WCPI: The cycle of life

Just thought, I would post a goodbye and hello to two War bloggers.

Goodbye to Tome of Knowledge an excellent blog with some good art work. You can check out an interview with it's writer at www.lagwar.com.

Hello to Stunty Stomper an old hat who seems to have returned, it provides an excellent resource for all thinks PvE.

First look at land of the dead

It’s 4’oclock in the morning, and it starting to get light. Everywhere is quiet and I am hot and can’t get to sleep, so I creep into the office and fire up my computer and luckily destruction have control of Land of the Dead. So I start to explore…

I have a go at one of the easy public quests. This particular one seems to fire a beam which keeps my Choppa in berserk mode. The skeletons rising out of the ground are level 40, and I am only 30 but being bolstered to level 36 they still deadly when you select them. So I try and pull one and he goes down in a few hits as I am in berserk mode. Then wham 2.5k from the kill, so I spend the next half hour killing skeletons and gain half a level and hit level 31. I stop as I don’t want to level to 32 as I am not quite finished with tier 3 oRvR.

What do I do… go back to tier 3? No! For some reason Land of the Dead almost begs me to explore, the whole place feels different… foreign. I try to swim across the river, which is a big mistake as the skin falls away from my body. I try and slay a vulture, and then I am picked up and dumped in a nest.

The whole area and monsters feel that little extra polished, and what is the main refreshing change to the area which makes me want to explore besides being just new content are there are no people in the hub with quests(what the funk)! Somehow I felt it free my character to take it up him self to see what is out there…

I took plenty of pictures which you can see here.

Guerrilla warfare

Could guerrilla warfare be coming to War? With the release of Land of the Dead, could we see smaller groups choosing hit and run tactics?

The opposing side is almost about to kill the boss from the public quest and you take down the healers and watch their tank get pummelled into the ground by the public quest boss.

When it comes to the purge, will the aim of organized alliances and guilds be to hide and choose hit and run tactics to disrupt the invading side until you recapture the zone.

Your pre-made groups in scenarios could be your training ground for the real deal.

Splat

It has been a weird few weeks; I have squeezed some time for playing between decorating my house. But had little time to surf and write so here is a Chaos cannon like splurge of my game play.

Thursday

This was my first attempt as Bilerot Burrow, a city dungeon. I was off tank, but Scission is only equipped with 4 lesser wards. We also had a better equipped tank, a marauder, squig herder and 2 disciple of khaine's. We where fully aware of the problems we faced with the party make-up but when the sewers of chaos are waiting all you can do is dive in.

The night was fun, even though we only managed one boss, and I did not win any gear. But learnt a lot and got to see some new content.

Monday

This was a night meant for open realm versus realm, and I was not disappointed. We had an excellent war band leader (see picture), which probably made the difference to the whole night. She threaten a war band kick when people did not follow orders as the war band was moving through zones. Organized groups to guard posterns and organize groups to do public quests and scenario’s to lock zones. Out of the whole night we must have locked two zones took 5 keeps and a multitude of battle objects.

Tuesday

With a smaller play session I opted to run scenario’s all night. I had a great time and had some good group on group fights. This is were I am finding the key binding paying off the most.

Warhammer University

I wonder how many new and trial players spend a few hours in War going through some of the PvE and come across a few empty public quests and put the game back on the shelf?

Could War could benefit from newbie University Guild on the odd trial server? Due to its steep learning curve Eve players put together a specific corporation to help the new player survive called Eve University.

I know War’s learning curve is not steep but the experience is better with other people and playing a scenario or doing open realm versus realm with other players sets War apart from its competition.

What sparked this idea was a conversation with a trail player and roaming the War official forums and noticing a very helpful community. The trial player asked questions about gear and its acquisition and how many times should they run public quest. I think tier 1 can be over in a few hours and a lot of Wars merits can be totally missed in this short time span.

The idea would be it would actively recruit new players in tier 1 and 2 and try and provide the following:

• Help with all aspects of War, and try to be as active as possible on region chat to answer any questions.
• Provide regular help with public quests.
• Organize tier 1 and 2 open realm versus realm.
• Organize scenario groups and providing pointers.

The idea being by the time they reach 22 and are released to the big wide world they have a good idea of how to play in an organized group and have knowledge of the server’s political landscape.

Now there are a few problems with this, alts gain levels and leave tier 2. No one wants to spend all of their time in the lower tiers when there is content to explore and renown ranks in tier 4 to earn.

So guild officers would have to keep alts in the lower tiers, and the guild would have to be a little more flexible maybe run with a larger number of officers operating like a collective. With a commitment to take 1 play session a week from their main character to roam tier 1 helping newer players and organizing events.

Memories

So it was Monday night. That is my War marathon session. A full 3 hours of un-interrupted play. I logged in as usually to do RvR with my level 29 Choppa. The night started well a few battle objectives and a keep take. We had almost flipped the zone and all the keeps and objectives were ours. So the war band leader suggested a few hard public quests, to try and flip the zone. We first did Bitterspring the Chapter 12 quest in Takabecland then did Tempest Horn Chapter 13 in High Pass. I had an absolute blast and had forgotten how much fun the public quests can be in a full group. Especially the Tempest Horn, it is one of my favourite public quests.

