The disgruntled player…

…usually has a point.

I’ll quote randomly what I read on the forums:

How we made pvp more boring than WoW by replacing RvR with dumbass scenarios used for xp grinding – a staggering achievement!
How we tried to make a ghostland of every quest, pq, and town on every server before an expansion pack using scenarios.
How we made an unbalanced game for the future by making too many servers, a completely laughable race of High Elves, and overpowered casters (as usual).
How we will change the game’s name to ScenarioWars for Guilds.

I’ve been Mythic fan for years. I hated WoW with a passion. But, I just cannot believe how badly things are turning out for this game.

I think the devs severely overrated their own scenarios. I mean fuck, at the current rate of EXP reward and requirements for T4 levels, i think it’ll take me almost 70-90 scenario wins just to level from RvR. It’s not healthy, I tell ya. Even my friend whom I introduced to the game went bonkers after finishing T1 doing nothing but Nordenwatch. He gave PQ a try and told me it reminded him of grinding (we cant’ finish it with just two of us anyway, what’s the point?) , he tried questing and found it dull (It’s like a shitty WoW, dude!) since he got no mount. So we login, me on my runepriest and he’s on bright wizard. We just sat at the warcamp, picking our noses while waiting for Morkaine to pop. That’s all there to it.

I was thinking this game was robot jesus after the end of t1. That’s probably because all the pqs and open rvr were actually, you know, populated.

The turning point for me was when I hit level 12 and still had tonnes of teir one quests to do, and that was just in the one race area, I hadn’t even barely touched the other two except to explore the rvr areas and battlecamps. Not being able to do scenarios while questing just made the pve seem so much worse than it probably is. So I skipped the rest of the quests and the completist/questor in me switched off. Now I have no connection to the lore and the land and I’m wondering why the hell this is really a MMO and not just a lobby and scenario deal only with the keep areas being implemented as some type of long running scenario.

I love the quests that take you to the PQ.

I hate finding those PQs completely empty.

RvR on my server is very weird: it comes to life for brief periods of intensity and then it dies again. Because WAR isn’t a world and has such a narrow base of satisfying gameplay, if things are popping either in the world RvR or in scenarios, that’s somewhat fun. If that’s not happening, it’s boring as hell.

Huge increases in gear drop rates and xp/rp gains in world rvr would go a long way to provide variety. Sport pvp is fun in small doses, but not enough to keep people interested. The pvp scenarios quickly feel like any other xp grind in the game after you’ve done them enough. It’s really a problem.

These mostly come from F13 and they reflect the way I feel as well.

I’m not canceling my subscription, absolutely not. I canceled my WoW sub instead, when Warhammer launched. I don’t expect even to be back for WotLK. Warhammer is much closer to the game I want to play, and I see its huge potential. I’m also one who gives too much importance to that potential, and not enough to what the game offers now.

Honestly and brutally, for me the game was fun up to level 10. A blast. The most fun I had in a MMO in a long time. But my main now is only 15 and feels like a chore. I try to log in every day so that I feel like I’m making some progress.

The game stopped to be fun, and now I play only because either I wait and hope them to fix stuff, or hoping to eventually reach the endgame and see if it is what I want.

I’m enduring to try to reach the level cap. From this perspective it feels like DAoC all over again. It’s a different grind, but also a similar one.

Why?

For the same reasons I explained in my first “review” of the game, that people mocked because I wrote it just a few hours into the game. The “fun” depends too much on variables outside the control of the game. I thought this was going to be a HUGE problem as the months passed, instead it is a HUGE problem right now. And it can only get worse and worse.

If I’m not having fun is not due to personal issues, or that I like to just bash Mythic, or that I don’t want the game to succeed (If Mark Jacobs is the first, I’m a close second who wants it to). If I’m not having fun is because the variety of gameplay I praised till day one is now crippled.

I enjoy scenarios to an extent, but when I’m doing JUST them they get incredibly boring and dull. A chore. I play while watching TV because if I don’t I won’t even endure to play two in a row. At level 15 I’m already completely bored of Tier 2. And the (understandable) reason is because I’ve already ran the scenarios of choice 40+ times if not more.

