Asuryan's Flames

So tonight I had my second issue that warranted a petition in WAR, and just like last time not only was I disappointed, but I felt my time and theirs was entirely wasted. Last time someone in my group had accidentally selected need for sentinel boots, and the CSR said oh...well we can't fix that, please submit a bug report, like that would get fixed. Tonight, I got my basic T4 influence reward on my KOTBS and I accidentally selected the wrong one, I submitted a petition, an hour later I hear back and am told that once again they can not fix this.

I remember in WOW, EQ, EQ2, SWG, EVE...the list goes on, when a mistake was made like that; the CSR would not only help correct it, but not in War. Nope the only thing that CSR's seem good for is to ban people, force name changes.....and that's it.

This is a very, very, very.....very poor face that Mythic is putting foreword. They take 3 steps foreword with content, classes and event. Then ruin it with customer service. So...this is a call to all of you. Tell them what you think of this poor performance. It is not an expectable way to do business, and if they are not willing to help people, then don’t give the option to help in the petitions.

I don’t mean to sound brash about it, but it is something that really bothers me. Customer service is king and as it stands I feel betrayed by Mythic. You put your CSR's out front with either the lack of knowledge or just straight ineptness to perform a roll. This would not have happened in the aforementioned games, and I hope this is something that Mythic seriously considers correcting.

So I have been playing on Praag now for a little bit. Largely because it is a bit riskier and overall more fun to have to watch your back where ever you go. I have yet to be ganked, but I know eventually it will come, so I will keep going about my leveling in the same fashion that I have used for a while.

Things I have noticed...Praag seems to have a lot more sever/group cohesion that I experienced on Skull Throne. Where as Skull Throne had an outspoken whipping boy, I don't see that on Praag, in fact if anything, there seems to be a lot more group think going on with leadership all joining one vent when they are prepping for a push and so on. This in and of itself is a key to being successful in War. By having everyone on the same page you develop a better overall goal for the server. Now the goal is the same for everyone...capture the king, but it is achieved through different means.

This is where I have been leveling my Knight of the Blazing Sun, and it is where I am enjoying spending my time. I am sure that I will see the dark side of the server eventually, but as it stands. There is solid RVR, great PVE groups and good communication. All together it helps make a great community.

The Night of Murder has been officially announced. As you recall earlier this week several in the blogging community where sent cards that started to give everyone a hint of what was coming out way.

Then Wizards and Wenches posted some lore information on death night, the witch elf ritual of snatching people from their homes and throwing boys into a boiling vat of blood; those who survive being trained in the arts of the DOK, or girls being brought into the witch elf sorority.

All of this speculation has lead to the release of the event information. The first downside I see is that it will be daily quest based like they all have been, not really an issue as long as they are not killing X of this, and Y of that. Those are a bit of a drag. Then the lack of something fun like a scenario to go with it. I did not read that there would be one coming along with it. Maybe they could have retooled another scenario for the occasion, but alas it is not there.

In the end it will be a nice break from taking keeps and allow people to do something that is for the most part fun and enjoyable without a lot of effort. Now we just need to see what is coming on the horizon.

"Land of the Dead Opens (June): The deserts of Nehekhara open to players with the addition of a new RvR-gated dungeon zone. To gain access to the Land of the Dead, opposing Realms must battle for control of the zone to access dozens of new Public Quests, instanced lairs, and a massive new Tomb Kings dungeon to plunder in search of the Casket of Souls." Mythic

Ask and thou shall receive, we as a community have been asking for a reward for our RVR efforts and Mythic has responded in RVR gated dungeon zone to come online in June. This means that not only are people vying for zone control but access to high-end PVE content with PQ's, Dungeons and probably many, many, many more surprises.

This is great for Mythic because it further shows us, the player base, that our voices are heard and they are more than willing to go the extra mile to make us happy. I am very excited about this, not only is this a FREE expansion, it is answering a lot of the issues people have had over the last few months. This is an excellent revelation Mythic, Cheers...

I was excited at the possibility of getting to play the Choppa today, and I know a lot of you all where to, but it looks like we will be waiting a bit longer for it. As we all had been speculating there would be a live event tied to the launch of the Choppa and Slayer, and Mythic has since confirmed this fact. They will be going live in March and coupled with a new live event that will be ushering in their new expansion Call to Arms.

This reminds me a lot of the mini expansions that EQ2 has been releasing for years and the full scale free expansions that EVE has been producing. This is good news on one hand but bad on another. The entire War community had been hopping that today January 29th, 2009 would be the release of the Choppa and the Slayer, two very highly anticipated classes, but alas that will not be happening today.

Take solace in the fact that Mythic is putting them in the oven just a tad longer, and rolling not only 2 new classes out but a hand full of other goodies for all of us to enjoy

Mythic's awaited announcement has happened; in what appears to the first expansion to WAR, a FREE!! Expansion that will take place over the course of the next few months.

