Dat 'Urtz! - review

And finally.. welcome to the Dat 'urtz review for this week. It's been a long time coming but been stuck with work, 1.2 and Empire: Total War (sadly not as good as Medieval or Rome in my opinion) This was my initial list made before 1.2 and in all fairness it's probably best I wait a few more days before adding my 1.2 opinions in anyway ;)

As will be the usual, there's no point in bitching or moaning unless you can offer something constructive, so I'll at least try and offer a solution.

1) Crowd Controlled out the game
Sorry, Warhammer: Age of Crowd Control is still getting on my nerves. Snares, roots, knockdowns, disables, knock backs, silences and disrupts. That's a LOT of crowd control for a game which preached that it would be CC light. You can literally still be CC'd out a fight leaving yourself helpless. One of the most annoying aspects is the fact that the immunity timer still seems far too short and the knock back distances are still far too out of whack with certain classes being able to punt others for absolute miles with no way for the knock backed target to get back into combat before the KB cooldown is up.
Solution: I'd like to see all CC affects halved to see exactly how that performs. Remember tier 1 with little to no CC and how getting stuck in was fun? If not halved then a 50% increase to the immunity timer would help.

2) Being hurt through walls
So I'm standing beside a keep lord and I'm taking damage from turrets/demons and aoe from the floor below. These things magically shoot through floors and boil up through the cracks... No it's just lazy coding. It's happened on our server once before where basically the mass amount of turrets and aoe casting destroyed the defending healers and then destroyed the rest of the defenders who were stuck in combat. No sword was raised in anger or jibblie was kicked... Simply taken out by something which cannot see you... *Annoyed*.
Solution: It's something which probably isn't an easy fix but really needs to be looked at to polish the game to make it accessible for new players and not a lesson in frustration.

3) Lost Vale wipe runs
Ok, which dev thought it would be a good idea to spend just over seven minutes running from lost vale beach to N'kari (using short cuts). Seriously, Seven minutes wasted doing nothing apart from talking rubbish on vent and praying no-one gets dc'd or falls of a cliff and dies meaning someone has to start running from the beginning again. Keep in mind, this seven minutes isn't including loading zones or running from Averlorn to the boat, nor buffing up when at N'kari. For a game which again prided itself on being fast paced, why put a total time sink in to make it a brutally boring experience? The actual time it takes from dying to taking on N'Kari is well over 10 minutes of literally nothing... And that's not just for her/it/him/wtf, all the bosses are like that, one long, slog run....
Solution: You see those healers that spawn in LV (why do they heal exactly? there's a healer in the camps in Averlorn you run past....) allow them to teleport you to another spawned healer for example
"I can teleport you to the remains of:
Sechar
The Dark Promise Beast
Zaar"
*click* ~teleport~ \o/ win!

4) Where's our cities?
Soooooo, we have our Guard and Knight, soon we'll have our Choppa and Slayer.. Now all we're missing is four out of the six cities. Two thirds of the end game is currently missing six months from release. The servers are being consolidated so there's plenty of people to make the cities look busy. Imagine the content that they could add when these cities are finally (if they ever will be). Six new dungeons for each side, loads of new quests and unlocks... THAT is content that should be added back before putting the new stuff in. You could have new armour sets as well, where your sentinel might focus on one tree your dwarf and greenskin set could focus on one other tree and point ear lands could focus on the third tree, you could actually have a set of armour which helps your characters spec!
Solution: Erm.. add them, or at least give us a bloody update on them, it's been nearly a year since they were cut with not a single word on them but yet they can talk about new dungeons and zones.. Give us our end game content back!

5) Bloody terrain...
Run, run, run, run, stuck... Move, stuck still, move a bit more, still stuck, backpedal and run around twig on the ground.... Run, run, run, jump over rocks, find self stuck between three rocks and have to book out. Run, run, run, get stuck on random corner of a building.. get annoyed and throw object at screen... Run, run, run down path which is at a slope and ends up making you actually take damage because the gradient is in such a way you 'fall' down it....
I have to admit, the glitchy and buggy terrain is one of these things that slowly niggles away at you and can make a game play session which is already frustrating due to bugs or glitches (like being CC'd and then blown up through a wall while in Lost Vale after a seven minute wipe run as all you want to do is use your book to get back to your Orcy home but you're stuck with the Inevitable Shitty).
Solution: I'm going to start reporting bugs for ever terrain piece I get stuck in, fall down while running down it or generally is designed in such a way that it pisses me off. Do the same...

Well that's this weeks urty things. More posts and random dribbles of brain fluid over the next few days now it's my weekend....