ORvR changes announced - updated

UPDATE! Producer's Letter is out. Reading it now, will comment ASAP.

First off we have a couple of small but important changes posted here:

We'd like to announce a couple upcoming changes for General Gameplay in v1.3.6. Please keep in mind that these are not patch notes and additional adjustments may be in the works.

• New User Interface option: Sticky Targeting. Enabling this option will prevent you from clearing your target(s) by clicking an empty location in the gamespace. (Developer Note(s): clears the offensive target first in the event that both an offensive and defensive target is selected.)
• Player health bars will now update correctly when receiving damage or heals. (Developer Note(s): this corrects an issue where health bars would "flicker or bounce" upon receiving a heal or damage.)

 And then the big news posted here and I've highlighted something in this that is very important and easily missed.

We'd like to announce some upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. As stated by Carrie Gouskos in a recent Producer's Letter, there are many upcoming changes for ORvR in the near future. While some of these changes do affect ORvR, they do not conclude the list by any means. We are vigilantly working on much larger improvements to be released in a later version.

ORvR: Victory Points for PVE and Prior Tier have been removed. New pool values are as follows:
Tier 1
Objectives: 40%
Scenarios: 40%
Skirmish: 20%

Tiers 2 & 3
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 35%
Skirmish: 20%

Tier 4
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 30%
Skirmish: 25%

  

• ORvR: Zone capture rewards will now only be awarded to players within the RvR lake or an associated Tier's Scenario. Players will remain eligible for rewards for 5 minutes after leaving the RvR lake or an associate's Tier's Scenario as long as the player is within the appropriate pairing.
• Against All Odds: in the event that an army is outnumbered within an RvR lake, members of the outnumbered army will receive a scaling bonus to Experience, Renown and Influence. This bonus becomes active on qualified players after being outnumbered by 20% or more. The bonus cannot surpass 400% and requires at least 6 players of each Realm to be present within the RvR lake. (Developer Note(s): this bonus is additive.)
• Scenarios: players with the "Quitter!" debuff will no longer suffer a penalty to Experience and Renown but will now be unable to queue for a Scenario until the "Quitter!" debuff has faded.
• Contested Cities: Players belonging to the Realm that lost Stage 3 will now always be properly disabled by the Routed ability.
• Contested Cities: Portals leading out of the Khorne War Quarters and Slaanesh Chambers no longer check for combat status. (Developer Note(s): YAY!)
• Contested Cities: Guards will no longer spawn at the six objectives within Altdorf and The Inevitable City. (Developer Note(s): this corrects an issue where Warlords could become stuck inside geometry.)

My first reaction is that this is great news. Asystem that gives a bonus to people when outnumbered in the ORvR zones? Woah... For a guild like mine that likes to roam in small groups away from the main destro zerg, this is a very cool development. Also this is important step in general, as it's promoting players to not zerg, that is assuming it works out like that and doesn't get abused in some way.


No more PvE being linked to the ORvR campaign, no more annoying prior tier nonsense. I am pleased with all of these changes, it's not everything we need, but this is another important step, moving towards a much better campaign system. I'm very keen to hear about the "much larger improvements to be released in a later version". I've really got my fingers crossed for larger ORvR lakes... pleeeeeeease.

I'm liking what I hear Mythic, keep it coming!

More 1.3.6 career changes revealed

The post by Nate Levy can be found here.

If you cba to click the link, here's what is says and my comments included in red:

Continuing with our "In Development" posts for patch 1.3.6, we're now ready to begin discussing some upcoming changes to several other careers. Just as before, we greatly appreciate your feedback and interest, and we will be heavily moderating this thread to ensure that discussions remain civil and constructive.

Swordmaster:

• A new ability, "Sudden Shift", is now trainable at Rank 3. This ability will instantly shift you from No Balance into Improved Balance, or from Improved Balance into Perfect Balance, or from Perfect Balance into Improved Balance. It is off of the global cooldown, and has a 5 second cooldown of its own.

 Black Orc:

• A new ability, "Changin' Da Plan", is now trainable at Rank 3. This ability will instantly shift you from No Plan into Da Good Plan, or from Da Good Plan into Da Best Plan, or from Da Best Plan into Da Good Plan. It is off of the global cooldown, and has a 5 second cooldown of its own.

 This is an improvement obviously for both SM and Blorcs, but is it enough? I think it might be, but I'd like to hear the thoughts of experienced T4 SM/Blorc players.

Black Guard:

• Crush The Weak is moving to Rank 35, and it will now reduce the victim's chance to critically hit based on Hate.
• Brutal Smash is moving to Rank 9, and it will now increase Strength, and Willpower based on Hate, for both the Black Guard themselves and their Protected ally.
• Feeding On Weakness will now increase Toughness instead of Strength.
• Furious Howl is moving to Rank 40.
• Horrific Wound is moving to Rank 12, and it will now reduce the victim's armor based on Hate.

 All good, the Black Guard has needed some love for a long time. Alas this is being ignored as people are up in arms that there is no mention of a fix to the Choking Fury bug, nothing something I know much about, but apparently its very powerful. Remember folks, no mention of a bug fix in a post about career changes doesn't mean it isn't getting fixed.

White Lion:

• Force Opportunity is moving to be available at 9 points in the Path of the Hunter, and its effect has been changed. It is now an undefendable attack which reduces the victim's armor.
• Echoing Roar is moving to be available at 5 points in the Path of the Guardian.

 I don't know the career well enough for personal opinion, but I'm told these are good changes.

Choppa:

• Can't Stop Da Chop has had its effect changed, and it will now reduce incoming healing on the victim. It now costs 15 Action Points, and has a 10 second cooldown.

Hmmm. This brings it more in line with the Slayer, that's no problem for me or my Choppa. I'm savage specced at the moment for farming saccelum for alts, but I'm more often Hitta specced anyway as I think its more interesting to play. Not arguing against the change, but I am kinda wondering what will be a Savage choppas main attack after this though, this will mean there is no longer a spammable savage main attack, well... other than two that dont really count (a crappy DoT and a behind target only attack). Constant cooldown dancing instead?

