Howdy ya’ll,
Well it has been quite the beta already and the team at BioWare has been quite busy as of late. Currently, there is a total of 10 Heroes for us to choose from and last week we received a couple of new skins for our friends Drulg (The Fatman) and Bax. However there has still been some complaining by many since this beta began about the pricing of champs. So today I will be laying out the basics to the pricing scale for you, and exactly how long it takes to purchase a champ if farmed in the most efficient and cost effective manner.
To start off, we have the basic prices of all champs being 30,000 gold and our friend Glowgob (the Shaman Healer) at a steeper price of 60,000 gold. The pricing scale is attacked on a daily basis due to the steeper price of the one and only team healer. This has been an interesting concept for the game. As many of you know, it is tough to find a healer in an online game because players are attracted to numbers, and killing. So players usually stray away from being the healer and instead brown nose the few players who enjoy healing. As a veteran gamer, I have seen this occur time and time again in every single PVP game over the last dozen or so years. So why all of a sudden are players in this game crying about wanting to heal? The absolute best answer that I have come up with is the age old supply versus demand concept.
If you make something more difficult to obtain, then more times than not, it makes that something more valuable or desirable. Thus the reason players are screaming out of their mind for lower prices on the games current healer.
Sadly there are currently no Dwarves in Wrath of Heroes, but our hint has come.
– – – > H I N T < – – –
As you see in the picture above, our loveable goblin shaman is being held captive by the classic Iron Breaker / Rune Priest combo. Our little shaman has it wrong though. Unlike many of our fellow gamers, our lil’shaman is screaming WAAAGH instead of Waa. See like the Shaman, I have discovered the math behind obtaining a healer in Wrath of Heroes. So in the words of our Beloved Shaman Glowgob, ‘‘Ere We Go!’
Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes Price Scale.
|
“The White Lion” |
“The Black Orc” |
“The Juggernaut” |
“The Bright Wizard” |
|
“The Shaman” |
“The Gutter Runner” |
“The Sorceress” |
“The Mercenary”
|
|
“The Vampiress” |
“The Marauder” |
There you have it… Each current Heroes’ pricing laid out with links to each hero and through those links are all of the juicy tidbits of information on them, as supplied by the team at Bioware.
So you now may be wondering the same as most gamers testing out Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes. What is up with the high prices and how do we afford them? How do we survive while on our journey to obtain the gold necessary to purchase those amazing Heroes that will help us dominate on the battlefield?
The answer is simple… Join up with your buddies or make a couple in the lobby to form a warband.
Why must I make friends in a MMO and can’t I just play solo?
Yes, you can solo queue for gameplay, but the way the system works is to reward gamers who are joining as a team and who are involved in the community. When a player is solo, they tend to get smashed into the ground and quit or not communicate with others in a manner that is helpful to the team’s goal.
Onto the main reason why many of you have come to read my article on Pricing…The How to!
In Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, we are rewarded for our hard work on the battlefield with spins. To obtain spins we must meet one or many conditions for Challenges.
The Basic: All Scenario Challenges:
Win a Scenario – Your Team wins a scenario
Participate in a Scenario – You see a scenario through to the end
Queue for a Scenario in a Warband – Finish a scenario after queuing in a Warband
Place in the top 3 Scores – End up in the top 3 of the Scoreboard
Each scenario will have 2 additional challenges to meet throughout your match. These two are scenario specific and are much more difficult than the basic’s.
Mourkain Temple
10+ Captures – Capture 10 or more flags
5+ Captures in a single life – Capture 5 or more flags in a single life
Black Fire Pass
3+ Captures – Capture 3 or more runes
20+ Assists – Assist players kill 20 or more enemies
The Arena
6+ kills in a single life – Kill 6 or more players without dying
20+ kills – Kill 20 or more enemies
So just by joining a scenario and playing through until the end, participation, you earn a spin on the wheel. That’s great and where many players are getting their OMG its 200 matches to earn enough gold to buy a champ. Well, they are wrong there as well because the average earning of a single spin is currently set at 55 gold, and if you base your calculations off of this alone, then:
30,000 / 55 = 545 games
This means that if all you do in each match is join up solo, then you can earn 30,000 gold in roughly 545 games. This alone tells you that the guys crying each and every day about prices are either trolling, or just suck at math (and lazy).
So what are they forgetting and what are they doing wrong?
Well, they are basing their predictions or QQ on the basis of the only gold they can earn in game is though joining a game and earning a single spin. As you can see above, there are many different ways to earn spins to give you gold. Just by joining a warband (group) prior to queuing for a match, you have earned a 2nd spin on the wheel. So that alone cuts down on the number of games required to play in order to earn gold in your path to purchasing a new Hero.
In order to earn the next few spins, it will require you to have a bit of skill and some cooperation/teamwork with the rest of your team. As you know there are many premade groups out there and some of them can be pretty tough competitors. So winning a match is tricky, but even the losing team can have a member in the top 3.
Let’s look at those map specific challenges for a moment.
