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February 8, 2012

Tag: Warhammer Online

August 17, 2009

A Better Letter From The WAR Front

Cannon at Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park
Image by J. Stephen Conn via Flickr

These days, you get the sense that Mythic’s just plugging away at WAR. Seemingly unconcerned at past transgressions and not particularly worried about the upcoming MMO releases on the horizon, the folks who develop WAR are starting to hammer away at the existing problems of the game.

Typifying this is the 1.3.1 And Beyond Producer’s Letter, written by Jeff Skalski. Let me first say that even though I’m a bit biased because I’ve met Jeff and he’s a standup guy (and dangerous in certain situations), that it is nice to see some other voices pipe up at Mythic these past couple of letters. WAR players have been so used to Mark Jacobs being the de facto “voice” of Mythic that when he left it was uncertain if one person could fill his very sizeable shoes. What has appeared, however, is a collective voice from a variety of sources from senior management on down that has frankly been refreshing to hear. If Mythic has any one strength, it is the humanization of their team, and putting Jeff, Gabe Amatangelo, Andy Belford, Jess Folsom, Martin Smith, and more in front of the keyboard or camera can only help that.

But aside from appearances comes a refining of the style that letters such as Skalski’s latest Producer’s Letter seem to exude – the same sort of changing voice of WAR that I referred to before. There are a couple of things that I’m referring to that point to this style shift. One of these is the reveal of specific details and mechanics. Gone are the more hype-worthy, marketing-style tomes of the past, replaced with instead, hard facts about what is happening, how things are working, and when they are taking place. There’s a detailing of the revamped city siege mechanic from beginning to end. There’s talk about the ORvR revision to Keeps with second ramps and other improvements. There’s talk about the other secondary improvements such as friends lists and summoning stones. More meat, and less fluff, seems to be the tone of the letters, and that is a welcome change.

Another is the subtle and indirect addressing of player concerns in these letters, by citing the problem, stating the analysis, and talking about the solution. Several times you can even see Jeff play devil’s advocate when he does this, addressing concerns about changes and fixes, recognizing the fact that they’ve been given, and then briefly addressing them. He doesn’t do this necessarily with the kind of blustery confidence you expect in these letters, but with a matter-of-factness that says “this is why we did these things, and we hope you understand where we’re coming from – but we know not all of you are happy”. That, to be honest, is as close as you’re going to get from a developer saying in a letter like this that mistakes have been made and they need to be rectified. As much as some people want the rush of hearing from a developer’s mouth that they suck, it is A)sadly a short term feeling of satisfaction that doesn’t address the core issues and B)not good business sense, especially from a watchful investor’s point of view.

The last comes with with a certain sense of cautiousness with revealing details and teases. 1.3.2, the next patch in the cycle, had a few interesting bulletpoints, all served with the usual “not 100%” disclaimer. Significant points include detaching fortresses from being required for city siege and an apprentice/hireling system to make it easier for people to play with each other. These only appear in short detail, but only with the level that Mythic appears to be comfortable with. We’ve seen this page out of an MMO PR playbook before – from Bioware – so perhaps some of that may actually be rubbing off on Mythic’s communication.

Really, no one patch is going to be the panacea to WAR’s multitude of problems. The key is to crawl before walking, and that once knocked down, knowing to take baby steps to get to a point where there’s confidence. This is the place that WAR is currently, and probably will be for the next few months, so letters like Jeff’s will be a welcome change in reports about WAR. Like the old saying goes – there’s no where to go but up.

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August 10, 2009

A New Kind of WAR Siege

Siege Machine (Trebuchet), Warwick Castle, Eng...
Image by Jim Linwood via Flickr

Over the weekend, the folks over at the WAR studios ran an event on the Public Test Server to test out their changes for 1.3.1. While there were a ton of things that were fixed, perhaps the most major of things was a fix to city siege, as the first part of a revamp to aspects of Tier 4 combat.