Looking forward to hearing more stuff in the hopefully near future.

Breaking the first rule of Fight Club

After the dismal performance by the English football team on Sunday and the crushing defeat by our biggest rival Germany, I was in desperate need of something to lift the spirits. Thankfully we had the perfect tonic already prepared. That evening we had a little guild event scheduled, but not quite to our normal daft standards, this was more serious, well a bit anyway. We had arranged to meet up with the Order guild “Champions of the Gods” in a secret location and have an evening of even numbered fights and amusement away from the zerging that is so rife in WAR’s RvR lakes. It was a brilliant night and both guilds had some tough fights, healthy banter and a great laugh.
 
CotG joined us on our ventrilo in a channel set up for them and our two guilds met up outside the fortress in Butcher’s Pass. This ensured we would have no interruptions from zergs by either faction and gave us plenty of room to fight. Being the first of these events and the evening after big World Cup games, we both had slightly lower attendance than we probably hoped for, but both guilds had enough people for 12 player teams with substitutions available on the bench. At first we planned to fight to try and claim a banner from behind the other team, but we actually both ended up ignoring it and just fighting to the death, or until it was obvious one side had won.
 
It was a fascinating match up tactically, as we both set up and approached it very differently. CotG had a mixture of DPS, which included a melee assist train and 3 Bright Wizards in a bomb set up. Where as we had 2 Sorcerers both more set up for single target and our usual collection of MDPS, so pretty much the usual KF single target heroes bundled together. Due to a healer shortage I used my Zealot for the first few fights and it didn’t go too well at first, with us losing the first 4 fights in a row. Half of the losses were fairly quick, yet the others took quite a long time before we got fully nailed. After each fight we spent a few minutes discussing and preparing different tactics to try and believe me we tried every trick in the book, but no matter what we just couldn’t deal with their combination of excellent melee assist training on our healers and the stacked Bright Wizard PBAoE reaching that infamous critical mass of firey death. At least not while we played as pure single target…
 
So we changed tactics again, respecced our sorcs and two of the Chosen, juggled the groups about, another Zealot logged on and finally I got to change onto using my Chosen. We went with a Sorc/Chosen Bomb mixed with Marauders and others including me on healer shafting duty. Instantly everything changed and we got a surprisingly fast victory. CotG are no mugs though and they adapted to our new play style and the next few fights were much tougher, one of which was an absolute epic. After our big tactical change we had 3 wins for KF and 1 for CotG, giving a final result for the Fortress fight of a 5-3 victory for CotG. I’d like to think had we continued further we might have pulled it closer to a draw, but it’s hard to say, many of the fights could have gone either way at numerous points to be honest. Plus it didn’t matter really, it was just plain fun, I was pleased with how we built on our losses to start winning and when either side lost they had always put up a great fight anyway.
 
After the Fortress fight we decided to do something a little different and took ourselves off to the secret demon prison lair for some 6v6 and good filming opportunity for the KF auteur Durtbocks. Those duelling flagged themselves for RvR, while Durt remained unflagged and resplendent in naked greenness, which allowed him to get some decent footage (more filming required, so this vid is a while away). It had all got a bit silly for the 6v6 with us fielding things like 4 Chosen groups or Marauder groups and I had to AFK quite a bit, so didn’t monitor results at all, but I could hear that everyone was having a good laugh. I have to say it really was a very atmospheric setting for a fight club event, certainly one to use again. As the evening came to a close we all jumped into one vent channel and everyone was saying what a great night it had been as well as a refreshing change from playing dodge the zergs. We’re definitely going to be meeting up again, not too often or it could get stale, but we’re already identified some great locations for our next event.
 
If you’re guild hasn’t done something like this already, I highly recommend you consider organising this kind of event. If you can keep the epeen out of it, focus on just having some good scraps, good humour, be open to try new tactics and learning a few things, then you are assured of a great night’s competitive, fair and thoroughly entertaining RvR.
 
A big /salute to Champion of the Gods for being good sports and all that stuff ;)

Actually something to add, now I've had a little ponder

So in my post a little while ago I updated it to say

"I didn't mention the no XP, loot, etc gains for a week. This was kinda half intentional, it just doesnt concern me and my subconcious ignored it :D We get 2 weeks refund which more than covers it and unlike many (most?) people, I can quite happily continue to play for a week just for fun and not pixel reward ;) "

Thinking about it, I should have dwelled on this more. Its not something that bothers me much, but then I'm unusual and whilst I like loot, character progression, etc, I will still play just for shit and gigles. Most other people probably are not like that. From what I've read and heard just now, a lot of people are planning a break from WAR until the XP gain is back online.

What maybe a bit of a factor to consider here is for up to 9 days those people are going to be distracted by other things. So after those 9 days one has to hope that those distractions (I'm thinking about APB here, though I dont rate it myself) remain temporary and people leap straight back to WAR. To ensure this, if Mythic are clever, they will hit us very, very soon with some lovely tempting news about the future than gives people a special distraction fighting carrot.

Alas, I've a dubious feeling they wont say a word and not even considered this as a potential issue. I could of course be wrong about any of this. What do you think?

GOA to Mythic, some rambling thoughts

OK then since we now have some details about the transition (read this too) from GOA to Mythic for the EU players, I reckon it’s about time that I chime in with a few thoughts.

First off, sorry GOA I got it wrong and I am now aware that Mythic did know GOA would be announcing on Friday AND that it was GOA that prompted the whole split. With Mythic knowing of such an epic announcement being released on Friday, I’m a touch disappointed with Mythic’s one sentence that day. To be honest I’m a little disappointed that Mythic barely commented on this, haven’t acknowledged Josh Drescher going, aren’t giving us any real news on the future (always just next patch news doesn’t cut it) and in general suddenly seem a bit quiet. Even the front page on the Mythic website hasn’t been updated for over a month. Now before you think I’m getting all negative, I was recently reliably informed that WAR is doing very well and there are zero concerns there, so I’m not doom and glooming here, but what’s with the lapse in communication? It just feels a touch odd.

