Warhammer Online drops 1.3.2 and looks straight ahead
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Oct 16th 2009 at 11:00AM
Filed under: Fantasy, Patches, Previews, Leveling, Warhammer Online
Love it or hate it, opinions have been divided, but the changes made to Warhammer Online in the 1.3.2 patch -- most notably the changes to the starting experience -- have certainly gotten people talking. But it's one thing to discuss it in the abstract and another to see how things play out. The opportunity is now in the hands of the game's players, as the patch has gone live and all of its changes are there for everyone to try.
Rather than locking things down and leaving them there, however, producer Jeff Skalski has released an open letter to the community explaining why some of the changes were made and what changes are coming in the game's next patch, 1.3.3. Cosmetic changes include the options to walk and sit (instead of constantly running and standing) and additions to the game's graphical engine. More far-reaching is the implementation of the Underdog System: a series of running handicaps designed to help bring the side that's consistently losing into better parity with their opponents. Skalski explains in brief how such a system will work and how it will avoid unbalancing matches in the other direction, as well as discussing some of the larger issues Warhammer Online plans to address. If you haven't been playing or you took a break, see what has changed and what's coming, since now is the time to give the game a look.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lilithsblood said on 11:14AM 10-16-2009
oh nice they learned the value of Tenacity from WoW. Good for them!
Its actually pretty ironic if you think about it. One of the lead guys workin on Warhammer during its development said that he was "flattered" that WoW was stealing ideas from Warhammer on pvp, (when WoW created Wintergrasp, which was in development way before warhammer showed what they could have stole) and now Warhammer is finally learning about Tenacity-type mechanics. (I don't think wow created that themselves, someone else probably did but still)
Just a funny little irony. But still good for them.
Reply
Lilithsblood said on 1:25PM 10-16-2009
Well seeing as how I expected a bunch of angry responses from War-lovers and the other comments so far are talking about the failures, I'll just say that I don't care that much if its good for them. Its funny about that irony, but I don't care much for War.
I do hope they stay alive enough so that the people who worked hard at the development team for so long have jobs and don't get laid off. Thats as far as it goes. Let them keep their jobs for the hard work they put in. Maybe one day WAR will learn to listen and fix those problems in the comments below, maybe not. Even if they do it may be too late. You know what they say, if an MMO doesn't get it right the first time, it may never get a chance again, even if its fixed.
I bet if WOW had a single or even just 2 starting areas, and only so much content and things to do in the beginning, and it took them a year to try to fix anything, WoW wouldn't be the giant it is. Even if the end result 5 years later was still what it is now. The big first impression is sometimes everything.
Jack said on 1:49PM 10-16-2009
I agree!
JP said on 11:26AM 10-16-2009
I’m one of the first to come in here and ridicule WAR on their lack of , but the game is seeing progress. Whether it’s too little to late is still up for debate.
I’m not sold on 1.3.2, but have a friend that (god help him) has stuck w/ the game since launch and is going to update me if the improvements increase RvR activity. More frequent city sieges are certainly a way to motivate players to fight. Waiting for zone flip ticks was not the way.
Looks like EA giving Jacobs the boot, shutting up Barrnet, and forcing Mythic to take a hard-line look at the disappointing and underwhelming game that was released to a large and anticipating player base is finally starting to see some real results. Less focus on new “content” and more focus on improving what players are screaming about.
I can only imagine if they had this type of focus on the game from the get go, and halted additions like LotD or even the extra classes.
Reply
Innocente said on 11:29AM 10-16-2009
What startles me is how much Mythic has *failed* to learn about long-term MMO viability as it relates to new-player and alt-player experience. The best MMO's at player retention, WoW and EQ1 have always had multiple, diverse starting towns for the level 1-20 experience (yes, I know about EQ1's newb caves). And from there, on to multiple progression zones, and zones for specific Races and Factions.
Late, they learned this lesson in EQ2, which also now sports Race and Faction zones with multiple starting towns (up from the pitiful two they had at launch).
Games like DAoC, WAR, and so forth are taking a BIG step backwards by distilling down their new-player/alt-player experience to a SINGLE location. What does that leave these players after they have capped? The same-old all over again? Does not work, in my experience.
Reply
Kyoji said on 1:45PM 10-16-2009
The other starting areas still exist and can still be accessed, they are just funneling everyone into the same starter area so that pop isn't as spread out. Regardless of whether this was a good idea or not, they are not "distilling down their new-player/alt-player experience to a SINGLE location" as youc an still play the elf or dwarf zones if you so please.
