leveling, which is no bad thing obviously.
My only concern is that some folks are seeing this as a sign of Skaven being added as a 3rd NPC controlled faction. That would be a massive mistake and huge missed opportunity. Since launch people have been screaming out for playable Skaven and complaining about RvR being too much RvE. With the city sieges taking us away from their hideous previous RvE style, I really wouldn't want the game to take a step back towards RvE and on an even larger scale than ever before. I play WAR more to fight players, than NPCs.
That said, this could just be teases towards Skaven being introduced as playable, certainly wasting all those career options and buckets of character would seem incredibly stupid. Plus if DAoC expansions are any clue, Mythic have a history of adding lots of new careers and races. But who knows...
So I view this news with both an approving smile and a buttock clenching grimace of concern. I don't want to play PVEhammer.
Link to Mythic post about T2-3 RvR changes. And because I'm helpful, here's the info:
++++
We'd like to announce some additional upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. These changes are aimed to improve the ORvR gameplay within Tiers 2 & 3.
"Land of the Dead
Players may no longer be summoned to this zone.
Players must be Rank 32 in order to use the flightmaster to this zone.
Due to the above adjustments, players may now enter the Tomb of the Vulture Lord by interacting with a Window of Perpetuity within the Temple of Ualatp PQ area and are no longer required to progress the PQ to the final Stage. A Window of Perpetuity is only available to those who have previously entered the Tomb of the Vulture Lord.
Tier 2
Plague Rat sightings have been reported within the RvR lakes of Troll Country and Ostland. (Developer Note(s): there have been two encampments added within the RvR lake of fast-spawning Core-con monsters. These encampments are available at all times and grant increased experience.)
Tier 3
Plague Rat sightings have been reported within the RvR lakes of High Pass and Talabecland. (Developer Note(s): there have been three encampments added within the RvR lake. Two of these are filled with fast-spawning Core-con Plague Rats with an occassional Packmaster. Another is filled with Champion-con Plague Rats with an occassional Packmaster. These encampments are available at all times and grant increased experience. There is also a Gutter Runner scout who traverses throughout the entirety of the RvR lake. This Gutter Runner is stealthed but will break upon entering combat. Broadcast messages will be sent to all players within the RvR lake as to where this Gutter Runner has been spotted. The Realm who performs the killing blow (it's important to reiterate that it is just the killing blow) will have all active participants rewarded with Experience, Renown, and Influence equivalent of fully capturing all four Battlefield Objectives from the enemy Realm. The Gutter Runner will respawn somewhere between 30-60 minutes but will not do so if a Keep is currently under attack."
++++
These changes sound good to me. Land of the Dead had made Tier 3 in particular totally pointless, which was a shame, but at the same time it was far too slow to level in. This should address that. It sounds like it will also speed up Tier 2-3 leveling, which is no bad thing obviously.
My only concern is that some folks are seeing this as a sign of Skaven being added as a 3rd NPC controlled faction. That would be a massive mistake and huge missed opportunity. Since launch people have been screaming out for playable Skaven and complaining about RvR being too much RvE. With the city sieges taking us away from their hideous previous RvE style, I really wouldn't want the game to take a step back towards RvE and on an even larger scale than ever before. I play WAR more to fight players, than NPCs.
That said, this could just be teases towards Skaven being introduced as playable, certainly wasting all those career options and buckets of character would seem incredibly stupid. Plus if DAoC expansions are any clue, Mythic have a history of adding lots of new careers and races. But who knows...
So I view this news with both an approving smile and a buttock clenching grimace of concern. I don't want to play PVEhammer.
Sunday, 27 June 2010
WAR's Lost Lands - Chaos Wastes
I wrote recently about my thoughts on how Mythic should be “Changing Tier 4 zones from OK to awesome”. I was suggesting not only opening up the zones to become full oRvR enabled, but also changing all the existing quality scenery from completely unused Public Quests into PvP themed objectives or events. This would give the rest of the zones more purpose, would spread the combat out better and help to reduce lag, as well as give alternatives to the constant and oh so bloody tedious zerging. In the post I included some screenshots of some of the awesome wasted scenery from Kadrin Valley’s PvE areas, which after posting got me thinking a bit more about how much of the game people just don’t get to see and what amazing potential there is for RvR if those areas lost the PQs and gained some PvP hotness.
