Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas!

Try not to eat too much of your chocolate selection box and drink too much of that single malt whisky.

YakUI Addon

I am constantly tinkering with my user interface to try and squeeze every ounce of my meagre PvP skills out. A while back I tried the YakUI release of add-ons, which are excellent. But to try and improve frame rates I deleted them all. I recently just upgraded my graphics card so went back to re-install YakUI.

I was hugely impressed by the installation and ease of use this time round. After you copy the files across the add-on sort of installs itself. It describes what you must do to scale your resolution and fonts then logs you out.

Then when you log back in it gives you a menu of the extra enhancements you might want to make and also gives you a tour of your new swanky UI with little arrows explaining each part. I think Mythic should give the creator a job as the whole installation was excellent!

I moved my war band grid to the middle of the screen in this screen shot as when I play a healer, I like to see what is happening and the little green bars at the same time. I plan to move guild chat in the right space.

Battle Kegs

I was playing in tier 3 today and we were trying to take a keep, the outer door went down and we piled in only to be stopped by a keg in the door way. You can run and jump over it, but the more people get stuck the more congested the door way gets. Some are calling this an exploit, but I love the ingenuity of players and thought it added a little extra to a standard keep siege.

Once ‘Keg End’ is over I wonder if ‘Mythic’ could actually introduce a barrier which can be constructed by players. I think it would still need to be jumpable, and take a good minute to construct and should only be allowed to have 1 in a given distance to another one, but it could add an extra element to PvP.

Maybe they could even extend the idea to have pools of damaging lava, or explosive aoe traps to slow players down. All the above needs to take time to plant and maybe even take the effort of a group of players, but you can imagine it being used as traps in troughs of terrain or at choke points.

I can just picture it now… you’re standing just over a hill with your war band goading the other side, then they charge with a bomb squad only to be slowed down by a snare trap and decimated by your ranged DPS.

12 Days of Mythic - Wrap up!

So they have done the wrap up and the winners get some cool stuff. Every so often I keep my eyes open for a price drop on the collectors edition so I can get the extra stuff, like the comic and figure. I wish Games Workshop would bring out more limited edition figures of the classes in War.

10 days of War

Heartless_Gamer is trying out the 10 day return to ‘War’. He is up to day 2 of his return, and both posts seem balanced and come with some excellent observations. I wish I could write stuff like this.

One observation is copying the Land of the Dead mix of PvE and PvP and duplicating it throughout the game. This works for LotD as it doesn’t attract the zerg because it does not contribute to the main RvR zone locking mechanic.

Would the public quests and small scale RvR still work as well if there were part of the zone locking? Or would the public quests and small scale PvP just get lost in the hordes of players?

Grumpy

To be honest I am a bit grumpy with War this week. I have been trying to play my Squig Herder and Shaman, and they keep getting stuck in looping animations which don’t fix until I change zones. So when it happens at the beginning of a scenario or doing a dungeon it can be very annoying.

The ‘1.3.3 Producers Letter - Bruce Maclean’ didn’t really inspire and spent a little too long dwelling on the past.

My effort to give away a 60 day time card also epically failed with not one entry, so I guess I’ll just use it myself.

I’m off to torture a goblin; I wonder how long its entrails will stretch out, so I can use them for catapult wire to launch a Snotling at a keep wall. Maybe the sounds of TWANG.., "Ouch!", SPLAT! Will put a smile on my face.

Warhammer Alliance Podcast Episode 21: One Shard, One WAR

The latest Warhammer Alliance pod cast is up and I had the pleasure to fill the fourth spot. I would like to say a big thank you to the podcast team for making me feel welcome. I wish I could just put on my slippers and don a bubble pipe and turn up each week and listen to all the chat and murmur agreement.

Listening to my own voice though, makes me want to crawl into ‘The Bile Lord’s stomach and pull his intestines over, so I can hide.

Kiss the rock

For a few months now, Destruction on ‘Karak-Azgal’ has been dominant. But since the transfers from ‘Eltharion’ it has flipped and massive Order war bands are everywhere and it is lots of fun.

This means our guild might not always be able to take/defend keeps but we can always find a good fight. Tuesday was no exception the number of players in ‘Caledor’ was staggering. After a few hours you feel like a ‘Snotling’ being repeatedly smashed into a rock by a ‘Black Orc'. But like the sick ‘Snotling’, I secretly like the attention and violence.

Spin

I have been playing in tier 1 a lot lately with a friend who is trying out the free trial and I have been surprised by the amount of people running about. Even when I played in tier 2 the number of war bands and battles around were the most I have seen.

I know War has seen a decline in the player base, but I wonder how many players the unlimited free trial has introduced to the game. Over the next month or so I could imagine Mythic releasing a press release based on this. DDO did it with announcing the increase in player based by percentage. Lord of the Ring did it with the amount of characters created.

Mythic could spin it any number of ways to percentage increase in people trying the game, new characters created or new accounts. Even when these announcements are just spin, it still creates a positive murmur around the community and gets your games name in the press.

60 days European Prepaid Key Competition

I was browsing in my local Game (UK Gaming retailer) and came across a Warhammer European prepaid 60 day game card at a slightly reduced price. So I bought it and plan to give the code away. So if you want to have a chance at winning the code you need to do the following:

• Write a post similar to this one or this, outlining key strategic points about either a battle objective or keep.
• The post should be around 100-500 words and in English.
• It should also follow a similar layout with looking at its location, terrain, and engagement possibilities.
• Only enter if you don’t mind me reposting it on this site (of course I’ll also state who wrote it.)
• Email your entry to 'oneshard@googlemail.com'.

My favourite will receive the 60 day prepaid code sent by email and have their entry posted on the blog. The next 5 runners up will get there entries posted on this blog over the next few weeks after the winner has been announced.

The competition deadline for entries is 18^th December 2009.

Don't turn around.

Trying to login to my main character of late has been difficult. I have 3 more destruction alt’s on the go. A Disciple of Khaine and a Shaman who are both 20 (I wanted the Cold One and Wolf mounts) and a Sorcerer around level 10. I am also undecided which healer to take to 40 as both have completely different play styles.

A few of my friends are also trying out the endless trial. At the moment they seem to like the accessibility of scenarios. We even rolled order alts on Karak-Norn. So I now have a level 7 Witch Hunter called Thlint (Flint was taken). So if you see me feel free to stand still and give me sweet renown.

The endless trial seems to be working well for tier 1 as most of the public quests have people running them and scenarios are popping like crazy. Last night on our order characters I don’t think we spent more than 20 seconds out of the scenarios. It is good to see how the Witch Hunter class works as well as they have killed my Choppa enough times.