RIP Armored Warfare, Road to Unicum is Back

Posted on 2017 February 16 by Ed Park — 6 Comments

As you may have heard, game publisher Mail.Ru is pulling the plug on Armored Warfare (AW) game developer Obsidian Entertainment (OEI) and taking the development effort in-house.

This is rather unfortunate, as I had a positive impression of OEI and thought they were heading in the right direction with Balance 2.0, which was a major rework of many mechanics, including normalizing damage based on gun caliber and normalizing HP based on size/weight to prevent power creep across tiers, plus positive changes to create better balance among classes.

Mail.Ru doesn’t seem to understand the Western market (EU/NA), so I have no confidence Mail.Ru will meaningfully improve AW.

Beyond that, switching development teams always creates massive churn, partly because the new team doesn’t know the existing code base and architecture intimately, and partly because people always want to change something to fit their particular vision.

I wanted to share two things with you:

  1. My AW clan leader Gatortribe posting an in-depth writeup on what happened with AW. It’s a fascinating read
  2. I went back to World of Tanks (WoT) several weeks ago

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Posted in Armored Warfare, Game Design, PVP, World of Tanks

Interview with My.com Senior Producer Josh Morris on Armored Warfare at GDC 2016

Posted on 2016 March 19 by Ed Park — 33 Comments

I sat down with Josh Morris at Game Developers Conference 2016 for an hour to discuss all things Armored Warfare (AW).

Josh is the Senior Producer at My.com and previously worked at Wargaming for three years as NA Producer for World of Tanks (WoT).

We covered a wide range of topics, including tank balance, PVP and PVE evolution, determining how modern tanks should work in-game, and matchmaking. Warning, very long wall-of-text incoming :)

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Posted in Armored Warfare, Business Analysis, Game Design, Interview, PVE, PVP

“The Art of Warfare” Guides & Tank Reviews for Armored Warfare

Posted on 2015 October 20 by Ed Park — 18 Comments

Last updated: 2016 November 8, Patch 0.18.

Following in the footsteps of my “Road to Unicum” series for World of Tanks (WoT), I’ve started a video series called “The Art of Warfare” for the tank shooter Armored Warfare (AW).

In “The Art of Warfare” videos, I discuss the mechanics of various tanks, how I’m reading each PVP battle as it unfolds, and key decisions and mistakes. My hope is that these videos meaningfully help players improve their gameplay.

Taugrim's PVP Stats in Armored Warfare

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Posted in Armored Warfare, Guide, PVP, Video, World of Tanks

ArenaNet Executes a Deft Recovery for Heart of Thorns With F2P and Raid Annoucements

Posted on 2015 August 30 by Ed Park — 16 Comments

ArenaNet (AN) just executed one of the most deft and savvy recoveries I’ve seen in addressing player angst about an upcoming expansion.

In January, AN announced the Heart of Thorns (HoT) expansion for Guild Wars 2 (GW2). There was much rejoicing.

In June, AN announced that HoT would cost the same to purchase for existing players and for new players. There was much outrage – check out the Reddit thread Don’t Pre-Purchase Heart of Thorns. The GW2 community understandably felt unappreciated for their loyalty.

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Posted in Business Analysis, Game Design, Guild Wars 2, PVE

WildStar (Finally) Going F2P

Posted on 2015 May 28 by Ed Park — 32 Comments

Two notable MMORPGs launched in 2014 with subscription models: Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) and WildStar. Four months ago, Bethesda Softworks announced that ESO was going B2P (buy-to-play). Today, Carbine announced that WildStar is going F2P (free-to-play).

For whatever reason, game developers have been painfully slow on the uptake that gamers do not like subscription MMORPGs. The only sub-based MMORPG that has been able to maintain a meaningful playerbase is World of Warcraft (WoW).

WoW is in the unique position of having a huge amount of polished content and a huge community, which are barriers to exit for existing players. That is, players have invested so much into WoW and their characters / guilds / community that they stick around, even though that requires a subscription. As I’ve said previously, even Blizzard would struggle to replicate the success of WoW in a new subscription-based MMO, and Blizzard has pursued non-subscription models for their recent new releases.

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Posted in Elder Scrolls Online, Game Design, Guild Wars 2, WildStar, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft
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