WAR Aura

Dominion Beta

2011-09-22T22:20:00.000+01:00

Just...fucking...yes!

More to follow :-P

500 Games of Lol

2011-09-03T20:59:00.004+01:00

Ok so a defeat is not the best game to hit a milestone with, and I'm ignoring the 2 leaves which were technical disconnects, but I felt it was big enough for me to throw out there!

I started playing League of Legends at during the Christmas period in between the release of Cassiopeia (The Serpent’s Embrace) and Caitlyn (The Sheriff of Piltover) and just as I was weaning off of WAR.

Honestly I'm still loving the game, trying new characters as their cycled through and picking up some mileage with older favorties. (My mains are Amumu, Morgana & Skarner though I can throw out a passable Vayne, Nasus and Nocturne when I need to) I'm far from the best or anywhere near l33t but I'm not too shabby even if my score does hover far to close to 50/50 for wins & loses!

I've never really had any issues with just having the two maps to play on, the different team comps mixed up with there always being new champions to try out or brush off mean that despite 11 months of effectively playing the exact same deathmatch map I've yet to be bored or start lagging.

Sure you get nights when you only seem to get grouped with playing who were born to be raged at. (I rage out loud for 5 minutes shouting at my monitor, then I open up the game chat and try and be constructive) And other night when I can't do anything right! Once Dominion, the new game mode comes out I can't see a point in the near futrue when I'll put the League to one side.

Far and away the next way to play is with a pre-made 5 man team which unfortunately I don't have apart from getting called in occasionally to be the missing 5th man but its not the same!

Overall I can't recommend it enough if you like instanced PvP although the structure (based on DotA) may put some people off it's what you find in most MOBAs.

In other news I finally got a acceptance into the Warhammer Wrath of Heroes beta and I'm looking forward to getting into the next session. It seems to be exactly what I enjoyed out of Warhammer without the bits that finally drove me away in a cloud of apathy! Do Want.

DF Part 2. The First Year!

2011-07-10T19:38:00.006+01:00

Well to start it's only fair to warn you that the area I've set up in has been no where near as active as I was expecting. Where there are so many biomes joining I seem to mainly be getting visitors from the western grass lands who've mainly been fairly harmless herbivores. So spoiler alert nobody dies in the first year. Boo!

We arrived and set up towards the end of Spring.

Spring 1050!

We arrive and start digging out a entrance. Mining downwards and clearing trees and foliage around the entrance. Not a great deal happens and I keep a close (and so far unneeded) eye on the local fauna. At one point a giant leopard starts getting curious and Sarigs is put on stand by. He soon gets bored and migrates out of the land without trying his luck, though he's followed by a herd of giraffes and then some warthogs.

I stop paying attention to the wildlife and take notice again after one of one of the wardogs milling around the entrance brings down a Honeybadger that charge the entrance trying to get at that lovable scamp Werit (renamed from one of the original miners).

A fledgling butchering industry is set up to take advantage of the sudden boon and our larder swells.

Summer!

Summer is almost entirely uneventful.

8 Hopeful migrants arrive. 4 of them being competent in a smattering of skills and are put to work. One of the more useless ones at least has some basic fighting skills and is recruited to Sarigs' squad of militia although at this stage I'm not bothering to equip and train them till the basics are in place.

Another one, Eral Workedmob, arrives with some basic cross-bowing skills and is set to hunt down the abundant and seemingly tame wildlife to add to the food stocks. As if in celebration of the news Elephants are seen on the horizon.

Note: Hunting is normally dangerous and unreliable and extremely time consuming. A dwarf will stock up on some ammo home in on a near by wild beastie and track them down exhausting their supply of bolts before returning for more and starting over. This leads to some irritating situation where they wing and injure a animal but then forget about it and start hunting a entirely new creature. Not the smartest of fellows. :-/

By the time I've managed to craft some bolts and a crossbow the herds already moved on leaving this fellow chasing a flock of birds about and nothing is brought back successfully. As his aims improves so should the returns. Hopefully.

Autumn!

With Autumn comes the dry season.

The various ponds and lakes around the area start to dry up although the brook continues to flow. One of the main reasons I picked the area.

Below is the same area as above but one level down and a start while later. The water is entirely gone a minute after.

The dogs breed a second generation and another migrant wave arrives. This time seemingly one guy who's dragged along his wife and two kids for the vacation!

Winter!

The food starts to run seriously low and the dwarfs are forced to drink straight from the brook as the last of the booze is used up. I order the miners to dig into a horribly exposed earthen hill at the south east corner of the map so a farm can be set up.

Farmers and gathers will have a long run back and forth through unprotected territory but there's nothing I can do about it right now.

The hunter continues to wing animals and then shuffle off after a completely different one. I'm starting to thing he's a bit of a sadist.

The hunter almost brings down a warthog before buggering off for a lie down.

Slightly concerned about the food situation I sent the militia out to try and put this beastie out of his misery and stock the kitchens but he proceeds to outrun them Benny Hill style from one end of the map to the other. Repeatedly. I give up in disgust after 5 minutes of fruitless chasing.

The same thing happens a short while later and the militia is sent out after a wounded peacock. This time Sarigs catches and frankly brutalises the bird and he's off to the pot.

At least point Eral seems to wake up after being shown up by the army and brings down a couple of warthogs and a large rodent thing in quick succession which tides us over.

Dwarven Merchants arrive and we flood them with cheaply made tatty stone crafts in exchange for food, booze and a couple more axes. They'll be back next year along with hopefully elven and human caravans of goods.

I finally get round to ordering bedrooms to be carved out and beds and doors to be constructed. This is almost always the last thing I get round to doing just ahead of making dining room but it's started now.

One of the migrants is taken by a fey mood and barricades himself into the leatherworks clutching our last piece of leather. He beavers away for a fortnight before presenting his creation to the world:

A single boot. Helpful.

Note: Dwarfs will occasionally be seized by various different moods demanding extravagant ingredients to use in their masterworks. They range from the depressingly useless and simple like Mouthsings here to decent weapons, armour, statues and thrones for display. And everything in between.

The hunter is just showing off now and brings down a giraffe with a well placed shot to the spine.

Elephants are seen once again and Eral brings one down before scaring the rest away swelling the stores of meat to bursting.

The end of winter finally draws to a near as the spring and the wet season approach again.

Just before that though a wave of 27 migrants show up as news of Masterlancer, home of the....boot spreads.

(God I hate sorting migrant waves out when they arrive!)

Here's a snap shot of Masterlancer's population!

I'll try and condense info and time for the next update hopefully someone will die .:-)

Mission DF. Part 1. Strike the earth!

2011-07-04T20:26:00.011+01:00

So as promised part one begins.

I've started by generating a fairly standard world though I've upped the savage areas a bit to hopefully make things a bit more interesting.

The world is called Ilusnir - "The Everseeing Land". Here it is in all it's majestic glory.

The gray swathes are mountain ranges. There is glacial field at the northern pole and desert wastelands to the south. I've decided to set up towards the south hopefully. You can see where I've tried to pick it out.

And the here's spot I've chosen to call home.

4 different biomes meet here, savage woodlands to the east, untamed wild grasslands to the east and a river and terrifying mountain range run roughly north to south through the centre. Setting up without a river or a brook is generally a bad idea and will lead to your fortress dying from thirst if anything interrupts your moonshine industry whether it be you brewing getting killed off or just some fool dwarfs eating the last of your plump helmets (brewable mushrooms)! Which will happen.

We should hopefully see a nice mix of wild vicious animals, undead monstrosities and evil creatures venturing across our territory to set things off nicely!

Our fortress home will be named: Konkivish. Dwarvish for Masterlancer. Sometimes the random name generator excels itself.

Home to 7 plucky dwarfs. I give you our starting cast:

Sarigs Boltedhatchets. (Yep you can name the dwarfs). He prefers to be along and talks to inanimate objects when thinking. He is very weak. Which is unfortunate as he is our wood chopper and only person capable of swinging a axe to defend the fort.

Eral Confusehelms. One of our two miners, he also does a secondary trade in crafting trade goods from spare wood. He finds helping others rewarding but is unaffected by the suffering of others. He also bites his nails. Odd.

Kivish Paddledrasped. Our second miner. She has no second skills. She likes eating sugar, is nervous and clumsy, has no spatial sense, no willpower and fails in social relationships...hence why she's banished to the mining pits.

