Me and Red Guard sitting in a tree, K I S.... actually just killing me ;)

Sometimes Altdorf is just a plain bizarre. So there I was, having just cleared one Altdorf with a couple of KF groups, I got out with 7 mins to go and most of the guys were gonna head off elsewhere, but I figured I’d do one more and go in solo, see what manner of PUG I get. We get inside, take the first 2 objectives, get to Emperors Circle and Red Guard are there. It was a sloppy attack by us and no surprise, we all get butchered. Of course everyone starts leaving, but I was feeling stubborn (stupid?) and decided to stay and fight. It ended up with just me and 4 others left inside with each of us doing our own thing against a load more Order.

It was strangely entertaining… I tried a few times to ninja myself a kill but kept ending up fighting multiple Red Guard at once, which obviously wasn’t going to be easy. Still I think I at least gave them a bit of a fight, before supplying my renown. When it became apparent that I was on my tod all the time some of the guys were good sports and we larked about for a bit, emoting, jumping around, you know… the usual sociable nonsense when you can’t directly speak to each other (sometimes I think WAR needs more emotes). I thought for a moment I might even get some duels, but alas a few others were not quite so friendly and jumped in each time, but hey no complaints from me, if it’s red its dead and all that.

I dunno if the guys intended lining up for a screenie, but it worked out nicely for this post...

Anyways, /wave to everyone in there, it was odd, yet amusing.

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.

What WAR needs from DAoC - What should and might happen

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Time to bring this series of posts to a close and consider which of Dark Age of Camelot’s features Mythic MIGHT actually bring to WAR.

First off here are a couple of things I’ve not mentioned before, because to be honest they’re not hugely important to me right now and I didn’t think about them much, but I think they will be a big deal for others and I fully expect will get introduced to WAR.

Alternative Progression – Mastery and Champion levels
You’ll often see people saying they want the renown cap increased, they’ve hit 80, got fully geared and need new incentives to play WAR. A fair comment, but I don’t think Mythic will increase the renown rank cap, instead we’ll get something similar to DAoC’s Mastery and Champion levels. Basically they are an alternative levelling system, each with their own XP bar, levels and associated benefits. I doubt Mythic will do a carbon copy of the existing system, but for reference here’s roughly how they work

Mastery levels
There are 10 mastery levels, each one requiring the player to achieve a range of PvE challenges. These challenges vary dramatically in scale, from things you could solo to others requiring almost realm wide co-operation. The challenges themselves are extremely varied, with exploration, puzzles, bosses and huge dungeons. Once you’ve completed that mastery level’s challenge you get access to new special abilities or bonuses and can then earn mastery XP for the next level. These abilities and bonuses are also rather varied, with players choosing from different paths available to their class. There are all sorts of things, from damage increases, to group buffs and travel abilities. Important to note the XP can be earned in both PvE and PvP, so this isn’t purely PvE.

Champion levels
Similar to Mastery Levels, but more based around quest lines that could be PvE or PvP related. However there are no mastery style challenges to complete and as you again earn Champion XP from PvP and PvE, the method you choose to gain it is up to you. As you progress through the Champion levels you get to choose abilities, including things that are not normally available to your class.

Between these two systems you gain a massive amount of individual customisation for your characters, so you really can make your character different to anyone else. It also allows Mythic to introduce new carrots for people to work towards without increasing the existing level caps, which in theory can prevent decimating any chances a newly dinged 40 has. I’ve not heard anything from Mythic on this, but I fully expect to see a variant of it in WAR.

Update for clarification – I’m not suggesting they should add these alternative systems based around PvE, I’m just explaining how they work in DAoC and that I expect a version of them to appear in WAR. Ideally Mythic would make them more PvP orientated.

Zone locking removed
The campaign is too fast, too restrictive and promotes massive zergs that the servers and game engine cannot handle. Everyone knows this, including Mythic if they choose to admit it. DAoC’s open campaign system is proven to work. Make control of a percentage of keeps across all zones the defining factor towards city sieges starting. Do this and it WILL spread players out, reducing lag and promoting group-warband scale play, it WILL massively increase WAR’s sense of scale and it WILL just bloody work. Also making the campaign require effort and increasing the relevance and importance of keeps (and therefore guilds holding them) will be an injection of life in to WAR’s almost extinct realm pride.

Prior to 1.3.5 I wouldn’t have thought Mythic would do it, I thought they’d be reluctant to admit how bad an idea zone locking has proven to be, despite the fact that this and the 2 factions thing are the biggest errors in all of WAR’s development. However, then 1.3.5 arrived and Mythic demonstrated with Carrie at the helm (I presume this is what has changed things) they can and will completely revolutionise the crap features. With the cities Mythic made a bold move and delivered something just plain better. Next step is the campaign.

