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.

Weapon Skill for da Warboss?

+++ Caution! Dis 'as Thinky Stuff +++
(07/04 updates in red)

So with the European PTS now up and the ability to copy Lokax over I decided to check out the possible secondary stat changes and how that would affect me. A weapon that Black Orcs have access to, the Badmoon Bigchoppa has always intrigued me with its proc and raw strength bonus. Now with the secondary changes looming overhead in 1.2.x it the weapon skill bonus on it suddenly makes it a lot more appealing.

So I did what any good Orc would do. I went out and bashed stuff till I found out what was bestest!

Here's what I found with no tactics used and hitting 96 times on level 38 spiders in Kadrin Valley.

Without any weapons equipped here are my stats (was in my rvr gear)
Strength: 557
Weapon Skill: 299

Numbers from live are in red

Bigchoppa of the Darkscale - with 2x +15 strength talismans in it
Auto attack hit: 254 / 253
Critical hit: 372 / From 34 crits: 354-402 (375.79 average)

Badmoon Bigchoppa - NO Talismans in it (because I forgot)
Auto attack hit: 274 / 273
Critical hit: 427 / From 34 crits: 382-434 (407.38 average)
+ 5% proc

Earthkeepa's Cutta & Blocka o' da Doombull - Wounds talismans (only other weapon I had)
Auto attack hit: 150
Critical hit: 220
+ lots of blocks

Using the Badmoon Bigchoppa and opening with a rank 32 Follow 'me Lead (+96 WS) upped my damage to the following:
Auto attack hit: 284
Critical hit: 486
+ 5% proc

Update:
Was on live this morning to note my strength and weapon skill as I forgot to do that. Also ran the first two tests again in a live environment. One thing I must point out though is that the Darkscale Bigchoppa is 3.0 speed whereas the Badmoon is 3.5, however I did not have any talismans slotted into the Badmoon. I'm no theoryhammerer (see wot I did dere?) but by stacking some Weapon Skill in place of strength certainly seems to help a lot (even on live) on the PTS.

Now imagine putting a black orc in a melee group and using No Choppin' Me as well as 'Ave Another One simply because you'll be spamming it and I think this might work out quite well for us...

What if we had three sides?

In Dark Age of Camelot you had three sides (or rather realms). Albion (Arthurian legends), Midgard (Nordic legends) and Hibernian (Celtic legends). The obvious advantage to having three sides in realm versus realm was that no-one side ever became too powerful since the other two could combine to take down the dominant side, and the cycle repeated itself so no-one ever gained continual dominance over the other two. The major flaw was that power and population on sides would change dramatically with each patch and people would often hop servers to play the perceived imbalanced realm only adding to the need for the other realms to team up.

So the question lies, would WAR have benefited more by having three sides rather than the traditional two and if so, how would they have managed it?

The more I thought about it, the more the concept of a third realm grows on me. It would certainly help towards a lot of balance issues should one side be buffed a bit too much in a patch, plus allows for more interesting battles as two sides possibly take on one only for the two to turn on each other to claim the keep or fort for victory points for there own realm.

Of course, this will never happen, it would require building the game practically from the ground up and a lot of what we have (the tug-o-war tier 4 zones for example) to be completely redesigned and ripped apart, but it's nice to think.

The fun bit however is imagining how the realms would form as the current triage for both sides wouldn't work too well. I'd imagine something like this.

Empire & Dwarves:
Knight of the Blazing Sun, Warrior Priest, Bright Wizard, Witch Hunter

Ironbreaker, Runepriest, Engineer, Slayer

Greenskins (Orcs and Goblins)
Black Orc, Boss (imagine an orc healer.. Shouting instead of traditional healing... "Oi, dat was a scratch, get movin' again", "Yer not dead ya runt, get back up an 'it 'im"), Arrer Boy, Choppa

Troll (with Goblin handler.. imagine a pet tank class), Shaman, Squig Hunter, Fanatic

Dark Alliance (Chaos and Dark Elves)
Chosen, Zealot, Magus, Marauder

Black Guard, Disciple, Sorceror, Witch Elf

So of course, one realm had to disappear and (not so) sadly it was the High Elves. Simple reason is that I couldn't 'fit' them in anywhere and they seem quite stuck out there on the little island of Ulthuan. However, the same case could be made for Dark Elves so you could change them for Greenskins and simply add in the "Brettonia and Wood Elf" realm in place of the full Greenskin faction.

