Monday 31 May 2010

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.