Punkbuster Inclusion, Removal of 4 Classes and 4 Capital Cities from WAR's Release

[superbob555]

I am glad the game was not delayed. I am also glad they are not shoving in half-finished, broken classes and elements into the game. Stick in what is great, take your time to polish things off and sometime down the road, complete the classes and other CC's and implement them through patches (not expansions), and I will be satisfied.

I offer my patience and expect a great game this fall.

[Valkyron]

This news is a hard blow to me. I am grateful that Mythic was upfront about this issue but that doesn't make the blow not hurt. I still plan on playing this game and I think that it will be a good game but I'm now a little worried about some of Mythic's decision making's compatability (that is probably quite poor grammatically but I hope you see my point) with what I want from the game. It is unfortunate that 4 classes have been cut at least temporarily; however, they have said they will be either tweaking them to get them to work or adding new classes to fill the void they left behind. On the other hand, the city changes (2 at launch, rotating them in and out, control of two fronts to control to siege a city) considerably change the campaign. I do not like these changes as of now, but the injury is to recent for me to have an objective opinion. I have had no interaction with Punkbuster and have no opinion on it.

[dutch_gamer]

Originally Posted by GorbadIronclaw

3:40
http://war.curse.com/videos/details/528/

It shows the Dwarf city at 13.27. At 3.40 they show a Chaos building.

[Syr]

Originally Posted by Destructive

cutting content at this stage in the game isn't good at all.

Hope Myhic knows what they're doing...

The only real content cut is the classes. The main cities being focussed to 2 is a more of a design decision. There are good reasons to limit it to 2 at release. I see that change as a great move on their part no matter if it was sparked by deadlines.

These decisions look very calculated to me, not random cuts to save time. The exact classes that were cut look to be extensively thought out. I'm a population, balance, and census buff, I like numbers and have a good eye for class popularity/hype. If they had to cut 4 classes these were possibly the best ones they could have.

So, does Mythic know what they're doing.. it certainly looks like it.

[Jonesy]

Originally Posted by dutch_gamer

It shows the Dwarf city at 13.27. At 3.40 they show a Chaos building.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was pretty sure it had been shown later in that presentation, but the video froze up on me before I could confirm. =P

[Mbj]

Folks,

Okay, it's been a long day so I'm going to post some quick responses, comments, etc.

1) We are not cutting out 2/3 of the content, 1/3 of the content and frankly, what we are cutting out in terms of content is, in most cases, stuff that people have never even seen yet. While the capital cities were parts of the end game, a city capture is only supposed to happen once a month and even when you take out 4 classes out of 24, somehow this doesn't add up to a huge content change. All the starting areas, PQs, quests, zones, etc. that were not city-based are still in the game. And since the cities, prior to our decision to double-down on 2, didn't have all the PQs/Quests/etc. that they have now, we aren't losing a lot of content.

2) We announced this now, rather than in two months, precisely so people would not be surprised when they buy the box. If you feel that you don't want to play WAR now because we've cut classes/cities that you've never seen, you are certainly free to do so. Just like when we announced the last delay I said that people should not pre-order (or should cancel) and just wait till either we lift the NDA (coming soon) or until the game launches. Now, if we don't lift the NDA and if we hadn't made this announcement and then you bought the box, you'd have a heck of a right to get angry. As I've always said here and elsewhere (multiple times), that while we're in beta, things are set in mud and I've also said that we weren't afraid to cut things that weren't great.

3) The two capital cities are just the first two capital cities. Other cities will absolutely be done and put into the game post-launch once we see how all things shake out when we launch. Oh, by the way, the people who have said here and elsewhere that you're really paying for beta when we launch because I said that we will change things post-launch, LOL, nice try. One of the really unique things about MMOs is that we can make changes to the game after launch in order to make them better. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. No MMO is any different, we all change after launch. How much we change and how much we change for the better is really the key.

4) Regarding Punkbuster, it will either work really, really well or we won't keep it in. We'll know as we progress through beta.

