First night of real Choppa action...

...and it was pretty cool.

I've had a bit of a sporadic nights gaming, but managed to get Gashface up to both realm and renown rank 7. So it's too early to really judge the class or anything, but enough for a first impression.

The mighty Gashface!

Unsurprisingly it's another melee glass cannon, but I think some people maybe surprised at quite how squishy they are. In RvR I died a LOT. This maybe due to me being a bit too interested in the Wrecka stuff, so meaning I was in full berserk mode the whole time, which in turn means I have my armour and resists reduced by 50% in exchange for increased damage by 50%. Or I could just be a bit cack.

Regardless, it was fun anyway. And I enjoyed playing the whole psychotic Orc thing, very different from the more calculated way I play my Witch Elf where stealth lets you choose your fights more.

In PvE I'm AOE farming quest mobs with ease. It seems the Choppa sure can kick some damage out.

Lots of guildies were talking about finding Great Weapons much better then dual wielding, particularly in PvP. No shocks there with the tradition in MMOs of great weapons for burst damage, but if this is the case yet again, then I really hope at higher levels dual wield gets better for PvP. Personally I want to play a dual wielding Choppa, I use a great weapon with my Chosen a lot, so a change would be cool.

Anyways I'll update again when I get more time playing with my chopper... fnar fnar

Choptimus Prime

Was already taken :( One of my guildies was gonna have that name, loved the idea :P I've gone for a good old fashioned orcy type name "Gashface".

Admist the usual rambling, I'll blog away over the next few weeks about how I get on with my new Choppa. But for now I'm faced with this still...


Bugger.

WCPI time

The whole server transfer was a big deal for me obviously and it went pretty smoothly in the end. Though there's some right bloody comedy crap smothering the WHA Karak Norn forum now as old Norn players and the ex-Karak Hirn people slag each other off. With all that epeen rage somebody is gonna get hurt :P
A voice of sanity amongst the ranting comes from Snort over at Tuffmudda as he discussing the reality of the situation.

Riv's got himself some Dark Promise gear. Considering the crap luck he was having with getting Sentinel, its about time eh? ;) Read his excellent blog over at: Way of the Chosen. The man clearly is a sensible chap having chosen a Chosen like the rest of us clever types.

Another blog I highly recommend is Tome of Knowledge. There's always interesting stuff to read and I'm a big fan of the custom artwork that enhances this blog. Talented swine! ;)

The Guild is dead. Long live the Guild!

Well that's a transfer done then... Karak-Hirn's Blood Pact is no more, the name was taken on Karak-Norn. So we formed Kill Frenzy today! Same quality people, just with some renaming for both the guild and some of our characters.

It's going to be very interesting on Norn over the next few weeks. It looks like all the destruction and order alliances from Hirn have moved there, I can't think of any that didn't off the top of my head. It's certainly going to mix things up a bit! I don't know what Norn is like for organisation currently, but as both factions have a load of very organised alliances (in fact really it's alliances of alliances) arriving today, well it can only complement or even enhance the server's existing factions.

Putting aside GOA's rubbish promoting of the transfer, I was impressed with the ease of the process. Only difficulty was at the time we tried to create the guild, IC was under siege and that complicated things somewhat :P

Looking forward to some hot Norn action ;)

Community spirit is alive and well ;)

Well it looks like all the big guilds (including mine) are moving from Karak Hirn to Karak-Norn. Representives from both Order and Destruction met up on a ventrilo server to discuss how to keep our community together and between them decided on Norn.

There were big events on our server last night as people said goodbye to it. Lots of fighting, emote banter and some fun between enemies. I'm really impressed with the attitude of people here and it bodes well for people on Norn to have us heading there. Check this screenshot taken by Svengrom from last night:
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1858/svengrom007.jpg

Fair play to everyone there. Stay classy Karak Hirn ;)

GOA: How to break up friends and influence people (to leave)

I’d like to say in advance, if this comes across as a rant, then I apologise now ;) Since WAR launched I’ve not once ragged on GOA, but alas today I have joined the masses drowning in frustration and misery brought on by their inept customer service.