As a result, I had a chat with Biggsie and we decided that we would go exploring, taking nothing but our heavily armoured (or mutated in his case) arses and a camera (AKA printscreen) across the Tier 4 landscape on a journey of visual stimulation. As we travel the lands, we’re going to post our findings between our two blogs with a series of articles showing some of the cool scenery and potential for RvR goodness that we encounter. This includes sneaking around the Order PvE zones, so certainly for me I’ve found things I’d never seen before. Didn’t find any players in the PvE zones mind you! :P
I’m starting off with the Chaos Wastes and Biggsie is visiting Reikland which he'll be posting very soon, so keep an eye on his blog. The Chaos Wastes are a mutated and rather freaky land, that’s also very, very blue. In fact it’s safe to say that this is a landscape that went down to the Crossroads and fell down on its knees.
As a result, I had a chat with Biggsie and we decided that we would go exploring, taking nothing but our heavily armoured (or mutated in his case) arses and a camera (AKA printscreen) across the Tier 4 landscape on a journey of visual stimulation. As we travel the lands, we’re going to post our findings between our two blogs with a series of articles showing some of the cool scenery and potential for RvR goodness that we encounter. This includes sneaking around the Order PvE zones, so certainly for me I’ve found things I’d never seen before. Didn’t find any players in the PvE zones mind you! :P
I’m starting off with the Chaos Wastes and Biggsie is visiting Reikland which he'll be posting very soon, so keep an eye on his blog. The Chaos Wastes are a mutated and rather freaky land, that’s also very, very blue. In fact it’s safe to say that this is a landscape that went down to the Crossroads and fell down on its knees.
This is how RvR is limited at the moment. Note it's a very open zone, so within the red boundary you are able to roam all over.
And this.. is what it could be like.. A huge zone with an incredible amount of freedom. I've marked the roads, but they're really not very restrictive in the Chaos Wastes. Unlike my first post I've not marked where I think other objectives should be, simply because there are just so many options. Basically anything marked with a Public Quest marker, camp or scenery will do!
Click images for the full size screenshot.
There are load sof strange looking castles, towers and ruins scattered around. They could be used for something like the keeps we get in RvR, standard objectives, or for RvR driven events akin to the new city siege. Imagination is the only limit. Posh door on this one below.
The Wastes are covered in these thorn bushes gone mad, they're a real wasted opportunity. You could have some crazy fighting amongst them, with line of sight being broken and chasing people through a forest of thorns.
I love the look of these towers. What a waste of a great bit of scenery! By the way, check out the snowflakes... Chaos Stars! Very cool.
All over the Chaos Wastes you'll find this huge metal circles, I'm not sure if they're meant to be man made or if it's the Chaos Gods chucking weirdness around. Not got any PvP use springing to mind, but they look great. ;)
This temple (?) is on the Order side, but you can see it for miles around. It is absolutely huge, and... uhm empty?
Yup, empty! Well apart from like 3 NPCs. Surely we should be fighting in there no?
It's worth a third screenshot, check out all the detail in the walls. All this effort and most people will probably never go in there,
I found this like field of frozen or petrified bodies. I've no idea what it's about, but it was a pain to move through. Perhaps getting stuck here would be too much of a headache in PvP. Or maybe it could be the point of it...
Looks like the Maw of Madness scenario. Like the thorn forests, this is another bit of terrain that could be fun to fight in. We just need a reason to do so.
Strange looking tunnel...
Teeth???
No idea what this once was, it's dead now anyway. I suspect it was angry when alive.
Another of those great looking towers. Another opportunity.
This one is the first of the towers I pictured above, obviously from a distance. The water you can see, some of it is frozen, some not, but I swear it changes. Either that or I just got confused. Imagine that though, fighting in a zone where the water is sometimes solid...
And here concludes my little tour of the Chaos Wastes. I'm sure some people will have seen all of these areas before. However if you're started the game after Land of the Dead was launched then it's quite likely you leveled from 25-40 there and/or the RvR lakes, in which case you had no reason to visit any of these places. Which I think is a shame.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
The impact of 1.3.4 and the great carrot problem
Now that 1.3.4 has had a little while to bed in, I think it’s about time I posted about what it has meant for WAR on my Karak Norn EU server.
