The Homunculus

It's time to say goodbye

2009-07-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

Around the time LoD hit, my WAR experience had reached a stable point: I was still very much enjoying the game, particularly playing with my great guildies and exploring the new content, but I had essentially given up on the end game. I was no longer hungry for the next boss, the next drop, the next upgrade.

At the same time I had a lot of outside work to do, and then I traveled for two weeks. Since I've been back I've been in WAR a fair amount, but I have hardly touched my Chosen. I've played alts and enjoyed grouping for PQs and RvR content, but the die has already been cast.

I'm leaving WAR, though I'll think on it fondly. my account expires in August and I won't be renewing it. WAR just isn't the game I'd like it to be. I think in many ways its a startlingly good game, full of a crisp vision and some really excellent features, but at the same time plagued by an over-abundance of riches and a headstrong and, for me problematic, devotion to PvP.

So sadly, I'll be taking my limited gaming hours elsewhere.

At the moment I'm playing , which is brand new to me, and which I'm enjoying, and I'm playing the beta of Aion. Aion wasn't why I'm quitting WAR although it will likely take WAR's place in my time.

I don't feel like a WAR blog is the place to discuss Aion at length, but for me the most refreshing thing about Aion was its simplicity of focus: there's only really one or two things to do .. a big change from WAR's avalanche of options.

I'd like to shout out to WAR's bloggers past and present: a fun, smart and interesting crew that had good ideas and made the game a lot more interesting for me.

I'd like to post an exit summary on my WAR experience and hope to have that together in the next week or so, but in case that fails (as such things often do) I want to make sure to thank everyone who's ever stopped by to have a read and particularly those who've left comments and sent emails. It's been big fun.

-Czarnal

WTB EZ Pass

2009-06-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's just me, but is the whole healer thing really necessary? I don't mind a death penalty, but couldn't we have an autopay option? That way you don't forget to heal up when you are in a hurry to get back to a fight in progress. Sure it would mean paying to heal at times when you aren't likely to get back into battle right away. Maybe there could be a shift-Rez option like there is for auto-looting. Even without though, I'm willing to pay a lazy tax to not have to muddle through it every time I die.

"unwrapping a present" or "what's so exciting about 1.3"

2009-06-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

I only got on for a sec to explore the talisman changes in game last night and to make sure my patch got done. Patching went fine, though all my interface settings got lost somehow, sigh.

Talisman changes look to be nice and the bag changes are quite welcome. I have a lot more room now, so much that I might not have to keep several dozen packages floating through the mailsystem anymore.

The streamlining of talimsan mats wasn't as significant as I'd hoped, with most frags and curios surviving, and only green quality dusts taking a stomping.

Didn't actually get around to making any talis, of course.

It's nice that you can easily toggle items between your bag sets and open and close bags by clicking the bag icon. Very nice that.

...

as for the event, I have to say I'm not that motivated. There'll be plenty of LoD for me, and anyway my contribution would be modest even if I were trying hard. No other rewards beyond the lame title? feh.

My biggest gripe really, and I knew this was coming but still, is that after all the prelude leading up to the patch when it went live we saw ... an rvr event and some modest interface and profession changes. The LoD stuff isn't open yet and the class changes all got QQ'd into submission.

So the patch day experience was for me singularly unexciting. Now I'm sure the event will be fun. They usually are and this one seems to have some nice stuff to do, but that's an event, not the prophesized patch of glory, or whatever this was supposed to be.

I guess I could always go to Gunbad ...

Incoming patch

2009-06-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

So 1.3 and the land of the dead starts today it seems.

Should make for an exciting week of WAR playing. Here's what I'm interested to see when the patch fully hits:

What's the impact of the Land of the Dead?

Lots of new stuff to do, but in potentially short bursts. Should make for a nice change of pace, but will the constant back and forth and the randomness of control be a major frustration? (ie. You log on ... oh well, the other side just got control of the LoD, might as well go have a snack.)

How will this affect the RvR siege game? What about city dungeons/bastion stair? (I assume that BS will basically rot until it gets fixed.)

They've rolled back the AoE/caster stat changes (as I understand it) but there's still plenty of other class mechanic changes in the works, always interesting to see how those play out.

Will the new and improved gunbad be an alt-cation destination of choice when LoD is unavailable? I know I'm interested.

As mentioned before, the talisman changes should have some interesting fallout. Curious to see exactly what happens to my bank full of mats and talis. IIRC there's something about these being grandfathered in, but we'll see what that looks like.

Glad to see auto-rolling, bag/storage changes, and bag opt-out getting in the game, those things will all be well received ...if they work.

What's next ... what should be?

Jeff Hickman's post on the LoD on the herald indicated that the following would be next on the block:

1. Addressing concerns related to Crowd Control and Area of Effect abilities.
2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.
3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.
4. Improving server population distribution – both in terms of overall population and realm balance.
5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (rewards) throughout the game.

Well we knew 1. would get attention, as it was supposed to be in this patch before people started QQing. 2 and 4 are Mythic's personal hell ... they're never going away and will always be important.

3 and 5 are interesting (if vague). Improving Tier 4 ... uh, can I get a "hell yeah"? Bastion Stair needs a big re-tool, PQs in the mainland need a re-tool (to make them worth doing in endgame) and the RvR game still needs to um, work? Forts aren't super fun and while city-sieges are fun, they don't really ever go anywhere for most of us.

5. Could mean anything but hopefully it means a real examination of what loot is available and how it stacks up, a real overhaul of the gear choices and what it takes to get them. It's sort of absurd right now really with some really vital gear being super-easy to get (100g will buy you a lot of engame gear) and other stuff insanely hard.

What should be done? Well I'm going to get specific. Dungeons need better ramping up ... too many of them are like boss 1=SNORE boss2=SNORE boss3=WTFPWNED. That's just goofy. We did BWE last night, my first time and the first boss was just a total joke, but the second boss completely hammered us. An experience all-too familiar from other WAR dungeons (herald of solithex in Gunbad, slaurith in BS etc.)

Some bosses will be more difficult than others, and the last boss should be harder, but it shouldn't be night and day. Group composition (eg 2x MDPS or 2x RDPS) should make some easier and some harder, not all-easier or all-harder.

One other simple thing ... tell us what's in a bag. Why do they want gear to get wasted? It's great that we can pass on a bag now, but what if say I have annhilator shoulders and chest but not helm? should I take all gold bags? (not that I'm getting any gold bags mind you.) That'll mean a lot of wasted gear.

Besides, shouldn't I be able to tell if a friggin' bag has a chestplate or a helmet in it? it's a bag for god's sake, not a black hole.

Oh, and yeah, make RvR fun to do.

See you all in the LoD.

WAR Tier 2 v. WOW 16-30

2009-06-03T08:15:00.001-07:00

Way back when I did a comparison of WAR Tier 1 v. WOW 1-15. I thought I'd continue the comparison now that the bloom has worn off the rose a bit. I think I stick by most of what I wrote about that stage of the games, but lets see how they stack up in tier 2. For the sake of continuity I'll use the same categories as I used before.

Zone Design -- how interesting and fun are the zones.
WAR: By Tier two you've got a pretty good grip on the aesthetics of the pairings, but tier 2 does offer some nice variation in each pairing: shadowlands, marshes of madness, and troll country all differ a bit from what you've seen in Tier one of these pairings. With the division of the zones by faction, some of these feel quite small, particularly Ostland, or circuitous (Barak Varr). Still very moody and well-designed.
WOW: Some of the best WoW zones here, and just a lot of places to visit over these 15 levels: ghostlands, silverpine forest, westfall, redridge, duskwood, the barrens, hillsbrad, the wetlands, loch modan, darkshore, bloodmyst, stonetalon, ashenvale and thousand needles. Some have great flow (westfall) some great aesthetic design (ashenvale, thousand needles), while others are awkward or unrewarding (stonetalon, I'm looking at you.)
Winner: WoW. So many zones to choose from, so many different looks and styles. WAR has a more uniform level of zone interest and better aesthetic design, but can't compete with the volume of variety that WoW offers here.

Engagement -- drawing you into the world (probably this should be called immersion).
WAR: Throws a lot of things at you to try to get you interested: epic quests, regular quests, tome of knowledge entries for a gazillion things. Frankly the world itself does the best job of drawing you in: the zones tell a story that is hard to miss (if you venture out of the RvR lakes) and they do it well. The rest of the stuff, not so much. I don't think that I'm alone in saying that even with the epic quests, I was often just looking for red blobs on my map to go to and kill stuff, and often I'd have to doublecheck what the quest even wanted.
WOW: This is where WoW really gets its claws into you. The zones all have interesting stories, large or small, told through quests primarily, that you will be interested in following to their end. The defias cycle leading up to Deadmines and The Embalmer string in duskwood are two of my favorites.
Winner: WoW. This is really WAR's weakness, and it only gets worse from this point in, I'm afraid. The choice seems to have been modularity and convenience over immersion.

Itemization -- gear options and appeal
WAR: Cloaks make their way into your gear set and helms and shoulders are plentiful. A few choices per class of design, with some odd color choices combined with the expense of premium dyes possibly driving you into somewhat bland color schemes. Still, your toon probably looks pretty cool at this point. Quite a few sets: the first quest set, the obliterator set, the sacellum set (which you'll never see) and the havok set, as well as quite a few good options from RvR renown rewards and random PQ drops.

WOW: A few dungeon sets, but only for leather wearers basically, PvP gear options, a plenty of good crafted gear. Much of this stuff is dorky looking however, and you're probably not going to see helmets until the very end of this level range. shoulders will also be at a premium. Possibly by this point to get some decent looking gear, but its not easy.
Winner: WAR complain about the lack of options if you like, but with the range of choices in sets, the aesthetic appeal of the gear, and the option to dye, WAR is for me well up.

Crafting -- interest and utility of professions
WAR: Um, well they're useful. Talismans losing their timers in 1.3 will help here a bit, but really, crafting in WAR is just not that exciting. If you are grinding it aggressively, you can get yourself a little boost, and the pots and talismans are really very useful, but it does get a bit rote.
WOW: Crafting by this point, if you are leveling it aggressively, is getting really strong. You can quest for recipes, win them as drops, and make yourself quite good items. It takes more work to keep up with your level, but the rewards are there for the taking. Engineering is particularly fun at this level.
Winner: WoW by a country mile. As I said before, some of this is intentional, but that doesn't change the score.

Group PVE -- dungeons and group-specific areas
WAR: More PQs some good, some great, some brutal, as well as some opposed PQs were both factions (Theoretically) compete in stage 1. Additionally you have the three sacellum dungeons. I've only done the first of these (east) and it was fine. More like a dungeon wing than a full dungeon. Nothing very tricky or particularly interesting in there, but a good change of pace and a nice warm up for the pacing of dungeons in WAR.
WOW: Again some of the best of WoW here. Deadmines, Black Fathom Deeps, and Wailing Caverns are all very cool and Gnomeregan is also quite interesting. They've stripped out a lot of the open area group content from WoW, which is just as well as for the most part it was just a brutal chore, but some of it remains, to give you a bit more meaningful content to do in a group. Some of the dungeons in this are less fascinating or less enjoyable (shadowfang, Razorfen kraul, stockades) but there so much variety and the quest rewards alone make them all quite worthwhile.

Winner: WoW Yeah, I love me a PQ but this is like the golden age of WoW dungeon-crawling.

PVP -- all player-vs-player-specific content
WAR: Keeps, baby! Outdoor RvR is in full-effect in tier 2 and is quite manageable at this point. It may descend into stealth keep zergs, but it still makes for an interesting experience. the BO game is less thrilling, but when they're defended that can be a good time as well. Three new and interesting scenarios are available and their quite good. Your mileage in these may vary by class (i hated mourkain as a tank, but love it as a healer and caster) but they are certainly very different from the T1 scenarios.
WOW: Battlegrounds are in full effect with both the meaty-end of the 10-19 bracket and all of 20-29 in play. Both of these are fun and reasonably rewarding in short bursts. Also, if you are interested in playing a power character, you can twink at both 19 or 29 very easily and crush other lesser foes. Not a big draw for me, but if that's your cup of tea, then it could be a big draw. World PvP is basically non-existent on non-pvp servers. on pvp servers expect to get routinely ganked as soon as you leave the safe zones. Yay?
Winner: WAR So much better. If I was into having a twink pvper, maybe i'd be miffed about my inability to stop a character at a given level. But I'm not, at all. Much richer and more lively experience. Also much more playable at non-peak-bracket levels (ie not 19,29 as in WoW).

***
So there you have it. I think this tier really shows how the games' design-emphasis impacts its experience. Wow is all about PvE: dungeons, crafting, questing. WAR is about aesthetics and PVP.

Things I'm excited about in Patch 1.3 - Talismans

2009-05-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

So there's lots of interesting things coming up for talisman crafting. Here's the relevant info from the most recent patch notes:

* Items can now have more than one talisman slot.
* Multiple-slot items will only allow one talisman from a given family to be slotted.
* The Potency data tables have been reallocated to heavily favor the fragment.
* We've compressed the number of ingredient Potency levels to 9 from 10. Curios have been compressed to a single rarity. Existing items of higher than common rarity will be grandfathered in.
* Fragments can now be broken down into two fragments of the next lower skill level tier.
* An "awesome" result attained while fusing a very rare talisman will no longer consume the fragment.
* There have been significant tooltip updates that will better convey vital information.
* Due to balancing issues, some talismans will be restricted to designated equipment slots. This change will not affect existing talismans.
* Character level requirements have been added to talismans to provide accurate power estimates for varying player levels. This change will not affect existing talismans.
* Normal stat talismans now extend to +24 stats at the upper bound to compensate for the timer removal.
* Normal talismans will no longer utilize timers.
* Talisman boxes can now be purchased from the talisman vendor.

So let's examine all this. The most interesting thing, if I'm reading it right is "Normal talismans will no longer utilize timers." So, no more 8 hour talismans? yes please.

Other items of note:

1. multiple talisman slots on gear
2. higher max level of talismans (+24 from +20)
3. compression of options, which means fewer bags full of only slightly different junk.
4. boxes can be bought from vendors.

My concerns about this new system are two-fold:
1. how will this sort out in the economy ... low level permanents should be more sale-able, but there's a lot of changes, and its not clear what the fallout will be.
2. we're going to have way too many fragments: fewer types is a good thing, but we're still getting them from salvaging and scavenging, and now in some cases they won't be used up by making a talisman. They're already basically junk except for rare fragments, particularly at high levels. I expect that to change but overall with fewer talismans needed, they should become even less valuable.

Why not have scavenging sometimes yield just vendor trash that actually is worth something outside the AH?

Overall, good changes and quite promising for talisman making and the related gathering profs.

PvP Strategy: the Charge

2009-05-20T07:56:00.001-07:00

Perhaps the single-most useful tactic in group PvP, the charge is little understood even by those who can most benefit from it.

Let's break it down.

Imagine that you are in, say, the Battle for Praag scenario. You and your pals are loitering contendly around a flag, perhaps picking dandelions, when all the sudden a great mass of red names comes flailing toward you, dashing past your befuddled meleers into your creamy casters.

That is a charge.

So you ran screaming in a panic away from the charging enemy, likely to be cut to pieces in retreat. You regroup, respawn etc. by your guards, while the enemy (lets call them "order") loiters around the flag closest to your spawn point in a seething mass. They taunt you; they insult your mothers (or in the case of greenskins ... parent?). So what do you do?

All to often this is what you do: you cherry-pick. There is a back and forth of dashing attacks and retreats. Some from both side die, but no ground is gained or lost.

The problem with this is two-fold:
1. you are at a point-deficit. You need their spot, but they don't need yours.
2. it's a shitty strategy.

What you should do is ... charge.

The problem with a charge into a set enemy is this: it takes guts. Every individual knows that if they charge in alone, they will get crushed humiliatingly. If you all go in together (assuming here you are competitive in numbers and overall power, not always the case) you have a good chance of pushing them back and doing to them what they did to you. Namely, routing them.

It's one of those trust dilemmas, do you take a personal risk (getting wtfpwned) relying on your teammates to rally to your side or do you wait around taking less risk, but gaining less reward (hey we killed one witch hunter woo!)

Not surprisingly, I die a lot in these situations, because I'm unwilling to do the lazy, wrong thing. I don't want to pussy-foot around and farm 1 kill to our 5 deaths, while they rack of scenario points. So I charge in (I'm a tank after all) and more often then not, no one else does the same, and I'm unceremoniously beaten like a pinata (on fire).

What happens in a charge is this: you change the plane of the attack and your force the enemy to make choices.

If there is one enemy in range, they all attack that enemy naturally, and healers can't keep them up.

If there's 10 enemies in range, then each individual has to pick the best target. Damage is split, healers have a better chance of keeping up with that damage and meanwhile the attackers are causing more damage to the enemy, requiring more effort from the healers and possibly requiring them to reposition or change targets midstream.
Add to that the benefit of shared buffing/debuffing and shared cc benefits and you can see why the charge gives you the best chance for success.

There are other factors of course: who do you attack in your charges for one. Don't hit tanks obviously, but also you want to move in a group, but not too clumped up, so that you can't be isolated on the one hand, and can't be casually group cc'd and aoe'd.

Stay grouped, focus your damage, help your teammates and win.

Charging: it works. Give it a try.

-Czarnal

PS. Strangely no one has a problem with implementing the charge in oRvR. O-RvR is also where you'll most likely see the best counter strategies to the charge: the tank wall and the isolation move (in which you drag a part of the charge away from the main group and focus them down).

PvP for Dummies

2009-05-19T05:54:00.001-07:00

Do you have a shield?

Go stand in front.

Are you wearing a dress?

Stand in back.

Do you have a propensity for stabbing or bashing things furiously?

Please direct your aggression towards the enemy wearing dresses.

Do you have healing spells?

Please use them (oh and btw, there are people you can heal that aren't in your party! Sometimes they get hurt too.)

