Rock, Paper, Nada?

Keen’s talking about missing a third realm in WAR’s two-faction design, and I have to say, I agree with him.

This has long been my biggest dislike about the WAR design. I’d go through my blog and point to the times I mentioned it, but I’m lazy and don’t feel like making people read my old posts anway.

I think just having two realms might make a difference in server control. There were plenty of times in my DAoC experience that Hib/Perc would have been required to just turtle up against the Midgard machine if we didn’t have the Albs to keep the Mids a little honest. Same was true for the Albs at times, I think. And I know the Mids loved barging in on a Hib/Alb fight out in the frontiers.

Personally, I loved the chaos when two realms were squaring off at a keep, and the third realm decided to come blasting into the middle of the fight. Or milewalls…it was a hell of a lot of fun to have three factions, and multiple fronts to your fight.

Mythic might make up for the loss of third realm by making RvR more accessible in WAR, but I do fear what’s going to happen to a server that has a faction that’s just dominant, either through skill or through the number of people who regularly participate in RvR.

Rock-Paper-Scissors is a lot more fun than Rock-Paper, ya know? We’ll see how it goes…it’d suck to have RvR turn into a feeling of helplessness or hopelessness if your two realms are badly out of balance somehow.

WAR Graphics: A look back into the early beta

I wrote this post last winter, when I had first started playing the WAR beta. I’m going to post it to illustrate a point. Much of what I wrote has changed; the graphics were upgraded many times between when I wrote this and now. What I want to show, though, is how much my initial perceptions have changed, and how little we should rely on people who heard last winter how poorly WAR might compare with WoW, or other current-gen MMO’s. Unless you’re reading something that has “Edit” before it, this was WAR six months ago. I’ll explain what has changed in the “Edit” additions, and put my edits all in italics. Please don’t link to the normal text and use it as evidence that WAR somehow sucks…lots has changed, and for the better. Posting the old draft starts in 3…2…1…now!

Maybe it’s just due to spending so much time in WoW, but I much prefer WoW graphics. I was surprised that WAR isn’t more visually striking. Perhaps this is designed to facilitate War and to perhaps solve some of the problems experienced in DAoC when hundreds of people might be fighting each other at a keep or a mile gate. I want to keep in mind the goals of WAR, and to view their graphical design decisions in consideration of those goals. I suspect they’re not able to use incredibly detailed graphics in light of the expected number of characters on screen at once.

Edit: Major upgrades to the graphics engine since I wrote that. I’m not a developer, so I can’t tell you specific technical details that were improved, but I know they added better textures, lighting, shadows, and details since then. The game is still designed to run smoothly in huge RvR battles, with 100+ players crashing together, with spell effects and animations going crazy around you, so no, it doesn’t look as good as, say, LoTRO or Age of Conan at high resolutions. It does, however, play really well. Back to the draft from last winter…

My initial testing this weekend is being done on a Macbook Pro (running Windows XP under Boot Camp), and unfortunately, it’s crashing like crazy. I’m not going to blame Warhammer for that; I’ve had crashing issues with XP and Boot Camp in other games as well. Eve Online runs very well under Boot Camp, but WoW crashes fairly frequently. I suspect that I’ve got an out-of-date driver somewhere, but updating drivers in Windows in a Boot Camp partition is a little weird.

Edit: I haven’t gone back to playing WAR on my Macbook Pro. I’m going to try to download the beta client to test it out, and I hope it’s stable now. So much else has changed, I can’t say for sure that there are any leftover Bootcamp issues. I’ll report how it goes after I torrent the huge client later tonight Back to last winter’s draft again…

When Warhammer does run without crashing, it definitely grabs my attention. Visually, it’s not as appealing as WoW, but I always give graphics a backseat to gameplay. I’ve had so many arguments with people who LOVE the graphics in Game X (and I can’t stand them), or I’ll rave about the graphics in Game Y only to hear how much someone else hates them.

My biggest complaint with the graphics is the characters. Their faces are fairly uninspiring. That may be because it’s beta and we’re not seeing the finished product (there are only two male characters available on the Chaos side at the moment, with two face options each). Characters also seem smaller in the environment than they do in WoW, which can be unsettling when you’re used to one game perspective.

