A look ahead.

Ah, a new week and my lazy 'Sunday' (I don't work Mondays \o/), so time to sit down with a freshly ground coffee (Mmmmm Hazelnut and Amaretto), make up some toast and think what WAR will bring this coming week.

Well with the PTS coming up at some point and no doubt the patch notes as well in the next day or two we'll see the inevitable "OMG IM QUITTING THIS GAME COZ I R NOT UBER ANYMORE!!!111111@@@ELEVENGOBLINS" quickly followed by the "OMG THEY R NOW UBER HOW CAN WE COMPARE TO THEM??!?!?!?!111@TWELVESQUIGS" and then finally the "OMG THEY HAVEN'T TOUCHED OUR CLASS, MYTHIC ARE TRYING TO GET US ALL TO QUIT!!!1111@@@THIRTEENGNOBLARS". What I think people will need to do is to sit back and take a deep breath before forming an opinion about any changes. This is 1.2.1, not 1.3 or 1.4, there will be no major ground breaking changes and as you should know in every MMO, that the power of classes will rise and fall like the tide. You may have been the uber class in 1.2, but it's time to suck it up and realise that in 1.2.1 you're not so good, or possibly you're better now. Who knows until it's truly live.

I'm going to promise myself not to look at the first Borc change I see and get annoyed (no really I won't), but to look at the picture as a whole and do my time on the European test server to check out changes and feedback where I can.

Hopefully the Inevitable City won't be under siege during our LV runs as that pretty much killed it due to the lag last week, we managed to make good headway and in a couple of hours got to second wing, final boss (tree guy) before we called it a night rather than pushing our luck.

I'll get on me thinking stone later on and come up with a proper article to post, until then keep smashing dem stunties!

WCPI Blog o' da week.

And dis weeks blog o' da week is.. *orcy drumrolls (on the 'eads of stunties)*


Mommy Can I Play Warhammer?


A fantastic read of how a family enjoys Warhammer. There's no grief, no hassle, no crys of nerf or OP!!!

Just a fantastic family enjoying Warhammer as it should be. For fun and together.

Go check dem out.. Lokax orders it!

Of course Mythic.. You have to ruin a good rant...

By announcing that 1.2.1 is coming to the PTS...

Bar stewards!

Weekend Preview - v1.2.1 Patch

Combat Responsiveness Improvements – This subject has been an object of much discussion, both internally at Mythic, and externally among the community over the past few months and the team has been focusing especially heavily on this issue over the past few weeks. The result is that we have made a number of important improvements to this aspect of the game. In V1.2.1, casting times have become more accurate under normal play conditions, and players should no longer see a significant “stretch” or “pause” when casting spells while playing in “normal” conditions. We have also changed the UI display so increments of ½ second will be shown to give the player a more accurate and correct representation of time, and in high-lag situations, there will be a slight pause after the bar has filled up instead of the current “stretching” system. We have also made improvements to the animations and special effects-systems, which will result in better transitions especially when players are “chain-casting.”
Yeah, but will it fix "Your target is out of range" when you're in a laggy area for the melee classes? All I see is that you're attempting to fix the spell casters... Great for them.. Even worse for melee

Keep Upgrade System – Our new Keep Upgrade system allows guilds that own a Keep to increase the Keep’s utility and defensive capabilities in a number of ways which we will talk about in a ton of detail later today. Upgrades need to be paid for, of course, through a maintenance fee, and upgrades will decay over time if maintenance fees aren’t paid. We will have a Keep Upgrade Interface to help the guild track the status of its Keep and associated upgrades. And for those guilds that take and hold a Keep until the zone is taken, a special reward awaits.
Great in theory... But honestly, with the way zone dominance works, why waste time and effort in paying for a keep to be upgraded when 3 people can just take it down and the zone at 3am? I'll wait until I see the full notes about this...

General UI Improvements – We have made a number of improvements to the UI, including a major overhaul of the Guild Window that includes making it larger, adding more tabs and even more useful information. We have also made changes to the User Settings window to make it easier to use.
Cool, that's all good.

RvR Zone Control Rewards- We have made a number of improvements to reward players receive for capturing an entire zone as opposed to individual Objective and Keep captures. Battlefield Objectives will also buff players in the zone, and the players who have captured a Keep or Battlefield Objective will also see a doubling in the amount of Renown gained when the zone is captured.
So in order to keep balance and prevent one side continually dominating the other you're going to reward the dominating sides with more loot and renown boosts making the gap widen? Err.. what the hell?