Thanks,

Avaricia,
Sorceress

Gunbad in 1.3

2009-05-18T08:58:00.001-07:00

What a great set of changes to Gunbad. A very fun instance already, but mythic is gearing up some much-needed changes. Hopefully similar changes will make their way into Bastion Stair. Here's some of the highlights for me:

- no more influence requirements for bosses.
- checkpoints for rezzing means no more having to completely reclear on a wipe.
- all undead despawn during the herald of solithex fight.
- herald of solithex's purple puddles have a reduced radius.
- can teleport to entrance of gunbad after a boss fight (instead of having to suicide back).

the bad thing:

krunk da big un is no longer part of the masta mixa fight. Boo!

***

Also sounds like they're making the trash fight a little smarter, which is always good fun. I'm now really looking forward to trying this out on my alts.

A Very RvR Weekend

2009-05-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was an RvR spectacular. I participated in a little bit of everything a fair bit of tier 4 o-rvr, which I'd mostly avoided to this point. Here's a rundown of my experiences:

1. strategery. I was pleasantly surprised to see a fair bit of strategizing by the various warband leaders of the groups I was in. We took BOs to stymy zone captures, we defended keeps and even split warbands to achieve multiple objectives. Warband leadership is WAR's version of running a high-end raid: it requires a lot of coordination and discipline, and I've got to give props to those who do it well.

2. Zone control. People don't like to switch gears. Sometimes the fastest way to finish capping a zone is to do scenarios or PQs, but people are reluctant to do these things once they're in o-rvr mode. Now I did see it done in Praag, when several parts of warbands went and did PQs to push us over the top, but at many other points leaders seemed to prefer to switch zones and stay in capture mode. I think that there's probably a concern that switching to scenarios or PQs will mean that your undefended nodes will get retaken, and that seems a reasonable concern. Not sure if there's a balancing fix to this, or just something that people have to get the hang of better.

3. tier 4 scenarios. This last weekend ended my grovod caverns curse, and I was actually a contributor to the success. As part of a strong destro group which was wallowing a few points back of order in Grovod, I made the crazy decision to try a cap a warpstone. Nutty, I know. Anyway, after being ganked a couple times, I finally capped successfully, and then others took up the challenge and we won handily.

Which makes me wonder, are people not really clear on strategies for these scenarios? the whole vast confusion of tier 4 scenarios and their situationally availability seems to reinforce the separation of lower t4 types and the endgame brutes that often define the course of the matches, as its those folk who have the most experience in the various scenarios. But, I observed at several points that those same people didn't seem to be pursuing what I'm pretty sure are the best ways to win the scenario (like capturing the warpstone in Grovod). So are the various +40 RR folks just pursuing a more lucarative path to renown by farming kills, even if it means losing the game, or do they really not have that good of a grasp on the strats? I'm not sure.

4. Gloating, taunting and trolling. Mixed with all the good in a large amount of pvp is bound to be the bad. Specifically, lots of gloating, taunting, and bitching. A +40 RR Witchhunter /lol'd at me when he killed me as I was trying to cap a warpstone.

Let me rephrase that, when he and another WH killed me ... a level 38 chosen. Oh and they were losing the game at that point, and went on to lose it handily. I understand the whole /teabag your opponent thing, but really, pick your spots. It just made the WH in question look dumb and pathetic.

Conversely, the SM who owned like 3 destro at a time, twice in a row (alluded to in my guide to tanking below) didn't emote a thing, but if he had, he would have earned it.

5. Age of zergening. While I've complained about the use of the term zerging before, its indisputable that WAR's open-RvR game is about numbers. Certainly there's skill, and organization, and class balance, but really, its usually the biggest group that wins. But, and this is important for me, even though the contribution of the individual can feel trivial in these massive onslaughts, there is a contribution factor. One individual's great play won't offset an extra warband, but it can make a big impact. I've noticed in scenarios that my groups do better now. Could be coincidence, but I'm sure that being able to contribute more as a level 38 or now 39 tank, playing a tanking role now, is helping.

6. tanking in RvR. It's not that bad, really. I've been pretty down on it recently, and it's certainly a mixed bag, but in the right combinations, tanking-type play feels pretty valuable. Guarding casters, debuffing, knockdowns and knockback, it's actually pretty satisfying once you can come to terms with not being dps.

Tanks in PVP: A Guide for Casters

2009-05-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the sorceress who asked me if I was "sleeping" after we were both killed by a swordmaster in Invader gear, she being killed while standing blithely in melee range of the SM, I present the following guide to PVP tanks for casters.

***

Tanks: Your armored friends

Greetings casters. You may have noticed in your scenarios and rvr exploits some fellows running around in heavy armor, some carrying shields. Those fellows are tanks! Tanks are friendly creatures, slow to anger and good with children.

Tanks can do many things for you in PVP, but there are some things they cannot do.

Tanks Can Do:

1. make your enemies less dangerous. We can make those nasty sword-wielding maniacs hurt you less! Isn't that nice? This is called debuffing. Chosen (a kind of tank) can for example use auras that reduce strength (how hard your enemies can hit you) or that increase your toughness (how much hitting you can take). We can also taunt. A taunt is when we say nasty things about the enemy's mother. This makes them mad at us, but less mad at you, so they do less damage! Some of these things only work for you if you're in the same group as a tank, so stay close to your friendly armored group-mate.

2. make it harder for the enemy to get to you. We can knock down the enemy, snare them, knock them away. But we can't do these things all the time, just some of the time. The time when we can't do these things is called a cooldown. Or sometimes we run out of "Action Points." "Action points" are our helping juice, when we are out of helping juice, we cannot make them leave you alone.

3. Protect the weak. Tanks have a special talent for helping the weaker and more flimsy. People like you, dear caster. But, you have to be in the same group as the tank to receive a guard (how we protect the weak), and only one person can be guarded, and only if they're close by the tank.

Tanks Cannot:

1. stop people from hitting you. You have a special ability deep inside you that you can use to stop them from hitting you. This gift is called "running away." Many of your magical powers work at a long range. Try attack people from afar!

2. stop people from hurting you. We can make them hurt less, and we want to, dear friend. But they will still hurt you. If you are getting hurt, might I suggest again using your "run away" ability?

3. stop you from dying. If someone hits you enough times, even if they are being "debuffed," I'm sorry to say that you will die. It happens. We feel bad when you die, dear caster, but we are not gods, and do not have the power to keep you alive when you have been beaten into a bloody pulp. To avoid this, watch how much "health" you have left in your "health bar." If you do not have much health left, I heartily encourage you, again, to "run away."

Why sigils are good

2009-05-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

So I assume everyone knows about the upcoming change to wards, but to review: wards are now separate from the armor. They are stored in your tome, they combine into Sigils. You can get wards (sigil fragments) from completing achievements (Such as kill Boss dropping ward-armor X times)

Okay, so that's that. Good or bad?

Good. Here's why. The problem with WAR endgame is its extreme linearity.

There's little choice: BS, B/B, LV .... or .... Keep, Fort, City.

But now, not so much, by removing the wards from the armor, you can pursue gear for its bonuses rather than its wards.

So much like the crit weapon farming in BS, people will be able to farm the best possible gear for their class, spec and conception thereof.

It also means (and probably why it was done) that good armor, high level armor can be introduced without wards.

So in summary: more choice = good, the forces of order = lame.

Why I play

2009-05-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last night my guild had an alt night, and it turned out to be great fun. A good group with lots to do, work together, joking around, possibly causing wipes from said joking around ... well it was fun for me anyway.

To get together online with folks around the country, to do different types of things, enjoying the game with no drama, that's what WAR is at its best for me. Did I come away with phat loot? not really, though I won a couple bags.

Did we own everything in sight? We did pretty well in both PQ and scenarios, but it wasn't like we were a juggernaut of destruction. It was just a good time, hanging with guild friends and new faces. Goofing off at its best.

Don't get me wrong, I like to accomplish the big task, to earn the phat loots, and what not, but at the end of the day, I log on to have fun and last night I had a lot of it.

MMO's are about ongoing stories, the persistent world and all that, but also, importantly, about shared experiences, and when you can savor the shared experience, the time is well spent, regardless of anything else.

WARBuddy

2009-05-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

So everyone's in a tizzy about WARBuddy (hear the WARP podcast on it here), an exploit program that allows you to, essentially, disregard the physics and boundaries of the game world.

Yeah, this sort of thing is really bad. There used to be a similar program for WoW that I think they got rid of by using that installer thing that checks the version of the game on your computer at runtime. People in WoW used it to attack mobs in dungeons from above them, where they were unable to target.

Hacks happen, bots happen. I can't really get too worked up about it, really. Sure people are cheating, but they take risks when they do: accounts get banned for this sort of thing. And how does it affect me? I get owned plenty by non-cheating players so that wouldn't be a difference.

Let me put it another way, which is more potent: warbuddy or a super-high end guild? If you have a very active, high-level guild you have a huge advantage in the game, and totally legitimately.

So yeah, they need to figure out how to get this thing out of the game, but I'm not gonna get in a twist about it, and if it's one or the other, I'd rather they work on the game's content -- on encouraging players to keep playing than on stopping cheaters.

PQ Crawl-ette: the recap

2009-05-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

So last night marked our first attempt at a Gaarawarr-style PQ crawl.

It was a bit light on epic-ness, but was still a fun try at a type of user-generated event that is much more tricky than you might imagine.

We only got through 7 PQs, and had at max about 7-8 participants. So it was a bit light on drama, but was fun-times and got some people some loot and influence.

What we learned:

1. a genuine multi-tier crawl is an undertaking, plan accordingly.
2. promote, promote, promote. Shout out anywhere and everywhere. The more people you have, the more fun the process will be for everyone involved.
3. hit everything. Now I'm not sure that everyone would agree, but for me the whole point of the crawl is to go from one PQ to the next one, not being selective.
4. don't masterloot. In some cases this might be worth doing, but it slows down the process. If I had a lot of level 11 folk, as we did last night, I might bother master looting ch.5 stuff, but otherwise I wouldn't bother.
5. go, go, go. Keep the pace brisk. It's a lot of ground to cover. Don't wait for people and don't dawdle.
6. remember that its supposed to be fun. Not really a problem, but something that always warrants a reminder. Better to hit a few PQs and everyone has fun than churn through them all and be miserable.
7. make sure you have enough firepower to move through them quickly. We had a lot of alts on and it meant more xp for folks I guess, but slower PQs. To get them all cranked out, I think you need a core of high level characters to really keep the pace brisk.

Anyway, we'll do another one soon, and I think we'll get much farther along. Will we manage a full 4-tier crawl? maybe not, but if we can get into double digits of PQs, move through a couple full tiers, I'll be stoked.

All the more props to Gaarawarr for the immensity of the crawls he's executed. It's not a small thing to do.

Hope everyone that came had a good time and will join us again on the next attempt.

Fun Time Volkmar

2009-05-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Gaarawarr's epic exploits, my awesome (if somewhat wee) guild, Children of the Raven, is running a PQ crawl tonight on Volkmar. We'll be doing Dark Elf PQs starting at 8:30 CST in Ch.1, until we pass out from exhaustion or finish them all.

So if you've got a destro toon on Volkmar, come out and join in the fun, and if not, roll up a newb and pay us a visit.

I'll try to get a recap of our success or failure tomorrow.

The Downward Spiral?

2009-04-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings to one and all.

The last few weeks have seen some damage done to the once thriving WAR blogging community. We'd already lost Syp to the potty, and now we've also lost the excellent Breakfast at War and GirlIRL. Sad times indeed.

Meanwhile many of the rest of us have slowed down or disappeared from the blogrolls altogether. Coincidence? Could be. Diminishing passion? Hmm.

For myself, I can say that the flames have cooled a bit. I still am playing nightly, and still enjoying it, but I'm not as fanatically as I was even a few weeks ago. The approaching endgame is rekindling some of my worst WoW 1.0 end-game memories and RvR in Tier 4 is still a mixed bag at best.

The live event was quite fun, I thought, and got people out and about, and I still contend that the early game of WAR is much better than the competition, but the RvR-nes of WAR and all that it entails combined with the rigid PvE endgame is not inspiring me to play as often or with the same level of dedication as I did when my characters were churning through the lower tiers.

Having said all that, I'm not closing shop or looking for a new game, and I still read and enjoy the many great WAR blogs out there. My guild is great is small, and I feel like there's much fun to be had in the game.

Here's looking forward to some exciting developments and creative thinking from the mythic team and maybe a little more interaction with the consumer base, to get us amped up again about the WAR.

Week in review: the Good and the Bad

2009-04-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

Greetings and happy Friday to you all.

So another week of WAR bites the dust and it's been a pretty interesting one for me.

Instead of another whiny Fuck You post, I thought I'd mix in a little good with the bad. Still whining, naturally.

Good:

Beyond the Sands Live Event. Lots to do, and people are gung-ho about it, even though the rewards are middling. The trophy is quite nice and the title is pretty good ("The Eternal"). Not sure how important the goggles will be, but I guess they're useful too, and fun looking, if you're into that sort of thing.

Bad:

Getting wtfpwned A few guildies and I were harrassing the live event PQ in dragonwake when we got absolutely crushed by a level 40 witch hunter. There was a SM there as well but the WH did the dirty work, basically killing all four of us solo. I chased her down when she had just a tiny sliver of health left, but one healing pot and a disarm later, I was eating elf-dirt. Anyway if you see Lolaxica on Volkmar, run away.

Good:

Lairs I know the loot isn't that great, and sometimes they're down, and you waste a trip, and some are much harder than others, yadda yadda, but for me, these are gold. Tucked away in obscure spaces, with jumps or obscure keys to enter, and then some really challenging fights, at least at the level my group was doing them. From the last one we did we got two R39 blue BoE drops, so not a bad haul, imo.

The idea of the lair itself is just great, for me. There's something about creeping into a big baddies lair that makes it very evocative. Also its a nice option to have when you've got just a little bit of time.

Bad:

Bad physics Seriously, I'm sorry, but If I knock someone off a mountain top, they need to die from the fall. It's complete BS that they take no fall damage. You don't want people pushing others off mountains, how about you get rid of knockback, or better yet, mountains? Don't fuck with gravity, kthx.

Good:

Alts I'm playing three characters now, and it's really ideal for me. Each tier and character role plays very different and has its own strengths and weaknesses. I'm doing new stuff and getting a better feel for how the pieces work together. The sorceress for me is still a bit too flimsy and reliant on others, especially in pvp. Though I can at least kill comparable level champs with her, so that's a nice improvement. The zealot is good fun, fun to RvR, a bit slow to solo, but obviously groups very well with just about anything.

Bad:

Invisible Walls Okay, I get why there's invisible walls in say, the Soul Vault, but ... I can't jump off stairs? Why on earth they felt like they needed to keep people from jumping on stuff, I'll never know. It's maddening though, to find perfectly good gaps or low walls or whatever and then find the way blocked.

Here's a thought, if I can jump yea-high, make the damn walls higher than that.

If I want to jump into the lava, by god, that's my right. Isn't it?

You know what's awesome?

2009-04-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

When light can't penetrate objects!

That's right, shadows are awesome. They're nature's way of telling us what is a ghost and what we can run into. So let's hear it for shadows! Yay.

You know what is not awesome?

Not only having to ride a rather undersized piggy, but also being called a "whacka."

My friend, you have my sympathy.

Miscellany: City Defense, Sorceress, Bastion Stair

2009-04-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

Participated in the defense of the IC last night, was good fun. The defensive group I was in was quite strong and we held off order until the timer ran out, then killed them off and farmed the PQ. Of course I didn't contribute much to the effort, but I made a good show of it, running around crazily, as if my attacks were actually doing damage to the enemy.

But I have to say the whole wait til the timer wears out thing seems a bit sketch. I mean, not exploitive, but just slightly unbalanced towards defenders. After contested wore out, we could still respawn in the city while attackers got the boot when they respawned. Might be more balanced if we had to at least finish stage one of the pq while the city was contested.

***

Also, I've been playing my bank alt, a lowbie sorceress, a bit. Quite different, as you might imagine from the Chosen or the zealot (my other active alt). The sorceress kind of sucks to solo with, at least the way I play, because I can't realistically kill champions solo. I suppose I could kite them around terrain, but I have no snare at this point, so it's a bit daunting. I will say that it's very fun to one-shot mobs of the same level.

Scenarios with the sorceress are a real mixed bag. If there's any structure to the group: healing, tanking, that sort of thing, then it's quite a potent experience, but when I'm left alone, I'm a joke. It's a bit frustrating watching tanks and mdps run right past people that are racing up to me, and then getting owned. Probably this gets better as people get more snares and crowd control, but it can certainly be frustrating.

***

Which makes me wonder, would I be more RvR focused if my main were a healer or the sorc? I find that healers are the least team-dependant in terms of enjoying doing rvr. I can be on a totally crap team with my zealot and still have fun, but with Czarnal and even more so with the sorc, if my team is underpowered or disorganized, it quickly feels like a chore.

***

Also, did a guild run of Bastion Stair left wing on the weekend. Good fun. I like a lot of things about this dungeon: it looks great, the loot is good, and I still like the pqs and quests and all that, very centralized and efficient, like so much in WAR. The downsides of the way these things are built (at least BS and Gunbad) are:

1. a bit uniform. Mobs in left wing are all beastmen: there's a couple outliers ... a gnoblar/ogre optional boss (iirc) and a doombull boss, but basically the same thing over and over. The PQs in the wing are all extremely straightforward too, though the wing boss fight was different and fun.

2. Hard to work on. The second PQ boss is quite hard, harder than anything else, unless we were just completely doing it wrong, which is possible, I suppose. And we couldn't really practice it, because by the time we respawned, the 1st PQ was fully populated and by the time we got past that, the 2nd was reset.

It's Time for Another ... F*ck You Friday

2009-04-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

Greetings, gentle reader, and welcome to another Fuck You Friday. I haven't played that much this week (fuck you, real life), but I have managed to find enough gripe in my soul to warrant another installment.

Without further ado:

Name-calling whiners Oh hell yes you're getting a "fuck you." Last night I was invited into a group farming a Bastion Stair PQ. We ran it twice, and I guess they'd been running it for quite a while previously. After the second time through, the level 40 tank decided he was done.

Now, he'd been asking "who needs bags" and apparently master looting his bag to someone in the group that hadn't gotten one. A nice thing, given that this was essentially a PuG. I lucked into a blue bag on our first time through, so i was happy. Apparently, one of the group, a shaman, wasn't. When the tank called it, he went off ... "i never got a bag" ... "everyone else got one but me" and finally "you guys are a bunch of fags, I'll never help you again."

