SIX Server crashes in one night... (at least)

So destruction made a push today, we hit all the zones and managed to get to Shining Way, half the warbands went and battered down the doors while the rest of us hopped between Reikland and Kadrin Valley to secure for a second fort assault.

As we waited in KV, the elven tier 4 pairing crashed THREE times causing it to reset and the destruction warbands having to start knocking down the gates from scratch again. Eventually we took Kadrin as well and almost simultaneously we took down both forts leading to Altdorf... No thanks to Mythics lousing net code and GOAs dreadful servers...

So we get to Altdorf and immediately our instance is full, lots of us wait and I'm the first one ine. Then 2 minutes later, the Altdorf server crashes kicking me out the game (and crashing me as soon as I log back in for 10 minutes). Finally, Lokax gets logged back in, after waiting forty five minutes to get in the server crashes again as I watch the rest of the guild get booted. After waiting some more time I get another spot in basically a puggy instance and with 10 minutes left to go in Altdorf... It crashes again.

At this point, by the time I log back in there's 3 minutes and I'm back in the queue for Altdorf, staring at the portal and thinking I just wasted two hours of my life, and we won't even get an apology, nor any sort of admission of fault by either Mythic or GOA.

It must actually be quite embarrassing being Mythic right now, or are they living in perpetual ignorance where everyone is happy and the servers are running beautifully?

Well the guild has basically agreed on this... The games pride, the end game.. The major selling point...

EPIC. FAIL.

WCPI Blog o' da week.

Drum roll please....... No, that's a Dwarf skull you're beating on.. Wait... carry on.

This weeks Blog o' da week goes to Bootae and his Bloody Blog! A fellow Norn player on Destruction side I always give him a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH when I pass as we charge into the massed ranks of Order.

So what better time than to read this Chosens blog than now? Eh? Go on... Go visit!

Bootae's Bloody Blog

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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.

How to bypass every keep wall.

Well was browsing the Karak-Norn forum on Warhammer Alliance and this popped up as a new post. I won't be linking to it, nor posting the video, but suffice to say that it shows ways of getting into every tier 4 keep without taking down the wall through wall jumping, print screen client jump (you know when you hit print screen it 'stutters'.. I thought they fixed that in DAoC... how foolish of me to believe that it wouldn't occur in WAR) and some clever terrain exploration I will admit.

So how long will it take Mythic to look at this? Probably not for a long time and then they'll just throw barricades at certain areas and not actually fix this. I don't actually think this happens too much on our server despite the video originating from it, at least not at peak times anyway. Don't know what the 3am Domination Point Players do mind you :P

*kicks Mythic*

So I logged out this morning at dragonwake, pissed at the state our siege of altdorf went (server booted us all out, and then we couldn't get our warband back in and we were scattered around). Went for a hike, got back, showered, fed and logged on.

So I'm running around dragonwake looking for some 1v1 or 1v2 action, promptly find nothing but 1v3 or more and die... a few times. Decide to head to IC to sort out my backpack since being a tank, cultivator, apothecary it tends to fill up quite a lot. Upon zoning to IC the game kicks me to the character select screen and Lokax appears to be in his tanking gear.. at Reikwald.. Uhmmm.. wut?

Log in... Reikwald load screen comes up and I wait.. game kicks me back to the character select screen.. I think Lokax is lost in the warp. Ok, this is my only real character, no alts played more than a few levels so a touch annoying.

Well time to login with an alt and submit a ticket.. let's see how long it takes!

Mythic is getting the reputation for releasing bug laden patches now...

Update #1
Ok, lets make a go of this, see how long it takes to resolve this issue. I submitted the ticket at 18:13. I have just rechecked at 18:30 and it's not listed in my amend appeal... Does this matter? Who knows.. there doesn't appear to be anyway to check...

Update #2
18:31 Get a scenario pop up for my Choppa... Mourkain temple. Click to accept and he gets booted to character select screen. Click to load him in and booted back to character select screen. Lokax now shows as being in Altdorf... Decided to try and load Lokax again, manage to get in, but he's stuck in the walls between Reikwald and Altdorf... Choppa still stuck.

Update #3
Checking Lokax's backpack.. Been rolled back, lost some conqueror tokens and officer ones.. *sigh*

Update #4
Well at 18:44 I'm back in at IC with Lokax.. looks like I got hit by the revert bug, lost some renown, lost some tokens but.... meh. Glad to know we're paying for a professionaly made product that shines next to games such as Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft and Darkfall. Gud jub Mythic! /sarcasm off and cancelled appeal ticket.. Not sure I want to play tonight now.. quite risky...

Update #5
19:00 Oh how foolish of me.. I went to the Maw to help defend while waiting for our LV group. Server crashed aaaaaaaaaand, I can't log back in now. Remind me to stay away from fortresses and cities.. forever.

Update #6
19:08 Nuts to this.. back in, buggering off to LV, it's less buggy than this bollocks...

1.2.1 A brief review

So lets get a nice substantial post done of some actual content with interest...

1.2.1 - How's it been going?

I promised myself not to get all caught up with the MiraclePatch(tm) belief that people had when they read the notes about AoE changes, and.. other class changes. I knew that a lot of what people felt was imbalanced, was also due to player skill, ability, population, communication and a drive to succeed. And yesterday confirmed that, on Norn, destruction was zerging away in the morning but as soon as we came to stiff resistance from Order the warbands collapsed and melted away as Order literally walked through the zones and captured two forts with no resistance at all. This isn't class imbalance, or over powered mechanics. It's basically people playing like crap and following a zerg, then giving up as soon as things look tricky - combined with a lack of communication on our server from Destruction and we are always on a back foot...

Anyway, I'm rambling here so lets take a look at what has changed and how I feel after ONE day of it... I'll be using my patented (not really) Orcy rating!