If Mythic had doubts about this… which they bloody well shouldn’t, because as history has demonstrated they should trust my sodding judgement… Uhm sorry for the EGO!!! moment… So yeah if they have doubts but were really clever, they’d do a live event week… The Age of Chaos, where the system is demonstrated on live servers. Though I think they might just go for it, after all really it’s a no-brainer and would revolutionise the game in a brilliant way.

Relic Raids
We know the fortresses are coming back, we don’t know how. The obvious suggestion is relic raids. Relics provide a realm wide buff and the goal is capturing enemy relics from their fortress, marching it back through it’s (now unlocked) racial pairing and securing it in your fortress. No need to go into much more detail, many people have discussed this before and whilst Mythic may do something totally off the wall with Fortresses, I think this is the safest and most sensible option.


There’s a lot of other things from my previous posts that I would have liked to say I think Mythic will do, but alas I’m not that confident.  The alternative levelling systems I think are a way off, probably with the first proper expansion if and when that arrives. I know a lot of people have huge doubts of Mythic and EA investing much into WAR, which of late my confident stance has lessened a touch and I’m a bit more on the fence regarding. However the beauty of those last 2 changes, is they don’t require huge new resources, instead they use knowledge from their classic and still excellent DAoC MMO and use WAR’s existing game-world to make it work better.

A key phrase for Mythic’s attention I think is simply “Make it work better”.

Not tonight Joséphine

Ok it’s believed Napoleon Bonaparte never actually said that, but meh I wanted to use the line. Soooo, with historical accuracy debated and ignored, I shall continue. It was allegedly because Napoleon got tired of his poontang pie with Empress Joséphine (hmmm, I wonder if anyone has ever written that before). And just like Napoleon's withered bits, we too can have too much of a good thing.

I had yet more excellent city action tonight. Great fights, a few moments of drama and all round great good times. My only concern is, well actually it’s a long term concern, the city sieges are happening too often. At the moment sure that’s cool, it’s new and it is a lot of fun, going on regular city sieges are no bad thing in that respect. But what about in a months time? How will we feel about it after 3 months? Will we overdose on the new city and become immune to its charms?

Of course I hope not, but it is a sensible concern and one I’m fairly sure will get realised. I’m not trying to be negative, I do really, REALLY like the new city sieges and I’m very pleased with this patch. However, as I’ve banged on about many times before I do think the frequency of city sieges and the ping-pong zone locking has diluted the campaign and realm pride to levels a homeopathic scamster could only dream of. It won’t be far in my personal future where I once again don’t want to do a city siege every night, I want the drama and tension of fighting in a campaign where reaching the end prize is an “OMFG! YES! YES!” moment, not “oh it’s Altdorf again”.

Mythic have made a huge step forward with the new city, but the sooner we get a campaign system that is actually worthy of this new high quality end game, the better. Lets think positive, since Carrie has mentioned recently (I'm paraphrasing here...) that now the city is pretty much sorted they are going to be putting in a lot of work to the oRvR campaign, so maybe we will get more good news soon?

First few days of 1.3.5

There was a lot riding on this patch, though it seems like I say something along those lines every single bloody patch. But it’s always true. After the WAR Street crash of 2009™ and the game’s dramatic decline, every patch is critical. Each patch is a chance for Mythic to keep hold of their existing subscribers, entice back old players and attract new blood. Unfortunately through WAR’s history in most cases the patches have been fairly underwhelming or downright disastrous, something that has done nothing to help the general MMO-gaming population’s now very poor perception of Mythic and WAR. Yet in recent times there’s been a bit of an improvement with the excellent revamping of tier 1, the free trial and so on. Whilst I have no numbers to back this up, it has felt like WAR’s population was picking up again, which meant it was really important for Mythic to deliver with 1.3.5. Mythic needed to consolidate their position, demonstrate clear improvements and finally give us the RvR end-game worth that the Warhammer name so deserves.

Thankfully it appears that 1.3.5 and the new city siege system is a huge first step in the right direction. Over the last few days I have had a bloody awesome time fighting in both Altdorf and the Inevitable City. I’ve done more city instances this weekend than I have in the last 6 months. Not because the cities are on constant siege (once or twice a day I believe it is), but because the sieges are now happening at prime times and it’s so much more fun now that I actually want to go take part. Everyone I’ve spoken to are loving the new city and this includes players that have returned specifically to try it out. There are of course a few people whinging in region chat, but then many will whinge no matter what happens, though there is also a fair bit of mewling after people lose an instance to one of Karak-Norn’s now infamous uber-bomb-warbands-of-doom. I do sympathise with those disappointed at the patch’s failure to nerf PBAoE bombing (a little more on that later), but not so much with the sour grapes PvE loot farmers that are crying because they’re not guaranteed to PvE their sovereign anymore, nor the “aint no pleasing you” brigade that would complain if they won the sodding lottery jackpot.