Unless there’s an organised king push on (which is about 3 nights a week) the RvR lakes are very, very quiet. The solo and small-scale roaming scene is almost non-existent, there seems to either be Order in zergs or no Order at all. My guild has a lot of solo and small group roamers, it’s something we’ve always done and in the past more often than not you can find plenty of fighting. Alas, everyone is complaining about how hard it is now to just find an enemy to fight. Even the player designated duelling area is empty. Last night myself and 2 guildies spent about 2 hours trying to find people to fight and only saw 4 Order roaming about, that is other than a 2+ group warband trying to lock zones. Though even they decided to guard their warcamp’s mailbox after the 3 of us with a handful of other Destruction (and in total we were still outnumbered) killed them once... I’m not one that normally flames my opponents, but sorry guys, that was just pathetic.
The nights where Order are on a push for IC are different and at those times there are plenty of enemy players to fight in the RvR lakes, same as ever really. It’s zergy of course, particularly when Destruction warbands have turned up to fight too, but it shows there’s still plenty of people active. Also there’s some smaller fighting to be had around the edges on these occasions, its not all zerg. Damn shame this just isn’t regular right now. Oh and I’m not blaming Order for this, Destruction are just as bad with their regular as clockwork morning King raids. It’s a bit like people have decided to let the enemy kill the king on certain days, especially since it gives you underdog points regardless if you are actually an underdog, it’s just convenient.
On the other hand, our people doing regular scenario groups are really liking this patch. Scenarios pop almost instantly and there are plenty of great fights to be had. Despite earlier concerns, pre-mades are not dominating any more than they were before, I’ve been in a great many successful PUGs (randomly formed Pick Up Groups) and a just as many crap ones. When doing pre-mades I’ve won far, far more than I’ve lost and I imagine this is the same for most guilds doing pre-made scenario groups. Simply because so many people are doing scenarios that you’re going to go up against a lot of PUGs and players less experienced in scenarios. Pre-made vs Pre-made can go either way, but is often defined by who is in your side’s second group. Poor quality comrades against quality opposition can easily lead to poor results.
For me the improved scenarios are of course a positive, but the reduction in oRvR is a huge negative. However this is NOT Mythic’s fault as such. It’s down to the player base choosing to do scenarios instead of open RvR. They could choose to do oRvR normally, instead of only trying to PvE zones down quickly when there’s King loot to be had. It’s people’s materialistic thirst for shiny new pixels grabbing them by the knackers and creating a temporary obsession for scenarios. Just like when Land of the Dead was released, until the novelty wears off it turns the normal oRvR lakes into unpopulated deserts. This isn’t a phenomenon specific to WAR, remember the impact of Arena weapons in World of Warcraft for example, but in WAR it does have more pronounced effects because the game is utterly reliant on it’s community to function. However the novelty isn’t wearing off quite as quickly as I would have hoped. People are not showing signs of returning to regular oRvR just yet.
That’s not to say this situation is entirely down to the player base, because it quite simply isn’t. You have to look at the bigger picture and ask why people are quite so obsessed with the new scenario system. Obviously it’s the loot, but it’s not necessarily because of the quality of the items or a must have uber item X, Y & Z thing. For many players the new items are more of a sideways progression, they give options rather than any huge increase in power. They also take a lot of time to get, unless you dedicate your entire gaming time to doing scenarios. So we have items that take a lot of time to get and for a great many players are not that much of an upgrade (if at all), in which case why the obsessive scenario farming? It’s because they’ve reached the end of the stick and eaten all the carrots.
