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Road to WAR Website Launched
Last week Mythic launched their "Road to WAR" website, allowing users to declare their allegiance, recruit friends, gather gold for the fight, and participate in a simple battle for self, state, and realm every week. In addition to the "prestige" of being on the leaderboard, you also have the ability to win in-game items and titles for launch. Looks like they really are hitting the warpath.
I know patches are unavoidable in MMORPGs, but patching the pre-game website on the day it's announced has to be some sort of new record. Hope it's not an omen for the forthcoming game.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
It appears as if the Road to War Beta is down for maintenance.... oh well.
It does seem like a good marketing strategy - to get players involved/committed prior to release. Especially for an MMO which depends on hooking as many players as possible. Hell, having the site down might even cause some even more anticipation in some sort of sick disappoint-the-customer kinda way.
I only hope it lives up to the hype. An MMO's success largely depends on customer satisfaction since it lives off of not only number of units sold, but also monthly subscriptions. Unsatisfied players will quit and along with them the people they could have influenced to join. Words travels fast for both the good and the bad. Now, I'm still iffy to get it (blame the fiance), but I do hope it brings something innovative to the table.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
First, here's the actual site: http://www.road-to-war.com/
Next, it's down for maintenance, which I guess is temporary but not a good time for an announcement.
This is, though, a better way to promote the game than monthly emails with new information that amount to "no you're still not in the beta."
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Are the comments decrying this post, like there always are for WoW ones?
I hope someone Mods him down. Everything he's said is slanted. Spreading FUD, as AC no less. Cities were cut, because they made the 2 cities so huge, they didn't want to take another 2 years building the other 4 to the same size. Blizzard's IP is based off of WARs IP, I thought everyone knew that... Content with WoW? Sure, I suppose. But as for the leveling up, WAR will level a lot faster than WoW, absolutely. No PvE Endgame? Says who? The King fights ARE PvE, and are the only announced endgame content I know of.
War, war never changes....
Whoops.. wrong game.
Since you want to compare Warhammer Online with World of Warcraft so badly...
They are launching a fraction of the content they were intending to have. Significant content too. Its like Blizzard shipping WoW with just Stormwind and the Undercity as capital cities.
They cut four character classes and are still shipping with 20 classes. How many character classes does WoW have right now? 20 classes is a lot to ship an MMO with in the beginning. They felt that those four classes that were cut were just not up to par with their expectations, and they may never see the light.
The capital city cuts were pretty bad, but it would have been worse had they shipped with six half-assed cities. They did discuss the fact that those cut cities will be reinserted into the game and will not charge for it.
They address this information about class and city cuts here.
People are content with WoW, especially with a new expansion releasing in 3-4 months. They don't feel like levelling up a new character in a MMO which is redone DAoC content.
Speak for yourself - not all people are content with WoW. If you read through some of the Warhammer Online forums, you'll see plenty of people who are getting sick of WoW and cannot stand the daily grind and the static classes. I am quitting WoW as soon as WAR is released. Even if WAR sucks, I'm not going back to WoW. The quests are too redundant, there is absolutely ZERO reward for exploration of the map, your in-game actions have no impact on the environment, and the classes are just too static.
If you want to be successful in dungeons and raiding, you have to follow the same path as anyone else. You almost cannot be versatile in how you play. I'm not sure how it is now in WoW as I haven't played in a few months, but at one point, if you want to be a warrior and play end-game content, you cannot be fury. BM hunters were avoided. Combat rogues were ignored. And so on. Even if you did end up in a decent group as an arcane mage or survival hunter, you couldn't contribute. There was always just one recipe to success and that was what killed the game for me.
And there are plenty of people who feel that WAR is not their cup of tea. That's perfectly fine. WAR was never intended to compete with WoW. WoW has its bright spots that WAR will never touch.
No PvE endgame in WAR. Endgame just like DAoC, a game made over five years ago.
They already discussed endgame content - remember, this is NOT a PvE game. End game content is there, but not completely finished. Many games do not ship out with complete end game content. WoW barely had any in the first year, and Age of Conan has a somewhat broken end-game system.
The bottom line is that you really cannot compare the two games. They seek to cater to two different groups of people - people who want an on-going raid in a realm vs. realm environment with public quests (WAR), and those that want highly polished end-game content with battlegrounds tacked on. (WoW)
Best "String" Ever!
Yeah, I know I am cutting your reply to hell, and I agree with most of it but...
The quests are too redundant, there is absolutely ZERO reward for exploration of the map
They are changing this with the new expansion - titles and such.
