WAR (Warhammer Online)

One (hyphenated) word: under-population.

The only way the basic premise of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning can be realized is if there are enough players to participate in all the content and flesh out of the atmosphere of being in a war. As it stands it's not looking too good.

Think about it. The population cap is small enough as it is. Even right now when there are lots of low-levels, most of the PQs are deserted. RvR in tier 1 is also basically non-existant. I cannot imagine what it would be like to level up an alt later on when most toons are in tier 4. Terribly lonely, would you think so?

Right now the sporadic RvR encounters in tiers 1 and 2 are horrid parodies of "war."  I don't know but in my book sporadic 5 on 5 every 5 minutes is not "war." It's not even a skirmish. Perhaps a brawl, at most. 

It will probably be better at tier 4 once more people get there BUT, like I said, that will leave the population in 1 & 2 even more deplenished. I think to make the game world really interesting they need to triple or quadruple the population cap. Maybe this is technically impossible, in which case it simply suggests the makers were a tad bit over-ambitious.

Let's not even get started on the Order/Destruction population imbalance. Or the wait queues. They may get fixed but the total population cap as it stands just isn't gonna cut it. 

How much population is enough? When there are enough people to populate all the PQs in all the tiers (at peak times). It this unreasonable? No. If you can't handle that many people then you shouldn't have created so much content to begin with. 

"Wait until tier 4" is a horrible excuse. I expect the early game to be as action-packed as the endgame. Why not? It's a common excuse used to defend bad MMO design - "oh just wait until you..." Bollocks. 

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Most people think I'm just a WAR basher or troll or whatever. But I want to think intelligently about games rather than be slaves to that "initial rush." 

The question of whether a game is FUN is separate from the question of whether it can realize what it attempts to accomplish.

WAR can be fun. But I'm afraid its aim to create a truly fleshed out war-like atmosphere-experience is limited by technical considerations (server size). 

Whether or not WAR can prosper & realizes its vision = whether or not you can get 10,000+ people per server.

In WoW the illusion of openness is created by your sense of loneliness in the Barrens or what have you. WAR is supposed to feel claustrophobic - fights breaking out everywhere, someone could gank you any time (I'm on open RvR). 

I've been ganked zero times. Actually, no one has even attempted to gank me.

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The only way WAR can be truly fun is if it were played on a private server with a 10,000+ cap (bare bones minimum) in which every player were members of 100-people guilds all hooked up to Vent who somehow could coordinate their attacks: both the tactical (how to fight) and strategical (when to attack what together) aspects. 

This is not feasible with the current MMORPG architecture.

Flame away, but at least remember this.

 Lol, I play Mordenhiem, plenty of WAR to go around!

Try a new server if yours isn't to your need or liking.  The game is still new, and once the majority resides in Teir 4, there then you will see such WAR!

1st of all are u gonna play the game or not?

They don't need to increase the population anywhere coz just its to laggy as it is already.

My only concern is how fast they will fix the million bugs in game plus improve game stability (mem leaks) coz the game is looking really bad atm.

I see plenty of battles everytime I log in.  Are you just hiding from them?   

Originally posted by hitec7

1st of all are u gonna play the game or not?

They don't need to increase the population anywhere coz just its to laggy as it is already.

My only concern is how fast they will fix the million bugs in game plus improve game stability (mem leaks) coz the game is looking really bad atm.

Are you playing the same game I am? I'm not experiencing any lag, other than when I move from one map to another, no slow downs, no crashes, no instability. I love how people judge the game on their computers that runs 'x' software/game just fine, because god knows it's not their computer that's screwed up. And they know this because they troubleshooted and tried new hard drives with a brand new install of the OS, without the clutter of all the viruses/adware that's bloated their old install, or installed it on different computers entirely, or their friend who they share software/cutesy emails with also has the same problem. It must be the new software, because the old software works fine.

People cry/bitch/moan, bandying words that they've seen elsewhere, without a true understanding of what it really means. There's a reason any time you call tech support, they lead you through the line by line checklist of stuff. It's because people are stupid and make the simple mistakes. I'm not exempt and do it myself. It's when the people lie and try to circumvent those procedures that they run into problems and then bitch even more.

It could be the game. In all likelihood it probably is, but understand that you are a minority. 500,000 people ordered the game and are playing it. If you count up the people posting here, because the vocal people are the ones with problems, you'll find you make up less than 5% of that population. Yeah...that's a major problem and needs to be addressed, because it most certainly isn't the computers.

Servers do seem underpopulated, im on a supposedly full server with the que reaching up into the 300's and 400's.

But I can't for the life of me find anyone to fight in the Highelf vs Darkelf areas, both T1 and T2, seems like most people just play in scenarios.

Public quests are almost empty as well, ive only really managed to finish 2 or 3, the others failed due to lack of players.

Don't understand why this is the case..:(

Volkmar Server here and waiting in a 45 minute que. Then again this is Sunday night and Volkmar is a very populated server.

WAR is no problem on our server, even during the weekdays...

i think the empty world is due to scenarios i would be questing  most times grinding the first stage of a pq alone since renown gear is not as good as pq gear at my level and get to a war camp and be 50 or so people at the warbringer that gives the quest and xp for the scenario. several times i tried to get some rvr going in tier 2 and no one would want to go take a keep i would get answers like lol rvr zones. i don't do the scenarios but feel i get the shaft of the game as i seem most of the time to be the only 1 in a rvr zone wish they had a way to tell how many were in a area so i could assault a keep by myself as it's beginning to seem that will be the only way i get to assault 1 in tier 2.

edit at least in tier 1 3 of us could cap an objective but in tier 2 i have seen no keep action and dest always has them and are never there to defend

what server you on? Im on Karag Eight Peaks and thats fine, most pq is easy to find a group and lots of RvR. We had a huge battle of about 200 players in tier 3 today it was epic. There is sometimes a que to get onto the server but i would rather wait in the begining than be on a server where i had to wait a long time for any Scenarios.....it was like that in AoC, took about 1-2 hours to get into a deathmatch for a game that lasted about 5 mins no more.