Bow & Stab

Sigmar Crypts (Second Time)

2009-05-16T22:22:00.004-07:00

This evening a hotch potch of guildies (that's my guild leader in the foreground) and Master Caledorian Army ran the Sigmar Crypts (located beneath the Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf). This was my second trip and the first for the off tank, and went pretty smoothly. As a WoW veteran, I do wonder if it's hard to fail at Crypts - it's ease of play is way beyond anything Blizzard ever put forth. But as a WoW veteran, maybe I'm just an old hand at instances now and should shut the hell up because at least it's quick and accessible to all.

For the record: the group balance was two healers (Archmage and Warrior Priest), two tanks (Ironbreaker and Swordmaster) and two DPS (Archmage and Shadow Warrior).

We managed to get to the Twins before we wiped, but the wipe was pretty amusing anyway. The Swordmaster tripped over her own ankles and went down in the corner (not her fault, we weren't managing the dps properly), then a healer died, and then the Archmage DPS. Which left Kipling, the WP and the IB valiantly fighting on to our deaths. We knew we'd die, we just didn't expect to last until the Twins were down to 30% health (down from about 60%? I could be wrong here). Which apparently made for an entertaining/impressive spectacle for our dead comrades? I was too busy pewpewing! A much preferable wipe than aggro fail anyway.

We got through to the end in about an hour and a half, and a good time was had by all. Gear-wise, I picked up my first piece of Sentinel gear last time (chest piece) so I was lucky to get the wrists tonight. As a whole, Sigmar Crypts drops the belt, chest, arms and shoulders. So hopefully this run of luck will continue the next time I visit.

Thoughts on Patch 1.3 (Public Test version)

2009-05-14T16:38:00.002-07:00

Take a gander! Here are my thoughts:

The first thing I go to are the updates for Shadow Warriors, because obviously, after all this time, over 6 months of playing one, they have to give us a boost right? Oh. A UI update and an AoE nerf. Maybe next time? I doubt it. It's a good thing I have a great group of people to roll around RVR with, because without them, I would have ditched Kipling a long time ago. I can't solo on my Scout mastery because there's no good way to clear distance or gain any height. I'm tired of the disappointment every.single.patch day.

Flag/bomb carriers and escorts in the immediate area (300-unit radius) will now receive 50 RP for capturing flags and setting bombs. Woohoo! Finally an incentive for hitting up the flag in scenarios and supporting the runner. That's a nice chunk of renown without it turning into a fight to get the flag before anyone else.

[In Serpent's Passage] Added area-of-effect siege weapons to the bow of each ship to discourage spawn camping. Aww, but regardless of whether you're being camped or camping the other side, it's fun for everyone! Boo. I guess that's not how they intended the scenario to be played out though.

[In Phoenix Gate] If both flags are held for over a minute, players can drop the flag off at the central bridge for 25 points, resetting both flags with no Renown rewarded. Now that's going to be interesting.

Woah! Some nice changes to Black Fire Basin: This Scenario now functions as a shared capture-the-flag Scenario. A single flag will spawn in the middle of the Ice Lake, and this flag must be brought back to a capture location to earn Scenario points. There is one such capture point for each realm, located next to the realm's spawn point. Captured flags will decorate the wall at the spawn area. When a flag is held, the capture locations will be highlighted by a glowing effect. The Order capture location has been replaced with a large Dwarf anvil. The guards have been rearranged to prevent the opposing realm from griefing the spawn locations. This was the most neglected scenario since the beginning - it was turtle or lose. The landscape for this one is particularly interesting, and it finally won't be going to waste.

Medallions will now be available to players in Scenarios, should the corresponding zone be captured by their realm while they are inside. Another good change, everyone should be able to play scenarios as a contribution to zone domination without fear that they'll miss the lockout they've played to achieve.

Large-scale Keep fights will now have the possibility of awarding additional gold bags for attackers or medallions for defenders. More rewards ftw!

Guilds can now purchase the Deadbolt upgrade for their Keeps. This upgrade locks the inner door of a claimed Keep, making it so enemies cannot use Pick Lock or Bypass Defenses to gain entry into the inner Keep. When the Deadbolt upgrade has been purchased, the postern door will be named "Dead-locked Postern Door." Well, that's halfway to stopping players from ninja-ing keeps. Do I want to talk about how certain Order players on Monolith have been ripping the rest of us off? Kind of, but I won't. I do want to see the inner doors barred from entry by opposing players on a permanent level though.

Players now have the option to opt-out of the loot roll at any Public Quest. Opting-out will not affect your contribution, but will bypass your character when rolling for loot, allowing others to get a chance at the loot. Awesome! Now Kipling has all the Annhilator gear but keeps getting Gold bags, I will be opting out as soon as this is implemented.

The action bar is now more customisable, hooray hooray! Characters will now be able to have up to five action bars on the screen. and The orientation of each of the action bars can now be set individually to vertical or horizontal. are brilliant, excellent, and long overdue.

There is now an Auto Roll tab on the Open Parties and Warbands window that will allow players to set their preferences on loot. The system will automatically roll for items based on your settings and items done in that fashion will not even appear in the loot roll window, making loot rolling much easier Too complicated to really copy and paste without it being a huge lump of text, so I'd advise clicking through, but this is going to save a lot of pop ups on my screen while I'm fighting. Should be good.

Players who have won loot from a Public Quest, but were unable to claim it for one reason or another, will now have that loot mailed to them 24 hours later. ! and that includes Keeps right? :D :D :D :D :D That is AWESOME!

There's obviously a lot more than this, especially in regards to character changes. Hopefully all the ones I like will get implemented in the final patch, and some miracle will befell Shadow Warriors to give us a damn break.

What's this? Nordenwatch Weekend?

2009-05-01T11:15:00.002-07:00

"Along the rain-scoured coast of Nordland, spring is not a blessing. For while the end of winter signals a return of the growing season, it also heralds the thawing of the Sea of Claws. Now all eyes turn to the white foamed waves, searching for the first sign of invaders. It doesn't take long.

A sharp shout goes up from the watchtower moments before a harsh bell begins to toll. Norse sails have been spotted on the horizon. War is coming, and the only hope that the people of Nordland have is that their defenders are well prepared."

Great writers. And a whole weekend of Nordenwatch for all tiers? :D A title at the end if you complete quests? Isn't that a mini-live event? Isn't that AWESOMENESS IN A BUCKET? Why yes. Yes it is.

Now all you guys need to do is create something like this for PQs and PvE. It will round out the game a lot.

Big Orc Face

2009-04-26T22:32:00.000-07:00

Beyond the Sands

2009-04-22T13:24:00.003-07:00

As you can see from the picture above, today I got the Aviator Goggles from the current Live Event. What's made this particular event interesting is that despite it being a list of quest chains and kill/object counts, there's been a fair bit of organic RVR in the midst of it all. Destruction took to camping/swarming the event area, and Order didn't back down, resulting in pretty realistic clashes, wipes and comeback surges.

Not to mention the fact that there are epic rewards for the three quest chains. I can't link it, as it doesn't seem to be mentioned on any of the Warhammer Wiki's, but look out for the quest reward called the Bone Ward... it's fairly useful and interesting. Not to mention a Pocket item!

Serpent's Passage #4

2009-04-20T18:54:00.001-07:00

It's that time again.

Hugely successful, mostly thanks to the help of my almighty guild leader Aedenwe, who herded and bashed healers down so that I could pick them off. Pick pick pick, I love Fell the Weak.

Grab Bag of Playing

2009-04-10T17:11:00.005-07:00

I'm keeping my Archmage on ice until the next patch so that I can try the Tier 3 Gates of Ekrund. I'm not in the mood to play another character, and Tier 4 is a back and forth keep game, so nothing huge to report. So how about some random screenshots from the ol'screenshot folder? Yeah? Yeah!

This made me laugh entirely too much:

Ooh, pretty trees in Empire Tier 3:

Killed this guy on the way up to an Avelorn warcamp, finally got the unlock for the Moldy Coin Purse. No wonder nearly everyone has this pocket item, yet I've never seen it (it's a high traffic area):

Last but not least, the view from a Keep, as Monolith's Order pushes back Destruction:

Oh no! They killed Karl!

2009-04-08T15:06:00.004-07:00

But bloody hell, congratulations to Destruction on Karak Eight Peaks! They killed Karl Franz! I've not been playing much this weeks (Sims 2 has been pulling me into it's black hole) but I've been keeping an eye on Monolith's Realm War page, and we're inching closer and closer to Tchar'zanek. It's just a matter of time...