Sodel Pickmoons. Our only doctor and seconds as a trader/book keeper to keep her busy. Hopefully we wont be needing her much. She likes helping others to, has a iron will and no patience. Just what you want in a doctor.

Tulon Boltpartners. A bone carver with a smattering of cooking/brewing skills. Clumsy with very bad intuition. Likely why she though joining the expedition was a good idea.

Eral Opencanyons. Well focused but prone to disease this chap is our architect and mason, he's also a stone crafter. He likes stone.

Shem Violetoiles. Our last lucky lass, this is our carpenter and mechanic. Also a very basic cook and brewery to help out. She is flimsy and overindulges.

In keeping with the established traditions of Dwarf Fortress stories if anyone wants to claim a dwarf for naming should out in the comments along with the skills you want them trained in and I'll rename one for you.

Selecting supplies, I've stocked up on plenty of food and drink along with picks and a axe, some bags, theads and ropes. Two breeding pairs of wardogs as I think I'll be needing them and some chickens. They'll supply eggs, meat and they're easy to breed should I need to shut myself off under ground.

So we're all set and it's time to Embark!

The floor has eyes....hundreds and hundreds of eyes. They won't stop staring. After a quick panic I've discovered them to be harmless and just part of the flavour of the region. And freaking creepy.

Having a quick scout around the map we find the area to be luckily empty of any immediate dangers which'll give us a chance to set up before getting mauled by any thing but not so lucky in that it is completely flat (other then a sandy hill in the south east corner) which means I'll have to dig down rather then being able to sink into a rock face which is more defensible and better looking. :-/

Priorities will be getting under ground, setting up some bedrooms and a hospital. Establishing some kind of defensive perimeter and making some goods to trade for when the caravan arrives. There's a brook (a shallow river that you can just walk across) just to the north of where the screen shot ends that trails down to west and then to the south so I may try and dig some kind of moat. Also some kind of narrative once I've come up with a story and had a poke around the worlds history!

I'll sign off here for the moment. If I've any readers left let me know you thoughts and if you've played DF before suggestions always welcome. I'm a mediocre player to best. I'll try and updates regularly.

Dwarf Fortress....Losing is fun.

2011-07-04T19:29:00.008+01:00

Right well in a attempt to appease Blaq over at Don't Mention Ze War (and not fade quietly into the mist) I've decided to see if I can run a successful Dwarf Fortress fort and bring the wonders of the game to you guys through the medium of interpretive dance! Or blogs...I'm not 100% decided here yet.

For those who don't know Dwarf Fortress if a free to play management sim it includes....well pretty much everything. It generates a random persistent word tracking each individual persons action while generating. It runs through normally 1050 years of warring civilisations (Dwarf, Elf, Human and Goblin in the vanilla version) rampaging Mega-beast (Dragons, Hydras, Bronze Colosii, Rocs & Various randomly generated titans) and semi-mega (giants, Cyclops, all many of demons, night beasts & minotaurs) and then throws you in the deep end.

The game itself has two main modes, Fortress & Adventurer. Adventure sees you control a plucky lad or lass who sets out to see the word to find fame and fortune, you trapesing from town to town righting wrongs & slaying foes and trying not to get caught out at night out of towns. You get jumped frequently and will die a lot. In nasty ways. Adventure mode makes the most of the game's excessively detailed combat system which allows you to flail away trying to chop off a foes 3rd toe on their right foot, or gouge out eyes or just strangle someone till sweet death carries brings them peace. It's fairly throwaway and I've never got too much into it TBH, more then likely because I suck at it!

The meat and potatoes as it were though is the Fortress mode this basically allows you too drop 7 plucky dwarfs anywhere in the world with a few base provisions and try to scratch out a living. As time passes migrant waves will bring new dwarfs which is balance by how the fortress is doing, they will shun"death-trap" fortresses and flock to wealthy prospering ones. They will annoy the hell out of you when they turn up with absolutely wanky random skills, sit around and eat all your food while you desperately try to shore up your defenses. When your fortress reaches a certain point the goblins will deign to notice you and will send ambushing squads, kidnapping and finally sieges to break you fortress. Semi & Mega beasts will discover the area and bring the pain.

To gather resources and metal ores you must delve deep below the surface breaking into underground caverns missed with monsters, giant spiders, various animal-men and most worryingly, Forgotten Beasts, generated monsters that stalk the deeps. To give you a example I bring you a couple of ones generated in the few world I'll be using:

Zagith Boilpukes: Zagith Boilpukes was a forgotten beast. It was the only one of its kind. A gigantic hairy earthworm. It has thin wings of stretched skin and it has a bloated body. Its ivory hair is short and even. Beware its poisonous gas! Zagith was associated with depravity and caverns.

Isa: Isa was a forgotten beast. It was the only one of its kind. An enormous one-eyed oriole. It has large mandibles and it belches and croaks . Beware its noxious secretions! Isa was associated with caverns and blight.

Because it's randomly generated some of these are ridiculously easy (a giant blob made from water) and some crazy hard (huge flying birds or flies made from diamond). Your fortress will crumble sooner or later as one of these over comes your defenses or your champion warrior goes postal after losing one more comrade then he can bear and starts scything through you population kicking off tantrum spirals until no one is left.

And because it's all one persistent world the dragon that ends your beloved fortress can be tracked down in adventurer mode for some vengence. Likewise the commanders of enemy army's have their own history and in a third game mode entitled "Legends" you can poke through your game worlds history. You can also go back to a failed fortress to reclaim it or as a adventurer to have a poke around.

Well I think I've set this up enough. Dwarf Fortress. Where losing is fun.

If your interest in trying it out you can download it here...but I wouldn't. The base game is build using a ASCII interface and will make your brain bleed.

If you're a wuss like m,e a much easier-on-the-eyes version with a graphic interface (there's a few but this is the one I favour) can be found here done by a guy called Mike Mayday.

I really cannot over state the awesome and the shear death of this game.

More to come. Dun-dun-duuuun!

...Oh one more thing. Don't try it without have a look at this tutorial. You'll need it. Seriously.

Sooooo...yeah....

2011-05-02T22:49:00.000+01:00

Soooooo.... See title!

Well here's the thing I'm not playing WAR at the moment...and that was pretty much the whole point of this Blog.

....And I'm not convinced I can use it just as a platform to just talk randomly about....stuff or games I'm playing...

So! I'm contemplating closing shop. I know all of my millions of readers are shocked right now. SHOCKED I tell ye.

Really though if there is anyone out though who'd still read if I was talking nonsense about any other random subjects shout out and I'll start blogging about more general stuff which i've not done so far as that's not what this site was started about. If not - Hello good night!

....And thanks for all the fish either way!

AFK

2011-02-22T12:57:00.002Z

Whelp if you hadn't noticed I've been idle a long while.

To be honest I've not been playing a huge amount of WAR lately and been easily distracted with other games.

While I've not been tempted by any other MMOs I've found my time mainly hogged by Blood Bowl UE, a great adaptation of my favorite tabletop game and the only one I still get together with old friends to play, & League of Legends, a frankly awesome game for short (around an hour) bouts of PVP on 5v5 or 3v3 maps. It's only you level both a toon within a given game and start from scratch each game. I'd highly recommend both but especially League of Legends which has a free to play model that actual works and doesn't penalise against people who don't fancy forking out.

Like I say i'm still playing WAR but with long stints at work, If I've only got a hour in the evening to play it's no longer the game I'm booting up first...

Forum Laughs

2011-01-27T14:00:00.004Z

Without commenting on the rightness/wrongness of the radio silence that recently ended with Andy's return (Personally wasn't bothered by it but can see why some people were)

This little gem from Max-damage on the forums cracked me up. Overly harsh perhaps but still....Lolz!

Ain't dead yet...

2011-01-24T22:52:00.008Z

Regular posts will follow shortly, had a shockingly busy festive period followed by stupidly busy work period (still on-going) meaning i'm rarely home in time to get any decent play time in.

On the plus side it seems to mean I'm not experiencing a lot of the seeming 1.4 burn out a lot of the regular bloggers seem to be going through at the moment.

The cracks haven't really shown through for me as yet, ORVR roaming with a small experienced guild group mixed with Scenario's is still a perfectly valid option on KA server when I've deigned to log on, but to be fair we tend to avoid the keep zerg's. Other then the guild healer alts who have been absolutely RACKING the purple number in. Leeching bitches the lot of them.

