Gratz Zatos!

Just wanted to give a big shout out to our guild resident badass Sorc Zatos who dinged RR80 last night!

Massive gratulations and things of that nature!

He dinged shortly before this in a scenario but I was too lazy to take a screenie then so this is slightly later on chest hunting in LotD.

Speaking of which:

Hmmm never noticed these guys before. Guess wolves migrate south for the winter!

In other news the Producers later came out and can be found here if you haven't already checked it. It's about what you'd expect, round up of information regarding the new patch. Only new thing is confirmation the Wild Hunt will be returning which is always fun. I just hope if they return Hunter's Vale in across the other Tier's they put the insta-gibb sections of the final boss fight back in!

Four thing’s Werit learnt.

Just a quick one:

Werit’s posted up a new interview from Buffed.de with Carrie Gouskos.

I’d recommend shunting over Werit’s way and checking it out. Translation leaves a bit to be desired and mainly more dropped hints but news is news!

Seems to confirm they are definitely working on something and that they have further plans for the End Game long term which unfortunately don't include re-introducing the missing home cities (Boo! Hiss! Etc!) a new 6v6 Scenario which is great as I loved the Ironclad. I'm convinced with all the hints and I'm gonna get off the fence about it. Next month is going to be a new expanion announcement...or I'll cry inside!

Plague Rat spawning points on the PTS.

Well as I was saying before I'm looking forward to the prospective changes to LotD/PLing dynamic that Mythic are obviously hoping to inject some more life into Rvr T2/T3.

Having now had a chance to run around the PTS Server all chickened up I've managed to track down all of the sites in the Empire/Chaos pairing (I've not masochistic enough to search the Elf pairing without a mount/helicopter/at least Flee) I've gotta say....

Tier two:

Order side:

Destruction side:

Tier 3:

Order side:

Destruction side:

And finally Tier 3 Champion Spawn point:

As you may have guessed I'm not a fan of the placement of the non-champion spawn points. Only time I've felt the need to post in the forum about it....twice *cough* forgot about the move that's now gone live [points at herald] *cough*

Really hope they change their mind about the placements. With a WC to the north and south perfect placement should be East and West!

Otherwise I don't see it fostering a Pvp/RvR attitude as much as a skip back into the WC and wait for the bad, bad men to go away so we can continue in peace...-titude. Was going to write more but all of the faffing about with the pictures (damn you blogspot just put the picture where I tell you to!) has stolen my rage!

Happy Warring!

Edit/Correction: Just as well I was too lazy to search through Greenskin and Elf pairing as by all accounts they're not getting their own camps which kinda sucks. Especially if your trying to cram all of the 25-31 Powerlevelers that currently swarm LotD into just two *small* spots.

This weekend I've mainly been....Moshing & Discovering things!

Note I've hopefully fixed the issues I was having with images but if it's still borked let me know please Gonna go back and edit the old posts similarly. :-)

Been away most of the weekend watching The Prodigy and Pendulum play at the Milton Keynes Bowl. Despite getting there late thanks to stupid road works (god bless you M25, don't ever change) it was a wicked concert. If you ain't been to watch The Prodigy before, I'd highly recommend it!

Got back home this morning via a house party, crashed out and still managed to get a few hours of WAR in so good times!

I've mainly been trying to boast Larkett's RR, managed to get him up to 39 so far, which while nothing worth shouting a bit is a big jump from what he's been for the last little while. That plus a very lucky 1st BB/BWE which saw 3 parts of his sentinel gear drop into my lap mean he's on the up. Should be fully warded this week with a little bit more luck and then I can see about DP/Tyrant gear. To be honest I was intending mainly to just use him to help fill out guild raid groups when the numbers/lockouts clash but he's been a lot of fun to run T4 Scenarios with so I think I'll stick with him!

Finished the weekend off with a Aldorf city siege and while we ended up unfortunately in a empty instance it did give me plenty of time to poke around and explore while grabbing Crests to convert into Officer Medallions and I came across something I'd not noticed before. Seems all of the BOs controlled by order have the usual barricades and spikes and whatnots along with a standard banner.

