A WoW Player's Guide To Warhammer 353
With Warhammer Online just around the corner, Zonk wrote up a guide which compares it to the current top dog of the MMO market, World of Warcraft. He highlights the fact that despite the appearance of "War" in both names, Warhammer is much more focused on the struggle between factions, in gameplay and artistic style. Warhammer's open beta started on Sunday, doing well in the US but stumbling in Europe. The full version launches on Sept. 18th, but people who pre-order the game will be able to access live servers up to four days before, thanks to Mythic's head-start program. Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs recently launched a blog to answer questions about the game.
What I want is more simulation (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what I want from a medieval MMO:
Unlike most players I met in WoW, I find no fun in comparing the size of virtual âoeswordsâ or in optimizing numbers in a game of statistics. I want immersion. The way WoWâ(TM)s world is just some immutable scenario ruined immersion to me.
Mythic has broken some old MMORPG rules.. (Score:5, Interesting)
When you kill a person in RvR you get EXP. You get loot (money and items that come from a random pool, not the dead players pockets).
There are repeatable quests for RvR. You join the RvR scenarios (similar to WoW battlegrounds but a faster pace and with more on the line) simply by clicking an icon on yuor screen from anywehere (though your likely to be in a queue for a few minutes before actually getting into the scenario). You have repeatable quests in those scenarios. You truely can level in this game with just RvR.
On the PvE side Public Quests are very well done. Open groups are very well done. In both cases you just walk up and your "part" of something. No need for invites. No more "we don't need a tank, we need a healer" rejections.
Now, the games not perfect, but it's well done. It certainly is linear in many ways (from zones to loot). And it misses the mini-game casual play of WoW. There's no mini-pets or fishing in WAR. Some like that, some dont. But it will have an impact on the total player base.
Anyways, Massively's got a lot of info on the game that anyone interested should check out so not much more I can really say besides it gets a thumbs up so far.
Re:Another game that doesn't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
You do realize that Mythic is directly targeting those who like to PvP. That percentage of the market is much less than PvE'ers but it exists. Think of all the FPS out there.
One way to imagine WAR is a FPS MMORPG.
I played DAoC quite a bit and I think Mythic got the PvE/RvR balance right in that game. I spent most of my time in PvE but when I felt competitive I had a decent PvP game to partake in.
WAR is not designed to be the next WoW.
WoW got 10 million with Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW has got 10 million with the mac and just google for 'wow wine' to see just how active a subject it is.
Blizzard apparently cares enough to have reversed its stance on Wine as being a hacker tool earlier. If the market is so small they could have simply kept it banned but they didn't. Explain please if they don't care about linux users.
Right (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell that to every korean MMORPG that has PvP.
The problem is that western MMORPG's do PvP wrong, they do open world PvP and that just doesn't belong in a level based game. Warhammer does things different, far closer to Guild Wars. Wether it will work is anybodies guess, but PvP done well with no ganking could easily attract a large enough userbase to make the game succesfull.
Anyway, it is not like the industry needs another PvE MMORPG.
Re:What I want is more simulation (Score:5, Interesting)
UO initially had ecosystems of a sort. Then the players pillaged and burned and plowed salt into the ground.
Animals? All killed off. Trees? Graphics still there but no lumber generating. Monsters? Hahahahahahahaha. You killed the other players while waiting for the one (1) orc to spawn in the orc fort.
Ecosystems are cool until they come into contact with players.
Re:Mythic has broken some old MMORPG rules.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What I want is more simulation (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah, game design from the "Anything I don't understand must be trivial to implement" school.
These issues have been discussed endlessly by many, many, many people. Inevitably real game designers realize that your suggestions are either far to complex to implement or aren't fun in practice.
Re:Attention developers; (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean people buy Macs to play games? No. But does this mean that Mac users wouldn't be open to buying games to play on their Mac? Of course not.
Unlike Linux games (see: Loki), a number of Mac games have done well in the market, despite attempts from Aspyr to deliver as substandard of a product as possible.
