Personally I prefer Rumours, but rumours are we may end up tangoing in the night anyway. A dark, vampire filled night and without an albatross in sight.
Putting my ropey Fleetwood Mac word associations aside, the rumours of an expansion have been a little, uhm, expanded upon. As you may have seen Radishlaw comment on my last post, the thing people have found is a name “The Blood Hunt Expansion” within some of the files included from the test server. Also I’ve read elsewhere that another file which zones which includes numerous zone names not currently in the game. Amongst which was Sylvania, homeland of the old world’s vampires…
First lets get this in perspective. The only things we know for sure are:
• Some clever techy people have found a handful of words in some files.
• Mythic have declined to comment.
That is all it is... We know nothing else. It could be the findings are from a possible live expansion or live event. Or perhaps and more likely they are just the remains of things removed during development, things never destined to see the light (much like vampires…). As such anything else that I, or anyone else, says is purely speculation and should not be taken as any more than that. But since speculation is fun and it gives me something positive to write about, here I go talking probable bollocks and making 1+1=3! :P
I suspect it’s completely real and Mythic are planning on adding the Vampire Counts as an NPC controlled third faction.
The reasons I think this are as follows:
• Mythic have mentioned that they have some kind of realm balancing system being created. No details have been provided, but if I recall correctly when it was mentioned they implied it was something cool…
• Aion has a NPC third faction, who I believe are meant to assist with balancing, so the idea is already out there in game developer land.
• Warhammer Undead will not work as a playable race, but they are bloody awesome for NPCs.
• The game desperately needs a third faction to balance things out. Ideally a playable one, but this could work too and is probably a lot easier to implement.
• It could actually be pretty damn cool and I want to be in a happy place.
So that’s my thinking and I know I’m not the only one to have thought this. Of course I could be talking a load of old cock, or maybe, just maybe, we could be onto something…
Whatever it is or not, I imagine Mythic are happy to have a bit of a buzz going around. I hope so, because it’s got people talking a little more positively about the future.
Neat idea and like you, I find nothing wrong with a little speculation.
ReplyDeleteThe mechanic sounds alright and it is in Aion (does anyone know if it actually works?).
I'm just trying to wrap my noodle around why Vampire/Undead forces would assist either side and then succinctly turn if the balance of power shifted. Hmmmmm. Could always be wrapped in some devious plot where they use either side as pawns for their own malicious machinations ...
Then you could roll-out another Live Expansion featuring some more delicious undead and specifically Nagash. Defeat the bosses in some ultra-difficult dungeon to get PvE-equivalent armour to Sovereign.
As a member of W.U.L.F (Warhammer Undead Liberation Front), I feel you are obviously talking out of your arse. Of course we can be the 3rd playable realm.
ReplyDeleteHaven't you played with some trully brainless people in the last year, who make me and my fellow undead seem part of the intelligentsia.
oh by the way, those vampire counts couldn't find a blood bank, if their unlives depended upon it.
PS - 3 is a fine number and any accountant worth his salt could make 1 + 1 = 3.
As I said on the previous post, Vamps are suppose to be RARE. it won't be rare if it's a playable class. Just image 1000 players runing arounds like vamps all over the place. sure it would be cool as hell but it would just not work lore wise, that's my opinion atleast.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Nagash idéa. it would be cool but we'd have to destroy his damn pyramid before we kill him so he won't ressurect over and over again as he's done everytime someone actualy managed to slay the bastard :p. Well, maybe not since he'll respawn with each instance reset anyways :p.
LOL Skar :D
ReplyDeleteKhalie ;) I'll prolly quit if they make Vampire Counts playable :P
NPC race would be fine, they we can have hordes of zombies and the Vamps as hero types.
another thing to consider is during the Q&A session after yesterdays PTS event Andy said "We have something exciting to bring life back to the lower tiers" (or something along those lines can't remember the exact wording)
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ReplyDeleteCould someone explain how a NPC controlled 3rd realm would work? I have been thing on how things are currently run and I just can't seem to put the peices together. Would the 3rd realm NPC's drop RVR gear when killed? What drives them to attack just the stronger side? Do they attack keeps etc? I know smarter people SMRT types can see behind the code and have a greater understanding of things these so hopefully they can answer some of these questions. Thanks
ReplyDeleteOh and great Blog by the way , keep up the great work here.
Arrk
One way to do it is to generate a lot of NPCs periodicly, attacking random keeps and battlefield objectives. Since the side with the upper hand would usually have more BO/keeps, they would be targetted more.
ReplyDeleteThe NPC horde would appear from one of the special spawn point, reach one of the objectives and start attacking it. The horde consist of a number of easy mobs, plus a "leader" mob guarded by 4 "champions". The force will be scale to defence level, so it will be a smaller force for BOs and larger force for a full level keep. The mobs will attack characters of any faction, and will give chase for a relatively short distance.
To disperse the horde, you just need to defeat the leader. But if the defenders failed to defeat him within a certain amount of time (let's say 5 minutes), the BO/Keep will be reverted to NEUTRAL. The horde will depart a few minutes after it is done.
A neutral BO performs like BOs after server reset: no guards, you just need to interact with flag to capture it. A neutral keep will have a banner in the lord room and no NPCs, capturing the banner would change control of the keep.
A neutral BO/Keep will not be counted in domination nor VP until captured.
With this system, there are a number of strategies for both side.
Attackers:
-they can "ride" the horde and let them engage whatever defense force the other side have, then mop up both afterwards.
-they can let the horde capture it then gank anyone who want to take it back, essentially a bait.
Defenders:
-they can have brave souls leading the attacking mobs into the attackers waiting/fighting outside.
-they can "camp" the NPCs if they know which spawn point they come from.
The biggest problems of my proposed systems are that it is difficult to determine a "good" force level: too strong and it is useless to defend, too easy and it might well be no NPC at all.
Another problem is the NPCs kind of look stupid standing there, but making them actually attack the objectives would be very difficult work.