While I'd notice the banner have rosette style paper notes on the back of them I hadn't bothered to try to read them before:

As far as I can make out it says this:

"If you can read this your should be dead I mean really, thats like realy good

I mean realy cause in Warhammer you should have eyesight this good, its just not natual and not being natural would make (you?) a which and if thats true than you are really gonna die so you want to reconsider readign this I know I mis spelled misspelled but, hey im from a fake world what do you expect we dont even have toilets and thats another really messy problem we need to deal with, you should smell some of these places it's not pleasant by any means."

Hopefully you can make it out for your self in this pic:

Ooooookay weird.... I've not noticed any thing similar on the Destro but enjoyed finding things like this hidden (ok not really hidden) away, any one else seen anything interesting as well?

Tier 2/3 Changes - Plague Rats Ahoy

So patch 1.3.6 notes are out now if you hadn't already heard.

To be honest there's not a huge amount there which worries or really grabs me. The Against All Odds buff should be fun and with any luck should draw more people out to the lakes. I already threw out my views about the Quitter debuff changes and the Mailbox Defense counter here.

The main part that grabs my attention is the changes to LotD and adding high Exp farming mobs to Tier 2 and Tier 3 the form post which can be found here.

Now this I'm really looking forward to depending I love roaming Solo across the lower Tiers with my Marauder and especially Giblettz my Squig Herder but unfortunately unless you bump into opposing Roaming zones tend to either me dead or filled with full Warbands making finding people to ambush tricksy.

I think a large part of it will come down to where they place these spawning camps. Hopefully it'll be a little bit out of the way in the Lakes as placing them in hotspots where the Zergs crossing isn't going to be a massive incentive to try to power level there. Placing them off the beaten track should mean people can level them in relative peace, only having to content with other leveling groups and roaming groups looking for action.

Being out of the way should deter detours by larger Zergs who are actively locking down zones and having one in each pairing should mean you can't just camp them over and over with leveling groups shifting between the and making the hunting more interesting. As long as the Exp makes the Risk/Reward ratio in the favour of levelers they shouldn't be overly put out at occasionally being wiped and being able to relocate if their getting griefed.

As long as mythic don't decide to place it somewhere stupid or despawn them when a zone locks this should be a whole barrel of fun.

I'm still having trouble logging onto the PTS so I've not been able to check out positioning as yet but I think I'm going to retire Giblettz until 1.3.6 is live and get back to solo roaming all the way through the T3!

Also I continue to be stalked by doppleganger this time bumping into another Giblettz, that right you spell it differently, I'm on to you!

He stole mah face!

God knows what I'm doing wrong with putting these pics up btw, if anyone's got any advice I'd appreciate it.

Today I logged on my Marauder for the first time in a long while only to run into Sarig's doppleganger in a scenario!

Check out the face of evil.

I'm distraught and must now hide Sarigs shame with his ugly 'ol Helmet!

On other notes first round of T3 Rvr's not as bad as I remembered, mainly because I remembered this spot:

Fun times.

My Ding-aling and good bye to T2 for Giblettz *Sad Panda*

Well finally got my 2nd Character up to 40 being my Zealot Larkett.

I seem to go through a love hate relationship with him, he is ridiculously squishy although that may be exaggerated by his hodge-podge of random gear. It's like he fell through a charity store and throw on what ever stuck. Hopefully that'll right himself my the time I've build his RR up a little bit, sitting at 33 currently and I've finally been stung by the officer medallion crisis other people seem to be having. They'll like fricking gold dust and I'm not looking forward to having to grind more out. Think I'll just have to throw him at some Orvr and hope I get lucky looting keeps with the Zerg. Having said that, he can throw out the mad healz which is always fun.

On the up side the Server is seeming a little bit more stable although I am still getting a much higher then normal D/c rate it's.... bearable for the moment at least!

And on a sadder note Giblettz finally leveled out of the fun of T2 and into the Grind of T3. The Empire/Chaos pairing of Ostland/Troll country being, I think one of the best across the game through all the Tier's. Not too far to run from one end to the other, lots of skirmishing oppotunities which I'm really starting to appreciate playing with my Squig Herder and my favorite BO....

..being the Monasteryof Morr which has a perfect location right by the Order Warcamp, a straight run across the map from the Destruction WC, meaning it's easy to siege/counter attack quickly for either side, never safe from attack and just all around the place to be for a drawn out war, carnage and general mayhem.

I don't think their's any other BOs that I'm as attached although locationwise Ogrund's Tavern in Highpass is close...but ya know T3ish.

