Can the Secret World survive a Summer Holiday?

So my holiday in the sun is fast approaching and this is a big test for the game. In the past there have been two major reasons why I have moved on to another game. The first is a long holiday away from the game. By the time I get back and boot up the game the holiday has taken me out of the gaming routine and I have logged back in and seen dozens of half finished quests and tool bars with racks of skills and you need to spend the next few play sessions getting back into the flow, Rift fell afoul of this and since then I have only been back in small monthly time frames.

The next is a new game and delayed content. Age of Conan promised a player versus player focused game but when it released it mainly focused on PvE. Unfortunately 4 months later just as the PvP patch was due to be released, Warhammer Online was released. War let you play and level too cap by just killing other players in RvR and scenarios. It took 2 years plus of subscriptions from me and I still miss her.

Star Wars, The Old Republic was another game which bit the bullet to a newer release. I had hit max level on my bounty hunter and was in the early 20’s of my marauder. I loved the class story and some of the planet wide quests were interesting. The rest of the game fell into the standard MMO quests though which got me speeding through content just to see more story. The game also asked me to do daily quests once I hit max level, something I didn’t like in World of Warcraft. Then to cap it all off the advanced class system made the journey to level cap to similar for me to want to repeat.

There have been games like Dungeon and Dragons Online, Eve online and Warhammer Online which survived other games and holidays.

DDO like War did something new for me. Both games made the levelling process and the end game the same experience. DDO content was built around the dungeon crawl, no quests in an open world but focused group content built on what I think is the core of D&D. I also joined an amazing role-playing guild which liked to take the content slowly even if they had done it before. This has some of my best MMO memories.

So can the Secret World survive the holiday?

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.

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.

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.

City Siege Action

If you look at the War blogs and forum’s there is a lot of negativity around the changes to the removal of fortresses. A lot of servers are experiencing multiple city sieges a day. This was not really intended for the game so Mythic are introducing some more changes to try and alleviate the problems. It is a shame the removal of fortresses coincided with the performance changes as the performance fixes brought a lot of positive aspects to War, so much so I have actually been able to successfully Fraps a lot of the action in game.

My play time is limited at the moment therefore I missed out on city sieges in the past and the change has actually allowed me to participate with my guild to attack and defend the cities.

Monday night in particular was an excellent session, we had fought in Dragonwake managed to crash the server and on at least two occasions battle objectives bugged out and took a second count down to flip but destruction managed to lock the zone so as an alliance war band of 2 and a bit groups we all joined the same instance in Altdorf. We were out numbered in the instance so we accepted the fact we would loose and just played to have fun. Moving quickly to flip flags and hide in buildings to pick off smaller straggling groups from the main order masses. Sure we got caught a few times and order started to notice a pattern in our movement which just meant more skirmishes and death. It was one of my favourite nights in War from epic zone battles to mini instance skirmishers.

Bouncing

Last night in tier 4 on Karak-Azgal the RvR was bouncing. Eataine was on the brink of a zone lock for quite some time but Order kept popping up too steal an objective or two. Our own alliance managed to form a full war band and Order was everywhere so we had some good fights.

A few people on Ventrilo suggested this post might have shaken order up who have been complaining about the destruction zerg for weeks. I am not exactly sure how much of a role the server forums take in War. I for one rarely visit the official forums and instead lurk around the Warhammer Alliance ones, which for me have more of a community feel. The main reason for this I think is the forums existed before the game was released therefore a community has longer and more reason to establish. I think the official forums came too late and they might have been better off actually linking the Warhammer Alliance forums and establishing some kind of official link.

The real reason for the renewed activity in War could be the live event as we all know Order are loot whores but in my opinion it is patch 1.3.2 and the action point fix have made a huge positive difference in tier 4 RvR. No longer do I just spam abilities. Fights are lasting longer and I have to actually think more and be more careful, to come out alive.