Thoughts on Patch 1.2.1

2009-04-01T14:24:00.002-08:00

Own a Keep? Want to keep it? Want to get more out of it? Then the new Keep Upgrade system is perfect for you! This deserves a post by someone more able to waffle on about the intricacies, but let's just say this is exactly what I've been gagging for. I want to spend hours scouting the edges of keeps, pwning things with my arrows, getting fat defence ticks and littering the grounds of the keep with bodies. Tier 3 is pretty active because it's a lot smaller than Tier 4, so I've seen this to a certain degree on my Archmage, but the lasting ability of either side is limited (although the other night I finally saw the attacking people loading up weapons on the pads, not just the defenders). Giving big fat rewards to defenders is great. The upgrades? Even more awesome. What would be even better, are set rewards for attacking a keep too.

Guilds that successfully hold a Keep until the zone is captured will be rewarded with a free gold bag that will be mailed to the guild master, and is tradable to his or her guild members. Only one? That's pretty crap. More than that, it's not rewarding anyone for their contribution, but relies on the Guild Master being a) fair and b) actually involved in the game. What if it gets mailed to someone who's not logged on for a week? or just loads up their friends with all the fat loot? I can see a lot of people being unhappy with this. But I guess it means you have to choose your guilds carefully.

Each character will now have its own Interface Profile. This will allow customization of addons and UI layout on a per-character basis. Awesome. I've reached the point with my Archmage where I've realised I have many more new moves to collect, and no toolbar space. But my Shadow Warrior (thanks to the stance bars) is perfectly laid out. I know where everything is. I can't change my Archmage's toolbar without destroying my Shadow Warrior set up. So this is perfect.

But wait. For instance, if you want to have a different set of addons for soloing versus open RvR, just open the Profile Management window, create a new profile, and make any changes you wish. You what? How dare you make it even more intuitive! :D

Guilds can now set up a "profile" for their guild using the “Recruitment” tab in the Guild Window. Settings for type of guild, careers, and levels being recruited, as well as guild "recruiters" can be set in the Recruitment tab... No more chat spamming required, just let the hyper-links fly! A feature that makes me say "um, why didn't Blizzard do this?"

The Renown merchants that offer Tier-based Renown gear similar to the Renown merchants in the warcamps have had their titles adjusted to make it easier for players to identify each Tier of Renown gear. Ask and ye shall receive! Thank you!

Upon successful destruction of the door into the city, friendly guards will arrive to support the invading army's foray into the enemy capital! Hah! Fun.

Oh look! A single fix for Shadow Warriors! Enchanted Arrow: The damage for Flame Arrow and Festering Arrow will now be correct when this Tactic is slotted. Well that's nice, I guess.

Archmages get a whole bunch more damage now + Magical Infusion: This ability has been redesigned, and how has an entirely new effect. It will now place a buff on the target that will restore their health if they fall below 15% Hit Points. which doesn't really make up for the fact that it feels like Shadow Warriors are being completely left behind. Ho hum.

Weapons of the Fallen can now be sold to merchants. And are you giving me back the 200 I trashed because they took up too much space in my bags? :(

This patch also introduces a new resource material that players in RvR can gather and trade in for deadly assault upgrades! Scattered throughout the RvR lakes, and acquired from killing players, Ordinance is collected and traded in for various items and weapons to use in open RvR! FTW! I like the idea of this a lot. Part of war is the struggle for real, useable resources.

Characters Rank 19-24 will now be able to queue for a new 6 vs. 6 version of the Scenario 'Gates of Ekrund' from any Tier 3 zone. Well, I guess I'm camping my Archmage until the next patch. Sounds awesome. More options for play = more fun.

Defenders will now be able to see the health of the Keep door at all times. Useful. A lot of people are assigned to yelling out the percentage of the door, but it's better if all can see it at all times.

Overall, an interesting patch. I am hoping that we're going to get a future big patch that upgrades the city siege experience for everyone. I'm expecting the other cities to open when all the realm transfers are finished, stablised and the populations can handle it. It takes a lot of people to unlock a single city at the moment - having three on the go at once will be hectic.

Russenscheller Graveyard

2009-03-29T23:08:00.003-08:00

Something I noticed today - the graves in Russenscheller Graveyard in Praag's ORVR lake have names on them. I guessed they'd be real people, perhaps the dev team, and I was right:

I can only presume that Mythic resurrected Pete Lipman to walk their halls as a zombie Deputy Art Director.

Can't make this one out, but it's a beautiful design.

Someone left flowers for terrain artist Brian Clarke.

There are plenty more. While you're waiting for a BO to tick over, why not check them out?

ORVR is your new bicycle

2009-03-25T07:42:00.005-08:00

"Without any apparent resistance the gate broke down quickly and stunties came pouring in, rushing towards the top floor. On top of the stairs we already had a solid wall of tanks, with countless Choppas lining the side, and ranged covering from above. A few of the Order stopped when they saw us, but quite a lot rushed headlong into our ambush, only at the last moment realizing that there were a lot of defenders here (we had a full warband). Then seemingly on an unspoken command all Choppas rushed down and began chopping like madmen true Orcs. Anyone who think keeps are only a ranged fight have never witnessed a horde of angry Choppas running down into a tightly packed bunch of Order and spamming AoE."

- Wizards & Wenches

And that ladies and gentlemen, is why I am still playing. I'm predominantly playing Petroleum this week, and I'm doing 10x the amount of ORVR I did on Kipling (mostly because it just wasn't there in the very early days of the game). Each encounter with my fellow players and Destruction never fails to be different. When you find yourself laughing even though you're losing, you know it's a good game.

When Guildies Go AFK

2009-03-23T15:17:00.005-08:00

My screenshot button has been acting up recently - every time I go to my folder, I have a bunch of random images, nothing like I expect. This snippet is pretty funny though.

[Backstory is that I was questing at the beginning of Elf Tier 3 with Drchainsaw, the alt of a favorite guildie of mine. We'd been at it a while, knocking off all the initial quests, so eventually we had to go AFK to get real life activities done. As you can see, he uh, left a trail of mobs for me to fight. How kind!]

State of My Game

2009-03-19T13:55:00.002-08:00

Well, I thought I had a screenshot to upload to break my silence, but alas: it seems to have disappeared. I've been quiet because I'm basically running through the same quests on Petroleum as I did on Kipling, which doesn't make for great excitement in blog content. But I'm enjoying playing a healer, and inched my Archmage into Tier 3 this week - with rank 20 came an absolutely fabulous and useful group heal (*stabs stick into ground repeatedly*), and with rank 21 came uh... nothing useful really! But it's nice to be a level higher!

Sitting on the cusp of Tier 2 and 3, I've been trying to decide whether I should concentrate on raising my renown rank another level or so, spend more time in the ORVR lakes (which I tried for the first time, and ended up with less than fun company) or fully explore the lush greens of Avelorn. Or perhaps all of it! The problem is that this month has proved to be busy in real life, so I'm not investing as much time ingame as I'd like.

PS Mythic: your character profiles seem to be broken at the moment.

PPS: good job on the realm mergers, more scenarios make everyone happy.

Mortal Enemy

2009-03-11T21:34:00.004-08:00

I won't mention this character's name, because I refuse to give him undue praise or hatred, but here Kipling lies in the Twisted Tower... having killed her goblin foe, the DoTs unexpectedly kill her moments afterwards. Blah.

2009-03-11T12:53:00.003-08:00

After I wrote the last post, Codpeace reminded me that I had the recent State of the Game by Mark Jacobs in a tab on my browser. It contains a few things I'm excited about:

"The Ward system will be receiving an overhaul to make it more understandable and accessible.So many people have no idea how the Ward system works. Including me. Apparently you have to have a certain amount of wards to really be able to contribute to killing Kings, and complete certain instances. All this information should be in our tomes when we get set pieces of gear.
We are also looking at implementing a “Nemesis” system which tracks the top 20 enemy players that kill you and which will give you rewards for hunting them down. Thanks to the Dammaz Kron addon, I already have a mental list of the people I hate the most, so being rewarded outside of my own personal glee when I kill them, that's just fantastic!
We are looking at giving interesting and useful things to guilds who upgrade Keeps; defense improvements, guilds rewards, etc. & We have improved Rewards for Keep Defense in 1.2 and we will continue to improve Loot, XP and Renown for defending Keeps as well as giving loot rewards (gold bag) to guilds that successfully claim and defend Keeps through Zone Capture. More loot pleases this loot whore.
The City Raid experience that we currently have in the game will also get some additional work. Our primary goal is to add more RvR opportunities throughout the entire Raid. We are looking at a number of options and possibilities under consideration for more “RvR” and less “PQ action”. YES. Make it less boring, more organic, and I am a customer for life.
We will continue to experiment with, and improve, the Scenario experience. This includes adding new scenarios temporarily for events, adding new permanent scenarios, and continuing to refine the scenario play experience. w00t! The best part of the server transfers should be that scenarios pop more often. I enjoy scenarios just as much as the other parts of the game.

