Summary:
-Warhammer Online will use Punkbuster to fight cheating and hacking.
-Only 2 capital cities will be in the game during launch. Altdorf(Empire) and Inevitable(Chaos). The other cities will be added in after the game launches. (Though I've also read on TenTonHammer that the other capitals will be in, but won't be siege ready.) To make up for this, to assault the other side's capital, you must have 2 regions conquered instead of that specific capital's region conquered.
-Class cuts. FUCK.
Classes that will not be in the final game are as follows:
Choppa (Greenskin)[Melee DPS]
Hammerer (Dwarf)[Melee DPS]
Blackguard (Dark Elf)[Tank]
Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)[Tank]
In other news, the Warhammer NDA may be gone in a couple of weeks after the guild beta gives enough feedback. If the feedback is good, the game will leave NDA. If the feedback is bad... then the NDA continues.
I'm really not sure what to think of all this. I do think one thing is for certain however. If the game's NDA lasts all the way to launch, the game is a piece of shit.
If the amount of balancing required for those classes would be prohibitive enough to cut them, then they should have known much earlier on. Same with the cities.
On the other hand, the two tank classes were kinda required to complete the public quests. So hopefully Mythic is smart and bumps up the tanking ability of some of the other classes, at least in the lower levels.
Edit: Also, TenTonHammer Interview. Willias fucked around with this message on 07-13-2008 at 01:01 PM.
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Captain Tarquinn Model 2000 was programmed to say:
Eh, while I would like WAR to succeed, these cuts do not bode well for the game.
WoW has basically only two cities, anyway (excluding Shattrath, but that's really not applicable to WAR since Shattrath was made to be a No-PvP-Ever copout) and if the classes stink, it'd be better to cut them now instead of having people play them and be left at the back of the pack, ie: Paladins and Hunters.
This doesn't entirely affect me, anyway, since I was planning on playing a Black Orc.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Mr. Parcelan who doth quote:
This doesn't entirely affect me, anyway, since I was planning on playing a Black Orc.
Getchu some chickenz
The removal of the Choppa is definitely disappointing though.
Since Chaos and High Elves are the only factions that have 4 classes and Elves are the number 1 attractors of imbeciles, we might find a pretty good distribution of nerts.
Empire and will have no tanks, but they'll be fighting Chaos who will have tanks? High Elves will be fighting the tankless DE's? How is that not going to imbalance RVR?
Furthermore, what's going to keep people from flocking to chaos when chaos will have the cool factor, their own capital city on release, and be one of only 2 realms with a complete class list? Maradon! fucked around with this message on 07-13-2008 at 04:30 PM.
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Maradon! was listening to Cher while typing:
what's going to keep people from flocking to chaos
Dark Elves
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Maradon! said:
Empire and will have no tanks
O RLY
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Addy had this to say about (_|_):
Fuck, I wanted to play a choppa
Liar, you told me witch elf.
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Maradon! wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
Empire and will have no tanks, but they'll be fighting Chaos who will have tanks? High Elves will be fighting the tankless DE's? How is that not going to imbalance RVR?
Empire's Warrior Priests look like they should be able to handle themselves in melee combat. Hopefully they give them some tanking ability to make up for the lack of Knights.
The Dark Elf Disciple looks like it could be tweaked in a similar way.
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x--WilliasO-('-'Q) :
Empire's Warrior Priests look like they should be able to handle themselves in melee combat. Hopefully they give them some tanking ability to make up for the lack of Knights.
The Dark Elf Disciple looks like it could be tweaked in a similar way.
That would be extremely dumb.
First, a hybrid never replaces anything except another hybrid. Second, if the healer is the tank, who's the healer? The other healer? How is this scenario as good as having one person who's actually a tank and another that's actually a healer?
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Maradon! stopped masturbating to porn to say;
That would be extremely dumb.First, a hybrid never replaces anything except another hybrid. Second, if the healer is the tank, who's the healer? The other healer? How is this scenario as good as having one person who's actually a tank and another that's actually a healer?
Druids in WoW would like to have a word with you.
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Maradon! had this to say about Knight Rider:
That would be extremely dumb.First, a hybrid never replaces anything except another hybrid. Second, if the healer is the tank, who's the healer? The other healer? How is this scenario as good as having one person who's actually a tank and another that's actually a healer?
...what
You play WoW, don't you?
