EA's closure announcement for Warhammer Online comes at no surprise to me. It was strong at the beginning, largely due to the strength of the IP, the hope of a PVP-driven MMO, and glorious promises of besieging cities that went unfulfilled until well after release due to bugs, lag, an unforgiving endgame, and graphics requirements. Its initial strength was enough for Blizzard to re-imagine multiple zones at the end of Wrath of the Lich King's development into something simulating the major promise of the game -- PvE development in PvP lakes, and siege mechanics. Despite Blizzard's best effort being largely ham-handed and leaving Wintergrasp as a poor knock-off of the RvR zone mechanics, its frustrations led the player base to bleed subscriptions until its death was largely inevitable. There were many innovations, however, that Mythic did bring to the table in a manner that Blizzard simply would not or could not cannibalize.
1) Inventory Management
WAR's default UI had a massive innovation in inventory management simply by creating tabs for your inventory screen. By separating currency, crafting, quest, and regular inventory, and giving a "list view" where you could look for an item by name rather than playing the mouse-over game, Mythic broke the old "find your quest item in your 40 slot bag" pattern Blizzard had established, and Blizzard hasn't quite managed to adapt this handy little innovation. Thankfully, the Combuctor add-on has brought these inventory management tabs over to World of Warcraft, as well as a search function,
Additionally, Mythic created an "overflow items" function, where if your inventory was full, you wouldn't outright lose the item. Instead, you would receive the item as soon as you made room in your inventory. Blizzard has somewhat picked up this feature, occasionally mailing you items you earned should your bags be full, but it has not been universally implemented.
2) PvP Development
One of the large pushes in a game using the Warhammer IP is, obviously, to make players fight one another. To encourage players to fight, they pushed boundaries of Open World PvP, making sure every zone had a PvP lake smack dab in the center, as well as creating PvP rewards that were on par or better than dungeon or raid gear. Mythic created 14 Battlegrounds, titled Scenarios, and had 3 specifically accessible to characters as they were just created. They gated the PvE endgame by overall PvP performance, while balancing out ganking by turning high level characters into 1HP chickens the moment they flagged in a low level zone. Additionally, they made sure that every PvE ability was not only balanced for PvP, but useful in PvP (see below).
3) Class Development
Classes were developed far past Blizzard's model. Each class was at least a dual-mechanic class at launch, largely blowing by Blizzard's single true dual-mechanic class at the time (Rogue) -- players had to manage both their own class mechanic, as well as "Morale," which allowed players to unleash devastating attacks once they had been in combat for some time. Though talent trees were more akin to the simplified trees of Cataclysm, the concept of creating a true "hybrid" class was feasible -- one of the Disciple/Warrior Priest's ways to heal was to DPS, for example, and this was viable well into the endgame.
The sides did not have duplicated classes, but rather had parity in a class with an almost-identical class on the other side, with minor variations and abilities that were moved to a different class in order to create the same overall balance, but more flavorful combatants. Each class had a unique "look" that allowed players to identify them at a glance, taking a page from Team Fortress 2's design.
Mythic advanced the concept of class mechanics, too -- crafting classes based on weaving auras, in a manner similar to a Holy Priest's Chakra -- but in a manner that encouraged the classes to be continually changing auras to gain a mixed bonus. They created a skill called Guard, which acted as a recursive taunt in a manner similar to the Paladin's Hand of Salvation, that when placed on the target shared half of the target's incoming damage, and threat, with the tank. They also made threat abilities useful in PvP, letting taunts reduce damage dealt to any target that wasn't the tank.
4) The RvR Campaign
Mythic not only made every zone have an open world PvP area, but they filled it with some of the most compelling game-play they had, the keep system. Players would use siege engines to bash open the gate of a PvE fortress owned by the other side, and would have a series of boss fights to take the keep for their overall side. Opponents would flood the area to stop an impending siege. These boss fights would provide the best gear available in the zone, making it a compelling target.
This was only the beginning. Each PvP lake was tied with an overall campaign, leading to a clear progression of PvE content that, when completed, led to besieging the opponent's capitol city in the top tier of raiding content. Even the lower level zones mattered, giving incentives to having an alt in each zone and making PvP progression necessary for the highest levels of PvE content. It also led to different sets of quests were available in capitol cities, leading to varied and interesting quest chains inside the capitols of even the winning side.
The Land of the Dead furthered this, not only having content varied by PvP performance, but also giving victors the chance to invade dungeon runs of the losing side.
5) Public Quests
Mythic created a system of an open-world quest that would be progressed and completed by large groups of people who just happened to wander by. These people would not have to group together, but rather would come together to defeat an open-world boss or complete a quest chain.
No comments:
Post a Comment