Vanilla Ice With Hints of Disappointment

I’m just going ignore the conspicuous lack of activity here and shout into the void. Shout with me (or whisper softly in case you’re afraid of waking up your significant others or roommates).

There’s a considerable amount of buzz surrounding the release of classic servers for World of Warcraft. As someone who grew up with the game and ended up quitting in the beginning of the third expansion, only to return to playing on vanilla and TBC private servers years (decades) later, I feel intrigued and compelled to thought. Am I excited about the prospect of reliving vanilla on servers executed by a professional gaming company, accompanied by all the modern media/social buzz we didn’t have in the past? Only as much as my past gaming buddies and real life friends are. They are the driving force, I remain forever the sceptic.

Conspicuous Lack of Activity

These days it seems that whenever I get excited about a game the feelings end up fading away in the space of a few weeks. Unfortunately I am not a person that can ramble on about things I’m not passionate about. Return of Reckoning, albeit a formidable project with passionate individuals that still seems to be going strong, took a path in development that alienated the game from me. Around the same time I had to resume my duties as a pretend-adult and wrestle real-life responsibilities. Which naturally limited my free time and with it the willingness to spend energy on investment-heavy games.

So between masquerading as a human being, slaying rats in Vermintide, trying my best to weed out the pugs from the PuGs in vanilla WoW, mucking about in Hearthstone and trying not to get lost in the world of The Witcher 3 (which, as I’m sure everyone is aware, is an amazing game), there’s not much time left for passionate, late-night attempts at wit via keyboard hammering.

But fear not, soon I shall exact my sudden, yet inevitable betrayal of the human race and return to my night-dwelling ways full of passionate fantasies…

That might not have come out exactly right…

My name is Elf, Witch Elf

Had fun editing some of my Witch Elf T3 footage. Still experimenting with the encoding and the colours but it’s at least somewhat entertaining so I figured I’d post it here. Enjoy!

Of rats and (rat)men

There has been a conspicuous lack of activity on this blog but I promise you there’s a very  good reason for that. I’ve finally gotten myself a proper graphics card so after, what feels like a lifetime of trying to game on a ten year old laptop and integrated graphics of a desktop computer I built later, I’m finally free to enjoy games again! All of them! And what do I end up playing? Warhammer, again, still… I’ve been playing Vermintide and having poured 54 hours into it, as Steam judgingly reminds me, I should type down a few words about it. Because what good is a blog if it doesn’t contain my never-ending stream of babble?

Oh and you can also observe my attempt at playing the game. I’d think I’m quite good at it but my judgement of these things has failed me in the past, as the internet keeps reminding me. Sorry about the colours but the video doubles as a rendertest and I’m trying to get the colour settings right, unfortunately youtube is struggling with Vermintide’s potato colours.

The Sneaky-Stabby Project

First of all, this has nothing to do with goblins. Yeah, I know, you’re disappointed, I know! Don’t forget to grab all the muck you brought in here with you on the way out. Thanks!

I had the clever idea of investigating one of the closest mirrors in the game, the Witch Hunter and the Witch Elf. Granted I didn’t come up with this up specifically for the sake of experimenting and feeling out the differences of the two for myself, it was mostly something for the sake of having fun on two careers that appeal to me. This is how the journey begins…

Addon Armory: Tidy Roll

A new year, a new incoherent post by yours truly. It’s time for more user interface streamlining and today I’ll showcase a sleek, minimalistic and incredibly handy addon that replaces the default loot window monstrosity. Now if any of this post seems familiar don’t fret, you aren’t going senile. I have recycled some of it from my previous rambling about Tidy Roll back in the year of 2010. After all, I am mindful of the environment and recycling is the first step to a greener earth (and also gives me more free time to kill stuff)!

Addon Armory: Miracle Grow Remix

I’m starting a new series of posts where I’ll be highlighting any Return to Reckoning compatible addons that I find borderline mandatory. As much as we all love Mythic we know they often ran out of time for polishing. However players often have free time on their hands that they enjoy pouring into polishing their favourite game and creating weapons fellow players can use to smash heads with!

Today’s addon is aimed at simplifying cultivating. The cynical dwarf reader might scoff and mutter something about how cultivating is for Elgis and a greenskin might pose the question of “Iz CULTIVATIN’ sumfink ta bash stunties wif?”. I understand the confusion, how does cultivating help me smash heads? Let me elaborate; potions make you stronger in combat and to create those you need plants you get from cultivating. But cultivating takes time, all that clicking through different plots, watching your timers and keeping stock of all the plants, seeds, mushrooms and reagents can make the head of even the greenest of Shaman explode. But don’t worry; read below on how to simplify the whole process.

A Dummies Guide to Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priest Changes

Edit: I will do my best to keep this up-to-date. Any feedback, help and corrections are appreciated.

Edit 2 19/11: The post has now been updated for the 19/11 patch.
Edit 3 22/11: Edited with the correct value on Sigmar’s Radiance and Transfer Essence as per this post.

The latest series of patches on the Return of Reckoning server aim to fulfill the original design goal of melee healers and make front-line healing viable. These changes drastically alter the way the two careers are played, including spec, tactic and stat changes. Since they need to be fine-tuned for them to be viable without being overpowered the changes are ongoing and patches are applied daily. This combined with a new way of thinking when it comes to the playstyle of these two careers and easily confused aura names makes many players scratch their heads and rage in exasperation at the patch notes.

This totally isn’t a three years old picture recycled to fit my needs. No siree…

Rage no more! Here comes an up-to-date, albeit slightly condescending guide aimed at making these changes understandable to the dummies (I say this lovingly, really).

Criss-, Cross- and Serpetine-realming

One of the biggest issues the Return of Reckoning project has been facing is reconciling with the fact that the majority of the population prefer playing on the winning side. In an open world PvP game with two – seldom evenly matched – fighting realms this mindset manifests itself in people logging off their characters on the losing side to participate in victories (and pertaining rewards) of the winning side. The fact that this behaviour is harmful to the stability of the server has been recognised from the very beginning by both devs and players and soon measures to prevent this from happening will be added to the game.

I seem to have misplaced my Photoshop skillz…

How and why? Join me in finding out.

Return to WAR

I’ve been glancing at my blog bookmark for a while now, contemplating dusting off the old rune carver. Over the past few years the need to chisel something down has always been counterbalanced by the shame of completely abandoning the blog and the fact that I simply don’t have anything constructive or fun to say. You see, I only blog about subjects that I find enthralling and exciting – subjects that I believe could sustain those feelings for quite some time. Subjects that could keep me actively blogging as opposed to tweeting a few tweets here and there. Warhammer Online made me feel like that. And you wouldn’t be reading these lines unless Warhammer Online awakened those feelings again.

Behold Return of Reckoning, a project aiming to revive and improve the long-dead Warhammer Online. And by my beard, it seems to be well on its way.

The reincarnated drunken ball of fury himself!