Sorry sorry sorry

I am part way through writing a proper post, but I've not had much spare time lately and when I have... the renown is sooooo nice.

So here's a drunk squirrel.


I think we've all been there.

Hotfix details...

...can be found here or pasted below.

General Changes and Bug Fixes
General
•The new dye options available to players who have purchased the Personality Pack have been reduced in price.
•A new dye color, Badab Black, has been made available to players who have purchased the Personality Pack.
•Corrected an error with colors on some Magus Disc Mounts.
•Fixed an issue where Thanquol’s “Warp Lightning” ability would occasionally not properly display.
•Fixed an issue where players eligible for veterans reward (WAR Double Aegis) were not properly receiving their reward item in the mail.

Realm vs. Realm
Open RvR
•Siege Weapons destroyed within a Keep’s area will now grant Contribution.
•Aerial Bombers defeated within a Keep’s area will now grant Contribution.
•Various improvements have been made to Contribution earned while participating in a Keep Siege.
•The Resource pool threshold for Tier 4 RvR Keeps has been increased. Keeps will now require additional resources to increase in Rank.
•The health for Tier 4 Keep Doors has been increased.
•Fixed an issue where the Skaven ability “Running with the Pack” incorrectly had a Renown Rank restriction.
•The Skaven/Giant Rat camps in Tier’s 2&3 Empire vs. Chaos have had their levels adjusted to be more appropriate to the new Tier restrictions.
•Fixed an issue which could, in some cases, prevent additional instances of the Thanquol’s Incursion RvR Dungeon from being created.
•The Quest “Release Control” granted by the Excavated Skaven Device has been disabled. Players will now be required to exit the RvR Lake or die to remove the Play as Skaven buff.


Contested City
•Fixed an issue which could, in some cases, prevent additional instances of Contested Altdorf or The Inevitable City from being created.

Scenarios
•Adjustments have been made to the Scenario Matchmaking system.
•Fixed an issue where Scenarios were not properly triggering.

BTW I will be posting in the near future with some thoughts about the introduction of 1.4, its just been delayed by me not getting enough time to properly play the game and get a good enough feel for all of the changes to live.

The Verminous Horde - release timing info

Can be found here. Or copied below:

"The ground beneath your feet rumbles and shakes as Skaven tunnels have appeared all over the Old World. We are proud to announce the launch of Game Update 1.4 and The Verminous Horde RvR™ Pack. We will be bringing all North American and European servers offline at 7:30 AM EST/13.30 CET. At this time we anticipate all servers to be back online no later than 12:30 PM EST/18.30 CET. As always, please be sure to check the Herald for updates regarding this downtime."

And in case you've missed them, the patch notes are here.

Balancing zones, keeps and sieges

Something I’m wondering about with 1.4 is how often will city sieges happen? I’m struggling to make any prediction I’m happy with because we quite simply do not know how the new system will play out in the end zones. Locking zones like Kadrin Valley or Black Crag are already quite different challenges strategically to say Praag and with the new campaign system I think the layout of zones is going to have even more impact than before.

Kadrin Valley is a prime example of this with the southern keep being so close to the warcamp; how will that work out with people rezzing in the keep, new people joining the zone so close by and the resource gathers arriving next door? And that’s before we start thinking about the routes that resource carriers take and any potential bottlenecks. What could happen though is perhaps we’ll actually see zones that are dramatically easier to attack or defend for certain factions, which in turn will change the way an entire faction views what zones and actions are important strategically. If for example Kadrin Valley was an easier zone for Destruction to take and hold, then it really starts to put pressure on Order to not let Destruction capture Thunder Mountain in the first place. That could actually be quite an interesting thing for us to deal with. I don't think every zone should be perfectly balanced, though the number of zones balanced different ways should be even.

Also, how hard is a fully upgraded and defended keep to take in 1.4? From what I hear it’s bloody difficult, but is that a good or bad thing? If it means less city sieges then I would say yes its good, but if it means no city sieges… that’s not so great. City sieges should be unusual and special enough events that you want to attend, but they shouldn’t be so rare that you don’t get a chance to unless you play 24/7. About the keeps though; I really think they should have a mechanism where they start to downgrade if the controlling side does not continue to gather resources. Otherwise we’ll get situations where both keeps are max level and it’s just zergs at keeps. Laggy, shitty and annoying zergs, the horrible thing this patch is trying to get away from. AND it puts even more importance on Battle Objectives, which is a good think in all respects.

Unless they already do downgrade? Please correct me if they already do.

Undoubtedly some tweaking will be required by Mythic over the coming months, the detail of what tweaking is required will only come out as we start to properly play the campaign on live servers. I think that’s actually going to be a lot of fun to play through, as potentially everything we’ve got used to is turned on its head.

Perfect Patching

When 1.4 arrives this Thursday, please don’t for a minute think there won’t be problems, because it’s a given that there will be. It’s always the way.

Most MMO patches bring with them a whole load of issues, be they lag, bugs or whatever. And with 1.4 including such a monumental change to the campaign and more, well… I’ll be amazed if it’s all smooth and perfect. As such, it’s not really worth going all emo rage and ranting if/when things go wrong and you can run the risk (if you care) of making yourself look a bit stupid as you wind yourself up over the obvious.

Now I’m sure we’ve all seen people saying “no we shouldn’t take it, we’re paying customers” and to a point that has some merit, so is it right to just accept these inevitable problems? Yes and no. Update problems happen with every MMO and that is not going to change anytime soon. Actually that’s not quite a broad enough statement, because really it happens with pretty much every type of software. Out in the real world, software upgrades are the bane of my working life and in particular I’ve learned to dread the major landmark updates. Those point zero versions that basically should be called Headache Inducing Toss 2.0, the buggers.

It would be lovely if software developers could deliver perfect, bug free software and the following patches, but with so many different pressures applying to release schedules and software being written by humans, it’s just not realistic. Also as anyone who’s ever been involved in serious software testing knows; what happens on your test system and what happens in a live environment are not always as related as you’d expect or hope. Combine that with MMOs being so damn complicated and having such large numbers of simultaneous users in much more free form environments and yikes… It sure as hell isn’t easy.

Having said whilst I’m obviously showing some sympathy towards MMO developers, I think it’s always important to ensure that the issues revealed on your test servers are properly dealt with before anything goes near live. I’ve not been able to get onto the PTS much and as such I can’t really comment on how solid 1.4 is, the feedback out there is rather mixed and some people’s opinion (both negative and positive) I find difficult to trust.

So going back to that “paying customer” bit… I would say it is unrealistic (though perhaps not unreasonable) for us to expect perfect updates on the day of release, but it IS perfectly sensible to expect any serious issues to be unforeseen ones and to be dealt with promptly after release.

Fair enough?

1.4 and RvR Pack.... THURSDAY!!

Yup it's almost here. Check out the official herald post for confirmation if you so wish.

Can't wait :)

New Career Builder online

Rancid has made a career builder over at war4scrubs, which with wardb dead is a great move. Check it out here.