Gonna try and continue leveling Giblettz through Orvr only with the occasional Scenario thrown in for good message, spurning the tawdry easy leveling option that is Land of the Dead. He's really brought me back into the solo Rvr roaming which I never had with Sarigs who mainly leveled through PvE and which wasn't a option for my Zealot so I'm hoping I can cling onto that through T3. Having said that I'm no longer quite sure why I've always been so anti it so maybe I've just demonised T3 unfairly in my mind from bad experiences. Here's hoping!

RDPS Sovereign up on the Forums

Orginal post here:

Magic DPS

(Primary) Offensive Set

Int - 232

Tou - 134

Wou - 116

Ini - 106

Spi - 294

Cor - 289

Ele - 289

6% magic crit chance

40 magic power

4% disrupt strikethrough

4 AP/s

3% crit damage

3 piece - 85 Int

4 piece - 85 Wou

5 piece - 5% magic crit chance

6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase magic power by 130 for 10s.

(BW/SO) 7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase all damage taken by your target by 5% for 10 seconds.

(MA) 7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase chance to critically hit by 10% and critical damage by 20% for 10 seconds.

8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 enemies 20 feet from your target have their abilities cost 50% more for 10 seconds.

(Note: the 8 piece bonus is 20 feet from your target, and it has a 100 feet initial cast range on it.)

(Secondary) Survivability Set

Wou - 232

Tou - 134

Ini - 116

Int - 106

Spi - 294

Cor - 289

Ele - 289

6% reduced chance to be crit

400 Armor

60 HP/4s

3 AP/s

2% magic crit

3 piece - 85 Tou

4 piece - 85 Wou

5 piece - 5% reduced chance to be crit

6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to form a barrier that will absorb up to 933 damage over 5 seconds.

7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to reduce target's movement speed by 40% for 10 seconds.

8 piece - 2m cooldown - Your group's abilities cost 0 Action Points for 10 seconds.

Ranged DPS

(Primary) Offensive Set

BS - 232

WS - 134

Wou - 116

Init - 106

Spi - 294

Cor - 289

Ele - 289

6% ranged crit chance

40 ranged power

4% dodge strikethrough

4 AP/s

3% crit damage

3 piece - 85 BS

4 piece - 85 Wou

5 piece - 5% ranged crit chance

6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase ranged power by 130 for 10s.

7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase chance to critically hit by 10% and critical damage by 20% for 10 seconds.

8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 enemies 20 feet from your target have their abilities cost 50% more for 10 seconds.

(Secondary) Survivability Set

Wou - 232

Tou - 134

Ini - 116

BS - 106

Spi - 294

Cor - 289

Ele - 289

6% reduced chance to be crit

400 armor

60 HP/4s

3 AP/s

2% ranged crit

3 piece - 85 Tou

4 piece - 85 Wou

5 piece - 5% reduced chance to be crit

6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to form a barrier that will absorb up to 933 damage over 5 seconds.

7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to reduce target's movement speed by 40% for 10 seconds.

8 piece - 2m cooldown - Your group's abilities cost 0 Action Points for 10 seconds.

The 8 piece bonuses look pretty useful for a change as does the 7 piece bonus for BW/Sorcs, forum going seem pretty happy with it so far though it's subject to change as usual!

Enjoy your weekend all!

An end to the recent server disconnects?

Well not any time soon by the looks of things but at least their looking at it.

From Andy Belford on the herald:

We are currently aware of and are investigating solutions for performance and stability issues affecting the Karak Norn and Karak Azgal servers. This includes delays with the in-game mail system, frequent disconnects to character and server select and reports of performance issues and high latency. At this point we have no estimated time of repair for these issues, however please be sure to check the Herald for updates regarding this situation. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued support.


No estimated time of repairs suck as I hope they sort this soon, getting sick of it, the last couple of nights I've spend at least 50% of my playing time staring at loading screens and my character selection screens. When it has been behaving itself it's been good fun, the lakes seem a lot busier at least comparatively. Though more then likely this is because people are willing to risk the gauntlets of disconnects that results from queuing for scenarios. But even here with no zone changes just running round the lakes I'm getting random disconnects, incredible frustrating particularly when it happens 5 minutes before a zone locks I've spend the last 40 minutes defending. And getting back on? 20 minutes of trying each time.

I'm not sure what it's been like during the day time but personally I work all day and only have a few hours in the evenings and weekends and this is absolutely destroying my playing time.

