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WAR: Live Event PQ Analysis
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood writes this analysis of the new PQs introduced as a part of Warhammer Online's first Live Event, The Witching Night.
advertisement Yesterday, Mythic Entertainment launched their first Live Event for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. With Halloween only a day away, it seemed like a logical time to bring out an event for players to enjoy. Titled, “The Witching Night”, the event sees the addition of new monsters in the form of ghosts, witches and other holiday-themed goodness, but perhaps more importantly is the addition of special public quests crafted especially for the occasion.
The new PQs aren’t your standard three stage wonders, scattered across the realm. These PQs pit realm against realm and are located in four RvR lakes (one for each Tier) spread across the racial pairings. These new quests would seem to be serving a double purpose for Mythic. First, and probably most obviously, they provide players with something new and exciting to do within the Live Event.
The second purpose of the new PQs would seem to address an issue that many players have been bringing up since launch: empty RvR lakes. For whatever reason, RvR lakes simply haven’t taken off (at least from my experience in the first two tiers of play) the way that they were intended as a focal point for players. We could spend an entire article discussing the hows and whys of the problem, and so for now let us simply say that a problem existed. It is a problem that Mythic has addressed recently by increasing the amount of experience earned for kills within the zone, a move specifically designed to entice more people to participate in the game’s open RvR.
By placing these PQs inside of the RvR lakes, Mythic is able to encourage players to take another look at the areas, and at least draw them in for a short time. The hope, I believe, is that players will “come for the PQ, but stay for the slaughter”, meaning that while they may enter the zone looking to participate in the PQ, Mythic hopes that they will stick around after the PQ has ended and engage in standard RvR activities like Keep Sieges, Battlefield Objectives and general PvP mayhem.
In my opinion, using a holiday themed live event in this way is a positively brilliant move. Encouraging players to participate in an important aspect of the game by offering them bigger experience rewards is one thing, and is completely valid, but nothing quite compares to bringing them in with something new and exciting that actually works into the structure of the game.
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Here’s the question: Will it work?
Yesterday, I logged in at various points in the day to see for myself. I should say here, before I go into my impressions of the event, that I am currently running three tier 2 characters, all on the Ulthuan server, so my opinions from this point forward are heavily based on the Troll Country PQ on that particular server.
Each time that I logged in to experience the Live Event PQs yesterday, I noticed not just a slight surge in the number of players in the zone, but a huge surge. Each time, I used the group finder to join a large warband and jumped into the fray. Win or lose, I found that once it was over, there was almost always at least a splinter of the large warband that wanted to go and take Battlefield Objectives or try to grab a Keep. This kept the action in between PQs (which was a longer period than your average PQ) hot and heavy as a move by either side toward any kind of objective resulted in the other side moving to stop them and some pretty intense RvR experiences following.
In the end, in terms of what I saw as far as the increased numbers in the RvR zones went, I would have the call the PQ part of the event a success. It met the first criteria: it entertained me, and it met the second criteria: it drew me in as a player who rarely finds reason to jump into the RvR lakes. That being said, I don’t know if we’re going to see any kind of lasting effect once the PQs are gone. I think that part of what keeps people out of the areas to begin with is the general empty feeling of them, the feeling that you could end up traversing a pretty hefty distance and find no reward, either in terms of entertainment or in terms of in-game reward. So long as the PQs are there, you can be reasonably assured that there will be enemies to fight and probably allies along the way. It gives you reason and drive to poke your head in and leave the scenarios behind for a little while.
My suggestion to the team at Mythic would be that if they saw the same kind of increase that I saw, they should institute a permanent or semi-permanent (maybe bi-weekly, or two or three nights a week) PQ in RvR lakes. I’m not saying that everyone would stick around once the novelty wore off, but at least there would be something to draw me in, and more importantly something that made me feel like other players would be drawn in without my having to pull teeth in the chat channel to try to get a group together for a BO or Keep Siege.
Now, lest everyone think that I felt that the event PQs were nothing but smiles and sunshine, I am going to spend a little bit of time talking about some of the issues that I experienced and some ways that they could be improved:
Unclear PQ boundaries: The Troll Crossing PQ suffered from one glaring weakness: It didn’t encompass the entire RvR lake. The Troll Crossing RvR lake is actually a part of a larger RvR lake encompassing two zones: Ostland and Troll Crossing. Unfortunately, the PQ extends only through a part of Troll Crossing. The result was that on one side of an invisible wall, the PQ was active. On the other side of the invisible wall, the PQ wasn’t active. This problem was compounded by the fact that Destruction’s primary spawn location was located in Ostland, just outside of the border of Troll Country. The result was that you had a line of Order players sitting on the border, while the Desto players would sit on their side until someone from Order got antsy and rushed, taking the combat outside of the PQ area, frustrating everyone in the process. It really did take a lot of the fun out of it.
