[SPOILERS] FATE OF HIGH ELF HEROES

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Arondight
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[SPOILERS] FATE OF HIGH ELF HEROES

#1 Post by Arondight »

WARNING. CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR DISCRETION.

Hopped on my friend's level 38 Disciple and ran pretty much all the HE public quests. The disheartening information made me cancel my subscription.

No, not really, I had other reasons but it was one of the things that made me stop.

DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. AFTER READING THIS YOU'LL FEEL LIKE BUNNY BELOW.

Image

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

Belannaer, Instructor of Eltharion: Dies in defense of the White Tower.

Continue Highlighting if you want to read more.

Eltharion: Puts up a great fight and dies.

Continue Highlighting if you want to read more.

Dragonlord Imrik: He and his mount dies in the Fortress of Caledor after being overran.

Continue Highlighting if you want to read more.

Everqueen: Dead. Spirit found in Lost Vale.

Continue Highlighting if you want to read more.

Caradryan: Dies in defense of the Phoenix King's palace. This deserves a special note. I was so happy to find Carrie pleasantly absent from the PQs. Then I found him on the last PQ we did. And my heart sank. It's....

....

To top it off, Asuryan doesn't even kill something with fire after he dies.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If this is canon, then Mythic and EA just earned the wrath of an angry fangirl.
Last edited by Arondight on Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:47 am, edited 2 times in total.
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#2 Post by VictorK »

Just remember: An MMO is a piss-poor medium for telling a story.
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#3 Post by Arondight »

Noted. It's just...I don't know. I was expecting a better story, but I guess I'm expecting too much.
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#4 Post by Musashi »

Nice bunny - did you just invite him to dine with you?
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#5 Post by Ghost »

Wow that is terrible, glad i didn't get the game yet :roll:
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#6 Post by Marwynn »

Oh I dunno, I think an MMO is a wonderful medium for storytelling.

You actually have to tell it properly and not just throw up text and events here and there.

But yeah they kinda rampaged over the High Elves. Don't forget Teclis.
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#7 Post by VictorK »

Marwynn wrote:Oh I dunno, I think an MMO is a wonderful medium for storytelling.

You actually have to tell it properly and not just throw up text and events here and there.
I guess MMOs have the potential, but as long as the dominant design philosophy for MMOs is that they should look like RPGs while having the dynamic of an FPS like counter-strike we aren't going to see good stories from MMOs. It's just not what they're about. The entire notion that every person gets to share in the same events being repeated over and over again is the antithesis of storytelling.
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#8 Post by Strangelove »

It was made pretty clear early on that the game isn't canon.

If it makes you feel any better, Empire players can kill Archaon.
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#9 Post by Enginseer »

this game is stupid. early on in the empire game you meet a force of ~10 hellcannons laying siege to your village. and then you just waltz up and start attacking the forces around them. they're hell cannons ffs!
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Re: [SPOILERS] FATE OF HIGH ELF HEROES

#10 Post by Dargon »

Arondight wrote:If this is canon, then Mythic and EA just earned the wrath of an angry fangirl.
Definately not canon, not even close.

Think of this as being no different than if you chose to field these characters in a huge game of tabletop. If you happen to get these characters killed on the tabletop, it doesn't become canon. Even if these characters happen to die in the pages of a White Dwarf battle report, odds are their deaths and the circumstances won't become canon.

Warhammer Online is a completely independant world, despite it's many similarities to the places and characters we are familier with. Think of it as a parallel universe, where Mythic can put together a huge "what if" scenario, without the slightest effect on the canon of the Warhammer World.

Just a thought...
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#11 Post by Crawd »

Rule #1 when a game is based on another game or movie, it won't be respected at 100%, learn to get over it...

Sorry but I'm tired of reading GW fanboys/fangirls that the fluff isn't 100% accurate. I prefer to see an independant world, like Dargon said, than the real thing otherwise you'll just kill your own fluff, just like Blizzard did with WoW. I said that Blizzard killed his own fluff and it's true, let's see how they will be able to get out of this to make a new Warcraft.

