The Warhammer Arms Race

"My melee DPS needs to be able to hit harder than a ranged DPS since we have to get in close"
"No-one uses ranged DPS anymore because melee DPS does more damage, we need to have more damage since we're more fragile"
"What is the point of healers now as we can't keep anyone up? We need stronger heals"
"Our DPS classes can't kill anyone now due to over powered heals, we need more DPS!"
"I'm a tank... I stand here with no defined role in RvR!"

And so the cycle continues with each patch, the classes get more and more powerful, turning Warhammer into an arms race. There was a quote from (possibly) Mark Jacobs about how they would rather not nerf any class but instead bring the others up to the same power level.

THIS. DOESN'T. WORK.

There will always be a spec or class that can find a tactic set or buggy ability that turns them into an "I WIN" class. The minute you try to drag other classes up to the same level is when you start the arms race. Everyone wants the bigger abilities and the large floaty numbers overhead to be coming from them.

Currently archmages and shamans are getting a healing buff in 1.2.1. Overall the mechanic changes (it goes from interesting concept to 'why even bother with a mechanic?') and buffs should make them both fairly significant healers and I'd almost say on par with the current healing level of Warrior Priests and Disciples. So the poor Zealots and Runepriests are now the bottom rung healing class (and these were supposed to be the pure healers rather than the hybrid ranged dps / melee dps healers) so they need to get a buff up. 1.3 comes around and gives them a nice buff and we now have a situation where healers are ruling the roost and the only way to combat them is to up the damage people can do..

Or is it?

Mythic seem a bit.. wary of nerfing any class, I suppose EVERY MMO developer doesn't like to do this. It causes unrest in the forums, people may quit due to the changes and it never looks good having a class up in arms and screaming bloody murder about the nerfs. And imagine if every class was doing it.. Would that be a good thing? Possibly not in the short term but longer term I fully believe this would help combat balance. Take a step back and look at where the game is going right now, it's simply DPS/HPS escalating. If one class gets a nerf then they struggle to adapt due to the buffs that continually go around them. bring all classes down to a level peg and re look at the class mechanics. Melee healers for example should need to you know.. melee.

Of course there are underpowered classes right now, Shadow Warrior comes to mind, but instead of a big buff, what's truly wrong with them if the other classes were brought to the same power level?

Would you be happy for Mythic to tone down the class if it meant that every other class would be as powerful as yours? Dropping damage, healing and mitigation down to a level that is easier to manage?

WCPI Blog o' da week.

This weeks Blog o' da Week goes to WAAAGH! Roots. Great site by Xerb of War Underground fame. It has a series of great articles and many thought provoking posts that get you thinking.. Hmmm, this git may be onto something.

WAAAAGH! Roots. Check dem out!

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The WAR Community Promotion Initiative, or WCPI for short, is a player-wide effort for WAR fansites, blogs, forums, and other WAR community efforts to cross-promote and expose content to everyone who visits them. Members of the WCPI regularly promote each other through links, spotlights, and other features. If you have a WAR site and you’d like to join, check out the WCPI thread or PM PhoenixRed on the Warhammer Alliance forums.

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)...

Is a third side or a new race on its way?

On the WAR Europe boards someone asked about the possibility of a new race being added and after a bit of back and forth there was a tiny tidbit of information...

Xmoe wrote:
i dont think ther will make new race..


You, Sir, are mistaken

Magnus Aalto
Imaad
English Community Manager

Now really we can't look too much into this as anything of substance but I honestly believe there could be something in the works to help balance servers that are struggling on certain sides and this would simply be an NPC faction. Right now the logical idea would be the Skaven that could weaken defenses and strike keep lords and not to mention champion mobs could suddenly tunnel up in the midst of attackers to help the underpowered defence...

Maybe not though, it's only a random thought there. Of course, it might simply be the Tomb Kings helping to balance the Tomb of the Vulture Lord to ensure that access is never totally blocked off for one side for an extended time.

One thing I feel fairly confident about though is that we won't see a new playable faction or side for a while. Mythic need to focus on getting the balance right with the existing classes first before adding more to the mix.

So.. What could be coming?

+DISCLAIMER: REALLY, THIS IS JUST CONJECTURE SO DON'T LOOK DEEPLY INTO IT+

oooh shiny...

Just so you know if the site looks a bit.... funny.. I'm messing around with a new template, so don't worry.

*gets back to hammering away*

Right.. dat looks about finished for now. Will touch it up over the next couple of days but any glaring problems or missing blogs on my ready stuff then let me know, I lost my old ones and had to import them from an old Google Reader *grumblez*

Fluffy Bitz (part 1)

I'm a huge lover of fluff in games (that's the geeky term for background and the things that pad out the game) and WAR has possibly the deepest licence for fluff that any MMO has, you can pickup a Warhammer novel or a rulebook and see lots of great background and items mentioned that the game just doesn't have enough room to fit in. Look at the noteworthy persons alone and there are a huge number of people mentioned with great quotes and... fluff to fill the game in with. There's a rich lore and background but yet still so much of it untapped.

So this is the start of my random thoughts upon the fluffy aspects of the game. GirlIRL did a wonderful article about it already so I don't want to step on her toes in my hobnail boots but it's something I've been thinking about a lot as well recently. It adds to the depth of the game and really, sometimes we just don't want to grind more scenarios, participate in a zerg or hit a buggy instance so lets see what else we can add to the game, which wouldn't take too much effort but would give us something to do.

