Fight on the Flag

Wonderful news! We now get twice the experience for killing people in open-field RvR combat! Read the WAR Herald for more:

With the addition of the new region-wide and RvR-wide chat channels we have seen a marked increase in Open RvR participation. In order to encourage this trend even further, we have made an additional adjustment to the experience awarded for killing enemy players in an Open RvR area. Previously we increased this amount by 50%. As of today, that bonus has been raised to 100%. With this change players killed in Open RvR will now be worth double the experience than those killed in scenarios!

I’m catching up on my reading and just got done with Marc Jacob’s State of the Game. Along with the announcement that Mythic will add the Knight of the Blazing Sun (supposedly a mirror of the Chosen that can twist auras) and the Black Guard to the game for free in December, Jacobs also says the game needs to be more stable for low-end PC players:

Creating an MMORPG, especially an RvR-focused MMORPG, which runs perfectly on all types of PCs, is one of the most challenging technical aspects of game development. While the performance of WAR is great on most higher spec machines, we know that we can improve its performance on lower spec machines.  We’ve been working non-stop to improve that performance and we’ve got a number of things going into the game between now and 1.1 that we expect will help to address everything from crashes to desktops (CTDs) to stuttering.We have a number of other client changes that will improve things such as propagation and ghosting.

This is great news. I know a few of our members have been highly frustrated with their play experience to date. It’s only been a month since the game came out and they are trying to get the game to work for everyone within the spec requirements. Awesome!

RVR-specific changes that Jacobs addresses:

• An RVR influence system similar to the PVE influence system
• Item linking in chat
• Improved PVP gear drops, drop rates and itemization
•  ”We will also be giving players more incentive to engage in open RvR by improving the rewards for both assaulting and defending in RvR.  WAR is an RvR-centric game and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to encourage people to join in RvR and reward them when they do so.”

Other changes in the pipeline:

• Server transfers to underpopulated realms
• Improved targeting system, such as adding main assist and target of target.
• Most classes will see changes in the coming weeks, and few of them nerfs (and people will complain about those I’m sure)

In a nutshell, I’m really happy with this game, and I’ve always been happy with how Mythic communicates with its player base. I only wish they’d bring back the weekly grab bag like DAOC had for so many years.

Sorry this is a bit late, but here’s my review of the game based on preview weekend a couple of weeks ago.

Organdonar and I joined up for some fun in some of the scenarios. Scenarios are like AV or WSG in WoW, except you can queue from anywhere in the world. When you are done with the scenario, the game puts you back where you were when you left the PVE world. We initially tried to play on Destruction, but the queues were literally 45 minutes. It reminded me of the queues we had to put up with when WoW implemented the dreaded 2.4 patch. So we switched over to Order and gave it a shot.

There we reigned supreme, or at least, according to the screenshots. Actually my photography kind of sucked. I’ve completely lost my touch with all these months away from gaming. I didn’t even get some battle shots. Oh well, heres what the scoreboard looks like:

Burnination was my Bright Wizard, the class I plan to play on launch. Bright Wizards are hella fun because if you’re not careful you blow up and die. As Organdonar can attest, I did this several times without complaint.

(more…)