The thing I do not like:

Additionally, 1.2.1 also contains... the Combat and Careers team will give some extra loving to the Archmage, Shaman, White Lion, and Marauder Dude. When people are saying the Shadow Warrior is the least loved/buffed up character, maybe you could throw us a frickin' bone over here?

But one misery against many joys = excellent. I look forward to every patch in this game.

On Rally Calls

2009-03-11T12:28:00.004-08:00

Patch 1.2 held many bountiful gifts, but the addition of the Rally Call button was a silent beast,. Like everyone else my boyfriend and I rolled a Slayer, and while we were questing, suddenly got issued a rally call. We clicked the blue button, and were transported (without a loading page, if I remember rightly) to the Tier 1 Dwarf warcamp, along with a handful of others, and ran straight into battle.

Awesome. But how it works is still confusing.

Here's what the patch notes say:

"We are introducing the new Rally Call system. At various intervals, players will be called to join the battle in the Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 RvR lakes. A button will appear near the mini-map, enabling willing participants to jump right into the action.
Basically, when a Rally Call is issued, you get an on-screen notification and the blue button lights up. Push the button and you’re automatically teleported to the appropriate warcamp. The idea is that this should provide easier access to RvR for those who want it.

Everyone seems to be under the impression that this was something a warband leader could issue, so the requests for it to go off again kept flying in Warband chat. The reality SEEMS to be that when activity in the ORVR lakes hits a certain point, the game issues it independently. And it's not available in Tier 4. Why isn't there a rally call option for Tier 4, where it's just as useful? Tier 4 is huge in terms of levelling, and lower levels are still in the PvE areas.

One of the major flaws that Mythic keep repeating is that they give us great features... but we don't know how to use them! Thankfully, as soon as we tell them, they nearly always respond quickly. So I'm expecting this to be addressed on The Herald soon enough.

---

A quick side note: another thing I would like to see is a more efficient warning before subscriptions run out. This might be more critical of the EA-Mythic side of the game, but I don't like suddenly being informed that my subscription has ended. And even worse, getting an email a day or two after I've renewed telling me that my subscription is close to ending blah blah blah.

But I did resubscribe!

My First Pocket Item!!!

2009-03-06T16:26:00.002-08:00

I have had the worst luck seeking out pocket items in the natural swing of the game - on my alt, I've "cheated" and looked for directions, but on Kipling, I wanted to keep her pure from such sneaky behaviour. I'm not going to give away any walkthroughs for this item, because it's fairly easy to get, but thank you thank you Mythic for continuing to include awesome fluff to pick up ingame. I was a bit mopey that there were no trophies from Bitter Rivals, but a pocket item? That fits my little interior story for my character? Even better!!!

In which Kipling sees the Inevitable City

2009-03-04T18:34:00.008-08:00

I spent 2pm until 10:30pm of yesterday playing WAR. Not for the Bitter Rivals Live Event (which is fun, I might write another post about this soon, but for now I'll say that the new scenario is, as another Monolith-er wrote "awesomely confusing"), but because Order were extremely busy locking down zones before besieging the Inevitable City.

Looks peaceful. Aaaah. However, for most of the time, the sands were strewn with broken corpses and towards the end of the zone lock out, groups of Order huddled tensely on BOs, waiting for the inevitable zerg o'Blades (which happened at 1 minute to lock out. They failed).

But I got my first ever gold bag from the south keep! And I got my Annihilator Maskhelm! Woohoo! (You can see the rest of my gear if you click on my name in the sidebar of this blog)

I also caught sight of Gorefang out there! Very brave of him to be out there at level 32, and I did wave. Unfortunately he fell to the ground shortly after and died a bloody death. I saw Codpeace, but I was dead and couldn't wave.

Hours later, we'd locked out Chaos Wastes and Black Crag, and it was time! Time to siege the city! And then the game failed. If you're in a warband, and your warband is in a full instance, you're forced to queue. What it took other players to tell me, was that you need to leave your warband, log out and log back in, rush the door and only then are you given the option to pick the PQ of your choosing. It's broken Mythic, fix that ASAP.

This was really the high point after we got to the city. I didn't think it was visually impressive (unlike Altdorf!), and I felt the pressure to join in the PQ rather than explore, in case of epic loot. I wanted epic loot. My name is Kipling, and I am a LOOT WHORE. The best I got was 10th place, and the green loot bag still sits in my bag because the green gear is not as awesome as it should be and I can't pick between the rest of the rewards. I'll probably choose the Apothecary item, because patch 1.2 broke the last two vials I had in my bank.

So at the moment, once the zones lock out, the game loses any kind of allure. The PQs are boring (repetitive, grindy, your chance at loot is low thanks to the distribution of abilities between characters) and the process of actually getting into cities is far from clear. And where's the option to just run riot through the streets? Next time I am going to forgo the loot, and explore the city properly, because the small chunk I saw was not as visually impressive as I would have liked!

But criticism aside: the process to get zones locked out is fantastic: exciting, rich with renown and if you want it to be, extremely satisfying when it comes to strategy and tactics. Will play again.

Uhhhh AFK?

2009-02-27T18:25:00.002-08:00

So I've not posted in 6 days because I've not been playing WAR. In fact, aside from the wonderful Kongregate, I've not been gaming at all this week. I guess my brain needed a break. But by no means have I left the game, or will quit the game. Especially since I hear tale of NON COMBAT PETS!!! I have no idea how I'll get one, but if you're passing by and would like to try out Warhammer Online for a week, for FREE please drop me an email at saturnine@gmail.com - anyone is welcome to take the 6 invites I have.

Kipling hits 40

2009-02-21T02:19:00.002-08:00

Hooray! A shot of my tome, because everyone does it.

Serpent's Passage Stats

2009-02-19T23:25:00.002-08:00

Some guildies kindly reminded me about the self-buffs Shadow Warriors have (instead of calling me a lolnoob and /guildkicking me for being a fool) and gave me a few combinations of moves I could use to up my damage in scenarios. They gave me this information during this scenario, and for the first time I did more than 100k damage. OK so we lost (we were being steamrolled by pre-mades), but hah! Look at Kipling go! So proud. Thanks for the help chaps, you know who you are.

When Bloggers Meet on the Battlefield

2009-02-19T23:16:00.002-08:00

Finally managed to meet Syncaine of Hardcore Casual on the battlefield - this evening was mostly spent running around Praag taking/defending keeps and BOs. I doubt he saw me, and I doubt I even got an arrow in his face before he got swamped by Order tanks, but it made me really happy to see another blogger out there. Destruction were pulling mighty feats and planting terror deep into my heart (damn Blades. Damn you to hell.) and it was a good night of pushing and pulling objectives.

In terms of levelling, I'm about 20% away from level 40 now. Thankfully I dinged renown level 37 last night, which might be as close as I get before the big 4 0, but I feel like I've put in as much as I could. Petroleum is not having a good time in Tier 2 - as someone pointed out, everyone is now rushing to Tier 4 to get in on the epic battles. Which isn't GOOD people. The lower tiers all contribute to the success of the uppers. Let's get Tiers 1-3 swinging on Monolith again.

Shadowlands (2)

2009-02-17T14:50:00.001-08:00

This time with a far superior graphics card in play. Click for larger.

What a way to go

2009-02-14T13:16:00.004-08:00

My new computer arrived yesterday, so I threw myself into the one thing that had been previously awkward: ORVR. Destro were dominating most areas last night, thanks to (allegedly) 4 warbands rolling around together.

How I came to the screenshot above: I was following a group from the warcamp out into the lakes, just for shits and giggles, and we focused on taking a BO. With a Bright Wizard (!?) tanking, we got to the Hero when I saw a Destro player come from the corner of my screen. No problem I thought, we can cope.

Unfortunately, what followed her was more of a Braveheart moment, as this entire group rose over the hill like a tidal wave. "Fuck me!" might have crossed my lips in real life. We had less than zero chance of surviving. But what an epic fate to suffer. I love this game.

Monolith Blogger ShoutOut!

2009-02-11T18:33:00.004-08:00

Following a few links today led me to realise that us lot on the Monolith server are developing our own little team, 2 on the Order side, 2 on the Destruction side:

Codpeace is in the same alliance as me, and also one of the larger guilds on the Order side, and his blog is Knights of the Feathered Hats. A hearty read and a very nice chap.

He plays under a lot of names but Gorefang is how I remember him, playing for Destruction. His blog is now a congolomerate of characters that I forgot to add when he moved urls. I keep a special eye out for his face during scenarios, but he's only just moved into Tier 4, so no premeditated murder yet :(

Syncaine reports from the Destruction side on Hardcore Casual, and that name seems mighty familiar *squint menacingly* *remembers many deaths* -_-

All of these are great blogs and I'll be keeping up with them on a regular basis. Do you know of any other players writing about their experiences on Monolith? Let me know!

