How to Have Fun In WarHammer
My Engineer enters the enemy occupied zone. He scans the horizon at the end of his trusty dragon engraved rifle, looking for any signs of the enemy. Every step through this cursed land taxes his very soul. He can feel the crunch of the dried dirt and sand with his every step, the grenades along his belt jiggling almost as if they are yearning to be thrown at an enemy to fulfill their destiny. Finally the lone engineer spots a full warband attacking a keep. This warband is united under the banner of Order. Order, the word is almost meaningless on the battlefield. Still under this banner we will seek to bring law to the lawless, justice to those that are unjust and in this case the goal is to liberate the keep from the forces of destruction.
This is a typical night in WarHammer. The only issue is finding a warband to join. The main ingredient is other players. You need those to fight against and those to fight with. If you are on a low pop server which has no action, transfer or reroll to a better server. Sorry there are no other options, you need a good balanced to almost balanced population to enjoy this game. I have come up with a formula to maximize my playtime. I will share this epiphany with you.
1-Queue up for all scenarios.
This is the first thing I do every time. If RVR is slow going I can hopefully pop in a scenario for some instant PVP. If RVR is active you can always leave the queue. Sometimes you need to partake in a sc to lock a zone. Either way queue up.
2-Look for Open Warbands.
Use the option on your UI to look for an open WB in your zone. If there is an open WB click on the RVR button to join.
3-Guild
Use your guild. Check your guild roster and see if anyone in your Tier is in an open warband. This is depicted by a red banner near their name. Right click on the banner and select join open warband.
4- The Mighty Map
Open the map; check the zones by the racial pairings. This will present a representation of the tiers by zones. You can see if there are any battles in any zones on the map. If there are battles in a different zone fly there and proceed to step 2.
5-Jump tiers
Don’t be afraid to roll an alt. Sometimes your tier might be having a slow night. Roll an alt and join the battle at that level.
This is my daily formula for WarHammer. I always have something to do. Regardless of Zone or Tier I can always expect to join a battle somewhere. Over all WAR is a good game, it’s full of fun and excitement. Sometimes we just have to go and find it. Good luck and enjoy your WAAAGGHHH!!
How to Have Fun In WarHammer
My Engineer enters the enemy occupied zone. He scans the horizon at the end of his trusty dragon engraved rifle, looking for any signs of the enemy. Every step through this cursed land taxes his very soul. He can feel the crunch of the dried dirt and sand with his every step, the grenades along his belt jiggling almost as if they are yearning to be thrown at an enemy to fulfill their destiny. Finally the lone engineer spots a full warband attacking a keep. This warband is united under the banner of Order. Order, the word is almost meaningless on the battlefield. Still under this banner we will seek to bring law to the lawless, justice to those that are unjust and in this case the goal is to liberate the keep from the forces of destruction.
This is a typical night in WarHammer. The only issue is finding a warband to join. The main ingredient is other players. You need those to fight against and those to fight with. If you are on a low pop server which has no action, transfer or reroll to a better server. Sorry there are no other options, you need a good balanced to almost balanced population to enjoy this game. I have come up with a formula to maximize my playtime. I will share this epiphany with you.
1-Queue up for all scenarios.
This is the first thing I do every time. If RVR is slow going I can hopefully pop in a scenario for some instant PVP. If RVR is active you can always leave the queue. Sometimes you need to partake in a sc to lock a zone. Either way queue up.
2-Look for Open Warbands.
Use the option on your UI to look for an open WB in your zone. If there is an open WB click on the RVR button to join.
3-Guild
Use your guild. Check your guild roster and see if anyone in your Tier is in an open warband. This is depicted by a red banner near their name. Right click on the banner and select join open warband.
4- The Mighty Map
Open the map; check the zones by the racial pairings. This will present a representation of the tiers by zones. You can see if there are any battles in any zones on the map. If there are battles in a different zone fly there and proceed to step 2.
5-Jump tiers
Don’t be afraid to roll an alt. Sometimes your tier might be having a slow night. Roll an alt and join the battle at that level.