"The Call to Arms live expansion, set to roll out for free over the next few months, will also include three in-game live events, a new RvR Scenario, added functionality to the Realm Wars section of the WAR website, the opening of the official WAR Forums, and a new free trial version of the game." Source

As you can see this is a huge development in terms of growth of the game and planned expansion on the horizontal growth of WAR. Some of the key items that will be coming:

* Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals Live Event (March): Successful completion of the live event allows head start access to the new Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer careers. The event will also introduces a new Chaos-themed RvR Scenario, Twisting Tower.
* The Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer answer the Call to Arms and join WAR! (March)
* Call to Arms: Beyond the Sands Live Event (April): The promise of great riches and powerful weapons comes from the south.
* Call to Arms: Rise of the Tomb Kings Live Event (May): The race between Order and Destruction begins to unlock the Land of the Dead for their Realm.
* Land of the Dead Opens (June): The deserts of Nehekhara open to players with the addition of a new RvR-gated dungeon zone. To gain access to the Land of the Dead, opposing Realms must battle for control of the zone to access dozens of new Public Quests, instanced lairs, and a massive new Tomb Kings dungeon to plunder in search of the Casket of Souls.
Source

This is certainly a nice development A. because most games charge for expansions, and B. it is giving us the player base a picture of the things that will be coming down the road.

Warhammer Online's Herald posted and article stating that tonight we the community can join in on the development discussion that will be held by Mythic's dev team.

It should be interesting to hear what the future holds for the game, what they see as the final vision and how they plan on getting there. Plus many more things to be discussed.

I will try and provide a run down of the whole event after it has culminated this evening

I was asked yesterday to describe my process of leveling, and I responded in kind that I would be more than willing to do it. Really what I do is not very hard, nor is it anything special that a lot of you all don’t already know, so here goes.

First and foremost, I am very big on time management, I work full time have a wife and a kid so when I play, I play with a purpose. With that in mind I set a goal each night before I play. So when I start a new toon, I want to hit level 11 by the time I go to bed, or get as close to that as possible; the same would apply at higher levels. So from there we have what the goal is for the night, now how to achieve it.

As it stands scenarios are one of, if not the best way to make exp, so you always want to be queued for one. Now there is down time between them that you will need to fill. Don't fill it with trips to the bank, auction house, or even to the oRVR zone. They kill your exp per hour. You want to be doing quests. In fact you want to grab all the quests in a quest hub and run them all concurrently in between scenarios. These will give nice exp boosts, and items that you will need to gear your character up. Hence the lack of trips to the AH. Remember when you are leveling, the more time you spend running around not finishing a quest or a scenario, it is wasted time. You can chat with people on the move and you can keep your goals going.

Now for PQ's, the only time I do PQ's is when I absolutely must have an item from it. You get a nice chunk of exp from completing one, but it is a matter of finding people to do it. So unless you have a grind group avoid these like the plague and continue to rely on renowned gear and quest rewards for itemization until T4.

The heart of this is the eyes on the prize. You want to reach a goal, and by defining that goal it makes it easier for you to do it, but you have to stay focused. You don’t need a cloak in T1, or you don't need the influence rewards, they are nice, but if you are on a limited time budget and want to get the most from it PQ's and quests are the way to go. This is how I have level all of my characters, and this is how I will keep leveling them because I have found it works and you can get a 40 in about 2 weeks with a little bit of effort and not sacrificing you life out of the game.

Someone in my thread Something Mythic comes my way! He deciphered the code as War Event Ninth, which in my opinion is the best guess yet. So my money is on that. Good job to who ever it was.

War Event Ninth

"I think the number/letter clues read backwards: WAR Event Hints."

An anonymous reader posted the above, and I think that is an interesting possibility largely due to the fact that most of us have yet to decipher the code that has been presented. Especially considering there is a lot of very smart people who play War, and have taken the time to look at it.

Fires Of War received the E. This is helping pull all of the pieces of this puzzle together.

Tome of Knowledge has gotten one as well, he says it is an L, but it is unmistakably looking like the E that Fires got earlier.

_ T N I _ T N E V E R A _

Provide a lot of possibilities and combinations. First we don’t know if it is multiple words. If it is the version with the 7 I would almost bet it is two words, but if it is the ladder then that leaves a lot of possibilities.

Any thoughts on what this code could be?

Tonight I hit my first ability that made me want to go OMG WTF, the Knight of the Blazing Sun's version of this is way better. This was the ability: Corrupting Retribution. In comparison to the Knight’s On Guard ability, the huge difference between the two is that Corrupting relies on being hit by a caster where as On Guard is being hit by melee.

I have to ask first, why? As one of the primary heavy tanks on destruction you would think that they would go for the same style since, in most cases a tank will be up in the meat of melee. Now I think I understand the logic because they give chosen Bane Shield to fill that gap, but the ability to twist a melee damage reaction shield would be huge for a chosen.

I digress though, last night was a blast. I started my push through tier 2, and with a little luck I will be in tier 3 by the end of tonight. Sadly I have done it that many times now I almost instinctively know where to go to do X, Y, and Z, but I am having a good time doing it and that is what matters.

