Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Resource Carriers and AAO Hotfix

Today saw a couple minor hotfixes. I am quite sure the response on the forums to having only 2 things fixed today, one of them being purely cosmetic, is not going to be good. No fix for the broken Keep PQs, buggy ram, or likely most important of all the trouble with Pounce (Although it seems to be working a lot better lately).

The RvR fix is a good one however. Resource carriers now heal the keep door when effected with AAO. This is a huge boost for the underdog. Currently when one keep hits four stars everyone heads to the keep-- attackers and defenders. Now an attacking zerg will be forced to keep an eye on their BOs unless they want to be beating on the door endlessly. This should disperse the attacking zerg to give the defenders a fighting chance. It also gives people something to do other than stand around the keep waiting for the door to go down.

I took part in a successful defense under AAO in Praag the other night. It was great fun leaving the keep to cap the BOs while the defenders repeatedly took down the ram. With the majority of both sides focused on the keep the lakes were filled with skirmishes. It was constant action the entire time and in the end with got our keep to four stars and won our offensive. It ranks up there with the best experiences I have ever had in this game.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

DING!!


Finally after what can be totaled as almost a year and a quarter I have a rank 40 toon. I got close with my KotBS, hitting 39, but then 1.2 happened and playing Order got real stupid, real fast. I've had other toons in their 30s - 35 Magus and 31 Shaman. Lots in their 20s - 26 Choppa, 23 SH, 26 AM, and 21 WH. And too many to remember below that. But I never got past the foreplay and went all the way.

Until my dearest White Lion.

Every other class lost my interest half-way through. I like to win and when I hit the point where I stop I tend to get bored and re-roll. Not that that did not happen with the WL, its just that the playstyle feels like it was tailored to me. My launch class was a Magus and I still love the class because you never stop moving. Same goes for the Shaman. But the Magus and Shaman were scrapped when Destro became the Zerg. My Knight was fun but when I returned I wanted a fresh start to see the game from the start to finish. The WL has that constant movement and some nice DPS to boot. I think what kept me going was killing a rank 40 Sorc when I was a meager rank 31. I may not have been able to compete with the RR80s but at least I wasn't useless.

Now the game really begins. There is still a long to-do list of things to finish now that leveling is checked off like more leveling. I need to find accessories. I need a good weapon. There are those pocket items I've heard so much about. Then there is the matter of RA specs and career specs. I've reached the summit only to find an even higher summit to conquer. Which is fine because I love the climb.

Protip: I never knew about this but there is a free WAR Tract to be had in Chapter 4 Empire. Very nice little secret that I would have never knew about were it not for my super guild. You just need to get the Chapter 4 influence up two bubbles, select your reward, and then take the Dispatches quest. Head to Altdorf and claim your free level! Below is where you can find it.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Impressions Day One 1.4 Gear and Guild

One of the highlights of last night was finally getting into my Annihilator set. Its super cheap now and I could feel the upgrade from my Devastator. Right now I'm sitting at 37/39 and I'm sure by the time I ding 40 I'll be stepping right into a full Conqueror set. Seems the medallions should accumulate at just the right pace.


I also liked the new green renown gear. Having more options is very nice when your waiting to get some descent gear. Looks like Mythic is going in the direction of making every last piece of gear you need acquirable from RvR. For instance this cloak now has strength on it instead of the old ones with only initiative.

When I was in the IC I was lucky enough to snag a purple bag with this bad boy in it. I won't be using it for a very very long time but my god. How I would love to play with it right now!









It was also kind of neat to see the new guild banners hanging for everyone to see. Guess I got into a good one?

Impressions Day One 1.4 oRvR

After what seemed like forever 1.4 has finally arrived! It was a very interesting and very confusing night last night as Gorfang struggled to figure out this new system. I only got about 4 hours play in but there was quite a few WTFs coming from my warband.

