One of our guild members deleted his characters after some frustration with Scenarios. I don't blame him, he was new to PvP and the imbalance of premades while you're queue'ing solo doesn't leave room for a lot of satisfying wins. Hell, those Scenarios are filled with players trash-talking their own teammates (lacking options to trash-talk the enemy), so that's bound to raise some blood pressure.

And let's face it for most of us, WAR at this point is all about the Scenarios.

I'm fairly happy with the Scenarios myself. My frustration factor is low, but I've been hammering away at PvP stuff since Pong. It's hard to get too upset after a billion quad-damage gibs in Quake and headshots in Counterstrike. I find the teamplay a blast, although certainly more fun when I queue together with Nelg, Sakkara, Taek, etc. than just by myself.

Still, it would be nice if WAR had more to offer, because I can't see myself paying a monthly fee forever for something I could get from Team Fortress 2.

I'm critical of Mythic on this one, I don't see how they could have missed this coming. There's the convenience factor, the population imbalance, the zerg-is-no-fun state of RvR and just the fact that they've bet so much of their "Open world" content on Warbands or just plain large crowds. It's not one factor, but all of those elements that leave the Scenarios as the most entertaining element of the game.

So here we are in Queuehammer. Scenarios are good enough for now.

But-- I'm holding out hope. I'm waiting to see if Tier 4 has some small team content that will be an escape from the Warband-or-Scenario situation.

I haven't really looked at the state of Dungeons and Public Quests at Tier 4, it's going to be a see what's there when I get there. I've been slowing down my leveling on Skereye these past few weeks while I let friends catch up and that'll continue since most of them are still in Tier 2.

Mythic's got some time to re-balance their game and tweak their content. I hope they aren't too much in love of their "epic" "massive" sieges like Funcom was with Age of Conan, because what's most disappointing to me is the insistence on gathering crowds of players before fun happens. I also hope they add some half-decent mob AI: WAR's aggro and threat systems are bare-bones, below par from other games. The PvE could use a lot of love.

I'm praying for some real honest to goodness old-fashioned group / party content. WAR needs more meat and potatoes, good hearty basic meals.

I'm going to be patient, WAR is what I'm playing for awhile. At least until Left4Dead comes out.

I'd like to see some sort of anti-zerg code put into WAR, because zergs just aren't much fun whether you're on the die-in-a-second recieving end or the I'm-just-another-robot zerging end.

Simple formula:

If more than 3 players attack a single targeted player, apply diminishing returns on further attackers. I'd suggest cutting it by 50% with each additional attacking player beyond 3.

This would put a stop to the abuse of automated focus-fire assist addons in Scenarios and overall it'll make RvR battles more balanced and require more tactical thinking. Warbands would divide into smaller groups, you'll see more flanking and clever strategies. Classes would have to rethink their pairings, whether they should stick with Tank, Heal & DPS or push for DPS, DPS, DPS or any combination in-between.

Preferably it should only affect damage. Leave holds, knockbacks, interrupts and other crowd-control or utility abilities to work as normal.

Heals may need to be adjusted similarly however.

Anti-zerg code should only be applied during PvP activities and should not affect PvE at all.

I'm aware that it's probably more difficult to implement than it sounds, but I think it's worth doing. It would would go a long way towards making RvR a lot more interesting.

If not this, then please come up with something.

Now is the time when the collective MMO blogosphere takes a step back. After a rash of criticism towards game mechanics in recent games and upcoming expansions, we feel like we've been a bit harsh. After all, we love these games don't we? We have to prove we're not just critics.

In true passive-aggressive nerdcore fashion, we look inward.

It's time to wax philosophical about us gamers ourselves. What motivates us? How many problems in these games are caused by us, the gamers? How well do we treat each other? And what makes us so important anyway?

There are other, far more important things happening in the world, right? The world markets are hurting (don't say collapse). It's election day in Canada. Led Zeppelin isn't really getting back together.

We're just little squigs specs in this great big ol' Universe.

But dammit, joy and creative urges are the best things to live for. Gaming is part of that for me. If anyone asks me to look at a greater perspective, that's my take. So excuse me if (after voting) I queue for some Scenarios.