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My suggestion: Just extend the PQ (which was basically first side to kill 100 enemies wins) to the entire RvR lake. Problem solved and you’d probably find that there wasn’t quite so much of a zerg smashing zerg thing happening either.
Needed Communication Improvements: I don’t know how many times during my play sessions yesterday that I felt like the communication tools provided just weren’t enough to facilitate the kind of gameplay that was happening. There’s always confusion and no one wants to take their hands off of their attacks long enough to write one or two words, let alone suggest tactics.
My suggestion: In-game voice hosting could be a plus for this game. Vivox has recently reported that their service often gets 70%+ use in some of the games that have integrated their technology recently (EQII, SWG, EQ) so this seems like a possibility, at least for some. I think that the game could also benefit from some kind of shorthand command system; fall back, charge, left flank, right flank… that kind of thing. If you’ve played Battlefield 2142, you know what I’m talking about.
Scenario Issues: Earlier on in the day and into the evening, logging into a scenario or even moving from zone to zone was a complete nightmare, taking an intolerably long time. That being said, I think that they had the issue resolved by late last night as I had no problems after midnight Atlantic time.
My Suggestion: This kind of thing often happens with a patch. There’s an unexpected problem and it gets resolved. It looks like that was the case here.
In the end, I think that this has been a pretty successful event both in terms of player enjoyment and in terms of giving Mythic something to learn from. My guess is that the dev team behind this game will be spending a good deal of time analyzing the hits and misses of their first live event to a) make sure that they can improve upon them next time and b) see what they can take away from the event and somehow work into improving the game in general.
Both my husband (T4) and I (T2) went to try and take part of these PQs.
Both were failures.
Destruction had managed to camp the entire T4 area and with not enough Order high into T4, they held it all night.
In T2, wandered through the entire area and had a lot of trouble finding where the PQ area was supposed to be. Once I found the PQ area, I wandered some more, all while RvR flagged, for about 30 minutes... and there was not a single player anywhere. This was because that PQ had finished and was going through its invisible X hours cooldown period. The thing was, there was no way to know where the PQ was, when it would start again, or even why I was there.
Now this isn't to discredit Jon or his experiences in the least. What I'm saying though is that, in my experience, this event seems too rushed and lacking. I think events like these need to be more spread out, or at least have "major" locations as well as "minor" ones where people can choose between clashing in huge armies or simply sticking to smaller groups to get things done.
Hmm. I'm sorry you had trouble finding the place... I wonder are you on a low pop server? Not trying to be snarky, genuinely interested.
As for the side stuff... The live event itself actually has that. You can hunt down these specialty creatures :) Since it wasn't part of the PQ, I didn't really mention it here, but it's out there.
Nope, it's a high pop server (still gives the warning every time I switch back to the server from my destro server).
I actually did do a little side stuff... I found a spawnpoint for four ghosts and killed about 20 of them, and even got a mask (I now look like a tengu). But I... wanted to kill destro players
Yep i also went to have a look at this today but was quickly stopped in my tracks,the desto guys had the roads out of the order warcamp set up with ambush groups,we finally managed to get some sort of order warband going but man alot of desto guys must have had the day off.
Not whinning too much about it as it is a rvr zone but I am pretty sure this is not what mythic had in mind for this event.
I participated in this event last night and there was more RVR than I could have imagined. I play on the side of Order on my server and all I can say is it was intense throughout. I am currently in T3 and playing on the Vortex server. I do agree that there were no clear boundaries and so it was hard to tell when I was in the PQ zone or whether the kills counted towards the PQ. Also, I found it hard to know if we were ahead or whatever. Most of the time I was trying to kill or be killed. Literally a sea of red in terms of enemy players. With that, we managed to win the PQ twice though I did not get any loot. Even with a Silver medal once I placed 36th on the rolls grr... in between we took BO's, attempted to take the Keep (close but no cigar) and fought destro constantly. After 12am I had to log since RL and work in the morning was calling. I logged in this morning to see that at some point I received the RvR lootable armor piece for the Devastator's Kit. That was a nice bonus. In all the mayhem last night I had not even noticed. Overall, I'd say I was pleased with the amount of player participation and the attempt by Mythic to get something like this done. I would hope that they learn and incorporate more incentive besides xp gains to encourage this kind of carnage from time to time.
Cheers!
I am on Gorfang and T4, medium server. It was he same players of order vs destruction. This is majorly BORING! Low Rvr through the night I was on for 5 hours. Closed my account and taking a break from mmos
Here are my comments, and several echo others mentioned.
