Tufmudda

Some piccies of Aion Snort

2009-09-18T23:06:00.002+01:00

So Aion is near

2009-09-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

Our Coalition of guilds have finally decided on a server for Aion.

We have as a community chosen: Perento

The legions we are bringing with us are the following:

Elyos:

Nishibo
Chosen Existence
Excessum
Ginnunga
Explicit Content
Comittee
Semper Dius
Cyrus
The Black Hand
Crimson Imperium Reborn

Asmodian:

Sol Invictus
MEH
Heresy
Hades
Eva Vix
VideInfra
Drakes
Frozen Tears
Mystical Awakening
The Unnamed

Aion thoughts

2009-08-05T01:16:00.007+01:00

A large proportion of my guild are interested in playing Aion. I thought it prudent to do some research on the game to make an informed opinion of my own. While my guildies are enjoying the game a lot of them are looking at it with a non-critical eye and are not the best source of factual information.

I tried the various forums for information and while MMOrpg, Aion Source and the official beta forums have a lot of threads the standard of information is appalingly low for anyone attempting to glean some facts about games.

I will illustrate the character creation system (which is superb) allows you to creat characters that are anything from 4 feet to 7 feet tall, I wished to see if there were any actual disadvantages to being as small as possible or indeed any advantages to being as big as i could be. There were indeed threads on a number of the forums where these questions were asked. The replies given covered.

I am rolling a small character

I am rolling a big character

I am rolling a medium character

Small characters look silly

Large characters look silly

You should not be able to make you character so small

you should not be allowed to make characters so big

The size difference in this game makes it a bad game

Go back to WoW

Aion Will fail

Of the 40 or so posts in the threads two actually addressed the question. One pointed out that the hit boxes are universal for both characters but smaller characters catch the eye less in pvp. The second that a larger character as a tank is easier for dps and healers to find and to interact with in terms of position, healing buffs.

So why are these threads so poor and why are the standard of reviews so poor in terms of actually providing factual information.

Firstly posters in threads for a game that isnt launched are self selecting and in no way reflect the gaming community of a launched game While they are not exclusively fanatics they do have an above average interest in the game.

A large number of these posters tend to break down in to the Fanboi or the Hater.

The Fanboi is magpie like in his love for something new and shiny, he has often left another game and resents that others still enjoy something that they he longer does. His new love is without flaw and vastly superior to his previous infatuation who still casts her whorish wares in front of the unenlightened.

The Hater has invested a lot of time in another game and they see a new game as a threat to their game. The worst scenario for them is that they will have to go a new game and all their time invested in their character will have come to and end and they will be starting as a lowbe again.

Neither of these types offer anything to those of us who want to learn about the game and we have the misfortune of having to try and sort through their dross to get the few gems the forums have.

Having suffered through a few days of forums and finding those who are trying toi provide some real information I came to the conclusion the game was worth having a look at in Beta.

In the past I have played,WoW,EQ, EQ2, CoH, Warhammer, VanguardSOH, AoC so i am comfortable enough with the MMOrpg to at least know what I like. I think i know enough to be able to look at a new Mmo and have some idea if its worth exploring further.

So how did i find Aion?

Aion runs very well it felt smooth and my fps went to around 100 (albeit in a beta environment)I had max’ed out graphical settings at 1920×1200 . Overall the game feels very robust and well put together.

the whole pre-daeva game (that's levels 1 p- 10 before you specialise) feels a little repetitive but this is the case with all Mmos

The quests are mostly kill quests, the skills the classes get are interesting for sorcerer and cleric, but quite boring for the melee classes. The scout has only one attack, which key will be spammed in hope for a crit, to finish the task quickly.

EQ2 learned its lesson after 2 years of constant negative feedback about its convoluted branching system. Eventually EQ2 did away with this system by letting people choose the class they wanted right from the beginning, at lvl 1, without having them go through two separate branches to get there.

Even in the early stages you seem forced to group.Having your campaign quest push you into an area that requires a group and kill mobs that can only be killed by a group is forced. Should you decide to skip this part, for whatever reason, then you are missing out on a portion of the game that pushes your character development along the plot line.

While some players would prefer to do it solo I actually think a return to a more group orientated leveling experience is a big plus.

You SHOULD loose out if you do not group.
You SHOULD get better loot in a group.
You SHOULDN'T be able to get through without groups.

It is also worth considering which class type suits you. I tend to believe the tank healer classes are where groups succeed, dps decides how fast you succeed. Aion also seems to be a game that will need you tank in particular to be very aware. I also suspect that the sorcerer class may have to be like an enchanter in everquest dealing with adds. This is a game that starts at level 20, not at max level. If you pick a healing class, expect to be healing and not DPSing or Tanking, that's just how it is.

I decided that I would spend my time in beta testing the templar class. Templars are the pure tanks of the Warrior class and of the entire game really. Templars use swords or maces as their primary weapon and a shield to go along with it. They are masters at building threat and mitigation. There is not much to say about the class other than what has already been stated, but I will say that if your goal for your character is to tank in all situations and be able to handle incoming damage the best, then the Templar is for you.

Theres is little downtime while grinding and I kill mobs pretty much as fast as the next guy. There are a few issues with multi-mob tanking but the new aoe taunt skills that are coming up seem like it will take care of that to some extent.

Tanking the elite mobs near Altgard was very lucrative in terms of cash and items drops and experience. It was also challenging, the group needs to be awake and on the ball. They can be started by a full group at level 13 but a careful approach is required. The area also has a few named elites which have some nice green drops.

Gathering and crafting are very time consuming

Is it a revolutionary game? Nope but IMHO its on par with LoTRO, AoC with patch 1.5, and EQ2. The game provides people a good experience for those seeking a new world to explore.

The character graphics and customization IMHO is outstanding and so is the armor and weapons designs in game. Quest wise there is nothing new here in this game. If you’ve played WoW, LOTRO, CoH/V, etc..

The game isn't hard , it takes effort. At lvl 10 you get a taste of what your character is capable of, at lv18 it comes to life with the various skills you receive and allow you to familiarize with your character further and develop your playstyle.

Some links I found useful.

http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/Aion/index.html

http://powerwiki.na.aiononline.com/aion/Templar

http://www.aionarmory.com/search.aspx?browse=6.6&filters=501=45;502=50

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/previews/48835/Aion-Options-and-Interface

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-discussion/16195-translation-aion-update-1-1-a.html

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-discussion/18828-dats-translations-including-major-patch-notes.html

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-discussion/22086-truth-reaching-level-50-5-days.html

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-guides/20612-how-effectively-use-keybinds.html

http://powerwiki.na.aiononline.com/aion/Combat

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Paragus1/072009/4306_Aion-Updated-Impressions-and-the-Abyss

Fan sites:
http://aionicthoughts.wordpress.com/
http://www.aionarmory.com/
http://www.aionglobal.com/
http://www.aionsource.com/
http://www.areyouhellbound.com/forum/
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/253
http://www.onrpg.com/
Official sites:
http://www.ncsoft.com/global/
http://www.aiononline.com/us/
http://eu.aiononline.com/en/
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/246106/Mostly-Elyos.html

Aion but what of Endgame

2009-08-02T04:32:00.000+01:00

Aion and hype.

2009-07-26T03:56:00.001+01:00

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

2009-07-21T03:48:00.002+01:00

More to come.

Nothing but the truth about the Blorc

2009-07-17T05:17:00.003+01:00

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?

2009-07-15T06:07:00.005+01:00

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

2009-07-02T02:25:00.004+01:00

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

2009-07-01T04:51:00.006+01:00

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.

2009-06-17T13:26:00.002+01:00

I havent been posting lately and I promised a reader I will start again.

Well I have been playing the game again and enjoying it.

Over the last few Weeks I have been working with Shekkel to try and figure out how to get to stage 2 in the city and then so.

On Sunday after a cross alliance event we pulled it of by the skin of our teeth. A few good lessons were learned and I think we can do it again but it will be difficult. The system for locking the city is unnecessarily obtuse. Locking to stage 2 a second time will be the real test.

I have also been enjoying skirmishing in orvr. There tend to be large groups of order and destruction in certain zones but with a bit of patience you can still find a decent fight if you zone hop. The population advantage does seem to have swapped to destruction but not as badly as the alarmist would have us believe.

Finally we have been trying to improve the rank of the guild, to do this we kicked the vast majority of members and reinvite them when they log on. This has drastically increased the amount of guild xp we get. If you prune your guild of all inactive players you will begin to see why this is becoming a popular approach.

Looking forward to the expansion.

Magus mania

2009-06-17T13:20:00.002+01:00

I had to link this as it made me laugh.

Great work by Uroo and I thought he spent all his time in keeps.

1.3 career fixes delayed

2009-06-05T15:30:00.001+01:00

So patch 1.3 is being split.

The most interesting aspect is the order that the patches will come.

The game badly needs the career balance changes, but this is something that for the greater part benifits those who are still active in game. A balanced fix to AoE and crowd control would make a vast differnce in playability. If a career fix went live first those players who are still thinking about having a second look at the game would probabaly still wait for the new content to go live.

However,

Mythic badly needs new content to encourage people to come back and try the game, a lot of DAOC players who have quit would be curious to poke about in the Land of the Dead( to see if it is darkness falls). It is my guess Mythic are betting on people resubbing to try the new content and they want those tasty subscription Euros, Dollars and Pounds as soon as possible.

What happens when you drop Warlord crests

2009-05-14T12:47:00.004+01:00

You become popular, I will ding 70 over the weekend, I am screwed.

King of Da hill

2009-05-13T01:11:00.012+01:00

Last saturday a few guildies and assorted allies were too late to enter the Fort siege at Stonewatch.

So we decided to do the next best thing,annoy the hell out of Order that tried to run back into the fort.

With 16 ppl( 2 not yet level 40) we where able to fend off wave after wave of Order for a good 30 min (sadly the first 10 min of footage where crap quality). We were outnumbered for the duration of the fight which took place beside the order camp. It is also a testament to the use of Tanks who know what a shield is and healers who dont think they are dps and ventrillo.

The pieces were filmed by one of our Blackguards, Searin. I am the Black and Orange Orc. This was the most fun I have had In ORvR.

This screenie gives a good view of the names of the members of the warband.

The Unnnamed in Altdorf

2009-05-12T19:24:00.001+01:00

Some footage of a recent visit to Altdorf.

Danger Will Robinson, Danger

2009-05-07T15:12:00.003+01:00

Bootae righly highlights the use of haxs in Warhammer.

Read him and have a listen to this.

I already have a suspect on our server.

This needs to be fixed.

Latest guild ad

2009-05-04T17:42:00.000+01:00

Long time no see

2009-04-26T04:42:00.002+01:00

I have been back to playing Warhammer for over a week now and its time for my first post. I wanted to wait a week or so to see if I was dabbling or back playing. I am back playing.

Its short as its late but to keep it snappy.

The removal of stacking for Rain of Fire( and similar) while taking way too long to arrive has made the differnce payers thought it would. While it may be too much to suggest the game is balanced it is in a better state than it was prior to patch.

Forts are once again defendable, which gives a better dynamic, it makes off peak lock attempts lesss painful for the opposing force.

Mass rvr game performance is still rather poor.

To finish on a bright note. Logged in this evening at 5, joined an alliance warband.The situation was order in CW with one keep to go until they were at the fort and on the way to IC.

We defended the keep, took the zone, pushed them to Reikland, took the fort, moved to Thunder Mountain and pushed to Kadrin valley and the fort there, which we took.

So the evening's gaming took me from the doorstep of IC to farming in Altdorf, half of level 64 and 7 invader crest and 100 officer medals.

All in all not a bad return to warhammer.

Broken classes and FOTM

2009-04-05T23:14:00.001+01:00

You know something is wrong when you see scenarios like this.

Thankfully fixes are promised.

Minion

2009-04-04T19:53:00.001+01:00

My Minion and I in the new guild colours.

A pity I cant shoulder mount him.

Caption Competition

2009-03-28T04:33:00.002Z

I just wanted to highlight the results of the caption competition over at Wizards and Wenches. Check it out.

Some of the sugested captions were very funny.

Customer support the right way.

2009-03-27T00:40:00.005Z

The performance issue on Karak Norn has spawned a lot of angst.

It is reassuring to see a response to us the customer that begins to tick the right boxes.

Magnus writes,

Good day all!

Thanks for the great patience you've shown through these admittedly frustrating times. The feedback you've shared here and via other channels has been invaluable. In return, I'll share our current understanding of the issue and further explain our motivations for merging servers in the first place.

A curious aspect of the Norn issue is that whereas it's now our largest server, we've got several European servers which are almost as large and because of this, we wanted to exclude the possibility that a hardware issue was at fault. A rigorous analyze by our SysAdmins revealed that the Norn hardware is in good condition and running well within acceptable limits. Consequently, we've now ruled out insufficient or malfunctioning hardware as a possible cause for these problems. For good measure though, we've applied additional monitoring software to stay informed and in order to provide Mythic with more data.

In our correspondence with Mythic, it's become clear that the root to these problems is directly linked with the Tier 4 population and, to some extent, its activity. There seems to be a threshold that - when exceeded - cause a strong performance decrease. This would explain why servers only marginally smaller than Norn doesn't don't share its issues. Seen in this light, one is tempted to conclude that the recent server transfers were a mistake. However, there are two factors which must be mentioned which demand a re-evaluation of this conclusion:

* Mythic have had Norn-size servers for some time
* These servers began showing Norn-type problems after Patch 1.2

Since the transfers were activated only days after Patch 1.2 went live, this issue was not identified quickly enough for us to react and do something about it. In hindsight, it was somewhat unfortunate that the transfers and Patch 1.2 would go live so close to each other. That said, there's a silver lining to this cloud. We know from Mythic's previous experience that Norn-size servers are viable, only that this was - for some reason - changed with Patch 1.2. Mythic are keenly aware of this and redeeming this situation is a top priority. Fixes are en route, and the only question is how soon and how tangible improvements they'll bring.