I’ve tried, really tried to explore all possibilities. I’ve ran a number of PQs, did some normal quests. Wandered alone and in group in the RvR lakes. But I’m still level 15. I feel like I’ve basically saw everything I wanted to see in the whole tier, but I have still five levels before I can move on the next. And now it’s a chore. The novelty of this tier is over for me.

I consider all this, and then consider also that players aren’t complaining about tier 2, they complain about tier 3. And I wonder how I’ll feel at that point if the game feels a chore already for me at tier 2.

The real big flaw outside the lack of players activity is that the Scenarios are the only option that makes you notice a tangible progress on your exp bar. And when things start to become a chore because you think you have already seen everything, then the exp bar is ALL YOU SEE.

You worship your exp bar. And the best way to worship it is to run Mourakin over and over. And over.

This isn’t a problem of Scenarios being too rewarding, because what triggers the process of worship is boredom. The boredom kicks in BEFORE you start the worshiping. What is lacking is the novelty.

I think I’ve gone through a patter that is common to many players. I started the game with a completist attitude. Do all quests, complete all PQs at least once. Then, at some point, I discovered that I played a whole lot, accomplished a while lot, but made very little progress overall. I feel like the content had outlevelled me, and I now have half a tier of grind so I can move onto something that feels new. And, by level 22, I’m pretty sure I’ll be bored even of tier 3.

The problem is twofold. First, they really, really need to speed up things. Because the big risk isn’t that players are bored at the cap, the risk is that players will play WotLK LONG BEFORE they reach the cap.

Levelling fast isn’t a tabu. Mythic, don’t be scared to speed up things. Don’t be scared to move players quickly to the endgame. Let them have a blast. It’s much more important that the game is consistently fun, than its longevity right now. Right now and later.

Do not dilute, do not water down. Consolidate instead. Trim. Cut.

Normal PvE and PQs need a huge boost. All the various gameplay possibilities need to be balanced against each other. Scenarios, PQs, open RvR. For “x” minutes spent in one of them the reward should be comparable to “x” minutes spent in another. INCLUDING DOWNTIMES. For PQs it would include the traveling, searching for an open party, organizing. For open RvR it should include its unpredictability.

I know Mark Jacobs says they have all sort of tools to monitor the situation and get statistics. Well, as with the interview with Jeff Hickman, THEY ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE COMMUNITY.

I don’t need to study ANY metrics to see where the problems of this game lay. They are glaring, glowing obvious.

You say you don’t want to repeat the same mistakes of ToA for DAoC. You are repeating them under a new form. Baby steps didn’t fix ToA. Baby steps didn’t prevent ToA becoming a fire brand and stain Mythic reputation for a long time.

Once the players form an opinion, it’s then hard to dismantle it. Right now Warhammer is Scenarios and then Scenarios. Open RvR is dead or insubstantial even after that timid 50% boost to kills. PQs are deserted. The world feels empty. The community seems dead. Either you act quickly, and firmly, or there won’t be much to save later.

Yesterday I logged in and fifteen seconds I was in a RvR warband. This is what I saw, to all those who claim that players don’t talk in Warhammer. My chat box was swarmed:

Players talk, if only those parts where the community has a role actually existed in the game. Open RvR has that role, but open RvR right now is non existent. The flaw of the game isn’t of not supporting the community. The flaw is that it isn’t using its potential. In Scenarios you don’t need to chat, because what you have to do is pretty obvious. It’s linear. Discussions are superfluous. Open RvR is instead where the moving parts are more unpredictable, where coordination comes to play, and the sense of community builds up.

Warhammer has this. It has this much, much, much more than every other MMO out there. Problem is that right now Warhammer is only Scenarios Online and not much else.

You know what’s the problem? The problem is that half an hour later I was in that warband, my experience bar didn’t budge. And the warband disbanded since it was accomplishing nothing.

8 minutes later I had one bubble an half, made out of Scenarios.

When the RvR warband disbanded I was reading how much fun people had trying, but how pointless it felt.

P.S.
I’ve read PLENTY of very valid solutions to open RvR issues. Including my own.

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