Everyday I notice the differences between playing my tank and a healer, and see that tanking in RVR is a lot harder than it appeared, but I am glad I decided to take a crack at it because overall I feel that Mythic did a solid job of building these classes and making them better overall for people. More over the micro-management aspect of this tank really takes me in. Not only are you worrying about those around you and what is going on, but you are also keeping auras up, watching your healing core, and potentially running/defending a flag.

Overall I have having a great time. It is a nice break from T4 where it is all push this, or flip that, and now that I have seen both order and destruction endgame completely I feel I can enjoy the leveling process and play something that may interest me more.

So I was on my private vent last night talk to a friend, who for the most part we have run around on Vortex and now on Skull Throne. We where talking about the fights that should have been taking place but have not. I started thinking on the subject a lot more, around the time that Slototh hit RR80, and for a week there after RVR was the best it had ever been, but now it has effectively died off, well not died off, but destruction has no fight in them.

This leads me to last weekend, Order for the first time on Skull Throne took a fort, and we almost had a second one, but we where finally thwarted at the last moment. Not even a month ago this would be unheard of. I am impressed at how far order has come on the server, but at the same time I am disappointed.

We are effectively back to a big game of musical keeps, with limp attempts to fight back. Now from time to time there is a good solid defense, but that is still few and far between, so what happened. Was Slototh the glue that held them together, or is it that destruction is in a time of transition?

I personally think the latter, in that with the old guard, aka Slototh taking a break, someone has to step up and lead the massive forces of destruction. Until then, there will be just a shell of what destruction had been.

So it is like Willy Wonka's golden tickets, except we don't get to go to a candy factory. None the less, /Random snagged him one of the many Mythic valentines. It brings the current letter list up to:

_ T N I _ T N _ V _ R A _
OR:
_ T N I _ 7 N _ V _ R A _

Certainly an interesting combination of letters that I will spend the day trying to figure out. None the less, I think that this has been a huge success by the Mythic marketing team. To get the meta gamers out in force and speculate what is coming up, so to them good job and keep it up.

Since I have gotten a hard time from the guys at RainbowMMO, my letter is A. So the 12/13 letter is that of A. So, the current list as I know it is:
_ T N I _ T N _ V _ R A _

Changed the 7 to a T thanks to an anonymous poster.

By now most of us have gone on our fair share of musical keeps, and we have seen the basic design to all keeps, and even forts fall for this problem. They are bland, more over they are like eating bran flakes every day.

The basic layout is keep wall with 2 postern doors, a keep door, and various construction points to build siege equipment. This is the tried and true build for everything, but in the world of war, and even looking back at past Mythic games I feel that there is some things lacking.

First, I feel that they need to add to the keep defense, moats, bridges, various things to make it harder to get into a keep, but on the inverse they need to give the attacker the tools to get past those obstacles as well. Such as siege towers, climbing ropes, and fix the witch hunter/witch elf lock pick mechanic. The siege towers would need to be light on the HP and very hard to defend. You could look at the T1 scenarios Gates of Ekrund for design and functionality. Additionally to that make the siege towers take 2-5x as long to build, and very easy to destroy. The destruction side uses two huge siege towers to get into the Gate. Why not offer that for keeps. Couple that with an additional keep wall to get through in T4, like terraced cities of the Middle Ages you create funnels in which defenders push people into.

Remember taking a keep and a fort is not supposed to be easy in fact it should be down right hard. The next area would be the lock pick mechanic. Allowing stealthers to do what they do best would be great. Sneak in kill a healer, caster, or other then die or run out of there fast. Coupling that with smaller harder to navigate terrain it makes for some fun encounters.

Next would be overall keep design. I would find it hard to believe that 6 races would build keeps in the exact same way. So spice it up, have some keeps 1 multiple ways to break in like forts, where you have 3 doors you can choose to break down. Add to the terrain so that there are less out in the open spots to attack from and defend from. That means adding more rooms to keeps, making it easier to hide, adding elements that you should see in high age keep construction to the battle field, and ultimately making it a challenge to take a keep.

Finally, as a defender I feel that if a guild owns a keep they should be able to buy guards of various levels, and stature, so you can have a full set of champion guards defending your keep with a hard cap on the amount of them that there can be. This would add one more layer to the challenge. Couples that with defenders successfully repelling the attacker, and all keep doors closing the defenders should have a chance to roll on loot. Wouldn't you think that at keep lord would reward those who kept him in power, just as attackers are rewarded for dethroning a lord?

All in all I think there is room for improvement, and none of this is life changing. It would add a new element to T4 keep sieges, but also raise the challenge level by utilizing more skills from various classes. As it stands rarely do I see anyone using any siege pad other than the oil, ram, and sometimes defenders use the bolt throwers, other than that the battle field is left barren, unlike the epic battles these are suppose to model after. The good thing is there is a very solid base to build on and expand the way keep sieges and mechanics work. The bad is, it requires more work and tweaking to make perfect for play.

Last night I picked the Chosen back up. Largely because I need a break from the Archmage, and I am a bit tiered of just being a heal bot. That and a tour through the PVE/Scenario content of the lower tiers are nice. So I started the evening out doing loads of T1 scenarios. They where of course hit or miss as to how well they where, but the entire time I was having a blast.