Re:Attention developers; (Score:4, Interesting)
I could've done a 1-to-1 hardware comparison back before Blizzard released a patch that caused WoW to stop running correctly in Direct-3D mode and come out way ahead. I have a friend with an identical laptop running Windows and who plays WoW. My framerates have consistently been higher than his (I also used to run things like UI size and resolution higher, too), but I've noticed a lot more in the way of graphics glitches under OpenGL and sometimes the framerate fluctuates wildly. Cedega & Wine's current implementation of a D3D protocol doesn't seem to be compatible with the current WoW patch level. Hardware does matter; ATI tends to yield poorer performance under Linux than Nvidia.
Then there's anecdotal evidence; aside from some glitches introduced in certain patches which I had to change config settings to mitigate, I can't recall the WoW client ever crashing for me under Wine or Cedega. It used to crash a couple times per week on my gaming box when it ran Windows (only the client, not Windows). After I ditched Windows and got games up-and-running under Wine or Cedega, it became rock-solid stable. Of everyone in guild and raids, I easily have the most stable client/OS. I see that as a big component of performance, since it's hard to say you're performing well despite crashing with relative frequency.
And of course there's that even less-quantifiable gain that relates to the satisfaction of getting an application to work on an unsupported platform better than on most implementations of its native environment.
Re:Attention developers; (Score:5, Interesting)
However if you build your game with DirectX then yes, it will cost more to port then you'll get in return. Keeping people tied to their platform is no doubt why MS provide DX for free.
I think with the rise of Ubuntu there could be a market for games on Linux (there probably already is on OSX). But it is still at the chicken and the egg state. No games on Linux means not many gamers using Linux. Not many gamers using Linux means no games for Linux.
Re:simulation != game (Score:2, Interesting)
economies: much as I hate to admit it (I like the idea of a player economy as well), player based economies are actually very destructive to game enjoyment. The "Auction Hall" global market with instant results just provides massive encouragement for goldselling services and the resulting rampant inflation. The more resources and money supply is controlled by the publisher, the more the econommy winds up in control of the goldsellers.
Puzzle Pirates has a great economy, which is *COMPLETELY* player run other than the sources and sinks. It requires design and balance, not slapping an auction house down on an existing looting system.
Re:simulation != game (Score:4, Interesting)
What prevents real-life griefers from doing so? For one thing it's a massive task, not easily accomplished by twenty or thirty people (even if they're expert hunters). Another thing is that they would attract attention from local police, then armed militia, and in most places armed militia is more combat-effective than any civilian organization. Just implement that in-game. And if a faction does manage to overcome armed opposition and the sheer amplitude and execute such an amazing feat, then I want to see the ecology ruin and the local economy plunge. Just make it easy to regenerate scenario procedurally (the nethack approach -- things may die, but then you just play again with new things). If the players managed to ruin the whole world, why not have creator gods come up with a new one? Why not challenge these players to destroy the new one too, patching the game to be less and less exploitable -- wouldn't it be much more rewarding to the griefer guild to be known as destroyers of worlds than "those guys who narf n00bs in the town"? Hire some professional writers to come up with convincing explanations, the possibilities are endless.
I know, most gamers are power trippers and your level 99 "hero" needs to be the Strongest Creature on Earth and single-handled trample entire societies and gamers would oppose to be less powerful than guards. I for one wouldn't mind less powerful characters in a more immersive world. Hell, I bet I'd feel more powerful if I could somehow affect the world, however slightly.
Er, because it takes hundreds of people and thousands of dollars to put a 3D MMO online? I did experiment with roguelikes; I hacked a bare-bones ecosystem in a weekend in Ruby, and now I'm (leisurely) playing with fractal terrain in Scheme. By now I'm convinced a simulation-centric (as opposed to stats-growing--centric) MMORPG is feasible; it just wasn't tried yet.
Re:WoW got 10 million with Mac (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Attention developers; (Score:4, Interesting)
this could be a blessing in disguise. the lack of mainstream titles by the big studios means that there is an untapped niche market for smaller studios or independent developers.
you won't see indie games with the most realistic 3d engine, but huge resources aren't necessarily a prerequisite for quality gameplay. besides, innovation is generally born from the margins of society rather than the mainstream.
it may not be as profitable a market as other platforms, but surely there are enough potential linux gamers out there for it to be worth the attention of independent game developers. and with the ease of distributing the games yourself over the web, you can bypass publishers and retain all of your profits.