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking about just stopping and waiting for the Herald to signal the all clear which isn't something I'm want to do.

Melee DPS/Rogue Sovereign Set Unveiled!

Original thread can be found here:

From the thread:

(Primary) Offensive Set

Str - 232
WS - 134
Wou - 116
Tou - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
20% auto attack speed
3 AP/s
2% parry strikethrough

3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 WS
5 piece - 5% DPS
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Increases movement speed by 40%, auto attack speed by 25% and you will gain 60 AP over 10s.


(Secondary) Survivability Set

Wou - 232
Tou - 134
Ini - 116
Str - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% reduced chance to be crit
4% parry
60 HP/4s
3 AP/s
2% melee crit

3 piece - 85 Tou
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% Parry
6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to form a barrier that will absorb up to 933 damage over 5s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to deal 409 damage to your attacker, healing you for 612 health.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Immune to knockdown, stagger, root and knockback for 10s.


Now I’m not sure how the offensive set matches up when compared with the existing set and honestly I don’t generally run a MDPS so I don’t really have a opinion regarding this. The offensive 8 piece bonus looks useful. I’m liking the look of the Survivability set myself for my marauder and the 7 piece bonus looks great from that set.

They’ve been tinkering with the sets based on forum feedback so expect changes before they nail down the final look!

RDPS to follow I'm guessing, can't wait for the SH set to be shown!

This weekend I have mainly been....

........Staring at the character selection screen.

/sulking

I've lost count of the number of times I've been kicked out and by the looks of the forums I'm not the only one.

WAR became pretty much unplayable for me on Sunday.

1. Change zones? Leads to:
2. Booted to the character screen. Try log back in. Back to the character select screen. 5 minutes of trying to re-log and in.
3. Join a scenario. Leads to: See 2.
4. Minding my own business and deliberately not doing either 1 or 3? Still leads to random cases of 2.

Now I don't know if the other EU Servers have been hit by this or if someone just really hates Karak-Azgal. And yes, I am fully aware that teething issues are to be expected and you've just gotta be patient and ride these teething problems out but I really, really hope they sort this and soon.

/end sulking.

Could Lizardmen work in WAR from a Lore type thing? Part 2!

Well continued from the earlier post.

And as for order? Well they've never needed a reason to be somewhere other then just to foil those dastardly Destros and their naughty ways (LoTD I'm looking at you and your soul casket) but beyond that as everyone should surely know: Mysterious Uncurable Disease cramping your style? Your need a cure! Wheres the incredible rare ingredients needed for said cure? In the Jungle. It's always in the freaking Jungle. So an Imperial Expedition Sets out for Lustria, they need to make up for lost time and so call upon the Dwarfs to provide Steam-powered ships to catch up. The High Elves, relatively sheltered from the Red Plague by their isolation in Ulthuan, were instrumental in ending the first Daemon War and since have always had High Lore Masters watching for signs that the Daemons might again renew their assault in the New World and so sail from their island home joining the Steam Fleet bearing the Rest of the Order Alliance to the new world.

So that brings pretty much every one over to the Lizardmen's backyard but would they come out to play nice with their potential allies?

The Slaan would be well aware of the Elves efforts in the first war but are from a lore point of view incredible insular. They do however follow the Plan of the Old Ones, foretold in Glyph Porphercies left by the Old Ones.

The various city states are all led by different Slaan Priests and are distinct in their own ways. Having a particular Pyramid City (Found suspiciously close to the searched for Cure and a key Geomantic node) that has been studying the time of the Red Plague and is aware of it's "destiny" to throw back the forces of Destruction is not too much of a stretch. Having the whole Red Plague omened by a sign maybe a streaking red comet across the night sky, gives the Lizardmen plenty of time to acknowledge the time is now and to raise a new spawning - the Red Spawning marked by the Comet Glyph. (I'm waffling a bit here, they had Spawning last edition I played, meant they were destined to be certain thing no idea if that's still cannon or not.) A new spawn fit to meet new or rather old threat in head on, flexible enough to accommodate new ways of thinking and without with prejudices of older reptiles.

With Orders arrival being pre-ordained and not there to loot relics (the main reason Lizardmen go to war with the good forces in warhammer) there's no reason why a alliance between the Slaan Mage-Priest of the city and the High Elves lore masters could not be agreed.

