If you build it, they will come, maybe.

First off in case you’re wondering why I’m not talking about the patch, it’s because I figured I’d let it settled in before commenting. For now, onwards with a totally different subject!

I recently posted a proposal for how a third faction could be incorporated into the existing campaign system of zone locking. The post was met with some enthusiasm (my thanks to those that commented here and the bunch of folks that contacted me in-game, feedback is great to have), so I think it’s time for some more third faction rumblings, but please bare in mind the following is purely hypothetical and Mythic have not given any suggestion they would consider adding a new faction. Right now this is just a popular topic generally, that I think is worth a bit of pondering on. Certainly it seems to me that most people are in agreement, WAR should have had a third faction. It worked in Camelot, would have worked here and would have been a lot better than just two. So the next question I’d like to mull over is:

Is it possible to implement a third faction without it becoming each server’s whipping boy?

Short answer: I think so.

Long answer:
The big concern is that if a third faction suddenly appeared, it wouldn’t have enough players to compete with the existing factions. If the faction starts of weak and is getting it’s backside spanked, then it’s perhaps not going to be an attractive option for people to sign up to and as a result it stays weak long term. Also I’ve seen people comment that people aren’t going to just quit their existing guilds and factions to join the new one, which I’m sure is true in many cases, but I know for sure it’s not every.

So if we think about what introducing a third faction needs to achieve and who it should be marketed at, I think it’s fair to say that; a change of this scale needs to not only be a nice addition that keeps existing subscribers, it also needs to draw in masses of new subscribers and give the game a big injection of life.


If what forums and some bloggers seem to be saying is true, then WAR is full of pissed off and bored people wanting a new challenge. OK, so if you want a challenge how about building a whole new faction up to a competitive level? Surely that would be one hell of a path to glory? I’ve already seen several guilds re-roll faction for a new challenge, which suggests it’s actually not that much of a stretch with a third faction. I know that if I were in that pissed off category I sure as hell would give it a go. It could actually be quite an exciting thing to be part of. Perhaps within this contingent lies the experienced spine of a new faction.

As for the new players, this is the crop waiting to be harvested. If Mythic could get that huge influx of new players you’d hope for with any expansion, but also get the majority of them into the new faction… That’s the lifeblood of it right there. We all saw how skilled Mythic are at building up hype for their game. Mythic could use that skill again and focus it around the third faction. Mythic release the expansion after months of advertising funkiness and the new players join up already brainwashed and gagging to play the new races.

Also I think a key selling point would be to release this as a proper paid expansion (something this scale has huge costs after all), but unusually the expansion release should include a full copy of the original game. This would mean totally new gamers wouldn’t have to pay twice to start the game and would instantly have access to that all important new faction. A whole game and expansion for the price of one is something people will certainly consider trying out and with the new content hyped to high heaven it would get some attention.

So that’s fine, we’ve got a potentially decent sized player base, but how do we make them start strong? That hype is going to wear off fast if the new faction’s city is on one star and being farmed constantly.

That would indeed be a bad thing. Lets avoid it entirely through the power of live events… For the first few months after release have the new faction’s city as un-attackable. We could push them back through the zone before it, but we can’t siege their city itself. This would give their faction time to develop relatively unmolested. As time progresses have various live events themed around the collapse of whatever lore reason is used for this immense defensive power.

The next big thing is to capitalise on the lore. Warhammer is one of the most popular fantasy licences out there; Gamesworkshop has created wonderfully detailed and interesting civilisations full of character. Pick the right races and classes for this new faction and make them awesome. Not good, not quite cool, it needs to be bloody awesome. The things you could create for Skaven zones… or Bretonnian, or Wood Elves, or Beasts of Chaos, or Nurgle, or…. There’s just so much potential to back up the hype with epicness. Make the most of it.

Boil this down and we’ve got:

A full game and expansion for a decent price.

A new faction hyped to hell and with a defensive head start.

Something fresh and new for existing bored players.

A much more dynamic RvR campaign.

More GW awesomeness.

I’m still happy as Larry with my Destruction evilness, but if I weren’t that would make me sign up. How about you?

© 2008 - Bootae's Bloody Blog

1.3.2 Fortress changes = Relic raids?

I wouldn't bet my house on it, but wouldn't be surprised either.

For those that missed out on Dark Age of Camelot... it used to have Fortresses that had a special Relic inside, having that relic in your faction's fort gave a realm wide constant buff, damage increases that kinda thing. If I recall correctly, relics from different Fortresses gave different buffs. You could assault the enemy Fortress, capture the relic, then escort it back to your Fortress and then your realm would get the buff for as long as you kept the relic safe. More relics you had, the more buffs you got, but the more of a target they became.

Something like that could be a nice side line to the main campaign. Or do you think they have something else planned?

© 2008 - Bootae's Bloody Blog

Fight Club continued

OK my first night's 3 to1 win/loss ratio hasn't lasted :P I'm probably at about 40/60% win/loss now, though to be fair I am repeatedly fighting the people I can't beat to work out how what I need to do. A slow, painfull, but interesting process that. Plus of course lots of these duellers are bloody good, so it would be arrogant as hell to assume I can show up and instantly get consistently good results.

Duelling is too addictive. I really must get some sleep.


© 2008 - Bootae's Bloody Blog

Tangent warning! Oi Sailor!

One of my big gaming interests is military sims and (decent) strategy games, chief amongst which is probably the Silent Hunter series.

