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Archive for the ‘EA’ Category

Wrath Of Heroes: Pre-release thoughts

17 Aug

Some initial thoughts on what we learned about the game so far…

Effect on Warhammer Online

I recently dropped my Warhammer sub, but I have to think if you are a current subscriber to Warhammer you are going to wonder how much of your subscription payment is paying for people to work on a new game instead of new stuff or even a similar arena system within Warhammer Online.

As easily as you can write resources were added to make this game and that those resources will be borrowed to improve Warhammer Online, you could say the resources for Warhammer Online are being used to help with the new game. As Warhammer revenue continues to drop, more and more the focus will be on new revenue streams.

I do not think in any way, shape or form this game will spark growth in revenue in Warhammer Online. The people it takes away from it will in my opinion be much greater than the people it brings into it.

6v6v6 format

Mythic got known for DAOC and its third realm system. A third realm is great to help balance a game that has unequal sides but to just tack it onto an arena style game with 3 completely balanced sides, I am not sure. Just seems to solve a problem that doesn’t exist and creates a big new one.

They may be going for innovation or something that hasn’t been done much before, but imo, it has not for a reason. When I think of 6v6v6 combat, all I see is a guarantee that almost 100% of the arena battles I do will be uneven, unbalanced fights with the potential to cause a lot of frustration when you end up getting ganged up on and lack of challenge when you end up ganging up on another team.

I really think this game will move to the majority of the battles being a more standard 6v6 team setup shortly after real testers and players start playing. Hopefully they have designed the game in a fashion that will allow for that change to occur.

Questions for Mythic:

1) Did Games Workshop relax their restrictions on what can be done with the Warhammer IP?

From everything I was told, Games Workshop was a major reason a third realm and other big requests were not able to be implemented. Seems like races fighting amongst themselves and with other enemy races would fall into this problem.

2) What exactly is your target audience?

The arena style game seems to aim at almost a competitive style gaming, yet 6v6v6 format to me would be the opposite of any sort of competitive gaming because in most cases skill will not determine the outcome, in fact, if you are known as a good/skilled team it seems likely the teams will just 12 v 6 your team and then they will fight themselves for kicks. The fast respawn might help alleviate this, but again, non-consequence gaming will likely lead to less competitive environment.

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Wrath of Heroes

 

Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes Announced

16 Aug

Today Bioware, Games Workshop and EA announced a new, free to play spin-off of Warhammer Online called Warhammer Online:Wrath Of Heroes. Beta invites start in around 2 weeks, so get signed up now if you are interested.

From what has been released, it appears to be an arena style game with set hero characters. Each character will have ~5 abilities that can be used and will be instant cast or channelled.

The big “sell” for the game is the 6v6v6 style game where 3 groups fight it out in fast paced action. When you die you can choose a different hero as a strategic move to help your team. There appears to be some progression/exp for unlocks of abilities etc.. but we will need to wait on more details for that.

You can view the marketing materials and signup for beta here:https://wrathofheroes.warhammeronline.com/

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Online Gaming, Wrath of Heroes

 

warhammer online – don’t turn out the lights!

28 Jan

Alright, told you guys I would balance this out. In my opinion the game is unquestionably dying but that doesn’t mean it can’t hang on a bit longer or even be saved. Here are some of my thoughts.

What can a small development team do to prolong things?

  • Manage the damn servers. Whatever server metrics telling you that the servers are fine, they have not been working. Find a different way to view these stats. May try logging onto the servers at various times manually.
  • Tanks guarding a dps get the same renown as the dps (unsplit)
  • Let healers clease their target. Up AP a lot if need be, but implement a system where if you case cleanse multiple times, the person has debuffs removed, regardless of type, especially the important ones like heal debuff, movement impairing etc..
  • Keep seiges are terribly boring. (wish I had something more to post on that)




Scenerios

  • Add scenerio variants that change the number of people. 6v6 Calendor, 12v12 Caledor etc..
  • Reduce scenerio length drastically when one sided.
  • Add focus to the objectives in the scenerio, have that be the place to be to gain renown and have finishing the scenerio be more rewarding then trying to kill people in the middle of spawn guards. (maybe reduce, heavily, renown from killing people, increase for objective holding and winning.)
  • Increase renown gain in scenerios by A LOT!
  • Show stats on the scoreboard relevent to tank classes. Guard damage, damage taken etc..