Re:What I want is more simulation (Score:5, Interesting)
UO initially had ecosystems of a sort. Then the players pillaged and burned and plowed salt into the ground.
Ha, I remember that. I had a Grandmaster Ground-Salter. Those were good times.
Anyway, I've thought about how cool an "ecosystem" would be, and also the problem of player abuse. It seems like you could get something a lot better than what we have without leaving it open to complete exploitation by the players. UO's problem was that it tried to remain too "pure" which opened the way to player abuse/boredom, while WoW's problem is that it remains completely artificial with only the tiniest nods towards an ecosystem (i.e. a wolf mob will attack a squirrel or bunny mob that's nearby, and sometimes herd animals actually travel in small herds though usually not). Vicious velociraptors will walk right past delicious zebras without taking notice. Because both are waiting to be slain by the players.
Just add more dynamism. Have the carnivores hunt down the herbivores, and have their respawn rates be relatively related to the number of each. When left alone, the populations will naturally stay in balance. If the players start killing off the carnivores, then the herbivores spawn faster. When the herbivore population rises, then carnivores start to spawn faster too. If the player keeps killing the carnivores, then before you're up to your neck in herbivores, they start to die of starvation. If the player kills lots of herbivores, then carnivores start to die too. But you never have to let the respawn rate reach zero, or even get more than some fraction less than the default spawn rate. Assume, much like you must to imagine Orgrimmar is really a bustling city, that the population that is represented by mobs is really a subset of a much larger one and thus genocide is effectively impossible.
WoW has done a decent job of making sure respawn rates are such that it takes a fair amount of concerted effort to truly keep an area clear. Put some basic safeguards around an ecosystem, and you could keep players from completely wrecking things while also making it much more interesting. UO didn't do that, and had much too low of a base respawn rate anyway (and a much smaller world and much fewer mobs etc etc). I don't think we need to write off the idea entirely because of UO.
Re:What I want is more simulation (Score:4, Interesting)
While it doesn't work all that well IRL, on the internet, most everything is better with a vengeful dictator at the helm. Griefers and other problem users can be struck down with little else.
Re:Attention developers; (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Impressions from the closed and open betas (Score:3, Interesting)
Great summary!
Some things I enjoyed:
1.) There are no utility classes. Healers are still there to heal, but actually have to get involved with attacking skills in order to build up higher and better healing spells.
This sort of keeps healers and other casters from hiding behind tanks the whole time. They can if they still want to, but if they want more powerful heals, they'll have to actually attack.
My warrior priest, for instance, had to be in the front-lines, dishing out damage while also being able to heal. I was still able to heal without attacking, but my heals became more and more powerful as I attacked more.
2.) The number of ways that you can gain experience. You're not limited to just PvE grinding. You can gain experience (and influence) through Public Quests, renown points through Scenarios, and just do standard questing. It never feels like a grind, and you always feel rewarded for your actions and if you get bored of doing it one way, you can try another.
The beauty is that you won't even have to spend hours looking for a group to run an instance. I noticed this in several MMOs. With WAR, you can walk right into a public quest and join in without being in a party.
3.) Since the object of the game is destroying the other faction's city (pillage and burn!), there is a far greater incentive to see other players get better gear as well.
4.) Tome of Knowledge. Seriously, it's a huge asset. Sometimes doing even the stupidest things may unlock something from your journal. Dying multiple times in Scenarios, for instance, gets you titles such as "The Anguished", "Snuffed", etc.
It's nice how the lore is built right into the tome, and how you can keep track of your kills, your achievements, and your quests all in one book.
5.) No redundant classes. Every class is unique and each faction has different classes. It really makes experiencing each faction worthwhile.
There are still some minor animation bugs, such as watching a Shadow Warrior release an arrow makes me want to gouge my eyes out. But the attention to detail is magnificent. Even your "starter sword" looks very unique and textured if you zoom into it.