I think I’ve done something like 7 city instances now, spread over 5 different sieges and I’ve had a great time win or lose. Due to real life interfering with my game time and having to play without vent a bit, I’ve only done one alliance warband instance (I tend to solo if I can’t get on vent, don’t like letting the team down because I can’t hear :P), which we won fairly comfortably against an Order guild warband, but other than that I’ve been PuGing. Apart from one match up with a PuG against some uber bombers (which was brutal), the fights have been fairly even, with the tides of battle sweeping back and forth. Every battle has been fun, or at least funny, including the one where we got slaughtered. If this version of the city siege had been in at launch, I don’t think it would have been enough to prevent the population crash on its own, but it would certainly have mitigated some of the damage so to speak. If Mythic can quickly combine this improvement with sorting out the oRvR system that gets us to the siege in the first place, then it could well lead to WAR seeing a dramatic resurgence. I believe that zone locking is the game’s biggest flaw and if that were to go… good times ahead. Whatever happens next, Mythic should strike while the iron is hot. Build on the positive reception of this patch with more news of great improvements to come. Cut out the viral marketing and slap us round the head with some OMFG news that shows everyone WAR is on the up and up AAAAAAAAND UP!!! Otherwise with this red plagued land and us leaping to conclusions, I'm worried we're setting ourselves up for a fall.

Ok a quick few words on the bombing nerf (or not). Basically the crap players that were face-rolling a keyboard bound to one spell can no longer bomb for toffee and die horribly. However, the players that really knew how to PBAoE bomb properly have not been nerfed at all, if anything they’ve been buffed with the improved single target options. The type of guilds that demonstrated real bombing on the EU PTS are still doing their uber-bomb-instant- killing bit and still wiping the floor with people, particularly in the confined city streets. Which is a shame, because the face-rollers weren’t much of a problem in warband vs warband combat, only in zerg vs whatever. So Mythic have dropped the ball with this particular change. I’m puzzled as to why really; I mean how hard can it be? Remove the stacking, just like with ranged AoE and job done.

Anyways, that’s my only real complaint so far and I don’t want that to distract from what is so far looking like the best WAR patch in… well, possibly ever.

Almost there... Patchy patch patch

Final patch notes for 1.3.5 are out! Check the Herald for details. The patch itself goes live today for the US and tomorrow for the EU I believe.

It is one hell of a big patch and looks to be a big step forward for WAR. There is also a LOT of smaller goodies hidden amongst the wall of patchy text. New mounts for example...

Looking forward to this one :)

Nerfage - Apparently this was one of the key moments...

This scoreboard is from a screenshot doing the rounds from the EU city testing that led to a sudden wave of Mythic's nerf bat. Though Mythic claim they had it planned long before, which is of course quite possible, but I would be surprised if this utter spanking didn't make a bit of an impression :P

The names look like a warband from the Norn guild VII, one of Order's best on our server. Not sure who took the screenie, full credit to them, whoever it was.

Click the image to enlarge.

Not much to say, since this tells it's own story really...

Youch! It burns!

There’s been WAR bloggers popping up all over the place lately, as my ever growing blogroll can testify to. I’m going to give an extra special shout out for Krosuss who’s been a regular commentator on my blog for a long time. He’s recently started his own blog called “Krosuss says burn…” and from his past comments I know the dude has plenty of ideas to share.


WAR’s resurgence continues!

Oh and on another topic... if you want to see the new city being tested live, check out Mykiel's site for streaming video uberness.

A big patch for the big picture

Righty then ladies and germs, having had a bit of time to think about the patch notes what do I (and you) think?

Bloody hell! This is a BIG patch! There are a lot of things I didn’t see coming, as well as a lot of things we all knew were on their way. In general terms I think this has the potential to be the best WAR patch in a looooooooooong time. Perfect? No of course not. But there are lots of clear improvements, a range of excellent new options, recognised headache bugs being zapped and of course the new city siege. It’s far too big a patch to review in its entirety in a single blog post, so excuse me for skipping a fair few things for now.

Clearly the focus of this patch is the new improved city siege system. Unfortunately this will mean that some people bitch and whine that their class hasn’t had this buffed or that fixed, but then unless they get an uber buff from God himself, well… they would bitch and whine anyway. Mythic appear to have changed their strategy regarding balance to making smaller focussed changes to careers, rather than the gung-ho widespread nerf-gimping of the past. This is a good thing, remember how much people hated that in the past? No? You bloody well should, the crying was epic. Small and considered change is a better way of doing things. Does this mean we have to wait longer for our buffs? Yes. Is that a shame? Yes, of course. Is it better than ruining loads of things at once because you can’t see the impact on individual careers? HELL YES! Having the end game turned into something worthwhile is more important than my poor Magus getting the buffs he needs. This is a big patch for the big picture.

