One of the things we’ve been discussing with the Core Testers lately is the economy of WAR. We received some excellent feedback and we’re formulating plans based on that discussion, however we want to open up the dialogue to all players for broader input.
As we continue to look at Warhammer Online (where it’s been and where it’s going), we’re examining the game from a macro and micro (big picture, little picture) level. One of the more macro areas we have discussed is the overall game economy. To put it bluntly, it’s not where we or the players would like it to be. The designs and decisions made during development left us in a hard position, where, in order to jumpstart the economy, we need to make some changes. Before we go into that, let us look at the status of the economy now.
The basic principle of a viable sustainable economy is supply and demand. If these are balanced, economies can sustain themselves. Tipping too far to either extreme can cause an economy to falter. In WAR, one can see examples where we made a misstep based on this principle; too much supply for the demand (plenty of gold, nothing to spend it on), and not enough supply for demand (not enough items are tradable). In a way, these two dynamics feed one another.
Let’s look at an example: Public Quests provide loot bags which allow the owner to choose an item that is specifically tailored to their class and bind on pickup (BOP). This does two things; limits the potential demand for the product because it is class specific and makes it so it can’t be offered in trade because it is BOP. This feeds the problem that there are not enough items being available. Compounding the issue, if the item is not useful to the person that earned it, they will sell it, gather gold, and due to the lack of items in demand, they have little to spend their gold on. It’s a vicious cycle.
So how do we look at ways to change our current economy to balance both supply and demand? To accomplish this we need to look at solutions that will tweak the way items are rewarded. Not just how useful they are to the individual, but also as potential trade goods in the economy. We have a good idea on how to do this, but we want to throw the issue out there and get some feedback proactively, before we settle on a design.
What we’d like are some thoughts on how to change our world drops, PQ loot, and the like to make them more viable and valuable to the economy which will hopefully balance supply and demand. Examples would be: making items BOE versus BOP, making items useful to multiple classes, etc.
Making some changes will allow us to redefine the balance of supply and demand and give us greater flexibility in introducing items going forward, which will benefit characters of all ranks.
We’re looking forward to your comments and feedback. James "That Guy" Casey Associate Producer Mythic Entertainment -Link to the Forum Post-
Ah, Economy. There's an aspect of the game that's gone more or less untouched since release. Oh sure there's been additions as the like of Medallions, Scarabs and now Insiginas, but these are autonomous and mostly separate from the Gold standard economy. Boot-selling has finally been fixed after nearly a year of easy money being made from collecting a few Officer medallions, although they came from players that made their way through the game legitimately at least once. You can find Gold Scarabs on the Auction House, but their value is slim if only for a few Soul Talismans that are easily enough farmed. Anything resembling Economy is watered down to the point that unless it's an ultra-rare drop, farming up the cash for it is just as easy as trying to get it yourself. I've been taking my time on this post mostly to wiggle through everything that I wanted to have in here without having to write a damn book about it.
The first thing that comes to mind would be a revamp of the BoP/BoE system. Currently, the biggest gripes over gear is doing PvE dungeons that will drop something for anyone that is NOT present at the time (or so it seems), and a lot of gear going un-usable and being salvaged or just sold off. Because the PvE armor sets do not require renown to wear, allowing them to hit the AH unchecked would be disastrous for end-game balance of commitment:power scaling.
Currently there IS a system in place to allow players to get Wards without wearing a single piece of the armor, I know as I've gotten my lesser and greater wards on my Chosen doing this (he's RR31 at the moment). Although repairable set item drops in PvE would alleviate some of the issues with getting this gear, tying them to a tome unlock (killing the boss X times) to allow them to even be purchased or traded would go much further. Essentially any piece of PvE warded set gear could go on the auction house, but the restriction would be on whether or not the player had gotten the unlock tied to it in order to purchase the piece. It's another system that guarantees you will eventually get your piece, but ties into player based economy at the same time AND requires players to experience content before reaping the rewards.
Another piece of changing that system would be to go back through and tweak the BoP rates so pretty much everything in the game no longer has it except for the most obvious stuff, and then making any item that is bought off the AH to become BoP when it's removed from their mailbox. Adding a system that keeps the AH from being gamed by gold farmers and sellers will go a LONG way to stabilizing the economy and revealing where it's truly at.
Another place that I feel could really afford to be looked at are the Chapter Influence rewards in PvE. For one, the first part of the influence reward is always absolute garbage to the point of being insulting. Most of the time I don't even bother taking it from the Rally Master at the camps. It should be removed, and the green item should be moved into the first spot, allowing room for the Elite reward to be a purple drop. Seriously, if I went out and killed 50 guys for a reward of a +2 strength talisman someone would be wearing their own ass for a hat. Alternatively, put some real damn talismans in there as a reward, and I don't mean blue ones either, or a stack of blue potions for your archtypes DPS/HPS or heal/resto pots. Also, tie the rewards to the stages. If you never flip past the first stage then you don't get the advanced and elite rewards. More gated requirements for participation in content is good. It keeps people from farming the chumps in order to get their easy loot and encourages groups to get together and battle through some of these awesome PQ's that are ignored out in the world.
Allow people to continue to accumulate influence even after they recieve their Elite reward. It would keep people coming back at regular intervals in T4 to stock up on good potions or talismans without needing to be a craftsman. Basically on a cumulative scale you could continue to accumulate influence to receive the same rewards over and over again. Say every 10k inf you receive a stack of 5 potions, then every 20k inf you get a purple talisman or something like that. People would be more likely to return and help out after they get their initial gear out of it.
Of course, most of this I could care less about. The real money makers should come from the fallen bodies of your enemies. As such, I would encourage our RvR currency to be locked similar to the Scenario currency. No down-conversion, and only allow up-conversion after your renown rank allows it. By doing this you have opened up additional possibilities when it comes to looting, possibilities for itemizing renown ranks instead of dropping normal ranked items, and possibilities for a new segment of the auction house that allows you to sell by medallion and crest costs instead of gold. Keep up with me here because it gets more interesting.
Most recently with Insignias and Emblems hitting the Scenario market we can start to see a trend as to where focus could be shifting. Scenarios net you weapons of all types purchasable with weapon oriented currency. I think on top of this, drops during scenarios should also be weapons. BoE weapons and only as high in RR as the player dropping them in the first place. Get some itemization in there for purple, blue, and green drops for every couple of RR's then balance them against the current scenario weapons. This means you have additional ways to get your loot, from drops and currency.
Originally, Medallions and Crests were added into the game to supplement horrid drop rates and randomized bags. Why aren't these two factors being added into scenarios along with the currency? Take for example at the end of each scenario the winning team gets a lottery roll. One gold bag containing a weapon closest to their RR, then random amounts of other bags depending on the total score between both sides (500 v 499 being the best score possible). The Gold bag would be the next blue weapon you could possibly get with a selection of archtype based liniments, talismans, and crafting materials if you weren't interested in the weapon itself, or fused-whatever-currency. Purple would contain the next lower ranked purple weapon that you could use, Blue would be next blue down the list, etc. etc.. Think one gold bag per scenario is too much? Have it happen once an hour or every three hours. Want to see people scramble around like crazy? Announce at the beginning of the scenario that this battle would be for bag drops in big dramatic fashion.
Either way, adding drops to PvP and Lottery rolls every handful of scenarios would stimulate something silly and get you out from under the death stare from people that have been collecting, nay HOARDING, medallions for the past year. These items hitting the Auction House would only go so far since the required currency to buy and sell them would be the very Emblems and Insignias that it requires to buy them from a vendor. Again, gating the rewards by requiring content to be experienced. Granted, prices would be regulated by the players instead of the developers, the only thing devs could really do is put a reasonable cap on the amount of Emblems and Insignias allowed to be requested at a time.
The trick to adding in tons of content is to blitz the field with so much stuff at one time that people scramble around like crazy to get it across all facets of the game. With the release of 1.3.4 dumping all the candy into one corner of the game, things have been pretty sour for anyone that actually enjoyed RvR and weren't that fond of facerolling premade scenario groups. Developers shot off a little too early, gave the entire playerbase one singular goal, and then made it so ridiculously unattainable that players became fed up and stopped trying to do it legitimately. Now instead of every other player having a fancy weapon and fighting over who gets theirs next, we have players literally running into the middle without worrying about dying, KNOWING that they'll be rewarded for losing and embracing the fact.
It's really not that hard to AFK through a scenario. Put on some TV, click yes when a scenario pops, run behind a building. Wiggle your mouse occasionally and collect emblems/freenown. You people can all burn and die as far as I care, but I understand why you're doing it.