When I first logged in Altdorf was under siege. My guildmates told me it was the third time that day so far. After the zone reset I jumped in our guild warband and headed to Caledor. After we had capped that in what seemed like record time we headed to Chaos Wastes and capped that in no time at all. Then we were back in a city. I have to say I was a little disappointed as I was looking forward to more time with the oRvR changes but I snagged a RR98 weapon. Only 60 more RR before I can use it!

Couple things I noticed:

No one had much of an idea of what to do. Being the guild blogger and in the know I tried to explain it but I can only answer so many questions. A few guildmates logged after getting frustrated but the majority just tried to figure out the new rules. I also couldn't explain to Destro what to do and they seemed to be having as much of a problem.

Old habits die hard. Everyone seemed to stick to the zerg mentality. When we were taking CW destro stuck in the north in one big zerg. Then they headed into the keep to defend. Left on their own our resources runners did a fine job of collecting more than theirs and we ended up with a nicely upgraded keep. It felt like there was zero resistance because they all just stuck in their keep waiting.

Skaven. Very neat. Being only RR37 means I can't do too much without exploding. I got a chance to run around as a packmaster and it was nice. I followed a Rat Ogre around, buffed him, healed him, and summoned the odd rat horde. Had a chance to apply that 95% snare a couple times and watch the poor desto crawl helplessly while getting FF'd into a paste. Very good way to get the lowbies into the action and make a difference. Plus I loved seeing the deluge of red dots pouring into the keep when we started the siege.

Tier 3 was more fun. After my IC run I headed to Highpass with a r/l friend to get a better idea of the system. There was maybe 8 Order to 6 Destro. It was nice that we actually took the zone with so few people. Lots of small little battles around the BOs and out front of the keeps. While it was almost deserted it was lots of fun getting into little 3v3s at various times. I had not consider that the new system would allow for oRvR in lower Tiers without the need of having a WB just to take the Keep Lord.

People QQ too much. Advice channel was filled with complaints about just about everything. To be expected but come on, its day one.

Overall it was a lot of fun. The next few days will be interesting as everyone gets accustomed to the new system and figure out ways to play in it and exploit it. Already I've heard some people are just sticking to killing carriers for the RP. While it seems the reward would be less it would be the same as choosing RvE over actual PvP in a high AAO zone.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

I don't need to unsub! xPac Release

Yesterday while grinding and getting ground by some better geared Destro I finally lost it. I just can't put up with being in crappy gear and I can't buy any gear until the expansion so I vowed: no expansion by next Friday and Imma QQ and unsub after a big forum whine. Luckily it'll be here Thursday!

So excited!!!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Afternoon ePeen Flaunt

ePeen. Its something we all have but would never admit. We all love that moment when you just totally kick-ass. I had one of those moments today and couldn't help but share it with everyone. It was right after I dinged 35 and got my neat new pet based 4 second silence. I was pumped to add it to my arsenal and tear out a little Shammy's throat. And tear them I did! Being a lowbie, the scenario felt kind of like this:
That's the Zealot I tried making friends with.
Now my success arose from three factors:
1) Half-pug/Half-Premade on Order
2) Really good healers
3) Destro had their heads in their bums

Still I did really well and put a big stupid grin on my face. Later I'll tell my wife all about it and she'll be nice and feign interest. I may even tell someone on my way to work. At Starbucks or something. Anyways here's the SS of me doing pretty damn well for a lowbie rank 35 playing with the big boys.
Even had time to heal a little.

Back To WAR: Guild Membership Required

A big change in player behavior I have noticed since coming back is most people avoid PUGs like the plague. This has become very apparent in T4 where finding a PUG is almost impossible. I tried getting one together in LotD lastnight and it took the better part of an hour before a single Slayer finally joined me. We finally got together another five people but all of them were from the Slayer's guild.