The NEW 100% RvR City Siege
Which leads me to the big picture change, Mythic’s attempt at delivering an end-game worthy of Warhammer. Have they delivered? This is hard to say with complete confidence as this is all on paper still, but it looks like they’ve delivered with style. Each stage is now completely RvR focussed, with the NPCs supplying reasons for us to fight other players. The NPCs are mobile targets and the goal of each stage is to kill or protect them, but crucially they don’t attack us, they are JUST a target to be killed or protected. There’s no boss tactics or PvE style stuff, no shitty kite fights or other such tedium, instead it’s all about one side defending against the invading players. Winning sovereign will no longer be about how good you are at (or interested in…) PvE, it will be about how good you are at defeating enemy players. Also the city has been opened up, with the war quarters areas included, so the fight should feel much bigger. On paper this sounds excellent.

Probably the next biggest changes for city siege instances are the change from 48 vs 48 to 24 vs 24 and each instance being self reliant. This is really good news. No longer are we reliant on someone in some other instance not fucking up, no more being hampered by unrelated and unknown players screw ups. This change also has another excellent knock on effect… At the moment one of the main reasons people do alarm clock city sieges is because pushing to stage 2 in the city is a lot easier without any defenders, and the reason it’s easier without defenders is because of that thing where one instance can screw up the entire king push for your entire realm. This patch gets rid of that. How well you do is now down to how well your warband (and your enemy’s warband) performs.

Career changes

• Auto-attack changes… Good move. People defending auto-attack were deluded, as anyone that has actually fought against a tier 4 slayer (with the related gear) would testify to, this was insanely over-powered. Regular readers will know I’m not one to jump on the nerf this nerf that bandwagon, but this was a genuine serious problem.
• Runepriests and Zealots getting buffed… Excellent news, these are two classes that really did need some tweaking and I’m chuffed for them. The changes look great too.
• Chosen and Ironbreaker get changes… All good as far as I’m concerned. The ironbreaker Gromril Plating morale ability was rather potent and having the Chosen morales moved around and aligned with that makes perfect sense for me, despite them not being career mirrors.
• Sorcerers and Bright Wizards… I have to say I’m not well versed enough with these classes to really tell what this means for them. I’m reliably informed it’s not really nerfs or buffs, more just changes.

RvR currency

As I can’t see the new prices for gear this is rather hard to make a judgement on. It does sound like we’ll earn a LOT more crests in future, though I have to say the breaking crests down on a 1 to 1 basis seems very, very odd. Why???

Combat Highlighting!
I had no idea that this was on its way. It sounds very useful for healing people outside of your group. And as an option you can have turned off or on, with a range of settings between, it sounds like an excellent addition.

Tomb of Vulture Lord 7th Boss changes
VERY good news. The problem with this boss is it's too reliant on either certain classes being present or kiting mobs. The problem with kiting is that the mob pathing in WAR is just not good enough and it will regularly bug out, teleport or worse. If you have a group of friends that want to clear VL, but you don't have the right classes, the 7th boss (and only the 7th) is a complete nightmare. I go with different group set ups, sometimes its a doddle, but sometimes when those staggers, etc aren't available, its just total bollocks.

Ok, there’s loads more in the patch and lots more to comment on, but I’m trying to wall of text a bit less, so this will do for now

Q&A about the new City sieges and a vague hint of something

There was a good post by Mythic the other day answering a whole load of questions about the new full RvR city sieges. The post was by Michael J. Wyatt, who has the no doubt busy job of Designer/Lead for RvR, Encounters, Live Events & Content. You can find the full post and all the questions here.
Here’s a few of the things I was most interested to hear:

Q: Who has control over moving players around in the Warband?
A: No single player does. As an individual, you choose which party within the Warband you would like to be in (assuming there is room). Its intent is to facilitate grouping and coordination; not work against it.

So that sounds just like the scenario system. I wonder if that means we’ll get those selfish healers that like to sit in solo groups and horde RPs?

Q: Will my Warband be split up when zoning into a Contested City?
A: With v1.3.5, the mechanics for entering a city instance remain untouched. It's possible that this will occur and something we're looking at improving upon for the future.

OK, at the moment if I join with a warband we all get in together, as long as we’re all outside at the time and move into the instance fairly promptly. You would only get split up if you’re slacking and take 10 minutes to get into the sodding zone. So assuming I’ve got that right, fine with me.

Q: What's to prevent Champions from running off and hiding?
A: During the final Stage, the gameplay area is sectioned off and the Champions are placed into the battlefield shortly after being chosen. There isn't a place to hide where your enemy cannot find you... quickly. Also, straying too far from your King will cause your Champion buff to fade and credit will be given to the opposing Realm for defeating a Champion.

Excellent news. This was something I know a few guildies were concerned about. The AFK scenario whores are a pain in the arse as it is. Tossers the lot of you btw.