Shamans, Paladins, Druids, and Priests all perform different roles based on spec. Especially druids and paladins, which can spec into DPS, tanking, and healing roles.
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Sakkra:
It doesn't sound so much like they're cutting the other classes from the game entirely, just temporarily.
You'd be right.
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Folks,Okay, here's the third of the topics I will create today in which I'll explain in more detail, why we made the decisions we made. It's going to be a rather busy day so please don't expect me to respond to every question asked in response or to get into long debates. Obviously, I won't respond to any questions that are off-topic as that's why I'm creating these separate topics.
Well, this is the topic that I have been dreading the most because the message I have to deliver here it the only one that I feel badly about. I'm not going to suger-coat, spin, twist and/or manipulate bad news because I never do that and I'm not going to start now. So, off we go:
1) Losing some of the 4 careers does not feel great. I wish I could sit here and tell you that we were close to getting them right, that everything was going well with those careers but it wasn't. The feedback we were getting from our beta testers on the Hammerer was not good and while the feedback on the Choppa was better, it wasn't great. These weren't classes that were introduced at the last minute and the Dwarf-Greenskin pairing had been through multiple iterations. What we saw after all our analysis, and that includes player feedback on the boards, player surveys and our metrics tools was that these classes weren't cutting it. When it came to the Blackguard, well, we weren't excited about how they were coming along either.
2) When we looked at these careers, we had four choices:
a) Spend whatever time it took to get them in and get them great
b) Spend a reasonable amount of time and go with the best we could come up with
c) Put them in as is and try to fix them post launch
d) Pull them for nowOption (a) was not feasible. This game is not ChoppaHammer or WarHammerer, it is WAR. It is based on a tremendous amount of great Games Workshop IP and these careers are obviously not the only ones in WAR. Our game revolves around RvR, not 4 specific classes, so taking an indefinite amount of time to keep working on specific careers until we get them right was not the right call to make. Option (b) we looked at but nobody could guarantee that these 4 specific careers would have both been great and that it could have been accomplished in a set amount of time. Option (c) is not something we were going to do. Launching knowing that you haven't gotten it right yet and hoping to fix it post launch is not something we are going to do again. When we launched DAoC back in 2001, we knew (and we've said this before) that we wished we had a few more months to get a lot more done in the game. We hoped we would be able to fix things post launch (and for the most part we did) but we were out of money and had no other option. With WAR and as part of EA, we weren't going to go down that path again. WAR is all about RvR and the consequences of having either truly unbalanced careers at launch and/or unappealing ones are worse than in a PvE-centric game. I'd rather cut 4 careers now and then put them in (or other careers) post-launch. We also weren't going to wait till the last minute before launch, pull them and say WHOOPS to the players. That left option (d). We're making the decision now, well-before launch, so we still have plenty of time to make adjustments in the game based on what happens during this current stage of beta, the Guild Beta.
3) We are currently still in beta and beta is all about putting things into development, seeing what happens and making adjustments accordingly. We did just that and the consensus from the players and the development team was that pulling the careers was the way to go. This is precisely the type of stuff that happens during a beta test. The history of MMOs is littered with developers who refused to listen to the players, to the data that was gathered during beta and we refuse to go down that path with WAR. Making a great game is not only about spending money on development it's also about making the right calls during that time. This is one of those calls.
4) The loss of the careers is upsetting but the content is unchanged (other than the career specific stuff naturally). Every race still has its own lands, quests, starting areas, etc. We believe that with the careers with have in there and our Mastery lines that no race will be at a disadvantage. If, during the next few weeks of beta we're wrong, we'll make the decisions we need to do to ensure that we launch the world's next great MMORPG.
5) As to the future of these careers, I would love to say that they will be put into the game at some point but I can't. We will continue to look at them and if we feel we can make them great, then we will put them into the game. If we can't, then we will put in other classes to take their place.
If I believed that some extra time would have allowed us to both get in the removed classes and the other cities, I would have made the call to delay the game and I believe EA would have supported it. However, neither I nor the team believed that some extra time would have changed the situation. I can just imagine how much the community would have howled if we had said "We need to delay the game again for an indefinite amount of time until we can get 4 out of the 24 available classes in the game working well."
I do wish that the news about the classes was better but it is what it is and our goal, as always, is to make a great MMORPG. It was never about whether we had 24 classes or 20 classes, 2 cities or 6 cities, it was about making a great game, first and foremost. By making these decisions we are taking a painful but necessary step to make that happen.