First the bad -
Now the good -
I suggest not only making this a permanent fixture, but rotate the PQ to different lakes. Each week or even each month, swap up the location of the PQ so that it keeps things a little more exciting and also encourages a greater experience. This worked for WoW with it's rotational battleground reward system and should work for the RvR lakes as well.
I am looking forward to more innovative ideas to encourage RvR Lake interaction.
Seems to be fairly hit or miss then from the comments... I'll be trying again tonight, so maybe I'll have better luck.
Strange....... Why does no one find it odd, that the devs of a game supposedly built for and around RvR,have to hold live events to get their players to partake in RvR ?
Um, I think that everyone here finds it a little bit odd. I think that's the point and actually a pretty major point in the article. That's what happens though, sometimes when a game launches, crtain things don't resonate like the devs expected.
We just finished the T3 Event in Black Fire Pass and it had problems too.
The PQ area seemed to extend approx 75% of the lake, which is acceptable, but the main action was focused between the relativly close Warcamps, and resulted in a dozen Order farming a full warband of Destruction on the Order Guards. It was impossible to organize Destruction. Every time an Order BW baited, the melee went for him and we got 2 kills while their guards slaughtered entire groups.
I understand that the point is to play smarter than allowing them to farm us like that, but it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth when you're supposed to have fun regardless of win/loss. Easiest fix would be to exclude guard killing blows as counting towards the PQ. More complicated fix would be to center the PQ around some sort of focal point away from the warcamps.
Also, apparently Order spawned some sort of Epic Nurgling which they had to kill, but Destruction killed it instead. I dunno what happened from there, but I never saw any chest for Order.
I think the operative idea here is that the open world RvR is lacking, because the scenario RvR is rocking pretty much 24/7. It's easier to "find" an enemy in the scenario RvR so that's where players go. That, and the rewards for scenario play are so much higher.
My server has no problem with RvR. Pretty close to every night we duke it out in the RvR Lakes. :)
T3 on Iron Rock last night was incredible. it was at least 50vs50 for almost 3 hours straight.
Like another had mentioned, the action was centered between the two warcamps and was a constant tidal shift pushing each other back and forth their respective guards. Bugman's Brewery changed hands a couple times during the event and we also had a keep defense in that time.
My biggest issue with the actual PQ portion was the length of time in between them. Just how long is it supposed to be? I got there right after the last one had ended and it didn't start up again while I was there. About 45 mins of my 3 hours was spent defending the keep so perhaps I just happened to miss it while in the zone?
Its not strange. You have to remember, since Ultima Online's PVP (circa 1997-1998), MMO's after that have focused more on PVE, questing and raids.
People have to get used to PVP being an integral part of the game again. Even in War, you see alot of people sticking to PVE, PQ's and soloing.
This will change over time once people start feeling the rush of excitement PVP offers. Now they realize they have to offer more incentive to PVP other than killing real players. Though for me thats all I need :). The rewards and PQ in the RVR are bonus.
I havent had this much fun in an MMO since early UO and early SWG. Best game out there right now, hands down.
The IRON ROCK server was on fire last night, like a poster above noted. I bascially fell asleep at the keyboard last night from fighting all night. Heck , even after the PQ ended, the war went on to the objective and defending the keep. Even when I logged off at 1am, battles were still going on.
How is this only a "little" odd ?
Thats like saying the titanic took on a little water...
OR
The sun might be a little hot.....
The game was BUILT around and for RvR....And yet the design doesnt make people WANT TO RvR .....
People need to WANT to RvR before the game can make them. If the game FORCES RvR, expect a lot fewer people to be playing.
I've been into 2 or 3 RvR lakes to do PVE stuff and except for New Emskrank ( Nordland ), the others are too big and I rarely see anyone there. Nordland is always contested and there is always PVP going on there. Some days it's very difficult to get any PVE done there, so I help with the defenses.
Compare that to the Plain of Bone. I have seen 1 person each, on 2 of the times, I've been there. Been through there on about 5 chars. Once I was on my DE DoK and the other guy ran away. The other time I was on my HE Swordmaster and the other guy was trying to kill NPC's at the Order held Altar of Khaine, so I killed him. ( His lvl 8 Sorc vs my lvl 6 SM. ) He had started his attacks while I was already there.
So your telling me the people who bought this game didnt want to RvR ?
Isnt it more likely ,they wanted to and hence BOUGHT the game ,but the game itself ,made them NOT want to ?
That the design was so incredibly screwed up, that it made people who bought the game with the purpose OF RvRing, not want to in this game ?