To be honest though I've pretty much abandoned all of my alts unless we're a healer short; other then my main who's up to 67 who, still being defensive specced is almost entirely useless other then a speed bump with out at least one person to support. It's probable still my biggest draw and largest log off for me. I've pretty much given up on any attempts at soloing. It's entirely useless without re-speccing and I still don't have a decent 2 hander to make venturing out alone a valid option....effectively I've given up on WAR as a solo option. I just don't enjoy it unless I'm backing someone up. In a PUG warband I find it too random, and frankly most random players to be nothing but a frustrating waste of time.

.....So I tent to log on, solo queue for a bit and if no-one turns up in guild I'll generally log within the hour.

Well before I peace out for now I have two things to say:

1. New Dyes.... not always a great idea:

2. I get bonus renown for being awesome, and may or may not be the anti-christ:

A spy is me!

2010-12-18T03:04:00.005Z

Yeah.....got accused of being a spy tonight by some div which annoyed me and hence spured me into posting again!

The lay up for the accusation is basically logging on while under the influence running round Praag on my tod and trying to track down any Order stragglers and basically pushing across to the Order WC. There's a second solo Chosen doing pretty much the same thing and we catch up to a couple of apparent idlers outside the Order WC. First BW goes down like the AFK Chump he blatantly was while the second AFK Slayer....tears me a new one.... my back up partner was conspicuously absent and that's when I see a /Msg from him sending me messages of encouragement. Turns out I'd missed a duel emote shortly before laying into him and it had all kicked off. Well a respawn and quick dash back and there's a few duellers about now so I line up and join in. (FYI I hate duelling WPs. I never win but always accept out of some seemingly deep seated need to be taken advantage of - backing up and emoting I can stop because he doesn't need the RR from my shame only makes it worse some how).

Now TBH I don't know what your home server is like but on Azgal Praag is always where duellers meet up. Admittedly normally while a Zone is locked and not while Destro are trying and failing to take a keep despite having a 5 to 1 star advantage but still there it is. Anyway skipping to the end of a rather long series of me standing around because I'm actually not in the state to give duelling my full attention and I see a message in /Region 1: Sarigs is a Order Spy!

So there you go! It's official and my secret shame is out! Que telling him where to go and being counter told what I could do with myself but seriously....WTF? What's the thinking behind this? Have mythic implemented a new /spy comment but it only works if your within 30 feet of someone? Does Vent impose some kind of cross realming police which mutes your voice if your not RIGHT NEXT to whoever your trying to talk to? And did Order REALLY need a spy to tell them "OMG They're totally going to hit the keep! Yes the only place they can push. YES their fucking it up and have been for quite some time but don't tell them I told you cos it's a SECRET!" So in finishing STFU random person I've never come across before and probably never will again! I'm totally not /hugging you next time I see you!

Also while I've got a post open I have two things to report! Me and my guild leader were pugging IC today (FYI we kicked ass) and I scored a white loot bag from stage III...

What in this new holy of holys....?

No idea when I went to claim it it dropped a gold massive bag into my inventory. I know I shouldn't feel hard done by here and yet somehow I do!

And finally finally I really wish Mythic would fix this. I know there are more pressing things on their minds (Or there should be at least) but FFS fix it so locked zones dont keep giving RR ticks for BOs. I could quite happily just idle away time in a already locked zone reaping 4 ticks every X minutes. I know it's not crazy RR/INF but there is no damn reason for it at all. Anyone who dosen't know what I'm talk about I give you exhibits A thru B.

While logging into a already locked zone. Very very minor but it make me feel slightly dirty every time I log off in a zone and then log back in on another day to find it pre-locked and someone trying to give me renown for effectively sitting about looking awesome. I did bugrep this and Twit Andy about it when I first noticed it (When 1.4 first came out) but nothing back about it! Also Merry Almost Crimbo!

Edit: Just checked the screen shots and it's not clear. The Zone is locked the fight only opening zone in the Elf Pairing was Eataine in this stage just because the Map icons would suggest the zone is contested it wasn't!

Regular Broadcasting Will Resume Shortly! Now with added RAGE!

2010-12-07T20:45:00.004Z

Right well the last month has been a almost complete write off WAR wise for me unfortunately.

Between housesitting with no connections and work going absolutely mental I've only made it on a couple of times!

But the dawn has broken and I'm back at what I enjoy so regular (well as regular as before) posts should follow!

Having said that I did log on a couple of times post 1.4 going live, not really long enough to get a proper feel for it other then a couple of city sieges and just long enough to start getting majorly irked by the constant refund of mastery points.

You see 1.4 brought in a free refund. So I spend most of my availible time switching through my 8 alts reallocating my mastery points (In almost every case putting them back where they were before other then a play around with the renown abilities). Finally done and BING! Hotfix! All your points are refunded!

FFS I DONT WANT TO RESPEC MAKE THE DAMN THING OPTIONAL YOU'RE KILLING ME HERE ZOMG!!1!

None of my guys were even using the ability that got changed! Such a damn waste of time if you don't want to change anything! I know if you do it's great but if you've got to cycle through every toon to put things back like they were yesterday it's just annoying! Make it a token you can change to the mastery trainers! Make it capped at one per toon or just fix it so the first change per toon per refund isn't charged! Jeeze! Or is it just me? Does everyone else practically skip down to the trainers for a change to jam points into random differents trees just to see what'll happen?

Anyhoo...when I finally finish the rounds of fixing that I may be able to get back to beating people in the face!

Exalted Goodies!

2010-11-19T02:41:00.004Z

Well despite my earlier post, I've sacrified a nights sleep to sneak home and patch and play for a while!

Destroy pushed across to Aldorf and Purple Bagged goodness did ensure!

The exalted weapons are bad ass! Here's a few I managed to snag Screenies of!

I've also just noticed their Bind on Equip so sellable!

Tasty!

1.4 goes live! RVR packs released and...

2010-11-18T19:38:00.002Z

...I can't play!

Boo hiss and things of that nature.

Yep unfortunately I'm house sitting for my folks which has left me stranded from WAR other then hopefully nipping back at the weekend to get some hands on time!

I'm really looking forward to this one so waiting sucks!

For a similar reason I'll not be posted much for the next couple of weeks while I'm stranded!

Have fun and see ya inna few!

Expansion release date!

2010-11-13T09:12:00.003Z

It's Thursday!

Check out the herald here!

Was not expecting it so soon TBH thought they'd be a month or so more but i'm not complaining!

Chickened Out!

2010-11-07T18:00:00.003Z

Well for the last little while I've realised too late that my Rank 31 SH was far too close to hitting 32 and leveling out of T3 before he could grab the max influence bow that I really, really wanted!

So as a result for the last little while I've been desperate trying to maximise influence while running madly from anything smelling of XP and despite see-sawing back and forth I could tell whether I would make it. It come down to needing 850 Influence and only being 11k away from hitting 32. I was just beginning to give up hope when this happened:

DOUBLE BALLS!

Was pretty close as well! I'd flagged by the Gutter runner as in combat so I held out a final hope that the tick if he went down might nudge me over the edge!

Bottom line? It didn't work.

Oh, I got the tick all right but it still left me 51 Influence short.

I'm sulking now. :-(

Patch notes 1.4 up!

2010-11-03T08:11:00.002Z

At the herald!

See here

From the same: "These packs are broken down into the Progression Pack and the Personality Pack."
Where'd POWAH go?!

In other news i'm kinda on a break atm. Not getting much play time in and RL keeps butting into my free time so I'll be back when I can but expect some radio silence for a while!

Skaven Rvr dungeon + Test times!

2010-10-19T19:41:00.003+01:00

Herald Bam!

From the herald:

"Everyone is invited to come out to the Warpstone Public Test server this week to help put the all new RvR Skaven Themed dungeon, "Thanquol's Incursion", through it's testing paces. We're going to be kicking things off tomorrow, 10/20/2010, at 8:00 PM EDT/02.00 CET with your first ever look at this RvR Dungeon. We'll be hosting a second, more EU friendly test this coming Friday, 10/22/2010, at 3:00 PM EDT/21.00 CET. "

Double Forum Bam! about the new Raid! All images below plundered from the forum announcement!

Looks very interesting! Dungeon is going to be a Pvp 24 v 24, Renown rank 65+ raid, 3 bosses have been announced:

Skeetk the warplock engineer:

Clan Moulder's Throt the Unclean

and Grey Seer Thanquol

with his Boneconstruct Boneripper:

The artwork looks fantastic!