When I play WAR, I keep in mind the #1 rule and the most important rule: Having fun.
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#12 Post by Luna Guardian »

Crawd wrote:Rule #1 when a game is based on another game or movie, it won't be respected at 100%, learn to get over it...
I could live with it and get over it were the lore even 60% correct! It's probably less than 50% correct! In fact, it IS less than 50% correct!
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#13 Post by Sfinx »

I haven't gotten the game yet.. I agree with the previous statements about non-canon, but.. Would anyone care to post, in a similar spoiler-protected fashion, what happens to other races' special characters (besides Archaon)? Just for comparison. My tin foil hat is detecting another go at the forces of Order!
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#14 Post by Ruerl Khan »

Crawd wrote:Rule #1 when a game is based on another game or movie, it won't be respected at 100%, learn to get over it...

Sorry but I'm tired of reading GW fanboys/fangirls that the fluff isn't 100% accurate. I prefer to see an independant world, like Dargon said, than the real thing otherwise you'll just kill your own fluff, just like Blizzard did with WoW. I said that Blizzard killed his own fluff and it's true, let's see how they will be able to get out of this to make a new Warcraft.

When I play WAR, I keep in mind the #1 rule and the most important rule: Having fun.
Thats a silly statement, and a bad comparison.

While we agree that say, blizzard changed their backgrund fundementally from warcraft 1 to wow, the same can be held between warcraft 1 and 2, or warcraft 2 and 3 (the example on how Gul'dan dies is completly rewritten), the differences grows smaller after each game though, making the present game (wow) somewhat stable fluff wise, ie. they haven't sought to break the fluff even more, except with the inclusion of the spacegoats.

Its no excuse though, and its no excuse for GW to be so lax with their licence of their IP, nor is it an excuse for mythic to be so lax in implementing it, its not so much that the high elves die (Caradryan has a pretty cool death from my POV), its all the other things they completly change that combined with the plot characters dying mess it completly up.

Such as the claim that no high elf would worship khaine, or allowing say dwarves run through the inner kingdoms such as Caledor, those are in conjunction with the others, what can ruin a game, furthermore not taking the warhammer hobby to its full extent is silly, it could be a perfectly good game by only having two sides, ie. orcs and humans, and then the other races could, and should, have been added as -independent- factions, the whole "split em up in two camps" just does'nt fit the setting and its been seen before, if Mythic want to capture and audience, they need to do more than say what blizzard (world of warcraft), Funcom (age of conan) and Sony entertainment (everquest 1+2) has done so far.

The last expansion of wow is a good example of a game who takes competition serious enough to get inspired and steal ideas from other games, the last game is ripe with things inspired from age of conan -not from warhammer age of reckoning, why? Because there is little new there.

Be tired all you want of the "fanboys" but without those fans, the game dies, an MMO relies on a massive amount of players, if these players don't get something credible, they'll find another place to spend their money.
So no, this is not about "learning to get over it" its about paying money for a product, and someone failing to deliver it properly, and the result will be another game that we'll see as dead as the fimirs and zoats given a few years, where i'll predict that WOW will still be in buisness, perhaps as WOW2.
-why? Because they know how to avoid pissing down the backs of so many players at once.
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#15 Post by Crawd »

Ruerl Khan wrote:Thats a silly statement, and a bad comparison.

While we agree that say, blizzard changed their backgrund fundementally from warcraft 1 to wow, the same can be held between warcraft 1 and 2, or warcraft 2 and 3 (the example on how Gul'dan dies is completly rewritten), the differences grows smaller after each game though, making the present game (wow) somewhat stable fluff wise, ie. they haven't sought to break the fluff even more, except with the inclusion of the spacegoats.
Humm.. no it's not a bad comparaison. Tell me where, from Warcraft Lore, C'thun and his "Zerg" came from? Nowhere! I'll keep with the AQ dungeon because it's one of the first biggest mistake of Blizzard to break is own lore since it seems to came from StarCraft, which isn't supposed to be in the same years of Warcraft, why the heck are the Alliance and the Hordes were "fighting" hands in hands against this invasion? It's totally fluff breaking.

Oh and Jaina Proudmore city was supposed to accept every members of the Hordes (except the undead) and yes I know that if a player was attacking a horde player, she starts attacking him but the entire town is supposed to follow Jaina Proudmore and yet, it isn't the case.

