Warhammer Online - Will you play?

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by Criminiminal

I didn't get to play this weekend... Can someone please explain specifically what is flawed about the combat?

You know that weird casting delay that WoW had for a while, where the end of spells had some client-server ambiguity?

WAR has things like that in almost every little detail of the combat:

1) Sounds not matching what I see
2) Animation
3) Effects landing, damage being dealt, damage being reported to you
4) Quirky GCD

Is it normal that when I fall from a height it takes a second or two for damage to hit? Can you get healed through a big fall thanks to that?

[Horse]

Originally Posted by Xenrauk

Someone correct me if I'm wrong....

There's a 2 second global cooldown, which finishes with a gold flash, if you try a skill(not the one that just fired even ones that are ready) while waiting for the cooldown most of the time it does not fire off and it resets the cooldown. It's not like WoW where you can't fire off anything until the gcd is done.

I did try spamming melee skills and for the most part it looked like I was killing stuff faster that way than waiting for the cooldown. The animation resets too. For spells I noticed a lot of times the spells didn't land if I spammed, even sometimes after I waited on the gold flash.

It seemed fucked, correct. Spamming sometimes beat the cooldown. The gold flash is when you can use abilities - this was more obvious on melee like swordmaster where you had specific combo paths ability A lets you do B lets you do C...

but with healing, i could effectively spam the shit out of the direct, instant heal and cast it way faster than 2 seconds.

The flash itself is junk because the icons go greyed out, then they return to color, then the flash. The flash should either be removed or synced with the color returning...



Overall the L10RR6 people swarming the scenarios was a joke. the difference between most classes without and with the gear is humongous, like hitting them for 100 without and 2 if they're geared.

The population caps weren't in. RVR open world was swarmed by destruction, the scenarios were majority rank10-11s versus your rank 1 "healers that prefer to dps" on order.

When its organized though, even with 1 or 2 small groups, you can overcome the retardation. The problem is that the retardation might be so severe that the larger scale goals may not be met. Sure YOUR premade might win a scenario 100% of the time, but that might only be 1% of the contribution towards taking over areas.

The guild levelling is intriguing but if a small guild cannot max things out the same as a humongous zerg guild it has the same problem of accessibility that AOC did.

People laugh about the low quality PVE - yeah, public quests are a great idea but its essentially "kill a bunch / kill or gather a bunch / kill hard mobs and boss." New game smell wears off when as a healer you're forced to run around dpsing shit to come close to the prize at the end. The roll system is also fucked, yeah - it encourages people to show up and help out, but someone who's been there and comes in the top few in terms of contribution should be guaranteed loot, and everyone else competes for the runner up prizes.

The problem with the PVE retardation is that it bleeds over into PVP with the siege mechanics and killing/defending the down's syndrome keep lord. How about the person with the most renown around the keep is the keep lord? There, shitty AI problem solved. If there is noone around then fine, AI it is... but really, i'd have no prob if there were simply empty keeps that were easy to take over if noone sentient was around.

Despite all of the problems, it's just super fun with a well rounded group or as a healer.

Gate scenario: me as bright mage. We all run to the middle area and everyone sits on the ledge waiting for dest to just run up to the flag to start nuking. This includes tanks throwing axes and healers smiting. ???????

me as tank w/o healer: I run to the middle and healers smite their way to victory. They kill a bunch, but I die, we don't cap the flag, they get raped.

me as runepriest w/tank or tank w/healer: We all run to the middle area and the tank hops down to the middle, some follow him (its always easier to be 2nd or 3rd in) and the heal spam commences. We win.

Same in the RVR skirmishes. A tank with healers lead the push, as much as its painful to be without them, you really can run in and cause some shit, buff the group behind you and lead a push. Like tarren mill zergs but with some abilities distinctly for that.



So in the end, its a winner for small guild play but we'll see how fun it is when CC becomes more abundant and the reliance on tards becomes paramount...

[Horse]

Originally Posted by RiskyChris

3) Effects landing, damage being dealt, damage being reported to you

A few times I'd be healing someone who had 0 hps / was dead and their portrait icon was the skull... then the heal lands and they're alive. Pretty silly.

[Zarcath]

Going to reserve judgement for open beta, I didn't get to play war priest as much as I would have liked, Swordmaster seems decent enough. Starting new position too so I won't be able to devote as much time to WAR as I would like during a launch.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

LOL, RvR can carry a game further than any PvE. Look at Shadowbane, although a little different and still buggy as shit, its still going strong.