Anyways, onwards!

Am I happy to get away from GOA?
Yes and no. In DAoC I loathed them, the service was shocking, but in WAR I’ve not really had any problems that I can put squarely at the feet of GOA. Well, other than in the first 2 weeks anyway and I’m not going to develop long term hatred because of a ropey launch, after 14 years of playing MMOs I would have lot of people on my hate list if I did.

When contacting support the response has been slow and when it’s eventually my turn in the queue, the CSRs have all been polite, chatty and mostly useless. Yet that’s like every MMO I’ve ever played and from reading the American forums this experience isn’t going to change when we move over to Mythic. I can’t hate them for that, so on to the next common complaint about GOA; server performance. WAR EU suffers from a lot of lag spikes and not always related to lots of players being around, but is that really down to GOA’s servers or is this the fault of WAR itself? I’ve no way of knowing, at least not yet (we will all find out soon). I’m not going to hate GOA because it might be their fault.

I don’t know them well or anything, but I’ve liked the posting style of GOA reps like Kaxzane and have no issues with any of them, quite the opposite. They seem a good bunch. So once again, there is nothing that I can rationally start ranting about.

Patches being delayed by a day or two… Is that worth whinging about? Absolutely bloody well not! We’ve had the American live servers as our unofficial live test servers for every patch since launch. Believe me, that is nothing to be unhappy about.

The only thing they’ve really done to annoy me is the website. And actually no longer having to look at that flash ridden hunk of utter shite is enough to edge me towards happiness. Being able to access a website that actually works properly and has the Mythic developers reading, well that can only be a huge step forwards. But then with a resounding thud, you think of billing disasters, which surely must have been a one off, but even so there’s a little hint of discomfort and nagging doubt. To put this into perspective, I recently had a problem with my DAoC account, not billing, something else and nothing scarily complex or security based. I contacted Mythic’s support by email and they refused to help me unless I phoned them. I’m a European player, playing on the recently transferred EU to US DAoC servers and they wanted me to phone a US phone number for a fairly basic thing. I dropped that account and didn’t bother with it. I am not making expensive phone calls to America for my basic customer support, especially when it could easily have been dealt with by email. This is a slight concern should anything go pear shaped again, which I honestly doubt it will, but a concern none the less.


Will the new service be better?
Now that is the big question and not one I can answer, anything I say here would be a guess and nothing more. This is where the pressure is really on Mythic to justify the last 2 years of people whinging about GOA. BUT if we have the same lag spikes at random and if dungeon runs are sill buggered by random massive lag spikes because someone, somewhere, logged into Nordland, then we know it’s wasn’t GOA’s "hamster powered" servers to blame, it was WAR. However, and this is only my personal opinion, I suspect we may see an improvement in lag. How justified it really is I'm not techy enough to say, but within the gaming community France Telecom (owners of GOA) don’t have the best reputation for latency/lag issues.

Oh and our new servers are indeed hosted in Germany. Good! Being in the US may have been a deal breaker.

What about the transition itself?
I am very pleased to have it confirmed that our server will be moving as one and will not be merged. Our population is certainly big enough, it’s very competitive and has been waging WAR together for quite a while now. As such I’m very pleased to hear that Karak-Norn and our wonderful rage filled community will continue! That is my single biggest concern addressed and routed.

I’m not keen on the server downtime being on Tuesday afternoon to early evening (2pm to 6pm CET), simply because that’s the one day of the week when I get home from work early and I normally log onto WAR mid afternoon GMT. Purely selfish reasons, though I have to say I expect quite a few European players to be unhappy about this one, particularly people a couple of hours or more ahead of CET. As far as I can recall every MMO I’ve ever played had EU server downtimes in the (often very) early morning. Still, this isn’t something to make me rage, just a mild irritation.

Speed of the transition? WOW! It starts like tomorrow?? Impressive and I’m pleased it’s not being dragged out. As for the rest of the transition details, it sounds good and if it all goes to plan it should be a smooth transition.


As you can probably tell, I’m on the fence about this whole thing. It would be easy to join the people leaping with joy at this news, but I’m very aware that “the grass is always greener on the other side”. For now I think I’ll remain perched comfortably on the aforementioned fence and see what happens. Hopefully Mythic will do a good job and in just over a week’s time I’ll be posting the praise they deserved.

UPDATE! I didn't mention the no XP, loot, etc gains for a week. This was kinda half intentional, it just doesnt concern me and my subconcious ignored it :D We get 2 weeks refund which more than covers it and unlike many (most?) people, I can quite happily continue to play for a week just for fun and not pixel reward ;)

GOA to Mythic FAQ

Can be found here.

Can't comment now because of work, but thought I should post the link quickly!

WAR's Lost Lands - Chaos Wastes

I wrote recently about my thoughts on how Mythic should be “Changing Tier 4 zones from OK to awesome”. I was suggesting not only opening up the zones to become full oRvR enabled, but also changing all the existing quality scenery from completely unused Public Quests into PvP themed objectives or events. This would give the rest of the zones more purpose, would spread the combat out better and help to reduce lag, as well as give alternatives to the constant and oh so bloody tedious zerging. In the post I included some screenshots of some of the awesome wasted scenery from Kadrin Valley’s PvE areas, which after posting got me thinking a bit more about how much of the game people just don’t get to see and what amazing potential there is for RvR if those areas lost the PQs and gained some PvP hotness.