This is my daily formula for WarHammer. I always have something to do. Regardless of Zone or Tier I can always expect to join a battle somewhere. Over all WAR is a good game, it’s full of fun and excitement. Sometimes we just have to go and find it. Good luck and enjoy your WAAAGGHHH!!
Waaaaghhh. I am back!
I finally resubbed to WarHammer. I have really been interested in what they have been doing in that game. Many career updates, patches and server stability fixes have been put into it. I… love… Warhammer. There I said it. The game is fun, full of excitement, full with fun classes to try. The game shines when it comes to PVP. This game actually has a purpose to PVP, you can level with PVP, and RVR combat. Decent gear is accessible to everyone. You don’t have to run dungeon after dungeon and hope you win a roll, just participate in RVR, and scenarios and you can earn reknown and influence for gear. Finally someone has made a PVP game for causal and hardcore players alike.
I am currently leveling 2 characters. The handsome dwarf you see above is my engineer. I just dinged 19 and I absolutely love the class. I can do decent damage, and I have many, many tricks to get out of trouble. Make no mistake if I am out of tricks I am as good as dead, but that’s part of the game. I am taking a small break from WOW just for this month to experience a break from PVE (WOW). The earlier levels for my Dwarf were somewhat tough, but the higher level he gets the more gadgets he earns, different types of grenades, and just trained landmines. Landmine is a very fun tool. Drop it near the enemy and it knocks all enemies down for 2 seconds in a 30 yard (feet? Not sure what the measurement is in WAR) range.
There is always action in the game. The server mergers have seen to that. It only takes a few minutes to join a warband for some good old RVR action, or join a scenario. The strength of the game is also its greatest weakness. If the server is dead or a slow night, well you just better log out. Let’s see if I can continue past a month. I will let you guys know.. So for now I am off to battle…Bloody Hell!
Waaaaghhh. I am back!
I finally resubbed to WarHammer. I have really been interested in what they have been doing in that game. Many career updates, patches and server stability fixes have been put into it. I… love… Warhammer. There I said it. The game is fun, full of excitement, full with fun classes to try. The game shines when it comes to PVP. This game actually has a purpose to PVP, you can level with PVP, and RVR combat. Decent gear is accessible to everyone. You don’t have to run dungeon after dungeon and hope you win a roll, just participate in RVR, and scenarios and you can earn reknown and influence for gear. Finally someone has made a PVP game for causal and hardcore players alike.
I am currently leveling 2 characters. The handsome dwarf you see above is my engineer. I just dinged 19 and I absolutely love the class. I can do decent damage, and I have many, many tricks to get out of trouble. Make no mistake if I am out of tricks I am as good as dead, but that’s part of the game. I am taking a small break from WOW just for this month to experience a break from PVE (WOW). The earlier levels for my Dwarf were somewhat tough, but the higher level he gets the more gadgets he earns, different types of grenades, and just trained landmines. Landmine is a very fun tool. Drop it near the enemy and it knocks all enemies down for 2 seconds in a 30 yard (feet? Not sure what the measurement is in WAR) range.
There is always action in the game. The server mergers have seen to that. It only takes a few minutes to join a warband for some good old RVR action, or join a scenario. The strength of the game is also its greatest weakness. If the server is dead or a slow night, well you just better log out. Let’s see if I can continue past a month. I will let you guys know.. So for now I am off to battle…Bloody Hell!
Warhammer online-US
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, which officially abbreviated as WAR, is a new fantasy MMORPG(massively multiplayer online role-playing game). WAR is an upcoming game and is developed by Mythic Entertainment, the creators of Dark Age of Camelot. The Warhammer will be released in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand on September 18, 2008.
