Random musings

It's typical isn't it? I can think of a hundred and one posts when I'm at work (normally when I go for a walk at lunch time) but see when I get home? They melt out my brain and disappear somewhere... So instead of actually putting one post on one thing, I'll pop a few little comments into a post and see what inspiration happens...

The Red Plague... I think we're setting ourselves up for a fall here. I am actually starting to believe that there is no red plague and that it was just a throw away fluffy comment in the patch notes. WE the players and bloggers have actually been the carriers of the disease that now has people talking about what will happen with WAR and if it will be an expansion. WE will be sorely disappointed and no doubt actually be raging at Mythic for not doing anything about the red plague when it was actually the community that created expanded it into something it isn't.

End game... I'm deliberately staying away from zones that will be locking, taking a couple of steps out a BO before it gets capped and generally trying to prevent any gains in renown other than killing things. Why? I'm just about to hit end game and I'm worried that the RR80 curse will hit me and suck the life out the game for me. I doubt it will, but there's just not a lot to drive people out to the lakes other than fighting for the fun of it when they hit 80. The game needs more for the end game players to do as full Sov and RR80 are actually getting quite common now.

Producers letter tomorrow... Hopefully something of substance, but I get the feeling this one will be a recap of the last patch and the usual "Great things are coming... just wait!".

Bombing... Good to see a European (and a guild we regularly fight) gave Mythic a bit of a wake up with the effectiveness of bomb groups. Shame that the 'fix' has actually done nothing of the sort other than add one more button to press every now and then. Bomb groups are still alive and kicking and are as effective as ever.

TTK... Time To Kill. This is actually a good one, and something I want to talk about properly. Mythic claims that the TTK is too low, meaning that players die too quickly. Mythics answer? Raise damage and healing.. Errr wut? No seriously, there's been no increase in damage mitigation or nerfing of items that make you kill players quicker than intended *cough*Land of the Dead pocket items*cough*. Why are resists so easily hitting the stupidly low softcap and then barely moving to help mitigation? Why does toughness really do bugger all since to make it effective you have to stack it very high (in my opinion, double the effectiveness of toughness). So many defensive buffs, potions and liniments don't stack that it makes many abilities worthless to use. I wont go into too much detail since it's best left for another day. Suffice to say that Mythic think the TTK is too low, but they keep on adding things that lower it...

PinkforTink... All my thoughts are with you lass. Hope you can pull through this and everyone over here in the old world of Europe is rooting for you.

Arabian Steeds... They look dreadful and all of a sudden the "You can recognise an enemy from the silhouette" design concept gets chucked out the window. I would have preferred (of course) racial mounts. Dark Steeds for Dark Elves, Keg carrying ponies for Dwarves. Wyverns for Orcs etc etc. Still the idea of having stuff to spend your wasted tokens on is good. Now it just needs to actually have something of use (and desire) for me.

Anyway, that's it for me for just now. Will pop back in later to go over some of these things again.

Any fellow bloggers know how to contact Mythic for a couple of interview questions?

Subject says it all, even if you're not a blogger any idea?

I'd like to send a few questions off to Mythic about Black Orcs and I'm looking for a way to contact them or some of the guys over there. Since I have a European account I can't use the forums to PM Andy or James there (and I dont think they would pay too much attention to a trial account PM'ing him) and I'm not even sure who does what on the team anymore (maybe a who is who for the website would be good Mythic?)

Not sure if I'm even wasting my time or possibly there time but if you know, then drop me a comment or you can send me an email by clicking the orange link to the right hand side there in the "Wot's dis all about?".

Even better, if you are Mythic then let me know if it'd be ok, or if it's best just to wait for producers letters etc

Precursor set for Black Orcs

So I've decided on a little project as I get scarily close to realm rank 80. To collect all armour sets which you don't often see such as the green sets, repairable sets and basically to look for interesting models and skins, hopefully the odd unique one as well to tart around in :)

So here's the first one. The Precursor set for rank 39. Simply a green set, nothing special on it but the artwork is nice enough, though can be seen throughout the game. You can click on each picture for bigger examples. I left the trophys on simply because I couldn't be bothered to take them off so the twin daggers on the shoulder at the left hand side are from Land of the Dead and the Stags skull on the right side of the picture is from the Hunters Vale live event.

Black Orc questions from the recent Q&A

I need to get me going to the European one if it happens again to ask some solid Black Orc questions. Last one (and maybe only ever one) I was on holiday :(

Anyway, thanks to Gaarawarr for posting the transcript.

Q – Are you looking into making the Black Orc Boss tree more attractive?

Nate - For the Black Orc and the Swordmaster, our intention is really getting the career to feel overall top to bottom like it’s a little smoother. Whether that’s something to do with the mechanic or how the abilities interact with the mechanic, I’m not sure yet. But we want to get the career generally not feeling so step-stop, step-stop as it does currently. That’s our priority more-so than singling out a specific mastery tree.