So many players are in the 70-80 renown bracket now that they’ve more than likely got everything they want and have run out of things to work towards. If you’ve got full Sovereign and/or Tyrant, got the glyphs and fancy weapons, you’ve exhausted your character’s progression options. Which only leaves you with scenarios and the new loot. I can see it in my future with my Chosen, I’ve got the Tyrant Chest and cloak to get, then I just need a few more funery masks to get the rest of the Tyrant drops. Now that I’m doing Tomb of the Vulture Lord regularly again, that isn’t far away. I don’t have any Sovereign armour, but this is actually by choice as I dont go on my guild's king farming warbands, because I don’t like the Sov graphics and don’t need the stats. We’re also almost at the point of downing the Colossus as a guild, so I’ll be able to farm that should I want to. Which means all that will be left for me are scenario items. Now I’ll still play for the fighting alone and I’m a filthy altoholic anyway, but long term MMO experience tells us most people aren’t like that. They get all the gear, quit the game and go off in search of achievements elsewhere.
And this I think is the biggest impact of 1.3.4. It is a good patch, it has added to and improved the game, but more than anything it has highlighted how long term WAR gamers desperately need real new content. Mythic need to add a new dungeon, a new zone, whatever, just more things of real substance. We need things to achieve and not Blizzard style earn 5 million gold crap by the way... ugh
Mythic’s supply of carrots is dwindling. If 1.3.5 really does fix the city siege crap but it doesnt bring new carrots as well, will it be enough to get people out of scenarios and back out in oRvR?
I sure hope so.
Unless there’s an organised king push on (which is about 3 nights a week) the RvR lakes are very, very quiet. The solo and small-scale roaming scene is almost non-existent, there seems to either be Order in zergs or no Order at all. My guild has a lot of solo and small group roamers, it’s something we’ve always done and in the past more often than not you can find plenty of fighting. Alas, everyone is complaining about how hard it is now to just find an enemy to fight. Even the player designated duelling area is empty. Last night myself and 2 guildies spent about 2 hours trying to find people to fight and only saw 4 Order roaming about, that is other than a 2+ group warband trying to lock zones. Though even they decided to guard their warcamp’s mailbox after the 3 of us with a handful of other Destruction (and in total we were still outnumbered) killed them once... I’m not one that normally flames my opponents, but sorry guys, that was just pathetic.
The nights where Order are on a push for IC are different and at those times there are plenty of enemy players to fight in the RvR lakes, same as ever really. It’s zergy of course, particularly when Destruction warbands have turned up to fight too, but it shows there’s still plenty of people active. Also there’s some smaller fighting to be had around the edges on these occasions, its not all zerg. Damn shame this just isn’t regular right now. Oh and I’m not blaming Order for this, Destruction are just as bad with their regular as clockwork morning King raids. It’s a bit like people have decided to let the enemy kill the king on certain days, especially since it gives you underdog points regardless if you are actually an underdog, it’s just convenient.
On the other hand, our people doing regular scenario groups are really liking this patch. Scenarios pop almost instantly and there are plenty of great fights to be had. Despite earlier concerns, pre-mades are not dominating any more than they were before, I’ve been in a great many successful PUGs (randomly formed Pick Up Groups) and a just as many crap ones. When doing pre-mades I’ve won far, far more than I’ve lost and I imagine this is the same for most guilds doing pre-made scenario groups. Simply because so many people are doing scenarios that you’re going to go up against a lot of PUGs and players less experienced in scenarios. Pre-made vs Pre-made can go either way, but is often defined by who is in your side’s second group. Poor quality comrades against quality opposition can easily lead to poor results.
For me the improved scenarios are of course a positive, but the reduction in oRvR is a huge negative. However this is NOT Mythic’s fault as such. It’s down to the player base choosing to do scenarios instead of open RvR. They could choose to do oRvR normally, instead of only trying to PvE zones down quickly when there’s King loot to be had. It’s people’s materialistic thirst for shiny new pixels grabbing them by the knackers and creating a temporary obsession for scenarios. Just like when Land of the Dead was released, until the novelty wears off it turns the normal oRvR lakes into unpopulated deserts. This isn’t a phenomenon specific to WAR, remember the impact of Arena weapons in World of Warcraft for example, but in WAR it does have more pronounced effects because the game is utterly reliant on it’s community to function. However the novelty isn’t wearing off quite as quickly as I would have hoped. People are not showing signs of returning to regular oRvR just yet.