It is time for a new way to make a profit
It really is time to start the switch to a different model. This game needs to be free to play by summer in my opinion. The general consensus from people is that WAR is a good game. Class balance is not bad at all and combat is fun in balanced and populated situations. A lot of work went into WAR and it is finally where it should have been around release. The trouble is it isn’t release, its 2+ years in and with so few changes it would be a pretty big understatement to call the game stale.

If people could play when they wanted, instead of worrying about the monthly fee going to waste, they would most likely end up giving a lot more back to the game in micro-transactions or gold accounts etc… all the normal ways the industry examples structure the games. More importantly, you become an excellent free to play game instead of a terrible subscription based mmo. Combined with actually managing the servers, the game could very well become healthy and successful.

My last post highlighted a bit further why a subscription fee based model no longer seems to fit, at least not at the $15 per month currently charged.

 
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Posted in Bioware, Business, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming

 

Warhammer Online – Managing Expectations and Subscriptions

25 Jan

Been a while and I have been meaning to write more posts, but I really like to bounce back and forth between positive and negative discussions about games and that has become very difficult lately. This one will probably fall a bit towards the negative, but my next post will contain some positive suggestions.

Todays topic is about the subscription fee in Warhammer Online.
I understand the subscription fee is charged by MMOs because the game is constantly growing in content, updates/fixes are provided in a timely fashion and the game experience is monitored and managed in an ongoing way. There are also additional server fees and customer service staff that need to be taken into account.

If I apply this to Warhammer Online, it no longer seems to fit.

The game no longer appears to be growing in content and hasn’t really in a long time. Very small updates released many months apart are mainly just fixes and everything seems to point towards nothing even remotely subtantial in the works.

I also expect that my sub fee is going towards monitoring and managing the server balance so that people have the best chance to have the game experience the game was built for. This has not been the case for a long time, in fact it completely and utterly baffles me how many people Mythic/Bioware are willing to lose because of their inability or unwillingness to create proper population environments for the people that still pay them month to month. From what I have seen, I would wager that far more people have left the game due to that than almost any other reason. Something that should be completely controllable and easily fixable!

Server fees and customer service rep fees are valid, but with so few servers and people left these fees cannot take up a lot of the subscription fee.

I don’t know what Mythic’s answer will be, but as a player, I feel like I need to help manage their expectations that people will keep paying subscription fees for a game that isn’t living up to a subscription fee model. Hands up, how many people feel like they got a full $45 boxed games worth of features every 3 months from Warhammer Online? It is time for a change.

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming

 

Patch Day 1.4 + Interesting Tidbits – Warhammer Online

17 Nov

Hey all,

Today is 1.4 release day for Warhammer Online, and here are some interesting things and tools you can use to prepare.

1- Renown training is changing quite substantially, here is a builder you can use to prepare so you aren’t completely baffled in game.
http://warstats.net/rbuilder?lang=usa

2- Careers are mainly the same, but if you are returning or looking to respec after a different renown build, you will need a career trainer. Rancid has been busting ass to get the career section of his site up and running. You can find the career section here and is up to date with 1.4!
http://wardrobe.war4scrubs.com/CareerBuilder.aspx#

3- There are a lot of new items and sets. Items flood into wardrobes site fast, so within a day or two you should be able to find all your new items and weapons.
http://wardrobe.war4scrubs.com/Default.aspx

4- You can buy the RvR packs at the EA Store. $10 for one, $15 for both. Tell them Tyanon from BackSeatDev sent you. They may give you a discount! http://eastore.ea.com

5- I had assumed that RR80-90 would be a near impossible grind so people didn’t cap out, but apparently this is not the case. In the Q/A yesterday it was said going from 80-100 would be similar in time as 60-80. So maybe the RR100s running around are not so far off as I thought. Good thing? Bad thing?
Read the full Q/A from November 17th that Charlotte wrote up at:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4796932

6- The patch includes new scenerio/renown weapons. The first coming at RR81 and are purchased using existing Royal Insignia’s and Captains emblems (a new currency a tier above officer emblems).

7- No more waiting for a domination victory in a zone. Take the keep, win the zone.

8- Sovereign drops in stage 1 of the city now. Stage 2 is the RR90 set, Stage 3 the RR100 set.

9- The progression pack allows you to get your characters to level 80 faster. Scaling up to 300% when you are close to RR80.