So that I think would be not be too blasphemous against the existing lore, indeed within the spirit of the IP. Course it wouldn't explain why the Lizardmen would be running round Praag taking keeps, but I think they would follow their Allies back to the Old World should their plan tell them to. If not, they've been known to invade Naggaroth over looted temple relics, theres no reason if something particularly important was spirited back to the old world they wouldn't follow it back as well. I'm thinking perhaps the same Macguffin that the Dark Elves are so interested in.

Well it's not perfect by any stretch but then neither is Dwarf and High Elves buddying up to the extent they have from a Lore Point of view. I think it would pass the muster but like I said by IP lore is rusty, what do others think? Could it work?

Could Lizardmen work in WAR from a Lore type thing? Part 1!

Well...could it? Apologies for the Part one/Wall of Text!

Well I'd be the first to admit I haven't been hands on with Warhammer Lore for a number of years but the Scalies have always been one of my favorite races.

They've been thrown out there as a idea a few times for a playable race a few times but lorewise they'd be a fairly shaky fit, the idea of them buddying up with other races just dosen't seem to fit.

First a page from Games Work about Lizardmen, general kind of info. Easier for me to link it here and refer back to it.

But I think it could be made to work leaving the Warhammer Lore perhaps a little bent out of shape but by no means broken.

So I'm taken a giant leap and guessing the Red Plague is hopefully the sign of a Live Event, proberbly a three parter leading up to a proper expantion, as a starting point.

The event would lead up to a new zone being Lustria and the tunnels stringing from there through to Skavenblight or one of the other Skeven Cities. With any luck this would also be a great time to reindroduce the new cities for the other racial pairings. (Considering they were planned out and partly done during the run up to release implimenting the Elven/Elven and Greenskin/Dwarfs cities should be the easy part)

So it would start with the Red Plague being released upon the old world, disease strikes across the Old World released by the Skaven hordes forced into a pact with the Chaos forces. This would be easy enough Lore worse, I don't think you'd put Skaven anywhere but squarly on the side of Destruction. As the Order forces pull back to fortified positions and cities giving the forces of Destruction the opportunaty to show their hand. The Raven Host splits some staying behind to harass the Order forces and keeping them off guard the rest boarding a fleet of Choas Warship sailing for the New World and the lands of Lustria to join forces with House Uthorin reservists marching South from Naggaorth and Greenskin forces emerging from the old abandoned tunnels from which the Skaven first crossed into the New World centeries ago. The forces gathered they sunder the Wardings that kept these tunnels impassable to Skaven and the Ratmen emerge to swell the host.

(No clue is that would work, sure I read somewhere that the Skaven were driven out of Lustria and kept out somehow, if it was Magical wards then it would work, barriers battered by Dark Elf magic from outside and Goblin Waaagh from within, if it was something more boring like "collapsed tunnels" then the Goblins can lug picks and blasting powder with them!)

The reasons for the subtifuge? Well quoted from Games Workshop that link above:

>In the wake of the Old Ones

Left alone and vastly outnumbered by the Daemons of Chaos, the Lizardmen valiantly defended their temple-cities, each fortified against assault and protected by the magical power of the Slann Mage-Priests within. Still the Daemons wrought untold carnage on the Lizardmen, knowing that should they destroy the network of temple-cities and break the geomantic web that ordered the ebb and flow of magic upon the world, Chaos would reign.

That would be reason enough for Chaos to go at it, the Changer of Ways likes to keep a lot of plates spinning at the same time and cracking the "geomantic web" would work. The rest of Destruction would be their either as Allies or to hunt down a lost Macguffin-Of-Awesome-Power in the case of the Dark Elves.

This is in danger of becoming a stupidly long wall of text so I'm gonna go for to be continued and to the Order/Lizardman thing in a follow up post. Yeah I know the Lizardman thing was the whole reason for this in the first place but I got carried away. I write it up tonight and post tomorrow most likely!

New Sovereign sets being spoilered! Tanks first!

Well first things first check Andy's post regarding the new look Sovereign bonuses.

My Chosen is currently stumbling through the late 50's Renown wise so I've never had a chance to play about with the current Sovereign sets but I'm actually liking the look of this.