The Battle for the Gates of Ekrund Expands! – We have added a special 6-on-6 version of the Gates of Ekrund for players between the Ranks of 19-24. This will help players at these Ranks gain experience faster while the team continues to work on other improvements to the experience-gain pace for those Ranks. Of course, this new Scenario “Broken Gates of Ekrund” is also accompanied by its own quest.
Is it just me or am I one of the only ones that finds the levelling pace was actually fine before all the XP boosts? It's meant to feel like an achievement, something you've earned to get to 40 and not just something to hand out.

Beyond the Sands Live Event – It’s time for another Live Event, and the rise of the Tomb Kings is getting closer by the minute!
Bets on a title, trophy and a random piece of equipment for the rewards?

Lots of Bug Fixes – While nowhere near the size of the main 1.2 patch, the team still found time to crush a bunch of bugs while working on the rest of 1.2 and the upcoming 1.3.
All good! \o/

Return to Nordenwatch Weekend Event – We will also be holding a special Nordenwatch-themed weekend event.
I was going to post an idea about introducing a random tier1 - tier3 scenario into tier4 for each weekend so looks like this could be something similar

And More! – Lots more features, career balancing, and improvements to the game are on their way. More details about this next week
Nerfs or Buffs... Class Balances or Class Overpowering. Will the AoE classes remain top of the pile for DPS and melee healers remain top for the healing classes or will there be a shift in power to make another class dramatically unbalanced.... Stay tuned!

Speedbumps on the way to the daily IC trashing.

+++ Warning, frustrated rant ahead +++

Well was idling in IC, bored as guild is normally quiet on a Friday night (I work on Saturdays) and I noticed that Fell Landing was under attack (it had literally started) so I decided to pop off an at least try and get some renown.

I got there as the timer reached 56 minutes left. The inner door was at 80%... what the hell? Ah well, might as well try and repair it.. Oh I can't.. it's been stealth nerfed so you can't repair doors. Ah well, lets see who else is here defending.. Mmmm.. I count thirty or so (one full warband and we had a warband of 6).

We got steamrolled.. Well rain of fired within seconds of the cardboard doors that can't be repaired more than twice every minute being sneezed at and falling over.

What is the actual roll of a tank these days in RvR?

We are no longer roadblocks but speedbumps, and soon we'll be a speedbump with a road around it when they add multiple paths into the lord room.

Our resists have been nerfed so we are fodder for the AoE caster face rolling (well rather face smash ontp keyboard for all the ability it takes. You don't even need to roll).

YOU ARE QUICK TO NERF OUR FECKEN BULWARK BUT GOD FORBID YOU NERF THE AOE

We can't taunt pets to attack us.

If it's not AoE it's disable/knockback/knockdown or anything else to make us unusable.. Normally in AoE stacks as well rather than single target, you know.... Because if it's AoE it's better or something.

Ah *sigh* I dunno... I just feel like Mythic are quick to nerf minority classes but cannot get the balls together to acually get a hot fix out there to prevent the abuse of certain skills made by the popular classes. Hey Mythic.. if the hotfix is too much, you can still adjust. Combined with wanting to make it easier to assault keeps and forts and you wonder why even bother trying to defend if your on a server which is dominated by one side.

Well, since that's IC under attack, I may as well log off play Empire: Total War

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...

All quiet on the Mythic front.

It's been fairly quiet from the lads and lasses over in Virginia and you wonder what's going on behind closed doors. Paul Barnett is noticeably silent. Mark Jacobs pops up every now and then to say "This is coming soon! (tm)" and the odd dev makes an appearance on the Oboards to give a response of very little substance. No news is good news they say, but in an MMO it's concerning.

Class imbalances are worse than they were upon release. End game is still horribly broken and bugged. Lag has pretty much killed our servers evening game play, we can't even do LV these days since IC is constantly under siege and the lag from that gives us +6 second cast timers on everything. The campaign is now dictated by the side which has the most people that can play in off peak times due to the dominance system. Apathy has set in with many players, I checked the number of players defending IC last night.. Order 301, Destro 146. Tonight was Order 273, Destro 110.

Do Mythic have a plan, or are they currently scrabbling around thinking "WTF do we do?". They can't respond to issues quick enough and severely lack in communicating to the players what they will be doing to resolve the worries and problems the players have with WAR. Can Mythic afford to let the game break apart through not being able to react quick enough. With WoW's 3. 1 patch, a new raid instance and class re-evaluations coming in a week or two, can WAR still hold onto people who are starting to feel jaded with the game in its current state.

Mythic. You NEED to get out there and start saying "This is where we are, this is what we know is not working and THIS is how we aim to fix it".