Welcome back to War

A while back I posted an entry on how I thought War was on the up and I still think that patch was a good start. It was the time when Mythic stopped adding and started fixing. Since then we have had a number of patches which in my opinion has improved War adding polish and improvements as well as tweaks to the game to improve things.

I agree with Werit and Bootae it is a good time to come back to War, but I might suggest just wait one more patch. As I think between now and then things will only get better, Mythic even seem to be hot fixing improvements now, which for me is better than big patches spread out.

When I created an alt and logged in for the new player experience I was greeted with the following screen, which outlines all the improvements they have added. I think my favourite addition has been the second ramp in keeps. All the keep sieges I have participated in have been manic!

Just thought I would also add my favourite screen shot I have at the moment which became the blogs banner. I seem to have caught Scission in an almost deflated state. This with the dark clouds approaching from behind almost tells a story of foreboding.

Realm pride by statistics

When you speak to most Dark Age of Camelot players if they are not endlessly harping on about 3 factions they gush over the feeling of realm pride.

Now I don’t to even pretend to know the answer to instilling more realm pride into War. If you are winning at the moment most people just point to the zerg and if you loosing there seems to be common theme of I quit remarks.

The War web site does have statistics on what the current snap shot of the realm looks like and it does have leader boards. But these are cumbersome to use and don’t tell a story of those epic struggles to take an objective.

Over at www.worldoflogs.com I jealously explore the amazing amounts of statistics they collect from World of Warcraft instance runs.

Take this example it shows DPS against a boss in an instance. You get to see how the group has done and it even shows markers throughout the boss fight. Of course the statistics can be viewed in a multitude of ways which can be DPS done and damage taken, healing statistics and a whole lot more. The whole web site is so easy to use and quickly brings up any statistics you want.

Imagine if War had this kind of log site. You might be able to take a particular objective and show the flow of battle. Then post the links on the server forums of a battle were your war band managed to hold out against insurmountable odds. Maybe have bragging tables of the most active and successful guilds over the past week!

War's facilities

So a lot is happening in War at the moment. I could comment about the interesting musings over at Bootae about possible expansion leeks.

Maybe I could join Zizlak looking at 1.3.2 and make comments about the War patch?

Instead… I was in tier two and notice Mandred's Hold has its own toilet. With one fatal design floor! They placed it outside the keep. Some of those sieges can take hours! What is a goblin to do when nature calls and the forces of Order are trying to break down your keep door?

Sometimes I wonder why I write this blog. But now I am wondering if any other keeps have there own facilities. All I need to do take out my tier 4 character on walk about, so I can get round quickly… I knew once day it would bite me on the behind! Damn you chicken mechanic! Damn you to hell!

New user experience video's

So the new user experience is here! So I rolled a Witch Elf to see what it was about. As stated every race starts in the same zone, but you also get a cool scroll which transports you out of the new player experience. I played for around an hour and thought the experience did well to help the most green of none MMO players get to grips with the game. Hopefully bringing more people into the War fold so we can kill them over and over again until they scream into the night and clutch their teddy's.

I took a few videos and posted them here. Note you need sound for the posh voice.

What would have been good to see was the same posh lady describing what to do at the start of each scenario in tier 1, and maybe even a little blurb on your character class role.

Recruit a friend

So the new user experience is on its way and the price for War has been lowered (which are both good). So what is missing to bring more players to War? Well in Europe we still don’t have the recruit a friend that has been running in the states for what seems like years. With the patch 1.3.2 on its way this would be a good time to recommend a friend. I have already bought two friends copies of the game we just need to organised a week of computer’s, booze and RvR.

What also looks good is the 1.3.2 patch seems to bring with it performance improvements! Check out Werit and Shadow War for more details.

Healing in a keep.

You may have noticed I started a Zealot alt a while back. She was enjoyable to play but did not have a glitzy mechanic like the Shaman, or have the personality of the green skins.

