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Today’s Edition Of Developer vs Developer (DvD)
I’m trying to cut down on the Warhammer stories, really, but then I see links to media interviews or posts and I can’t help myself. It’s got all the drama of Dawn, but surrounding an actual fun game. How can a blogger resist! Anyway, in today’s media clipping, Mark Jacobs smacktalks back at the Blizzard boys.
Do you believe Blizzard’s plan to introduce open world PVP into World of Warcraft is an attempt to position themselves against WAR?
Oh absolutely. I think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You have a game that’s been out for four years, they’ve never put in world PVP like ours, they’ve never been able to level through PVP like in ours.
I think it’s absolutely a reaction to Warhammer. It wasn’t like all of a sudden the idea of open world PVP or levelling through PVP came into their heads and went ‘nobody’s ever done this before’. I don’t think it was accidental that they’re talking about doing it when Warhammer comes out. Four years and suddenly, miraculously, at the same time Warhammer comes out that’s when they start talking about these things… I think it was Jeff Kaplan who said they like to look at other games and learn from them – well, I’m flattered.
He’s right, of course (smacktalk based on truth is always the best smacktalk!) Considering that Blizzard’s designers were avid DAOC players, this isn’t precisely a new development. And hey, if Blizzard takes one of Warhammer’s best features (levelling in PvP from level 1) I’m all over that.
Until they nerf death knights. Which you know is going to happen sometime in January, right? Just checking.
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about 1 year ago
I remember a time when WoW was promising city sieges and world PvP and it was 2002 ish if I recall correctly.
City sieges were removed due to server lag that was through the roof and the world PvP methodology for leveling was removed because it was abused to the point of intolerable.
At least that is how I humbly remember it.
about 1 year ago
If WAR was doing as well as Mark wanted he would be too smug for these comments, but the truth is the population is already starting to break down and he’s panicking. Aligning himself against his OWN DESIGNERS in the F13 forums is worst thing I have ever seen a developer do in a public arena of discourse and it has to have annihilated what little morale that place has left. Way to play that fiddle in the Roman flames, Nero.
about 1 year ago
anyone remember the lagfest in Southshore/Tarren Mills during the world pvp times? Insane.
I’d settle for just no more crashing to desktop in Warhammer! Thanks, latest patch.
about 1 year ago
Here’s another funny detail from that interview: “Since we released we’ve done patches every week but we have a big one going in late fall, which will have two of the classes we cut out in July, new content, all sorts of stuff. That’s one of the ways we’re going to respond.”
But if you look back at the State of the Game address release just last week, he said this: “I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR.”
Is December late fall? Or did they make a lot of progress on the new classes over the weekend?
about 1 year ago
After doing some research, apparently winter doesn’t start until the end of December? Oh well, I guess I am wrong.
about 1 year ago
It’s too bad that MJ didn’t do what Jeff Kaplan apparently does, and look at other games and learn from them. Like, say, World of Warcraft. I hear that one’s popular with the kids.
/all too easy
about 1 year ago
Will DK’s have precasting? If so, I am in!
about 1 year ago
“Is December late fall? Or did they make a lot of progress on the new classes over the weekend?”
Yes, Fall ends December 20th and winter starts December 21st. Mark Jacobs is not an idiot.
about 1 year ago
There were open world pvp objectives in plan for the release version of wow, and so were in the alpha test files. Fyi.
Anyways, I think they can do it better than Mythic did, who all think DaoC was the pure goddess of all mmo games there are. It wasn’t. It was the game always second to EQ.
about 1 year ago
wantordertanksnowplzkthxbai
about 1 year ago
world pvp will be cool as long as it has some way to contain lags. It is like most other software, features are good till they start to affect performance.
about 1 year ago
And dear god does it affect performance. i just bought a 2k dollar PC and a keep siege can start to make my framerate suffer.
bigger issue is the fact that as soon as any WB I am in hits a keep and starts to meet player resistance it quickly devolves in to chaos, and everybody starts whining about wanting to go to a different keep that is unprotected….yay for PvP?
about 1 year ago
Oh and to put that performance issue in better perspective it drops my frame rates at a relatively low resolution for a high end PC (1280×1024)
about 1 year ago
I’d say it was a reaction to both WAR and AoC, since both talked about having their endgame be about sieging. Just AoC didn’t actually have and endgame, but at the time Blizzard put out a press release over a year ago stating they were going to have world pvp with capturable objectives and siege engines (that move!
), no one knew that.
Of course, just like the Destro overpopulation, on every WoW PVE server, Alliance will dominate until Horde won’t even bother. It’s so ridiculous they even are trying this since they already know Horde ignores Halaa and every other capturable objective on every pve server due to the imbalance.
about 1 year ago
Yeah they had it in alpha, but they scrapped it and I doubt they seriously considered adding it in until they saw two MMOs predicted to be huge both had it and were coming out this year.
about 1 year ago
Devolve into Chaos, eh?
about 1 year ago
“Will DK’s have precasting? If so, I am in!”
They start out with Fourzors Hallies.
about 1 year ago
While a bit of candor from a developer is nice, why does Mythic employ all of these community relations people if MBJ is just going to communicate directly with the community so often?