Waits jus' a minute. Us Black Orcs are smaller than dem Choppas?

It's been rumbling for a while now, but with the visual aspect of the Choppa not being the biggest Orc in the game (defeating the whole lore aspect of black orcs being the biggest, darkest and toughest greenskin) it's starting to wear a bit at us Black Orcs. There's at least two threads out there which haven't even had a dev response about something that was meant to be in the game but quietly got cut. Now that we have the choppas increasing in size, it's time for all of us Black Orcs to stand up and be counted.

LET US GROW IN SIZE AND OUR SKIN GET DARKER AS WE GAIN RENOWN RANKS AS WAS ORIGINALLY PLANNED

Show support for the cause, and when the European forums come up I'll be putting the same issue in, as well as putting a feedback request in today. Anyone that supports us, please post on your appropriate thread and drop (just one) feedback to Mythic asking for this feature to be put in now we're the smallest Orc.

Bioware Social Discussion
Warhammer Alliance Post

WCPI Blog o' da week.

Recently discovered this blog Spearhead which is a very good read. Excellent layout, design and a lot of food for thought. Well writen and one I'll be reading for a long time.

Check it out:)

Will WARs darkness fail?

So I'm starting to get some reservations for the Tomb Kings version of Darkness falls.... Will it help the WAR experience or will it hurt it in the long run?

WAR is supposed to be an Open RvR game. The focus of it is to engage the enemy on the field of battle to capture zones and get to the cities to engage in a bit of looting and pillaging. Now I understand that the land of the dead will be a zone for capturing, so there will be the initial burst of activity an warfare for the capturing of the zone and once it's captured, then what?

Will the winning side go to into the dungeon and look for the new rewards and items (to make it worth the time, the rewards have to be good otherwise people will not bother), clearing out the last remains of the previous occupants if there's any about with big zergy warbands? Will the losing side just uproot and bugger off back to tier 4 and take the unprotected BO's, keeps and possibly forts since they'll be locked out until another assault on the zone can be made? In effect making tier 4 a pretty dead area for one side..

I honestly don't know, but it's just a worry I have that it will split the sides more and become more of a RvE game once a side has the tomb captured.

Still, there's a long time to go and no doubt there will be mechanics in place to encourage the continual warfare... Well I hope there is....

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!

Mmmmm Gud - review

Well time to appraise what I've been enjoying in WAR this last week or so. Things won't always change, there will be certain aspects I always enjoy so will always remain in the list, but I'll try to put a fresh perspective on them so as to avoid it being a copy/paste job each week.

1) Cultivation
I'm really enjoying this now. Prior to 1.2 I had a lowbie alt with 200 Cultivation (levelled without any repeatable quest seeds) but once he got to 200 I pretty much stopped doing anything with it due to lacking the time to invest in making sense of all my seeds. Now with the system streamlined it's much more accessible, you glace at your bags to see what you get from a special moment (would be great to get more than dye and an improved seed though, maybe a one shot special seed or spore? to give you a random effect, doesn't have to be a bonus to stats or skills, maybe something to make you glow, change your appearance or whatever). I've just been spending time in the game planting away even though I'm at 200, just chatting and making posts for the blog. Mmmmmm gud!

2) More fixes in 1.2.1
Nothing mentioned yet over than another 400 fixes. Thumbs up, never say no to getting the game smoothed out!

3) Easy PQ's
OK, really enjoying this as well, go into a t4 area and just smash some stunties over and over with influence, the chance of seeds (see Cultivation above). Being able to feel like I can read a story, while putting the boot in AND getting rewarded for it, either on my own or with a great friend while chatting away over Vent or spamming each other. Great on your own, better with a mate! Think I'll list my T4 favourite easy PQ's and see how they compare to others.

4) Continual open RvR in the lakes
Only happened once this week but still enjoy seeing ranks battle each other, shame it's not happening as often as I'd like it. There needs to be more incentive for armies to meet each other on the battlefield and not just zone hop once they have finished a clash. Increasing the renown for a pitch battle over time instead of making it slow down to single points as people die. hmm, I sense another post idea coming up.... *thinkz*

5) Exploring!
This week I found one of the new lairs and discovered a couple more tome unlocks for history and lore. Do yourself a favour and just read some of them. One of my favourites will become a basis of another post at some point. Just take a wander through a zone you didn't spend much time in... Your Choppa or Slayer will still be there when you get back. There's no rush...

So that was my top five things I've been enjoying or am looking forward to in WAR this week. WAR's Darkness Falls (I always forget what it's called) has dropped out the list for a reason, again this will be the basis for a post. Is it really going to be a good addition to WAR?

What's your top five?

Da Choppaz are comin'

An' dey don't care who dey fites!



Love this CGI piece from the Warhammer RTS games.