5) Regarding another pushback. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who are saying that we should have delayed again were some of the same people that said last time that if we delayed again, they would lose interest, cancel their pre-order, epic fail, etc. I've addressed in great detail, why we have made the moves we did but we didn't make these moves to avoid delaying the game again. Frankly, I think another delay announcement would have had a dramatically worse effect on the community than this announcement.

6) As to whether this game is going to be unfinished at launch, well, depends on how you look at things. I've said over the years that MMOs are never finished until they shut down, that's the beauty of MMOs. However, if you mean by unfinished that "we're not going to have everything in the game that we hoped to when we started out" well, you'd be right. OTOH, no MMO that I can think of (WoW included) had everything that they hoped when they started out on the project. That's how these things go. Now, my definition of unfinished are treasure lists that are blank, spells that don't work properly, typos, graphical glitches and unbalanced classes. In terms of that, we will certainly not be an unfinished game when we launch. So, if you are not going to buy a game because it doesn't have absolutely everything that you'd hoped (or even that we hoped it had) it would have, then don't buy WAR, it's as simple as that. Of course, you would never buy any MMO ever and probably most games as well (unless the dev either doesn't talk about stuff that they would like to put in the game or they lie to ya). Stuff changes all the time during development and especially during beta.

7) Regarding the cities, the cities in WAR were not there to be the places people go to right away, this was not WoW or other MMOs. All the Tiered content is still there for each of the races.

Regarding "Keeping our promises" and stuff like that. We are keeping our promise and that is to make a great RvR-centric MMO with Warhammer. We never promised that we would have in 24 careers but just that is what we were working on and hoping to put in. Frankly, one of the few promises I have ever made is that some of our decisions would piss people off and well, I've kept my promise.

9) I'll re-emphasize again that another delay would not have meant that the 4 careers would be still in and for certain, we wouldn't have launched with 6 cities, I don't care how much time we had. Six cities sounded really good on paper but we believe it wouldn't have worked out that way at launch.

10) As to how it's all going to work going forward, more details coming. Once things settle down we'll go into great detail about how it's going to work. Same game, some slightly different mechanics to make sure that people who do not have a CC yet are not put at a disadvantage but it's the same game.

11) On the whole smoke and mirrors thing, well, like I said in my response, we had a lot of information coming. If we wanted to engage in smoke and mirrors kind of behavior, we wouldn't have made this announcement, talked about it, etc. till the last minute.

So, that's it for now. It's been a very long day and I've been posting a lot so I'm taking a break.

In the end, I'm truly sorry that we had to announce any bad news but as I've said here before, I'd rather have you all pissed at us now than when we launch.

Mark

[GorbadIronclaw]

Originally Posted by dutch_gamer

It shows the Dwarf city at 13.27. At 3.40 they show a Chaos building.

Oops, it was supposed to be 13:40.

[zalin606]

I'm glad someone else has commented on this. I really think people are over reacting. Mythic Entertainment could have created this game a lot like ... Bioware (just cause its the first one that comes to mind). Bioware hesitates to give any information on the game until its been released. They try their hardest, with this strategy, to avoid this griping when they take content out.

I'm just trying to say that if people didn't know this stuff was gonna ever be in it (the classes mainly, and cities), they would still consider this a great looking, and probably, a great playing game! Get over the fact of loss content and enjoy the great game we will have to play at release! Mythic Entertainment is doing a great job IMO. Just my 2 cents.

[Horvak]

Originally Posted by Mbj

Folks,

Okay, it's been a long day so I'm going to post some quick responses, comments, etc.

1) We are not cutting out 2/3 of the content, 1/3 of the content and frankly, what we are cutting out in terms of content is, in most cases, stuff that people have never even seen yet. While the capital cities were parts of the end game, a city capture is only supposed to happen once a month and even when you take out 4 classes out of 24, somehow this doesn't add up to a huge content change. All the starting areas, PQs, quests, zones, etc. that were not city-based are still in the game. And since the cities, prior to our decision to double-down on 2, didn't have all the PQs/Quests/etc. that they have now, we aren't losing a lot of content.

