A question of depth

So I've been struggling to balance work, real life and play time recently so my activity in WAR has been quite low unfortunately. Normally I get the 'twitch' to login and crack some skulls or go wondering off in search of something new and interesting however sadly the twitch just hasn't been there.

Now don't get me wrong, WAR is still my game of choice, I'm not running off anywhere soon but right now there's nothing grabbing me back to WAR. I'll log on, hit a scenario then pretty much give up due to the MIA  matchmaking system which still puts full RR80+ premades against low RR pugs. I've been unfortunate in my warbands recently that we're hitting Morale bomb warbands most of the time. My record stands at having 10 damaging morales hit me in a 2 second window which isn't mitigatable (making a mockery of the increased survival rate) and basically ends up being which side clicks faster and/or has more full Sov MDPS to drain multiple sides. For all the whining of 1k1 it still doesn't help against a rank 1 morale.

But that's just the evolution of battle now that standard bomb groups have taken the hit, someone will find a new way and it's only a matter of time before this spreads onto more servers and becomes more common amongst premade warbands (which are the standard on Norn). So lets move on anyway away from that. If I log into WAR late at night after work there's little for me to do now, I've hit a lot of unlocks already so I'm left looking at killing 100,000 mobs or blindly looking for an exploration unlock which may or may not exist and if it does may or may not actually be broken anyway - so currently unlocks are out for me. Scenarios and RvR as said are become frustrating, even roaming is becoming a chore due to ganking, adds or just unkillable warrior priests or doks or my pet hate... Kiting AM's (I HATE YOU!).

I'd like something I can do in WAR which doesn't go down the inevitable path of rage due to bugs or just unfun situations... I hate saying it, and I have in the past so apologies for sounding like a broken record but there's just nothing to actually DO in WAR in downtime. This isn't WoW or LotRO so I can understand a lack of fishing or archaeology but what about the crafting skills we do have? Why can't there be more to them, no siege weapon making? You could gather resources such as ore or wood (Mmmmm wud) or smith armour and weapons, scribe scrolls.... Heck I'd even like to do some fishing or archaeology, something to waste some time in so I have a reason to login and not get pissed off with the game.

I dont want WAR to be WoW, LotRO or some such, it's WAR.... But at least those games have more to do other than the main objective. WAR you RvR, everything else is left over, buggy or just plain doesn't work.The problem is that nothing will happen over night, in fact nothing will happen for a while because the game needs RvR to survive and rightfully that should be the primary focus. I'd like to hear about more things happening in WAR, more new stuff coming in but I can't see anything ahead of us now that makes me want to say "That's cool".

So in your downtime, when scenarios and RvR have become a chore/grind more than something what do you do?

Also today.. RvR Adjustments in 1.3.6

ZOMG! Double post day!!

http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=dev_discussions&thread.id=10655

We'd like to announce some upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. As stated by Carrie Gouskos in a recent Producer's Letter, there are many upcoming changes for ORvR in the near future. While some of these changes do affect ORvR, they do not conclude the list by any means. We are vigilantly working on much larger improvements to be released in a later version.

• ORvR: Victory Points for PVE and Prior Tier have been removed. New pool values are as follows:
  • Tier 1
    • Objectives: 40%
    • Scenarios: 40%
    • Skirmish: 20%
  • Tiers 2 & 3
    
    • Objectives: 45%
    • Scenarios: 35%
    • Skirmish: 20%
  • Tier 4
    • Objectives: 45%
    • Scenarios: 30%
    • Skirmish: 25%

• ORvR: Zone capture rewards will now only be awarded to players within the RvR lake or an associated Tier's Scenario. Players will remain eligible for rewards for 5 minutes after leaving the RvR lake or an associate's Tier's Scenario as long as the player is within the appropriate pairing.

• Against All Odds: in the event that an army is outnumbered within an RvR lake, members of the outnumbered army will receive a scaling bonus to Experience, Renown and Influence. This bonus becomes active on qualified players after being outnumbered by 20% or more. The bonus cannot surpass 400% and requires at least 6 players of each Realm to be present within the RvR lake.

• Scenarios: players with the "Quitter!" debuff will no longer suffer a penalty to Experience and Renown but will now be unable to queue for a Scenario until the "Quitter!" debuff has faded.

• Contested Cities: Players belonging to the Realm that lost Stage 3 will now always be properly disabled by the Routed ability.

• Contested Cities: Portals leading out of the Khorne War Quarters and Slaanesh Chambers no longer check for combat status.