Without further ado I would present to you the same system be added to RvR as well. Renown based armor drops from players, and a continuation of Renown Gear merchants that extends all the way up the RR's. Add on top of this something else that all the hoarded medallions could finally be used for. Relatively cheap renown gear that should be slightly less powerful than the equivalent set gear (mid RR40's being better than annihilator except the set bonuses, but not as good as conq). Granted of course the renown gear merchants would never sell anything besides greens, wheras drops from high RR players could be blues or purples...
Considering the epic endgame renown grinding that is ahead of us all, I think we've been secretly wondering as a community, why are armor sets the only thing we have to look forward to? Add RR based gear to the game for RvR as well as scenarios and you'll spread out the population a little bit more. Add lots of filler in-between the uber shinies and you won't have people grinding their fingers to the bone to get it. With the current system in scenarios, people WILL eventually get their shinies, but in the meantime they have NOTHING to look forward to. Give them a something else to play with and more than likely they will calm down on the ultra-focus of uber-shiny at the end of the nigh-endless tunnel. Renown is just another leveling system, and it's BY FAR the longer path to take, yet we have how many thousands less items involved in it? Two weapons every 10 RR's past 40, and a grand total of 5 armor sets? Compared to the THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of normal R1-R40 pieces of gear?
Alright then guy-who-picked-up-itemization-responsibility, get your ass to work on finishing the game. Maybe we'll see something in 1.3.6, because I know something to that magnitude wont make it with 1.3.5
Of course, by mid-game I'm talking about T2 and T3, not RR60.
Having recently leveled up a handful of toons my insights to these two areas of the game are as sharp as they've ever been. As such, I've been picking at my brain thinking of ways to make the RvR flow better. T2 isn't bad, typically 2 warbands are the minimum on each side of the field, during primetime, peaking at around 5 throughout all of the pairings. T3 is a bit more barren however, peaking 3 warbands on the best day I've seen so far, and occasionally going with no RvR at all. This I partially blame on Land of the Dead, although many new players returning to the game have no idea what it is. However, the other half is the self-fulfilling curse of having no players will net you no players. Rather than try and force their way through a dead tier, players are more than content to go back and enjoy T1 and T2 all over again. The other alternative is to quickly grind their way to R32 and enter T4, which is more often than not a very painful experience. I've seen my fair share of players wearing Obliterator early in T4.
The solution that everyone interested in a good fight would prefer, and can rarely find, is simply an active RvR lake with fighting on both sides so they can continue the action and excitement over from T2. It's time to break out the funnel. We have something of a lack of passing time in Warhammer. There's nothing that really notes when a day passes, it's just constant fighting or waiting. My funnel would be to introduce an off-time for 2 pairings, and leave one pairing as the main focus until it is either captured or an arbitrary amount of time has passed before freezing the zone and moving on. Battles simply don't last forever, and they really shouldn't in T3. There hasn't been a population to support 3 pairings for over a year now, maybe 2 pairings if you get lucky.
With a single pairing available, players would have little reason aside from skirmishing to be in the other pairings. However, one has to plan for expansion as 8 warbands in a zone might make things a bit unstable. Based on sustained population in the lakes (something like 15m interval checks), the battlefront would dynamically expand to open two pairings at one time instead of just one provided the population could support it. Say for example the sweet spot in T3 is 72 vs 72, or 3 warbands each, the sustained population would need to hit 150 total players for 30m (two 15m intervals) before another pairing would open up. At this point, a new pairing opens and gains it's own timer. If the 150 players is not sustained, then the first zone would simple go inactive and the lakes would return to a single pairing at the end of it's duration. Otherwise it would open up the third pairing and continue the rotation. Now, in the unlikely event that a tier is hosting 300+ players, all three zones would be open, and timers would be removed until it drops back down.
This is just another example of a content-free change to some rulesets that could perk up areas of the game which are under-used. It's scalable so when the server fills up at any given time, people aren't cramped into a sardine can. Also, it's randomized, so you aren't limited to the same content all the time when there's plenty off to the side going unused. It focuses on getting people action any time of the day and driving as many players as needed into one spot. If the live pairing is Empire, you should see a surge of people getting into the Empire lake and going crazy. Empire PQ's should start lighting up across the board. Open warbands would form and /region would spam "LFM! LFM!" at frequent intervals. It's not crazy talk either. You know what happens to T3 when either faction gets Land of teh Durr? Anyone over R25 (that's trying to escape T3 QUICKLY) hits up their fave flightmaster and BAM, instant-funnel to a zone. The problem being RvR quickly dies in T3 as a suffering result.
I wouldn't mind seeing LotD being R32 or higher because of this reason...
The recent resurgence of interest in the game, post Endless Trial, brought some life back to RvR in T3. A few tweaks since there's population to test it out would come in awfully handy. You could even apply this ruleset to T4, each pairing unlocking all three zones, while leaving the other 2 pairings locked up tight. Not to mention how incredibly effective this would be at breaking up the zerg. There's no way you could roll through three zones in one massive blob and expect to capture the pairing, the opposition would just snag something from behind you rather easily. Of course, one would have to adjust how the VP pool works so you capture the pairing instead of individual zones. It'd give the world that connected feeling that we miss out on by using Flightmasters to get to all the battles instead of just running north and south through the zone transitions. Once you finish leveling you kinda miss out on that a bit and it breaks up the flow of the game. I would MUCH rather run through seamless transitions instead of seeing loading screens.
For example lets say that there's less than 150 people doing RvR in T4 when you log on. Throughout the day on this pretend server Destro has been doing really well, and each pairing has gone along nearly flipped, but not quite enough. The old State of Realm addon would show you all three pairings having little activity, with T1-T3 noted below. My new mockup however would show you a single pairing, with each Keep and it's associated BO's for each zone in a single pairing. Also, take note of the Fortresses on each end. There's gotta be good stuff in those! (always capture-able, but defenders can use a flightmaster to get inside if the outer doors are still standing, whoops different thought).
Mind you, the other pairings haven't been locked, as you can tell by the percentage left on the zone. That percentage would be locked in place until the zone timer (i didn't stick it on there, but assume one at the bottom section of each pairing, hurr durr), expired and a new zone opened up. Possibly a 5 minute downtime in between so people wrap up their fighting and get moving to the next zone?
I find it's always therapeutic to end my brain functions with incoherent rambling. Sorry about that. I've intentionally left a lot of stuff out as I think it might spur YOUR mind as well. Man I love this job. =D
I think it's a little insulting to call them "RvR" weapons, you really only get emblems and insignias from doing scenarios, which is exactly what I've been doing on my Shaman since he hit T3.
Anyway, there's a big over-explained post on the Herald here by Nate Levy.
They're not low enough, not nearly enough at least for T3.
I hit R22 on my Shaman the day after the patch went through and started doing scenarios exclusively on him. He's the only toon that I managed to finish the live event with, and currently he's sitting at R26/RR26. The RR24 Staff before cost 660 T3 Emblems, and was reduced to 340. The RR29 Staff (which has a measly 10 more stat points) costs 490.
With a ~50% win rate at scenarios, by R26, I've racked up a grand total of 253 T3 Insignias. That's with the full 24 hour buff from the Live Event reward. Still 87 shy of getting a weapon that is 2 levels beneath me (and will likely be 3 levels by the time I have the cash). This means by R27 I'll be able to afford the RR24 weapon, BUT I won't be able to get the RR29 weapon before getting kicked out of T3. To take things a step further, the ONLY reason that I have anywhere near this many Insignias is because I've done NOTHING but queue for scenarios throughout my entire T3 experience, and I'm already past the halfway mark of T3 with no weapon to show for it. Let alone any of the influence gear for doing REAL RvR.
So where's the balance here? I know it's possible to go out and RvR for all 9 pieces of Influence gear before being ejected into T4, I've done that before. Do I need to invest the same amount of time in scenarios for a SINGLE weapon? The trade-off seems a little underwhelming, especially since the Sentry (RR16 green) weapon has 5 more of my main stat and costs a few measly silver. Oh, but I guess I miss out on that +4 AP and +2 crit. Woo. I've said it before on the PTS, these weapons are not that great until you start looking at the RR65+ ones. For T1-T3, they're damn near unattainable unless you queue for scenarios EXCLUSIVELY, and even then you're only going to get one of the two choices for the tier. It's not necessary. Drop the prices for T1-T3 by half again and they might be close enough that people can enjoy a balance of RvR, Scenarios, and PQ's without missing the rewards from each of them.
Players don't have a chance to stay in the lower tiers forever. You get one run through. With the prices, even reduced to where they are now, players are going to miss out on them if they do anything besides queue. Another one-dimensional aspect of the game... /sad
Thank you google. You make all the random things I find possible.