Big woot from me! Trailer for Silent Hunter 5 is out :)

Video Games Silent Hunter 5 GC 09: Debut Trailer HD

XBox 360 Playstation 3 Nintendo Wii

Producer's Letter - 1.3.1 and Beyond

I wouldn't normally put two posts up in one day, but this is worth it. Check out the latest Producer's Letter released today, there's some VERY interesting stuff about plans for patch 1.3.2.


1. Data has shown us not enough players have experienced a city assault. With the new improvements, we want to make sure that happens, so we’ve decided to decouple the Fortresses from the Tier 4 campaign. They still exist, so don’t worry—they are not disappearing, but they are also no longer required to capture in order to claim the pairing. We have other ideas for the Fortresses, but I would be showing our hand a little too early with those thoughts right now. =) It’s cool, trust me.
Ooooooooooooooohhhh!!! Now this is very interesting. Right now it seems almost everyone hates going to the Fortresses, which is fair enough, since they suck royally. I'm really looking forward to the city changes in 1.3.1, but I'm not so keen on having to go through the bloody forts to get there. Decoupling them from the campaign can't come soon enough and I'm most intrigued to see what Mythic's plans are. This could be great.

2. New User Journey Experience – New recruits come to WAR everyday and many of us roll alts from time to time, so we are taking a hard look at the beginning player experience and exploring how we can make that introduction experience to WAR even more memorable.
I'm an alt whore, so new stuff in the lower tiers I'll be interested to see regardless. Plus this could be good for keeping hold of new recruits to WAR.


3. Apprentice/Hireling System – Wouldn’t it be cool if you could play with anyone at any time regardless of Rank? I think it would. ;)
Ah an apprentice system. Hmmm, could be good, but I've encountered them in other games and am yet to see one that really worked well. Always a first time of course.

4. Continued Crowd Control balancing! In patch 1.3.0b you saw some of our first adjustments to Crowd Control, and in 1.3.2 you'll see the next steps as we begin approaching some CC abilities directly. These changes will help to continue shifting Crowd Control to be more strategic and purposeful on the battlefield.
Good. The changes so far have been a step in the right direction, but it's proven to be not quite enough. Looking forward to some details.

5. The Daemon moon will rise.
Oh you tease.... Clearly a reference to the Warhammer world's warpstone second moon and the many evils it's associated with. Live event one presumes.

Fight Club

A couple of days ago I found myself at a bit of a loss for things to do. It was late and it seemed everyone was rammed into a zerg fest fortress thing, something I can rarely be bothered with. I noticed my guild’s infamous duelling Sorcerer “Infexion” was off in Etaine. On Karak-Norn Etaine has become the server’s sort of official duelling zone (when not unlocked for RvR of course), it’s generally acknowledged that you leave the duellers to it, unless you want to join in. So with nothing else to do, I figured I’d take my Chosen over to Etaine and try out this duelling lark.

It was an interesting change of pace. I’m pretty handy with my Chosen in group/warband oRvR, on even terms my guild groups are a tough prospect and losing is not something we do that often. Also whilst in scenarios and roaming generally, I fairly often get in 1v1 situations and it’s a very rare occasion that I lose, so I was fairly confident about duelling. This was probably a bit naïve, as I’ve now realised there is one huge difference between random 1v1s and the organised duels. That difference being: preparation.

When I’m scrubbing about Tier 4 or in scenarios I’m using equipment and tactics that will put me in a good stead for any situation and opponent. I’m using an all round, cope with anything set up and due to how suddenly combat can start, normally I won’t have time to switch tactics or gear. The same applies to my opponents. Duelling however is totally different. Prior to the fight starting people are selecting the optimum tactics and equipment set up for that particular opponent. This is something I totally failed to get my head round and I just went in with my standard set up. I've no idea what the best set ups for 1v1 fights are, I've had to just wing it so far... So how did it go?

Actually it has gone pretty well. I’ve won more than I lost (over 27 fights I had a roughly 3-1 wins/loss ratio), but I have found myself consistently losing to one class; Swordmasters using shields. There are also some classes I’ve not yet duelled (KotBS & Runepriest), so I don’t know how I will fair against them. I’ve had a chat with a couple of the big name duelling Chosen about my Swordmaster problem and they initially put it down to my gear. I’m using Invader & Darkpromise armour (I can’t equip my Warlord yet, the price of having too many alts…), which means I’m running (with my aura on) at about 800 strength. These guys are in the 900+ region, which certainly makes a difference and I could see them hitting harder, but I now suspect the main thing is actually tactic choice rather than that 100 strength difference. After further discussion with one of the guys I discovered (amongst things) he was using a tactic that boosts our DPS by 15%, but reduces our armour by 33%. This is something I wouldn’t normally even consider using, it’s too risky for my normal group play. But this isn’t group play, this is duelling and the environment is totally different. People are using different tactics for different opponents, which I suppose is obvious really, but having not duelled before, I hadn’t considered it... It’s got me wondering how many different tactic set-ups I actually need to for fighting different classes.

After a year of WAR it’s fascinating to discover I’ve got a whole new style of play to learn. Though I'm also preparing myself for some brutal spankings as I go up against more of the seasoned pros... :P

That and I need to pull my finger out and instead of having multiple RR5x characters, lots of nice LV gear on them and a bazillion other alts, I need to become a renown whore and get my Chosen’s RR up big time...

Oh bless their cottons! BBB gets plagiarised

Friend of mine has pointed out some donut at http://howtoplaywarhammer.com/ is putting my and other people's posts directly onto their blog :P

Having not asked permission or bothering to even present it as being copy pasted from other sites, well let's just say making the title a link to our sites doesn't quite wash. My fellow bloggers that actually, you know, own a keyboard... may want to have a trawl through the archives of that "blog".

Comedy gold, but kinda special too.