I have to say, the improvements were well received by those who tried them, and I personally like them very much so far. Those of you who played WAR may recall the first stage of the city siege as it was before, as it was a mixture of NPC kills, and PvE-like missions like burning or putting out things on fire, with optional combat with other players. This led to a sort of PvE-ish experience that was just a bit bland. Now there are objectives to hold and players to kill, which makes the experience completely PvP-oriented. The result is fast-paced, frenetic gameplay as both sides race to the 1000 points necessary to advance stages or help eject the defenders.

Part of the overwhelmingly positive feedback that has resulted from the test of the patch is probably a setting of expectations, done beforehand to manage player opinion. 1.3.1 is by no means a major or huge patch, but it is one that does a lot of bugfixing and revamping. With the knowledge that this is what the patch has in terms of content, players know exactly what was going to be tested and what feedback was needed where. Honestly, it’s a good move for Mythic to release patches in this manner – being realistic about the application and ability of your patches to fix certain game elements leads to more of an understanding that is reflected in player feedback.

WAR does still have a lot of work to do to fix their endgame. But the coupling of small, incremental patches and the desire to take in, more than ever, the feedback of players will lead to what will probably be a bit of a renaissance down the road, if the cards are played right. If these changes and more go through, we’ll be seeing more fun city sieges for all.

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August 5, 2009

Plain-Spoken WAR

PhotonQ-M.Soleil in the BrainWarRoom
Image by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via Flickr

Over at Gaarawarr Gabs there have been a series of interviews about the state of Warhammer Online from various members of its development team that have been posted. They are interesting reads so far and I encourage you to check them out.

While there are certainly bits of information to be gleaned about WAR, one of the other things to be gleaned from the interviews is a different kind of tone than was taken in previous interviews. While there’s still a bit of confidence on the part of Mythic in order to fix the struggles the game is currently going through, there is a certain kind of plain-spoken straight shooting that eschews marketing hype for matter-of-fact evalution. For example, Josh Drescher states:

“Over the next 6 to 9 months, you are going to see a lot of that type of internal soul-searching going on trying to really ego-check a lot of decisions we have made.  Because it is very easy to look back on something that you know in your gut is wrong and try to construct a defense around it.  That is almost never the right answer.  The right answer is almost always to go “It doesn’t matter why we chose to do this thing, but that it turned out not to work the way we would like it to.”  The only thing that matters is that we have the clarity of vision and the sort of fortitude necessary to look straight at it and go “OK, we need to make some changes.”  And that is where we are right now with a lot of things.”

This is an interesting, yet nice, tone that I’ve seen Mythic take with their game, and, perhaps the first public acknowledgment in any comprehensive form that things haven’t worked out as they could have. Plagued by the release of WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King, a few bumps in the road for class balance, and several core problems with endgame, WAR has been taking a few body blows for quite some time now. Until now, we haven’t heard much about how Mythic has felt about such events, but it appears that the time for putting on a face of things being all right with the ship are over.

Being so able to speak plainly about their product is part of Mythic’s charm, something which may have been lost in the midst of all the craziness of dealing with a post-release game and all the MMO community shenanigans that go with it. Some people might think that this new tone is a little too late for the game’s longevity. But I personally think it’s a good way to them to turn the corner, talk about how they’re feeling, and most importantly, deliver in the form of results, something that will realistically take months, beyond the release of new shinies for MMOs that people will flock to, temporarily forgetting WAR in the process.

But along with this new tone of voice heard in interviews, perhaps that is what WAR needs. It needs hunker down in the war room, concentrate on keeping the players and subscriptions they do have, and fix the glaring bugs which aren’t “marketing sexy” but which will, long term, create a better game, one that has the legs to keep going. There are a lot of people out there who want to, and have, declared WAR dead in the water, but the truth of the matter is that it’s not done yet. Yesterday’s EA earnings call for the first fiscal year of 2010 listed WAR as one of the main drivers of online subscription profit, meaning they aren’t taking a loss on the game just yet. Business appears to be more than usual over at Mythic, with a new Live Event and a bugfixing patch on the horizon. All in all, if the game was in danger of being shut down, no one has told Mythic – which, on another note, probably feels the pain of creating a perceived underperforming product more than anyone.

