Road to WAR Website Launched 64
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.
And the site is down for maintainence (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And the site is down for maintainence (Score:3, Interesting)
The days when Slashdot could bring down a big-money website are long since past. Pipes are ever fatter, but Slashdot sure isn't growing.
Re:Dead site... hopefully WAR will be better (Score:3, Interesting)
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*
Re:War... (Score:3, Interesting)
If only...
...actually, I take that back. I can just imagine the horrible WoW grind-fest clone they could make out of a Fallout MMORPG.
Personally, every single time someone announces that some franchise that I really like is getting an MMORPG, I am sad. Right now we are in the "Doom clone" phase of MMORPG design. Doom was original for its time. It knocked people's socks off. Then out came thirty thousand Doom clones that add nothing except cosmetic changes and slight refinements of gameplay. MMORPG design is in the same mode right now. Everquest was made. It was a big success, and now everyone has copied that game to death, tossing basic formulation tweaks onto the same boring well worn game play.
I personally am waiting for someone to break some new ground with MMORPGs. A good FPSMMORPG (I stipulated good, so don't tell me about Planetside) would be a nice start. Imagine an MMORPGFPS that is more than a glorified game of capture the flag. Imagine a FPSMMORPG that of course has fighting, but has more things to do than just fight. I think the Warhammer 40K and Fallout universes both scream out to be quality FPSMMORPGs. Hell, if someone really felt like they had a pair of balls that needed a wheelbarrow to lug around, they could try to simply copy the original Ultima Online design for a "sandbox" world (which has almost nothing to do with that UO was released after beta, and even less with what it is now).
There is a ton of room for innovation in the MMORPG world. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid and I dreamed of MMORPGs (before there were MMORPGs), I sure as hell didn't envision playing 'whack-a-mole' grinding away killing mindless NPCs in the tens of thousands to score more l00t and exp. I personally envisioned fighting through living worlds where clearing out the goblin cave means the bastards stay dead, where undead attacking your city means the city is defended or burns, and where there are no "levels" that stratify the game into gods and peons who couldn't kill a high level even with a small army backing them up.
No, not really (Score:4, Interesting)
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