Warhammer Woes at 60 Days
I feel compelled to do another installment here on how Warhammer online is progressing a little passed the 60 day mark of going live. Those of you who have followed my writing on MMORPG.com and MMOCrunch may remember that I wrote my review of the game right before launch, and at the 30 day mark I wrote about the Top 5 Issues with the game. Now past 60 days, Warhammer Online finds itself struggling due to what I believe are 3 main problems that need immediate fixing.
1) Itemization
This is the first issue that is crushing my motivation to play. This is one of the 5 points I touched on in my previous Warhammer article and it remains to be a major problem. The stats on most if not all of the high end gear is horrible. I am almost inclined to think the stats were picked by a Mythic Dev throwing darts, they make little to no sense for their respective classes and seem almost random in the stats and set bonuses.
This is a major problem because the high end gear is one of the primary motivators to play. Unlike DAOC which had interesting realm abilities to chose from, Warhammer uses RvR gear as the carrot at the end of the stick to keep you wanting to advance and participate in RvR. The fact that the stats are so poor on these items completely takes the wind out of the player’s sails to participate and chase the carrot. Unfortunately this problem is not only limited to the RvR gear. I was fortunate enough to get 4 of my Sentinel pieces for my Shadow Warrior in a single run through Sigmar’s Crypt. In any other game I would be elated to be this lucky, but the excitement was quickly diminished when I realized none of the items were an upgrade, and the set bonus was actually worse then a lower level Bloodlord set. This needs to be fixed immediately, and if not before the end of the billing cycle, then there will be a further bleeding of subscriptions.
2) Overworld RvR Mechanic
The overworld RvR mechanic simply is not working. In a recent patch, Mythic claimed they made changes to the “Victory Point” system which determines how and when a zone will flip to the control of one team or the other. The patch claimed it would make scenarios carry less weight, thus putting more weight on the overworld and making zones flip faster. Yesterday my guild had an ORvR day to make a real push on the Destruction territory. After taking all the keeps and battle objectives in all 3 pairings, I was shocked to see that we were only halfway to flipping in 1 zone, and even less in the other 2 zones. Nobody wants to be forced to run public quests, which offer terrible rewards and are tedious, in order to flip a zone. Scenarios other than Serpent’s Passage still are not popping as needed, and I play on Skull Throne which is widely viewed as the highest pop server in the game. This leads to all the objectives being taken and being unable to progress, so people log off or go run mindless scenarios.
Another problem is practice of keep trading that has been developing as of late. In a recent patch, Mythic decided to make all keep lords to drop 3 gold bags 100% of the time when defeated. Unfortunately, players will always take the path of least resistance when trying to get stronger. It has become a common practice to see an Order Army and a Destruction Army deliberately avoiding each other and attacking undefended keeps for the easy gold bags. If you are out for loot, why would you attacked a defended keep when you can attack an undefended one a lot easier and get the same reward? On the flip side, why defend a keep if there no tangible reward for doing so? It is actually better to let them take the keep so you can take it back later and get 3 more gold bags. Even if I did want to defend, the keeps are taken so fast that the battle would most likely be over by the time I arrive. This entire system needs to be looked at quickly.
3) Contribution System
In case you haven’t been reading various Warhammer related forums, someone seems to have come up with a theory about how contribution is calculated that I have been unable to disprove after testing with my guild extensively. The theory states in short, that whenever you zone into an area, you are given a randomly generated contribution number before you do anything. This randomly generated value will stay with you until you zone or relog. I can enter a zone and be given a value of 900 while my friend gets a value of 100. We can attack a keep together and if I do nothing while he does all the work, I will still beat him in contribution when the keep lord dies. If we move the second keep we see the same exact thing happen, but only if he relogs or zones will his contribution rating change.
After collecting data from my guild, I can conclude that this theory not only seems viable, but likely. Knowing this, it makes it hard for me to want to try and help anyone during a keep fight since my contribution rating has been predetermined no matter what my actions are. I wouldn’t expect Mythic to comment on this because if they admitted that this was how the system works, the outrage would be massive. Now as much as it pisses me off to think this is true, the blow is softened by the fact that the itemization is so bad that the rewards are often times worse then most of the green items I have of lesser level.
The Billing Cycle
Warhammer’s issues are starting to catch up. A week ago we crossed over into a new billing cycle for those of us who started at release. As I mentioned earlier, even on Skull Throne I am noticing some of the guilds disappearing, I looked up some of the biggest instigators of RvR on the opposing side, and a lot of them have large portions of their roster who hasn’t been on since the new billing cycle started. While I am sure some can be attributed to the Lich King, I can’t blame those who have decided to sit this out until the big patch.