Warhammer features next generation Realm vs. Realm gameplay that will immerse you in a world of perpetual conflict for years to come. Experience the glory of Realm vs. Realm! Declare your allegiance and join hundreds of thousands of mighty hero es on the battlefields of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to experience the epic nature of war. Enter a grim fantasy world where the armies of Order (Dwarfs, High Elves, and Empire) and Destruction (Greenskins, Dark Elves, and Chaos) collide to determine the fate of nations. Invade enemy lands, besiege imposing fortresses, and sack sprawling capital cities for the glory of your Realm. Wield devastating magic and deadly weapons, battle monstrous creatures, and join your brothers-in-arms in epic Public Quests. Climb the Bastion Stair, carry your Guild Banner into battle, and unlock the secrets of the Tome of Knowledge as you travel the world. Sharpen your blade and prepare to unleash your inner mutation-the Age of Reckoning has begun and war is everywhere!
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Warhammer Online: Open RvR Revisited
Recently, I’ve been craving a little PvP action. Having been mostly playing Final Fantasy XI on my free time during the past few months, you can see why I would. Clearly, World of Warcraft was not an option; I dreaded the thought of ever laying my eyes upon Warsong Gulch again. Yet, for some reason, I was drawn back to Warhammer Online. I was curious as to what had happened to the ORvR lakes. You know, those places you went to when you wanted to do those scouting quests they give you in the warcamp before queueing for the next scenario? I had heard several changes had been put into place to make ORvR more appealing. Seeing as I had a 6 month subscription to Warhammer Online that was still active, I decided: what the hell? I already paid for it, I might as well see what they’ve added to the game.
You’ve no doubt read around MMOCrunch already, from posts made by Mike that several servers had been completely closed off. It saddens me to say that while this is a great step to keep the player base to high-population servers(I use the term loosely), instead of low-population servers it does little to solve the imbalance problem some servers experience. Volkmar, for example, suffers from a lack of Destruction(Tier 4). This makes the RvR experience for both sides very unpleasant. Destruction complains that Order only wins because they have greater numbers, and Order complains that Destruction never shows up to fight because of that reason. When Destruction players read about these problems, they are further discouraged from playing on that server, and so the problem seems to never fix itself. But, I digress. We are here to talk about ORvR! More importantly, non-T4 ORvR. Why should anyone care? Call me old-fashioned, but I like the journey to be as enjoyable as the destination. Much to my surprise, it seems many others feel the same way, recently.
It may be difficult to see exactly what’s going on in the image above, but it’s very clear what I’m trying to show. I started a new character, a Knight of the Blazing Sun, and no sooner had I stepped out to the ORvR area that I let out a loud high-school-girl-esque yelp of glee. To those with a keen eye, it may seem like an imbalanced fight. There’s roughly 50 million order killing a single Choppa. This was near the entrance to our warcamp, though. You don’t really see many Destruction characters venture that far. In this particular case, the fight was at Festenplatz, where Destruction awaited with inferior numbers, but still managed to put up an amazing fight. So how did Mythic achieve this? How did they convince people to stop queueing for Nordenwatch and get out to the ORvR lakes to fight? Well, the same way any game developer gets players to do anything in their game: they add a grind to it. Every ORvR lake has an influence bar now, and whenever you kill a player, capture or defend an objective, you get influence. The rewards are amazing for the level they are available at. Tier 1 offers an almost complete set of blue armor, weapons, and rings. Tier 2 offers purple items, etc. The grind for these items is not as long as you would expect. For example, Tier 1 has a total influence requirement of about 3.3k INF to reach Elite. If you have two warbands, one Order and one Destruction constantly killing and taking/defending objectives from each other(which is not a rare sight these days, even in Tier 1), you can reach full influence in a couple of hours.
Some concerns:
One of the first things I noticed when I created my new character and hopped back into the game was the Rally Call function. The first time I got one of those, I got up from my chair, and stood straight as I valiantly declared: “My brothers need my help, I must answer their call for reinforcements!” When I got there, though, it was nothing more than a skirmish between a couple of Order and a few Destruction at the Harvest Shrine. Angered, and hurt that my role-playing act had been in vain, I promptly returned to questing. I later learned that these rally calls are automatically issued by the server, roughly every hour or so. Why? There are very few times when these rally calls will actually yield any amount of people, and a lot of times, it’s just a way to facilitate travel to the nearest warcamp. I can’t see any real solutions to the problem, but then again I can’t really see the purpose they were intended to serve, either. Everyone who wants to RvR is already at the warcamp in a warband or in the RvR lake itself; they’re not out questing. If someone’s doing PQs, it’s because that’s what they want to do; the likelihood that they will answer a rally call is very slim.