2) We announced this now, rather than in two months, precisely so people would not be surprised when they buy the box. If you feel that you don't want to play WAR now because we've cut classes/cities that you've never seen, you are certainly free to do so. Just like when we announced the last delay I said that people should not pre-order (or should cancel) and just wait till either we lift the NDA (coming soon) or until the game launches. Now, if we don't lift the NDA and if we hadn't made this announcement and then you bought the box, you'd have a heck of a right to get angry. As I've always said here and elsewhere (multiple times), that while we're in beta, things are set in mud and I've also said that we weren't afraid to cut things that weren't great.

3) The two capital cities are just the first two capital cities. Other cities will absolutely be done and put into the game post-launch once we see how all things shake out when we launch. Oh, by the way, the people who have said here and elsewhere that you're really paying for beta when we launch because I said that we will change things post-launch, LOL, nice try. One of the really unique things about MMOs is that we can make changes to the game after launch in order to make them better. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. No MMO is any different, we all change after launch. How much we change and how much we change for the better is really the key.

4) Regarding Punkbuster, it will either work really, really well or we won't keep it in. We'll know as we progress through beta.

5) Regarding another pushback. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who are saying that we should have delayed again were some of the same people that said last time that if we delayed again, they would lose interest, cancel their pre-order, epic fail, etc. I've addressed in great detail, why we have made the moves we did but we didn't make these moves to avoid delaying the game again. Frankly, I think another delay announcement would have had a dramatically worse effect on the community than this announcement.

6) As to whether this game is going to be unfinished at launch, well, depends on how you look at things. I've said over the years that MMOs are never finished until they shut down, that's the beauty of MMOs. However, if you mean by unfinished that "we're not going to have everything in the game that we hoped to when we started out" well, you'd be right. OTOH, no MMO that I can think of (WoW included) had everything that they hoped when they started out on the project. That's how these things go. Now, my definition of unfinished are treasure lists that are blank, spells that don't work properly, typos, graphical glitches and unbalanced classes. In terms of that, we will certainly not be an unfinished game when we launch. So, if you are not going to buy a game because it doesn't have absolutely everything that you'd hoped (or even that we hoped it had) it would have, then don't buy WAR, it's as simple as that. Of course, you would never buy any MMO ever and probably most games as well (unless the dev either doesn't talk about stuff that they would like to put in the game or they lie to ya). Stuff changes all the time during development and especially during beta.

7) Regarding the cities, the cities in WAR were not there to be the places people go to right away, this was not WoW or other MMOs. All the Tiered content is still there for each of the races.

Regarding "Keeping our promises" and stuff like that. We are keeping our promise and that is to make a great RvR-centric MMO with Warhammer. We never promised that we would have in 24 careers but just that is what we were working on and hoping to put in. Frankly, one of the few promises I have ever made is that some of our decisions would piss people off and well, I've kept my promise.

9) I'll re-emphasize again that another delay would not have meant that the 4 careers would be still in and for certain, we wouldn't have launched with 6 cities, I don't care how much time we had. Six cities sounded really good on paper but we believe it wouldn't have worked out that way at launch.

10) As to how it's all going to work going forward, more details coming. Once things settle down we'll go into great detail about how it's going to work. Same game, some slightly different mechanics to make sure that people who do not have a CC yet are not put at a disadvantage but it's the same game.

11) On the whole smoke and mirrors thing, well, like I said in my response, we had a lot of information coming. If we wanted to engage in smoke and mirrors kind of behavior, we wouldn't have made this announcement, talked about it, etc. till the last minute.

So, that's it for now. It's been a very long day and I've been posting a lot so I'm taking a break.

In the end, I'm truly sorry that we had to announce any bad news but as I've said here before, I'd rather have you all pissed at us now than when we launch.

Mark

So how are empire and DEs gonna do PQs with no tanks?

[Vale]

Originally Posted by Kazad Karazin

I bet WoW devs are ROLfing right now.

Yeah I bet they are. Not.

Lets see what they cut shall we: BGs. Siege weaponry. PvP Honour system.