Let's see, the Blood Elves with the Horde, isn't that the same Blood Elves that was following Prince Kael'Thas Sunstrider, Lord of Quel'Thalas who worked with Illidan and the naga? Yes they are, what's the reason of the Blood Elves joining the Hordes? It's really a random bs, because all they want to do is returning in the Outland because of their addiction to the magic. Oh and speaking of their addiction, I still remember that Blizzard's reason to give Blood Elves the Paladin was they drop their magic addiction and pray the light.

I'm skipping a whole lot of bs facts because it's a little off-topic, but I just wanted to tell that no Blizzard haven't respected his own lore in WoW, I didn't care when I was playing it because I had fun, which is the most important thing for a game. Now, I like WAR because it's fun, I don't even care about the Lore of WAR because they change it in the actual games too.
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#16 Post by Dargon »

Ruerl Khan wrote:-why? Because they know how to avoid pissing down the backs of so many players at once.
I guess the big question then, is how could Mythic have created Warhammer Online without making the compromises they did?

I'm not a fan of changes to established background, but for my part, I'm willing to accept (or ignore :wink: ) most cases that I've encountered so far. The big stuff, the important stuff, Mythic seem to have gotten right. The game plays really well. The look and feel of the visual identity of Warhammer is fantastic (there's no question that everything you encounter - buildings, monsters, machines - is Warhammer). The atmosphere and style of the game (with heavy focus on PvP) is well done - they definately captured the feeling that "War is Everywhere".

The other stuff, you face the problem of compromise.

In the case of Dwarfs stepping in the inner kingdoms of Ulthuan, it's likely a case of either engineering a scenario whereby Finubar is desperate enough to allow foreigners on his soil... or not have Ulthuan in the game at all, since there's no way that Mythic could justify investing time and expense into designing game maps that are only ever limited to only a small percentage of ingame population. In this case, they chose the former, because people WANT to be able to see the sights that they've previously only read about - what's the point of creating a Warhammer MMORPG if you can't explore the cities of the Elves, Dwarfs, and yes, even Empire.

Likewise with special characters, it's a case where poeple WANT to be able to meet heroic allied characters they already know, and challenge the familiar heroic enemy characters of the opposing realms to bring them down (just like in Warhammer). Players would feel a bit cheated if the heroic characters could conveniently escape their deathblows. The way the game is set up, it is again an either-or scenario - either the famous characters are in the game and can be attacked/defeated, or not in the game at all.

The crazy Dwarf mount, again a compromise. The game demanded a mount for the Dwarfs to travel more quickly, so Mythic had to make something up (at least they didn't mount the Dwarfs on a live animal). This was the best compromise Mythic could come up with (they tried a tractor-type thing, but it wasn't well recieved).

Plot type deviations from established background, I pretty much ignore. There is no plot, there can't be. Warhammer online is a static environment frozen in a constant loop. Characters will be back no matter how often you kill them. Cities will remain no matter how often they are captured and ruined. Warcamps will hold out indefinately against endless assaults and never be overrun. Mythics version of the Warhammer World (kinda just like the tabletop Warhammer World :wink: ) is frozen into a specific moment in time as our characters walk around in it. I ignore any attempt on Mythic's part at plot, because without progression there isn't a plot, just a scene. I don't have any experience with other MMO's, but based on the mechanics of Warhammer Online, I have to agree with VictorK - "An MMO is a piss-poor medium for telling a story".

I'd genuinely love to know how Mythic (or any company for that matter) could make an MMORPG in the warhammer world while genuinely staying true to the background. How would the ideal Warhammer MMORPG work?
(Assume hypothetically that WAR were to actually last long enough to be worthy of a sequel, and the designers get to start over from scratch)

Just a thought...
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#17 Post by VictorK »

Ruerl Khan wrote:While we agree that say, blizzard changed their backgrund fundementally from warcraft 1 to wow, the same can be held between warcraft 1 and 2, or warcraft 2 and 3 (the example on how Gul'dan dies is completly rewritten), the differences grows smaller after each game though, making the present game (wow) somewhat stable fluff wise, ie. they haven't sought to break the fluff even more, except with the inclusion of the spacegoats.
No, comparing the development of Warhammer to Warcraft is a bad comparison. You can't compare the development of fluff for a video game, which became a video game in a different genre, to the fluff for a tabletop wargame with deep roleplaying roots developing into an MMO. Warcraft was always under central control, it was always designed to be dynamic, it was always designed to be what it is today, a video game with a rich but mutable background which is designed to sell a central product.