The next few months will truly test the WAR development team. But I take heart in the fact that they, as well as the playerbase, understand how difficult those months will be.

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July 1, 2009

News on Breaking From WAR Devs

For a few days now, it’s been all quiet on the WAR front. Speculation abounded for a little bit, until we saw a post from Community Coordinator Andy Belford explaining that the upcoming holiday meant the Mythic offices were taking a bit of a break, leaving to spend time with families and loved ones. This, of course, sparked some discussion and even a few jabs at the developers for daring to take a breather from not just post-Land of the Dead but also post-Mythic/Bioware announcements.

This is going to sound completely cliche, but developers are people too. Don’t get me wrong – WAR has a lot of work ahead of it and there’s still so much for Mythic to do in order to get the game to where it is running in a place with which they are satisfied. But every time I see posts that rage out over developer priorities when “they should be working on the game 24/7 or it’ll die”, I have to scratch my head, because these are people that clearly have let their frustrations get the best of them on an emotional level.

In my travels through the world of geekery and gaming, I’ve had a healthy respect for the folks at Mythic because they’ve been the most “human” out of the developers I’ve had the pleasure to meet in person. There’s a tendancy to put developers in an ivory tower at times, and let’s be honest – some developers like it up there and never come down. But the ones that do, that take the time to talk to players and testers and show them their product, those are the ones who deserve just a little bit of latitude when things don’t go right, because they clearly care enough about what they built to want to fix it. If a break to re-charge the batteries is what is needed, then so be it. This is especially true when things have taken a rocky road, as WAR has since its release.

A good analogy to use here is a simple story. Say you build a sandcastle on the beach. You make sure the structure looks good, the sand is well-packed, the towers look realistic, and the castle doesn’t collapse on itself. You spend a ton of hours out of your stay on the beach for a week, perfecting the look and feel. Then you finally invite other people to play with the sandcastle. You watch proudly, as people take an initial look at the sandcastle and appreciate it before starting to mess with it.

Then you watch as some people destroy whole towers in anger, stomp around the castle, put holes in the wall in the places where you thought you’d packed in the right amount of sand, and generally call it a complete failure of a castle. You wince as people who look disdainfully at the holes in the castle and leave even though you’re hard at work fixing them. How do you think you’d feel? Bet you’d feel like taking a break, too. Walking away from the beach might seem like you’re unwilling to face the problem, but you’d be surprised at how staying away from something will rejuvenate you, making you more determined to build a bigger and better sandcastle for people to play in.

I’ve been blessed with actually seeing the passion and dedication that WAR’s developers exude when talking about their game to an audience, or to an interview with me. This is why I think that while Mythic may be taking a small bit of a pause to gather their thoughts during the holiday weekend, that they will come back with a vengeance to fix the things that are wrong and concentrate on building a better game for people. The people currently taking a break are people with families, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, and children – just like most of us. Give them a chance to stop running in the MMO marathon to catch their breath, and you never know how fast they’ll be sprinting later.

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June 23, 2009

WAR Becomes the Land of the Dead

Warhammer Online: Land of the Dead PTS
Image by Evan Sims via Flickr

Today, Warhammer Online‘s 1.3 patch becomes fully live with the introduction of Land of the Dead, a zone based upon Warhammer’s Tomb Kings with an Egyptian slant.

If you don’t know the skinny, here’s the bullet point play-by-play:

-Constantly Flipping Control: The zone has a mechanism wherein control is determined by resource allocation. Each side gathers resources by participating in WAR’s normal RvR gameplay. When one side gets the resources needed, they control Land of the Dead unfettered for 30 minutes. Then the resource allocation begins again, with the “losing” realm picking up where they left off and the “winning” realm starting at zero.

-Invaded Instances: The aforementioned control determines a couple things – first, whether or not you respawn in the zone, and second, whether you can invade instances currently occupied by the opposing realm. If you contorl the zone, you can do both, which means if zone control flips away from you while you are in the Tomb of the Vulture Lord dungeon, you’d better be prepared to deal with enemy players.

