Big post of rambling before going AFK

I’m going to be AFK for a week, which would have meant no posts, but thanks to the glory of iPhone I might be able to sneak in the odd post, but that may prove difficult… Still, worry not my bored at work friends! Just go check my blog roll for more WAR, MMO and other alt-tab work-time reading! ;) In the meantime I figured rather than post on a particular topic, I’d instead ramble about the various WAR related things ticking through my head and see where that takes me.

First of all we have the collision detection drama that I posted about yesterday. For good or ill, this will prove to be what 1.3.6 is remembered for. I saw this post on the WHA forums earlier which tickled me, it’s a quote from a Mythic grab-bag about friendly collision detection. LOL Poor Mythic, but that’s the curse of the internet and that special breed, the MMO gamer… if you say it, it’s never, ever forgotten. I have to say though; I agree with Mythic’s comments in that grab bag and would love to hear exactly why it was a problem then and not now. I say that without sarcasm. No, seriously, something changed their mind and would like to know exactly why.

Long term readers will know that this is not something I would say lightly, as I’m not one to go all emo-rage-quit, but there are 2 things that would make me seriously consider quitting WAR:
1 – WAR going free to play (thankfully ruled out)
2 – The PvP combat system becoming too much like World of Warcraft’s trash PvP.

As of 1.3.6 the jury is out on the second one. I’m unfortunately only little bit hopeful it will work out ok, I’ve got much louder alarm bells going off like crazy. Kiting through friendly targets, weakening of the relevance of terrain and a big step towards Zerghammer are genuine threats with this change. If Zerghammer replaces everything, then everyone will suffer and all of Mythic’s recent progress will be for naught. You may think I’m being overly negative, reading too much into it, but in a year and a half of writing this blog I’ve discovered it’s better not to write off my gut feeling on this sort of thing. Everything I’m hearing is pointing to this going in regardless of anybody’s concerns. Unless it’s for a like a temporary 2 week test on live servers, then I will be staying extremely worried for the future of WAR’s gameplay.

Moving on…

A mini Blorc update. Sorry folks, I got sidetracked… I will be continuing and will be posting about his progress, but I just got utterly absorbed by my Witch Elf. I’m approaching realm rank 50 with her, have got pretty well geared for that level and have become reasonably proficient in kicking arse. Of course I still lots and lots to learn to become “good” with the Witch Elf. It’s also dramatically reduced the time I’ve spent on my Chosen, which I need to address. The Black Orc I figure I’ll pick up again in couple of weeks.

Gamescom, Gamesday Baltimore and the big announcements for the future are fast approaching. Many of us are expecting this to be news on a paid expansion, whereas others are more than a little less optimistic (shock horror). There are all sorts of rumours flying around, but they’re hard to substantiate. For example I’ve heard from a respectable contact with extremely good links into Gamesworkshop that not only is an expansion coming, but it’s been practically ready for a while, but between the GOA split and the big scary Cataclysm approaching, Mythic’s release schedule was buggered. Any truth in it? I’ve no idea! I can’t get any confirmations and it could just have been someone involved pulling our chain. In a couple of weeks hopefully we’ll know the truth.

As an aside to that, something is going on general with Mythic and their games. Mythic have stated that Ultima Online has a big announcement coming. The lead for Dark Age of Camelot is also going to Gamescom and I believe Gamesday too. Hmmm. Speculation can lead you all over the place with this.

Next thought… Having had plenty of time to settle into our new Mythic version of the Karak Norn server I can confidently give a bit of feedback on it. The performance in ORvR is vastly improved. Is this to do with avoiding France Telecom? Having played MMOs for a long time, I wouldn’t be bloody surprised. I’m extremely pleased with the improvements in ORvR and it has been great fun. Alas, its not all good news. The lag spikes everyone gets in Tomb of the Vulture Lord (or any dungeon) when something happens elsewhere in the game world have not gone away with the GOA servers, so its obviously WAR itself at fault. I loathe wiping on a boss purely because everyone’s game froze up for a second or two. Actually I don’t know if this is related or not, but if you want to see some kind of server delay in visual form, just use a knockdown on the cousins on the 7th boss in Vulture Lord and notice how they fall to the floor several paces BEHIND where you and the mob are when you actually hit them. It happens almost every single time.