10- Cave-In will still cause people to smash keyboards and monitors. Rampage will be overpowered. Healers still can’t efficiently remove important debuffs.

11- RvR and combat is about to be quite a bit different. Enjoy and congrats to Bioware/Mythic on the content release. Lets hope it is just one of many to come in the near future.

12- You can find me on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/tyanon

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Other bloggers, Warhammer

 

Server population issues and the effects on subscribers

28 Oct

Population_and_balance_issues_Warhammer_Online_2009_2010
This is a paper I wrote in February, 2009. The last page contains some updates that attempt to catch up and comment on ways Bioware-Mythic has been working on the issues in the past ~19 months. Much of paper, however, is still pretty relevant.

I never quite finished it, and it is pretty unedited. I dug it out the other day and thought it might still be an interesting read to some people. Initially, it was almost meant to sell a position on the community team, one which I, of course, would have been interested in if it ever came out.

People like Andy Belford bring a lot to the table and have helped with Warhammer’s success quite a bit by opening communication channels between the community and developers, however there still seems to still be a piece missing for keeping server communities and populations healthy.

It was projects like this that eventually led to me starting up this website.
Please let me know what you think.

Population_and_balance_issues_Warhammer_Online_2009_2010

Cheers,
Troy aka.Tyanon

 
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Posted in Bioware, Business, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Other bloggers, Warhammer

 

News: Korea drops Warhammer Online

08 Sep

It has been reported that NHN will no longer be servicing Warhammer Online in Korea as of the end of September 2010, which will mean the end of Warhammer in Korea.

“We had no choice but canceling the service because we have been informed that no longer proper support for developing from EA is expected”

Who knows what this means for EU and NA Warhammer, but with RvR packs coming out in a couple months, lets hope they go well and at least a small amount of development resources remain to continue to build on Warhammer.

Source: http://www.thisisgame.com/go/?p=1911

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Mythic, Warhammer

 

time to change tactics? warhammer online

01 Sep

Recently, a friend and fellow blogger Going Rancid interviewed Nate from Bioware|Mythic and one of the questions asked was regarding tactics, the response was as follows:


“Our general goal for tactics is that we want players to agonize over their loadouts and have to make tough choices between several desirable options and end up with a loadout that they’re happy with once the choice has been made. Additionally, we want players to be using different loadouts for different situations, and tactics to be less “set and forget” – hence the multiple loadout sets built into the basic UI. It’s pretty common knowledge that there are some tactics which are viewed as “must-haves”, and we see from our metrics that players don’t frequently change tactics. Broadly speaking, our approach to improving tactics is to take one or two of the least-used and consider what improvements can be made to them; in most cases, we’d rather make bring up under-performing tactic options and make them as desirable as the most-used tactics.”

This got me thinking about tactics and how I think Nate is spot on in his thoughts on people picking a load out and just sticking with that.
On my Zealot I have the 4 I feel are the best and unless I go and do some PvE, those tactics do not change.
On my Choppa I actually have 3 tactic sets, each a varying degree on survivability from running solo to being in a solid group with guard. Really though, I would switch tactics maybe once per scenerio at most or just when I join a group.

The biggest thing preventing people from switching tactics based on the situation they are in is the restriction from switching while in combat. If this was lifted, you could further improve smooth transitions by allowing macros/hotkeys for tactic sets and linking tactics to stances/mechanics (eg. the new Zealot/RP mechanic for healing and damage modes). A cooldown may be required however.

This would add some interesting new group vs group dynamics as whole groups could have alternate strategies and flip to them on the fly.

It also just makes sense for ORVR as you often cannot get out of combat and you really do not know what you will encounter next. At the moment it creates an experience that promotes the most generic set it and forget it setup to ensure you will not be hand-cuffed with more specialized tactics.

What do you guys think? Aside from people that complain that there is mystery to their opponents, what other things could go horribly wrong?

Read the full interview by Going Rancid: http://goingrancid.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/war-qa-with-cc-developer-nate-levy/

 
4 Comments

Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Other bloggers, Warhammer

 

Appearance system part 2: compromise – Warhammer Online

27 Aug

In response to my last article, there has been some resistance from people who feel that they will not try as hard if they scan over someones gear and it appears they are not in end game equipment. This makes them upset that they could be tricked into losing.

My opinion on this this is pretty simple. If you don’t try your best against everyone you fight, I have little sympathy if you lose. This is not a “hardcore” stance, this is just a “realistic stance for a mmo fight against other people.

