Warhammer Online's fortress changes begin rolling out
by Kyle Horner 
Jan 8th 2009 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Fantasy, Warhammer Online, News items
Players had been experiencing some stability issues playing Warhammer Online's endgame Fortresses -- the bits before the capital cities -- until yesterday, when a new system went into place for the Phoenix Throne, Dark Crag, Vortex, and Darklands servers. This system is going to be rolled out over the coming days onto all of the game servers, which is a plan that smacks of cautiousness on Mythic's part. Or in other words, they're being wise and avoiding server imploding en mass.
So what's the big fix? Well, it's an implementation of a threshold system. What was happening before, is that Fortresses would get so full of players -- 500 or 600 of them -- that the entire thing would essentially crash for everyone. It was a big crash-a-thon. Now, when the player count approaches certain thresholds the game will start teleporting rank 35 and below players entering the fortress area into the nearest warcamp. Then, rank 37 players at the next threshold, before finally rank 39 at a final threshold. Mythic hasn't stated what the exact numbers are for each of these caps, but hopefully it's a high enough count that too many players shouldn't feel frustrated when they attempt to join in the battle and find themselves staring at a vendor or trainer.
This is just the first fix of what Jeff Hickman recently promised as one of many (see video above) that should be coming sometime in the future. And with the rapid-fire rate that past updates have hit the game, we have no reason to believe otherwise.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JP said on 10:09AM 1-08-2009
I haven't been involved in a crash in weeks, so this will have little effect on my server, I'm assuming.
But, there needs to be some kinda flag on players that die and release, b/c they shouldn't lose out on contribution b/c they were there, and then died, only to have their spot "stolen" by the players that only decide to show up at the last possible minute.
The under lvl 35 boot is fine though. They add little, and should stay (just) outside the fort and battle incoming forces.
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MrGutts said on 10:21AM 1-08-2009
Wait a second...
So they are openly admitting to this problem now, finally? Must be a New Years resolution...
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JP said on 10:53AM 1-08-2009
Huh? They've been admitting and working on it for well over 2 months now. I'll admit that ti should have been a bigger priority in beta, but they've been adding and improving things for a while now. You must not read about the game often.
MrGutts said on 11:18AM 1-08-2009
Well if they have, show me where Mythic officially said anything about this and please don't show me something on some fansite.
Your also right about me following them close, I gave up on them. I was a loyal follower, CE customer and also a elder beta tester of this game and it really disappointed me to see what happened. I gave them a chance. Not once, but twice.
Krynos - Ironclaw Server said on 11:49AM 1-08-2009
Agree with Mr Butts on the above.
To be fair they did acknowledge the keep siege CTDs issue for a while and I was wondering all along how they will rectify this "too many players crowded at one spot" issue that WOW faced too during TBC when everyone gathers at the Dark portal, causing server instability.
By restricting the number of players, it is an ironic solution because the point of having a fun keep siege is by having as many players as possible for a zerge fest!
Not convinced this is the way to fix this crucial problem and I for now will remain un-subbed until the game improves.. hopefully. Will leave my Rank 40 Marauder in hibernation while I go back to Northrend for now.
Hope Mythic can give us a good enough reason to go back to WAR. :)
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Jack said on 12:21PM 1-08-2009
What I like about Warhammer is that the people behind the game get in front of webcams and say they are sorry this guy was almost crying...
There is no hiding behind walls of a forum for this designers they are put up in front of a web cam and can tell to every one why its not working.
This guys where funny from the start the game may turn out to be a lot less them what we expected but when they marketed it I really was thinking this is the next big thing this is the game that show that WoW is not the only one that can pull big numbers.
Later it was canceled and revive and later EA come in to the mix and the beta... and the rush and the content cut and so on.... How every when this guys keep doing what they doing maybe in 1 or 2 years this game will beat WoW!
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Fess said on 1:30PM 1-08-2009
You *like* one-way communication? I'm sorry, but the steadfast refusal to have an official forum is sooo telling.