PS - my new computer shipped today, fingers crossed that it will arrive for the weekend.

Patch 1.2

2009-02-11T18:04:00.003-08:00

All buff potions will now persist through death.

Oh shit yes!!! Thanks to everyone who didn't buy my potions in the past, I'm going to make a whole heap of gold from you in the future.

The rest of the patch notes are right here.

Two Hundred!

2009-02-09T12:39:00.003-08:00

An awful quality image, but this weekend brought forth 200 Apothecary skill to match my Cultivation skill. It was a slog. And naturally, it came before the patch that probably makes it easier.

Night of Murder

2009-02-07T14:52:00.003-08:00

Well last night was fun! It took me a handful of hours to hit the second point on the Live Event INF bar, and gleefully did Kipling run to Altdorf to pick up her Murder Fang (which now replaces her disappointingly undersized Ceremonial Dagger). And then I threw her back into the fray, because scenarios and ORVR was buzzing like mad, and who can turn down all that renown?

Now I have days to get to the epic reward, and thanks to the speeds, I can give my alts a chance at getting something flashy too!

Oh! And Kipling hit level 39 this morning. One more level to go!

Desktop Ordered

2009-02-05T12:54:00.005-08:00

My guildies know too well that I have a ghetto laptop that causes CTD every 45 minutes or so ingame. A scenario pops at the wrong time? Finishes at the wrong time? I decide to take a flight? I crash out. And it takes bloody forever to reload the game (seriously Mythic, make some of those loading screens faster/optional!). And I'm not the only one with a severe CTD issue, it's been pretty prevalent in a variety of systems since launch date. I did google around a few months back and theories range from a background program to processors being overloaded.

Regardless, I know I am lucky to have been able to play at all.

Thankfully, I have an awesome boyfriend who decided to buy me a brand new gaming rig to replace the (crappy) desktop I've left behind in the UK, and we ordered it last night. It's a massive leap in quality:

6GB of RAM
500GB hard drive
Intel Quad Core 2.40GHz processor
nVidia Geforce GTX 280 graphics card

We did debate about the graphics card and the processor, but from experience, Warhammer is less about the processor and all about boosting your RAM/graphics card.* I was also trying to keep the cost below $1500 (which we just about managed, at least until I was reminded that tax et al is added on afterwards) and buying the best of everything would have been unbelievably expensive. We also bought this monitor separately, which was on sale, has a mail in rebate and is a lesser model of one that came recommended to me. It has speakers included, so for now we're holding off from picking up some new ones, but Creative has a great clearance/refurbishment section that's worth keeping an eye on.

I wanted the desktop for the next Live Event, as playing has become more unbearable since moving out to California, but Dell predicts it won't arrive until the 12th. I'll steal my boyfriend's computer for the Night of Murder, I guess, but I can't wait for the Dell to arrive.

*And also great for the Sims 3, which will be my other big investment in gaming time for 2009. Looking around, there doesn't seem to be much of interest on the list of releases for the year.

Gendered Gaming

2009-02-04T22:16:00.004-08:00

I've tried so many times to write a smart, insightful reflection of GirlIRL's Gendered Gaming post, but I can't. So all I can say is that it's one of the best pieces of writing about Warhammer Online I've come across so far, and if you're in any way interested in gender equality in gaming you should read it. Read it. Read it! Go on.

Shadowlands

2009-02-02T12:39:00.002-08:00

My Wishlist

2009-01-31T11:52:00.004-08:00

Inevitably nearly everyone is going to have their own personal wishlist for Warhammer - it's a young game, and is far from perfect, especially thanks to the powers that be rushing the Beta stage. Instead of talking at my boyfriend, I decided to write down some ideas I had:

Let players duel each other in a designated area of the city - I am not a duelling person, I don't think I ever took part in one in my 2 years of WoW but while in game or reading blogs you'll hear a low whine of people who miss that feature. Duelling your friends is a great way of fine tuning your reaction times and skills without a penalty. And every time I'm near the War Quarter, I see that massive expanse of NPCs fighting each other and wonder - why can't that be enacted for real players? Or at least contain a portal to mini-instances for two people? By itself, it's an unused, wasted piece of the city and dammit, I don't like that.

Come out with a low-spec version of the game - another "if Blizzard can do this, why can't Mythic?" wish. My laptop is very very low spec but somehow makes it possible to play the game. If there was a way of turning off even more of the graphics, Mythic would be opening up the potential userbase even further. And more players = more money.

Hotkey for zooming in and out - every once in a while I'll get lazy and take my laptop to bed to do some crafting, or maybe a scenario, but with no mouse scrollwheel, it makes playing awkward. I went into the hotkey section to discover there was no keyboard button that controls the camera zoom function. Am I blind or is this silly?

Improve the ORVR notification system - when I log in I want to know if I'm missing anything in the other zones, where the warband and fighting is, and how many Order are in the ORVR lakes. Kill markers on the map and messages to tell me when something has already happened feels like too little too late. I want to see a swarm of action and dive in headfirst, not type /1 and hope someone out there will update me.

OPEN THE OTHER CITIES GOD DAMN YOU - come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come onnnnnnnn what are we waiting for here? I am dying to see the Elf city, learn my racial lore, do quests. The Phoenix King should not be holed up in Karl Franz's bloody office! If absolutely necessary, send me in and I'll find all the bugs to help the developers stablise it. I'm pretty good at breaking the game.

If you're going to make things easier, make it optional - I love Syp but his constant requests for easier XP gain and tome unlocks are frustrating. Yes, levelling after 20 takes time and effort, and yes it's hard to find tome unlocks but that's the game. I don't want to have someone hold my hand and lead me through the game, it ruins the thrill of seeing my hard work pay off. I can't do much about the XP change, but if you're going to change tome unlocks easier, I want to be able to turn it off so it's not readily accessible.

Renown sellers = le suck - I'm getting tired of having to click on every renown gear seller in Altdorf because I can't remember which one has the latest gear for me. Giving them titles (ie: Apprentice -> Artisan) would help. A lot.

Customised mounts - OK, so we can't have faster mounts, but could we customise them? Saddles, bridles, trophy slots? Can I have a pink pony? Please? Perhaps this could be accessible at renown level 80? :D And while we're here, non combat pets? Pleeeeeeease?

NERF WITCH ELVES - because they make me cry in scenarios. Odogg and the infamous Blades (now renown level 77! Aargh!), I'm looking at both of you. Odogg in particular seems to hate me, I wonder if she's a stolen relative of Kipling...

So not really huge complaints. I'm excited that Live Events have become a consistent part of the game, that gold selling isn't an issue, that people are organised and motivated to play as a team and that bitching is still a dull murmur in the hum of people getting on with their own shit. I can almost guarantee that I'll be subscribing until the end of 2009 if the devs keep the customer service & patches up to scratch. It's a great feeling to be this positive about a game and yet not be addicted. Hooray!

On Yesterday's Announcement

2009-01-30T10:48:00.003-08:00

A quick post because I'm stil jetlagged and haven't managed to put more than a few hours gaming in this week:

Slayers/Choppas: awesome! Awwwesome! I was never really excited about the Dwarf classes, or in fact the other Melee DPS characters, but who wouldn't want to play a Slayer? Smashing and bashing, and an extra-emo backstory (which is why I chose a Shadow Warrior as my main) to boot.

Night of Murder: can't wait for this event, I like the look of collecting another trophy as a live event reward, as well as any excuse to brutally murder anyone in my path.

Oh man oh man oh man, a free expansion! I love you Mythic! They're treating us so well. If there's one thing I enjoy about MMOs, it's seeing the game shift and grow as the months go by. I swear they keep putting new NPCs in Altdorf without telling us...

Real Life Time

2009-01-27T11:47:00.001-08:00

There won't be any new posts here for a few days, as I'm finally off to the US to become a newly crowned American immigrant. I'm all packed and ready, but obviously settling in is going to take some time. I'd like to give a big thanks to Mythic for using servers in the US that, unlike WoW's crappy laggy localised European servers, work extremely well for people located overseas. You guys rock.

More questing in Chaos Wastes!

2009-01-25T08:46:00.006-08:00

...and not only did Kipling end up with a massive 80% towards level 38 via questing alone yesterday, but I got my very first bestial unlock! I was having a poke along the foot of a mountain range and found a named Bray Shaman that naturally, I had to kill, and resulted in the unlocking of said tome. This is the easiest way that I've found to get a bestial trophy in the game, short of going back to the lower level areas and killing champions. But your mileage may vary.

(When I went to the Library to pick my trophy, I chose the Ceremonial Dagger and was instantly disappointed that it was so tiny. They could have made it at least half the size of a regular dagger! Meh. Maybe I can pick my teeth with it or something.)