• Contested Cities: Guards will no longer spawn at the six objectives within Altdorf and The Inevitable City.

• 
  

This is all quite a lot of info to digest. Against all odds only gives xp/renown/influence so wont impact the actual fighting (I initially misread this part, so apologies if you read something else here :D ) . Quitter change looks decent as well and how many people will we see hiding just inside the rvr lake but still close enough to the warcamp to get guard protection? Fair few I bet,

Broken Blockas & Cracked Choppas

My Blocka o' da Doombull and Choppa of da Chieftain are starting to look a little battle worn and run down these days. The Blocka has been in use since the middle of February and the only upgrade for it comes from Land of the Dead after killing the Colossus a gazillion times (funnily enough a PvE thing). The Chieftains choppa has an upgrade, in the Warlord PQ (good luck getting there on Karak Norn) but the better two are a Sandstorm (from land of the dead grinding) drop or from... again... the Colossus.

See the theme here?

Barring the tier 4 RvR influence rewards there's no real way to get weaponry in RvR. And those weapons are quickly replaced by PvE weapons.

The two logical choices would be to expand the influence rewards or allow weaponry to be purchased with all those tokens starting to build up in people inventories. I'm in favour of the influence system, it's guaranteed that you will get them if you work towards it rather than waiting on lucky drops.

Start a new influence bar... Basic influence you can only gain if you are renown rank 50 or above, advance influence only gains when you are RR60 and elite influence you can gain from RR70. The reason for this is to stop people being all influenced out before they can even wear conqueror to help the sense of progression. Keep a renown requirement on them so you have a dual goal, your rank and influence then let people go smush!

The same can be done for jewellery items, barring the dreadful Warlord and Sovereign pieces (seriously, who thinks +8 will power is of ANY use to a tank?) all other jewellery pieces come from PvE.

Let us gear up and progress in RvR, not stare at the same items for almost a year because there's nothing left to get other than rare PvE drops...

For Gorks sake.. give us something to do other than sieges!

Well as the Hand of Blood wait around for another siege to end we're at a loss... No ORvR... No scenarios... A lot of guilds just seem to log out now if it's not going to look like a lock.

We NEED RvR to do during this time if the city instances are empty and dont give us that horrible city scenario we had before please.

My thoughts? Open up The Twisted Tower and the Maw of Madness if IC is under siege and Reikland Hills and Reikland Factory if Altdorf is under attack. When Highpass Cemetery was on as the event scenario I've never seen scens pop so fast, you would be going straight into them after wards... People would rather fight than stare at empty instances.

I don't know what the average play session is but I'd say no more than three hours for the casual WAR player.. if two and a half hours of this are taken up by a city siege which is half empty then it's not productive to the game. The novelty has worn off already and the grumblings are starting again...

This r not srs business

Sometimes... You have to just go out and enjoy the fact that this is a GAME... Or in our case, strip off and run the RvR for the night completely, stark naked (and win a lot of fights somehow!)

Huge thanks to all the Hand of Bloods that joined me for our naked romp, was some of the best fun I've had in a long time and with the hilarity on vent, I hope you guys enjoyed it as well :)

Lokax makes a movie!

Well on Friday night we did a bunch of RvR but also had a small group split off and head to help some alts in BRB, so during this time I figured I'd do some solo RvR.. Or try to, is bloody tricky finding people on Karak Norn that are willing to fight one on one or that don't run the minute there health gets low (I had a lot of clips of people getting beat up then running and I wasn't able to catch up to finish them off). Also you get a lot of folks jumping into fighs but then it's mass scale RvR so I have no issue with that, I can't expect people to not fight me, I'm a bloomin' Black Orc for Gorks sake!

There was a couple of mess ups I made in some of the fights but overall I don't think they went too badly. The music is just a couple of tracks that I felt were quite amusing (and first is NSFW) to go with Lokax as he stomped through Eataine and Praag.

Enjoy! (and there is a much better resolution and better quality file, but it's 400megs so not sure if anyone wants it really)...

Mmmmm Gud - review

Well since my last post was a fairly negative one (born out of a night of sheer frustration) I've decided to sit down with my Mmmmm Gud list and think of what I enjoy in WAR and what makes me want to log in (or not log out)

1) Small scale RvR
Wot? Hang 'on... Last time you loved mass scale RvR... True, but I'm starting to appreciate the smaller scale RvR, whether it's in scenarios or small war bands. The first crucial part is that it's on a much more personal level. You don't get hopelessly zerged constantly, you can pick and choose your fights a lot more. Smaller armies are much more manoeuvrable and WILLING to do more than renown farm. They can escape a lot quicker or strike a lot faster. We've been running alliance war bands recently and just having less than 20 folks in it and you can do more than a war band and a half. Communication is so much better, people help and single target more. Yeah, things still bugger up, but you're with a small group of friends so it's more fun.

