So me typin' board 'as sticky bits eh?

I blame the stunty bits stuck to it after I lobbed it at dem.. Hur Hur Hur...

Ahem, well I got nominated by the wonderful Mommy Can I Play Warhammer? and Cry Me a RvR. For the Sticky Keyboard, to sum it up and 'cause I wont do it justice here I'll paste the details :)

So what is it about?

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

So without further ado, lets gooooo.

Breakfast at War: With the tagline 'coz’ stunties iz better than bacon' you know you're onto a winner. Great insight and depth, lots of great reads and fantastic descriptions and of course, not to mention a huge lot of solution. Highly recommended read.

Bootaes Bloody Blog: A Chosen on the same server (Karak Norn (it's Dwarvish for 'Mountain of Lag')), I need to sit down and do his Pimp My Character post, but waiting one more renown rank (OK yeah I know I had a target.. I got it.. so onto the next one)

Corwynn Maelstrom: Filthy elf on Norn but also a wonderful writer and read. A lot of deep commentary not just on WAR but on many factions of life and the world.

Tufmudda: A fellow black Orc on (guess where) Karak Norn. Another nice read and offers a lot of good opinions and views on many aspects of the game.

War Lady's View: A personal great friend from pre WAR, her Jinglish makes her blog very unique, just don't call her Squig Hunter 'Pooch' (woof)

Stunty Stomper: Honestly, Thulf needs no introduction. Amazing writer, wonderful blog and always has valid points and concerns.

GirlIRL: No, don't say it as one word.. It sounds like an angry Gorilla that way... Girl IRL has smashed onto the scene to become one of the top blogs and with the witty writing and great work on the site, it's easy to see why.

Now the tricky bit.. 10 honest things about me that wont make you go screaming away...

1) I forgot to put the oven on to make anything to eat while I was typing this up, now I'm hungry. brb....

2) kk, got some lasagne made up quickly.. I'm 30 years old, living in Scotland with forests, lochs and mountains all around.

3) I used to live near the Scottish Highlands and kept over 100 sheep, 7 horses, 9 cats and 3 dogs.

4) I'm credited in a still available Games Workshop book as a background writer.

5) I first got introduced to the Warhammer world in 1989(ish) but never had an army or anything of substance for tabletop playing.

6) Nearly four months ago, after 18 years of long hair.. I got it all cut off, shaved right down to stubble on my head... And I'm glad I finally done it, feels a lot better.

7) I can still sit down and watch any of the original three Star Wars films at any time

8) I don't have a TV (moved house and threw the old one out, and never bothered with a new one. I have the Internet and more importantly, books)

9) I started my MMO life in Ultima Online, then Dark Age of Camelot followed briefly by Horizons, then Star Wars Galaxies, then Dark Age of Camelot once more before jumping to Warcraft and finally landing in WAR.

10) Give me a hill or forest and a nice day and I'll happily walk for miles.

April Fools Post

Welcome to Mmmmm Gud! A Halflings tale of adventuring for the perfect cake!

Being chased by Orcs or Goblins? Dark Elves enslaving your village? Greenfield Grasshuggers just been beaten 3-0 by the Chaos All-Stars? Then don't fear, for we have the perfect recipe to send our bellys rumbling with the sweet, sugary cakes of delight!

Now without further ado, let's get cooking!

Roasted banana and ginger cheesecake

Ingredients
3 ripe Bananas, peeled and thickly sliced
1 tsp ground ginger
125g golden caster sugar
50g Butter
200g gingernut biscuits, finely crushed
750g mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp cornflour
3 large Eggs
1 Lemon, zest only

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6.

2. Place the banana slices on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle over the ground ginger and 2-3 tablespoons of the sugar. Roast in the oven for 10 minutes, until golden and very soft.

3. Meanwhile, melt the butter slightly in a saucepan, then stir in the biscuit crumbs, stirring until evenly mixed.

4. Tip the crumb mixture into a 23cm non-stick, spring-form cake tin, pressing the crumbs down firmly with the back of a spoon. Place in the fridge to chill for 10 minutes.

5. Place the mascarpone in a large bowl with the rest of the sugar, cornflour, eggs and lemon zest and beat until smooth and creamy.

6. Spoon the roasted bananas on to the biscuit base, top with the mascarpone mix and place the tin on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 45 minutes until golden. (The cake will still feel a little wobbly, but will set as it cools.)

7. Turn off the oven, open the door and leave the cheesecake to rest inside the cooling oven until completely cool.

8. Remove the cheesecake from the tin and slice into wedges to serve.

Da picture box o' Lokax #1

Was browsing through a load of old screenshots from WAR and figured I might as well post one up every week or so, sometimes it's nice just seeing what happens to other people and get an amusing chuckle from whatever happened in them.

This first picture I title... "Runnin' is fer Stunties"

Looking for an addon...

Anyone able to help here?

I'm looking for an addon that will let me see how many times I block an attack. Basically I'm wanting to run some extended tests on a mob, check to see how often I block, then reset it and try on another mob. Thought Tortals DPS thingy would do that but doesn't appear to. Anyone got any recommendations?

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.