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.

On Rally Calls

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.

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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!

On Yesterday's Announcement

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...
  

Dear Mythic...

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!