That’s not to say this situation is entirely down to the player base, because it quite simply isn’t. You have to look at the bigger picture and ask why people are quite so obsessed with the new scenario system. Obviously it’s the loot, but it’s not necessarily because of the quality of the items or a must have uber item X, Y & Z thing. For many players the new items are more of a sideways progression, they give options rather than any huge increase in power. They also take a lot of time to get, unless you dedicate your entire gaming time to doing scenarios. So we have items that take a lot of time to get and for a great many players are not that much of an upgrade (if at all), in which case why the obsessive scenario farming? It’s because they’ve reached the end of the stick and eaten all the carrots.
So many players are in the 70-80 renown bracket now that they’ve more than likely got everything they want and have run out of things to work towards. If you’ve got full Sovereign and/or Tyrant, got the glyphs and fancy weapons, you’ve exhausted your character’s progression options. Which only leaves you with scenarios and the new loot. I can see it in my future with my Chosen, I’ve got the Tyrant Chest and cloak to get, then I just need a few more funery masks to get the rest of the Tyrant drops. Now that I’m doing Tomb of the Vulture Lord regularly again, that isn’t far away. I don’t have any Sovereign armour, but this is actually by choice as I dont go on my guild's king farming warbands, because I don’t like the Sov graphics and don’t need the stats. We’re also almost at the point of downing the Colossus as a guild, so I’ll be able to farm that should I want to. Which means all that will be left for me are scenario items. Now I’ll still play for the fighting alone and I’m a filthy altoholic anyway, but long term MMO experience tells us most people aren’t like that. They get all the gear, quit the game and go off in search of achievements elsewhere.
And this I think is the biggest impact of 1.3.4. It is a good patch, it has added to and improved the game, but more than anything it has highlighted how long term WAR gamers desperately need real new content. Mythic need to add a new dungeon, a new zone, whatever, just more things of real substance. We need things to achieve and not Blizzard style earn 5 million gold crap by the way... ugh
Mythic’s supply of carrots is dwindling. If 1.3.5 really does fix the city siege crap but it doesnt bring new carrots as well, will it be enough to get people out of scenarios and back out in oRvR?
I sure hope so.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Lair of the MissedOpportunityThatCanEasilyBeSortedOut Beastie
Tonight I logged in to WAR and shock bloody horror, omfg I can’t believe it, there was…. A city siege!
/sarcasm off
It was the Inevitable City under siege, which isn’t exactly tempting to take part in anymore. Most people will have gathered full Invader long ago, and we’ve done the same city fight many, maaaaaaany times before, so it’s not providing much in the way of entertainment or pixel rewards. Also having arrived after the start, it means I could either join a warband already inside, queue hoping to get into a decent competitive instance (and then of course run out of time), or join solo and instantly get a spot in one of the instances everyone is quitting because of uber Order bombgroups/whatever maiming everyone. Plus, thanks to the Underdog system you’re actually better off NOT defending your city, as there’s no downside to it being captured and you’ll actually get a benefit in the form of underdog points, which then make it easier for people to go farm their PvE Sovereign at stupid o’clock in the morning. Screw everything to do with this tbh. As you can probably tell, I’m not bothering with cities at the moment.
Aaaaaanyways, I was relieved and slightly bemused to discover a couple of guild groups doing a tour of the game’s Lairs. It’s something we’ve not done in a looooooooong time, like 8 months or something… I like the basic concept of WAR’s Lairs, I really, really do, but the implementation is flawed. The reason people only visit them once in a blue moon is that other than to get tome unlocks or simply have a butchers, there’s absolutely no reason to do any Lairs outside Land of the Dead. The loot drops are utter crap and the fights aren’t exactly challenging. It’s a real shame because many of the Lairs are really well designed graphically, with things like hidden caves, demonic prisons and Super Mario style jumping puzzles.
The frustrating thing is it wouldn’t take much for Lairs to be much more desirable places to visit. Mythic could make the loot actually relevant, rather than mere vendor trash, which would help but surely it wouldn’t be hard to spice them up with rewards that have some character. Special Awesome looking trophies, posh cloaks, funky titles and decent pocket items.