The keep contribution system is still very random and unreliable. Not to mention, it’s always the same loot(non-T4). Why is that bad? Because people can get a gold bag more than once. For example, I’ve gotten two gold bags from keep sieges in Tier 2. I was happy the first time, because I got a pretty good set piece from it. I was not so happy the second time, because my choice was either the same set piece, some crafting items, or some silver. It’s not so much that I didn’t have any other loot to choose from(although that may have been nice), it’s that I took someone else’s gold bag, and pulled out silver from it. Someone who really needed their chest set piece would have made better use of it. The game is in desperate need of a “pass” function, both for keeps and PQs. Allow players to set their preferences for what kind of bags they want to roll on. I’d be afraid to keep doing keep sieges on my knight with my friends if one of them hasn’t gotten a gold bag and I get a third. This effectively prevents me from playing with my friends.
There’s still little incentive to attacking a heavily defended keep. In most cases, a warband that’s attacking a heavily-defended keep will give up after one try. The INF and XP you get from killing a few people inside their own keep is nothing compared to how much they got for wiping the entire warband. Not to mention, they will get “ticks” of influence everytime they defend the keep from an attack(which translates to: everytime a player dies near the keep). One possible solution could be to add “ticks” for sieging a keep. The longer you continue to assault a heavily-defended keep, the more influence both sides will get. In order for this to count, however, the warband must make considerable progress in taking the keep. If it’s just one destruction and order player killing each other near the keep, it shouldn’t count. Progress could be measured in several ways: amount of players killed during siege, damage dealt to the door or siege engines on the walls, etc.
Overall, I am quite happy with the changes made to ORvR lakes. While I’m still leveling up my new character and getting into Tier 3 now, so far the journey has been enjoyable. By defending keeps and turning in the “kill 15 players” quest there, I’ve been able to actually obtain a level or two this way. Leveling through ORvR is possible, although not as fast as questing, doing scenarios, or combining the two. Hopefully, they continue to provide changes to improve this area of the game. I, personally, can’t wait to see what the next 6 months will bring to the game.
Warhammer Online: Open RvR Revisited
Recently, I’ve been craving a little PvP action. Having been mostly playing Final Fantasy XI on my free time during the past few months, you can see why I would. Clearly, World of Warcraft was not an option; I dreaded the thought of ever laying my eyes upon Warsong Gulch again. Yet, for some reason, I was drawn back to Warhammer Online. I was curious as to what had happened to the ORvR lakes. You know, those places you went to when you wanted to do those scouting quests they give you in the warcamp before queueing for the next scenario? I had heard several changes had been put into place to make ORvR more appealing. Seeing as I had a 6 month subscription to Warhammer Online that was still active, I decided: what the hell? I already paid for it, I might as well see what they’ve added to the game.
You’ve no doubt read around MMOCrunch already, from posts made by Mike that several servers had been completely closed off. It saddens me to say that while this is a great step to keep the player base to high-population servers(I use the term loosely), instead of low-population servers it does little to solve the imbalance problem some servers experience. Volkmar, for example, suffers from a lack of Destruction(Tier 4). This makes the RvR experience for both sides very unpleasant. Destruction complains that Order only wins because they have greater numbers, and Order complains that Destruction never shows up to fight because of that reason. When Destruction players read about these problems, they are further discouraged from playing on that server, and so the problem seems to never fix itself. But, I digress. We are here to talk about ORvR! More importantly, non-T4 ORvR. Why should anyone care? Call me old-fashioned, but I like the journey to be as enjoyable as the destination. Much to my surprise, it seems many others feel the same way, recently.