If nothing changes during this cycle, this game is going to sustain serious damage to its subscriber base. Even if the diehards decide to ride it out, the premise of the game requires a lot of people to be playing and participating in RvR. The incentive to do so is not there with the 3 problems above. Mythic needs to prioritize issues that will drive people to quit. That new sound for the horn when I get on my mount is nice, but 4 of the classes are severely underpowered, the items are junk, the RvR system is flawed, and 2 new classes are not going to steer this away from the edge of the cliff.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Warhammer Woes at 60 Days
I feel compelled to do another installment here on how Warhammer online is progressing a little passed the 60 day mark of going live. Those of you who have followed my writing on MMORPG.com and MMOCrunch may remember that I wrote my review of the game right before launch, and at the 30 day mark I wrote about the Top 5 Issues with the game. Now past 60 days, Warhammer Online finds itself struggling due to what I believe are 3 main problems that need immediate fixing.
1) Itemization
This is the first issue that is crushing my motivation to play. This is one of the 5 points I touched on in my previous Warhammer article and it remains to be a major problem. The stats on most if not all of the high end gear is horrible. I am almost inclined to think the stats were picked by a Mythic Dev throwing darts, they make little to no sense for their respective classes and seem almost random in the stats and set bonuses.
This is a major problem because the high end gear is one of the primary motivators to play. Unlike DAOC which had interesting realm abilities to chose from, Warhammer uses RvR gear as the carrot at the end of the stick to keep you wanting to advance and participate in RvR. The fact that the stats are so poor on these items completely takes the wind out of the player’s sails to participate and chase the carrot. Unfortunately this problem is not only limited to the RvR gear. I was fortunate enough to get 4 of my Sentinel pieces for my Shadow Warrior in a single run through Sigmar’s Crypt. In any other game I would be elated to be this lucky, but the excitement was quickly diminished when I realized none of the items were an upgrade, and the set bonus was actually worse then a lower level Bloodlord set. This needs to be fixed immediately, and if not before the end of the billing cycle, then there will be a further bleeding of subscriptions.
2) Overworld RvR Mechanic
The overworld RvR mechanic simply is not working. In a recent patch, Mythic claimed they made changes to the “Victory Point” system which determines how and when a zone will flip to the control of one team or the other. The patch claimed it would make scenarios carry less weight, thus putting more weight on the overworld and making zones flip faster. Yesterday my guild had an ORvR day to make a real push on the Destruction territory. After taking all the keeps and battle objectives in all 3 pairings, I was shocked to see that we were only halfway to flipping in 1 zone, and even less in the other 2 zones. Nobody wants to be forced to run public quests, which offer terrible rewards and are tedious, in order to flip a zone. Scenarios other than Serpent’s Passage still are not popping as needed, and I play on Skull Throne which is widely viewed as the highest pop server in the game. This leads to all the objectives being taken and being unable to progress, so people log off or go run mindless scenarios.
Another problem is practice of keep trading that has been developing as of late. In a recent patch, Mythic decided to make all keep lords to drop 3 gold bags 100% of the time when defeated. Unfortunately, players will always take the path of least resistance when trying to get stronger. It has become a common practice to see an Order Army and a Destruction Army deliberately avoiding each other and attacking undefended keeps for the easy gold bags. If you are out for loot, why would you attacked a defended keep when you can attack an undefended one a lot easier and get the same reward? On the flip side, why defend a keep if there no tangible reward for doing so? It is actually better to let them take the keep so you can take it back later and get 3 more gold bags. Even if I did want to defend, the keeps are taken so fast that the battle would most likely be over by the time I arrive. This entire system needs to be looked at quickly.
3) Contribution System
In case you haven’t been reading various Warhammer related forums, someone seems to have come up with a theory about how contribution is calculated that I have been unable to disprove after testing with my guild extensively. The theory states in short, that whenever you zone into an area, you are given a randomly generated contribution number before you do anything. This randomly generated value will stay with you until you zone or relog. I can enter a zone and be given a value of 900 while my friend gets a value of 100. We can attack a keep together and if I do nothing while he does all the work, I will still beat him in contribution when the keep lord dies. If we move the second keep we see the same exact thing happen, but only if he relogs or zones will his contribution rating change.
