TW MP vs Blizzard RTS MP

[Nobunaga]

TW vs SC/WC3/SC2 ...

What do you think? What is the better/deeper MP experience?

My experience with TW MP is limited however I played all of blizzard RTS titles (SC/WC3/SC2).

[Magyar Khan]

pooff thats an odd question to compare these..... so very different in aims... i like wc3 and the maps.... very well balanced... esports-worthy

[Nobunaga]

pooff thats an odd question to compare these..... so very different in aims... i like wc3 and the maps.... very well balanced... esports-worthy

well both are "RTS" games ... and yeah WC3 is awesome :)

[Swoosh So]

I never liked these 1 man unit games just never got into them, i prefer to have a bunch of men in the unit like in totalwar. Im sure ofc tho if blizzard stepped into the arena with a game similar to the totalwar series they would beat CA hands down on the multiplayer side. How could they not it would be beta tested by the community something which every good mp game needs. What CA need to do if they dont want open betas with the community involved is really get stuck into the forums about what the players are saying about mp and start talking with top players from the current game and past games. Ive no doubt if one any of my MP friends were involved in mp totalwar design it would be alot better if ofc their opinions were heard.

[pevergreen]

As a pretty heavy user of battle.net and bnet 2.0, it is going to be far above anything CA puts out. SC2 is just beautiful in how it runs. The only downsides are hopefully going to be changed, a few are confirmed as changing, but the custom maps are still...eugh. Wc3 did them better.

[Togakure]

One thing that can be compared is the communication/community interface. On the old Bnet Diablo 2 LoD for instance, there is no "master" foyer, but a number of public channels. When you log in you are automatically routed to one and can change to another easily, or create your own by simply clicking a button and typing a name. Communication in the channel you're in is just type, hit enter, and everyone in the channel sees your message in the scrolling box, just like the old TW foyer. You can mute and do a number of other functions (add/remove friends, etc.) from the command line. You can also talk to anyone you know anywhere on Bnet (via their ID) via command line strings (e.g. m myfriendsID what is the game name and password you are in now?).

This system is ancient and works pretty well. I'm sure they divide the channels up to distribute the server workload due to the large number of people online playing. Even though TW will probably never have the numbers that bnet has, this is something that CA has to consider about a single foyer, etc..

There are also custom channels created and used by clans, with moderators who can kick, and bots that be programmed to provide information. All you have to do is know the channel name to go to one. Mods can ban you from it if you become a nuisance.

One HUGE annoyance in battle.net are the prolific bots--messaging/advertising bots, farming bots, leveling bots. This would probably not be an issue in a TW game as there are no valuable resources to collect but you never know what the games will have in the future.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm curious to read about the WoW interface, as I have mercifully managed to control myself and not play that game. SC too.

[Paolai]

As a pretty heavy user of battle.net and bnet 2.0, it is going to be far above anything CA puts out. SC2 is just beautiful in how it runs.

sad but true.
Blizzard gives to his customers a real and great MP, CA doesn't.

[Magyar Khan]

i always hoped blizzard would do a tw version of their warcraft lore imagine with their resources..... but still i prefer japanese and mongols fighting

[Swoosh So]

Would be a sad day for CA if they did as CA surely couldent compete with such a large developer, but i guess CA could always keep the historical players, personally i dont care if fantasy or not as long as the era interesting to me and the multiplayer is balanced.
I stick by CA in the "hope" that they can recreate something similar to STW MP, they have drifted far from the perfect little mp game they created back then and many features have been lost, NTW somehow feels like a step back in the right direction but still has a huge amount of problems with control bugs such as the run bug (just run already!), lack of maps and user created maps from a map editor, lack of chat lobby - these are huge issues and the difference between a great and an ok totalwar game.

[Magyar Khan]

rome was dissapointed in that... but swoosh imagine that maps are all not balanced could u live with an home and away battle (2 games, each as defenber and attacker) and the game calculates the overall winner...... i think this game mode would make much more maps suitable..... with many people discovering new ways to defend or attack and new armytypes.... and purposes....

[Kocmoc]

Battlenet and the mentioned games are miles ahead from TW.

The balance, the quick patches, the tons of player, the maps.... hell, battlenet is actual working, there are tourneys.


Indeed, it is very hard to compare, but one thing for sure, blizz is really working on the MP part. On the other hand, it is very hard to turn a game like TW in something similar like WC3.
WC3 or SC2 is good balanced (SC2 need some more patches), there are many ways to counter your enemy, its a very nice teamgame and what i really love about it, you can lose a battle, but you dont lose the whole game.
You can always come back and turn the fight, thats something TW will never reach.... hard to compare.

Koc

[Paolai]

I am not talkning about blizzard's games, I am talknig about the work that blizzard put on MP. I have played about 380 SC2 matches, and just one game I had some minutes of lag...just some minutes! I never had a drop.
No lag at all means that the commands work perfectly, you just have to give to your unit a command one time...from RTW to give a commend and to be sure your unit will move where you want you have to give the command more and more time, you never know if your unit will do what you want. In NTW the same, maybe also worse.
SC2 also has a very well done ladder. Ladder for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and also 4v4. A lot of leagues. The MP its near to be perfect. Blizzard worrks on MP from years, CA...well CA I think never works on MP thats why Blizzards sells billions of copies in just few weeks.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

But is it really wise to charge money every month to play a game online? I'm not going to buy WOW, the expasions, then spend more money to play it, if I'm only going to play it a few times a week.

[AMP]

It's also a matter of taste of which you prefer. A lot of people like the starcraft,warcraft, and command and conquer style of play. I always liked more RTS games which had a unique twist of their own to them like populous, shogun, homeworld, total annihilation, and world in conflict. As long as they had a workable mp I played it cause I enjoyed the gameplay... it's a matter of taste. I had people that I've played with try and get me to hop on the band wagon and play starcarft or warcraft, but I wasn't into it as much as I was the other RTS games I was playing at the time. I played the warcraft series up to warcraft3, but it was more of an inbetween game to play until I found something I really liked.

Blizzard has a boat load of money and man power so of course they are gonna have a better MP... The TWs MP hasn't really changed much since STW days because it was all going for SP where an AI will never give a human player a real challenge without a buff to it. :O

[Tempiic]

Apples and Oranges I say.

Though with the growing progress in genetic engineering, we may be able to compare them easily soon.

Still, the balance for blizzard's RTS has been quite good as far as I can tell. Other than that, it is not really my kind of game. I like to control units instead of single thingies. And I really really like TW's major selling point of pick an army and fight with it, rather than also having to worry about economic growth. I don't feel like being a fast-click account-manager. ;) Nor do I care much for their WC lore, eventhough I did enjoy WC1, it went a bit too cartoonish for me after that. WC3 did had a real nice 'league' system at first glance, but I spend too little time to really look into it in more detail. And yes, Blizzard is way way bigger, and its own publisher too right?

AI never challenges a human player I think, unless its a nice game of chess I suppose.