I unlocked a lot of tomes while I was running around yesterday, as well as meeting Dragon Ogres for the first time:

Talk about a beast! I don't want to know how they came into this world.

In conclusion: I like Chaos Wastes a lot - creepy landscape, new types of mobs, more space to move. I hope Mythic does something to make the mobs less clustered in the Tier 4 Elf lands, because I just can't be bothered with the level of difficulty there at the moment.

Things to do next: work on Kipling's renown level. While it's not pitifully low, I'd like to see the gap close between rank and renown before 40 for efficiency's sake.

Time to Get the Book Out

2009-01-22T18:39:00.004-08:00

So if there's one thing I'm good at in MMOs, it's getting lost. If there's another, it's falling off or getting stuck in things, but that's another story for another day. Having dinged level 37 today via Keep taking (1) and a scenario, I was a little stuck. Another level to churn out. So I took myself to Praag - I had a few "I'm tired of looking at you, go and annoy this NPC in this camp" quests. Riding around there is straightforward, despite the clustered landscape - which may I say, I love, it's so dense and realistic. It reminded me a lot of the ruins of Eastern Plaguelands, only far more advanced.

But then I got to the south of the Chaos Wastes and nothing seemed to make sense... the maps showed a path that didn't exist. Was there a tunnel? Was the path a lie? After having a poke around for a few minutes, I gave up, not wanting to risk being the next snack for the nearby Champion, and booked it back to Dragonwake. Sometimes things aren't what they seem.

Once I did get back to the Chaos Wastes, I found a nice selection of quests - one LOLworthy chain taking me into the RVR zone - accidentally found Bastion Stair (thus clearing two spaces in my quest log!) fell off a cliff and logged out at the camp in the middle.

It seems to be quite a small zone, so I'm going to have more of a poke around in the next few days. That is if I get a chance - I'm emigrating to the US next Wednesday, so I have plenty of packing to get on with!

The Blighted Isle

2009-01-20T18:48:00.001-08:00

Monolith Population Stats

2009-01-20T07:48:00.003-08:00

Mythic released some figures about my realm in a recent post on the Herald. I knew we were being steamrolled, but chalked it up to us being a bit crap and being slower to level than Destruction. But no:

Active Accounts Per Faction: 44% / 56%
Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Average Exp. Per Character: 51% / 49%
Average RP Per Character: 51% / 49%

There are 12% more Destruction players on Monolith. TWELVE PERCENT. And we're actually earning more XP and renown than they are? Wow! In the face of such difference, the fact that we've been able to organise and blitz an area is amazing! Well done everyone. Order are kicking ass on Monolith and everyone should get a cookie.

They also said:

"We do realize that numbers alone do not always equate to the very real perception players experience when waging war in open RvR. There are many different variables that can play into what you actually experience, including the time of day/night, the organization and cohesiveness of the group, and player skill. As developers, we also realize that it’s simply not possible to control these aspects, and there are times when one side is inevitably outnumbered on the battlefield."

I guess the only thing the devs can do, without completely meddling with the game and thus give certain players an advantage over others, is to push for server transfers for one faction side only. There were the exact same arguments in World of Warcraft, so it's not a unique problem, and I am glad to see Mythic addressing them, sharing information with us and helping us all overcome the frustrations we face instead of branding us a bunch of crybabies and return to counting their piles of money.

Now that's customer service, and that's why I'll keep playing. Fluffy bunny non-combat pets would help too.

What Now?

2009-01-19T08:30:00.005-08:00

I seem to hit a wall in every game without fail. Back in the day (um, 1997-8), I resorted to ringing the Nintendo hotline because I couldn't work out how to get past the second dungeon in Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (to date, one of the only decent game I've ever completed). I like Warhammer and I've just renewed my subs, so I'm not going to up and quit, but I need to find a solution to the corner I'm stuck in.

Basically:

Kipling (nearly level 37) seems to be surrounded by quests that are too hard - too many sensitive mobs that respawn too quickly. ORVR is a killer because I'm running on ghetto specs, so until I get my new desktop (post-emigration, but very soon!) I can't join in there. I did complete some quests in the Dwarfland, but I'm reluctant to zone jump too much, in case it makes questing on my alts boring. I could happily ding via grinding Serpent's Passage, it's a brilliant scenario, but it doesn't pop enough to keep me busy.

Icepick does not like RVR. No one seems to heal her, so it's an exercise in frustration. I'm one of those crazy people that likes to run facefirst into a group of the opposing team (quote from /sc "WTF is that chick DOING?"), but it's a shortlived joy if the healing is nonexistent*. Questing is more than easy, especially when Knights can easily solo champions. But when your renown is affected by your level, it makes more sense to keep them as even as possible. And all the fun ORVR is still in Tier 3.

Petroleum wants scenarios. Scenarios refuse to pop. Pop scenarios, pop! Aside from that, I'm loving Archmages. I especially love that one move that's a *zzzzzapp!* lightning bolt from the sky. I'm aiming to play her all the way to Tier 4, so hopefully the scenario popping won't be a massive inconvenience and I can keep moving forward in a fluid motion.

So in short, Tier 4 has questing problems, and Tier 1/2 has scenario popping problems. I'm not sure much can be done about the scenarios... maybe try and boost server population? But they could definitely improve the ease of Elfland quests - after Saphery, there just don't seem to be a good distribution of achievable quests. Kadrin Valley onwards has a far superior layout.

*Healing in Tier 4 is amazing. I love you guys.

Dear Mythic...

2009-01-18T10:23:00.001-08:00

Please could you throw one of those promotional packages my way? My roots need doing, and my boyfriend is too lazy to buy his own clippers to shave his head.

love
Natali

xoxo

PS - SLAYERS! OMG AWESOME YES!

(Dark) Elf Land

2009-01-16T11:58:00.004-08:00

Scenarios refused to pop this afternoon, so I weasled Petroleum, my new Archmage, into the Dark Elf side of the Blighted Isle and had a poke around. I managed to get all the way to their starting ground without being shot in the face. Not really sure that's a good thing... but whatever!

Age of Blogging: Thank You!

2009-01-15T13:19:00.003-08:00

A big big thanks to everyone linking to this blog for the Age of Blogging month that's going on throughout January. It's great to get comments and hear that people are interested in what I'm getting up to! I'm also finding it hard to keep up with all the blogs, there are far more people getting involved than I expected and so many good blog posts to read now! I'm hoping to make a compendium of my favorites at the end, but for now if you look right, I'm linking to them in the sidebar. Even that little list took me a couple of hours to organise the other day, and it's perhaps 5% of the concentrated effort piling up!

If you're thinking of starting a Warhammer blog and haven't yet, join the fun! It's often as easy as a screenshot.

Mother, What's WAR?

2009-01-15T07:43:00.004-08:00

So proud of Monolith's Order last night. I logged in expecting to see Dragonwake locked out by Destruction, only to see the exact opposite and Region Chat buzzing with people giving directions and updates. Not one but three warbands were roaming the Elflands looking for Destruction blood, blitzing the Battle Objectives, dodging zergs, planning a defence of Reikland. It was fantastic. So so proud that we're finally turning around, organising ourselves and pwning as we should. After giving up - my poor laptop could not handle the action, and turned the game into more of a slideshow - trying to help in Caledor, I took Kipling back to Dragonwake to quest and do Serpent's Passage* et al to make sure we kept the zone. Because it started trying to turn back on us very quickly... as this game tends to do. In a month or so I should have a better computer and thus will be diving into the fray.

*re: SP, I am still chasing the elusive 100k final damage score. My closest has been 99k.

Serpent's Passage Sample Stats

2009-01-13T11:36:00.001-08:00

Am I the only one that absolutely loves reading the stats at the end of each scenario? I love it! I love seeing how everyone else has played in relation to me, why x person didn't do as well (usually because they've died a lot), why y person pwnd. Screenshots also give me a good measure of how I'm progressing on my characters and an idea of what I should expect from others. As usual, click the images for readability:

Can't Keep Control

2009-01-13T11:19:00.009-08:00

Spent the last handful of hours trying to exert some influence over the Order/Destruction Dragonwake bar. Talking to a guildie while I was knocking off some awkward quests opened my eyes to the fact that not many players seem to realise that it's not just oRVR that determines the area control. And to be fair, I didn't realise this myself until a few weeks ago. Swivel thy eyes to the image on the right.

So oRVR obviously has the biggest influence over which way the colours go, but if Destruction have 20 players running around completing their quests and Order only have 2, it's not much help either. I might have been imagining this but I swear I saw the Order bar go up a notch when I completed a quest today! It shows that every player in this game matters, even if they never get a single point on their renown bar. Instead of standing around at the warcamp waiting for scenarios to pop, it might make more sense to go finish any leftover quests you have lying around (in return for this, I will lobby for non-combat pets in the near future).

