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.

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.

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!

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!

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! :)

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?