What an A-Hole father
Now on the one hand I like seeing guilds working together: more organization means more wins for Order. On the other hand having no PUG groups mean some players get left out in the cold if their guild isn't running a group or there isn't enough people on to make an effective group. In oRvR this isn't a problem for me personally as my guild is almost always running a warband. But now that I'm spending time in LotD it is getting frustrating trying to grind effective sans healer or tank. Nothing worse then finishing two stages of a PQ only to have to start over because you can't solo the boss.

Would have preferred this
hat to the new helm.
I feel like a kid in grade school excluded from the soccer game when I walk by a group grinding a PQ after I've been spamming LFG in region. I would jump in and finish the PQ with them but then I almost feel like I would potentially stealing a sweet bag if I won above green in the end. My only solution is to start an open group and hope there is another loser like me wandering the desert alone.

Pic of New WL set

Found a good pic of the new White Lion set in this thread from WHA.
Enjoy!

Actually I think I would have preferred this.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

New armor sets and LotD fun

Lastnight was the big PTS event showcasing the new armor sets and RR100 templates. Buzz on twitter seems to be everyone had a ton of fun. A big negative was the appearance of the armor sets. Bruglir's blog has pictures of the Warpforged sets. Have to say the White Lion set is an atrocity. Well the helm at least. I really have to question who put that together and thought it looked good. I was really expecting something more in line with the Skaven theme. Something that kept to the style of each class but with a dash of Skaven. Oh well, its too far into the future for me to worry about.

Instead of joining everyone on the PTS I was exploring the LotD. I left the game right after LotD was released and never had much of a chance to spend anytime there. Everyone is telling me its the place to grind sub-40 and I'm starting to see why. The mobs are super easy to kill, they drop neat little scarabs, and you even get a little PvP now and again. I was expecting some massive grind to get all the goodies but everything is priced pretty reasonably. Should be a nice place to spend sometime while I make my way to 40.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Back to WAR: Good time to be back

Wow its been an exciting couple of weeks for WAR news. There are a lot of changes on the horizon and they all seem to be aimed at satisfying us players. For more specific information visit the blogs to your right.

First is the news level caps in the Tiers will be higher, and will be overlapping. This couldn't be better! Those T1 free trial twinks are going to be getting a pounding now that you can stay in T1 all the way until level 15. And being level 32 got a whole lot better now that you can stay in T3 all the until level 39. This can also be a good thing when leveling with friends and falling behind or ahead. Currently I don't have any toons in T3 so I'm unable to play with my R/L friend. Not sure how scenarios are going to work with the overlap, but on the topic of scenarios....

There will be a new matchmaking system that ranks you on skill and pits you against people of similar skill! Something that I haven't seen talked about much is a comment Andy made NOT ruling out cross server scenarios. I can't find a link (fail search function) but I don't think I'm imagining it. Now that the scenarios are going to be unhinged from the campaign this is entirely possible! Scenarios are one of my favorite aspects of the game so anything that makes them better is A+ in my books.

There is also the matter of gear being much easier to acquire, something that effects me directly. Being rank 33 means Annihilator is my next step up the gear ladder but the cost is just too steep to warrant buying it. By the time I get enough medallions I'll be very close to 40 and ready to move into Conquer. I'm not alone with this problem because come 1.4 Annihilator will cost COIN and Conquer will cost medallions only--no crests needed. Big relief for me but now the question is do I shelve my toon until the patch or endure T4 wearing Devastator?

Last thing is the pricing on the expansion packs. One for $10 or both for $15. Very reasonable price when you consider how much a regular expansion cost and how much the other RMT items were priced. Sadly I let myself get riled on the forums by the people complaining about the $10 and how its pay-to-win. Don't know why I read the forums.

Overall it seems the game is going in the right direction. I think not only will the current players be happier, new ones will see things they like. Feels like a very good time to be back!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Re: Roadmap to The Future

Hardune has a post on his Ammo Dump about the future of the game and how he would like to see a roadmap to give us all a glimmer of hope. It would be nice to have even a vauge idea of where the game is headed. 1.4 is sounding pretty exciting but a little bit underwhelming. It would be nice to know what they have cooking after all the Skaven goodness.

