EA partners with microtransactions firm

EA has a HUGE library of games already in development, so it's a fairly good chance that it's nothing to do with the MMO arm of EA (Bioware Mythic) but just in case I thought I'd pass along the news.

Keep in mind though, microtransactions do not mean F2P, probably just TRH....

Electronic Arts ( ERTS - news - people ), one of the world's largest games publishers, on Monday partnered with microtransactions platform Live Gamer to bolster its online game efforts. The companies did not disclose details of their partnership.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/26/electronic-arts-videogames-technology-microtransactions.html

Warhammer Online: Island of Blood

I recently found out that Warhammer the board game has recently had a new version brought out (I stopped playing the board games a long time back), it's up to 8th edition and is just a rulebook. However Games Workshop have also announced that there will be a boxed set expansion type thing for the game in September featuring two armies.. High Elves and Skaven.

Now what possible tie in could happen with a certain online game that we play?

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=11500028a

Nothing even mumbled from Mythic of course, but it'd make an almost perfect opportunity to announce an expansion whether live or paid. Fighting over resources or some such for the war against a Skaven horde. Now we just need to find out some background on this Island of Blood and what the story is behind it, could it be linkable?

BioWare points, ANOTHER vacation the PTS and thank you to da boss Xzi

I have a Bioware Social Network account from buying Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 so one account rather than multiples is always good for me, it's also inevitable that SW:TOR will go through the network as well, possibly DAoC and Ultima will come later if it's viable.

So what does this mean really? Well one key thing that the BSN (I can't be bothered typing it out each time, so it's now called that) has is the purchasing of BioWare points for real life money, this is used in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age to purchase downloadable content such as new quests, party members and expansions.. Could Warhammer be going down the road of purchasable items? There was also mention a while back about new vanity pets coming in, this would be a way to gauge interest, maybe add some of the mounts that are hidden in the files that people have found.. There's a possibility. What I don't see happening is a free to play model, WAR is profitable enough to not have to worry about that... For now.

And guess what? I'm on another vacation. Last one for the year probably but I'm off for a week to Sweden with the girlfriend and to meet up with some long time guild mates, we're heading up to the north of Sweden, just inside the Arctic Circle with a forest, lake and mountain around us. Mmm 1600 metre mountain to climb. Should be a good laugh :)

The PTS I've had very little time to play with, the problem with it right now is that I don't have Lokax on it, I hate using template characters as they don't let me 'test' situations properly. I know Loks gear, limitations with it and what not, so giving me two sets of high end gear and a lot of emblems doesn't help when I still have jewels, other weapons and other armour pieces I use. From what I've heard though the plan mechanic changing is not too bad, will take some time to get used to for some people but when you can open up with a Down Ya Go or Shut Yer Mouth it certainly can't be bad.

And finally my long time guild leader has stepped down to concentrate on real life. We went out with one final Hand of Blood warband with Xzi leading on Thursday night before he logged out for possibly the last time. So here's vid that one of our members took.

/salute Xzi

You were a gud git.

(click to expand to see the full version)

Another look at the 8 piece sovereign bonuses

NateL of Bioware Mythic posted the revised 8 piece set bonuses they are looking at

(clicky)

And for the stuff I'm interested in, lets look at the tank bonuses:

Tank archetype

• Defensive: Your group becomes immune to Stagger, Knockdown, Root, and Knockback effects for 5 seconds.
• Offensive: Nearby allies have their movement speed increased by 60% for 10 seconds.

Meh... Well compared to the other archetypes it's just a big... Meh. I mean, lets be honest about it, we get the same buff (for four seconds) on a 20 second cooldown in our third plan, that's not an endgame bonus on a 2 minute cooldown no matter what they think, all other bonuses are on 10 seconds. Just because you think CC immunity is hugely powerful doesn't actually make it so when it is reliant on timing and lasts 5 seconds. Extend it to 10 seconds maybe and then we're talking.

The offensive one I still think it's Meh as well... It just doesn't strike me as 'tanky' even for offensive tanks. I guess it's meant to show the tanks leading a charge in, but lets be honest, it will only affect you, maybe the other tank in the group and a melee dps (assuming a two tank, one mdps, one rdps and two healer group). I just don't rate it as using up an item slot when there's better abilities out there for offensive tanks, in particular the LotD cloak for DPS. Hmm, 100 melee power and 25 strength.. Or I can run fast for 10 seconds on a two minute cooldown. I know what I'll pick.