We're very sorry about all of this and we'll do what we can to make it up for you. Top GOA and Mythic technicians are on top of this and we're all doing what we can to bring about a solution as soon as possible.

I had suggested that we need to see a few things, amongst them an apology and some concrete information. Kudos to Magnus for giving us most of those.

Of course the proof in this pudding will be useful fixes being patched in as soon as possible but I think we can give Magnus some credit.

Nimlets Lost Vale Guide updated

2009-03-27T00:12:00.001Z

There have been a few updates to the best Lost Vale guide out there.

My problems with Warhammer

2009-03-24T05:16:00.007Z

I haven't stepped into Tier 4 for any length of time for over a week now. Prior to this I had been noticing low morale and a very low turnout on the Destruction side. Chat in guild and in our alliance pointed the fingers (whether rightly or wrongly) at game performance and class balance amongst other things.

I noticed while trying to lead during the week that the level of cooperation on our side seems to be dropping of. Large numbers of players in guild and in our alliance didn't turn out for a preplanned event. Where in previous months we had as many as 5 warbands we were just fielding two. I also found while people were happy to do some rvr very few were willing to do the more boring but essential jobs such as scouting and monitoring various BO and keeps. In general there was a lot of selfish play on destruction side with game play I hadn't seen in months rearing its head. Leading in rvr is time consuming and often frustrating. In the past leading in open RvR has been very rewarding and worth the trouble but having to over come the apathy of others is a bridge to far when there are a number other issues that are already undermining your enjoyment of the game.

Twice since then. I have either logged out or moved to an alt when The Inevitable City has been under attack.

There are five reasons that I believe I am not enjoying the game as much.

1. Mass RvR

The games performance during any large scale fight is appalling, not bad, not a bit laggy it is appalling. Warhammers great promise was mass rvr and 6 months in it as failed miserably at delivering it.

I believe if this issue is not addressed very quickly and with tangible results the game lose many more subscription. At the moment there are only 3 tiers of decent play, it is the main reason some people are still playing , pvp in the lower tiers is enjoyable and with the advent of the choppa many people are trying it out.

2. AOE

Both AoE damage and healing are too effective. I raise my eyebrow at the idea of skill in an MMO but if ever there was a skilless approach it is Mythics present attachment to AoE. A simple solution would be to make single target heals and damage more effective while at the same time reducing the effectiveness of AoE healing and damage. AoE has its place but not in its present form. Perhaps enabling damage from friendly fire is an option.

3. Class Balance

At the moment I think Mythic have completely lost control of class balance. The disparity between a magus and its mirror the Engineer is the first of many examples that come to mind. Not only is the game performance shockingly poor, the recent changes that have been made to class balance have made melee classes redundant in large parts of endgame pve.

Corwynn makes a pretty valid observation.

Inside the faction Destro has been pretty nicely balanced from the beginning, WEs melted faces but died fast enough to keep their overall damage in check and all the RDPS careers could fulfill their respective functions, with Squig Herders being the ones worst off. The balance between Order and Destro however hasn’t been that good, what with the huge amount of players playing BWs, the single most effective DPS career.

The great pity is that some very good changes were introduced, the Swordmaster was made into a viable class but you do begin to wonder if its accident rather than design. I have never been a fan of nerfing classes but some retuning is needed on a number of classes. That some classes were not looked at in 1.2 with anything approaching an understanding of how the game is actually played is at best shoddy at worst incompetent.

4. Patching

I am genuinely believe that for every inch Mytic advance the game with a patch they also manage to move half an inch backwards. The sheer amount of issues with performance in Lost Vale for example has got to the stage of being laughable. If it weren't for swift response from CSR our guild's last few LV runs would not have taken place.

Some time ago I wonder about staffing numbers in Mythic and whether they had the manpower to test. It is begining to seem that they do not have that capacity at the moment. You have to wonder whether Mythic are up to running an MMO to the standards expected by those who played World of Warcraft.

I am aware of those who accused Mythic of not listening to its player base in Beta but it does seem that they did not listen to their player base during the testing for patch 1.2 either. Perhaps it time Mythic's communications with its subscribers contained more fact and less generalities, the state of the game and recent dev chat were for the most part. We will do something, someday about something maybe, doesn't cut it.

5. Tanking

One of my hopes for this game was that it would be possible to play a tank class as a tank rather than as a glorified melee dps. The recent changes to the Black Orc, while certainly not crippling to the class as a whole have made anything other than a choice of 2-handed dps spec in pvp foolish.

The idea of a defencive melee support role for a tank has gone from this game.

In Conclusion:

Players on out faction on Karak Norn are getting pissed off as Synlaw points out when he says this

Dear GOA / Magnus / Whoever,

We - the players - have been very hopeful for a quick resolution to our issues. Many of us have decided to stick with our subscriptions for an extra month pending expected fixes. A week has passed, and we have yet to see any progress whatsoever. In fact, the server - and the game itself - seems to be getting worse and worse, bursting along the stitches of spit and chewgum. There is no other analogy which could explain why it has little to no lag on one day, then a day later everything falls apart with instances crashing, 10-15 second casting lag, etc.

I am not aware if Mythic developers are actually reading these forums; but please let them be aware that you have an entire server crashing & burning subscription-wise due to their unprofessional testing and implementing of patch 1.2. Having consulted with the majority of Destruction guilds on Karak Norn, it is evident that the Destruction players are giving Warhammer until April to sort out the server, and realm balance issues.

We are not asking for anything unreasonable. We are asking for an opportunity to play and enjoy the product we're paying for in relatively LAGFREE circumstances. Much as I hate to say this again, nobody is going to pay for beta-testing something that should have been solved a long time ago, considering the game is now approaching its 1-year mark. The main problem is the lack of any sort of addressing the issues at hand and maintaining a week-by-week habit of keeping the community updated as to what's exactly going on and what's being done to take care of the situation.

If nothing is done by the end of April, I'm sorry but you will have to start organizing new transfers. Because the population of Karak Norn will drop, and it will drop like a rock.

I agreed with his sentiment

At the moment my time in game has decreased. I spend some of that time playing scenarios and a lot more of it playing my choppa (lvl 20). If the Choppa wasnt as enjoyable and the lower tiers so active I would be back in World of Warcraft. For the moment Warhammer is keeping my subscription but it needs to work hard and work quickly to ensure I resubscribe when my billing period ends.

Community time again

2009-03-23T17:54:00.004Z

Its that time of the week again where we highlight other blogs.

This week its Evan Sims.

Evan is a game designer so I was very interested in his advice on tweaking performance in Warhammer.

His ingame tweaks include.

Lightmaps & Specular — By far the biggest performance booster. Disable these options and restart the game client. You will notice a drop in visual quality, but get a huge boost to your FPS in return. This impacts the lighting quality of the game.

Shadows — I recommend setting this to Balanced. This will set all NPC and PC (including yourself) shadows to simpler, non-dynamic textures. They still look pretty decent, and this tweak can help a lot in crowded areas like Altdorf or Inevitable City, or during keep, fortress or city raids. I haven’t noticed a huge performance difference disabling them completely, and I think the effect they give is worth the few frames.

Disable EAX — If you have a Creative card that supports EAX, I don’t recommend using it. Especially if you’re an unfortunate soul running Vista.

No Blogging for a few days

2009-03-22T21:41:00.002Z

I havent been blogging for a few days.

The reason.

Warhammer: Its own worst enemy?

2009-03-19T04:52:00.005Z

So this evening an old Guildy (old in all senses) turned up out of the blue. He had returned from Warcraft on a 30 day trial period designed to get those who had left the game to return. Surely this is a triumph for Warhammer, he will get to experience the many improvements in the game.

He was enthusiastic and eager to learn what had changed.

Unfortunately for him, most of the feedback on vent was negative. It is is not the case that there haven't been many improvements. His class, the disciple is great fun to play and is far better than it was when he left. He loves to pvp so wasn't interested in PvE improvements but was glad to hear about influence rewards for RvR. He loved the fact that scenarios that he had never got to play were popping (you remember when only Serpent's was played don't you)

Yet for all these improvements his first experience on the game on return was negative.

The problem was once again server performance. The inevitable city was seiged on Karak Norn and the game was nigh unplayable.

As this has been the case for sometime the general mood in guild and in our alliance and in deed in general on the destruction faction was very very low.

So here we had a player returning looking for PvP finding that the game that promised so much in terms of mass PvP was still not delivering and the players he was coming back to were talking about upcoming games they could migrate to.

He will play during his 30 day period but how many other will quit if there isnt a solution?

Many people waited for patch 1.2 and have been disappointed by it. The next patches may address issues and indeed they may bring about an improvement.

The real issue is that their may be too few people left to benefit from the changes, leading to a downward spiral, as the end game is population dependant.

Its very easy to stop the rot.

Alknowledge that their is a problem, apologise, disclose whats being done about it and then actually fix it.

Outnumbered in scenarios, there is always a brightside

2009-03-18T02:20:00.003Z

I am always a fan of good news stories. Tonite we got into a scenario to find we were outnumbered 2 to 1. Usually you get rolfstomped but sometimes you dont, this time we did the stomping. it gave us a good chuckle.

As the scenario closed we were hunting the Order side down to their camps.

Some times you dont mind being the underdog.

Also of note is the First level 40 Choppa on the server, Slashingmadness.

Defending your Fort, please form an orderly Q

2009-03-17T04:32:00.003Z

I took this last night, we wanted to get some cordination on door repairs by tanks.

This seemed to work.

State of the Game, Whats coming for ORvR - Snap reaction

2009-03-12T03:03:00.008Z

So Mark Jacobs has made his state of the game address.

If we get through the fluff what does he actually say.

1.2.1 also contains the initial Keep Upgrade system (more on this below), more improvements to T3 in terms of content and experience and the Combat and Careers team will give some extra loving to the Archmage, Shaman, White Lion, and Marauder, another Live Event and much more

All good, especially healer love.

We are also working on a new ORvR Influence bar which is filled by killing players and unlocks higher renown ranks in T4. We also want to improve XP, Renown and Influence Rewards for fighting other players apart from those bars.

The detail will make or break this, we will have to see what more we can learn.

We are also looking at implementing a “Nemesis” system which tracks the top 20 enemy players that kill you and which will give you rewards for hunting them down.

I can see this being very popular. I have already been thinking how best to use this system. should I pick as healers, all high renown players or players with high play times. I can see this being fun.

We want to make BOs more relevant and necessary for the Keep take to Zone Capture progression.

Interesting, with some great potential, short on actual detail

Our current plans include putting in a Keep Upgrade system that encourages guilds to claim and upgrade Keeps. These upgrades would be usage upgrades, not just visual upgrades. We are looking at giving interesting and useful things to guilds who upgrade Keeps; defense improvements, guilds rewards, etc. We also want to put in more attacker options, more attacker abilities, and experiment with new types of siege warfare. Down the ramp (a pun a day and all that) a bit, we are also working on putting in an additional ramp to the Keep Lord room in every Keep and Fortress in the game.

Could be fluff, could be great, we need to see the detail. An adtional ramp will be a great move.

players will no longer be able to bypass other players in City Selection and you will no longer have City Instances which are 40 vs. 0!

About time.

I suspect that some people may get very annoyed about the lack of detail and it does read as if Mark was backed into a corner and wrote this against his will. Overall, lots of potential and I am optomistic. Mythic do seem to be concious of flaws in the game and they are trying to address them.

Cooking Warhammer style

2009-03-11T15:22:00.004Z

At the recent gathering in Dublin on March 9th, I was explaining how to use Warhammer to cook your dinner. Book of Grudges has reminded me of my drunken ramblings and set me the challenge of typing up my recipe. Other bloggers also have a passion for cooking so we may get a few others to try this.

The principle is that you use in game times to make sure you don't burn your dinner.

How to slow roast a chicken in Lost Vale, using an average group(3-5 Wards).

Needed a copy of Warhammer online

1 good quality whole chicken
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large lemon
5 cloves garlic
Fresh thyme
Olive oil
One Blorc
One Chosen
One Magus
One Witchelf
One Disciple of Kayne
One Zealot
You may change any of these classes in preference to your own choice of seasoning.

When you land in Avelorn and are waiting for your inevitably late guild mates, rinse the chicken and pat dry with a paper towel. Rub the chicken inside and out with sea salt and black pepper. Take the whole lemon and carefully pierce a few times. Place the whole pierced lemon, garlic cloves and few sprigs of fresh thyme into the cavity of the chicken.

Turn you oven on to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and leave. Start Lost Vale

Upon killing Arzranok you can place the Chicken in the oven. Kill the trash up to Malghor Greathorn. Before you engage Malghor adjust the heat in your oven to 250 degrees.

Finish the left wing and start on the right. In the right wing as soon as you have killed the Butcher Gutbeater, adjust you oven temperature to 450 minutes. Kill the trash up until Gorak the Ancient.

Remove chicken from Oven and allow it to sit until you have finished the 2nd wing.

It is important that you do not wipe so use a good guide to LV. If you are particularly efficient in Lost Vale advance by one Boss encounter, place chicken in oven at Malghor.

For those of you who prefer a PVP environment the same recipe can be adjusted for zone domination.

A quick thanks

2009-03-11T01:47:00.003Z

A quick thanks to all the GOA guys for a great night out, especially Nic and Magnus.

I hope you all made it into work.

It was great to meet the people who are going to be the communiity managers for the various forums, such as the french forum manager Madam Tullé. I think it is taking her some time to come to terms with our drinking culture.

I was very much taken with how enthusastic everyone I met was for the game and the esprit de corp(as Mde Tullé would say) was excellent. They really seem to enjoy their work and hopefully we will see that in the forums.

It was also great to meet some other bloggers and gamers on what was nerdtastic evening.

Swimming Pool of Heaven

2009-03-10T19:59:00.001Z

ZOMG server transfer disaster, News at 11

2009-03-08T16:32:00.005Z

I wrote a short time ago about players from Karak Hirn transferring to Karak Norn

Our alliance Red Eciplse (formerly Shadow Wind) has transferred from Karak Hirn.

