1.3.5 has arrived

[Tallen]

Possibly the single most important patch of WAR's history has arrived. 1.3.5!

Finally the end-game city sieges are no longer pve...it's pvp all the way.

Ok, it should have been this way from release and it's probably not going to revitalise the game, but a step in the right direction. PTS participants have been raving about the changes.

Cool stuff like at one point your king selects players to become champions, they get big and bad-ass, a slug fest between the order and destro kings and it's 24 v 24, wb vs wb, so all the uber guilds can slug it out and other players can easily find a warband to join both solo and as a group.

The cowards buff has been introduced, no longer can people instance hop, once your in you stand and fight, or leave in shame! This goes for normal scenarios as well now.

Along with the patch comes a minor nerf to sorcs and BW's....very minor, but now scorched earth and the sorc equivalent they used to spam to build combustion before bombing now consumes combustion instead of building it. It can be worked around with tactics and using other combustion generating spells, but it stops the mindless spamers 1-button mashing....now they'll need at least 2

Expect the usual bugs as with any major conteent altering patch, but a step in the right direction....finally!

 

[GReaper]

Is this actually a good thing?

In my experience the RvR side of city sieging used to suck badly. If your realm went to all the trouble of locking zones and the enemy realm didn't bother to stop you, but they all decided to camp their city and put up a well organised fight there - it was awkward to win. If the sides were even then it was just an absolutely tedious stalemate. If your side was winning then it was just a tedious zerging - a very boring situation.

Was never really happy with the entire city sieging in the first place - it wasn't a perpetual war like DAOC, as winning a city siege is an "oh, we've won!" scenario for the winners and a huge "you suck" to the people kicked out of their own city.

This is all from my experiences many months ago, so sorry if the game has actually changed for the better since then!

 

[Ctuchik]

still don't like the whole instanced city siege part.

makes you feel to detached from the overall struggle to have a meaning imo...

 

[Calaen]

This is all from my experiences many months ago, so sorry if the game has actually changed for the better since then!

To be fair mate the game aint changed a dot, other than there is usually city sieges every god damn day numerous times. I aint even played for about two months, but I hear the same complaints from friends about aoe, and lack of immersion that the game seriously struggles with compared to DAOC.

That said I will be resubbing, however I have my doubts because I simply hate city raids full stop, there is no challenge in getting to the cities anymore, since the removal of forts which means I don't give a shit

 

[Mabs]

WAR is going to be ace

in about 6 years when the hardware exists to run that shitty engine well without lag etc

 

[Ctuchik]

WAR is going to be ace

in about 6 years when the hardware exists to run that shitty engine well without lag etc

server power aint helping against shitty coding tho


makes you wonder if they took the coding GW had made and tried to fix it...


iirc they had massive network issues that they couldn't sort out.

 

[Tallen]

Is this actually a good thing?

In my experience the RvR side of city sieging used to suck badly. If your realm went to all the trouble of locking zones and the enemy realm didn't bother to stop you, but they all decided to camp their city and put up a well organised fight there - it was awkward to win. If the sides were even then it was just an absolutely tedious stalemate. If your side was winning then it was just a tedious zerging - a very boring situation.

Was never really happy with the entire city sieging in the first place - it wasn't a perpetual war like DAOC, as winning a city siege is an "oh, we've won!" scenario for the winners and a huge "you suck" to the people kicked out of their own city.

This is all from my experiences many months ago, so sorry if the game has actually changed for the better since then!

You have really answered your own question to a cerain extent.

It has actually changed since launch in fact for those who claim it hasn't.

The original system was modified a while back and a flag-cap system introduced which was better, they removed the in-siege scenarios and the pq system which clagged everything up. Current sieges are solid pvp for stage 1, assuming there is anyone to fight, which there isn't always.

The problem was stage 2 was tricky to reach, you had to win pretty much every single instance and win them convincingly to acquire enough VP's to get to stage 2. However, once you got to stage 2.....pure pve which was horrific for a pvp game.