Well it's a start. I'm not expecting much, if anything as this has been the first mutterings of changes to the mechanic since they last mentioned it wasn't totally going to be re-written. I'm wondering if it wouldn't just be easier for Mythic to re-write the mechanic than to work on the existing one. It absolutely MUST be resilient to high lag situations so we're not locked out of plans or spamming one button because the game doesn't realise we've changed plan and then jumps us ahead two. I'd actually like to sit down and design a mechanic, just to see how it would work.

Q – When you use Not in Da Face you get a 4 second immunity to your group and Savin Me Hide gives your group 4 seconds of reduced magic damage. It was said in the past that those durations would be increased. Are we going to see those adjusted?

Nate - It’s possible. They’re both pretty powerful effects, obviously specifically the CC immunity is really strong. We don’t want those to get too out of control so that they’re up all the time, but it’s certainly a possibility.

So keep the CC immunity timer which also has a great base effect (single target CD increase but ability has a cool down) as it is and increase Savin Me Hide's 4 seconds to something of substance (10 seconds?). Savin Me Hide has a hidden cool down of around 7-10 seconds depending on lag due to it being on the last plan so it's not spammable, plus you have to drop defences on your war band (no Hold the Line), find a target that isn't a tank so you might actually not be blocked or parried, go through the first two plans and then drop it on the third, rinse and repeat. If it's too good then nerf it, but I don't see anyone complaining about it as it stands, if anything it's almost under looked due to the stupidly low 4 second duration

Q – Any plans on increasing Black Orc group utility?

Nate - As I mentioned earlier, in our view, some of the bigger problems with the Black Orc and the Swordmaster are general smoothness of playability and that’s what we’d like to look into first.

OK, so we wait for the class playability before any other changes. So 1.3.6 is out the window as it's too short if they're just looking right now. 1.3.7, 1.4? Who knows. On the upside it means I won't hold my breath for patch notes expecting some wonderful work done on the class, downside though is that we'll get the little nerfs here and there and no doubt be waiting six months until we hear anymore about this. I'll put this bet out (and going by my track record of predictions which is dreadful, please don't put money on it) and say that the Black Orc and Swordmaster mechanics/playability/ability interaction or however you want to call it won't be changed within the next 6 months. In fact I'm putting a post in 6 months which will pop up reminding me to either eat my hat or to look smug on me rock. It's not that I don't think Mythic don't want to do anything, it's just that BOBs and SM's are so poorly played it's not worth the resource for Mythic to fix the classes when the game revolves around Chosen/Knights, Sorcs/Bright Wizards, Choppas/Slayers, DoKs/WPs. Those are the best in archetype for each side, both mirrors and both head and shoulders above respective classes.

Black Orcs got nuffin'

I had a mini rant about this a while ago but didn't go into too much detail, so bear with me on this one....

So Black Orcs and Black Guard have a little tactic which allows us to ignore detaunts, it's gud. It lets us be a pain to healers and it gives us something different from the Chosen.

So mythic remove it from Black Orcs and give us a group heal tactic...

Uhm.

Wut?

Balance Changes:

* You Got Nuffin': This Tactic will now heal group mates whenever your War Bellows trigger.

Yup, they changed it to a group heal. But not just any group heal, it's a group heal which does a whole 300 health over 10 seconds (and it doesn't proc multiple times so it's basically on a 10 second cool down).

THIS IS POINTLESS.

All I'm asking is the reasoning behind this. Again I go back to communication issues with Mythic. They have changed something, given no reason for it and no matter what feedback will be submitted on it it will not be changed. It's one of these changes that are set in stone. I've almost gotten to the stage of giving up on feedback since nothing ever seems to change unless it's a huge public outcry.

So here is my request since we have no communication channels with Mythic.

DEAR MYTHIC.

PLEASE CAN YOU GIVE US THE REASONING BEHIND THE CHANGE TO THE BLACK ORC TACTIC "YOU GOT NUFFIN'" AND REPLACING IT WITH A TACTIC WHICH HAS SO LITTLE IMPACT IN RvR THAT IT WILL NEVER BE SLOTTED.

I know the chances of a reply are less than slim to none but since I'm a paying European customer I have no way to post on the official forum which is frequented by the developers so I have to resort to this.

Another blog roll update

Nine new additions to my blog roll, not all are new blogs, some very well established members of the community I somehow managed to miss out.

Apologies to those I missed out and welcome to the new members of the community. I'm sure there will be more to come.

On Waaaghcation!

Forgot to say you little gitz dat I'm on me Orcy 'olidayz so no posts dis week.. Be more soon though gits.. Keep da smush goin'