Warhammer Online

[Robert Treder]

Playing WoW I'm having issues with the overwhelming Alliance majority on my realm, and from what I've read here, faction imbalances are not alien to WAR. I just wonder why don't they implement some faction-balancing mechanism?

I don't know, but faction imbalance is a big problem. Order is outnumbered on most servers, so if you play Destruction it can be hard to find a fight. Me and my friends are thinking of rerolling Order now.

[Stormin]

There needs to be a reason to go to the rvr zones, they could be filled with mobs that are easy to kill and are worth massive exp compared to any other way of leveling for example. Money and good enough gear are easy to get so that's not much of an incentive and making people worth a lot more RPs was a flop.
Since right now the fastest way of gaining levels on a high pop server is to sit in a warcamp and keep repeating the quest to do the instant pop scenarios that's what people are going to do, no matter how boring it is.


As for forcing equal populations. Mythic won't make many happy customers if people trying to log in can't because they play a more popular realm. The real solution was in their previous game, to have three realms. The strongest and most overpopulated realm could always be taken down whenever they got between the two other realms.

[White Haven]

Well, I think you somewhat missed the point, my good friend with the kung fu skills and the sociopathic love of Stranglethorn. If you're on an oRvR server, of course you can't find Order to play with, those are uniformly the WORST destro/order imbalances, as all of the 'hur I'll go fuck people over to make the big boys come out and fight' mouthbreathers tended to roll Destruction on general shit-stirring principles. Go find a server with decent faction balance and bitch about the RvR lakes, on Badlands they're dangerous, dangerous places. And I should tail all that off with the mention that I was a PVP-server player back on WoW, and 'we're bored so we fucked some lowbie sideways with a crowbar so he'd call help' is a fucking POOR excuse for being a jerkoff, heard it a million times from both sides of the line.

[PainRack]

So what do you guys think about the current live events? Mine is good, when the people are on.... I think the draw just went away though, since the big PVP fights in the RVR lakes seemed to had died. but then again, I haven't been logging on in popular hours

[Bilbo]

While I'm still generally enjoying the game, here are some gripes off the top of my head:


Going around trying to gank is even worse. Everybody just stays in town and queues for bgs, it's almost impossible to find people, and when you do and you gank them, you can't corpse camp because they spawn back in town.

Only a complete asshole whines because they cannot corpse camp.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I played this over on Utsanomiko's computer, where he can have everything turned up to maximum.

My god the game is gorgeous.

[charlemagne]

I played this over on Utsanomiko's computer, where he can have everything turned up to maximum.

My god the game is gorgeous.

Gorgeous as in "would have looked maybe ok 3 years ago", right? I mean, I don't want to bash a game that never was meant to have uber graphics for looking like shit, but really, Warhammer Online is ugly. And I've seen animated gif smileys that have smoother animations as the toons and mobs in this game.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I played this over on Utsanomiko's computer, where he can have everything turned up to maximum.

My god the game is gorgeous.

Gorgeous as in "would have looked maybe ok 3 years ago", right? I mean, I don't want to bash a game that never was meant to have uber graphics for looking like shit, but really, Warhammer Online is ugly. And I've seen animated gif smileys that have smoother animations as the toons and mobs in this game.

Play it on a rig with max settings and tell me it's ugly, chucklefuck. Every one of my hotkey attacks has a different animation, so I don't know what you're complaining about.

[charlemagne]

Play it on a rig with max settings and tell me it's ugly, chucklefuck. Every one of my hotkey attacks has a different animation, so I don't know what you're complaining about.

Well yes, I play* on max settings and even with 8xAA (drivers overriding game settings), and I still say it's ugly. Textures are messy and not very rich on detail, there is very little lighting, effects (like casting) look bland and boring, and animations have circa 3 stages each and look very choppy. You also don't need a very high end rig to max everything out in Warhammer Online (but that was the point of this antiquated engine). The one good thing about the graphics is that it won't stutter even with lots of chars on screen, and that really is a good thing for pvp, but it doesn't change that it looks ugly

*Well, I played till level 12 or 13, lost interest very quickly and couldn't be bothered to log in a couple of weeks now. It's not my kind of MMORPG, I find it boring and lacking of anything interesting to do.

[Robert Treder]

I have to agree with Charlemagne, this is not a very good looking game. Textures are uninspired, npc models range from pretty good to fucking horrible (have you seen a "tiger" ), and the visuals in general are quite buggy (spell effects [really, really, really annoying ones] persisting after cast, poor pathing and clipping on mobs).

That aside, as I've said before, I don't really care about graphics in a game personally. What matters far more is the gameplay and the community. While I wouldn't call this game "gorgeous", it's still pretty fun, albeit far from great.

[Oskuro]

Everyone complained (and some still do) about WoW's cartoony graphics, and look where it is now. As long as the game's solid, graphics shouldn't be such an issue.

Also, a lot of people forget that MMOs have to deal with larger scenes than most standard games. You can't expect extremely high polycount and complexity, and then plug in dozens of player characters and a decent view distance.

And, finally, it's better to have more players (by making the game less demanding on player's machines) than have only those who can buy the latest hardaware play. I personally think that was one of the failings of Everquest 2, it was terribly demanding graphically, while WoW could be played perfectly on my old Geforce2.

