Aggregating the State of the Game
Rather than listing and commenting directly on Mark Jacobs' State of the Game address, I'll one-up all the other blogs and comment on their commentary-- Okay, to be honest, I slept in this morning and I'm behind, so this is where I catch up. =P
First up, Mythic is adding two new classes in December. The Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun. Class injections are always great, but Syp over at Waaagh! is slightly jaded and this perspective should be acknowledged:
I know this is a major content addition, but most players won’t see it as an “addition” so much as putting back in that which was cut out.
Meanwhile, Lum the Mad had the best summary on the server balancing Mythic has planned, he called it "Consolidation" and threw previous comments from Mythic designers back at them that were originally jabs at other games. I'm gonna lift both quotes here shamelessly:
We will also be offering the first server transfers to our players to continue to help even out the server populations. These transfers will be free of charge but they will be limited to moves off high-population servers to select mid-population servers or off of low-population servers to a selection of mid-population servers
What happens to low-population servers once you've moved people off them? That's right, this amounts to merging servers. Here's that previous quote now:
Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.
For the record, I think they're doing just fine. This is just a jab at Mark Jacobs' tendency towards foot-in-mouth, especially when he trash talks other games.
Next up, the state of RvR. I would have preferred if Mark Jacobs was a bit more frank about it and unfortunately my concerns were true: all he's offering are incentives. JoBildo thinks this will work. Myself on the otherhand, I think it'll give a small boost at most but won't make a dent in the long term decline of RvR in WAR:
Open-RvR Incentives Out the Whazoo. Can I call it or what? Best part of the letter for sure, in my eyes.
It's all good news really, I just wish it were more. One needed addition thankfully are some default UI controls for main assist and target-of-target. Keen shows his glee on this and the item-linking as well:
YES… seriously this needed to be in the game a month ago! Very happy to see that it’s not something being ignored. Target of target, main assist and item linking = me happy.
And finally, I really appreciated Mark Jacobs' theories of class balancing, with an ever-upwards positive approach rather than nerfing classes. For this one, I'll quote him directly:
Almost every career is going to see some changes and love coming their way and there are very, very few changes that will be seen as reductions to a career’s abilities. The Combat and Careers team has spent the last month looking at the changes that they want to make with an eye towards making improvements and buffs, not removing or weakening abilities. I won’t go into details here but the vast majority of careers all have nothing but love coming their way.
One thing missing was the current state of Public Quests, which are virtually abandoned in many zones. I'm curious to see what Mythic plans for rebalancing and incentivizing PQs, if anything.
All in all, I'd say the game is progressing well, but not quite as well as expected. I thought WAR would top 1 million subscribers in the first month, but now with my expectations adjusted I think that's more likely to happen over the entire Christmas season. I really hope they can push it over the top. I'm not saying they need to have 5+ million subscribers to compete with World of Warcraft, I'm saying I'd like to see them have 5+ million subscribers regardless of any competition.
Oct 19, 2008 7:59pm
Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.
I must try to remember that one.