No they've said they dont want 'click = more damage' bonuses so we should avoid dreaming of them, and subsequently I don't think they want 'click = absorb damage', they're looking for bonuses which change the shape of the battlefield.

So how would I do this?

For Defensive I'd change the timer to 10 seconds, if that's deemed too powerful then how about?

Your group takes 20% less incoming damage for the next 10 seconds

I'd say it looks decent enough, can be vital if timed right, or a waste if not.

And for offensive bonus? Hmmm, a bit more difficult. It needs to be aggressive and beneficial to your group, or a hindrance to your enemies, not a simple self buff or single target debuff. It's very difficult to think of the bonus since by nature tanks are defensive but yet we need an offensive bonus which does not mirror the MDPS morale. I'm honestly at a loss for what could be better but I still can't see myself using it in any shape if I'm DPS spec (which I generally am these days).

So are the bonuses great or not? A guild mate suggested you make it a simple +1 tactic slot which I think is great in theory, but sadly would become essential rather than a choice even beyond the inevitable rank increase.

Loudmouth vs. 'Ave Another One

I've always been a firm believer in the tactic Loudmouth. It's a nice proc which does decent damage. For those who don't know it's the following at Rank 40.

Loudmouth: War Bellows now also deal 227 damage to your offensive target.

What this means is that there's a 25% chance every thing you hit something (or in the case of Da Greenest when you're hit) to do 227 corporeal damage to your offensive target. Nice little proc which can do a nice chain of damage if you're lucky. Bellows activate (though you dont gain the effect from them) regardless of whether they are on internal cooldown allowing Loudmouth to do damage fairly consistantly. It's actually my choice over Stab You Gooder (crits do 25% extra damage) due to the guaranteed damage rather than assuming you get a crit, plus a decent damage roll which would add over 227 damage to an ability, although SYG has it's place for heavy crit builds for sure.

Now compare Loudmouth with 'Ave Another One (AAO)

'Ave Another One: Follow me Lead will deal an additional 695 damage over 5 seconds

This is basically three Loudmouth procs in one tactic which is spammable every 5 seconds (not that you would since FML is an opening plan). Overall Loudmouth always looked more appealing since it wasn't tied to one ability and you could easily just keep Wot Armour? as your opening plan without jumping between multiple actions.

But the more I've been looking at AAO recently the more I'm starting to get a twitch for it, however to maximise it's efficiency you need to keep it up as often as possible. It's only 5 seconds so it's pretty much impossible to keep at 100% uptime unless you drop plans (although 1.3.6 changes will make this easier). So lets have a look at two abilities side by side. However be warned, there is NO maths, nor any stats since I have no way to really collate and compare reliably.

AAO is obviously linked to FML so you need to keep this in mind. There's a fine line of whether it's better to always use FML if you have AAO slotted, or to use a combo of Wot Armour? and FML since both have 20 second secondary effects. Wot Armour obviously debuffs the targets armour which increases your overall damage from other abilities (though not Loudmouth since it's corporeal damage) as well as increasing melee damage done by allies on the target. FML however does more damage than Wot Armour and gives you or your defensive target a +100(ish) WS buff which in turns increases your own armour penetration and parry rating.

The one test I done against a random rank 40 mob, an auto attack with -1k armour (maxed brawler at rr80) applied to the target was only slightly more damaging than an extra 7.3% armour penetration I received from 102 WS (6 or so points in Boss). I believe it was onlt a difference of around 40-50 damage in favour of using Wot Armour? however keep in mind I have now activated a 695 damage proc.

So lets think about this without any factual based number crunching in the slightest.

A standard rotation I use is the following:
Wot Armour? > Right in Da Jibblies > T'ree Hit Combo

Three Hit is actually 5 hits (not a bug) so in one rotation not including auto attacks you are hitting a target 7 times without blocks or parry, add in a couple of auto attacks and lets round it up to 10 attacks. Now your bellow will go off 25% of the time so that's 2.5 Loudmouth procs, rounded down due to the Black Orc curse to 2 procs. So including the increased damage from the target being armour debuffed and you probably come away with slightly higher numbers than using AAO with FML always used as the first plan.