At the moment the constituent guilds are:

Apex
DarkWind
Explicit Content
Fractal
Filth
Tainted
The Rigante
The Unnamed

What a hectic introduction to a new server. Five minutes after moving server I find that a fortress is under attack. A very enjoyable defence of our Inevitable City instance. No points for Order in the instance we were defending as an alliance(No: 95).

I could see from following chat that some misunderstandings between new arrivals and others ensued. Corwynn has an excellent write up on it all. He could write a thesis on trolling but its a fascinating piece if your a forum warrior.

One of the huge issues raised is the use of caps. In many games CAPS ARE CONSIDERED RUDE AND ANNOYING.HOWEVER THE MAIN ALLIANCES WHO HAVE TRANSFERRED FROM HIRN HABITUALLY USE CAPS WHEN LEADING A ZONE LOCK OR FORT ATTEMPT.

This has led to consternation.

It has been suggested that "I'm sorry but you moved to OUR server, so you adapt to OUR rules."

Unfortunately when hundreds of active and coordinated level 40 players move to your server the rules change. It is unreasonable to suggest they stay the same just as it is unreasonable for the new comers to impose their own rules.

I am a user of and an advocate for CAPS, when I lead events I use them, other leaders in my alliance use them as well. They stand out and they make simple orders more prominent. The vast majority of players do not care one way or the other they want to be where the action is and they want to win. Yesterday the guys using caps locked Thunder mountain(Twice), Kadrin Valley once and Caledor back to Dragonwake. They couldn't have done it if the guys that don't use caps hadn't been helping them.

So is this post to highlight how the triumph of getting a whole community to work together has turned to dust with internecine feuding.

Yes it is, Damn you GOA.

Actually I am joking. Just as Magnus said a community can work something out in regards to a transfer, I am sure he would say that teething problems on a new server are to be expected and will be sorted out by communities as well.

The good news is that we are already doing this.

We all know forums don't often give an accurate picture of the reality of a server. The forums have players from my own guild flaming players of the main destruction alliance. In reality myself and the alliance that I am a member of and that already established alliance were working together over 12 hours yesterday.

Tells were sent, whispers received. We pulled of coordinated attacks on order forces from multiple directions. We sent information to each other. we swapped zones to back each other up when needed to stop locks in other zones. we split the duties on keep takes

So while the forums are full of bluff and bravado the game was full of action and fun.

With a merger like this the Norn server is not going to stay the same nor is the Hirn server going to be rebuilt. We will even have more folk joining us from other servers.

All we are going to have is the esteem that exists between equals.

Some people are already on this page of the story, the slower readers will catch up.

Lagwar: guide to zone domination

2009-03-07T01:53:00.005Z

Its that time of the week again where we highlight another member of the warhammer community.

Lagwar has a sucinct and accurate guide to zone domination.

If you read nothing else from lagwar know this:

The optimal method:: This is NOT meant to maximize renown gained from BFO’s and keeps, this is meant to capture the zone as FAST AS POSSIBLE. Take both of the keeps as close to simultaneously as possible. Guard them well, camp the opposing realms warcamp, or queue scenarios, but DO NOT LOSE THE KEEPS. Now that keep doors reset if they aren’t broken down after 20 minutes (20 min not in combat) it is very possible to successfully chain defend keeps. Once you’re at an hour and 15 minutes of holding the keeps, go out and take all the BFO’s, try to capture them as close to simultaneously as possible as well. Now if you successfully hold everything, the BFO’s will finish their zone domination counter at approximately the same time as the keeps. Start to finish it will only take 2 hours to flip the zone with successful defense.

So onward to Karak Norn

2009-03-06T00:50:00.012Z

So GOA decided to merge some more servers and my server Karak Hirn is on the list.

It was a shock to lot of people.

Magnus from GOA posted the following.

Dear Hirn,
as some of you know, I've played on Hirn from day one and have first-hand experience of the unique and plainly awesome community found here. The decision to close Hirn has not been taken lightheartedly and has followed lengthy and sometimes turbulent discussions, but we all agree that something had to be done about population development on Hirn as well as our other English servers. Put plainly, they just weren't sporting the kind of populations we think we owe our players and some tough decisions had to go through.

A community consist of the players which are part of it and little else. I hope you'll all talk with your friends, guilds, alliances and foes to make sure you end up on the same server, allowing you to continue to develop the relationships you have built on Hirn over these months.

-Magnus

So while some fumed, others tried to do just that.

The two major destruction alliances discussed it between them, as did Order's. People took the time to learn a bit about the possible destinations.

At 8pm a large number of Order and Destruction represenatives met and discussed the transfer. Information was shared, opinions offered. It was incredibly civil and the difficulties of all particpants were catered for. In the end we opted for Karak Norn. We couldnt have done this without the cooperation of all particpants.

It was a pleasure to see "friends, guilds, alliances and foes" decide to transfer to the same server. It was great that so many different people could turn a problem into an oppurtunity.

Afterwards the fun started. We went and took some screen shots to commemorate.

Some more very good Shots and another film.

Domination system flawed?

2009-03-05T06:59:00.006Z

We wanted to see what half a warband could do if they attacked at an off peak play time. So while everyone else was a sleep we locked Thunder Mountain, Caledor and Praag, differnet players took part but we never had more than 14 or 15.

Half a warband can lock 3 zones, this needs to be fixed.

Edit: It strikes me that a server transfer is potentially a fix to the issue of late night attacks. more players means greater off-peak activity.

LIVE: First impressions of the patch.

2009-03-04T14:59:00.005Z

The good:

I am very happy with the new mounts. Mrs Wiggles got a lovely dye job.

I got a stack of Chaos Black Dye so my Black Orc actually is black.

The new scenarios seems very good.

Big slash is indeed 360% and it may be my imagination but it sends people further back.

Tracking your warband on the map.

Zone domination system adds a new dynamic to the game.

The bad:

A few Crashes.

Lag in the new Scenario.

Witch elves are complaining.

Scenarios for Tier 1 and Tier 2 dont seem to pop.

Archmages seem to have increased survivability, there are claims their detaunt is bugged.

Block seems a bit buggy.

Population imbalance will be a greater issue with Zone domination system.

Patch due soon, a pity is a poor one for Black Orcs.

2009-03-03T19:17:00.007Z

1.2 will be going live tomorrow morning, 3/3/09. All North American servers will be brought down at 7:00 AM EST with Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00 AM EST. We expect all servers to be back up and running by 1:00 PM EST.

As always be sure you check the Herald for the latest information and updates during downtimes. We will update this message in the morning with a link to the final 1.2 Patch Notes.

At the moment the Black orc notes read:

Bug Fixes:
* 'Ave Another One: Fixed a bug that allowed this ability to gain benefits from stats.
* Can't Hit Me!: This ability will now behave correctly when interrupted.
* Challenge: This ability no longer requires an enemy target.
* Da Biggest: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Da Greenest: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Da Greenest: This ability's armor-buffing effect will now scale with level.
* Da Toughest: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Da Toughest: Tooltip will now upgrade correctly.
* Loudmouth: Fixed a bug that allowed this ability to do critical damage.
* Loudmouth: Fixed a bug that allowed this ability to gain benefits from stats.
* Not in Da face: Damage increased to proper amount.
* Puddle O' Muck: This ability will now correctlyactually snare targets.
* Rock 'Ard: This ability no longer claims to lead to Gud Plan, or highlights while you have a Gud Plan.
* Stop Hittin' da Runts: The tactic will now restore the proper amount of Action Points.
* T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will no longer interrupt itself while moving.
* T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now behave correctly when interrupted.
* T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now cause the caster to be considered in Da Best Plan for the duration of the effect.
* Waaagh!: This ability's debuff icon tooltip now states correct reduction type, and no longer requires a target.
* Where You Going?: This ability's description has been updated to correctly reflect that this is actually a PBAoE.
Balance Changes:
* Big Brawlin': This ability will now disorient targets by 25%.
* Can Youz Hear me Now?: The damage boost of this ability has been increased.
* Can't Hit Me!: This ability will now deal Corporeal Damage.
* Can't Touch Us: Will now absorb more damage.
* Da Bestest!: This ability has been renamed to "Guud at Big Choppin!" and will now increase damage and Parry rate while using a great weapon.
* Da Big Un': This ability will now deal more damage, and affect a larger area.
* Da Biggest!: This ability will now grant a stat buff to nearby group members.
* Da Toughest: This ability will now grant less Wounds and health to the Black Orc when it triggers.
* Dat Was Great!: This Tactic has been changed to match the changes to Wot armor?. The Tactic will now increase the duration of Wot armor?, and reduce the victim's Toughness.
* Down Ya Go: This ability will now deal more damage, knock the target down for 3 seconds, and cost no AP to activate.
* Keep it Goin!: The damage boost of this ability has been increased.
* Loudmouth: The damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Corporeal. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Not in da Face!: This ability will now deal more damage and also make you and your group briefly immune to disabling effects.
* Rock 'Ard: This ability will now absorb more damage.
* Savin' Me Hide: This ability will now deal more damage, and will also reduce the magical damage taken by you and your group.
* Shut Yer Face: This ability will now deal more damage and cost no AP to activate.
* Skull Thumper: The additional damage caused by this ability's debuff has been increased, is now mitigated as Corporeal damage, and no longer gains an increase from stats. Additionally, the damage from this effect will show up on its own line in the combat log.
* T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now deal more damage but will receive less damage contribution from stats.
* Taunt/Challenge: Will no longer force player pets to attack you.
* WAAAAAAAGH!: This ability will now deal more damage.
* Wot armor?: This ability has had its stacking % armor debuff replaced with a fixed-value armor debuff. Additionally, it will now apply its maximum debuff value in a single hit.

So a few new ones in here:

T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now cause the caster to be considered in Da Best Plan for the duration of the effect.

A fix to long standing issue. Good Job.

* Taunt/Challenge: Will no longer force player pets to attack you.

A bloody stupid nerf. So much for being a tank in PVP.

*Stab you gooder: Reduced the amount of bonus critical damage given by this tactic.

Idiotic nerf based on issues with the Choppa.

It seems that Big Slash is now 360 degree, if this is the case its a nice buff.

Overall its seems as if its a patch for 2-handers. Some great individual buffs and fixes to the class but they lack a coherency that might be expected. Black Orcs have been devalued as tanks and using a sword and shield has taken a nerf.

Feedback from Black Orcs seems to be have been ignored and EU PTS feedback seems to be beyond a joke.

Community Spirit

2009-02-28T11:33:00.002Z

Its that time of the week again. Check out Rainbow MMO blog.

Kudos to it for drawing my attention to this gem.

Are Mythic in a panic

2009-02-27T19:15:00.004Z

Have Mythic's developers got in a panic? I have been reading a lot of feedback from testers and have been testing myself when the server is up.

Their approach to the Black Orc is utterly unconvincing. (Some other classes claim the same)

First we have an emphasis on Black Orc's 2 hander damage when we have a melee class coming out.

Then we have nerfs to the tanking viabilty of the class.

Then we have nerfs to newly buffed emphasis on damage, this nerf being driven by issues with the new melee class.

Orcs are Tanks, that shouldnt be undermined. We should be able to play as tanks in PvE and PvP enviroments.

We have a tree for 2 handed play, which has recieved some of the help that it needed but taking away 25% of our crit damage undermines that. That, that change is driven by another class being imbalanced is laughable(I chose this word deliberatly)

Getting the Black Orc right isnt too hard, take a breath, listen to your testers, if Mythic cant get this class right what hope have the classes that are really screwed up.

I genuinely wonder if they have enough staff to deliver the patch in the time scale they promised. This mess strikes me as too many people having too much work.

I would give them some advice, listen to your feedback.

I do believe that while there are decent options for sword and shield Blorc that some of the buffs are lacklustre. The new group buffs added to not in the Face and Savin me Hide are inadequate, the duration is to short.The higher part of the toughest tree needs some love.

I have a few sugestions.

1. Changes the duration to these neww group buffs to 10 seconds
2. Change our tactic Mor Hardcore to turn Jibles and Not in the Face to knockdowns
3. Remove the movement speed debuff on Cant Hit me, or put it lower in the tree
4. add an Anti-healing debuff or a healing buff to this tree.
5. The Blorcs lack of defensive CC combined with a short distance knock back compared to all Order tanks needs to be adressed

In Other trees The Damage on Waaagh is inadequate.
Put a 50% crit Damage Bonus in the Brawler tree.
The lack of an effective class rank 3 moral needs to be given attention.

If you can do some of these and fix the bugs that have crept in(Loudmouth is still wonky)then you should have a balanced class.

Testing a new build

2009-02-26T04:42:00.001Z

I have just spent some time on the test server and am impressed with some of the changes.

I tend to play with sword and shield, so I tested with that preference in mind.

First of all I think that the buff to Stop Hittin da runts is excellent. They took a worthless talent and gave us something that is useful in PvE and PvP. A proc based on the frequency of our bellows is a useful and pretty decent piece of balancing.

The change to Da Biggest allowing it to buff group mates is bugged at the moment, however Da Greeniest is buffing group mates which would be nice if it went live.

The change to Waaagh is promising (some decent damage) although it seems to have picked up a completely unnecessary 5 second cool down. Da Biggest procing like crazy on multiple mobs. Combining it with loudmouth was useful.

With the AP regen I could literally spam a cycle of Wot Armour- Big Swing - Waaagh without pause. Loudmouth boosted damage on my main target (not by as much as I thought it would) and Da Biggest buffed me considerably.

I can see it being a useful spec in scenarios and in Keep/Fort sieges.

I will have to do some research in to which classes on destruction benefit from a corporeal debuff to their targets.

The buff to Can Youz Hear Me Now makes it a nice single target attack against our squishiest opponents

I will continue to test this spec.

Updates for PTS

2009-02-24T12:33:00.003Z

I hope to testing a new build today but for those of you who missed it here are some of the changes.

Black Orc

Bug Fixes

* Tree Hit Combo: This ability will no longer interrupt itself while moving.