Now I just need to remember to kill the dude with the thing.

Update: The addon has now been renamed and updated for the new WAR patch since Mythic has added a standard "Join All" button but this adds the ability to select which ones via checkboxes. So if like me, you dislike Lost Temple of Isha, you exclude that (or other) Scenarios.

  ·  ·  ·

Here's an addon I'm finding useful, it's simple and self-explanatory: Scenario Join All Button Join Selected Scenarios.

Not much to write up about it really, it just makes it easier to queue for more than one Scenario at a time. Especially useful at Tier 3 which opens up 6 Scenarios.

Works great for both solo and joining as a party.

Skereye is Rank 24 now, Renown 18. I took a break from Scenarios for awhile but the last two days I've put in some good hours at it to catch up my Renown.

Just like Tier 2, I think my natural tendency is to knee-jerk dislike a new Scenario until I've got the hang of it, heh. But I've been in all of these a number of times now and have had good times and bad in each. Here's my take:

Tier 3 Scenarios in order of preference:

1. Doomfist Crater - I loved the two Tier 1 maps with the stationary flags. It's great to fight around the flag pole without having to interact with it. Doomfist has one central stationary flag point, plus three pickup objects (sort of like Mourkin Temple).

   Doomfist Crater is my preferred Scenario by far. I also love the terrain, the elevated ramps are great, getting knocked off removes a player from the fray without destroying them either. There's also plenty of opportunity for line-of-sight tricks.

2. Black Fire Basin - Classic Capture-The-Flag. There's enough distance to bring mounts into play, which should disappoint me as a Squig Herder but I don't mind that so much. Maybe it's because I love getting up on the Order's ramparts and shoot down at them in their own flag base.
    
3. Highpass Cemetary - I like this one just because the esthetics are so good, the volumetric fog looks great amongst the tombstones. The game mechanic is similar to Khaine's Embrace in Tier 1, but it's a smaller map.
    
4. Tabalec Dam - I'm still lost on this map and I think I will be forever. It's large and I never feel involved in the whole blowing up of the Dam / Windmill. Still, it's not annoying either, as the most open map it's great for skirmishing.
    
5. Tor Anroc - I stand by my decades-long belief that throwing people into lava is the most overused and lame mechanic in all of videogamedom. Soooo tired of lava. Whether my side wins or loses, it's just not very entertaining to chase someone carrying the bauble on open ground surrounded by fiery pits of death.
    
6. Lost Temple of Isha - It's capture the temple then hold it. Great idea, I thought at first. Except it's so easy to defend with the layout. Whoever gets there first wins. I've never seen anyone lose the temple once they've got it and everytime I play someone else says so in scenario chat. This map desperately needs something like the ramparts I mentioned for Black Fire Basin.
    

Overall, I'll have to say, I still enjoyed Tier 1 Scenarios best. I wish Mythic had made Scenarios inclusive, added maps and still allow you to play the earlier ones (only within your Tier of course).

Tier 2 grew on me, maybe Tier 3 will, but even with more maps to choose from the Scenario quality IMHO is tapering off a bit. The variety is nice though, all of these maps are very unique choices.

Dear Mythic,

Please remove the 5ft deadzone for shooting my arrows. Between that and the underpowered Squigs, it's like painting a big target on my Squig Herder's back "Easy Kill for Melee".

I'm trying not to overreact here or just do a "buff now plz", this is based on serious observations about the class I'd prefer to keep playing and that I've seen others give up on.

Where did all the Squig Herders go?

Squig Herders seemed great in tier 1 and 2, the Scenarios matched our abilities well and some of the other classes hadn't come into their own. But since hitting tier 3, I rarely see any other Squig Herders in Scenarios at all. And I can understand why. Without someone specifically watching my back, it's a frustrating experience.

We're super vulnerable to a basic tactic: anything melee.

As Gobbos, we're hella noticeable. I'm sure many Order players mistake us for Shaman. I get regularly swarmed. No doubt White Lions, Witch Hunters and Swordmasters are chuckling with glee every time they see a Goblin. Either they're hitting a valuable target or it's a squishy Squigy that barely slaps them once they close in.

