WAR NDA officially lifted. Post pics and info!

[OneofOne]

What are their handles on that forum? I don't keep up over there.

[Lost Ranger]

They are not duking it out on the thread far as I know. There are a few "lulz WoW > WAR" posters on there who appear to be fresh recruits from the WoW general section but I didn't see anyone I would say is Kaplan. Mark is responding to some interviews they did. You would have to read all the pages to find the links to the different responses. Too tired to sift through that beast again heh.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Kharza-kzad

I got very frustrated the first few levels. As conflag spec, and with no rain of fire, I had to play in close to do decent damage, which often found me in the lava.

Also the level gap in tier3 seems to make much more of a difference than in 2.

Everything smoothed out when I hit 25, and in another level I get a knockback myself so I can participate in the cheese.

AE spec as a BW is more or less useless till you get Rain of Fire and Fiery Reserves. Fiery Blast is inconsistent TRASH. The spell is bugged as fuck because it uses a retarded method of dealing it's AE damage (big fireball hits target, then little fireballs fire from you to each target in the AE, if you aren't still in 100ft range when the big ball hits, the little fireballs won't fire.) The sorcreress version though works perfectly by dealing damage when the original spell finishes.

Q for everything except Tor Anroc. The map is lame as fuck. 1) It's too big 2) You can't use mounts 3) People take the baubble and run it back to their spawn for zerg protection. That map needs a serious redesign. The baubble should do a fixed damage per tick based on distance from the volcano. If you are near the volcano, it should be something small like 300/tick. If you are near a spawn area, it should be 3000/tick.

[Ubiquitrips]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

Q for everything except Tor Anroc. The map is lame as fuck. 1) It's too big 2) You can't use mounts 3) People take the baubble and run it back to their spawn for zerg protection. That map needs a serious redesign. The baubble should do a fixed damage per tick based on distance from the volcano. If you are near the volcano, it should be something small like 300/tick. If you are near a spawn area, it should be 3000/tick.

As a healer TA didn't bother me as much as melee because, while I was on the receiving end of a lot of punts, it was never as bad as those directly in the fray. I also found that when I hit level 25 and got a knockback of my own the amount of enjoyment I got from this scenario nearly doubled.

I still don't think that it is perfect and I think the above DoT idea would be absolutely brilliant in keeping things interesting but, for me, hating the map came in the first half of T3 and I am enjoying the map more in the latter half.

[Pyros]

You know, pretty much every idiot I see bitching about KBs in TA ingame when I'm playing are fucking standing next to the lava, or trying to circle a tank when on a bridge, or standing on the edge of the middle area, or doing all kinds of stupid retarded shit. I fall in lava myself on my DoK, but it's consterning seeing people bitch about things they could prevent by not being total retards. Like omg nerf IBs, these fuckers all pack on him(31 IB with a shield), on the fucking bridge near order respawn. OBVIOUSLY they're gonna get kbed into lava, how stupid is that.

Overall TA isn't all that bad really, it's just that it's way too easy to insta kill bad people, when they can at least act as human shields on other scenarios. And too easy to turtle I guess, but with the dot and stuff, it's not that easy, and you can't zerg spawn that much due to rez timers and distance to run back(10secs from spawn to ledge). If you can't break turtling it's usually more an issue of tank attack retardasis, where all your melees and even your BWs target that 31 black orc/ironbreaker because he's the closest target. Goddamn NPCs, the AI fucking suck in scenarios.

[Zalere]

State of The Game - Mark Jacobs

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Folks,

After over three years of work and one of the smoothest launches in MMORPG history, WAR is moving quickly towards the end of its first month. This is a perfect time to take a look at where we were, where we are and where we are going. First, on behalf of everyone at Mythic, I would like to thank you for your interest in our game. While it is impossible for me to personally thank all 750K+ worldwide account holders, please know that we are grateful for your support to date and the support we hope you will show us in the future. It’s been a long road to get where we are today but it has been a worthwhile journey. While I might be tempted to say that the future’s so bright we have to wear shades, as you’ve seen from our podcasts, we’ll even wear those indoors.

So, as to where we are today, WAR is doing fabulously. We are one of, if not the, fastest selling MMORPG out of the blocks and we are also one of the most highly rated MMORPGs of all time. While the game is off to a great start, we still have a long way to go before we can declare WAR a major long-term success. That success will only come by being focused on making a great game even better. How we are going to accomplish this begins with our first major patch (1.1), the subject of this State of the Game message. While WAR is truly a glorious MMORPG, it is not perfect and over the last month our primary focus has been to correct bugs and tweak a few things here and there. We’ve stayed away from major feature or career changes until we’ve had plenty of time to gather and analyze the data from our players. Having done that, we can now move on to what we are going to do over the next couple of months, culminating with the release of patch 1.1 later this Fall.



