CK

@hereafter

But that's the problem. You want to give something useful to each of the bartle types... yes?

Now imagine the frustrations this pigeonholing can cause.

I'm an achiever. Do I choose scientist so I can collect every pet in the game or soldier so I can get all the trophies from the wave battle generators?

I'm a killer. Do I go for explorer path so I can find and climb all those ledges to snipe people from or for settler so I can build my own ledges? Keep in mind that killers tend to exploit every nook and cranny of the rules of the game. Anything they can get away with to get a kill...

I'm a socializer... I could go for soldier because hey nothing brings people together like public quests... or settler so I can drop quest hubs and vendors wherever I go.

I'm an explorer? Well, that's a no-brainer... although I could still go for settler so I can build crazy structures in places devs didn't think of so I can climb things and get places that even they never intended. Fall through the world's geometry for giggles. Kite monsters and get them stuck between awkwardly placed buildings "just so".

Yeah, settlers seem OP upon what I've heard. Which is admittedly not much. Hence knee-jerk reaction.

They misinterpreted some Bartle Types badly.

1. Killer: I like killing people, not grinding mobs. Why do I care about PVE grind wave battles? Give me something useful for ganking, counter-ganking, or counter-counter-ganking. The wave battle beacon sounds like something a carebear would use. Like an Achiever, because they like to brag about this PvE fight or that PvE fight.

2. Explorer: the last game that did something nice for Explorers was Rift. They had a bunch of hidden treasures you could find by walking off the map. It's a good thing they realize that Explorers want to break out of the box and need the least hand-holding to do so. Let's hope that beacon doesn't provide too much spoiling. This is probably the best fit, depending on the implementation.

3. Socializer: oh yes, housing and construction. That would fit right in with the social types... except it sounds a bit like craftsmen and economists who dominate auction houses in other games. Nothing social about price gouging and undercutting minigame. If those guys have the only access to economic structures (banking, inns, mail, etc) then holy cow do they have an iron grip on the economy.

4. Achiever: so I get buffs and pets. I get to collect things. Yeah, that's achiever material right there. Except maybe I'd want to have the soldier beacon so I could brag to my friends about the encounters I've unlocked with it... that the other achievers can't get unless they're with a soldier. That could work...

I'm a predominantly a 'killer' bartle type. And you know what? I would probably pick 'settler' if I were to play this game, so I could build a fortress somewhere unfriendly and use it as a base for ganking operations. And hope that I ruffle enough feathers that people rally up and try to take my precious fortress down, giving me something to defend. Not to mention hey economic structures, clearly OP.

So, premature knee jerk reaction and all, but it seems they really messed up on the killer path beacon.

Did they fix the interface lag yet? That was my biggest problem at launch - there was a real disconnect between my pressing buttons and actions happening on screen. And trying to fling someone with one of those knockdown abilities when running at them head on never worked... because of the movement interpolation.

Have this been addressed at all?

Here's a story from the game's start. I got my collector's edition. So I got a bunch of cosmetic in-game items.

I remember dark elves having this nasty red smear on the face as the "cosmetic" tattoo. And my swordmaster had a blindfold. Hey, cool, look at me I'm a jedi. So I ran around with that blindfold for a dozen levels or so. And then - and only then - I realized that I can't take it off! It's stuck. Funny, because when I was trying it on, I could take it on and off in the "trying it on" screen.

Ok, whatever, I submitted a ticket. By the time the ticket got back to me I wash pushing early 20's, and it was a week later. The ticket said, "can't help you, sorry".

Running around with a blindfold stopped being cool all of a sudden. Don't take me for a special snowflake, but I take my avatar's appearance seriously enough. Seriously enough to reroll, and redo those 20 levels just so that I didn't have the blindfold.

And even after, I ran around without so much as a helmet on, because I couldn't find the one I like and this game doesn't have (or didn't have at the time?) the option to turn the helmet graphics on. Don't remember having trouble tanking without a helmet...

Anyway... then all my friends quit and went back to that other game everyone plays, and I was sad. Didn't last in warhammer more than a month, but I really wanted to like that game. It did so many things right.

But it missed two big ones, like I said, the interface lag and polish. People expect wow-level in polish from mmo's these days.

I'm a game developer. I know what goes on in that box, between the CPU and RAM...

You say the machine doesn't hate you? You don't know much about computers, do you?

Computers are like wolves. They can smell your fear, your confusion. They don't like users who don't assert dominance.

Ever notice that when a computer gives crap to an average user, and then a software engineer comes along and everything is fine?

Exactly.

Next time a computer gives you crap, go to a hardware store and buy a sledgehammer. Lean it casually against the desk, and see if it dares to throw you an error again.

You'll be surprised.

180,000 bugs is not a big number for an MMO as old as WoW.

Most of them are fixed and closed, I'm sure. Say, remember an old windfury nerf? That was maybe around 50,000th bug, called something like "Windfury weapons do too much burst damage in pvp". If I were to make a wager, less than 5000 of those bugs are still being worked on, and the rest are filed away as fixed or "working as intended".

Remember that an MMO is a service, and patches and updates are a process, so there's a constant stream of bugs and bugfixes being generated by the devs and QA.