First the good:

I like the fact that I have survivability. It means I can wreak more havoc on people before I die, but also makes life on healers a lot better. Additionally, if I forgo some survivability that the sword and board brings for a two hander, things seem to get a whole ton better on offence. Now I have spent a bit of time running back, but now that I am at the top of tier 1 things seem to start going in my favor, that and with the added gear, and abilities it seem to have a lot better time dropping people. There are also not many people playing tanks in the lower tiers, or if they are they seem to all be playing black orcs.

The bad:

Managing 3 auras during combat gets rough, but I keep trying to do it. I have considered macroing it, but I think that takes away from the spirit of the game. Next, I am still having issues killing healers, but I know a lot of that stems from not having a lot of anti healing abilities yet. Once I get those it should make my life a lot easier. Some of the abilities I think need tweaking, but I will hold a lot of that judgment until I get this character to 40 and see the viability of the skills then.

Finally, I think tonight I will head back over to the Knight so that I can keep them close to each other in terms of levels so that I can make an accurate comparison of the classes.

Looks like this event will be revolving around the Death night which could bring some very exciting things to the live event. Maybe a buff to the witch elves and DOK's? It certainly makes you wonder what the cipher code has to do with the event and how it will play into the next live event as a whole. Additionally, what element will the slayer and choppa play as well, will they be here before then, will be be the trigger for the event, or will they be the culmination of the event.

Thanks to the guys at RainbowMMO and several others on my post about the card that there appears to be a bit of decryption to go on. So me being a bit dense, I did not pick up on this last night so I will have to list my letter tonight when I get home.

Also Werit just supplied his letter, R, for the #11 spot.
_ _ _ I _ 7 N _ V _ R _ _

So this is panning out to be like the Mythic descriptor contest to find what the link is. I will throw a few thoughts in on it as well, Rainbow hit on the idea that 7 stands for &, but what if they are using the all to annoying Haxor typing, then 7 could mean T. Just a possibility as anything can happen.

Additionally Wizards and Wenches Provided a little more insight into what is possibly around the corner, Death Night.

Death Night

The official “holiday” for Dark Elves in general, but Witch Elves and Disciple of Khaine in particular. Straight from Wikipedia:

"The holiest time of the year for Dark Elves is Death Night. During this night the Witch Elves rule the streets of the Dark Elf cities, capturing anyone they find (whether they are slaves or Dark Elves) and dragging them back to the temples as sacrifice to Khaine. The Witch Elves will even go so far as to break into houses, which has led to Dark Elf families barricading windows and doors during this night. On Death Night, the Witch Elves will also steal away a number of children. Girls captured like this will be trained to become Witch Elves. Boys are tossed in a cauldron of boiling blood. Those that survive are trained to be true adepts of Khaine: the feared assassins. As dawn breaks after Death Night, it is customary for those who lived through the night to make a sacrifice from their own household (usually a favored slave or elderly relative) as a thanks to the Lord of Murder for sparing their family."

Lagwar Just posted letter 7/13 as N.

What are your thoughts as to this event; do you think it might be better or worse than the live events we have so far experienced and why?

So to my delight, I got home from the office and checked the mail and I had received a nice little surprise from Mythic, more specifically about the release date of our new and beloved classes. I will post pictures as soon as I get them off the camera, I literally just opened this, but I think you all will be very excited about the date :D

Also remember target the witch hunter Hickman, Paul would enjoy that.

The card reads:

Roses are Red
Just like a Squig Herder
I'll hunt you down,
On the
Night of Murder

I know there are servers that have amazing things going on all the time, in fact I have a character on one, Skull Throne, but on that same note there are servers where that same action is not always going on. Mythic has done the free character transfer to most of these realms to help consolidate, but I think there needs to be other incentives to get people to play on the under populated realms.

I think this can be done by bringing in one of the best aspects of DAOC, the /level.
You can read the details about it from DAOC Here.

Personally I feel that it would encourage people to make other characters, or at least let people make lowbies in targeted tiers to help the war effort. It was a very nice feature for DAOC and I think that it would have a place in War as well. Imagine if you need a healer in a pinch, well it would give you a quick boost towards that goal.

Maybe couple this with the bonus exp and renown, as a reward for rolling a new toon on another server even though you already have a 40...Just a thought. I think it helps to look to the past for things that have worked, as well as use new ideas to come up with a very good balance.

When I started out in War on my Zealot, there where a lot of times on destruction where I would be the lone healer or one of two, where as my Archmage would be one of many in the same settings. Now that I am leveling a new character I am seeing almost the exact opposite.

When I am on my Knight of the Blazing Sun, I see maybe one healer, and I am lucky if they are healing, where as on the chosen, there is an abundance of healers all healing. I respect people who roll healers because they are very much a selfless class, but I also think that this points to the fact that people playing War are righting the shortcomings of classes.

Coupling this with the fact that there are new classes on the horizon, it creates another prime time for people to level healers, who for the most part are a lot more reliant on others than others are reliant on them.