Others have mentioned that people do use the information for tactical reasons, like running away if they feel they are outgunned. This is somewhat valid and I can at least accept that gear can be useful for people who want to know if they are out matched and make decisions based on their risk tolerance.

I have instead decided to offer a compromise. I would like to suggest that a visual way of determining the relative gear level to your oponent be put in. Allow appearances to be set any way you like and have that be viewable by all. Perhaps a colour coded “con” system or star rating for which people to tell someones approximate rank or approximate relative rank compared to yours. An exact number would not be required, just a general range based on RR/Wards. People could then use these as indicators of gear level and not be cheated out of winning battles they are capable of winning because they didn’t try. Realm titles do show under the character names, but perhaps this isnt “visual” enough.

I know Bioware/Mythic put a lot of work into the new appearance system and the way it stands right now it feels incomplete and it is getting laughed at because it can only be seen by yourself and realm. I understand why Bioware/Mythic is hesistant to put this in full scale for both sides however, there are a decent number of people against it. More then I would have expected.
I like having some mystery about my oponents, and I like that people can customize their apperance for all to see. An opt-in sort of option may work, but it still seems weak. For people to get on board and fully enjoy the new appearance system, it needs to not hinge on someone from the other realm checking a check box somewhere for it to work.

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Mythic, Warhammer

 

Character customization great, but needs to be seen by all – warhammer online

13 Aug

I would also like to begin by saying that I really like the way they have implemented appearance altering. I suggested a long while back that they go off the armoury and allow you to set appearances of any item you have unlocked in your tome, but this expands and improves on that in several ways.

However, my focus today is on a pretty big drawback to this addition and that is that it can only be seen by your realm, not your enemies. More directly, this post is aimed at the reason posted today on the items and appearances article. I love all the guys over there at Bioware Mythic, so in a way it pains me to call them out like this, but unfortunately this is part of the reason I created BSD.

A couple years ago, my cell phone company sent me a letter in the mail, saying they were modifying my plan to include some extra charges that were not optional, for my convenience. I got a good laugh out of that because the most convenient thing for me would be to not pay the extra money for the same service.

This snippet from the post today explaining why the enemy realm can not see armour customizations reminded me of that, in part because I feel there is probably a good and valid reason kicking around somewhere why they do not want to implement it as showing to both sides, perhaps a performance issue, but instead we get a reason which seems to imply that players would prefer it this way.

    “In light of the fact that we do not want players to use this system solely to confuse the opposing realm in RvR, the appearance you apply to your equipment can only be seen by players of your own realm. Players of the opposing realm will see the equipment as if no alternate appearance has been applied to it.”

Lets take a look at this from two different perspectives, both the Warhammer tabletop side of it, and the Warhammer Online practicality side of it.

Warhammer Tabletop: While I never played the tabletop version, one of the biggest selling points of the game seemed to be the ability to customize your figurines and paint them as you like. If you were a good artist, you could make them look pretty amazing, if you were not, your army would look pretty rag-tag. Either way, when you played against other people everyone had their customized armies on the board. Would anyone complain that it was unfair that they lost to a poorly painted army because they didn’t expect them to be able to fight as well as an army painted by a professional?

Warhammer Online: Imo, any person that is running into a battle, evaluating the equipment level of the people they are fighting, then adjusting the effort and concentration they put into winning the battle based on that equipment evaluation, deserves whatever outcome they get. Fight the player, not his gear.

Adding the customization should be a patch that adds the tabletop feature of making yourself look how you envision with the different pieces in the game and dye jobs available, but I feel it is important to reflect that appearance to your enemies as well for the full effect of taking pride in doing that to come through.

I really enjoyed the old way of doing things. In DAOC you knew very little about your opponent beyond his race. You had to fight your hardest no matter what and you had to expect the unexpected. With the gear sets and weapon restrictions/itemization in this game and the looks of the characters, most classes are easily distinguished. A bright wizard can not really be mistaken for a warrior priest etc, no matter how you customize it.

In conclusion, I would just say that if the reason posted is the actual real reason and it is being restricted to help the players out, toss up a poll for players and see how it turns out. I know how I would vote and I -think- I know how it would turn out, but I can’t say for sure. What do you guys think out there?

Read all about the appearance changes here: http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=1218

 
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Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 
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