Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

You need to hire me. I want to play Warhammer as research for my upcoming MMO

Ngruk said:

Definitely noticed the GAPING change in RvR scenario activity once you hit t2. I was doing 5-10 an hour in t1, and first 3 days in t2 not one single queue.

Almost felt like a penalty for leveling fast, which I don"t think people want.

That"s going to be the rub for awhile. Thing is I just KNOW some server our there is going to band together to take over as much of the world as they can as fast as they can.

My other qualm is that starting a new toon, which given the content and speed played is pretty much a guarantee, almost means I HAVE to start another race since leveling up is pretty much the same exact set of quests at every step. Weird. I know you can go to other races home points for that, but that"s a challenge I am not too interested in.

But they still hit a HR on the PvP/RvR as far as I am concerned, incredibly cool.

Biggest complaints right now would be
1)The mail system.. Holy crap, 1 item every 20s???? No "friends" feature????
2) TS"ing, feels "detached" from the game. I could level to 40/80 and not touch TS and it feels like I won"t miss a single thing. If that truly is the case I"d have opted to skip TS altogether and focused on the core game features. TS"ers might hate to hear that but that"s imo only.

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I never noticed a difference going from t1 to t2. But t3 took me 2 and a half hours to finally get in a scenario last night.

Eventually you will have to go to the other races areas to level. Just like with AoC they increased the XP required per level and you run out of quests very quickly in your races areas.

One thing that really gets me excited in this game is every time I see a pop up on my screen that a farmer has been banned. That is pure awesomeness!

Flight said:

SWG"s craft system

FFXI"s one char can play all jobs (one at a time)

Anarchy Online lvl cap, stat and buff system



Got to agree with this post. Developers are so committed to not being seen as a rip off that they try too hard to be unique in everything (see EQ2 vanilla vrs EQ1). Theres a bunch of systems in other games that could be huge pulls if they are part of a backbone of a fun game.


Of course, there are the ideas that will plain make your game fail before it launches :


CoX actually has no loot system.

AoCs has loot but actually has no loot you care whether you get system.

FFXIs major boss spawn system and economy - how not to do it if you dont want gold sellers to own your servers.

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Agreed. I think there"s enough good content to borrow from certain mmos that have failed to create a well-rounded, successful one. Personally, I"m not looking for anything game-breaking. I just want an sk class that works.

If you are experiencing stuttering and slow downs in the pve world delete your combat chat tab. Something is wrong in the background and getting rid of the combat tab fixed nearly all my problems. Now Scenarios are still a bitch in places like Mourkin(sp? dorf t2), but even that can be fixed by leaving the group. If you do that though you hurt your xp and renown gains.

The scenario scarcity is by far the biggest complaint I have with the game so far. They really should"ve thought more about it. I"d much prefer 3 scenarios per tier that can all be queued for at the same time (like with T3 scenarios). Ideally, I"d prefer cross-server scenarios as well. I know this brings up a lot of issues with the world RvR mechanics, but there"s got to be a way to design around that. It also lessens intraserver relationships, but I believe that"s a necessary evil in this case, there"s just not enough people in the respective tiers to consistently be able to get a scenario.

Also, the T3 scenarios pretty much all suck IMO. Most of them are far too large which really kills the experience. From what I"ve heard, the most popular T3 scenario is extremely unbalanced for Destruction as well, so that needs to be fixed ASAP.

Other than that, having a blast. It"s unfortunate that it is kind of mimicking what we saw in AoC where the game gets less fun the higher level you get. Hopefully it turns itself around soon.

I would imagine there was hundreds of hours spent thinking about the queue system and how it would work, and then the actual implementation of it.

When, now that I look at it, wouldn"t the easiest solution have been to allow world wide scenario access (based on server type) for class balanced more than level balanced group composition? Not allow single/duo party size, just disable drop group option.

If you think about the impact the scenarios appear to have (far less than keeps and open world stuff that I can see) you could have dialed the effect down but seen the same if not more impact since you"d arguably have MANY more scenarios being run much more often?

Oh and someone commented here I think, on the Warrior Priest. I played every class to at least 5 and most higher, except the Witch Hunter, and the WP I played to 11. This is where I put my CEO hat on

It was far and AWAY the least fun class I played, not even a close second. I thought for sure that would be the least played class by a mile at launch and yet I see them everywhere.

I don"t know that it was any one thing, but I didn"t like how the class felt to me. Obviously I missed the boat because people love them.

Had to laugh last night though. In Mourkains and of course every scenario has it"s "General Rommel", you know the guy.

Zone into scenario

"Ok you #@!Qsticks! You go here, you go there, you do this and you do that, we win, game over!"