The details on the face may be a deliberate design decision. In Dark Age of Camelot, when you had a couple hundred people on screen at once, the servers had to load all the character and equipment details. In a game where you’re expecting massive battles again, you’ve got to consider the level of complexity in your models.

The art style is reminiscent of Camelot, moreso than WoW. Running into the first newbie dungeon, just a tomb in a graveyard right outside the starting area, I was instantly reminded of the Darkness Falls dungeon from Camelot, and the little dungeons around Tir Na Nog in the Hibernian realm.

Edit: Can you see how someone who played the beta last summer, or last winter, and hasn’t played since, might still have a negative impression? Or if you’re taking the word of someone who talked about the beta on forums back then? That’s the point I’m trying to make here. If you heard bad things a while back, give it another try in the open beta, or at least listen to people who are playing the current version of the client.

Ok, I’m done with the italics, and done with my old impressions. Hopefully I’ve made my point I was kind of disappointed back then, even though the gameplay was pretty solid (beyond the Bootcamp problems). I’ve definitely changed my tune since then. I think Mythic was really smart to concentrate on gameplay for so long, and to leave the polishing for when they felt like the gameplay was pretty complete. I feel like Funcom went the opposite direction; they made a pretty client, and then tried to jam the gameplay into that high-resolution model, and the result was pretty poor.

Let’s see what happens with the WAR client when we hit open beta, and when launch day comes I suspect they’ll have load balancing issues to straighten out. Pretty much every MMO does. The gameplay, though, seems solid.

Two WAR beta Public Quest stories

I’m writing this before the WAR NDA drops, on the last day of July. Twice in the past week, I’ve had outstanding moments in the WAR closed beta, participating in Public Quests.

For those of you who haven’t played WAR yet, I wouldn’t expect experiences like this in your very first public quests. There’s a typical MMO combination of the right place, the right time, and the right people for MMO magic to happen. Not every PQ is like this, just like every WoW instance wasn’t fabulous, and every DAoC RvR group didn’t have epic moments.

When those moments happen, though, it reminds me why I enjoy MMO’s so much, and why I miss them when I’m off playing single-player games, or playing other MMO’s as a single-player game.

The first Public Quest story (hereby known as PQ’s) is what I’ve come to call my “Diablo moment”. If you played multiplayer Diablo at all, you might know what I’m talking about. I’m not trying to say that WAR plays like Diablo MP, far from it. This particular PQ, though, turned into a frenzy of slaughter, one of those gaming moments where you lose yourself in what you’re doing, and you realize 10, 15, 20 minutes later that the game has completely occupied your attention.

I call it the Diablo moment because the killing seemed as fast and furious as Diablo multiplay. Much button-mashing and clicking, mobs dying all around the PQ area, teammates being saved (or not!) from the brink of death, loot windows popping up all over the place to roll or pass on drops…it was life on the edge for a long time, like surfing a big PvE wave that never fully broke, always finding a little more wave to ride, to keep your momentum going. I’ve been in RvR battles like that in DAoC, where you realize in the middle of a huge battle, “Holy SHIT, this has been going on for a long time! And I’m STILL ALIVE!!”, and then it keeps going even longer. It was my first WAR PvE moment like that, and the PQ idea really promotes longer and more interesting PvE fights than my past MMO experiences.

Not everyone PQ goes like that. It was a combination of a good group of people (it was a pickup group, too, from the Open Group feature) and riding that wave-edge for quite a long time. Some PQ’s have too many people, and the fighting seems to easy. Sometimes you don’t have enough people, or the right mix of classes or personalities, and it’s too difficult. There’s so magic potential in PQ’s, though, and this one delivered.

The second PQ experience was far different from the Diablo moment. The Diablo moment happened in a pretty well-trafficked area. The second story, the 3-man PQ (as I’ve been calling it in my head) happened further off the beaten path in Ekrund, the dwarf area. I was in a duo working on quests, and we came upon the PQ as it was already in progress. We joined a big open PQ group, maybe 10 people, (god, I love the Open Group concept), and helped them finish it up. When it was over, all but three players in the Open Group had maxed out faction. Most people left for the warcamp, or for other quests, so three of us started on the next round of the PQ.

