Mark Jacobs on changes to WAR's open RvR

by James Egan Nov 25th 2008 at 2:30PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Guilds, MMO industry, PvP, Warhammer Online, News items

Mythic Entertainment's Mark Jacobs posted a Warhammer Online dev blog today, titled "Open RvR Update" which maps out the future of open realm-vs-realm in the game. Jacobs writes that the coming months will bring some changes and additions to WAR:

An RvR Influence system. "This system is designed to reward our oRvR players with lots of new stuff that you can only get through oRvR," he says.

Increased visibility of open RvR, made possible through numerous improvements such as improved maps and travel systems, second bind points, a campaign HUD, and tier-wide messaging about the status of battlefield objectives and keeps.

Greater incentives for oRvR participation, namely through keep quests, 'Daily Event Quests,' and chained RvR missions.

Better rewards for guilds that take and control keeps, and a system of keep upgrades.

Allowing characters to gain oRvR "Fame", linked to the Tome of Knowledge and thus rewards, titles, and experience that come with oRvR success.

Jacobs cautions though, "Please keep in mind that these changes/systems apply to oRvR only and not to scenarios. This is not all we are working on but these do reflect the majority of oRvR additions that we are currently working on/planning for the next few months." Jacobs hopes that open RvR enhancements will inject more risk and challenge into this aspect of the game, and ultimately more rewards. Check out his dev blog where he outlines the changes to open RvR and let us know, do you think Mythic is headed in the right direction with this system revamp?

Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Tags: achievements, breaking, dev-blog, experience, fame, fantasy, game-mechanics, guilds, mark-jacobs, mmo-industry, mythic, mythic-entertainment, open-rvr, pvp, quests, realm-vs-realm, reward, risk, rvr, titles, tome-of-knowledge, war, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JP said on 2:44PM 11-25-2008

Above and beyond anything, I hope that server stability is job numero uno.

While insentive to RvR is nice, constantly crashing makes any new rewards a moot point.

mikejl said on 2:44PM 11-25-2008

Awesomesauce for my WAR Goose!

Jess said on 2:58PM 11-25-2008

I never understood why WAR wasn't 100% open/zone PvP to begin with. The sooner they remove the Battlegrounds...oops I mean "Scenarios", ha, the better.

Mythic spends a lot of time bragging about how they had the best PvP system of all time (and for the most part that's true..only ArenaNet/GW can really touch DAoC) yet when WAR launches they have two-sided instanced, sports match style PvP....as opposed to DAoC's three-sided open zone PvP.

It is especially detrimental to WAR because there are very few battles in Warhammer with 12-24 people a side. It makes it all the more of a joke to true Warhammer players. Feels more like Bloodbowl.

All Mythic needs to do is scrap the Battlescenariogrounds, make a DAoC New/Old frontiers with Warhammer skins/names and then work on that.

Then you have the real, unique RvR that Mythic can brag about. Not some perverted amalgamation of DAoC and WoW PvP.

lagwolf said on 3:09PM 11-25-2008

The trouble with oRvR is that there is either no one about for it or the bloody server lags so bad as to make it freaking impossible to play. Scenario RvR seems to handle lag far better.

I think having to kill 15 in oRvR for the Heavy Metal live event is bloody stupid. Make sure that oRvR does not lag that much, then do something like this.

zombiejesus said on 3:20PM 11-25-2008

what lagwolf said I would love to come back to this game if they fixed the lag that was in orvr. Then again the bg matches were kind of laggy too making most of the game just impossible to play with alot of people. Don't get me wrong I loved the game pvp was a blast in it, just the lag was a turn off.

Tholianr said on 3:51PM 11-25-2008

One of the reason I see for doing the Heavy Metal 15 open RvR kills was to gather information on large battles, and on our server, the lag was not bad, in praag last night we had about 75 destruction against about 100 order and I only lagged after respawning. In Tier 2 there were a lot more and I had very little lag.

zombiejesus said on 3:54PM 11-25-2008

well for me the game had crazy lag and I could never understand why I mean I'm able to run fallout 3 on highest settings and no lag, and farcry 2 no lag as well but warhammer? most of the orvr and bg matches were just choppy

DeathMutant said on 8:32PM 11-25-2008

I feel they need to add more PQs to the RvR "lakes" similar to the one for Witching Night.

---

HINT: Last night on Praag, I was able to kill 15 enemy players -- several times over -- in open RvR at level 7 (!) by manning the seige weapons at the (Order) RvR camp in Troll Country. It was amazing the number of times I would *repeatedly* kill high-level (to me) enemies that were stupid (blood lusted?) enough to attack so close to the camp. I suspect the mindless assaults will stop once everyone gets their 15 kills but it was still fun while it lasted.

Jack said on 4:57PM 11-25-2008

I hate pvp and RvR did not change my mind one bit... this new rules do not change a thing for me...

"An RvR Influence system. "This system is designed to reward our oRvR players with lots of new stuff that you can only get through oRvR," he says. "

So this is what it come tru I will be just like in WoW have to do RvR to get armors and things?? that suck.

I wish War start working on the PVE part of the game.

Tasogare said on 5:31PM 11-25-2008

PvE was never the focal point of WAR, RvR was, therefore they should spend time making sure people who are fighting in the field are rewarded appropriatly. The problem I had with the game was that EVERYONE was always in scenarios, and the most played ones were usually the worst (Tor Anroc and Morkain Temple anyone?) I would say that making these changes is a step in the direction they should have been in from the get-go.

If you don't like PvP though, you should honestly find a different game.

PS - Where did people get the idea that you had to PvP to get gear in WoW?

Simons said on 10:40PM 11-25-2008

What ARE you talking about? There's already a perfectly good PvE gear progression system in the game. It's the one they're modelling the new RvR gear progression system on, after all. Works great.

Just because the oRvR Influence system will offer rewards not available through PvE doesn't mean you have to RvR to get good gear. The sentence works perfectly in reverse: The PvE Influence system offers rewards not available through other means, but does that mean you have to PvE to get good armor?

Hardy said on 3:03AM 11-26-2008

My opinion is that because there is the option to do something other then oRvR in the first place that's causing all the problems.

It's probably the best decision, to keep scenarios in all level brackets EXCEPT for the end game.

I think they should just put more endgame incentives and completely remove scenarios.

That's what happened to Warcraft. There was lots of open PvP but as soon as BGs hit. It became a ghost world.

ScytheNoire said on 11:09PM 11-25-2008

They made a mistake in their design right from the start by having PvE quests. The entire game should have been Open RvR, as others mentioned, and it should of had quests involving RvR.

Another major problem is that they are doing these changes now, when if they had properly beta tested, this would of been in the game already at launch, and perhaps things wouldn't be going downhill for WAR.

It's a major problem when companies expect to share the market with WoW and use the launched game as their Beta Testing. Customers who buy a released game expect a release ready game, not a Beta.

Some survive this mistake (WoW, LotRO, CoH), while others die off (too numerous to list). Companies need to realize just how important that first month is to their success. There's no room in the MMO space any more for releasing a Beta as a launch.

Box said on 10:42AM 11-26-2008

To further beat the dead horse: fix the lag first. When you to fairly random crashes to desktops or just got less than 1 FPS it's quite impossible to try to oRvR properly. Nice to see some more thought and effort put into oRvR than simply increasing the amount of experience you gain.