So when I started playing War in beta, I thought that I would be rolling a tank to start. So I tried out the black orc, chosen, sword master, and iron breaker; I was not very impressed largely because it was a huge shift from what I normally played. I personally like ranged classes, but the allure of getting into the thick of it can’t be forgotten so I thought that I would go with the chosen at launch.

Well as you can tell from most of my posts that is not the case, and even until recently I had not rolled a tank until the black guard had been released. So when I played the chosen in beta I felt that it was lacking a lot for me as a player so I passed it over. Well this weekend I took my first trip back to playing one. I am leveling up a chosen and a knight of the blazing sun, kind of side by side so I can see what the strengths and weaknesses are to each of them.

I have been very impressed with the advances that have been made for these classes. They not only seem more fluid, but overall more enjoyable to play. I even felt at level 1 that I had a ton of survivability in otherwise tough scenarios.

Both of these classes I would personally consider the heavy tanks of the game. Sure you can argue that but nothing beats their AOE debufs, group buffs, and their outstanding damage and tanking abilities.

Overall I am glad I revisited them and I plan on leveling them up so you might hear more about them. It was nice to get to run morkain temple again and the even run Nordenwatch.

I have been on enough of these now that I think I can share a bit of knowledge about flipping zones. Some of these are mere speculation; while others are probably factual, although not necessarily confirmed.

The first thing that many people need to do of course is capping keeps. These are the easiest for the enemy to defend and kill your VP grind, and they also are the back stopper to VP degeneration. So taking these locations and holding them is very important, additionally it helps if a guild claims them when you are close to the magic number 100 because it seems to give a small VP boost.

The next area would be scenarios, more specifically scenarios that are for the zone you are trying to cap. Winning those pays off in a big way, especially if you rack up lots of kills and get the magic cap number. Additionally you need to lose as few as possible. Now going along with this, you cant have people who queue and then leave queue, or quit in the middle of a win because that hurts VP and could add hours to a cap.

PQ's are another option, but they really don’t pay off in a big way, but it might be worth while if you have the numbers to have a group off doing one while the others focus on the RVR zone.

BO's, these are the easiest objects on the battle field to cap, and the hardest to defend. They are open, and in easy to get to spots, so capping these last to make the final push is huge. They add massive boosts to VP, and are locked in your favor for 15min.

Finally, if you are still far away from capping a zone, take everything in the zone and leave to another zone and have premades keep queuing for the proper scenario. This will keep adding up VP and throw the enemy off. The magic number needed to ensure a cap without having any of the BO's or keeps in the zone is 40. So if you have 40 VP's without any objectives, you are golden. You want to rush to cap keeps, and BO's and you will almost certainly flip the zone, and any extra VP will spill over into the next area.

Now for the heresy, talking to keep lords or BO sergeants might give a VP boost, so consider doing it when possible. This is far from confirmed, but you never know.

I had a present surprise last night, or about 2am CST when I logged onto Warhammer Alliance to read this post. I feel very humbled that I would get a mention on one of the biggest sites for War out there, and I am glad that my voice is reaching some people

Thank you for reading, and the recognition.

Enslaver

This is not really a problem by any means, but it added an element to fun to games like this. What to do with gold. There are few things that you could consider as money sucks in this game, in fact there are very few at all. So what can you do to help lighten the purse a bit?

Well you can become an avid buyer of rare dyes. As a buddy of mine does, he is now the proud owner about 30 black dyes for no other reason than to have them. You can twink out t1 character with t4 talismans and run around on a witch elf with 500 strength in t1. Buy items and give them away, I would say this is slightly less popular, but I have bough 3 guildies pairs of conquerors boots on out standing loans so that they could have them.

Out side of this there really is not a lot of spent money on in this game. Talismans are really the only thing that comes to mind since you need them for socketed items. Other than that I guess consumables but those are dirt cheap. Maybe we need a gambling feature introduced into war. I know EVE has EVE poker where it is winner takes all. What about introducing something else to help burn money. Like betting on zone control and so on, even EQ2 had the gambling goblin where for a few silver you could be rolling in the plat over night.

I think it would add a fun element and a way to arbitrarily waste money in the game. The only concern that I have from there would be the enticement it would give to gold farmers/sellers to hit the game even harder and heavier.

That’s right, I have gotten the title The Extremist, although without stumbling on a walk through I would have never even known it existed. This title is gained by gathering all of the hidden plungers throughout the world. They are put in places that are for the most part way out of the way and hard to get to, but it is a fun adventure getting them.

It took me all of an hour to do so, and they are located in West Pragg, Dragonwake, and Death Peak. War Wiki is a link to a brief location list and a bit of a walk through.

Have fun going out and getting one of the exciting little caveats of War.

I have been contemplating this for a while, and I really only have 1 person in the guild who I would consider a friend. Taking into account that he hopped servers with me a while back and got into this guild because I pushed his recruitment. I digress though...