Since it’s located in a corner of the zone, no one else joined us. We had 100 non-Hero class NPC’s to kill to finish the first round, which was easy. We had 8 Champion-level NPC’s to slay in the second round, plus setting fire to tents, and there was a time limit. Three people can be tough to finish off a second or third level PQ stage, especially since it was our first time there and we were figuring it out as we went along. The elite-level mobs made the time limit a factor, as we had to work fast and efficiently to complete the requirements before time ran out. We finished with, literally, just seconds left, which was exciting in its own right.

I didn’t think we had a chance at the third stage. There’s usually a Hero-level NPC at the last stage, and they hit really, really hard. In addition, there was a Champion-level NPC as well (elite, but not as powerful as the Hero). We had two healers and a tank, though, and we managed to survive the entire fight and complete the PQ. By the time we were halfway through the fight, and I saw that we had a chance of winning, I started hoping that other people wouldn’t wander into the PQ. I wanted to finish it on our own, and we did. It definitely had a boss-fight feeling to it, along with the boss-fight victory afterglow.

When you finish a PQ, you get to roll for loot. Each PQ has a chest, and everyone who’s contributed to the PQ has a chance to roll on loot. Those with the biggest contributions get a bonus to your roll, and the items are usually pretty nice. Finishing the PQ with just three of us, who did every bit of damage and healing in the encounter, ensured that we were all going to get a drop from the loot chest. It was very satisfying.

I came in third after the rolls, but I didn’t care. It was an awesome PQ experience, and I hope I get more encounters like that when the game goes live. We also maxed our faction for that area, so we got to go pick out our faction rewards from the war camp, in addition to the loot drops from the chest. Sweet

Couple words for Brent

Hah. I really was only going to write a couple words, but I got carried away.

I realize I’m not going to change Brent’s mind. I’m not really interested in changing his mind. I think Brent has seen games, MMO’s, that have changed the way he thinks about MMO’s, and he can’t stand the thought of playing a “first generation” MMO any more.

I haven’t played any of the games Brent saw on his Sony Online Entertainment trip (Free Realms, The Agency, etc.), so I certainly can’t judge those games. I can judge Brent’s disillusionment with the state of MMO’s, though, and part of me can almost understand where he’s coming from.

The last MMO I bought at launch was WoW. That was a looooong time ago now. There’s been nothing (until WAR) that really captured my imagination. I’m still playing Eve because it’s the only game that’s not decidedly first-gen, a direct descendent of EQ/UO/Meridian/MUD’s.

I’ve been burned out on MMO’s. The evidence is here in my posts. A short jaunt in LoTRO, finding good ideas and good execution, and just not having the heart to keep leveling. Zero desire left to pay for or level in another WoW expansion. No desire to play EQ2, or to try Vanguard (ok, a little desire to try Vanguard, but only if Eve is down for a week, and I’m out of porn websites to view. So, basically, I probably won’t get to it ).

When I first joined the WAR beta, I had a reaction not unlike Brent’s. My first focus testing was like a level 20 template, so I kind of jumped into a new character in a new game, and had no idea what was going on. The art was still primitive, there were no open groups, I didn’t understand (or even know how to find) public quests, and I was having a tough enough time just figuring out which shiny new buttons to push. It was a tough slog for a couple months. In fact, it led to me trying LoTRO and re-subbing to Eve.

Around May, though, I got to start a character at level 1, and I got the hang of the first couple public quests. I felt like I understood my character, and I started queueing for Scenarios, and I actually had a blast in scenarios at like level 4. Shocking! Leveling through PvP, getting Renown, getting great gear rewards, earning more gear through Public Quests. I played a healer for the first time in my MMO career, and really enjoyed what Mythic has done with the Archmage and Rune Priest (I’m not a big Warrior Priest fan yet), getting to heal and nuke at the same time.

Shortly after that, Open Groups went in, and everything really changed for me. Other than DAoC, I was such a solo player in other games (I’m solo mining an Omber spawn in my mission area while I type up this blog post, haven’t talked to a live person in Eve all night), especially in WoW, but Mythic has brought back the fun of playing with other people.