Riight. So, you're "helping" us? and yet you're peeved about not getting a bag? Doesn't sound like altruism to me, friend. And really, fags? I'm sorry, but you got all the bags you earned or lucked into, per the PQ conventions. So, No, I'm sorry, you're a whiny little tool. Sure he was level 40 and no doubt a big reason we did well in there, but you know, that's how loot works, friend.

Why is it that people that get bad luck or fuck up are always the quickest to call other people names. I remember a UBRS run I did ages ago in WoW, in which some dumbass got himself killed and then released. This was in the 15man UBRS days, mind you. And he was livid that we wouldn't clear back to the front door to help him. He and his friend in the group decided to call everyone Jews ... which in addition to not making any sense, is just really, really, fuck-headed.

So here's a big ol' fuck you to whiners, name callers, and bigots all around.

Tier 4 Scenarios Oh my everloving god do I hate these things. I'm sure it's a delightful romp for the level 40s in organized warbands and all, but man are these un-fun. The one I did last night was a little better, so maybe there's hope on the horizon, but still. Fuck you, Tier 4 scenarios, and particularly Grovod Caverns ... you look so cool, but you are such a dick, Grovod.

Can we get a level 40 only tier, plx?

Here's how my play sessions go: happy at questing ... happy at farming ... happy in oRvR ... happy in PQs ... happy with professions ... OMG I want to tear my arms off.

That last part is the scenarios, btw.

Crushclaw Fucking scorpion, fuck you. Way to be take forever to get to, be unusually hard to kill and then cause me to respawn at the ch.15 camp in Caledor, meaning I have to hearth to go anywhere ... I am going to wear your carapace like a cape if it's the last thing I do.

Dammaz Kron Fuck you for making me feel bad about my skills. I play a tank and a healer .. I'm not getting a bunch of killing blows, okay, I admit it, so I've gotta be like -12 to every witch hunter and BW out there. When Mythic steals this idea to incorporate into the core game, I hope they score participatory kills rather than killing blows, that would make me feel a little better.

"WAR is a PvP Game" Okay some of my fellow bloggers as well as pleeeenty of people in game have trotted this one out, to which I must respectfully say, "fuck you, good sirs (or madams)." WAR is. not. a. pvp. game.

It is an MMO. It is a whole big ol' fucking world. It is PVP-oriented. PvP-centric if you will. You know what game is a PvP game? Street Fighter II. Quake is a pvp game. WAR is not that. Frankly, I don't get what the big freaking hissy is all about. PvP is fun, to be sure, there's a potential randomness to it that PvE doesn't have. Characters hit harder and are more cagy than mobs. But really, if you can out-level, out-gear, or out-number your way to victory, I'm not sure how much crowing you should be able to do about your PvP chops.

And on top of all that, WAR is also a license game. It's the Warhammer Fantasy game. Not Mythic presents gloomy fantasy battlelands! Trust me, if it were, you'd have a lot fewer people in your RvR to lay waste too. Am I persona-non-grata because I'm drawn to this game by the property rather than its DAOC heritage and RvR bent?

And the final fuck-you ... Forum commentors. I'm sure there's good in there, but it's like digging for gold in shit. Not. Interested. So much venom and self-congratulatory nonsense. The thread on the kill of Tcharzanek was the last thing I saw on a forum, and was totally absurd. The only value these things have in my book is as a primer on logical fallacies: "See there johnny, where Long Dong Silver calls the original poster a "Fanboi" that's an ad hominem fallacy."

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

WAR is not War

2009-04-16T09:25:00.001-07:00

The comic panel above is taken from the excellent Giant in the Playground.

So there have been a number of good posts out there on RvR tweaks and fixes, particularly Breakfast at War's "RvR Remodeling."

Another quite good post this week was Dark Crag Dispatch's "Shouldn't MMO's End?"

My response to both of these excellent posts is succinctly phrased in Rich Burlew's Giant in the Playground tribute to D&D co-creator Dave Arneson (shown above).

To belabor the point: WAR and other MMO's are descendants of pen and paper roleplaying games, particularly Dungeons & Dragons. With that comes a set of limitations and conventions: the glory of the individual hero and the persistent world are two that are relevant here.

So, should MMO's end? Of course not, like D&D and before it Tolkien, and before that the old myths and legends, the world is bigger than the individual hero. But, should the hero's tale have an end? Yeah, that would be nice. Is finishing end game the end of a hero's journey now? Well, if you feel like it is, sure ... until the next expansion naturally.

Will an MMO ever add in an end to a character's development arc, a meaningful conclusion? If they did, they'd have to add in something to do with the character afterward, some kingdom to rule, some other role to play, otherwise they're throwing away subscription dollars.

But what does this all have to do with RvR? Well, it's the odd nature of the world of heroes. Battles in WAR are comprised of essentially nothing but heroes: elite units, if you will. This is not war, right? There's no infantry, there's no rank-and-file. Which isn't to say that RvR is irrevocably broken or ridiculous or anything, but its a unique beast. People in RVR-chat are often complaining because their fellow players don't defend, for example, but it's not really the hero's role to sit around garrisoning a strategic objective. People aren't committed 100% to the cause because they don't have to be. They don't have to take orders. They don't have to do boring stuff.

Interestingly less PvE-oriented RvR, such as Pancakez proposes, and scenarios are even more abstract. More ... lets say realistic, even though that's pretty ridiculous ... fix would be to add more PvE in ... a whole army in defense and in support of the attack, but of a decidedly trivial nature, so that the stature of the hero is reinforced while the narrative is augmented. But certainly this creates problems of its own.

This is the dilemma for Mythic though: pursue the grandeur and pomp of massive sieges and battles at the cost of any narrative sense as well as the individual glory of the participants, or pursue skirmish-type PvP that heightens the role of the individual, makes more sense narratively, but loses the massive scale and glory.

Dave Arneson, as imagined by Rich Burlew, makes the D&D case pretty clearly ...
"We're not doing a big battle," but Mythic's choice will likely fall the other way.

Tier 4 thoughts

2009-04-14T07:45:00.001-07:00

Czarnal is now at rank 35 and has had a fair bit of time in tier 4. My experience here has been a mix of the good and the not so good, so I thought I'd share a little recap of how tier 4 is playing out for me.

City Siege

The good: I've participated in both sides: defense of the IC and the assault on Altdorf, and I've seen plenty of back and forth going on in the various zones. It gives the game a very live feeling. Having the various scenarios lock or unlock based on the status of the various zones connects you to the status of the war, even if you're ignoring it. On Volkmar, it seems like we're approaching the sweet spot: back and forth with both sides having opportunities to pin the other back and to put their capital under pressure.

The Altdorf city siege that I participated in, seemed particularly effective. It really felt like a city under assault. There was lots of skirmish action in the streets as well as organized bands assaulting the 2 capture points. It felt genuinely cinematic and like a really well-wrought combination of PvE and PvP elements working to further the central narrative.

The Bad: I can't really get all that into PvP in Tier 4. I hope it will be better post-patch, and/or as I get a little closer to the level cap. Right now I feel like I'm making up the numbers. In scenarios I get consistently crushed, and in the 2nd stage of the City defense PQ (or either stage of the assualt of altdorf) I felt basically useless. I guess I gave order some renown, so there's that.

RvR is less casual in T4. Sure you can hop in and out, but you're not going to do much or earn much unless you're willing to really commit to the process. So far, I'm not.

The Ugly: Lag. It's really absurd how laggy some of this can get. While order was pushing into the maw, I was trying to do a PQ in Praag and had around 3 seconds of lag ... 3 seconds between the receipt of any given action is really unbearable. And I know it's even worse in the fortress fights. So yeah, put those bad boys in discrete instances on an instance server plx ... and keeps too.

Questing and PQs:

The Good: So everytime I change tiers I start questing again, and then about halfway through I abandon it for PQ influence grinds, dungeons, and RvR. In Tier 4, I've been very pleased with the quality of quest narratives. In particular I've done a lot of Chaos ch.15 and 3 of the epic quests. These are great fun ... very appealing story arcs (spoiler: your character is awesome) and force you to visit the various zones of parts of zones. The PQs have been a bit mixed, but some of them are fantastic. Interesting mechanics, interesting stories, good visuals.

I've also been enjoying exploring the Tome. My current obsession is jewelry unlocks. They're perfect for my level and there's a lot of them. They tend to be defensive in nature but seem pretty good at that. So far I've unlocked about 6 or 7 of these and there's at least another 5 or 6 if not more. They're in sets too, btw, which increases the collectibility for me.

The Bad: Basically poor and inconsistent rewards. More of the same kvetching I know, but let me explain. PQs throughout the previous tiers have had evenly scaling rewards. Ch.11 elite rewards are level 22 blues, ch.12 are level 24 blues, ch.13 level 26. But in T4, not so much:

Ch. 15: level 28 (ch.14 at the end of t3 gives level 27 blues)
Ch. 16: level 30 (okay so far so good)
ch. 17: ...also level 30
ch. 18: level 31.

and so on. Now to be fair, there are more chapters in tier 4 (8 vs. 5) but the rewards rapidly drop below the scale of the mobs you have to fight. (ch.20 for example gives level 33 blues for it's elite rewards. The mobs you fight are level 38+)

Not a big deal for grouping, I imagine, but it makes soloing yourself decent gear from PvE a bit of a non-starter.

Epic quests are as I've said, very cool, but the rewards are a bit inconsistent and seem to trend a little low. The chaos Ch.15 epic quest yields a level 28 blue weapon, the chaos ch. 17 epic quest yields a level 30 blue weapon. But for this one you're looking at level 37+ mobs. The ch.15 greenskin epic quest yields green level 30 boots. It's all a bit slapdash.

The Ugly: Broken PQs. This is a bad thing. Gaarawarr's epic PQ crawl puts this into stark perspective. Look at all the busted PQs in that recap, particularly in Tier 4. A real shame. My personal bane has been the Lonely Tower (ch. 15 chaos) which has like 3 or 4 different broken bits:

1. final boss may completely reset at any point in the fight.
2. PQ refuses to leave stage one, even when completed.
3. PQ refuses to start stage three, after all the skeles in stage 2 (that are above the ground and visible) are slain.
4. Random junk.

Here's a couple screenies from lonely tower to illustrate my point:

t4 Art & ambience

The Good: It's all good. T4 really is quite gorgeous. Altdorf is gorgeous, Praag is fantastic, the Chaos Wastes are brooding and crazy, Thunder Mountain is brilliant, even the elf zones, in particular I love Dragonwake, are great ... all yawning chasms and elegant, absurd bridges and lonely, graceful towers. Just really lovely.

So there you have it. Gorgeous zones, a bit of bugginess and lag, brutal PvP ... tier 4 is a different thing to be sure. I think I may just have to forget RvR altogether. Or alternately, give in to it completely. The old standby of queuing for scenarios while I'm grinding PQ influence doesn't seem to translate.

Ten Probing Questions

2009-04-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

Girl IRL tries to breath a little life into the somewhat sleepy WAR blogging community with 10 probing questions. They're good questions too, and I'm happy to play along.

1. What is your current main character’s name (or names, if you play multiple games)? Explain how you chose the name.

Czarnal. So this is a good example of how I choose names. I get a feel for the character class/race and then I sort of dig through names I like from fiction other games whatever. In this case, I'd just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods which has a russian (I guess) god in it named Czernobog. Cool name, I thought. So I toyed with different variations on that name until I reached Czarnal. Now, truly, when I was reading the book, I was pronouncing the name Chair-no-bog in my head, may or may not be right, but after I'd picked Czarnal and started leveling him, I realized that my toon's name would likely be prounded Zar-nal (which is uncomfortably close to Arnold) insted of (Char-nal) as I had imagined. Oh well. Them's the breaks.

2. What was the name of your very first character in an MMO? Explain how you chose that name.

My first MMO character was in WoW ... a female night elf rogue (original, I know). Her name was Ashran. Yeah, I got in pretty early. The idea for that name came from an RPG character I'd had named Intima Ashrain. ... Modify and enjoy. Other WoW toon names I've had that I quite like: Bellacose (from bellicose ...modify obscure words into names is good too) and Sephira (from Sephiroth, FFVII) I guess Sephira is also an Eragon character, but it was accidental.

Oh, another naming thing. I like names that shorten nicely. People aren't going to type your full name, so think of how they'll truncate it. This can go really wrong, as my friend Tanith found out in WoW when his pally's name got shortened from Mordesa to ...

Mordy.

Ouch.

3. Have you kept a specific name through various games, or do you tend to change your naming habits based on the individual game?

No, I'm not really about that. Each character deserves a fresh name imo.

4. Do you ever reserve names, planning to use them for characters that you might play later? If so, what are they and why do you hold on them?

I don't. See 3 above. I feel like I can find a good name even if lots are taken.

5. Of the three common archetypes in MMOs — tank, healer, DPS — which is your current main character?

Czarnal is ...well a tank class, but now he's specced DPS (Rending Blade, natch)... we'll see what happens post-rending blade nerf.

I really don't see the point to speccing corruption. I'm sure there's good tanking stuff in there, but it seems pretty thin ROI given that a lot of speccing in WAR (at least for chosen) is upgrading damage from your various attacks.

6. What archetype was your very first character in an MMO? Why did you choose it?

Ashran as I've said was a rogue, melee dps. MDPS is a good starter role i think. Gets you up close to the action, decent soloability, not too much responsibility.

7. Are you usually attracted to one archetype over another, or do you play them equally? Why?

Well I like to tank and to heal for the responsibility that comes in those roles. I like ranged DPS the least, though my raiding main in WoW (Sephira) was a warlock and I did a lot of content that way. Too easy to autopilot for my tastes.

8. What is your favorite feature from an MMO you no longer play?

I miss the breadth and complexity of WoW's dungeons. So many of them, most with fun complications and interesting designs.

9. Is there an MMO that you would play if it was free? Which and why?

I might play WoW again if it was free, or LOTRO which is yin to WAR's yang. Maybe Lineage II just for the sexy characters?

10. How do you measure the success of a character in an MMO (total kills, titles accumulated, wealth, rare items collected, level reached, etc.)?

Tricky. I think I've always sort of judged by fairly basic guides: do I have endgame gear? Have I done end-game content? When the end-game of an MMO is really working there is no end, so I try to be flexible. I was very pleased right before I quit WoW to have met a couple goals: got an arena ranking on my disc priest and had a more-or-less matched set of gear on my rogue. I wanted to kill Illidan on Sephira, but though my guild killed him and I worked on the fight, I never participated in a kill. Still, it was a good run.

***

so there you have it!

I'm going to chain-letter this bad boy to Rivs at Way of the Chosen, Tulane at Incoming Pull, Goody at The Captain's Blog and Grimnir at Grimnir's Grudge.

Post your own or get seven years of bad luck, so says I. Readers are invited to post their own in the comments. Fellow Children of the Raven, that means you!

Imagine there's no healers ... I wonder if you could

2009-04-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

WARNING: The following is a general MMO post, not WAR specific.

So a while back, I was discussing a hypothetical MMO with my friend and fellow WAR-player, Tanith (aka Bellagoth). In this hypothetical MMO there weren't any healer classes. We wondered, could you do it? What effect would it have on the game?

Here's what we came up with, as I recall:

• all classes would have some healing abilities
• boss fights would shorter, as you couldn't build them assuming PC's would go through several times their normal hit point allotment.
• some people would be turned off by the loss of that role.

Is it doable? Absolutely. What would the combat in game look like ... not entirely sure, but it would likely be much more intimidating.

Recently, as I was thinking about this conversation, I was wondering about the other iconic MMO role: the tank. Could you do away with the tank?

I'm reminded in all of this of D&D. The pen and paper sort. Before 4th edition you certainly had fighters with armor and shields, but they didn't have the stickiness that you find in an MMO tank .. they couldn't taunt, there was no threat.

Also, in D&D, while there has always been healers, at least since good ol'AD&D, virtually all of their heals were touch range only. Moreover, they had a very limited amount of heals.

So imagine, if you will, that there is no tanks and no healers ... there would still be ranged vs. melee types, and probably light armor vs. heavy armor types, but imagine that all of those classes could do some of the things a tank does: debuff, taunt, temporarily increase damage absorption or avoidance. If the only sort of tanking was one that was shareable by all, then how might roles be assigned and how would combat play out?

Furthermore, for the sake of argument, lets imagine that each character has some sort of very limited healing ... whether its a long-cooldown group HoT or a self-heal or what have you ... or imagine instead that everyone has a WoW-shammy style self-rez.

I guess to avoid nitpicking I should also assume that these abilities are balanced such that one doesn't clearly outweigh another.

In the resulting game you'd have parties where each player could contribute in all aspects of the fight. Monster damage would have to be juggled between individuals, or they'd have to be crowd-controlled or kited. Everyone in that world is a hero, no one is there to support someone else.

But is that better? While you could still have class diversity, some might miss the specialization that comes with being a great tank or a great healer. Some might prefer to support others (which you could still do, but less potently). It might also encourage the bad play we often see in PvP: everyone attacking willy-nilly without organization or structure.

On the other hand, it would mean that you wouldn't have to have someone playing a healer, playing a tank ... everyone could be a hero capable of dealing the final blow, of finishing off the badly wounded boss, of soloing the difficult champion.

I like tanking and healing both, but I wonder if without them MMOs might not be more dynamic. When you try doing a hard PQ or a keep lord without a tank or a healer you find yourself improvising, working harder, pushing yourself, I wonder if you could build that in to a workable system.

Blogger confessional

2009-04-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

So Wall of Text has an interesting little set of questions for bloggers that I'd like to take a stab at in my ongoing effort to talk about myself all the time.

1. Do most MMO bloggers change their game more than their underwear?

I played Wow for over three years, and in that time I changed my underwear at least once ... maybe even twice. Since I've been blogging and playing WAR I have not changed my underwear, so I guess I can't answer that question truthfully yet.

2. Do we have secretly compete with other MMO bloggers for attention?

Secretly? No. I like to think of blogging as a war with other bloggers, rather than a competition, which might imply some sort of friendliness. And instead of attention, I consider blogging a battle of reputation and credibility. I am constantly working to undermine my "fellow bloggers" one post at a time.