While contemplating writing up a summary on the 1.3.4 patch I stumbled across a relatively new site for WAR. Although the author of it stopped playing the game back in October, it's still up and running somewhere on the internet. Basically what you have here is graphing of the VP's in each tier and pairing. It grabs the past 24-hours of data and spits em out into something pretty. Nice and handy to have when figuring out what kind of activity you can expect on any given server in RvR.
Now, the problem being this little option in Ventrilo. You can make it so other people can't record what you're saying and that's exactly what the host of it all did. So while we're not blessed with the vocalization of Andy Belford, there's still a load of answers coming straight from the Devs as they're being asked the questions anyway.
It's weird, but it's all I've got. Next time, I'll be sneakier about recording everyone...
Yanno, it figures the blog goes quiet for a week and I manage to randomly pick up another 30 readers on feedburner. Well have no fear! I haven't actually disappeared (something you'd note if yer following me on twitter), just collecting thoughts and working on a couple other RL things.
I think the big feeling is resignation. The fate of the game isn't really in danger with the removal of scenarios. There's enough goodies stuffed into 1.3.4 that people will do a /meh and roll along with the punches. Some will get excited that they can play different scenarios in T4 for a while, but it'll fade over time. I guess that's kinda the idea though, nothing stays new forever and when something is changed people just get used to it.
It's not like they're getting rid of Scenarios entirely. Just killing most of them because they sucked in various ways. Of course, we're gonna get a scenario every weekend as well but that to me kinda feels like the onset of something else. Like, daily quests in WoW, but on a weekend-only basis. "Do the weekend warfront 50 times and get some candy" kind of deal. I can't really say it's a bad thing in theory, keeps people coming back for more candy.
Execution is one thing, but how it's actually going to play out really isn't going to differ. Premades are going to come out in force to get their candy. Pugs are going to come out as well to try and earn their own. The epic facerolling will begin Friday and end Monday morning. Does anyone see this coming? NOTHING was done to alleviate what players were really concerned about when it came to Scenarios. Yeah, everyone gets to play their all-time favorites again, but is it going to be worth it for lower RR players or pug groups? Is it really going to be worth it for premades that earn piddly amounts of renown for rolling these pugs over and over again? Scenario will start, premade will wipe the pug, spawncamp ensues, pugs leave the scenario.
It's still the same problem, and the wrong solution was offered up to make people happy. Granted, it's working for now, in theory. There's been a couple of viable options presented to combat this...
Full Group Queue and Solo Queue directing players into separate scenarios. (i.e. premade/pug seperation).
Premades aren't necessarily full 6-man groups, this is going to separate the 2-3 man groups that enjoy doing SC's together unless they pick up enough to fill out a 6-man. The reason you need to have 6 is simple logistics, all scenarios currently require 6 or 12. If you let anything less than 6 queue for a premade it's going to kill the flow of scenarios as the system has to try to pick and choose what fits where. Much easier to have it grab 2 groups instead of trying to mash together any other combination of 2-5 players.
The bigger problem is when you have a solo queue going that manages to get imbalanced based on gear and RR. Have you ever been privy to rr30's fighting a single rr80? Granted we're talking about the extremes here, but the concept follows. A low RR player will be rewarded exceptionally well for killing a high RR player. Problem is, it's really not going to happen. Gear-wise you have about a 30% discrepancy between 35rr and 75rr, there's also going to be a stat discrepancy that I haven't calculated yet but probably close to the same. The result is character vs character the average high RR player should never lose 1v1, and rarely 2v1. Take a skilled high RR player against 6 lower RR players, and he'd probably STILL win. Get three or four into a scenario that are unmatched and it's pretty much over. Also, consider being the RR75 trying to get the last few hundred thousand renown to RR80. Killing lowbies, while deliciously entertaining, is hardly worth the time. You get what, 50rp's for soloing a RR35? While being worth a few thousand RP to a group of lowbies?
The point I'm making here is that pug v premade only addresses part of the problem. Besides, a crafty bunch of players will solo queue for one scenario and have pretty good chances of getting into as a group anyway. The loopholes around the concept are staggering.
Here's the good stuff. Invader/DP/Tyrant is what I've commonly heard being the requirement for some of the best premade groups. Superior wards are a necessity for getting into Stage 2 City groups. It also happens to be the tipping point for renown when it comes to RR80, or close to it. I.E. every point of renown up to RR55 is only the halfway point to RR80. The game is reasonably matured, players above RR55 are plenty abundant on every server. The population for scenarios, while being slightly affected, would ultimately be much more rewarding for both sides of the line. This fits with the structure of the game leading into T4, you're never separated by gear or level by an exorbitant amount. This ALSO fits in with the changes to the proposed scenarios structure as another 6 scenarios are easily available to be added to a T5 scenario set, reintroducing the variety that is being cut. Premades and pugs will still be effective, as they should IMO, but the challenge will be increased across the board as would the viability of winning any given scenario.
The downside would be another segmentation across the game, and elitists being elitists. T5 guilds will pop up requiring you to run a T5 scenario to gain entry. oRvR would be unaffected for the most part, although a T5 guild assembling would be a force to be reckoned with. Well, the downsides honestly are pretty weak. Players that would be angry about this include any number of gankers and griefers that enjoy spawncamping lowbies for kicks.
What about adding a new T5 zone? The forces of Order figure out a way to protect themselves from Chaos magic to enter the Realm of Chaos directly and seize a foothold. Only the strongest of champions can survive the process, gating off those lower than RR55, or doing perpetual damage to those not in Superior wards. Destruction, aided directly by the chaos gods, are sent into the Realm of Chaos as well, partially to the amusement of the Chaos Gods. Two zones with a Fortress holding each faction, and the most twisted and distorted battlefield you could possibly imagine to fight over. Control wouldn't be over access to the Realm but the sources of Chaos magic throughout the realm granting a bonus to your allies in T4, but a penalty to the ones in T5...
Anyway, I'm going completely off track as it is. The point of the post was simply that the changes to scenarios and the carrots added to the game aren't going to make playing them any more fair. There's some cool stuff involved, but for the most part it'll be the same way things are going now. Premades and high RR's rolling over the carpet of pugs and lowbies. Spawncamping and griefing abound followed by people skipping out of sc's, or at least finding a spot to afk until it's over. The winners get the hoard of goodies, and the losers get their consolation prize.
1.3.4 is a wash for me. Just enough /meh to combat the remaining /meh. I'll be eagerly looking forward to 1.3.5 in hopes of changes that make more of a difference.
I'm not going to pretend to understand the fascination with the chickens, but more WAR bloggers has never bothered me in the slightest. iheartgorfang (penned by the dubious 'ChickenArise') is the latest addition to the WAR blogosphere. I think my favorite parts of her blog, aside from actual content, are the random labels and illustrations spattered about. They induce smilies.
Also, more female bloggers to shake up this sausage factory, never a bad thing.
So let's put things in perspective. For the next step in Mythics grand plans for Warhammer Online, they're "restructuring" scenarios. Take a peek!
Scenarios RemovedScenarios Leftover (Available starting at each tier)
Black Fire BasinNordenwatch - T1 Blood of the Black CairnGates of Ekrund - T1 Caledor WoodsMourkain Temple - T2 Doomfist CraterPhoenix Gate - T3 Dragon's BaneHighpass Cemetary - T3 Gromril CrossingBattle for Praag - T4 Grovod Caverns Howling Gorge Khaine's Embrace Logrin's Forge Lost Temple of Isha Maw of Madness Reikland Hills Serpent's Passage Stonetroll Crossing Talabec Dam Thunder Valley Tor Anroc
Yeah, this is gonna go over well... First off, the 5/6 of the scenarios left are the ones that we recently did Weekend Live Events over the past couple of months. If the metrics they used to figure out what scenarios are the "most popular" didn't take this into account it kinda makes sense why they were picked.
However, on a more important note, WHAT THE FUCK!? Cutting 75% of the scenarios from the game is what we were teased about when they said a "few" of the less played scenarios were going away? Can someone buy these guys a clue? Seriously! I've never been more disgusted with a move an MMO has made since the NGE from Star Wars Galaxies. Are developers TRYING to kill the game so they can get a job working on something else? VARIETY IS SPICY. The biggest thing I promote about WAR when getting people to take a look at it is the VAST amount of scenarios they have a chance to play. 24 is a LOT compared to any other MMO out there. Why are we throwing away this unique aspect of the game?