Shame when I'm out solo most Order run from me when they're below 1/3rd health *grumblez*

2) The maturing community
As the game matures the community starts to pull together, you start to trust your guild mates more, names are recognised you get whispers from people saying "Hey, love your blog!" (no really.. I've had one.. epic win!). Once you start to get used to your guild and the people you share the game with it starts to feel a lot more comfortable in the game. Logging in to share your time with a great bunch of people and wonderful friends can make a dull day or game a lot more fun. Spend some time chatting with your guild mates and do more events with them, whether it's ORvR, scenarios or grinding. It helps to bring the community together which helps you and the game in the long run.

3) Fixes are coming.... 'onest guv'
We're still waiting on details and it might be almost a month since 1.2 was released with still unbalanced classes and abilities but the fixes and bug squishes WILL come, just for every day Mythic doesn't release details it's another day that someone will get pissed off with a broken aspect and quit.

4) Easy PQ's
I still enjoy going round these and finding new ones or fun ones. I stumbled into a quick and fast Tier 4 PQ the other day and ended up grinding a bucket load of gold and greens from it without realising. Go out and explore them, find some fun ones and see how they progress, follow the little stories they give, they can be fun wee reads (and even better, take your guildies and friends to the harder ones).

5) Updated RvR Influence system.
I am eagerly awaiting more news on this, many people already go out and use the tier 4 armour sets so by the time they get full influence the gear is pretty much redundant, would be nice to either have a themed set to collect every three months which would be usable in all instances barring the cities or have some way to upgrade them by spending your gathered influence.

So that ends a quick Mmmmm Gud for today. Sit down and give me your five things you enjoy about WAR right now, you don't need a huge spiel o' pish about them, but lets see what you all think...

Picking flowers on the field of battle

So there I was on Monday morning. Charging through Dragonwake, yelling Waaaaaaaaaaagh! and with the intentions of slaughter and carnage, when I realised how quiet, serene and picturesque it was. So i stopped off my boar, let him snuffle about and decided to pick a small flower... Den i crushed it under me stompas!

Why are so many of the T4 RvR lakes (I don't run any alts right now so can't remember the others) designed in such a way that they look like tranquil landscapes and not war zones? Praag is actually the only one that feels as if there is a war going on with raging fire and burnt out shells of homes with the occasional NPC in battle with another NPC to give a sense of a warfare. You can be running with a warband through an empty, desolate zone and it feels very fake. Certainly not adding to the sense that you've entered into a battle zone.

So what do I feel could be done to make the RvR lakes more of a battleground?

In my opinion, the best place to feel like there's a war going on is actually all the way back in Mount Bloodhorn at the Kron Komar PQ and camps. The ambient sounds of warfare add so much to the zone, hearing cannons blast, Orcs shouting. To see explosions and enemies dying with two sides engaged in constant warfare. It feels like you're on the front line about to charge in. Now I don't expect Mythic to fill the lakes with NPC's and explosions due to lag reasons but surely it might be possible to add a few in, certain spots in the lakes where you can have two sides of NPC's locked in eternal combat (make them invulnerable to players to avoid them being farmed). Even better, and I have no idea if this would be possible, but have a system in place that plays louder and more frequent ambient warfare sounds (explosions, sounds of steel on steel, shouts and death cries etc) the more action there is in a lake, make it feel like you can hear the battle from a mile away. There's no need for it to get louder as you get closer, but make it feel as if you're stepping into a battle zone and not a landscape painting.

Scar the landscape some more with the marks of war. Sorry a keep with a bit bashed out the wall while the rest of the landscape around it looks like a summer field such as we have just now doesn't count. Craters with corpses, more ruined buildings and items around battlefield objectives (I always remember Nordenwatch at the Destruction starting flag with the fishing huts, being able to run around and feel as if you're in a small camp). The BO's still stick out like a sore thumb, something randomly placed. spice them up with war and blood!

Now I'm not saying that the whole zones must be littered with corpses and craters, or explosions and elves but a bit of world re-design would go long way to make it feel like WAR!