Yesterday patch 1.2 went live on the European servers. Big news indeed, but for players on Karak-Hirn it’s turned out to be just the “and in other news” moment. You see directly after the GOA announced the patch had gone live, they then declared a new round of server transfers. Starting the following morning! So we’re talking about no more than 12 hours notice of server transfers and the icing on the cake is, they didn’t state what time limit the transfers have.

Panic has ensued.

Now this is clearly badly done by GOA and more than a little bit rubbish. How GOA expects guild and alliance leaders to coordinate a transfer with only a few hours notice, I don’t know. However for me what’s increasing my annoyance is the manner of their announcement regarding Karak-Hirn. There has been no discussion previously about population problems, yet their announcement basically says get out now your server is dying. We then also had a bit of inside information leaked to some of our server’s influential players that the population is decreasing badly, confirming the “get out of Dodge” message.

Whilst writing this, I’ve just heard that now when you log into WAR and Hirn, a message from GOA warns you this is a low population server and go play elsewhere. Magnus the GOA rep has also just posted on WHA talking about the “decision to close Hirn” being tough, etc. So GOA is well and truly ringing the death knell for my server. With just a few hours notice…
Link here to Magnus' post: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3672406&postcount=110

I have mixed thoughts about the transfer (transfer? I mean closure), as whilst our server’s community was recognised as one of the best in Europe, it is smaller and the difference in server activity particularly in the lower tiers is monumental. You can forget open RvR in tier 1, it just doesn’t really happen and tiers 2-3 are only marginally better. In tier 4 there’s regular action, but it’s nearly always focused in one zone at a time. There’s not the numbers to effectively attack multiple zones regularly, apart from those nights where we pre-arrange attacks. So in that respect, I’ll be happy to move and get more WAR action. I understand and accept that something needed to happen.

However, that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about the situation we’ve been put in. Something needed to happen, but it should be done in a sensible and planned manner. Transferring guilds and alliances causes hassle both in and outside of the game world, hassle for your paying subscribers; we deserve more respect than this.

As a guild leader I have to stay positive to try and keep my guild together, there’s no option but to move and now I have to make this work. But frankly I’m stunned (perhaps naively) at how bad GOA’s timing and communication has been. Let me elaborate:

· It was bloody patch day! Emotions are running high as the nerf debates rage, so obviously dumping a short notice transfer on people is not a good idea. Imagine you’re a Witch Elf player and you’ve just discovered not only has your character been nerfed beyond all sanity, but you’ve also got to move server and quite possibly have to lose your characters name, is that perhaps going to annoy you? You think? What a wonderful incentive to log in that is eh? People that were verging on quitting are being nudged over the edge.

· Guilds that transferred to Karak-Hirn now have to transfer AGAIN. People are not happy.

· Any server’s members being told to transfer would ask this, but with Hirn’s competitive tier 4 and decent community and instead of killing it, why is Karak-Hirn not a destination server? I presume there are valid reasons, but why could they not have been shared?

· Players may have to change their characters names. Whenever there’s a server transfer this comes up, but again with the short bloody notice it exaggerates the annoyance.

· Guilds may have to change their names. This hits my guild and it sucks. What do we do then; call ourselves “The REAL Blood Pact”? Or how about “Karak Hirn Blood Pact not to be confused with this servers Blood Pact?” Sigh… so it’s basically time for a new name, which means changing our website, graphics, logos, everything. A bit of our identity gone. Blood Pact was created the first day of the Collectors Edition headstart, we like our name :( And you can bet your bottom dollar the destination server’s guild with our name isn’t even bloody active.

