The Cesspit. - Warhammer

How things go

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:57:38 -0800

Mythic Entertainment, responsible for Warhammer Online, just laid off 80 people, about 40% of its employees.

Lum:

Don't know anything about numbers, but literally everyone I know who was still at Mythic outside of upper management is looking for work this morning.

Blame the economy, but not just.

Follow-up on Warhammer Online

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:33:09 -0700

I was thinking: go on and make the PvE game harder in the initial levels like you said, now that the game is losing players and that the servers are almost completely empty. Especially the low level zones, I'd guess.

On Q23 I was reading this comment, likely from someone who played recently:

On the PQs, I think it's still a brilliant concept. No, you can't make it THAT challenging - these aren't coordinated groups. But it does foster some grouping and player interaction. I still think those are the best part of WAR. The challenge is that they're abandoned now. I'm not sure how you overcome that...but on release I LOVED the PQs.

The kind of problem we pointed out at release. Public quests are a broken design concept if you don't implement a scaling/adapting dynamic.

But then go on and put the nails on the coffin, it is surely better than the slow agony.

Warhammer failed and is sinking not because of technical competency, lack of resources or lack of support from EA. It failed because of very bad game design all around.

Warhammer failed because PvE was too easy and too soloable

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:46:29 -0700

On Q23 today I noticed a necro thread about Warhammer (you know, that game we used to talk about a year ago). I went looking why it was resurrected and the reason is that all Mythic's services went offline. Including all Warhammer and DAoC servers.

It's quite a big fuckup (since I think it's been already a few hours, if not the whole day), so I went checking the forum to see if there was the kind of rage I'd expect. Not so much. It's quite calm. Maybe because there are only an handful of players left, and even those who are left aren't particularly caring either.

While looking at this I noticed a link to a gamasutra article that boasted this title: GDC Austin: Mythic's Hickman Shares Warhammer Online's Biggest Mistakes

I'm curious, let's see these biggest mistakes (the three major ones are reported). Let's see if, one year later and one Jacobs less, they got some clue.

Here's their three biggest mistakes they think they made on Warhammer:

1- The PvE game is too easy in the initial levels.
2- Since the game is too easy and too soloable, people don't socialize.
3- Farming gold and grinding is not important. But it brings together the community.

The article is also filled with brilliance and awesome insight, like:

"The era of boxed products is ending."
"Digital distribution is absolutely profitable"
"if your game is flawed and you have to make massive rebuilds, that's risky."

If you don't believe me, here the actual quotes about those three major mistakes:

1- "Warhammer, in PVE, in the beginning, is too easy."
2- "You can do so many things solo, that friendship, at least in the beginning levels, is not necessary, and it's super dangerous for your games."
3- "what it caused us to do was build a game where economy is not important enough. Economy brings people together."

It's also quite funny because when they asked him if these issues were the same reported by players during beta he said, obviously not:
"I'm not sure how many of our players would say it's too easy; it's not something they think about. There are a lot of things they point at and say are the problems, but [actually] it's that."

Players wouldn't say that PvE being too easy is the game's major flaw (maybe because players aren't as clueless as himself), but it's that. No really. It's that.

Now after my crusade against Mark Jacobs you'd expect that I find the current Mythic at least slightly improved (since he left, if you remember). I'm not. Mythic with Jacobs had at least some drive. Mythic without Jacobs seems just as clueless, and even lost all drive.

How the story ends

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:14:40 -0700

I don't write about mmorpg anymore if it's not about leftovers. I guess I'll comment this.

Seen on Rock-Paper-Shotgun:

EA will merge Mythic and Bioware to create a new MMO and RPG division. The new division will apparently be headed by BioWare boss Ray Muzyka, while BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk, will become Group Creative Officer. Mark Jacobs, the outspoken boss at Mythic, will apparently be leaving the company

It didn't end too well, did it?

Nope, for anyone. I guess you would expect me to be all happy about this since I wrote so much negative stuff about Mythic and especially about Mark Jacobs along the years. Nope, I'm not. Justice is done? Nope.