After collecting data from my guild, I can conclude that this theory not only seems viable, but likely. Knowing this, it makes it hard for me to want to try and help anyone during a keep fight since my contribution rating has been predetermined no matter what my actions are. I wouldn’t expect Mythic to comment on this because if they admitted that this was how the system works, the outrage would be massive. Now as much as it pisses me off to think this is true, the blow is softened by the fact that the itemization is so bad that the rewards are often times worse then most of the green items I have of lesser level.
The Billing Cycle
Warhammer’s issues are starting to catch up. A week ago we crossed over into a new billing cycle for those of us who started at release. As I mentioned earlier, even on Skull Throne I am noticing some of the guilds disappearing, I looked up some of the biggest instigators of RvR on the opposing side, and a lot of them have large portions of their roster who hasn’t been on since the new billing cycle started. While I am sure some can be attributed to the Lich King, I can’t blame those who have decided to sit this out until the big patch.
If nothing changes during this cycle, this game is going to sustain serious damage to its subscriber base. Even if the diehards decide to ride it out, the premise of the game requires a lot of people to be playing and participating in RvR. The incentive to do so is not there with the 3 problems above. Mythic needs to prioritize issues that will drive people to quit. That new sound for the horn when I get on my mount is nice, but 4 of the classes are severely underpowered, the items are junk, the RvR system is flawed, and 2 new classes are not going to steer this away from the edge of the cliff.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Rant: RvR - Not One Step Back!
Rant: RvR - Not One Step Back!
Order 227 was issued by the Soviet High Command and Stalin during World War 2 to deal with cowards on the battlefield. Order 227 was read out to all troops in the Russian armed forces and here are the critical parts of the order…
“And so the time for retreating is over. Not one step back! That must now be our watchword.
Is there something we lack? We lack order and discipline. This is our main shortcoming. We must establish the strictest order and iron discipline in our army if we want to rescue the situation and defend our Motherland. Panickers and cowards will be eliminated on the spot. Commanders of companies, battalions, regiments and divisions, along with their commissars and political workers, will be considered traitors to the Motherland if they retreat without orders from above.”
I have been recently playing Warhammer Online and have been spending a fair amount of my time doing overworld RvR now that I am 40. The game is built around massive combat between the realms, so it has become more common to see giant bloodbaths in places like Praag. I have seen a behavior pattern that I find disturbing that I have seen in previous MMOs, and I am sure both realms are suffering from it.
Cowardice
You are in your warband marching into battle when you encounter an equal size warband of the enemy team. There is a moment where you see each other and time seems to slow to a halt as the realization hits you that a battle is imminent and unavoidable. In this moment of truth, someone from the other team finds his balls while your comrades are still feeling in there pockets trying to find their yambags, and they start charging forward towards you. For some unexplainable reason, this man inspires the fear of God into your team and they start to retreat!
What the hell is the logic behind this? You both have the same number of people. You both were looking for a fight. You both are facing each other head on. All things being equal, you had the same chance of winning as they did. Now your army will be ran down like animals and scattered into the wind.
Is it confidence that inspires fear? This is the same type of behavior we see nature between animals when one animal scares off an entire pack, or how a mouse can spook an elephant. As it turns out, elephants may not be scared of mice, but scared by sudden movements (depending on who you ask).
My Theory
I play a Shadow Warrior which is by most accounts a back row class. From my point of view, I will be traveling with my warband or group until we encounter a group. Often times I my initial reaction will be to calmly step to the back of the ranks to allow the tanks to receive the brunt of incoming attack like they are designed to do, and to give myself the range I need to be effective. Naturally other back row classes, specifically healers, are also inclined to position themselves at the rear of the warband to avoid being damaged so they can keep the front line classes alive.
I suspect what happens is that front line classes in the warband see half of their force backing up and think they are fleeing, when in actuality they are repositioning. The front liners start to freak out when they see the opposing side advancing and the rest of their team backing up. Panic sets in and they turn and run. The back row watches the front row flee, then they in turn start to flee. The next minute or two consists of you and all your friends being rounded up like cattle and put down.
We need RvR Order 227. No army ever wins an RvR fight in any MMO with their backs to the enemy. Now don’t get me wrong, there are times where you are faced with hopeless odds and running may be the best course of action. People who wander off on their own are likely to encounter superior numbers. When you have even a decent sized force, I’d wager you are more likely to get more kills by standing your ground, then try to flee and being killed anyways without any resistance. Regardless, this is something I see all the time from my experience so far in Warhammer and previous MMO’s I have played. I suspect there are many other out there like me who do a collective facepalm on a regular basis from being the victim of this phenomenon.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Rant: RvR - Not One Step Back!