They'll be unveiling all of the different sets in time but firstly they have Chosen (Geddit?!) to reveal tanks first, from the forum, Vóila:

>(Primary) Defensive Set

Tou - 232

Wou - 134

Ini - 116

WS - 106

Spi - 294

Cor - 289

Ele - 289

6% reduced chance to be crit

4% block

60 hp/4s

4 AP/s

2% reduced armor penetration

3 piece - 85 Tou

4 piece - 85 Wou

5 piece - 200 HP/4s

6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to reduce attacker's armor penetration against you and chance to critically hit you by 6% for 10s.

7 piece - On Defense: 25% chance to increase parry/block/disrupt/dodge by 5% for 10s.

8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 targets within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 5s.

(Secondary) Offensive Set

Str - 232

WS - 134

Wou - 116

Tou - 106

Spi - 294

Cor - 289

Ele - 289

6% melee crit chance

40 melee power

4% parry strikethrough

3 AP/s

2% parry

3 piece - 85 Str

4 piece - 85 WS

5 piece - 5% DPS

6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.

7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.

8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 allies within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed increased by 60% for 5s.

Not made my mind up about the 8 piece bonuses yet, 2 minute cooldown's not too horrific, 5 second duration and up to 9 targets...could see it making a big difference if used right, anyone else have any thoughts on that?

Of course their a lot of people complaining already about the set bonuses being standardised across all of the tanks as opposed to personalised for each mirror set but I'm looking forward to the customisation it looks like it offers. I've never been a min-maxer myself and I'm quite looking for to trying out a 4/4 combo when I get up there.... probably about 2013 by which point they may have got round to unveiling the first expansion! (I'm just impatient!)

On a semi-related note really liking the amount of information Bioware Mythic are pumping out into the forums. Hope they keep it up going forward!

EU Early Access Servers up and running.

Hi All,

Any EU players should head on over to the the Warhammer Alliance forum thread for news on how to get the new Servers up and on line now.

I've done it myself and not hit any problems and Andy at Mythic verifies it on page 3 of the thread.

***Update: Just read through Skar's post regarding the same and points out you should be backing up your files before hand if case of any issues, I'd suggest you check his post out first as I don't tend to think things through!***

Spend most of the morning running round Nordland playing with my R6 Squig herder in the lake, was the only Destro character there and only a single WH for order. Ended up +7 kills against him by the end but he didn't seem to have the hang of sneaking up on someone. Great fun and bagged two ranks and RR by the end of the fun.

Ugly little bugger but playing SH makes a great change of pace from player my Chosen Main.

Any hoo have a great weekend all!

Why I'm not out fishing on the Lakes

Well at the moment anyway.

The new teaser information given out over the last week has got me thinking about this. Recently for…maybe the last 4-5 months I think I can count the number of times I’ve gone out into the lakes for something other then duelling/getting to a city siege on my fingers…and possible toes but over 4 odd months still not enough.

I think in part it’s been due to always falling in with a pre-made running scenarios but I always loved, especially when I first hit T4, to join an open warband and get out there. Somewhere along the way the Zerg lost its appeal to me.

With a bunch of alts spread across the different Tiers I’m beginning to get an idea of why and the culprit seems to be the amount of people and losing the sense of contributing to anything. It’s seems any time I venture out into T4 lakes there’s always a Zerg, either a Destro one, in which case you just ride along, or a order in which case you try and not die. Realistically if you’re riding with a PUG WB and 2-3 warbands of order come over the hill there’s only ever one way things are gonna end! About the best you can hope to do is slow them down for a little while but when numbers are weighted that heavily nothing you do is gonna make that much of a difference.

Not that it’s a one way Realm problem either. The Zerg runs both ways and though I’ve enjoyed completely over running an enemy position in the front lines of ridiculously large charge of players. It’s never lead to any particularly memorable moments for me or anything I’m that bothered about repeating.

My small army of alts have taught me that the lower the Tier the more I seem to enjoy it:

Tier One? You can’t pay me to get out of the Empire/Chaos Lake, I rarely if ever both with Scenarios at this stage, other then repeat queuing them while walking from the Destro new spawn point down to the war camp.

Tier Two? Love it, keeps at this stage are great fun and the zones are nicely sized. I’ll queue for Scenarios more often at this stage but probably 9 log-ins out of 10 will be out on the lake.

Tier Three? Uuuugh I lose almost all interest at this stage and I’m guilty of doing what ever I can to get the hell out of this stage as quickly as possible. And if I can’t power level through? Well the Alt just tends to languish at this stage till I can.