Warhammer fluff is designed to sell armies. You don't buy Warhammer the game, you buy the HE army, the Empire army, the Chaos army. It has to all fit together, but the background of Warhammer is designed to give each race its own unique background with its sacred objects, like Karaz-a-Karak, the leader hero, or the Inner Kingdoms, which are to remain inviolate. That doesn't work in an MMO. Dargon's analysis is dead on, Mythic made a pretty damn good Warhammer MMO. They didn't make Warhammer, they made a Warhammer MMO.

You need to understand this, Ruerl. It fundamentally changes the fluff dynamic. Warhammer purely ported over without alteration doesn't work, it was never meant to.
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#18 Post by DarkTyrany22 »

Honestly this sounds more like a protest against MMOs than WAR as a game. This is how MMOs are. Dargon and Vic are absolutely right in my opinion...

Personally it wouldn't bother me at all, for the same reasons Dargon said. It's just like playing a game of Warhammer online, but of course with a different style/premise. Special Characters die... sorta?

Not only that, but it's how they move the story/plot (or whatever you want to call it) along. There's only so far you can go without including SCs in the plot.
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#19 Post by Ruerl Khan »

VictorK wrote:No, comparing the development of Warhammer to Warcraft is a bad comparison. You can't compare the development of fluff for a video game, which became a video game in a different genre, to the fluff for a tabletop wargame with deep roleplaying roots developing into an MMO. Warcraft was always under central control, it was always designed to be dynamic, it was always designed to be what it is today, a video game with a rich but mutable background which is designed to sell a central product.
Go re-read my post please and look at what the essence of my post where, it was'nt a comparison of warhammer the tabletop game and warcraft the strategy game, it was a critism of warhammer online and its methods, it was a critism of lack of ability to learn from the mistakes other MMO's make, thats what I where writing about, MMO's, not video games or tabletop games.

If you want to flaunt someone for making a mistake in bringing in the comparison in the first case, then please read up and you'll see who I quote in the first post I make in this thread.
VictorK wrote:You need to understand this, Ruerl. It fundamentally changes the fluff dynamic. Warhammer purely ported over without alteration doesn't work, it was never meant to.
I understand it perfectly Victor I just disagree with it, and in this case your statement as well. You need to understand that to understand my arguments instead of just assuming that i'm not understanding the concept.

I do, as I repeat in other places in this post, accept that some changes are necessarry when you translate the background of a tabletop game onto an MMO, but I still disagree with their translation on several key points, such as altering things that was unecessarry to alter and forcing everything into two sides instead of grasping the oppertunity of having more than two sides.
Dargon wrote:I guess the big question then, is how could Mythic have created Warhammer Online without making the compromises they did?

I'm not a fan of changes to established background, but for my part, I'm willing to accept (or ignore :wink: ) most cases that I've encountered so far. The big stuff, the important stuff, Mythic seem to have gotten right. The game plays really well. The look and feel of the visual identity of Warhammer is fantastic (there's no question that everything you encounter - buildings, monsters, machines - is Warhammer). The atmosphere and style of the game (with heavy focus on PvP) is well done - they definately captured the feeling that "War is Everywhere".
How they could have done it differently? By keeping the game slightly smaller and putting more emphasis on other details, perhaps only starting with two races, perhaps having more than two factions, i'd like to see elves and dwarves to be in a situation where they could wage war on each other, instead of dividing it up into two sides, the old "two sides" thing is boring and it has been seen before and always ends up with someone starting to play it as the "good guys against the bad guys" wich is'nt really warhammer at all, since the "good guys" are pretty downright nasty people as well.

I'm well aware of the necessity for compromise in an MMO, you can't fully adapt a setting to a computer game, you can do it better however than what Mythic has done, and you can do your research on pretty unimportant lore details such as high elves and khaine (wich has no game technical relevance I might add), instead of writing it down wrong.

I can, though I hate to do it, accept the compromises and reasons that allows such things as dwarves into the inner kingdoms, provided that Mythic stays lazy with just two sides, but i'm having a much harder time with them writing lore down wrong on places wich does'nt affect the game mechanics at all, there is no justification for changing such after all.

