........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.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Could Lizardmen work in WAR from a Lore type thing? Part 2!
Well continued from the earlier post.
And as for order? Well they've never needed a reason to be somewhere other then just to foil those dastardly Destros and their naughty ways (LoTD I'm looking at you and your soul casket) but beyond that as everyone should surely know: Mysterious Uncurable Disease cramping your style? Your need a cure! Wheres the incredible rare ingredients needed for said cure? In the Jungle. It's always in the freaking Jungle. So an Imperial Expedition Sets out for Lustria, they need to make up for lost time and so call upon the Dwarfs to provide Steam-powered ships to catch up. The High Elves, relatively sheltered from the Red Plague by their isolation in Ulthuan, were instrumental in ending the first Daemon War and since have always had High Lore Masters watching for signs that the Daemons might again renew their assault in the New World and so sail from their island home joining the Steam Fleet bearing the Rest of the Order Alliance to the new world.
So that brings pretty much every one over to the Lizardmen's backyard but would they come out to play nice with their potential allies?
The Slaan would be well aware of the Elves efforts in the first war but are from a lore point of view incredible insular. They do however follow the Plan of the Old Ones, foretold in Glyph Porphercies left by the Old Ones.
The various city states are all led by different Slaan Priests and are distinct in their own ways. Having a particular Pyramid City (Found suspiciously close to the searched for Cure and a key Geomantic node) that has been studying the time of the Red Plague and is aware of it's "destiny" to throw back the forces of Destruction is not too much of a stretch. Having the whole Red Plague omened by a sign maybe a streaking red comet across the night sky, gives the Lizardmen plenty of time to acknowledge the time is now and to raise a new spawning - the Red Spawning marked by the Comet Glyph. (I'm waffling a bit here, they had Spawning last edition I played, meant they were destined to be certain thing no idea if that's still cannon or not.) A new spawn fit to meet new or rather old threat in head on, flexible enough to accommodate new ways of thinking and without with prejudices of older reptiles.
With Orders arrival being pre-ordained and not there to loot relics (the main reason Lizardmen go to war with the good forces in warhammer) there's no reason why a alliance between the Slaan Mage-Priest of the city and the High Elves lore masters could not be agreed.
So that I think would be not be too blasphemous against the existing lore, indeed within the spirit of the IP. Course it wouldn't explain why the Lizardmen would be running round Praag taking keeps, but I think they would follow their Allies back to the Old World should their plan tell them to. If not, they've been known to invade Naggaroth over looted temple relics, theres no reason if something particularly important was spirited back to the old world they wouldn't follow it back as well. I'm thinking perhaps the same Macguffin that the Dark Elves are so interested in.
Well it's not perfect by any stretch but then neither is Dwarf and High Elves buddying up to the extent they have from a Lore Point of view. I think it would pass the muster but like I said by IP lore is rusty, what do others think? Could it work?
Could Lizardmen work in WAR from a Lore type thing? Part 1!
Well...could it? Apologies for the Part one/Wall of Text!
Well I'd be the first to admit I haven't been hands on with Warhammer Lore for a number of years but the Scalies have always been one of my favorite races.
They've been thrown out there as a idea a few times for a playable race a few times but lorewise they'd be a fairly shaky fit, the idea of them buddying up with other races just dosen't seem to fit.
First a page from Games Work about Lizardmen, general kind of info. Easier for me to link it here and refer back to it.
But I think it could be made to work leaving the Warhammer Lore perhaps a little bent out of shape but by no means broken.
So I'm taken a giant leap and guessing the Red Plague is hopefully the sign of a Live Event, proberbly a three parter leading up to a proper expantion, as a starting point.
The event would lead up to a new zone being Lustria and the tunnels stringing from there through to Skavenblight or one of the other Skeven Cities. With any luck this would also be a great time to reindroduce the new cities for the other racial pairings. (Considering they were planned out and partly done during the run up to release implimenting the Elven/Elven and Greenskin/Dwarfs cities should be the easy part)
So it would start with the Red Plague being released upon the old world, disease strikes across the Old World released by the Skaven hordes forced into a pact with the Chaos forces. This would be easy enough Lore worse, I don't think you'd put Skaven anywhere but squarly on the side of Destruction. As the Order forces pull back to fortified positions and cities giving the forces of Destruction the opportunaty to show their hand. The Raven Host splits some staying behind to harass the Order forces and keeping them off guard the rest boarding a fleet of Choas Warship sailing for the New World and the lands of Lustria to join forces with House Uthorin reservists marching South from Naggaorth and Greenskin forces emerging from the old abandoned tunnels from which the Skaven first crossed into the New World centeries ago. The forces gathered they sunder the Wardings that kept these tunnels impassable to Skaven and the Ratmen emerge to swell the host.
(No clue is that would work, sure I read somewhere that the Skaven were driven out of Lustria and kept out somehow, if it was Magical wards then it would work, barriers battered by Dark Elf magic from outside and Goblin Waaagh from within, if it was something more boring like "collapsed tunnels" then the Goblins can lug picks and blasting powder with them!)