I think, in the rush to judge what Mythic has or hasn’t created with WAR, the one major success of their design that gets overlooked (except by Tobold, bless his heart) is that WAR makes it an absolute frickin’ blast to play with other people in your realm. I tend to be wary of other people, in most MMO’s except DAoC, but WAR just makes it a joy to team up and work together. The first thing I do when I log in is check for groups in my area. I’m chatting, laughing with people, feeling like I’m helping other people and getting a ton of help myself, getting into ALL sorts of crazy high-level keep-taking, siege-firing, bloody, brutal, hella fun battles, and reveling in the fact that I once again have a connection to all these people around me.

It’s been years since I felt this way in an MMO. I distinctly recall Hibernian Relic defenses in DAoC, standing on the walls of our relic keeps with lots and lots and lots of realm mates, people I knew from crafting, from questing, from hearing on chat channels, from RvR, sieging enemy keeps, defending our own keeps…it was a sense of belonging, of shared purpose, of epic adventure that no other MMO has managed to capture. Until WAR.

Brent, if you’re burned out on first-gen MMO’s, I understand. I know you’ve seen sights that make the present games seem dim. I’m not going to try to convince you to play a game or genre that you’re done with. I will say, though, that if you never experienced the thrills of DAoC endgame, or if you pass on the madness that will be WAR RvR, you’ll have missed some of the best gaming this generation had to offer. There’s really little else more deserving of the Massive title than what Mythic created with DAoC, and is creating with WAR. Their whole purpose it to get people together, giving them a reason to get to know each other, to not pass each other by, to be stronger as a group than you could ever be as an individual, and to be stronger as a realm than you could ever be as a realm than you could ever be as a group. Mythic truly understands what it means to game together; not just a group of friends, but a server of realm mates, a huge population of potential collaborators.

Sometimes people talk about the failures of SWG and attribute it to people not being able to play the heroes; Vader, Solo, Skywalker. I’ve heard the same concerns about Star Trek; it can’t succeed if people can be Kirk or Picard. I think those people misunderstand what it is DAoC players, and I suspect Warhammer players, love about their MMO’s. I don’t need to pretend I’m a hero that already exists in that universe. I’m getting a chance to be one of those heroes myself.

I still remember the names of Hibernian heroes on Percival. Raad, Emerick, Blarney, Wayland, Slayne, Valgrim, the Thorns of Eire, and so many more. The names won’t mean anything to people who didn’t play on my server, but damn, I had fun with those people night in, night out. They meant more to me than any Vader wannabe could ever mean. They were selfless, they were inspirational, they were skilled, they were daring, and most of all, they made the game fun.

Mythic, more than any MMO developer out there, knows how to give players a stage to perform on, a place to become a hero, to become a friend, a fellow adventurer. They know how to put people together, and make the WANT to play alongside each other, to crave community instead of craving the solititude of the grind. There’s no greater MMO stage available…unless it’s Eve. I can’t talk bad about Eve, I think CCP really gets it too. But Mythic is about to make lightning strike twice, and I think it’d be a damn shame for someone who’s such a huge fan of MMO’s to miss the kind of magic that Mythic can conjure.

I don’t care if it’s first gen. It’s bloody fun

Why no posts after the NDA?

So, yeah, I complained for a long time about how I couldn’t wait for the NDA to drop, and when it drops, I don’t post.

I thought a bit of an explanation was in order. First, I agree with Brent, and WAR will be Dead on Arrival.

Haha! Kidding!

Seriously, I’m getting my ass kicked at work, and home’s been a little crazy as well, in a mostly-good way. My eight year-old daughter has a couple weeks left before she’s back in school and going to bed earlier, and she and I have been hanging out in the evenings, playing games, going for bike rides, getting ice cream, playing cards, stuff like that. I just haven’t had the time to really sit down and write.

Second, the market is flooded right now, and I don’t have time to read what everyone else is writing to ensure I’m not saying what’s already been said. Tobold has a kickass post called “What’s the Difference” that does a great job of showing the different direction Mythic chose in their design. I think he’s right on the money stating that WoW is more conducive to solo play, and WAR really does encourage community. The best part of DAoC for me was the community, and it seems like Mythic is emphasizing that even more in WAR.