Mark
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Nobody really understood why Sakkra wrote:
Hopefully they'll get rid of hammerers forever in favor of slayers.
While I'd like to see that, the flavor of a slayer probably wouldn't work too terribly well with the game. At least, going off of how they are in Fantasy Roleplay. I mean, it could be interesting, and there'd definitely be a few interesting quests for them to move up the slayer line (I don't have my book in front of me, but I think it goes Troll, then Giant then Daemon).
It would be interesting, and much more fun than hammerer.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Willias who doth quote:
...whatYou play WoW, don't you?
Shamans, Paladins, Druids, and Priests all perform different roles based on spec. Especially druids and paladins, which can spec into DPS, tanking, and healing roles.
But paladins never MT, and a raid with no priests fails unless the raid is vastly overequipped for the instance, and I'm trying to imagine a raid with nothing but paladins and druids on DPS and I can't stop laughing.
The point is that giving one class two jobs is never going to be as good as two classes with two jobs.
Let's not forget that turning Warrior Priests into Knights and Warrior Priests would kinda forever preclude the addition of actual Knights that aren't completely redundant.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Willias who doth quote:
You'd be right.
It's odd you say that, because I read the quote you bolded as saying that the classes won't be going in in the future. He loaded that statement with as much uncertainty as he possibly could without explicitly ruling the possibility out. It certainly doesn't sound to me like he's describing a front-burner project. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 07-13-2008 at 09:57 PM.
Also, at least horde side you tend to have one ret paladin for DPS if possible. They don't have the best personal DPS, but the buffs they add make it worth it. It's a good way to add in that third paladin buff for a raid.
Druids are optimal main tanks for some encounters. They can't block crushings nor do they have clutch cooldowns, but their armor is just ridiculous. IIRC they are the best Kil'jaeden tank, and you basically always want a good one offtanking the encounters that require one due to their threat generation. Very few raids don't bring one due to the synergy they offer the hunter group as well.
Shamans are awesome for any role they can fill in (even elemental). Although elemental is their weakest spec, you pretty much need insane gear and people not being selfish with the enhance's stormstrike proc. Addy fucked around with this message on 07-13-2008 at 10:30 PM.
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Addy had this to say about Robocop:
Also, at least horde side you tend to have one ret paladin for DPS if possible. They don't have the best personal DPS, but the buffs they add make it worth it. It's a good way to add in that third paladin buff for a raid.
Ret paladins are fantastic on both sides simply for Judgements.
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I'm trying to imagine a raid with nothing but paladins and druids on DPS and I can't stop laughing.
Druids you won't find in DPS positions as often, but you're likely to see at least one ret pally in a raid.
Thing is, they can do it, and do a decent job at it. Making Warrior Priests able to tank somewhat isn't going to hurt any tank class they add in later, so long as the new class can tank better AND add in something different that's worthwhile to have in a group.
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It's odd you say that, because I read the quote you bolded as saying that the classes won't be going in in the future. He loaded that statement with as much uncertainty as he possibly could without explicitly ruling the possibility out. It certainly doesn't sound to me like he's describing a front-burner project.
I must have read it differently. I read it as "we're going to see if we can make these classes good enough, and get them back in eventually. If we can't, we'll make something new that will be good enough". It definitely isn't a front burner project, but at least he's saying that they do want to get 4 classes to each race.
Except hopefully without the balance problems that make female characters do less dps than male ones. Willias fucked around with this message on 07-13-2008 at 10:34 PM.
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Ret paladins are fantastic on both sides simply for Judgements.
Wow I fail, I completely forgot about that. Our holy/prot paladins tend to be good about judgements, but ret is definitely a ton better for it. My guild doesn't have a raiding ret paladn at all heh, we run with 3x rogues instead.
Also since I can't edit my post, I mean stormstrike debuff, not proc. >< Enhance shamans are pretty stupid though, they offer almost too much to raids. Shamans in general! Not really a bad thing, but you'll see raids stack to 5 sometimes. I saw someone post this on a forum once and it was so true: If you want more DPS, bring a shaman. If you want more healing, bring a shaman."
On Age of Conan, I was kind of sad to see that game fail so badly. I really liked the concept of the Tempest, but the game just wasn't ready to be released. Addy fucked around with this message on 07-13-2008 at 10:39 PM.