As a result, I had a chat with Biggsie and we decided that we would go exploring, taking nothing but our heavily armoured (or mutated in his case) arses and a camera (AKA printscreen) across the Tier 4 landscape on a journey of visual stimulation. As we travel the lands, we’re going to post our findings between our two blogs with a series of articles showing some of the cool scenery and potential for RvR goodness that we encounter. This includes sneaking around the Order PvE zones, so certainly for me I’ve found things I’d never seen before. Didn’t find any players in the PvE zones mind you! :P

I’m starting off with the Chaos Wastes and Biggsie is visiting Reikland which he'll be posting very soon, so keep an eye on his blog. The Chaos Wastes are a mutated and rather freaky land, that’s also very, very blue. In fact it’s safe to say that this is a landscape that went down to the Crossroads and fell down on its knees.

This is how RvR is limited at the moment. Note it's a very open zone, so within the red boundary you are able to roam all over.

And this.. is what it could be like.. A huge zone with an incredible amount of freedom. I've marked the roads, but they're really not very restrictive in the Chaos Wastes. Unlike my first post I've not marked where I think other objectives should be, simply because there are just so many options. Basically anything marked with a Public Quest marker, camp or scenery will do!

Click images for the full size screenshot.

There are load sof strange looking castles, towers and ruins scattered around. They could be used for something like the keeps we get in RvR, standard objectives, or for RvR driven events akin to the new city siege. Imagination is the only limit. Posh door on this one below.

The Wastes are covered in these thorn bushes gone mad, they're a real wasted opportunity. You could have some crazy fighting amongst them, with line of sight being broken and chasing people through a forest of thorns.

I love the look of these towers. What a waste of a great bit of scenery! By the way, check out the snowflakes... Chaos Stars! Very cool.

All over the Chaos Wastes you'll find this huge metal circles, I'm not sure if they're meant to be man made or if it's the Chaos Gods chucking weirdness around. Not got any PvP use springing to mind, but they look great. ;)

This temple (?) is on the Order side, but you can see it for miles around. It is absolutely huge, and... uhm empty?

Yup, empty! Well apart from like 3 NPCs. Surely we should be fighting in there no?

It's worth a third screenshot, check out all the detail in the walls. All this effort and most people will probably never go in there,

I found this like field of frozen or petrified bodies. I've no idea what it's about, but it was a pain to move through. Perhaps getting stuck here would be too much of a headache in PvP. Or maybe it could be the point of it...

Looks like the Maw of Madness scenario. Like the thorn forests, this is another bit of terrain that could be fun to fight in. We just need a reason to do so.

Strange looking tunnel...

Teeth???

No idea what this once was, it's dead now anyway. I suspect it was angry when alive.

Another of those great looking towers. Another opportunity.

 This one is the first of the towers I pictured above, obviously from a distance. The water you can see, some of it is frozen, some not, but I swear it changes. Either that or I just got confused. Imagine that though, fighting in a zone where the water is sometimes solid... 

And here concludes my little tour of the Chaos Wastes. I'm sure some people will have seen all of these areas before. However if you're started the game after Land of the Dead was launched then it's quite likely you leveled from 25-40 there and/or the RvR lakes, in which case you had no reason to visit any of these places. Which I think is a shame.

Crazy day, Fortress idea from Biggsie and other stuff

Well today was a bit mental. It was too damn hot, I had heavy meetings sorting out procedural explosions thanks to other people’s muppetry, a daughter desperate to fly a kite in almost no wind (that went well, not) and then trying to keep up with the WAR developments in-between all this and ninja a blog post in was a bit manic. Attempting to gather up the rumours didn’t quite work out so well, but meh I can’t nail it every time :P


Thankfully there are other bloggers on better form and fellow KFer Biggsie has posted an interesting idea for bringing back the fortresses. It’s essentially the same basic concept, but tweaked to make it more of a big fight between players. I would be concerned about lag mind you, but then I guess it depends if we’d still all cram into one fort or not. Suppose that depends on the campaign around it. Loving the Engra idea, that guy looks crazier than Lady GaGa.

As for my own thoughts on the big news of the day, I’m told we’re not going to get much further official comments until next week, so I think I’ll reserve judgement until then. Rather than go off half cocked again.

WAR EU - GOA to Mythic - Rumours

As you all will no doubt now know, GOA will no longer be managing WAR in Europe and we’re all being moved under Mythic’s direct control.

At the time of writing this post, unfortunately official news is scarce and it’s a bit hard to work out what is going to happen. Through a range of sources I’m hearing a lot of things, but as of yet Mythic have not directly confirmed anything much. On the Herald there is a mere one sentence, which confirms it is happening but not a lot else. I suspect from this that GOA have announced this before Mythic were expecting them too and they didn’t have a proper statement prepped up, wouldn’t be the first time GOA have done this. Since the announcement GOA staffers have said a few things on both WHA and the official forums.

I’m not going to list everything I’ve heard, nor am I going to reference sources, as they’re rather varied and some rumours are duplicated lots, plus I’m not at home and am writing this on my iphone, which is a pain in the arse to sort all the links with. :P So everything that follows comes from a mixture of respectable and more dubious places, as such it is not gospel and should be considered nothing but rumour for now. To be doubly clear, I’m just sharing the rumours, as that’s all we’ve got to go on at present.

- It was Mythic’s choice, reason unknown. However it is not due to financial problems or WAR’s imminent death, WAR EU is very profitable. (UPDATE not confident about the Mythic's choice bit)

- This was not a sudden or unexpected for either company; Mythic gave GOA notice a couple of months ago.(UPDATE see above)

- The EU servers are NOT being merged together or onto US servers. We will have our same players, guilds and alliances just on servers managed by Mythic. The communities of Karak-Norn, Azgal, will remain as is.

- The current Mythic WAR website will no longer just service the Americans and will be the international site, with EU players getting access.

- EA/Bioware/Mythic/whatever has access to servers in Germany that will be used to host WAR EU servers.

- EU class leaders and closed testers (or whatever you call it) will join the US equivalent scheme, the Oracles you see on US forums.