3. Can we ever stick with one game longer than 2 weeks without ranting about what is wrong with it?

Okay seriously, there's two things here worth discussing, one that discussing issues with a game is potentially equal to ranting about what's wrong with it (totally inferring this by the way, maybe not intended) and secondly, actual ranting and complaining. I'll ignore the two-week thing, since its mostly for effect (as in, we do it constantly).

Yes we point out issues. We do this so that, one, people know that they're not alone in the trouble they have with a game, and, two, that we can share perspective on it. Is our perspective more valuable than say Johnny-Posts-a-lot on a given forum? Yes it is. Here's why. Blogging is more a more involved enterprise than posting to a forum. It's less of a pissing-contest. Sure there's some pissing involved but we're forwarding a brand and trying to make it valuable, so we're less likely to just wail pointlessly. Though obviously, that happens too.

But it shouldn't, in my mind. Certainly anyone can blog about any thing, but for me, I wouldn't put the time in if I didn't care about the game and want it to succeed. Why I would spend time constructing posts about a game I just wanted to kvetch about, I can't imagine.

4. Why should developers read us when they know we just are going to cry more?

Begging the question. You assume that we will cry more, but I think that's an exageration. Maybe you're reading the wrong blogs. Most of the ones I read are happy to see improvements. Sure, there will be more complaints, but that's because no MMO is ever perfect, no system is flawless and completely realized and untouchably awesome, so why not share your concerns, frustrations and ideas?

5. Do we really think we are going to be web famous from this?

I write this blog to communicate with and maybe get in-game contact from smart, saavy WAR players, and because I've read and enjoyed other blogs. Hopefully somebody out there gets a little enjoyment from this one.

And also I'm trying to get a hot suit of armor.

Malekith, Professions, and Master Looter revisited

2009-04-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

A gallimaufry of WAR thoughts for you today.

The king is dead, long live the king. Grats to the euros who brought down Karl Franz. While I agree with Tulane's generally annoyed stance on the community response, I do think that 14 hours is pretty long, and I suspect that the whole process will get a nerf to make it easier.

Having said that, the first time my old guild cleared karazhan it took us like three nights? after gear and experience improved we were clearing it in like 3 hours.

But yeah, I think they'll nerf it, and here's why: Tomb kings. When you start diluting the end game player pool, especially when they haven't mastered the current content, you're probably going to need to nerf the old content to get it done.

And moreover: Malekith. So at some point I expect we'll see Malekith and the other various faction leaders in killable form. When they come in, where do they slot in, experience-wise? Are these subordinate leaders going to drop comparable or better loot? If not, why do them? Maybe they'll be easier to kill. If so, people work toward that target instead of Tcharzanek ... and you're back to the nerf equation.

Maybe I'm missing an option here, but I think that there's a potential narrative/progression problem here.

I agree with Snafzg Whoa that was weird to write. His post on crafting is spot on. A couple of notes: Butchering is a really a chore. Beasts aren't as plentiful in PQs or quest areas as humanoids, and the returns from beasts aren't exciting... pretty much one level of drop. The good thing about butchering, what's now missing from scavenging, is drop-relevance. Cats drop cat sinews, birds drop feathers etc. In old-timey scavenging (oh sweet old-timey scavenging) that was also the case.

Not any more. Now the drops are totally mob-independent, which is kind of boring. On the plus side, there are rare drops. Rare and very rare curios, and the grand prize, very rare level fragments.

Salvaging pretty much sucks for the absence of both of these: no relevance to what your salvaging (Well it has to have the stat for the fragment) and no randomness.

Also, why do you only need one gathering for apothecary but need both for talisman-making. And if you need both, why do they both need to gather fragments? There's so many fragments between salvagers and scavengers, that they're basically valueless, except for the rarer ones.

Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus The PQ master looter is working great, by the way. A couple of follow up notes to this, for those of you who aren't taking advantage of it:
1. you can set up master looter during the final boss kill of the PQ, maybe after even, but I can't confirm that.
2. set loot type to all (default is uncommon). this is the thing that was failing it so often for me.
3. turn off auto-looting. Probably you can work around this, but it makes it much easier.
4. master looter should be given to high bag winner. I've actually only ever done it when I was party-leader and high roll winner, so maybe the other doesn't work, but I suspect it does.
5. After you've been master looted a bag, you can then go pick up the bag you rightfully won.

I'm sure this info is out there elsewhere, but I thought I'd share my findings. Good luck and good hunting.

Pet Peeves I think this was a WAR blogger meme right before I got started, but I'm gonna list mine anyway. Complaining in bullet-form isn't complaining at all!

Clipping: A while back Dont had a big post about graphics that is worth a read, but for my money the big problem is clipping. It's really quite bad.

stuck: I've gotten stuck riding my horse and in a keep. If I'm jumping off cliffs or whatever, fine I'll give you that, but in a keep? Riding near a path? a bit aggravating. Also, the only way out is to hearth (er ... bind?) ... sort of a pain.

inventory responsiveness: particulary I'm thinking AH and mailbox. The mailbox as a whole is just really sluggish and frustrating. I love the bulk mail, but the auction house mailbox is ridiculous ... can't I just get the gold deposited and a receipt? It's pretty painful at the moment. Also, my bag sorting preferences apparently cause stacks to break apart and items I'm trying to mail to shift position and then not be mail-able? Or maybe that's just the mail system being fritzy.

The Vending Machine

2009-04-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

WAR is seemingly built on a fairly straightforward premise, one that rings very familiar to the consumer in us all: Have it your way, right away. It's a vending machine mentality. Lots of choices, easy to get at.

What do you want to do? Let us make it easy for you. Scenarios, quests, PQs, oRvR ... they're all just a click away. The rallying cry is the latest step in this direction, adding more convenience, and the "arena" and multi-tier city-defense scenarios upcoming are yet more options, and on it goes.

But this is a good thing, right? Well, yes. And maybe no. It's often very pleasant. It minimizes waiting around, searching, riding aimlessly. Or it intends to at least, your mileage may vary. There's a lot to do, at every level of gameplay, and each of those things is easy to do. You get buffed up in level in both oRvR and scenarios, so you can hypothetically contribute as soon as, or even before, you enter a tier's level-range.

The downside is the thinning of the waters ... each element takes playtime from the others. If you think that WAR should be all about oRvR, then you probably wish there were fewer or less appealing competing options that suck players from the oRvR lakes. If you want to do nothing but PvE, you might have a parallel response: that it's too easy or too lucarative to do RvR, that encourage participation in RvR at the cost of PvE.

The second downside is immersion. If everything is sort stripped of locational meaning then the world doesn't feel solid. Where exactly are Nordenwatch or the Stone Troll Crossing? (okay maybe you know where these things are. I don't). Is Talabecland really right next to High Pass? The design of the world emphasizes narrative connection and ease of access over world shaping, which comes at the cost of immersion. I don't really understand how the pieces fit together. I'm not sure that they do fit together, honestly, as they're constructed. It seems like the world is built on a premise, rather than a map.

So, what's the take away? It is what it is. I think the loss of immersion is a significant one, but the added convenience of the structure, as well as the nice narrative flow of moving as you level up the battlelines toward both your own capital and the enemies are positives.

I think that the wide array of options are competing against each other, but if you have less to do, do you reduce your player base, and consequently have fewer people to take part in your fewer choices? I don't know.

I think that WAR works. For me it works. But it is this odd thing: this vending machine game of many choices.

Drop Dye Colors

2009-04-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

Hey hey, it's a non-april fool's day post. Shout out to all the funny and well-done Fool's Day posts out there. Of what I've seen, Thulf and Rivs win the prizes, and Dont's post is also quite funny.

What I offer you, gentle reader, is less amusing, but hopefully helpful. A quick look at some of the various drop and cultivating dyes out there and what they actually look like. You can get also get screenshots of the various dyes from wardb but having the context of a comparison, is I think worth a look. I've provided some vendor dyes as context.

Blazing Orange
Scorched Brown Made from resinous brown extract (cultivating)
Dark Red common quality drop
Red Gore made from fiery red ant extract (cultivating)
Warlock Purple drop dye shown, but same as vendor
Regal Blue
Midnight Blue
Seaguard Blue made from blue bottle fly extract (cultivating)
Scaly Green Vendor
Oddly enough the drop Scaly Green that I had previewed like this:
Which is the same as Goblin Green Made from verdant leaf extract (cultivating)

Obviously a lot missing here. I'll try to update as I acquire more dye, and screenshot submissions are welcome.

OMG I Win! Yay!

2009-03-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Tulane at Incoming Pull and Goody at The Captain's Blog for the nod in the sticky ... er ... keyboard award deal. I figured by process of elimination I'd get one of these eventually, but I'll admit I was starting to get worried.

I'm delighted to accept this "prestigious" "award" on behalf of the whole team here at Homunculus Labs. Both of my readers will be only moderately surprised to see that someone else has visited the page and apparently found it amusing. Seriously though, the blogging community for WAR is one of the things that keeps me so involved with this game, and much love to Tulane, Goody, and all the other awesome bloggers out there, even those who didn't include me on their lists.

So here's my list of seven blogs worthy of your adoration. All of these folks are probably on someone else's list already, and if not they should be:

1. Dark Crag Dispatch. Squin and Wicce are really just embarrasing the rest of us with how awesome they are. Not afraid to tackle big topics or to tell funny, somewhat embarrasing stories. A must-read.

2. Waaagh. Well, it's bio break now, but really, Syp is the gold standard. I'll read his blog whatever it's called.

3. Blame the Healer. Dont provides a great mix of insight, humor and perspective. Great features like the duels as well as some much needed love for WAR's healers.

4.Wide Eyed Newb A very engaging voice and some fantastic features, like the dark elf quest-giver flowchart and the how-to-seduce-a-witch-elf walkthrough.

5.Girl IRL Jennifer writes fantastic blog posts about things you and I don't think to write about, or don't write about nearly as well.

6. Stunty Stomper Thulf's blog is a different sort of beast. Not the sort of pablum you get from this blog, but a classier, more informative type of read. Polished presentation and a balanced, sage voice.

7. Way of the Chosen In addition to the tongue-in-cheek title of the blog, Rivs is always doling out the news and views for those of us who aren't as swift. Learned me plenty about playing a chosen and is a blog I look forward to reading every day.

And here's 10 possibly true, marginally interesting things about yours truly:

1. I have very little patience for complainers. If you don't like a game, don't play it. If something is bad, make a useful suggestion.

2. I have an autistic son. five years old. He once caused a raid-wipe on Archimonde in Mt. Hyjal (that's a WoW thing).

3. I'm a long-time pen-and-paper roleplayer, and I love to really get into character when I do that, but I have zero-to-no interest in playing an MMO on an RP server.

4. I've completed a first draft of a young adult fantasy novel and am in the painful process of editing the beast.

5. I like PvE more than PvP. There I admitted it.

6. I was working in Washington DC during 9/11 and the beltway sniper. Not fun. At all.

7. I have a master's degree that I don't use. But it's in English, so I guess that shouldn't be surprising.

8. I still think Paul Barnett is funny.

9. I no longer believe that Mark Jacobs is telling it like it is.

10. I like big butts.

Ekrund Arena

2009-03-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

The most interesting item from the upcoming patch notes is the creation of a special 6v6 gates of ekrund scenario.

Now I'm not sure what's so dire about leveling from 19-24 ... 19-21 is the creamy center of tier 2 oRvR, and 23-24 is like the coziest time to do t3 scenarios, renown and xp-wise, as well as a nice to time to do PQs when the rewards are rich (god forbid people have to PvE).

but fine 19-24. I'm sure they have data on this.

Anywho, 6v6 scenarios I think are a good idea. It's a poor man's arena, in some ways. Obviously you pug this at your own risk, but unlike larger group pvp, this gives the individual a significant role to play in the team's failure or success. It's a size that should allow more organization and strategy.

We'll see. I'll be interested to try it out. Should be a fun variation on the usual scenario play.

Super Epic Chosen Armor Prototype

2009-03-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

As a service to the fine armor designers at Mythic, I'm going to share my top-secret, state of the art, prototype ultra-high-end armor set design. For the chosen, naturally. Images here are a proof of concept, so you'll need to a little touch up, porbably, but as you'll see, i've done most of the heavy lifting for you.

So, we'll start with the fruit-of-the-loom apple:

Simple but lovely in his own way. Obviously we'll need an awesome helmet.

The most awesome possible helmet?

The gigantic eyeball:

Just think of the cool special on use abilities that sucker could have ... death ray, x-ray vision (hey ladies!), uh ... telescopic zoom? And, scorchingly hot.

You are probably reeling from the awesomeness, but I have not yet begun to blow your mind.

Shoulders. Ol' apple boy doesn't have any, but when he's super endgame-tastic, I hope he'll have these state-of-the-art zealot shoulders:

Two wee healers, constantly showering the chosen with HoTs. So money.

After the shoulders and helm, the most important piece of armor is the chestplate. Czarnal hopes to rock the Inevitable City commemorative chest plate when he's battling ... er ... Sigmar or something:

Not only is this a lovingly crafted representation of the Inevitable City, but paradoxically, it is also the actual inevitable city... and has a built in Auction House and Bank (It's Chaos, baby). Every Tank deserves one of these bad boys.

Gloves ... they do more than cover your hands, they also carry your weapons, so the highest of the high-end will help you carry even more:

That's right these sweethearts are equipped with additional hands. Two hander and two shields? Yes we can.

Boots. Two parts to the boot design, as any elite boot designer will tell you. The knee and the foot. For the knee, I prefer a troll head, but really any scary monster bit will do. For the foot: flames.

now that is an armor set with all the panache and verve and ... zing? you could possibly want. But, you ask nervously, how does it look all together. The answer: Awesome.

Still, something is missing. Ah, of course. The belt. Well given the finely tuned balance of the aesthetic effect here, you'll probably want to go subtle. And I agree.

My choice: Bloodthirster head.

Preferably the bloodthirster head will make some sort of bloodthirster-y noises: slavering, bellowing, paeans to Khorne, that sort of thing.

So there you have it. The pinnacle of chosen armor design. You don't have to thank me, I'm happy to help out.

By the way, I'll be 40 soon, so you can just send me my set in the mail.

Cheers,

Czarnal

Red Rover, Red Rover Send Order Right Over

2009-03-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

Last Night brought yet another assault on the IC. Instead of churning into the city defense instances, we put together a skirmish/blockade warband. Eventually parking ourselves right in front of the entrance to the city siege. Is this kind of a dick move? Sure it is. On the other hand: completely legitimate defense strategy as its set up now, and it's not like order has never seen the inside of the IC.

The trick is that you can't enter the instance portal if you're in combat, which I'm guessing a lot of order didn't know or forgot, cause they kept trying to bulldoze past us.

As far as the advantages of this tactic for destro. Well, I'm not entirely sure, and wasn't consulted, but here's my guesses:
1. more of a nuisance: they respawn, what back at their CW warcamp? that would suck.
2. oRvR influence. Is this better than what you get in the city defense instances? no idea.
3. low levels? Not sure what the level reqs are to participate in city defense, so maybe it was an accomodation for the lowbies (like me) in the WB.

Anyway it was fun. We definitely rained on the order parade.

A couple oddities that were new to me. The ram pad giving us grief:

Every time it was killed it would sort of bitch at us about not having won yet. Kind of surreal and funny.

The other odd bit was the engineer who somehow got onto the other side of the instance portal.

There's no line of sight I guess from that position, but he must've been pretty edgy while he was camped there. Kudos to him, though, eventually he went out of combat and snuck into the instance.

Fun times, and some good scrapes in the mix. T4 oRvR definitely has a nice sense of consequence to it. Your presence in the fight has real effects on the war outcome, in a way that I never felt at the lower levels.

Pimp My Chosen

2009-03-26T09:52:00.001-07:00

I'm in a pickle of a dilly of a jam, as Ned Flanders might say. Czarnal is starting to get some nice looking gear, but I'm still loath to cough up big bucks to dye his crappier pieces of gear to match the nicer items. Case in point:

Now I've got my three pieces of Devestator gear, which come in a nice red color with a dark grey trim. Very pretty, but to dye the rest of my gear to match would cost serious shekels. So I've gone the cheap route here, dyeing my other gear cheap neutral colors.

But I'm not loving it. So I pose to the community, to you, gentle reader, this question: How do I get a nice look without breaking the bank? Some of these pieces will be upgraded very soon. My belt in particular is kind of terrible.

Any thoughts on working in a secondary color scheme? Should I just say a tearful goodbye to the nice dark red and go for a matching set?

I've had sets in the past where all my armor except for one piece, say the helmet, was one color and the helmet was a different contrasting color: Say light gray armor with a dark blue helmet. I thought that looked kind of nice.

Tying in the secondary colors might be a way to give a sense of unity to the look.

Also, while I'm on the subject, Please Mythic, let us dye our shields. Shields are like the most obviously paintable-part of a set of gear, and the visual impact of the shield for those slinging one is considerable.

Warhammer: Celebrities of Reckoning

2009-03-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

Well, of course, Syp beat me to it.

"SYYYP!!"
/waves fist futilely at the sky

But we have slightly different takes on this important, really critical, matter.

My idea is to catalogue the celebrities that most look like/reflect the various WAR races, while SYP goes the casting call route. I'm going to focus on the ones that are interesting to me, but if you have good ideas for the rest, I'll be happy to add.

Anyway off to the races:

CHAOS:

For the chaos dude, there can be only one: Motorhead's Lemmy.
Haggard: check.
Muttonchops: check.
Badass: check.

If you wanted to go with a chaos gal, the obvious choice here for me is Amy Winehouse. She looks like a zealot already. Wasted by drugs rather than chaos, I suppose but the feel is right, even if her hair looks more Witch Elf than Zealot.

DARK ELF:

Jonathan Rhys Meyers was born to play a gothy-elf in a dress. He did a nice turn as Steerpike (shown here), one of my favorite bad guys. The key is to be a pretty-boy, uppity, and cruel. Put that boy in a man dress and give him a goblet!

GREENSKINS:
Pick your favorite lantern jaw for orc and big nose for a goblin...really nobody looks like these guys.

DWARF:
Put Jack Black in a dorky suit of armor and you've got a probably drunken dwarf (imagine a LOTR sizing effect if that's a big hangup for you).