Balance Changes

* Da Toughest!: Wound buff increased from previously reduced value.
* Da Biggest!: This ability will now grant a stat buff to nearby group members.
* Da Bestest!: This ability has been renamed to “Gud at Big Choppin!” and will now increase damage and Parry rate while using a great weapon.
* Skull Thumper: The additional damage caused by this ability's debuff has been increased, is now mitigated as Corporeal damage, and no longer gains an increase from stats. Additionally, the damage from this effect will show up on its own line in the combat log.".
* Loudmouth: The damage of this ability has been increased and changed to Corporeal. However, this damage will not critically hit or receive benefit from stats.
* Can Youz Hear me Now?: The damage boost of this ability has been increased.
* Keep it Goin!: The damage boost of this ability has been increased.

Lets build that community

2009-02-24T03:22:00.004Z

Warhammer Alliance and PhoenixRed have come up with this great new Initative.

We call this program the WAR Community Promotion Initiative, or WCPI for short, and it is our effort to get other sites in the WAR community seen, heard, and otherwise looked at, through mutually beneficial, simple, cross-promotion. Inspired by efforts such as January's Age of Blogging, the WCPI seeks to continue and expand the effort across all kinds of WAR community sites.

Here's what you need:

* An active WAR fansite/blog/forum/podcast/other community resource (active meaning at least one post a week)
* Willingness to promote other sites such as yourself!

In order to help promote the warhammer communnity I have decided to sign up.

I would like to ask you to have a look at the blog of Bootae, a chosen from my server, Karak Hirn.

Bootae is often to be found where the Order corpses are stacked highest and has gained an insight into how to get the most out of your Chosen.

The best Lost Vale guide I have seen.

2009-02-23T01:44:00.004Z

A quick post if you want to do Lost Vale read this.

A comprehensive Lost Vale guide by a guildy of mine.

Things to do in Reikland when your bored

2009-02-20T01:51:00.004Z

We were on guard duty last night in the southern keep in reikland. Finding ways to appass the times when their are no order about is a challenge. We actually had a decent laugh.

We tried Hide and Seek, it worked suprisingly well.

We had a race where people managed to get lost.

Finally we climbed some trees.

7 favorites

2009-02-19T02:38:00.008Z

people's seven favorites are doing the rounds. Here are mine

Favorite Zone:

Kadrin Valley, some nice ambush spots, good keeps for a tank wall and lots of access from the non RvR area.

Favorite Race:

Greenskins. So funny and full of personality.

Favorite Career:

Black Orc - a bit obvious

Favorite WAR Feature:

Public quests

Favorite Skill:

Right in Da Jibblies, How cant you like a quick kick to the family jewels

Favorite Scenario:

Talabac Dam

Favorite Live Event:

I havent really enjoyed any of them.

A few Weapon Changes from PTS

2009-02-19T02:03:00.004Z

I popped on to the test server to see how Lost Vale named items had changed. Some rather nice minor buffs it seems.

Earthkeepa Cutta

Blocka o'da Doombull

Eye of the Spider Queen

A Guild, my Guild, any guild, why bother?

2009-02-18T01:21:00.004Z

I was about to write up your standard recruitment post for my guild. You know it, guild looking for three of this class and two of that yada yada yada

Then a rather central question dawned on me, why would you join ? We do not do have any world firsts, no server firsts. Its fun to be in but we have our drama too. We belong to a decent alliance that we enjoy but its nothing special by the standards of other servers. It dawned on me that this description covers most guilds in most games.

So thought why don't I interview our guild leader and see if he can convince me to join my own guild. I have kept editing to a bare minimum as I think it does a better job of keeping Badgers voice.

So Badger why are you a guild leader?

Well it started back when i discovered that Warhammer was going to be my next big game, I wanted to be ahead of the curve and get established in a guild before release. In the past i always joined guilds in other games after once reaching the highest level. This meant i was always back of the Queue for raiding and always missed out. I searched for guilds on unofficial Warhammer forums a1. After considering the guilds available i chose a mostly UK populated guild in July 2007. Things where going good, the forums where really active seeing as the game wasn't released, and it help to build the anticipation for the games arrival. In other mmo's and guilds ive never had much to with the leadership side but i didn't want the great bunch of lads i have met to split and go there separate ways because of the lack of leadership, so i took it on my self to help them in keeping the guild alive and to which they made me a officer. Then the worst happened, only after a couple of days of trying to get the guild morale going again the site went down and we had no way of contacting each other. I had but a hand full of the members i got on mostly with on my msn and some i knew in wow. After several days of discussion we decided to start up our own guild, the only problem most have already tasted being a guild leader and did not wish to do it again. So i took the bull by its horn with no experience and raised my hand to say ill give it a shot. One of the lads asked a favour from a friend who was a web designer to set upe a website and forum and on the 11th January 2008 the guild was born. I emailed every one from heresy to let them know about the guild and they flocked in numbers to sign up back with there old friends. So i guess that's my story how I ended up a guild leader.

What experience had your previously?

None at all, as i said above my previous gaming experiences have always been as a follower as much i am in real life as well. Only experience i have is from the guild leaders i have played with in the past. I had reservations about some guild leaders mentality, some seem to think they were better than the run of the mill player. I'm not saying every guild leader is this way i have most likely been very unlucky in the guilds i have joined in the past. There always seems to be a invisible line between the selected raiders and the back ups that could only sit and watch as there fellow members link loot they had won in high end instances. I know hows these guys felt and its not good. Your only there to make numbers up, to carry the guild tag only to advertise. In my guild i wasn't going to let this happen and i started my own way of guild leading one of which every one is equal. Every one is going to have a chance and be a part of something where every member enjoys playing and will wear the guild tag not to make numbers up but with pride. You can ask any of my members what I'm like and they will properly tell you I'm the thickest person on the face of the planet. they will take the piss out of me until they run out of breath. The reason they can say these things? because they see me and as fellow member and not some one they must suck up to or impress. I also know in the same breath of them having a laugh at my expense they will tell you i wear my heart on my sleeve and i treat every one as equals and more importantly as my friends. So to answer you question i use my past bad experiences to educate my self on how a guild should be ran.

Why The Unnamed?

Well there is no great story to this one unfortunately. It was a drunken night on msn just before the website was created and we spent a couple of ours thinking up names. Some funny, some serious, and some.. well... better left to the people that where there. It wasn't until some one joked "We are never gonna agree a name lets just called it The Unnamed" we laughed a little but it grew on us and there you are. That's we are called The Unnamed.

Your guild leader in a run of the mill guild no world firsts, why is it important that guilds like this get noticed?

Good question and its really what The Unnamed is really all about. I think when people see a guild with no elite background or members with monster reputations being successfully in a game it raises there hope that any one can achieve great things. As a guild we stay in the shadows we don't boast our rewards, instead we work with others to reach a all round goal. This shows that if run of the mill guilds work together they can achieve more than the the elite single guild. Also you gain the respect of other guilds and players, majority of which are the run of the mill like us. They have something to relate with and when trying to organise a server push i feel people listen more to players of there own mentality.

Whats your proudest moment as guild leader?

Every day i am proud, but I'm proudest when my members say things in vent like " badge, your like no other GM your hilarious" i like to think they mean they feel happy to be around some one who is no different from them selves. Most guild leaders when asked this question would probably reply "we downed this boss" Or "we got this loot this day" I'm just pleased to be playing a game with people I call friends.

Guild Politics: Does it rear its head? Why?

Unfortunately it does and there is no way of getting away from it. When you have 60-80 different players with different idea's and personality's there are always going to be clashes. I think a successful guild need to do its best to take all its players thoughts into consideration before making a decision. Having said that with such a big player base there needs to be a team which makes a final decision which is hard as you know some people properly won't be happy with it. And here comes one of my weakness as a guild leader. I'm not the most educated or articulate person and some times struggle to explain to people our decisions, to which I'm gratefully to have great officers. My officers take time to inform the rest of the guild what we decide to do and afterwards take in any criticism or thoughts on the matter and always try to find a happy medium.

When things go well what’s being done right?

In MMO such as Warhammer coordination is the key to every thing. In open RvR every one has a role to play. So when every one works together great things are achieved. In PvE its a practise and dedication thing you get out of it what you put into it and as long as every one is willing, eventually you will get success. Also once you are kited in a certain tier armour its important to keep doing it to help the less fortunate people achieve the same. I am proud to say that the high geared people in my guild always run lower instances to help the less lucky people. The key to things going well, Teamwork.

Good job Badger I am convinced where can I sign up

Fortess time

2009-02-17T00:47:00.005Z

I did not have time to post today as I was running a fortress atempt(or at least trying to)

At first it was a bit like this

Luckily in the end it a bit neater and we took it.

Bad Moon Rising

2009-02-13T16:20:00.006Z

A little song dedicated to all my destro chums who fought last night in Black Crag's Bad Moon Hole.

Survivability for Black Orcs: I see a possible new trend.

2009-02-13T11:24:00.001Z

I would test this approach to the new patch.

We replace our resists talismans with wounds and our resist accessories with toughness/wounds/ initiative gear. We get a mixture of strenght/toughness/intiative and Block from our renown tree.

Now, if we get our resists in such a set up to say 25 to 30% mitigation unbuffed which should be rather easy to do. We can use Da Greeniest to break the soft cap. We then add to this our new anti-magic damage skill. This should leave us with decent survivability against casters. Would it be as much as an equivalent to 50% mitigation?

Now have a look at the following:

Blessed Pullets of Purity: This ability will now deal Spirit Damage.
Blessed Bullets of Confession: This ability will now deal Spirit Damage.
Blessed Bullets of Cleansing: This ability will now deal Spirit Damage.

This is just one example of what used to be unmitigated damage is now mitigated via resistances now.

Having done this we have added survivability/damage from other sources which in conjunction with the toning down of armour penetration across the board makes us tougher against melee.

We could also get into the habit of switching bellows more often even a 50% reduced Da Toughest would be of some use.

(Anyone want to write a bellows twisting addon?)

While a rebalancing of gear, talismans, renown and class build may be need. I do see potential in these changes and a few opportunities for our class.

It’s a team game so if I keep my team alive longer I am happy to let them get the kills while I buff and debuff.

I really would like a sword and board knockdown to augment this.

The sky is falling the sky is falling

2009-02-12T16:16:00.003Z

Have a quick run over the forums, everyone is crying about nerfs. The Black Orc forums seem to be following the same pattern.

So were we nerfed, lets take a close look.

Shield Wall: The block bonus from this ability will no longer stack with other block buff bonuses

Must be a nerf but I don’t really understand it TBH.

All Disorient effects cast by players will no longer stack. Only the most powerful Disorient will affect the target.

This seems a huge buff to us.

Armor breaking/ignoring abilities got severely nerfed in their effectiveness (which helps high armored targets the most)

All absorb shield buffs have increased in effectiveness, and will now absorb roughly 50% more damage in most cases.

We have an underpowered shield now it may be viable.

Rock 'Ard: This ability no longer claims to lead to Gud Plan, or highlights while you have a Gud Plan.

Does this means it can be used every 10 seconds? If so that will be very useful.

Challenge: This ability no longer requires an enemy target.

A small but effective buff.

Wot armor?: This ability has had its stacking % armor debuff replaced with a fixed-value armor debuff. Additionally, it will now apply its maximum debuff value in a single hit.

A nerf especially against high armour targets but we benefit overall from the nerf to armour pen on all classes.

Da Toughest: This ability will now grant less Wounds and health to the Black Orc when it triggers.

A nerf, We will need to see how much it is reduced by.

Da Big Un': This ability will now deal more damage, and affect a larger area.

Buff

Savin' Me Hide: This abilty will now deal more damage, and will also reduce the magical damage taken by you and your group.

This could be very good, it isn’t raising resists, its stopping damage. This could be very powerful. I look forward to testing it. Very useful in pvp and situation ally useful in PVE. It is not as if we will miss the toughness bonus.

Shut Yer Face: This ability will now deal more damage and cost no AP to activate.

Simple buff

Down Ya Go: This ability will now deal more damage, knock the target down for 3 seconds, and cost no AP to activate.

Buff

T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now deal more damage but will receive less damage contribution from stats.

Perhaps nerf

Not in da Face!: This ability will now deal more damage and also make you and your group briefly immune to disabling effects.

Interesting, we will be less susceptible to disabling effects any way but buffing our healers and ranged dps gives us greater utility.

WAAAAAAAGH!: This ability will now deal more damage.

Buff

Can't Hit Me!: This ability will now deal Corporeal Damage.

Nerf but consistent with all other classes

Big Brawlin': This ability will now disorient targets by 25%.

Don’t know

Dat Was Great!: This Tactic has been changed to match the changes to Wot armor?. The Tactic will now increase the duration of Wot armor?, and reduce the victim's Toughness.

Nerf but not that important

Rock 'Ard: This ability will now absorb more damage.

Buff, ok for PVE and great for PVP

Can't Touch Us: This ability will now absorb more damage.

Buff

I am pleased with these changes in so far as I can be until I test them. Brawler Orcs have some nice buffs, Tanking Blorcs may have to change their builds but with the change to a fixed Da Greeniest, new builds may appear and they may even be superior.

Build

New improved self shield, a reduction to magic damage, a fixed greeniest below a lot of group buffs, Increased damage and reduced AP cost on our attacks. At worst we sacrifice a little bit of survivability for greater utility and damage. It’s a group based game so I am happy enough with that.

It has a lot of potential. A few questions come to mind. If Da Toughest is reduced by 25% and our shield goes up by 50%, have we lost out on survivability?

I have never been one for stacking resists. I have tested it in the past but have gone for other options. How strong does the new Savin' Me Hide have to be to make up for the soft cap in resists?

As I see it worst case scenario we have dropped a little survivability for more Damage, utility and more efficient AP. We may even have been buffed in survivability relative to other classes.

A very big patch

2009-02-12T12:16:00.002Z

A lot in the patch Notes. I will comment on them as the day goes on.