It may be difficult to see exactly what’s going on in the image above, but it’s very clear what I’m trying to show. I started a new character, a Knight of the Blazing Sun, and no sooner had I stepped out to the ORvR area that I let out a loud high-school-girl-esque yelp of glee. To those with a keen eye, it may seem like an imbalanced fight. There’s roughly 50 million order killing a single Choppa. This was near the entrance to our warcamp, though. You don’t really see many Destruction characters venture that far. In this particular case, the fight was at Festenplatz, where Destruction awaited with inferior numbers, but still managed to put up an amazing fight. So how did Mythic achieve this? How did they convince people to stop queueing for Nordenwatch and get out to the ORvR lakes to fight? Well, the same way any game developer gets players to do anything in their game: they add a grind to it. Every ORvR lake has an influence bar now, and whenever you kill a player, capture or defend an objective, you get influence. The rewards are amazing for the level they are available at. Tier 1 offers an almost complete set of blue armor, weapons, and rings. Tier 2 offers purple items, etc. The grind for these items is not as long as you would expect. For example, Tier 1 has a total influence requirement of about 3.3k INF to reach Elite. If you have two warbands, one Order and one Destruction constantly killing and taking/defending objectives from each other(which is not a rare sight these days, even in Tier 1), you can reach full influence in a couple of hours.
Some concerns:
One of the first things I noticed when I created my new character and hopped back into the game was the Rally Call function. The first time I got one of those, I got up from my chair, and stood straight as I valiantly declared: “My brothers need my help, I must answer their call for reinforcements!” When I got there, though, it was nothing more than a skirmish between a couple of Order and a few Destruction at the Harvest Shrine. Angered, and hurt that my role-playing act had been in vain, I promptly returned to questing. I later learned that these rally calls are automatically issued by the server, roughly every hour or so. Why? There are very few times when these rally calls will actually yield any amount of people, and a lot of times, it’s just a way to facilitate travel to the nearest warcamp. I can’t see any real solutions to the problem, but then again I can’t really see the purpose they were intended to serve, either. Everyone who wants to RvR is already at the warcamp in a warband or in the RvR lake itself; they’re not out questing. If someone’s doing PQs, it’s because that’s what they want to do; the likelihood that they will answer a rally call is very slim.
The keep contribution system is still very random and unreliable. Not to mention, it’s always the same loot(non-T4). Why is that bad? Because people can get a gold bag more than once. For example, I’ve gotten two gold bags from keep sieges in Tier 2. I was happy the first time, because I got a pretty good set piece from it. I was not so happy the second time, because my choice was either the same set piece, some crafting items, or some silver. It’s not so much that I didn’t have any other loot to choose from(although that may have been nice), it’s that I took someone else’s gold bag, and pulled out silver from it. Someone who really needed their chest set piece would have made better use of it. The game is in desperate need of a “pass” function, both for keeps and PQs. Allow players to set their preferences for what kind of bags they want to roll on. I’d be afraid to keep doing keep sieges on my knight with my friends if one of them hasn’t gotten a gold bag and I get a third. This effectively prevents me from playing with my friends.
There’s still little incentive to attacking a heavily defended keep. In most cases, a warband that’s attacking a heavily-defended keep will give up after one try. The INF and XP you get from killing a few people inside their own keep is nothing compared to how much they got for wiping the entire warband. Not to mention, they will get “ticks” of influence everytime they defend the keep from an attack(which translates to: everytime a player dies near the keep). One possible solution could be to add “ticks” for sieging a keep. The longer you continue to assault a heavily-defended keep, the more influence both sides will get. In order for this to count, however, the warband must make considerable progress in taking the keep. If it’s just one destruction and order player killing each other near the keep, it shouldn’t count. Progress could be measured in several ways: amount of players killed during siege, damage dealt to the door or siege engines on the walls, etc.
Overall, I am quite happy with the changes made to ORvR lakes. While I’m still leveling up my new character and getting into Tier 3 now, so far the journey has been enjoyable. By defending keeps and turning in the “kill 15 players” quest there, I’ve been able to actually obtain a level or two this way. Leveling through ORvR is possible, although not as fast as questing, doing scenarios, or combining the two. Hopefully, they continue to provide changes to improve this area of the game. I, personally, can’t wait to see what the next 6 months will bring to the game.