T4 PTS Test this Friday!

2010-10-14T05:35:00.002+01:00

Whelp looks like their rolling another test out on Friday for Tier 4 for the Orvr changes!

You can check it on the Herald here.

Different time of at 3:00 PM EDT (21.00 CET) centered in Praag should be interesting with the time being more of a compromise between both time zones!

P.s. I'll wait till after that to post a update about the testing, I've had a busy week and still haven't got round to doing a proper update about the changes, I made it to the last Fridays test and Tuesday as I was still about, had great fun both times

So the test...

2010-10-08T22:53:00.002+01:00

Short answer on the test to night! Enjoyed it!

Longer answer can wait for the moment while sorting out a proper post!

Also Andy killed me when I was squaring off against another WP up at the manor while the rest of order were distracted elsewhere. He totally uses Nerf Buttons thou :-(

It's All On You Mythic.....

2010-10-07T19:36:00.003+01:00

....so for the love of got make it count!

I have had the worst week of my.... well certainly year..quite possible a lot longer! (Bad times at work, divorce papers finally served on me, 5 year old son's birthday who doesn't want to talk to me on the phone because he's distracted by presents [Totally expected but a kick in the teeth I don't need on top of everything else] a whole bunch of everything else going wrong that I'm not getting into)

Anyway, I don't vent in RL hence why your getting more info then you needed, it's culminating tomorrow. I'm expecting another shitty day at work before the weekend so Friday YOU ARE IT.

Make or break time and I'm going to be on the PTS for the Euro Test Event. I turned down drinks for this! Feedback for the US ones seems positive in the main,but I've not been a massive Rvr fan in T4 in general and this is what I'm hoping with suck me in.

Week + Rvr make or break = Eggs in basket.

Soooo....no pressure Mythic eh? Salvage my week and you will have my thanks! That's totally why your going to all this effort right...?

RIGHT?!

PTS test run, New zone & a single concern.

2010-10-05T19:16:00.006+01:00

New Zone Info!
Well been another busy week of news with Bootae getting the skinny on the first news regarding the new Skaven themed zone over here. I was tempted to check out the interview but after trying and failing to skip ahead to the interesting bits I gave up...I'm just not dedicated to put up with the host!

To be honest it sounds like a lot of fun, one of my favorite thing is mixing up Rvr with Pve if it's done well and Tomb raiding is a lot more fun when order is about to prove a fruitful distraction.

Course its far too early to guess how it's all going to pan but I'm looking forward to new news about this in the coming months.

Rvr Change Test Runs!

Other big news over on the Herald is PTS tests going live this Tuesday, Friday and the following Tuesday again!

From the Herald:
>We're inviting our entire Community out to the Warpstone Public Test Server this Wednesday, October 6th 2010, to put the new ORvR mechanic through its paces. We'll be kicking things off at 8:00 PM EDT/02.00 CET, so be sure to log in early to get set up! Tier 3 templates will be provided, as we'll be testing the night away in the Tier 3 EvC Lake.

A second (European friendly) test will be hosted this Friday, October 8th 2010 at 21.00 CET/3:00 PM EDT with a final test occurring Tuesday, October 12th 2010 at 8:00 PM EDT/02.00 CET.

Should be a whole lotta fun and will definitely be hitting up the Friday night Euro friendly testing!

Looking forward to getting hands on with the new changes and seeing how shiny the new mechanics are, especially interesting in how lock rewards are going to be calculated.

A Single Foreboding Concern

I do have one major concern with regards to the new system and that is this. You fly into a zone and land in your keep. If a zerg effectively sieges your keep as soon as a zone unlocks you can't get out. Defending a keep with smaller numbers is one thing, but trying to get out past a besieging force right from the get go, while potential outnumbered is going to be tricky. And close to impossible for soloers or PUG groups.
No access to the zone as a whole and no effective way of of breaking out of your keep. It's counter intuitive but I can't see anything stopping a large body of people effectively blockading you in your keep.

Sure you get Aerial Bombers to break up the blob, but when your keep is rank 0 you don't and if you cant get out while a zerg baby sits you while a couple of small group scoop up the BOs it's going to be fun. Everyone enjoying being camped in scenarios who wont in the lakes?

Maybe some kind of transport system from the keeps to teleport to your War Camp would be the answer. Two access points to the lake and you cant effectively be "locked in".

May not happen and be totally unfounded but you know I can think of it some zerger will. :-)

Edit: Intial reports from T3 suggest they've worked around this by working around which keep belongs to which Realm news can be checked over at Krosuss will be interesting to see how it works in T4 though

The Great Skaven Debate

2010-09-30T19:31:00.003+01:00

Well following on everyone digesting the news from last weekend about the future WARs taking there has been a inevitable backlash against the decision by the game producers to make Skaven playable by both Order and Destruction.

Sure it makes perfect sense for them to side with Destro but less so for Order.

Ekalime over at Hypothetical WAR has set out a much less Lore shaking option .

Now personally the different play styles the Skaven option sound great and although a fair few are unhappy about the lack of progression they're gonna offer like Shadow-War and Gaarawarr I'm looking forward to it but TBH I'd much rather square off against a order equivalent like either Lizard-men or Ogre/Dogs of War on Order's side.

Check out his well made argument and then head over to the forum thread he starts regarding it. Unsurprisingly the threads got a bit flamy and non-constructive but themz the net for you!

Gamesday Uk news! RvR Campaign changes and Skaven!

2010-09-27T00:37:00.012+01:00

Right just got home after a long 'ol train journey, (Bless you National Rail, if you hadn't crapped up the route at least once I'd have been disappointed!) kettles on and I figured I'd get the jump on the others before their barrage of far better written posts follow - Just remember - you read it here first! Unless you follow Bruglir on twitter that is, in which case second at best but still....

Just before I start was a great day, neat presentation and was good to meet Bruglir, Bootae, Andy and a bunch of Destro from Norm. (I was the sole Azgal representative and Order wisely kept away!) Unfortunately Carrie wasn't able to make it so Andy was on his tod.

So...right ok firstly some minor changes

On Line Shop/Microtransaction:

Server Transfers: Your going to be able to transfer toons from one server to another for a fee, theirs not going to be any cooldowns on it although their be putting in restrictions to stop over populated servers getting increasing any further. Normal rules apply so only Destro/Order characters on any given server.
Mounts: Appears mounts will be availible from a on-line shop, vanity style for a fee, the only one I could see from a screen shot were called started mounts and which, IIRC seemed to be +25% speed and 100% dismount change so seemed aimed at Tier 1.
Pets: Again vanity type pets will be added. Andy mentioned some of these would have a buff associated with them, the example he gave was one that applied a +2 speed increase so other types are likely to be similar sized so very minor but there.
WAR Tracts: Purchasable from an online shop similar to 2-5. Exactly the same as the in game item and you'd only be able to get one.

2 to 4 of the above would be applied account wide rather then per character and from the screen shot of 3 & 4 they were aimed at $9.99, whether thats that they'll be in the end or whether that was meant to be there is a different matter!

Edit: To clarify I only say the $9.99 linked with the mounts and pets and not with the below. Whether it's going to a flat rate for everything/was a placeholder I don't know! Few people have taken it as gospel that it'll apply to everything!

Barber Surgeon:

Their gonna implement a way of completely re-doing your toon's look from scratch which is pretty good for everyone who messed up the character creation and needed a do over! Not said about how it's going to be implemented over then it's gonna be there.

Renown Rank System Change:

So we already knew they were pushing this up to 100 Renown Cap and that they were intending to smooth the journey from 1 to 80. They confirmed they'll be new armour sets 90 and 100 along with further weapons although their wasn't further info beyond that.

Renown Rank Points abilities:

Well this'll be getting a pretty massive do over!

They're removing the renown tactics altogether and replacing them with similar ability as "passive bonuses" mainly as not many people use them and it'll stop people having to mess about slotting further tactics.

They'll also be removing the "tiered" system altogether. Everything will unlocked so you want need to allocate X point in Tier Y to unlock ability Z you can go straight in for the +crit/dmg/resolute defense without the messing about!

Speaking of Resolute Defense they'll be adding in a number of powerful Renown Abilities, each of which will have 4 minute cool down and will obviously be a tactical call as to whether their worth the trade off compared to the increased stats.