For me the stuff that caught the eye is.

All Disorient effects cast by players will no longer stack. Only the most powerful Disorient will affect the target.

Immovable: Duration increased to 20 seconds.

All absorb shield buffs have increased in effectiveness, and will now absorb roughly 50% more damage in most cases.

Shield Wall: The block bonus from this ability will no longer stack with other block buff bonuses

Black Orc:

Bug Fixes:
* Waaagh!: This ability's debuff icon tooltip now states correct reduction type, and no longer requires a target.
* T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now behave correctly when interrupted.
* Can't Hit Me!: This ability will now behave correctly when interrupted.
* Da Biggest: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Da Toughest: This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Da Big Un': This ability will now continue after zoning.
* Rock 'Ard: This ability no longer claims to lead to Gud Plan, or highlights while you have a Gud Plan.
* Challenge: This ability no longer requires an enemy target.
* Da Greenest: This ability's armor-buffing effect will now scale with level.
* Puddle O' Muck: This ability will now actually snare targets.
* Where You Going?: This ability's description has been updated to reflect that this is actually a PBAoE.
Balance Changes:
* Wot armor?: This ability has had its stacking % armor debuff replaced with a fixed-value armor debuff. Additionally, it will now apply its maximum debuff value in a single hit.
* Da Toughest: This ability will now grant less Wounds and health to the Black Orc when it triggers.
* Da Big Un': This ability will now deal more damage, and affect a larger area.
* Savin' Me Hide: This abilty will now deal more damage, and will also reduce the magical damage taken by you and your group.
* Shut Yer Face: This ability will now deal more damage and cost no AP to activate.
* Down Ya Go: This ability will now deal more damage, knock the target down for 3 seconds, and cost no AP to activate.
* T'ree Hit Combo: This ability will now deal more damage but will receive less damage contribution from stats.
* Not in da Face!: This ability will now deal more damage and also make you and your group briefly immune to disabling effects.
* WAAAAAAAGH!: This ability will now deal more damage.
* Can't Hit Me!: This ability will now deal Corporeal Damage.
* Big Brawlin': This ability will now disorient targets by 25%.
* Dat Was Great!: This Tactic has been changed to match the changes to Wot armor?. The Tactic will now increase the duration of Wot armor?, and reduce the victim's Toughness.
* Rock 'Ard: This ability will now absorb more damage.
* Can't Touch Us: This ability will now absorb more damage.

We have added three additional mount variants exclusive to guilds only. These can be purchased by visiting the Guild Quartermaster once your guild reaches Guild Rank 25.

Lost Vale
Lost Vale has benefitted from some significant changes in version 1.2. We have itemized the dungeon with a number of new drops as well as improved a number of older items. In addition, we have revised the drops for most of the bosses in order to improve the chances of getting set items for each career.
General:
* Darkpromise weapons have been retired and will no longer drop in Lost Vale.
* Darkpromise cloaks have been retired and will no longer drop in Lost Vale.
* Darkpromise accessories have been retired and will no longer drop in Lost Vale.
* New, unique Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare items have been added to the Lost Vale. These items are available as dropped items from all monsters in the dungeon.
* All of the old "Unique Named" special weapons dropped in Lost Vale have had their stats improved.
* A number of the "Unique Named" special weapons have been moved from boss loot tables to rare monster drops to make room for new items.
* We have added an additional Unique Named Weapon for each career to Lost Vale. These are powerful weapons with magical proc effects.
* Multiple items have had their names changed. Existing items will update automatically to the adjusted name.
Boss Loot:
* Wing Sub-bosses have been updated and will now have a 100% chance of dropping the following: 1 Set piece, 1 new dungeon Rare/Very Rare item, 1 rare Dye. In addition, they have a 50% chance to drop a Unique Named Lost Vale weapon.
* Wing Main-bosses have been updated and will now have a 100% chance of dropping the following: 2 Set pieces, 1 new dungeon Rare/Very Rare item, 1 rare Dye. In addition, they have a 50% chance to drop a Unique Named Lost Vale proc weapon, as well as a 50% chance of dropping an additional Dye.
* Lost Vale Wing Main-Bosses will always drop different 2 different career pieces.
* Darkpromise gloves for the Tank archetype careers now drop off of Ahzranok, Larg the Devourer, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise gloves for the Healer archetype careers now drop off of Ahzranok, Larg the Devourer, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise gloves for the RDPS archetype careers now drop off of Horgulul, Butcher Gutbeater, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise gloves for the MDPS archetype careers now drop off of Horgulul, Butcher Gutbeater, and the Darkpromise Beast.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Tank archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Chul Earthkeeper, and Zaar the Painseeker.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Healer archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Chul Earthkeeper, and Zaar the Painseeker.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Tank archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Gorak the Ancient, and Zaar the Painseeker.
* Darkpromise Belt for the Healer archetype careers now drop off of Malghor Greathorn, Gorak the Ancient, and Zaar the Painseeker.

RvR Fortresses
RvR Fortress raids have received an update for their itemization in version 1.2. The focus of this update was to better reward players for completion of a Fortress capture as well as give players who do not successfully capture a Fortress some chance at improved loot.
* The Fortresses now feature the same world drop items found in the high-level city dungeons. This includes rare drop "Watcher" weapons.
* The Fortress PQ bags now feature new, unique Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare items.
* Non-PQ target mobs within the Fortresses, including general mobs and the guards of the lords, now have a chance to drop the Conqueror Belt. The belt will no longer drop from Gold Bags.
* Additionally, the Conqueror Belt has been made bind-on-equip. This only affects new instances of the Conqueror Belt. Any Conquerer Belts found prior to this patch will remain bind-on-pickup.
* The number of PQ reward bags that drop in Fortresses has been increased to 30, with 12 Gold Bags for each completion.

Zone Control Domination
To help place more emphasis on Keep claiming and defense, as well as to combat the "defense by not defending" strategy, we are introducing the Zone Control Domination mechanic. With this system, players who take and hold all Battlefield Objectives and claim Keeps in a contested zone (in Tier 4) or a shared RvR lake (in Tiers 2 and 3) have the opportunity to capture that zone, forgoing the standard mechanics of Zone Control. Each Battlefield Objective and Keep will be worth 1 Domination Point. To capture a zone via the Domination rules, your Realm must have all 6 Domination Points. In Tiers 2 and 3, capturing all six points in a shared RvR lake will give the capturing Realm control of the entire Tier. These are represented as small pip marks on the Zone Control Bar. Battlefield Objectives and Keeps have different requirements for earning their Domination Point, as follows:
* To earn a Domination Point from a Battlefield Objective, it must be owned by your realm for 30 minutes.
* To earn a Domination Point from a Keep, it must be claimed by a Guild and then held for 2 hours. If you lose control of a Battlefield Objective or Keep at any time, you lose the Domination Point.
* Multiple Domination Points cannot be gained from a single source (for example, it isn't possible to get 6 Domination Points by capturing Martyr's Square 6 times).
* If a zone that was taken over by Zone Domination is put into a contested state, all timers and Domination Points are reset.

Fortress down on Karak Hirn: Operation Snotstorm.

2009-02-11T11:07:00.007Z

Last night the Destruction Forces of Karak Hirn set out to take a fortress. Approximately an hour into the operation the human stronghold south of Reikland lay in ruins. Hordes of destruction pillaged as their loyal piggies frolicked in the once proud abode of the Lord of that land.

The Build up:

I got a very interesting mail in the post the other day from Roo. Roo’s ambition was to get 200+ destruction players in the field and try and push 2 zones at the same time in the hope of taking a fortress. He had contacted every guild in the game and got commitments from all the Alliances to support this initiative. H spent a small fortune on internal mail and organised meetings of all those interested.

The Plan:

I took the lead in Reikland with my alliance and 2 non aligned Warbands, Roo took the lead in Kadrin Valley. Zone pushing started at 7pm GMT / 8pm CET, giving people with lives a fighting chance of getting home from work.

When the zone locked:

When we locked Reikland the team that locked moved to the fort immediately. The other zone team moved to blockading duties. If the first team wiped on the lord, we would have immediately moved the next team into the fort before Order could return.

The transition from zone lock to fort attack went very smoothly and the first door was down as our stragglers arrived at the fort and the population cap was reached. The second door went down very quickly with a rather scary amount of DPS concentrated on it.

Over the last few week we had practiced out Lord attack tactic and had been fine tuning it (having a little more success each time) this time it worked perfectly. It did so because everyone knew the plan and executed it. Discipline and good spirits ensured that when we had killed all the order players in the fort we were well placed to take down the lord. The kill on the Lord was especially nice as people controlled their agro and didn’t get over excited.

The feeling after the kill was very gratifying, while people did get loot; I genuinely think no one really cared. The kill was a combined effort with everyone on destruction playing a part. Players in tier 4 with sub level 40 characters formed their own WB to defend the outer zone so that they could allow level 40s in to do the fighting. Everyone did what they had to do to make the kill possible even if there role was less than exciting. Not everyone can be the Main Tank or the general but without every single player doing what was asked there would have been no kill.

Overuse of the word Thanks

This bit may be a bit tedious.

Congrats and thanks to all destruction players, everyone did their bit, every pq farmed is as important as tanking the Lord.

A special thanks to Roo, the level of preparation he put in to this was staggering. People were mailed, meetings were held, forums were set up. His target was 2 simultaneous zone attempts and a fort capture; he got that through sheer hard work,

Thanks to my alliance Shadow Wind, its very easy to run a zone lock when you have 100ish people that do exactly as you tell them. We kept a census of our members during the event.

7:00pm - 100 members
8:00pm - 113 members (Reikland Lock/Reikwald Fort)
9:30pm - 107 members
10:00pm - 100 members
10:30pm - 91 members (Eataine Lock/Fort Attempt)

To the other warbands (non Alliance) who worked on Reikland I would like to thank Calana and Bakchop and their teams.

Thanks to Bakchop who took his warband to Eataine to stop order from capping there while we were in KV.

Thanks to Donegal who rounded up the sub 40 players into a warband. Thanks to you guys for staying out of scenarios and the fort.

Grats to the guys in Tier 3 who were working away to support us.

Congrats to order for a superb defence of KV and the grace of the majority in acknowledging the fort take. The ORvR on our server last night speaks highly of the competiveness of the server.

I expect a backlash soon.

It was a pleasure to be involved in and I really enjoyed myself.

Aldorf here we come, Mrs Wiggles needs a new dress.

Clean that Screen: A Sharper UI for WAR

2009-02-10T11:39:00.005Z

I was chatting in guild last night about addons and came up with a few we really liked and that give us a clean interface.

The first of these is Pure, which is a unit frame addon for specializing in player, target, group and pet unit frames. By offering a wide array of customizable options, you can change the look and feel of Pure.

We also use Phantom which is a tool to hide portions of the default unit frames in WAR (and/or the associated default buff frames).

For your action bars I would recommend Vertigo. Vertigo allows you to customize action bar layouts - set the number of columns, the number of buttons on the bar, show/hide the pagers or background for each bar, and whether or not to show empty slots. I use this in conjunction with ActionBarColor which Tints the entire button red instead of just the binding text if the current target is out of range, out of LOS, et cetera.

WarHammer Scrolling combat text is another nice feature. Target Ring puts a ring around your friendly/hostile target, so it stands out of the crowd As a Black Orc, you really shouldn’t be without Plan B. It is such an aid to key binding and makes our Plan system playable.

I have found that combining these makes my Black Orc more playable in mass ORvR and my screen has less clutter.

That Elusive Fortress Take

2009-02-09T12:12:00.002Z

In the last few weeks I have found myself trying to organise the unruly masses for a Fortress take. Our best effort so far was the Lord in the Elf Tier to 10%.

I have come up with a few tips (pretty obvious) for those of you who would like to do the same. There is nothing earth shattering here but they may help.

1. Use CAPS, some people don’t like them but it catches the eye
2. Use channel 2, It saves you annoying people in channel one, region chat.
3. Have able deputies who can and will support you in public channels
4. Let someone else lead the Warband you are in. It is hard enough to run a raid; you don’t need to be worrying about group management.
5. Warn people well in advance what you’re going to do. Let them know the tactic well in advance.
6. Repeat yourself, repeat yourself
7. Where possible be nice to people.
8. Explain to each class type their exact role, have a reliable rep from that class confirm what the best strategy for them is. Tanks should know where they are going, Melee DPS too, Ranged DPS should know their role and when to commence bombardment, healers should know their placement.
9. Use a count down, start on 3 minutes and go 10 9 8 ....2 1 GO
10 Stick as closely to the same approach on each keep(tweak for improvements) This gets everyone into a habit.
11. Thank everyone afterwards, emphasise the positives
12. The more Fortress attempts you run, the more people will be familiar with you and therefore the more likely they will listen to you.

Trying to organise a mass attack can be frustrating and tiring but it can also be very rewarding. Don’t try and do it when you’re tired, hungry or cranky

The Guild

2009-02-07T14:49:00.003Z

Orc, Snort, Coke.

2009-02-06T16:05:00.008Z

I recently appeared in the Coke ad that premiered during the superbowl.

I am the Orc in the cafe.

(I didnt really really, I am pretier than that and i just wanted an excuse to use the title for the blog)

Warhammmer TV advertisement.

2009-02-06T11:27:00.005Z

War needs a TV segment. Lets get some advertising out there.

Start with Random Celeb. Lets say Kate Wynslet.

Voice over.... "Whats your game?"

Kate wrinkles that oh so cute nose.

Looks at the camera and says " This isnt a game, This is WAR"

Cut to cinematic of Blorc called Kate kicking a Witch Hunter in the Jibbles.

Cut to Kate, evil grin.

Alliance Talent Showcase - The singing Zealot

2009-02-05T17:30:00.007Z

Guilds and alliances are very useful for drawing on, for all sorts of information, skills and experiences. Some members are even talented.

I discovered that one of our allied guilds officer's plays bass and sings.

I present the singing Zealot.

He is now in charge of our Alliance Anthem.

