Slashdot Mirror
Mythic Launches Warhammer Online
After four days of "head-start" players getting the run of the servers, Warhammer Online launched today to the rest of the public. Mythic took the opportunity to explain why they think World of Warcraft players should give them a chance, highlighting their focus on PvP (or Realm-vs-Realm in this case), and their desire to keep time-intensive activities to a minimum. Creative director Paul Barnett says it's "a bit like Batman." 1.5 million copies of the game have already been sent to retailers, so they're clearly expecting a solid launch. The folks over at Massively have developed an excellent series of guides for players looking to get into the game. They explain and contrast general career choices and look at individual classes as well. They also have a variety of interviews and descriptions of gameplay.
Been playing for a few days now thanks to CE. Love the game! If your looking for someting new or deciding to try the whole MMORPG thing you will be impressed!
My least-favorite part of WoW. I guess I won't be spending my money on Warhammer.
As soon as the release a Mac version of the game I'll join up! For now, WoW is getting my money
And, no. Bootcamp is NOT an option
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
I may not be your "typical" MMORPG gamer, but I actually "like" PvE-style play. I find it tedious and frustrating to play in a PvP realm, where every snot-nosed 12 year old is hiding behind a tree, waiting to gank my level 2 warrior.
Therefore, no need to move off of WoW for WHOnline. There's enough for me there today.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
...best idea if they're trying to dethrone WoW.
Someone should have told them that 20 years ago when they came up with the name!
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
I got in early due to pre-order and I must say that I am enjoying the game thus far. Only up to rank 10 (they say rank instead of level, but whatever) but I have had experience with both the controlled RvR (these you click a button for on the compass and it puts you in a queue for them, the only one I've experienced is very capture and hold, but fun) or the open quest areas which you can roam around in. Detaunt actually serves a purpose in this game when you go against other players, which makes playing a mage class a little easier as I'm no turned into beef jerky the instant a tank rolls up on me.
The other thing I particularly enjoyed were the PQs (Public Quests) that anyone can participate in. You come across these areas and there are objectives (kill 100 things, then smash 15 of these, defend this, etc) and anyone can assist in completing the objectives and the tallied points for them are persistant (save for the timed ones which if not completed autofail then reset the encounter). The loot is done in such a way in that if you took part in some way you are rewarded.
Not saying it's perfect, but so far I am enjoying myself.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.
WTF were you thinking Mythic???
Seems like you guys are bitching about the game and not even looking at it really. PVP is a hell of alot better in this game and the classes are well intergrated and balance each other on each side. The PVE side also has very intersting quests and story lines. Also the tome of Knowledge is awesome. You can just be exploring around and you just get a blurb added to it about the skeleton you just found or the creature you just killed. It gives you xp, titles that can be displayed and even some cool items to use. Check out the game before you just shrug your shoulders and roll your eyes. The game is not WOW.
I'll have to disagree with the general sentiment that Warhammer won't succeed. I've noticed many, many, many former WoW players in love with this game, including myself and my boyfriend. The RvR is amazing, the classes are well balanced, and there's no cheesy stun-based PvP system. Will it "replace WoW?" God I hope not. WoW has become to AOL of MMORPGs, where any retard can get a 1700 arena score and be shining in purples. It's utterly ridiculous and so far, Warhammer has been the breath of fresh air serious PvP'ers have been waiting for, and it will be a success in its own right. If you're a carebear and you want to raid instead of melt faces, that's fine, but don't come to Warhammer. We don't want you.
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
Think more 'Dark Ages of Camelot' v2.0 than WoW, given that it's Mythic. From my experience in the beta, the PVE game exists only to teach you how to fight, and to lead you around to collect loot and XPs. The public quests in particular are very much 'Repeat these until you max your local faction out, collect a few greens, and hop in the local RvR queue.'
See that's the thing, I hate instanced PVP. I don't want to "Hop into a queue"
I want real territory control and player owned areas.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I would have preferred to see a WH40K setting
Amen to that. Instead of trying to compete with WoW in yet another fantasy setting, why not compete in a sci-fi setting? 40K has a lot of background material, they're constantly updating it with new races and new storylines, and it's just overall a lot more fun as a setting. It feels like they went with the fantasy setting because that's what every other game has done, and that's just dumb.
25 years. Warhammer Fantasy Battle was originally published in 1983. (Yes, I still have miniatures I bought in '84).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Good, I won't have to bother. It's not WoW's PVP, I've seen it in a dozen games, each of which has claimed to "do it right." Despite what some people say, not "everyone really, really likes PVP down underneath it all, you know... if it's done RIGHT."
