Jul 11
Big WAR Features Cut
Update: There are a ton of folks coming out on the side of the Mythic team, which is really heartening to see. I agree that it’s better to ship with fewer, better features. I agree 100%. I’m still stuck on the idea that if they wanted to they could hold off until early next year and get those classes in. Would it ultimately matter? Does it matter that the “Orcs” only has one Orc class? Does it matter Empire and the DEs don’t have a tank?
In the long run probably not. To be honest I think part of the shock is that it’s randomly inserted into an interview with a website. Mark does a podcast for the crafting system but not this? :/
Looking forward to hearing the whys and wherefores behind this.
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This is … this is really frustrating. I don’t see this as a good thing. Sorry, I’m just dissapointed. You say for months and months that you won’t release it until its ready, and then you drop this on us:
“A number of months ago,” Jacobs began, “we sat down and looked at where we were with our Capital Cities and we looked at what we were doing with Altdorf and Inevitable, we looked at the Greenskin home, the Dwarf home and we went ‘there’s an awful lot to do here and there are some issues‘.” There was something missing. It wasn’t enough fun, it wasn’t interesting enough, it wasn’t “alive” enough. From there, the team was faced with a choice. They could either keep going down that path, working on all six cities and trying to get them finished before launch or make the hard decision to shelve four of the cities until post-launch and make sure that Altdorf and Inevitable were as full and rich as their design had intended. Mythic chose the latter. “we decided to focus our energies on two capital cities; one for Order and one for Destruction, and make them fabulous, said Jacobs. “Not good, not great, but fabulous.”
And:
“We tried,” Jacobs said, “we tried to see if we could make them better and we just couldn’t make them great. So we had a choice. Do we put in some non-great careers just because they are iconic, or we cut them out and put them in post-launch if we can get them right, or do we not put them in at all?” In the end, whether it’s the second or the third option is still unknown.
The four careers that are going may surprise players (and even includes one of Marks personal favorites). The list is as follows:
Choppa (Greenskin)
Hammerer (Dwarf)
Blackguard (Dark Elf)
Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)This means the removal of two tanks and two melee DPS classes. “I wish we didn’t have to do it,” Mark said, “I really do. Unlike the capital cities [which provided a silver lining in the end], I can honestly say that I really wish we didn’t have to cut them out, but it’s better for them to be cut out than to have classes that aren’t great and that we would spend more time trying to make them great post-launch than we should have to.”
I just … I don’t really have any constructive things to say about this, because it’s so fresh. More on this later, I’m sure.
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I look back at EQ2, where Freeport and Qeynos were “okay” at launch, then Kelethin came and was better, Darklight Woods was better yet, and now Timorous Deep is the best of them all.
But they haven’t gone back and fixed up Freeport and Qeynos, have they?
I fear for the eventual fates of the two WAR starting cities once the new ones come out and are so much better.
I look at this as a good thing. Launching with limited, polished content is a promise to release the rest of the content just as polished down the road.
Launching with a mix of polished and adequate content usually leads to never polishing the adequate content, especially after most of the playerbase is at the level cap. Look how long it took Blizzard to fix Dustwallow Marsh!
Of course, I’m unhappy about this. But I’m willing to accept the judgement of Jacobs et al that this was the right decision to make. I’m certainly not canceling my CE.
Of course, my favorite class wasn’t picked for removal, so I guess tastes may vary…
This makes me worry about the game as a whole. The things they’re cutting here are *core* elements of the game, features they’ve been advertising for months or more now.
Losing them is a bummer, but not a deal breaker itself - I’m more concerned that this is the tip of the iceberg. If highly publicized (and presumably high priority) features are being slashed, how many low priority features are already on the chopping block? What else will we see disappear before launch?
They’re trimming it down, alot, it seems.
I think that we’ll only be able to tell if this is good when the outcome of these decisions is known.
If they believe they can get it straight by focusing on fewer stuff, maybe it can be for the better.
Afterall, Starcraft came out after Total Annihilation, and while the later has ton of stuff, the former gets around with less stuff, but much more depth.
If they came this far, let’s at least wait and see…
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If you want to read my original thoughts, feel free to click my name. I am extremely disappointed by this but I think it could be a lot worse. As long as this stuff is freely patched into the game within the first few months, I think they can save their asses.
I’m not kicking a guy while it’s down but didn’t you guys just talk about on massively speaking about how it was crazy for eq2 to release with only 2 capital cities? I’d rather see them delay the game another 6 months and at least have 4.
Also I pose a question… who’s fault do you think this is, EA or Mythic?
Well, the issue with the EQ2 launch cities wasn’t that there was only two of them - the issues it that they were huge, sprawling, over-zoned messes. They’re nightmarish to navigate, and a significant number of the at-launch zones shipped were “City” zones, which tells you something right there. :)
My worry with WAR cutting these cities is that those capital cities once sat at the end of a long string of content. Now the keep and siege warfare leads dramatically up to … ?
You also have the problem of lag. With an abundance of cities you had each race defending their own. Now you have all 6 races coming together to fight over 1 of 2. And if the servers are say about 3k each and 1k shows up… that’s a lot of people to animate.
“Now the keep and siege warfare leads dramatically up to … ?”
Big giant purple bubbles that you can’t get into!
[...] (Greenskin) Hammerer (Dwarf) Blackguard (Dark Elf) Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire) Source: MMOG Nation ? Big WAR Features Cut __________________ Tinman_au "It’s a SERVICE. Not a game. It’s a WORLD. Not a game. [...]
[...] in how we feel. Keen takes a balanced view, as does Syp@Waaagh with some reservations. Matt at MMOGnation is disappointed and wonders if EA were connected. Snafzg@The Greenskin is angry but Cicadyn also posts an alternate [...]