See below for WAR status on issues from the company...personally I really have enjoyed the overall approach they have taken in beta and communication. They really had a very good controlled closed beta and took alot of feedback to heart. Even the message below to me is written great, honest and realistic for the most part.

Once the pathing issue and also the R10 RR6 issue is resolved there is no major blaring issue that is a game stopper for me. Always room to approve but as long as they diligently work on it after release we are good to go. Also there is alot going on behind the scenes still, lets just hope the final versions of some of the things they are pushing out are adaquetly tested.

A few issues they need to finish up before release or would be nice at least are
1) Auctioneer system....I saw the AH but last time I checked it wasn't working yet, hopefully that will get put in soon.

2) Talisman....currently there are regular/green/blue drops that can be used in talisman creation but no recipes etc yet. Talismans basically are the equivalent of gems for slotted gear.

3) Itemization pass, they did a pretty good job up to this point but they still need one more pass to ensure gear makes sense in some areas (sorc getting gear with melee stats etc) and also purple gear needs to be better at low levels....I got a lvl 3 required puple belt from a PQ (each PQ takes 20-30 mins at the start, has random loot bags so gold bags that drop purple loot only occur occasionally, and mix in 6-20 people all basically randoming 1-1000 for the top position to get the gold bag if it does drop....very rare to get purple gear) and 10 minutes later I got a green belt with better stats. That shouldn't happen

Other then that there isn't much I can complain about that isn't listed/addressed below. I never thought the day I would actually look forward to a true pvp/rvr game.....I will openly admit I was average at best in WOW pvp (partially due to spending all my time on the pve side) so will be interesting to see if I suck it up here or not. So far so good though, bring on the WOW kiddies!!!!

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Folks,

Okay, it was a wild and crazy weekend in WAR and while some of you might be tempted to go all Samurai on us for a couple of the bugs, overall things went very, very well. As long-time readers of my notes now, I won’t do a Nick Winters and we are anything but pathological liars so we’ll always own up when we make a mistake and we made a couple here. So, let’s talk amongst ourselves and have a little chat about the top nine list of the biggest issues and where we stand in regards to them.

(1) Client Crashes – I’ve talked about this as one of the reasons why we didn’t release the NDA until recently. Here’s the current status.
- Just a little too many currently. While we are better off than we were in beta, we must do better still before release.
- A number of players will lower spec machines had more CTDs than higher spec machines.
- Number of fixes already in pipeline. They are working their way through our testing servers and will be pushed to the players once they have been vetted internally.
- Engineering time for CTD issue has remained heavily committed; our top engineers are working on the various issues.

(2) Monster Pathing and AI – Well, what can I say other than not even all of King Tut’s wealth could have made us feel better for messing up on this one. Well, maybe all his wealth. 
- “Yes, that monster seems to be behaving a little oddly”. Monster responsiveness was very sketchy, odd pauses and tethering issues.
- “Oh, was I supposed to go in that direction?” Pathing sometimes wonky - mobs get stuck or go in wrong direction.
- Utter confusion at times as both monsters and pets will engage and disengage seemingly at random
- Internal server optimizations last week broke the pathing/AI. And I mean really, really broke it. This truly was a “Opps, we broke this code” moment for us and we don’t have many of them.
- Going to ensure that this problem is fixed this week. As I said in my first Preview Weekend, this is a major concern for us. Fortunately we have no underwater combat in this game or some of the NPCs may have been appropriately dubbed land sharks.

(3) Pet Responsiveness – With similar issues to Monster Pathing and AI, this was not our finest hour.
- Need to transfer "combat responsiveness" fixes to pets - have pet move immediately on button press.
- “Oh no, Mr. Bill!” Pets suffer from same pathing and lack of response as general monsters. Pets hopping around like they were headed to Del Staters.


(4) Global Cooldown Timers –This seems to be a hot topic for players to talk about. However, things aren’t always as they seem.
- Reality and perception are two different things, Warhammer has a GCD of 1.4s, WoW has 1.5s
- “Ability not ready” messaging needs to be improve, a sound effect if Global Cooldown in effect, maybe more cowbell?
- Need to improve on the feeling of sluggishness of the GCD and UI. Bug with display where our timer shows 2s when it is really 1.4
- The next best thing to a queue is? We will add in better "slop timer" to allow players 0.3s extra to pre-queue a second ability followup.