Finally in not WAR related, yet sort of is, news, I’ve been playing an awful lot of “Mount & Blade: Warband” and am bloody loving it. Once you get past the dodgy presentation, the lack of decent instructions and after you apply the Polished Landscapes add on to update the graphics, it is truly a brilliant game. The single player campaign is far deeper than it at first appeared and the multiplayer is absolutely fantastic. I’ve been in siege battles with 222 people, no lag at all and FULL collision detection. I’m sure for technical reasons that you can’t really compare a hosted battle game and a MMO on performance, but a big part of why this game is so amazingly brilliant is that full collision detection. Last word on that my friends, you don’t know what you had until its gone.

The Kill Frenzy WAR video auteur is making a video of some of the fights we’ve had, I’ll post it ASAP so you can see why I’m gushing about this game.

Anyways that’s me done, I’ll try and keep posting over the next week, but don’t rely on me for news or anything ;)

What to do with 2 weeks of double influence, renown and XP?

That was the question inadvertently put to every player on the EU servers recently, myself included. At the beginning of the 2 weeks I was all set on doing the sensible thing; getting my Chosen main (who was at RR68) as close to 80 as possible. Within just a few days I was up to RR72 and the renown was still flying up, but then with a resounding thud, I fell off the pixel painted wagon.

My name is Bootae and I’m addicted to alts.

That’s the reason why my Chosen was only renown rank 68 after 2 years of playing WAR. I’m just so easily distracted. It’s learning how other careers work, revelling in their different appearances, styles and themes. It’s being able to really understand other player’s career concerns and issues, finding out if the allegedly gimped is really gimped or just grass is greener syndrome. Plus it’s always a nice challenge seeing if I can be competitive with low renown alt versus all the 80s.

So over the last 2 weeks I got my Squig Herder to 40 and discovered what a fun class it is to play at 40, even in annihilator/devestator armour. One of WAR’s most atmospheric and entertaining careers to play for sure, I highly recommend. Having got the Squiggy to 40 and with my Black Orc building up rest XP, I figured I might as well finish my Witch Elf off. I levelled her to 33 a looooooong time ago, then for a reason I don’t remember I stopped playing her. She was then pretty much forgotten as I was distracted by the (at that point) newly released Choppa. With these 2 weeks of boosted XP I figured “what the hell” and levelled my Witch Elf from 33 to 40.

It was then that the unexpected happened. I discovered that I bloody love playing my Witch Elf. It’s awesome fun, not because of it being over powered, it’s actually pretty well balanced (versus other careers, though debatably underpowered versus its own mirror). The Witch Elf is fun because it is squishier than the squishiest squishy squish, hittier than the hittiest stick of hittydom and all wrapped up in a bundle of sneaky pie. The career really suits my play style too, since I do quite a lot of solo roaming. Not only is solo roaming fun and challenging generally, but it’s also a great way to learn a career. If you want to be able to consistently win 1v1s and stand a chance in 1v2+, the only way is to get out there and fight on your own, lots. Having said all that, on a bad day solo roaming can be very frustrating. You just have to learn to roll with the punches.

My little WE with one of KF's well known roamers Biggsie (For Norn people; yeah he's been grabbed by the green).

Anyway, I ended up playing my Witch Elf a lot, getting to the mid 40s in renown rank so far and my plans to hammer up Bootae’s renown rank some more failed. Not that I care to be honest, as I’ve been a bit worried about running out of carrots for my Chosen. I’ve only got one bit of Tyrant and two bits of sovereign left to get, at which point there’s little left to achieve. Other than grinding scenario weapons, but other than with the ladies, I’m not good at grinding. Easily distracted… So all in all the 2 weeks of boosted XP, etc worked out well for me. I now have a slightly bonkers 7 level 40 characters and a new Witch Elf obsession.

Of course I now have a new problem… I’m curious about levelling a Black Guard, but I’d have to delete either my DoK or Marauder. Doh.