ORVR is your new bicycle

"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

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!]

Mortal Enemy

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.

In which Kipling sees the Inevitable City

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.

When Bloggers Meet on the Battlefield

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.

Monolith Blogger ShoutOut!

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.

Gendered Gaming

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.

My Wishlist

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!

Monolith Population Stats

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.

Age of Blogging: Thank You!

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?

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.

Highest Renown...

...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.

So Shamans are AWESOME, huh?

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.

Customer Service

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.

Got Vent w/Music Bot

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.