There are plenty of other rumours flying around, but they’re either very dubious or solo comments from random people I don’t know enough to want to quote. 

(update 2) Once more to make totally clear, these are just todays rumours. I'm hearing things already that throw doubt on many things. PS this blogger softeare hates bullet poitns AGH edited..

As for what I think about it… that will follow. Except one thing now… I don’t want my server merged. Karak Norn might be smothered in trolling arrogant bastards, but they’re our arrogant trolling bastards and when you put aside all the bollocks, our community is great. Very active too, we really don’t need transfers.

Anyways, I’ll post more ASAP. Hopefully Mythic will give us some info soon.

GOA go bye bye?!?!

Huge news! WAR in EU will no longer be hosted by GOA! I can't check the details because the crappy GOA site us flash and doesn't work on my iPhone, but I hear it's true. More thoughts later when not at work an I know more.

Borked Blorcs

Before I get started, if Mythic have this all sorted in 1.3.6, then I wub you guys. If you don’t, well, you should :P

You often hear people complain about the Black Orc (and Swordmaster) plan system, you’ll think it sounds a bit dodgy, but until you roll a Blorc and you really persevere with it you won’t really know quite how frustrating, limiting and just abso-bloody-lutely “AAAGHHHH MAKE IT STOP!!” it is.

Just in case you don’t know it works, I shall explain as briefly as possible… Obviously I’m talking for a Black Orc, but the principles are the same for Swordmasters. Your attacks are split between 3 different “plans”.

1) No Plan
2) The Gud Plan
3) The Best Plan

Using an ability from one plan progresses your character to the next plan and you can then use abilities from that plan (and only that plan), this then progresses you to the third and final plan, you use one of those attacks and then it takes you back to the start. So at any one point the abilities you can use is limited dependent on what plan you are in. Think about that for a minute and relate it to your current main character, divide their attacks into 3 groups and imagine what it would be like if you can’t pick and choose what to use when.

To make the implications of this absolutely clear, oh yes baby, it’s imaginary scenario time! No nurse outfits alas.

I’m logged in with my Chosen and fighting a Slayer 1v1 on a bridge in Dragonwake. A Witch Hunter appears behind me and joins the fight, but his positioning is dodgy so I simply turn round, hit my knockback, punt him off the bridge and continue the fight.

Now lets try the exact same situation, but I’m using a Black Orc. The Witch Hunter has jumped me, his positioning is dodgy and he is ripe for a knockback… except I can’t, but not because I don’t have a knockback, I do and it’s quite a good one. You see at this point I was in the next plan up, so I’ve got to go through 2 different attacks and 2 global cooldowns before I’m in the correct plan and my knockback is useable. In MMO PvP where it’s all about hitting the right ability at the right time, this pretty much ensures that the Witch Hunter will no longer be set up for punting off the bridge by the time I can actually use my knockback.

That would be quite simply ridiculous if there wasn’t some incredible benefit for using the plan system, but… uhm… there isn’t, so yeah… it is ridiculous. There is no benefit to plans in any way or form, nothing. It is a limitation for limitations sake. To make matters worse the plan system is negatively affected by lag. When you’re in a big fight or suffering from lag for whatever reason, sometimes the plans don’t change correctly. So not only do you have to cycle through a range of abilities to get to the one you want, but now and again it just doesn’t work at all. AND the system is unplayable without using either a mod such as Plan B or Nerfed Buttons. As such I don’t understand why it is still in the game. Other than generating frustration, what is it achieving?

Yet, could it be made to achieve anything? Possibly... First, lets assume Mythic manage to fix the lag related plan changing problem…. Which leaves us with; if the plans are going to limit our options, the plans themselves need to provide a benefit.

First off Black Orc (and Swordmaster) plan related abilities should not have any cooldown timers. Not being able to use an ability when you want (due to the plan system) is annoying, so why limit it further? Make that into a bonus. So yes, you are restricted by the plan system as to when you can use ability X, but if you are in that plan then that ability WILL always be available. Secondly, give the plans a bit more meaning. There is a tactic (name escaping me right now) that links your critical hit rate to your plans; Gud plan gets +10% crit, Best plan +20% crit. Remove the tactic and put that into the career as standard. This would mean that while the careers are limited about when they can use each ability, they would be more potent when using them. In other words, they get bonuses to counter balance their serious limitations.

Would my suggestions be enough to make up for the headache plan system? Hmmm, to be honest I don’t know. I’m not an experienced enough Blorc player yet and I’m trying to fix an inherently flawed system. Not having proper choice and control over what you do, when everyone else does, is a massive downside and I’m not convinced it can be balanced out so easily. Would it just be easier to rip the entire plan system out and give Black Orcs and Swordmasters something new?

I’d be interested to hear from other more experienced Black Orc players (Lokax I’m looking at you mate) for their thoughts.


Oh and make Black Orcs as big as enraged Choppas. Black Orcs are meant to be the biggest, meanest Orcs in existence. Having them dwarfed by bloody Choppas is completely lore breaking and looks stupid. I refuse to believe it’s not easy to change. AND while I’m here, get rid of the shields from Swordmasters and make them true great weapon tanks (once again) like they’re meant to be. It’s not hard; to replace the loss of shield blocking just give them an enhanced version of parry that also works against magic. Actually, that should apply to Black Guards too and their lore breaking shield nonsense! And another thing… uhm… actually I better stop before I go off on a tangent of epic proportions.

FIX BLORCS!

Blorc update - the middle of tier 3

Ok so I've hit level 25, but my renown rank has dropped behind a bit and is languishing at 21. I had a few power level opportunities which I decided not to turn down. Of course now I'm at 25 I can get to Land of the Dead, which is great for power leveling on champions and the like. I'm considering hammering the Blorc straight to 40 with some serious PL sessions, but I'm not so sure if I want to leave my renown rank so far behind this time.

Tier 3 is erratic... Ranging from zero PvP to huuuuuuge fights. Want to get out quickly really.