Last night was our first run into lost vale in about a week. We lost our off tank that we spent a lot of time gearing up which is what happens. So our main tank, an iron breaker, has 5 greater wards so we thought we would go in with one tank and do 2 healers, 2 straight dps, and then a warrior priest who was dps speced so that he could dps heal if need be. The time was set for 9 pm CST and everyone said that they could make it. Well 930pm rolls in and people are either not there or not ready, so I handed group leader off after inviting another healer to go with them and went off to play my alt.

Like many of you I take time out of my evening to do PVE stuff, it is not like RVR where I can come and go as I please. Additionally, this told me that people where not ready for the discipline required to clear this zone. Having a buddy and I clearing the zone on our destruction toons where people showed up on time and where prepared to people who seem too careless, but just want the gear.

Ultimately I feel that if they where dedicated to the goal they would have come prepared. They knew their rolls and knew the start time so by not meeting those items I don’t feel like wasting my time teaching them the boss fights. I know that may sound emo'ish, or even elitist, but it is my time that is being wasted and I value my time.

You should, they need love-in to, especially after a very rough scenario where they where pulling their hair out.

All I can say is I am glad that I was in a guild group and that we had a tank in almost full darkpromise or it would have been rough...Even trash aoe was killing my 9k hp in no time, and I spent most of my time using none shall pass, but overall it was a fun run and worth the time. I was grateful that I was invited along even being as poorly geared as I was, but I have a few more days now to gain some renowned ranks to get in a better position to get geared up.

I know that this is strafing a bit from my normal focus, but I recently got my blackguard to level 40 and I am finding myself asking what its role is. I know at the base it is a tank, but what purpose does it really server that the chosen and the black orc have not already filled.

I can see it partially being an anti-caster tank, with things like soul killer and some amazing dps output, but a chosen can do as good if not better dps, and a black orc is the king of 1v1. This is the grey area where the sword master falls in, a tank designed to be very good at caster killing. Now like I said I think that the black guard is great as a caster killed, even against melee dps they fair well, but against other tanks, that is where their weakness comes into play.

We initially don’t have the same amount of armor penetration as a black orc or chosen, and additionally we are not as heavy in terms of armor and mitigation in general as the aforementioned classes. I agree that every class should have a weakness and in terms of weaknesses another tank is not the worst one to have, but I still find myself asking what role do we server when the two already released tanks filled that spot already.

The blackguard is a great class, and it fairs well I only think that it needs more class definition. Where as the KOTBS is easily the mirror of the chosen and can pump of dps and tank amazingly well, I find that as a blackguard I can do amazing damage, but I am lacking on the tanks side.

Has anyone else had or seen these issues first hand?

This is something that I see a lot when I get off of the Archmage and play the Zealot, or the Black Guard. On Skull Throne there seems to be oRVR going on almost all hours of the day and not in a small scale, it is large, in fact some of the biggest engagements happen at night. Where as when I am on Vortex or Magnus it is almost dead during primetime, or if there is something going on it is a bit of keep defense.

Now don’t get me wrong but that is a huge problem. The fact that there is little to do in the between time on those servers where as servers such as Skull Throne have constant actions, wheatear it is keep trading or huge warband versus warband fights. I like action or something going on constantly, but it is hard to keep that up where there is a small "night owl" population.

This is what Skull Throne has going for it, it has a very large Korean and Japanese player base whose primetime is during our down time and visa versa, but this does not answer for the lack of oRVR during prime time on other servers. I think that the first thing that needs to happen to curb this would be to merge servers. I know that merge is a dreaded word, but we are now at a point in the game where we have a fairly stable population, and we are past the spike that is brought on of a new game's release. This would need to be done very selectively because of population balance issue that can and would be caused by this, but they also have to take into account some growth over time.

The second thing that needs to happen is to add more things to do during the off time. Weather it is new PVE content, which I am sure is in store since we still have 2 cities yet to be released into the game, or something in the realm of PVP to get more action going.

Overall I think that this is a big issue, but one that can easily be mitigated with a bit of foreword thinking. When the game came out, Mythic had to plan for a huge bubble of people. We are now post that bubble and now Mythic needs to do everything within its power to ensure that the population is happy and that they keep them interested in the game hence forth. It is a great game, and we are now in the polishing phases so only better stuff will come down the pipe.

As we all leveled we had specific scenarios that we loved, or hated as we leveled. There are people who like Nordenwatch, and others who like Tor Anroc. Personally I enjoyed Highpass cemetery. None the less I think that as people of t4 we should be able to play these scenarios as well.

Like with the t4 when a zone is controlled you get access to the scenarios of that zone and not the rest of them. I think that they should also bring in the t1-3 scenarios to help vie for zone control. In fact several of these scenarios are the reason why people try and stick around in those tiers for long periods of time to keep enjoying what they like about them.

Well by making it so that you can queue for any scenario, or even access to the lower tiers, it will allow people to keep playing what they enjoy while leveling up, and providing people already at the level cap access to more options.

