The eagerly awaited Land of the Dead

[Grotnob]

From the recent FAQ:

q. How do i travel to the land of the dead?
A. You will be able to fly to the land of the dead after you unlock the flight path by speaking to the flight master in your capital city. Once you unlock the flight path to the land of the dead, as long as your realm holds control, you can fly there from anywhere in the world! Keep in mind, you will only be able to fly to the land of the dead if your realm controls it. in the event that the population cap has been reached in the land of the dead, your flight master will inform you of such.

So to clarify, this spawn of DF which is accessible by anyone over R25 will save the endgame, give people things to do other than endlessly charge round collecting RP, tokens and ordnance, bring balance to the Force, and has a population cap so only a handful of warbands per side can be in it at one time (bearing in mind you can sneeze and get to R25 in WAR).


Epic Fail!

And I resubbed for this...

 

[pikeh]

If they didn't put in the cap what then?

The zone would crash constantly, the current RvR areas would be deserted. Its a good thing, IMO.

 

[Gahn]

It's pretty clear by now that the Engine just don't cope it.
From the balance pov i'm double sided on the matter; putting a cap will force part the overpopulated Realm out of LOTD meaning that it'll be even more hard for the underpop to switch and conquer it, on the other side the few times the underpop gonna actually be able to enter, they won't get zerged to oblivion the second it switches hands.

 

[Bugz]

If they didn't put in the cap what then?

The zone would crash constantly, the current RvR areas would be deserted. Its a good thing, IMO.

Bullshit.

It's a way of them masking the fact the system can't handle it. Fuckin disgrace.

 

[Theodoric]

The game is a joke full stop.

 

[pikeh]

Bullshit.

It's a way of them masking the fact the system can't handle it. Fuckin disgrace.

I didn't say they shouldn't fucking fix it did I?

If they pretty much know its going to crash then put a fucking cap on it to stop it constantly crashing.

 

[Bugz]

I didn't say they shouldn't fucking fix it did I?

If they pretty much know its going to crash then put a fucking cap on it to stop it constantly crashing.

Or provide the right level of service for the game.

 

[Grotnob]

Bullshit.

It's a way of them masking the fact the system can't handle it. Fuckin disgrace.

Actually, it's the game code at fault. There's sod all wrong with the system it's running on. GOA's not to blame for this one.

If it were the hardware - the "system" - that GOA's maintaining, then one might reasonably expect there to be a pop cap in the EU, but not in the States - cos Mythic's machines are sooo much better, right?

Fact is, the pop cap's being implemented both sides of the pond, indicating that it's not hardware, it's shitty, clunky, rushed, bug-ridden coding which is leading to the performance issues.

It's Mythic's fault.

In fact, more than likely, it's EA's fault.

 

[Downanael]

I really would love to know what they did with the engine,daoc had problems but it feels like it was totally perfect engine compared to this.

 

[Ctuchik]

If they didn't put in the cap what then?

The zone would crash constantly, the current RvR areas would be deserted. Its a good thing, IMO.

its gonna crash regardless if theres 10 or 50 warbands down there. and its gonna keep crashing until Mythic stops being so fucking anal about having 1 server for a whole tier.

now i know that "DF2" isnt concidered a tier but i bet both my arms that they still only have 1 server for it, and as far as i've understood it, that dungeon is HUGE. so obviously its gonna crash when things heat up.

 

[Ctuchik]

I really would love to know what they did with the engine,daoc had problems but it feels like it was totally perfect engine compared to this.

remember the 600+ ppl RR's back in the day?


.001 FPS and 1 minute lag followed by zonecrash after zonecrash after zonecrash


but then again, there were 600+ ppl there. not less then 200 that makes WAR's servers go tits up and die.

 

[Xandax]

War is everywhere .... because people can't stay and fight in one zone, so they have to spread out due to population cap and lousy game engine.

