So I caught a certain nugget from MMO-Gamer.com’s recent interview with Josh Drescher that really caught my attention and eased a concern I’d had about the direction RvR had been headed in. As you may recall, the Warhammer team had been going more towards the instanced route when it came to RvR. That was really going to be the main vehicle for RvR. Which for a DAoC lover like me, was a bit depressing. I really loved the open world RvR with objectives out in the world. Instanced RvR smacked too much of WoW battlegrounds to me, and although I had a bit of fun in those, they really aren’t my favorite way to pvp.
So it was great to hear Josh say the following about RvR, and how they’ve been spending some of their beta-downtime to focus on that aspect of the game:
A good example would be persistent world RvR, where we really had initially focused very, very heavily on the instanced scenario RvR combat, and players enjoyed the scenarios, they’re really well-balanced, and they’re all cool and full of vistas and interesting stuff like that, but at the end of the day there’s something really strong to be said for moving through the persistent world and not knowing if I run through this occupied city, are there five guys in there that are going to try and kill me, or are there fifty guys in there that are going to try and kill me?
There’s something exciting and engaging about that, and as a result we’re really going to try and emphasize that side of the game a lot more, kind of bring in a little bit more of the Camelot feel, where in the open world RvR there are actual places that you can take and hold, things that have more meat to them, instead of just, “Congratulations! You’ve run through the city and touched three points, and now you control the city for five minutes.”
Awesome. I think this is totally the right way to go with RvR. Should there be some instances? Absolutely. It’s fun to have a balanced setting with a limit to team size and a timed objective. But for me, world RvR is where the fun is really at. No worries about queues, no worries about cross-server nonsense (which in my opinion destroys the community of the server). I’m very, very glad to see them setting a reverse course on this and going back the other way a bit more. Again, they listened to their beta community and I think the community got this one right. Can’t wait to try it! 
Entries (RSS)