Colossal Colossus

Couple of days ago I got my first experience of fighting the Colossus in Land of the Dead. In case you’re not familiar with this particular beastie, here’s the low down. When a group successfully clears all 8 bosses in Tomb of the Vulture Lord and the PQ outside is then completed again, it activates a special public quest that has excellent rewards. With a boom the giant statue outside the tomb collapses and its colossal upper torso hits the ground. The statue's crippled remains come alive and is very, very angry. The public quest is to kill it.

It’s quality boss fight and one that I think Mythic have got very right. The boss has a range of abilities and requires certain tactics to fight, however unlike so many boss events in MMOs, it’s arranged in such a way that you can quite quickly work out what you have to do. You probably won’t beat it first time (we didn’t anyway), but unless you are special you will at least learn the fight and be confident for the next time. It’s not even vaguely tank and spank, but there’s no need to search the interweb for obscure tactics. It really is a very well presented fight.

I’m also a big fan of it as a non-instanced, community promoting fight in an RvR enabled zone. It encourages cooperation and provides natural drama. We must have had 60-100 people there, all working together and all bloody paranoid about Order turning up. The fight itself has a 15 minute timer, so we were already a little tense, but when you add the fear of your enemy faction arriving, it really does add a wonderful extra level of tension to the event... It reminded me of the dragons in DAoC or dungeon fighting in UO’s Felucca, albeit more complex boss wise.

This style of PvE event is what I would like to see more of in WAR. There’s no need to instance everything and have us buried away in dungeons. Give us more large scale PvE bosses that feel like big events when they’re activated. Use the PQ contribution system to share out good rewards (read not like the crap on lair bosses), so these events have incentive beyond the first kill. And have them in places where we have to keep our eyes open for enemies. A healthy mix of gaming excitement and paranoia please!

And now I must temper my enthusiasm with a rant...

OI MYTHIC!
Do NOT link great events like this to bug ridden bloody dungeons, where clearing it is as much about sodding luck as anything else. I posted the other day about how my return to TotVL was cancelled by bugs, well… the other guild group that went that day ALSO had to stop because of bugs. Third boss was moving with his legs inside the floor, which meant the bomb animation was not visible. Then when they wiped because of this and ran back they found the door to the boss room was locked for half the group and open for the others, so that was the end of that.

When ToTVL came out, for the first few months Kill Frenzy was one of the guilds with the furthest progress (6 boss kills quite early) into ToTVL, but then we stopped going because the bugs were so annoying. Now that we decide it must have had enough time to get sorted out, we find the opposite. It’s very hard to motivate people to go when it’s generally seen as a waste of an evening. The bosses won’t drop Tyrant because of the ridiculous loot rules (I’ve seen 4 pieces drop ever) and it will bug and screw up everything anyway.

Honestly, I have to /salute the guys that are persevering night after night to get it cleared. I can’t log on that much anyway, but even if I could… fair play to you chaps. I’ll happily fight that Colossus though ;)

Rorschach you are not

Mmmm Gud hits the nail on the head with the blog post "Maintenance mode? Absolutely incorrect".

But of course the doom callers will say the post Lokax links to is just from some community manager, so what do they know eh? Random forum troll #11678 knows much more, they have secret sources in Mythic, not that they can ever reveal them or give anything to validate their expertise. Oh, you used to work on MMOs? And that one over there is a financial expert? And chugnuts in the corner, a business analyst on Wall Street? Accurate estimates? Yeah we like those!

You know bugger all. Stop making shit up and stating it as fact.

The people stumbling across the interweb screaming "the end is nigh!" are exactly like the people with placards doing the same crap on city streets.

ToVL is STILL a buggy pain in the neck

I'm writing this while waiting for a CSR, but it's been a while so I think I'm stuffed. We wiped at the third boss and now the instance has bugged, the doors in the first room are locked and we can't back in.

It's really, really annoying. The group I'm in with tonight is mainly people that have never been here before. We were showing them how the place worked. Even after all this time, it would seem it still works "badly".

Bit like LV...

Mythic, pls give up on PvE and focus purely on RvR :P

Busy busy busy!

Been a bit slow posting this week, sorry ;)

It's all gone a bit mental trying to juggle gaming and real life, so much so that I've had little time to write anything up. Reason for this increased juggling is the quality game releases over the last few weeks. As well as WAR and EVE, I'm playing a lot of Football Manager 2010 and ofc Dragon Age Origins, both of which rock big time.

A few quick words on WAR though. After the EA layoff news, the haters have been out in force. However it's been a real pleasure to see our server staying busy and competitive, with plenty of moments this week where I got to rampage through the enemy and others where my backside was proper battered. IC and Altdorf both being sieged, still far too often, but at least it's not one side dominating.

On a slightly random tangent, I'm switching characters like a mad thing at the moment. Really enjoying Chosen, Choppa, Magus and Shaman. Shammy is my target for my 4th level 40. Everyone needs a level 40 goblin IMHO. Only problem with all these characters is I've not got an uber geared and Renown Ranked character like many folks do. The variety is cool though.

Quick update: There is a new Producer's letter out. It's a bit short, but does have a couple of goodies in it. Graphic updates, including bloom, are on there way. Not high on my priority list, but I do know people that will be very pleased about that. 3 live events over the current patch period, one of which is a new one and probably pirate themed judging by the yaarrrr...

Anyways must go, I've got Dinamo Kiev in the Champions League Quarter Finals to play.

Storm in a tea cup or turd covered fan?

Ok so what we know is:

EA have made 1500 job cuts, some of which (apparently 80) are from Mythic.

Other than that we don't know anything.

Various people who claim to have insider knowledge are saying that it's all of Mythics creative staff gone and the whole studio is now in maintenance mode. That's what they say, but there has been nothing from EA or Mythic to confirm this. They could be right, or it could be the usual shit stirring. Certainly some of the so called experts/insiders/whatever are people recognised as having an axe to grind and they've sniped at WAR with every opportunity, so whilst I'm not writing off what they say, I'm certainly not taking it as gospel either...

In fact be they good or bad, I would recommend not taking any forum "experts", bloggers or anyone stating facts seriously. Speculation and rumour, not a lot else yet.

It boils down to this: We don't know anything and will have to wait for confirmation. Not that it sounds great :P

Dragon Age Origins in one word

WIN

Mythic become attracted to Starbucks

It's waking up to that alluring coffee smell that does it...

You've probably already heard about the city changes, but if not go read this post on the official Mythic forums.

It's a decent sticky plaster fix and makes perfect sense as something they could quickly do. Long term, as Mythic themselves acknowledge in that post, they need to be (and are) doing more, but this works for me now. I liked both those scenarios and I'm very happy about the siege length reduction. Sure it doesn't fix how regular sieges are, but at least they won't be ruining my whole night anymore.

However the thing I like best about this is the simple fact that Mythic are not waiting for the 1.3.3 patch, instead they are promptly implementing much needed changes and in a considered manner. Think back a few months and there is no way we would have seen Mythic do something like this, knowing better they would have ignored player concerns, or at the very least been extremely slow to act on them.

I've stated my concern a few times lately; if the city crap was left for too long it would totally distract from the massive performance improvements in 1.3.2. It's very important that when a patch makes things go tits up that Mythic act fast and don't let the rot set in. Looks like Mythic have realised this too.

GJ chaps.