I think, at most, we could have done away with 6 scenarios total, but not entirely removed! REPLACE them with other scenarios you guys have stashed in your secret squirrel lockbox. I'm not entirely concerned which 6 would be cut and replaced, something Mythic could have made an in-game poll about I suppose (NO WAY! ASKING PLAYERS DIRECTLY FOR INPUT??). I cannot stress how far away I feel Mythic has their finger from the pulse of the game as it stands. Instead of feeling for a heartbeat, it seems more like they're feeling for bowel movements, and this one might blow open pretty hard. Keep an eye on the forums. Players DO NOT WANT THIS.
Roadkillz - Gorfang "Serpants passage/ Dragons Bane/ Logrins forge/ Howling gorge/ Caledor woods are great t4 sc's taking these out are a huge mistake" Jund1 - Phoenix Throne "Am I the only one upset that they are getting rid of both Caledor woods and Howling Gorge scens?" Seytor - Gorfang "Removing Caledor Woods, Howling Gorge, Serpents Passage, Grovod Caverns... Never has your finger been so far from the pulse Mythic" Nebuchadnezzar - Badlands "I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to wipe out the majority of this game's scenarios but it wasn't...I'm sure that everybody is going to be thrilled to play through the same two SCs(Nordenwatch + Gates) for the entire game." FriarKhan - Gorfang "this decision just seems horrible. Players that are levelling get repetitive scen, and vets get repetitive scen." Kervo - Volkmar "taking content away from the game, with a dogwaffle promise of "event play" without any mention of new content when the rumors are the game is in maintenance mode must be a PR nightmare." Torre - Badlands "Sorry Andy, but who said they wanted to get rid of Serpent's Passage? Perhaps a few didn't like it, but there's no way it was a player "majority"." Greysyn - Badlands "I agree 100% with Inda. Who in the world wanted Serpents taken out? I haven't talked to anybody that thought Serpents being removed was a good idea." Laurreth - Gorfang "How can one be constructive about this joke of a patch beyond saying "don't have this patch"? You remove content (like, most good T4 scenarios)..." Lantharius - Badlands "Keep the old tier 4 sc minus Logrin's Forge, Maw of Madness, and Grovod Caverns. Add Nordenwatch, Phoenix Gate, and High Pass Cemetry. We keep the good tier four sc and we add some flavor from earlier tiers. A rotation system could work as well." Majorin - Gorfang "the changes to SC make absolutely no sense period. I mean the complaints related to SC [are] related to pre-mades vs. single quers" Loldpshealing - Iron Rock "Put in new weapons and please, leave in the scenarios we love." Stravok - Badlands "if that list is the actual *new* scenario list for Tier4 then it's pure fail. " JeannRosaire - Iron Rock "This is completely silly and ridiculous... I hope they realize their mistake before this goes live..." Hothead - Iron Rock "That list for t4 scenarios is garbage..why would they remove all the other scenarios" Huntler - Gorfang "Mythic please have a game wide poll on what scenarios we want. You took out several of the best. grovod, serpents, caledor woods. What were you thinking?" Foofmonger - Volkmar "Personally, I don't think this is a good idea, not because of any reason besides the actual scenario removed, there are a ton of good ones that should be in the "regular" list." Kirsten - Badlands "This is a terrible idea. Mournkain in tier 4 will be a bomb squad nightmare. Nordenwatch gets old, so do we really have to do it in every tier?" Utopi - Volkmar "Just give it up with the polls/ Rants because they will not revert these epic failed changes." Stormironballz - Gorfang "Terrible, Terrible, Terrible news. Gromril, Grovod, Serpents, gone gone gone. Even the scenarios I don't care for one way or another are gone in Logrins and the Black Crag one."
So maybe a few of you guys follow me on Twitter, probably not. Well, like 5 of you do. Anyway, I don't pass judgement, Twitter is what it is and most people couldn't be bothered with it. However, if you DO follow me or the likes of @werit@vn_cydoc @siberwulf or @cpodemayo you might have noticed a bit of frothing this afternoon.
First off, this stemmed from the recent patch that removed the ability to purchase RvR gear with medallions, and sell it for gold. Apparently you could make something in the range of 45g for each Invader broken all the way down to Decimator gear. One Invader crest, 45g, 100 Invader Crests, 4500g. Okay, I can see where that might be a problem, no biggie.
Connect the dots now, what can you buy with unused RvR currency at the moment? Well, there's a set for each tier and crest. Then you have heal/ap potions. Once you're all set on your gear it's really just coming down to heal/ap potions. That's a LOT of crests sitting around fairly useless. I figure across all my toons I have a couple thousand Officer medallions in equivalency that I have unused.
Another line to another dot. 1.3.4 is bringing us RvR weaponry. This has already been confirmed in various places across the internets. Unfortunately it's also bringing us RvR weapon currency. The question is why, and so far the answer has been to start a level playing field for all players. Now, a lot of players are concerned about the premade vs pug scenario matches. Since the Weapon Currency will mainly be gained from RvR, it's not really promoting much of a level playing field at all. The premades will quickly earn their weapons anyway, and will be right on top of the game with the best that these weapons offer us. As far as we know at the moment, there isn't any real changes coming to scenarios that is going to remedy this situation.
To be honest, I could care less that premades are beating pugs silly. It's their damn job.
However, to say that a new currency is needed to create a level playing field is just silly, especially when the playing field involves RvR. Land of the Dead scarabs? Yeah, fine, that made sense. Those are from PvE, you don't kill people to get them, although during the live event you sure could (and guess who did all the killing? premades!). The point I'm getting at is simply that there is NO LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. The haves and have-nots are going to be seperated as far as the game allows these discrepancies. The haves will have the BEST weapons, armor, accessories, pocket items, potions, talismans, liniments, and abilities. The have-nots will... uh... not, for the most part. So why beat around the bush? Are you so deluded that this is going to change anything?
This is simply a brand-new grind. Thanks for that. We all love grinding our fingers to the bone. At least we can kill people in the process... well, at least some of us can, like the ones that aren't having problems killing people in the first place. Look, just get rid of the Weapon currency and stick to the RvR currency that we have all accumulated over time. Do the haves get it faster than the have-nots? Well yeah, but they were going to get it faster anyway. It's the same playing field all around, with less grind. Which is a good thing!
Yanno, for a conversation lasting 20 tweets or so, this was all rolling around in my head. Now onto the meat of the matter.
Since we're introducing more stuff that people will want to spend their hard-earned RvR currency on anyways, you might want to go with things on the lower end of the scale to pad your options a little bit. If you make weapons scale in power with a range of 500-1000 medallions, there should really be a lower end that buffers some of that savings away. Things that are consumable, or wear off over time. Things like +20 stat talismans, r200 crafting ingredients (blue seeds! zomg!), r200 talisman/apothecary containers, maybe some weapons or armor normally found at PQ's, tons of stuff! Fill in the bottom end of a vendor with gear and it'll make reaching that top end so much harder!
Here's the thing that makes it all beautiful, randomize the loot list over time. Ok, well this leads into the other part of the equation. Where are you going to put these vendors? In my mind, they belong out on the battlefields. Skaven scavenger merchant caravans! Picking clean the bodies of the fallen, there would be one roaming Skaven merchant with a pair of Rat Ogres pulling his cart of goods. Neutral to both sides and a fan of violence! See, the thing is these merchants wouldn't want to roam around in an active battlefield. That'd just be suicide getting caught between two blood thirsty tyranid swarms of raging warriors. Oh no, these merchants would be in the other six RvR lakes just begging for small group on group confrontation. Or rather, ganking.
I've always been a big fan of ganking, even though I'm quite horrible at it.
This is the beauty of the thing. Each time a zone flips, in either direction, the merchant would be displaced. The zone coming out of contention would get a new merchant with a fresh loot table and probably a bit of skirmishing over who gets to sample his wares first. How cool is that? Haven't you ever been in the middle of fighting over a zone when it flipped to watch the battlefield go empty immediately? It's frustrating!
Also, for the people working at Mythic, the hardest part of the implementation would be coding the randomizer for when zones flip for a couple dozen different loot tables. The great part is that since it's in RvR, dead enemy players could be wearing gear from anywhere in the world! Fill loot tables to your hearts content! Aside from that it should just be 9 copies of the same merchant, pathing across the RvR lake like the good ol' cultivating mobs do in the PvE areas. Look, your dev team is undeniably shrunk. Making small things like this goes a loooong way to bringing something new to the game. Do something like this with every patch, just something small and interesting that is persistent and draws in a bit of RvR. It's not the scale of huge live events and dungeons, but it's something players will look to when they're tired of the options presented to them. People LIKE options.
So, to sum up. Two things.