Ok, so not the most scientific method so if anyone has any better way for me to collate and work it out then please let me know and I'll give it a shot. In the meantime I'm going to hit some scenarios using just FML instead of Wot Armour to see how it 'feels'.

Mythic.. Seriously sort the European servers out.

How?

I mean.. Really.... HOW?

What is so different with the European servers that are causing people to crash to character select screen upon changing zones. Currently I'm in a little premade of three people and for the last 90 minutes we've not managed a single scenario together without at least one person crashing out. This is the first time I've really played in three weeks so was looking forward to a good night of smush.

I know I'm not paying for the sub right now (because you won't let me since you don't have the account system setup for us) but I'm still an active subscriber. There is something seriously wrong with the servers. This is pretty much proving that the new servers are sub par that you gave us.

Apparently the free time ends soon (21st ish) and there's been little to no information from Mythic barring a "we're looking into it" and an emergency maintenance during peak time which took the server down for 6 hours or something stupid. Add to this that normal Wednesday maintenance now lasts until 6pm and you can tell see that we're starting to get a little pissed off.

There was a perfect opportunity to show former players over here how well you've done with the game but you've seriously dropped the ball, in fact it's dropped onto a big spiky pit and is actually deflating as I read about more and more European players just pissed off with the whole thing and wont be subbing when the free time runs out. Time to get your act together Mythic, communicate more (there's the C word again you like to preach) and get this shit fixed.

(Edit: Mythic have updated the Herald with the following information. I appreciate them actually saying something openly about it now, but it still worries me that there is no estimated fix time. I hope they dont expect us to pay while it's like this....

"We are currently aware of and are investigating solutions for performance and stability issues affecting the Karak Norn and Karak Azgal servers. This includes delays with the in-game mail system, frequent disconnects to character and server select and reports of performance issues and high latency. At this point we have no estimated time of repair for these issues, however please be sure to check the Herald for updates regarding this situation.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued support. ")

The new sovereign sets for tanks (part 2)

So Mythic have changed a couple of bits for different classes (primarily removing the WS upgrade for the DPS set for Chosen and Swordmasters, and changing how things proc). It doesn't overly affect how the sets work for us, but gives me a good excuse to look back on the sets with a bit more time.

The new sets look like the following:

(Primary) Defensive Set

Tou - 232
Wou - 134
Init - 116
Str - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% reduced chance to be crit
4% block
60 hp/4s
4 AP/s
2% reduced armor penetration

3 piece - 85 Tou
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 200 HP/4s
6 piece - On Being Attacked: 10% chance to reduce all damage you take by 6% for 10s.
7 piece - On Being Attacked: 10% chance to increase parry/block/disrupt/dodge by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 targets within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 5s.

(Secondary) Offensive Set

Str - 232
WS - 134
Tou - 116
Wou - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
4% parry strikethrough
3 AP/s
2% parry

3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% DPS
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 allies within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed increased by 60% for 5s.

If you compare this to our current sovereign set.

Tou - 224
Wou - 100
WS - 99
Init - 20
Str - 103
WP - 8
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
3 morale per second
2% block
2% parry strikethrough
4% melee crit
2% reduced armor penetration
3 AP/s
3% reduced chance to be crit


3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% Melee crit
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to lower all of targets resistances by 200 for 10 seconds.
7 piece - On Hit: 25% chance to steal 80 toughness from your target for 10 seconds.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Defensive target will absorb 487 damage over 10 seconds.

Both new sets are a lot more appealing but can they replace for example a Sov/Warlord/Invader combo set for 3x strength bonus? Without knowing the exact numbers on pieces I'd have to say yes. Using the triple strength stack (without talismans but including the Shroud of Assassins) you are receiving +376 strength without any set piece bonuses other than the + to strength. The DPS set, using all 8 pieces will grant you +317 strength but with +40 melee power added and a 5% DPS bonus. The DPS bonus is always hard to work out but with high end gear I'm sure it will add a few more points onto the damage bonus.

As for replacing a defensive/tanking set that's more tricky. For PvE tanking there's a lot more pieces out there which have better effect in PvE as well as some of the procs and bonuses being pointless. Toughness has NO effect in PvE at all for anything of any use and thus should be completely ignored, so you lose your first set piece and in effect 232 stat points. Wounds and HP regen is nice as is the parry/block proc. The 6% damage reduction proc is too low to be worth anything when you're getting cleaved for 4000 damage. Overall the defensive set is NOT for PvE tanking so don't use it as such.