Mourkain Temple
10 captures in a match, and 5 captures in a single life. While I am not a huge fan of a certain round robin technique, that one is probably the most efficient in completing these challenges. The way you go about it is by running around the map in a group to take 4 flags prior to attacking the mid, thus making the 5 capture in a single life as the middle point. After this, it’s easy to get 5 more total captures throughout a match.
Blackfire Pass
3 captures and 20 assists are our challenges in this map. These take a bit more teamwork than the last map, but they are still possible to complete. What you do to get them easily is at the start of the map, send out 4 teammates to be offense and keep 2 on defense. The reason we do this is to make sure that we bring back a rune while keeping our starting rune safe. This can be tricky but if you attack the base to the left of your starting area, this is not only the quickest route but the safest upon return. This is because your spawn is closer to their base than their spawn, making the path shorter for you than them and quicker for your buddies to reinforce your escape path than the other team to reinforce their recapture of the rune from you.
Now that you have your two runes, you can sit back and defend them. Don’t worry; the enemy will come to get your runes. Usually one of the other two teams will get 2 runes as well and be greedy for a third, or they will both have 1 each and want a 2nd and 3rd. This is where things can also get tough. You will soon have one or both teams at your door. This also plays to your advantage because you can defend and get those beautiful assists that you so desire for a spin on the wheel. Remember its just 20 assists and that means that 20 players of the enemy team must die with you damaging them but not killing them. Playing defense means that you can quickly reinforce your base upon death as well as the other team bringing the bodies to you.
Now you may be asking, how do I get those 3 captures? This part is tricky but simple as well. You let the other team take the rune off your point but not escape the base. When they stand by the statue and begin to take your rune, they have begun a necessary process. If you were going for 3 points and a fast game then this does not work for you and you must kill them so your points continue to fly through the roof. That method is good, but you lose spins that way. So for this method you have to let them take the rune, and then kill them, grab the run and capture it again.
The Arena
This is probably the toughest map to obtain the additional challenge spins. For this map you must kill 6 enemies in a single life and 20 total enemies in the map. Since each enemy is worth 5 points and the match ends when a team hits 250 points, which means that there is only a possible 50 kills per team before someone ends the game. So for this map you must simply out kill your teammates while not allowing either of the two other teams to out kill your team. You can however easily earn 6 kills each, but then no more than 1 member of the team can possibly complete the 20 kills challenge. So this one is simply kill them before they kill you and kill them before your buddy kills them. Learn to KS is my best answer to you and this skill is good to learn as well, because you must never forget that there are 3 teams in a match and If you are Orange and killing a blue guy, it won’t matter how much damage you do to him, if the green guy gets that killing blow.
One more great thing to remember about spins is that each time you login, you get to spin the wheel for bonus gold. This gold is just for logging in that day and each consecutive day that you login, earns you an additional spin. After your 6th day, you continue to earn 6 spins instead of the old method where it would reset to day one again and the average amount earned through a total of 6 spins is 450 gold, so one great method of earning gold is to make sure you login each day for those free spins. Now if you miss a day…it resets you back to spin one, which sucks but that’s why it’s a reward for consecutive logins and after all…it’s free just for logging in.
So we have out prices and our how to get spins covered, but seeing how hard it is to earn spins may have you worried still. BUT! There are still a couple of other things to consider.
SALES! SALES! SALES!
The store here in Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes is a great one because we have sales. The sales are not limited to daily ones either. The developers can sometimes change the sale hero in the middle of the day on us. This can suck at times if we are unable to catch a hero on sale, but do not worry because that hero will come on sale again soon.
How much is a sale and is it really worth waiting for?
Sales are typically 25% or more off the normal price of a Hero, so if your normal price is 30,000 gold then the sale price will typically be 22,500 gold. Since Glowgob is 60,000 gold a 25% discount brings him down to 45,000 which is a heck of a deal! This is actually a great deal because in a single week this comes out to playing about 5 days a week for 4000 gold a day, and the remaining 2,500 being awarded from the free gold from consecutive day’s logging in. Not to mention that a sale is a sale and would you want to spend more time earning for the same thing, or buy on sale and put that 25% saved from hard work towards the next hero? Me…I’d rather save 25% and put that money towards the next hero or an ornate chest.
The Simple Math of it all…
Now is the fun part…Math (EWWWWWW)
All joking aside, we have a store here in this game and we are rewarded with currency to use in that store by playing games and logging in consecutive days. Spins can suck at times because it is random, and occasionally you are set back on your quest to obtain gold by earning wooden chests in your spins. You must remember that you can sell the tactic/perk gained in the chest for experience. That and experience is necessary to level and leveling gives us more mastery points to use on our Heroes for special tactics and perks. So…chests aren’t all bad.
If we calculate out the time necessary for earning gold to purchase a Hero we come down to a basic minimum time required, or minimum number of games and/or days to login.
Sale price of a Hero is as mentioned 22,500 or 45,000 for Glowgob.