Let’s start with what we know is some truly exciting news. I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR. We have very special plans around their appearance and in our next newsletter we will provide full details about that exciting and rather novel event. When they were cut from the game launch plans earlier this year, I said that the Black Guard and the Knight would be part of WAR only when they were great and deserved their place alongside all of WAR’s other compelling classes. I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that’s not how we operate. We’ve kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer.

Creating an MMORPG, especially an RvR-focused MMORPG, which runs perfectly on all types of PCs, is one of the most challenging technical aspects of game development. While the performance of WAR is great on most higher spec machines, we know that we can improve its performance on lower spec machines. We’ve been working non-stop to improve that performance and we’ve got a number of things going into the game between now and 1.1 that we expect will help to address everything from crashes to desktops (CTDs) to stuttering. We have a number of other client changes that will improve things such as propagation and ghosting.

Thanks in part to WAR’s success; our mail system that worked well in Beta has been straining to keep up with the heavy demand placed on it. It’s functional and it works, but it can also be slow and cumbersome to use. In all fairness to the team, the system’s problems have been magnified by the demand of having so many servers and players using it at the same time. That’s not an excuse though and we are working hard on deploying a substantially improved mail system for this patch. We will continue to enhance WAR’s mail system until it is one of the best mail systems found in any MMORPG.

Moving on to some more good news for our RvR players; we have brought additional resources to bear on, and augment, our RvR gear and overall itemization. In 1.1 (and beyond) we will be doing a myriad of things for our RvR players, including improving gear drops, increasing drop rates, and implementing an RvR-influence system to compliment the current PvE-influence system. We will also be giving players more incentive to engage in open RvR by improving the rewards for both assaulting and defending in RvR. WAR is an RvR-centric game and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to encourage people to join in RvR and reward them when they do so.

Other changes for 1.1 include major additions to the chat system (item linking and more) as well as continued work on our targeting system, including adding Main Assist and Target of Target. In addition to the server balancing methods that have worked so well over the last week, we will also be offering the first server transfers to our players to continue to help even out the server populations. These transfers will be free of charge but they will be limited to moves off high-population servers to select mid-population servers or off of low-population servers to a selection of mid-population servers. Much like we are doing now, we will select certain mid-population servers and let people transfer there. Once they reach a certain population level, we’ll remove them from the list and give their spot to another server. We will publish the list ahead of time so players can plan their moves accordingly.

While that might seem like a lot for a month, we’re not done yet! We’ll also be adding more exciting content to the game, including fourteen entirely new quest chains, two new Lairs, and many more Tome of Knowledge unlocks! This is only the first of what will be our ongoing content updates to WAR and it is a great start.

So, that about wraps it up for this first annual State of the Game, so without further ado…

Okay, so I was joking, we’re still not done. Over the last month the team has been looking at all the careers and building up a list of issues/concerns to address. Almost every career is going to see some changes and love coming their way and there are very, very few changes that will be seen as reductions to a career’s abilities. The Combat and Careers team has spent the last month looking at the changes that they want to make with an eye towards making improvements and buffs, not removing or weakening abilities. I won’t go into details here but the vast majority of careers all have nothing but love coming their way. Of course, we will continue to monitor and track all the class data so expect, like every other MMORPG, changes to the careers to be an ongoing process.

Well, that just about wraps my first WAR State of the Game and I hope that it has given you some insight into what we are going to be doing over the next month or so. This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything we are working on and I won’t go anywhere near talking about general bug fixes. The items mentioned above are just some of the highlights of our first major patch and I hope you agree that there is a ton of good stuff coming down the pipeline.

As required by lawyers everywhere, here’s the usual disclaimer that this letter is a guide to what we hope to include in this upcoming patch and not a guarantee of any kind. We are working on many things right now and my letters, as always, are just the tip of the iceberg. Fellow WARriors, we have a lot more big surprises coming your way that I will address in my next State of the Game message and it’s going to be a doozie.

Once again, I thank you for your support, patronage and interest in WAR.

Mark Jacobs

VP, GM Mythic Entertainment

[Vithe]

Originally Posted by Mark Jacobs

Let’s start with what we know is some truly exciting news. I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR.

Sweeeet...

[Torrid]

Originally Posted by Lost Ranger

Not to sound all school yard here but Kaplan/Sams started it! In all seriousness though I do agree with Jacobs. Kaplan/Sams are being fucking douche bags and its just not professional. Another MMO showing signs of being successful should not be Blizzards queue to start talking shit.