HIGH ELF:

Tilda Swinton has the ethereal/androgynous/attractive-but-not-sultry high elf thing going on. No point in doing a male/female for the high elves. Not that much difference and Tilda can handle either one, I reckon.

EMPIRE:

I might go like an Ed Harris route if I was looking Warrior Priest. Obviously if you were thinking of the ladies of the Empire, or even dude wizards, knights, or witch hunters, you'd go elsewhere. I reckon Patrick Stewart could make a fabulous bright wizard.

Ceci n'est pas une Zerg

2009-03-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe I'm picking nits here, but I see in oRvR all the time some really daft, whiny kinds of things. Like last night in t3, the leader of the warband I was in said something to the effect of "friggin' order, all they ever do is defend!"

...

O-kay.

But the most common, is the zerg complaint. "Just another zerg," people say. "They're just going to zerg it, so why bother." This is an interesting meme. As far as I can tell what people really mean when they say zerg is "charge at us aggressively with superior numbers."

I mean really. Literally, if they were "zerging" I would imagine there would be a motley swarm of order all in a big pile, all clawing or slashing or whatever away at the first thing in sight. But really, that's not what's happening.

Certainly, when you have excessive numbers ... more than you need ... you might play a bit looser with your tactics, but the point is the numbers are the defining factor.

Which I guess is why people call it a zerg. But, the thing about zerg as a verb is that it has a negative connotation. It's dismissive. "Way to zerg, order."

Really, the complaint is number imbalance. Which is a real issue. Part and parcel of oRvR I suspect, but a real issue.

But seriously, we don't need to act like the other team is being cheap or is somehow lame because they outnumber us. That's just sour grapes. And no one likes sour grapes.

Except the zerg.

the second M in MMO

2009-03-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

When I first started playing WoW many moons ago, the least interesting thing about MMOs for me was the multiplayer part of it. Well, let me qualify that. I was interested in playing online with my real-life friend that encouraged me to try it out.

And yet, over time, that part of the game has become a real pleasure for me. Now, a couple of qualifiers. I'm not Johnny Chats-a-lot. I don't tend to blather away in region chat or even to chit-chat a ton in guild chat about random nonsense. These are okay things, but not my cup of tea. But there's a lot of social interaction even for a sometimes reclusive. Let's take a look in numbered list form!

1. Real-life friends. These are the gold-standard in some ways. People you already know and presumably trust. People you can talk about the game with outside of it. They're a great boost to the experience. But they come with a sort of cost too. Whenever you get a real-life friend into a game, there's a certain amount of chaperoning you may feel compelled to do and a bit of uncertainty. You know this person in real life, but how are they in game? Do you have to show them around, explain everything? Are they going to lean on you to make their experience interesting?

Of course the inverse is true as well. My RL friend in WoW got me into the guild I stayed with my entire tenure in the game, got me a raid spot, tried to buoy me up in the guild, draw me out of my shell. I've done the same for others. These relationships have to be nurtured.

2. In-game friends. Sort of the odd mystery of the MMO is the way it facilitates real friendships. You find some kindred spirit and do a few things together. Maybe you chat about your lives a bit, then the next thing you know, your gaming experience is richer than it would be without them. You check to see if they're online, you work together at the game, sharing it and exploring it and developing a common experience: inside jokes and running gags, stories and adventures completed or failed.

I come to this level less easily I think than others. My current guild in WAR has great people in it that I feel are becoming friends, and I couldn't be more delighted. For me this is like lightning in a bottle. I don't expect it, but it's a magical thing.

3. Acquaintances and the friendly wave. There's a lot more to socializing in an MMO than friends though, and this is the part that I think many people don't appreciate. The wonder of some social parlay on the incidental level. Open parties are a great facilitator for this. Sometimes you're working on a PQ and someone else slings you an invite, or you do to someone you spy. Now you're working together. You win or lose together. It's a great opportunity to have a very casual interaction with people. You crack a joke, you discuss a little strategy. You share some gossip or talk about the game. It may last a half-an-hour and then you may never see the person again, but when there's a show of humanity, of personality, its surprisingly rewarding.

I've done PQs with a lot of random folks. Had little conversations with strangers about whatever ... the lore, the game, the event at hand. It's like an amuse bouche: it's an unexpected little treat. Discrete and spontaneous. For me, probably the most pleasant surprise in online gaming is that you can have charming, human conversations with people that you're not invested in and who aren't invested in you.

4. Adversary. I have to say I haven't found the relationships of this sort that strong yet. There have been order at various tiers that I've remembered. Maybe that I've gone out of my way to kill or have done the same to me, but leveling it sort of comes and goes. This can be a pretty fun relationship too, and fairly unique to gaming. The respectful rivalry. Sometimes not so respectful. I'll be interested to see if this is more prevalent as I near the level cap.

I never had this sort of relationship in WoW either, but I do remember the sort of adversary celebrity. The awesome PvPer, or guild whose apppearance brings terror. I have high hopes there will be some of that in WAR's endgame as well.

***

I've seen a lot of blog posts about people disenchanted with WAR because their friends are leaving the game. I get that. Good in-game friends are a commodity, but they're not as rare as people seem to think. To me it seems that insulating ourselves into some tight group of friends, while very natural is also self-injuring. My WoW guild over the 3 years I was in it had a massive amount of turnover, a revolving cast of characters, if you will. And each time this happens, there's sadness of course, but then you find, to your surprise (or mine at least) that among the new crew there are more funny, smart, interesting people.

So hold on to your friends, to be sure, but don't forget that there's more interesting, funny, nice people out there than just those on your friends list.

Lrn 2 Scenario ... the Destro Way

2009-03-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome, servants of evil, or as we like to call it around here, "badness." The world of Destro scenarios can be a little confusing at first, so I present this handy three-step guide to Scenario-ing the Destro Way.

Focus You see that bright wizard over there? That's right, up on the hill, looking all smug and fiery. That guy. That guy needs to eat soil, am I right? Make it your mission, your quest, your personal jihad. Follow him to the ends of the earth. Leave your companions behind. Be singleminded. Sure he's got a pocket healer and there's a tank circling around him debuffing, snaring and knocking you around, but does that mean you should change targets or regroup? Hell. No.

Self-sufficiency Zealots, shamans, Disciples of Khaine. We love them right? Of course we do. That's why we must never, ever help them out. The path to fulfillment is hard won. Why would you heal another healer? They've got their own healing spells! And if you're a dps class, well, there's that bright wizard again! Tanks, now I know you may be thinking. I can help this healer, and make the whole destro force stronger. But you can't. Better to just charge into the fray making a ridiculous spectacle of yourself. Better yet, just jump into the lava.

Gumption Sure you and all your allies have been killed, and order is camping your respawn point, but that's no reason to gather your forces and reorganize. Organization is for order. This is chaos, baby! Just run right out there. That bright wizard is somewhere up there. You're sure to get a heal when you run as fast as possible away from your allies. You're leading the charge after all!

And don't sit back and defend a node. That sort of behavior is for lackeys and lesser minions. Just rush past that flag, leave yours undefended, ignore the so-called "goal" and "objectives". The only real objective is spilling blood, am I right? If they wanted you to defend, they wouldn't make it take so long.

***

Okay so there you have it. Three easy steps to help you scenario ... the Destro way. Good luck and good being-hunted! And remember, if it's not bad, it's not Destro!

Playable races: idle speculation

2009-03-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

At some point I think we can hope to see additional playable races. Not soon probably, but at some point. So just out of idle speculation, here are some thoughts on race expansion.

Destruction races:

The obvious choice here is skaven I think. Skaven are chaos worshippers and have a variety of interesting classes ... plague monks, assassins etc. Everybody loves a good rat-man right? I hope we see skaven as a playable race, but at the same time, I hope they get a design overhaul. Games Workshop skaven are quite a bit more impressive and sinister looking than the much more authentically rat-like skaven currently in WAR. You give me a good redesign of the skaven, and I'll roll one.

Other possibilities: well, you have the other chaos factions. Probably a long shot but you could develop some interesting dynamics by making say slaanesh worshippers playable, or even nurgle. Khorne is probably right out, given the single-minded bloodthirst of that faction.

Other than chaos factions and nurgle, you have ... maybe the undead? People like undead, particularly vampires, and Mark Jacobs has indicated some interesting in developing at least content in that direction, so I think that's a definite possibility.

Very long shot: chaos dwarfs. Chaos + dwarfiness = weird fun? I guess. Wouldn't count on it though.

Order races:

A little bit trickier here. Some people are guessing lizardmen. I think that would be a smart move, but might take a bit of lore jiggering. Lizardmen are, if I recall correctly, heriditary enemies of the skaven, but they aren't really part of the civilized races gang. Would be a nice move that could help to boost order population quite a bit, if they're done well.

Other possibilities are basically variations of what we have now: other human kingdoms, particularly Bretonnia, which is pretty well developed and is a nice counterpoint to the Empire. Bretonnia is a bit weak as a faction for a couple of reasons though: not much magical or religious tradition that I can recall, and even more poofy and flamboyant than empire folks.

The other race variant order could see is Wood Elves. Could be order-elves done right, but might end up feeling very similar to high elves.

So that's how I'm handicapping it at this point. Am I missing anything obvious? Any lore pros out there have thoughts on these races and what they could bring to the table? For some detailed analysis of undead, skaven and lizardmen armies, check out the nice thread at Warhammer Alliance.

Gold Bag Santa Claus UPDATED

2009-03-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

This may be a well-known phenomenon, or maybe it's a bug, and I'm spilling the beans, but it's an interesting trick for those of you who PQ.

The master looter can hand out bags. Now this may not always work, and maybe it only works when you haven't touched the chest, but if you manage it, you can distribute any of the bag drops to anyone in the party.

I was the beneficiary of this in a ch.9 pq a while back and it just occured to me that people might not know about it. In the PQ, a higher level DoK won 1st place in contribution and the top reward, a blue bag. The Dok took master looter and then distributed the bag to me.

Theoretically this should work in any chest drop situation, although in large PuGs its probably not worth the grief. But if you win a bag you don't need, you may be able to hand it off to someone who does.

EDIT (3/30):

Got this to work with some tweaking. Post patch 1.2, fyi. Here are important considerations:
1. master looter must be high bag winner,
2.must have loot preferences set to loot all (instead of uncommon the default).
3. auto-loot should be off
4. have master-looter on before boss fight starts (Not 100% sure it needs to be on before fight starts, certainly before it ends).
5. The person to receive a bag must not have looted one yet.

I'm pretty sure you can set master looter to on, and then change the master-looter, but I haven't actually confirmed this.

Anyway. It works. Turn off auto-loot, set loot to "all" and enjoy.

Too much of a good thing ...

2009-03-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

Who likes gear upgrades? I sure do. And yet, I'm coming to believe that there's too many good gear sets for leveling.

Let me explain. In Tier three, there are really 5 sets of quite good gear you can get:

The stalker set, obtained by completing RvR kill quests and then killing hero mobs
The devastator set, obtained from oRvR and renown vendors
The Mayhem set, from PQ gold bags
The Redeye set, from Gunbad
and the oRvR influence reward armor ... not really a set, but matched armor of a very high quality.

Each of these in a vacuum would be worth obtaining, but there isn't a vacuum, instead there's an overabundance of choices.

So what do people do? They choose the path of least resistance. Typically this means devastator, with maybe the oRvR influence to supplement.

Sure you might go for the stalker set, it's pretty easy to get, but the level requirements and relatively low quality make it a temporary solution.

Redeye, meanwhile, is left in the dust.

Yesterday, I noticed a comment in a post on Way of the Chosen by WAR's resident sourpuss Snafzg (love ya, Snaf, don't ever change) in which he complained about the randomness of drops in Lost Vale. To paraphrase, he writes that we shouldn't get drops from dungeon bosses that noone in the party can use.

My initial response was that this is how it is. WoW has always been like that, and it's one of the things that makes achieving a good set of gear so rewarding. It's a time sink sure, but that's part of the business of MMO's.

But on second thought, I think I'm coming around to his way of thinking.

1. RvR gear is not really random: winners are chosen by contribution (theoretically at least) and they get a drop they can use ... maybe one they already have, but not something for a different career.

2. dungeons are on lockdowns. You can't farm them really. Even gunbad has some length of lockdown, so you can't just do the Masta Mixa over and over until you get your drop.

3. Gear is career specific, not by type. In WoW you may get healing plate, only usable by a paladin, or you might get spelldamage cloth, usable by a number of classes. It's less restrictive.

PvE may be meant to be second fiddle to RvR in WAR, but it shouldn't be punitive. I'm fine with random drops, but it discourages groups attempting these dungeons, particularly when there's no specific need to do so (ie. Wards). What's the solution. I don't expect or particularly want to get perfect loot every time. But with tokens (or broken gear in WAR parlance) and chest drops (rewarding class specific loot to the winner) you dramatically increase the likelihood of a usable drop, without ever getting to 100%.

I've done 4 dungeon runs on Czarnal. 3 of these have ended in boss kills, not one of them has awarded a usable piece of gear. Meanwhile, in our last Gunbad run we got 2 PQ gold bags and redeye helms for Czarnal and our healer, Shennas. It's a good system, lets get it onto bosses.

And while you're at it, lets knock back some of the RvR rewards. Do we need devastator and oRvR reward armor? I know its important to have a critical mass of RvR players, but the rewards dramatically outweigh the challenge at this point, and are sabotaging the other choices.

PvE impressions from a WoW true-believer

2009-03-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

My good friend Xill ventured into WAR last night on a trial account. He's a hardcore WoW player and like me a PvE-first player. I was eager, if a little scared, to get his impressions.

Turns out we have very similar takes on the PvE. He rolled a marauder and played the first 5 or so levels solo. Then I grouped up with him on a disciple and we churned through a mixture of content: easy and normal PQs, oRvR, quests and scenarios.

His take, in short, is as follows:

The World is very cool looking.
the PvE is interesting and engaging.
Levelling is too fast.

Now this may come as a shock to people, but I have to agree. Leveling, particularly in tier one, but arguably throughout the process, is very fast. This is not a big problem if you want to RvR, but if you are interested in doing PvE it can be a problem.

Why? Because PvE is a cumulative experience. Completing quests and quest sequences develops the story line of the character and conveys the development of the character in both the larger narrative and personally.

When you out-level content that you are working on, you have to decide to abandon the content or to continue with content that offers rewards of reduced value: less xp from kills, less useful prizes. Eventually, you have to decide to proceed in the narrative order to a stage that is already, before you've begun it, of low value, or skip a portion of the narrative to move toward more lucrative hunting grounds.

This problem is already in place just from doing quests and influence grinds in the given chapters. From those methods alone you may outpace the narrative, but I'd guess that it would stay close enough to not be overly jarring. However, when you add in scenarios and oRvR -- components of the game you're strongly encouraged to participate in, and that offer excellent returns, the outpacing of the narrative gets extreme.

So what's the fix. It's as easy as it is impossible. Reduce XP from RvR, possibly even reduce xp from mob kills and/or increase the amount needed to level. Would this kill RvR? I doubt it. There's already several strong motivators to RvR: oRvR rewards, renown gear, as well as the separate Renown Rank system.

Reducing XP from RvR and possibly increasing it for long quest strings, dungeons and other more-intensive PvE components would revitalize PvE and maybe put to rest permanently the misguided notion that WAR's PvE is inferior.

Won't happen, but it should.

Craftmaster 3000

2009-03-15T06:56:00.001-07:00

Do you guys craft? I craft. I'm sort of a crafting junkie. WAR's system is relatively easy and is both grind and crafting alt friendly (no quests for recipes for example), but one isse I have with it is that it's pretty opaque: higher level mats are better than lower, but in what way? Some of this we know broadly from patch notes, but the values and particular characteristics are frustratingly obscured.

The not-sexily-named Crafting Info Tooltip ... fixes that in a simple way, by adding the nuts and bolt numbers to the tooltip. Combine with moth for simple, up-front crafting data.

F*ck You Friday ... the 13th

2009-03-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

In honor of my return from the brink of death (not really), I present unto you, gentle soul, a fuck-you friday the 13th.

1. Warband Hall-monitors: Fuck you self-important windbags. Seriously, telling people to listen to the warband leader or badgering people that happen to not be interested in the mighty struggle of taking unopposed BOs, or generally acting like you have some sort of mantle of authority. You don't. If people are wasting spots you need, tell your WB leader, get them kicked. If people are being rude or disrespectful and it bugs you, vocally support the warband leader, or better yet, explain why their ideas aren't as good.

2. Scenario phantoms: Queued up for a scenario that you really aren't going to join? Fuck you. Now it happens, I get that. It pops fast sometimes, you aren't ready. Or really slowly, and well its stage three of that PQ. Hey no problem. But if you hang on to the queue the max time, if you do this over and over again, you are why the scenarios are always off balance. Also ... if you're in a warband taking BOs or something, don't queue the whole group. You're not going to do scenarios. So knock it off.

Actually, now that I think about it, I really want to say fuck you to unbalanced scenarios, which i guess is a mythic complaint. People are lame, mythic, you know that. It's great that you want us to have like eight minutes to make up our mind or not if we really want to go into the scenario we queued for but its leaving them unbalanced ... a lot. That wastes everybody's time. So, fuck you, and now please sort it out. Thanks!

3. Choppas and Slayers who are to good too play defense. Basically that's all of you guys, as far as I can tell. I thought "it'll be fun to heal tier one scenarios right after choppas and slayers are introduced." WRONG. Here's why. So we're charging up the hill in nordenwatch, i'm behind a group of slayers on my DoK. At the fort are waiting a group of slayers, they charge slightly to the side of the choppas in front of me. Choppas promptly ignore them and leave me to die. Quickly and brutally.

When I chided the group for not defending healers in SC, i was told to fight at the flag.

Yeah, no soup for you, oh and fuck you, too.

4. PvE bashers. Two flavors of annoying for me here: the first is technically, the PvE Hater. This noble beast roams the RvR fields loudly proclaiming the lameness of taking undefended BOs or keeps not because it is boring (which in the case of the BOs it is, unless you're group is size three members or smaller) but because it is PvE. Chances are, good sir, that you suck at PvE. So, fuck you.