Q: Can players join an instance after it has progressed past Stage 1?
A: Yes. There will be functionality put in place that will temporarily prevent new players from joining a specific Contested City at certain junctures however. To give you an example, new players won't be able to join an instance if the final battle is well underway.

Oh really… if this could be also be used to prevent the immense annoyance of joining an almost finished scenario, well that would be spiffing.

Q: With allowing Defenders to obtain the same end-game equipment, what incentive is there to participate in ORvR?
A: The intent is that Invaders are given an advantage by disallowing Defenders to recapture lost points in Stage 1. The conclusion of each Stage affects the start of the following Stage, too. If the Invaders were allowed to destroy the gates leading to the enemy King, well, the Defenders will have a tough time trying to recouperate their losses and succeed in Stage 2. This will be an aspect that is closely watched and adjusted accordingly. We want you to participate (and win) the Campaign. Simply because you can obtain the same rewards for Defending, doesn't mean you will.

Hmmm… OK I get how when in the city siege instance this encourages you to fight, afk leeching or playing to lose will result in poor rewards. This is good news and to be applauded, anything to bitch slap the leechers is wonderful in my book. Problem is that doesn’t answer the question “what is the incentive to fight in ORvR?”

Billy-Bob the Warrior Priest needs Sovereign armour. He logs on and Destruction are pushing to Altdorf, so Billy-Bob might as well let them and have a chance at getting the armour from defending the city right?

We need a proper negative for having your city undersiege. Not by locking out content like before, but something else... a renown gain buff for the enemy?

Q: How do you plan to prevent players from "AFK Farming"?
A: With v1.3.5, there are significant improvements made to the "Idle Hands" buff. That being said, any player with the "Idle Hands" buff will not receive any reward but still receive the Reward Lockout Timer.

Good good.

Q: Will I still receive a trickle of Scenario Currency rewards?
A: Yes. At the conclusion of each Stage, the players of the winning Realm will receive an Insignia even if a character has a Reward Lockout Timer.

And there was much rejoicing. Now if you could add insignias to general oRvR too, that would be great. I’m not hugely bothered by it, but I’m starting to want one of those nice shields and I don’t want to farm scenarios. :P

Aaaaaaand finally, the vague hint of something.
The lovely Werit has posted yet more info from his visit to Mythic HQ, which includes a little something of special interest…

"During our tour of the office, we got to see nearly everyone. There was one group of WAR developers that we couldn't talk with or even see what they were up to. Who knows what they were working on? It must be something good though :)"

It’s vague for sure, perhaps I’m just clutching at straws or putting 1 and 1 together and getting 9. Whatever... I don't care! :D It will be an expansion and totally awesome. I hope. Pls. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on.

City change details are out and they're uhm... like awesome duuuuudes... I think.

Bloody hell Mythic! The new city changes sound very cool. I'm not sure what I was expecting, I guess after so many meh city changes in the past it was easy to have a large dose of nagging doubt. Yet these changes actually sound really good, with potential for tactial play and constant fighting. Stage 3 and the player champions, now that is inspired.

However putting first reactions aside, there's a lot to digest and also a lot of fine detail to be answered, so for now it is of course a case of it sounds great. We will have to wait and see how it actually plays out.

Full details with pictures can be found here.

Bloggers report from Mythic HQ

Check his post now! Werit linky linky

He has news on the city changes, but note this is only the first batch of questions, there is more to come.

One thing in particular has my attention...
OneShard: Will cities still have the capture the flag mechanic?

Mythic: Capture the what?

 Very interesting... moooooooooooooooooooore pls!

OK here's more...from Gaarawarrgabs.

More form Mykiel.

And yet more form Shadowwar.

You'll be wanting to keep an extra eye on these blogs over the next few days as more questions are answered.



Still more to come too.

You can tell it's another city siege when...

...your guild roster looks like this:

Not that going to Tomb of the Vulture Lord is exactly a hardship, well... apart from those all too regular times when it turns into bug-mageddon. I think most of it's problems are server lag related, it does seem to go a bit wonky if say a zone locks, a siege starts or a player logs in somewhere or presses something on their keyboard. :P Maybe sometime I should list all the bugs I still regularly see in TotVL, might do Mythic a favour... things like 3rd boss still randomly vanishes into the floor, 4th boss wont let players release from the trap things, 5th boss random line of sight issues (healer gets no LoS messages even when standing next to you), 8th boss standing still letting you kill him but the PQ not completing... oh you know what, I can't be arsed :P

Anyways getting back to what was meant to be a the brief and simple post:

Cor blimey guv and other such cliche mockney expressions. I hope Mythic's 1.3.5 plan is 1) made of awesome pie with proper English custard, and 2) here soon!

In other total bloody awesome, but utterly unrelated to WAR news; Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip's new album is out. Their first album was pure win with classics like Thou shalt always kill, a letter from God to man and of course Look for the woman. Those links are a few videos from the aforementioned albums, well worth a look if you fancy listening to some music that actually has a point. Plus Scroobius has an epic beard, which ofc means he is a man of genuine wisdom.