I don't care how many people Jacobs parades in front of a webcam so that he can toss blame at them, WAR is Jacobs' baby. Maybe if he wasn't so busy putting out podcasts and acting like an insane British used-car salesman hawking his wares, and actually, oh, I don't know, DOING HIS JOB, *MANAGING*, ensuring basic elements of the game that should have been working at launch...actually work! Tossing about blame in public is no way to run a business, and the state of this game, for better or worse, is a direct reflection of Jacobs abilities at leading a team, or lack thereof.
As for WAR, too little, too late.
Brian! said on 2:28PM 1-08-2009
I dunno. Official forums like WoW's just make me more frustrated. I have NEVER gotten a reply from anyone at Blizzard.
In fact, if you write a well thought out post it gets buried on official forums because they are filled with crappy QQs. No one bothers to respond much to anything that is well written as there is no need. But some punk simple posts, "Nerf warlocks" and that thread becomes the top post for weeks.
So far, the best 2-way communication with any developers have been in the form on grab-bags, moderated webcasts, and similar tools where select questions are posed to the team and they answer them.
So far, out of all the MMOs, I feel as the Mythic team is the most communicative. So far anyway, we have a few new launches coming with teams that also seem to be very open too.
JP said on 2:32PM 1-08-2009
Hey Fess, that's not Mark Jacobs. It's Paul B.
Box said on 12:54PM 1-08-2009
Hurray! ...I suppose. Will the Castles be fixed too? I do see how 600+ people can make the servers crash, but how 30-70 can I don't know. Not sure if I will return though; it feels to much like they're releasing a half-finished game and then fixing it after release, rather than releasing a finished game.
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Kyoji said on 1:49PM 1-08-2009
Good to hear, Skull Throne crashed 2 times last night with Order trying to take Fell Landing-Destruction has a reputation on our server of zerging with as many people, regardless of level, they can. So it will be interesting to see how this affects that.
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SimpleSteve said on 5:11PM 1-08-2009
Okay, if too many people in a small area causes the server to crash, why not look at the problem differently in order to solve it?
Make the castles larger, spread the content and goals out a little. Dark Age of Camelot had larger Keeps than many of WAR's!
The small room where the Keep Lord resides is simply ridiculous. Look at LotRO too, where the size of the final boss room is four times as large. These are massive stone structures, Mythic, in a massively multi-player game...so c'mon....make the more MASSIVE!!
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InfamousBrad said on 6:28PM 1-08-2009
Doesn't change my opinion that the Fortress Lords are just flatly mal-designed. I've fought in two fortress sieges, one each on offense and defense. I didn't crash either time, but I found both fights horribly unpleasant, actively un-fun. I'm boycotting that part of the game until (or unless) it's redesigned. You can get the same quality rewards, more reliably and more quickly, from the level 40 "city" dungeons. And when it comes to stopping people from sacking my side's capital city, I'd rather fight them in the city than in those awful fortresses. Similarly, if some really determined guilds on my server managed to push into two fortresses simultaneously, I wish them all the luck in the world; once the fortress sieges begin, I'll be dropping out, to rejoin them if and when they get into the enemy capital city. And if they don't? Then I'll go back to open RvR, city dungeons, and the Lost Vale.
Seriously: great game, nice improvements almost every week since it shipped, but (as Tabula Rasa proved) you can't bug-fix or tweak a sufficiently awful design into a good design. The fortress siege parts of Warhammer Online don't need to be repaired. They need to be replaced.
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TonyMcS said on 6:46PM 1-08-2009
It seems that there is an effort to talk about these BUGS as if they aren't. No, they're CTDs (so even the word CRASH isn't there). No it's server stability. How about it's either bad code design or bugs?
And did I get it right? Their "fix" is to remove players until they reach a level that their code can handle (they hope).
If it's not working properly, then redesign it or fix it, don't throw in a workaround and pretend it's a solution.
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