Rant: RvR - Not One Step Back!
Order 227 was issued by the Soviet High Command and Stalin during World War 2 to deal with cowards on the battlefield. Order 227 was read out to all troops in the Russian armed forces and here are the critical parts of the order…
“And so the time for retreating is over. Not one step back! That must now be our watchword.
Is there something we lack? We lack order and discipline. This is our main shortcoming. We must establish the strictest order and iron discipline in our army if we want to rescue the situation and defend our Motherland. Panickers and cowards will be eliminated on the spot. Commanders of companies, battalions, regiments and divisions, along with their commissars and political workers, will be considered traitors to the Motherland if they retreat without orders from above.”
I have been recently playing Warhammer Online and have been spending a fair amount of my time doing overworld RvR now that I am 40. The game is built around massive combat between the realms, so it has become more common to see giant bloodbaths in places like Praag. I have seen a behavior pattern that I find disturbing that I have seen in previous MMOs, and I am sure both realms are suffering from it.
Cowardice
You are in your warband marching into battle when you encounter an equal size warband of the enemy team. There is a moment where you see each other and time seems to slow to a halt as the realization hits you that a battle is imminent and unavoidable. In this moment of truth, someone from the other team finds his balls while your comrades are still feeling in there pockets trying to find their yambags, and they start charging forward towards you. For some unexplainable reason, this man inspires the fear of God into your team and they start to retreat!
What the hell is the logic behind this? You both have the same number of people. You both were looking for a fight. You both are facing each other head on. All things being equal, you had the same chance of winning as they did. Now your army will be ran down like animals and scattered into the wind.
Is it confidence that inspires fear? This is the same type of behavior we see nature between animals when one animal scares off an entire pack, or how a mouse can spook an elephant. As it turns out, elephants may not be scared of mice, but scared by sudden movements (depending on who you ask).
My Theory
I play a Shadow Warrior which is by most accounts a back row class. From my point of view, I will be traveling with my warband or group until we encounter a group. Often times I my initial reaction will be to calmly step to the back of the ranks to allow the tanks to receive the brunt of incoming attack like they are designed to do, and to give myself the range I need to be effective. Naturally other back row classes, specifically healers, are also inclined to position themselves at the rear of the warband to avoid being damaged so they can keep the front line classes alive.
I suspect what happens is that front line classes in the warband see half of their force backing up and think they are fleeing, when in actuality they are repositioning. The front liners start to freak out when they see the opposing side advancing and the rest of their team backing up. Panic sets in and they turn and run. The back row watches the front row flee, then they in turn start to flee. The next minute or two consists of you and all your friends being rounded up like cattle and put down.
We need RvR Order 227. No army ever wins an RvR fight in any MMO with their backs to the enemy. Now don’t get me wrong, there are times where you are faced with hopeless odds and running may be the best course of action. People who wander off on their own are likely to encounter superior numbers. When you have even a decent sized force, I’d wager you are more likely to get more kills by standing your ground, then try to flee and being killed anyways without any resistance. Regardless, this is something I see all the time from my experience so far in Warhammer and previous MMO’s I have played. I suspect there are many other out there like me who do a collective facepalm on a regular basis from being the victim of this phenomenon.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Review: Warhammer Preview Weekend
Review: Warhammer Preview Weekend
For this entry I am going to try something new and take a break from ranting about the usual MMO debacles. Instead, I am going to give my impressions of the Warhammer Preview Weekend from the perspective of an MMO veteran, guild leader, and a gamer coming off the of the AoC disaster.
As a guild leader, I and my members were recently burned badly by the Funcom bullshit. I approach Warhammer Online with heavy scrutiny while trying to recover from the burns Funcom gave me and my members.
Character creation is nothing to write home about honestly. I found it to be quite lackluster, and I could see where this could give people a negative first impression. I wasn’t thrilled about my option, but like most MMO’s, my armor covered me up after a few levels and it became a non-issue to me at least. I guess it could be justified that a lack of options helps performance in large scale PvP, I am not going to speculate to the validity of this theory, but after AoC’s performance I could see it having merit.
The user interface is probably one of most glaring similarities to World of Warcraft that will catch your eye. It literally shares an almost identical positioning and style to WoW, which could be viewed as a positive if you liked this interface. The good news is the user interface is fairly customizable, and Mythic has left the door open to 3rd party UI mods which will surely be in abundance.