PS yes its stupid o'clock and I couldn't sleep

Mythic in blog linking frenzy and tease on city changes

Over on their Herald website Mythic have gone on a blog linking frenzy and given a shout out to both the new and veteran WAR bloggers amongst us. I really like to see Mythic recognise our efforts like this, it’s only a simple thing for them to have done, but it shows they do read and are aware of their community. Of course the cynics out there will say that whilst it shows they read, it doesn’t mean they listen. But, for those of us trying to blog regularly it is nice to be acknowledged and it certainly gives you some encouragement to get tapping on that keyboard.
 
Mythic linked to me with the following comments:
 
“Bootae brings us his across-the-pond perspective on naked city sieges and why he feels like there are too many city sieges happening on the EU Server Karak Norn. Not to worry Bootae, 1.3.5 is on the way and it will change the way we look at cities forever.”
 
You will notice I’ve highlighted the last sentence. That’s a pretty damn bold statement by Mythic. And whilst we’re still not getting any rumours of what I really want to hear about (live/paid/whatever expansion), this one sentence is on the right track. If 1.3.5 really does revolutionise cities for the better, then this would go a long way to improving the whole WAR experience and give more than orange pixels as an incentive to attack or defend cities. Hell, with luck it could even be the thing that brings back realm pride and even some emotional attachment to the campaign. As long as Mythic follow up that one sentence with the magnitude it implies.
 
Soooo, what do we know about 1.3.5 city changes? Not a lot other than:

The focus will change from PvE to RvR.

Mythic have said previously that 1.3.4’s changes to zones unlocking once a city is captured was a requirement for the city changes in 1.3.5.
 
Questions…

Will this mean absolutely no PvE in the city sieges?

If they are fully reliant on RvR, how will it work if there aren’t enough enemies to go round?

Will we see NPCs bolstering under-strength sides?

Why were the zones unlocking a requirement? What’s the relationship?

Will there be a reduction in how often cities are sieged?

Or are the changes so dramatic that I have no real clue what I should be asking?
 
Hmmm, hmmm and thrice hmmm.

6 sieges in one day, the big 40 and getting nekkid

When I heard last week that we’d hit the 4th siege of the day on Karak Norn, I planned on writing a blog post that would sneak in lyrics from Crowded House’s song “four seasons in one day”, however it was not to be. The server community ruined this glorious opportunity for a tribute to jingly jangly Australian nineties music by having another 2 bloody sieges. Still it’s worth posting about anyway. Six city sieges in one day. SIX! V sodding I! 3 each for Altdorf and the Inevitable City. If ever you wanted proof that WAR’s campaign is totally FUBAR, this is it. In fact I’d go so far as to quote a friend of mine when he says the situation is “ricockulous”.
 
In other news, my guild Kill Frenzy finally hit guild rank 40! It’s taken a while, but then we don’t restrict alts or anything like that and as a result the guild shows as being about 140 members, when in reality it’s actually about 30 actives with a mix of casuals and hardcore. In case you don’t know, the more characters in a guild, the more guild renown you have to earn to level. This is why you can power level guilds by stripping it down to just 6 members and then farming PvE instances :P I couldn’t be bothered with that myself, so thanks to my stubbornness KF earned their ranks the hard way.
 
Finally and this is a real shock… I actually did a city siege for the first time in months! IC got invaded, I had a warband of 15 Kill Frenzy and we thought sod it, nowt else to do… So in we went and found ourselves against 17 Order, who other than one group from my new fave order guild “Uprising”, appeared to be a random collection of players. We brutalised them horribly, obviously with us on vent together and them being randoms, but at the end the fun began. We spotted Steveo, a famous Bright Wizard, on his runepriest alt. We like Steveo, he’s always played with good humour and we once ganked him with naked Orcs, which sorta turned into a guild tradition… whenever we see his corpse the whole guild will drop everything to jump on his corpse.
 
After one of our Marauders had pulled him into us a few times, Steveo reacted with true style and went for the only real solution that didn’t involve quitting. He got naked. This then snowballed, as everyone stipped off and suddenly the streets of Altdorf were full of naked characters dancing, fist fighting and generally larking about. Good times.
 
 I’ve not got any pics myself, but there maybe a video appearing at some point…

Changing the landscape of WAR

There’s this friend of mine who is not only an MMO player, but is also the proud owner of a most spectacular beard... And as everyone knows, a man with a beard is a man worth listening to. Has history ever given us a greater symbol of wisdom? Sigmund Freud, Alan Sugar, Abraham Lincoln, Gandalf, Socrates, the Chuckle Brothers, Albert Trotter, the list of hirsute heroes goes on and on.
 