Ghetto gear can make a difference for your Black Orc

2009-02-05T14:59:00.006Z

After the levelling grind a lot of us get caught up in the gear grind. On Karak Hirn a significant number of players are grinding dark promise gear. So what do you do if you just dinged 40 to compete with the adversary that is decked in top end gear?

As a Black Orc there are a few options such as the Enervating GutStrap. Easy to find in the Auction House, I bought mine for less than a gold. It has some very decent stats. +2 to block is hard to come by and very useful for a tank, the resists are helpful and 22 wound is a passable stat. Check out the equivalents for other classes.

Another source of easy yet useful gear is on your renown merchant.
In terms of bang for your buck don’t underestimate these as placeholders until you upgrade.

Vanguard Warp Ring
Vanguard Chaos Ring
Vanguard Dark Band
Vanguard Cloak

You could also look at the lower set such as Martial if you wished to stack a stat or if your renown isn’t high enough yet. The Martial Darkband will gain you another 37 wounds.

Just taking these very accessible items you can get (I need to check the maths):

102 Wounds
91 Initiative
42 Toughness
282 Spiritual Resist
409 Elemental Resist
338 Corporeal Resist
+ 2 Block

For about 2-3 gold you have some tasty stats.

Stayin Alive – Tank specing your guildies

2009-02-04T11:56:00.004Z

We have had a few new members of the guild and some older ones who were complaining about how squishy they were.

While I am happy to admit not being very knowledgeable about any class other than any own, I would like to think I have gained some insight into how to stay alive. So I decided to see if we could “tank them up”

The 2 guys in question were a BlackGuard and a Disciple of Khaine.

A mix of Annihilator and Sentinel pieces was available for both guys as well as some offset pieces. Both were cookie cutter builds so we didn’t change their mastery trees’

How did we pimp them?

First of all we took at a look at which pieces they had and tired to get the best combination of Annihilator and Sentinel looking particularly at the bonus on the sets. Pick the best combination of pieces gave some useful resists stats and the individual pieces have some reduction to crit. In the end they were both on 3 Sentinel, 3 Annihilator spread across the various slots or 4 Annihilator and 2 Sentinel depending on their preference.

We also reslotted some of their gear where needed, with the gems we had to hand, resists and wounds.

Both of them had very few decent accessories (In terms of survivability) so we started them on the quest for the Winds Impervious set. They are both also looking into getting Stryfe and Torment. The parry on the set is very useful. In the mean time they were able to pick up a few cheap wounds, toughness and initiative rings from the renown Vendor

We then had a look at their renown. It was respeced to provide a bit more focus taking an emphasis on toughness. Toughness comes into its own in pvp where you are being hit by a number of attackers. Taking wounds from your renown tree is not good value so we got our wounds up elsewhere.

By moving some gear around, farming some items and respeccing renown we were able to increase their survivability to a noticeable degree. As they gear up or become more comfortable they can reduce their emphasis on “Tanking” gear and spec and gear more liberally. But for now they don’t feel as if they are a free kill.

MMOs as Religion

2009-02-03T15:31:00.004Z

I found this on massively

Do MMOs have similarties to religions?

Just bumping it because it covers two of my interests MMO's and Theology.

I will give it a read tonite.

More here

The full thesis here.

MMO, Politics and Human Relations

2009-02-03T12:57:00.005Z

While they may not to be peculiar to MMOs politics and human relation issues do seem more prevalent than in other gaming genres. Managing people from different cultures, different outlooks and of different ages can be a delicate affair. As most communication is in the written word, tone, intention and emphasis can be lost. Indeed when communicate orally we adjust out approach to individuals as we perceive their mood, bearing etc. This week I had a fine example of that.

Chat in our alliance channel took a very negative turn last week. You have seen it yourselves in your own alliance or in general chat, I am sure. A mood can suddenly be set that is unhelpful and doesn’t actually reflect the reality. What people were perceiving as a lack of desire to cooperate and an inability to play well together was in fact about low morale within the member guilds about the state of the game. We had had a large alliance event a week before where cooperation was superb and we all played well but the event failed due to short comings in the game.

To overcome this mood we decided to a meeting of representatives of all our guilds on vent. This was a task as we have 8 guilds but eventually on Sunday at 11am we got together. This worked very very well.

There were a number of reasons for this success. Voice coms are a far more efficient way of getting people to resolve issues. Guilds can build up reputations that are not wholly deserved and these can extend into rivalries with other guilds. Clearing the air between such groups is essential before you can tackle any practical or logistical issues. Secondly we had someone chair the meeting so we did not speak over each other, we also had a person record the minutes so our members can see what we discussed. Imposing a little structure on the gathering seemed to help us all. In the end we came up the following very simple conclusions. The may be of use to some of you in similar situations

Our Goals and Ambitions:

Having Fun
ORvR rather than ORvE
Locking zones and seeing end game content
Building on the strengths of the Alliance
We do not exploit

Communications:

Try and be positive in Alliance Chat

Use the Alliance Chat with care, if we are doing Alliance RvR we should not use it as a general chat. This doesn't mean you can’t type into it or chat , just don't spam it with chitchat when we do events or massive RvR, use common sense when you use and you should do fine
Each guild will police their members in alliance chat
Support those leading Warbands and Raids
Channel criticisms and ideas through appropriate channels
A forum for alliance is available

Events:

We will try and have an Alliance event once a week even if its only jumping of a Bridge
We will also have Ad Hoc events
During the week if people ask for help in defence or attack in ORvR try and assist them where possible Help the Alliance: If someone requests help to lock a zone everyone that is up for RvR should go and help with locking that zone.
Fighting vs Farming: We should try to fight order instead of farming loot from empty keeps.

I am optimistic that will improve from now and am hopefully that our next event will be a success.

Warhammer Word Puzzle update

2009-02-02T13:03:00.002Z

Seems one of the letters is a H

It seems a H has been found. Where is Richard Whitley when you need him?

As it stands these are the letters are

_ T _ I H T N _ V _ R A _

If we take the letters and accept one of the words is valentine we are left with an R and a T and 2 unknown’s

V A L E N T I N E

H _ R T

Could it be:

H U R T?

The Squig Herder is a person in your neighbourhood.

2009-02-02T12:21:00.005Z

I asked a Guildy for some information on the Squigherder class as he plays it well and is involved in a few discussion threads on the class. Thanks to Nublet for the following.

Why did you write about the squig herder?
The Squig Herder section on the Warhammer alliance forums felt a bit like a synopsis of the class with a lot of players asking questions relating to endgame, game play mechanics, specs, leveling ideas, tactics vs order classes, shot rotation, mastery points, renown points you name it. Seeing countless different topics relating to this class I decided it was time to share my knowledge and experience of the class with my fellow Herders. This link will take you direct to my post titled "Squig Herder - My experience"

As I have played the game through its closed beta, open beta stages I have learned alot about the game mechanics thus far and how these relate to the Squig Herder. Many players who have posted on the Squig Herder forums of Warhammer alliance have explained that they are having difficulties in tier 2/3 and asked what endgame was like. I felt that as this class in my opinion is underplayed I would post some information for discussion from an informative view to give hope to those who were finding it hard. I have had a lot of positive feedback on the thread started by myself with several very good Squig Herder players sharing their knowledge.

What is attractive about the class?
The best thing about this class is its a gobbo! Sneaky little gobbo to be precise, we have an awesome selection of abilities which really make for some sneaky attacks on unsuspecting order players. The ranged classes of this game really do have the upper hand... that is until we are engaged in melee.. wait what was that... sneaky Witch Hunter on my ass?! Squig armour time - we get gobbled up by our trusty squig to return the favour of the melee damage!

What are the top 5 most enjoyable things about the class?
1. Annimations - specifically - Dont Hit Me, goblin soils himself in a cowering gesture - makes me chuckle every time.
2. Squigs - although slightly gimped once these receive the fix they deserve expect alot more squigs on the battlefield. The different buffs each squig provide make each battle interesting.
3. Squig Armour - As mentioned above, this is awesome fun and yes it does need a fix!
4. Small Character - feel for the little guy eh!
5. The Damage Per Second (DPS) - they can spec to have extremelly potent single target dps, or an increadible Area of Effect (AoE) which you can cast while running!

What needs to be fixed?
1. Squig Armour - Instant cast, 10sec cooldown. This is really our only choice when melee closes the ground between us and them, with it currently being on a cast time with a reuse time of 60seconds it makes us a sitting squig for melee.
2. Squigs - Instant cast no cooldown, at the moment these squigs are on a 2second cast time with a 30second cooldown- this turns most level 40 squig herders into Goblin Archers and only because in Open RVR you dont have enough time to wait and summon your squig... the enemy wont let you!
3. Squigs out whilst mounted - If they added this alot more players would be happy, it was in Beta at one stage, why the took it out i dont know, it would be even better if we could mount our squig and dismount when in combat it attacked.
4. Current build of the game theres an annoying graphical bug with Lots'a'arrers where the cast annimation keeps going even after the ability has ended. Its about time this was fixed.

How should you spec for Leveling?
Firstly at Rank 17 you should take this spec, http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=8#3:8:0:0:0:0:25 - this gives you a tactic called Aimin Quickly which makes your main attack, Plink, a 1second cast instead of 2seconds, which means you just increased your dps by 100%
Keep pumping points into Big Shootin Tree until you can take this spec at Rank 28: - This tactic reduces the cost of your Big Shootin Abilities which means if they cost less you can fire em more often, in turn increasing your dps again!

The choice splits into 2 here, you can either continue with Big Shootin or for a little fun you can take this spec at Rank 30: - This will change your game play as you will now be AoE melee specced, Use your gas squig and Big Bouncin to AoE down mobs, see how many you can pull at a time for maximum xp/hour.

Alternatlively those of you who want to go Quick Shootin Spec follow this;
- You can now AoE with Run'N'Shoot.
Rank 26 - Rotten Arrer, awesome addition to our DPS - also this reduces the targets incoming heals by 50% !
Rank 29 - Shootin wif da Wind - Range on Quickshootin abilities increased by 50%!!

Please do remember that there is no set path and that the above is for a guidline only - use what you prefer and remember respecs are cheap, so play about and find out what works for you.

How should you spec for Open RVR?
This is heavily debated on the original link at the top of this interview. A build that is becoming more mainstream for level 40 players Renown Rank 40 is this

This is a Hybrid spec, takes the best abilties from both Big Shootin an Quick Shootin. You have maximum versatality with this spec and the tactics you choose determine your play style. The ones in this link are the ones I currently use in Open RVR.

How should you spec for PvE?
With regards to PvE endgame its all about dps on the boss before the enrange timer hits, as range generally isnt a thing to worry about here I would suggest this spec

This allows for the proven shot rotation for maximum dps which is: Yer Bleedin > What Blocka? > Rotten Arrer > Plink, Plink, Plink > Yer Bleedin > What Blocka? etc etc..

How should you gear?
Currently with a ward requirement for PvE when doing any of the Ward Requirement dungeons in the game, you should always put on your maximum amount of wards regardless of any stat. However that aside it would be advisiable for both open RvR and PvE to stack as much wounds as you can (surivability) Alot of the squig herder gear lacks any real big wounds stat and comes with plenty of our main stat - Balistics. At about 1000 of any stat the soft cap kicks in and you will notice diminishing returns on any more points applied over 1000. At this point it might be beneficial to you to stack either +Crit on Ranged, -Chance to be Crit or +ranged power stats.
Survivability is your priority, a dead squig herder cant do any dps.

Thanks for Interviewing me and my preferred class - Squig Herder, hope you have enjoyed reading and learned a thing or two!

Regards,
Nublet - Squig Herder @ The Unnamed: Karuk-Hirn EU.
Character & Gear: http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/1386/nubletjan09qk9.jpg

Moi

2009-02-01T16:56:00.001Z

The people in my neighbourhood

2009-01-30T16:32:00.003Z

As my blog goes on I hope to write a little about a few subjects, class guides, upcoming content and such like. I will draw on on various people I play with.

But for now a teaser.

The latest news from Mythic: looking promising

2009-01-30T10:53:00.005Z

The Choppa

Will we see a lot of Black Orcs rerolling?
Will we see players come back to try out the class they wanted to play at launch?

The Slayer

One of my favourite classes in tabletop and fantasy role play. I think this will give Order a small bounce in numbers.

Who is going to play hardcore and reroll ever time your Slayer dies?

The Call to Arms:

This looks like it has potential but at moment I would like to see a timetable for fixes to problems we have at the moment.

Top 3 issues for me:

Zone Domination
Class fixes
Resist stacking

The Night of Murder:

Our third event, lets see what mythic have learnt, I found the previous events amusing. I prefer useful rewards rather than fun rewards but just as many people like a new talisman or title. Will have to learn more.

Bitter Rivals

Ignore what I said above they just got me interested in and event.
New siege weapons and a class unlock. I am looking forward to it

This is what Mark Jacobs had to say.

I think these are fair points he makes and Mythic should get some credit.

This "Call to Arms" expansion arc represents a large amount of content that will be spread out over a few months. When you factor in all the content that will be added as part of this arc, it certainly makes it one of the largest subscription-based content upgrades/addons done by any MMO developer.
Once the Choppa/Slayer go LIVE, we will have added four careers to the game over the first 6 months of its life, and at no additional charge to our players. No other subscription-based MMORPG that I am aware of has ever added 4 new careers to its game as part of a regular update/addon/free expansion.