Call me silly, but that seems alot more likely to me.
I think more accurately, people wanted pvp. However, when they saw how easy it was to get more epic battles in scenarios, they all went there.
It's not fun wandering around a rvr lake and not seeing anyone. It is more fun to immediately be put into queues and get immediate (and for the most part balanced) battles.
I've loved the scenarios because they are a blast. If I'm going to pay money it better be worth it. If there aren't people doing rvr (and I've only done a little as there isn't a lot) then I'm going where the action is.
I think others have had the same thought as well.
guess i personaly didn't understand RVR and I wanted world PVP (Tarren Mill/Southshore battles)which as i have found out are 2 different beast
ran 1/2 dozen scenarios and remembered why I left WOW 2 years ago after dishonor kills finished off what was left of any world pvp in the game
pve in this game i would rather not think about
1. It depends on your server. They are going to consolidate the lower population servers with a free character transfer to a higher population server.
2. Scenarios are fun, RvR is fun, PQ is good and fun with a good group. Then you have other quest, so that means that there are a lot of people doing different things.
3. Land masses are big.
4. Being in a guild does more RvR than PUGs. If you not in a guild, your fault.
5. It’s a new game. People are still checking each side and each class.
6. It’s a new game. Again people are learning tactics now. In several more months there will be Epic battle of which you have ever seen.
I was in the T2 area last night with my lower leveled Sorcerer, and had a blast
People do want to do RvR, but there are other things. This games isn’t going to die tomorrow, we have lots of time. And from my experience last night, its only going to get better.
It's probably difficult to anticipate exactly what your player base is going to gravitate too, and they miscalculated. During beta testing, people RvR'd more because, since they had no incentive to invest in progressing a temporary character, they concentrated on having fun. Once they purchased an account, they became more concerned with character progression, which is currently NOT sufficiently rewarded from RvR. Yes, I know, these forums are full of geniuses that can tell us in perfect hindsight how predictable that was, but unfortunately for all of us, none of them are designing and publishing games. Mythic has publically stated that they are aware of the lack of RvR and have plans to make it "the place to be," and hopefully that will happen soon. IMO, putting live events, PvE content and other rewards into the RvR lakes will do the trick. Once you manage to get into a big battle, it's insanely fun!
My comment is somewhat off topic but was touched upon in the article. Scenarios are killing rvr areas. That is why some rvr areas seem empty most of the time.
With scenarios you're quickly thrust into a group, no need to find one and there are always lots of enemies to fight. With rvr areas you're left on your own to search for groups and hopefully find someone to fight. There is more "work" involved with rvr areas.
How mythic managed to overlook a potential problem between people choosing scenarios over rvr areas is suprising to me. They couldn't foresee this problem coming?
I tried the PQs last night. I had no fun. I went back to scenarioes. That's were I have fun. I used to cry about scenarioes being too rewarding, also. Well, it sure beats RvR, imo. I'd rather grind scenarioes, than killing the same orc in a different custome 1000 times. I just wish Mythic would wake up and do battlegroup servers like WoW.
That's exactly what people are saying, and it's exactly true. What an MMO is has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years, mostly after the introduction of games like World of Warcraft. Like it or noit, that game is the model for a vast number of the people who are buying MMO titles. While there is indeed PvP in the game, it isn't the focus, especially early on. The focus there is PvE. That is the paradigm that has been set up for MMORPGs.
While some people do indeed read websites and follow a game's production, still more buy games without a great deal of prior research, leading to confusion when a AAA title MMO launches witha focus that isn't directly relatable to the familiar WoW model.
Honestly, I wouldn't say that the design is "incredibly screwed up". I would say that a few tweaks and changes are needed to make the game work properly, but where the RvR lakes aren't as popular as the developers probably imagined, the scenarios are FAR MORe popular than they had planned, so in the end it's a bit of a wash if you're keeping score.
No one says this game doesn't have problems, but I don't think you're looking at the issues objectively before you post in disagreement with what others are saying.
If you ask me, I think that the original design had created scenarios for average joe (please God, no plumber references) who wanted to engage in RvR, but didn't want to, didn't know how to become a member of a guild. RvR lakes, I think, were originally intended to be more suited for guild on guild action.
The problem arose when that didn't really come to pass. Personally, I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the time, going into an RvR lake is hit or miss as to whether you'll have any opponents or not. I talked about it a little in the article.
So, while I DO recognize that there was an oversight / something the devs missed in terms of the design, I don't think it's necessarily the fault of the scenarios as much as weaknesses in the mechanics of the lakes.