If you want to be successful in dungeons and raiding, you have to follow the same path as anyone else. You almost cannot be versatile in how you play. I'm not sure how it is now in WoW as I haven't played in a few months, but at one point, if you want to be a warrior and play end-game content, you cannot be fury. BM hunters were avoided. Combat rogues were ignored. And so on. Even if you did end up in a decent group as an arcane mage or survival hunter, you couldn't contribute. There was always just one recipe to success and that was what killed the game for me.
This is a result of people being close-minded, not the way things actually worked. I've played a fury warrior since the inception of WoW and have done quite well the whole way through. In fact, I was upset when they made several of the changes to Fury to make it "better" In some ways it was better, but in others the change sucked. That's the nature of redesigning character builds.
Also, from where I stood, Arcane Mage was (and still is) always the best spec for raiding - people are just too impatient and want to see big numbers or don't pay attention to what they are doing with their characters. *shrug*
"Little is much when little you need."
Blizzard did ship WoW with just Stormwind and the Undercity as capital cities, I don't know if you ever went to Darnassus but it's just an empty shell. ie: completely dead contentwise, even 2 years after launch.
In fact, most of Kalimdor felt unfinished until content was patched in later on (Theramore is the most recent example of this).
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Obviously since no one thought it prudent to mention what game this post is about, it must be about CounterStrike, since those are the only people with the sort of tunnel vision to think that everyone else in the world plays the same and only game as them.
Actually, IMHO 20 classes are entirely too much. I don't know about WAR, but I can compare WoW to EQ2's 24 class bonanza, and actually WoW is the more fun one there.
In WoW, the classes are distinct _and_ have a decent amount of flexibility, allowing them to be more than one-trick ponies. Except in end-game raids, I guess.
By comparison, EQ2's classes are confusing _and_ 1-2 trick ponies all the time. When you spread things that thin, either you have massive overlap, or have to slice abilities too thin to keep them unique. And thus end up with linear, non-interesting classes. Or, if you're bad at it, the worst of both worlds.
E.g., did we need _two_ druid classes in EQ2? One is better at offense, but can put it's talents into becoming a good healer too. The other one starts better at healing, but ends up sucking at both. Well, I guess at least you have a choice ;)
For that matter, why do we even need the druids as yet another healer class too? At least in WoW each druid shape has its unique gamplay, and the class is a unique jack-of-all-trades. In EQ2 they sliced classes too thin, that essentially they have 6 healer classes which differ only in whether they got healing, _or_ healing-over-time, _or_ preventing damage as their primary focus. Or one flavour is actually bad at all 3. The druid's animal shapes are just minor self-buffs. (And in a typical Sony stupidity, you can have two polymorphs, like, say, be a Wolf _and_ a Lion at the same time. But let's not go there.) It just illustrates what I'm talking about. All those classes just mean that each of them gets a small, uninteresting mix of tricks, because they had to slice it too thin.
Or did it need Assassin, Swashbuckler _and_ Brigand as rogues? Wth is wrong with one class and having the Assassin, Combat and Subtlety specs as talent trees, like in WoW? And again, all that slicing classes thin, pegs you into one narrow role from start to finish. Each gets less tricks up your sleeve than a WoW Rogue, which makes for rather less interesting gameplay.
Did the mages really need to be split the hard way into single-target mages and AOE mages? WTF?
Did we really need two Bard classes, where one buffs melee types and one buffs mages? WTF?
Etc.
And worse yet, it makes you choose something from the start, when you don't even know or understand the subtle differences between them all. Which healer class suits your play style better, if you want to be a healer in EQ2? Do you even understand what you forsake by picking Warden instead of Templar, on your very first day when you bought the game? Fuck if I knew, myself.
So, basically, I'm not impressed that it has more classes. More isn't necessarily better, as I've illustrated with EQ2. Now if you were to tell me that WAR has some unique classes that can do things a WoW class never dreamt of, I'd listen and be interested. But just splitting the same abilities among more slices, doesn't make a game better.
Still sounds like a half arse launch to me, either way.
Ah, yes, that cate
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yawn.
--
Re-yawn.
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[2. Trade]Noobzorrz: I wanna buy an chant! for my daggarz!!! Who have daggar chant?
[2. Trade]Ptwink: Sure, I can do it, where are you?
[2. Trade]Noobzoorz (1):Shattrath!
[2. Trade]Ptwink(1): np, omw.
[2. Trade]Noobzoorz (2):Ironforge!
[2. Trade]Ptwink(2): yeah ok.
[2. Trade]Noobzoorz (3):Stormwind!
[2. Trade]Ptwink(3): .. alright but you better tip well
[2. Trade]Noobzoorz (4):Darnassus!
[2. Trade]Ptwink(4): come here and I'll do it.
[2. Trade]Noobzoorz (5):Exodar!
[2. Trade]Ptwink(5): wtf? why are u in Exodar?
In terms of quests/content, I would have thought the undercity was a lot more fleshed out. But I'll admit I never got an orc character to the point where they would have been getting quests out of orctown.