That makes my two key problems with WAR the following: forced two sided system, lore changes where they are unnecessary and therefore harmfull to the overall experience of the game.
Crawd wrote:Humm.. no it's not a bad comparaison. Tell me where, from Warcraft Lore, C'thun and his "Zerg" came from? Nowhere! I'll keep with the AQ dungeon because it's one of the first biggest mistake of Blizzard to break is own lore since it seems to came from StarCraft, which isn't supposed to be in the same years of Warcraft, why the heck are the Alliance and the Hordes were "fighting" hands in hands against this invasion? It's totally fluff breaking.

Oh and Jaina Proudmore city was supposed to accept every members of the Hordes (except the undead) and yes I know that if a player was attacking a horde player, she starts attacking him but the entire town is supposed to follow Jaina Proudmore and yet, it isn't the case.
To keep this on topic, and in relation to the topic: Many of the examples you mention, are changes between warcraft 3 and wow, wich can pretty much resemble the sometimes overwhelming changes in the warhammer fluff between different edition armybooks (Bretonnians for example, used to have organ guns once upon a time), its a question on how you wish to adapt and change and develop your storyline, I believe that blizzard has kept it much more inside its own concept, wich always was -very- whacky.

And its still (imho) a silly statement you are making, you are basically stating that its acceptable to re-write the lore completly, even at the points where it has no game relevance in the form of working towards enchancing the players experience (as per Dargon's very good points), therefore the only statement I can agree, 100%, in your original post is the following: That the most important rule is to have fun.

And we agree, the fluff can't be 100% true to the original setting from wich it came, its an adaption after all, but they sure as could, and should, have worked a bit more on it.

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#20 Post by Crawd »

Ruerl Khan wrote:And we agree, the fluff can't be 100% true to the original setting from wich it came, its an adaption after all, but they sure as could, and should, have worked a bit more on it.
I just want to add something, if the fluff was being kept at 100% I doubt that players would be the "shining star" of the game. I read something, don't remember where: "Praag shouldn't be taken because Teclis should be able to free it" but if this is done, why would people play Order if Special characters would do all the job by themselves?

Anyway, it's all about everyone's opinion and there's no winner, so I'll leave it there.
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#21 Post by Eldacar »

Crawd wrote:if the fluff was being kept at 100% I doubt that players would be the "shining star" of the game.
WHFRP manages to do it quite well without radically altering anything.
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#22 Post by Luna Guardian »

Ruerl Khan wrote:A lot of relevant stuff
I agree with you here 100%, especially the two-side system. I mean, the Orcs should've gotten their own side. Just like in WoW, no one would side with the Forsaken (Well, maybe the humans of...Azeroth? )
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#23 Post by VictorK »

Ruerl Khan wrote:Go re-read my post please and look at what the essence of my post where, it was'nt a comparison of warhammer the tabletop game and warcraft the strategy game, it was a critism of warhammer online and its methods, it was a critism of lack of ability to learn from the mistakes other MMO's make, thats what I where writing about, MMO's, not video games or tabletop games.
I'm not saying that you compared Warhammer to Warcraft in their capacities as a tabletop game and an RTS. But there is a comparison between the development of the Warcraft background through the games until eventually becoming an MMO to Warhammer's leap to an MMO. You said that Warcraft accomplished a stable transition (I agree), contrasting to the "unnecessary" alterations made by Mythic. You want WAR to learn from other MMOs without imitating them, to create something new. A lot of this has to do with how Mythic managed the fluff. Our argument is that it's difficult to imagine Mythic creating a successful MMO (and they have learned a great deal from other MMOs) and keeping the fluff in tact. In this sense it's bad to compare the Warhammer to the Warcraft fluff experience because Warcraft is a unified stable product contained within one medium and accustomed to the video game dynamic, Warhammer is not. It was necessary that it changed.
Ruerl Khan wrote:I understand it perfectly Victor I just disagree with it, and in this case your statement as well. You need to understand that to understand my arguments instead of just assuming that i'm not understanding the concept.
It's your disagreement that shows you don't understand. You propose all these fixes, but none of them are successful. There's a reason companies use the two-side dynamic. We experienced that in our own campaign. You either don't understand what an MMO needs to be successful, or you don't understand the nature of the Warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.
Eldacar wrote:WHFRP manages to do it quite well without radically altering anything.
WHFRP isn't an MMO. It's not dynamic, it's not impersonal. It's a bunch of people sitting around a table who can make their own characters as important as they want them to be, it's not a standardized experience designed to accomodate millions of unique players.