Since the focus of the game is going to be RvR what about cannibalizing some of the wasted PvE space out there? The Dwarf/Greenskin pairing has a few areas with shared PQs that are a lot of fun when some PvP springs up around them. How about some daily quests that send the 40s back to the old zones to help the troops? Keep the low level mobs but increase the amount of them. They are there only for the amusement of watching 30 mobs melt under your Rain of Fire while you pound other players. Make the rewards something fun like the many trophies that are mostly ignored or a single medallion. The only point to doing them would be for fun.

So that's the gear gap

Got more of a chance to play around in T4 lastnight and it was a much more positive and negative experience. On the positive side of things the lakes were really active with lots of fights and keep taking. Got in some really nice kills. It really makes me feel special when I can take out a rank 40 without much trouble and even more special when I do so with a lot of trouble.

On the negative side I've finally felt the gear gap 100%. Previously I couldn't really understand why people complained so much about top gear players and how unfair it was. Then I fought a Sov. geared Mara 1v1. I barely scratched him. However I love it because things are just so lethal. If I'm on my game I do alright as support DPS, pouncing in to help focus a target or catch the runners. And if I can get the jump on a squishy I can still burn them down quick enough to survive.

Its going to be a long road to 80 but I think I'll enjoy the ride!

Monday, November 1, 2010

A little support goes a long way

I'll be straight up: I'm going to stroke my ePeen a little bit with this post.

Running with PUGs can be a frustrating experience. Everyone who has knows you seem to end up playing with 9 bads and maybe 2 other competent players. The healers never seem to heal, the tanks never guard (my current personal crusade is to try and educate the tanks in T2 of the art of guarding), and everyone else just runs around like stray cats. Even when the healers seem to be stepping up something I have noticed is they focus on the tanks before anything else. But sometimes everything falls into place, everyone acts together, and you start having obscene amounts of fun.

I had one such scenario the other night. We lost overall but the action was just awesome. Pouncing all over the place, making little squishy explode, and generally feeling like an unstoppable force of death. One of those times where you say, "FUCK I LOVE THIS GAME!". See below and allow my ePeen to be stroked! :)

Saturday, October 30, 2010

T4 is confusing....

Spent a little time in T4 tonight and I'm finding it really confusing. People just seem to stand in the WCs not doing much of anything. And there doesn't seem to be any open WBs. I actually asked in region why people are just standing around when Destro are taking the BOs and I think people thought I was trying to troll but I honestly don't understand.

Same thing when I was in the Altdorf defense everyone stayed behind the shield the entire time. I honestly don't understand the point of this whatsoever. Maybe I'm missing something?

Friday, October 29, 2010

I'm not dead!

When I started this blog I wanted to be churning out a post everyday. Just hasn't been happening lately with work, kids, introducing a r/l friend to WAR, and leveling two toons getting in the way. Add in all the juicy info on the new RvR instance and skaven that needs to be read and there is little time for me to chime in. And let's not forget about needing to finish the Live Event before its too late!

I have a post incoming about my experience playing with a r/l friend who's a hardcore WoWtard. He's gone now and been replaced by another r/l friend who's MMO experience precludes any type of WoWness. Instead this guy was playing Ultima Online up until about six months ago when I pulled him over to Aion. Now I've pulled him over here to WAR and so far he seems to like it. It will be interesting to see how he takes to the game in the long run.

My playtime has been split between my WL Rogozhin and RP Rogozhor. Its been a lot of fun being able to get my killing in and then switch to being the nice healer guy. I have finally hit rank 30 on Rogozhin and took him out to play in T4. Not anywhere near as brutal as everyone made it out to be. It was my first time ever doing a city defense which was a very mixed experience. The first instance saw Order getting rolled by what looked like a totally premade WB.  I was confused the entire time as to why we all just stood inside spawn watching one or two people go out to get killed. When the instance transition we ran to do something, got rolled, then just stayed in spawn again. I found it kind of stupid and boring but people in region were explaining its called meta-griefing? Not exactly my style. The next was better I guess except there were only ten destro to our full WB. I did win a green, blue, and purple bag. Not that anything inside is of any use to me anytime soon but it was neat.