Still liking the class, the look and feel of it, but I'm still hating the plan system. It's terribad as they say. I'll be posting in more detail about that and with some suggestions soon. As for the evolution of my armour, wow, really starting to get there now. Very spikey and just plain covered in metal. It's just sooo WAAAGH darling!

I suspect once I get to 40 I could get a bit drawn into playing the Blorc in T4 quite often, just for the look..

In other news, make sure you read my post below about Shadow-war's competition.

Competition time over at Shadow-war

As the title says, Shadow-war is hosting a competition and he's giving away a really nice prize for those that missed out for whatever reason, a collectors edition of WAR. I've got the collectors edition myself and can say it's probably the best collectors set for a PC game I've seen. Well worth a punt.

The competition is about ideas for how to re-introduce the Fortresses to WAR.

Go check it out folks here.

Football won't stop my WAAAGH, well ok it does a bit.

Huge football matches today, so I'm a tad distracted, but of course I realise I have a duty to post something to give you working (I've got the afternoon off YAY!) alt-tabbers something to distract yourself with. Of course there's yesterday's post, but showing my recycling skills here's some vids.

You've probably seen them before, but if not or you fancy revisiting the WAAAGH pimpdom, here's a couple of our classic KF videos:



and our masterpiece KILL FRENZY SUCKAS!



Enjoy!

Unforgettable, that’s what you are...

I don’t think Nat King Cole really had this in mind when he sang that little ditty, sorry Nat fans, but I’m talking about those unforgettable, geek out, WAR gaming moments. You know the ones, where something epicly-uber-OMFG-like-wow-dude happens and you end up telling the tale to bemused (and possibly somewhat concerned for your mental well-being) friends. It’s more than likely that most people won’t find them that amazing, or even interesting, they’re probably just “you had to be there” moments. Heh, maybe so, but if you’re reading this then you most likely have an avid interest in MMOs and I bet that YOU know what I’m talking about. ;)

How about I share with you one of mine and in return you relive some of your special times? For the benefit of my guildies, when I say “your special times” I do not mean anything to do with Diggler, Zoggy and that ketchup bottle. And Filthiusia, just don’t go there.

Ok so this was many months ago now… It was all kicking off in Riekland in a big way, carnage everywhere and my Chosen was in the thick of it laying the smacketh down. I was right in the middle of a sprawling melee atop one of the hills, where the fight had been raging for a while, but slowly Order were starting to fold. I was fighting a Bright Wizard when he realised the fight was starting to go our way. Suddenly he bottled it, turned and sprinted away from me, I gave chase but he went straight for the cliff edge, flung himself off and landed somehow alive and stuck half way down the cliff. No doubt cackling at his lucky escape and blagging himself an utterly impossibly to reach position.


Being a gung-ho and somewhat aggressive player (read: stupid), I leapt off the cliff after him. I instantly knew I had jumped too far, but somehow I managed to spin my character around in mid air and as I fell past his untouchable position, I RAVAGED him (uppercase for the ravage haters) right in the face! WAAAAGH! Oh yes baby, killing blow in the face while falling down a cliff! I landed on the floor below with about 100 hit points to spare and laughed my arse off :D

Obviously I didn't think to screenshot it mid flight, so this will have to do.

So come on folks, lets hear some tales of glory or nonsense, big or small, whatever, just the things you will always remember. Like the first time someone got stuck in the cage when a Dark Elf battle objective locked and you spammed /lol at them, come on, you know you did...

City sieges: I don't want to say I told you so, but I told you so...

When I posted Not tonight Josephine I was worried about city sieges happening so often that it wouldn't take long before people started getting bored of them, no matter how good the new city is.

Well, shock bloody horror, it's taken roughly a month for the apathy to start. Personally I'm still enjoying them and it's not yet at big problem stage, but the rumblings of discontent have started in region chat, forums and elsewhere, plus you can see the effects in the city itself as the number of sovereign smothered players flies up and the motivation of loot is no more. The thing is, whilst its the early days of apathy right now, it won't get better, it can only get worse.

By the time 1.3.6 arrives the city siege will have been so overplayed that people will no longer care that its a million times better than the old city or that's its the end game WAR should have had from launch. As I've said before, familiarity breeds contempt.

Will Mythic do something quickly enough? No. They will do something and eventually the campaign will get sorted out, but it takes too long between patches and by then it will be too late and the city siege will be merely for gearing alts or roleplaying volcanoes. And that's depressing, because the pace of the campaign is something I and many others have been complaining about for a very long time.

Don't mistake this for negativity, it's once again just me being realistic. Bloody hell, I'd love to be wrong, but I'll be right, again. *sigh* Posting this is just so familiar, reminds me of an old post that came true about Fortresses... Uncanny.

Karate + Keyboards + Jabba The Hutt = ?

Oh yeah play it karate man play it!

Yeaaaaaah! Or perhaps not.

PS: Epic keep defences tonight on Norn and as it's our claimed keep I'm getting to see the number of Order... We're (that's KF, Tainted and a few others) outnumbered at least 2-1 and have thankfully managed to hold, until reinforcements have arrived. Youch! 2 full defences so far, but 3rd attack just started...

OK wiped us 3rd time, with 145, but considering we were only 2 groups of KF, a warband from Tainted's alliance and a group or two of others max, that was a given I think :D

More layoffs at Mythic

Very few details known at the moment, it was announced via Josh Drescher's twitter and at present all we know is what he has said, so it could be just him, it could be more. No clue as of yet. However Josh has said a few things:

"Not EXACTLY how I expected the day to start: As of 11:00 AM today, I am no longer an employee of EA Mythic."

"FYI: I can't get into details (and, in fact, don't HAVE many more details), but it was a layoff. I wasn't fired and I still love Mythic. "

"Quick note, then I'm going offline for a while: WAR isn't dying. The game is better now than ever before and more goodness is on the way. "

Obviously despite Josh's assurance's otherwise, this is going to get the Prophets of Doom going into overdrive. I'll just say treat everything you read on forums and in region chat with a large pinch of salt.