(And even now, reading the bottom part of the text properly, it sinks into my brain that BOs = a boost to your renown. Want more renown in scenarios? Make sure you grab a BO first! One of the major flaws in playing WAR is that half of us are just not reading the content properly. It's a fantastically designed MMO if you're conscious.)

Highest Renown...

2009-01-13T07:00:00.002-08:00

...from a single player kill during a scenario so far. Nice huh! I am guessing a certain someone has been ploughing the post-40 renown fields and must be pretty high by now. Which works great for me, the lower level you are in a scenario, the more renown you get. But still, I look at the number "598" and can't quite believe that one player kill could net so much. End game scenarios are now looking quite promising.

PS - had some real life stuff to tackle recently, hence the lack of posts. I'm intending to get stuck in this week.

Pestilent Soul, Level 19 Hero

2009-01-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Found this horrible thing near Icefist Warren in Troll Country, surrounded by trolls. Having beaten down a level 19 Champion, I figured this would be difficult, but not that difficult. After all, Kipling dinged level 35 and has a shiny new cloak leftover from the Heavy Metal live event! Um. And then it beat me down to the floor, and I fell off a cliff and died. Fail.

Coldsnap

2009-01-10T12:19:00.003-08:00

Got him! It's a Snap is now unlocked for Kipling.

Time Out

2009-01-06T12:12:00.002-08:00

An email in my inbox today announced that my 60 day timecard? Had run out. Because I'm in the UK (which will change soon, woohoo!), I'm dependent on my boyfriend to finance my subscription (I don't use credit cards), and he didn't check the internet before going to work today. And from work, he's going on a business trip for a few days... argh. I managed to get him to pick up a timecard from home on the way to the airport, so hopefully I'll be back in game by tonight instead of at the end of the week.

The good news is that he took advantage of the Black Friday Amazon.com deals and got them for half price. Half price is excellent.

Troll Country Exploration

2009-01-06T08:02:00.009-08:00

Last night I finally got to game with my boyfriend, but instead of doing productive things like scenarios or quests, we went out in search of a few unlocks and to see what we could see in Troll Country. I'd spotted these Yetis a week ago, and wanted to kill some. So we did:

Close to the Destruction warcamp, we saw an AFKer. Aside from a band of RVR flagged Destro, this was the only other person we saw in the two hours it took to traverse the landscape.

Hung out in some water. I took all my clothes off to see if we got an unlock for skinny dipping. Alas: no. So back on they went.

You have encountered a Wareagle!

Take a look at this monstrosity, it had an eerie "trapped souls screaming" soundtrack emanating from it:

After this, we moved west into what came across as a very unfinished, barren landscape of trolls and icy caves:

I was a little disappointed, because I was hoping to find some history & lore unlocks, or something a little more random, but only came out with encounter/world/25 kill unlocks. And then we found Coldsnap, the champion that would provide the unlock for "It's a Snap!"...

...but only to the person with the killing blow. My boyfriend isn't as bothered (ie: he has a sane mind) about completing his tome. So you can guess who got the killing blow right? And he's a Rune Priest! Dammit! He has the best luck at the moment for drops and whatnot.

I'll be back Coldsnap! Don't you think I won't! And after blitzing through a quest cave (ie: mobs only, nothing interesting at the back) our journey had come to an end. This chap lies beside a large rock outside the cave to the south of Coldsnap:

Would have been nice to have an unlock telling his story, do you think he's a Slayer? And what's a Dwarf doing so far from home?

Ostland is Beautiful

2009-01-04T18:16:00.003-08:00

One reason I am looking forward to getting a new desktop in 2009 is to experience the graphics turned up to 11 (the other is to stop crashing to desktop every hour and cut the lag in keeps - my problem, not the game's fault).

So Shamans are AWESOME, huh?

2009-01-03T18:56:00.009-08:00

Playing as Icepick yesterday I came across not one but two RVR flagged Destruction players in Ostland. No idea why they were running that way, they were quite close to what I think is their warcamp, but this is the first time I've seen anyone flagged in such an obvious enemy area. So, being a good slave to Order, I attacked them both. One was level 13 and went down too fast (I needed Marauders for a quest) to comment on, but Boomsok was another matter. The little bugger managed to get me down to half health (!) before I managed to murder him in cold blood amidst the trees. His self-heals were epic and I'll definitely think twice about jumping a Shaman in the future.

And obviously, when a scenario popped for both of us 2 minutes later, I was absolutely spit roasted by the Destruction team in revenge. D'oh.

Through a door, down some stairs...

2009-01-01T14:41:00.006-08:00

...hit some red-level Destro NPCs, turn around and run for your life. But stop to take screenshots, because it's a beautiful game. All in the Troll Country oRVR area.

Icepick: Still in Troll Country

2008-12-30T18:58:00.005-08:00

I'm still playing a maximum of 2 hours a day at the moment, which sounds like a lot, but isn't really - it's enough for a few scenarios, INF gathering, quests, crash to desktops and a trip to Altdorf to unload my bags in the bank/auction house. The above picture is from the first stage of Chapter 6's Public Quest The Blighted Farm.

Thanks to all the zombies you can pick up a lot of Apothecary water* while you're grinding out INF/doing the three or four quests available in this area. For people who have yet to get this far into the zone: if you've got a group of around 3/4 people, head south a little further, there's an easier PQ there. Why not just do this one? Because at the end, the Hero comes with a Champion and adds that are easily pulled along with him, and it's just a massive headache unless you have two tanks and a decent healer. The recommended number of players is nine, but I think you could do it with six.

[Oh, and while we're here, I need to give a massive shout out to Kyris, who orchestrated some of the finest healing in one of the PQs the other day - if you're on Monolith, watch out for him and feed him treats, his heals are worth more than gold can buy.]

I'm almost ready to move into Ostland, I have to scout around the oRVR area and finish off a quest, but I dinged level 14 so (as with Kipling) I am well on track for levelling. Scenarios don't pop often in the afternoon (which is morning on the East coast), but I was happy to see Pheonix Gate twice today. I think I might spend some time in there + filling my bags with loot to sell before I actively do some more questing. If you're not careful, you can level too fast in this game.

*One of my impossible aims at the moment is to force down the price of water/soil on the auction house, as it's ridiculously high. I don't think I'll be able to do it, but at least undercutting others by several pieces of silver/gold means that I'm guaranteed sales.

Holiday Week

2008-12-28T10:32:00.003-08:00

The holiday week lends to extra casual playing because it's so quiet, so instead of trying to batter through the stagnant Tier 4 Elf zone, I've been playing Icepick, my Knight of the Blazing Sun.

Any game is fun when you're playing a class that just will not die (Knights can take on equal level Champions and win, no wonder Order have been battered in Scenarios from launch day) but I like the Empire storyline a lot - Tier 1 focuses on the Norse invasion, and now Tier 2 is about plague and sickness and um, trolls. I also caught sight of Yetis in the distance, but at level 21 I think I'll have a go at them a little later.

I've also come across a lot of unlocks, more so than in the Elf tier (although it could be that I wasn't familiar with the game enough/too squishy to look properly) - 2 coming from bestiary items, and one from walking into a spider cave.* When I ding 40 with Kipling, or finally lose my patience with Tier 4, I'm going to run her through all zones and have a solid day of exploring the world, and I value finding unlocks and items organically, rather than relying on Google.

Not much else to report: I've barely touched Tier 2 scenarios so my renown is falling by the wayside and that's on my to-do list in the near future. And scavenging is working out to be a nice little money spinner - it's sole purpose is to funnel resources to Kipling for cultivating/apothecary, but until the right level drops come along, I will stack that gold pile high.

*Sidenote: what is it with Warhammer and spider caves? They're everywhere!

How Tier 4 RVR feels for Order right now

2008-12-22T18:01:00.003-08:00

[Direct Link]

Keg's End

2008-12-20T15:08:00.010-08:00

Live events bring out the worst OCD traits in me. If there's something I want, I have to keep grinding away until I have it. Even if I pass out. Today, I achieved my Keg's End goal, and picked up the awesome awesome beer mug trophy. The best part is that the way it positions on my shoulders, it looks like it's hooked onto my bow:

In order to get to the second notch on the INF bar, you need to do every quest to completion except the "drink 100 Dwarf Beer Kegs" and "Massive Ogres Tyrants Slain" ones, and even then, you still need to do part of them - I have 63/100 kegs drank, and 3/20 Ogres killed. It's a maddening crawl, I was convinced at some points that I'd never get there.

Here's how I look at the moment, I'm running with the green/purple theme. Dying your gear purple is really big on Monolith right now, even though red dye seems the most scarce.