The ones Andy was able to talk about were called Last Stand & Total Cleanse.

Last Stand: 4 minute cooldown. For the next 4 - 7 seconds you are completely undamagable(!). After 4 to 7 seconds you die(!) Should be fun expecially with some of the changes to come! I may have orginally stated this was 47 seconds...say them both in your head quickly and i'm sure you'll forgive me!!

Total Cleanse: 4 minute cooldown. Removes all debuffs from your character, does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.

No idea what it's actually called: 4 minute cooldown. Reduces the AP of all ability used to 0 for it's duration which is...no clue wasn't mentioned!

Whether they'll be others as well to come I'm not sure but he did mention all of the renown abilities will be ungradable with further point investments. This wasn't elaborated on but I imagine in the full of reduced cooldown/longer durations or maybe secondary effects?

Open RvR Champaign Changes:

Ok this was the biggie as far as I'm concerned, you can keep your skaven this is what I was interested in! (Not really the Skaven look cool but yea RvR goodness!)

Right, Well first the domination system is going out the window all together.

Each open zone will have the two keeps and the 4 BOs still. When ever a zone "unlocks" one keep will belong to one of the sides automatically so even in Chaos Wastes Order will have one and vice-versa in Reikland.

You zone into the Keeps, NOT the Warcamps from here on in! You respawn after dying in Your respective Keeps as well! You lock a zone by capturing the opposing keep. That's it no waiting no mess right? Well no it's a bit more complicated then that. Taking a leaf from the new scenario's their going for a far more dynamic take on controlling a lake involving the Battlefield Objectives.

These are still cappable as normal but there is no longer a cooldown on wresting control of them from the opposing side. So no capping and wandering off for 15 minutes safe in the knowledge it's untouchable. You leave one unguarded and they'll be vulnerable.

Why do you need them? Well once capped by either side they will start generating resources and when enough of them have build up a NPC spawns. (Think sappers from the city instances) Now when one spawns it will just sit there doing nothing...

They need to be triggered by interacting with them at which point they will scurry off with the resources and head to your Warcamp. Their gonna be fairly squishy and if the opposing faction kill one they will drop the resources which can then be ninjaed so they'll need watching. (Resources are gonna be important so trying to watch four BOs while guarding the carriers, while attacking the keep and potentially defending your own should do a fair job of splitting zergs and forcing warbands to co-ordinate with each other across a zone, will also have amazing potential for smaller hit squads to run guarilla sabatage tactics!)

So you once you get resources trickling into your warcamp they'll start leveling up your owned keep which will have 5 Ranks.

Rank One: Resource carrier's will become armoured and become far less squishy.
Rank Two: Carrier's will get a speed boast. (Hopefully one and two will mean once you get going ranking up will start escalating by this point)
Rank Three: Offensive siege weaponry becomes available! These will spawn in the keep and can be picked up by anyone and deployed any where, no more siege pads! Siege weaponry in general is getting a massive boast with the single target ones doing around 4k damage unmitigated! (Not sure if they meant it's Unmitigatable or 4k before armour/toughness etc is taken into account but a big increase either way!)
Ram becomes available, more offensive siege weapons spawn, Aerial Bombers* unlock - (*)Patience!
More weapons, more Aerial Bombers!

So should be mentioned that they are changing keeps so they CANNOT be ninjaed and doors CANNOT be harmed other then by Rams. Well Rams and one other think but that's to follow somewhere below! So with keep doors pretty much unassailable untill the opposing keep hits Rank 4 you need to be out in the lake patrolling, watching out for the opposing side as they try and disrupt your well oiled resource gathering troopers!

Keeps are going to have a Anti-res aura within the outer walls untill the Outer doors are taken down so any attackers, usually MDPS ghosting in through the postern (But potentially any class) will not be able to get ressed EVEN IF THE *Insert healer here* IS OUTSIDE THE WALLS.

The keep CANNOT be taken until the Inner Doors are destroyed so no more ninjaing cos it aint gonna work. Once the doors are down its a case of charging in, piling up the stairs, bundling into the lord's room but OH NOES: "Your keep lord is in another castle". Yep Keep Lords are no more instead they'll be a banner where they stood which must be interacted with uninterrupted for a full 30 seconds (timer subject to chance if its not realistic in practise). Now im not 100% on the ins and outs of this part but as the defenders spawn within the keep you are going to keep getting hit by waves of pissed Order/Destro while your trying this so should be fun!

Edit: Once the inner doors of a keep are broken the spawn point will switch back to the warcamp so that once the doors are down you cant keep respawning instantly to disrupt the caps!

It's worth pointing out keeps themselves will start out fully tricked out with siege weaponry so will be defensible from the get go!

Aerial Bombers: At stage 3 aerial bombers unlock, these will effectively be flying mounts which will spawn in the keep which can be mounted by anyone. They'll then take to the sky and will follow set patten patrols though the lakes, not sure the exact routes that will be taken but Andy confirmed they will pass over keys features/choke points to shake things up a bit. The bomber in question can...drop bombs. By the sounds of things these will be pretty devestating so your gonna want to spread out and keep a eye to the sky! Again these seem designed to chew through Blobs in particular which is a pretty reoccuring theme throughout! Once you get bored of bombing you can parachute down to safety! Inside the enemy keep! Wheeeee!

That's about it off the top of my head for the RvR changes but for my money it sound brilliant and as someone who has until recently kept away from the main Campaign I'll definitely be re-joining the War!

So great games day! Although I'm sure there was one other thing.... Oh yeah....

Boom! Skaven Shot!

Rat Orges, Packmaster, Warlock Engineers, Gutterrunners! You want 'em? We gots em!

Seems these WILL NOT be a seperate character! The unlocking mechanism has not been revealed as yet but they will effectively be a "sleeve" for your character, completely replacing your skin and class features for the duration! (I've no idea if there is a actual duration, don't think so but I mean session or what ever!) This'll also mean any renown gained while a Skaven will level up your main toon! They'll be joining both sides (Its ok lore fans, apparently it's happened before in a book! Skaven Slayer I think according to Bruglir). I'm thinking maybe another resource type? Warpstone at a crazy outside guess!

So onto the Class types before this stops being a wall of text and gets into mountainous territory!

Rat Ogres: Huge hulking beasts of destruction, damage dealing mobile siege weapon pretty much!

Lots of wounds!
Lots of toughness!
Lots of damage!
Special Charge Attack! Gives you a speed boast and knockdown/knockback (Not sure sorry!) Any enemies in your way! Reminds me of the Tank from L4D!
Special Hurl Attack! Pick up a near by ally and throw them up on the enemy keep wall! (This sounds like so much fun but potentially could cause a fair bit of grief "Gimme healz!" "No I'm busy healing others!" *Hurl*)
Can damage doors. Other then Rams the only thing in the game that can!
Can't be healed! EXCEPT BY.....

Packmaster: The brains to the Ogres brawn your looking at a squishy buff/debuff type dude!

Can heal Rat Ogres!
Very Squishy!
Can produce buffs that effect allies around and that again compliment Rat Ogres!
Summon rat swarms that do ridiculous damage (Quoted as 1!) but that apply a outgoing damage debuff to the target. It stacks. Alot. And Quickly.
Can leg it to the nearest Rat Ogre if in trouble! (Sounds like pounce but defensive only and to the nearest Ogre...which is also likely to be Hulking out in melee range of people!)

Warlock Engineers: A defensive beast, adept at protecting keeps especially

Has a number of AoE pulsing buffs, increased AP regen or healer pluses. Sounds like a extension of the Zealot/Rune Priest ritual system.
Has a Warpfire flamethrower!
Can repair siege weapons!
I should point out all of the classes will have further ability but these are the ones they're prepared to talk about at this stage!

Gutter Runners: Fast, Invisible, Utility heavy sneaky rat bastards

Has a permanent stealth mode
Run invisible with a +70% speed increase. At all times!
Very very squishy!
Can "leap" onto keep walls in a single bound!
Can sabotage siege weapons which will trigger when someone trys to next one it. Will deal 4-5k and break the siege weaponry which will then be unusable till either a Warlock Engineer gets to it or that repair renown ability is used!
Very low damage dealing wise though, they'll be strictly utility based running around hampering opposition!

That's pretty much it I believe, their was some Q&A, I'm pretty sure he said "Yes" when asked if forts were making a comeback but I missed the wording on the question and so may well have been one of those "are they any plans" "have you thought about" "is there any chance" rather they a straight forward are you putting them back in kinda thing.