Justice is when things are understood and people collaborate to work toward something better. Justice is to see things realize their potential and draw the best from the people who made them. There's little justice in seeing something fail, even if there are good motivations behind the failure. Or whatever, even if you still won't call this failure.

And there's also no justice when you're proven right, and yet you can't put it to any use.

Minor quibble on Mythic 55 pages of patch notes

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:35:19 -0800

Beside the fact they really tried hard to lengthen the patch notes at the expense of readability, this following passage goes beyond what is reasonable:

* To earn a Domination Point from a Keep, it must be claimed by a Guild and then held for 2 hours. If you lose control of a Battlefield Objective or Keep at any time, you lose the Domination Point.

* Multiple Domination Points cannot be gained from a single source (for example, it isn't possible to get 6 Domination Points by capturing Martyr's Square 6 times).

Why that second point? Why to clarify what was already implicit and so making it more confused?

If to gain control on a zone you need to hold all six contested points, and if you lose one you lose the point associated to it, then it is obvious that you won't get anything by capturing one more than once.

1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 = 1

Not 6.

You simply need to conquer and hold all the contested objectives, and hold each for a set amount of time before it counts. That's all. There was no need to use "points" in this system and apply specific rules. Overcomplicated design and contrived explanation.

EDIT: Another less minor quibble I saw pointed out on the forums:

* Playing with Fire: This ability will now hit for the correct amount of damage.

Well, since you were at writing 55 pages of notes at least you could have made them informative.

I'm glad the ability now hits for what you think is "correct" damage, but maybe knowing how much would be too useful? Or know if the damage was lowered or increased?

They were too worried to make these patch notes look positive, more than make them look informative. Less complaints if the notes don't explain the merit of balance changes. Things were "fixed"! Now it is all "correct"! 55 pages! Don't worry anymore.

What's up with EA? EDIT: Warhammer 300k

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:55:51 -0800

This is not about Warhammer, but since it was mentioned in early December on the forums I've been keeping an eye to the financial charts.

It was mentioned in December (and on a bunch of business sites) because the chart had a new dip, but if you look at how it was going along the year you can notice that the crisis started in September (yeah, Warhammer again, but it's likely a coincidence and more a problem of world crisis).

Today I think is the day of their earnings conference. I have really no idea on how to read these charts as I know little to nothing about economy, but the chart today reached a new low and is under 15 (whatever 15 means).

STOCK PERFORMANCE: Shares of the Redwood City, Calif.-based company tumbled nearly 57 percent during the quarter to finish at $16.04. In Monday morning trading, the stock hit a new year low of $14.78.

I guess the next few hours will be important? Maybe investors are waiting to see what happens with the conference.

About Warhammer:

EA's earnings call is in a few weeks and after that, there will be a lot more clarity about our numbers.

First reports already in:

Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning®, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment studio, ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe.

This means 300k as December 31 2008.

Indeed. And flawless victory.

EDIT: Mark Jacobs only comment at this time:

Because not everything that I hoped to talk about was in the earnings call (they had other things to talk about obviously), I'm waiting on guidance from corporate to see if I can add a few additional bit of information that weren't contained in the call before I write a longer post than this.

Apparently he's pissed because EA didn't spin the numbers enough to make them look better.

EDIT2: Comments from EA:

And while we expect to benefit in the future from increased sales from these franchises, generally games with a two on them sell better and do sell with a lower R&D budget.

drive our content direct-to-consumer. This is a strategic initiative that is very important for the long term. In FY09, we made $150 million online investment with limited associated revenue. In FY10, all significant online spending, except for the LucasArts BioWare Star Wars MMO, will be generating positive income. These investments are working. We expect over $500 million in direct-to-digital revenue in fiscal year ’10.

And also for fiscal ’10, we are going to get a full year of Warhammer subscription revenue. We talked about the fact that we are already at 300,000 subs. That is a very ratable and more predictable business, and so that is new for FY10 compared to fiscal ‘09.