Look at that guy's beard. Fantastic.

While most of the Keg's End quests are quite grindy, it doesn't lessen the fun. The best part of this Live Event? All the explosions. World of Warcraft gave us fireworks, but compared to WAR, they are damp squibs. These suckers go up in the air, and are varied and creative - there's probably a set number of designs, but even the Common Fireworks vary in colours. And firework drops aside, the Explosive Snotlings are made of win - not only exploding when you're finished killing them, but spontaneously exploding when they... just get tired... or something. Anyway. Explosions. Yay!

It's hard to get a screenshot of the fireworks by the way. Still working on that.

So now I have to kill Ogre Tyrants if I want the final reward. Ho hum. Not sure whether I want it or not - it's not permanent, and it's a pain in the ass to corral other people into a group to go hunting around the RVR areas for mobs.

Also, Monolith's Destro has been running riot through the RVR zones, blitzing all the Objectives and locking out everything. Bless their hearts. We're expecting them to hit Altdorf in the next few weeks, and I hope Deathclaw obliterates their faces for taking away my scenarios. I can't really participate in defence because the lag inside keeps and in large groups renders the game unplayable, and I get killed almost instantly anyway. To Order's credit, we did get a bit of the old to-and-fro battle going on outside Dragonwake's warcamp last night which lasted an hour or so, so I do have some Tier 4 INF built up, but nowhere near even halfway to the first epic piece.

[PS - congratulations to Grirmind for being the lucky jammer that got the Tier 4 epic drop!]

Presage Vestament Loot

2008-12-19T18:01:00.002-08:00

The Presage Vestaments for Rune Priests dropped in RVR on Thursday night. Unfortunately, I don't get to make mad gold from it on the AH, mostly because the AH economy is nowhere near reliably stable enough to rely on that, but also because my boyfriend plays a Rune Priest. I'll count that as a Christmas present thx.

Customer Service

2008-12-19T07:29:00.003-08:00

Assholes. Up until last night they weren't part of Warhammer Online, and then I had the misfortune to want to do a few scenarios/try not to die taking part of oRVR in Dragonwake. And then an asshole (with a posse) who shall not be named, because trolls don't deserve fame, decided to spend the best part of two hours trolling the Tier 4 Elf region chat with the usual homophobia/misogyny that seems to come with social gaming. I waited him out, and sure enough he made a rape joke, and I filed an Appeal.

[This is the second time I've filed one, and thus the second time I've spoken to the CSR's of Warhammer Online. The first time was when a random Hero mob showed up in Altdorf and I rolled high enough for one of the top bags of loot... only no one could find the chest spawn. It sucked and there was nothing anyone could do, and the CSR was unable to restore the loot chest for us. Blah.]

But anyway, both times that I've had the opportunity to speak to their customer service reps, I've been pleasantly surprised. They use scripts, but are friendly and considerate and are actually allowed to be a bit silly. The first encounter I had, after detailing the problem in the hope of a future fix, we exchanged the \m/ emoticon and yelled WAAAGH! at each other. Last night one responded within 15 minutes of my filing the Appeal (wish I'd taken their name, it began with a V) while I was in a scenario, so I couldn't discuss what had happened in great detail (team > chat). They understood, and let me know they had enough information to do something about the issue, and let me go on my way pwning the faces of Destro. Similarly Ainilome of Obsessive Focus corrected them about the naming of an NPC critter, and they promptly changed the name.

So if any Customer Service supervisor happens across this post, please keep this kind of thing up. We live increasingly in an age of robots and scripts - actual people responding to our ingame problems and trying to keep the mood elevated will keep people playing.

And I hope the asshole in question gets a banhammer to the face.

That's Awfully Precise

2008-12-19T07:22:00.005-08:00

So either I broke something (highly possible!) or WAR's maths for stats is really really precise and they need to fix how it appears on the character screen. I don't usually check my defensive stats, so I have no idea if it looks like this ingame.

Got Vent w/Music Bot

2008-12-17T15:42:00.004-08:00

The other day Sideon of FHoTA was sending around guild recruitment messages in Eataine. One of the big lures they were including was the promise of a music bot on their Ventrilo server. I immediately assumed it had to be running Norwegian death metal, so I sent him a /tell to see if I was right:

Totally awesome. I'll be keeping an eye out for this guild in the future, they're definitely having a laugh. And if you're guildless on US-Monolith, I think they're still recruiting.

Procrastinating

2008-12-16T18:52:00.001-08:00

I now have quests in the Isle of the Dead.

I'm scared to go back.

It's creepy.

Procrastination takes the form of hanging out in Dragonwake, where its safe and everyone knows your name. Like Cheers, but with more crossbows.

Altdorf Scenery

2008-12-13T09:46:00.005-08:00

No bones about it: Tier 4 is frustrating for me at the moment, I can't find my groove. The level of difficulty has been ramped up, the ability to group for oRVR is lost on me at the moment (all the action was in Tier 2 last night), and doing scenarios all the time is not how to play Warhammer.

So! I went back to my Tier 1 Knight of the Blazing Sun and ran through all the quests in the city. This is my third time doing them and it's still not boring. Since I bought the game, the city has changed. NPCs are in different places, say different things, wear different clothes. New quests have been added. But I love the way the city is constructed, from the makeshift pen of rats watched over by the Ratcatcher's Wife to the detailing inside the Sigmar chapel. The Emporer's Palace is my ultimate tourist destination - you get to meet Karl Franz himself! And you get a fat chunk of XP for doing so too!

Take a look at the stained glass:

And if you take yourself through one of the doors on either side of Emperor Franz, you'll find his level 48 flying mount Deathclaw:

According to HammerWiki, he " joins the Emperor (reputedly by smashing through a stained-glass window) to fight against Destuction players should they reach the King fight in Altdorf." Which, to be honest, gives me goosebumps. I can't wait for the day Monolith's Destro launch an attack on Altdorf.

Isle of the Dead

2008-12-12T22:13:00.005-08:00

I was about ready to go to bed tonight when I saw a portal in an area of Tier 4 where there were lots of level 40s. Encourages by guildies, I ran as fast/smart as I could and managed to get through - and discovered the Isle of the Dead. Creepiest place in the Warhammer world, beautiful landscape, a purple vortex thrust straight through the centrer, the bones of ruined buildings sticking up through sand like ribs, twisted mobs, tormented spirits, the ghosts of Shadow Warriors staring out to a desolate sea.

Unfortunately, none of my screenshots worked*.

:-/

*Screenshot keybinds were reset with patch 1.1a

Moment of the Day

2008-12-12T18:11:00.003-08:00

Serpent's Passage: the salvage has just reset, and I'm mid-field. No Destro to be seen. "Hm, where is everyone?" I think, and head over to pick it up. I start running, completely alone...

...and straight into the ass end of a crowd of enemy players trying to push Order down-field. I veer left, using whirling pin in the desperate hope that they'll slow down and I'll clear some space, but no, my health bar is down to 30%. Aaaaaargh! I didn't think I'd make it, but dammit, I was going to try.

But then the heals came! Someone, anyone had seen me (hard to miss, what with the giant column of light beaming out of my head) and was desperately throwing everything they had at me to get me out of the mess alive. And very rapidly the red numbers were replace with green numbers and I was back to full health, sprinting down the sand towards the blue shimmery wall.

I made it to the cart, and I capped the salvage, and it was totally awesome.

My Big Bow

2008-12-09T16:20:00.005-08:00

Dinged level 31 earlier, and put on a great big bow. Actually called the Outlaw's Bow, which is the early Tier 4 green gear that drops. Reminds me of the ludicrously oversized swords you can get in Final Fantasy (as always, click for the full size version):

I almost edited the screenshots down, but look at that landscape. So beautiful, even on my crappy graphics card.