The reasons for the subtifuge? Well quoted from Games Workshop that link above:
>In the wake of the Old Ones
Left alone and vastly outnumbered by the Daemons of Chaos, the Lizardmen valiantly defended their temple-cities, each fortified against assault and protected by the magical power of the Slann Mage-Priests within. Still the Daemons wrought untold carnage on the Lizardmen, knowing that should they destroy the network of temple-cities and break the geomantic web that ordered the ebb and flow of magic upon the world, Chaos would reign.
That would be reason enough for Chaos to go at it, the Changer of Ways likes to keep a lot of plates spinning at the same time and cracking the "geomantic web" would work. The rest of Destruction would be their either as Allies or to hunt down a lost Macguffin-Of-Awesome-Power in the case of the Dark Elves.
This is in danger of becoming a stupidly long wall of text so I'm gonna go for to be continued and to the Order/Lizardman thing in a follow up post. Yeah I know the Lizardman thing was the whole reason for this in the first place but I got carried away. I write it up tonight and post tomorrow most likely!
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
New Sovereign sets being spoilered! Tanks first!
Well first things first check Andy's post regarding the new look Sovereign bonuses.
My Chosen is currently stumbling through the late 50's Renown wise so I've never had a chance to play about with the current Sovereign sets but I'm actually liking the look of this.
They'll be unveiling all of the different sets in time but firstly they have Chosen (Geddit?!) to reveal tanks first, from the forum, Vóila:
>(Primary) Defensive Set
Tou - 232
Wou - 134
Ini - 116
WS - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% reduced chance to be crit
4% block
60 hp/4s
4 AP/s
2% reduced armor penetration
3 piece - 85 Tou
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 200 HP/4s
6 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to reduce attacker's armor penetration against you and chance to critically hit you by 6% for 10s.
7 piece - On Defense: 25% chance to increase parry/block/disrupt/dodge by 5% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 targets within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed reduced by 60% for 5s.
(Secondary) Offensive Set
Str - 232
WS - 134
Wou - 116
Tou - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% melee crit chance
40 melee power
4% parry strikethrough
3 AP/s
2% parry
3 piece - 85 Str
4 piece - 85 WS
5 piece - 5% DPS
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase melee power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase parry/block strikethrough by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Up to 9 allies within a 20 foot radius have their movement speed increased by 60% for 5s.
Not made my mind up about the 8 piece bonuses yet, 2 minute cooldown's not too horrific, 5 second duration and up to 9 targets...could see it making a big difference if used right, anyone else have any thoughts on that?
Of course their a lot of people complaining already about the set bonuses being standardised across all of the tanks as opposed to personalised for each mirror set but I'm looking forward to the customisation it looks like it offers. I've never been a min-maxer myself and I'm quite looking for to trying out a 4/4 combo when I get up there.... probably about 2013 by which point they may have got round to unveiling the first expansion! (I'm just impatient!)
On a semi-related note really liking the amount of information Bioware Mythic are pumping out into the forums. Hope they keep it up going forward!
Saturday, 3 July 2010
EU Early Access Servers up and running.
Hi All,
Any EU players should head on over to the the Warhammer Alliance forum thread for news on how to get the new Servers up and on line now.
I've done it myself and not hit any problems and Andy at Mythic verifies it on page 3 of the thread.
***Update: Just read through Skar's post regarding the same and points out you should be backing up your files before hand if case of any issues, I'd suggest you check his post out first as I don't tend to think things through!***
Spend most of the morning running round Nordland playing with my R6 Squig herder in the lake, was the only Destro character there and only a single WH for order. Ended up +7 kills against him by the end but he didn't seem to have the hang of sneaking up on someone. Great fun and bagged two ranks and RR by the end of the fun.
Ugly little bugger but playing SH makes a great change of pace from player my Chosen Main.
Any hoo have a great weekend all!
Friday, 2 July 2010
Why I'm not out fishing on the Lakes
Well at the moment anyway.
The new teaser information given out over the last week has got me thinking about this. Recently for…maybe the last 4-5 months I think I can count the number of times I’ve gone out into the lakes for something other then duelling/getting to a city siege on my fingers…and possible toes but over 4 odd months still not enough.
I think in part it’s been due to always falling in with a pre-made running scenarios but I always loved, especially when I first hit T4, to join an open warband and get out there. Somewhere along the way the Zerg lost its appeal to me.
With a bunch of alts spread across the different Tiers I’m beginning to get an idea of why and the culprit seems to be the amount of people and losing the sense of contributing to anything. It’s seems any time I venture out into T4 lakes there’s always a Zerg, either a Destro one, in which case you just ride along, or a order in which case you try and not die. Realistically if you’re riding with a PUG WB and 2-3 warbands of order come over the hill there’s only ever one way things are gonna end! About the best you can hope to do is slow them down for a little while but when numbers are weighted that heavily nothing you do is gonna make that much of a difference.
Not that it’s a one way Realm problem either. The Zerg runs both ways and though I’ve enjoyed completely over running an enemy position in the front lines of ridiculously large charge of players. It’s never lead to any particularly memorable moments for me or anything I’m that bothered about repeating.