I did check and the new keep system will pretty much mean guild can no longer claim keeps (Although this hasn't been finalised) so a guild wont be able to control the siege weaponry, Bombers etc distribution.

Likewise Tier One will remain pretty much as before as they have no keeps and there are no plans to change that.

Oh yeah and they did mention they looking into potentially cross service scenario queuing or some kind of matching up similar groups against each other (But looking into could mean anything!)

And that's me done! I'm sure their are shed loads of spelling errors/sloppy english above but it's late, been a long day and I've been writing this bloody thing for the last 2 hours odd so....POST!

Bah couldn't do it, edited and hacked out a lot of bad english/spelling mistakes, still not perfect but at least it's readable!

Finally

2010-09-11T09:27:00.013+01:00

Well finally dinged 61 last night, I know it’s not exactly a massive benchmark but I’ve been stuck on 60 for what seems like forever (and has been a just under a month in fact).

Why? Because of this motley collection of alts:

Sarigs: 40/61 (Finally) - My Main Obviously, Still fully S&B and playing purely defensive roles mainly for guild groups, not been PUG Warbanded with him for a long 'ol while mainly because I'm defensive to the point of pretty much uselessness on my own or amongst unorganised Zerging kittens. Hoping to phase in some more DPS but gear is still a major hurdle for me, plus I don't like change so switching between different set ups, has never really appealed to me!

Larkett: 40/42 - Mainly only log him on if the guild short of healers, has been a lot of fun playing around with the new Harbringer function and flicking between healing and DPSing depending on the scenario while on my tod. I've sworn to only heal while with the guild though! QQ (Their just jealous of me really!)

Gorkitt: 31/22 - My oldest toon behind Sarigs and horrifically neglected. I should really put the effort into getting him up to 40 next but I'm just not a massive fan of the choppa, no idea why though. Think I'll try and take him out solo roaming and see if I can get back into the swing of the mechanics again.

Giblettz: 28/25 - My favorite secondary by far. Recently switched him over to Big Shooting after mainly being specced for short range skirmishing. Got caught out a time or two too often so I'm gonna hide at the back for a while!

Ryntle: 25/23 - Loved the Marauder all the way through T1 and T2, Tier 3's taking the shine off a bit but again need to try and get him up and back into it. Definitely my favorite for solo roaming without question however.

Darksar: 18/17 - Not used in quite some time, tend to go through bouts of favoritism amongst my toons and my lowly magus has been having the cold shoulder for a while!

Sesoli: 10/9 - Started for the hell of it while bored, T1's always fun so not in a hurry to drag up through the ranks.

Jeliwali: 6/6 - Ditto to the above, plus my son named her so I'll keep the WE way back on the bench.

Frankly I'm wasting far to much time on various half assed alts and although I have great fun flicking between then I'm spreading myself far too thin!

I tend to still have great fun running a alt through T1-3 and then as soon as I enter Tier 4 I tend to lose interest until they finally max out their rank at 40 at which point they become intriguing again!

Well I've decided to swear off my alts during peak times, maybe limit myself to a alt night once or twice a week, until I get Sarigs up to 70 and unlock Warlord. Think I'll be able to stick to that for a while especially with my guild starting to branch out more into some scale Orvr roaming which has been great fun coupled with the AAOs boasting.

Spend a large chuck of last night switch between Scenarios and cruising across Praag and then into Chaos Wastes was a blast especially being the only survivor of a Destro group pinning stragglers back into their Warcamp for a while....well till the Zerg doubled back for us!

Also this is just sneaky:

Anyways, I did have a point when I started this post but rambled off a tad. Everyone beat me to the punch about the recent hotfix. Moar Medallions = Good news! Away to Gamesday this weekend, randomly crashing at a guildies sofa for the Saturday before the big day sunday so should be fun. And hopefully I'll come away with something interest to share!

Non-helpful BO-Hugging Cats Vs. 3 Man Ambush Squad

2010-09-10T14:17:00.004+01:00

Well I was running around with Ryntle my R25 Marauder in Saph with a two group PUG Warband and by the end of it I was fuming.

We'd just cleared Well of Qhaysh and the moderate Order defenders and had moved up to Sari'Daroir the BO just directly north of their.

On the way one of our members gets jumped by a Slayer/Witch Hunter/Bw Trio taking advantage of the AAO buff (and who'd come back to dog our steps across the rest of the lake.) They went down quickly after me and a couple of others jogged over to assist and a nearby healer came over to Res our fallen. (Not one of our healers who were far to busy sprinting to the next BO, a theme about to reoccur)

We moved onto Sari'Daroir capped it and moved across to The Spire of Teclis, we'd just moved in and started the tick when a message comes in from one of our DOKs who'd been jumped on route by the same three and gone down. Now bear in mind that from one BO to the other is literally about a 30 second sprite and he fell on the way, who was stirred enough by a group members plight to double back and help?

Well me and a choppa. By the time us 2 got there the hit squad had faded back into the scenery. The chop buggers off back for his tick, while I sit there failing to Res the DOK using pure mental willpower alone!

I start requesting (nicely) in /WB for a resser or some kind of assistance by which point a Shammy volunteers to double back. In the mean time Order return and unsurprisingly I go down. I warn the Shammy back off without the help of the other 9 Destroy warband members all happily cuddling the BO Flag not a minute away.

Well lo and behold the tick happen a couple of minutes later and then sweeping majestically to the rescue the Group floods in wipes the resistance (All 3 of them) and we're duly ressed.

Not to be ungrateful but FFS what's wrong with you people?!

Why in for the love of Jiff would you sit around when you had plenty of time to go and return you bunch of jerks. I don't blame the choppa for doubling back, without a healer to res it was pretty pointless him being there. Likewise the Shammy who came out afterwards and ended up missing the tick because he was trying to find a way round the hit squad to res us while unsupported.

I ended up apologising to the DOK for the bunch of jerks who made up are our PUG even though none of them were anything to do with me!

I mean I could understand if there was seconds on the clock for the reward but seriously....My Frustration and rage about this relatively minor incident will power me through the weekend!

Also kudos to the three order who hit us again as we we're leaving the Woodchoppa camp after locking everything down and again took 3 of us down while the rest of the group ran unconcerned back to do what ever it was that was so pressing for them.

But really am I expecting too much of people? Would you double back for group mates under attack or just ignore them in favour of free renown?

Wild Hunt is up and off/Producer's Letter!

2010-08-31T23:04:00.005+01:00

Welp Wild Hunt is back again, sprung up live while PUGing some Scenarios.

Haven't really noticed anything different from last year as yet! Except the Hunter's Vale seem a lot easier then last time round. No idea if that's a change in my perception but I'm pretty sure last time round the Boss had a insta kill attack and I diddn't notice it this time round!

wOOt! While posting this up the Producer's Letter Augest has come online! Can be found here! I'm off to read through it!

I hates it. Part 2 - The explanation

2010-08-29T11:08:00.004+01:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm along in this but I'm really not liking the new 6v6 EC scenario.

Why not? Well after doing it pretty much constantly all of yesterday, both solo queuing with PUGs, Dual queuing with a friendly Zealot and as a full guild pre-made I think I've come to it from pretty much every angle and it's just far to short and inconsequential. It also dosen't help that it's been the only damn thing that seems to pop.

God knows how the points are generated but it's crazy quick.

I've not been in one that took longer then 5 minutes start to finish, win, or lose it dosent matter. It's over in minutes and you just requeue again. I know it's a farmer paradise for your fused insignias but it's just far, FAR too throw away.

Just whenever it pops up I can't summon the energy to care how it ends up (except in a pre-made obviously). And the renown your gain from it seems to be rubbish compared to pretty much every other scenario in the game currently, lucky to hit 1.8k even with the 10% bonus and a 500 point lead (although I suppose the amount of bonus 600 RP win bonus adds up at the rate you can hammer through them)

If there seriously thinking about putting this in the rotation they need to take out all point scoring other then player kills or half it or something, TBH I'm not even sure how you get the points but even with 0 kills the losing side still seems to end up with 100-200 points!

So yeah, I love 6v6s but if there thinking about putting one in permently they should seriously just fix AOE/LoS issues with Iron Clad and put that back in. Much more fun and enjoyable IMHO.

Also this is one of the PUG line ups I ended up in while dual queuing with Skumgummi the Zealot. Kinda fixed the eternal question of is there such a think as too many Chosen?