The second, more common is the PvE denigrator. The "pve in this game sucks" songbird. To you, sweet prince, I say, do you do the pve? Are you completing quest strings? are you doing PQs all the way through, dungeons? If so, then I grant you your opinion. If not ...

come closer ...

fuck you.

Bitter Rivals in review

2009-03-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

So, bitter rivals is at an end I guess. I never did catch the bug though I did many of its special tasks: swearing at friendly players and/or myself over and over again, picking up choppa corpses for no clear reason. Some other stuff I didn't realize was part of the event, and the new scenario: ~~Wrath of Khaine!~~ The twisting tower!

Okay, not the biggest fan of this event. Syp I see gave it a higher rating than night of murder. Hmm. I liked night of murder much much more, though I'm not entirely sure why. Let me take a stab at it:

1. Bitter what now? Aren't rivals like competitors? As opposed to enemies? What is their rivalry? To be the most beloved melee dps class? So I don't think the title makes sense, but that underscores the issue I have with this live event: the whole thing doesn't make sense. I like the fighting orcs and dwarves, I like the pq bosses in the rvr zones, but ... these things aren't new... and they're not temporary either, right? Don't dwarves and greenskins always hate each other? Isn't that the schtick? I just don't get the everlasting enmity as a theme for a one-time event.

2. Live "Event" Part of the problem for me is that bitter rivals didn't feel like an event, it felt like a set of quests, a one-time influence bar. There was no day ... its not a holiday, its an event, fine, but there was no event either: no culminating battle, no opening of the gates, nothing to commemerate the period.

Night of murder had this problem as well, but had a couple good visual effects, particularly the burning skulls which were omnipresent in scenarios during the event.

WoW holidays for all of their schtickiness had a strong visual presence: every zone, every town, many npcs and buildings were modified, color text was modified, everything looked "holiday" and so you didn't need to check the tome to see that something was happening, you knew it.

3. Maybe that's why they're bitter ... The various bits, they just didn't make any sense together, that I could tell: I mean the swearing at people, okay sure. Weapons of the fallen, the rvr PQ, sure. But the tentacle pies, the twisting tower? Seriously, that's a big stretch. This seems to me like the "hey lets get these new classes out the door" event, with a vague theme sprinkled on top.

In short, lots to do, but no sense that you're doing anything meaningful, no sense that there's anything going on, and no real sense at all.

But other than that, I liked it :)

Dungeon tanking techniques

2009-03-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

So I'm not the world's greatest tank. I can accept this. There are things I only do so-so like holding aggro and mitigating damage. I'm not a slouch, but I've seen better. Some things I do pretty well though, and these are the little things that other tanks may not do at all.

1. The pull: when, where and how. WAR has relatively easy pulling, Mobs don't seem to link based on proximity, which is normally a big concern. Still there's more to the pull than just throwing an axe. Does the mob include ranged dps? you'll need to either walk over to them to engage them in melee and then walk them back, taunt to interrupt casts (when applicable), or my favorite, use a line-of-sight break to make them run to you (LoS pull).

When possible pull back to a clear, out of the way area. This will help you avoid patrols and minimize the danger of runners wandering into other groups. runners don't aggro other groups automatically in WAR, but they may reset if left alone and if you have to chase into another group, you will body-aggro them.

2. the Turn: An important but often overlooked technique. When you bring mobs into melee range, run around them so that they turn without moving to face you. This does two things: it exposes their backs to melee (I assume that like WoW there's no blocking from behind) and lets you face your party, so you can easily see if a mob attacks someone else.

3. the Intercept: save your taunts for mobs that are trying to run after a healer, so you can intercept them and easily bring them back into the fold. Tanks should not taunt off each other. It's a waste. It happens of course, from time to time, but there are lots of better uses for taunts.

4. the Juggle: The hardest technique of the bunch. Often you'll need to tank multiple mobs, when you do so, you can't simply attack one target. If you do, the others will eventually switch to the healers. But if you spread your attacks to broadly, the target being focus-fired (hopefully that's what your dps is doing) will turn on a DPSer. So you put the majority of your attacks on one target, and try to corral the others with AoE, taunts, and occasional attacks.

There's no magic formula to this, but if you watch what happens and adjust you can easily figure out a good balance.

Offtanks share these responsibilities, tending to focus on intercepts and strays. The offtank can also be the eyes in the back of the main tank's head, seeing what's coming up from ahead of the party, while the MT focuses on the mobs in play.

Patch Day Distractions

2009-03-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I for one never get anything done after a big patch. There's always a zillion things to do that aren't really playing the game at all. Sometimes its just futzing with addons that eats up my time, in other cases its a respec. Patch 1.2 was the mailbox game edition of patch day distractions. I hope for your sake that all your dye producing junk was in your bag or bank, but if like me you use the mail as an ancillary bank (running across IC is nice and all, but inconvenient to my on-the-go-murdering-people lifestyle). Based on the gaggle aroun the mailbox in the IC quad, I'm guessing my strategy is pretty common. Anyway, mail service was hella slow. So slow that I often just clicked an attachment a couple of times and then opened the next one, hoping for the best.

Compounding the problem was the untimely demise of zMailMod, as shown here:

Now some folks in the new (and totally obnoxious) IC region chat were saying that zmailmod still worked, albeit slowly. I can't say, but it didn't strike me as at all responsive.

So yeah mail was hosed. On the other hand the new multi-attachment thing worked perfectly and more quickly than zmail ever did.

Back to that IC region chat. Such a terrible waste of time. Useful, I imagine for buying and selling and all, but oh so annoying. There was actually a giant political argument going on. MMOs and politics are not friends, people. Half of the people trolling IC chat aren't old enough to vote, and the other half didn't vote.

Seriously, just say no.

So as everyone no doubt knows deprecated crafting reagents got the ol' dye job. 10 veggies or 20 animal bits convert into chaos black dye. By the way, what a nice touch. Black dye is very desirable (for destruction anyway) but not at all attainable before this little treat. I will treasure and hoard my dyes until I know they'll go to good use.

But about the conversion process. I have to say that I admire mythic's handling of this. By which I mean, they didn't just whisk it all away. There's a little color text and a conversion action. It made the whole thing kind of fun.

Items that were reclassed or converted to another item also had a "touched by the winds of chaos" bit that I thought was pretty nice. In some cases, you could even use the old item instead of converting it, I saw that setup on some apoth reagents that got cultivation conversions.

Vials, at least high end ones, got a special conversion description that caused me some alarm:

But no worries, it converted to a similar level epic quality vial. I thought i was going to have a pocket full of broken glass for a minute.

Finally a /bonk to myself for not having a bit of faith in mythic. If you've been in Troll Country recently you've probably gotten some "Torn" equipment. Shoulderplates, weaponry, robes all of it only said "this isn't convertable to something usable by your class." I knew, I knew that this was just a bug, and yet ... you couldn't disenchant, or vendor, so when my bags filled up a trashed these, a lot of them, probably a dozen. I had exactly two left, stored in an alt's bank. Lo and Behold come 1.2, they're fixed:

Yeah, I probably shouldv'e destroyed those worn garments in my bag before i killed all that nice and valuable gear. Oh well. Live and learn.

Hope you all had a fun patch day.

I'm so excited ... I just can't hide it.

2009-03-03T12:42:00.000-08:00

Merry Patch Day to one and all.

Looks like a good un, and should be an interesting log-in tonight. Here's in order the things I'm excited to see in action:

1. Crafting changes. Yes, I'm a crafting geek, but I spend a lot of time on this stuff, and it all sounds very promising. Buff pots persist through death? yes please! Easier cultivating and talisman crafting? Oh hell yeah. New cultivating gathering skill and a whole new apothecary interface to boot? Lots of promise here. I'll pour a distilled water on the ground for the brothers who ain't around ... namely apothecary drops from scavenging, but I'm still very excited about what's awaiting me here.

Also, 20 decomissioned crafting reagents gets a limited time dohicky. I bet i've got 20 of these. I hope I get a pony.

2. Class changes. Chosen seems to have gotten a decent tweak, we'll see. Nothing here stands out as mind-blowing, but that doesn't mean it won't have a big impact. Also, free mastery refund ... yay? Not the biggest fan of the mastery paths, tbh. Don't really get my blood pumping. One long path ... with some spells? And tactics? eh, okay, I guess. Maybe I'd be more excited if it did a better job of defining roles, but I'm not feeling it dawg.

3. Gunbad changes! Okay, your mileage may vary, but I'm in a major Gunbad mindset, and it sounds like it got some nice lovin' particularly a boss loot upgrade, which is always welcome. Rare dyes are sweetness.

4. easy pqs: I've got a nice little guild so I'm not quite as needy for easy pq's as I might be, but these are still very welcome.

5. Bitter rivals ... I guess. Meh. I know I'll get into this, but I'm just not really that gung ho about the rewards. Nice and all, but nothing to get too excited about. Still I'm an influence junkie, and pretty competitive so I know I'll be pushing hard to get this despite my general indifference to the loot.

I'll be curious to see what kind of world-impact this event has. Will I feel like .. oh this is totally "Bitter Rivals" when I log on? Will the event be immersive in any way? Night of murder had a little of this: the slaughterhags everywhere, the burning crossbones, the sinsearchers, but was still pretty easy to ignore.

Early access to the new classes? Not really for me. I'll probably make a choppa up at some point, but I'm not in any rush. No slayers thanks, I don't do the dwarf thing.

spell effects, scenarios and shoulder plates

2009-03-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

Hiyo!

Good WAR weekend for me: Gunbad right wing run, first piece of stalker set, lots of scenarios. A couple random thoughts:

Spell effects settings. So the settings on spell effects work like this: choose performance level (fastest framerate, balanced, or super awesome ... something like that, I'll never know) and who's effects you show: none, self, party, warband, all.

Default for me was fastest and party (i think). So what's curious about this is that mobs that have spell effects, like say the Herald of solithex the final boss of the third PQ on the right side of Gunbad, drops these little purple volcanos everywhere, but you'd never know if your spell effects weren't set to "all". You see nothing. And then you die.

So a couple of thoughts about this: one, why would I want to see friendly effects, but not hostile ones? I'd much rather for performance reasons see say, unfriendly only, or self and unfriendly.

Also, does this mean there are opposing PC effects that I've been missing? If so, what the fudge! Why would you let me turn this off?

Okay, so as a side note on that fight, my party-mates, good folks all, told me that we should fight the herald at the top of the ramp by the mixa cauldrons. I'm a noob to the dungeon so I wasn't going to argue, but yeah, I think that's wrong.

At the top you have three narrow paths that meet by the entrance to the final wing boss, and you sort of cluster in there. So when the herald drops his volcanos, you have nowhere to go but back and back. Tank him on the bottom and sidestep, imo. Has Prince Malchezzar taught us nothing?

Okay, where was I. Oh yeah. Jeez there's a lot of scenarios in tier 3. I thought I'd done them all when i posted on friday. Wrong. six scenarios. Some pretty good ones too. I'm particularly fond of Talabec Dam. While its possible to just zerg up at the bomb drop in the center, it seems to encourage small group fights, which I quite fancy. Also, it just strikes me as very narrative in a way that many others aren't.

The crater is more of a king of the hill sort of deal, reminds me of the old days of Tarren Mill sieging in WoW, sort of a big standoff with the occasional bloody charge.

Still haven't done any high pass cemetary, so I'll be curious to see what that's like.

***

Okay last random thought, everyone knows that WAR has borrowed liberally from WoW in play mechanics and such, and most everyone knows that WoW borrowed many aesthetic/world ideas from Warhammer, but it occured to me that perhaps the most important of these is the shoulder plates.

Seriously, giant shoulder plates should be copyright games workshop. Were others doing it in the late 80s and early 90s? Probably so, but no one made quite the art out of it that GW did. Warhammer 40k's space marines are sort of the poster child but the early realms of choas stuff, which was both fantasy and 40k also made full use of the gigantic flamboyant pauldron.

Nowadays it seems kind of like a standard, but it really isn't. There's no giant shoulder plates in Tolkien, or AD&D or any of the other sources for most of fantasy's design fundamentals. Giant shoulders are really a games workshop product.

how ya doin

2009-02-27T13:12:00.000-08:00

After three chicken-ings in close succession, two of which came in PvE zones, I decided to finally bid adieu to Tier 2. I'm only a night or so into Tier 3, but I've been lucky enough to do a fair bit of content.

Scenarios You know the one thing I didn't think when I was doing Mourkain Temple is "This place needs more lava!," but know I've got the molten core of scenarios: atmospheric but repetitive design: check, lava deaths aplenty (at least for me): check. Now all we need is Major Domo getting a smack down.

Temple of Isha was new, and I like it, its like a mini-siege mechanic. Maybe I like it because we crushed order. That usually helps.

The other one, Black Fire Basin I guess, was ... er, capture the flag again. Someone thought that Phoenix Gate was good, but what if it were like really huuuuge.

I'm not so sure. And what's with the glowy ball in the middle of the map? I spent a long time trying to click that dang thing.

I was very pleased with my ability to contribute. Not sure how much mileage I got out of my dischord spec healing debuff aura, but I felt like i was providing utility, so that's something.

And the rewards for doing scenarios? Daang. One scenario netted me 19k XP and nearly 4k renown. That is serious ROI.

Also did some PQs, but not enough to have a great feel for them yet. Did some quests in badlands, and was reminded how pleasant questing is in WAR. The interface is so good.

Speaking of which, Squin has a very nice WAR v. WoW post on Dark Crag Dispatch noting the quest interface (even with addons its not even funny how much better WAR is) and the kill rate/rest differences. Good stuff.

So yeah, T3, how ya doin? I'm looking forward to taking your loots.

blogging the business of WAR

2009-02-25T14:02:00.000-08:00

It seems like there's a growing number of bloggers writing predictive columns about WAR's business end -- the subscriber base, profitability, whatever. I understand why this is interesting to the people writing about it, but I'm not convinced that it's very useful.

Let's assume that everyone blogging about WAR's likelihood of long-term success or chances of survival or whatever knows more about this than you and me. Even given that, what's the benefit of these predictions to the reader? Aside from generating fear of investing time into the game, it doesn't do me much good.

Obviously anybody can blog about whatever they want (yay internet), but if you want WAR to succeed, if you are invested in the game, then I think this sort of conjecture is pretty self-sabotaging.

WAR Tier 1 v. WoW 1-15: A Tale of the Tape

2009-02-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, I came to WAR after playing World of Warcraft for over three years. In that time I made a lot of alts and levelled in every starting zone. I've basically done everything there is to do levels 1-15 in WoW.

In WAR, I'm less experienced but I've made enough alts and done enough Tier 1 in destruction side that I have a pretty good feel for what's on offer. So I'd like to present the following comparison for the amusement of you, my gentle reader:

	WAR	WoW
Zone design	Interesting, dramatic zones that express the race's aesthetic and the conflict at play.	Stylish, safe zones.
Winner: WAR The WAR starter zones are more varied and better represent the standing conflict. The detail of the landscapes and style of the art direction really draw you into the world. Some of the 8-15 WoW zones really shine, particularly Westfall and the Ghostlands, others are a bit monotone.
Engagement	Good movement through a variety of war camps with early quests to explore the other pairings helps draw you into the range of available actions, and the tome unlocks further reinforce the narrative and experience. Quests are a mixed bag, but are seldom narratively powerful.	Great quest flow pushes you into your race's story arc and keep you moving in a basically linear course. Zone transfering is available but can be cumbersome.
Winner: WoW in a nailbiter. Great quest pathing and simple options help to push you into your character. Some of the gain here though comes at the cost of range and option.
Itemization	You can actually acquire gear for all your slots in Tier One, and with dyes and influence rewards, there's pretty quick gear replacement. Often times the gear you're replacing will look the same, however. Some very nice looks, that really suggest the class's style come by midway through the tier.	Well, there's lots of options, if you can find them. But you'll be forced into stat-based choices with no customization available. Many slots will remain unfilled until near the end of this stage or throughout. Much of the gear is unappealing and/or dorky.
Winner: WAR Dyeing can get expensive but can yield remarkable effect. gear choices may be fewer but what you get is better looking by far.
Crafting	Early and easy access to crafting, at no cost, and easy and quick to level the early parts. Relatively low gathering requirements for what you produce. The downside is that you often can't go too far in your craft without auction house luck or an alt.	Many more choices, recipes, drops. Gathering is less interesting in yield and more often a seperate task. Harder but with more choices.
Winner: WoW WAR crafting is getting an overhaul that will offset this somewhat and the difference here is by design. Crafting is less robust, but less demanding in WAR.
Group PVE Content:	PQs for days. No dungeons to speak of, but so many PQs -- offering varied experiences, a feeling of earning your drops and influence rewards to supplement the experience.	A handful of dungeon opportunities (Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, and SFK right at the upper limit of these levels (all marked at 16/17+) and ragefire chasm means you have a few good dungeon runs opportunites, right at the end of these levels. Most of the time your group content will come from quests against elite mobs. These can be fun but offer meager rewards. Once you get to the dungeons you are in for a treat, particularly from deadmines and wailing caverns.
Winner: WAR Deadmines is better than any of the T1 PQs by a longshot but its right at the edge of WoW's Tier One. Most of the time you are killing hogger and undead miners. Not that great.
PvP	objective based outdoor RvR yielding easy-to-earn rewards, with separate reward grinds for each pairing, three lively scenarios to join from anywhere in the world, and a renown levelling system encourages, nay demands that you PvP. You will and you will enjoy it. Oh and there's renown gear too.	Ha ha ha. No. I guess you could do battlegrounds at 11-15, but it will really suck. You will be mercilessly ganked by level 19 twinks in rare gear with level 60 enchants. It will be soul sapping. Eventually you might earn some decent gear, but you can't wear it until level 18+. There's some world PvP on open servers, if you leave the protected zones, or seek it out, but it will be horrible as well. Level 80s will loiter around to corpse camp you (yes it happens).
Winner: WAR No, it's not really even close.

So the take away from this is don't worry about the buzz, don't worry about the company. Don't buy into the hype that there's no PvE, that half-empty zones are a death knell for WAR. There is PVE, the early zones and experience is still fun. Enjoy the game. Make up alts and replay tier one if the later game is that bad. Tier One WAR trounces level 1-15 WoW. It's not even close, and unlike WoW, the early parts of WAR are still getting better.