High Pass brought a lot of memories back from levelling my Chosen. For some reason going through tier 2 & 3 with my Choppa has been an absolute breeze. Maybe the curve has been fixed, or is it my play is more RvR focused so you concentrating on keeps and objectives instead of levels.
I think War absolutely suites my idea of a fun MORG, I have said it in the past but the variety of stuff to do has yet to see me tire of playing. I am still eager to see how it play’s from a Shaman’s or Sorcerer’s point of view. If only I could get a regular group to play with.

UK Scarab Cartouches found

Just in case you fancy one of the Scarab Amulets for your pocket all the alphabet can be found here at War of Alts.

Also check out VideoGamer for some of the hieroglyphs then go to the War site to enter the key.

Also look at the offical War forum for some more details.

I was going to make a joke about the Beatles crawling all over me and Ringo Star being a little dubious but thought it would be best not to.

When I entered mine only a few had gone so hurry….

Is it necromancy or all just for a cool pocket item?

So it has started, the Land of the Dead blogger promotion. But this time there is a cool pocket item up for grabs.

Upto now I have only seen the US versions of the bones at the following blogs:

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog

Tome of Knowledge : a Warhammer Online blog

Epic Slant

DA’TOUGHEST

MMORPG

Kotaku

The one thing that concerns me, is this a secret necromantle (is that a new word, meaning a fire place born in hell?) plot to take over the western world. Maybe once the codes have been deciphered, and the ritual completed the bones will all slowly creep together to form an unstoppable skeletal beast who will kill innocent War players. Just incase, if you have any of these bones put a paper weight on them to stop them crawling when the day of destruction comes.

Keybinding – Update

I know the guide says it takes a few days to get used to, but I tried setting up my keys for my Choppa. I started slowly, so my brain and flailing fingers could get used to it. So I first just put in my two main sets of attacks my single target chopping attacks, and dot and my multiple target attacks and dot. After a few scenarios I started to notice a pretty big difference in my mobility. So then I started to add my snares and detaunts and I found it a lot of fun.

The only problem was my hand ended up in a claw like mutated grip that any Marauder would be proud of.

So I did a quick search and come across the following keyboard. One problem with online games is the low cost so they are good for your wallet, but not good for the hobby spending itch.

Talking about hobby spending itches, I am surprised Games Workshop has not released collector’s editions models of each class in War. I know I would spend a few bucks on my main characters.

Keybinding

So I am looking for ways to improve my playing style, as I have always been a mouse clicker to activate abilities I imagine this does not help me. 

Anyway I have just read this excellent guide on key binding posted by Gorroth on the Warhammer Alliance forums. (There is me just thinking it meant using CTRL 1 to = doh!)

WARgames

Check out WARgames, a new blog with some excellent posts.

I particulary liked this post linking to a Choppa RvR video, I love stuff like this as it highlights how far away I am from actually being any good.

Being RvR focused, I am not really that bothered about the city dungeons but his Lost Vale post has inspired me to at least work towards them. :)

Is it possible?

Well the answer is probably yes, but I am still looking for a decent solution.

Here is the situation... You’re a full war band charging round tier 3 and there is also another enemy war band out to spoil your keep taking face smashing party. 

Your main aim is to try and take a keep, but every time you attack one the other war band shows up and manages to get into the keep and wipes you attempt.

So you start to get wise, and change zones constantly tagging keeps to try and lead them on a snotling chase. Then you hit the keep and try to guard the two postern entrances, leaving a minimum number grinding the door down. But then the full war band hits one entrance, brushing a 3rd of you group aside and you war band collectively sigh.

What's-a Orc to do?

Balance & Organization

Over the last few nights I have been in Tier 3 with my Choppa. The action has seemed to have lessened since earlier levels, maybe people are busy getting alts to level 25 ready for Land of the Dead. 

Anyway we got our behinds handed to us on two separate occasions. The first by what seemed to be 2 order war bands against our one. To which you hear calls of “the order zerg” banded about. Then a little later after a few defeats the war band dwindled to a size of 2 groups. The remaining members took a few objectives back (the larger order force may have moved on to another zone) and we where beaten again by what seemed a similar sized group.

On both of the above occasions I think of defeats were down to the same reasons. Organization and general war band skill.

In the first instance of the 2 war bands against our single war band, order seemed to move with focus and precision. Even though they had more numbers they engaged us while we were busy attacking objective NPC’s, or defended in range of friendly NPC’s. They used choke points and bright wizard AoE tactics. They killed stragglers leaving the war camp as destruction left to rejoin the fight after each wipe. They used these tactics even though they had greater numbers.

While our forces which where smaller and in turn easier to manage (you would think) rarely did we do any of the above. We managed to do the opposite by moving as individuals rather than as a group.

In the second instance when the forces at the final engagement where equal, the order war band scouted our destruction war band while we took two of the objectives back. Then they hid in a building behind our third objective attempt and waited till we had all engaged the hero then sprung their trap and wiped our 2 parties.

You may think this post going to be bitter, but I like to play against organized enemies who show me how I should be playing so I can learn. It is the same when I play in scenarios. I try and measure my effectiveness against other players so next time if they are in the same scenario, I stick with them and try and learn what they are doing.

I think on the whole War does a good job on realm balance. In the few months I have been in tier 4 the flow of domination has switched hands a number of times. From being totally order dominated to destruction alliance saying enough is enough and starting to organize them selves and finding they now have the ability to push the opposing city.