The answers a big fat YES.

Also annoyingly I ran afoul of the Quitter debuff ona T1 alt. Have been queuing while roaming the Empire/Chaos lake, get a pop while in combat. We finish off the Order in the area but I don't come out of Combat in time. The pop expires and I get hit with the Quitter debuff. Wth? Is that meant to happen? I'm guessing not and being locked out of scenario queues because the game wouldnt let me enter the bloody thing in the first place it not cool.

I hates it. Part 1

2010-08-29T02:40:00.003+01:00

It being the new 6v6 scenario.

I've just logged off, after a couple of drinks and having complete the neww WE Warfront event line (So at least 15 Runs both as Pug/Premade)...and I don't like it.

In fact I would go as far as to say I dislike it immensely bordering on hating it.

I'll clarify this further tomorrow but right now all I have is.....apathy. I would have much preferred pretty much anything else.

But A) I'm fully aware everyone else including my guildies seem to *love* this and B) Kudos to Mythic for bringing forth something new. Ill go into further detail soon!

I have a confession…Goodbye old faithful.

2010-08-25T13:53:00.003+01:00

I've been playing WAR on an old 6+ year old comp on the "fastest graphics" and everything slashed down to minimum settings or turned off completely.

The only times I’ve been able to put things up to high is during Pve Raids (That’s specifically because standing around in AOE while Main Tanking is neither big nor clever.) but it’s turned off as soon as the raid’s done to stop my poor geriatric crashing in a storm of lag.

My PC’s huge hard drive (All 60Gbs of it) has finally filled up and I’ve run out of things to delete to make space and so I’ve been (happily) forced into upgrading to a new desktop. Frankly it’s well past time and I’m looking forward to being able to crank everything up to full and playing it as it was designed to be played. Aswell as hopefully making Orvr viable for me again without sildeshowing completely!

Upgrading from a old 1.8Ghz single core CPU to a Quad core 2.9Ghz and my old old graphics card upto a ATI Radeon 1GB HD 5770 and 1 gig or Ram upto 4, should mean I get huge inprovements across the board, but unfortunately it’ll mean finally letting XP go in favour Windows 7 but I’ll live with that one was or the other.

Gotta wait two weeks for it to be build and delivered but I honestly can’t freakin’ wait.

Setting up a twitter thingie

2010-08-21T21:20:00.003+01:00

Diddn't catch much of the Video chat but what I heard wasn't exactly inspiring. I'm resigned for no solid news to follow for a while so....yeah I guess its back to waiting.....again...

Overhyped much?

In other news I'm setting up on twitter and can be found here: https://twitter.com/WarAura

Mainly for keeping tabs on news and random things rather then much else I think, guess I'll see how it goes never tried it before.

Double renown bonus could not have come at a worse time for me really. Kids staying over and trying to make up for not studying the last 2 years into a weekend craming does not make for a whole lotta play time!

Pacified for the moment!

2010-08-20T20:02:00.002+01:00

Well new news has been leaking over the last while.

Seems the RvR pack will be out before Christmas (here) and I'm more interested by the new plans then anything else right now.

Nobwaart has a transcript of the WAR related questions from the earlier Webchat (Which I missed, stupid work) up here.

Confirms a new zone is coming and will be available to everyone regardless of the Rvr Pack although some content within will be restricted to those with the pack (I'm guessing items etc)

Krossuss has put up some interesting ideas about what the 3P's (Power, Progression and Personality) could mean.

I like the idea of a Tiered unlock, especially if it can be upgraded at a later time once you've purchased a "lower" Tier like Skar suggests.

The only thought's I've had myself regarding what 3P's could mean are the announcement that RR81-100 is being brought in....and they have a expansion-like called Progression being introduced. RR81-100 unlocked by purchased the Progression pack for when you max out and want to keep going rather then re-rolling an alt? I don't see a issue with that myself but could be a bit to similar Pack X=Advantage Y over everyone else for some.

Any hoo colour me intrigued I'm looking forward to more roll outs of news after the initial apathy I was feeling on Wednesday!

Massively initial info from Gamescom up

2010-08-19T14:25:00.003+01:00

Massively posted their post late yesterday and I missed it initially. Can be seen here.

No new content over yesterday's information day is still youngish I guess but other then a post from Andy on the Forum's expending (a tiny bit) on their reference to "personalise" game play experiences nothing else has been forthcoming.

Does seem like these posts are not the extent of the interviews that took place yesterday at least but otherwise still Mehing here.

Edited Title as I misled my self!

Gamescom update: I'm 'a gonna wait it out!

2010-08-18T23:04:00.010+01:00

Well spend most of my free time at work scanning for new news from Gamescom and to be honest it's been scant and fairly underwhelming so far. Theres a interview over at Onrpg you can check out here.

Brief highlights are RR cap being raised to 100, Skaven not being added as a normal race but "something different" and not wanting to follow the tradition path of releasing paid expansion every 2 years. And by brief highlights I mean thats pretty much it.

Well...TBH I'm not knocked over here but I'm making a concious effort and I'm going to wait it out and see what else appears before commenting nothing released so far really interests me.

*Possible Server transfer? Well maybe if my home server (Karak Azgal) dies suddenly that may be useful.

*Name changes? No not bothered by that at all.

*Skaven being something different, I'm guessing rules out a new Tier 1-4 pairing zone with a opposite number and could mean anything or nothing.

*RR to 100? Could well be a interesting incentive to maxed characters and I would imagine will mean new armour/weapon/item sets to follow at some point. Personally Im not bumping my head against that particular ceiling but I'm not self-absorbed enough to rule it out as a big issue for those up there. Just hope they don't over compensate with making the attempts to make progression through the lower RR ranks and make it a doddle to hit 80.

*Not going F2P? Pretty much already ruled out so not exactly news.

Andy stated over on his twitter that more detailed..details should follow. Hopefully about other bits being planned cos frankly the above....no.....NO....gonna stay positive till they pack up and head back to the states before ruling out anything more exciting being announced.

Edited: As Bootae point's out the above further information to follow will be from Baltimore Gamesday this weekend so that could be all she wrote for now. Boo & Hiss indeed!

Patch notes up!

2010-08-17T14:01:00.002+01:00

Check them out here!

More hopefully later once I've had a chance to go over them!

Edit: well server's been done all evening so I've not been able to scope out the changes. Looks like a pretty solid patch overwise and I'll see how it pans out when I finally get online later in the week. 'Course by then we should have the Big Announcement to chew on so....I know it's stupid but I'm actually excited to hear the news!

1st Time Draws and Kislev's

2010-08-13T20:08:00.008+01:00

Just a quick one today!

Had a strange Scenario fight out last night while running with a guild Premade. Normally there's 4 of us that run about together using various alts with the other two spots being who every else is online and fancies it. Last night due to a some odd playing times I ended up in a completely different group. We ended up with me, another S&B Chosen (who is a absolute DPS monster, I'm still not quite sure how he manages it!), a 2 hander chosen, 1 heal DOK, Zatos the Sorc and a SH, frankly we rocked, and it was great fun mixing up with different set ups for a while.

Just before we settled into that group we had a slightly different line up when the Reikland Factory Sc we were plugging away at came to a abrupt (Seemed like: I dont tend to pay attention to the score/time if it seems to be going well!) end:

First time I'd come across this! Always fun!

Anyhoo I saw this master piece for the first time this week, I'm sure it's old hat for some but first time awesomness for me! :

And that kinda got me thinking about the Kisliv's. For those that aren't up with there Warhammer IP, Kisliv is a hardy country situated somewhere between Nordland, Troll Country and the Chaos Wastes. Lead by a powerful Ice Queen and Praag had close linkes. There a ally of the Empire rather then a part of it as far as I'm aware but my lore years old! Think Cossacks, think Prussian/Russian medieval, think Mongolian style horse arches, think wind swept Siberia but mainly think BEAR CALVARY! Mythic you missed a trick here!

Images have been ridiculously hard to come by! Most of the models are discontinued etc. Diddn't want to start stealing them from random guys website so I'd point ya here for more Bear Riding Minature goodness! If you like minatures in general the sites got some pretty cool painted/converted goodness. Stumbled across it while trying to grab some offical pic but there all out of production!

Actually I'd settle for adding Cathay to the game!:

I've also learnt that google image searching for "Bear Cavalry" will never, EVER get old!