Third, I want to let the reactionary hate die down a little bit. I don’t feel like arguing with people who have already decided WAR sucks just by reading blogs, and not getting a chance to play WAR for a while. I didn’t like WAR when I first played it either, it took a bit for my eyes to open to what Mythic’s really doing. In their defense, it shouldn’t take new players as long as it took me last winter; the game has improved by leaps and bounds since then, primarily graphically. The core components were already in place; I just had trouble seeing them through the clunky old beta graphics, and jumping in to testing at higher levels, instead of growing a character from the ground up. It should be a lot easier for open beta and Preview Weekend players, especially with so much information around about how to play. I went in really blind.

Lastly, I’m a little burned out on starting new characters in WAR. I’ve restarted characters so many times in the closed beta that I’m not sure I have the energy to start a new one for the Preview Weekend, and then start one for Open Beta, and then again for launch. I may pace myself a bit and play Eve and relax until launch, or maybe until open beta. I’m really looking forward to a character that I’ll own and be able to keep, and looking forward to meeting people who will stay on my server, instead of losing track of friends each time the closed beta wiped and reset.

Hmm, this is a damn long post about why I’m not posting I’ll let you get back to your regular WAR reading now!

Syncaine’s a dirty NDA breaker!

Haha, I saw that! It’s still in my Google Reader, lol.

With the NDA down (it is down, right?), lets finally start talking WAR details.

I tried to click through to the actual post to disagree about the NDA actually being down, but the post is already gone. Google says there were 8 comments, I’m guessing someone beat me to it.

Man, could they drop the curtain already? I’m with you, Syncaine, what the hell is the hold up?

Why I don’t give a !&*# about advance NDA drops

If you’re following Warhammer Online, you know that some websites have permission from Mythic to break the closed beta non-disclosure agreement. I know this has pissed off some dedicated WAR bloggers, like Syp. And I don’t blame Syp. It’s really a shame that his dedication to WAR goes unrewarded here, but I suppose EA/Mythic feels like they have to kiss the ass of “major gaming sites” and give them something exclusive.

I’m in the beta, so I have the luxury of already knowing (and sometimes disagreeing) with what’s being posted by said gaming sites. Maybe if I was dying for news, I’d be hanging on every word they’re posting, but I kind of doubt it.

I’ve noticed, after a couple years of reading RSS feeds, that I’m likely to ignore the dozens of posts churned out daily by the huge gaming sites. I’ll skim through those folders in Google Reader once I’ve read through all the blogs produced by individual bloggers, but I don’t read them the same way, or in the same detail, that I read The Ancient Gaming Noob, or Syp’s blog, or Hardcore Casual. Maybe I’m just an old MMO dog, but individual gamers write about what interests them specifically. They can talk a little more narrowly, perhaps, than the broader appeal of bigger gaming sites.

Maybe I like the individual blogs because they’re talking about what interests them, not what they think will interest me. If they happen to find like-minded souls out in the gaming ether, that’s awesome, but they don’t write thinking about page views and click throughs and a certain number of posts a day. Sure, we all like an audience, and we enjoy the conversations that arise, but I think the primary motivation for an individual blog is saying “Hey, here’s something I thought was interesting”. It doesn’t have to be news, or journalism, or a breakdown of game mechanics on a broad level, or developer interviews…I don’t care as much about those things. I want to read about what other gamers found interesting while they were playing games last night.

I don’t think I’ve read much of anything about WAR from any of the gaming sites that can bypass the NDA. If I did, it was just a skim of a headline in my RSS feed. Yeah, I’m in the beta, so I know I’m not the standard audience, and I’m sure some people are enjoying what’s being written, but you can bet that when the NDA drops for the rest of us, and CoW bloggers start writing stories about their experiences, I’ll be reading their stories with great interest.