1. Leave RvR rewards to the already implemented RvR currency. 2. Introduce roaming RvR scavenger merchants to inactive lakes. 3. ???? 4. Profit!
Thanks to some of my old-school guildies returning to the game I've been put in the position of leading warbands through the mostly barren battlefields of T3. As I almost alluded to in a previous post that was eaten by the internets (I.E. it never got posted) the tactical state of doorhammering, or Keep Sieges, is frankly quite pathetic for the majority of casual players. Don't get me wrong, I happen to LIKE casual players for the most part, it's just that a lot of them have no idea what to do when you're rolling up on a keep that is likely to have a dozen defenders or more. As such, I'm taking personal responsibility for not enlightening these players earlier on the more subtle tactics and strategy involved in Keep Siegeing.
Hopefully, I can right my heinous mistakes with this short guide.
Keeps, starting in T3 and typically continuing through T4 have a few key points of interest to note. Understanding each of these and the strategic significance not only to your realm, but the enemy realm, is a challenge that most players are either uninterested in, or the zerg as a whole considers unimportant.
First, the main focal point of a keep siege. The door.
Mistake #1: During a siege, all the MDPS will run up on the door and flail away at it seeing their big unmitigated numbers fly across the screen all willy-nilly, driving them to raging e-boners as they get perverse satisfaction from big hard numbers in their face.
Mistake #2: RDPS will focus on the oil with single target abilities and dots, leaving the oil pourer relatively unscathed the entire time, freely dumping hot splattery love all over the mass of MDPS humping the door with reckless abandon.
Mistake #3: Healers panic. All their bars are dropping as melee and tanks alike get rocked by oil splashing freely all over their faces. Half the warband dies, the enemy pushes out and drives hard and deep into the warm and squishy center, the Keep Siege is wiped, rags are handed out at the warcamp to clean up.
A question for anyone playing a melee toon, do any of you really think that you're doing a reasonable amount of damage when compared to a ram that hits for 30-40k a swing? Fine, of course you do. Well, stop it. Your job is not to beat on the door, your job is to kill incoming reinforcements. It's not as exciting as afk-humping the door and tugging off to your big damage numbers scrolling across the screen, but it's necessary. Not to mention, with ~6 melee guarding each postern, you're going to quickly destroy any enemy that wanders through. Hey look! Renown, Xp, AND Influence! You just have to WAIT FOR IT. Here's one for the RDPS, why are you trying to focus down the oil if there's someone pouring it? Once oil is loaded into that thing, it gains 10x it's unmanned hitpoints, and can be repaired almost instantly. You know what really sucks for someone trying to pour the oil? AOE the damn thing. Yes, move into your 65'-80' range and drop every AoE you possibly can on that stupid thing. If every RDPS in your group can do this, that oil is going to stop pouring as the poor sap trying to tip the bucket will either quickly die, or run like a bitch crying to his momma. Hell, for this reason, I'd recommend leaving the oil UP, so you can nuke whatever poor soul thinks he has a chance at dumping the stuff.
Healers... for the love of god... you have one archtype to worry about for the majority of your keep sieging. YOU can shape the battlefield with your unique ability to keep people alive. 4 Tanks on the ram, 4 targets to heal. Move out of the 100' group heal range and stay safely between 100-150'. If some MDPS get into the oil LET THEM DIE. Drop a rez on them, and let them LEARN the hard way that "No motherfucker, I'm not healing your stupid ass if you're playing in the oil. Go guard a postern". It's OK. You can be the biggest dick on the battlefield and NO ONE is going to forsake your healing if they die immediately after doing some stupid... well, at least after the first couple times. Now, to be fair, if they're doing what they are supposed to be doing, by all means heal them when they get in trouble. If you see no melee on the door, but life bars are dropping, run over and give them a couple quick bursts of loving goodness, they'll do their job much more frequently when you give them candy for doing it right.
Tanks, your job for the first two doors of each keep is simple. If you have a shield, take the ram and slam that bitch into the door. If you DON'T have a shield, then go join the MDPS at a postern. Hell, you might even want to guard them too. Now, if your warband leader is one cool savvy sonofabitch (like me), he'll have all 4 tanks in the same group so you can have a 4-way with each others Guard ability. Yes, Cross-guarding is good. Everyone with a shield has a chance to block, everyone guarded/guarding with a shield has a chance to block TWICE AND TAKE 1/2 DAMAGE. Don't QQ over taking damage on the ram. If you die, you die. Expect a rez shortly, probably before you can whine about how little heals were spammed on you, or how long it takes to get a rez around here. If this doesn't happen, you're probably wiping anyway for any of the above reasons. Regroup, smack a few of the assholes that failed at their job, and move along. The game doesn't end from a single wipe.
Now, the secondary and more tactical aspects of keep siegeing is where things require a bit more finesse and patience. Oh, and a picture for Passwatch in EvC T3. So, everyone should understand the positioning here if you read the previous paragraphs. Red is the four Tanks on the ram. Green are the healers in the middle, closer to the DPS for group healing, but within 150' for focused heals on the tanks. Yellow is the RDPS, close enough to AoE the Oil, or to nuke anything rushing the middle. Orange is the MDPS spread out near each postern to intercept incoming reinforcements.
Two new lines here, the path for Order in light blue, and the path for Destro in purple. It's important to know where your enemy is coming from, and where they're going to head. 60% of the time, if they're going for a postern, they'll be swinging around wide to stay out of sight as best they can. Also, having a single RDPS near the postern is more than acceptable, faster to dismount them at max range, and let your melee eat them alive. Now, chances are if anyone is coming to defend a keep, they won't be very organized until they get inside. It's a bit more rare to see a well established warband roll in as a single force. At best you'll have 3-6 players at a time that are actually organized, and aside from that one or two at a time that will try to sneak around. Provided you have a suitable force, it shouldn't be an issue to kill them before they pop inside. The KEY TO KILLING THEM, is simply to keep your distance from the postern. Standing AT the door, or even within rez range from the wall does absolutely dick. You need to kill them far enough away from the wall that a healer can't reach them without risking their own ass, because they simply won't (most of the time).
During this stage, you may see renown pouring in like crazy as small amounts of players are focused more on getting inside than fighting at all. They drop fast and hard, with sexy RP's and candy flying around. Guarding the Postern will give you MORE RP than flipping the Keep (which you'll get anyway if you do your job). MDPS have the unique ability to Charge or Stealth, not to mention Mara/WL Pulling. At RR30 your stealthers can sit right inside the postern and crush the hopes of anyone who thought they were going to survive, this is more common in T4 however.
Eventually, your enemies will most likely get tired of filtering into the keep and go RvE somewhere else (the battle is won!), or they'll get their shit together and come storming through the center. IF they choose the latter of the two options, everyone (TANKS INCLUDED) needs to fall into the middle and wipe the bastards before too much damage is done. This is tricky, and not guaranteed to work, but occasionally you can deflect an attack on your rear if everyone reacts accordingly. Provided your grouping is done well, send one group of melee to the back for healer assassination, the other group to the middle to intercept and defend the squishies. Derpa durr, it's RvR, good luck with that!
Moving on to Stage 2, where most warbands wipe since they usually fail at executing stage one properly and the inner keep is full of pissed off enemies. With fire. -Pardon the horrid image quality here...-
So here we have the same idea in practice, the only real change is the MDPS. One group will be guarding the most likely postern, while the other one does laps around the building killing off guards and catching heals as they pass by the core group on a hunt for any other enemies wandering around. Also, you have the greater danger here of Morale 4's being thrown around, possibly many at one time. Keep some distance between each other (as best you can) to lessen the AoE morales, and use whatever CC you can to mitigate the rate at which they're flying about.
For Passwatch in particular, the healers are going to be pretty damn close to the walls. Not a lot of great places to go between the 100-150' range and still have LoS on your tanks. Spamming group heals, if tanks are in your party, in this instance is fine and dandy. You'll probably need them anyway since defenders inside the keep are REALLY hard to get rid of. Keep the same strategy in play as the first door, and soon enough you'll be walking up those nice new big stairs to wipe the Lord.
So there you are. Essentially a two step process for any class to what they need to do during a siege. The problem currently is getting people used to the idea that yes, you get a LOT more renown for guarding posterns than humping the main door. Also, getting people to listen falls mostly on the shoulders of the healers and the warband leader. If you're leading, make sure your healers fully understand what you are planning to do. Getting them to agree to your devious plans will make things a lot easier when they keep people in line.
As a disclaimer, running a pug warband with tactics does not equal a premade warband with 10x the communication. If you want to get serious about RvR, join a guild, get on Ventrilo, and take part of the glory that is vocal communication. Even WB leaders have to fight, we can't sit around and give direction the whole time.
