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?

My week in WAR

Day 1
Log in to one of my tier 4 characters.
City siege…
I log off and go play a tier 3 alt.
 
Day 2
Log in to one of my tier 4 characters.
City siege…
I log off and go play a tier 3 alt.
 
Day 3
Log in to one of my tier 4 characters.
City siege…
I log off, but I’m a bit bored of tier 3 and go play Star Trek Online.
 
Day 4
Log in to one of my tier 4 characters.
City siege…
I log off and go play Star Trek Online.
 
Day 5
I log in to Star Trek Online.
 
Day 6
I log in to Star Trek Online.
 
Day 7
Log in to one of my tier 4 characters.
City siege…
I log off and go play Star Trek Online.
 
I am so sick of city sieges. I’m not interested in the loot or the buggy/boring PvE. I’m not interested in the empty instances and I’m sure as hell not interested in the instances where a chain of players are quitting rather than fight full premade warbands, which of course leaves those of us that stay in with no chance at all.
 
The next patch might mean when the city is captured I can go find some oRvR, but as most sieges don’t go beyond the contested stage, most times I log in there will still be an hour and half of tedious crap. I’m utterly bored of it now.
 
Frustrating thing for me is the week before I was having a really good time in WAR, but this week has been hideous.

Mythic respond to player concerns regarding scenario changes

Here's the link. And by the power of copy/paste, here's what Andy Belford has said:

First off, thanks to everyone for their continued constructive feedback. We appreciate all of our players who involve themselves in the testing process, both on the PTS and in the forums.


Based on the feedback we've received, both here on the North American forums and on the official EU Forums and through feedback submitted using the in-game tool, we are going to be reevaluating and adjusting our current plans for Scenario structure in 1.3.4. While the plan is still to streamline the Scenario system we are going to go back to the whiteboard on how we accomplish this.

Our intent is still to remove some of the less utilized, lesser played and downright less enjoyable Scenarios and to make room for some of the more played Scenarios from lower tiers. We'll speak more to our plans sometime early next week and be sure to preview what we've come up with at a Mass PTS Playtest as well (be sure to keep your eyes on the Herald for more details regarding that )

So thank you for your continued feedback, thank you for caring so much about WAR and rest assured that your voice is being heard, loud and clear.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andy Belford
Community Coordinator
Mythic Entertainment
Nerf Lizards
 
Good reply. Proof will be in the pudding of course, so now we wait and see what they do.

Inside information from the WAR Bureau - Black Orcs to remain ickle

OK it's not exactly devestating news, but it's a shame to hear Black Orcs won't be getting made bigger :(

It's a shame why? Well, if you're a Warhammer Lore Whore™ like me, then you'll know that Black Orcs are meant to be the biggest, meanest Orcs about. Certainly bigger than mere Choppas... Which just isn't the case in Warhammer Online. If Blorcs also looked like the big nasty buggers they're meant to be, perhaps more people would still be playing them. Actually, maybe that and if their mechanic didn't suck so badly that the class becomes unplayable with even the slighest bit of lag...

Annnnyways, this isn't something that's high on my personal "what Mythic should be doing" priority list, but it's a pity none the less.

Gaarawarr has pics of the new weapons

He's quick of the mark that one. Go check out his post here.

Some of the weps look very nice indeed...

WAR's 1.3.4 patch notes and a request for Mythic (updated post)

[updated... ]


Hang on a minute! Its only on seeing Grimnirs post that it actually sunk in quite how much has been removed.
75% of the scenarios gone... Bloody hell. For some reason I was only thinking it was a handfull.
OK. That is mental, bonkers, waaaay too far and I can't defend or be positive about that. Wish I'd pondered on this more before posting tbh, because this post looks stupid now, but hey, such is life. Consider everything highlighted in orange, as dubious opinion that I should have thought about more, because I was clearly talking utter bollocks. Everything else still stands mind you.

PS doh and sorry for editing a post after someone commented, bad form.

+++++++++++++++
Mythic have released the 1.3.4 patch notes which you can read here.

There's not really much we didn't know about already, other than a few tweaks and the final verdict on what scenarios got removed. The bolster changes are sensible, the campaign changes mean I will actually have something to do when a city gets captured and I like the scenarios we're getting in Tier 4. Plus with the new items to earn through scenarios, there's a new carrot for many players to chase after. So all in all, I'm pretty happy with this patch, though as I’ve said before I don’t think we’ll see the real impact until it goes live.


However...

Whilst I believe this patch will be a good one for those of us still playing the game, it also provides large calibre ammunition for the people that want to slag WAR off.

Simply because this patch is removing a lot of content, yet not (to the outsider at least) introducing much in return. When you combine this with Mythic’s complete failure to give us any teasers or news of any serious new content (sorry Mythic, but the Scurvy Dogs scenario barely qualifies), it’s easy for people to suggest the game is stagnating, pottering along and merely tinkering with existing content.

I, like many people playing the game, will understand and appreciate why Mythic are removing this content, as it will focus us into the better and more enjoyable scenarios. Problem is, if Mythic continue this silence regarding true new content, i.e. live or paid expansions, and we still keep getting patches that just tinker with, or remove, existing conent, then even people like me will start to lose the faith.

For some bizarre reason I still believe Mythic have major new content in the pipeline, but right now they are giving me absolutely zero to base that belief on. Which to be honest is making me feel a touch uncomfortable. If I want to post about WAR's future I have to quite literally make crap up. Vague twitter comments once in a blue moon are rubbish. Seriously chaps, I have nothing to go on.

So OI MYTHIC! Stop buggering about and give us bloggers something interesting to chew on. Your game’s community need more than just blind hope.

STO - Star Trek Offline

Beta is over. It's headstart time, but it seems Cryptic just simply aren't prepared. At first I wasn't that bothered about the fact they did a server maintenance in the middle of the day at the weekend, it's a US game so their timezones will get preference, 'tis the nature of things. However since the server also goes down without any warning for hours all the bloody time, it's a tad annoying. If your decision to pre-order was influenced by getting a headstart code, it would be nice if it was actually possible to play the game with any reliability during said headstart .

Of course the MMO veteran in me says "Oh what shock horror! A MMO having shitty server stability at launch". But seriously, we've been cutting developers slack because it's an MMO for years now. It's wearing a bit thin.

• Will any MMO developer ever learn from the past?
• Did Cryptic really not understand how popular an MMO with the Star Trek IP would be?
• Do they not actually know how many headstart codes they created?
• We've had queues to log in, many server crashes, restarts and emergency maintenances just during the headstart. Do Cryptic really think they can sort this out before this week's launch?

Which leads me to ask...
Q) Is there any chance of a smooth retail launch?
A) None what so ever. Which is a shame considering it's a pretty solid game.

 However, when the game is actually online, it's been a generally enjoyable experience. Improving dramatically as you get your first proper ship choice. I've gone with a Science ship, sorta debuff/healy/buff/funky thing.

Oh... and I heard millions of Role Players suddenly cry out in terror. Only to be suddenly silenced by uberness. Doh wrong IP... Anyway, the chap below amused me. You could almost hear the intake of breath from the RPers (of which STO has many).