Too scared to talk, you cowards, all of you

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:57:11 -0800

Last on the list, official forums.

Once again I think another step in the wrong direction. Why? Ive always been for official forums. First to receive support and not talk to each player individually (as, usually, when problems exist they are experienced by many), second to quickly gather up to date infos that don't fit on a web page (servers going down, problems to connect etc..). Then obviously to get feedback from developers and discuss meaningfully the game.

I've explained the way I'd moderate it. Not tolerating spam and trolling. Not looking for manners or good disposition, but rewarding arguments, motivations.

There are two aspects that make obvious what Mythic's forums will really be.
1- Account levels that will allow Mythic to pick their favorite posters/friends/supporters and rail them as champions of the community
2- Developer feedback is a privilege, not a right

There all that is wrong. In order to discuss things and read what developers think, you have to be a privileged person who's passed Mythic's rite of initiation.

Mythic's dev feedback is too precious to be shared among customers. It is of a so high complexity and depth that enlightened players with access to it will have to sign yet another NDA that will forbid them to divulge the Sacred Words.

I hope you'll do nicely, with your fist of sand.

P.S.

I still also remain convinced that having official forums are not a guarantee of success for an MMO.

...Do you know where he may have possibly heard that official forums guarantee success for a MMO? In his head, you say?

P.P.S.
I laughed (but look at the screenshot down that thread if you think nothing could surprise you anymore). Developing a forum grind is some form of misunderstood genius.

Headbanging to walls

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:58:43 -0800

Every time I spend some time looking at what's happening with Warhammer I find more and more proofs of game design incompetence.

Beside the latest, blatant, "People who really want to do Open RvR, though, were falling behind PvE and scenario players in terms of gear" and Mark Jacobs' "avoiding other factions in a RvR/PvP game are always tough to solve even if you could only level through RvR/Pvp since many players/groups tend to always want to have an edge on the other group", now we have this upcoming change to BOs and keeps that mirrors exactly what I was saying: they do not get it, and so keep making things WORSE.

Since players loved to swap BOs and keeps quickly to get points, you know what will happen next patch?

That you'll have to SIT in a BO for half an hour, and a keep for TWO HOURS in order to get the points/loot. Awesome. I'm sure players will love this.

The REAL problem here is that they are handing points for PvE (NPC guards) objectives. Players learn this and learn that if points come from killing NPCs then fighting real players is just an hindrance. So they go killing NPCs and avoid fighting each other since this maximizes the reward.

Instead of fixing this system and link the ORVR rewards to RVR activity (as is reasonable to do if they had a clue) they double all the timers in the game, so that it's not possible anymore to swap quickly the objectives. But, since the rewards STILL come from PvE, the only effect is that now you'll sit idle waiting for a timer to run to zero and the bag of loot to open to you.

If you are a kind of player who enjoys this kind of gameplay then I'm glad for you.

This game isn't flawed in production value or because Mythic isn't working hard enough. This game is flawed because they don't get the basics of game design, and four months down the road they still haven't understood problems that the majority of players noticed all along.

You can work as hard you can, but if the direction is all wrong nothing good will ever come out of it. That's Mythic's path.

P.S.
And to demonstrate that I base my critics on concrete motivations and not bias, I'll also say that making ORvR authoritative over Scenarios is a step in the right direction (meaning that if you control a zone in ORvR you'll control the zone in the campaign as well, no matter the results in the Scenarios).

Why Warhammer goes nowhere

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:46:55 -0800

When I thought I was done being surprised I find this.

Mark Jacobs answers a player who brings up the same complaint I've been reading for the last four months: players avoid the fights and run in a circle around the maps.

- Tier 4: problems with everyone farming renown and inf by avoiding each other faction, instead of that "War is everywhere" that all we want.

This is Mark's comment to this long standing problem:

avoiding other factions in a RvR/PvP game are always tough to solve even if you could only level through RvR/Pvp since many players/groups tend to always want to have an edge on the other group

I'm honestly baffled.