Maybe there are other, better tier ones out there in the MMO world, but too often people say WAR isn't doing well enough, so it sucks. This is a major logical fallacy. The game I'm playing is a lot of fun. More fun than WoW, the gold standard for MMO success. So don't piss on Mythic for not conquering the world. They made a good game, and are making it better. It's up to players who enjoy the game to spread the word, to recruit and to support it.

Keep Sieges again

2009-02-24T05:56:00.000-08:00

So last night offered another abortive attempt to take a defended keep. Someone in the warband asked how many order were defending and when told around a dozen, replied "and we're a full warband? What's the problem?" It's a fair question. Honestly, for a PvP-centric game i'm a bit surprised that people are so easily flustered. Straggling through the keep lord room, arriving in different groups, pathing in different ways to the pad or stairs: these things get you wiped.

So I left that warband as it floundered for a reason to exist and switched zones (to the elf t2 pairing). There I saw some other warband refugees loitering around in a zone that had an order defense around the keep and order controlled keep and objectives.

"Want to take BOs?" Yes, yes they did. So we formed a little group: Czarnal, a witch elf and a level 12 DoK. We gathered another on the way to the Unicorn Siege Camp objective.

There we handily took out the objective and an order defender. A couple more trickled in to their demise.

We took the other objective and our group started to swell, by the time we'd grabbed the second objective in Ellyrion we had two full parties, and people were talking keep siege.

Problem: only healer was the level 12 DoK. So I presented my patented strategy (tanking, focused DPS killing champs first and then Hero). The not-surprsing response: why kill the champs?

We went to the keep, and tried to run through to the pad. Surprise, our DoK dies on the way in, as do I trying to defend everybody else. That's why we kill the champs people.

Run back from Shadowlands, killing a WH on the way back (thanks for the renown, pal!)

Meanwhile, the rest of our WB: 2 tanks and something like 9 dps at this point are burning down champs ... with no healers.

This is my point. It's not hard.

We get back and handily, from the pad, kill the hero with 2 groups and only one healer.

If there had been order there would we have succeeded? probably not, but it's not unimaginable. Frankly we probably could have done it without the healer (though he did a great job). we had three high-level tanks. Taunt rotations, debuffs, and knockdowns will do wonders of mitigating damage.

So the project continues. I'll call it the Pug Tactics Project. Can a PuG be trained on the fly to succeed against difficult conditions? I think so, but time will tell.

***

Random Interlude

Orcs with bows? That guy's gotta have some self-image issues.

"Bows iz for gobbos! I no gobbo!"

/sobs uncontrollably

warband assumptions

2009-02-22T17:55:00.000-08:00

So maybe I wrong about the whole warband thing, but I think people (at least in my server/tier) are really unnecessarily spooked by the whole keep siege thing, and I think the reason is bad organization.

Let me try to work through this.

How many tanks, healers, and dps to kill 4 champs at the same time. Assume the tank is the same level as the champs. 1/1/1? Something like that. Say worse case it's 2/2/2 So that's one party in your warband. Maybe the champs in keeps are unusually fearsome, but if so, it hasn't been obvious to me.

So then there's a hero, say 1 tank, 3 dps, 2 healers. That's a second group. 2 groups with: 3 tanks, 4 healers, 5 dps should be plenty to quickly kill all five NPCs in the keep main chamber. Also, if you actually kill the champs, you have an easier time when the opposing faction shows up to defend, and can reassign all the champ crew to PvP or to hero killing.

so 2 decent groups. Then you need enough extra to deal with defending players. Assume that they are not organized, at least initially. You shouldn't need more players than they have, right? Let's say one group: 1 tank, 2 healers, 3 dps for that too. Though probably you could do 5 dps, 1 healer in a kill squad.

simple assignments:

champ team tanks and kills champs, pvp defense (aka Kill squad) helps kill champs until defenders show up. Hero team tanks and burns down hero.

That's it. Is this bad math? Maybe I'm wrong, I haven't had that much experience with all this, so maybe my assumptions are incorrect. But if not, then bad leadership/poor tactics devalues your group by ~25% or more: a full warband with the pad or renown stair "strategies" and nothing else will often wipe against less than a single party of defenders.

I lead a small warband last night, but we were too tiny (2 healers, 2 tanks, 4 dps) to take a keep, and our one attempt met up with a full order warband, so yeah, who knows. I'd be interested in other perspectives or experiences. Maybe i'm missing something.

"Patch Note Notes" or "Don't Take Away My Dryad Husks"

2009-02-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

So I finally bothered to look at the professions patch notes. Interesting stuff and promising I think. One change that will have a big effect on Czarnal (which they bafflingly refer to as a minor change): Scavenging will no longer drop apothecary reagents.

This makes sense: two gathering per crafting. The problem is that some of us are Scavenger/Apothecaries.

This was in my opinion probably the optimal combination. It's the only one I can think of that required no supplemantary gathering skill. Currently I can scavenge water and apothecary main ingredients. Cultivation? Where's your water, hon?

Now maybe Butchering provides water, but if it does I'm raising the bullshit flag. Spiders shouldn't carry bottled water is what I'm saying.

So now my lovely combination is completely hosed. What do I do? Respec to Talisman? Ugh and ugh. I may have to abandon scavenging, which I would hate as it is now.

Currently, scavenging is fantastically evocative. Much of the scavenging loot is nicely coordinated with what you are killing. Skeletons drop grimy grave dirt, or ghostly knucklebones. Dryads drop dryad husks, Nurglings drop demonic whiskers. Humans drop leeches and fleas, which is gross, but also pretty expressive of the world.

In the new order I guess they'll all drop fragments instead. It makes sense and is fairer I guess, but still ... I'll miss my horse leeches.

F**k You Friday

2009-02-20T06:12:00.000-08:00

Borrowed liberally from Achewood, it's Fuck You Friday. Here we go:

1. Bad Warband Leaders: Seriously, fuck you. Last night a number of destro parties were defending the keep in Marshes of Madness and merged into a warband. The new leaders were a certain guild who will remain nameless, but who I had grouped with before to less than stellar results.

The leadership orders us in all caps to go to Shadowlands. When any questions are asked, they are met with derision and insult. We ride to Elly and charge into the keep, and then up to the renown level. The plan is to jump down to the pad. Not sure why we needed to go to the third floor but there we were. And there we stayed. DONT JUMP DOWN. WAIT. Then nothing for like 10 minute. Meanwhile Order shockingly reinforces the position. Still nothing. They are planning in vent they say. We should join their vent if we want to contribute they say. But nothing is happening. Free tips:
A. assign tasks.
B. Communicate with your warband
C. Don't make it unnecessarily complicated
D. Don't bring underlevel people into the warband (level 8 in tier 2 = awesome). It's not classy.
D. Don't be dicks.

A bunch of us left at that point, and no doubt it all amounted to nothing. Awesome work guys, you are an inspiration.

2. Talisman Making level 49 why is it so freaking hard to find level 25 talisman ingredients? Why is it so hard to get from 40 to 50? Why have I not levelled from 49 to 50 after 6+ talismans all with level 25 ingredients. I've made this handy graphic to summarize the experience:

That is all. Have a lovely weekend.

Destination: Volkmar

2009-02-19T12:21:00.000-08:00

Just saw the herald item that announces free server transfers from Sylvania, and Azazel to Volkmar (and other lesser servers). I'm psyched that Volkmar is a destination server for two (probably obvious) reasons:

1. more people = more good times. Friend or foe. More characters is more action. Hit me up for a PQ or a warband! Or let me know your order character so I can /salute you as you own me.

2. bonus XP and renown for the big fat win. Don't get me wrong, I think levelling is reasonably paced, at least so far, but I do love a good bonus.

So if you have a say ~ level 18ish alt languishing on one of those servers, transfer on over and hit me up for some PQ or warband goodness. You know you want to. And remember our slogan:

Volkmar -- come for the endless war, stay for the cheese.

Seven Favorites

2009-02-19T06:03:00.000-08:00

When Syp commands, Czarnal obeys. ... Eventually.

So my selection of favorites will be skewed by my lack of WAR experience, but anyway, here ya go:

Favorite Zone: Inevitable City, baby! Seriously, this is the sickest city in MMOs: the Lyceum, the soulless servants, the pursuing fleshhounds ... its all good. It's the only place I've ever gotten one-shotted while I was walking around, twice in the same night, and been happy about it. It's dangerous and weird and dark. Love it. Now if only there were a crafting vendor near the Soul Vaults.

Favorite Race: Chaos. No brainer for me. Chaos is I think a riskier race-concept than you might think. It's not evil in a pretty way, it's not simply blood or cruel. It's deranged and diabolic and occasionally diseased and decripit. You've got your twisted mutants, your hunched lunatics ... that's good times.

Favorite Career: Chosen. This is sort of a default choice, given that I've only really played chosen and zealot. But I will say that tanking and pvp is a lot more fun and more interesting with the chosen than it was as a warrior. There's no simple sequence to holding aggro and/or mitigating damage, at least that I've figured, and no two button PVP strategy (spamstring + mortal strike ftw). So maybe it's a default choice, but pretty fun nonetheless.

Favorite WAR Feature: Public Quests. Seriously I love these lil guys. Sequenced fights, mini-dungeons, itsy-bitsy rep grinds ... call them what you will. They are pure PvE goodness.If I could get steady groups together I would do these all the time.

Favorite Skill: Guard. This is a seriously primo tanking skill. Not flashy, but so money. It's a classic two-birder: you got a high aggro party-member? Give him some extra mitigation and reduce the chance he pulls aggro. Also great way to show a healer a little love.

Favorite Scenario: Nordenwatch still, but it's closer than I would have thought. My reactions have changed since I wrote this. I like Mourkain Temple more now, as I have a better feel for the mechanic, and khaine's embrace, which I've enjoyed on my zealot. While Nordenwatch hasn't been nearly as interesting on the zealot as it was on Czarnal.

Favorite Live Event: Night of Murder. Another default answer for me, as it's the only one i've done, but I liked it. Got me out there sieging keeps, killing stubborn sinseekers, and generally mucking about. Plus I got to hang out with the hags!

Lursa's Blight

2009-02-18T09:27:00.000-08:00

This is a very fun PQ that I highly recommend. Go in cold, no hints or guidance, with a decent group and see how you do. Go ahead, I'll wait. Spoilers below.

..
..
..
..
..

You done now? See, totally cool!

Lursa's Blight is a three stage PQ with a couple interesting tricks.

Stage two: you have to kill 9 rot bearers. They are spawned in packs of three, all champs natch. What you don't expect is that they will resurrct each other, taking away your kill credits in the process. So what do you do? We tried a couple stategies (moving away from spawn point, kiting etc) before finding the right one: kill them all at the same time. Seems simple, but that's the fun of trying something you don't know the trick to.

The third stage has another wrinkle: the hero spawns with three normal adds. You kill them first of course, but then, wait, they all respawned. So you have to adjust to that one too.

This is the heart of what makes PvE fun. Surprising encounters and different kinds of challenges that require you to think on your feet, putting different responsibilities on the group members, forcing different, better play out of the group members.

RvR can do this too, but often it too becomes rote, and it tends to hone certain skills and strategies, rather than encouraging you to develop new strategies and solutions.

Another fun part of PQs is the simple surprise of the unexpected. Don't read the PQ summary before you try the Blightstone Trolls PQ. A fun surprise, at least for our group, and easy enough to do.

What are other great PQs I should seek out? all recommendations are welcome.

Tier One redux

2009-02-18T09:09:00.000-08:00

So over the weekend I trotted out my zealot for a second round of chaos tier one. Why did I repeat the same zone? A couple of reasons:

1. I like the chaos starting zones,
2. I wanted to play a zealot and its hard/impractical to move a character from their initial starting zone
3. I was planning on doing the RvR challenge (well,starting from level 3, as I'd already gotten my zealot to 3) so the zone would only matter in terms of rvr lake, and chaos/empire from my earlier experience had an okay one.

So now my Zealot, Xoth, is level 9, and here's my tier one redux notes.

Healers in RvR/scenarios: daaang zealots are fragile. Just brutal. I can churn out some healing, but I can't solo worth a crap and any focus fire sees me crumple.

I think the contrast from playing a tank exacerbates the feeling: the chosen is quite durable, and has at least a chance of soloing most classes. The zealot feels like much more of a support class.

The class you desperately need at one point may not be the same when you reroll: Yeah there's nothing but zealots in Tier One. Nothing like trying to RVR with a gaggle of zealots. Believe me the witch hunters and white lions are not sad.

RvR challenge: yeah no thanks. I did RvR only from 3 to 7 and it was pretty easy really, but it wasn't super fun. A couple of problems for me: gear. I felt I was falling behind on gear pretty early on, that makes RvR harder, or seems to anyway. Waiting: When the scenario queue slowed down, I had nothing to do. The RvR lake was quiet, and when it wasn't quiet it was brutal at level 6 or so. RvR feels more fun to me when its inter-mixed with some PvE. Crafting: no money, few drops makes crafting pretty rough. I have mixed feeling about crafting, but I still want to try it out. Xoth is my talisman crafter and salvager, and RvR didn't help much. Scavenging on the other hand mixes nicely with rvr in my experience.

Lairs, baby! I sort of randomly lucked into a lair run (Camilla the decayed) we were a relatively weak five man and barely scrapped through the fight, but it was good fun, and the drops were quite decent I thought (none for me though). I wish people would do more of these, do more of the hard PQs etc. Which made me wonder, do people do RvR because its more rewarding, or because its more incentivized?

I think there's a portion of the player base who primarily wants to RvR. I had a healer drop group when we were on the final boss of a challenging PQ to do a scenario. Now we had wiped on the boss, but there was time for another try. Weird to me.

I think that if you got renown rank from doing PQs, if the accumulation rewards were better and harder to solo grind (doing stage one over and over) you'd have more solo content.

Let's have a PvE holiday! Dungeon runs for pocket items or trophies, PQ achievements for cloaks etc. Or at least a portion of a holiday that requires PvE. Night of Murder only had the marked mobs requirement, which could be easily farmed in the capital, instead of on PQ endbosses.

Sacellum East

2009-02-13T12:00:00.001-08:00

So we did a Sacellum East run last night, which was fun. I was very interested to see how dungeons in WAR would work, how they would compare to WoW's dungeons. Aesthetically, I thought Sacellum East was very nice without being particularly fancy or different. Has a good chaos feel to it.

We had a strong group: chosen (moi), black orc, 2 zealots, and 2 marauders. We were probably around level 15 on average. I came armed with Thulf's guide to Sacellum East, which was quite helpful.

Trash consisted of four types of mob: beastman Gors, beastman Ungors, Flesh hounds of Khorne, and flayerkin. The majority of the trash were beastmen in packs of three, all champs naturally. The fleshounds were near the final boss and were in packs of 2 with a beastman handler. The flayerkin were in mobs of 2 or 3 and guarded the four side entrances that lead to the other two bosses. The only tricky part in the trash for us came from body-aggroing a pack of flayerkin that I didn't see (sorry guys!). We survived to my relief. I'd suggest hugging the left wall to avoid the flayerkin adding, or pulling the beastmen packs away from the side passages.

We went straight down to the final boss first, Vul the Bloodchosen. A very cool looking chaos champion type. His fight is a bit boring, honestly. Straight Tank and Spank with really not much in the way of damage spiking or anything. Just a lot of HP to churn through. He dropped 2 set piece items, boots and a helm (magus and blackguard for us, unfortunately) and a green.

The other bosses were also pretty easy, both gigantic Gors. The second of these seemed to have an aggro dump at one point in the fight, when he emotes "enough of this, we fight like heroes" or something to that effect. The first side boss was also tank and spank.

Oh the flayerkin seem to have some sort of cleave or melee aoe ability.

I would go back, and hopefully will get to try the other wings soon. The end boss drops are quite nice and worth the time, which was quite reasonable, IMO. The sidebosses, even though they require almost no extra clearing are hardly worth it. They both dropped level 13 greens for us. Not too impressive but probably worth short side trip.

Probably need two tanks to clear the trash, two healers was certainly nice to have as well. I think a lower level group of six could easily handle it. Only took a little longer than a PQ and a nice change of pace.

Chosen:Master Assassin::Shadow Warrior:Actual Warrior

2009-02-12T06:33:00.000-08:00

Got my master assassin title last night in a keep lord kill in the Marshes of Madness. Funny that the superior title ("the Murderous") comes so easy and the lesser title so hard. Well, it was fun grinding it out.

The keep lords were of course the hard part, but there was a lot of activity mostly trading keeps back and forth it seemed, but still fun enough. I won 2 massive bags, netting me an obliterator chest piece and a pocket full of silver. (Really, only one decent thing in massive bags for the whole tier?)

Our last attempt at a keep, after I'd gotten my title thankfully, ended in abject failure. There were I'll admit 2 defenders, but they only showed up after the keep lord (Stone Troll Keep) should have been dead.

Why did he not die? Well thank you for asking. The renown stairs, whee! Or as I like to call them, the Oh-my-f**cking-god-don't-reset-the-keep-lord stairs.

Yeah, aggro pull by a caster, probably after a tank death (lots of those throughout our attempt) resulted in a reset after he was down to what, 20%?

Rough. We never got close again.

Seriously three quick pointers for people from a RVR WB noob, but a raiding veteran:

1. put some thoughts into what your groups are ... consider buffs, useful abilities, etc. Czarnal was in a group with all the other tanks. Bad idea. Who do we guard? Who are we buffing? We can all twist several auras, no need to stack us all in a group.

2. do a countdown on a hard pull, or have a designated puller (Main Tank probably). Counting down to the pull in WB chat is easy and effective. Try it out.

3. Leashing is great when you need it. But why risk it when you don't don't sit on the pad or the renown vendor stairs unless you are catching aggro from champions, you need to hide from the opposition or, well just don't do it. Resets are much more costly than individual deaths.

***
The ten ninjas line is from R.Stevens.

here we go, yo ... what's the scenario?

2009-02-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

Okay two tiers in, time for a completely unnecessary scenario review. I'll note approximately how often I've won in that scenario, which might color my perspective. Let's go to results!