Warhammer Online: Does RvR Need an Overhaul?
Since I reached Rank 40 a bit over 2 weeks ago, I’ve basically been doing nothing but RvR. Keep sieges, Battlefield Objectives and so far two Fortress sieges. I did do open RvR while I was working my way to rank 40, however I would say it only made up about 20% of my game time online. Now that I’m doing nothing but RvR, the design flaws are becoming more apparent to me. Lets get to it.
Flip Flopping Keeps
My biggest issue with RvR is that it’s setup in a way that Order and Destruction just take turns assulting each others keeps and BOs, flip flopping back and forth. While I do enjoy defending, it seems most players would rather be attacking to get a chance at a loot bag. So the few times I have tried defending, with what’s usually a small warband, we get steamrolled. Mythic has taken steps recently to try to make defending more worth while, but from what I’ve seen so far it doesn’t appear to be enough.
Choke Points
The problem with the keeps and fortresses is that they all have impossibly difficult choke points. Usually one staircase leading to the top floor. Now I know from a fortress designers point of view this is the way to be most effective. However if Mythic’s going to take that stance, then attackers should be able to fire catapults into the tower to blow it up. It’s no where more ridiculous then when doing a fortress siege and you have 50 defenders all stacked up in front of the stairs at the top level. There’s absolutely no chance to get through. Those 50 people could stop 200 attackers. Keeps need to be redesigned, there way too small and the choke points are ridiculous.
Zone Locking, Timelimits & Resets
In open RvR, once you have locked all 3 zones, you can then assault the other teams Fortress. My problem with zone locking is it shouldn’t reset, not until the other team comes and takes their keep/fortress back. I’m not sure the exact time limit, but once all 3 zones become locked you have 1 or 2 hrs to sack the Fortress, which just seems incredibly stupid to me. I not only don’t understand why there is a limit, but I hate the fact that everything resets afterwards if the attackers fail. If Mythic wants epic sieges, just think how epic it would be if your sides Fortress has been sieged for 3 days straight and you are finally able to drive them out. Or if you’re on the other side, how exciting it would be if you’re there when the fortress finally fell. You wouldn’t be sitting there saying “I hope I have enough participation points to get a loot back” no, you would be setting off your fireworks celebrating. I won’t go any farther then that cause City Sieges have yet to be implemented.
My Overhaul
The way I think zone locking should work is sorta like a tug-o-war. Lets say everything is neutral and there are 3 zones. Each side should only be able to start out locking the zone nearest their capital city. Once those 2 zones are locked by their respective side, they battle for the middle zone. Once a winner emerges the newly claimed zone is locked for 24 hrs and the winners below zone is locked indefinitely. The winners can then assault the next zone. If they cannot claim it within 24 hrs, nothing is reset, however the middle zone will unlock. If they can claim the 3rd zone, then it becomes locked for 24 hrs and the two below it become locked indefinitely. Now that all 3 zones are locked, the winners would get 24 hrs minimum to sack the fortress. After the 24 hrs, the top most zone will unlock, making the attackers have to defend that zone if they wish to continue the attack on the fortress. If a keep in the top most zone is lost then the fortress siege ends and the below zone also unlocks. Making it now 2 zones that are attackable and giving the defenders a chance to try to swing it back the other way. Did I lose anyone? No!? Good.
This scenario slows down RvR battles significantly, eliminating the constant zone and keep flip flopping. Instead it creates an atmosphere where players would feel a greater sense of accomplishment and spend less time worrying about if there going to get a damn loot bag or not. I want it so that each side has to fight tooth and nail to maintain their lands, which is definitely not the case currently.
I’m not the type of player that wants to do the same runs over and over again. I want to be working towards a goal that’s challenging and right now Warhammer is making me feel that most of my time online is kinda pointless since everything is so easily accomplished. Ok Fortress sieges aren’t easy, but only because of server crashes, time limits, and ridiculous choke points. I do think Mytic is taking steps in the right direction in dealing with RvR, so hopefully it only gets better from here on out.