For my second Destro toon on this little escapade, please refer to the scary looking dude to the right. Currently I've got him to R25 and find myself deep in the throes of T3 desolation. It's not as bad as it used to be, scenarios occasionally pop (I've got a 92% win rate), and I'm finding with a healer I'm pretty much unkillable in PvE.
Like, extremely unkillable. It's disturbing how much abuse I can take at a time. I've yet to find a PQ that I can't pull every single mob at the same time and not survive provided my healer doesn't fall asleep.
It might be the capped resists, 30% block and 70% parry that do the trick. Toss about 500 toughness on there, a Thornshield III standard, Discordant Fluctuation and Dreadful Agony, it's just a world of killing without having to lift my sword. Doesn't really do the trick in RvR as well, mobs don't really heal themselves at all so the little damage adds up over time.
I'm still something of a menace in RvR, standing in the back protecting the healers is my preferred position. 70% of the time is waiting, which is exhausting, but worth it. The benefits of snare+punt+ravageravageravageravageravage I suppose. Once we're put into a situation were either we or they are dominating, I can take the front and Hold the Line against all the ranged nonsense while intercepting pesky Warrior Priests or other MDPS that rush in. I don't often let things sneak by if it can do some damage.
I suppose I could put away my huge shield and go with a two hander, rebind all my hotkeys to ravage, and roll my face against the keyboard to rack up some silly amounts of damage and DB's in scenarios, but to be honest it's just nowhere near as much fun. Playing a Chosen, or any tank really, is about abusing control. You call the shots, direct the battle, and cover your assets. Also, form a warband and people are far more likely to take direction from a tank in my modest amount of experience. So then, overall, the experience with Chosen is mostly good. Flipping between auras takes some practice, and the pace is quite a bit slower, but your effectiveness is a bit higher as well. It takes a bit of finesse and patience, keeping 60 AP available at any moment is almost a requirement. Being able to react thoughtfully and quickly to situations is a boon. Totally different playstyle than I'm used to.
I may be avoiding Land of the Dead this time around as well. Sure, it's a fast and easy way to grind out r40 once you hit 25, but some of these PQ's are quite a bit of fun. Not to mention, I don't think I've done any of them. I'm not a huge fan of PvE, but when T3 goes silent for hours at a time I'd rather do something interesting than slap the same 15 skeletons to death over and over again. Perhaps if I'm lucky I'll have just enough RvR to get three pieces of my Stalker set before it becomes pointless to me. Barring that, I may actually go down to the Gunbad Tunnels and make a serious attempt at getting some nice Redeye gear. Not sure, the path ahead is all cloudy with this nasty Chaos stuff... bleh.
Seriously... there's WAY too much city sieging going on.
Playing on both Iron Rock with my Destro toons, and Badlands with my Order toons during primetime is a struggle to avoid the city. Last night was particularly bad. Both servers had sieges going at the same time overlapping by about an hour. How the hell am I supposed to do scenarios if I can expect a prime time siege (a couple times) every single night? That's not the extent of it either. I usually get online at the beginning of east coast prime time and play until the end of west coast prime time. Hell, I'd love to do some city scenarios if they weren't crap. Where's my Reikland Factory and Twisting Tower already?
Please Mythic, even if you don't associate my proposed offensive and defense buffs for the city siegers, including 2 scenarios while the city is being attacked would be a hell of a lot more fun than having to roll toons on multiple servers. Too many people running sc's instead of defending against the empty instance our enemies refused to join? Only let one of each scenario run at a time! I'm not sure how your SC backend works, but if it tosses everyone into a queue, as one would assume, things should roll along smoothly enough. Right? It'd work nicely with the solo-queuing by RR rank, and premade v premade group queuing. Hell, at that point you could run 2 of each scenarios at a time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind being able to get in on a phat load of renown pretty much at will by defending or attacking a city, it's just more often than not, as these city sieges become more frequent, I find myself in a city devoid of opposition where the most interesting action I get is running between two flags. What the bloody hell is that? It's a fair step better than only having two objectives I suppose, but if no one comes to play, what's the point? You want an all out bloody war in the streets of your capital cities? Add an unbalanced feature, just like you do for scenarios, that closes down the instance if you have a significant discrepancy between attackers and defenders. Well what if one of the forces is sickeningly dominant over the other? Spawn more overlords! Or just lords, or hell, a group of champs might be enough. Let them rally near our spawn for a minute or so, then charge into the nearest BFO with, hopefully, the rest of the forces needing assistance.
Here's another thought to spice up the city siege mechanics a little bit, why not have some sort of bombing run? The attackers have to drag along a giant bomb from their spawn point to a point of attraction on the map. There's banks, and auctioneers, taverns, libraries, temples, all kinds of things that we could blow up. It'd need to be a big bomb though, so snare the bomb runner and make his teammates watch over his ass. If you manage to get a bomb inside your target, it gets a 30s timer before killing everyone nearby (ala Khaine's Embrace), and add a handful of VP's or points to the PQ flip. I would also limit the targets to only be explodable one time per city instance, as opposed to PQ flips, and only one giant bomb per run with a 2m respawn timer if they runners get killed in the process. Heh, as an added bonus, if the bomb runner is killed, it hits the ground with a 30s defuse timer. Once the time runs down, another big kaboom to wipe out you foolish bastards playing with bombs in a city siege.
See how this works now? Use it to get points to flip the PQ, or use it to clear out a massive hoarde camping at a BO. Fun innit?
Now we're using more of the scenario mechanics that we all love. A little Howling Gorge combined with Khaine's Embrace and Stonetroll Crossing. C'mon guys! Let's up the ante a little bit here!
Now, it seems to me that generally when a few posts in a forum are made, that's the minority of the population speaking on behalf of the majority. If this is true, it appears the Endless Trial is bringing a whole lot more people back to the game, along with true noobs, than many have given it credit for. Sure, T1 isn't as balanced as it used to be considering the number of twinks involved (haha!), but for the most part this hasn't stopped people from subbing to the game one bit. Honestly, when you think about it, having a heavily twinked out free trial is more representative of the end game anyway. One does not walk into T4 and pwn, after all. You're subjected to the same sort of twinky nonsense that you currently get in the Endless Trial.
That being said, populations are growing. Like any recent game WAR had it's super-highs supported mainly by marketing and propaganda, with a dash of WoW/EQ/LotRO apathy, which then took a pretty sharp decline over the next 9 months. I believe after Aion was released that we hit the subscriber base (all those layoffs were a bit premature) of about 45k. Now, with the 1.3.x patches, MOST of the issues with Warhammer have been all but squashed. Yes, Bright Wizards and Sorcs still dish out STUPID amounts of damage (it's their job), and your Warrior Priests and DoK's are nigh-unkillable (again, their damn job), but class balance is working itself out as people L2P and spread the common knowledge around willy-nilly. Indications like this forum post are a spot of brightness in the blood and gore spattered fields of WAR we commonly know.
I'll just get it out of the way, WAR is on an uptick. T2 and T3 have had more action in them than I've seen in a long time, hosting 30-40 players in RvR during prime hours. Development has slowed down, but is far from stopped or going into maintenance mode. There's even some whispers of change coming with the next patch that further compliments changes to the T4 experience. WAR isn't the all-out success that many of us hoped it would be, but it's starting to become the PvP/RvR niche game that it's been aiming for all along.
Ah, Sqwittle Mcsquee. This was my first WAR toon from 4 servers and 3 guilds ago, back in the days of the Chaos Wastes RvR/RP server and the Dogs of War guild. Changes over the past year have altered this class quite a bit, but it's still the same idea. Run around and shoot everything that moves while your squig harasses anything that bleeds. Well I've gotten him to R40 on Iron Rock and have made a habit of blasting away with a giant green arrow of doom. Why doesn't anyone use Shoot Thru Ya? I've identified some of the main issues, but for the most part I've overlooked them as the damage still scales well regardless.
If you're confused as to why I'm talking about Destro, please refer to item number one in my Keg End Resolutions.
So my little Squig Herder was abandoned at the paltry rank of 31 with some pretty decent gear acquired from PQ's, but utterly useless for the current age. Also, pretty much destitute in the ways of cash and no guild associations I went to the one place I could get some phat lewt for the pawning. Land of the Dead. Two quick levels and I was decked out in Fallen Explorer gear, one lucky drop of a shaman healcrit Sandstorm staff netted 3500g, then bam. Back in business. A few guildies from way back got together and we had a decent team, bought up a bunch of blues and purples, Ruggog's Shoota for myself was a very nice find, then off to make with the killin'.