No more (new/old) cities anymore

2010-08-10T07:58:00.003+01:00

Well between the Q&A (Check Gaarawarr for a transcipt or Bruglir for a recording) and the Buffed.De interview Carrie has pretty much ruled out re-introducing the lost cities back into the game.

Which is kinda a shame. I wasn't around for the Beta so I've never seen them or had a chance to poke around in them. :-(

Personally I think they should meet some where in the middle, add them in as Instances only ala IC/Aldorf Siege and have them unlock when ever the relevant pairing locks down instead of the current system or Empire/Chaos + Elf = IC/Aldorf unlocking.

My thinking behind this is it would add some variety (never a bad think in my book) to the city sieges instead of it always being IC/Aldorf for the end game and hopefully spread out the Zerglings with the opposing force being able to split and counter attack for a different city across the pairings. It would also take advantage or the current system with Orvr opening up during the current city sieges giving multiple targets and something to aim at.

Sadly you'd probable need some kind of incentive to get people to defend threatened pairings rather then just pushing through a undefended zone....Perhaps increased rewards for defense in the outer zones in the form of either a generic Renown increase for the defensive side (So Order in Reikland/Kadrin Valley/Eataine and Destruction in Chaos Wastes/Caledor/Black Crag - combined with the Against all odds would be a pretty strong reward) or increased lock rewards for these end zones (Less keen on the last idea and as would probable led to increased Zergs concentrating in one area rather then spreading out)

So....was just something that I thought might have a impact/salvage the old cities/add some variety...kinda works in my head but what do other people think?

Un-Constructive VL post! Now with added expansion thoughts

2010-08-03T21:39:00.005+01:00

Bah after the amount of messing around last night, it went almost disappointing smoothly tonight and the Vulture Lord fell within a couple of tries.

Just goes to show what massed tiredness and frustration can do to a otherwise competent group!

Wasn't a bad run for the guild, our Off Tank Black Guard picked up the Tyrant chest piece, I finished off my full Glyph set (although disappointingly only 1 Tyrant piece in total still) and our healer DOK got his Glyph cloak and enough masks for another piece of his set.

Elsewhere, every one seems quiet - quiet at the moment, just settling in to wait for the big news which is fast approaching when I'm sure the scene will explode again.

Personally I'm still not sure what I'm expecting. Expansion announcement certainly. New races seems a given but I'm starting to lose hope in my preferred tag team of Skaven V Lizardmen duking it out in Lustria. As one of Bootae's comments reminded me in one of his post comments the recent flag backgrounds in podcasts and the like have had a huge "Bretonnia" scrawled across them. Honestly I've never been that enamoured with them, plus while different from a style and Lore perspective they are still at the end of the day more humans for order.

Of course from a IP perspective they could be released in tandem with Wood Elves for a kinda dual-race pairing. That would mean either cutting classes down to just two a piece or making the Skaven faction a deluxed sized affair. Skaven could certainly stretch to keeping 6-8 classes interesting and distinctive I just don't see it happening realistically unless they were also planning on adding some additional classes to the existing races and that just seems like a impossible amount of work for Mythic to do in one go regardless of how large/long away the expansion is likely to be.

You'll notice I'm taking Skaven as a given if new races are coming. I just can't, CAN'T, see anyone at Bioware-Mythic being...silly....enough to think:

"Hey you know what'll be funny? That's add another destruction race, hint all the way Skaven are likely to be involved and then put out Beastmen instead to keep people on their toes!"

*Enter angry mobs stage left*

On a more down beat note Wasdstomp had some disturbing thoughts regarding the "big announcement". I just really hope he's wrong!

Regardless interesting times ahead!

Scr*w you Vulture Lord!

2010-08-03T03:47:00.006+01:00

Gnah. Its 4 in the morning, I'm meant to get up for work in a hour and I'm just logged from War after spending the last....8 hours trying and failing to take down the 8th boss.

And I mean just the 8th, our group had cleared up to there yesterday...

..Just...gnah nothing went right! Anything from weird things happening, occasional member errors, bad luck, some down right shoddy tanking (Hey im tired leave me alone!) and pretty much everything else.

Just too clarify everyone in the group has finished this before barring a couple of position swaps (Our healer DOK hadn't been primary healer for it before and I'd only off-tanked him previously)

Well enjoy your victory tonight Mr. so-called-King Amenemhetum, cos I'm coming back tomorrow and your in for it.

(Words cannot describe how singularly annoyed I am about tonights run!)

/end self-pity

Gratz Zatos!

2010-07-31T20:13:00.007+01:00

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.

2010-07-30T08:53:00.003+01:00

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.

2010-07-27T20:20:00.010+01:00

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!

2010-07-26T02:30:00.015+01:00

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

2010-07-24T09:21:00.008+01:00

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!

Now come on end of summer, I want my big news hit!

He stole mah face!

2010-07-20T15:20:00.009+01:00

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

2010-07-19T22:23:00.009+01:00

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

2010-07-16T18:27:00.003+01:00

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?

2010-07-14T09:55:00.006+01:00

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!

2010-07-13T10:18:00.001+01:00

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....

2010-07-12T12:53:00.003+01:00

........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!

2010-07-08T21:29:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-07-08T20:33:00.003+01:00

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!

2010-07-07T21:10:00.005+01:00

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.

2010-07-03T14:37:00.005+01:00

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

2010-07-02T15:00:00.003+01:00

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

2010-07-01T12:33:00.004+01:00

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.

First Post

2010-06-25T21:12:00.002+01:00

Right first post, thought I'd try my hand at this blogging malarky and see how things go.

Thought I'd start with a little bit about me, I'm a UK based bod, devote father & ex-husband and never seem to have enough time on my hands. I've been playing WAR for over a year now, had my eye on it since before Beta but have never been tried a MMORPG although I cut my teeth on MUDs for a long, long time (Discworld MUD ftw btw). Play style wise I'm casual/hardcore, casual in the amount of spare time I have to sink into WAR and my preference for non-optimised groups and hardcore that I've got to the stage where people no longer shout at me for running in the wrong direction/pulling guards etc (Well at least not that often)

Not 100% on what I'll be posting about, thoughts about WAR, things that pop up, my struggle to optimise my chosen so he's not continually the last person picked for the team!

I'm a member of New Dawn down on Karak-Azgal EU Server, and while definitely not a rabit fanboy, enjoy the game a huge amount!

I'll make my next post a bit more interesting content wise with any luck but my first attempt at blogging and Html frankly confuses the hell outta me so I'll have to play it a bit by ear!

WAR Aura

Dominion Beta

500 Games of Lol

DF Part 2. The First Year!

Mission DF. Part 1. Strike the earth!

Dwarf Fortress....Losing is fun.

Sooooo...yeah....

AFK

Forum Laughs

Ain't dead yet...

A spy is me!

Regular Broadcasting Will Resume Shortly! Now with added RAGE!

Exalted Goodies!

1.4 goes live! RVR packs released and...

Expansion release date!

Chickened Out!

Patch notes 1.4 up!

Skaven Rvr dungeon + Test times!

T4 PTS Test this Friday!

So the test...

It's All On You Mythic.....

PTS test run, New zone & a single concern.

The Great Skaven Debate

Gamesday Uk news! RvR Campaign changes and Skaven!

Finally

Non-helpful BO-Hugging Cats Vs. 3 Man Ambush Squad

Wild Hunt is up and off/Producer's Letter!

I hates it. Part 2 - The explanation

I hates it. Part 1

I have a confession…Goodbye old faithful.

Setting up a twitter thingie

Pacified for the moment!

Massively initial info from Gamescom up

Gamescom update: I'm 'a gonna wait it out!

Patch notes up!

1st Time Draws and Kislev's

No more (new/old) cities anymore

Un-Constructive VL post! Now with added expansion thoughts

Scr*w you Vulture Lord!

Gratz Zatos!

Four thing’s Werit learnt.

Plague Rat spawning points on the PTS.

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

Tier 2/3 Changes - Plague Rats Ahoy

He stole mah face!

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

RDPS Sovereign up on the Forums

An end to the recent server disconnects?

Melee DPS/Rogue Sovereign Set Unveiled!

This weekend I have mainly been....

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

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

New Sovereign sets being spoilered! Tanks first!

EU Early Access Servers up and running.

Why I'm not out fishing on the Lakes

1.3.6 Producers Letter Orvr change

First Post

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