As for Josh. Thanks for everything you've done with Mythic & WAR, it must have felt rather unappreciated at times. Good luck for the future old boy.

Black Orc update – middle of tier 2

So far and still so good… Most of the time in Tier 2 I’ve been grouped with a Choppa and occasionally with a Zealot and Disciple of Khaine, all from Kill Frenzy. Where possible we’ve been running our little group around the sides of the main Destruction groups/warbands and with great success. Of course it’s only lower tier action, so the quality of opposition (and friendly) players is extremely varied and as such it is hard to judge how good the Black Orc actually is. It feels like an absolute monster, but I expect that is because of the whole fighting in lower tiers thing. Not that I care, since it has just been plain good fun.

Armour wise I’ve upgraded quite a lot. As I’m playing Gashcheese purely in PvP at the moment I wasn’t really getting any armour that wasn’t just the very basic green stuff from keeps, so I ran my Choppa through the Saccelum dungeons to get the repairable blue armour from there.

This is what I'm looking like now at level 16 and all tier 2 armour and weapons:

As you can see comparing with the end of tier 1 (image below), it’s made quite a big difference to my appearance and I’m really starting to look like a proper Black Orc.

A few levels away yet, but I’m hoping Tier 3 won’t be too much of a letdown after all this fun in Tier 2. I guess I’ll just power level out if so.

Changing Tier 4 zones from OK to awesome

A common topic for my ramblings is the small size of the oRvR lakes and how so much of the tier 4 zones are completely wasted, empty and utterly devoid of life. Admittedly I originally wanted to play on a full PvP server, but there was a lot of scaremongering about the chicken system and we decided not to risk it being a disaster. To be honest the difference turned out to negligible, since even on full PvP servers the oRvR lake is no bigger and Land of the Dead emptied the PvE quest areas anyway. Today I think that regardless of my old bias WAR desperately needs to expand it's Tier 4 oRVR lakes.

 Well it’s all good and well saying that and go on about how they could be better, even bashing Mythic for it, but I figured I should also post to demonstrate this more clearly and give some examples of how I think they could be improved. As I’ve said before, I think the Tier 4 zones should become fully oRvR active, it would give us a lot more to fight over and there is absolutely nobody using the zones for PvE anyway, since levelling in Land of the Dead (a fully oRvR zone) is a much more efficient way to get XP. While thinking and preparing for this article I scouted various Tier 4 zones to make sure this is not just my assumption. On my travels scouting multiple zones in detail and at a range of difference times and days, I have seen ONE Choppa in the PvE areas. This is on Karak Norn which is a very busy server. So I can say with confidence that there is barely anyone doing any Tier 4 zone PvE or their PQs (Public Quests).

I decided I’d use Kadrin Valley for this example.

It’s a great looking and very well themed zone with some mark out moments for the Warhammer lore whore in me, but it’s oRvR lake is somewhat flawed. I've highlighted it below:

Basically it’s a big circle and that’s about it. There are a wide range of ways you can travel through the zone as a whole, yet it's only the yellow roads below that are RvR enabled.

You can take alternative routes through the PvE areas, but it is rare anybody bothers. I think this is because they are PvE; people don’t bother learning their way around in the first place, there is no sense of threat when in them, there are no RvR objectives in the PvE area annnnnnnd as alternative routes... they just don’t work very well. You can sneak across to get behind the enemy, but with all the objectives on the big circle oRvR lake, the enemy will just zerg around to you in no time anyway.

So what would happen to our possible paths of travel if we made the entire zone oRvR enabled?

Bloody hell! That's suddenly become a much more complex zone, with a massive array of places to go, but as of yet no reason to do so. It still leaves all the oRvR objectives around the circle and the other routes are still of no use. So what we need to do is add a few more objectives (in a general sense of the word) to what was once the PvE area. I'm just going to add 4 for now, though I think we'd want to add more to the left side of the zone.

You will notice I've used the keep symbol. The reason being is the zone already has loads of keeps and fortified buildings in it. They're PQs mainly, empty of course, but with more character than the ones in the oRvR lake. It's actually a bit of a travesty that they're not being used and that so many players probably never even see them.

1) Tucked away in the south east is this castle with a classic dwarven style keep and other buildings. It doesn't have to work exactly as the old keeps, perhaps it would have multiple keep Lords spread around that need to die within a certain amount of time between each other. Or something...

2) Here we have yet another keep, but with a different awesome look and interestingly it's at one of the highest points in the entire zone, which is a loooong way up. I really like the giant statues and clouds that drift around.

3) The Slayer Keep. A massive fortress, which should be so awesome, but is just another empty PQ. It's gagging for something cool, not just another keep or fortress. Perhaps it could be turned into some kind of RvR enabled PQ, inspired by the City Sieges? A big RvR PQ of some kind...

4) A dwarven brewery... Stunties take their drink very, very seriously. As such these places are heavily fortified. Perhaps it could just be like one of the normal battle objectives or could be turned into something more akin to a Dark Age of Camelot tower?

I found loads of other things I could have used here. And I mean LOADS.

By adding these (and more) extra objectives, using the existing excellent terrain, we now have reasons to fight all over the zone and not just zerg round a bloody great circle all day. There's room for zergs, warband and small group play, all with choices in what to do. I’m sure whoever designed the PQs may have a tang of sorrow at my suggestion to remove them, but sorry chaps, they simply do not get played. You’ve given us really cool looking stuff, but the system that uses them does not give us any motivation to go there. Change them from PvE to PvP and not only do you give reason to your high quality graphics, but you also reinvigorate an entire zone and oRvR itself.