Before WAR's launch when hearing about the "Lairs", I had images of loads of classic Onyxia style fights. Awesome PvE moments that would complement the RvR. That was my favourite thing about WoW, the Onyxia instance. I bloody loved the whole concept of Onyxia's Lair, a dark and smoky cavern with just 2 or 3 trash pulls and then a huuuuuuge dragon to fight. Unfortunately what we got in WAR just doesn’t come close and now would be almost impossible to attain, but perhaps with a little tinkering WAR’s Lairs could still be something we might actually do more than, well… more than once a sodding year.
/sarcasm off
It was the Inevitable City under siege, which isn’t exactly tempting to take part in anymore. Most people will have gathered full Invader long ago, and we’ve done the same city fight many, maaaaaaany times before, so it’s not providing much in the way of entertainment or pixel rewards. Also having arrived after the start, it means I could either join a warband already inside, queue hoping to get into a decent competitive instance (and then of course run out of time), or join solo and instantly get a spot in one of the instances everyone is quitting because of uber Order bombgroups/whatever maiming everyone. Plus, thanks to the Underdog system you’re actually better off NOT defending your city, as there’s no downside to it being captured and you’ll actually get a benefit in the form of underdog points, which then make it easier for people to go farm their PvE Sovereign at stupid o’clock in the morning. Screw everything to do with this tbh. As you can probably tell, I’m not bothering with cities at the moment.
Aaaaaanyways, I was relieved and slightly bemused to discover a couple of guild groups doing a tour of the game’s Lairs. It’s something we’ve not done in a looooooooong time, like 8 months or something… I like the basic concept of WAR’s Lairs, I really, really do, but the implementation is flawed. The reason people only visit them once in a blue moon is that other than to get tome unlocks or simply have a butchers, there’s absolutely no reason to do any Lairs outside Land of the Dead. The loot drops are utter crap and the fights aren’t exactly challenging. It’s a real shame because many of the Lairs are really well designed graphically, with things like hidden caves, demonic prisons and Super Mario style jumping puzzles.
The frustrating thing is it wouldn’t take much for Lairs to be much more desirable places to visit. Mythic could make the loot actually relevant, rather than mere vendor trash, which would help but surely it wouldn’t be hard to spice them up with rewards that have some character. Special Awesome looking trophies, posh cloaks, funky titles and decent pocket items.
Before WAR's launch when hearing about the "Lairs", I had images of loads of classic Onyxia style fights. Awesome PvE moments that would complement the RvR. That was my favourite thing about WoW, the Onyxia instance. I bloody loved the whole concept of Onyxia's Lair, a dark and smoky cavern with just 2 or 3 trash pulls and then a huuuuuuge dragon to fight. Unfortunately what we got in WAR just doesn’t come close and now would be almost impossible to attain, but perhaps with a little tinkering WAR’s Lairs could still be something we might actually do more than, well… more than once a sodding year.
Monday, 24 August 2009
Does WAR need more PVE instances?
Lately I’ve seen a few people say it does. At first this puzzled me greatly, I mean come on, this is meant to be an RvR game, surely it needs more RvR? But after pondering on it a bit, I think I see where they’re coming from. Let’s say you’ve cleared Lost Vale earlier this week, when you log in and for whatever reason there’s no decent RvR going on. The problem you now face is that there’s not that much else to do.
There is Tomb of the Vulture Lord (and LotD Lairs), but that’s not a dungeon you can always get in and it has the odd issue that is putting some people off going regularly (including me), but that’s a topic for another post. For now I’ll “just” say that access to Land of the Dead isn’t always available, the main dungeon itself is tricky enough to not be somewhere you can easily take random groups to, the scorpion boss fight is ridiculously badly implemented and the place has a certain burning irritation…
Out in the rest of Tier 4 unless you’re grinding XP, you’ll only do each PQ once if at all, for the sake of seeing them perhaps. There are the lower dungeons for taking alts and new people through, but there’s nothing relevant to most of our main characters. In the modern MMO we don’t do dungeons just for fun, we do them for fun AND loot. EQ/WoW turned us into materialistic bastards, whilst we still want to have fun; the desire for shinies is often the driving factor. If you’ve cleared a dungeon or PQ once, unless there’s loot to be had, why bother going again? You’ve already met the challenge and beaten it to death with it’s own shoe. MMO PvE just isn’t that much fun on its own. To have any interest in doing something more than once, for us to want to farm it, then it needs to have incentives, be they XP, cash or loot.