My small army of alts have taught me that the lower the Tier the more I seem to enjoy it:
Tier One? You can’t pay me to get out of the Empire/Chaos Lake, I rarely if ever both with Scenarios at this stage, other then repeat queuing them while walking from the Destro new spawn point down to the war camp.
Tier Two? Love it, keeps at this stage are great fun and the zones are nicely sized. I’ll queue for Scenarios more often at this stage but probably 9 log-ins out of 10 will be out on the lake.
Tier Three? Uuuugh I lose almost all interest at this stage and I’m guilty of doing what ever I can to get the hell out of this stage as quickly as possible. And if I can’t power level through? Well the Alt just tends to languish at this stage till I can.
Tier Four: Welcome to the Zerg. At this stage I tend to occasionally romp out but nowhere near as often as I should.
The upshot of this post? Well honestly I don’t have one…yet. Going to spend the weekend breaking down why I rate each Tier and try and chuck out a proper, constructive post about how I think T4 could reel me and perhaps others back in.
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.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
1.3.6 Producers Letter Orvr change
Right so, 1.3.6 Producers letter is now out and if my any change you've not read it yet it can be found here.
Seems to be the first of a major ORvr change being rolled out with the second half being 1.4 at a guess since all clues seem to point to that being one their pretty excited about. Or maybe 1.4 will be related to the still theoretical expansion and they'll be a futher 1.3.7 prior to that, who knows.
The changes seem pretty good so far. With more info to follow through Developers Diaries and some further specifics already starting to go out through the Forums.
Firstly there been the following annouoncement: (Thread can be found here.)
We'd like to announce a couple upcoming changes for General Gameplay in v1.3.6. Please keep in mind that these are not patch notes and additional adjustments may be in the works.
*New User Interface option: Sticky Targeting. Enabling this option will prevent you from clearing your target(s) by clicking an empty location in the gamespace. (Developer Note(s): clears the offensive target first in the event that both an offensive and defensive target is selected.)
*Player health bars will now update correctly when receiving damage or heals. (Developer Note(s): this corrects an issue where health bars would "flicker or bounce" upon receiving a heal or damage.)
Now the second part of that I'm not too worried about, I've never realise noticed a flicks or bounce on the health bars, late in updated correct health displays sure but not flickering. Having said that I tend to use the squared add on for my healer which has it's own share of problems, non of which are any thing to do with Mythic! Sorry Bioware Mythic!
The first point however I'm looking forward to, I've learnt to compensate for it a fair bit but can be extremely annoying loosing your offensive or defensive target due to a misclick and in a chaotic melee trying to track them down again before it's too late can be a massive pain!
Second announcement mainly concentracts on a re-jig of how victory points are distributed (Taking away PvE elements and Prior Tear = Great Idea)
They've also up and stopped mailbox leechers although all it will take is a quick job down to get RvR flagged every 5 mins which would involve a 20ft walk to the other side of the guards and back to get round it. Sure it'll stop people actively AFK but not any one who's crafting/chatting/idling about. So how effective it'll be I don't know. Personally I've never really had a problem with the mailbox guards, I've only really been annoyed by it when a zone is on the point of locking down and then Order come out to play people would rather stay safe in the warcamp and lose the potential Renown Reward rather then come out and fight for it. Of course I doubt this'll make any difference to that situation they'll just idle some where else/stay in IC/not get rewarded for nothing! I know people have issues with people leeching off their hard work out in the lakes but the rewards have always been skewed (rightfully) towards those going out and helping in the form of bonus rewards per BO/Keep take you've been involved in. Dunno have to wait and see how that all pans out.
Against All the Odds sounds like a great little buff however Bootae's raised some good points about wheather this'll make any difference to Zerg distributions as it's doubtful it'll have any impact on smaller groups taking on larger WBs within a contested, active zone.
Only other points I'll bring up is I'm not sure about the new Quitter Debuff angle, frankly if I get D/ced (Which has happened to be a few times within the last couple of months) in the middle of a scenario while playing with a guild party, I'd prefer to requeue with them and join with them for no personal gain till the debuff wears off. Now how ever I'll effectively either have to leave the group for 15 mins (And defending on pops rate could be up to half an hour by the time the group has finished up a scenario) or else the whole party has to sit out and wait for me to be able to play again.
Likewise how is the Quitter debuff going to effect city sieges? Are they including Instances as a "Scenario" for the purposes of this? Other wise the quitter will have no effect at all as a deterent against instance hopping in Cities. Not really happy about this change at all but I guess I'll see how it pans out. Still plenty of time for me to resign myself to being punished for a shoddy connection lol and I can at least see their reasons behinde the change, well I'm guessing it's to drive people back into the lakes. "Can't queue for scenarioes for 15 minutes but can still gain Renown? Get into the lakes for 20 minutes, who knows you may enjoy it!"
Having said that more information should hopefully follow closer to the time and on the whole I'm looking forward to this patch and a shift in the focus within WAR.
Just my two pence worth.
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.
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