Beta Impressions Part 2 (Specific Positives and Negatives)

August 19, 2008 – 8:18 pm

Since I won’t be able to post much tomorrow, I’ll put a few up tonight.

I have broken down my list of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta impressions by positives and negatives to keep things simple and provide you with a balanced (and biased) point of view (it is my blog, right?). Everything is summed up in the conclusion paragraph.

In no particular order, my top 10 likes and top 6 dislikes are:

Positive Beta Impressions

Stylized graphics - I love the look of this game from the textures to the models to the lighting to the environment to everything else. To my eyes, they look nothing like World of Warcraft, which is much more cartoon-like. If anything, WAR’s graphics are closer to Lord of the Rings Online (except everything is more dark and depressing). They are no-where near as realistic as Age of Conan’s graphics, which is probably why you can play this game on an older PC.
War is everywhere - From the moment you step into this game, you will feel the tension with your racial pairing. They don’t throw player enemies at you right away (though you can join a scenario if that’s what you’re looking for), but the PvE areas are set up with hodgepodge war camps and fortifications, persistent sieges, and even allied NPCs that are engaged with enemy NPCs. It feels as if you’re in the midst of an ongoing battle.
Simple questing - This questing system was tailor made for me. The red lakes (aka, polygons) surrounding quest locations on your map might kill the fun for some explorers, but I played WoW with Thottbot/WoWHead permanently open in the background because the directions and objectives were usually too vague. I don’t think a WoWHead for WAR will be necessary (unless you want to know which mobs drop which items).
Public Quests - Okay, these are just awesome… Each PQ has three stages that increase in difficulty and coolness. Not only do they give great XP, but the renown rewards are some of the best items you can get in that particular chapter. I do have a negative impression though (see below)…
Scenario queuing - I love that I don’t need to travel to a capital city to queue up for some quick and dirty PvP action. You can queue from anywhere in the world. The ability to do this may become annoying when people start disappearing in the real world from groups and such, but I think it’s up to the individual players to keep a list of who is reliable or not and join groups wisely. To prevent the queue system from becoming a death-cheating system, you should not be able to join a scenario while engaged in PvP combat.
Scenarios in general - You can join solo or with a group and get some nicely balanced RvR. Well, balanced in terms of numbers anyway. More skilled players and more coordinated teams will definitely have the advantage over random pickup groups, which is just how it should be. I also like the variety of scenarios. There are many variations on capture the flag, but they’re a lot more creative than the battlegrounds you’ll find in WoW.
Flight masters - These guys give you the ability to travel to an ally’s zone without having to first unlock a flight point. Given that most of the war is spread across multiple continents, this is a necessity that has been done very well. Simply travel to a war camp and you can join friends in any of the racial pairings after a short flight cinematic and loading screen.
Battlefield objectives and keeps - BOs give you a reason to participate in open-world RvR throughout each of the tiers, and it starts right at tier 1. Zone control plays a big part in pushing toward your enemy’s main fortress, which is one step before capital city siege.
Cut cities and classes - My impressions on this are almost entirely negative but for one silver lining: horizontal expansion. At least these cuts give Mythic an opportunity to expand horizontally (more content and options) rather than vertically (more level caps and gear treadmills). I hate the WoW model and will promptly quit WAR if they ever introduce a level cap increase that promotes mudflation.
Smaller groups - I really like the 6-man group size because it allows for smaller guilds or groups of friends to have fun in the game. Content also scales for smaller group size pretty well (except zergs). The smaller size also allows for a wider variety of class combination, which makes PvE and RvR much more dynamic than DAOC, where there was only one perfect setup per realm.
I could go on… and will into the future.