Right, so we got smoked pretty bad in scenarios. Order farming the king on a bi-daily basis probably didn't help with the gear discrepancy. Still had some good times, and moved from RR22 to RR28 over two days. I should mention something for the Witch Hunters in the crowd, do NOT use Sudden Accusation when you're fighting a goblin. All it does is proc our RUNAWAY! over and over and over again, which btw is a hilarious way to kill multiple RR60+ WH's in a row (thanks for the RR29-30, lolz). Some thing for IB's and Binding Grudge, it just doesn't work to drop a movement barb on us. I'll suck up that 800 damage with half a pot, and kite your silly ass all over the place while my Spiked Squig (with his +620 odd BAL) tears you apart from behind. Wanna kill a squiggy? Forget the dots, hit em with big single target abilites, and snare them before you get rooted/snared/punted.
Angry little buggers they are.
Needless to say, aside from the rampant Order dominance on Iron Rock, I'm having a great time playing the SH. It's a good amount different than my Engineer, Shadow Warrior, or White Lion which all share similar traits. This is one of the beautiful things about WAR in my opinion. Mirror classes really don't exist, the way you play an Engi is going to be significantly different from how you play a Magus. A Chosen is not the same as a Knight. The SH, SW, WL, Mara share similar styles, but each is it's own beastly force to be dealt with (Melee SW's need to dual wield, kthnx!). My goal of two destro toons to RR36 is nearly halfway through, and I think the next toon to level up will likely be my Chosen. I hear their defensive spec is some kind of insane to deal with.
I'd also like to apologize to all my Order buddies that I'm missing out on time with. The Knights of Order are still running strong on Badlands from what I hear, and I miss my Engi/Slayer/AM/SW/WP r40's quite a bit. I'll be back for sure, hopefully with a bit more insight into our Destro adversaries.
Right then! So first off we have at least two new additions to the sidebar of Warhammery goodness, and one returning blog/guildsite.
First off, much props goes to @MykielWAR and his recent endeavor of not only a weekly video podcast, but a FULL LENGTH FEATURE FILM!? Man I wish I had the free time, alcohol, knowledge and patience to do something like that. O.o
Next on the chopping block is a blog that I'm pretty sure I had mentioned before, pretty sure I had added to not only my RSS reader AND Blogroll here, but it keeps sneaking off into the shadows (obviously trying to kill me). Blog the Witch! is, as one might imagine, focused on those scantily clad death-skanks of WAR we refer to as Witch Elves, or "AGHH!! RUN! Witc- Kthttg*gurgle*gghkhk..". Taransula is one of the nastiest around. High into the RR70 range, there's a ton of insight and gameplay aspects to the blog. Along with the galleries of mostly not-clothed... dark elves... hnmm...
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Fight on the Flag is back to WAR! Okay, well they have been since late November to be honest. I really have no idea why I didn't have them on the blogroll. Ya'll are still on my RSS reader, sooo... yeah. Sorry bout that Perle! Here you can keep up with just another random taste of Warhammer goodness. Because really, who doesn't love random Warhammer goodness? Shaddup and check em' out!
So that'll do me for that little update. Does anyone have any other WAR-related website and/or blog type links you wanna share? I'd love to hear what else is out there hiding in the cracks of the internets.
It's not very often that I stop and drool over the attention my gracious readers and fellow bloggers lay upon this humble blog that I've marked as my own corner of the internet. This is one of the inevitable milestones, and just in time for the New Year. It's a wonderful gift from you all, and I do appreciate it and look forward to delivering content as often as creatively possible. It's a number like this that make some of us bloggers stop and go "Well damn. I really didn't think I would come this far."
For myself, I really didn't imagine this blog being something more than a way to dispense some creative writing on occasion with the Warhammer lore in mind. Almost immediately after my first post I realized that it was going to be so much more than that. This is the place for my thoughts and ideas to be displayed, all the theories and what-ifs, little quips and quotes from various other WAR community members. Oh and the community was thick and ripe with blogs back when I first started. Well, for a month or so anyway. What I had stumbled upon was the tail end of the Warhammer blogging phenomenon, but it hadn't deterred me in the slightest. If anything it made me more stubborn and persistent in providing great (or at least somewhat interesting) content for the players and WAR-curious gamers out there.
To be fair, the game isn't in great shape. Although TONS of bugs have been fixed, and performance has improved exponentially, the population has thinned down dramatically over this past year. We're still out here though, gamers and fans, bloggers and forum admins, we still enjoy every huge heartpounding battle and the sight of that elusive drop or revenge inspired kill. There's a lot to love about WAR, and as long as there's people dropping by this corner of the internet, I'll be sure to share that love. I'll share my hopes and dreams, thoughts and inspirations, moments of glory, and the rare moment of well earned defeat. As I see things now, WAR is coming out of it's infancy as an MMO. It's established a solid foundation of like-minded bloodthirsty ravenous warriors hungering for the next sight of battle to redden their vision and incite a riot. For massive visceral RvR experience in an immersive world rich with an IP that stretches back with literal decades of history, well... Nothing even comes close to touching it.
I would still be playing the game regardless of this blog, but I wouldn't still be blogging without the people who make it all worthwhile.
A thought crossed my mind, what if WAR broke loose, and all six factions split apart into a free-for-all struggle?
Ah, roll that around in your skullcase for a minute, while I illuminate the possibilities...
I know some people are going to say "Well there goes Grimnir... Someone grab the sedatives and strap him back into his rocker, he's lost his mind again." and that's fine. I get visions like these on occasion, and they do cause my brain to flail about like a fresh Slayer dropped into a pile of greenskins. There's a handful of GamesWorkshop purists out there that would take a huge offense to the lore of the game being violated as well I suppose, but isn't the Age of Reckoning a new chapter in the lore? Can the game not move forward from the past and assert itself as a true addition to the IP itself? Well, perhaps not, but if it could a breakdown in alliances would be one hell of a fight.
It's all there too, go through some of the quests in the game, particularly a few of the epics, and you'll see the mistrust and control issues that just about every single race has with each other. I could fork over a dozen different scenarios where one race gets the impressions that another race is just using them, or stockpiling weapons, or getting its soldiers killed unnecessarily. Sure, there's supposed to be some sort of unity tying them all together, the forces of "Order" and "Destruction", but that's pretty flimsy to me. The elves are fighting over their island, the Dwarves and Greenies are fighting over holes in the ground, and Chaos apparently lost it's mind when they tried yet again to invade the Empire. There's no real interconnection between these conflicts, just a common situation being that they're all conflicts and some ancient treaties I suppose. Elves bring the magic, Dwarves bring the technology, Empire has the expansive civilization, Greenskins are shock troops, and Chaos is insanity given form.
To be honest, in an all-out 6-way war, no single faction would hold the cards necessary to dominate the other 5 armies. This is what breeds a truly endless WAR. Pushing forward on two fronts, then being flanked by three others. Constantly looking behind you while pushing ahead as fast as you possibly can, desperately hoping that the other factions are dealing with each other instead of sneaking up behind you. I really think they could pull it off too. We would be starting off with the standard 4 classes to choose from with each faction, but this can be expanded upon with another archtype that's been missing for far too long. The controller/mezzer CC master! Oh man, that's a whole other post right there. Essentially stripping the more powerful forms of CC from each class and granting them to a CC-based class. Leave Tanks with a perma-snare and disarm, MDPS with their CC-break/charge and a KD, RDPS with a long-punt and silence, and Healers with a PBAoE-stagger and absorb shields. Then allow the mezzer all the AoE snares, roots, staggers, a variety of punts, KDs, disarms, and silences. Each class would have a very limited amount of CC on the normal cooldown timers, where the mezzer would have all the crazy CC on slightly reduced cooldown timers. Also as a 6th class it would be a stealther for the Greenskins, High Elves, Chaos, and Dwarves. Then a medium armor MDPS for Order and Dark Elf.
Ok, ok. Time to calm down a little bit. Adding a 5th archetype to the game WOULD be a little crazy I'll admit, but what's wrong with being a little crazy? I think my point is getting across one way or another. With smaller factions comes smaller more focused battles. Gone would be the days of epic 100v100 battles, as it'd be more like 20v20 battles, and maybe another 20 on the side, with another 20 stalking them while another 20 are stealing your babies from an undefended keep off yonder... Yeah, that'd be awfully tough with only two keeps available in a pairing to be taken at a time. Even tougher if one faction has to own both keeps to force a pairing eh? Well, throw out them silly ass rules then! Most of em. You see, in my world, each pairing would have warcamps for their respective races, and 4 invasion points for the other factions. Essentially a mini-camp in the RvR lake somewhere. All 6 factions would have access to all 9 zones at any given time. Unless a zone gets locked... hehe.