[charlemagne]

I don't disagree with that, for a game where you want massive pvp to happen the graphics engine has to be fast, not pretty. I just disagreed with Warhammer looking pretty

But I don't agree that a game has to be playable on cell phones to be successful, just look at how many people bought Age of Conan when it came out, it was close to a million - and most of them leaving didn't have anything to do with the hardware requirements, but with the desolate state of gameplay and the game becoming buggier and running worse with every patch they released. AoC is pretty scaleable, too, you can play it on older hardware by tuning down shaders to 2.0 etc, it just won't look like in the promo screenshots (but it'll still have prettier animations and all). Or take Lord of the Rings Online, it's really pretty overall, although I wish they'd replace animations with something motion captured already, because walking and riding look like crap in that game.

All in all I don't get why it is so hard to make an engine that you can scale the crap out of, a perfect engine would scale dynamically and tune down graphics to still get smooth fps when there's lots of characters on screen at the same time, but no game seems to manage to do that.

[Garlak]

You know, one of the biggest beefs I had with Warhammer Online was that it couldn't be played on my laptop--I have to take over the family computer if I want to play Warhammer Online. That means splitting time with 2-3 other people *needing* it, and one of those people also in a raiding guild in World of Warcraft...

So, yeah, I'd much prefer slightly worse graphics in exchange for lower requirements that I could play it on my laptop.

[Oskuro]

But I don't agree that a game has to be playable on cell phones to be successful, just look at how many people bought Age of Conan when it came out, it was close to a million - and most of them leaving didn't have anything to do with the hardware requirements, but with the desolate state of gameplay and the game becoming buggier and running worse with every patch they released.

Again what I said, graphics can be neat, but if gameplay is not solid, then the game sucks.

I also don't understand why they don't work on scalability. Well, I understand it, it means more work for the DEV team, and they have this concept (excuse) of making games that will look good a few years down the line, wich is utter bullshit as most games are all but forgotten by then. It feels like they try to push players to buy new hardware to be able to play the newest releases, doesn't it?

[charlemagne]

You know, one of the biggest beefs I had with Warhammer Online was that it couldn't be played on my laptop--I have to take over the family computer if I want to play Warhammer Online. That means splitting time with 2-3 other people *needing* it, and one of those people also in a raiding guild in World of Warcraft...

So, yeah, I'd much prefer slightly worse graphics in exchange for lower requirements that I could play it on my laptop.

How old is your laptop? I mean, you can't really expect new games to run well or run at all on older hardware, and most laptops are even worse because if you got integrated gfx or sound hardware that's not really supported even in newer laptops. (At least it says so on my LOTRO box.) It's a bit like saying "damn those PS3 games, why won't they run on my PS2"

It's not even about graphics quality, but about the tech the engine uses. If they program a game using Shader 2.0 it just won't run on any card not supporting Shader 2.0, regardless of how good or bad the game looks.

I also don't understand why they don't work on scalability. Well, I understand it, it means more work for the DEV team, and they have this concept (excuse) of making games that will look good a few years down the line, wich is utter bullshit as most games are all but forgotten by then. It feels like they try to push players to buy new hardware to be able to play the newest releases, doesn't it?

Yeah, but I can understand things like the mentioned Shader, apparently programming with Shader 3.0 is quite different from older Shaders, to it would mean double the work or something. Same goes for when they make the final switch to DirectX 10.

But developing an MMO that is supposed to run for years and will look good in a couple years still, because the engine can scale a lot, now that would seem like a good idea to me.

[Gandalf]

You know what's really shit me? There's no way to help navigate your way around Altdorf. I just lost an hour looking for a way to find a mount.

Though I should say it's still fun, if a bit repetitive.

[PainRack]

You know what's really shit me? There's no way to help navigate your way around Altdorf. I just lost an hour looking for a way to find a mount.

Though I should say it's still fun, if a bit repetitive.

lol. When I was exploring the capital city, I got creamed when I accidently wandered into a room where the Cult of the Coin PQ was.......

The city is also full of triggered PQs and apparently random PQs... Gurgle the Unclean one creamed me when I was in a room and he WALKED in.

Agreed. The exploration quests might had been better designed to actually show you how to navigate the city.

BTW, what servers do you guys play on? I'm on Ironclaw.

[Gandalf]

I'm on Ironclaw for my Destro guys, and Darklands for my Order ones.

[DPDarkPrimus]

My destruction characters are on Red Eye Mountain, with The Six Mouths, which is Penny Arcade's Destruction-based guild.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Dest on Ostermark.

Order on Avelorn.

I've been kicking around with Heavy Metal and have done a few runs on Reikland now. I like a lot of things about the scenario, especially its objective mechanics, but it devolves into this weird zerging too often.

[DPDarkPrimus]

That reminds me, my lone (at the moment, anyhow) Order character is on Ostermark.

[Atavarius]

My main is on Red Eye Mountain, I think I have an Order toon or 2 on Skull Throne.

[PainRack]

lol. For some odd reason, the plethora of tanks in T1 means I had sc pop up that comprise of more tanks than other classes combined, and all the Nordland PQs are being farmed repeatedly. A huge bunch of hardcore players have already moved up into T2 and are swinging the balance there.... can't wait when the first KOTBS and BG move up into T3 where my WP is:D

[Jaevric]

So my current server is offering transfers away due to its low population. I hadn't played in a month or so but this doesn't surprise me. Any server suggestions? I'm currently playing a Warrior Priest, ~ level 24, but I may reroll a BG or KotBS when they're open to everyone (yeah, I know, me and everyone else but I prefer playing tanks damnit).

I don't really care which faction I play on, both sides have their good points, but a fairly well-balanced population would be preferred.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I'm only familiar with the RP servers, but both Phoenix Throne and Ostermark have good balance. Phoenix Throne is a bit on the overcrowded side, but it's mellowed out a bit since release and a lot of the idiots have been filtered out by now.