Aion and hype.

Interesting thoughts here.

A taster.

WAR had a ton of hype before launch. Probably more hype than any game I have seen before. It worked, as evidenced by the fact that they sold nearly a million copies of the game. Looking back on the pre-release hype, however, reveals that much of it was generated by Mythic. Paul Barnett and the rest of Mythic did a masterful job of building hype. Video Podcasts, developer interviews, convention booths and Mythic’s regular visiting of any WAR forum, all contributed to an amount of hype unknown before WAR. The Internet was covered in WAR information and hype and we all fell for it; hook, line and sinker. Of course, after the game was released, we found that most of the hype was just that; HYPE.

I am going to have to check out Aion

More to come.

Nothing but the truth about the Blorc

I had to copy this and draw attention to it here. I agree with nealry every word.

Its not my work all credit goes to TLALOC.


Forgive the wall of text below. I started typing and it just poured out. Mythic has me completely pissed.
This isn't an exhaustive list of how they've screwed the pooch on this class - but it's a start.


*** STATS ***

.. Wounds and Black Orcs ..

Wounds was once our advantage over other tanks. The new cap of 1050 has stripped that from us.

We have a tactic that adds 160 Wounds. However, the cap of 1050 is reachable without this, and easily. Tactics slots are very valuable - so once you have decent gear, it is now foolish to slot our wounds tactic.

In fact, ANY ability that a Black Orc has that increases Wounds has now taken a hit under this new mechanic.

- I'm Da Biggest: already mentioned - useless once your gear is good.
- Da Biggest: If you steal Wounds and it puts you over the cap, the buff has no effect.
- Da Toughest: The Wounds proc fails to work if it would put you over the cap.


.. Stat Caps in general ..

To be blunt, Mythic has ham-fisted stat caps.

First they nerfed Str contribution, so everyone looked for the magic number where Str stops mattering and moved to Wounds.
So then they soft-cap Wounds to 1050. Guess what? We all now aim for that number and move on to Toughness.

Can't they see that they are not helping diversify our stat choices? They are locking us into cookie-cutter builds. If they want to make people start making different choices, they need to remove caps and actually make all stats do something meaningful.


.. Class skills ..

If a class has a skill that increases a stat, that skill should ignore the stat cap. Why? Because the whole waffleing point of these skills is to define your class.

If I'm supposed to be the Wounds tank, then why am I now running around with the same wounds as every other waffle tank in the game?

Let ALL classes with a stat-increasing ability use that ability to push beyond the baseline caps.



*** Armor Stacking ***


The following abilities all increase Armor for a Black Orc:

- Tuffer n' Nails
- Da Greenest (bellow proc on physical damage)
- We'z Bigger
- Armor pots

Of these abilities, the following stack:

- ...

So let me get this straight ... a Black Orc has no less than _three_ class abilities that are mutually exclusive?! Using one of these negates the usefulness of the other 2?

And if I use an Armor pot, and three of my class abilities are now useless? What kind of Busch League crap is this?! Mythic developers, anything?


*** Tactics ***

We have the crappiest tactics of all the tanks in this game, bar none. Yes, this is a bold statement - I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

Stolen from here:
http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=greenskin_bo&thread.id=294

Black Orc
m1 - Quit yer squabblin': 10% parry/dodge to your group for 30s
m2 - Deafening Bellow : 7s AoE (30ft) silence
m3 - Walk it off! : 120 toughness to your group for 15 seconds (!!)

Swordmaster
m1 - Guard of steel : 120 tgh to your group for 10s (look familiar?)
m2 - Wings of heaven : Leap to your target and snare everyone around by 60% for 10s
m3 - Bladeshield : 2798 dmg shield for 10s that returns 600 dmg to attackers

Chosen
m1 - Inevitable changing : 600 dmg, full AP restore
m2 - Tzeech's amplification : +300% healing on the chosen for 15s
m3 - Sprout Carapace : 504 to resists, 1320 armor, 100 ap to your group for 30s

KOTBS
m1 - Guardian of light : 3600 dmg absorb for 30s
m2 - No escape : 40 yard root for 10 seconds, + 600 dmg
m3 - Emperor's Champion : +240 str/tgh/wounds for 30s

Black Guard
m1 - Banish weakness : all hexes/ailments/curses removed and 300 healed + ap returned for each effect
m2 - Away cretins! : ae knockback + 600 damage
m3 - Armor of eternal servitude : 990 armor + 2400 healed over 20s

Ironbreaker
m1 - Roc clutch : 7s root + 600 dmg
m2 - Skin of iron : Immune to damage for 5s
m3 - Gromril plating : 7200 dmg absorb for 30s to your group (stronger than our rank 4 morale btw)



*** PvP Spec ***

At the moment, there is exact 1 viable spec for PvP - Brawler/Boss. Why? Because all the matters in this game is: Dmg, Healing, CC.