I think the "Public Quests" are a pretty neat innovation. It's kind of like a 20 minute raid (which has a story) that you automatically join once you walk up. At the end everyone rolls for rewards, and you get bonuses to your rolls depending on how much you contributed and you also get a bonus if you didn't win anything the last time you tried. During these quests, you're also making progress on your "area influence", which allows you to get some nice rewards as well pretty quickly. It might seem like a "small" innovation, but I keep wondering why I haven't seen it in any other game (and I've played quite a few).
Mythic has extensive experience with PvP and has put controls in to remove the griefing of lower level players as much as possible.
The game is divided up into four "tiers." The level ranges for the tiers are (roughly, I'm not positive) 1 through 11, 12 through 21, 22 through 31, and 32 to 40. If a Level 12 players enters a Tier 1 zone and goes looking for some Level 2 warrior to gank, he won't succeed. The level 12 player will be "chickened." He will literally be transformed into a chicken with 1 hit point and an attack that does 1 damage.
Even on the open PvP servers where you are always "flagged" for RvR (there are no safe PvE zones like on the Core ruleset servers) they have kept a reduced form of the "chickening" mechanic. It's just been extended down a tier, so a level 15 character can go into the tier 1 zone without being chickened, but a level 23 character WILL be turned into a chicken in the tier 1 zone (but not in tier 2).
There is also the "starter" area, which is a subset of the tier 1 area, where anyone from a higher tier will be turned into a chicken regardless, to allow the newest players time to level up to 2 or 3 before going out and fighting.
As always, Penny Arcade has already made fun of you.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Someone has to do it.
Don't say another Goddamn word.
I'm as much against slashvertisements as the next guy, but considering how much of a behemoth the WoW machine is anything that has the potential to challenge it is newsworthy. Warhammer might equal WoW. They may even beat them eventually.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Because THQ owns the license to WH40K and not Mythic. =/
I'm sorry but games need to be more challenging. I'm tired of MMO's where you have no penalty of death. It's like....Run around get killed, come back to life and do it all over again.
Hey, I'm all for having more challenge in games. A lot of games, and WoW stands out here, are quite easy in the main (WoW has a few moments, but generally the "challenge" comes from party members who are "challenged").
But I'm bloody sick and tired of people who say "I want more challenge... there should be a penalty for death!" Because you know what? Being penalized for death isn't challenge, it's punishment. MMOs are already "punishing" enough as timesinks, they do not need additional punishment for what is supposed to be FUN!
And the punishment doesn't make the game harder, it just makes people who don't succeed the first time (regardless of how easy or hard the game is) realize how retarded taking punishment from a game is and quit. I guess maybe that's the point, drive away the noobs, but it's nothing to do with whether the game is actually hard or not. You could have an extremely hard game with no penalty for death, and hey, it'd be hard! Using punishment as a substitute for challenge just means you can't figure out a real way to make the game hard without also making it cheap.
And cheapness is the biggest reason I'm against punishment in games, because most of them are cheap. UO had a huge penalty for death -- you lost all the gear on you. And if you were a mage/archer and that's the skill that got nerfed into oblivion that patch while the other got buffed to ridiculous levels, then you'd get whacked in two seconds. Or you would get lagged entering a dungeon so you're frozen in place while the gankers on the inside stabbed you to death and took your stuff. How is that "challenge"? Diablo II had a big penalty for death in Nightmare and Hell, in the form of perhaps hours worth of experience lost if you died. It also had retardedly imbalanced mini-bosses who could kill you in one shot before you realized they were there. How is having to spend those extra hours regaining your gear or regaining the exp "challenging", as opposed to "annoying and cheap"?
I don't get what the big deal of "Run around get killed, come back to life and do it all over again" is. If you make the game actually challenging instead of cheaply punishing, and it takes someone 147 deaths before they figure out what they were doing wrong and beat the encounter, why is the extra 10 hours it took them not punishment enough?
The enemies of Democracy are
Bit of mixed message though.
Sorry to say, but this is the only reason why I don't buy it. I'm just tired of booting into Windows to play a game, that's why I stick to WoW for now - not because it's better than anything else but because it runs fine on my MacBook.
With the state of the desktop application level of performance and the OpenGL reliance Apple is tied to, you might just be waiting a lifetime before gaming ever becomes prominent on OS X.
1) OS X is slow for gaming. OpenGL, same game, virtually same code, Boot OS X Native, Vista Native, Windows wins everytime by a large number.
2) State of OpenGL is bad at the moment, and Apple has put all their fruit in the basket. OpenGL isn't even trying to catch up to DirectX 10, let alone 11, which will be the next big thing. (Go read Tom's Hardware on OpenGL/DirectX11).
3) Apple's graphics stategy is OpenGL and and SSE Intel optimizations. Trying to bank between the two to achieve respectible performance. SSE is not what Apple thought it would be, and even dropping to OpenGL 'AQUA/QUARTZ' concepts are failing.