Ya know, I don’t think I care so much for stories about how the game works. I want stories about what people are doing in the game. Syp, I know it sucks, and you definitely deserve a nod and a thanks from Mythic for your work promoting their game, but dude, I’m anxiously awaiting your WAR stories, and I could care less what the big dog sites are writing. It’s not the same as acknowledgement from Mythic, but I want you (and other WAR bloggers who might feel slighted by this) to know that you guys provide a personal perspective that I appreciate and gravitate toward. Keen and Graev, Snafzg and crew at The Greenskin, Syp, CoW bloggers; those are the sites I want to hear talking about WAR. The big sites are sort of the CNN of gaming. It serves a purpose, and they do it well, but it’s definitely my second choice for reading.

And yeah, I know, I’m dangerously close to high school-type arguments about why arena rock bands are sellouts and the real shows are in the clubs by unsigned bands, bla bla bla. Maybe it’s a little stereotypical, but there’s some truth in stereotypes too. Like Dwarves and drinking. Or Goblins and stinking.

My turn: Warhammer Sales Predictions

I saw Syncaine take a stab at this, and he got the idea from Tobold. I’m well-versed in talking out me arse, so I’ll make a Warhammer subscriber prediction as well.

First, I’m going to take WoW’s number, around 10 million subscribers, and chop 6 million off the top. That’s my approximation of the number of non-US and non-European WoW subscribers. Well over half of WoW’s subscriptions come from outside those markets. Since I think WAR will mainly appeal to US and European gamers, I’ll say 4 million subscribers is the theoretical maximum Mythic could achieve.

Naturally, that assumes 4 million players drop WoW for WAR, and that’s obviously not happening. However, there are people playing other games that might give WAR a try, and there are people who have stopped playing WoW that are going to play WAR. I’ll pick a number out of me arse and say Mythic might attract attention from 2 million gamers…actually, that sounds high. That’s fully 50% of what Blizzard’s managed to do in the US and Europe, and that sounds optimistic to me, especially since WAR is focused more on RvR. True, RvR is not PvP, I’ve been banging that drum like crazy, but I don’t expect everyone to enjoy RvR even if they understand my points from a theoretical perspective.

I’ll drop to 1.6 million interested players. Not all of them will buy at once. I think we’ll see a little more than AoC numbers for launch and the rest of 2008…let’s say, 1 million users. Not all of them will keep playing after the first month. Naturally, there will be people who find it isn’t for them, they’ll return to WoW, or their other MMO homes.

Given WAR’s RvR-based nature, I don’t see as much future growth in WAR as we saw in WoW. It’ll be more difficult to join the game later and have the same game experience. I can see WAR selling another 600k copies in 2009, maybe into 2010. That puts me around the 1.6 million copies sold, and I’d guess the actual subscriber rate will be lower. 50% of that would be tremendous for Mythic…if they could get a million subs, I think they’d be thrilled. I’m expecting it to be lower, though. I’ll say that, given how much the potential market has grown since DAoC launched, they could expect to triple their DAoC subscriber peak, and get about 750k monthly subscribers for WAR. I don’t think it’ll last as long as WoW has peaked, though, and I’d suspect that number to drop closer to 500-600k for WAR over time.

And I think that’d be a huge success for Mythic. They’ll never get close to WoW numbers, just because it’s not going to appeal to the Chinese and Korean market the way WoW does. Plus, it’s an RvR-centric game.

Remind me in a year how wrong I am, lol.

WAR vs. WoW mathematics

There’s no shortage of online opinion about Warhammer: Age of Reckoing and how it’s going to perform against World of Warcraft. After listening to podcasts on my daily commute, though, something occurred to me.

I was surprised to hear that Van Hemlock didn’t play Dark Age of Camelot (noted on his very fine podcast, episode 11. Don’t worry about being late putting out your episodes, sir. I’m behind listening to them!). DAoC was a very early MMO, and perhaps easy to overlook. In a way, DAoC was compared to EQ in the same way WAR is being compared to WoW; an underdog competing against the reigning MMO heavyweight champion. Maybe, in the resulting fanboy heavyweight champion buzz, people heard all sorts of things that were “wrong” with DAoC, and didn’t get a chance to discover first-hand everything right about it.

I was mulling over the fact that one of the more prolific MMO game players/bloggers hadn’t experienced everything that was brilliant about the DAoC end game. Van Hemlock knew DAoC’s reputation. He understood on a theoretical level what it was that Mythic had accomplished, but there was no direct experience of the game. It made me wonder how many other MMO players are really in the dark when it comes to what Mythic offers to the genre.