So…
1 spin average 2 spin average 3 spin average
22,500 / 55 = 409 games 22,500 / 110 = 205 games 22,500 / 165 = 136 games
45,000 / 55 = 818 games 45,000 / 110 = 409 games 45,000 / 165 = 273 games
4 spin average 5 spin average 6 spin average
22,500 / 220 = 102 games 22,500 / 275 = 81 games 22,500 / 330 = 68 games
45,000 / 220 = 204 games 45,000 / 275 = 163 games 45,000 / 330 = 136 games
Since each game takes on average 10 minutes to complete and we have an average 5 minute wait time in queue for a match with little to not loading time for games, we can easily complete 4 matches an hour. This gives us the basic math required for hours played to earn a hero.
1 spin average 2 spin average 3 spin average
409 / 4 = 102 hr 15 min 205 / 4 = 51 hr 15 min 136 / 4 = 34 hr
818 / 4 = 204 hr 30 min 409 / 4 = 102 hr 15 min 273 / 4 = 68 hr 15 min
4 spin average 5 spin average 6 spin average
102 / 4 = 25 hr 30 min 81 / 4 = 20 hr 15 min 68 / 4 = 17 hr
204 / 4 = 51 hr 163 / 4 = 40 hr 45 min 136 / 4 = 34 hr
Now that we have time required per basic spin average we can look at how many hours per week that would be to gamers. Since the gamer is different in all of us, those numbers can seem rather scary but there are still some more numbers to toss in that you will find very attractive. Since we also have 3 spins being the easiest to obtain I will now go off of those numbers for the following calculations.
Based on a 3 spin per match average
You must play 136 matches to earn enough gold to purchase a Hero on sale. This comes out to 34 gamer hours at a 4 match per hour average. This can be a lot to many because if you are a casual gamer and play an hour a day, that comes out to roughly the ability to purchase one Hero a month for an hour a day gamer. This is where most get discouraged and cry that this game is pay to win. That you must pay gems to buy the hero or increase your gold earned per game.
HOWEVER !
You cannot forget that you earn spins for each time you login to the game, which in a 30 day time period can come out to:
|
55 |
110 | 165 | 220 | 275 | 330 | 660 |
|
990 |
1320 | 1650 | 1980 | 2310 | 2640 |
2970 |
|
3300 |
3630 | 3960 | 4290 | 4620 | 4950 |
5280 |
| 5610 | 5940 | 6270 | 6600 | 6930 | 7260 |
7590 |
So if you login everyday then you will on average make 7590 gold from logins alone after 28 days. You must however keep in mind that some days you might make more or less on spins (like in game you can sometimes make a 400 on just 1 spin). So if you login everyday then in a 7 day week with 6 spins each day you will have made on average 330 a day and after 7 days you will have made 2310 from spins alone.
Coming back to the math…
22,500 – 2310 = 20,190 per week… to buy 1 Hero per week.
BUT !
Since some days you can (like I did today) make 545 on your 6 spin login…those are minimums that I have listed meaning that a gamer such as myself who plays an average of 3-4 hours a day totaling in about 12-16 matches per day or 84-112 matches a week can easily make enough gold for 1 Hero a week.
3 hours a day = 12 matches a day X 7 days = 84 matches a week X 165 gold = 13860 gold / week min
4 hours a day = 16 matches a day X 7 days = 112 matches a week X 165 gold = 18480 gold / week min
However, you must also remember the 330 a day min you earn just from logging in each day making it come out to 16170 – 20790 per week on a 3-4 hour a day gamer.
Once you get involved with friends and make warbands you increase your gold gains and can on average pull 4 spins per game easily making the number change to:
3 hours a day = 12 matches a day X 7 days = 84 matches a week X 220 gold = 18480 gold / week min
4 hours a day = 16 matches a day X 7 days = 112 matches a week X 220 gold = 24640 gold / week min
However, you must also remember the 330 a day min you earn just from logging in each day making it come out to 20790 – 26950 per week on a 3-4 hour a day gamer.
SOOOOooooo….
Now you can see the numbers behind this and how to make the gold for the purchase of 1 hero per week. Keep in mind that these are typical minimums earned per spin per game and that some spins can be as high as 400 on a single spin. In the end our bare minimum seems acceptable and further pushes the requirement to become a part of the community, join as a group, make friends, play harder, and bring on the WAAAGH!
PS- Don’t forget that you get a 50% bonus on all gold in game just by being an active Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning subscriber. Also that while this is a free to play game, you can buy gold boosts for 24 hour periods. Each Gold boost lasts 24 real hours, and costs 10 gems. 10 Gems a day = 70 a week or roughly $5.00. This doubles your gold gains and will cut time required in half. If you love RVR/PVP as much as I do…then why pay $15 a month for horrible PVP, when you could pay $15 a month for amazing 6v6v6 PVP? Not to mention….paying is an option J and paying isn’t winning… teamwork and time played is winning because skill doesn’t come from money. You could buy every hero with gems and not have the levels or mastery to buy the perks and tactics… you can even play to get them after buying the heroes. And still not have skill or teamwork… Free2Play & Play2Win.
GLHF and Eat More Cookies!
