Hat tip to JoBildo for posting Mark Jacob's new incentive plan for Warhammer.
To sum up, Mythic intended their RVR lakes (which Blizzard copied, to relatively little success) be a high risk, high reward alternative to leveling in safer instanced scenarios or PVE content.
To accomplish this, they're adding in incentives; influence (like WoW's reputation), tome unlocks/titles, and some assortment of missions, daily quests, and other such carrots. They're also doing a bit to lighten the travel burden (always a favorite pet peeve of mine) by allowing a second bind point and providing a better UI for determining where the fighting is - a nice addition, especially since Warhammer is already relatively well behaved on the travel front, with instant "off-camera" zone to zone flights. It's a simple and effective plan to make the content both more rewarding and more accessible.
It was a bit short-sighted of Mythic to launch without all of this stuff and to just expect open RVR to happen on its own with so few incentives in the game. That said, Mythic is doing a very good job recognizing the problem, acknowledging it in public (!), and working towards changes that may make a big difference towards fixing it. In fact, bringing players out into the world to look for RVR to participate in may incidentally help out the health of Warhammer's much touted but seriously underused Public Quest (a key feature of the game I was looking forward to but rarely used once the game arrived, because there were no groups).
The only catch is that many players came, made up their minds about the game, and left already. Perhaps Mythic will need to think about readying a free re-trial program for sometime next spring when all these changes are implmented. Either way, it's good to see the game getting back on track (at a time when its community could really use the boost).
Definitely a good idea - they should offer a free weekend or something to former players once these changes are in place.
ReplyDelete"Blizzard copied, to relatively little success"
ReplyDeleteHow can you say this? Wintergrasp always seems to draw a crowd even at prime raiding time. After every sucessful attack or defense there is a group formed to go PUG the raid boss.
I really don't understand how you can say little success.
The siege engines are very enjoyable to drive around in and the entire fortress is destructible (compared to WAR's single point of attack). Also unlike WAR the siege engines actually play a large part.
Lastly the fight to take the keep doesn't involve a defensive strategy of hiding behind powerful NPC guards and you are actually rewarded for defense. I think WAR should copy some features from WoW and it would improve the RvR lakes.
Aside from Wintergrasp there are 3 points in the Grizzly Hills zone that are PVP areas with daily quests to complete.
@ Centuri:
ReplyDeleteI was referring to the "accepting this quest will flag you for PVP" quest areas in Grizzly Hills (the topic of my linked post) and Icecrown. There is no good reason to do the quests during peak hours when your ability to get the rewards might be deterred by the presence of enemy players.
Wintergrasp is a somewhat different creature, perhaps more analogous to Warhammer keep sieges (which, I will concede, are located in the RVR lakes), though, as you point out, there are substantial differences in focus between the two.