45 seconds later in zone chat

"HEAL!! YOU @!#$#@ son of @#@@$#$ HEAL!"

......

10 seconds later

"You are the worst PVP players ever, you guys suck! Go back to WoW losers!"


At which point I call out to this WARRIOR PRIEST!

"Dude, why with 2 minutes left in the scenario have you healed for a grand total of 750?"

"Bro, I"m not a healer!"

Then the flood gates open, the entire Order side just lets loose on this guy.

Fun stuff. Oh and another LOVELY by product of their RvR setup which I never considered.

Most folks cue up 75-95% of their time. This means we are ALL RvR"ing whenever possible. Never thought to consider this might be 10 times more effective in creating a community than a solely group based game....

I mean I am possibly grouping and SIDING with players I might never have met,and in many cases often! I know it"s funny to me because by the end of the night last night I was praying to see the High Elf Kondara on his horseback for the Temple scenario, it was the only way we were getting the flag and I knew I could ward/heal the guy forever.

On the flip side there are about 10 destruction players I know by sight now MVP, Bashyou and a few others, all Orcs, and it appears I have some sort of Orcmagnet of attraction on my little guy because within 2 secs of my first heal I am being pummeled like nobodies business.

I love playing a Warrior Priest, both because I can solo PvE without any trouble, even in typically "Oh shi-!" situations, and because I have a friend playing a Sword Master alongside me. In Open World PvP and Scenarios we"re always dominating everyone, thanks to him using Guard on me, and me keeping HoTs and Divine Strike(?) healing him. Even in a 3 or 4 vs. us we typically come out on top.

So, if you"re going to play a Warrior Priest I suggest you find a tank that can siphon off the damage you"d normally be taking. It makes it a thousand times more fun.

As for the scenario queues, it"s kinda dumb that you have to fly to the correct area to queue up for a specific scenario. It seems like it would make more sense to allow people to queue for that realm"s scenario from anywhere, and to queue up at an NPC in any of the RvR/Flight Master camps. You"d have to run just as far to queue up for a Scenario not in that realm, but at least it would save the two loading screens of going back and forth.

EDIT: PS, the crafting system sucks. I took Talisman Making and having to drag and drop 5 times to make one item is obnoxious as hell.

Ngruk said:

When, now that I look at it, wouldn"t the easiest solution have been to allow world wide scenario access (based on server type) for class balanced more than level balanced group composition? Not allow single/duo party size, just disable drop group option.

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The way I"ve always wanted them to implement would be like an FPS game, where it"s more or less a server browser. Also allow access to all scenarios and allow higher levels to down-rank to quite an extent (like if typical bolster puts you to 18, make down-rank put you at 13-14 or something to offset any whacky %"s left over after gear compensation). That or just allow higher levels to play a higher level version of the same scenario, although this could have some negative effects (more knockbacks in Stonetroll Crossing for example... granted Tor Anroc is basically worse).

I can"t imagine them not making the scenarios more accessible at a future time. There are just too many awesome ones in the lower tier areas to simply out-level them and go "ok, I"ll never play that one again". Sadly as it stands right now the queue system is pretty sub-par.

I really enjoy playing my WP as well, mainly because of the fact that I really feel I am contributing overall to the team. A good WP can really make a big difference in a scenario. The thing is I don"t really know what to classify my class as.

My definition is this: A support healer who can take some damage and deal a fair amount of melee dps.

TwiNCannoN said:

The way I"ve always wanted them to implement would be like an FPS game, where it"s more or less a server browser. Also allow access to all scenarios and allow higher levels to down-rank to quite an extent (like if typical bolster puts you to 18, make down-rank put you at 13-14 or something to offset any whacky %"s left over after gear compensation). That or just allow higher levels to play a higher level version of the same scenario, although this could have some negative effects (more knockbacks in Stonetroll Crossing for example... granted Tor Anroc is basically worse).

I can"t imagine them not making the scenarios more accessible at a future time. There are just too many awesome ones in the lower tier areas to simply out-level them and go "ok, I"ll never play that one again". Sadly as it stands right now the queue system is pretty sub-par.

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I see no way of allowing people to "grandfather" in to earlier scenarios once they move out of the tier. Imagine an already present imbalance of the lvl 11 with all skills vs the lvls 1-4 with literally no skills, now bring in a 17 with their skills to the mix, make it even less fun and you"d have a world full of people playing backwards for RK and Exp. Not to mention the game is built to get us moving through tiers to maintain control of objectives right?

Something I was wondering last night. To assault a castle is there any pre-reqs outside the t4 zones? Or do you just have to have control of the t4 objectives in front of the keep?