They wanted the WOW crowed and now they got them... only problem is that there is particular mindset / experience that makes these people prefer grinding scenarios over going out in the RVR areas. Which is weird, if you think about it, as the main thing in WAR is raiding keeps and stuff, which you can do already in Tier 2. Really, it's totally beyond me.
"I think more accurately, people wanted pvp. However, when they saw how easy it was to get more epic battles in scenarios, they all went there.
It's not fun wandering around a rvr lake and not seeing anyone. It is more fun to immediately be put into queues and get immediate (and for the most part balanced) battles."
Which comes down to design.Instead of making it so "scenarios" were open missions inside large RvR zones, they choose to pull people away from those RvR zones into instances.
And instances that amount to capture the flag,that you dont even have to enter an RvR zone to access.
Imagine how full the RvR zones would be, IF scenarios were re-occuring RvR missions in the RvR zones....
IE -Order captures Bugmans,this triggers a caravan of weapons and npcs to leave Bugmans heading for some Order warcamp/point inside the RvR zone (or a connected RvR zone).Players can now sign up to guard said caravan,for order, and destroy said caravan for Destro.....
Tie the damn RvR missions to events and conditions inside RvR areas .....Put 4 or five of each tied to each RvR point,have them fire 1 of the 4or 5 on a regular basis , with those who sign up getting rewards in addition to any kills when the mission succeeds...
I am also on Ulthuan, but my experiences last night could not have been more different.
I was really excited to participate in an event that encouraged open RvR. I first logged in on my T3 character and high-tailed it to the PQ area, which I never found, although it had a lot to do with the fact that there were a ton of order players running amok pretty much everywhere in the zone, making any travel inside the RvR lake neigh-impossible.
After an hour of being farmed for kills I decided to switch to my new T1 alt. I ran to Chrace, found the zone, but the place was completely deserted. There I sat, a naked rank 7 sorceress, when finally a rank 11 archmage showed up. "Finally, someone itching for a fight!" I thought to myself. The archmage spotted me, then proceeded to do an about-face and run back to their warcamp.
A few guildies joined me, two random people joined us, and we combed the area for another 30 minutes or so. Not another soul.
So, my two hours was completely unsatisfying, which is a huge bummer because I was very excited for this event.
But, on the upside, I did make some fun progress in Fallout 3. :)
They should of never created mini-game scenarios. Instead they should of took a page from DaoC and had the scenarios be "mini" keeps. That way people could relate more with keep seiging. Also, they should add a control dungeon to the mix. Like what DF was to DaoC. But on an even larger scale, with raid bosses at the end for guilds, and solo mobs at the beginning for solo players, and the middle being for groups. I loved DaoC dungeons, and wish they had stuck with the same design.
"What an MMO is has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years, mostly after the introduction of games like World of Warcraft. "
That you can say such a thing without bursting into flame,or having it littered with uncontrollable LOLs is Absolutely Amazing.Amazing Straddon....hmm......has a ring to it.....
I forget, was it Koster who said (paraphrased)"Its important that the people who speak for you, believe" way back during EQ ?
Outside of graphics and amount of people in a game ,very LITTLE has changed in MMOs since the first days of The Realm and Meridian.In fact the industry has lost a few features.Where oh where has the mob looting defeated players gone ?Where oh where has being able to use "loot" as bait, to "pull" a mob gone ?
They are still just the modern day equivilant to badly done graphic muds .
Of course, people didnt blindly defend MMO companies back than, so we have that in the way of change ......and of course there was little to no MMO "journalism" .......
Gonna have to throw a QFE in right here. It's sad that people still fail to grasp this, or treat recent MMOs as if they are the genesis of the genre.
All in all, I am discouraged and saddened to say that my personal belief is that WAR is a failure. I was too busy to join in the beta and kept my hopes that EA/Mythic would take to heart the Warhammer feel and game-play. I should go back to Shadowbane.
While every company ultimately makes any game for the big dollar, I had hoped that they did not sell out to be a WOW clone; they even sold the kitchen sink.
Getting to these PQ's was just too weak to entice me into the supposed fun. Participating in the subsequent RvR was a far second with even less enticement.
I am sure John only participated in all of this due to his 'job' of being editor here at MMORPG. I feel for you.
Well, the question of Open RvR is a difficult and the reasons for the Lakes being empty are Multifold.
Permit me to share a couple, the major ones, that I got from people and I have observed in my time since Open Beta to now and as a Guild Leader.