Makes them look like the fucking B-Net tards that worship them.

You are such a fucking fan boy. Kaplan's remarks were hardly out of line. He was just honestly and candidly discussing his experience with the game. An experience shared by many other players, including myself. And I don't even like WoW raiding, so I could give a shit about Tigole.

Jacobs is just being a baby, and is overly sensitive to criticism about his game. Shit, when beta ended, his official letter or whatever went on about why people shouldn't dare criticize his game because his team worked SOOO hard on it for 3 years. Please.

[Korinth]

Great to hear a date that the KotBS will be patched in.

[Torrid]

Originally Posted by Kharza-kzad

I got very frustrated the first few levels. As conflag spec, and with no rain of fire, I had to play in close to do decent damage, which often found me in the lava.

You think my comment was suggesting that Bright Wizards were underpowered? How cute.

Originally Posted by Pyros

You know, pretty much every idiot I see bitching about KBs in TA ingame when I'm playing are fucking standing next to the lava, or trying to circle a tank when on a bridge, or standing on the edge of the middle area, or doing all kinds of stupid retarded shit. I fall in lava myself on my DoK, but it's consterning seeing people bitch about things they could prevent by not being total retards. Like omg nerf IBs, these fuckers all pack on him(31 IB with a shield), on the fucking bridge near order respawn. OBVIOUSLY they're gonna get kbed into lava, how stupid is that.

Oh bullshit. Ironbreaker knockback throws you back so far that you are insta-killable on like 4/5ths of the map. There is no out maneuvering or avoiding it. Mdps are basically perma snared or rooted, and the tanks certainly do not ignore you making a beeline toward their healers. It takes half a second for a tank to circle strafe around you. Not to mention unless you have a premade going, it will be you, alone, running to the healers and ranged DPS and you will be half dead before you even take a swing. That is why people tend to attack the tanks that are 100 feet in front of the healers/rdps. Not that it stops me from trying.

I might be able to tolerate this nonsense if the map were small and allowed mounting. But as it is, I was spending WAY more time waiting for respawn + running back than I was fighting, only to get insta-killed in seconds half the time upon returning to battle.

[Bizanich]

Originally Posted by Torrid

Oh bullshit. Ironbreaker knockback throws you back so far that you are insta-killable on like 4/5ths of the map. There is no out maneuvering or avoiding it. Mdps are basically perma snared or rooted, and the tanks certainly do not ignore you making a beeline toward their healers. It takes half a second for a tank to circle strafe around you. Not to mention unless you have a premade going, it will be you, alone, running to the healers and ranged DPS and you will be half dead before you even take a swing. That is why people tend to attack the tanks that are 100 feet in front of the healers/rdps. Not that it stops me from trying.

I might be able to tolerate this nonsense if the map were small and allowed mounting. But as it is, I was spending WAY more time waiting for respawn + running back than I was fighting, only to get insta-killed in seconds half the time upon returning to battle.

Look, I agree with you that the map was waaaaaaaaaaaay too fucking big for how it operates and allowing mounting would fix a lot of the issue I have with it....but Pyros is right, you can avoid a lot of the knockbacks just by moving yourself. I've avoided a lot of the lava myself just by strafing when I saw an enemy tank coming at me, guessing what he was about to do, and making sure there was a pillar behind me or just a lot of land....OR, worst case scenario, to make sure it was a place I could get back on land from.

It's true you can't avoid it 100% of the time....sometimes you have to take a chance or you just don't notice someone coming at you (I punted a Sorc in once and he/she never saw me because I came OUT of the lava behind him/her, wasn't his/her fault at all)

What class did you play?

As for complaining about PUGS sucking, well, yeah, that's true everywhere and goes without saying.

[Nija]

Originally Posted by Kharza-kzad

Also the level gap in tier3 seems to make much more of a difference than in 2.

See, I completely disagree. In T2 I've gotten my dick knocked in the dirt and looked at the scoreboard, sorted by rank, and saw nothing but red. I dismissed many, MANY Mourkain Temple losses as being outleveled.

In T3 that's never been the case. I leveled to nearly T4 (going to hit 31 tonight, 93% there) doing nothing but Tor Anroc. I've probably played hundreds of games. Never once did I dismiss a loss as being outleveled.

We've lost a few because some guys couldn't coordinate and drop sorceresses as fast as they should have, but that definitely wasn't a level disparity.

