Kill Ten Rats

Credit to Mythic, responses to issue have been timely. Early server clones, spammer updates within a week (and SpamMeNot recommendation in the meantime), leveling rate updates, a variety of bug fixes, and assorted post-release tuning. They are doing a great job with first month tune-ups, much of which is a credit to the state in which the game released.

I am expecting some new patch and a big announcement this week. This is purely based on timing: the free month is almost over, so you want to get people to stick around another month. Give them a bone, give them hope, and you have another month to work out any issues.

They seem to be doing this without a test server. I have this horrible vision of a Herald update: “We have taken servers down to resolve a bug that deleted any character that attempted to log in under the last patch. We have already restored deleted characters and are working on a way to deal with the rollback to the last full save point.” Or maybe I am just having EVE flashbacks there.

: Zubon

Looks like Altdorf is falling in multiple servers; even after the postern door fiasco.  On Averheim it took some good coordination, but Altdorf fell within five hours of the campaign starting.  My guild, Xen of Onslaught, started the assault with the alliance at 7:00 AM Eastern time in the hopes of a sleepy Order.  Mythic keeps making it sound like this is a truly epic endeavor, but I am not so sure Mythic has hit the mark.  Sure, the King encounter may be the pinnacle, but that’s not RvR… it’s a raid boss.  I have seen what great PvP players have done to “epic” bosses.  I heard in alliance chat that Mark Jacobs has nodded at the Averheim-Destruction victory, but I have not found the post.  I am looking forward to see if the Sunday morning-type assault on the enemy, while Order is clearly at church, is working-as-intended.

EDIT: Here (3rd down) is the Mark Jacob’s post.

While it’s against our policy to share exact formulas (in order to keep guilds from gaming the system), we do want to be sure and clarify these mechanics to the best of our ability for those guilds who are concerned about how guild leveling actually works.

The best of their ability is very poor. “It is a sound system involving a lot of math” does not tell us anything. “The system takes into account the characters’ level, and is balanced in a way to allow guilds of all sizes to level up at comparable (but not necessarily equal) rates.” This statement also translates to “we’re not going to tell you anything useful.” The best I can infer from the post is that completely inactive characters do not count against you, but mules and slightly active alts do. So Casualties of WAR was completely right about severely limiting alts, until we get a conflicting statement down the road.

The guild leveling system was obviously not part of any open testing. No one is allowed to know how it works, so we cannot tell if it is working properly. That is one way to keep the bug count down.

Conveniently, it does not matter in the long run. Every guild that sticks with the game will hit max level (or near enough) in several months. And what are the odds that anyone will quit because it took too long to get a guild emblem on their cloaks? Everyone will stick the guild leveling system in the “ignore” box soon and not think about it until someone looks at the code in two years.

: Zubon

Seriously Casual addresses the problem. First, there is not enough PvE to go around starting in the 20-ish range. I am fighting +3s and +4s regularly. Guildmates speak of completing all the PvE in all three areas without out-leveling the tier. For me, this has been a limited problem since I like leveling via scenarios, but if you are in long Destruction queues or a low-population server that doesn’t work. Even now, I am looking at a lot of scenarios before I am past the bolster point of tier 3. I do not feel the need to reach level 40 quickly, but I do not want to spend my RvR time feeding points to higher-level opponents. When players receive condolences in guild chat for reaching a new tier, that is a bad thing.

There are lots of games offering slow PvE grinds. That is not why we signed up for Warhammer. My buddy Cameron had the goods earlier, but then the ladies tell me he has always had the goods.

: Zubon

This? Changes little unless the numbers on that are large. Really, I can repeat one quest two to four times? That makes it much less grindy! That’s unfair: maybe it will help tier 2, but then I hit the wall in tier 3. Maybe I was already eating the tier 3 content in tier 2, so I did not notice. Maybe the later phases of “experience enhancements” will add up to more. I would gladly accept a retroactive boost to those quest rewards, if that is part of the plan. (Turbine can do that, nudge nudge.)

Update: oops, that is CHAPTERS 10-22, not LEVELS. Okay, that could make more of a difference. Again depending on the numbers, and again I could use that retroactively because I already did a chunk of that.

Update 2: having logged in, I can’t tell if it was retroactive. I forget how full that bar was. I scheduled this post before the Herald update, and I’m not sure how much is still relevant. Read Cameron anyway. I’m locking this down. Credit to Mythic for reacting to things quickly.

Holy crap, that was a big number. >3000 for a scenario completion. I must poke around and see what’s about.

Mourkain Temple is a Tier 2 Scenario (12v12) in Warhammer Online using the murderball mechanic – where one item is held for points but increasingly damages the player holding the item.  Mourkain seems to get a bit of flak, but I really like the fast pace of the map (especially compared to the other slower paced Tier 2 Scenarios) and the focused game mechanic. The map and game mechanic is most interesting in that it truly allows a better team to rub it in the loser’s face. I’ll explain.

A basic match goes like this: (a) players rush the murderball, (b) one team gets the ball and goes defensive, while the other team tries to kill the ball holder and his support on the offensive, (c) the ball gets dropped and someone else picks it up.  Points are made for picking up the ball, holding the ball, killing the player with the ball, and killing other players.  It’s a pretty simple concept.  In most games, the team with the murderball will fall back so as to get closer to their resurrection point. This has quite a few benefits because your healers don’t have to worry about rez’ing as much when you are standing next to your rez point, your newly rez’d players can jump right back in the fray, enemy players that rez at their point have to run for ~30 seconds to get back in the fray, and your ranged players can stand on top of a ridge gaining immunity from melee enemies. Seems like a good plan to fall back.

Going back to the psychological gamesmanship, it is quite a defeat when one team can “hedgehog” so as to impenetrably defend the murderball the entire match. I saw this tactic when I started playing Mourkain’s. Now, I am seeing a different “tactic” where a heavy tank (Black Orc or Ironbreaker) will pick up the murderball and push forward.  When I first saw this (and I am a Zealot healer, so it was all the worse) I could not believe the stupidity of the Black Orc I was following. “We have the ball, fall back, and make them come to us!” However, I kept dutifully healing, and my teammates did their jobs effectively. We then handedly defeated Order with the ball in our control on their turf.

It is an interesting strategy because it shakes up the “set” tactics an armchair general might bring to the table. The team without the ball should be on the offensive, but if they are getting pushed back things get muddled. Then the DPS are unsure of who to target, and get cut under in the confusion. Healers have to spread their healing around more.  And of greatest effect of all, in my humble opinion, is the psychological one where the losing team is told “you are getting beaten so bad, we won’t even let you go on the offensive like you should.” I cannot think of another MMO PvP map/mechanic where a similar effect could take place – where you can rub their noses in their loss through gamesmanship and skill.  That, or players could just be bored with hedgehogging and turtling tactics.
–Ravious