Oh no! They killed Karl!

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

• 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

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

"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!]

State of My Game

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

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.