Dmg - Our Dmg sucks (read complete joke) if we're not Brawler spec at least to 3-hit combo.
Heal - tanks don't heal.
CC - We have exactly 1 knockdown, in the Brawler tree, requiring a 2H.

A simple solution for opening up other viable specs for a PvP Black Orc would be:

- allow Down ya Go to work with a 1h.
- Fixing Waaagh so it actually does the damage it lists, and debuffs Corp.


*** Waaagh ***

While we're on the subject, WTW is up with Waaagh? This is the friggin slogan for this waffle game, and it is STILL broken after how many months?

According to a recent grab bag (someone link it up if you can find it), this should be:
- Based on STR
- doing Corp damage

It has the same delve value as Da Big Un, and should be doing considerably more damage because
- it's Corp instead of physical
- it debuffs itself

But instead of hitting like a truck (like Da Big Un does), it hits for 1/2 the damage it should.


*** Class Mechanic ***

Da Plan is too limiting, and offers no reward for its risk. (you can apply this to SM as well)

We are limited to using 1/3 of our skills at any one time, yet the skills in Da Best Plan are no better than other skills in other tank's arsenals that DON'T require some stupid dance to get to.

We have a tactic that advances us to the Best Plan on a Parry... but they putting waffleing timers on all our Best Plan abilities, making this completely useless! Why the hell are there lockout timers on abilities like 3-hit when we already have to be in the Best Plan to use them?


Da Plan also hurts our CC more than other tanks.
Snares - plan 2
Knockback - plan 2
Knockdown - plan 3

We have no way of advancing to plan 2 without having a target and being in range for melee. So we can NEVER start an engagement with a CC like knockback - an option all other tanks (other than SM) have. In a knockback engagement like a bridge fight, we are at an insane disadvantage over other tanks.

Now if we're in Plan 2 we _can_ advance to 3 with no target by using Big Swing. We need something like this for getting from Plan 1 to 2.

A fix for this would be to add an ability (or change an existing ability) to allow it to advance the plan. What if our AP Regen Shout added to Da Plan? At least then we'd be able to start an engagement on Plan 2 or 3 once every minute.

Getting the maths wrong?

So its a keep seige and our alliance are there, it goes on for over 60 minutes

Rank 6 keep with all the bells and whistles.

The attacking force is trapped in the inner courtyard.

174 order players

93 destro players

690 kills by Destro players

249 kills by Order players

Here is a screenie of destro inside the keep( well done to Bladeh for 100 kills)



The question is who were the attackers?


If you said order, your wrong.

1.87 to 1 population ratio

2.77 to 1 kill ratio

Does that mean we were 5 times as good?

Mrs Wiggles gets wings

I was the lucky winner of one of the special mounts on the test server.

I have taken some screenies to show of my new toy.

70% movement speed I LUB you.

Land of the Dead - PvP Skirmish

Some people have been missing the point of rvr in the Land of the Dead. They look at locking it, driving the other side out and purging a few instances and go meh.

The rvr in The land of the Dead only starts when the other side gains control.

Then you face a real challenge and a real penalty, if you die and cant get a ress your gone and out. You going to be outnumbered too as the majority of your faction are vanquished.

Over the last few days I have been in groups of 8 or so trying to fight and survive as long as possible in the zone while the enemy controled it.

Today I lasted 6 hours, some of my group lasted an hour or so longer to see the zone locked back.

The cat and mouse involved is great fun. Todays group had mostly healers which made us less than effective in attack meant we could not be weeded out as people were ressed and ran to ress others.

The few mishaps along the way added to the spice, do not attack the bitter winds PQ in Stage 3 as your attack party will be split up as they are summoned into the crypts below leading to you getting your asses kicked.

In the end I died to a rather flattering amount of effort from order.





The partial bomb squad from a solid guild guarding my corpse for the full 10 minutes, the mine field and turrets say it all for me, the dangerous renegade "Tough Boss" Snort has been vanquished but we can not lower our guard lest his evil minions revive him.( Said evil minions survived to form a 4 healer death squad and continued to find and kill order, ganked by healers the shame...)



So dont give up on LOTD, its what you make of it and you can make a lot. And finally a moral tale for all the LOTD panic naysayers.