A concern of mine

[vayasen]

For what its worth, there is an issue regards WAR that is worrying me.

This may be way off the mark and I may be concerened over nothing, but I thought Id share anyways to see what the community thinks.


My worry is not whether Scenarios are going to be good or not (perosnally they seem like WOW BG's and not 'RVR' at all) but if so many Scenarios are going to dissapate the playerbase so much, that people will be spread across many different 'scenarios' at any one time, which could lead to there being no 'true DAOC style RVR' at all.


Lets speculate that there are (random numbers ;p) 300 people wanting to PVP on a Tuesdy night.

Those 300 people in DAOC (for the most part) were focused into 3 main areas, most in Emain, small pockets of fighting over Odins and Hadrians......but overall 300 people to fight with/against.

In WAR (again speculating on numbers) the same 300 people want to PVP. Well you could end up with 40 fighting in various instances of Scenario 1, another 30 in scenario 2, another 30 in number 3 and so on...many peoepl spread thinly, not fighting true RVR but seperated from the real world in their instance. Leaving only 100 people (50 per side) spread over the 3 main RVR open areas (Human v Chaos etc).


What do you think? Im convinced the PVPing community is going to be dissapated so much across the game, that no 'DAOC style' community is going to flourish.



Id like to point out this isnt a moan, I havnt even tested the game yet. Its a genuine concern and im just interested to see what other people feel about it.


Community > Segregated WoW style BG squads.

 

[crispy]

Generally there seem to be more interest in open world rvr. But this is only input from a little die hard core of fans waiting for WAR who

1. Got fed up with wow pvp and want some open world
2. Old time daoc players who still want to play open world

So it might as well be that when the server is flooded by new mmo players we'll see alot of people in the scenarios also.

I wouldnt worry, there'll be daoc'er running open world most of the time, which probably will attract some of the newer players. At least thats my theory

 

[ileks]

Well i think (hope) that the servers will be very large, maybe 20-30K? So a good spread of players across all the aspects of PvP will be healthy.

Also hopefully they will balance it so that most of the victory points will come from open world objectives rather than scenarios, encouraging people to fight in the open world zones. Oh and hopefully no x-server queues, then the battlegrounds will be more RvR like

 

[Aesgir]

Well theres only so many different scenarios, no matter how dedicated a scenario player is, eventually they are gonna get bored, or the queue will take too long or something and they'll wander out into the frontier and find what we already know. Open World RvR is the best, because of the camaraderie and the fact that you never know what to expect. I think at first Scenarios will be new and fun, but eventually it'll balance out, and only the dedicated 8 vs 8 type players will stick with Scenarios, the rest will be out on the frontiers with us, fighting the good fight

Oh and no Ileks, it says in one of the RVR vids....scenarios are worth more than any other type of RVR in contribution points. And yeah, i think theres x server queues

 

[vayasen]

Aye ive read that also Aes, its a big worry to me atm.

Lets face it there are only a hadnfull of WOW BGs and people still repeat them night and day....they get rewards from them (rinse and repeat).


I really hope more emphasis is placed on RVR....I say it again, RVR!. Not segregated, seperate instances...which is not RVR in the slightest in my books.

Not a prayer of a DAOCesque community if everyone is inside instances fighting for themselves (with the side bonus of 'it effects the outside world'.

The outside world should be the main influence on the outside world and campaign. (imo)

 

[civy]

As I understand it you cant just go to the city and sign up for a BG. the BG's are in the rvr zones so even if you are off to a BG you will be facing open world RVR first getting then then waiting for your turn.

OFC not being in beta that could be wrong

 

[Aesgir]

Yeah i got the impression that it was kind of a 'stumble on' situation with Scenarios rather than head to the city and join a queue. Don't think that affects Vayasens concerns too much, as scenario players probably then wouldn't miss their chance in the queue to help out in Open RVR if they are waiting.

Something we won't know til retail sadly, whether the Open RVR is going to be the main style of fighting.

 

[Case]

Personally I'm seeing scenarios as closer to current DAoC BG`s rather than the WoW version. And this works fine in DAoC. Also don`t forget the player base in WAR is going to be huge and also people who want to PvP will be drawn to WAR in a way that people who like to PvE are drawn to WoW.

 

[Vasconcelos]

Well i think (hope) that the servers will be very large, maybe 20-30K? So a good spread of players across all the aspects of PvP will be healthy.

Also hopefully they will balance it so that most of the victory points will come from open world objectives rather than scenarios, encouraging people to fight in the open world zones. Oh and hopefully no x-server queues, then the battlegrounds will be more RvR like

20.000 - 30.000 seems a huge figure for even a brand new mmo for this days (note the 10.000 difference is about the total amount of current players on DAOC europe). Not to mention the lag issues it would cause...
I will take my bet and say 10.000 players servers, which is more than enuff to keep all the rvr areas crowded

 

[Draig]

Fear not Mythic will watch how the wind blows and sell Expansion 1 on what players want from the launched game pvp/rvrwise, call me a cynic but been playing these games to long now...

 

[Lexa]

The way I understand it the instances are in the frontier zones, the incentive to go in them is victory there contributes a great deal more to capturing the zone than standard RvR. Also they are relevant to the zone they are in. the last thing you can expect is to be constantly capturing flags.

