Comments on: Mythic Entertainment: Our Last Best Hope For Peace

By: Bialar

Bialar — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:33:03 +0000

Thanks for the B5 reference.

Playing the WAR open beta for the past two days, I think it will easily be #2 to WoW in subs, and far ahead of everything else. Definitely will not overtake it, but will pull in more than everyone else. LOTRO is an incredible game, but not solo-friendly enough to be “huge” in the current WoW-dominated market.

By: deplkthxbai

deplkthxbai — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:46:31 +0000

Eh, I’ll play them all, rip off all the good ideas, repackage them in another container, and resell them with approximately 41% alternate backstory…

Wait… What?

That’s alreay been done before? Damn you, Tolkien! You made everything that’s come after your works just look like a pale comparison or cheap ripoff thereof! Leave some imagination and ingenuity for the rest of us poor folk!

/shakes fist

…lol.

By: Cambios

Cambios — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:02:00 +0000

>> I see WoW as scrooge mc’ducking it in swimming
>> pools of money and not investing back into the
>> game appropriately. They haven’t done a great job
>> on elder game except for the raiding niche. They are
>> very vulnerable on a lot of fronts (e.g. PvP) and
>> while their content is polished they have some pretty
>> smelly failures also (meeting stones, lfg ui, heroics,
>> in-game voice chat).

That is exactly how I see it. My biggest gripe about WoW is the obvious fact that they barely reinvest in the game. They just rake in the money and cackle all the way to the bank. No player housing? No mini games? No fluff? Just more raid dungeons? Seriously?

I also agree with the poster who noted that a lot of people want WAR to succeed just to take WoW down a notch. Imagine how much better both games would be if they can really give each other a run for their money.

The shame of it all is that the subscription model really hurts competition. It locks people in and makes it really hard for people to move back and forth depending on which game is doing a better job.

-Cambios
Blogging about Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds:
http://www.muckbeast.com

By: faefrost

faefrost — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:55:49 +0000

WAR is DAOC 2 “lite”. It will do better then AoC, and will hold subscribers for a bit. But as it stands now it is probably roughly a 6 month game. For some reason DAoC’s frontiers and relic Raids seem infinately more replayable then WAR’s 15 minute cycle keep assaults. And realm imbalance will be a HUGE problem in release. It has already proven to be a major issue in every phase of beta.

And as a beta tester, I agree, the game should have released in November. It is good, it is stable, it is rushed. Another 4 to 6 weeks would make a world of diference in what is there at release.

By: Sullee

Sullee — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:06:43 +0000

I’m seeing (and even somewhat feeling) a vitriol with respect to WoW that I personally haven’t seen since eq1 and the Vision days of Abashi ticking people off. It is WAY beyond simple burnout.

People want WAR to be good not only because they want an alternative to WoW but because they want WoW to do poorly. It’s hard to describe really but from my perspective I see WoW as scrooge mc’ducking it in swimming pools of money and not investing back into the game appropriately. They haven’t done a great job on elder game except for the raiding niche. They are very vulnerable on a lot of fronts (e.g. PvP) and while their content is polished they have some pretty smelly failures also (meeting stones, lfg ui, heroics, in-game voice chat).

End of the day if WAR is DAOC2 then it will do well. Their timing is right and I think a bunch of people are looking for any other game that is even headed in the right direction.

By: UnsGub

UnsGub — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:00:36 +0000

While a feature added long after launch this really helped Planetside. I am sure Mythic can improve on it.

Incentive Adjustments based on:

Seven-day average population balance

The real-time population balance on each continent

Details:
http://planetside.station.sony.com/game_updates/development.vm?category=Game&id=61624

By: AimedShot

AimedShot — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:27:06 +0000

@Axecleaver:

There is a Leipzig movie out where Mythic states that underperforming realms will receive bonus to help them level and achieve at a faster rate. Mythic did say they will never penalize a realm for being “better” at PvP. Which in my book is a good compromise.

By: Axecleaver

Axecleaver — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:43:31 +0000

If we compare just the US markets, Warhammer will be #2. It isn’t perfect – the economy and tradeskills are underdeveloped, for example – but the pvp focus of the game is much more interesting than other MMO’s, to players who enjoy pvp. I found the PvE actually quite engaging – the public quests, for example, were a good idea and helped pull me into the game effectively.

WAR shares more design elements with DAOC than it does with WoW. Just putting a quest indicator over a NPC’s head and having some instanced PvP doesn’t make it a WoW clone. That’s just good game design now. I don’t really understand the WoW-clone argument, Lum. “Innovation” doesn’t have to mean 100% new. Something can be 10% new and still be innovative.

What will make or break WH in the long run is post-launch class/realm balance. Mythic struggled with balance in DAOC, and undertook some severe changes in direction over the course of the game. They never came up with a really good answer to the over/under populated realms, and I don’t see one for Warhammer either.

By: yunk

yunk — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:50:22 +0000

Mark Jacobs, years ago you served along Funcom in the MMO wars. Now we beg you to help us in our struggle against the ActivisionBlizzard. … information vital to the survival of fun gameplay is in the memory circuits of this Warhammer server. Josh Drescher will know how to retrieve it. You must see this game safely delivered to us before WOTLK. This is our most desperate hour. Help us Mark Jacobs, you are our only hope.

By: Openedge1

Openedge1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:01:56 +0000

@Relmstein
Yet, those “stylized” landscapes seem to sell more than the realistic (like Vanguard? which has way better landscapes)
People want a good game (is what I keep getting told, especially if the new Darkfall trailer is any indication…that engine looks like ass, but people think it is better than pizza)
I guesstimate that the engine has been tweaked, and on launch, WAR will look like a high end WoW.
And the gameplay will be WoW like enough, that it will keep whatever players stray from WoW long enough to drink a new flavor of kool aid.
Cheers