The new system is supposed to make it less disjointed and with 24 v 24 more balanced. It also stops guilds instance-hopping to find the ones they can win which caused notrhing but chaos and bad feeling amongst the other players. Haven't tried it myself, but assuming they get it patched today, might be able to comment over the weekend for anyone interrested in how the actual implementation works.

As for other comments:

If the city was "open" you'd have one side dominating every single aspect of it due to the inhernat population imbalances on the servers. Instancing it keeps it on an even footing, numbers don;t count when they are limited and equal. While i agree with the sentiment that it makes you feel detached from the actual fight, it certainly does, it's not much fun being zerged into the ground by 300+ destro organised into bombing wb's when your order who would be outnumbered, outgunned and outlevelled (usuallty the dominant realm has much higher number of higher rr players and more organised high rr warbands). In this case, there would be little point even bothering defending a city and certainly no fun at all.

Lag is still and issue, but nowhere near as bad as it was a year ago, they have improved on this significantly over time. We had a 200 v 200 fight on Norn the other night, it was a bit laggy, but generally surprisingly playable until the numbers swelled to around the 500-600 mark and the zone fell over...then again, DAoC servers often couldn't handle that number either

It's actually a much better game with the forts removed, everything flows along a lot better and city raids are a lot more common. Forts chugged things up a lot. Yes, they should have fixed them, but removing them has actually worked quite well imo.

This being said, the game still has other issues.

The zone lock VP system still sucks, even with the domination and underdog systems, it's still not the greatest way to do it.

Cheating fookers, there are a few around who do cheat blatantly although Mythic are supposed to be clamping down on this.....weve all heard that before...remember how many players used various versions of radar on DAoC for years and never got caught? A lot of people got away with it.

Organised high rr bomb groups can dominate scenarios, however, crap bomb groups are easily farmed. AoE is still an issue, but not as much of an issue as it once was.

Elitism, same as DAoC, this game is dogged by the same elitish bullshit attitude, the "were better than the rest of you" mentality...while it's nowhere near as bad as it was in DAoC, it's still pretty obvious and can grate on the nerves.

Class balance isn't too bad in WAR, it needs work still, although DoK and WP's can be stupidly powerful if played well, again, poorly played ones suck ass and are easily killed. Again, certain set-ups are a lot stronger than others, but all classes really are viable in a group still.

 

[Ctuchik]

The new system is supposed to make it less disjointed and with 24 v 24 more balanced

this is where they are going to be so very very VERY wrong.

uber RR80 guild or alliance raid enter on one faction versus random rr30 - 80 PuG enter on the other...

balanced? i think not.

so unless they made it impossible for any organized warband, or even FG to enter the same instance, it will be anything BUT balanced.

basically its the same as before the patch, just with 1 warband instead of 2 on each side.

 

[Tallen]

this is where they are going to be so very very VERY wrong.

uber RR80 guild or alliance raid enter on one faction versus random rr30 - 80 PuG enter on the other...

balanced? i think not.

so unless they made it impossible for any organized warband, or even FG to enter the same instance, it will be anything BUT balanced.

basically its the same as before the patch, just with 1 warband instead of 2 on each side.

This isn't what i meant by balanced, i meant balanced in numbers, currently some stages wind up with 20 v 48 or even 48 v 2 thanks to the instance hoppers and population imbalance. Limiting each instance to 24 will mean a lot more 24 v 24 instances and preventing instance hopping by adding the cowards buff means once those instances fill up, they either stay filled or the participants leave the city altogether unable to return. Leaving has other unattractive side effects outside of the city instance as well.

You are absolutely right ofc, but how do you match warbands by level and skill? Hmm? How do you measure the sum of the parts and assign them to the closest available comparable enemy?

They are considering changing the instance system in scenarios so "pre-made" groups can opt to fight other pre-mades instead of random pugs. However, if they were to try this in a city instance, whats to stop a wb of rr80's choosing to fight pugs instead so they can dominate and farm sov kit?