***Below is a synopsis of some of what I think each healing class is really designed for, it will focus on the order side since I play it now most of the time but it will be applicable to the destruction mirrors.***

First I will start off with what I play 99% of the time now, the Archmage. The Archmage is and it's core the pure healer of the game. This is prevalent by the fact that we can specialize into healing completely. Now I know several of you will argue this point, but simple fact is point for point an Archmage can put out more healing. Now, with that in mind there are some negatives to being in this role. First and foremost is survivability, the Archmage has little to none. Even in full sentinel with 8k HP I still have almost no chance against a witch elf it they get on me, and as they should they rock my world unless others in my group are really on the ball. This is not a huge impact, but it does add to the advantages of others. Next, the fact that almost every heal outside of a hot and a shield are on a casting timer. This is something that other classes really don’t feel, and I think it provides them with some advantage, and also me the advantage of getting bigger heals for the time spent casting.

Now the rune priest. This is the bread and butter healer. They have a lot of mobility, coupled with added survivability, and lots of instant cast healer. They fill the gap between what a warrior priest is suppose to do and what an archmage is suppose to do. They do this by being able to heal on the run effectively, and provide filler for the gaps that are left from the other two healing classes. Now the down sides. First, the rune priest has to pick either single target, hot's, or aoe healing to specialize in, thus splitting up the tree. Next, their heals are not the most efficient, especially the instant cast heals. This means that they will suck up AP a lot faster than other classes.

Finally the warrior priest. The warrior priest is an amazing short range aoe healing class. They can put out a lot of aoe healing and have them on short casting times, but they trade this with the being up in the fray almost constantly to be the most effective. So the huge trade off here is once again survivability. Now I think they have a lot more than an archmage, but less than a rune priest, but they are also the best "dps" healer as well with the ability to do solid damage and keep healing up very effectively.

Now none of these are static people play each class to their liking, but this is how I see it. They are designed to fill specific roles in a warband or group very effectively, while also providing additional utility.

Ah yes, the rumors of the new classes on the horizon. The Choppa and the (?) unconfirmed class getting released into the game. I think that they will bring a lot of needed abilities to the combat. There is as I have noticed a sever lack of mdps, and an over abundant amount of rdps. Not that this is a huge issue, but it something that I think needs to be addressed.

On Skull Throne, you rarely see a white lion, and you see a lot of witch hunters, witch elves and a fair amount of marauders, but the lack of heavy melee dps design to charge head first in and smash some skulls is actually kind of disappointing. I think the first issues that caused this is the fact that white lions had a very rough start in WAR and are still arguably not near as good as a marauder, especially since you are almost always tethered to a pet. Then there is zerg on zerg fights where most of what melee classes do it run in maybe kill one or two die, rez, run in again. Now they certainly serve a roll, but not near as effective as range.

Now neither of these are game enders, look at the witch elf and the witch hunter. They both have a very viable means of getting in quick, dropping a healer or two and pulling back out, or dying, but they still have a very good shot of dropping the intended target.

What will these new classes need to have that viability? I think that they need to be a heavy class, using either heavy armor class, or having self buffs that make them fairly hard to kill. In addition to that they need to have better than 2-hander tank dps, and close to but not necessarily on par with the current melee classes, or they need to perform some other utility that is not currently in game.

All of which are just theory until we get to see these two new fine additions to the War world hopefully by the end of February.

Last night was one of the first real out cries in my guild for things to do. Our main RVR'er hit RR 70 last night and he is starting to get burned out. So, we did an alt night for the first time. I have to say that it gave me a better perspective on a few things. First of which, we need to clean house. We are going to be dumping members who have not been on in a long while.

The second thing is we are now short on tanks and in a guild of 25 that is a huge issue. So we have one active 40 tank that is fairly well geared, so I rolled one last night since we are healer heavy, what a punishment to have right, and very dps heavy. This means that we can keep a solid PVE group going.

Thirdly, we need to step up our roll in server politics, we collectively as a guild are not on the best terms with others on the server, and that bothers me, but I think that in the end we can turn it around. We have to set goals, and at this point I want to get my newly created KOTBS to 40 which should take me a week or so, then a bit of time to gear him up so we can get back on the pve band wagon.

Future, what does it bring to any of us. Guilds, people, places change all the time, but I think that you need to stay prepared for the worst and in our case the loss of 4 tanks in about a week span, and hope for the best.

Well I have been toying with a black guard for a while, and one thing led to another and I was pushed into playing it more because of the actions of a guild leader. I guess I should back track a bit.

I went out Friday evening and got back in time to start into the Korean/ Japanese players prime time. So I started out with some heavy oRVR and it had been going really well. My goal for the weekend was RR55, so I was well on track from RR53 to get it. Saturday rolls around and the wife has to work so I decided to get on and try and push through the last of RR53, and things where going really well all morning until the guild leader logs in. We start running premades which was fine; really it is the only way that I like to run scenarios. We has two healers with us; a warrior priest and myself, archmage, the rest are a bright wizard, iron breaker, engineer, and shadow warrior. We where light on tanks but we didn’t think that it would be a problem.

So we go into a serpent’s passage and things are going ok at best. A witch elf jumps the warrior priest and he calls for help on vent, and is dropped before a response, so I call for help since the witch elf was heading to me and I know even in the best cases it is really hard for me to live a witch elf encounter. So at that point everyone but the bright wizard in our premade group turns kills the WE and they go back to business. Well during the 2 seconds it took to kill the over zealous bright wizard, aka the guild leader, decides to make a solo push knowing his support was in jeopardy, and you can imagine how it ended for him.