I hope he doesn’t mind me using him as an example. I’m not attempting to critique him specifically; not at all, in fact. He handled his lack of DAoC experience with the grace and aplomb I’d like to see in other internet MMO message board posters. What intrigued me about his revelation was simple math.

Dark Age of Camelot probably hit their subscriber peak at somewhere around 250,000 players. That’s a rough estimate, I haven’t traced the lines on Sir Bruce’s chart to find the precise number. I’m going to compare it to WoW’s numbers, so perhaps you can understand why I don’t feel the need to research the exact number WoW’s peak is above 10 million subscribers.

Given DAoC’s 250k subscribers, let’s be generous and say that 75% of them spent significant time in RvR, the concept that Warhammer Online is built around. 75% of 250k is about 185k. Don’t make me do exact math, it makes me sad. Since I’m comparing it to WoW, so I could use the entire subscriber base, or just half, and it wouldn’t affect the numbers too much.

Let’s take those 185k users, with direct personal experience of RvR, and speculate whether those individuals are being taken at their word regarding what’s different between WAR and WoW in the various forum debates in the MMO world. For the other 9, 815,000 WoW players, how would they know if WAR’s a clone? If they’ve never played an MMO with an endgame like DAoC’s (and DAoC was the only one so far), how can they dismiss what they don’t know? How do you have the nerve to make the clone claim, when you’re talking out of your arse? (For the record, I’ve moved far away from Van Hemlock here!)

I know the answer, of course. Discussion forums encourage stupid, unfounded, strident posts. I guess ignorance of what made DAoC unique, and posting that ignorance, isn’t the real story here. For Mythic, the real story becomes how many of the 9,815,000 WoW players who didn’t play DAoC can play WAR with an open mind. Is it any wonder we’ve got Paul Barnett grinding the WAR organ while the monkey dances?

Eve skills: What am I missing?

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m stumped. I’ve read the guides, checked the Eve-O forums, done some googling, but I still can’t figure it out.

In Halada’s “The Complete Miner’s Guide“, he’s talking about fitting out a Retriever, which I recently gained the skills to fly. He mentions fitting a Mining Laser Upgrade, which I also have the skills for, and he says that Mining Upgrades 1 should suffice (along with Electronics V because of CPU requirements). I have Mining Upgrades III, working on IV, and Electronics V, and I can’t fit the Mining Laser. MLU’s impact your CPU, and I don’t have enough CPU left to put the module online.

Is there another skill I’m missing that would be reducing CPU requirements and letting me fit the Mining Laser Upgrade?

Tobold and WAR: The other possibility

Tobold wonders today if the WAR Open Beta is capped at rank 20 because Mythic is trying to hide unfinished higher-end content. Gee, I wonder where he got that idea? I mean, is there some sort of track record where a MMO developer puts a ton of effort into levels 1-20, but levels 30 to level cap are kind of devoid of content, and we listen to endless developer promises that new content is coming?

Yeah, I can’t blame him for wondering. And I’m not just taking shots at Funcom and AoC. There are plenty of MMO’s that fell into that situation. I can’t break NDA to argue the point about WAR; actually, I haven’t done enough PvE at higher levels to even be able to judge WAR yet. I’ll be finding out with everyone else, although I have a pretty good feeling about it from Little Bird chatter around me.

However, I do have another explanation for why Mythic would cap progress at Rank 20, and it doesn’t have anything to do with unfinished content.

WAR’s selling point is going to be RvR, and just how much flippin’ fun RvR is with a huge group of people. Again, I can’t break NDA, but Mythic has to convince open beta players who are on the fence about buying the game that WAR includes something unique, something enjoyable enough to pull them away from another MMO, or to convince them to pull the trigger on trying WAR.

By concentrating all the beta testers into the first two Tiers of the game, Mythic is going to improve the chances that testers will encounter RvR in large numbers, which is where the fun of of WAR really kicks in. The same is true of Public Quests, to a lesser extent (PQ’s don’t have to have a ton of people to be fun, they work as well with one group as much as a whole raid group), and RvR Scenarios (instances) will fill up faster with everyone in similar level ranges.

