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…

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.

The art of blowing your trumpet

As you might be aware, patch 1.4.2 is live on the servers. I’ve talked about it a bit here, and concluded that while Mythic is taking steps in the right direction in order to balance the game, they are not addressing the worm of stale content that is eating into the game. The focus of the game might be PvP, but by now I’m sure that everyone realises that players can’t be entertained by the same few ways of killing someone for 3 years. It seemed as if Mythic didn’t. But there was a glimmer of hope in those patch notes, a revamped Mourkain Temple making it back into the T3 and T4 scenario pool. What I imagined would be a slightly changed scenario, in order to fix some of the more apparent flaws in its design, turned out to exceed my expectations several times over. Imagine my surprise when I watched the below video made by Werit.

Are we stupid?

A while ago Mythic devs wrote a small blurb on the state of RvR in the game. You can read it here. I was planning on posting my response to it but managed to forget. Read my (belated) thoughts below.

Freelance: Slayer

READ FIRST:

This article was written back when I was happily roaming on my Slayer and when I was still actively playing WAR. It was written with the intention of showcasing the way I play the career, introducing players to the playstyle and helping those who are struggling. Later I abandoned this semi-guide when I realised that this specific playstyle and the tactics depicted below are highly subjective in nature, that I’m not really qualified to be teaching anyone anything and that most of it could be condensed into a few sentences. It has been sitting in my drafts folder ever since. I decided to proof read it and correct it simply because I think it would be a waste to delete it and because I see some people searching for information on this topic. So take this wall of text with a grain of salt, and as always, test it before you buy it. With that, take it away Mr. Residential Quasi-Expert.

When Rift went into open beta and several guildies announced that they’ll be participating in it, I decided to swap my gear around and respec into a solo friendly build on my Slayer. If there’s not much going on in the guild as far as group play goes, I’m more than happy to go solo for a bit every now and then. Now, after a couple of days, I believe I’m back in the swing of ORvR solo roaming and I thought I’d share a bit of my knowledge and experience. It won’t be a guide per-se, since a lot of the gear, tactics setup and rotations, along with playstyle are subjective and mostly boil down to preference. But since there seem to be no decent Slayer guides around, you’re hardly in a position to complain.

Tier 4.5 – Isle of the D(r)ead

In my last post, where I ranted about things Mythic needs to fix, I put separating the RR80+ crowd from the rest as a top priority. I also mentioned I’ll be fleshing out an idea that achieves that. As you correctly assumed from the title, it takes the form of a new tier. Now before you get up from your chair and start shouting at the monitor I should tell you that it’s not a regular tier. Just calm down and read on.

WAR on depreciation

It’s no secret that Warhammer Online is in a big rut at the moment. The most important link the community had with the devs, Andy Belford, left Mythic and Carrie seems to have given over the reins of WAR development to James Casey. Big changes the community is rightfully sceptical of. Any game development discussion seems to have slowed down  and patches are being worked on very slowly (the patching speed never was lightning fast to start with). It’s as if Mythic isn’t quite sure where and how to begin setting the game up on its legs again, after the recent changes, the population drop and with most of the staff being shuffled to help with SWToR (it’s not a secret, Bioware). So here’s my contribution. A short countdown or a list of items Mythic should be working on, the ones with the highest priority on the top. Yay, a countdown!

Dear Mythic, please fix… #8

Dear Mythic, please fix the scenario currency.

Next time I need to pay my subscription, I want the payment options to look something like: “Two month subscription, costs either 10, 20 or 30 euros.” And then it would randomly bill me one of those amounts. You say that can’t be done? Cause it’s inconvenient and plain silly? I agree.

Then why the hell am I awarded “between 1 and 3” crests at the end of a scenario? How is that not silly and inconvenient? Because it depends on the color of Tchar’zanek’s socks, the wind speed in Lost Vale and the amount of dps Archmages in Nordenwatch, it just messes with unlucky players and makes for ragequits. It’s not a coincidence that I’m writing about this issue a day after I logged off in disgust after 22 painful scenarios before getting my weapon turned into 27 painful scenarios. The amount of crests awarded varying serves no purpose, fix it.

It would be easy to fix aswell. Just change the fused type of crest to a normal type in the script that awards scenario currency and change the amount from one to two.

Yours Sincerely,
“Between 1 and 3” Blaq

How to stop ninjaing crests

I see you. I watch you every time you set the auto roll for crests to need on all. You’ll shrug and go “You don’t seriously expect me to click pass each time an invader, warlord or royal crest drops and need on every doomflayer or warpforged?”. Of course the lowbie setting his to need on all will use the same argument, only with a hint of puppy eyes and a remark on how tough it is to get through life as a lowbie. Well no more being lazy. Here’s how to do others and yourself a favour, as karma is a bitch (and will come to bite you in the ass when you’d trade your grandmother for that gold bag).

Dear Mythic, please fix… #6

Dear Mythic, please fix the city siege end message.

Currently it says either “Altdorf stands strong. No mercy for the straggling Order.” or “The Inevitable City stands strong. No mercy for the straggling Destruction.” which doesn’t make any sense. If the city has been defended it’s obvious that the side being repelled should be the straggling one. And while it’s fitting to address your side as straggling after you suffer a particularly nasty defeat in a city siege, it’s sad to know that this broken message has been in the game pretty much since launch.

It’s irritating and easy to fix, yet somehow it has never found its way on the bug tracker. I urge players to bug report this (as you should every bug). It might even get fixed!

Yours Sincerely,
Blaq the Meticulous