Apple never was able to accelerate the original Quartz or Quickdraw, let alone the new lipstick pig they are trying this year.
Software rendering only goes so far in today computing environments, when you have rich web UI and WPF smacking your developers over the head with performance and simplicity Apple could only dream to offer.
Game developer know the OS X score, and bootcamp helps them make this an easier decision. Why should they even try to get a game to run, when they know it is going to run a lot slower than the Windows version, because you can't fight the Apple and OS X overhead to get the raw performance you can on the NT Architecture.
I have no intention of buying or even really trying it, but as a big WoW fan, I hope it does well. Competition, or at least, the fear of competition from this and AoC appear to have made Blizzard make some really nice changes to the game. I'd love for Blizzard to have an active and large competitor.
So, while I'm sticking with WoW, because I love my pally and have been playing Warcraft series games since around 94 or 95, I hope it does well, people have fun playing it, and the WAR team comes up with some good ideas for Blizzard to copy. :)
It's not so much the lost revenues from sales to Apple users (which will be low compared to Windows) that they should be worried about. MMOG are by nature group games, I want to play with my friends. Even if 10 of us are using Windows, if one of my friends can't play because of the lack of a Mac version then we will find another game.
This is one thing that Blizzard understands, and it has made them a lot of money. I would be surprised if Mac users make 10% of their revenue for WoW, but the addition to their total revenue due having multiple versions will be huge.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
I've played both the beta and head start for a little bit. Here are my thoughts
-I've completed all my quests without ever once having to go through the pain of getting a group together. The public quests are GREAT. Just jump right in and start fighting. They also have a concept of open groups, where you enter a new area and it tells you about any player groups you can immediately join.
-I have yet to worry about grinding for mats. To craft a talisman, I don't need to mine ore for an hour, then buy mats on the AH. Instead stuff comes naturally while doing the quests.
-It actually feels like a world.... at war. There is destruction everywhere, fighting everywhere. Invading enemy cities is encourged. WoW got to the point where it felt like a couple of Humans would get bored and call on some Orcs for a game of flag football.
-The races aren't wimped down. The bad guys really feel like bad guys. The orcs aren't struggling to find their place in the world, they just want to kill things.
-The races and classes are all very different. This game can't cop out and make both major sides mirror images of each other.
-It feels like a game, not a job.
Comparing WoW to WAR is difficult to say the least. Fundamentally at their core, they are completely different games. WoW is a PVE game, endgame content is focused on PVE Raids. WAR is a PVP/RVR game, focus is on Realm vs. Realm combat.
If you are a PVE endgame raiding junky, and NEVER PVP, then WAR isn't the game for you. Questing in WAR is no different than any other MMO.
If you like PVP, whereas you grind out Uber Gear to give yourself a distinct advantage over opponents, and you want to be a solo superstar ganking machine.. WAR is NOT FOR YOU!
If you like GROUP BASED PVP, PVP That matters to the overall goal, and battles won/lost effect the world, where you have to rely on the group and group tactics (forming lines, choke points, for one because this game contains collision dectection), WAR will be for you.
Just mah $0.02, ya I'm oldsk001
Awesome!
When you appear intelligent on an online forum, it doesn't really mean much, as anyone can Google or visit Wikipedia. However, looking like an idiot online generally indicates that you're really an idiot.
RvR. It has been keeping DAoC alive, even though DAoC has severe flaws that can't be fixed in-place. WAR fixes those flaws.
Most previous MMOs have been PvE games, balanced around PvE, with PvP tacked on as an afterthought. I can only think of just a couple exceptions, which judging by your statement aren't games you're coming from.
Warhammer, on the other hand, is a PvP game with PvE balanced around the PvP. That's not to say PvE feels tacked on in this game like PvP does in others (they did some really cool things with PvE I think), although it is clear that the greatest effort went into the PvP core.
All of that is by way of saying, if you just absolutely detest PvP, Warhammer may not be for you. Then again, I know a lot of people who hated PvP and were strict PvE'ers, but after trying it in Warhammer thought, "Wow, this is actually FUN!" If, on the other hand, you're worried about PvP breaking the PvE, then don't, because the PvE is balanced around the game's PvP core to begin with.
My point was partly there is no PvP playerbase in WAR, since the entire game is PvP. Really, having a game that is built around PvP at its core affects a lot more than just the mechanics. I'm going to guess that what you object to the most is the ganker type--people who seem to PvP just in order to make other people miserable. Those people are probably going to steer clear, because that kind of behavior is actually disallowed by game mechanic (you get turned into a 1 health chicken if you try to kill people in a lower level bracket than yourself). Again, a lot changes when a game is built around PvP from the outset.