As a guild leader, I am extremely thrilled to see a real Guild Interface akin to that of Everquest 2. Guild Functionality has always been important to me, and Age of Conan’s left a lot to be desired. The Warhammer Guild UI offers multiple tabs showing roster that is sortable, and gives me the ability to make notes next to each name to labels alts and such. It also gives me the ability to rename all my ranks, set their permissions, an unlockable calender, a log showing me recent events, and guild battle standard options. Guilds level up through the members PvPing and new functionality becomes unlocked.
The graphics in this game have been the subject of a lot of debate among the community. Obviously no one will contest that Age of Conan has far better graphics, but these graphics are a lot better then WoW IMO. Are they cutting edge? Not be any means, but they get the job done. Again I think some will argue that the games graphics will make it accessible to a wider audience, and help performance in RvR. I do think some people are giving this game a lot more heat than it deserves in this department, once I turned the resolution up, it looked good, and in large scale PvP I ran smooth as a baby’s ass.
Character Customization comes to you in a variety of ways. While I found the creation process lacking, as you progress through the game will you see that there are some ways for you to tweak your looks and skills to fit your playstyle. First you will be able to tailor your “Tactics Abilities” to suit your needs. These are basically passive abilities that you can put into the bottom right of the screen to enhance your character. They deliberately limit the number you can use at a given time to force you to decide what to best use in a situation. These can be changed at any time however, and I think you can cycle through layouts of these as easy as you cycle your hotbars depending on your situation.
There are also “Moral Abilities” which remind me of TP moves from FFXI. The longer you fight and stay alive, the more jacked up your character gets. He is able to then perform super moves that get stronger as he gets more moral built up. These can be interchanged again to fit your playstyle, and add another layer of tactics to the combat.
The RvR rewards come in the ways of both gear and points. The gear is strong enough to make it a viable alternative to gear earned through PvE, and better in some cases. The points are spent much like talent points or AA points. If you played DAOC, you are very familiar with their PvP reward system, which is fully functional and in the game unlike a certain rival game which still has yet to give an ETA on their system.
One other aspect of this game in regards to customizing your appearance in the use of armor Dyes. This was one of the better features of DAOC that I am shocked was never stolen by more recent MMOs. It gives you the ability to make yourself look a little different and it gives guilds a chance to add uniformity to their members. Changing your armor colors can be done very easily by visiting a merchant. A nice dressing room screen comes up where you will be able to see the colors before you buy them.
The PvE aspect of the game is pretty run of the mill from what we have seen in recent MMOs. The game follows the same lame quest format of collecting X amount of dingleberries, killing Y amount of orcs. Nothing to write home about honestly. The game does break Quest mold from recent games by adding public quests. Doing these will get you rep in that local area, and this rep can be used to claim rewards, which are usually very good if your rep gets maxed. Luckily, maxing out your rep in a given area does not seem to take very long at all, and the public quests are always fun as long as other people are there. They can be compared to the Besieged Mode found in FFXI where you are rewarded for your contribution, and acts a nice diversion from the collection quests. At the end of the day, the PvE is just a means to an end, and that end is the RvR.
The RvR is where this game really shines. Finally I feel like I am getting the RvR that World of Warcraft promised me but never delivered on. You can PvP from level 1. You get exp from PvP, and quests to kill people in PvP. This helps makes PvP a viable way of leveling if you so chose. The games does have a battleground type system called Scenarios, which honestly I am not a fan of being an overworld guy myself. To their credit though, they are well thought out and usually contain some sort of interesting twist instead of the makeshift deathmatches we got in AoC. I hope Mythic will make world PvP enticing enough to minimize the desire to play in these. On the flip side, if you play on a server where the population is imbalanced, these do provide a level playing field somewhat. If you are under leveled, the game gives you a buff to your level to help you remain useful, but a true level 10 is stronger than a buffed level 10 because he has better gear and new spells that a level 5 won’t have.
The castle sieges are very well done. Finally we have real capturable objectives to fight over, and they are meaningful in the struggle to push your enemy back to the city gates. Siege weapons are easy to get and funner to use. Giant cannons that put you in an FPS view with a crosshair to bark fire on the oceans of enemies inside the castle or outside. Rocks can be seen flying through the air from catapults, and it really adds a wildcard to the battle as well as making things a bit more chaotic in a good way. It also helps give melee something to do in situations where enemies are out of reach. After playing these sieges, I have no desire to go into the scenarios, and hopefully the population who plays will see it the same way.