PvP when applied correctly, can have vastly more re-playability than any PvE game can.

Yeah PVP usually keeps people engaged longer than PVE. For example, in Counter-Strike the most popular maps have been the same core maps since 1999 (Dust, Dust 2, Office, etc...). However, there are people who can re-run PVE content over and over, for example Diablo 2 or NWN, but there are far less players in those games nightly than CS or other PVP games.

I'm in on release for Warhammer and I haven't made it past free trials or purchased any MMO since WoW.

[krinkled]

I have been in both WAR and WotLK closed betas.

I can say with absolute certainty:


WotLK > WAR hands down.

However I will still sub to WAR and play, because it is fun for casual PvP, but WotLK is just on higher level gameplay wise.

[Tolanin]

Originally Posted by krinkled

I have been in both WAR and WotLK closed betas.

I can say with absolute certainty:


WotLK > WAR hands down.

However I will still sub to WAR and play, because it is fun for casual PvP, but WotLK is just on higher level gameplay wise.

thanks for explaining how wotlk is better... your post will definitely help alot of people make a decision about which to play.

[Xenrauk]

Originally Posted by krinkled

I have been in both WAR and WotLK closed betas.

I can say with absolute certainty:


WotLK > WAR hands down.

However I will still sub to WAR and play, because it is fun for casual PvP, but WotLK is just on higher level gameplay wise.

PvP wise? PvE wise? or both?

PvP better not be more arena and a couple battlegrounds crap either.

[Horse]

Is the PVP system dramatically overhauled in WOTLK? Or are we still being handfed nuggets of "things that should have been changed before going through the torturous arena system?"

I hear there are other PVP ways of getting arena points. That's a start. I hear they're added a few more arena scenarios and BGs. Compared to the number I've gone through in WAR, it's not much.

Will you still have to grind out battlegrounds incessantly to be viable in arena? Is there still no guild-based PVP legacy?

The arena makes no sense. You give certain classes free gear/rating in 2v2s because they work well together and then scratch your head why 3v3s and 5v5s have vastly different makeups?


Where's the "join arena solo" that allows people to just queue up, try to win and get some points like how battlegrounds work? Why am I fighting people in full S4 at 1500? Why doesn't personal rating stay with you forever?

It's just a bullshit system. Most people I know are looking forward to WOTLK for the PVE, and taking a pass on the PVP side of things. The numbers that are thrown around about how many people left WoW for AOC only to return merely proves how shitty AOC ended up, and if it had things fixed they'd be dramatically different.

The slow drip that we're on regarding obviously needed tweaks (hi there mace stun, remove it to invalidate how many seasons of pvp? hi there spell pushback.) on top of the separation of "this gear for PVP, this gear for PVE" just add up to no thanks.

But please, fill me in on why WOTLK is superior when I'm looking for any sort of non-vapid PVP game at the moment. Fuck, even shadowbane2 with updated graphics would be a winner at this point.

As far as wotlk goes, even though the "hey a new item with a million billion stats!" will work for a while, the first time i'm destroyed by some class with less gear and no way to respond because someone at a game company wants a new fur for their mistress, yeah.... levelling will be a real treat with the current balance.

[Janx]

Originally Posted by RiskyChris

I will play, but if combat fluidity doesn't match WoW's within a few months I will abruptly jump ship. The state of the combat system 3 weeks from release has me weary.

This.

Pathing is pretty fucking horrible too.

[Zignor 2]

I don't give a shit about MMORPG PvP, so probably not.

[Vodo4321]

I'll be playing for sure.

Folks,

I'll be expanding this as the weekend goes by but here's where we stand right now in terms of some of the issues that have been discussed, tossed around, thrown like a spear at our heads since the Preview Weekend started:

1) We peaked last night at around 30K concurrent players across our servers, that is obviously a great number. During that time the servers performed extremely well in terms of CPU usage and we never once came close to max usage so we know that we will meet our server cap populations for launch.

2) Regarding overall server stability we've pretty much exceeded our expectations. We've only had two full server crashes across all servers since we began. Neither crash was due to player load, CPU overload, code going brain dead,etc. but due to a minor issue on our part. The same is true for region crashes of which we only had two. Unfortunately, we had more scenarios crash (20) than we like but the number is still quite low considering we've been running 15 servers for more than a day.