A while back I created a Shaman to use if my friends ever tried War. He was still waiting at level 5 so I decide to give him a spin. 10 enjoyable levels later and I am still finding it fun and easier to level than my Chosen. I am keeping all the staffs I find and putting them in my bank as I find they, like the race have a lot of personality and a lot of work seems to have gone into them.

Today I got into RvR for the first time in tier 2 with him and found myself a war band leader. Like most of my outings in tier 2 it was extremely enjoyable, we swapped objectives and keeps with order in the chaos coupling. We won a few objectives and managed to beat order back. Once all the objectives were taken we decided to take the keep, which was fortified with order. We got to the keep lord and wiped due to a strong order defence. Instead of the usual stragglers being taken out as your side get whipped into submission the war band grouped up outside of the keep and tried again together moving as one force. We made it to the lord again and again order wiped the war band. The third time was a charm, and order again tried to wipe us, they succeeded but the lord fell in the last moments, the Raven god must have smiled on our lost souls. So we returned to clear out our keep, 2 epic hours later we swept the last of the enemy from the doors of the keep.

Healing in a keep attack and defence has given me new respect for healers in War, the whole 3 hours was quite stressful and full on. When I have played a tank or melee DPS you get time to take a breath in these situations, but not when I played as a healer. There was always someone taking damage or needing resurrection. The layout of the keeps doesn’t help as well with dead and dying players around walls or down stairs. That coupled with team members over extending themselves out of healing reach, calling out for resurrection without location details or just my ineptitude. The job is difficult and challenging but enjoyable.

Daemon Moon Rising

So we are getting to that time of the year when the twin moons Morrslieb and Mannslieb are high in the sky and the blood in your ooze ridden veins makes you do things even more horrid than sprouts with the roast dinner or skin on your gravy.

Mythic are giving use a new live event called Daemon Moon Rising. It has a few items from the last year’s event Witching Night and a new public quest ‘The Daemonball Rally’. It gives a nod to blood bowl and lets you kill and play skull football.

I am glad they are not just re-releasing last year’s event which looks positive for future events.

Breaking up the Zerg?

For a small organized war band the zerg can be annoying. You try and take a keep or lock a zone and the whole of the opposing side tier 4 players are all over you like mucus on a well used blade.

The tier 4 zones are a decent size, but the problem is each has a flight path smack in the middle. So any force can respond very quickly, which is good as Mythic’s aim has been War War War… But it also means the zerg might as well stay together as once they wipe a war band the other is only a snotlings throw away.

I wonder what would happen, if 2 out of the 3 flight paths in a race coupling was disabled or moved to a far flung PvE camp. Could this slow the zerg down or at least split it up. The smaller war bands then could at least try and take two objectives out at a time and have a little more time before the zerg wave crashed over them.

If we wanted to add a little more strategy to the campaign we could even allow the players to disable up to 2 of the flight paths by completing an objective near the camp. This might help split up war bands to respond to multiple threats but still allowing the War War War to happen.

Missing the fun?

I wandered into a dangerous mind set for me over the last week. It is one were progression becomes my main focus, which means the act of actually playing the game takes second fiddle.

This is largely due to the fact my Choppa is level 37 renown rank 31. What happens is I end up grinding PQ’s just to try and use a 1 and a half hour play session effectively. Even questing becomes too slow, as I become impatient because I have to travel or read text. Let alone stand in a keep for half an hour with guild members defend.

This means I end up actually missing all the fun stuff, and not engaging with my guild members. So I have pulled my self out of the progression pit and told myself 40 will happen so stop trying to make it happen. So last night instead of the PQ’s I joined a pug war band and had loads of fun.

War band is probably a bad term as there were at least 4 of them which is more of a zerg. It was only an hour’s play session, but instead of following I tried to make sure I was one the front line. Which does wonder’s for you character ego. I just charge and when I have casters in my range I stick on Git To Da Choppa and because there so tightly packed in just watch those damage numbers fly up. I know the zerg is not skillful but sometimes all you need is to stick your choppa into as many faces as possible.

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.

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. :)