Perhaps something should be clarified...the RPG at the end of MMORPG is a misnomer. It's there because your avatar levels up and has a funny name you can make up. But ultimately, what has emerged from the MMO experience through WoW and which has crystallized in WAR is that the RPG elements of an MMO are a mechanic to facilitate FPS style gameplay. Your average game of Counter-Strike has more in common with WoW or WAR than PC RPGs like Baldur's Gate. That's the dynamic that works for the majority of players, and WAR has certainly embraced that with its emphasis on PvP. It's impossible to tell a story in such a setting. It's impossible to expect that the fluff will be maintained. This is the essence of the modern, successful MMO. And it's why a lot of us who are looking for an RPG experience as I believe that many who complain about the fluff etc. are get left out in the cold.
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#24 Post by Dargon »

Ruerl Khan wrote:How they could have done it differently? By keeping the game slightly smaller and putting more emphasis on other details, perhaps only starting with two races, perhaps having more than two factions, i'd like to see elves and dwarves to be in a situation where they could wage war on each other, instead of dividing it up into two sides, the old "two sides" thing is boring and it has been seen before and always ends up with someone starting to play it as the "good guys against the bad guys" wich is'nt really warhammer at all, since the "good guys" are pretty downright nasty people as well.

...

That makes my two key problems with WAR the following: forced two sided system, lore changes where they are unnecessary and therefore harmfull to the overall experience of the game.
I can certainly understand these problems. I never caught onto the "High Elves don't worship Khaine" bit (I assume it's in one of the History & Lore tome unlocks), but I can guarantee you that I will be ignoring that one with extreme prejudice if I come across it. You have certainly sparked my curiosity to have a more indepth look through my Tome of Knowledge and see what else is written there. Where the Tome of Knowledge is concerned, I do agree whole-heartedly that there is no excuse for messing with established background if there is no gameplay related compromise attached. Even if the GW liason wasn't readily available, there are fantastic resources (like here and Bugmans for instance) that could clarify most background questions the writers might've had in mere moments.

I can likewise understand the displeasure of the two-side system. Shoe-horning disparate factions into two opposing sides has been problematic for GW in the past, and the game would certainly feel more like Warhammer if a Warband were made up of just Dwarfs (had the pleasure of this once, it was a magnificent sight), rather than the usual rag-tag mix of Elves, Dwarfs and Humans. Problem is, I can likewise understand the larger potential problems that can arise in a multi-sided system, from (as VictorK points out) our experiences with our own War of the Beard campaign on Asur.org. Given that Mythic's previous MMO, Dark Age of Camelot apparently is a 3-sided affair, I can only imagine that the designers have their reasons for limiting WAR to only 2-sides - it doesn't seem to be a case of taking the easy route at the expense of background for Mythic, since a multi-sided system is more familiar to them.

Unfortunately, I definately don't think limiting the initial game to two races would have worked, because it would have dramatically limited the market (good for background, very bad for buisness). I have avoided numerous GW computer games in the past because they didn't allow me to represent my favourite tabletop armies, and by the time expansions come along with those races included, the hype is usually gone. Dwarfs drew me to WAR, and if they hadn't been a playable race, I would have likely not picked the game up, and by the time they did arrive in an expansion a year or two down the track, it would have felt deeply daunting to join the game so late (pretty much the reason I never tried WoW). Starting with 6 different races was definately a good move on Mythic's part (even if they couldn't manage to complete them all on time).

Just a thought...
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#25 Post by Eldacar »

WHFRP isn't an MMO. It's not dynamic, it's not impersonal. It's a bunch of people sitting around a table who can make their own characters as important as they want them to be, it's not a standardized experience designed to accomodate millions of unique players.
There are campaigns (as in, official, company-released campaigns) in WHFRP that revolve around the PCs taking part in some fairly major events, in a similar fashion to how the character doing a WAR quest is taking part in a major event as a star player. My point is that WHFRP does it without changing too much, while WAR doesn't.
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#26 Post by Tahl »