· I’m fairly confident all my active members will wait for our alliance’s confirmation of where to go, but not everyone will be this lucky (and I’m only confident, not certain). GOA has rushed this through; because of which lots of guilds are going to loose players in the move. People will move to the wrong server in the panic, plus people will be left behind. For some this will be a guild killer. And what about your friends not in your own guild? With time and a little thought, this could have been avoided.

· What if you’re in a Destruction Karak-Hirn guild, but you have an Order alt on the destination servers? Sorry bud, you can’t move it first. Tough shit old boy, delete your Order character or you can’t stay with your Destro friends anymore. This could have been totally avoided with transfers allowed between destination servers BEFORE launching the full transfers, allowing people to prepare.

· There’s a lot of bloody admin and organising work for guild officers and leaders. In fact our whole alliance wants to stay together, that complicates things. Hell, our whole bloody server wants to move as one. Why oh why could you not have given us time to prepare?


In a months time I might be thinking that moving server was the best thing we could have done, but right now I have a total nightmare to organise with hardly any time to do it properly. I'm pissed off and so is everyone I've spoken to about it.

I really wish GOA had handled this better.

Perfect Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

City sieging reminds me of the missus...

...when she says "Is that it?".
Not really :P I have her limping for days after through my herculean man powers. I'm like the bastard love child of Shaft and the Mitchell brothers.

But on a less serious note...

My regular readers will know that I'm pretty positive about WAR, I'm no fanboy but I'm not buying into the rampant negativity that smothers the internet about, well pretty much everything ever.. Whilst I think there's lots of room for improvement with open RvR, I'm enjoying it and I also quite like the PvE (shock horror!). So all told I think WAR is pretty solid and for an MMO only 6months or so beyond launch, it's got massive potential to deliver buckets of awesome pie.

However, the current live server main event, the big deal we're all meant to get excited about, the pièce de résistance, is city sieging. Which turns out to be a hugely disappointing, underwhelming anti-climax. Quite frankly, it's rubbish.

I logged on to discover Order had captured two Fortresses and Inevitable City was now under siege. Once I got over the misery of Order beating us to a city on Karak-Hirn, I think "nvm, at least I'll get to see something new and awesome". Sometimes optimism is such a curse..

Basically it boils down to a buggy instanced PQ (which most likely won't have any enemies in) or a buggy crap scenario. I loathe scenarios anyway, so that was lose/lose, but as for the instanced PQ... The instance list pops up with the number of players, so you can choose where to go. I apologise for not screenshotting, but it was something like this:

Order 48 - Destruction 48
Order 48 - Destruction 0
Order 3 - Destruction 48
Order 43 - Destruction 48
Order 40 - Destruction 2
Order 0 - Destruction 39

So basically the one with a possible decent fight was full and the rest consisted of people avoiding each other so they can farm loot. So I had a choice of gank or be ganked. Yay...

Now I understand that gets fixed in a patch soon, but even so that doesn't get around the rubbish PQ. Which was basically all 48 Destro huddled on one point and AoEing the mobs down so fast you barely see them. Thankfully after a while Order did turn up in our instance, but that just meant we had a clusterfuck zerg fight in one place. There was moments where this got a bit more entertaining, as the fight spread out a little, but and this is crucial, it is FAR more fun, interesting and challenging to fight Order pretty much anywhere else. Why would I want to log into a city siege? You're better off waiting for it to reset and get back to the decent fights in proper zones.

Please, please Mythic have a drastic rethink about how this works. Think about that awesome trailer we get to watch once WAR loads up. Now that's a city siege. It's got massive trebuchet type things bombarding the place, siege towers, carnage in the streets, hell even a Lord of Change shows up. It makes you think wow this will be epic!
Where as the reality of it is just not very good, in fact it's no where near good. It's like when you get a text notification that you've won something on the national lottery, you rush home to check the numbers... the excitement builds up, this could be the end of mortgages man! I could quit work, buy a football team and get wasted in Monaco with Heidi Klum.

Ahh bollocks, it's just a sodding £5.

Gutted.