*TIER ONE SCENARIOS*

Nordenwatch
The short version: three flags, take and hold flags for points.
The long version: a lot of different terrain makes this a pretty dynamic scenario: curving hills, fragments of wall, bridges, ramps etc. You can march through in order, or end-run and snap up a poorly defended flag behind the front. Maybe a little repetitive for some, but I think the simple structure really shines.
My Win percentage: 100%
Grade: A
If this were a food item it would be: A nice steak. Yum.

Khaine's Embrace
The short version: take both flags (sorry, altars) for points, then they explode. Hide in tunnels or at third shrine to avoid one-shot death.
The long version: not sure how this one is supposed to work exactly. There are lots of discreet passages between the two flags (sorry, altars) which should encourage small group skirmishing, but never really seemed to. Often it seemed to end with one group (order, cough) hanging out by their guards. Ends up being a zerg-fest.
My Win percentage: 65%
Grade: D
If this were a food item it would be: Guatemalan Insanity Pepper

Gates of Ekrund
The short version: take and hold three flags (can we just call them flags, instead of ... resources? strategic locations? I mean, jeez, they are literally flags!).
The long version: three flags in a fortress. Warcamps are close by the exits, so be careful not to get dragged back into the guards. The three flags are quite close to each other and the whole place is very mazy and frantic. Again, like Nordenwatch there's great variation in terrain with balconies, stairs, broken walls, etc. It reminds me of a good wolfenstein map.
My Win percentage: 90%
Grade: B
If this were a food item it would be: haggis

*TIER TWO SCENARIOS*

Stone Troll Crossing
The short version: grab the Troll pacifier (flag) and once you have it, turn the three nodes (troll camps).
The long version: This one is definitely interesting. A big smashmouth start, with lots of terrain interest around it. It does seem to be hard to turn around once one side gets the upper hand, but has a nice mix of large group and smaller skirmish type battles.
My Win percentage: 20%
Grade: B
If this were a food item it would be: fried oysters

Phoenix Gate
The short version: Warsong gulch. Er, sorry capture the flag while yours is safe.
The long version: well hmm. This is not my favorite mechanic, but it works okay here. I think the map is a bit long, and there are a couple choke points, so you can't really sneak around or anything. Tends to end up focused on one group's base, while the other team ferries the flag back over and over.
My Win percentage: 40%
Grade: C
If this were a food item it would be: Green ... salad. No dressing.

Mourkain Temple
The short version: control the mourkain artifact, while in your possession, kill people. Don't die.
The long version: What. The. Fudge. This scenario makes me want to eat my eyeballs. It brings out the worst in PUGs and rewards brute strength over tactics. I should say it rewards strategy, but not tactics, in that if you're roles are played well you should do well, but there's no positional, or distribution game (ie. who stays offense, who defense).
My Win percentage: 10%
Grade: WTF
If this were a food item it would be: my eyeballs.

Minding Your P's and Q's

2009-02-11T06:18:00.001-08:00

So Public Quests are great. Yay PQs. Love ya. But I do wonder about the protocol, the proper ettiquette, if you will, for handling them.

Let me explain by way of example:

situation one: You are in a PQ in an established [closed] group. You are working on objectives, Tra la la. In stage two, while you are killing say, level 16 champion spiders (Silkens in the house!), someone else rolls up and starts mixing it up with the mobs. Does it matter what the new toons class is? What level he is?

situation two: You are wandering by a PQ area and see a group in stage 2 of say, Reaper's Circle, and notice that they're a bit behind on the timer. Also, a small group. You roll on in and start mixing it up. The group refuses to acknowledge your presence. No heals, no help, no invite. It's a closed group.

These are actually different things that happened to me (shocking)! In both cases here I was the individual coming late to the game, but I've been on the other side as well.

Obviously on the most basic level, PQs are open to all. If you can show up and do enough to rate a roll, you deserve one. That's what a PQ means. But that doesn't mean you're going to be super psyched by the redundant tank rolling up late in stage 2 (sorry about that) or that you the late-arriving tank, redundant or not, really deserve a shot at the roll.

"That's what contribution is for." Sure, sure. If you farm the whole thing, you have a better chance at top roll. But first, as I've noted earlier, contribution is screwy. And second, if I, the redundant tank, am left alone by a surly group, baited in to pulling mobs, or whatever, I WILL DIE AND GET NOTHING. (sry caps!)

But seriously. I don't really deserve good loot. I do it, though I know it's lame, and I always hope, if I haven't earned it, that I don't take someone else's hard-won loot.

Not what I'd call a hag

2009-02-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

That's the Twisted Slaughterhag in the Inevitable City. A very cool character model: Sexy and hardcore. But, yeah, not what I think of when I picture the word "hag".

Dear Tier Two

2009-02-10T06:11:00.000-08:00

Baby, we've been together for a week now, and it's been great. You are a wonderful ... tier, but I have a confession to make to you. You wear me out sometimes.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like to have fun. But, damn, you never stop. With you there's always ten things going on at the same time. A man needs some time to catch his breath, you know?

Sometimes, I just want to do a quest or two. Maybe a tome unlock? Is that wrong? But with you there's always five other things happening. I can't remember what I wanted to do? My bags are always full of junk I can't find the time to sell. My quest log is maxed out. I need a breather.

And scenarios? Damn, baby, take it easy on me! You know I'm up for anything, but Mourkain Temple? Baby, that is just freaky. And then keep sieges and defends, and, oh wait, that wasn't a real assault on a keep even. I ran all that way for nothing.

Help a brother out. Let's just slow it down for a minute. I just want to take a day to do nothing but grind out your PQs nice and slow. Taking our time. Then, maybe we could do a few unlocks, drop some greens at the AH. You know, spend some time together.

I heard you had dungeons, but baby I can't even get on that now.

I want to be with you, I see myself spending a long time with you. Maybe even another week! But sometimes, I have to admit, I think back to my old flame, Tier One, and miss the simple times.

Oh who am I kidding, I can't quit you, baby. Let's go take some Battlefield Objectives, take em fast while no one is watching. The way you like it.

Keeps, Keeps everywhere ...

2009-02-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

... and not a drop to loot.

Did a few keep sieges last night. Of the hurry up while Order is elsewhere and then skedaddle variety. Pretty fun, albeit rather easy. The tension really comes from the fear that order will crash the party.

Of course at rank 15, my contribution was on the low side. No loot from any of the three we did. The last (marshes of madness) was a bit screwy. Our warband leader said to pull the keep lord down to lower level. I know from pulling, so I jumped on the chance, body-pulling the keep lord and retinue from the top of the stairs.

I backed down and jumped off the side. Should've been perfect. But yeah, not so much. I dropped into a little half-circle surrounded by torches. Completely stuck. Meanwhile the warband decided to fight upstairs. Groan. I spent the whole time trying to hop out. Then I hurried to logout via /stuck so I wouldn't accidentally take someone's loot. Hopefully I got out before the roll.

"How you doin?"

I want my smoking skull!

2009-02-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

So Bellagoth informed me and I later confirmed that my Zealot tome unlock, the smoking skull pocket item, which my tome of knowledge tells me I'm due, is out of stock or something. Seriously. The librarian in IC won't even talk to me about it.

He's so rude sometimes.

I vaguely remembered reading that it was bugged for destro, maybe on Pwnsan although I couldn't find the page to confirm that, so I went to Wardb and checked out the item. no comments, but the "Worn by" page is pretty telling.

All of I'm left with is the dang ol' Flint Stone, which is underwhelming. Basically, it makes a scraping noise.

Scraping noises do not impress the ladies. Maybe I need to click it furiously for a few minutes. I'll give that a try, I guess, but I'm not optimistic.

Way to have a lame pocket item, Bright Wizards.

An RvR vignette

2009-02-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

So in my last RvR fight in T1, the following incident occured:

Now I don't want to harsh on the designers, cause I think the game looks swell, and honestly I don't even know what the cannon looked like, cause I never got a good look at it, but i did seem to be getting pelted by tennis balls, straight below the order war camp.

A bit goofy is all I'm saying. By point of comparison, here's the corresponding gun placement in the destro WC:

This gun only targets directly below the cliff edge. A bit of a mis-match to its appearance, imo.

Contribution confusion

2009-02-05T05:27:00.001-08:00

So, now that I'm all grown up (yay tier 2), I'm trying to get a handle on how this whole contribution system works. Specifically I mean PQs, as that's all I've had to deal with really.

So here's my data. All the PQs I've completed in a group:

Destruction of the weak (ch.2 norsca)
who: Czarnal, level 6 or so, and Tanith level 24 DOK.
contribution ranking: czarnal, tanith.

Ruinous powers: ch.1 norsca.
who: Czarnal, level 6 or so, and Tanith level 24 DOK.
First place: czarnal, tanith.

Macabre Fervor, ch.3 nordland
who: Czarnal, a lot of other folk.
contribution ranking: czarnal, everybody else.

Pillage and Plunder: ch.3 nordland
who: Czarnal, Magus, squig herder
contribution ranking: czarnal first, dont recall others.

Pillage and Plunder, ch.3 nordland
who: Czarnal, Bellagoth (11 WE), Mortien (10 Zlt).
contribution ranking: bellagoth, czarnal, Mortien.

Pillage and Plunder, ch.3 nordland
who: Czarnal, Derruba (7 BO), Mortien, Bellagoth.
contribution ranking: Derruba, Bellagoth and Mortien, Czarnal.

Fields of Woe, ch. 4 nordland
who: Czarnal (11), Derruba, Mortien (11 Zlt), DaveJones (11 Mrdr)
contribution ranking: DaveJones, Derruba, Czarnal, Mortien.

These are contribution rankings, not rolls or loot order. So it's not perfect data, small sample sizes and all, but a couple oddities have struck me:

1. how the crap did I out-contribute Tanith twice? full disclosure, in addition to being a third her level, I also spent most of the PQs scavenging.

2. healers aren't getting enough love. Fields of Woe ... no disrespect to DaveJones who dished out the hurt, but we could have completed it without him, in fact we had on a previous attempt wiped only because we stood in the road where all the champions rush out and fought them all at once. When we respawned we killed them all, just ran out of time. My belabored point is that without Mortien we have zero chance of completing. Everyone else in that setup is expendable.

3. I wonder if contribution is distributed by role. Maybe this has been discovered, released, explained and I've just missed it, but for a tank to win, it can't be damage / healing numbers, it has to be some tanking calculation: damage taken, time that mob has tank targetted, damage mitigated, etc.

so, does that hurt hybrid types? healers that are DPS specced? DPSing tanks?

4. splitting the responsibility hurts your contribution score. This makes sense to me. Two tanks means each is individually less vital. So we score lower. One dps class? bigger contribution. I would say that given the relative roundness of classes (tanks and healers can also do decent damage, not one-dimensional), dps is probably less vital in and of itself. Now if they kick the ass, well then nevermind.

T1 oRVR

2009-02-04T06:11:00.001-08:00

So last night, in a panic, I bent to maxing out my T1 oRVR rep. The panic stemmed from making this decision about 2/3 of the way to the advanced rep reward, and 3/4 of the way through rank 11.

But really, it wasn't a problem. Order obliged by mixing it up all night and now I have my Lost Axe.

Tier 1 oRVR is a bit odd. Rep gains are really fast, and I get that it's meant as a training mode for later oRVR, but the taking of Battlefield Objectives is a little ... odd.

The objectives can be pretty handly 2-manned, and are seldom defended. Once taken they must be defended briefly and then they're locked. Which means after you run around and grab them all, there's not much to do but skirmish.

I like skirmishing fine, but it's not really objective-based pvp is it? On my way to elite rep, I think we defended a node one time in numbers and I don't think I participated in a single assault against a defended BO. It's all hit and run action.

Is that bad? Not in itself. But I wonder if its training us to be good RVR-players in later tiers, or training in bad habits.

Barrel chest or Apple costume?

2009-02-04T06:08:00.001-08:00

I switched out of my first piece of dyed armor yesterday, a breastplate dyed red. The look had reminded me of something, but it took me a while to figure out what it was.

You be the judge:

Well, maybe its just me. That I felt like the fruit of the loom apple isn't meant as a slight. I actually kind of like the rotund armor pieces. They have heft and feel reasonably authentic. Truly, I miss my apple costume.

oi, beleza?

2009-02-03T05:49:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to shout out to the brazilians I grouped up with last night: Derruba, Davejones, and Mortien. Derruba and Mortien joined with Czarnal and my pal Bellagoth for the Ch.3 easy PQ (Gathering and Pillaging, iirc) and then for a Khaine's embrace. Davejones joined up with us after Bella left for Fields of Woe. They were a good group, and chatted away in Portuguese while we ran through the PQ.

Apparently Volkmar has a big brazilian population. One of those interesting things you find out about your server. My old WoW server, Suramar, had a huge Aussie population when it started out (before the oceanic servers came up). Meeting people from far away places and killing stuff together, that's good times.

Khaine's embrace

2009-02-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

Did three or four turns in Khaine's embrace last night. Have to say, not a huge fan. The mechanic is ... weird. Two flags to control, and grabbing both gets you points, but also blows you up. My complaints with this are:

1. the instructions could be a little less arcane. Here's more or less what the instructions read: "Controlling both altars wins points but also causes khaine's wrath. Avoid imminent death or ask for forgiveness." Not a quote obviously, but yeah. NOT THAT HELPFUL.

2. why would either side be in a hurry to control a temple (if that's what its supposed to be) that blows you up for controlling it? Not usually something you look for in real estate.

I think the idea of the multiple paths between the nodes is interesting, and could theoretically work to divide the sides into smaller skirmishes, but in reality that didn't seem to happen. Battles were fought on the flags or in giant scrums in a given tunnel or path.

While I'm on the subject, the high level guards on the spawn points? Yeah, they suck. And so do shadow warriors for exploiting them. Just saying. Also, shadow warriors? Not warriors. Archers. See my informative illustration below:

Clever little gobbo

2009-02-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

So in the Nordenwatch scenario, T1, we'd rushed out to the fortress, clever plan that, and I stepped up to the bridge to try to choke the order attack away from the flag. Order was happy to oblige and pounded away at me. My health dropped pretty low, and I noticed the flag had capped, so I swigged a potion and ran back behind my teammates. The idea was to drop out of combat, and regen up some health. not sure if that's realistic or not, but that was the thought.

For the most part, the other destro players were providing nice cover and I wasn't getting ranged or anything. Then a goblin, with a witchhunter all over him comes hauling around on the wall side and drags him right up to me.

Oh, clever play that, says i, and I step up to peel the WH off the healer. He obliges and starts stabbing and shooting and what not. No problem I thought, just need that heal ...

No heal. I die. I scroll the camera over and notice that the goblin in question is not a shaman at all. He's a squig herder.

If he'd been a shaman, I'd have been annoyed, but for dps, that's just smart play. So hat tip to you, squiggy, even though you killed me.

The aesthetics of chaos

2009-02-02T12:32:00.000-08:00

I have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised by the both the chaos character model options and the starting zone.

The character models really are very quirky and have a strong aesthetic, while allowing a bunch of different effects. Czarnal is a pretty handsome looking dude, if I do say so myself, but there are certainly other ways to go from the horrific to the war ravaged.

The chaos starting areas, and really all of the chaos camps in Norsca and Nordland are very cool. Squirming pink trees, the chaos portal, lots of impressive NPCs marching about in spikey armor, the hellcannons facing out at the hapless town. Its both visually interesting and narratively immersive. I felt right away like I was in the thrust of a monstrous, otherworldy army's assault on the trim, respectable world of men.

The Quest to Read Quests (FAILED)

2009-02-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

I really want to be the guy who reads all the quest text. Who savors the writing, immerses himself into the story, the atmosphere. So I consciously set out to read all the text of my quests.

Yeah that didn't last very long.

On one hand, I don't want to dump the blame onto Mythic, when I seldom read a single WoW quest all the way through, but, on the other hand, I'm gonna blame Mythic.

Actually my complaint such as it is, is that at least early on, the color text, the voice of the quest giver, is problematic in two ways:

1. Tends to be a bit uniform. This isn't to say the writing isn't good or that there's no voice. Honestly, I'm not sure how much character diversity you're going to have in a chaos war camp. It seems to break down to:

A. Zealous adoration of Chaos
B. Psychotic/Zealous adoration of Chaos

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

2. The color text early on didn't tell me anything. It'd be like:

"The lord of change wreaks destruction untold upon this world, tearing at its fabric, unraveling its mundane order and law and unfurling in its place the beautiful terror of change unending ..."

and then the helpful instructional part would read:

"Go to the nearby empire camp and take two loaves of bread."

...

By chapter three or so, I'd figured out the basic chaos quest-giver concepts: sorcerer types, warlord types, and marauders and I think they do have reasonably distinct goals and personas, and that the did from the start probably. But early on, It just didn't come across for me.

But maybe that's just me.

Ow My Eye

2009-02-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, I love the random achievements (I got one for scavenging while standing in water, woot), and the Ow My Eye! title is pretty funny, but I'd rather be able to actually click things on the ground.

Maybe its just the chosen silhouette, but I swear that I have to adjust my camera every single time I loot something. Or open a gate. I've gotten in the habit of positining Czarnal at an angle from NPCs so that I can click on them.

Is this something that is always there, that I've just forgotten about in my 2 month MMO fast? I noticed in the customization menu that there was an "allow character click through" toggle. Eureka! But, not so much. Still a problem. Maybe it just didn't take.

Seriously, aside from the funny achievements, why do I ever need to click my character? I guess if i was a healer and didn't have auto self-target, I might need it (click your unitframe, cough cough).

I guess I could go to first person mode ... /shudder.

Life during Wartime

2009-02-02T06:34:00.000-08:00

Had a good first weekend in WAR. I had a lot of expectations, and really a lot of information for someone starting up, but still I found some things surprised me both positively and negatively. On the whole, I like it a lot.

I came to WAR after playing WOW for almost four years, so my whole response is pretty comparative. I wonder though about comparing the two: in as much as there's any point in comparing them (I think there is), which WoW should we compare WAR too? The WOW of 2009, or the one of 2005, when it was as old as WAR is now?

We'll see. I'm a weekend into the game, rank 10/rr 9 on my chosen, Czarnal, and have found lots to like and lots to do.

More to come.