Warhammer Online Information by the Truckload

Last week Massively.com got the chance to head over to EA Mythic's Virginia lab to clock some hands-on time with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning . As a result they were pumping out loads of review content, everything from hardcore PvP info to dungeon crawling to crafting. The culmination of all this hard work was a summary post with clickable navigation to all of their review resources. Definitely worth a look if you are at all curious about this upcoming behemoth.

Comments

Zonk at Massively?

[eldavojohn]

I haven't seen a post from Zonk since April 17th and now I see that this blog at Massively is by none other than Michael "Zonk" Zenke.

Is there a reason why this wasn't hosted at games.slashdot.org? Is it a sign of Zonk moving on like other editors/authors or is he merely helping other sites out?

Either way, an unparalleled score of information on Warhammer Online by EA Mythic! Well done, Zonk!

I wish there was word on how stable and balanced the game is currently at. I remember playing some MMOs back in the day that were more than a bit glitchy.

Re:Zonk at Massively?

[Zonk]

Aprils 17th was actually my last day with the site.

I'm just another Slashdot user now. :)

My primary gig is over at Massively, but I'm also writing at places like Wired, Gamasutra, and 1up.

As for stability, unfortunately I can't really speak to that. They're still very much in a Beta phase. It was a lot less glitchy than I've seen some games at that stage, but it was (of course) a setup specifically designed to give me the best impression of the game possible.

Re:Zonk at Massively?

[StalinsNotDead]

So why does your user name still have the Slashdot indicator next to the friend/foe dots?

Good luck on you r current gig(s).

I won't pay to play an MMO until

[Bobtree]

the players have real agency. What's the point of being online with lots of people if everybody's quests are identical and no player's actions really impact the world at all? Maybe Warhammer will be the one to do that. Time will tell.

Re:I won't pay to play an MMO until

[plus_M]

Sounds like you're asking about Eve Online.

Re:I won't pay to play an MMO until

[TheThiefMaster]

Or at least, the Faction Warfare expansion being released on Tuesday. See: http://www.eveonline.com/empyreanage/

Re:I won't pay to play an MMO until

[elnico]

The jewel of Warhammer Online will be it's Realm Vs. Realm (RvR) combat. One of the main tenets of RvR combat, as Mythic implements it, is that all PvP actions contribute towards the war effort. Entire zones will change control as the result of events in RvR. Believe me, Mythic is very much trying to avoid the solo-MMO paradigm that was made popular by (parts of) WoW.

Re:I won't pay to play an MMO until

[GalacticCmdr]

Except of course for the whole "Developers cheating to help themselves and their friends" issue that plagues Eve.

Re:I won't pay to play an MMO until

[Spudds]

Dark Age Of Camelot (also created by Mythic) was somewhat like that. WAR is basically DAOC v2.

In DAOC, you captured keeps. The more RvR keeps you had, the more advantages you had in PvE.
For example, with x keeps, you had more gold dropped from mobs. With x + 1 keeps you had more gold drop and bonus XP when you killed mobs. With x + 2 keeps you had more gold, more XP and did more mele dmg.

Those aren't exact, they're examples from my diminishing memory, but you get the idea.
There was also a special dungeon shared across all realms that you were only allowed to go in if your realm had enough keeps in RvR. I believe that's where "the good drops" were...

It sounds like WAR is following in those footsteps but is expanded and refined. So it sounds like WAR is basically what you're looking for.

Re:I won't pay to play an MMO until

[AlexMax2742]

I could deal with that if the game was more exciting than Microsoft Excel.

Truckload?

[spun]

I'm unfamiliar with that unit of measurement. Could someone convert that to Libraries of Congress, or failing that, to metric buttloads and I can convert from there to LoCs.

Re:Truckload?

[everphilski]

I'm sorry, we only deal in imperial buttloads

Re:Truckload?

[CogDissident]

Hence the McCain '08 tag on your posts?

Re:Truckload?

[hkmarks]

Assuming the information is stored on hard drives, and a hard drive weighs 700 grams, and the truck in question is a Ford Super Duty, which has a capacity of 6,120 lbs, and the hard drives have a nominal capacity of 500 decimal gigabytes, I estimate the amount of information per truckload to be approximately 1.76 petabytes.

If they were using an 18-wheeler I'd really be impressed.

DAOC 2 ??

[setrops]

When they put the game on hold some months back and stopped the beta program I was a bit intrigued on what they may doing. It looks like they took feedback from the beta players (mostly DAOC players?) and implemented siege warfare, keeps, realm abilities and other features directly ripped out from DAOC. This could be bad, really bad.

Well let's hope Mythic learned their lessons from the mistakes that they did with DAOC and not repeat them. Who know it may be a great game.

Re:DAOC 2 ??

[ferat]

The only real mistakes that mythic made with daoc were the atlantis expansion and crafting.

I have high hopes for WAR.