Well how about the defensive set being useful for RvR? Much better yes. In scenarios I still prefer to run a more offensive build (triple str stack for example) so for scenarios I'll be sticking with the offensive set, for open RvR out in the lakes running with the warband it's much more interesting to look at the set. Multiple targets hitting you with AoE will set the defensive procs off enough to keep it up (though that also depends on internal cooldown), add in the AoE snare and general survivability with toughness, wounds, reduction in being crit and block and you have a good open RvR set.

Overall though, it's looking good. For single target DPS, scenarios etc I'll be running with a Sov set, though I might swap out a couple of pieces as the parry strikethrough I don't rate too much with the low proc rate and the speed boost while I like it, it will depend if I can fit in the invader two piece bonus (+72 strength) which I'd prefer or the Ferocity of the Crocodile set (+90 melee power).

The new sovereign sets for tanks

Subject to feedback no doubt, but overall they don't look too bad. I gave up with toughness as a stat a while back mind you as I found it to be very ineffective. A large wounds pool seemed to work out better and the toughness just sort of added on anyway. The procs are nice and the speed buff/debuff seems decent enough, if a little odd for tanks, but I suppose it gives us more movement effects (and a life saver for us Black Orcs for being buggered with CC due to the plan mechanic). Any thoughts? I like it so far.

(Primary) Defensive Set
Tou - 232
Wou - 134
Ini - 116
WS - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289

6% reduced chance to be crit
4% block
60 hp/4s
4 AP/s
2% reduced armor penetration

3 piece - 85 Tou
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 200 HP/4s
6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to reduce attacker's armor penetration against you and chance to critically hit you by 6% for 10s.
7 piece - On Defense: 25% chance to increase parry/block/disrupt/dodge by 5% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 targets within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 5s.


(Secondary) Offensive Set
Str - 232
WS - 134
Wou - 116
Tou - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289

6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
4% parry strikethrough
3 AP/s
2% parry

3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 WS
5 piece - 5% DPS
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 allies within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed increased by 60% for 5s.

Your dream sovereign sets?

Well with the upcoming changes to the Sovereign armour sets and multiple choices you can make, I was thinking what I'd like to see with the Black Orc Sov set. In all honesty it's a nice set, you get strength, wounds and melee crit as the first three bonuses, the next is a resist debuff which is also very nice. The toughness theft isn't that great and our special is abysmal.. A 300 damage absorb shield on a 3 minute cool down.. Bleh

So with the inevitable change coming, lets head it off and find out what I'd like.

I'll try and do three sets here, one for each mastery tree. All 8 part pieces are on a 2 or 3 minute cool down (can't decide). If it's highlighted green it means it's an already existing ability on the Sov set or on another high end set such as Tyrant.

Brawler (Single target DPS / Two hander)
3: +85 Strength
4: +85 Wounds
5: +5% Melee Crit
6: Erosion - On Hit: 10% chance to lower all of target's Resistances by 165 for 10 seconds.
7: Snap yer fingerz - On Hit: 25% chance to reduce targets chance to parry by 1% for 10 seconds this can stack up to 10 times
8: 'eadbutt: You smash your head into your targets head staggering them for 5 seconds. Once the stagger is broken the target will suffer from mass bleeding and take 750 damage over 10 seconds

Toughest (Tanking)
3: +85 Wounds
4: +85 Initiative
5: +500 Armour
6: Spiky Bitz - On Being Melee Hit: 10% chance the attacker will get caught on some nasty spikes adorned on your armour and take 200 physical damage.
7: Reactionary - On Defense: 25% chance to increase Parry, Evade, and Disrupt by 10% for 10 seconds.
8: Dats not 'urty: Your party will absorb 1000 damage over 10 seconds.

Boss (Group Buffs / AoE)
3: +85 Toughness
4: +85 Strength
5: +85 Wounds
6: Dis way - On Hit: 10% chance to increase the highest stat of party members within 60 feet by 100. Does not stack.
7: Keep 'ittin 'em - On Hit: 25% chance for party members within 60 feet to regain 20 Action Points
8: Orcapult!: If your defensive target is within 5 feet you can throw them to an enemy target within 60 feet.

Wot you gitz think?