If players could progress past rank 20, it would become incrementally tougher to gather a critical mass of players for RvR. There’s only a few weeks to play, most likely. Imagine the spread of player ranks from 10 to 40, and consider what it might be like to find a huge group of players around your level. It’s going to be a lot easier with a cap at 20. I think the potential for great gaming moments is going to be increased.

If you do get into the open beta test, join Open Groups for PQ’s. Join warbands. Queue up for the instanced scenarios. Head out for open-world RvR with friends, or by joining an RvR open group. Whatever you do, make sure you do it with a lot of other people. The magic of WAR really starts to reveal itself when you find yourself surrounded by lots of other players, both friend and foe, and the mayhem, bloodshed, and sheer fun factor blossoms. With a cap at level 20, it’s going to be a great preview of what to expect from ranks 20 to 40, and we’ll have plenty of time to see that after the 18th of September

Casualties of WAR

Casualties of WAR (CoW)

I’ve been a little quiet the past couple days because I’m over at the new Casualties of WAR guild forums. If you haven’t heard of Casualties of WAR yet, it’s an outgrowth of Boatorious‘ idea to create a WAR guild for all the WAR bloggers that talk back and forth to each other. Genda, Hudson, Bildo, and Heartless really took the idea and ran with it.

The guild forum has attracted quite a few bloggers, and even more people who read those blogs. If you don’t yet have a WAR guild, and you think you might be interested in joining us, come by and read the charter. We’re aiming for a low drama, high enjoyment factor, but everyone always says that initially I’m hoping we actually manage to accomplish it!

I’m usually a solo-minded player in MMO’s, but WAR has encouraged me to group more than any previous game. Grouping is simple, it’s rewarding, and it’s a lot of fun, even with strangers. It should be a lot more fun running around with friends who I’ve been talking back and forth with here, and on other blogs.

I don’t want to miss mentioning anyone’s blog, but I know I’m going to. I think I’ll start a thread at the CoW site later today that lists everyone who has a blog, so anyone who pops over from here will be able to see everyone who’s writing about WAR in the guild. And I won’t get in trouble for not mentioning them here, I hope. It’s not personal! I’m old and forgetful, that’s all.

I was excited to see Wilhelm from The Ancient Gaming Newb say he’ll join us, and not just because he’s older than me. I’ve flown around the Eve universe for over a year now, and I’ve never run into Wilhlem in space. Hopefully I’ll fix that in WAR and I’ll get to have some adventures with him. Saylah from Mystic Worlds showed up yesterday, and I’ve always enjoyed her appearances on the VirginWorlds podcasts and her blog posts. Ethic from Kill Ten Rats says he’s going to play, which would be awesome. I’m hoping we could convince Oz to come out of semi-retirement and play with us as well, although I know his real life is quite busy. Oz was an old EQ guildmate, back in our Test Server days, and one of my favorite posters on the old Druid’s Grove EZboard forum.

Oakstout will be playing with CoW, Cuppycake has indicated she’ll be there (Nice, two degrees of separation from Raph. Who needs Kevin Bacon?), Pixiestyx (who might not be blogging any longer?) will join us. Blackguard (Ryan Shwayder) has posted on the boards, although he hasn’t actually applied for guild membership…I’m guessing 38 Studios will have their own gang to run with, but I can still hope he’d come play with us. I’m running out of time here (I’m at work!), but other bloggers who are applying to the guild include Werit, Pete from Dragonchasers, Esri, Ardua (who has an awesome sig pic)…if I missed anyone, it’s an accident! I ended up cruising the application section and checking profiles for blog links…if you have a blog and it’s not in your profile, add it in!

If you haven’t been to the CoW site and you’re interested in checking out the guild, the guild charter gives you an idea of our goals.

I have to say, I haven’t been this excited about an MMO launch in a long time, and I’ve never been a part of a big guild right at launch. I’m hoping that good players continue to join us, and that can have one hell of a good time going to WAR We’ll have two chapters, on two servers; one for Order, and one for Destruction. Come check it out!