Warhammer Online Producer Discusses Game Features 54
BigDownload.com has a great interview with Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer for Warhammer online, that offers a great preview of many of the game's features. The interview spends quite a bit of time discussing the "RvR" (Realm vs. Realm) style of gameplay and what that will mean for players. "We generally start everything in our game with a thought toward PvP. PvP isn't the first thing we think of, but it's one of the first things. We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content. So, when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it. We know how much damage each class can do and take, plus all the utility each class can provide. So, instead of balancing each ability, we just need to modify the overall damage output and absorption of each career."
Hope WAR is better than WoW for PvP (Score:1, Interesting)
So far, other than having one of the two PvP classes, all of WoW's PvP is how much res you have on your stats (i.e. how many months you ran your 10 arena games to get your points to buy your season pieces, only to do it again next season), and if that didn't decide the issue at once, how fast you flicked the mouse and batted the spacebar while hoping to get rage, combo points or do something with them, and to keep behind the other person while the person did the same.
I know I'll get a Blizz fanboi who says the usual "l2p", but I can easily point to the number of HKs of both my chars who have full S3 sets where one of them is one of the classes the lead dev plays, and the other isn't. Even with the same gear and both with similar arena standings, their kill/death ratio are totally different in one versus one PvP. Its fairly obvious that there are classes who win in PvP, and those who just plain cannot survive even with 400+ res unless paired up with someone else as a partner for healing or melee DPS. Blizz calls it "rock, scissors, paper" balancing, however when your scissors will encounter statically 2-3 times as many rocks as paper, this balancing gets old.
I'm glad WAR and AoC are coming. If either of them delivers on what they promise with solid playability, they will start eroding Blizz's player base until they get a critical mass, similar to how WoW shredded EQ. Maybe then, Blizz will work on cycles faster than 24 months for major content additions.
Re:PvP vs. PvE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Blizzard are the latest MMO company out there. NOTHING ever changes in the game. They may add new content, but so what? My wife grinds out the same daily quests every day. I'm running round with about my 20th character trawling through all the same shit I've done a hundred times before. You'd think there wouldn't be any fucking gnomes left in Gnomeregan now, but oh no, those refugees still come running up that slope.
By being popular, WOW is cursed, because Blizzard are so terrified of any major changes, they just sit on their arses and do NOTHING. The game outside of Outlands, aside from a few minor additions (Dustwallow quests for example), is identical to the one I started playing three years ago.
Nothing evolves. Nothing changes. I think WOW will lose a good number of PVP fans when Warhammer launches. Ask any hardened PVP'er and they will tell you that PVP in WOW is utterly broken.
Please make a server where users have only 1 life (Score:4, Interesting)
My arguments for this:
It will make it posible for users that don't play so much time to get player charactors that are within the 10% best, because a characters power will be the amount of time played since he last died, not the total amount of time played.
It will make the player levels a bell curve, meaning that there are only a few really powerfull players. There is nothing fun about reaching $MAX level if >25% of all the other players are also max level.
This does mean that one team may have a player that can beat any player on the opposite time, but he still can't beat any team of other players.
It will also make guilds much more usefull. Just imagine that the guild leader is the person with the highest level, and the other members of the guild funciton as kind of "support troops" for the leader. This will be extra cool if the instances insted of limiting the number of players within a group, limit the total number of levels within a group. So if a instance is rated to level 100, you can bring either 2 level 50 players, or a single level 50 player, and 5 support players each at level 10.
The motivation for beeing a "support troop" in a guild is that a: It might be safer then beeing the front fighter, and b: At a time the front fighter and leader will die, and then the highest level support troop, will be the new leader. (This will be extra cool, if high level players get the ability to give bonuses to a limited number of players within their group).
(And yes, this system might mean that the xp that users get for killing monsters and players might need to be raised, so that there are top level players at all).
Giving each player one life, also have the effect that you don't have to limit the number of levels/classes/extras that each player can have.
Just imagine a d&d mmorpg where a player can be dual class. So imagine he is both a fighter and a mage. The existing mmorpg games can't allow this because when that player reach $MAX level, he will have all the powers of both the mage and the fighter, thus owerpowering any single class player. But with unlimited levels and only one life that will not be a problem, because the player will newer really reach a max level where he can't be better, so for any amount of XP, a dual class fighter/mage might have both classes at level 35, while a single class mage with the same amount of xp, might be at level 50, thus preserving the game balance while allowing interesting combinations. (Dual class players advance slower, because they split their xp between their classes).
Martin
Re:PvP vs. PvE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Except all Blizzard do is add new content for the bloody endgamers.
I've made this comment before, recently, on Slashdot. There's a difference between content and progression for which my argument was (and is) that progression is more important than content, though they are both required and closely linked. What you're referring to is not content, but progression. You're pissed that even though Blizzard adds new things to the game, you cannot do them. So, you're not pissed at the "new stuff", you're pissed at the lack of progression or ability to DO the new stuff.
And I believe you're right. Although TBC was better than the "original" level 60 cap end-game for progression, Blizzard is still far too slow to add progression for the masses to keep them sustained. Lack of progression is what drives people towards other games. That includes running out of content, because if you run out of content you also have nothing else to progress too. However, (depending on your play style) there could also still be content you've not seen (40-man raids or other major end game dungeons) but if it's more-or-less impossible for you to do it, it's the same as if it wasn't there at all. However, it's clear Blizzard knows this as they've been moving away from this kind of progression brick wall to their content since TBC. WOTLK appears to be making another huge step in that it appears they're making all dungeons 10 or 25 man optional. That should make content more accessible to a lot more people.
NOTHING ever changes in the game. [...] ou'd think there wouldn't be any fucking gnomes left in Gnomeregan now, but oh no, those refugees still come running up that slope.
Now you're talking about something that's completely outside the realm of content or progression. I'll continue my habit of linking to what I believe to be one of the most interesting MMO books out there... Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle [amazon.com]. This book talks about what you're referring too. There are many types of virtual worlds. They go from very dynamic (everything you do changes the world) to static (no matter what you do, little changes). Most MMORPG's on the market today are far closer to the static side of the spectrum. It sounds like the type of Virutal World you'd like is a more dynamic system. However, dynamic worlds are very hard to play in, to program, and to run. If everything you do changes the world, you might not like it that someone changes a part of the world you liked. I recommend checking out that book for more interesting reading about this aspect of Virtual Worlds. Yes, there use to be very dynamic text based MMO's (MUDs) back in the day. They typically didn't last long. The reason MMO's today are (more) static is partly due to the fact that it's also what 'sells'. Survival of the fittest.
By being popular, WOW is cursed
Popularity brings with it the people who hate popularity. I guess you could say this, but it's a short sighted and ignorant view of things.
Blizzard are so terrified of any major changes
This could easily be argued against by just looking at patch notes and expansion pack details. Class talent changes have dramatically changed over the years. The addition of Paladins and Shamans to both factions was a very major change to the game. The addition of a 3rd dimension with flying mounts was a major change.
The game outside of Outlands, aside from a few minor additions (Dustwallow quests for example), is identical to the one I started playing three years ago.
That's game design (see previous comment about static/dynamic worlds), not laziness of Blizzard or their curse of being popular. It's a technical issue. You'd have to know more about client/server architecture to know that it's pre