Most Tier 4 Warhammer zones are like this. The terrain is awesome, but we get forced away from so much of it and spend our game time ignorant of the amazing art and design in vast swathes of WAR's game-world. If we want XP we do land of the Dead, if at 40 we want PvE we do instances, we don't ever do PQs. WAR's existing landscape could be the most amazing RvR zones ever, they just need a little tweaking and the decision to really make WAR's Tier 4 about PvP.

Black Orc update – The other end of tier 1

I’ve been really enjoying the Black Orc this time round. I discovered that an add on conflict was causing problems for the Plan B mod (essential to make Blorcs not utter crap to play) and sorting that out has made a massive difference. I still think the Black Orc/Swordmaster plan system is very poor for PvP because it doesn’t let you react with the right ability at the right time, but even so at the moment it’s not annoying me. I’ve opted for running around with a great weapon, stacked mainly strength and the end result has been me kicking buttocks left right and centre. Only lost one 1v1 fight and am also winning most 1 vs multiple fights, within reason anyway. Of course this is tier 1, so a lot of the opposition isn’t up to much, but then it’s not like I’m the only veteran running round with a half twinked alt. It’s certainly a very solid class in this tier.

With these Blorc update posts I’ll be including pictures to show the evolution of the Black Orc image as I progress through the tiers, it’s a class that has some pretty dramatic and very brutal looking armour. Nothing in the way of WoW’s camp insanity thankfully, this is Warhammer after all.

So this is me at the start of Tier 1, I think other than the starting gear all I had was a bracer.

And this is me now at level 11, about 35% away from dinging 12 and leaving tier 1. Not found a helm yet alas. Mean looking bugger I reckon.

Tier 2 is fast approaching... It was pretty busy when I was there with my Zealot fairly recently, hopefully that will have continued.

Lilrys the Godslayer

Here's Lilrys a Disciple of Khaine from Kill Frenzy soloing the last boss in Bloodwrought Enclave :)

Obviously this is asking for people to cry "NERF!", but meh Warrior Priests can do it to. NERF! :P

Nah, but seriously not just any DoK could do this.

Marauder vid is for the big

Biggsie has just posted up his latest Marauder roaming PvP video. Well worth a look if you want to see some solo Marauder spanking action.



Or go here for higher res options

World Cup - England vs USA

Looking forward to tonights game, it will be great to get underway.

England will be favourites to win, but we're going to have to be on the case because the USA are pretty solid these days. Still I'm predicting a 2-0 win for England. Rooney and Gerrard to score.


Other than tonight obviously, I'd like the USA to have a good world cup. America are slowly waking up to football, they just need some emotional attachement to hold attention so more of them can start to see the tension, drama, art and subtleties beyond the usual not enough scoring complaints (which is like way to miss the point my friends). I've known a few of my American friends that went to league matches over here, every one of them left the game fully converted ;) There is nothing quite like the atmosphere of an English league match, with a pie, chips and sugery builders tea :D The American enthusiasm for sport could lead to them having a great domestic league if they got onboard.

Good luck to both teams of course ;)

Honourable combat: pixels at dawn

I got a message on WHA the other day from a well known Order player, he was thanking me for how I handled a little situation we’d got into and mentioned it was rare to see such sportmanship. I’d been walking through a quiet area in Praag when the infamous Ironbreaker attacked me and we instantly went at it one on one. I think I was going to lose the fight, but I wasn’t getting horrifically spanked or anything, it was a good fight. Anyway, a passing Destruction player randomly charged in and so I backed out and let the Ironbreaker deal with him, rather than have it turn into a ganking and tarnish what had been a fair fight.
 
His post about it has got me wondering; is it really that rare for people to show sportsmanship in WAR?
 
I guess it depends on your own standards, people will have different expectations of what is fair or not, their own definition of sportsmanship. You could say we all write our own Bushido code of honourable pixel based combat. I suppose by my own personal code it is pretty rare. I will always take people on 1v1, will tell guildies to “leave them to me” and in general will make a choice over whether I join in other people’s fights based upon how fair I think the fight is. Unless of course the enemy is well known for being a twat or merciless ganker, they can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. So that backing out when others pile in wasn’t an unusual moment for me. I know I’m possibly a bit odd, playing a computer game against faceless opposition and giving a toss about being fair, but for me it adds to the game experience. This whole honour lark is not because I’m a roleplayer or anything (nothing against them, I’m just too lazy), but I love the atmosphere of it in MMOs. Two enemy warriors roaming the land looking for challenges, randomly meeting in some desolated battlefield and going at it in some testosterone fuelled duel. I think my MMO baptism in Ultima Online and the “Eternal Knights of the Circle” guild made a long-term impression, it was a brilliant guild with a very strict code of conduct and was a bit of a roleplaying chivalric type affair.
 
However I’m very aware most people don’t give a rats arse about fair fights, certainly when solo it’s not often other people don’t take the opportunity to try and gank me. And actually I don’t care at all, they are under no obligation to play by my rules and it just gives me a chance to try and embarrass them by killing all of them at once. I remember a fight in Reikland recently where a Witch Hunter who jumped me was losing badly, so his 3 guild mates (that at first were just watching) decided to join in and gank me. Unfortunately (for them) a combination of my stagger, other crowd control, sword & shield set up and their being… well… not great, it led to them all respawning hopefully rather red faced. Moments like that make the many times I get brutally ganked worth it.
 
Not that I’m saying playing with honour makes you a better player or person. There is an argument about your in-game actions reflecting your real life personality, but I don’t entirely buy that. The anonymity of the internet, plus the fact we’re talking about games and the death of pixels, twists people’s behaviour and I don’t think its as straight-forward as saying all gankers are wankers in real life. Though readers of Karak Norn’s WHA server forum have seen the line crossed recently, with online behaviour (thankfully not in game) that I’ll make no such excuses for. Utterly despicable behaviour and anyone justifying it is either a child or morally deficient. I’ll not link it; people will know what I’m talking about.
 
So how do you play? Is it pure red is dead and nothing else matters? Are there situations you will let play out? Or are you as anally retentive about playing fair as I am?