Negative Beta Impressions

Four missing classes - Regardless of whether or not Mythic could make them fun, closed beta testers (non-Mythic employees) had not seen the four cut classes since August of 2007. I believe Mythic gave up on these classes way before we heard about it, yet they strung us along anyway, just to keep the hype machine going. How could they get our metrics if we weren’t even given access to them to test? Closed beta testers heard about these class cuts along with the public, which means we weren’t kept in the loop at all. On top of all this, greenskins lost their Choppa, which was a fan favorite… It may have been necessary from Mythic’s point of view, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Four missing cities - Non-internal beta testers got their first look at Altdorf in June 2008 and they promptly closed the testing phase after a few hours of mayhem and confusion. We weren’t given a chance to see Altdorf again until the city cuts were announced (again, we heard at the same time as everyone else). The cutting of these cities had nothing to do with us, and was solely due to Mythic rethinking their game design and biting off more than they could chew for release. I am and will probably always be a bigger fan of their original design that included six cities rather than the redesigned, “focus-driven” / “rotating” city model. Given what I’ve seen of Altdorf and the Inevitable City, I’m not even that impressed (well, I am, but not blown away like I think I should be). Greenskins won’t launch with their capital city either. I would have much preferred that they scaled back their designs on these living cities, so that all six could have made it in. They have tried making up for it by putting more emphasis on fortresses, but I’m still pretty meh on that.
One city for capture - I firmly believe that the new city capture model will make things way more difficult for gamers, especially on a balanced server. With a balanced population and skill spread, which is what most people want on a server, the advantage will always go to the defender because of higher ground, fortification, and NPC support. Having to capture and hold two fortresses will be nigh impossible in my humble opinion unless one side overwhelms the other due to numbers and/or skill. If that’s the case, that faction will always have an advantage and the other side will become perpetual losers. City siege will be extremely rare (way beyond Mythic’s expectations imho), which is pretty strange considering it’s supposed to be the bread and butter of their endgame. The longer it takes to siege one of these cities, the less interested I think people will become. Can you imagine the amount of coordination it’s going to defend an entire zone and fortress while you’re trying to capture the second one required to unlock a city? I haven’t tested how this will play out in the game because we were never given free reign to an entire campaign from start to finish. These are just my perceptions.
The PQ grind (a lack of scaling) - Maxing out influence in the first few PQs you encounter in WAR is pretty easy; it usually takes 2-3 complete runs (depending on group size). However, later PQs take many completions to max out; like 7-9. After a while, PQs just feel like another grind. Once the game becomes established and fewer allies are XPing around you, PQs will be extremely grindy because solo players will only be able to complete stage 1, and then have to wait for the PQ to reset because they aren’t powerful enough to continue. They’ll also miss out on all the lottery items and additional XP rewards because they’ll never progress past stage 3. Adversely, PQs also become grindy when you have more people around than intended. It’s no fun killing dozens of mobs per second, gaining 1-5 influence per due to the massive size of your group. Due to the miniscule influence gain, you’ll be forced to repeat the PQ many more times than is optimal. The biggest drawback to PQs in WAR is that they don’t scale to the amount of participants, which is pretty much unavoidable in an open-world environment unless Mythic were to implement complex respawn systems.
Class balance - I won’t argue that balance is a daunting task when you have so many classes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work your hardest to get it right. Even though the game follows a rock-paper-scissors and class mirror balance model, certain classes definitely outshine others, even when their mirrored counterparts do not. A perfect example is the Witch Hunter and Witch Elf. The WH is one of the most feared classes in the entire game, while the Witch Elf is but a minor annoyance.
Zergs - The siege game of WAR (cities, keeps, fortresses) will almost surely come down to zerg vs. zerg warfare and I absolutely snore at combat of this scale. Not only are zergs laggy (the worst performance I experience in WAR is when many enemies are on my screen), but you will die to them almost instantaneously if you step out of line for the briefest of moments (getting nuked by 10-20 people is unsurvivable). Also, the more people you group together, the more mindless they generally become. Skill and tactics deteriorate and zerg battles usually turn into a massive standoff that lasts for hours. Maybe some people enjoy this, but I do not. Some of the end-game scenarios and city siege phases are upwards of 40vs.40 or 72vs.72. Make sure you have a sweet gaming rig and/or turn all the effects off, because your system will be severely tested. I don’t think their listed minimum specs will handle fights at the zerg scale very well at all. Here’s a video to show you what I mean…

Zergs in Action (Keep RvR) from The Greenskin on Vimeo.

Conclusion

The biggest drawback for me is that the game is really designed for large-scale RvR - Keeps, fortresses, cities - and some of the end-game scenarios are designed for 24-72+ players. This kind of PvP is not my cup of tea. I dislike zergy matchups in all genres of games from RTS to FPS. I’d much rather play an 8v8 match in TF2 than a 32v32. I will rarely siege a city, keep, or fortress in my future WAR career because it doesn’t appeal to me at all due to the zerg potential.

However, I will still be playing WAR. The main reason is that I should be able to find ways around these zergy fights. I’ll hopefully roam around in my group of 6 or 12, tagging battlefield objectives or out of the way keeps, engaging any evenly matched enemies we come across. I will avoid zergs like the plague, perhaps skirting around the perimeter, picking off any midless zergling hoping to join his hive-mates. For me, city and fortress siege just won’t happen. I’ll let everyone else bang their skulls against the walls and jump in once the fortifications have toppled.

Every time I get angry about the missing classes or cities, I keep telling myself to concentrate on the horizontal expansion. These features will eventually be implemented, and hopefully they’ll help mitigate against mudflation. If I ever hear Mythic is releasing an expansion like Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, or Trials of Atlantis for Warhammer Online, I will promptly put my account up for auction. I have no taste for level caps increases and gear treadmills.

So that pretty much sums it up. In short, I’m looking forward to WAR’s fall 2008 release, but that doesn’t mean I won’t hold them accountable on this blog for mistakes I think they’re making or about to make. I hope this game provides me with years of entertainment, but the moment it stops being fun, I’ll pack things up and move to greener pastures (likely out of the MMORPG genre altogether because nothing else looks even remotely interesting).

Waaagh!