In any case, what I'm getting at is that as a rule of thumb the Eastern Kingdoms was far superior to anything in Kalimdor, either because they did Kalimdor before EK and learned how to do it better. Or because they did EK and then rushed it out with Kalimdor half done.
It's hard to say which is the case.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Good bad or ugly a lot of Aussies are going to play this just because it has servers based in Australia. Hooray! Goodbye 500ms pings!
I played Warhammer Beta... it's alright, fun even. But it's a MMORPGer and I just don't have the time for the grind any more :(
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
Yeah, I know I am cutting your reply to hell, and I agree with most of it but...
Hey it's perfectly fine. I'm actually interested in what other people think about the topic. And in the end, I always end up learning a thing or two. Besides, it's the whole point of a forum. Speak your mind. :)
That's a very positive sign for at least me. I know a lot of gamers like WoW as-is, and they should, it's a fine game. I just love exploring and getting the sense of finding something different every time I go out somewhere.
I wonder what it would take for such a system to be in place - where every time you visit an area, something new and different is going on? Maybe an NPC that wasn't there before and such. I know the current crop of MMO's cannot do that without having physical people inject content.
Or maybe content that came from the people playing rather than only from NPC's.
You mentioned playing a fury warrior since the inception: Did you ever feel like you were boxed into playing a certain way? Or perhaps the game's content dictated how you should play? Or was that simply other players making it seem like you HAD to play a certain way?
I tried every class, but spent most of the two years playing a combat rogue before switching to an assassination / subtlety combo, and just loved it.
Best "String" Ever!
Sorry to correct you there, but the first zones made are elwyn forest and westfall :D
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
I agree with the other response to your post. I've even heard it from blue posts in WOW: 'one spec to rule them all' is caused by players, not game design. They can make all the numbers work out on paper to be perfectly balanced, but if people in the forums and game keep spreading rumors that X is the only viable spec, then that becomes 'truth', because no one lets other specs into groups, etc.
Used to be that everyone said 17 arcane was 'required' for mages to get Imp. AE. The devs gave that to mages free, and then people said 17 in arcane is 'required' for Imp. Counterspell. The other 15 points in arcane are almost literally useless (at least until the next expansion, when they're getting reworked). Screw that. I leveled and played at 60 (and now 70) as an elemental mage, a spec that people won't even talk about in forums for PVE or PVP.
That said, elemental is getting HUGE buffs in the expansion. More than making numbers balance on paper, the designers have to over-buff things perceived as bad to get people to even consider them, and then nerf them back down to match the other specs. Well..except they forgot about the 'nerf back down' part. I'm looking at you, rogues and druids.
Blizzard's IP is based off of WARs IP, I thought everyone knew that...
Sadly, the abuse of GW IP is making WHFB fans cry... I'm talking about Mythic, not Blizzard.
And the crazy tunnel vision for a teen rating. Seriously, Khorne is weeping softly for the lack of blood in this game.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Aren't you just as guilty of slanting in the opposite direction? "They couldn't include the four other cities because the first two were so awesome and big! They couldn't fit that much awesomeness on the servers! Blizzard's IP is all from WAR! There is no original ideas and therefor WAR will be better since it has everything from WoW and more (except content)! People complained how easy it was to level in WoW but they were wrong...WAR makes it EVEN EASIER and it actually makes it more awesome since you run out of things to do faster and can have a real life. And there is one and only one thing to do in PvE. Take that WoW!"
Obviously, exaggerating for comedic effect...but that is how you came off to me.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
"Plus, if having your name on the Leaderboard isn't enough incentive to win, there are plenty of valuable prizes at stake, including a Never Ending Bowl of Custard"
Those Australians and their custard.
It's just like New Zealanders and sheep.
Disgusting.
Oh, and I think four classes should be enough for anyone (F/Th/MU/Cl);)
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I never felt boxed in by anything but the other players. But then I am extremely individualistic. And I eventually found a guild that welcomed me, my individuality and my tactical abilities.
"Little is much when little you need."
If you're a republican, you might be more inclined towards the War Song message. Click "The War Song" in the Flash doohickey on Max for president site. Part of the lyrics:
Ohh, War!
What is it good for? (What is it good for?)
Oh, it strengthens the economy!
It shows the world that we've got stones! (We've got stones!)
And carriers... with fighter drones! (Vo doh dee oh!)
War!
Oh, what is it good for? (What is it good for?)
It's good for you it's good for me!
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
Well, given I said 'either/or' you didn't correct me, because I have no way of knowing which scenario was true. If they did EK first, they just ran out of time on Kalimdor. (Or alternatively just didn't give a shit about the quality of the continent, which doesn't sound like the blizzard I know)
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.