-Dynamic PQ’s and Encounters: Action RPG is what Encounters Strike Team lead Gabe Amatangelo says was the inspiration for Land of the Dead. From dodging mist and locusts, to traps that require a bit of good timing to get past, to the ability to redirect invading players to trash and hazards, there’s a bit of an Indiana Jones element to the whole zone that makes the experience active.

Overall, Land of the Dead will no doubt be a worthy addition to WAR. No MMO doesn’t add content, so with this being WAR’s first major content addition since the release of the game, all eyes are on it to make sure that it does the job it’s supposed to do, which is revitalize the game for current players and attract former players back. Personally, I’ve played the zone and the dungeon, and both are really fun and engaging. While many people are weary of what WAR has been struggling with since release, I encourage people to give this patch and new content a try. The control mechanics and new quests are different than anything they’ve had before, and focus on smaller groups means less of the zerginess that has plagued WAR’s signature version of PvP.

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April 9, 2009

RP’ing It Off In WAR

An example of shrugging.
If this guy can shrug off looking like this, so can you.
Image via Wikipedia

 As with any MMO out there, WAR has its frustrating moments. Whether it’s getting  a beatdown in a scenario, getting killed over and over again, or experiencing the long, hard grind to that next level and feeling bored, there are just some moments in the game where you just feel bleh about it all.

Don’t worry guys and gals – I feel it too. But I’ve discovered a way to deal with the pain that doesn’t involve multiple shots of alcohol or bingeing on Twinkies. And that’s roleplay.

No, I don’t mean THAT roleplay, gutter-minds, I mean the kind of in-character shenanigans and different personalities you created in that D&D game you played but will never tell anyone about. I’m talking about dropping yourself into the role of your toon at the very moment he or she is getting the begeezus kicked out of them and saying in chat that glorious death is imminent…again.

If you’re a dwarf, you can rush in, declaring how it’s a good day to die. Or perhaps you’re an elf and would prefer to haughtily declare that your teammates can go first so you can die without having their blood on your clothes. Or maybe you’re just a plain old human or goblin and you just have to weep about being sent in again by commanders and warbosses that don’t respect you.

You know that inevitable breakdown in friendly communications that losing a scenario or ORvR tends to do to a team? When people tend to get frustrated with one another over not being able to win their way out of a paper bag? Those are the times when RP’ing it off works especially well. Got two pissed off people arguing and typing more than fighting? Break up the hostile e-toughness with a little humorous comment about parents needing to wash their mouths out, or if you’re playing a Destruction race, to complain about some nonsense buzzing about “l2p” and “lol ur retarded” that is driving you more insane than you already are.

While I’ve continued to piss off people who simply take the game just a little too seriously with my weak attempts at witty repartee, there are always inevitably a few lols from the other members of the team, which makes the loss just a little bit easier to bear. And if you can make other people understand that it isn’t such a big deal and that they’ll live, all the more better.

Let’s be honest here guys – no one wants to lose, and even moreso, no one wants to lose badly. But a little bit of fun and RP’ish humor in the face of such a crushing defeat is a nice little bit of sugar to make the bitter medicine go down just a touch better. So have those witty in-character one-liners ready, kids – you might have to type them while a ton of AoE or DPS pain train classes are beating on you for the 500th time.

 

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March 26, 2009

Buck up, young WARWalker

A smiley by Pumbaa, drawn using a text editor.
Nothing like obnoxious smilies to brighten your day.
Image via Wikipedia

 Y’know, in my many travels doing what I do for the Warhammer Online community, every so often I see a busting out of a trend, whether it’s RvR changes, or the latest patch, or even some crazy screenshots.

This time around though, I’m seeing a depressing trend, watching as various bloggers vent their frustrations and send a negatve vibe towards those reading them. Meanwhile, the pundits decide to kick dirt over the developers with glee as yet another MMO fails to meet expectations – and by expectations, I mean beat World of  Warcraft for BEST TOP MMO EVAR!

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell all these people that they’re wrong. To tell them they’re wrong would begin a dramatic war of epic proportions, and here at OP we are all about non-war – not because of the violence, but because there is a clear lack of sunshine, fluffy pillows, and rainbows, along with the other things that make this infrequently updated blog the beacon of positive posting everywhere.