To me I think the difference is that in T2, with Destruction being tank-heavy, and the DoK being at the height of it's game, makes for a rough time for Order. But with everyone getting snare breakers, and the Witch Hunter coming out of "easy kill" mode at rank 18ish, leading right into T3, makes it for a much more 'level' playing field.

I still double detaunt and /shrug at the rank 30 Marauder that is flailing away at me. Same thing I did at level 23. Only now I'm a seasoned field goal kicker so I wind up parking him in the drink.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Torrid

Oh bullshit. Ironbreaker knockback throws you back so far that you are insta-killable on like 4/5ths of the map. There is no out maneuvering or avoiding it. Mdps are basically perma snared or rooted, and the tanks certainly do not ignore you making a beeline toward their healers. It takes half a second for a tank to circle strafe around you. Not to mention unless you have a premade going, it will be you, alone, running to the healers and ranged DPS and you will be half dead before you even take a swing. That is why people tend to attack the tanks that are 100 feet in front of the healers/rdps. Not that it stops me from trying.

I might be able to tolerate this nonsense if the map were small and allowed mounting. But as it is, I was spending WAY more time waiting for respawn + running back than I was fighting, only to get insta-killed in seconds half the time upon returning to battle.

Ok to make things clear, I'm not even talking of the huge single target kb IB have. I'm talking of the shitty AE kb. I'm also not talking about good IBs, just your average keyboard turner retard. In most cases, when I see someone punted in lava, a tank ran STRAIGHT for them, then stopped in melee range, aligned while swinging autoattacks and THEN punted, and the fucker bitches because he got punted. I played an IB. I'm a fucking god at KBing people, or even groups in lava. But when I see total retards knocking other retards in lava, there's no excuse but retardation. Not to say it can't be frustrating, especially as you described when you run back to the fight because the pug healers are too fucking busy DPSing instead of rezing people, and you get punted instantly due to shit luck(squig/sw targetting you for a ranged point blank, or magus/engineer, or just going up the hill and right at that moment an IB was AE kbing and you go right back down the lava).

Now not saying the map is fine either, I'd rather be playing something else. The issue with these something else is, Tor Anroc is fast, you lose or you win, but it's fast. I rarely played a game for more than 10mins in TA. You get some good bonus. Pretty much every other map I've played on T3 either went to time limit, or ended up with like a minute left. Don't think I've played anything that wasn't at least 10mins, even when we win 500-4 on Isha. That's partly due to pug not doing objectives, and me not wanting to waste xp/renown doing them to end the game faster either, without the assurance we'll win, which usually involve me and my guildmate actually raping the other team(yay BW+RP duo). They should fix the other maps so they can end up faster than time limit, even if people mostly FFA in the middle with one objective capped or whatever. In Isha, the game should end in 8-10mins if you get 45-50kills on opponent team and have the flag. It shouldn't require you to also carry the orb, and cap it. Just like TA ends in under 10mins even if you don't have the orb as long as you're destroying the other team.

Anyway, I fully understand why people dislike TA, but at the same time, I also understand why people queue it. And yes I can't say I really like it on my DoK because I can't fucking melee without getting punted, and while I can usually land fine because I see the kbs coming, it disrupt my healing and I still end in lava every now and then. I've been healing fine though, it's quite a surprise to me that I can get 75-80k healing when losing as a 26DoK in TA. I find it a bit fun, even though I can't save anyone from a decent BW(the dot speced one, especially lvl 30s).

[Pest]

It's almost comical how nearly all the Order players are fine playing Tor Anroc all fucking day and Destruction largely hates it. It's been said a million times but you guys just don't get it. I've played probably 10 scenarios in that shit pile TA and really don't want to go back. I'll queue for the others but seriously fuck that scenario. Isha and Doomfist are way more fun and well balanced.

That's great news on the new tanking classes coming out. I've been planning to try out a tanking class and while I like the Ironbreaker mechanic I didn't want to play a dwarf.

[Bizanich]

Originally Posted by Pest

It's almost comical how nearly all the Order players are fine playing Tor Anroc all fucking day and Destruction largely hates it. It's been said a million times but you guys just don't get it. I've played probably 10 scenarios in that shit pile TA and really don't want to go back. I'll queue for the others but seriously fuck that scenario. Isha and Doomfist are way more fun and well balanced.

See, on our server, we'd queue the others and it seemed like Destruction would only queue for Tor Anroc (in our eyes).

My main concern for scenarios is to figure out how they're prioritized. Some of the scenarios in T4 are more then 12 vs 12, right?

Well, if you queue all, does it just shove us all into Serpents because that's the first one that qualifies due to #'s?