I have seen random pug warbands turnover the top enemy premade alliance wb's, we did it only yesterday on Norn, we held our own against the top guilds....although admittedly quite a few of them were playing alts.

 

[Ctuchik]

This isn't what i meant by balanced, i meant balanced in numbers, currently some stages wind up with 20 v 48 or even 48 v 2 thanks to the instance hoppers and population imbalance. Limiting each instance to 24 will mean a lot more 24 v 24 instances and preventing instance hopping by adding the cowards buff means once those instances fill up,

but they COULD have added the coward debuff without lowering the number of ppl in the instances to just 1 warband.

if they kept the 2 WB and just added the debuff it would end up being more balanced both in numbers and in overall "power" between the sides as that would almost guarantee that at least 1 warband on each side were pugs.

now all they have done is make life even easier for the opted warbands while further pissing on the pugs.

I have seen random pug warbands turnover the top enemy premade alliance wb's, we did it only yesterday on Norn, we held our own against the top guilds....

yes i'm sure it does happen, gotta get lucky sometime.

 

[Loneliness]

Nice patch but alittle to late and not enouth.... This Allods mmo isnt to bad btw

 

[Calaen]

)

It's actually a much better game with the forts removed, everything flows along a lot better and city raids are a lot more common. Forts chugged things up a lot. Yes, they should have fixed them, but removing them has actually worked quite well imo.

Class balance isn't too bad in WAR, it needs work still, although DoK and WP's can be stupidly powerful if played well, again, poorly played ones suck ass and are easily killed. Again, certain set-ups are a lot stronger than others, but all classes really are viable in a group still.

The constant city sieges are not a good thing at all, they were buggy, boring and shit.

Class balance is dreadful, far to many favourite classes, tanks should not be out damaging a MDPS class ever. Mosgt setups run with one tank two/three healers and the rest bw's or sorcs for maximum melt.

Which pretty much nulifies anything a single target mdps class brings to the table!

 

[Ctuchik]

This Allods mmo isnt to bad btw

as long as your not playing a warden for example.....

allods have its fair share of moments of utter shit to.

 

[Fafnir]

Elitism, same as DAoC, this game is dogged by the same elitish bullshit attitude, the "were better than the rest of you" mentality...while it's nowhere near as bad as it was in DAoC, it's still pretty obvious and can grate on the nerves.

This is the reason i only paid for 1 month in november last year, uninstalled the game after that.

 

[Ctuchik]

Class balance is dreadful, far to many favourite classes, tanks should not be out damaging a MDPS class ever. Mosgt setups run with one tank two/three healers and the rest bw's or sorcs for maximum melt.

tanks biggest issue is that they do their job a little TO well.

hell even my lvl 34 BO had no real issues tanking lvl 40 pure MDPS classes for quite a while, sure i couldn't kill the mdps, but his DPS were quite pathetic concidering he was RR50+.

tank versus mdps on equal footing, as in lvl 40 and same RR/gear and the tank will most likely win due to insane toughness and armor. and will utterly destroy the mdps if the tank is actually tank specced... its bad enough when tanks go dps spec, its outright retarded when they spec for tanking because the fuckers just. wont. die!

 

[`mongoose]

for those of you still playing war, I hope that these changes bring you joy and happy faces.

It's rare I quit a game and say never will I return - but I reached that point with war a while ago. I love the world, hate the game. They could and should have done so much more. Effectively they've turned it into fantasy counterstrike.

M

 

[Ctuchik]

They could and should have done so much more.

like ditch the T rating and gone for M like it deserved...

 

[Tallen]

Well, after two days of quite regular sieges a few things are blatantly obvious:

The new system is way better than the original one, no contest. Honestly, the new siege system is great fun when the sides are relatively equal....however...

The problem as was feared is twofold. Firstly that the dominant realm just field bombing wb's which are completely unbeatable thanks to the second problem, poor map design which has allowed several key choke points which are "funneled" thanks to the useless doorway geometry this game suffers from.