Ach, as said, it's just not going to happen but would WAR have been better with a third realm to balance out the odds when one side starts to become the dominant force, or is the Order vs. Destruction working fine?

Secondary Stats

One sneaky little thing I found in the PTS notes was secondary stats.

"1.2.1 PTS introduces a number of changes to “Secondary” stats to give them a stronger effect on overall player performance. Please keep in mind that these new effects are in addition to existing bonuses that are already present in 1.2.

Critical hits: Critical bonus damage is no longer random, and is now a range of +5% to +75% based on stats (see below).
Critical heals: Critical bonus heal effectiveness is no longer random, and is now a range of +5% to +75% based on stats (see below).

Weapon Skill: Increases your Melee Critical and Ranged Critical bonus damage dealt.
Willpower: Increases your Magic Critical bonus damage dealt, and also increases the effectiveness of Healing Criticals from your healing abilities.
Initiative: Reduces your critical bonus damage suffered from all types of attacks.
Toughness: Increases the bonus Healing Critical effectiveness of heals which are used on you, and also grants you minor Hit Point regeneration while in-combat."

Hmmm interesting. The need to balance your stats is to me, very important for a game to have to avoid one button face smashers who stack one stat and use one skill. Giving stats more use in game and in fact for some classes a requirement to have to function well stands good for game balance.

I don't know what sort of willpower the average sorc or BW runs with, but I don't expect it to be too high, and with crits being quite a useful thing to have having to drop raw damage output to gain crit damage boost makes it a decision, do you go 50/50, or stack one at the expense of the other? Either way it should reduce the potency of one-stat classes if they have to find ways to balance them.

It may cause some headaches with itemisation but I'm certainly all for making people have to think of what they have to get on an item and balance it with the other stats.

Two Orcy thumbs up for this

Do you play through your mind, or your characters?

Not long after I put my picture up the other night I had a conversation.. With myself.. In my head... Gork (or possibly Mork) was speaking to me...

"That picture is at the warcamp, why did you die there?"
"I charged in"
"Why? You got killed"
"I'm an Orc"
"No you're not, you just gave some free renown to the hundred order camping the warcamp"
"Yer right... I is a black orc and I dun run from no-one, specially dem stunties..."
"*sigh*"

Or so it roughly went. I really only play Lokax, so to me he is my only character. He has developed his own personality and likes/dislikes as I have. He can be quite impatient though tends to get bored quickly and is utterly fearless (but not stupid) having no regard for his own safety so long as he can put some 'urtin' on his foes. He remembers waking up after a battle against some stunties in the warcamp with a big metal plate on his skull and the desire for more pain. Ever since then he believes he's on a Waaagh from Gork (or possibly Mork) to get stuck in and do some bashin'.

I don't roleplay to the extent where I talk like an Orc, I'll quite happily talk as I normally would but do enjoy flipping into Orcy chat mode (especially in region chats) but I do play him differently from how I would any other character I've had. I enjoy getting into the Orcy mind, it's vastly more entertaining than the mind of a Chosen or Witch Elf (in my opinion). It's slightly off the wall and can make playing the game a lot more fun.

Of course, if I change to my Shaman (all 16 levels of him) then I have a completely different mind set, he's scared of large numbers of enemies, is absolutely terrified of bears but should he be with his best friend out in the wilds then he'll give anything a shot.. Until it starts to look bad...

When you log in your character to play, is it the character or the player that you see in the screen.

For me... I see Lokax and I get ready to unleash the

WAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhh!

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

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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.