The problem is that WHFRP very rarely has someone of any real importance. If a major character is involved he is likely to be put on a podium and be the only one there. This game literally lets people run around Ulthuan and as such they expect to be able to see and meet most of the characters. Not ofcourse that I agree they should get to then kill them though....
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#27 Post by Ruerl Khan »

VictorK wrote:
Ruerl Khan wrote:Go re-read my post please and look at what the essence of my post where, it was'nt a comparison of warhammer the tabletop game and warcraft the strategy game, it was a critism of warhammer online and its methods, it was a critism of lack of ability to learn from the mistakes other MMO's make, thats what I where writing about, MMO's, not video games or tabletop games.
I'm not saying that you compared Warhammer to Warcraft in their capacities as a tabletop game and an RTS. But there is a comparison between the development of the Warcraft background through the games until eventually becoming an MMO to Warhammer's leap to an MMO. You said that Warcraft accomplished a stable transition (I agree), contrasting to the "unnecessary" alterations made by Mythic. You want WAR to learn from other MMOs without imitating them, to create something new. A lot of this has to do with how Mythic managed the fluff. Our argument is that it's difficult to imagine Mythic creating a successful MMO (and they have learned a great deal from other MMOs) and keeping the fluff in tact. In this sense it's bad to compare the Warhammer to the Warcraft fluff experience because Warcraft is a unified stable product contained within one medium and accustomed to the video game dynamic, Warhammer is not. It was necessary that it changed.
Emphasis in the quote by me, to signify what I respond to

Incorrect, I stated that there are big changes from the various games before they evolve into WoW.
Incorrect, I do not say they cannot imitate, they can downright steal ideas and game mechanisms for all I care, if they work.
Incorrect, your argument -you do not speak for everyone.

Correct, it was necessarry, how they did it however was not necessarry but rather overdone, I can agree with the necessity of changes, not with the way they are pulled through.
VictorK wrote:
Ruerl Khan wrote:I understand it perfectly Victor I just disagree with it, and in this case your statement as well. You need to understand that to understand my arguments instead of just assuming that i'm not understanding the concept.
It's your disagreement that shows you don't understand. You propose all these fixes, but none of them are successful. There's a reason companies use the two-side dynamic. We experienced that in our own campaign. You either don't understand what an MMO needs to be successful, or you don't understand the nature of the Warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.
Quit that circulair argumentation please, I -do- understand, and I disagree with you, that I disagree with you does not mean that I do not understand.
It follows, from the logic of your argumentation that if I do "understand" your arguments, i'd agree, because disagreement shows lack of understanding. Therefore lack of the ability to percieve the truth as it is, ergo: your speaking the truth and those who disagree with you are just dilluded and unable to understand what your saying.

-Can you see why I get slightly annoyed at this? Quit your petitio principii, its beneath you, and simply understand that the reason I disagree with you, is because I have a different opinion, not lack of understanding.

Especially, since your statement above rather clearly shows that you don't understand my arguments, or ignored them completly
VictorK wrote:We experienced that in our own campaign. You either don't understand what an MMO needs to be successful, or you don't understand the nature of the Warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.
1) Those campaigns where a) having a different audience b) a much smaller audience. It therefore follows that your campaign is a bad basis for comparison.
2) The criteria that I do not understand what an MMO needs to be successful.
3) The criteria that I do not understand the nature of the warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.

Firstly: 2) and 3) are not mutually exclusive, I can understand the warhammer fluff and understand the requirements for an MMO to have success.
Secondly: I never stated that it should be "translated perfectly into a successful MMO model", i'm not an utopist I do know the difference between the real world where cash makes things run around and the tabletop game wich caters to a slightly different audience to put it mildly.

on 2) To put it in simple terms, for an MMO to have success it needs to be able to be financially viable, that means attracting thousands of players and keeping them there, to do so there are a multible different things for the game designers to keep in mind, to name but a few: graphics, design, music, gameplay, difficulty, accessability (how easy is it to get the game and keep paying for it) and pretty far down the hierachy of requirements come such a thing as the worlds background -its still on the list of requirements, but many MMO players won't care much if its warhammer or not, many MMO players will in fact be utterly uncaring about anything but the other more basic factors, many of them won't even be roleplayers and its mainly for role players that such a thing as a consistent background setting is important.
Roleplayers does not take up a majority of the games custemors, therefore it logically follows that this aspect is downplayed compared to the others.