(5) Better animations
- So much more coming in the next two versions of the client. We are currently incorporating serious amounts of new animations into the game. Hopefully nobody will sneak a coneheads model into the game.
- Look at what my XXXX does now? Over the next month we will address many class-attack specific issues across all 20 careers.
- “U think you can dance?” Nope, but we have added new racial animations for movement, fidgets and redid some emotes.

(6) Texture Blurring
- Textures are currently cached in a manner that results in blurriness on entering a region.
- We will look at adding a client scalar.

(7) Client Performance – This is one of those issues
- Need better scalers on effects, sounds, graphics, etc to help lower end machines (already lots of additions to coders)
- This thing loves memory like Dan Aykroyd loves bass. We have already improved the memory consumption of the client and taken 100M out of current test best.

(8) Targeting, Camera, etc
- Currently our targeting system differs from many MMOs in terms of our features and how we go about things. We will identify and make a more standard initial setup but allow flexibility.
- Will add additional keybinding selections to allow flexibility

(9) Renown rank gear
- Unfortunately, a new bug (well an old bug we fixed and then managed to break again) which allowed Rank 10 RR 6 players can go to Tier 2 to get better gear and then come back to Tier 1 and own scenarios. We are currently working on a fix.

I hope you enjoyed the Preview Weekend and we thank you for your interest and we hope, patronage of our game.

Guess what folks, that’s the news and I am outta here!

Mark

I REALLY liked this game so far, to the point of almost going through withdrawals...

Something nice about being able to que RVR stuff while doing a public quest, finishing the match, and popping right back to the same place in the world when the match is over, so you can pick up right where you left off.

And witch hunters keeping their combo points when you switch targets or something dies is a dream come true.

Word

bright wizards have something similar, you can spam your PBAE nuke to ramp up your combustion lvls to max before running into the fray so you can come out a swinging hard. The bad part is without a healer you kill yourself fast so you have to manage that aspect of it. It starts to diminish after you stop attacking people but you can switch to anyone you want. It really is a great system that balances risk vs reward.

They have a lot of small things that just make sense and make the games more enjoyable.

Updateed

Sunday, 31 August 2008
Folks,

Well, things have been, as usual, busy here at Mythic so I have lots of news to share. So, without further ado and no SNL references, here's the update on my update:

1) Significantly improved NPC pathing - Okay, in all fairness it wouldn't have taken much to improve on what we showed you folks during the PW. However, the NPC pathing is back to where it needs to be and while it still isn't perfect, well, it's a heck of a lot closer than it was just a short time ago. We identified a whole lot of bugs and squashed them.

2) Improved pet commands and responsivness - Well, pretty much same as above. Pets will no longer act as if obeying an order from you was the last thing in this world that they wanted to do.

3) Fixed an issue with textures blurring - Nothing like looking at textures through a blurred lens to make things look really sharp eh? Major improvements in and more OTW.

4) Enhanced Global Cooldown Mechanic - Well, for one the GCD actually shows the correct cooldown time and not the rounded up cooldown time (Hey, what a great idea, let's make it seem slower than it is. WOOT!). The slop timer is working fine right now and we'll continue to look at making the GCD and combat in general more responsive.

5) Continuing to improve Client Stability - As always, lots of fixes going in here. The client is supposed to be more stable (and looks like it so far) but until we get the masses back in...

6) Added new Graphics Settings and seeking more feedback from testers to guide future improvements. You asked for it, you got it. Well, in all fairness we were going to put these in anyway but it never hurts to nudge us a bit at times.

7) Target Nearest Target improved - Yeah! One of my pet peeves addressed.

Renown Gear changes and Potency of Potions increased. Tweaking, adding, subtracting, in other words (don't say "nerf", we're still in beta!) balancing.

9) Increased bonus for medal winners in PQs. PQs are supposed to be fun, joyous and not grindy. We'll continue tweaking and changing them wherever we need to do that to make it so #1. (okay, a ST reference)

10) Added more loot bags in Tier 1 PQs - Boy, it's going to be rather crowded when we launch so we just upped the loot for the Tier 1 PQs. We'll do the same to T2 as needed. And when the rush is over, we'll tweak downwards.