Rogozhor my cute little stuntie has been a ton of fun to play. I've played an AM and DoK but this guy is a healing monster. I just love be able to run around healing everyone while I lead destro straight into the waiting DPS. One thing to note is when I'm playing him I tend to get a little more frustrated with the rest of my team. I completely told off two people last night who criticized my playing. Not that I was excessive and profane, I just sternly explained why they were not receiving heals and suggested they go roll a healer to understand how to play nice with the healers as DPS. Felt good. Also had a scenario where two level 25s snuck in to play. Despite them, we rolled Destro very nicely. Also felt good.

It would be redundant for me to post a lot about 1.4. The folks over to the right in my blogroll already do a really good job of reporting on the latest news. Personally I'm super excited about the new changes and can't wait to see how it changes the game. I'm not very impressed with the new instance. From what I've seen and the feedback on the forums it seems a little boring. I was expecting something much more involved with lots of twisting tunnels and Skaven crawling around everywhere. Instead it seems to be a new scenario with sweet loot. Who knows though, maybe they'll pull something out of their sleeve and we'll see a jewel.

Last thing is the Live Event. I missed the Live Events so much. In particular I love how the daemon ball rally in the empire zones meant when the zone was zerg free there were still few people trying to finish the PQ. Made for some really fun 2v1 fights and with 4XAAO, some very good XP/RP. All I need to do now is kill a few demons and wave to a bunch of people and I'm done on both characters. I really wish they had something like this every month.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

WCPI: Plugging it

So I guess how this works is I'm all nice and mention a couple blogs then a couple blogs are all nice and mention me. So here goes with two blogs that make me LOL.

First is Taransula's Blog The Witch!

I have to say the design is amazing. So nice on the eyes. I could learn a thing or two I think. What I really love is the WARBits comics I'm sure everyone is familiar with. Here's one of the newer ones:
Oh how many times I've had this happen to me. Sadly this has even happened when I'm in their group and everyone else is pretty much full-HP. Everytime I wanna rage-quit and play a healer. All the comics are great and give me a good lol.

Second is Thehealeroftru's WAR blog

First time I saw his blog I took one look and closed the tab. Luckily I met in him in-game and gave it a closer look because it's damn funny. Its just random and retarded in the best possible way and I actually look forward to the polls and every post. Post-modern masterpiece! BEST BLOG EVAH!

Back To WAR: Rivalry

Before I left me and a friend had a fun meta-game we would play. We always made our top priority target a Chosen named McLovin. He leveled with us all the way to T4 and no matter the situation if we saw him, we did everything we could to take him out. I don't think he even noticed our baseless hatred for him but we howled everytime we killed him, knocked him off a bridge, or just generally harassed him. Much to my delight in my first scenario after my return I get this message: You have been killed by McLovyn Rank 10 Squig Herder. I don't know if this is the same guy playing an alt but no matter because now he's on the top of my To-Kill list.

Population in WAR is something everyone whinges about but something I've learned in life is you need to find that silver lining. Playing a game with a smaller population can be nice because you get to see the same faces everynight. Since I do a lot of solo roaming I notice this even more as there are only a small amount of players each side who enjoy this type of play. There is a certain DoK/BG combo that run solo which I cannot even seem to scratch. It can be pretty frustrating because they interrupt my ganks but I love the challenge of trying to get just a little bit closer to winning and figuring out how to deal with the situation.

Speaking of the situation I was unfortunately not born mentally retarded. So instead of producing feelings of mindless bliss, the show Jersey Shore instead inspires feelings ranging from violence towards animals/children to a strong desire for painful suicide by fire/eye gouging. As such I've added someone to the very very top of my To-Kill list.