Instead, I’m going to ask our disgruntled WAR community a simple question.

What makes an MMO fun, anyway?

Remember the first time you picked up an RPG much less an MMO? Do you remember the excitement as you racked the box, read the manual (optional), looked at the patching instructions (even more optional) and dropped it into your computer? Remember the first few times you logged into the world, played with peopel who were decent and some who became fast friends? How about when you got that really cool item or when you and your mates achieved something you accomplished?

What happened to that anyway? When did we become more concerned with the tunnel vision of that specific game experience where you got nothing but frustration, or the min-maxing that threatens to break apart your group of once-tight friends? What happened to games as a way to relax and have a good time after a long and hard day – or heck, whatever happened to games in moderation?

I’m sure many people feeling the way they do about WAR right now feel that way because of a lof of time invested and problems experienced. The jade over the eyes of players and even people “in the know” has gotten so green that it’s hard to see straight. While it isn’t wrong for people to feel the way they do about WAR, and certainly, WAR has its problems, is it really that easy to become pessimistic?

I’m perenially a sunny person, but I’m not vacant, because I’m practical. If something isn’t fun, or games aren’t giving me pleasure, I simply won’t play them. If a game is so frustrating that it just sucks to log in, then is it really a game you want to force yourself to deal with? And if that’s the case not just with WAR, but with every game out there who we have high hopes for, have them dashed, and then fade away from, then is that a reflection of development, or rather, the kinds of feelings people have about gaming these days? 

Really, it’s both. At the height of my World of Warcraft career, I was raiding 16 hours a week. I was in game for nearly 30, and most of that was not spent in fond memories and forging bonds and laughing, but stressing out over the latest virtual items or encounter, or dealing with guild drama, or overall thinking about the next, frustrating issue Blizzard was going to throw at us. One day, I realized that I wasn’t really playing a game anymore – that I was really playing another life, one that had enough if not more stress than my real one. Sure seems like some of the most frustrated people playing WAR are burnt at both ends of the candle.

Denying that WAR has real, actionable issues would be silly of me. The AoE issue is overarching, the endgame still needs major work to be engaging, the performance issues of the game engine itself are unfortuante, and the community is holding but suffering under the weight of a patch released far too early for the scope of what it has. Yep, WAR has problems. But if people are getting so upset by them that they seethe with ranty rage about them, or are generally losing their faith in developers to fix their problems, what is that, really? Is that really playing a game for one’s own benefit or the benefit of others, or is it something else?

I think everyone can frankly do with a little perspective and 30,000 foot view of why they are passionate about or look at games and the game industry these days. Boil it down to the essentials, and decide from there whether WAR will give you that experience. If it doesn’t, then find something that does capture that great feeling you get from gaining that level, or killing that boss, or having a great PvP battle. Because if you don’t, you’re only hurting yourself.

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November 22, 2008

WAR Left 4 Dead (Not the game)

Warhammer Online CE - Female Dark Elf Head

There's more people here - honest!

So in yet another shift on the forums for WAR for which I am a moderator, I came upon, among all the wonderfully positive threads declaring the death of the game, a thread regarding the mass exodus (“mass” being, certainly, the always reliable statistic of mass of forum posters”) of the game. In it was a quote from VP GM Mark Jacobs of Mythic Entertainment, WAR’s developer, about how if they aren’t adding servers six weeks in, they’re “not doing well”.

Obviously no servers have been added – in fact, they were added at the beginning of course, so all the doom and gloomers are having a field day.

Here’s the reply I posted below, which in short, is really – the game is neither doing hugely successful things nor is it completely failing. For right now, it’s pretty much right on tack with what I was thinking, which isn’t a bad thing. So pick up those chins, WAR players!

MMO developers need to stop overpromising and underdelivering. They need to understate their goals to set realistic expectations for an increasingly impatient player base.

I would argue that “how an MMO works” has changed a hell of a damn lot since the release of the current gorilla in the market, WoW. And that’s not just because of WoW, but because of releases than came after it.