Think of it this way, if you want to work towards capturing the capital city you will need to win many of the instances on the way. I imagine they will be things like cutting supply lines, sacking towns, destroying guard posts and the rest of the things you need to do to advance on an enemy stronghold.

On the other hand you don't need to do them at all.

This information came from one of the videos of the creative director and the project director so should be pretty solid.

 

[Hawkwind]

20k+ servers on Opentranshite, hmmm lag fest!

 

[Garok]

I wouldnt worry, there'll be daoc'er running open world most of the time, which probably will attract some of the newer players. At least thats my theory

Kinda depends on the RP/hour though. If your gonna get more than double the amount of RP's from BG's in the same amount of time you would do roaming thats gonna have an effect on the amount of people doing open world RvR.

At the moment you can get Armour with your Rp's (additional rewards will be added later apparently). I think what they need to do is add two tiers of points, one for Bg's and one for Open world RvR so to advance your toon you need to do a mix of both.

 

[Aesgir]

I think you'd gain more Renown per hour in open world, as i read it, its 'contribution' that adds more from scenarios than actual points for killing people, and as theres a limit on the number of people in the scenarios, less victims = less renown.

 

[vayasen]

the fact of the matter is, if people are spread across MANY self contained little fights (Scenarios), just like WOW, there will be NO community a la DAOC.

 

[Wels]

If I remember correctly, running a few people in the frontiers for a while wrecking havoc always resulted in opposing realms showing up, starts of slow and ends with server crash

 

[Aesgir]

Well generally speaking that was true, although dragging people out of their chosen area (Emain mostly) could sometimes prove a little tough. And i think without the keeps to defend a la DAoC (they say just non claimable battlefield objectives) it might be a little tough to persuade people to come out and defend when they are happy zerging somewhere else, or the instance players to leave their instances. I think the Devs need to offer a carrot for Open World RVR or vayasens concerns could eventually come to pass as apathy sets in.

 

[svartalf]

the fact of the matter is, if people are spread across MANY self contained little fights (Scenarios), just like WOW, there will be NO community a la DAOC.

I think you're completely wrong. I reckon there will be lots of scenario battles AND a thriving community. The thing that stifles the community of WoW is the time-demanding guild-focused raiding.

 

[Whisperess]

I think you're completely wrong. I reckon there will be lots of scenario battles AND a thriving community. The thing that stifles the community of WoW is the time-demanding guild-focused raiding.

As long as they stick with the plan of cross-server scenarios, they won't see any community worth squat; unless they pull an extra-ordinary rabbit with sharp pointy teeth from a hat.

(slightly exaggerated, they could still pull off a good way of using x-server scenarios, I just highly doubt it.)

 

[Draig]

The killler of communities in MMO games is over instancing/scenarios, the games with the strongest communities are open world and static dungeons

Games with open and little instancing

DAOC
EQ's
AO
Eve

Over instanced and shite communities

WoW
GW
DnD Online

Will use DAOC as an example as it's the game most here have played

From a purely Alb perspective think how many friends you made when you first started playing in Mithra, Keltoi, Barrows etc now imagine if the first time you started playing was circa Catacombs and the ITD's, same game ?

Pretty much same applies to cross server rvr/pvp scenarios but its even worse then... the random PUG's are not even on your server

 

[Gorbash]

The killler of communities in MMO games is over instancing/scenarios, the games with the strongest communities are open world and static dungeons

(+ rest of post)

Amen to that!

Forcing people to have some basic level of interaction with each other is a good thing, and shared XP/Dungeon areas are the best place for this to happen.

The simple things like finding an XP spot, and grouping up with someone you dont know as a result of them being there and ending up being best buds two weeks down the line... priceless.

 

[Garok]

I think this has become apparent to them (hence the shutting down of the beta servers and jazzing up the open world PvP. Still think the way forward is to seperate the points you get from instanced and world RvR forcing you to do a mix of both.

 

[eble@work]

Well i think (hope) that the servers will be very large, maybe 20-30K? So a good spread of players across all the aspects of PvP will be healthy.

Also hopefully they will balance it so that most of the victory points will come from open world objectives rather than scenarios, encouraging people to fight in the open world zones. Oh and hopefully no x-server queues, then the battlegrounds will be more RvR like

I did read somewhere that servers will be about 3000-3500 tho I could be totally wrong in that.

Eble

 

[Ctuchik]

I will take my bet and say 10.000 players servers, which is more than enuff to keep all the rvr areas crowded

i don't think we will get even that many per server. WoW i think have a cap at 4k players per server, and when that cap is reached its barely playable from all the server lag. and u can't get much better game servers then what they are using (despite popular belief).


and i know that SOMEONE will bring EvE online up and point at their 30k+ users. EvE uses a bigarse server cluster, not 1 single server, and they still struggle bad with lag

 

[Ctuchik]

I think this has become apparent to them (hence the shutting down of the beta servers and jazzing up the open world PvP.

my biggest fear i have with WAR scenario pvp (IE BG's) is that we will have the same shit as on WoW, ppl figuring out what gives the best rewards over time and play accordingly. like on my battle group on WoW horde play to lose in one of the BG's because they get more honor/marks over time then what alliance do even if they win every singe game, due to alliance being so overpopulated and having long queues.