I really enjoy so much of this game, but still so much makes me able to switch the game off without a good thought. I tend to log off now thinking "That's pi**ed me off" rather than "That was cool". I WANT to keep playing this game, you're not making it easy to enjoy it though Mythic.

Speak to us.

WAR Europes story contest

Over on the WAR Europe forums there's a contest to win a Skaven cloak for some fan fiction. You're given a paragraph from various pairings and you finish the story off. This is the opening paragraph for the Greenskin story...

"The strangely attired gang of Orcs bulled through the wood toward the lonely Dwarf tavern. Gragnak ‘Eadsplitter, greenest, meanest and biggest of the warband sniffed the air, listened to the rumbling chatter of the boyz to his back and snorted in disgust. He wasn’t just stronger, he was smarter too and much as he wanted a good dust up with the stunties this was a chance to prove his cunning to da Warboss.
“Oi!” He roared twisting to plant his Choppa into the forehead of the bemused Orc behind him. “Keep yer gobs shut, dem Stunties will know we be coming.”
Reaching up the unlucky Greenskin wrapped dirty stained fingers around the weapon embedded in his thick skull and with a quizzical raise of its beady eyes fell forward. Gragnak retrieved the cleaver with a brutal yank before he’d even hit the ground.
“Listen up! Dem stunties won’t know we be Orcy until we’re well inside. I ‘eard off Gagna, an ‘e ‘eard it off Bugrag dat we done dis trick wid Stunty beards right? Well dat worked so fink wot we’ll do wid dese.” The mammoth Greenskin strode out of the tree line and toward the Tavern door.
Stumbling forward in his unfamiliar garb Gragnak slammed the door open, adjusted his wig and stepped inside.
“Ahhh,” came a voice behind, “dats why we needed da skirts.”"

And this is how I finished the story... *Clicky*

On my command, unleash waaaaaghhh!

You know, I was trying to find a nice trailer or some sort of cinematic clip on YouTube with some siege warfare on a castle but really couldn't find anything, but never mind, all it takes is a bit of thinking to get in the mood.

So sieges or keeps and forts. Staring at the enemy as the ram goes up, oil boils and is poured onto the defenders as they burn and scream (well OK, burn). The cannons and ballistas are built up, ready to rain untold destruction on the defenders, except they don't. How pathetic are the siege weapons in WAR? Seriously, anytime a cannon hits me I might fall over and get a tickle from the 200 damage I take but that's it.

There's no fear in standing in the range of siege weapons other than the boiling oil over a keep door (and even that's not a huge worry), it's the bloody AoE stacking that defends keeps and forts. There's a lot of untapped potential in the siege weapons and possibly a few balance fixes at the same time. So lets look at the two main weak points for siege weaponry in WAR.

DAMAGE
It's crap. Honestly, absolutely pathetic. There is NO point in sitting with a catapult, flinging rocks at the enemy when the damage is so pointless it does nothing more than a scratch.

RANGE
Righto, so I have the inclination to setup some siege equipment since as a tank I'm pretty much limited in my siege taking abilities (apparently a ram isn't a siege weapon anymore either...). So out of boredom I set one up to tickle a few defenders on the walls. Except they're out of range.. Every single person on the walls is out of range of a giant bow and arrow, unless you happen to be standing on one corner of the walls, which is miles away from the action. Waste of time, money and effort.

So how would I go about making the art of siege more interesting, while at the same time discovering a cure for world poverty and possibly making some toast at the same time?

I'd leave the existing siege weapons as they are.

Wot? You gone off yer noggin dere Lokax?

Nearly, but not quite.

Instead we add a new trade skill to the game Siege craft (nicked the name from DAoC). Siege crafters would be able to make improved versions of the weapons which would increase the range, damage, give unique looks and also give special siege weapons for each faction.

Gathering profession
The skill would be linked to Cultivating and Salvaging. from cultivating you can grow trees that once harvested would provide wood, from Salvaging you would be able to refine items to get metal (in addition to your normal goodies). The higher types of siege weapons would require higher levels of wood and metal.