Gobbo = Not gud...

Choppa = Better than a gobbo

Black Orc = Da bestest!

Keep Upgrades:
Seems to have done the job, keep doors no longer fall down like a sack of shit on a summers day the moment anyone gets close (fortress doors still do though, seriously, the time it takes to announce a fort is under attack, then for people to get there, the internal door is at 50%.. literally 5 or 6 minutes into the siege). The downside I see to this right now is that for under populated realms it takes a long time to break down a door now to try and disrupt a zone capture. There's no more guerrilla strikes on keeps especially if they have reinforced doors. From what I've heard all upgrades but reinforced doors are pretty much pointless anyway. Who seriously cares about healers/bankers in a keep? Still a bit to go on this though.
Orcy Rating:

Combat Responsiveness:
Well it seems to be working, though as I'm a black orc when I get server lag and unresponsive combat moments it can seriously bugger up any hope of a fight as skills don't fire, then go on cooldown. I'm sure casters love it, they don't have to get next to the target but even though ON MY SCREEN THE STUNTY IS NEXT TO ME, I AM OUT OF RANGE AND CAN'T SMUSH 'EM. It's still horribly broken for melee. More focus needed on this Mythic. The client/server synch is making melee combat really pants in even the lightest lag, especially when you have to rely on a plan system and can't just spam one button. This still needs a lot of work done on it, focus on melee.
Orcy Rating:

UI Improvements:
Oh My Gork! WIN! The guild interface is brilliant and the alliance tab works perfectly. Gork and Mork approve.
Orcy Rating:

RvR Zone Control Rewards:
Uhm, not really worked this out entirely, only managed to take the one zone yesterday before we got pummeled into the dirt but I got a nice renown buff, but other than that... I didn't notice any other buffs.. Mmm, not sure if I'm missing something here...
Orcy Rating:

Quartermaster System:
I like the idea of it so far, yes it will take some time but I don't want all the gear brought to me on a silver squig, I'm happy to get stuck in and work for it. And I can finally complete those old sets I never managed to finish. I've been hearing some reservations from the higher renown players (71+) saying that they get no advantage to the system other than being hunted down but I haven't looked into it too much. I'll just play this and see how it goes. Is good so far for me anyway.
Orcy Rating:

Ordnance:
You know.. upgraded siege weapons... Better rams.. oil immunity (and they did take out bombs and caltrops) and such forth... For some reason I like this idea. Forgot to check the prices of them but it does seem like it could take a while to get enough, but suppose you don't want to overwhelm the place with epic siege engines.. Still, would have preferred to have seen this as a crafting skill than straight purchasing.
Orcy Rating:

Career Changes:
Well as I only play a Black Orc I can't comment on the other changes, I tend to put down getting my head beaten in to being out played rather than a class being OP'd. Though I can say we must be the most balanced class in WAR when the only change we got was a typo fix in an ability.
Orcy Rating:

RvR Changes:
Not sure about some of these.. I get bonus renown if I help to capture a BO or keep and we take the zone. Must I remain in the zone or can I zone hop for an hour while waiting on the timers and get back to the original zone or do I lose the bonus? Same if I crash out or otherwise log.. Should I re-enter the game, does it remember what I've helped defend/capture?
Orcy Rating:

Bad Stuff...
The lag is back on Karak-Norn... Well it was never really away, just people had slowed down and were scattered more. Last night in the IC defence I gave up trying to do anything, the lag made it impossible for me to target and kill anyone before the rubber banded about or teleported. I've been getting affected by a bug that doesn't show my respawn window. A /reload UI brings this back but also breaks some addons (that's my issue though...), amusingly I sent a bug report in to advise that I was suffering from missing respawn windows. This is my reply from GOA

You recently placed a support request concerning a missing item. We are sorry to hear that you have lost an item, however until further notice we are not reimbursing items in your situation.

... wut?.
Orcy Rating:

Well that's enough for me. Off to grab a coffee and a shower. Will be back tomorrow my little grots!

So glad you fixed AoE spam Mythic!

Click the image for a bigger view.

Note the debuffs above my health. Thought AoE wouldn't be stacking now hmmm?

Who needs Bright Wizards when you just stack engineers now.

Daemon Adoptables...

Well seems Lokax found something under his rock and somehow managed to adopt a daemon from Heresy Online. Feel free to poke it a bit until it becomes something useful...

And if anyone doesn't get it, it's one of those clicky web pased pet things you sometimes see floating around. Only this one is Warhammer based. Shame there's no Orcy themed ones :)


Level up Daemon!

Fluffy Bitz (part 2)

I was out on a hill walk yesterday, the fog was pretty thick and reduced visibility quite a lot, thankfully it's a local hill and not very steep or difficult at all but it was just a chance to get out the house and get a bit of exercise while I was on holiday. So off I trekked and as I went through the mist on the scrub land it got me thinking that there's something missing with the ambience of WAR.. The weather.

You get the odd chaos snowflake fluttering down in some of the regions with snow, but other than that there is nothing to make it feel like a living world. It remains static. Down in the Badlands there's no sand storm (and I bet we won't see any in the land of the tomb kings). The streets of Praag never seen a thunderstorm and Kadrin Valley never has a strong gale blowing through it, scattering debris throughout the region.

Every day is a nice day in WAR!

While I understand that it's not exactly a major thing in a game, nor would it be a high priority compared to the other glaring issues that need to be fixed, I'm sure Mythic has an environment/world creation team working on the tomb kings zone, placing objects and adjusting hills, but maybe we can hope one day to battle through a thunderstorm, defend a keep in a blizzard or be hunted down in a sand storm.

It's not essential. It's fluff... But it's what adds to the game.

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.