He doesn't have even a VAGUE idea of how the game works. He thinks that players run in circles and avoid fighting because THEY ARE SCARED TO LOSE.

Could he be more out of touch? The problem is game design giving out RvR rewards (exp, gear, renown) for PvE action. The system TRAINS players to realize that it's faster and more convenient to bypass the enemy than to put on a fight because the rewards don't come from PvP itself. Players avoid fighting because the system can be exploited, not because the players don't want to PvP because they are cowards.

For all the time Mark Jacobs wastes justifying his work, for once he should stop and actually listen what others are saying. BECAUSE HE IS CLUELESS.

Famous Last Words

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:20:11 -0800

I was digging the archive to see if I could find the quote where Mark Jacobs said that Warhammer will never be like DAoC (since the announce of Darkness Falls).

I didn't find it, but I found this:

“The initial partnership between Mythic and GOA resulted in Dark Age of Camelot being the number one MMORPG in Europe for many years,” said Mark Jacobs, CEO and President of Mythic Entertainment. “With WAR our goal is nothing less than to take Europe by storm and regain that leadership position in the European market.”

We love DAoC and by continuing to improve and invest in the game, it will be able stand up in the face of current and future competition. We believe by continuing to drive DAoC's evolution, it will remain the top RvR-based MMORPG as well as one of the top MMORPGs in the world. If you agree with us, we're willing to put in the time and investment to make it happen.

Yes, I agree. But I'm not that gullible so I don't believe (and didn't).

P.S.
For once we agree.

On building false hype

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:08:44 -0800

I'm strongly against this new habit across game companies of announcing the announcement. Hype should be built on the merit of things, not on false expectations or projections. I say this not as a personal preference, but because I believe that hype built without a foundation is hype that will hurt in ALL cases, even the best ones.

Mythic will announce something next week. Dunno if it's a free expansion, a patch or whatever, but these are the small expectations Mark Jacobs is building:

While our patch notes for the next version are certainly worth reading, I think the new content is pretty good as well. Now, whether players consider them totally over-the-top, mega brilliance or simply, kewl, interesting, next generation stuff will be interesting to see. There are other options of course, but I'll stick with those for now.

Imho, things should be talked about in two cases. Before the fact, if devs want to participate in a discussion and and confront and integrate players feedback. After the fact, to discuss the merit of things.

But announcing and hyping the announce, without anything concrete and objective to say. Why? What for? It's since release that MJ hypes patch notes, only to have real patch notes out deluding players and him ready to hype the next. This policy operates at a loss, every time it's a little worse. You're training customers to not trust you.

Especially when your customers have a critical eye for what you do and you keep going with blind self-praise. It creates a disconnection with the players that won't bode well at all. There isn't anything worse than self-praise in the face of your customers.

At loss for words

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:20:49 -0800

Yes, Warhammer again.

It's like the perfect manual on how to be COMPLETELY out of touch with your game and community. Full denial of problems. Head in the sand attitude, and some of the stupidest ideas coming out of the blue.

Apparently as the first players rush onto the system and spread out across the servers, a ton of information and feedback will come flooding in via game forums, initial reviews as well as raw internal data. The temptation then is for the team to rush in and immediately start fixing things based on extremely small data sets and subjective interpretations. What the Warhammer Online team did instead was what might be referred to as "game triage." They needed to decide which problems were truly game-threatening and focus on those and which could wait.

So they weren't fooled. They wisely waited to address the real problems. Oh, really?

"When we look at game balance, we look at it in terms of realm vs. realm balance," said Jeff Skalski, Warhammer Online's RvR Strike Team Lead. "As long as we're hitting that realm balance, we're happy. Factional, racial or career population imbalances aren't as critical."

In fact, the team asserts that one of the biggest criticisms and fears around launch time -- the potential for population or class imbalance -- hasn't really materialized.

Yes, denial will help. As always.