Anyways, back on topic and now apologies for another Warcraft comparison, but it’s easy to do so meh :P If you compare WAR’s end game dungeons with WoW’s vanilla dungeons (prior to The Burning Crusade expansion) it looks like this:
WAR (6)
Bastion Stair
Bloodwrought Enclave
Bilerot Burrow
Lost Vale (3 wings)
LotD Lairs (think its fair to group these as one)
Tomb of the Vulture Lord
WoW (12)
Blackrock Depths
Scholomance
Stratholme
Dire Maul (3 wings)
Lower Blackrock Spire 10-man raid
Upper Blackrock Spire 10-man raid
Molten Core 40-man raid
Onyxia 40-man raid
Blackwing Lair 40-man raid
Zul Gurub 20-man raid
Ahn Quiarajthingy 20-man raid
Other Ahn Quiarajthingy 40-man raid
Obviously within those dungeons there are paths of progression, but in WoW there are a lot more options for your progression. It doesn’t matter that you were locked out of Molten Core; you could still do Onyxia or Zul Gurub, etc instead. In WAR there are other things like the King fights or the instances in city sieges, but they’re not things you can just arrange to do on any given night, where as with WoW you free to do stuff anytime. Clearly then, at present WAR doesn’t have anywhere near this PvE luxury, which is understandable as an RvR focused game, but if people are asking for more PvE how can this be addressed?
There are 2 basic solutions:
1). Add more instanced dungeons. For me the danger here is it makes a comparison between WoW and WAR’s PvE more relevant. Unless something dramatic happens with Mythic’s bug squashing, this comparison is one that WAR will lose every time.
2). Give us new and improved RvR options. Make tier 4 zones fully RvR, give us more objectives, open field scenarios, RvR PQs, non-instanced RvR enabled dungeons, open-RvR scenarios, fortresses that don’t suck, better (and actually relevant) influence rewards, more siege weapons and destructible walls. Get the game to a point where there’s so much awesome RvR going on that people don’t have time or a care for PvE.
For me it’s option 2 all the way. I like RvR in WAR now, despite the odd (heh) problem its PvP is still miles ahead of most MMOs, but we all know it could be so much more. Mythic are moving in the right direction here with the changes to city sieges and fortresses (whatever they’re doing with fortresses must be better than the current rubbish), so there’s potential.
There is Tomb of the Vulture Lord (and LotD Lairs), but that’s not a dungeon you can always get in and it has the odd issue that is putting some people off going regularly (including me), but that’s a topic for another post. For now I’ll “just” say that access to Land of the Dead isn’t always available, the main dungeon itself is tricky enough to not be somewhere you can easily take random groups to, the scorpion boss fight is ridiculously badly implemented and the place has a certain burning irritation…
Out in the rest of Tier 4 unless you’re grinding XP, you’ll only do each PQ once if at all, for the sake of seeing them perhaps. There are the lower dungeons for taking alts and new people through, but there’s nothing relevant to most of our main characters. In the modern MMO we don’t do dungeons just for fun, we do them for fun AND loot. EQ/WoW turned us into materialistic bastards, whilst we still want to have fun; the desire for shinies is often the driving factor. If you’ve cleared a dungeon or PQ once, unless there’s loot to be had, why bother going again? You’ve already met the challenge and beaten it to death with it’s own shoe. MMO PvE just isn’t that much fun on its own. To have any interest in doing something more than once, for us to want to farm it, then it needs to have incentives, be they XP, cash or loot.