Re:DAOC 2 ??

[BlowHole666]

Amen. It was a slap in the face when mythic made crafting easier and let everyone craft everything on the same character. It just said to the hardcore players who started playing in the beginning that we do not care about you anymore. Atlantis... well i have mixed feelings on that. It went from very hard and needing large groups to complete to needing only a 4-8 man group, or just RvRing the whole thing.

Re:DAOC 2 ??

[DerWulf]

judging from the disappointing (not bad, but not on par with expectations) Age of Conan I'd advise developers to look at what WoW does right first if they want to have a fighting chance. RvR could be a clusterfuck if the realms are not balanced. Then everyone will suddenly cry for instanced PvP because open is just so damn unfair (the reverse of what people crying about on the WoW forums). WAR and meaningful PvP? I'm not convinced until I see it ... and if it is truly the case the devs should be prepared because any balance issues will be magnified a thousand times by that.

There's only one important thing in the game...

[HerculesMO]

How much PLAYER SKILL does it take to compete?

World of Warcraft is very cookie cutter -- X class will beat Y class, armor and weapons make a HUGE difference, etc.

I have been waiting for Darkfall Online for 6 years (and am still optimistic), but it seems like that will be the only game that fulfills the idea that an individual player can beat somebody else because of innate ability rather than what class you played.

That said, the only other good PvP game has been Ultima Online. I've tried EVERYTHING since then -- AC/EQ/AO/EQ2/WOW/AoC, and more that I forget.

Re:There's only one important thing in the game...

[effigiate]

You missed the other game by Mythic that was focused on PvP - Dark Age of Camelot. If Warhammer is as good at PvP as DAoC was, it will be great.

I've been spoiled by WoW

[merchant_x]

WoW hit the sweet spot for MMO's in that they made it challenging enough to keep hardcore types interested but easy enough for their casual friends to get into and experience quite a bit of the content with them. I'm hoping WAR can do the same thing and perhaps improve the experience a bit. WoW is starting to feel a bit long in the tooth and seems to have lost it's focus a bit. If WAR can deliver what WoW is missing before Blizzard gets out the next expansion, they could have the makings of a very successful launch.

Re:I've been spoiled by WoW

[MrPink2U]

Before the next expansion? They're likely not going to do anything except raise the level cap and put more end-game content in, that most casual players will never see. Yes, I'd call that an expansion. What else would you like?

heh

[thatskinnyguy]

Warhammer Online Information by the Truckload Don't they know that the internet isn't a big truck you can throw stuff in?! It's a series of tubes!

Not Impressed ... Yet

[kenp2002]

In full disclousure I am a former DAOC player:

Warhamma' has one major, GLARING, OUTSTANDING, AND IDIOTIC failing that Mythic has time and time again told us the players is not an issue, yet we complained over and over (and still do to this day).

In Warhammer, there are only two factions (sides.) And I played BETA for 3 months I NEVER SAW A SINGLE, NON-CHAOS player. EVER. With only two sides the oldest problem MMO's face crops up, un-balanced populations.

Every 10 year old kid is going to "roll" Chaos. All the hard-core PvP'ers will roll Chaos. So for every 10 Chaos we'll get 1 person playing a dwarf for about a week; subsequently the dwarf cancels because they're outnumbered 30 to 1. DAOC had 3 factions so even if Midgard outnumbered Hibbies (Hibernian) the combined populations of bucket heads (Albion) and Hibbies outnumbered the fatties (midgard). A three-way battle provided an excellent mechanism for preventing population imbalances. (And isn't a three-way better then a two-way anyway?)

Faction stacking is going to be a serious issue with Warhamma, enough to kill the game at launch if not addressed and as usual, egotist know-it-alls claim they are smarter then the players, and in this case, smarter then basic statistic and math. They denyed population imbalances for years prior to and post Atlantais in DAOC. Time and time again we would show them the population problems (on one server there was an 4 to 1 ratio of Mid's to any of the other two. The other two combined only equaled 1/2 the number of mids.) Their arrogance keeps their head in the sand and with Warhamma, unless they fire some of those twits are gonna bury their own product at launch (reminds me of Star Wars....)

We see it already in WoW with battlegroups (clusters of servers) starting to stack as people transfer to "the horde or alliance dominated" battlegroups.

At least WoW instanced the majority of PvP\RvR to control population imbalances but as far as Warhamma is sizing up, failure is written all over it before it even launches... Hell the gearing imbalances still linger from the AV debacle. On Stormstike I have both alliance and horde (Archimonde and Scilla) and When I queue up for WSG I am standing next to 70's with an average resilience (a key PvP gear statistic) of 70. When I log into my horde on Scilla and head into WSG the average is 200. Most in full s3 gear and very few without at least 4 pieces of s2. Full BG rewards because they had such an advantage during the AV transition (now fixed but the damage is done.)

Basic math doesn't lie and without major re-work I see no future for Warhamma.