The team also takes message board and player feedback very seriously and will address issues when they reach certain critical thresholds. A recent shift to healers, for example, occurred because the complaint by healers that their big healing spells were essentially useless in combat was backed up by internal data that showed how often such spells were used. As a result, many big healing spells were jazzed up to become more attractive for players.

Interesting, because the latest patch just reset the timers on those "big healing spells" to how they were previously.

Of all the problems the most crucial one the game had was one that many players doing other things missed -- there weren't enough people playing in the lower tier open realm RvR. While this had always been an anticipated problem as the player base aged and leveled up, all the data indicated that it was happening faster than it should. It was clearly something that needed to be addressed.

So they realized something wasn't working. Now let's see what it is:

"What we've found is that Scenarios tend to be their own reward," Drescher said. "People who really want to do Open RvR, though, were falling behind PvE and scenario players in terms of gear. We needed to do something to draw people back into the 'RvR lakes.'"

What!? Scenarios being "their own reward"? People in ORvR falling behind in terms of gear?

Do you have EVER played your own game? Scenarios weren't their own reward. Scenarios were played because they gave HUGE boosts to experience and renown. ORvR players were falling behind in experience and renown. They are still falling behind.

In fact Scenarios didn't provide gear in any way. If not through renown, which is again proportional to the experience.

If anything playing in ORvR will make your renown level advance FASTER than your experience level. This means that you proportionally get more gear via ORvR than what you get via Scenarios at the same level. The exact opposite of what you said.

And you are saying that in ORvR players were falling behind IN TERMS OF GEAR? And that, since you realized this, you fixed the problem by adding influence as another system to obtain gear WHILE YOU LEAVE EXPERIENCE UNTOUCHED?

Excuse me, this is nothing else than a plain display of utter incompetence. This is not a blogger with an axe to grind, this is just not having a clue about what you are doing.

Working on the Open RvR system also allowed the team to try and get ahead of another problem -- the aging of the player base. The first element of this is the addition of "chicken content." This is a series of quests that encourage higher tier player to revisit lower-tier zones (where they get turned into a chicken) in exchange for a fun series of Tome unlocks and quests that also provide interesting content for lower level characters as well. Apparently players will get experience for killing high level player-chickens and according to the team, there are as many Tome unlocks involving them as there were for fighting while naked.

...Speechless.

Josh Drescher, a name to remember.

If you had said we'd be where we are just a few months after launch last year, we'd have called you a liar," Drescher concluded. "We're ecstatically happy with where we are

Good for you then. If only you could persuade me you're convinced of what you are saying.

In fact it sounds simply pathetic.

Warhammer 1.1a patch aggravating ORvR instead of improving it

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:41:58 -0800

Had to be expected. After the gold bags at keeps encouraged avoidance instead of conflict (keep trading) now there's the new influence system that takes player kills in very little consideration while it hugely rewards keeps takeovers.

Result: another incentive to avoid a fight and cooperate with the enemy faction. You trade keeps and maximize the rewards. Before it was gold bags for gear, now it is gold bags + influence. I also note that now there are three overlapping systems just in ORvR that provide gear: gold bags, renown vendors and influence system. How many broken systems you are going to pile up before you start to make work what's already in the game?

This is a perfect example of Mythic not understanding the basic of game design. Not only they made the mistake with the gold bags, but instead of recognizing it, they make it worse.

Official response from a CM:

James Nichols: Unfortunately the path of least resistance is also tempting,

Nope, it's not tempting. It's the way the game is designed. Doing quests in WoW isn't "tempting" it's the way the game was designed.

Simply put: You continue to design RvR so it promotes avoidance. You got many occasion to correct this, instead you make it worse.

James Nichols: rest assured though we'll continue to improve RvR to make it so that conflict is a common occurrence as best we can,

How? Does your team even recognize how game design works? Because with every step they are making things worse.

James Nichols: but players adjust to massive RvR may still have yet to learn that a lot of the fun of RvR has to do with what you make of it.

It's hard to be fun in a game when bad game design is an obstacle. Blaming the players because they don't know how to have fun is blaming them for your very own faults and failures.

