Dishwasher Safe?

I love tat like this. You can pre-order them here. So wish they would do Games Workshop miniatures of the classes in War. I would end up spending a lot of money.

Short Choppa gear video

Here it is and now begins the long road to Warlord.

Patch 1.3.4 Ding!

So patch 1.3.4 is on its way for Thursday so hopefully this might mean our guild starts more oRvR and scenario runs to get the new kit.

Hellichoppa my Choppa just hit renown rank 45 so he gets to equip all his Conqueror gear. Woot! I have kept all my set gear throughout the tiers so a video will soon follow showing them all.

Should ‘Land of the Dead’ have been free?

I have just finished listening to show 58 of Shut Up. We're Talking, which they discussed when is it alright to charge for downloadable content? They discuss and rightly so that Mythic charging for the missing classes was not optional and would have made a lot of people angry.

But I am wondering if giving us Land of the Dead free a good decision in business terms. I don’t remember if Land of the Dead was meant to make it in on release and could have been a prime contender for DLC without the gated system. As it works as a separate zone, gives you access to new content and gives players of 25+ a good place to power level.

Today’s MMO market is vastly different from the days of regular free updates and large paid expansions. Lots of games are offering $10 pets, so could they have got away with charging us $10 for account access to Land of the Dead. Then would War's numbers then appear more positive and offer potential in Electronic Arts eyes.

If it meant more regular content and a rosier future for War with regards to funding with this model in place I know I wouldn’t mind paying.

Fun, fun, fun

Over the past week oRvR has been quite active as our guild Nightfall has joined forces with Aes Sidhe. Aes Sidhe is a good guild with plenty of active players. I don’t know any of them personally but have played with them throughout Wars life. I used to be in a TOG guild (The older gamers) and both guilds where in the same alliance back in the day. So I spent a little time talking to them on Ventrilo while we ran scenarios.

So the past few nights we have been able to put together nearly 2 war bands of players which is a lot of fun. Order on Karak-Azgal are around tier 4 in abundance so you can usually find around 8 war bands spread across two zones. This has meant huge battles of 100+ players with plenty of battle objectives and keeps swapping hands in some epic battles for zone capture.

We tried bombing them at the gate for keep defences which order bought about 3 times before they started to pull back. But as more order joined the attack we became little more than a speed bump. As they seemed to be running round mainly in one group we decided to try and move quickly to slow them down by capturing objectives. A little while after the rest of destruction turned up in Chaos Wastes after locking Dragonwake. They immediately went for the south keep as we just capped the two northern objectives.

We joined them as they hit the inner door of the keep and went for the keep lord. Just as the main order group came in the south keep gate to defend. The Lord went down with 100+ of enemy players (I am guessing of course) inside the keep to wipe any destruction.

Our forces wiped and we re-spawned and went straight to the north keep to take it quickly. So in the space of a few minutes the zone went from 1 red battle objective, to two red keeps and 3 red battle objectives. Just shows what can happen fighting superior numbers with a little luck and timing.

Throughout the night we only noticed a single time when the server started to groan, which is excellent performance. All the time I was able to use abilities with little or no lag with multiple war bands on the screen at one time. It looks like Mythic are trying to push this even further have a look at Werit video below, or go and visit Shadow-War for more information on Mythic’s stress testing.

Importance of a guild

For me one of the most important aspects of any MMO is finding a guild early on in you characters life. It always improves my knowledge of the game, and will keep me playing the game for longer. I have found without being part of a guild I end up jumping from game to game, never really getting past the mid leveling stages.

While I played Eve Online not being in a corporation (guild) usually meant the destruction of your ship. As without friends (unless you played the forums) you tended not to be aware of politics within an area of low sector space or have the multiple eyes of your friends around the various systems. So at any time you might find yourself at the mercy of pirates or in the middle of a war. Where anything not alliance colours is the enemy.

As a casual War player (about 6 hours a week if I am lucky) I find being part of a guild even more important. I know I will never be part of the guilds inner circle of players or have the best armour. But having a regular set of players to call upon is vital especially in War. Most nights when I login there is already a fully functional alliance war band in the thick of battle which I can just join and sign into Ventrilo and start chopping away. If not and no people are doing city PvE instances or power leveling in Land of the Dead you can quickly get a scenario group together.

You also get to see guild/alliance chat and see questions you did not even know to ask, never mind knowing the answer.

Voice chat also comes in to play in most of the guilds I have been part of. This is also crucial in War as it allows a war band to move as a tight-knit group and turn on a coin. There have been times when the whole war band has hidden behind a rock at a moments notice, or the war band leader has decided to flank the enemy or try a completely new strategy to win the day. When you are part of a guild the leader knows each member of the war band and knows they can rely on each member to follow orders even when it looks like certain defeat. Sometimes it does end in death but more often than not it ends up in fun and a shared unique experience which otherwise the game could not offer.

As well as all the above War also offers special mounts, access to recall scrolls and access to the Viper Pit. So if you not part of a guild, how come?

Busy news week

So it has been a busy news week for War. With the new 1.3.4 patch going on the test servers and news is trickling out about 1.3.5 from Werit.

Patch 1.3.4 seems to be a love and hate patch. Everyone is drooling over the new RvR weapons (check out Gaarawarrgabs for screenshots), and screaming over the removal of so many scenarios (see Grimnir reply to Mythic).

I never really liked the idea of removing content in the first place, and I wonder how bored a new player would get after playing Nordenwatch over 40 levels. Lack of choice is never a good thing but at them moment I don’t actually care about the update. So trying to write a post about it almost seems futile.

I don’t care as I think it won’t have that much of an effect against my current game play (short sighted I know). My current game play is oRvR and levelling the odd alt. I know they are streamlining and polishing to trying and attract new potential players but as a long time player I tend to look past the warts now and mainly concentrate on either following war band orders or learning a new class.

What I do get excited about is even more improvements to large scale RvR performance; check out Shadow-War’s post detailing 420 players in one area. Could this also mean a possible return of fortresses as they have made a lot of improvements since they were taken out.

I think the not caring also stems from no big expansion news yet. I am with Bootae and wish Mythic would give us hints at least on the future instead of just tweaks and polish. Some people are just never happy are they. ;)