Tier Four: Welcome to the Zerg. At this stage I tend to occasionally romp out but nowhere near as often as I should.

The upshot of this post? Well honestly I don’t have one…yet. Going to spend the weekend breaking down why I rate each Tier and try and chuck out a proper, constructive post about how I think T4 could reel me and perhaps others back in.

1.3.6 Producers Letter Orvr change

Right so, 1.3.6 Producers letter is now out and if my any change you've not read it yet it can be found here.

Seems to be the first of a major ORvr change being rolled out with the second half being 1.4 at a guess since all clues seem to point to that being one their pretty excited about. Or maybe 1.4 will be related to the still theoretical expansion and they'll be a futher 1.3.7 prior to that, who knows.

The changes seem pretty good so far. With more info to follow through Developers Diaries and some further specifics already starting to go out through the Forums.

Firstly there been the following annouoncement: (Thread can be found here.)

We'd like to announce a couple upcoming changes for General Gameplay in v1.3.6. Please keep in mind that these are not patch notes and additional adjustments may be in the works.


*New User Interface option: Sticky Targeting. Enabling this option will prevent you from clearing your target(s) by clicking an empty location in the gamespace. (Developer Note(s): clears the offensive target first in the event that both an offensive and defensive target is selected.)
*Player health bars will now update correctly when receiving damage or heals. (Developer Note(s): this corrects an issue where health bars would "flicker or bounce" upon receiving a heal or damage.)

Now the second part of that I'm not too worried about, I've never realise noticed a flicks or bounce on the health bars, late in updated correct health displays sure but not flickering. Having said that I tend to use the squared add on for my healer which has it's own share of problems, non of which are any thing to do with Mythic! Sorry Bioware Mythic!

The first point however I'm looking forward to, I've learnt to compensate for it a fair bit but can be extremely annoying loosing your offensive or defensive target due to a misclick and in a chaotic melee trying to track them down again before it's too late can be a massive pain!

Second announcement mainly concentracts on a re-jig of how victory points are distributed (Taking away PvE elements and Prior Tear = Great Idea)

They've also up and stopped mailbox leechers although all it will take is a quick job down to get RvR flagged every 5 mins which would involve a 20ft walk to the other side of the guards and back to get round it. Sure it'll stop people actively AFK but not any one who's crafting/chatting/idling about. So how effective it'll be I don't know. Personally I've never really had a problem with the mailbox guards, I've only really been annoyed by it when a zone is on the point of locking down and then Order come out to play people would rather stay safe in the warcamp and lose the potential Renown Reward rather then come out and fight for it. Of course I doubt this'll make any difference to that situation they'll just idle some where else/stay in IC/not get rewarded for nothing! I know people have issues with people leeching off their hard work out in the lakes but the rewards have always been skewed (rightfully) towards those going out and helping in the form of bonus rewards per BO/Keep take you've been involved in. Dunno have to wait and see how that all pans out.

Against All the Odds sounds like a great little buff however Bootae's raised some good points about wheather this'll make any difference to Zerg distributions as it's doubtful it'll have any impact on smaller groups taking on larger WBs within a contested, active zone.

Only other points I'll bring up is I'm not sure about the new Quitter Debuff angle, frankly if I get D/ced (Which has happened to be a few times within the last couple of months) in the middle of a scenario while playing with a guild party, I'd prefer to requeue with them and join with them for no personal gain till the debuff wears off. Now how ever I'll effectively either have to leave the group for 15 mins (And defending on pops rate could be up to half an hour by the time the group has finished up a scenario) or else the whole party has to sit out and wait for me to be able to play again.

Likewise how is the Quitter debuff going to effect city sieges? Are they including Instances as a "Scenario" for the purposes of this? Other wise the quitter will have no effect at all as a deterent against instance hopping in Cities. Not really happy about this change at all but I guess I'll see how it pans out. Still plenty of time for me to resign myself to being punished for a shoddy connection lol and I can at least see their reasons behinde the change, well I'm guessing it's to drive people back into the lakes. "Can't queue for scenarioes for 15 minutes but can still gain Renown? Get into the lakes for 20 minutes, who knows you may enjoy it!"

Having said that more information should hopefully follow closer to the time and on the whole I'm looking forward to this patch and a shift in the focus within WAR.

Just my two pence worth.