Now lets see what they released...broken: Hunter talents. Paladins; SoC bug and terrible class design. Paladins were made to play whilst downloading hardcore pron, remember that? Warlocks. Warriors. A crap end game, unless you raided or PvPed all the time.

There's not much more too list really because all WoW is; is a glorifed MMODiablo. Grind, grind, grind. Its keys to success? A graphical engine that worked on pretty much all PCs. An easy leveling system that promoted heavy soloing. A history and community that was already highly popular via Warcraft 3 and a lot of word of mouth.

I might add that Siege weaponary and supposed class abilities were listed on the WoW website for a long time and only now via WotLK are they implementing Siege weaponary and only via TBC did Paladins and Druids actually have the ability to tank properly.

Enough about WoW now.

As for all this drama. Yes it is disappointing, but the drastic behavior of some people is just astounding. To those of you who claim they're "money grabbing", uhh sorry how exactly are they? Ok if you did purchase a physical box and keys for Open BETA you've kinda got a point, but you can sell that, although why you'd want to I have no idea as that alone would be your ticket to see first hand what WAR is like before making a decision come release. As for the others that pre-ordered online; if you feel that strongly about it, go ahead and cancel it. They haven't hood winked you like Funcom did with numerous features listed on the box and within the manual to not have them in game. Yes they're on the website, but this game is not released yet so until it is nothing is set in stone as Jacobs pointed out a long time ago.

There are some key things that need addressing and I'm sure they know this already, but this will not turn me away from WAR at all. All the nay-sayers have Open BETA or the NDA lift to wait for; if there is a string of negatives coming from the actual ingame BETA community, then will be the time to really consider your stance. I for one have never been so excited about a game, since I first locked eyes on Planetside and whilst I do sympathize for those this affects in a major way (roleplayers and said classes) this is not the end of WAR by any stretch of the imagination.

[Drithe]

The first MMORPG I ever played was Dark Age of Camelot. I played it for a year and just absolutely loved it. 3 different worlds with tons of quests and amazing adventures. 3 huge worlds in one game. THen came the PVP which just blew my mind. But some of my friends was playing Everquest so I decided to play it over a friends house. It made me sick to my stomach. I played for 3.5 more years before I ever even tried another mmorpg and am currently playing today.

Mark Jacobs has a vision on what he wants for his game. The only problem he has is the apparent lack of work ethic SOME OF HIS EMPLOYEES have! Im sure he wants everything to be in the game at one time, but you cant always get what you want. A game as EPIC AS THIS will have to take a litlte more time. If I was him I would put his pet monkeys to work and make them work DOUBLEY HARD to get the other cites up and running!!!!

There are so many things to do in Dark Age of Camelot its crazy and there is no way they can do all of this for Warhammer in the time they have compared to the time they had with Camelot.

I will play this game Warhammer just because Mythic made it. Mythic and Jacobs made the best damn MMORPG I have ever played and I still cant wait to play Warhammer. I just hope that EA has patience to let Mythic to thier thing.

Dont forget to make this game a memorable adventure and not a rat race for Realm Points!

I pwn Mark Jacobs Infil. He fears the ranger Deerhunter.

End of Line.

[Jonesy]

Originally Posted by Mbj

I'd rather have you all pissed at us now than when we launch.

Mark

Can't it be both?

You deserve the break, Mark, but in case any other Mythic folk come around looking for questions to answer:

Should we expect more of those "further details" at E3 next week, or later on in the beta process? I'm glad you've clarified that the other capitals are going in eventually, but I'm very curious how the campaign is going to work now, and I don't know what to think of this talk about "rotating" capitals.

[MagusJ]

Originally Posted by Mbj

Folks,



2) We announced this now, rather than in two months, precisely so people would not be surprised when they buy the box.

Mark

So the game is being released in september?

[baso]

Originally Posted by Horvak

So how are empire and DEs gonna do PQs with no tanks?

There is gonna be enough Chosen to go around. Just look at which class that seems to be the most popular

For some reason though.. everyone wants to talk Chosen and dps and not tank

[Dromakith]

MJB, that was a fantastic post that pretty much clears up a lot of issues. Seriously, lots and lots of relief over here.