So, in terms of some other good stuff, lots and lots and lots of bugs fixed and lots of new stuff added to the ToK. But wait, there's more and we'll address some of it next week as well as more coming info in the next update.

Oh, and there's still no such thing as a miracle patch so don't expect one here. Just a ton of fixes, additions and adjustments. We have another major patch coming as well before launch. We don't believe in miracle patches (miracle whip is a whole other subject) here at Mythic but simply hard work and a talented team.

Much respect to my team that is really doing one heck of a job getting things ready for launch.

Mark
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I just can't help (and always have) but like Mark Jacobs. The guy is hilarious and takes a real gaming approach to bugs.

You can always tell what bug is his pet peeve... and it's typically something that is little but aggervates your gaming community.

I haven't spent years upon years in his games as I have Smed but, this guy has my support for the most part. If only Scott Hartman worked on Warhammer as well I would probably start selling the game myself.

Take care,
Muli

I've been talking with a lot of different people both on the servers and with guildies and a major complaint is still that the pvp feels far less fluid in Warhammer than it does in WoW. I haven't played too much of the later levels, but it feels like a button-mashing fest. With animations completely and utterly out of sync with your melee and ranged attacks, it's hard to see this as a game of skill on the level that WoW is if they don't change something quick. Honestly I tried 6-7 different classes and they all gave off the same feeling of button mashing.

I just hope this is fixed before launch because it's really a game killer for people who want second-by-second skill-by-skill fast-paced gameplay. The RVR system is incredible looking. The guild functions absolutely sweet. Public quests awesomeness. Here's hoping for the best.

I think the PVP is fun as hell. I don't button mash though so not seeing any issues so far with attacks not synching up. When I hit a button they go.

This is on my Ironbreaker and my Shadow Warrior.

Button mashing and ability spamming are common to every MMO when characters are low level. It doesn't work so well when you get to Tiers 3 and 4.

Sorta goes along with the argument that in dest the shamans are the best healers. They are in the low tiers, same as the bright wizard who also owns in them. Later on, not so much.

Sarissa Candyangel

That's my hope, is that it's only a lower level problem.

I played a Shadow Warrior for a bit as well, and my bow would start raising up for the shot and the arrow had already hit. If this were WoW, that would be a pretty huge issue for other players as well because people are watching to see when projectiles hit and wait for the right timing to LOS or use defensive abilities. It's hard to know when to time your abilities in succession when you don't know when your next attack is going to actually hit or whether the animation is going to go all crazy on you again.

Squig Herder wouldn't even show the arrow being shot at all.

I noticed a similar issue as my Witch Elf but it wasn't quite as bad. Between hitting an ability and seeing the damage it seems downright random at times, even when ignoring the animation.

The consensus from my friends that were in beta (And were Gladiator-ranked players in WoW) is that WAR PvP, in general, is a lot simpler and geared more toward folks not looking for too much in the way of tactics. It does seem to reward strategy, though.

That's the feeling I'm getting as well. I didn't see a lot of the half-second manuvers that I usually see in WoW high-end arena pvp, but again I didn't play high level in WAR either. I will agree with the strategy part though, there's a lot of strategy to be had in WAR pvp and that's apparent from the first battlegrounds.

I'd still prefer a game that encourages skill AND strategy though; I'm hoping this changes at the high end.

Yah....I re-read my post and realized it might seem like I was talking down the idea low "Low tactical, high strategic" PvP, but rest assured I wasn't. I rather like the idea.

One thing that's annoyed me is that archers will continue to pelt me with arrows when I've been around the corner for seconds. I'm not talking about one arrow while still "in flight" either, I'm talking several shots. The code for determining whether something is in your LOS leaves a lot to be desired. Or maybe it was just lag every single time I went around a corner, who knows!

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

WoW PvP itself is very simplistic.

Sarissa Candyangel

WoW PvP is far more complex and engaging than people give it credit for, the problem is that it lacks a really good stage to display it on, aside from high-end arena.

And that's something that most people will never see because they never really take the time to understand concepts like CC coordination and communication, simply because the game doesn't really make a point of teaching it. (It's shocking how many people don't know a thing about diminishing returns, for instance, simply because the core UI makes no mention of it whatsoever.)