Anyways, back on topic and now apologies for another Warcraft comparison, but it’s easy to do so meh :P If you compare WAR’s end game dungeons with WoW’s vanilla dungeons (prior to The Burning Crusade expansion) it looks like this:
WAR (6)
Bastion Stair
Bloodwrought Enclave
Bilerot Burrow
Lost Vale (3 wings)
LotD Lairs (think its fair to group these as one)
Tomb of the Vulture Lord
WoW (12)
Blackrock Depths
Scholomance
Stratholme
Dire Maul (3 wings)
Lower Blackrock Spire 10-man raid
Upper Blackrock Spire 10-man raid
Molten Core 40-man raid
Onyxia 40-man raid
Blackwing Lair 40-man raid
Zul Gurub 20-man raid
Ahn Quiarajthingy 20-man raid
Other Ahn Quiarajthingy 40-man raid
Obviously within those dungeons there are paths of progression, but in WoW there are a lot more options for your progression. It doesn’t matter that you were locked out of Molten Core; you could still do Onyxia or Zul Gurub, etc instead. In WAR there are other things like the King fights or the instances in city sieges, but they’re not things you can just arrange to do on any given night, where as with WoW you free to do stuff anytime. Clearly then, at present WAR doesn’t have anywhere near this PvE luxury, which is understandable as an RvR focused game, but if people are asking for more PvE how can this be addressed?
There are 2 basic solutions:
1). Add more instanced dungeons. For me the danger here is it makes a comparison between WoW and WAR’s PvE more relevant. Unless something dramatic happens with Mythic’s bug squashing, this comparison is one that WAR will lose every time.
2). Give us new and improved RvR options. Make tier 4 zones fully RvR, give us more objectives, open field scenarios, RvR PQs, non-instanced RvR enabled dungeons, open-RvR scenarios, fortresses that don’t suck, better (and actually relevant) influence rewards, more siege weapons and destructible walls. Get the game to a point where there’s so much awesome RvR going on that people don’t have time or a care for PvE.
For me it’s option 2 all the way. I like RvR in WAR now, despite the odd (heh) problem its PvP is still miles ahead of most MMOs, but we all know it could be so much more. Mythic are moving in the right direction here with the changes to city sieges and fortresses (whatever they’re doing with fortresses must be better than the current rubbish), so there’s potential.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
Being saved to instances in WAR needs fixing
...because at the moment it's a bit rubbish and either broken or just badly implemented.
You get half way through Lost Vale, but with a bit of bad luck and a bugged boss, time runs out. No problem! We're all saved to the instance, so we'll just continue on Sunday we say. Sunday arrives, but one of our guys can't get online due to RL stuff. Which means, no continuing LV for anyone, because with the stupid system in WAR you can't swap people out and save their replacement to your instance. Why are people punished if a guildie is ill or something?
In fact I've not been able to see the last wing of LV yet. Due to regular bad luck both in game and with the effects of real life, everytime we arrange a second night something goes wrong.
Really REALLY bloody annoying.
Why didn't they just copy Blizzard's perfectly fine system for being saved to instances?
Mythic, please, please change this ASAP.
[update 1]
Annnnnnd while I'm here. God I hate run backs after a death in dungeons. Mythic you had a great idea in LV with those quest giver ghost things that spawn, you know the ones where you can remove your res sickness debuff. Why can't we also res at them when releasing? 5-10 minutes of running back is not fun :P
[update 2]
Ok lol, I got into the middle of LV tonight. :) My point still stands though.
You get half way through Lost Vale, but with a bit of bad luck and a bugged boss, time runs out. No problem! We're all saved to the instance, so we'll just continue on Sunday we say. Sunday arrives, but one of our guys can't get online due to RL stuff. Which means, no continuing LV for anyone, because with the stupid system in WAR you can't swap people out and save their replacement to your instance. Why are people punished if a guildie is ill or something?
In fact I've not been able to see the last wing of LV yet. Due to regular bad luck both in game and with the effects of real life, everytime we arrange a second night something goes wrong.
Really REALLY bloody annoying.
Why didn't they just copy Blizzard's perfectly fine system for being saved to instances?
Mythic, please, please change this ASAP.
[update 1]
Annnnnnd while I'm here. God I hate run backs after a death in dungeons. Mythic you had a great idea in LV with those quest giver ghost things that spawn, you know the ones where you can remove your res sickness debuff. Why can't we also res at them when releasing? 5-10 minutes of running back is not fun :P
[update 2]
Ok lol, I got into the middle of LV tonight. :) My point still stands though.
Monday, 12 January 2009
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...
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...
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About Me
- Bootae
- Half man half pixel. Music obsessive, likes a drink, occasional bastard.