Most of the PvP is group on group. Do not expect to be some WoW superhero 1 shotting people like a God. Combat in this game takes a bit longer, and as such I think a bit more skill. If I wanted to 1 shot everyone I would stick with Call of Duty 4. You feel like you are a unit in an RTS game, no one person is so superpowerful. This makes it a very team oriented game, and hopefully the Community will be good. Some have complained about the combat speed and a global cool down, but honestly it never occurred to me until I started reading whining on the forums. The combat to me felt interesting, tactical, and I was not spamming the same ability over and over like other games.
In conclusion, the game is fun even though it lacks major Innovation. First and foremost I think that fun is why we play. The game delivers on its promises. Mark Jacobs at Mythic has been honest about talking about flaws and problems with the game and I appreciate his straight talk. It upset a lot of us with AoC that they were in denial about the game’s missing features and short comings.
This game will live and die by the RvR and the endgame. The RvR looks amazing, the endgame we won’t know until we get there. If it is anything like DAOC, then hopefully we will have a good RvR MMO that will last us a long time, made by a company that seems to be honest and competent. I am hoping this game will help heal the burns Funcom gave me, my guild, and so many others like me. Only time will tell.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
inqguild.dkpsystem.com
Review: Warhammer Preview Weekend
Review: Warhammer Preview Weekend
For this entry I am going to try something new and take a break from ranting about the usual MMO debacles. Instead, I am going to give my impressions of the Warhammer Preview Weekend from the perspective of an MMO veteran, guild leader, and a gamer coming off the of the AoC disaster.
As a guild leader, I and my members were recently burned badly by the Funcom bullshit. I approach Warhammer Online with heavy scrutiny while trying to recover from the burns Funcom gave me and my members.
Character creation is nothing to write home about honestly. I found it to be quite lackluster, and I could see where this could give people a negative first impression. I wasn’t thrilled about my option, but like most MMO’s, my armor covered me up after a few levels and it became a non-issue to me at least. I guess it could be justified that a lack of options helps performance in large scale PvP, I am not going to speculate to the validity of this theory, but after AoC’s performance I could see it having merit.
The user interface is probably one of most glaring similarities to World of Warcraft that will catch your eye. It literally shares an almost identical positioning and style to WoW, which could be viewed as a positive if you liked this interface. The good news is the user interface is fairly customizable, and Mythic has left the door open to 3rd party UI mods which will surely be in abundance.
As a guild leader, I am extremely thrilled to see a real Guild Interface akin to that of Everquest 2. Guild Functionality has always been important to me, and Age of Conan’s left a lot to be desired. The Warhammer Guild UI offers multiple tabs showing roster that is sortable, and gives me the ability to make notes next to each name to labels alts and such. It also gives me the ability to rename all my ranks, set their permissions, an unlockable calender, a log showing me recent events, and guild battle standard options. Guilds level up through the members PvPing and new functionality becomes unlocked.
The graphics in this game have been the subject of a lot of debate among the community. Obviously no one will contest that Age of Conan has far better graphics, but these graphics are a lot better then WoW IMO. Are they cutting edge? Not be any means, but they get the job done. Again I think some will argue that the games graphics will make it accessible to a wider audience, and help performance in RvR. I do think some people are giving this game a lot more heat than it deserves in this department, once I turned the resolution up, it looked good, and in large scale PvP I ran smooth as a baby’s ass.
Character Customization comes to you in a variety of ways. While I found the creation process lacking, as you progress through the game will you see that there are some ways for you to tweak your looks and skills to fit your playstyle. First you will be able to tailor your “Tactics Abilities” to suit your needs. These are basically passive abilities that you can put into the bottom right of the screen to enhance your character. They deliberately limit the number you can use at a given time to force you to decide what to best use in a situation. These can be changed at any time however, and I think you can cycle through layouts of these as easy as you cycle your hotbars depending on your situation.
There are also “Moral Abilities” which remind me of TP moves from FFXI. The longer you fight and stay alive, the more jacked up your character gets. He is able to then perform super moves that get stronger as he gets more moral built up. These can be interchanged again to fit your playstyle, and add another layer of tactics to the combat.
The RvR rewards come in the ways of both gear and points. The gear is strong enough to make it a viable alternative to gear earned through PvE, and better in some cases. The points are spent much like talent points or AA points. If you played DAOC, you are very familiar with their PvP reward system, which is fully functional and in the game unlike a certain rival game which still has yet to give an ETA on their system.
