Desktop Ordered

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.

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!

Real Life Time

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.

Ostland is Beautiful

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).

On the Tech Side

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.