#1 Reason, is Performance, many people are having performance issues with this game, Open RvR for them is simply unplayable and we are talking about people with 64bit single core computers Gforce 7000-8000 series video cards and DDR 400 Mghz memory, 1-2 gigs. It is disheartening to many that want to participate and just can't. The game is not optimised for fluidity yet, it just overloads PC's, and even higher end computers have issues, I myself am on a Triple Core (AMD) with 1066 Mgz Memory and Gf9600, and I still, since beta play with Lowest Settings (Albeit I can put on all effects and have maximum viewing distance) yet that is it, no lighting no Specular not even Grass. And in a protracted RvR battle my framerate slowly drops to 6 or a CtD insues, I still have to restart the game every 1.5h of play.
So performance is a big issue for many, and it keep them off the RvR lakes.
#2 Reason, is Scenarios. Scenarios trump Open RvR, it is a faster way, and a more accessible way for people to have fun PvPing and Devellop their Characters. Given the choice between queuing for a Scenario or trying to Coordinate with 100 people of different guilds from the Same realm, people just choose the Scenario.
#3 Reason, is RvR Perception. It seems that many people just don't associate RvR with PvP. And the way that the Game rewards Open RvR participation is more conductive to PVE activities rather than PvP activities.
Every single night there is guilds and warbands that form, on both Realms, and just avoid a direct clash with eachother taking turns Assaulting Empty fortresses and Keeps and "Raiding" Boss NPC's for a chance to roll on Purple Gear.
The PvP fun comes from Scenarios anyways, the Drops from Killing Keep Lords, which help one to be better...in the Scenarios for a better ranking in the damage meter.
These are the three major reasons why Lake RvR is not more busy than it is or is not taking Off.
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Possible solutions? There are many actually.
Personally I think, first of all that Renown should come from Open RvR only. Second Gear Rewards should be made considerably better, with set bonuses as well, and these should either be obtainable from Renown vendors or Drop from slain players at much higher frequency that it is now inside the RvR lakes only.
No more Rolls for Gear from Keep Lords. Instead what Keep Lords or Successfully assaulting a Keep or a Fortress should do is give Trophies and Brag Rights. That guilds and Individuals can display for their acheivement, and these can also be better depending on if the Keep/Fortress was defended by players or not. If it was an empty Keep it should not reward anything other than permitting to complete the quest from the Capitals and the Tome Unlocks as well as Realm Contribution.
It could even be rewarding Bestial tokens. But no gear in the fashion it does right now.
Scenarios on the other hand, should reward Influence and experience rather than Renown and Experience. They could become the PvP way to obtain Influence which gives access to Influence Gear, as an alternative to Renown gear, and in the same spirit that WAR was built upon catering to both styles of play under the RvR premise, and common goal.
Puting all that together, it would mean that Renown only comes from open Conflict between the Realms, coincidently those that participate are also going to be those that get rewarded with the better gear.
Armaggedon, will result, and maybe, just maybe, tales of 3 days long Sieges will spill over the Internet calling upon all avalable warriors to aid in the effort, and Fun.
Right now as it is, most people would laugh at the thoght of a Siege lasting 3 days, and it really has to do with the prevailing mentality result of the trends and habits of most players today.
To be just, the game is still in its infancy, and hasn't been around for much either, so hope is far from being lost. Much can change for the best, and 1.1 is just around teh corner.
Because they went to such drastic measures to not make "DAOC 2.0" that they shot themselves in the foot.
They made scenarios instead of just open rvr. They didn't even have open rvr originally, they cobbled it in later, unfortunately.
What happened is that scenarios are quicker, easier, you still get xp and renown. It is much easier than organizing a huge warband to go take a keep. So people that only have an hour or two do that instead of RvR.
Plus everyone is still stuck in the "I have to get to the endgame" mindset, so they grind pq's and scenarios to get to lvl 40 so they can complain about a lack of content.
They should have just done DAOC battlegrounds, with a DAOC frontier, and pasted the Warhammer IP'ness overtop of it= instant win.
I had the same experience than some others, mostly negative (T2). The orders camped near the Destruction camp and it was no coordination possible to get out (mostly as orders outnumbered destruction 2:1, also I think this was because of the frustration of many players). I quit after two hours, constantly dying, and quite frustrated. The lack of possibilities to organise a warband are quite frustrating.
Another word for the event: the other quests (for the masks) are like 95% of the other Warhammer quests: kill 50 of that, 50 of that, 50 of that. Boah! ANY quest in Warhammer involves killing and is quite uninspired (like the PQ: kill 100 of them). I think the forcing to PvP is ok, as this is thefirst goal of War, but hell, although beeing a PvP fanatic, I do not want these uninspired kill X quests if I go PvE all the time. There MUST be interesting quests or even funny stuff inside War in the future in my opinion.