... as for the Tomb Kings and the RvR dungeon, I think it is very safe
to say that DAoC's Darkness Falls was one of the most successful addons to the
game. Over the last few months we've gotten a ton of feedback and requests (once
again, here on the Vault) asking us to create a next-generation DF, and we are
in the process of doing just that. So, if you liked DF, then this zone/dungeon
we are creating is right up your alley. It is truly the spiritual successor to
DF and I expect that when you see where we're going with it, you'll like it a
lot.
1) Bug fixing - Correcting bugs, even little ones, is still a priority for us. The list of bug fixes in the next couple of patches is lengthy and we will continue to hot fix bugs on an ongoing basis. The team has been working on everything from small bugs (tooltips) to larger issues.
2) RvR code fixes - Over the last two weeks, the number of Fortress crashes have shrunk down to a total of one per week total across all servers. The number of Fortress takes/sieges has also increased every week and it is safe to say that things are better than ever in this aspect of the game so I can happily steal a line from The Princess Bride and say "Have fun storming the castle!" even now. Work will continue until those crashes go down to zero. Once that happens, we can look at increasing the hard cap.
3) RvR changes/improvements. - This is a rather lengthy list which includes a new scenario, changes to the Zone control system, lots of Keep Upgrades (this is only our first pass at it), oRvR events and additional rewards for Zone and Campaign captures.
4) Career balancing - Lots and lots of changes/fixes in this next patch across all careers. As I mentioned in one of my posts, I was going through the preliminary bug fixes/balance changes patch notes and after reading through 15+ pages of them, it’s safe to say that the C&C team has been rather busy lately. We know how important balancing the careers of an MMO is to the players and that’s why the team has put so much effort into it to date and will continue to do so going forward. Every career has gotten some attention from the team in 1.2 whether it is fixing bugs or balancing their abilities. The team has paid particular attention to crowd control abilities and will continue to do so with 1.3.
5) Changes to "quality of WAR" such as new armor and mount color diversity for high-level guilds, flight masters added to every zone that doesn't have one, ability to attach multiple items to mail system, improvements to the Guild and Warband UI, and improvements to our Guild Reward systems.

Multiple personality gamer

2009-01-29T12:32:00.004Z

I love a good flame war. Back in the day in Everquest we called them NAG, Nearly Anything goes posts. In WoW we had our own community forums long before the official ones went up. The best read threads were always the juicy fights, the name and shames.

My forum personality is split though.

On certain forums Rugby and Theorycraft I tend to be civil, conscientious helpful. On class specific forums I tend to approach things the same. I am all for the sharing of information and knowledge and these forums allow that (not that I don’t get distracted)

But in certain Threads my better angels take a vacation, temptation rears its head and I am quite happy to dive right in. Sometimes its goading an individual that is ripe for harvest so that his rage explodes across his keyboard ( I am disturbingly talented at this). Another is catching someone talking about a subject they haven’t a clue about and slowly illustrating their ignorance. My favourite of these was a poster pontificating on Alexander the Great’s military tactics on which I based one of my Masters Degrees.

My personality in MMO’s suffers a similar spilt, in PvE I am calm(relative term) and in PvP I am consumed with passions. In PvE I think I would be characterised as helpful .I enjoy getting angry, I enjoy the stress of close games and I love banter across vent as the game gets hectic and tempers rise. It makes the victories sweeter. Fortunately while I burn hot I don’t burn long. In fact I can switch back to normal mode pretty handily. On the other side I can often be the peace broker between others,

These various personalities are similar to the real me (does the real me write this?) but they are different too.

Lots has been said about how the anonymity of the internet allows us to do what we may not normally do.

I think the more interesting question is why we create the personalities we create. Why will I goad someone on a forum? Why will I get real pleasure for destroying my foe in a PvP battle?

Is it is simple as releasing the demons we normally keep hidden? I am not sure it’s merely about letting go. In some way that is too passive, I don’t open the cage and let them out. I create and polish them and while they are similar it’s their differences that make me wonder. My forum persona can be the most vicious. I looked at some posts I made over 4 years ago and I was surprised and some of it.

I think back to some of the arguments I have had over vent, some raging screaming matches.
The thing is, I don’t have many regrets. I enjoy the rough and tumble of debate and if it gets rambunctious and frays at the edges, so be it. We live in a such a victim culture that it might do us no harm to push the edge out as adults. Its no harm to be passionate, there are too many grey men and John Majors in MMO’s. They are more holier than thou hypocrites in games and games forums than at an abstinence rally.

So by all means create you own persona, at least have one

I can take it, can you?

Warhammer Word Puzzle

2009-01-28T13:22:00.001Z

There is a lot of chatter on the Warhammer Blogosphere about a code coming with the Valentine’s cards to certain bloggers’. A neat piece of promotional hokum.

As it stands these are the letters are

_ T _ I _ T N _ V _ R A _

If we take the letters and accept one of the words is valentine we are left with an R and a T and 2 unknown’s

V A L E N T I N E

_ _ R T

Could it be:

R I T E

A valentine rite?

Being proactive with guard

2009-01-28T11:57:00.004Z

Over at Breakfast at War Pancakez makes some very good points about tanking. One thing that wasn’t highlighted is the proactive use of Save da Runts. I usually run with my healers runted in open rvr and scenarios until we are engaged.

Yesterday one of my Bikini clad followers lets a shout out that he was being ganked. We ran towards him to find a tank on him and a warrior priest and his health down to 25%. A switch of guard to him from the healer followed by a Challenge that got both enemies in the cone and then a root allowed the healer enough time to land the kill saving heal and turn the fight in our favour.

Don’t be afraid to switch guard a lot. Do remember its only group members you can help in this way. If your buddy is in trouble get within 30 feet, guard him, challenge his attackers, use a Level 3 morale to reduce incoming damage (I find quit your squabbling the lvl 1 morale a good ghetto save). Now drop a root and let him run for the hills. This is one of those times that a knockback is a good idea. Some of those attackers will switch to you.

If the fight is going the other way with your on the offensive with your healer sitting back unmolested, switch guard to the dps beside you, he will love you for it. If you are on the same enemy player, stick to your buff-debuff role and let him do the damage. A Blorc doing this can really soften up a target for the dps classes. Slow the enemy, set back his timers, silence him, reduce his damage, reduce his weaponskill, drain his AP, strip his armour, root him, and reduce his strength. These may not give you big numbers and will mostly go unnoticed but you’re taking one for the team. The beauty of this is it’s a style of play you can use when your renown and Career choices are directed towards survivability.

Karak Izor server tranfers

2009-01-27T16:34:00.003Z

In Order to kill two birds with one stone I thought I might say something about the Server transfers from Karak Izor.

Firstly browsing the forums for Karak Izor I see people are taking a great deal of time to carefully gather information so that they can make the correct decision about their destination. This strikes me as a greatly positive indicator for the life span of Warhammer. We have people who are obviously enjoying the game and want to ensure that enjoyment is not diluted.Noone is interested in easy mode play and as such balance is a key issue. Useful data on which servers need which faction have been provided.

Beyond this we have groups of guilds looking to transfer in mass without unbalancing the game play. This is the way such things should be handled and I applaud it (Cant find a clappy emote)

I have a vested interest in this saga as my server Karak Hirn is a possible destination server. But in the interests of fairness I will attempt to provide an impartial impression of Karak Hirn.

In terms of population Order are slightly outnumbered, War analytics gives a ratio of about 1.27 to 1.(tier 4) Recent census takes by players on either side indicate it is a closer with a ratio 1.03. to 1. Examples of both can be found on the Karak Hirn forums.

On any given day either side can be in the ascendancy and on some days we have large scale encounters with both sides well represented. This is not to say that on any given day in any given zone you will not be rolfstomoped by a zerg of either hue.

In destruction where I play there are 2 active alliances, both with slots available for non alliance guilds. On days that we attempt locks there is cooperation and pretty decent support for those trying to coordinate matters. Adding another alliance into this fold should not be an issue. As a destruction I find the order to be organised, there are a number of competent leaders who coordinate regularly and are successful.

In terms of game play I have had no issues with lag at keep sieges in the last weeks or so. On Friday (I believe) I attended a fort attack and a fort defence and game performance was excellent. I do have a decent machine though so cannot speak for low specs.

The community on Hirn is vibrant with good give and take and for the most part respect on both sides. I would wager that the community elements of Karak Izor would prosper and not be consumed.

I believe Karak Hirn has great potential as a server and as this game prospers as I believe it will so will the server.

Krak Hirn would benefit from a balanced influx of players but make your decisions based on all the available data and where ever you play enjoy yourself.

A Repentant Elitist

2009-01-27T13:56:00.001Z

Are you the guy that farms content over and over so that your guild mates get their set pieces? I have been lucky and completed my sentinel set weeks ago. Since then I have run Bloodwrough and a Bilerot every cooldown (Other than on Christmas Day). Our bank overflows with Sentinel belts and everyone is getting gear with a large number of us in full sentinel. There are still new level 40’s to get gear for but the city dungeons are an easy farm for us.

We have moved on to Lost Vale. As it can be a pain in the ass to master we decided to take 2 groups who would learn it by playing together so that the experience could be used to get others through. Over the last few weeks we have done this and now we 12 players who are comfortable with the fights. The guild has another 6 to 8 players that are curious about Lost Vale and would like to give it ago.

We decided to try for 3 groups on the coming Sunday to allow some other guild mates to get a taste. We were going to break up the 2 original groups and sprinkle the classes and experience across the 3 groups and then add in the players who were ready for the instance but had not yet got the opportunity.

Then it seems things exploded. A guild member quit( excellent player and nice guy)It seems one of the groups doesn’t want to break up. Now in fairness they have had little luck in drops and I can see where their coming from, they have just mastered the instance.

However, we have other players who were promised that they would get a chance and as we prepared to give them that chance it is being taken away from them. We are also in a guild which for a long time parroted against any form of elitism. Unfortunately some of those that spoke out against elitism are now the ones who want to leave others behind.

I am left in a difficult situation as by nature I am an elitist. I prefer to play with the best players in the best gear. I have played in guilds that lived and died by the dps metre I subjugated this inclination as that’s what the guild wanted and I could bend to that will. I have done city raids with all classes and all players including those in greens (my personally favourite 3 Blorcs, WE, Shaman and Zealot in Bilerot).

However I am not a hypocrite and I can’t abide pretending that a 2 tier guild is anything other than a 2 tier guild. If people wish to change to a more elitist structure I can be comfortable with that once it’s done above board. Let tell people that they are reserves for Lost Vale or that as people level they can put together their own group.

If we go down that line openly at least we treat people with respect. It would also allow us to try a few other things.

Premade groups designed to farm scenarios could be kept to the more geared players, at present we take anyone from any class with a guild tag.
We could introduce dps/healing meters and prioritise places in groups based on performance.
Warband slots on alliance ORvR raids could be managed to get the best geared players in rather than taking anyone who is a member.

It would be a change in mindset and ethos for the guild but it would be above board. Asd I see the one thing worse than being a second class citizen is not knowing you’re a second class citizen.

A change to a more elitist structure would bring me great benefits personally; I would continue in a successful Lost Vale group and equip myself fully in a few weeks. I could create a premade scenario group with people geared and specced specifically to farm renown. I could balance warbands so that they are more powerful instruments. I could step back from farming dungeons I have no interest in.

And there lays my problem, I am an elitist by nature and allowing one of our groups to change the ethos of our guild would benefit me and my gaming experience but all of a sudden I find myself not wanting to exclude others.

Maybe I have been contaminated.

Da Toughest

2009-01-26T14:54:00.005Z

I have been lucky in most MMOs that I have played that my first character has been the one I have fallen in love with. I tend to research classes carefully before rolling.

In Warhammer I wanted to go back to Tanking and as I have always enjoyed green skin humour a Black Orc was an obvious choice.

As I was guilded I made a conscious decision to build him for survivability and as an unapologetic min/maxer I am always looking for the optimum build that will allow my healers to keep me up as long as possible.

At the moment I spend about half my time in PVE content tanking Lost Vale and the city dungeons. I have been looking for a spec that I can stick with for RvR ( I am bankrupt in yet another game)

At the moment I have gone for the following builds

Career

Renown

The logic behind this is to give me as the essential PVE tanking skills from Da Toughest tree (combined with the buffs to the associated skills) and to have a selection of other attacks to harass healers and DPS.

I find that the build shines in PvE and in mass RvR and with some changes in gear I can be a pain in the ass in a scenario too.

I have been taking Weaponskill as it increases parry for a PvE environment and increases armour penetration in a PvP environment( not that the benefits are exclusive to either)

Black Orc the issues

2009-01-26T14:02:00.009Z

Shameless cut and paste from my thread.

1. Our Shield from Rock Ard applies before mitigation not after, if this is working as intended the shield needs to be strenghtened.

2. The range on Big Swing and Big Slash is too short

3. Our AP Regen Shout Get 'Em doesnt work in combat

4. Can't Hit me--animation and cast bar doesn't shut off unless manually turned off. If you are disabled, interrupted, or AP runs out, it continues to animate and the cast bar continues to drain, but the ability effects do not continue.

5. The 'Plan' mechanic: it's only has drawbacks and gives no clear advantage. Second and third attacks in the attack chain should be more powerful or give some sort of bonus for coming later in the chain.

6. The 'Plan' mechanic + CC: 3 out of 4 CC abilities are on either the second or third attack in an attack chain, our root being the only exception. meaning a BO has to hit an enemy at least twice before ithe CC is applied. Being a melee class plus people running all over the place plus all sorts of lag makes this a serious problem.

7. Big Swing + Big Brawling: neither the attack itself nor the tactic for works properly. The AoE range is too small and the snare proc is utterly unreliable.

8. Big Slash: the knockback distance is too small when compared to other classes.

9. Itemisation: specifically the rarity of 2h weapons pre rank 40ish and the lack of any RvR 2h weapons. This has been fixed somewhat with the introduction of the RvR influence rewards, but still a BO has very few 2h weapons available during lvling. The fact that there were only 2 graphic skins (pre RvR influence) for 2h weapons doesn't help, but is less issue for me.

10. A number of our "Best Plan" attacks cost AP (eg. Down Ya Go, Shut Yer Face). Having an AP cost for these attacks removes the tiny benefit we get from our class mechanic.

11. The Gork Smash! tactic only applies its crit bonus to the first hit of T'ree Hit Combo. The rest of the hits occur in a "no plan" state. I haven't tested this for the last month and a half or so, so this may have changed. I'll parse my combat log tonight to check.