Using Siege craft on the field of battle
I don't think any profession should be chucked on an alt and left to rot while you send mats back and forth, I like the idea of each profession having a place on the battlefield. So what can you do to get people to take Siege craft on mains? One simple way, and one more complicated but involving. The first is to grant a straight range and damage bonus for a siege craft using a siege weapon. +5% damage and +10% range bonus (for rams, +2% damage bonus for each siege crafter using it). The second one would be to make Siege crafters the only ones to 'activate' the siege pads on the ground (keep the oil and ram pads active for anyone). A siege crafter would need to right click on the pad to activate it to allow people to build on them (imagine it as clearing away the ground and setting it ready for a siege engine). Add more pads to the area around keeps and even a few inside them (requires higher levels of skill to activate a pad in the higher tiers and forts)

Da weapons!
Now the fun bit. Each type of weapon you can buy from the Quartermaster would have an improved crafting version which as said, does significantly more damage and has a much larger range, one which will make any tower defenders think twice about showing face on the walls rather than standing there immune to everything. Of course, allow siege weapons to be used on the doors (though increase the damage that doors can take) . Rams can be upgraded to say 6 man versions, doing more damage and giving a buff to everyone who uses it mitigating incoming damage by 50% (a concerted effort should still break down people, but you're mean to to be hidden under the canopy really, even if your character is at the side on the screen). Of course, give oil a larger area of affect, longer lasting burns and possibly up the damage a bit. Make them meaner, siege weapons should make people scared when they see 10 cannons appear in front of the keep. Remember, siege weapons are on both sides, so no one side would have an advantage.

New weapons
OK, little fun idea. I LOVE the Troll boulder thrower it just feels so damned orcy it's great. So how would you be able to add this into the game on a permanent basis?

Simple really ('onest guv). Add a special BoP seed for cultivators (Troll Fungus - da trollz luv it), upon growing it, they can harvest it and give the fungus to a siege crafter. Adding this as a 'special ingredient' in the siege crafting window would turn the weapon into a Troll boulder thrower (in affect, you've promised the troll more nibbly bits if he lobs more rocks at da stunties). This theme can be repeated for the other races. For example, poison/acid throwers for the Dark Elves (special apothecary potion), Demon Forged cannons for Chaos (uses a special salvaged part). And the same for Order (Ogre mercenary with the cannon on his arm for Empire with shinies from salvaging) , special oil from apothecary for the Goblin hewers for Dwarves and you could give the high elves some sort branch from cultivating to make a nasty bolt thrower (I didn't think that idea through entirely did I....)

In game effects
OK, so how would this change the game as it stands? My immediate thought is that it would address the AoE for the initial taking of forts and keeps. You wouldn't have everyone stacked in one place (the door) for them to be obliterated by mass AoE stacking, no need to change aoe damage that way or the mechanic. You can have siege weapons spread out, blasting the door from a distance and trying to pop off dangerous targets on the wall. The defenders can take out other siege weapons and players to keep healers aware and players from going afk while attacking. It gives melee classes something to do other than stare at the wall while the siege is going on, they can easily handle the war machines and feel as if they are contributing.

It opens a new possibility of the defenders sallying forth to take out a few siege weapons before retreating while under the cover of there own siege weapons from the keep. Gives a reason to push the attackers rather than just waiting for the inevitable final assault on the lord. Get out there and break down some of the nice shiny weapons they have to give them something to curse you for.

It spreads the field of battle out, rather than being focused on one part (the door), hopefully giving rise to more tactics than AoE spam and zerging the door (seriously, huge iron door getting broken by witch elves with flimsy little daggers...)

Other random ideas...
You could expand the idea to defending BO's. Add pads to them which can be used for palisades, pit traps (imagine charging into a BO, only to find yourself snared or rooted as you 'fall' into a pit trap), or blown back as you stand on a mine. Caltrops could be used to cause damage to any attackers getting nearby as well. Gives something to the BO anyway.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bloody hell, that was a lot of writing, really not gone into too much detail since it's really only for fun and unless Mythic sends me an email I don't think I'll elaborate on it any further. It's all speculation on game balance etc as well, who knows what the true affect could be. I'm not a designer, nor will I ever claim to be but to me it's a fairly good idea though I am sure as with all ideas, the person who thinks it through doesn't always see each side.

WCPI Blog o' da week.

A new addition to the Greenskin family (but not a new blog) is Cry Me a RvR (hur hur hur).

It's a great little read, lot of witty comments and enough to keep you entertained as you read through the scribbles :)

http://missvindaloo.blogspot.com/

NNNNnnooooooooooooooooo.............

From the Grab Bag for this week.

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=706

Q. Why are Black Orcs not larger than Choppas?

A. Black Orcs and Choppas are intended to be the same size, just like every other race/career combo in WAR. That being said, while full-on Berserk Choppas are larger for game-play purposes, this is only to call them out as a very dangerous target that needs to be dealt with ASAP!

Lokax is offically a sad Orc now *grumbles and sulks*