I wouldn't call it Amazing. I would call it paying careful attention. MMOs used to be more about the sandbox style and the sandbox feel, there used to be a bit more diversity in the way that design was approached. This is typical of a genre that has had some successes, but no real breakaway hit. That was pre-WoW. Anyone who doesn't think that WoW changed the way that the MMO industry makes games is deluding themselves.
Nope, I actually really like the game. I play it for a few hours every day.
That doesn't mean I don't see problems with it and it doesn't mean I can't see why others may not like it, but I really am enjoying it.I'm sorry it wasn't for you.
Good write up Jon.
Last night I logged on to go check out the event. I play on Skullthrone which is one of the highest pop servers in the game. I went to the T4 RvR lake and could not find the designated area for the PQ. I was shocked that they confined it to a very small area. Off and on through the night I went back to the area. Almost everytime I went there, either one side or the other had a hug force just standing there waiting for the other team to come fight them, most of the time it didn't happen. You would have the occasional stragglers come over and get steamrolled, then lose interest and leave. After a few hours I gave up to go play Fallout 3.
Something is not quite right with this game at the moment. I am in an alliance of about 4 large guilds, and I am noticing their numbers online at peak hours are becoming low. There is a real lack of interest starting to set in. It is looking like their first big patch might not be until December 1st, and honestly I am concerned about whether or not people will stick around that long to see if this whole thing is going to pan out.
Yep Paragus I had the samething last night when I was trying to do it,I cant put the blame all on mythic though for this not working,Yes the pq area is very small but so is all the pq's in the game and sometimes players are there own worst enemies,last night when the desto guys did show up as soon as 1 or 2 of them were seen a group of about 10 order guys would chase them all over the map and started to camp the warcamp,We kept telling them to allow them to come to the pq area but it fell on deaf ears.
Yes mythic could have made it zone wide but they never and kept to the formula that every pq has and if player's had just stuck to that it could have been alot more fun last night.
I think Jantis hit it on the head.
Wow just the opposite on the RvR server Order had Destructiuon camped for last 3 days in Troll country many more order of the lv 16 to 30 range it seems and this wasnt just random times was most of the day and into the early a.m. hrs.
Yea you killed the last stage mob so they couldnt win the quest.
Nice write up, Jon.
I play Order on Sylvania (currently in T2) and had a blast! At times, there were so many people on each side, it was mass confusion, but it was FUN. All during the PQ, a bunch of us would run and defend the keep or cap the BO's, so it was almost two objectives in one. I spent the entire evening in the RvR lakes because it was so active. We had to travel in groups to avoid being overtaken by wandering Destros.
The only problem we had was the PQ boundaries. We had to make kills in Troll Country for them to count, so it meant that we couldn't rush Destro too far out of the zone. Lots of people either didn't want to worry about it or didn't understand, so the PQ took much longer than it should have. Kinda funny seeing some not-so-bright Wizards trying to tank on the front lines.
All and all, it was a great success for me. With that many people in the RvR lakes, it made battles seem epic and there was lots of fun for all. Met some great people and had a ton of laughs.
I think overall, it was a great idea from Mythic to pull people into the RvR areas. I know I'll be hanging out there much more often.
I play on Chaos Waste a med/med server and here is my opinion. I think if they added some sort of in game voice system it would go a long way to helping overall communications. There were a lot of people that wanted to get into the fight and could not find out where the fight was. I could not tell you how many people were wanting invites and getting no reponse. When I finally got there it reminded me much of those old days of WOW and the huge fights at Tarren Mill before battlegrounds came out. I will say it was not clear where the line was between order and chaos where you got experience I think that needs to be more defined. But here is the most dragging feature that comes up in any PVP group situatuions is the players themselves. I have no idea how to fix that problem is you have one or two or three people all trying to tell everyone else how to play. They do this by yelling and screaming and berating other players telling them how stupid they are for not listening to them. It sure would be great if our side actually used army tactics line up tanks in front and casters in back and everyone move together. Is that ever going to happen? no. People need to remember that this is a game, entertainment it is no like real life where if I screw up I might get someone else really hurt or killed. But if I want to rush the caster and get myself killed that is my entertainment.
Personally i think rvr will begin to take off when more casual players reach end game. When there are enough bored level 40s to actually compete with one another we will see more action. Right now there are still a lot of people attempting to level and scenarios are far more appealing and convenient than rvr in that regard. I believe the reason so many people are harsh on warhammer for rvr is because it is the only mmo that comes to mind, my mind atleast, that actively encourages lower leveled players to participate in pvp. This is ussually reserved for end game players.
I would love to see them test different variations on xp gains through pvp. Perhaps test making scenarios give double renown but little to no xp while orvr and questing gives double, or even triple the current xp.