12. We have a couple abilities/tactics that appear to be remnants of the beta process and need review, especially when you consider their placement in our mastery trees:
Down Ya Go which is our *only* knockdown requires a two handed weapon, ap (see first point), a snare (for 100% success), and a Best Plan state, on top of the mastery points required to buy the ability. Remove the snare/ap requirement or the 2h requirement to make it a bit... friendlier.
Mor Hardcore, I don't think anyone would bother slotting this tactic right now. It should really grant a knockdown effect instead of knockback to the related abilities (similar to the IB tactic Punishing Knock) or be changed to completely different effect if a knockdown is imbalanced.
Walk it off (Rank 3 Morale - 120 toughness to your group for 15 seconds) one of the worst morale abilities I've ever seen, especially since its a Rank 3 morale ability. This one I've yet to purchase from the trainer.

13: Server lag, basicly nullify all our melee attacks due to improper placement of enemies combined with low range.

14: Juggernaught not working on some roots/snare effects, and why does it remove silence?

15: Once serverlag is gone, recheck abilities not being able to land, i assume alot of the BO current problems are related to the lag.

16. An Bestest should have its ranged increased to 65ft.

17. An Bestest (since last patch) no longer seems to apply the Stamina stat to your stats.

18. Guard should be applicable to targets within a War Band, not just a group.

19. our group buffing is compared to the other tanks

20. The need to incorporate a system like planb into the game to sitch action bars as we move through stances.

21. The Armour proc on Da Greenest is a worthless 24.

22. issues with animations not completing and stoping halfway through makes my game feel sticky because i stuck in that position untill i hit something else

23. Only BO ave useless tactic - fer Shut yer face, which reducin cd o'dis one BUT in case o'game mechanic wiv 10sec immune... itz not workin. Most o'da squishyz already silenced once, so no point to tell "yer snotling, use on uvva targetz

24. The renown Talents taht increase resist stats are not working beyonf the first purchase.

25. trip em up should lead to da gud plan, not to da best plan

26. Blorcs need a knockdown usuable with a shield

27. the top half of the Da Boss tree needs to reworked to make it worth while spec'ing into, it seems 90% of all Black Orcs are Brawler or Toughest spec with the lower section of the Boss tree acting as a utility buffer, I'd like to see three viable trees rather than two and a half.

28. i would love if Challenge became an AE taunt with like 20foot range rather then a frontal taunt since i find if mobs are slightly off to 1 side you can miss them when trying to round them
up.

Tank class general issues: (I'm assuming all tanks suffer form these)

1. RvR as a tank: There is a penalty for fulfilling the job of a tank in RvR. Players get renown/xp for doing damage or healing those that did damage. Blocking, taking damage, and other archetypal tank actions gives 0 renown.

2. Protecting allies: there's no good way to protect allies. Guard helps a little, but a tank really has no effective way of peeling an enemy of their allies.

3. Defensive specced tanks are unpowered in ORVR other than in tank walls in keeps(where they shine) elsewhere they need some buffs

TacticsKeep It Goin'! (Brawler) - This is a remnant of beta when Big Slash didn't have a knockback effect. More damage and less AP is good in theory, but in reality because Big Slash is now a knockback its use is situational and we don't gain much by equipping this tactic. By rights this tactic should enhance the knockback portion of the ability; take the Ironbreaker's Powered Etchings tactic as an example and make this tactic add a snare component to the knockback and/or increase it's knockback distance.

An Bestest! (Brawler) - Good tactic for PvE, but needs a boost in range to be worth slotting regularly in PvP
.Stop Hittin' Da Runts(Toughest) - This tactic isn't worth using... ever. I like the idea of enhancing our guard, but this tactic would be better off increasing the range of our guard or giving our guarded runt a buff (armor bonus or damage return?)
Mor' Hardcore (Toughest) - Another tactic that isn't worth using. There is really no question about it - this tactic should add a knockdown effect to the related abilities and not a knock back.

No Choppin' Me (Boss) - Weapon Skill isn't a useful enough stat to justify slotting this; especially when just one application of Wot Armor? on a target will provide more benefit and not use up a tactic slot.
In my opinion this tactic position in the mastery tree should be occupied by something that improves Da Big'un or allows you to buff a groupmate with Rock 'Ard.Lookin' For Opp'tunity

(Class) - Most BOs won't recognize this tactic because it is probably still sitting on the class trainer waiting to be purchased. This tactic simply is not good enough to justify using Clobber in PvP, and the tactic has no effect in PvE. If it must stay as a buff to Clobber then have the tactic add an initiative buff or flat -crit buff.

AbilitiesDown Ya Go (Brawler) - AP cost and snare requirement have to go.Trip 'Em Up (Brawler) - I would love this to be a "no plan" attack to allow us to more effectively snare an opponent who is running.We'z Bigger (Boss) - Good group buff (really the only one in this, our buff tree), but needs to have it's range extended

.WAAAAAAAGH! (Boss) - I'm not entire sure how Mythic can justify giving Black Orcs Waagh! and Ironbreakers Earthshatter (and earlier in their mastery tree). Raise the damage on Waagh significantly and add a snare debuff and I would happily spec into "Da Boss". As it stands right now, once disorient gets nerfed there will be no reason to touch this mastery line at all.

Da Greenest (Boss) - Now that roots break fairly regularly on damage this war bellow has left my action bar. The amount of resist it grants doesn't make much impact and the entire ability should be reevaluated.Morale Abilities

Walk it off! (Morale 3) - 120 toughness to your group for 15 seconds... really? Compare that to the other tank's racial Morale 3's:Blackguard - Armor Of Eternal ServitudeChosen - Sprout CarapaceIronbreaker - Gromril PlatingKotBS - Emperor's ChampionSwordmaster - BladeshieldGeneral

Other Blogs:Tobold

2009-01-26T13:28:00.004Z

Well worth a read.

I thought this was particularly insighful.

And as strange as it sounds to have "Blizzard" and "rushed" in the same sentence, Wrath of the Lich King is still obviously missing some development time. If you look at the expansion critically, you'll find that Blizzard shipped it without any major new raid dungeon. There are a few one-boss dungeons, and one raid dungeon recycled from 2 years ago, and that is it. How hard raid content is doesn't matter as much as how much there is of it. The current version of World of Warcraft also has obvious big problems with class balance. And I'm not talking about subjective feelings of underpowered classes, but of facts of classes being boosted in one patch, just to be "nerfed to the ground" in the next. Several classes have seen their power level yoyo all over the place.
So many games, Warhammer included have suffered froma rush to the market. Take your time prelaunch to get it right and after launch fix the remaining pieces as fast as you can. The MMO customer wants your product, treat them with respect.

Why Warhammer?

2009-01-26T13:21:00.001Z

Ever since I came across the concept of PVP in an MMO I have been intrigued by it if not convinced about the pleasures.

In Everquest I viewed it as a waste of time and remained sceptical. I was not adverse to playing against others player rather than a AI but I thought it was better left to the FPS and RTS genre.

My epiphany happened the day they patched PvP into World of Warcraft. I was lvl 55 or so and a friend who was a mage was saying in guild chat that there was fun to be had at the crossroads. I wasn’t up to much so I flew down expecting not to enjoy myself at all. I logged out 8 hours later exhilarated. The random chaos the back and forth play, the one shotting of casters as the drank (I was a rogue) the being zerged made for a new type of gaming experience.. I loved PvP from the moment I tried it and I still love it.

For me Warhammer brings even more to the table. In enjoy solo play but an MMO doesn’t come into its own until you are grouped. Working with others and winning with others is what keeps me coming back to this game.

I can enjoy a nice one on one fight. I had a twenty minute duel with and Ironbreaker recently that we both walked away from on full health which I enjoyed.

However my favourite moments in Warhammer have been in Open RvR with a group or 2 or indeed a Warband.

With one group you can set ambushes, killing the stragglers as they make their may to a Keep.

With two groups you can fly from a non RvR area to quickly take a Battlefield objective, hoping that your speed will have caught the defenders while they are distracted. You can hold your ground nervously watching the timer and play out of your skin to slow the hordes as they overwhelm you, praying for one last attack to knock them back from a recapture.

With a warband you can hold that last keep in the zone, arraying your tanks to block the enemies approach, as your healers sweat and swear and you dps shout out “the numbers, the numbers” in a semi orgasmic chant. Holding your foe at bay knowing at any minute it could all fall apart and they will wash over you to the tasty squishes behind.

With multiple warbands you can tilt at zones. You can work with you alliance. You can sit on the walls of a keep organising groups of defenders in key areas, check on allies farming PQ’s for precious victory points. You can send in your crack squads armed to the teeth (and with teeth) to crush the opposition in Scenarios. You can spend all your time cajoling and prodding while you barely move yourself.

From 1v1 to whole alliances taking on a zone lock, PvP in Warhammer has a much to offer you if your willing to grasp it.

Evercrack and all that Jazz

2009-01-26T12:54:00.001Z

With all blogs they recommend you write a profile of your self to give a little background.

My first foray into MMOs was Everquest. It started with me looking over a friends shoulder as he wander through Kelethin (He was lost, again). The graphics were appalling but there was something about the scale of the place that was enticing.

I bought the game and various expansions and started to play (on dial-up). I still remember my Level 1 Paladin making his way out of the Dwarf capital. Little did I know that I would be playing the game for 3 years, 65 levels and 70 odd AA.

While it was the scale of the MMO genre that sold me on it initially it was the social interaction and community that kept me playing (and still keeps me playing MMO’s).

Finding a group to grind out a camp or kill Emperor Crush, Joining a guild, raiding NTOV are all milestones in my MMO experience. As I type this I have just MSNed a a guy I first met on EQ 7 years ago. We would grind in the caverns on Luclin while he fed the baby. Now he has 2 more and his wife plays( She still has active account Everquest account)

I gradually grew tired with Everquest and dabbled in a lot of other MMO’s, I didn’t find the combination of emersion and community that I wanted until World of Warcraft. I don’t regret a day played in Wow which is arguably tone of the best computer game of all time ( if such comparison can be made)

As I tired of WoW I was pleased to see Age of Conan and Warhammer on the hozizon. Age of Conan and its failures are well documented elsewhere, its greatest failure for me was that I could have been the best MMO out there had they had the courage of their convictions and waited a year.

So here I am in Warhammer. It certainly has the immersion and the community is developing. Launching so close to Wrath of the Lich King has hurt it but I am optimistic.

No MMO is a finished product on launch and Mythic have been working on their game and do seem to be continuing in this vein. I will be interested to see it looks and feels 6 months into its life. It flawed but its still fun and once there is a willingness to fix it that is backed up by actual fixes it can become a success.

In the hope that it does grow, I will endeavour to try and blog around it.

Numbers numbers numbers

2009-01-22T15:51:00.005Z

Mark's message.

Folks,These threads always make me chuckle a little bit. EA's earnings call is in a few weeks and after that, there will be a lot more clarity about our numbers. As always, I can't talk about it before the call but after that it will be fair game. There is no question that WotLK (like BC before it) and everything else swirling around us had an effect on PC game sales but we expected it would happen so we were not surprised. As I've said in interviews both before and the game launched, we knew going up against WoW was a marathon and not a sprint and we're still in it for the long-term. I can't give you sales numbers today but I can say this, that if I compared the number of new people trying WAR today than one month ago (or even 2 months ago), there are more people today than on Dec 17th or even Nov 17th (and this holds true for lots of other days as well, for those of you who think I'd engage in semantics ).
This, of course, will have no effect on the doomsayers/naysayers/etc. but the fact remains that we've come through one of the most competitive and challenging retail environments in the history of gaming (world economy in tatters, WoTLK, other great RPGs, etc.) and are still selling nicely even though we are a new subscription game. The fact is that almost everyone is hurting these days and calling us a failure because we didn't achieve WoW numbers (which I always said we wouldn't do) overnight is just silly. WoW didn't reach their peak subscriber numbers overnight and neither have we. If I thought that we had peaked already, I'd put WAR in maintenance mode and call it a day. Not only are we not doing that but we are investing heavily in WAR. The extent of some of that investment I'll be discussing soon.Mark
Good marketting or good news, possibly both.

Second class citizens

2009-01-22T15:49:00.000Z

It has become rather fashionable on EU servers to blame GOA for all the problems of this game. The vast majority of our issues are not with GOA but with Mythic but players do not make the differnetiation. Class Balance and game play issues are solely their responsibility and are often misleadingly left at GOA’s door.

After copious reading of forums, and Warhammer sites a slow realisation came across me. The EU player base is not important to Mythic and Mythic do not listen to feedback from GOA.If we look back at the premature announcement of the fixing at all crashes on EU servers or indeed Mark Jacob’s recent Birthday clip (where he doesn’t have a notion which EU servers are having issues) it becomes pretty obvious.The EU player base is easily as large as the US yet Mythic’s responses are tailored toward the US.On these forums, you notice Magnus of GOA taking the time to reply on a number of topics. I wonder when he communicates these concerns to Mythic whether they get a fair hearing.It is not unreasonable to come to the conclusion that Mythic are ignoring the feedback they get from GOA. I have come across players who have run into difficulties because they use non US characters in their names, Mythic seem to have forgotten the existence of umlats and accents. This is one small example but it illustrates that Mythic are nor actively considering the EU in their planning processes

My question is

Do Mythic pay any attention to their EU customers or indeed to GOA (is there any evidence that they do)?I am aware that it is fashionable to be disparaging to WOW but amongst its strengths is the fact is you did not feel that the EU player base is of a lesser importance to other regions.

Blogging is it for me?

2009-01-22T15:24:00.000Z

My metamorphosis from a gamer to a MMOer has always been intertwined with my interaction with forums. I am not sure that I really paid much attention to forums until I became engrossed in Everquest. As I wanted to learn more about my paladin, I began to browse looking for a useful source of Information. I eventually made it to a Paladin forum. The joys of my server forum came next and an education in flaming and trolling.

Today as I browse for information I tend to hit more and more blogs. The thought strikes me, why don't I give this a go.

So here I am.