Patch 1.1

2008-12-09T06:25:00.005-08:00

Patch 1.1 rolls out soon, and you can find the full patch notes here. There are many many things I am looking forward to, including:

Chat linking - not being able to was a major barrier in discussions about gear and where to find it. Some guildies and I stumbled on a level 35 set of accessories, and while we did have it in our tome, it was hindering discussion with the rest of the guild as to why we were so excited. Aside from that, they've added a right click menu to people's names, so it's easier to say "STFU /IGNORE" in scenarios as well as invite them to group.
We have added an additional item to the following armor sets: Redeye, Devastator, and Keeper. Not sure how fast I am going to level out of the Devastator gear, but I'm definitely going to have a look at that.
The drop rate for Gold Bags has been increased in almost every PQ in the game. Because I have yet to see one.
Open RVR influence Open RVR is the best part of the game hands down, nothing compared to the day they released the "Kill 15 enemy players in open RVR" Heavy Metal event live quest, and everyone charged to the battle fields. I am unspeakably excited at the prospect of being able to slaughter Destro every day outside of a 15 minute time limit.
Player Statues OMG OMG way to appeal to the RVR overachievers among us. I've been checking out the statues in the War Quarter (by the steam tank PQ) and I'm wondering if they're going to be upgraded in any way, and how that's going to work.
A Pale Eye Burglar that has been spotted skulking around the docks in Altdorf has been persuaded to move along. & Banker Lutz near the Mastiff’s End in Altdorf has found his courage and will no longer duck and hide behind the bank counter. just make me laugh. Banker Lutz was more than a little annoying, and we were all convinced he was sleeping on the job. Also: Peasants near the Bright Wizard College in Altdorf have given up trying to keep their clothes free from soot and ash. Their clothes now reflect the atmosphere and danger of living close to the Bright Wizard College. is a nice update that like the other two, tweaks the world to be more realistic. I hope NPC patterns/clothing changes a little in the future to make the city seem less stagnant.
The mysterious barrels found in the capital cities will now reward those who are adventurous enough to open them, but be careful! Some of the barrels are potentially dangerous! Being one of the foolish that explored Altdorf at level 10 and managed to find more than one mob that would one shot me, now I'm an appropriate level, I hope the rewards suit me!
Improved and diversified the appearance of many cloaks throughout the game. I'm one of those players that started dying her gear from the second I could afford the 20s for Warlock Purple dye. I have some lovely dyes saved up for level 40 thanks to Apothecary/Cultivation. Because most people get the same kind of gear, we all look the same. Looking the same when we have the option to not look the same is silly. Dye your armor!
While exploring Altdorf and the Inevitable City, players might discover new citizens who have some interesting lore to share. Woohoo, more unlocks! I love unlocks.
Fun new “chicken run” quests have been added to the Tier 3 Greenskin and High Elf warcamps. These quests send players back to Tier 1 open RvR areas for an update on the progress of the war. If you haven't gone into a lower level RvR area and become a chicken, running the whole zone clucking like a nutjob and hoping the other side doesn't find you... you're missing out. It's hilarious.
Added the functionality for chat tabs to blink when they receive new messages. Still tweaking my chat tab set up. Still not perfect. This will help.

No doubt a lot of people will also be happy with the fact that Keep Contribution has been fixed - having a large part of the game broken and loot distributed wrong never makes anyone happy. Having discussions with other people about Keep Sieging in general, I think Mythic have a fair bit of work ahead of them to make it completely fair (eg: people shouldn't be eligible to continually get gold bags if other people need the gear more), but that's fine. We're only on Patch 1.1 - we have lots of time.

Serpent's Passage Sample Stats

2008-12-07T10:15:00.009-08:00

I was gobsmacked to see 3000+ renown at the end of my first Serpent's Passage today. We didn't even win! Click on the images to make them readable:

But it got better. The next one that popped resulted in the highest ever damage score I've managed to churn out. Again, I don't think we won this one:

And here's a shot of the board overall at the end of the last one I participated in where we did win:

It's obviously dwarfed by the kind of damage that Bright Wizards can do, but I think that's fair enough - they don't have the option of doubling their armour or disabling tanks. I'm really chuffed that I'm holding steady ground in Tier 4 already.

On Tier 4 RVR

2008-12-07T06:09:00.004-08:00

On Friday night Kipling dinged level 30/renown level 25, which was the line in the sand for me to move onto Tier 4. No offence to the residents of Avelorn and Saphery, but things were just worn out. I know that going back to do Tier 3 scenarios is a possibility, but now it's a little too easy, I'm interested in new challenges, new landscapes and apparently also getting my face ground into unidentifiable meat by level 40 Destruction players. The only scenario I've seen at the moment is Serpent's Passage [video] and apparently that's the only one that pops at the moment, and while I wasn't watching myself die and die and die again or renegotiating with myself for one more round of Tor Anroc, I was admiring the landscape. Shipwrecks and sand and jagged rocks? Yes please! It's a shame there's no cutscene at the end with the winner sailing off leaving the other group to starve and die on the island.

The other thing I like about RVR, is that there are multiple scenario choices. People might not always play every single one (eg: Black Fire Basin was abandoned by everyone on the Order/Monolith side because Destruction would refuse to participate aside from sitting on their flag and waiting for us to attack, oh how I hate them), but when more people reach a tier, there's a greater chance of different scenarios popping. After the last patch, I rolled a Knight of the Blazing Sun, and got to see the other two Tier 1 scenarios for the first time, which was cool, although Khaine's Embrace is very creepy to say the least.

So, should I log on today, look for the dead green&purple Shadow Warrior in the sands of Serpent's Passage. I'm having fun, even when they're stabbing me in the face from 16 different angles, honest!

Cow Tipping Across the Universe

2008-12-06T15:18:00.002-08:00

Came across this quest in the Empire Tier 4 zone just now. I won't ruin the ending, but it caused a severe LOL reaction...

When Landscapes Bork

2008-12-06T09:08:00.006-08:00

I get this graphic/landscape bork every now and again, and while it's really cool looking, it's also freaky and bizarre. This was actually how I met my guild a few weeks ago, trying to explain to a scenario group what I was seeing. It's like I've fallen through the floor*, but the rest of the players appear at the same level as I do and I have to navigate this maze of hellish rocks in order to play. Which is not easy.

[This screenshot is from a Nordenwatch scenario on my Witch Hunter alt DuBois]

*I fall through the floor a lot. I don't know why.

On the Tech Side

2008-12-06T08:29:00.002-08:00

Here are my laptop specs:

RAM: 2.37GB (bumped from 512MB)
Processor: 1.79 GHz
Graphics card: ATI Radeon Xpress 1150

Yes. I know. Warhammer Online is not supposed to run on a system like this. But it does. I made it work... somehow... and this is why I refer to this machine as the "Ghetto Laptop that Could". If you don't think your machine specs are high enough and you have a better rig than this, try installing it - borrow a friend to input their login details to patch you up and see what happens. All I had to do was bump my RAM up (I paid around £20 for 2GBs of RAM from play.com) and turn down all the graphic settings in order for it to be playable (and this doesn't bother me, I don't play games for the shiny graphics).

Let's also throw into the pot that I am not living in North America at the moment. I am playing from the southwest of England - because I am emigrating soon and I wanted to play the game with my boyfriend, he bought me a US copy and a time card. Unlike World of Warcraft, there are zero issues connecting to the servers which (I think) are located in Maryland. I can't comment on the EU servers, because I've obviously not used them, but if you want to play Warhammer Online with your American/Canadian friends and don't live there, it's do-able, especially thanks to internet shopping. It can't be that hard to buy the necessaries on eBay.

(side note in regards to server locations: I do wonder if they're bouncing me off a server located in the EU based on me getting GMT+1 when I type /time but I've not investigated this further)

In conclusion: yes, I do suffer lag, but so does everyone else. It's improving as they hotfix and patch the game - Altdorf used to be a nightmare until 1.0.6. Yes, I do get those annoying CrashToDesktop issues (which I really need to write a separate post about), but so does everyone else - talking to people that I know have infinitely superior systems to me, multiple core processors, they still suffer. I don't know what Mythic are doing about that, I hope they're taking that seriously. I applaud them for everything else, because the game does work for me and hope the CTD issue is resolved in the future.

Intro

2008-12-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

So I've been playing Warhammer since September and it honestly wasn't meant to be this way! After playing World of Warcraft for around a year and a half, levelling two characters to 70 (amidst other abandoned alts), and now being unable to play further (I'm emigrating, Blizzard outright refuse to transfer characters between the international server clusters), I was planning to rest on my laurels and let Mythic settle all their bugs before I dived back in. Probably after Christmas.

But it wasn't to be.

It took me a maximum 2 weeks after launchdate to buckle before I tapped that pipe again. I even bought new RAM in order to play.

And I don't regret it! It is so much fun. SO. MUCH. FUN. There are three reasons I've started this blog. One is because the game is just SO. MUCH. FUN. Two is to counteract the naysayers - there are a lot of people publicly declaring that the game is Not Very Good, and defecting back to WoW whereas I see things a lot different. I can't and won't go back to Blizzard - I have so much love for what they have done in the world of gaming, and WoW is possibly one of the best games I've played in my life, but it's like a bad ex-boyfriend. Great sex, shame about everything else being stunted and frustrating. If I have to level through the Barrens one more time, I am going to slit my throat.

And finally, my third reason is that I've not played an MMO from the beginning. OK, I didn't participate in the Beta, but I'm watching this game of epic proportions grow around me, and I want to partake as vocally as possible. There are lots and lots of other blogs (see the list to the right) that are doing this too, all of which share information and inspire thoughts. I only wish I'd started this from day one, and documented the amount of times I managed to fall through the floor in Altdorf (clue: more than once).