Warhammer Online: Does RvR Need an Overhaul?
Since I reached Rank 40 a bit over 2 weeks ago, I’ve basically been doing nothing but RvR. Keep sieges, Battlefield Objectives and so far two Fortress sieges. I did do open RvR while I was working my way to rank 40, however I would say it only made up about 20% of my game time online. Now that I’m doing nothing but RvR, the design flaws are becoming more apparent to me. Lets get to it.
Flip Flopping Keeps
My biggest issue with RvR is that it’s setup in a way that Order and Destruction just take turns assulting each others keeps and BOs, flip flopping back and forth. While I do enjoy defending, it seems most players would rather be attacking to get a chance at a loot bag. So the few times I have tried defending, with what’s usually a small warband, we get steamrolled. Mythic has taken steps recently to try to make defending more worth while, but from what I’ve seen so far it doesn’t appear to be enough.
Choke Points
The problem with the keeps and fortresses is that they all have impossibly difficult choke points. Usually one staircase leading to the top floor. Now I know from a fortress designers point of view this is the way to be most effective. However if Mythic’s going to take that stance, then attackers should be able to fire catapults into the tower to blow it up. It’s no where more ridiculous then when doing a fortress siege and you have 50 defenders all stacked up in front of the stairs at the top level. There’s absolutely no chance to get through. Those 50 people could stop 200 attackers. Keeps need to be redesigned, there way too small and the choke points are ridiculous.
Zone Locking, Timelimits & Resets
In open RvR, once you have locked all 3 zones, you can then assault the other teams Fortress. My problem with zone locking is it shouldn’t reset, not until the other team comes and takes their keep/fortress back. I’m not sure the exact time limit, but once all 3 zones become locked you have 1 or 2 hrs to sack the Fortress, which just seems incredibly stupid to me. I not only don’t understand why there is a limit, but I hate the fact that everything resets afterwards if the attackers fail. If Mythic wants epic sieges, just think how epic it would be if your sides Fortress has been sieged for 3 days straight and you are finally able to drive them out. Or if you’re on the other side, how exciting it would be if you’re there when the fortress finally fell. You wouldn’t be sitting there saying “I hope I have enough participation points to get a loot back” no, you would be setting off your fireworks celebrating. I won’t go any farther then that cause City Sieges have yet to be implemented.
My Overhaul
The way I think zone locking should work is sorta like a tug-o-war. Lets say everything is neutral and there are 3 zones. Each side should only be able to start out locking the zone nearest their capital city. Once those 2 zones are locked by their respective side, they battle for the middle zone. Once a winner emerges the newly claimed zone is locked for 24 hrs and the winners below zone is locked indefinitely. The winners can then assault the next zone. If they cannot claim it within 24 hrs, nothing is reset, however the middle zone will unlock. If they can claim the 3rd zone, then it becomes locked for 24 hrs and the two below it become locked indefinitely. Now that all 3 zones are locked, the winners would get 24 hrs minimum to sack the fortress. After the 24 hrs, the top most zone will unlock, making the attackers have to defend that zone if they wish to continue the attack on the fortress. If a keep in the top most zone is lost then the fortress siege ends and the below zone also unlocks. Making it now 2 zones that are attackable and giving the defenders a chance to try to swing it back the other way. Did I lose anyone? No!? Good.
This scenario slows down RvR battles significantly, eliminating the constant zone and keep flip flopping. Instead it creates an atmosphere where players would feel a greater sense of accomplishment and spend less time worrying about if there going to get a damn loot bag or not. I want it so that each side has to fight tooth and nail to maintain their lands, which is definitely not the case currently.
I’m not the type of player that wants to do the same runs over and over again. I want to be working towards a goal that’s challenging and right now Warhammer is making me feel that most of my time online is kinda pointless since everything is so easily accomplished. Ok Fortress sieges aren’t easy, but only because of server crashes, time limits, and ridiculous choke points. I do think Mytic is taking steps in the right direction in dealing with RvR, so hopefully it only gets better from here on out.
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