3) Client crashes (crashes to desktop) are down from the last stage of closed beta and thanks to all the people playing, we've already fixed two issues that have caused some of the CTDs. We're not there yet but we are in better shape than we were last month and we will be even better at launch. Even now the CTDs are lower than some games were at release but having said that, it's not good enough for us and CTDs are issue #1A for us right now.

4) Pet AI and pathing is severely broken. The Preview Weekend patch (3.3) unfortunately borked the system. This is issue #1B for us. Even though this is a beta and new bugs/issues are to be expected, we messed up on this issue. We expect a quick turnaround on this next week. So please accept my apologies for this one, it should not have happened.

5) On the subject of graphical quality, SLI, etc., the problems that some players have reported are being focused on as well. From what we've been able to gather so far (other than on SLI which is a known issue), there is something weird happening with a small percentage of graphic cards as well as a possible issue which crept into this patch. We'll know more about it this week.

6) On some targeting issues, we're looking into that as well.

7) Regarding the GCD, we are not going to remove the GCD but we are continuing to look into some of the issues that have been reported with its use. As our closed beta testers have reported, our Combat Responsiveness Code made a huge difference to the game's feel and we're going to continue to look at the GCD and see if it needs tweaking along with any bug fixes that need to be done. I'll be posting more about this as well in the coming days/weeks. While the bugs with the GCD isn't our #1 priority, making combat feel even more responsive and fun is a major issue so it will continue to get looked at and tweaked over this last month and beyond.

So, that's it for now, more to come as the PW progresses as things arise. Overall we are thrilled with the response to the game on the Web, to our in-game surveys and from our feedback/bug tools. I'm glad we still have almost a month before launch but I am also quite happy where we are other than the problem with pathing/AI for which again I offer my apologies.

Mark

Posted on Warhammer alliance boards. Makes me feel better that they're prioritizing in the way I would have too.

[Dandain]

I play to play on the side until WoTLK launches with some guild members from WoW, then unsubscribe and check back in once my PvE guild in WoW gets into the swing of merely raiding on our set schedule in WoTLK.

[Mogley]

I'll be playing the second the Head Start servers open up. I've been in the beta for months now and am confident they'll fix the issues that showed up this weekend.

Pathing will be fixed. They screwed up and broke it right before the preview weekend. Client-server ability/damage sync will be fixed. They changed the way it works like two weeks ago and are still ironing a few bugs out.

This is the best run beta I've ever seen. I don't see any reason to think that they'll change the way they operate post release. Mark Jacobs and Jeff Hickman have learned the lessons of the recent MMO failures. They are not going to release the game then shoot themselves in the foot like Funcom.

[krinkled]

Originally Posted by Xenrauk

PvP wise? PvE wise? or both?

PvP better not be more arena and a couple battlegrounds crap either.

Sorry didnt realize people would really want my opinion on specifics.

So here we go:

PvE This one is no contest whatsoever, WotLK offers more complexity, strategy, depth, polish, and just a ton more content than WAR. If you like PvE your choice is easy, stick with WotLK as WAR doesn't even really come close. WAR does have public quests which are a great idea on paper, but they really are limiting when it comes to complexity and depth and are in no way a sufficient substitute for the huge variety of content offerred in WotLK.

PvP This one is not so clear at all, and I would rate WotLK and WAR about even. Whether you like PvP better in WotLK or WoW is really going to come down to your personal preference. If you like world PvP and Battlegrounds then there is a good chance you may enjoy WAR more (or if you couldn't hack it in arena and want to be rewarded more for time spent). WAR is full of world objectives and RvR. However, I would offer the following caveats: WAR PvP mechanics are less complex, there are way fewer strategy type moves and counters. There is a lot of mindless zerg. It is also my opinion that the combat in WAR feels less responsive. YMMV.

Graphics/Art This category offerred the biggest suprise for me. I really expected WAR to blow WotLK out of the water. Not so. I was very impressed by the graphics upgrades in Northrend. In fact in some ways Northrend graphics look superior to WAR. (draw distance is a great example). WotLK is a much bigger graphics upgrade over TBC than TBC was over vanilla WoW. Blizzard really impressed me.

Overall I would give WotLK a 9/10 and WAR a 7/10. Both are good games, but only one really has the polish, depth and variety that will keep me playing 12 months from now.