But Grim! You just told us to throw out those silly ass rules!! Ah yeah, suppose I did. Well, they'd be changing. Instead of locking the RvR lake when a faction controls a certain amount of "Victory" points, they would have to capture every objective in the zone (including their opposing factions warcamp) which would total 1 Warcamp, 2 Keeps, and 4 Faction Camps. Wait, what? Faction camps? Well yeah, you thought I wanted the stupid Battle Objectives to stick around? Seriously... hehe. Convert each of the Battle Objectives into an unwalled spawn point for the opposing factions that aren't conflicted in the pairing. Would there be ganking? Most likely, yes. Would that stop people from fighting? Well, hell no. I know this from experience. Where there is ganking, there is conflict. Conflict breeds hate. Hate fuels fires and fighting. One Witch Hunter ganks your ass when you spawn into the camp, then you bring four buddies and show him what hole his pistol belongs in.
Now, with a zone locked down for a single faction this would block every other faction from even being able to spawn into the zone at all. All the chapter hubs would be shut-down and destroyed with the delicate touches of whatever faction did the deed. All the flightmasters and healers would go missing (preferably in bloody pieces strewn across an open field, or orphanage). A zone lock would add to a reserve of points to accumulate towards a city siege, something like gathering your forces for a march across the RvR lake, burn through the fortress, and siege the city walls with a few battalions of Champion, Hero, and Lord mobs trudging along with you the entire way in a wake of merciless killing frenzy. It'd be like a parade of death and dismemberment. The opposing faction could end the fighting premature by taking out a couple key Lords and Heroes while they procession is in transit, but them you have 4 other factions that might want to watch, and hinder the defenders instead. City sieges need to be epic! Not the three-times-daily nonsense that we have now! I get it though, in the mind of bosses at Mythic there simply weren't enough people seeing the "true" endgame of WAR, and they felt it was getting an unjustified bad rap about it. Was it? Was it really? Well, this could lead to a wholly different rant, but to be blunt. No. The end game in WAR is fighting in RvR zergs with a vague semblance of organization until stage 2 comes around. At that point its a warband PvE affair all the way home. Just the CONCEPT sounds bad for WAR, let alone the poorly scripted execution ridden with bugs and gamebreaking flaws. The number of times I've been at the Sacellum in stage 2 to have one of the giants bug out untargetable or the self-replicating Lord reset to full hp after the umpteenth kill is just disturbing. I don't play the game for massive raids. I do it to kill people. Lots of them. Endlessly. Take the end-game out of the city and make it a parade of death OR take the PvE out of the endgame and make it an objective based scenario style final encounter.
Point made, but the application to a 6-faction war would make things a bit more interesting. You see as the entire pairing locks down and all the non-pairing factions are locked out due to lack of flightmasters and healers, it would be one of the few times where paired factions would be able to face off against each other. Any of the remaining factions left milling about in the pairing would be free to watch, engage, or gank as they see fit, but without a healer or flightmaster it'd be a one-way ticket home if they were taken out. Also, with a single pairing locked down, it wouldn't kick the remaining four factions out of doing scenarios! Just the ones tied to that pairing. Genius!
Right, so the standard T4 experience would consist of 9 open zones and 12 scenarios available at pretty much any given time. Zones no longer lock, but pairings do when there's a city assault marching across the land. PvE would be scaled back significantly as you could only do your racial quests, but I think the PQ's could be spared provided it's not your pairing enemy territory. Land of the Dead would be the free-for-all I've always dreamed about, although it would need an expansion on the east and west to hold an additional 4 warcamps. Luckily these areas have been left rather open and blocked only by a perpetual sandstorm. This would open up a ton of conflict within the desert and invasions into the Vulture Lord would become rather frequent. Also, considering the size of these factions, guild leaders would have the option to allow members access to a faction chat similar to the T4 RvR chat, or failing that a default faction guild similar to the T1-T2 starter guild. This would get together all of the separate races regardless of what previous guilds they were in to reorganize and form new guilds once again.
I guess this brings up the logistics of instituting what would basically be a vastly new ruleset. Essentially, you start a new server, and restrict it to T4+LotD. Entirely remove the T1-T3 experience from the game. Reason being, this server would be one that you could do a free character copy (not transfer) similar to the PTS. However, it would strip you of all your worldly possessions and start you off on a more-or-less clean slate gearwise for fairer competition. You keep your rank, renown, unlocks, crafting skill, and start with a default set of green gear. Of course the minimum level to copy over to the server would be at least R28 as that's the low end for running T4 scenarios, but this late in the game I'd imagine most people have closer to 7 viable alts if needed.
So what about the other 7 toons you leave behind? Allow them to copy over to the new server as well, but put a 4 hour lockout for changing your faction to prevent people from abusing the system to a degree. Simple faction caps will help to balance out populations as well, a check made when entering the character select screen to see which faction in particular has the most and least players online at the moment. The highest population would be locked out (although the desperate can queue for it), and the lowest would grant a 10% bonus to renown/xp/inf. If you only have a single faction (non-alt-rolling purists?), then you would never be denied the chance to log in regardless of high faction population. These sort of checks and balances would go a LONG way in making sure the battlefields are somewhat balanced and chaotic as ever. You simply don't bring a 200pt army to a 500pt match.
Auctionhouse. In it's current format the viability of the AH would be utterly destroyed by separating the factions from each other. Seriously, who would want to sell their enemies weapons, armor, potions, and talismans? There are some things that can be changed on the back-end of the AH to make things seamless. Albeit a technical pain in the ass, essentially each item can be translated in the the race/class specific item when using the AH for trade. For example, a Squig Herder helm goes on the auctionhouse, only Destruction classes can add it and buy it. It wouldn't make any sense for Order to see it. With a split in the factions, you've got 66% less traffic, why not take the open road and make it 100% more traffic instead? That SH Helmet enters the AH and is converted into a Light Armor Helmet. When a player from ANY faction takes a peek, they see it as their factions Light Armor helmet equivalent instead. The only way that you could know what faction was selling said helmet was if you're particularly familiar with all the factions in the game, and possibly the naming scheme.
In essence you would still be selling gear to your enemies, but the gear would be much more plentiful being sorted out as it's type and converted into it's race upon viewing and purchasing. This system is partially in place already with all sorts of repairable gear. Notably in T1 where the Prudent and Worthy gear are exactly the same for both sides. No race requirements at all, the item just adjusts to your class to fit as it should. This isn't to say that these items would appear as repairables on the AH, if a SH puts up a spear or a bow, it won't show up as a light weapon for a choppa. It'd still be a spear and a bow. The conversion would only happen when a different faction is viewing it, and only at the AH. 6 factions, one WAR, tons of crap for everyone to blow their money on!
Were't there supposed to be 6 capital cities in this game? Oh yea... That might be pretty damn awesome too...
Am I on the right track here or have I gone completely batshit crazy? Ah well. It was a good ramble. =D
I subscribe to, visit, and actually read pretty much every blog on that blogroll. If you're visiting from another blog, feel free to add me to yours and leave a comment so I can do the same.
lets say that there's less than 150 people doing RvR in T4 when you log on. Throughout the day on this pretend server Destro has been doing really well, and each pairing has gone along nearly flipped, but not quite enough. The old State of Realm addon would show you all three pairings having little activity, with T1-T3 noted below. My new mockup however would show you a single pairing, with each Keep and it's associated BO's for each zone in a single pairing. Also, take note of the Fortresses on each end. There's gotta be good stuff in those! (always capture-able, but defenders can use a flightmaster to get inside if the outer doors are still standing, whoops different thought).
Yanno, it figures the blog goes quiet for a week and I manage to randomly pick up another 30 readers on feedburner. Well have no fear! I haven't actually disappeared (something you'd note if yer following me on twitter), just collecting thoughts and working on a couple other RL things.
I'm not going to pretend to understand the fascination with the chickens, but more WAR bloggers has never bothered me in the slightest. iheartgorfang (penned by the dubious 'ChickenArise') is the latest addition to the WAR blogosphere. I think my favorite parts of her blog, aside from actual content, are the random labels and illustrations spattered about. They induce smilies.
For my second Destro toon on this little escapade, please refer to the scary looking dude to the right. Currently I've got him to R25 and find myself deep in the throes of T3 desolation. It's not as bad as it used to be, scenarios occasionally pop (I've got a 92% win rate), and I'm finding with a healer I'm pretty much unkillable in PvE.