I didn't roll a ranged class to melee

For melee attacks, I have a dot, then it's mash that small basic attack repeatedly, quickly draining my AP for very little effect. 30 AP for a 70 dmg attack at Rank 22. Add it up with the dot, that's a grand total of 680 dmg using a full bar of AP against opponents with 3500+ health.

I'd use "Git 'Em" more, but it's situational. It requires my pet to be on a target, within range and not busy during another attack. All of my pet-related abilities have this huge lag delay on them, so it's rare for me to get "Git 'Em" off on another player. When it does work, well then there's the cooldown.

The range on pet abilities and the lag on using them are hugely crippling factors. Having my pet on passive to have it close by in case I need its laggy defensive abilities isn't exactly the fun way to play a pet class. My Squig needs to bounce around a bit for me to feel joy, my fun factor is rather intertwined that way.

I can jump into Squig Armor, but that's not something to do on the fly with its 55 AP cost and once again is Squig dependant to be effective, yet astonishingly they take away our abilities to control our pets while in the armor. Squig Armor isn't nearly as cool as in the opening video, which is evident in the fact that I've never seen any other Squig Herder use it in Scenarios either.

Speaking of pets

A White Lion's pet will kill me at T3.

Oh it won't do it quickly, but it will stick to me like glue with no means whatsoever to get it out of my 5ft deadzone and my melee attacks completely ineffectual to kill it. What a slow, painful and embarassing death, to be made completely irrelevant by another's pet. I watch every other class brush these lions aside like they don't matter.

It's sad that I need to be rescued from a pet attack. And who exactly assists a Squig Herder anyway?

And if I do try to fight back at the damn thing? White Lions get to heal their pets. Oh what I wouldn't do for the ability to heal my Squigs. See, our pets are supposed to be throwaways right? We're supposed to explode them, call new ones. Except that stuff isn't working right, it's rare that my Squig will explode when asked to, probably because he's bounded out of range. Worse, half the time the explosion happens at my location and my Squig just dies where he is.

For disposable pets, why does it take 3 seconds uninterrupted to call a Squig? Why does the same Squig get a 30 second cooldown even if he's just mysteriously vanished, or I've mounted?

Which is another point that sticks in my craw: Why does my pet die when I mount? Ugh, everyone else can mount up, then dismount and jump into the fray right away, but I've got to get murdered while I'm calling my damned pet.

And finally, one last sore point: How am I herding when I can only have one pet at a time?

Mythic, please do something

Getting rid of the 5ft deadzone would completely balance our class versus melee. They'd still have the ability to interupt us, just like with any caster.

Don't buff up our melee, just let us use our ranged regardless of situation. I'd even take a slight power loss within that 5ft zone as a compromise.

There, that's my PvP balancing bitching for the day. =)

The most fun I've had so far with WAR's Open Beta has been with the Public Quests (which I love, when they work) and in PvP (RvR areas and Scenarios). That is-- during Primetime hours.

Unfortunately, I tend to play most during the off-hours, either early morning or late evening. Outside of Primetime the RvR areas are ghost towns and Scenario queues don't pop at all. And Public quests aren't playable when only one or two players aside from myself show up.

In other words, this Beta has only been great fun for me between 3pm - 9pm. For Michelle, she's usually working during those hours so she has yet to see a single bit of RvR or Scenario combat and her opinion of Public Quests hasn't been as favourable as mine.

Is WAR just a game for Primetime players? I certainly hope not.

The central design of WAR appears to require a balanced high population present at all times. Public Quests don't scale. RvR works only when there are more / less equal numbers on both sides (Order & Destruction). I cannot say I'm fond of Mythic's queue approach to the problem, I would have much preferred instancing of their RvR areas (say what you like about instancing, at least it lets you play).

I'm hoping this crummy status of boring off-hours is more indicative of the Beta and perhaps our late choice of server: Wurtbad, since at the time all other servers were maxed and in queue for Destruction. I can't imagine myself being more pleased on a high pop server if I'm hitting queues tho, so I've been in a conundrum here.

Hopefully Mythic can balance their server populations better than they've done so far.

Every server should be fun at ALL times.

Update: Right after I posted this I noticed that Ethic @ Kill Ten Rats has similar concerns, you may appreciate his perspective.