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.Two years ago today, I started blogging about MMOs at my old blog, Existential Worlds, though I haven’t written there since joining the KTR staff, June 9th, 2007.  It really hasn’t seemed like a long time, but it has been rewarding.  I have met so many amazing people, many of whom I now call guild-mates in Casualties of War.
Thanks again to Ethic for welcoming me to his little soapbox in cyberspace, and thanks to all the readers and bloggers who make this hobby so engaging.
~Cyndre
As the Warhammer Online Open Beta winds to a close, it is easy to look back over the relatively short development cycle with all its ups and downs, and form an evaluation of Mythic’s performance from start to finish.  My opinion? Excellent, although your milage may vary.
One thing is certain…  Mythic moved the game to Open Beta, and unlike the vast majority of their peers, they remained committed to continuing the testing, polish and development of the game.  While many game studios often will say ‘forgive us it’s only Beta’ and yet the bugs persist and go unfixed, Mythic tweaked, patched and improved nearly every single day.
I had a tremendous amount of fun, and I just wanted to thank all of the hard workers at Mythic who have given us long hours, commitment and who have poured their blood, sweat and tears into this project, so that we may have a world to lose ourselves for a while, and share wondrous adventures with our friends.
When the dust settles, raise a pint, take a long nap, and be proud of your accomplishments!
~Cyndre
I’m still not sure if I want to play a sequel to World of Warcraft with a team-PvP focus. I passed on the first one.
: Zubon
This is what it’s all about. The day before you can first log in to a new MMO. Everyone’s talking about it. People are excited because this is the best game ever. People are holding off because all new MMOs need 6 months to really be ready to play. People are angry because it’s just more of the same old thing.
It’s a fresh start, a new beginning. New adventures with old friends. Old adventures with new friends. Finding a new guild or moving with the old guild. New game mechanics to figure out, or just to figure out they are the same as the old. A new class, a new race, a new sex. What name should I choose? Should I use the old name so people know me right away? What if someone grabs my name before me? Maybe I’ll choose a new name and new identity, I was kind of a jerk in that last game. I think I’ll create a character on each server to save my name. Ah, who cares if someone else gets my name.
What server should I choose? Maybe the first or last alphabetically? Oh I know, I’ll pick the coolest name so I will be on a popular servers. No way, I want a quieter server so I’ll go for the lamest name in the bunch. Nah, I’ll wait until they add a new server and I’ll join that one.
Anyway, for me this is where it all begins. A new game. Whatever you plan to do and wherever you plan to do it, I hope it is everything you had hoped for and more.
– Ethic
You can pack that blogline in your feedburner and smoke it! You won’t see too much Mythic hate coming from me in the the next few months I’d imagine, but their most recent decision regarding server rules, is just too grotesque to ignore.
Tobold talks about his Witch Elf in a way that defines “This thread is useless without pics.” So there you go. Want to know what she looks like in armor? That is her armor. Her armor is actually called “halter.”
Oh, and if someone is running away from you in PvP, throw a dagger in his back. Witch Elves get that at level 1, and it includes a snare if you hit the target in the back.
: Zubon
I’ve been playing a Shaman in Warhammer Online during beta on a regular basis and find the mechanic they use to encourage both healing and damage dealing to be entertaining. How it works is that basically the more damage you do, the more effective your healing spells become and the more you heal your friends, the more powerful your attack skills become. Therefore, the system encourages you to play the balance of damage and healing. No longer are the healers getting yelled at for attacking. It’s all part of the design and I find it quite fun.
Now along comes the Rune-keeper in Lord of the Rings Online. This is one of the new classes coming out with the Mines of Moria expansion. The thing that caught my eye here is a system called Attunement. The Rune-keeper is also a healer/damage dealing hybrid like the Shaman, but in this case Turbine has appeared to flip the design over. The more damage you do, the better you get at doing damage. The more healing you do, the better you get at healing. It seems to actually discourage you from filling both roles. Instead, I guess you must pick one role or the other before you start the fight. I can’t tell at this point if one will be more fun than the other but I plan to create a Rune-keeper when the expansion launches to test the class. My gut tells me the Shaman will be more fun, but I could be wrong.
– Ethic
Recommendation:
If you would like a sequel to World of Warcraft with a team-PvP focus, buy Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. If you are waiting for something new and original, keep waiting.
Take note: that is “buy it” not “buy it after the major bugs are fixed.” This is my fifth re-write, and it was only yesterday that it changed from “wait” to “now.” Once the new bugs from Thursday’s patch are fixed, the game is ready to go live.
I do not think I have ever said that about an MMO. There could be massive bugs and a lack of content hidden beyond the open beta level cap, but as far as I can see, they are almost good to go. Servers are solid, with only one crash to desktop and one server flop, and it is a fully competent implementation of DikuMUD with graphics. If you like MMO gameplay, the classes are good takes on it, and they are fun.
If you do not like standard MMO gameplay, had hoped for something new, or are waiting for something better, pass on it. Mythic added a couple of cards but did not shuffle the deck much. This could be a very large expansion pack to your current game, except for that “start anew” thing.
A while back I read at The Cesspit and Nerfbat about some issues Warhammer Online will face. One quote:
Too many parts of Warhammer’s core design are strictly dependent on keeping a fine balance on the number of players participating, and so vulnerable. It’s not about PQs only. It’s about PQs, faction balance in open RvR, issues of overcrowding and depopulation in all the parts of the game. The *fun* strictly depends on that fine balance, to keep all the options viable at all times, and to keep the single option fun without suffering overcrowding or depopulation.
I hadn’t really seen it as an issue until it slapped me in the face last night. I was playing on the side of Order in the lower levels and the first two Public Quests I participated in could not be completed. There just was not enough people to take on the spawning mobs and people would not bother coming back if they got killed. I tried several times and eventually I got to the point that I would just slip into the PQ area and look at the quest progress to see if the mobs are being killed fast (the first phase is usually something like kill 25 somethings). If the numbers didn’t go up quick, I knew there was not enough playing and moved along – thus feeding into the problem more.
I’d hate to see what the early PQ’s look like a year from now (not to mention the even larger related problems mentioned in the quote above) if they don’t make some changes to address this.
– Ethic
It has been noted that nothing gets me in Yahtzee-mode faster than technical issues. I sometimes start to feel bad about this, until I remember that an MMO is a service not a product. We put up with a lot of bugs. A lot of bugs. Like, hey, whoa, a lot of bugs. If you cannot list 20 bugs in your current MMO, you are not trying, and that is before considering balance issues like “this quest is brokenly difficult and gives you jack for a reward.”
I’m an MMO player, meaning I’m a masochist, so I deal. If the bug is an account or log-in problem, I’m not a player, so I can’t deal. I can fume. Oh look, a convenient form I can send in (web form; they’re not going to give you an actual e-mail address to contact). Someone will get back to me in one to two business days. You can fill in how useful that is.
Those are infrequent. The ones that upset me more often are the ones we do put up with. Example: the boss of an instance resets half-way through and breaks, so he cannot be fought. Wait on tech support, and you are helpfully informed that they know about the issue, nothing to be done; feel free to reset the instance and start over. And we come back the next night or next week to try again. How many times have you had some variation on this discussion: “We completed it but did not get the reward.” “That sounds unfortunate, but we cannot give you the award. Is there anything else we can help you with?” I have it far less often than I used to, back before I gave up hope. Getting useful tech support is a pleasant surprise because it really is a surprise.
: Zubon
I shouldn’t blog late at night.