I picked up an old Orcs & Goblins Warhammer rulebook off ebay for £1 the other week just to have a browse through it. The background section was quite thin I have to admit but what actually interested me was the magic items and the descriptions.

It shames a waste that there are a bunch of items with wonderful descriptions sitting in the rulebooks which the fans of the game could see in the..ermm.. 'flesh'. Now everyone loves shinies.. Don't care what they say but shinies mean progression and it is the most basic and fundamental need for an MMO, for a player to want to keep on playing to improve. Once the character remains static, that's when interest starts to wane. Adding more items to collect (and even better if they are usable) and a sense of achievement once you get your sword or shield that you desire.

So how would I go about adding the old magical items with the descriptions into the game in a way that would let players collect and desire them?

I'd start with adjusting the armoury section of the Tome to include Weapons and Amulets. Now with the amulet sets you complete small quests and can then go and purchase the amulets themselves from the Librarians. Lets keep this concept with the weapons but add in a mix of the other tome bits to fill it in. So lets grab a random weapon to see how we can fit this together.

FUMPA'S CLUB OF FUMPIN'
Since the dawn of last Thursday, Fumpa's club has been the traditional symbol of leadership amongst the Blacknose tribe. Of course, to start with there were a few who didn't see it like that, but they've all since been, er, convinced.

OK, lets ignore the tabletop stats and well, the in game stats, we're wanting to make this fluffy enough to want people to collect it. In the Tome, under the armoury you'll see (well you would do...) the weapon section, under Greenskins there are lots of ??? and not much else. Now you've just been bashing away some rowdy Goblins in Black Crag when one of them drops an item "Fumpa's handle" now the item is bind on pickup and you can right click on it. Upon doing so, it unlocks a tome entry in the Greenskin armoury with the following:

FUMPA'S CLUB OF FUMPIN'
..... ... .... .. .... ......... ...... .... ... ...... .... traditional symbol of leadership amongst the Blacknose tribe. Of course, to start with there were .... ...... ...... ....... ..... ..... ........ .... ....... ..... .........

O ???
O ???
O Fumpa's Handle

Upon finding more of the pieces it will uncover more of the story and once you have all three unlocks you can purchase the item from the librarian in your capital city and to show it off as an Unlock item you can paint it orange as well (because right now with the current itemisation, certain greens can be just as good as Mythic orange). Give the items more than just a proc, make them unique for situations, in our above example the Fumpa is a symbol of leadership, so give it a nice +strength bonus (Orcs only respect strength) but also give it a use affect. With a one hour cooldown, using the item (must be equipped) will grant all party members 100 points of Morale.

Would adding unlockable weapons give you something to do during the downtime when you're not up for the usual day-to-day of WAR? Would it add to the depth and lore of Warhammer to see interesting and unique weapons with a sense of achievement to them?

I'd like them for sure.

Six months on and are we now ready for release?

Well we're now six months or so into the life span of WAR and we can pretty much now stop with the "Well it's just new" excuses (not that anyone really did recently). We finally have the missing careers but sadly no sign of our missing cities. Is WAR now at a stage where you would release it or was it released on time?

I think everyone agrees that the release was decided by EA to get in before WoW's expansion regardless of the state of the game and while it went relatively smoothly all things told, the game overall was still very rough around the edges. I'm guessing a lot of what we're seeing is what was planned in the background before it was cut.

The game itself is starting to feel as finished as an MMO as it can be, the big bugs are getting squished and the game itself is feeling more responsive and less clunky. There's still silly little things that can be added i feel (characters weight for example... as a Black Orc in full heavy armour when I jump and land on the ground I make the tiniest little skip and noise on the ground, the same my shaman does, characters seem to lack substance to them). Of course we wouldn't have the same level of testing *coughs* as we've had over the last six months of the game had it still be in closed beta for longer then a couple of months of open beta.

I do feel that we're finally starting to get somewhere with WAR, we might be a couple of patches away yet, but WAR is almost ready for public release... Six months after it was released

My Blocka!

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your appeal. We have investigated the issue and found that the item was sold. We have restored Blocka o' da Doombull in Lokax's bags and removed 34 silver and 99 brass coins.

For any further queries don't hesitate to contact us via the in game Ticket system.

Kind Regards,

WAR European Customer Support Team

*Blushes* How did I manage that? And I checked the buy back option on the merchants and it wasn't there. Anyway, thanks GOA!

Da picture box o' Lokax #2

You don't even know where to begin with this...

It was possibly our Gobbo Snikkit... Or maybe it's his clothes... And that looks like something sticking into him... and I don't even want to know what happened to his legs...

The scorpions weren't that scary were they?

WCPI Blog o' da week.

I always feel I should be promoting the lesser known, possibly the little hidden gems of blogs but I don't feel guilty for this one.. It's a big WAAAAAGHHHHHH to GirlIRL, who is well known, well established but is just a great writer and a wonderful read. Little else needs to be said other than if you don't already have her subscribed, then do so!

GirlIRL

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The WAR Community Promotion Initiative, or WCPI for short, is a player-wide effort for WAR fansites, blogs, forums, and other WAR community efforts to cross-promote and expose content to everyone who visits them. Members of the WCPI regularly promote each other through links, spotlights, and other features. If you have a WAR site and you’d like to join, check out the WCPI thread or PM PhoenixRed on the Warhammer Alliance forums.