Now then, this is relevant to WAR because in a moment of true bearded genius, my hairy friend had the following idea…
 
Why can’t WAR’s landscape change dependent on which faction is dominant? Not change in any huge physical way, nothing requiring masses of complicated new models and effectively whole new zones, but change the textures used. Have the colours and feel of the zone adapt to the theme of the owning faction. So when you kill the enemy king, not only do you get some shiney orange pixels in your loot bag, you also get to see the fruits of your labour made real in the game world. As the city rebuilds it also triggers your game client to access different texture files… How hard can it be?
 
Imagine a corrupted Eataine. Once a land of rolling hills covered in vibrant green grass, now reduced to a rotting and decayed realm of filth. The sleek Elven buildings covered in chaotic symbols daubed in Elf blood. The sky itself smouldering with purple fire, rivers red with blood.  Or the city of Praag, fires doused and replaced with a tranquil snow covered city, snowflakes drifting through the streets, but be wary, this is just the calm before the storm…
 
And the landscape retains the controlling faction’s theme until you manage to siege the enemy city and kill their king. Your action defines the whole character of the game world.
 
Just a visual change perhaps and probably far more complicated to implement than my Top Gear “how hard can it be” style post suggests, but man, think about it. Wouldn’t it be better to have a truly changing landscape?

When testing on a live server, keep your disinfectant handy.

With the vast majority of fixes or changes to software it would be bloody mental to test them on a live server. The potential to crash your live system, destroy data, etc, is very real. At work right now I’m involved in a major software upgrade and there’s not a thing we’re going to allow on live that hasn’t been fully explored and rigorously tested. However not everything is like that. MMOs are strange beasts and allow their users a lot of personal freedom. As an MMO gamer you’re not always obliged to follow the rules and your personal taste will define how you play. As such there are some things you just can’t fully explore in a test server environment, because you can’t predict with 100% accuracy how the live gaming population will react and Public Test Servers do not in any way reflect the reality of a live server. The upcoming campaign changes in WAR’s 1.3.4 patch are a prime example of this problem.
 
When an under siege city is captured and the king is attackable, the campaign will in future “unlock” and the openRvR zones become available again. This means the defending faction could attempt a counter attack, or the attackers could even try to consolidate their position and push once more towards the already under siege city.
 
Mythic are perfectly able to test the mechanics of this change on their internal test servers. They can make sure when that city locks, the campaign then unlocks and everything works correctly. The problem is they can’t discover on a test server, be it public or internal, what us players will decide to do when this change hits live. Just like any of us thinking about this change, Mythic can take an educated guess at how we’ll react, but they can’t know for sure.
 
If Inevitable City is captured:
Will all Destruction stay in to defend?
Would some or ALL of the Destruction defenders counter attack?
Will Order all push for the King, or will some go back out and push the oRvR zones instead?
If one faction starts pushing the oRvR zones, will the other faction react or not?
 
There are all kinds of possibilities and combinations of the above, some of which could lead to people choosing to do the much frowned upon RvE (RvE=Realm vs Environment, hitting mobs to progress the Realm vs Realm campaign) and with it bring a decrease in actual player fighting, where as other situations would supply an increase in players fighting in oRvR. There’s only one way to find out what we will get and that’s to put it on a live server, sit back and watch the drama unfold.
 
I’m all for this kind of experimenting; it mixes things up and could lead to massive improvements. There is however a “but” of J-LO proportions, so here goes… BUT! If things don’t work out well, they must be dealt with quickly. Sticking rigidly to a patch timeline and leaving us with a shit situation for a month or two is unacceptable. It will drive existing players away and turn new players off. Mythic need to communicate regularly, keeping us informed and react promptly to problems. This time Mythic got away with the mess that removing forts put us in, more by luck than judgement to be honest. If the next batch of changes ruin the campaign further and it’s not remedied quickly, then it will fester like a batch of Nurgle’s finest pox.
 
As ever with WAR, it’s a delicate time. Many of us are very positive about the upcoming experiment on our live servers, but many others are decrying the removal of content (even if those scenarios are crap) and the potential for RvE. I know this change is the first stage of a range of planned campaign changes, it’s preparation for the following patch, but please Mythic… remember those fortresses. Removing the Fortresses and not replacing them was proven to be a poor decision, which was only emphasised by the lack of information on their future and the MONTHS of city ping pong we’ve had to put up with since, with no sign or word of a solution.
 
Mythic, please don’t make the same mistake twice. Keep talking, keep us feeling involved and if something goes smelly, get the disinfectant quick this time. Nurgle’s rot is a bugger to shift once it sets in.
 
Also as an aside and while I’ve got you here, this patch preview has prompted a lot of community grumbling about a lack of proper new content. Don’t give the maintenance mode crew any more ammunition please, you might want to announce something solid sooner rather than later.

Ehhh? What's all this happy stuff about?