James Nichols: We expect to see players naturally migrate towards conflict as the initial influence frenzy calms down.

After the players understand even better than avoidance maximizes the reward? I don't know what trends you see in games, but over time things get "gamed" more and more. If players pursue the path of least resistance NOW, in a week or a month they'll do it even more.

Making mistakes is one thing, but making them over, and over, and over... well, there are no excuses for that. See below, Warhammer had its chances. It wasted them all.

Warhammer selling less than EQ2?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:03:09 -0800

From PC World.

Top PC Game Sales for November 2008

1. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King ($36)
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King CE ($70)
3. Call of Duty: World at War ($50)
4. Spore ($48)
5. Fallout 3 ($49)
6. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest ($34)
7. The Sims 2: Double Deluxe ($19)
8. Left 4 Dead ($48)
9. The Sims 2: Apartment Life ($21)
10. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 ($49)

WoW wasn't the only MMO to make November's top 20. Sneaking in at #14? Sony's Everquest II: The Shadow Odyssey expansion pack.

No Warhammer?

EDIT: Aye, confirmed.

11. World Of Warcraft - (Activision Blizzard) - $18
12. The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $19
13. Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy - Her Interactive - $20
14. EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey Expansion Pack - Sony Online Ent. - $40
15. Far Cry 2 - Ubisoft - $50
16. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - (Activision Blizzard) - $29
17. Bioshock - 2K Games ( Take 2) - $14
18. Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack - Electronic Arts - $19
19. IGT Slots: Little Green Men - Masque - $20
20. Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition - Ubisoft - $17

Oops!... I did it again

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:22:17 -0800

But at least there's no hate nor arguing.

There are two other frequent and well known problems in Warhammer Online that I think my old proposal would address nicely.

Problem 1: Warbands camping Warcamps
This is a frequent situation that players should be accustomed to. Beside trading keeps to quickly collect loot, the other popular form of RvR is "sieging" the enemy warcamp while staying outside the range of the guards. This because the respawn timers are short and so they provide a continuous stream of enemies to kill, so points. The situation partially bandaided with diminishing returns (making recently killed players worth fewer points).

Problem 2: Players throwing themselves at the enemy and respawning over and over
This is a similar problem to the once above, but from a different perspective. The players are disappointed because with constantly respawning enemy players it is kind of pointless to kill them and battles become simply a matter of attrition. This situation makes players suggest all kinds of foul solutions, like longer travel times or respawn timers. In DAoC one example of these foul solutions was to make players wait for 20 minutes on a pad waiting for a port to the frontier zones.

How to solve or at least improve Open RvR in these situations? Long term this can be done with a strategic layer to the battle that is currently missing from the game (making players care more about the campaign than the single skirmish), but since this is a complex solution and the game is nowhere close to make it possible, I'll go with the simpler fixes.

The first problem is entirely solvable by rewarding players to fight around the objectives. If these rewards existed then it wouldn't be convenient for anyone to siege the spawn points. the players would stay around BOs and Keeps and fight there. More details about this idea can be found again here.

The second problem can be consistently reduced, without doing more damage, by using another of my old proposals. You revert the approach. Instead of punishing players if they die, you reward those who survive. You make a new rule so that the more players you kill without dying, the more points you earn, increasing a bonus.

At the same time you also make these "hero" players who survive for long like "preys". In the same way they build a bonus for killing players, they also start to be worth more points progressively, so becoming very enticing targets for the enemy. There should also be some kind of visual recognition so that enemy players would spot easily these "special" players and hunt them. The details of this kind of "visual cues" should be discussed with Mythic's art team.

This is what I'd do.

P.S.
While I think those two changes alone would be enough to make a much better game, there's also one other aspect that should go in:
- Make BOs linked to the keeps, so that the more BOs you have under your faction control, the weaker are the defenses of the keep and much easier the siege. Keeps should be very hard to conquer if the enemy doesn't hold any BO, and very easy if it holds them all before the siege to the keep. This would also start to shape some kind of strategical layer.