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.

Rather than listing and commenting directly on Mark Jacobs' State of the Game address, I'll one-up all the other blogs and comment on their commentary-- Okay, to be honest, I slept in this morning and I'm behind, so this is where I catch up. =P

First up, Mythic is adding two new classes in December. The Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun. Class injections are always great, but Syp over at Waaagh! is slightly jaded and this perspective should be acknowledged:

Meanwhile, Lum the Mad had the best summary on the server balancing Mythic has planned, he called it "Consolidation" and threw previous comments from Mythic designers back at them that were originally jabs at other games. I'm gonna lift both quotes here shamelessly:

What happens to low-population servers once you've moved people off them? That's right, this amounts to merging servers. Here's that previous quote now:

For the record, I think they're doing just fine. This is just a jab at Mark Jacobs' tendency towards foot-in-mouth, especially when he trash talks other games.
 

Next up, the state of RvR. I would have preferred if Mark Jacobs was a bit more frank about it and unfortunately my concerns were true: all he's offering are incentives. JoBildo thinks this will work. Myself on the otherhand, I think it'll give a small boost at most but won't make a dent in the long term decline of RvR in WAR:

It's all good news really, I just wish it were more. One needed addition thankfully are some default UI controls for main assist and target-of-target. Keen shows his glee on this and the item-linking as well:

And finally, I really appreciated Mark Jacobs' theories of class balancing, with an ever-upwards positive approach rather than nerfing classes. For this one, I'll quote him directly:

One thing missing was the current state of Public Quests, which are virtually abandoned in many zones. I'm curious to see what Mythic plans for rebalancing and incentivizing PQs, if anything.

All in all, I'd say the game is progressing well, but not quite as well as expected. I thought WAR would top 1 million subscribers in the first month, but now with my expectations adjusted I think that's more likely to happen over the entire Christmas season. I really hope they can push it over the top. I'm not saying they need to have 5+ million subscribers to compete with World of Warcraft, I'm saying I'd like to see them have 5+ million subscribers regardless of any competition.

"Unless Funcom somehow screws up"-- That was my mantra for over a year prior to Age of Conan's release. There were so many features that sounded great when discussed in dev interviews and on the AoC forums, I was so pumped for this game. Never before had myself and my friends / guildmates made such plans for a game prior to release-- and I feel burned for it.

I love the core game, the combat has been fantastic, visuals are stunning and the immersion is good as well. The city construction is cool, but turns out hollow since the cities themselves don't do much, especially on a PvE server where you can't run around and shoot arrows at each other from the walls.

Funcom has created what I feel is a great leveling up game with good solo fun, but it's not a compelling group experience. It's especially lacking in quality dungeons for small groups at Endgame. The crafting is bland and there are so few things to fiddle with besides just running around and killing mobs.

'Massive' Mistake?

Funcom is determined to push the 'massive' aspects of Sieges and Raiding, which is a direction leaving me cold. They're now working on even bigger Sieges, even bigger Cities and even bigger Guilds (in the form of Alliances). What happened to the original plans for PvP questing in the Border Kingdoms with smaller fights over resource areas and towers? Without that stuff, they have no initial buildup into Sieges, so they're trying to leapfrog higher to provide progression.

How can their game engine support 300-player Sieges? It doesn't even work well with the current Sieges or even their standard Raid size of 24. Anytime I've seen more than a handful of players casting at once, things get out of sync and characters pop in and out of existence. Hell, even just the streets of Tarantia the NPCs blip in and out. Their solution: Drop visual effects from other players? Ugh.

A perfect example of how screwed up their PvP system is: When a Siege is about to take place, all other players are kicked out of that Border Kingdom. Not that the Border Kingdoms have much to do anyway, they're complete wastelands, but this mechanic ensures Funcom will never be able to bring Border Kingdoms up to par with the pre-release expectations.

Even if they fix what's broken now, they're not even close to the Endgame they should have had.

I really feel as though Funcom has made the wrong game for their Dreamworld engine, which seems far more appropriate to smaller groups. It looks spectacular from a solo perspective. They should stick with their strengths.

Where I'm stuck

They're now dicking around with balancing, mostly for PvP and Raiding with a few things just thrown in to slow down the gangway pace of leveling. The glory of the combat is getting watered down fast as they reduce the number one fun factor of the game. Due to their recent changes to balance out the gender damage issue, my Polearm Guardian's animations seem stuttery and unnatural. =(

The Apprentice obliteration was a huge blow to my daily fun, the day it hit was the day I played significantly less since I can no longer team up in a meaningful way with Michelle or Lurch as well as most of my friends and family-related guildmates.

So what am I left with? I can compete with the 12-to-1 ToS ratio that's AoE'ing the snot out of the high end mobs in Kheshatta (no thanks) or I can do Villas over and over again. I can't even spend my time collecting resources for my Tier2 guild city because they won't fit in my bags unless I first spend 22.5g to progress my Architect skill. Crafting as a gold sink != fun. I'm left feeling very unenthusiastic for anything gameplay-related, I'm just socializing with my friends, which I can do regardless.

So it's moving on time

I'm going to be parking Bello, my level 77 Guardian for awhile. Perhaps a short while, perhaps a very long while, it all depends on whether Funcom brings in content I'd actually like to play. What's in the game at the high levels right now is lacking, I've just plain run out of things I'd like to do.

I thought I would have been able to hold out a minimum of six months.

Gaute Godager's latest state-of-the-game address (thanks JoeBildo) is disheartening. Funcom is missing out on the bigger picture of things.

Most players will be 80 by the time they get their new 55-60 zone out the door.

Kheshatta is overcrowded on half the map where the 75+ mobs are, but it doesn't instance much because the other 70-75 half of the map is devoid of activity. The game desperately needs at least one dedicated 75-80 zone, preferably several.

Sieges barely work, I understand the need to fix them up, but creating even more 'massive' ones? The game engine so obviously doesn't support amassing large numbers of characters together for such a task. Funcom is just spinning their wheels trying to squeeze that in.

Why are the Border Kingdoms so desolate, what happened to their plans for a host of PvP activities in those areas? Instead they've crucified the concept by kicking everyone else out of the zone when Sieges are about to start? Seriously?

Age of Conan needs more content, period. Specifically they need more Endgame content, PvP & PvE. Funcom should go with the game's existing strengths and stop fiddling with what isn't working.

I realize they are trying to address the biggest complaints, but you cannot go back in time and fix what players have already bypassed by grinding. Yes, this stuff is good for alts, but provide for main characters first. And if you don't solve the Endgame for existing players, I don't think you'll get too many new ones.