Also, it appears that the Dest/Order imbalance is going to see Destruction servers Capital cities "level up" faster than order cities. Does that give them access to higher and better gear? If so could that not potentially skew an already imbalanced scenario set?

Listen I am not complaining, enjoying the underdog thing right now, but I get the impression that this end game castle siege that was supposed to be epically hard and incredibly arduous to get to and achieve, being potentially anti-climactic when Destruction rolls over Order across the board.

FYI I am on Vortex as Order, haven"t made destruct toons yet. FOH dest guild is on which server?

Ngruk said:

I see no way of allowing people to "grandfather" in to earlier scenarios once they move out of the tier. Imagine an already present imbalance of the lvl 11 with all skills vs the lvls 1-4 with literally no skills, now bring in a 17 with their skills to the mix, make it even less fun and you"d have a world full of people playing backwards for RK and Exp. Not to mention the game is built to get us moving through tiers to maintain control of objectives right?

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City of Heroes had a de-mentor (you bring someone else down to your level) system that worked quite well. Any skills you wouldn"t have at that level are greyed out, and your stats are brought down accordingly. Granted, it was much easier to do in CoH as there was no real equipment to speak of. Your point is a good one though, in that allowing people to drop down to old tiers is inconducive to what the ultimate goal is: tier 4 RVR. Still, I worry that a year down the road the tier 1-2 stuff will be empty and the content unused.

Something I was wondering last night. To assault a castle is there any pre-reqs outside the t4 zones? Or do you just have to have control of the t4 objectives in front of the keep?

Also, it appears that the Dest/Order imbalance is going to see Destruction servers Capital cities "level up" faster than order cities. Does that give them access to higher and better gear? If so could that not potentially skew an already imbalanced scenario set?

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You have to have "zone control", that big flashy screen-shaking thing if you"ve seen it. Once you have zone control of a tier 4 zone, it will say "the battle has moved to a new area" and you have to go there and fight over that zone. If you control all the zones to the enemy"s main keep and take that, then you have claimed that realm. Claim two realms and you can attack the enemy city. Considering Mythic have said that the best gear is going to come from city raiding, this could skew the balance. They have given us a standard "we have something hidden to prevent one side getting completely stomped" response, but who knows what that could be.

If any of you folks have tried the old version of the Azeroth Advisor in the past I wanted to let you know we have soft launched the revamped product. We are working to complete much of the behind the scenes stuff but anyone that is a current or former customer you can now get the new updated version.

The bigger point though, is that the product and the service is now free.

We worked hard to create a revenue generating product in conjunction with Blizzard but at the end of the day we could not do it.

Knowing we wanted to provide this service, we made the decision to eat the expense and forego a revenue model. For a start up this was not the easiest decision, but it"s the right one.

So if you click on this linkAzeroth Advisor :: World of Warcraft Guideyou can see what we"ve been up to "on the side". We brought in the company that created this product, one person as an investor and the rest of the team as the developers and purveyors of the product and service itself.

smart, a continued tutorial that basically cut and pastes from a given database of already made information :] i like it.

does it integrate armory parsing to find better upgrades?

Ngruk said:

So if you click on this linkAzeroth Advisor :: World of Warcraft Guideyou can see what we"ve been up to "on the side".

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Usual complain: doesn"t work with euro players.

The key for me, in loving the product, was the culling of information from players and from sites all over the net into a very character and class specific newsletter written by good and smart players.
There is always room to improve but the key for me was the time saved in trying to find that information from a web search, not to mention that even that information was never tailored "to me", and this is.
Your play style is going to be vastly more valuable than your class and level in some cases and that"s part of the ongoing work in improving what we are creating, and allowing players to fine tune what they receive in even more detail.
Feedback, as with anything we ever do, is welcome, appeciated, and asked for.

also does it in any way project leveling habits of the player? ie: parse their online time or is it just purely a newsletter where you pick and choose info about your class.

Just go there and use the tool at the bottom of the front page to create your character sheet to see for yourself.
It will bring up your specific characters "newsletter" and you can see what it really is and does.

i uninstalled wow for the time being to focus on studies, so client wont work :] still interested in how it works, i do a lot of database stuff in my major, and game programming is a little side hobby.

findar said:

smart, a continued tutorial that basically cut and pastes from a given database of already made information :] i like it.

does it integrate armory parsing to find better upgrades?

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Not yet, but we are in the midst of making that happen!

findar said:

i uninstalled wow for the time being to focus on studies, so client wont work :] still interested in how it works, i do a lot of database stuff in my major, and game programming is a little side hobby.

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You can still generate a character sheet on the site if you want to see what it does and looks like.