Not to compare everything to WoW but when its players first reached 60, on my server atleast, everyone starting with exploring the current end game instances, scholo etc. and then when we got bored their was constant random raids on tauren mill crossroads etc. BGs didnt even really kill it until they implimented dishonor kills which was the final nail in the coffin for WoWs world pvp. Atleast War seems to encourage orvr compared to its competition.
I agree. The way the rewards work now for keep lords is lame. The fact that you have to defeat the keep lord on the chance that there may be a gold bag and on the chance that you happen to win it in order to complete your tier set is ridiculous. Most people I know have out leveled the armor set by the time they actually win the thing.
I also have to agree - this event is a bust and another clear example that Warhammer just isnt that fun until you hit max level. From what I heard from guildies, T4 was hopping. But where I was at in T3 - completely dead. A handful of destruction fighting a handful of order until everyone gets bored and quits.
Oh, and the event also completely brought out the jackass in a lot of people. Ok, I got lured too close to a hero and died. Yes, it was a dumb mistake and I shouldn't have followed the guy into the bushes where I couldn't see. But I was cursed at for 5 min over it. Why? Because I had gotten in the way of people getting their precious little goblin masks or witch cloaks.
Holiday events should offer plenty of PVE and mini-game content - not simply content that requires players on both sides to show up. Also, give out at least a few goodies relatively easily - I feel like most of the stuff for this event is an epic raid grind, only with PVP content.
Last night, it was so boring I logged off and went over to Guild Wars for the Mad King Thorn event. Yes, it's totally cheesy, but at least I got some cool stuff and had fun.
I have to say the event was a blast for me. I ran the rvr PQ 5 times, tier 2. It would have been nice to know where the boundaries were, but the action was fairly constant. I think it needed comparable numbers on both sides to work right, one of the times we ran it, order outnumbered destruction by a fg+. This one ended up an order win, but we had them pushed back against their warcamp the whole time.
I don't really care about the masks and things, although they're funny. Some nice loot did drop from the pq though, saw purple and gold bags a couple times. Closest I got was placing 7th, and then rolling 21st hehe.
Anyway, good hunting and I hope everyone has fun somewhere, I'm really enjoying this game.
I spent some time in the T3 RvR PQ, and it was pretty active on Azazel server. I think that over all it was a good idea, but it had some flaws in execution. The only really solid complaint I had during the whole thing was that having two fairly even sized armies facing off in RvR, once you had a winning side there was no way to keep the other army off your backs long enough to loot the reward chest. My Squigherder came in 3rd in one of the events and I never got my reward bag for it. I am just hoping that I can run a PvE PQ and have the bag pop there. If I can actually find a PQ with enought people who are not just farming up enough renown to move on to the next chapter, but the discussion of empty PQ's could fil a topic on its own. All I am saying here is, you give people an inch to be petty and mean and they will push it as far as they can. Makes me sad, but I actually had to walk away from the event when I started feeling genuine animosity toward the Order players. What makes me even more sad is I found out my own side was doing the same screwed up thing earlier that same day, which makes it hard for me to take a moral high ground.
Nice review of the event and nice suggestions.
I just sent Mythic feedback based on your suggestion (PQ on all the ORvR lake). In the feedback I put too that they should consider some perma PQ too so that will be another incentive for people to go into ORvR.
I sent them feeedback again requesting them to consider to put an in game voice in the game. I think MJ said in VN that is not a minor thing to do and they will consider in the future... he didnt make any promise, of course. But more feedback about a subject, more Mythic's attention get focused on that subject.
I think other people should sent Mythic feedback too, if they have suggestions or like other people's ideas.
Yes they did and do want to rvr ...but ...BUT..scenarios are not rvr. But again...EVERYONE is doing that. So if everyone is doing that...rvr isn't happening. Empty rvr lakes = full scenarios....scenarios that keep popping soon as the last one finishes.
Mythic did too good a job with scenarios, they are very attractive, they resemble the pvp in a box battlegrounds of Wow "fame".....and they feel like home to people who come from that game. The renown and exps rewards for scenarios, cannot be beat by what you get in rvr.
Its a danged shame...
So Mythic cut their nose off to spite their face when they made scenarios so rewarding..so easy to jump into.
Rvr is trademarked...did you know that? hehe Realm vs Realm (tm) belongs to EAMythic.....and here we have Warhammer: Age of Scenarios.
I too hope Mythic implements something like the Witching Night setup for the rvr lakes, to encourage more folks to get out in the rvr lakes and have fun.
There's still time Mythic..get your thinking caps on..and get that rvr looking MORE attractive than the scenarios.....please :D
Cend