Adopt a little git

Well maybe not adopt one. You don't know where the grubby little blighters been, but help one.

Today I was grinding up seed levels to get a batch of 200 greens for generic uses and rather than staring at the grim Inevitable City I decided to take a fond reminder of tier 1. So Off I went to Mount Bloodhorn to find a vendor and just relax while I messed around getting batches of seeds up to 200.

I had forgotten that over here in Europe we finally had trial accounts and so was quite happy to see lots of new players running around and asking questions, talking about how much they enjoyed the game. That fresh to the game enjoyment.

I ended up spending a good portion of the time just talking to people in the region channel, answering questions and just explaining things. Many other people in the area with experience were doing the same. There was no "lol u nub" or sarcastic answers, everyone was being genuinely nice and helpful to our new little gits trying the game out.

Then everyones connection to the servers was lost for two hours. Thanks GOA.

So do your game a favour. Spend 30 minutes this week in a tier 1 zone, just exploring for unlocks, doing old quests or whatever, and just be helpful to all the little gits asking questions and looking for advice. It doesn't hurt to be nice to the people who can help keep the game alive. The more people that play, the better for everyone.

Depth in WAR

So today got me thinking... How deep a game is WAR truly? In the long run, how much longer will this game hold peoples attention?

I come from an Ultima Online background, possibly the most deep MMORPG in history (it does have well over 10 years of game as well), but just the fact that there is a whole crafting system, PvP, exploration, player economy and social interaction sets it apart from the many other MMO's out there. You can literally log into UO and do anything.

Now my time in UO has long past, but my yearning to be able to just escape from the niche of a game still remains. WAR IS a PvP based game, the whole point in it is to battle one another, however you cannot expect people to always want to do this and at least you have public quests and... urm... well that's about it really. Or is it? I'll look at a few things we can do in WAR when the RvR grind gets boring or you just want a lazy day chatting to guild mates and doing random stuff.

The Tome of Knowledge
The tome of knowledge is a great idea for improving depth and giving us something to chase after, however sometimes it's more of a long slog just trailing through newbie zones looking for something (you don't know what) to give you.. well you're not sure. Now there's addons to help you discover things but I'm never a fan of 'cheat sheet' style addons to dumb down an aspect of a game. However being able to get a 'hint' ("Discover a specific item in Saphery" doesn't really cut it) by following items and quests in game as to where to get unlocks would be great.

Lairs
Fantastic idea, love the idea of mini bosses just waiting to be found, but it's so disappointing to setup guild runs to go off and find some only to discover that every single one you visit has been killed and it could be 12+ hours before they respawn. Drop that respawn timer on lairs, add a few more in but more importantly, give us a reward that would be useful for anyone for killing them. Keep the basic little bits of loot, they're good, help many players and some are still useful once you're in the end game gear, but how about adding a single item that drops from each boss. Once used, it unlocks a trophy for you. Oh to have Stinkfang the Vomitous' head on my shoulders, a necromancers book bound to my belt or the claw marks of a dragon embedded into my armour to show off with. The little things help to make great ideas more appealing to the mass market.

Crafting
There's just something lacking in WAR here. I know one of the main design points was not to make it Warhammer: Age of Needlework, and I agree with this, but we need more crafting to the game to give us something to do in down times, and also to give the achiever and socialiser more to do. My personal favourite idea would be to add Siege Crafting into the game based a bit on DAoCs own siege craft. Have the basic siege weaponry weakened down a bit from the Warcamps, but allow players to craft siege weapons that are much more powerful (honestly, who is wary of any siege weapons other than oil?). This is an idea I actually want to expand on and write about so I probably will get something down this week or so for it to explain further what I mean.

PvE
Ghah... Player vs. Environment... The bane of a PvP niche game. But it's what drive a lot of players to play an MMO. Everquest got good because of it's PvE aspect, as did WoW with it's raids and Ultima Online with its requirement to replenish stocks from monsters. For WAR to continue to exist and to gain more than 300,000 subscribers the game needs to appeal to those people who are bored of the raid grind in WoW but still have that itch for it. Going back to my last Dat 'Urtz I mentioned that the missing cities are making WAR miss out on content, get a focus on implementing the cities and you will have more PvE content for both sides to participate in, more loot, more stuff to do... You don't need to drag people from the RvR lakes, but you need to give those people who are bored of PvE in other games something to look at WAR for.. Six dungeons for each side doesn't cut it when two of them are for lower ranks. Get the cities in and get more PvE to show off.

Dat 'Urtz! - review

And finally.. welcome to the Dat 'urtz review for this week. It's been a long time coming but been stuck with work, 1.2 and Empire: Total War (sadly not as good as Medieval or Rome in my opinion) This was my initial list made before 1.2 and in all fairness it's probably best I wait a few more days before adding my 1.2 opinions in anyway ;)

As will be the usual, there's no point in bitching or moaning unless you can offer something constructive, so I'll at least try and offer a solution.