Being farmed over and over for 1 crest is painful especially now they devalued the Royal and Warlord crests.

Bottom line, great new system ruined by the other inherant flaws the game still has. All-in-all it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth as the real issues they have failed to address have again been overlooked.

 

[Ctuchik]

that sucks :/

 

[Gahn]

Have fun, for me War died long time ago.
It's a shame really.

 

[svartalf]

WAR is going to be ace

in about 6 years when the hardware exists to run that shitty engine well without lag etc

Didn't we say the same thing when we played DAoC?

 

[Ctuchik]

Didn't we say the same thing when we played DAoC?

probably, but DAoC had a solid end game to make up for the lag, WAR doesn't.

 

[Tallen]

probably, but DAoC had a solid end game to make up for the lag, WAR doesn't.

Actually, DAoC didn't have any real end game after NF, it was just cyclical keep and relic swapping, nothing ever actually reached any sort of conclusion.

WAR's system isn't much better, but there is a logical conclusion to a raid and at least some form of challenge and reward at the end instead of a pointless relic that actually did very little in the grand scheme of things and would vanish once you went to bed, pve'd by ac raiders.

DaoC's old system was far more of an end game, the relic keep raids were epic...but laggy beyond belief and almost completely unplayable at times. But best of all, once you had a relic, you couldn't lose it to a few players during off-peak times. Being able to hold and defend a relic was critical in DAoC to the bragging rights and as such the immersion of the game. NF destroyed that im afraid and was the beginning of the end for DAoC.

People blame ToA for the death of DAoC.....NF's revised relic system definitely had a significant hand in the games demise.

 

[Ctuchik]

Actually, DAoC didn't have any real end game after NF, it was just cyclical keep and relic swapping, nothing ever actually reached any sort of conclusion.

true, but it started off having one.

that's more then we can say about WAR

and even tho WAR have city sieges there's really no conclusion there either, its just an endless rinse and repeat. often several times a day.

there's nothing special in killing the kings in WAR. you don't feel ANY form of accomplishment after a kill because its so easy to get there. even tho you might fail once there's always a major chance that you get another shot later that same day.

 

[Marc]

Old school relic raids back in the day were a million times better than WAR city sieges

 

[Ctuchik]

Old school relic raids back in the day were a million times better than WAR city sieges

yep, laggy as they were i much rather have something like that instead.

nothing beats 600+ ppl fighting at the same place.


i so want old school DAoC back.

and i mean proper old school, pre SI old school...


when pugs were the norm, epic armor were the shiz and the most uber stuff you could get were coming from the dragon.

 

[svartalf]

i mean proper old school, pre SI old school...

I concur. SI was shit, TOA dreadful and Catacombs... I don't know.

 

[Fafnir]

Catacombs... I don't know.

Yes you do, you wanted to have its children...

 

[svartalf]

probably, but DAoC had a solid end game to make up for the lag, WAR doesn't.

Got to call BS on this one, too.

I've played some Warhammer now, and the RvR system is a zillion times better than DAoC's. I see improvements all over the place. There's no 5 minute long zone-wide ubermezz and no 8-man keepdoor PBAoE spammers. I could go on and on. DAoC was shit, anybody who thinks otherwise is wearing rose coloured spectacles, but don't misunderstand me. It was good compared with what was around at the time. This is not that time, and Warhammer is much much much better than DAoC is.

For me, if it weren't for the awful mob spasming and lag it should certainly have been a contender with WoW.

 

[Ctuchik]

There's no 5 minute long zone-wide ubermezz and no 8-man keepdoor PBAoE spammers.

there werent any 5 minute long mezzes in DaoC either, and certainly not zone wide so be serious.

and there IS keepdoor pbaoe spams in WAR aswell, and theres probably just as much there as in DAoC, because every time theres a keepdefense with potential half the raid relogs to their sorcs and BW's.

you can't have played much in T4 at primetime if you havent seen that.