Wow still has plenty of this in the battlegrounds too. It's always entertaining to have a hunter sitting at max range blasting you through a mountainside. If WAR is anything like DAOC's pvp, it's going to take a bit of work to get it smooth and functional. Who else remembers when DAOC archers had no visible arrows and stealth? lol...Could 2 shot any class and they'd have no idea where the hell you were shooting from.

I really really hope WAR does well. I'd love an excuse to leave WoWrena.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Different issue.

The ground in WoW doesn't usually block LoS at all. He's talking about running behind something that DOES block LoS (Think: Nagrand Arena Pillar) and still getting nailed for some time before the game realizes he has moved there.

What he said. It's very difficult to use LoS to your advantage when people are still hitting you through a wall which was supposed to stop it seconds ago. I know for a fact that a cast started and ended after I had already left their LoS. >< They need to fix that asap.

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

How's it simplistic exactly?

Also, how many classes do you have above 2200 to the point where you've learned every nuance of each class?

There are no nuances to any class. WoW PVP is about as simple and skill-less as it comes. It's just hitting buttons and using potions and relying on crits.

Again I'm just curious how many characters you have above 2000 rating. Messing around in BGs isn't anywhere near the same thing as arena. I learned a ton of shit on my warrior as I moved on from timing on shield reflects to pillar intervenes to tab interrupts to anticipating fakecasts to shield reflecting frost traps pre-scatter. Having played arena fairly frequently on all 6 of my level 70's I've noticed that every class has a number of different nuances that you learn over time. I just don't see how it can be declared "simplistic".

One, my warlock. 2000+ is more about using a particular combination of classes, having a sea of timers, and having vent up. And time of course.

Every match is a virtual repeat of the one preceding it. Team makeups are rock-paper-scissors. To hear people talking about it, I really think I must have been playing a different game.

Honestly Rocket Arena has just about as much depth as the arena.

Sarissa Candyangel

Skycrasher says PVP is about using potions, so that tells you how much time he has spent doing Arenas.

ProTip: no potions in Arenas

That's an exception to the rule, doesn't make it the rule.

2s, 3s or 5s?

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

2s & 3s; didn't like 5s enough to continue playing in them past season 2

Sarissa Candyangel

Potions, heh. This isn't Age of Conan where a potion is as strong as a damn healer. A potion might buy you one more Ice Lance crit from me, it's hardly "what PvP is about".

PS: Armory that warlock!

Potions in War are pretty strong as well. I imagine people will start complaining about them once the economy gets geared up. Right now the supply is generally limited to quests.

Sarissa Candyangel

Yeah, but don't look at potions to necessarily save you in RvR. They might, but not worth it if the pain train cometh.

So if this is all it really is, why is there such separation among players? Why is your Warlock at 2000+ and another Warlock only at 1600? Are you using vent and mods and he's not, is that the only difference? And if it's so simplistic why is time even a factor? There should be minimal benefit to having more time than another person if the game is as you say.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Time is one of the factors because you become better through practice; that does not mean a game has depth. That's not to say it isn't fun either, it's just silly to me to see it as something transcending team deathmatch.

Sarissa Candyangel

You practice, get better, but there's no depth to it. So what are you practicing, exactly?

There's not a lot of depth to Donkey Kong, but people who practice get better at it. Then they get documentaries about them aired on G4.

So provide examples of others (similar) games that do have a lot of depth and why.

_________________
Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I'm Joe. I'm good at Donkey Kong. I think Donkey Kong has a lot of depth.

I'm Bill. I'm good at Quake. I think Quake has a lot of depth.

That's usually the way you'll get your answers there.

Sorry not going into more detail, I just wanted to take the rare opportunity to get a King of Kong reference out there. You may go back to your regularly scheduled flame war.

Those guys are a bunch of fucking losers, man. I like how that Billy guy destroys all of Steve's attempts and just totally destroys him every time. He's such a dick but he puts those angry nerds to shame. You just can't fuck with Billy. (What adult goes by the name Billy, by the way, besides retarded people?)

The Tae-bo guy, and the guy from the Orange Clean commercials.

Billy Dee Williams is one smooth motherfucker, motherfucker.