When you paint a situation with only two clear cut sides, even the foot steps of a moth will break any hope of balance.

Re:Not Impressed ... Yet

[Achoi77]

That's never going to change.

In almost all mainstream MMOs, the most dominant race played are the 'most normal' ones. And then after that you have the most 'hardcore' races played by the 'serious' gamers.

In WoW, while NE were popular, humans were clearly the most commonly played race on the Alliance. Dwarves and Gnomes the least played. On the Horde, it was the undead, them being the most 'human' looking, but in a hardcore eeevil fashion. The trolls being the least played race.

EQ had the same pattern - humans being the most commonly played race, trolls and gnomes/dwarves the least.

Also keep in mind that a lot of people were afraid that everybody was going to roll undead during launch - and at first it was true, but as more and more people signed up to play the population evened out after a while, with humans at the top.

But when this game launches, I wouldn't be too suprised to see when a bunch of wow expats playing the opposite faction that they have played in WoW. I myself am looking forward to rolling a dwarf.

Re:Not Impressed ... Yet

[joelpt]

I believe they are trying to address this problem by adding NPC 'helpers' to the weaker side in PVP/RVR battles where the population is unbalanced.

That won't help the "ghost town" phenomenon that can result from population distribution problems, but it should hopefully make RvR "fair".

Wrong approach

[Shivetya]

They should first concentrate on what WOW did right. Looking for mistakes in WOW is going to devolve into being saddled down with personal nits. In other words if they look for what WOW did wrong they will not get a good picture simply because what was done wrong is so overshadowed by what went right.

I have nothing wrong with trying to make a better WOW, but you don't do that by trying to find out what is wrong with it. The only thing really wrong with WOW is that its size hobbles other companies trying to compete in the fantasy genre. If anything that size stifles others as VC money is more likely going to examine what happened to recent offerings like LOTRO and DDO and say "if they couldn't make a dent or sizable population what could?"

Re:Wrong approach

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Except that WoW has never handled PvP well. That's one of the major things that the fine folks behind WAR have looked at and made sure to get right.

Re:Wrong approach

[Phrogman]

All that WOW seems to have done right is rehash all of the concepts present in earlier games in a new format with very few problems. I tried it at release and didn't last the first month because it offered nothing new, just old concepts redone in an easy but boring format. Its been marketed to a massive audience of former Blizzard customers and done extremely well I admit, but most of those customers have never played another MMO to compare it to.They will get bored and move to a new game when the right one comes along that does things at least as well as WOW.

To quote a woman I met recently "Oh my husband and I have been playing WOW for about 8 months now, but we are getting a bit bored. Are you saying there are *other* mmorpgs like WOW out there?"

Overall as someone who has played dozens of MMOs, WOW is of minimal interest to me. If you want an excellent MMO, try City of Heroes in my opinion. Yes, like WOW its not very good for PvP so don't go there if thats your thing, but otherwise its the best engineered game I have ever seen, and has proven extremely enjoyable to me and my friends ever since its release.

Mythic has the advantage of its experience with Dark Age of Camelot, and thats a tremendous heads up with regards to RvR. They set the standard and no one has come even close to DAOC in that regard, although Mythic did overengineer things in the end and ruin it in many people's opinion

DAOC in its first few years was the best gaming experience I have had or am ever likely to have. I can hope WHO comes close or exceeds it, but I doubt thats possible.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

So, basically...

[Moraelin]

So, basically, they're trying to avoid what made WoW so successful? I'm sure they can ask the fine developers of Vanguard how well the plan went to avoid everything that made WoW fun.

I mean, seriously, even Sony had to grudgingly give up and demote most NPCs from heroic (think "elite" in WoW lingo) to make it more soloable, plus give all classes enough firepower (e.g., via "heroic opportunities") to solo.

Now I'm not commenting on Warcraft Online specifically, since I don't have enough info for that. I don't know whether it will rule or suck.

But trying to avoid solo-MMO at this point is really a way to say, "nah, we're not giving the vast majority of players what they want." I just have to question why would anyone sane do that? Did they (and their publisher) take a vow of poverty? Or are they trying to not compete too hard with Blizzard? Or what? :P

Or it could be that they're smarter than that, after all, and just give a wrong impression.

Dunno where people got that definition from

[Moraelin]

Personally I dunno where people got that definition that you must need a group to even go to the toilet, to be a "real" MMO.

The name just says "massively multiplayer", which strictly speaking means lots and lots of players on the same server.

The first "real" MMO was UO, so basically it means whatever Origin wanted it to mean. It had no such restriction.

Some people would argue that MMOs are really a continuation of MUDs, only this time with a graphical interface. And while I would personally call it a new genre anyway, or a convergence of two former genre, I see their point too: the first ones played a lot like a DIKU with graphics. MUDs had no such restriction either.

Basically I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. Quite the contrary. Just wondering where people got that idea.