How an MMO works has been completely changed by the idea of success being “millions” of subscribers and a carrot on a stick grind to appeal to players (WoW).

How an MMO works has changed by having created the idea that players want things and want them right away, with little tolerance for downtime or bugs or “we’re working on it” awful launch issues (Vanguard).

How an MMO works has changed in that you can’t release something based solely upon equity built upon previous work – the “hey, we did x game, but we left and are doing it OUR way now” (Hellgate: London)

I could go on.

All of this stuff aggregates into current development and release philosophies for MMOs. The problem is, people’s memories are shorter than a kid looking at shiny toys in the store, and when comparing to other products on the market, can only compare to the current state of the product as opposed to the product when released. That’s a bit unfair, but totally understandable.

This all boils down to expectations. If you expected WAR to be something and it wasn’t, then of course there was disappointment, and sometimes anger. I close unproductive goodbye threads every day from people who say things that would make their mother wash their mouth out with soap and a detergent brand, if you could do that without being sued or arrested. They’re mad because they didn’t get what they thought they would.

Many people, mostly late adopters, who subscribed to WAR expected the “WoW killer”. WAR was never meant to be that game. A lot of people like to say that WAR tried to be “WoW lite with PvP”, but all that was done was something done in lots of MMOs – taking successful elements from other games and giving it your own flavor, something Blizzard does extremely well.

This only accounts for some of the people who left, but the real key is whether or not Mythic expected the loss they are experiencing. You’d have to be foolish to think Mythic didn’t know they were going to take a subscriber hit with WoTLK. The degree of that hit is unknown, but the real, true test is how WAR does through the next two or three months. If they can’t maintain the subscriber target they’ve set (a number we’ll never know), they will have real problems. But I don’t think they have unexpected issues regarding subscriptions now.

That being said, the article quoted is another in the long line of developer quotes that later end up creating foot in mouth syndrome. I’m certain Mark knows this too, but as a developer or member of the development company, you need to only rarely introduce concrete statements or numbers unless you’re near 100% certain. The reason being, is that the community will crucify you for your words later if you don’t deliver. That quote, along with another quote regarding GOA’s level of service and the “deal is off” if it isn’t, are two such quotes.

Seeing that quote, however, you can see why the decision was made to open more servers. The game’s biggest issue in my eyes, its population spread, is the result of a decision made by the company to either have an awful launch with overpacked servers and long queues, or to launch with more than enough servers to handle the load but suffer problems from people leaving off of underpopulated servers, or leaving the game entirely due to no “massive multiplayer” in MMO. Clearly, with the bad history of launches like AoC and Vanguard had, the latter was chosen – totally understandable. But it created a problem that still exists now, and I’m curious to see how Mythic approaches it.

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October 19, 2008

24 Hours of WAR – Update 6, 5:00am – 9:00am

Ok, so I lied. One more small update before I get to sleep.

I’ll have much more detail later, but my little foray for charity ended up with a rank 18 Disciple, a lot of scenarios, a lot of grindage, and some funds to help children’s cancer research. All in all, a good day.

And now, to collapse.

October 19, 2008

24 Hours of WAR – Update 5, 1:00am – 5:00am

At this point in time, being coherent, much less communicative, is extremely difficult. It’s entirely possible if I was to receive a cut, caffeine would pour out of me and could be used for energy drinks.

As for the Disciple, a great slowdown in leveling power due to lack of availability of people to play with confirms my thoughts about WAR being dependent on its population. Hopefully something is done about it soon.

The Disciple really comes into their own as a quick healer, with damage mitigation that is immediate and oftentimes a difference maker. Even resurrecting serves its purpose by allowing people to contiue the battle.

This may be in all likelihood, the last update for 24 hours of WAR. I’m sure you noticed by now the quality of my posts decreasing as sleep deprivation takes over, and when I complete the time period at 9:00am, 4 hours from now, I will immediately be getting some much needed rest. I’ll be posting my final thoughts and doing a bit of cleanup on all the posts.

Thanks to everyone who gave me support during this time. It’s much appreciated!

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