Of late there has been a distinct lack of WAR grumbling affecting my gaming time.  For someone who is now I guess classed as a long time WAR player this is a unique and novel experience. I don’t know if this phenomenon is limited to the circles I move in, since I can only guess what the ambiance is like in other guilds or on other servers, but at the moment Kill Frenzy is a rather contented place.
 
But why this ridiculous happiness in an allegedly “failed” game? Damn you Boots why?
 
1) Mythic have made huge improvements to the game. Particularly performance. I now run the game with fairly high settings and full spell effects on at all times. Be it small scale skirmishes or big battles, the games is now much more able to cope and runs pretty well. Yes there are still times when the lag kicks in badly, but the number of players it takes to do this is much higher than in the past. And to be honest, I can understand it lagging when 350 enemies attack a keep with 150 defenders. I’ve yet to see any MMO cope with that, other than EVE, but then EVE has the advantage of space and bugger all graphics and landscape to deal with.
 
Also in other areas Mythic have delivered a lot of good work. The game is feeling more polished and has developed its character with subtle little things here and there. Character balance still isn’t perfect (name a game where it is), but it’s probably the best it’s ever been and as a result we’re starting to see more of the “gimped” classes on the battlefield.
 
That said, AoE is still far too powerful and still needs toning down. Though it is at a point where it’s no longer the dominating factor in small scale fighting. AoE remains a serious issue in large scale fighting, since it hits that instant death critical mass of Wizards/Sorcs. A warband of 24 Bright Wizards would be unstoppable. :P However, since we do far more small scale fighting than zergy stuff, I think it’s a bit less noticeable for us a lot of the time.
 
2) The campaign is knackered. It swings back and forth from PvE farming Altdorf and the Inevitable City like a metronome out of its mind on Columbian marching powder. If metronomes had minds, and could snort class A drugs, and had a form of income to pay for the habit… uhm… random… aaaaanyway, the campaign has lost all meaning or value and is dissolving any care or realm pride. It is utterly ruined and needs serious changes. So why the hell am I listing it as one of the reasons why we’re happy?
 
Because we got to the point a while back where we quite simply don’t care about the campaign at all. Not even bloody vaguely. If you pay attention to it you will just get annoyed, so we don’t. We log on, we fight people, and we have fun. Sure, if people in our alliance that do care about the campaign need help, then we’ll help them straight away, that’s what alliances are for after all, but we don’t actually care about the campaign, just the fun and the fighting. If the campaign provides some fun, yay, bonus! But if the enemy kills our king, why care? It doesn’t mean anything; there is no real downside or any ramifications. It is utterly irrelevant. The sooner you stop caring, the sooner you enjoy your game time and just get on with smacking things in the face. A strange situation perhaps, but the fighting in WAR is really, really good... it's just that the framework around it is dodgy.
 
Of course this is not an ideal situation in the long term. Mythic really must fix the campaign. BOTH Altdorf and Inevitable City twice every day is insane. Hardly an epic campaign, more like some Unreal bloody Tournament map. For now though, ignore the campaign, focus on the fighting and enjoy. We certainly are ;)

2+4= no more WARpong

As we all know, WAR's campaign is totally FUBAR. Bouncing back and forth like a demented game of ping pong. It needs sorting out, but how?

How about adding the missing cities?

Here's the (not exactly new) idea...
I'm not sure if it would need it, but it might be wise to review how quickly zones can be locked. Perhaps slowing them down again... Anyway, when you do lock a racial pairing, you get the relevant city siege; so Empire/Chaos gives you Altdorf/IC. However it doesn't lock the other pairings anymore. You can still do their scenarios, push for zone locks and even start a siege on another pairing's cities at the same time.

Which in theory would mean players would have more choice both as individuals choosing how they play the game and strategically as a faction. As Destruction do you dare commit everyone to sieging Altdorf and leave the Orc and Dark Elf lands unprotected? Do Order get everyone on the defensive or could they counterstrike from the Elf lands? Add a proper downside to your king/s being killed and all of a sudden the multiple city campaign gets a bit tense...

Oh and it would also be something huge to announce, bring in major new content to relieve boredom, provide new PvE instance opportunities, different RvR sieges AND this is all using content Mythic had already started making anyway.

Potential you think?

Saturday night's RvR in a few pictures

Click the pics for the bigger images.

A few (318...) Order arrive.

"We bomb because we're outnumbered" doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. :P

They bomb, we bomb, every-bloody-one bombs.

Defenders in the keep are smothered by red pixels.

A look at the map confirms; WAR is indeed everywhere.

Our group tried to slow Order getting into IC, which meant we got into IC late and had an empty instance. :( I did get a nice shot of me posing at the Apex though.

But despite my posing, the end result was always going to be Order visiting the Citadel.

And I believe they got 7 king kills. No shots of that obviously, being instanced PvE. Such a shame all the proper PvP leads to PvE. Gratz to winners tho ;)