One other aspect of this game in regards to customizing your appearance in the use of armor Dyes. This was one of the better features of DAOC that I am shocked was never stolen by more recent MMOs. It gives you the ability to make yourself look a little different and it gives guilds a chance to add uniformity to their members. Changing your armor colors can be done very easily by visiting a merchant. A nice dressing room screen comes up where you will be able to see the colors before you buy them.
The PvE aspect of the game is pretty run of the mill from what we have seen in recent MMOs. The game follows the same lame quest format of collecting X amount of dingleberries, killing Y amount of orcs. Nothing to write home about honestly. The game does break Quest mold from recent games by adding public quests. Doing these will get you rep in that local area, and this rep can be used to claim rewards, which are usually very good if your rep gets maxed. Luckily, maxing out your rep in a given area does not seem to take very long at all, and the public quests are always fun as long as other people are there. They can be compared to the Besieged Mode found in FFXI where you are rewarded for your contribution, and acts a nice diversion from the collection quests. At the end of the day, the PvE is just a means to an end, and that end is the RvR.
The RvR is where this game really shines. Finally I feel like I am getting the RvR that World of Warcraft promised me but never delivered on. You can PvP from level 1. You get exp from PvP, and quests to kill people in PvP. This helps makes PvP a viable way of leveling if you so chose. The games does have a battleground type system called Scenarios, which honestly I am not a fan of being an overworld guy myself. To their credit though, they are well thought out and usually contain some sort of interesting twist instead of the makeshift deathmatches we got in AoC. I hope Mythic will make world PvP enticing enough to minimize the desire to play in these. On the flip side, if you play on a server where the population is imbalanced, these do provide a level playing field somewhat. If you are under leveled, the game gives you a buff to your level to help you remain useful, but a true level 10 is stronger than a buffed level 10 because he has better gear and new spells that a level 5 won’t have.
The castle sieges are very well done. Finally we have real capturable objectives to fight over, and they are meaningful in the struggle to push your enemy back to the city gates. Siege weapons are easy to get and funner to use. Giant cannons that put you in an FPS view with a crosshair to bark fire on the oceans of enemies inside the castle or outside. Rocks can be seen flying through the air from catapults, and it really adds a wildcard to the battle as well as making things a bit more chaotic in a good way. It also helps give melee something to do in situations where enemies are out of reach. After playing these sieges, I have no desire to go into the scenarios, and hopefully the population who plays will see it the same way.
Most of the PvP is group on group. Do not expect to be some WoW superhero 1 shotting people like a God. Combat in this game takes a bit longer, and as such I think a bit more skill. If I wanted to 1 shot everyone I would stick with Call of Duty 4. You feel like you are a unit in an RTS game, no one person is so superpowerful. This makes it a very team oriented game, and hopefully the Community will be good. Some have complained about the combat speed and a global cool down, but honestly it never occurred to me until I started reading whining on the forums. The combat to me felt interesting, tactical, and I was not spamming the same ability over and over like other games.
In conclusion, the game is fun even though it lacks major Innovation. First and foremost I think that fun is why we play. The game delivers on its promises. Mark Jacobs at Mythic has been honest about talking about flaws and problems with the game and I appreciate his straight talk. It upset a lot of us with AoC that they were in denial about the game’s missing features and short comings.
This game will live and die by the RvR and the endgame. The RvR looks amazing, the endgame we won’t know until we get there. If it is anything like DAOC, then hopefully we will have a good RvR MMO that will last us a long time, made by a company that seems to be honest and competent. I am hoping this game will help heal the burns Funcom gave me, my guild, and so many others like me. Only time will tell.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
inqguild.dkpsystem.com
Warhammer: One Night of RVR in MSPaint
We’re raising the bar around here. We’ve noticed that a lot of alleged MMO news sources and Warhammer info sites have been spawning lots of generic, non-informative and highly “graphical” previews and sneak peaks at some of the features of Warhammer Online. That’s all good for some, but what about our readers, many who are still using AOL or Compuserve dial-up on a 56k line? Trust me, they are out there. Hell, I even got an email from a reader who still uses Prodigy.
We’ve had enough of these flashy “Character Generation Previews” - yeah, thanks for the 10 minute video watching you stumble around trying to make your Dark Elf’s tits look bigger. Also, quite frankly, all of these videos of PVE battles are pretty damn boring. Rather than add to this problem, we’ve decided to bring you a real, original and informative look at RVR in Warhammer Online.
So, I logged on my Bright Wizard last night and headed for the frontiers for some good ol’ PVP action. I missed an important piece of information as I logged in; either due to consumption of alcohol or my one handed navigation thanks to my new duel monitor setup.