However, this does not mean that a game designer should skip or directly change things if they take from a given setting, if they do that they scare a part of their potential custemors (the roleplayers) away, and while they (the roleplayers) may not be a majority, they are still a serious cash income, otherwise you would not find servers specifically marked for RP (roleplay).

It thereby follows, that a game designer has it in his best interest, to try and stick to the lore he's adapting into a game, at least from a financial perspective, Mythic has to my observations failed in this, they have delivered a game wich relies more on making it epic than making it good, more focused on the grand events than on character development, i've seen a screenshot on this forum of a level 9 great unclean one.
If players allready kill such things at that level, then I wonder how the game will be able to feel increasingly grand when you rise in the levels, without it being absurd?
This is one of the places where I believe that Mythic may have failed, there is a very good reason that most other games don't allow you to start as "archmages" to name but one thing.

To sum up my opinion: I believe that Mythic has failed in their translation, not that they should'nt have done one when transferring a tabletop game to an MMO, but rather they should have evaluated some of their aspects differently, and perhaps cut a bit of the present content out to have the rest interacting in a smoother way.
And they should send whoever was responsible for writing the text fluff to a penal regiment.
VictorK wrote: It's impossible to tell a story in such a setting. It's impossible to expect that the fluff will be maintained. This is the essence of the modern, successful MMO. And it's why a lot of us who are looking for an RPG experience as I believe that many who complain about the fluff etc. are get left out in the cold.
WRONG!
You -can- tell a story in such a setting, and you should give the players the option of following it while also allowing them to ignore the story as fits their style of play.
Age of Conan has some great examples of telling a story, while also making it fully possible for you to utterly ignore it.

Its possible, and not even hard, to tell a story with such a game, in fact one of the great strengths of MMO's are that they can tell multible stories at the same time, telling the story not just through text but through visual effects as well, in that regard they are closer to a theather than to a FPS, because the result tend to be given to a certain degree, especially when it comes to such things as quests.

Only aspect that is partially impossible to make a story for is the "successfull" PvP experience as you would find it in say a "battleground", but such ones are also taking place within their own domain within the MMO, the MMO as a type of game, are more than just that, and more than just PvP.
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#28 Post by Eldacar »

Tahl wrote:The problem is that WHFRP very rarely has someone of any real importance.
Campaigns in WHFRP can include things like destroying a cult in Middenheim, saving the entire city and gaining the favour of Ulric. They also deal with stopping a rampaging Daemon from laying waste to Nuln. Or rescuing Talabheim from the armies of Skaven. One doesn't always need to meet the leaders (though you can run into characters like the Elector Counts or Patriarchs of the Imperial Colleges, certainly) in order to create a suitably "epic" adventure in the WH world. Ergo, the concept that you have to have Teclis in order for something to be important is flawed.
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"Think of the Loremasters as irresponsible parents. VictorK is the one you need to talk to if you want permission for something, I'm the evil parent that says 'no' and Eldacar is your grumpy grandfather who fought in some war and is scary and authoritative." ~Ruerl Khan

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#29 Post by faile »

Mythic didn't edit the Lore, they completely butchered it IMHO...

Litrally I have no problem with characters dieing BUT making the High Elves seem worse of than they where in the Sundering (playing the High Elf campaign is depressing at times). Our citizen levy is non-existant (most elves who are not soldier classes are turned into flower picking pansies)

I've done what High Elves are not supposed to do and visited the White Tower.. it's immense but there is not even a lore unlock for High Elves that visit it. And it's in Dark Elf lands.

our great bastion in the sundering Tor Achare (described inthe High Elf army book on page 7) is a collecetion of three towers, no walls a fountain and a few white lion guards, not exactly our great fortress city. And AGAIN it's in Druchii controlled lands.


The fact is that there was a huge destruction Bias during the development, just look at the production podcasts, it's all about WAAARGH and such. Our classes look unfinished and rather boring (some of the simple graphical bugs are shocking).

but the problem is all I want to see is us fighting back, possibly a counter-assault into the druchii lands. I don't know. But currently the high elves have lost 90&% of landmarks and are living in Tents... :roll:
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#30 Post by Malhandir's Feed »

So, all the cool High Elves die except Tyrion. What Dark Elves die? Malekith and his mom?
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