Diaz said on 11:55AM 10-16-2009
I really really wanted to love this game. After sticking with it for 1 year, I unsubbed last week. I was in beta and I showed up on all the PTS tests to take part in helping improve this title. But at the end of the day it wasn't fun anymore... you get to the opposing capital after months of fighting and then week after week, guess what, the capital city is bugged. You can't win. Do they hotfix it? No.
Warhammer has alot going for it and one of the most talked about was the fact that the T1 experience was a ton of fun. Now they are changing T1. Why? To try and hook more players? Excuse me, but it seems like they are off again down the wrong rabbit hole.
Mythic I left your game because the factions and classes are horribly balanced and bugged to high heaven. Until you fix that you are going to continue to lose players. Even diehard players.
Reply
Calvin said on 1:32PM 10-16-2009
I resubbed last night to check out the new patch because I've heard that it is a dramatic increase in framerate and holy crap, they weren't lying! I was in a keep siege that had 90ish destruction attacking and we had at least 2-3 warbands defending and I was doing a solid 20-30FPS. Yes, its not perfect, but compared to 2 months ago when I played that kind of siege would of been 10-20FPS, and I don't even wanna talk about running up a ramp in a keep only to go down to 4FPS and die. (Now they have 8-lane highways going up to the lords room!)
I'm defiantly going to keep playing and recheck everything out for me. Aion to me was a horrible grindfest and just wasn't fun. Lots of people in my guild enjoy it, but a lot of us can't stand the grind and were looking to try out war again to get our fill of killing people. It's finally nice to see Mythic listening to there customers, performance was a huge issue with many of us, and so was CC, and there on the right road to fixing both.
Reply
pogger said on 1:34PM 10-16-2009
I actually liked a lot about Warhammer... the starting experience and such. I never made it to max level or end game. It was what allowed me to see that there was more out there besides WoW. Ultimately, I unsubbed from both games.
I like what I'm seeing about the changes they're making to the game. The temptation to reactivate my account is increasing. I'm trying out DDO right now but after that, WAR may be the fantasy genre MMO I turn to.
Reply
crsh said on 2:02PM 10-16-2009
They're still not clearly addressing the 5 key issues they identified several months ago; these band-aid patches don't help.
They're starting to remind me of AoC prior to Godager's resignation.
Reply
Diaz said on 4:24PM 10-16-2009
As a side note, the letter to the community reads as though they are changing the starter quests in the other zones. So even if you do make the run to a warcamp as a lowbie and fly to your old starter zone (not exactly easy) the quests may be different/changed. I don't consider that "still being able to play (those zones).. if you so please".
The end result, either way, is that they are diluting the content in T1 which is the most well designed part of their game.
Reply
Archmage said on 4:53PM 10-16-2009
To me, this says that they could care less about the work and effort that went into these zones and just want to funnel everyone past them. When a company has reached that point in a products life-cycle, it doesn't bode well.
Reply
Epitaph said on 5:20PM 10-16-2009
Maybe I will re-sub......
Reply
Willemwell said on 1:06PM 10-17-2009
The patch has improved the intensity of fights on the tiers I have been playing on (1 and 2). People seem to want to defend a lot harder now and the rewards make it worth staying and defending. I noticed a lot more xp and renown points coming up for me but it could just be I never noticed it before.
The one bad thing that has happened that I have noticed is that Pheonix Throne seems to be virtually dead in the lower tiers due to people actually apprenticing up and not coming back. So for somone like me who has several tier one and twos and no guild that will respond to requests to be apprenticed up its kind of a bad situation. So I will probably just be playing on Gorfang for the time being until they can look at doing something about that servers population.
There is also a bug that has popped up in sc's that will actually freeze everyone until they are killed. It is a bug that could be exploited in a capture the flag type of game easily so they will have to look into that pretty quickly but they have been good about the bug stomping recently so I got no real worries.
Reply
Dave said on 11:42PM 10-18-2009
After reading the 1.3.2 patch notes my friend and I opted to re-sub. I hadn't played the game in probably 7-8 months and remember they had their work cut out for them in multiple aspects of the game. This patch was sort of the launching point for both of us, got our interests peaked. So far we're both playing on Gorfang and enjoying the new experience.
Would love to hear from anyone play Order. I'll be playing as Thavier if you ever need a KotBS.
Reply