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Addy had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
Wow I fail, I completely forgot about that. Our holy/prot paladins tend to be good about judgements, but ret is definitely a ton better for it. My guild doesn't have a raiding ret paladn at all heh, we run with 3x rogues instead.Also since I can't edit my post, I mean stormstrike debuff, not proc. >< Enhance shamans are pretty stupid though, they offer almost too much to raids. Shamans in general! Not really a bad thing, but you'll see raids stack to 5 sometimes. I saw someone post this on a forum once and it was so true: If you want more DPS, bring a shaman. If you want more healing, bring a shaman."
On Age of Conan, I was kind of sad to see that game fail so badly. I really liked the concept of the Tempest, but the game just wasn't ready to be released.
Shamans have such amazing versatility right now that if you stack enough of them you can effectively replace the need for priests in the raid. Due to buffs you need to have a few Paladins, and a single ret paladin saves the raid so much in terms of mana and health that their decent, but not great dps, is worth it.
As for Age of Conan, I don't know if the game qualifies as a "fail" yet. Funcom has never made a bad game, and if history repeats itself AoC will end up like AO an outstanding game with a terrible launch.
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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Tyewa Dawnsister said:
Shamans have such amazing versatility right now that if you stack enough of them you can effectively replace the need for priests in the raid. Due to buffs you need to have a few Paladins, and a single ret paladin saves the raid so much in terms of mana and health that their decent, but not great dps, is worth it.As for Age of Conan, I don't know if the game qualifies as a "fail" yet. Funcom has never made a bad game, and if history repeats itself AoC will end up like AO an outstanding game with a terrible launch.
They can definitely replace holy priests. Shaman healing is just insane. It was thought they were pretty subpar with single target, but now you have shamans filling that role too. I've heard of guilds only logging in an alt holy priest for the spirit buff, otherwise they stick with their 2-3 shadow priests.
Maybe "fail" is too harsh of a word, but the release was pretty bad. An improvement over Anarchy Online, but they had way too many kinks in the system still. I suspect in a few months AoC will be pretty damn fun to play (I'll probably reactivate it, I loved the healing system), but for now it's not really worth it to me.
-FFA PvP is never fun for anyone except one or two classes (in this case, Rangers).
-Some classes were severely gimped.
-One whole gender was severely gimped.
-No customer service.
-No end-game content.
-"Iron triangle" syndrome where one class dominated its category.
-I know people praise "low" fantasy for its uniqueness, but it doesn't mean much if nothing is original. Maybe I was just picky, but fighting snakes at level 25 seemed too much to ask.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Willias who doth quote:
Thing is, they can do it, and do a decent job at it. Making Warrior Priests able to tank somewhat isn't going to hurt any tank class they add in later, so long as the new class can tank better AND add in something different that's worthwhile to have in a group.
You're losing sight of the argument here. My point isn't that hybrids completely fail at everything, my point is that a realm with 3 classes fighting a realm with 3 classes plus a dedicated tanking class can't possibly be considered balanced, no matter how they hybridize the handicapped realm. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 07-14-2008 at 12:04 AM.
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Maradon! stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
You're losing sight of the argument here. My point isn't that hybrids completely fail at everything, my point is that a realm with 3 classes fighting a realm with 3 classes plus a dedicated tanking class can't possibly be considered balanced, no matter how they hybridize the handicapped realm.
oh
well okay then.
It'll suck at first, but as players move from region to region, I doubt it'll matter too much.
So while Dark Elves won't have tanks at first, as soon as Black Orcs figure out how to get over to Dark elf territory, it won't matter.
Edit: I was thinking more in terms of PvE content, not RvR. Willias fucked around with this message on 07-14-2008 at 12:34 AM.
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Tribute? You steal men's Kegwens, and make them your slaves!
I'd prefer them to cut and release a relatively balanced, stable game than to release something that's shit and spend 2 years rebalancing
As it stands now, if they wanted to compete with WoW in any kind of real capacity, they've already lost.
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ACES! Another post by Densetsu:
As it stands now, if they wanted to compete with WoW in any kind of real capacity, they've already lost.
Nobody in the industry thinks they can legitimately compete with WoW. It's just a manner of carving out their own niche in the market.
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Densetsu thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
I'd rather them push the game back and make some of those cuts actually work. Let the races that are now without tanks have their tanks, add at least two more cities.As it stands now, if they wanted to compete with WoW in any kind of real capacity, they've already lost.
They gotta get their game out before WotLK.
Aside from being able to hit other players over the head, which doesn't fucking count.
