Notum Wars: A Failure
Why? Well..... :
1) Crowd Control
2) No alliance system
3) Small guilds shafted (see 1 and 2)
I started "The Notum Wars Era" as leader of a small clan guild. We placed QL 250,150,100, & 75 towers. The 250 and 150 were in PW, the 100 in Belial, and the 75 in VW. Total active members of my guild stod at approximately 30 (Lvl 150 and above). Total members online at any given time was approximately 5-10. Well equipped to construct bases, but definitley unable to defend.
No problem, NW is where clans and omnis have truly united with orgs of their own faction. Getting clanners to come and assist us with base defense is something they are eagerly willing to do, as we were with them.......... Of course this is the case with a well-designed system that allows for proper defense of bases and offensives against bases. This is not the case in NW. I have since disbanded my guild.
Here are examples of the negative aspects I have experienced:
As a defender:
- Defending a base in 5%, unable to team clans from other orgs during mad frienzy to defend base. (see #2, #3)
- Having zone crash (PW) and base getting reset to 100%, offsetting omni efforts. (Note: was NOT scheduled to be 100%, had couple hours left till * 5% *)
- Assisting with defending other clan bases and being warped out, even tho there are only a handful of clan defending. (See #1,#3)
As an attacker:
- Continuous CC/LD loops due to being warped out of area into some other part of zone, which is already maxxed to capacity. (see #1)
- Being warped and being able to freely pvp omni who have also been warped. (see #1)
Obviously I could sit here and make those lists VERY long. The point is that as a player, I experience bugs and frustration instead of fun and enjoyment while playing a game. Games are meant to be fun ya know.. Overall I am not very optimistic that NW will be very playable anytime soon, much less in the future.
To apply an old business analogy to this: Funcom: Keep it Simple, Stupid!
Its not the players computers causing lag. It's the servers. You have only made it 1000% worse by implementing crowd control. The lag is STILL there. Instead of coming up with some elaborate system to balance battles and decrease lag, Keep it Simple, Stupid! The simple solution is a massive hardware upgrade, not the implementation of elaborate coding that only adds to the problems experienced by your customers. What has resulted is the additon of even more bugs (why do I feel like I have beta tested AO for two years now) that your customers have to deal with. Your complicated 'fixes' to a problem of lag is just not ethical. Why can't you as a company see the true weakness in its system? Your customers certainly can.
Enough is enough, fix it using the simple solution. Upgrade your hardware, implement alliances, remove crowd control, etc. Avoid the complex solutions that have been demonstrated as failures.
Laterness....