EDIT: Just realized he spelled his own name wrong! Maybe he's the real deal!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

AAO how I love thee....

Tier 3 so far has been void of almost any PvP. Lastnight started much the same with everything in every pairing being Order controlled when I logged on. Even scenarios were dead. An hour later I feel like I'm starring in 300.  My ragtag PUG WB finally gives up and decides they are not logging without some influence gain so head to do some RvE. I stick around and see if stalking the zerg may be more lucrative.

Couple fun facts about WAR: Zerging is boring and waiting for BO caps even more so. People also feel very safe with the zerg. Fun facts Aion taught me: You are never safe in a PvP zone and honor is for noobs. So I stalked the zerg, let them cap, then ganked the silly bastards AFK after the zerg left. They retaliated and I just kept stalking. Found little groups at the rats, waited until their healer let his health drop, then pounced on him and finished the group with the help of my little rat buddies. So in the time it took my former WB buds to cap the BOs in a zone I had racked up 150k exp and 7.5k influence.

As time went on I grouped up with a couple other people, took a BO, killed some rats, and got some nice fights with other small groups of Destro. It was just about the best experience I've had with WAR period. That's the key to getting the most out of WAR: you need to learn to make your own fun and find your own fights.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Back To WAR: DogTags

After a year away I’m back on Gorfang as Order. AFter staring at 3 hotbars filled with abilities I had almost completely forgotten for ten minutes with no idea where to start I decided to start at the beginning again and re-roll. This time around I’ll be playing as a White Lion and Archmage. I’m going with two characters because I have a little problem with ALTs. Before I left I had quite the roster: 39 KotBS, 21 WH, 15 SM, 33 Magus, 30 Shaman, 21 SH, 25 Choppa, 21 DoK, and 10 BO. I think that covers every class except BW/Sorc (I’m saving up RvR gear for a BW).

In real-life I work fulltime, have a wife, and two kids. I live in the wild North that is Canada--a place of crazy socialist healthcare and premium marijuana. I’m interested in reading, writing, the internet, and WAR of course. I’m very laidback and enjoy life very much. I life making people laugh and hopefully I can convey a little of my sense of humour in my posts.

I would describe my gamer self as a casual with a hardcore attitude. My gaming is my hobby so although I may not have lots of time I make up for it with a dose of passion. I approach the game like a puzzle and enjoy figuring out how to play effectively. I’m on most nights for a hour or two after 7 or 8 EST. Before returning I was playing a lot of single player RTS and RPGs. My only MMO since I left WAR was Aion--I was drawn in by its shiny goodness and promises of PvP paradise. What I found was a grind that with my amount of playtime meant I may be competitive in PvP in about a decade.

Now that I’m back I hope to get involved with the community and finally get a character to cap. I’m trying hard not to roll a third character so I can actually achieve my goal of a high level character. So very glad Skaven will not be an extra race! So far its been two weeks of really good playtime and I hope that trend continues. But more about that in a future post.

Back TO WAR!

It has been a little over a year since I last played Warhammer Online. One night after getting a little tired of KotOR I decided to take Mythic up on their Endless Trial and give it another go. When I made it to the first oRvR lake I knew I was hooked again.

I know Tier One may not be a good indication of the true state of the game but after an hour of scenarios and oRvR on my new white lion I knew I needed to find out for myself how Tier 4 was doing. I rolled a White Lion, Archmage, and Runepriest and had a blast getting each one to Tier 2. After a little forum research I found most T4 players complaining about their RPs so I've all but shelved him. Instead I'll be splitting my time between my AM and WL.

In the next few posts I will give more detailed impressions of the game: what's better, what's worse, and what's to come. I also have some unfinished posts with gameplay advice that I will be finishing up and posting here. Hopefully I'll be able to inform and entertain you a little.

Thanks for reading now back to WAR!