The piece of information I missed was this:
Order population: 372 Destruction population: 561
Knowledge of this might have made me enter the RvR lands a bit more carefully. I entered the frontier land, past the “small group” of Order I saw (why are they standing near our RvR entrance, I thought to myself) and then promptly got knocked 30 feet the wrong way by some level 40 guy and then chewed in half by 7 Squigs.
Using the Warhammer in game editor, lovingly called “WARPaint”, I drew this up as a summary of my night of RvR:
All kidding aside, I think that Warhammer Online does have a bit of a population balance problem. I’ve done a strict scientific analysis on this, involving me logging into each EU server at least once, and I’ve decided that Destruction has roughly 20-30% more players at any given time. Keep in mind that this strict scientific study was, in fact, done in one night. Word from the US has roughly the same estimate.
So, what’s the reason behind this? Are Destruction classes just more interesting? Do the girls look better? Is there free beer? Is the inner emo of many players finally being reached, and you find that playing a Destruction character is a way to tell the world you are a beautiful and unique snowflake in a tasty goth flavor?
What do I think? I think that it’s a combination of a couple things: Destruction classes are more interesting, Orcs and Goblins are cool, and the chicks definately do look better on the evvvulll side. Truth is, they’re just showing more skin. Order Elves, in my opinion, are pretty “meh” in regards to aesthetics and class fun factor. Dwarves and Humans have the most interesting class choices of Order, yet both only have 3 to choose from, sadly.
So, how will Mythic handle this? Will Destruction be the new Albion/Alliance zergfest of Warhammer Online? Lastly, how will this effect your decision on what faction to play? I know after a couple nights on both sides of the fence, there is no way in hell I’m going to play Destruction on release.
Warhammer: One Night of RVR in MSPaint
We’re raising the bar around here. We’ve noticed that a lot of alleged MMO news sources and Warhammer info sites have been spawning lots of generic, non-informative and highly “graphical” previews and sneak peaks at some of the features of Warhammer Online. That’s all good for some, but what about our readers, many who are still using AOL or Compuserve dial-up on a 56k line? Trust me, they are out there. Hell, I even got an email from a reader who still uses Prodigy.
We’ve had enough of these flashy “Character Generation Previews” - yeah, thanks for the 10 minute video watching you stumble around trying to make your Dark Elf’s tits look bigger. Also, quite frankly, all of these videos of PVE battles are pretty damn boring. Rather than add to this problem, we’ve decided to bring you a real, original and informative look at RVR in Warhammer Online.
So, I logged on my Bright Wizard last night and headed for the frontiers for some good ol’ PVP action. I missed an important piece of information as I logged in; either due to consumption of alcohol or my one handed navigation thanks to my new duel monitor setup.
The piece of information I missed was this:
Order population: 372 Destruction population: 561
Knowledge of this might have made me enter the RvR lands a bit more carefully. I entered the frontier land, past the “small group” of Order I saw (why are they standing near our RvR entrance, I thought to myself) and then promptly got knocked 30 feet the wrong way by some level 40 guy and then chewed in half by 7 Squigs.
Using the Warhammer in game editor, lovingly called “WARPaint”, I drew this up as a summary of my night of RvR:
All kidding aside, I think that Warhammer Online does have a bit of a population balance problem. I’ve done a strict scientific analysis on this, involving me logging into each EU server at least once, and I’ve decided that Destruction has roughly 20-30% more players at any given time. Keep in mind that this strict scientific study was, in fact, done in one night. Word from the US has roughly the same estimate.
So, what’s the reason behind this? Are Destruction classes just more interesting? Do the girls look better? Is there free beer? Is the inner emo of many players finally being reached, and you find that playing a Destruction character is a way to tell the world you are a beautiful and unique snowflake in a tasty goth flavor?
What do I think? I think that it’s a combination of a couple things: Destruction classes are more interesting, Orcs and Goblins are cool, and the chicks definately do look better on the evvvulll side. Truth is, they’re just showing more skin. Order Elves, in my opinion, are pretty “meh” in regards to aesthetics and class fun factor. Dwarves and Humans have the most interesting class choices of Order, yet both only have 3 to choose from, sadly.
So, how will Mythic handle this? Will Destruction be the new Albion/Alliance zergfest of Warhammer Online? Lastly, how will this effect your decision on what faction to play? I know after a couple nights on both sides of the fence, there is no way in hell I’m going to play Destruction on release.
