Two! Two Days Until Open Beta, ah-ah-ah!

Yes, as the maniacal Chaos Count from Sesame Street hath stated, it is now just under two days until open beta.  (Yes I know I haven’t posted anything since Preview Weekend.  Just consider the time lapse as how long it took me to get a wheel barrel large enough to fit my jaw into, yadda yadda-insert fanboy moment here, death to WoW, what have you)

I’ve been wondering what to type about WAR as I’m not quite sure what hasn’t been said already, so I thought I’ll turn the idea on itself and instead of posting what was great about Preview Weekend’s hint at the retail version of WAR, I’ll post the two ‘negative’ ones instead.  (Gasps are heard down the isles of Blogland)

No, I’m no Brent, save your pitchforks folks.  Warhammer Online *is* fun, and well, I’ll leave the subject at that.  (If you don’t know what I mean, it’s probably best you don’t at all.  It’ll save your blood pressure as well)  The only two concerns I have with WAR beta are:

1.  Lag issues
2.  RvR balance

The first one is mostly ‘my’ issue.  I know I could use another gig of ram in my pc, but I figure, if I could run Quake 4 on max settings (in it’s time it was the pc-killer of games) I should be able to get more than chu-chu-chugging in WAR.  (I later played almost completely lagless by turning all the bells and whistles off, so further opinions are not based on a laggy experience) Again, there are a lot of variables here, so I won’t ‘rant’ about this, I’m just mentioning it.  My pc is dated compared to what’s out now, but it is far from obsolete.  Here is my thinking process:

There was a Q&A with Jeff and Josh a few months back, I believe it was Jeff himself who said “if you have a pc within a few years it will play WAR” etc etc.  I don’t want to get detailed as I don’t recall it exactly so I’m paraphrasing.  Basically if you have a pc that was good 4 years ago it’ll play WAR fine.  That statement would be false if beta client does not get tweaked a great deal before launch.  Now again, I know I could use more ram and I know there are many players out there with better rigs as what WAS top of the line when I got mine two years ago is not now by any means.  But if I have still a good chunk better than average, at least better than the golden “casual gamer” and if my pc is chugging, they won’t be playing the game that long.  Again, this is just beta, hell Mythic only invited people to beta that had the best rigs in the first place so this was just a sneak peek for the Faithful that gave Mythic money before the game was released.  This does not reflect the end product. 

I’m not worried, but I’m just stating something that bothered me a bit.  I want to play this game for a long time, I’m willing to wait for Christmas to get ram as a gift (as I’m cheap) but I know other people won’t be patient if their pc can’t run the game.  They will simply go back to the game they have been playing that CAN run well on their pc, WoW.

Secondly, RvR balance.  By this I mean first and foremost even numbers.  Secondly, when those numbers are even, I want even-skilled players on my side.  This can be aided by offering more information to the player before they even set virtual foot inside each scenario.  I play Chosen I defend my flag and take my enemies’.  I play orc I stand near flags to take them for my own and defend from attacking enemies.  As an Elf I stand near a flag to defend it as my team takes the other flag and I blow up.  What?  It took a few tries to understand why I blew up (honestly blamed an ‘over-powered’ Sorceress at first as she always seemed to show up when I got ka-blooey’d)  So a more out of character and straight to the point:  “Capture both bases to capture big points, but stand clear of the flags once you do as they’ll explosively reset” line would have done wonders.  Also, this would help any hint of…let’s call it the “Alliance Gene” from surfacing in the game.  More information the newbies know, the less they’ll have to learn at higher levels.  Train em right when they’re young and they’ll be worthy warriors in the end game.  Skip a few details, and well…it’ll be Alterac Valley vs every other bg all over again.

Now, I wouldn’t go and exactly say single out one side and say that Destruction = Noobs, but I will agree with what Snarfzg said in that:

“One thing is certain: Warhammer Online is a game for generals, not soldiers acting on individual whims. Without communication and coordination, your team will be left in the dust, whether it be a pick-up group or a guild group.”

I know of many battles that ended up as a loss if not simply because people didn’t say a word in chat to organize.  I tried typing “inc Ammo Cache” and “the middle is open” or “Just stand near the flag to stall for backup” but when no one else says ANYTHING it gets to be a major downer.  When I go out of my way to give people the slash command on how they can communicate in in a scenario only to still not get any feedback, it’s disheartening to say the least.  Sadly there is no way Mythic can make people communicate other than promote Guilds, which they are.  And I can say those painfully silent losses did promote the idea of joining a guild into my jaded lone wolf style of mmos.  I even made a few friends doing PQs (holla at Kanea from Isle of Dread!  Woo!  Keep healing those Sorceresses mang’!) so I guess *some* people do understand the idea of Massively or at least Multiplayer in MMORPG.

On a side note, I cannot really weigh-in on the Destruction more noobish than Order issue as I only played some 40+ hours over three days, but from what I saw, whatever side I played on, the opposite side would win 60% of the time.  I played several classes over both sides of the war, and they might barely even out, but I know that I was more often pissed off about losing ’silently’ than cooing over a win.  Actually the most I recall was playing on an Engineer and getting severally beaten sub 50 to 500 Gates of Ekrund battles by apparent premades all night the final night.  I once joked “Hey, let’s try and confuse them by winning this time!” only to get “I’ve been winning all night” as a response, so apparently I was getting in on the unlucky pairings.  Then we won that one, and lost the next one, and went back and forth for awhile, but from my point of view Destruction won more often when I played Order, than Order won when I played Destruction.  If that made any sense.

But as far as curbing general noobishness via easily accessible information, it’s really a minor thing and easily done.  Paul Barnett went on for 10 minutes about how he needed huge chicken feathers on screen to get people to understand that they turned into a chicken.  After months of telling people to make them bigger and thinking that they were almost too big, players commented saying they wanted them “just a little bit bigger”.  (Paul says it a LOT better here, I’m just simplifying: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39583  Actually I’m gonna let that play in the background, Paul’s great) Something like that would be immensely helpful, and I doubt the guys at Mythic aren’t going to.  Every patch they add more and more polish, this is far from a real issue and it’s great that this is one of the things I’m ‘complaining’ about.

Again, this was only beta I played, the game is not done yet.  It’d be like running into a kitchen, opening up the stove and sampling the raw brownies inside only to complain that they’re too runny, unbearably hot, and need a topping of powdered sugar.  They weren’t done yet, the Mythic chefs have not officially placed them on a fancy plate and gave it their approval.   All things seen before release are just a blurry idea at best, and by the time it officially releases it will be focused into a Parabolic Mirror of Awesomeness.

Note:  Do not stare directly into the Parabolic Mirror of Awesomeness.  May cause blindness and the urge to yell at the top of your lungs when everyone around you lest expects it.