 

[Kami]

They should cancel this and put their resources into a new DAOC engine, I'm no longer playing either but if I were to resub - it'd be to US DAOC servers.

Flogging a dead horse with Warhammer as frankly they're taking the game in the wrong direction and making the same mistakes they made with DAOC - they haven't sorted out what they've got in game, and are too focused on adding more poorly thought out pap to the game.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Fact is, the pop cap's being implemented both sides of the pond, indicating that it's not hardware, it's shitty, clunky, rushed, bug-ridden coding which is leading to the performance issues.

It's just shocking how clunky the code is for this game. But remember ladies and gents, firing HALF of their testers and QA people had no impact at all on the quality/testing...

 

[ford prefect]

Is it just me or does this seem like another rushed and desperate fix to bring in revenue. I mean the game is still buggy (granted not nearly as bad as it was), but the population caps are unacceptable, the engine is obviously faulty and puts too much stress on servers and both mythic and goa are way behind on the subscribers predicted for war.

Releasing an expansion at this point seems like it is just going to compound the problems they are already having.

 

[Svartmetall]

Actually, it's the game code at fault...

...more than likely, it's EA's fault.

What he said.

I guess with E-fucking-A in charge we should be grateful it didn't get released as Madden Ork Pro-Ball 2008...

 

[Downanael]

I But remember ladies and gents, firing HALF of their testers and QA people had no impact at all on the quality/testing...

They really did this? thought it was Funcom who went and fired almost everyone from testers

 

[Gahn]

They really did this? thought it was Funcom who went and fired almost everyone from testers

They did it cause "The Beta Test phase is over so they are redundant" translated = we lost 75% of playerbase cause we are morons and we are in shit.

 

[Gahn]

I really would love to know what they did with the engine,daoc had problems but it feels like it was totally perfect engine compared to this.

They stretched the Daoc Engine far too much with Graphics improvements and the over load of work needed to keep track of the 100.000 types of cc dots hots etc flying around.

 

[SkarIronfist]

It's one server, but it's probably a blade server. Which means different blades handle different tiers, which is why when a zone crashes, it's normally not the whole server coming down, just part of it.

So the limitations are going to be what each blade can handle.

Which is why you have the loading screens nearly all over the place, because you are moving between blades on the server and your character is being moved.

At least it's running linux and not winbloat.

This is what I wrote about it, summing up my thoughts...

http://thatsskarwithak.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/what-does-the-warhammer-backend-really-look-like/

 

[Xandax]

It's just shocking how clunky the code is for this game. But remember ladies and gents, firing HALF of their testers and QA people had no impact at all on the quality/testing...

Well- the game was a problem before they fired their QA/Testers.
Most likely they were fired because nothing could fix the game anyway, so no need to do QA anyway

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

They did it cause "The Beta Test phase is over so they are redundant" translated = we lost 75% of playerbase cause we are morons and we are in shit.

Yup. I understand why they felt they needed to do it (EA's cost cutting group-wide - 10% headcount cut), i just think it was the equivalent of trying lose weight so you can run faster by cutting your leg off...

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

They stretched the Daoc Engine far too much with Graphics improvements and the over load of work needed to keep track of the 100.000 types of cc dots hots etc flying around.

Agreed - the engine just wasn't designed for this level of AoE. If you look at DAoC there were a lot of AoE's going off, sure, but they were generally very small radius (even the best AoE mezz had a tiny radius) and hit a limited number of people.

The other issue is that even with a high-end PC you have to be careful about running with effects on full, whereas in DAoC the old, battered PoS PC i had could handle it in anything but the very biggest (300+ a-side) relic raids.

 

[SkarIronfist]

The AOE diameter is very large and given the nature of network traffic expanding exponentially the more players in a area, then reducing the AOE diameter should help reduce network issues.

 

[Flimgoblin]

Have to say - not encountered this population lock yet... and this is on Norn which has "High" destro most evenings...