1) Crowd Controlled out the game
Sorry, Warhammer: Age of Crowd Control is still getting on my nerves. Snares, roots, knockdowns, disables, knock backs, silences and disrupts. That's a LOT of crowd control for a game which preached that it would be CC light. You can literally still be CC'd out a fight leaving yourself helpless. One of the most annoying aspects is the fact that the immunity timer still seems far too short and the knock back distances are still far too out of whack with certain classes being able to punt others for absolute miles with no way for the knock backed target to get back into combat before the KB cooldown is up.
Solution: I'd like to see all CC affects halved to see exactly how that performs. Remember tier 1 with little to no CC and how getting stuck in was fun? If not halved then a 50% increase to the immunity timer would help.

2) Being hurt through walls
So I'm standing beside a keep lord and I'm taking damage from turrets/demons and aoe from the floor below. These things magically shoot through floors and boil up through the cracks... No it's just lazy coding. It's happened on our server once before where basically the mass amount of turrets and aoe casting destroyed the defending healers and then destroyed the rest of the defenders who were stuck in combat. No sword was raised in anger or jibblie was kicked... Simply taken out by something which cannot see you... *Annoyed*.
Solution: It's something which probably isn't an easy fix but really needs to be looked at to polish the game to make it accessible for new players and not a lesson in frustration.

3) Lost Vale wipe runs
Ok, which dev thought it would be a good idea to spend just over seven minutes running from lost vale beach to N'kari (using short cuts). Seriously, Seven minutes wasted doing nothing apart from talking rubbish on vent and praying no-one gets dc'd or falls of a cliff and dies meaning someone has to start running from the beginning again. Keep in mind, this seven minutes isn't including loading zones or running from Averlorn to the boat, nor buffing up when at N'kari. For a game which again prided itself on being fast paced, why put a total time sink in to make it a brutally boring experience? The actual time it takes from dying to taking on N'Kari is well over 10 minutes of literally nothing... And that's not just for her/it/him/wtf, all the bosses are like that, one long, slog run....
Solution: You see those healers that spawn in LV (why do they heal exactly? there's a healer in the camps in Averlorn you run past....) allow them to teleport you to another spawned healer for example
"I can teleport you to the remains of:
Sechar
The Dark Promise Beast
Zaar"
*click* ~teleport~ \o/ win!

4) Where's our cities?
Soooooo, we have our Guard and Knight, soon we'll have our Choppa and Slayer.. Now all we're missing is four out of the six cities. Two thirds of the end game is currently missing six months from release. The servers are being consolidated so there's plenty of people to make the cities look busy. Imagine the content that they could add when these cities are finally (if they ever will be). Six new dungeons for each side, loads of new quests and unlocks... THAT is content that should be added back before putting the new stuff in. You could have new armour sets as well, where your sentinel might focus on one tree your dwarf and greenskin set could focus on one other tree and point ear lands could focus on the third tree, you could actually have a set of armour which helps your characters spec!
Solution: Erm.. add them, or at least give us a bloody update on them, it's been nearly a year since they were cut with not a single word on them but yet they can talk about new dungeons and zones.. Give us our end game content back!

5) Bloody terrain...
Run, run, run, run, stuck... Move, stuck still, move a bit more, still stuck, backpedal and run around twig on the ground.... Run, run, run, jump over rocks, find self stuck between three rocks and have to book out. Run, run, run, get stuck on random corner of a building.. get annoyed and throw object at screen... Run, run, run down path which is at a slope and ends up making you actually take damage because the gradient is in such a way you 'fall' down it....
I have to admit, the glitchy and buggy terrain is one of these things that slowly niggles away at you and can make a game play session which is already frustrating due to bugs or glitches (like being CC'd and then blown up through a wall while in Lost Vale after a seven minute wipe run as all you want to do is use your book to get back to your Orcy home but you're stuck with the Inevitable Shitty).
Solution: I'm going to start reporting bugs for ever terrain piece I get stuck in, fall down while running down it or generally is designed in such a way that it pisses me off. Do the same...

Well that's this weeks urty things. More posts and random dribbles of brain fluid over the next few days now it's my weekend....

Oooh 1.2 confirmed for tomorrow for Europe

From WAR-Europe.com

"Patch 1.2 is going Live Wednesday morning and we'll be doing the usual patch process; we’ll bring our servers offline at 08:00 CET and expect it to be finished by noon. This is a behemoth of a patch and we really recommend you to have a read and see what’s in store for you. We're including the highlights below and will post the full notes tomorrow."

Gud luk ladz!