Well after the scenario he gets on his high horse and tells the warrior priest and myself that only the iron breaker should have turned to help and that dps is the only thing that is important in the scenario. Well as you can imagine that playing an almost pure support class I did not take that statement well. I told him next time I consider running with him I will only be dpsing to prove the fact that healing/support is key to any success in pvp.

In the end he just could not wrap his head around the idea that defending the people who keep you alive is more important than getting 3 more kills to pad your stats. So I logged.

Now to the black guard, I love it, and I am finding it harder and harder to log into the archmage. The only thing that keeps me doing it is that I have friends there, other than that I could care less at this point.

Sorry I have not posted anything in the last 3 days, I like to spend my time playing on days off. I will get some new content posted by the days end though.

Do you have in fighting on your server? Would you like to really show who is the ZOMGWTF1337MOFO. Well if that is the case, then you need to petition to get guild versus guild fighting.

This was an idea a guildie had, but it is an amazing idea. The ability to fight with each other. Maybe a ladder system that only rewards you with Statues or maybe just bragging rights. So if someone has an issue with you or your guild you can legitimately challenge them in the arena of combat. That is what this game is about, WAR. So why not allow people to get into the ring and duke it out.

Any one has any thoughts on this? I know that it exists in EQ, Guildwars and several other games, but do you think that it would help war, and provide another area to keep people interested?

This is a new development on Skull Throne that seems to be stemming from our first RR80 player. He had also been the main leadership on destruction in oRVR. Since his accomplishment, which that is what it is, he has not been around much, if at all. This is a sudden change in how oRVR is played out because it went from 5+ warbands of destro roaming a night, to hardly 1 warband leaving order to rule the roost, but here in lies the problem. If there is no one to fight, what is the drive to keep going? There is no fun in musical keeps.

This is pushing people who I know to be huge into PVP into PVE. they only show up for the instance runs then quickly log out to go play another game where this fascination can be met. With any game there is point where it slows down. A year or so after the release of WOW I felt that slow down where people where just showing up to raid then left for something more exciting, but to see this happening so soon in the life cycle of this game raises alarm. People are expecting to be entertained and the entertainment value seems to be dropping because you can only take a keep so many times without having anyone contest it gets old.

There needs to be a change. Remove renown and influence from keeps and BO's. Make the only way to get renown and influence from killing the enemy. Force legitimate battles that bring sides out. There will still be a rewards system with keeps and BO's, bags of loot and buffs associated with BO's.

Where to go from here, I don’t know. I do know that something needs to change, look back even a short while ago when influence rewards where added to oRVR people flocked to it, but the lackluster attempt to draw people out is waning and now it is time to make real fixes and add real reward to oRVR, or they might as well TOA it up again like they did with DAOC and try and compete in WOW's space for king of all PVE.

I know when everyone went to school there was the kid who was picked on a lot. It seems childish looking back on it, but that is childhood for you. Well this seems to be happening on my server. In fact my guild leader is the preverbal fat kid, well him and his destruction counter part.

Both seem to get this because they are very voiceterous about what they think needs to happen and they go for it. Additionally they both are known for soloing in scenarios. Both of which I see no harm in especially considering that they are both very successful in their campaigns. Additionally, in the case of my gl he has lead us to several fortress attempts in the last few weeks, which until then it had only been an item for destruction.

I never saw and or heard of this person back on Vortex, but I also only PVE'ed with my Zealot almost exclusively. I do have to admit that I wonder if others experience this on other servers or if they might be this whipping boy for the rest of their faction. I know that as of recently it has only been a very small minority who are like this now on the order on Skull Throne, but these are the same people who where called out for 1v1 RP farming.

Anyone seeing any of this happening on their server?

This seems to be a very static issue that has been happening in WAR. Major Zerg warfare where the one with the bigger numbers wins, but I am seeing a systemic change in the way this warfare is going. In 90% of the fights, order is out numbered on Skull Throne; in fact I can only think of two instances when that was not the case, and both of which where at non-prime time hours.

First and foremost to over coming the zerg is moving as a group. You are always better off with numbers since that means that you will have support. This is key to any engagement. Additionally a smart warband leader will ensure that each group within the warband has a healer and adequate DPS classes and tanks. This is critical because each of these classes perform a role that is critical to taking on a superior force.

The next key is that you need to have a very adept and head strong warband leader. If you don’t have someone who is strong in that position then you have a chance of people losing sight of the goal. Additionally they will start to questions why follow you when we could be doing x, y, or z.

Finally as a pervious post on here went into, use you environment. In small spaces numbers don’t matter because you can control who and how many come in. For instance Iceherth in Kadrin Valley is a good example of a location where it is tight, with limited places to run that a smaller force can meet a greater one and win. Or even in outer world combat using brush to hit healers and ranged. Forcing the enemy to focus on the easily accessible.

There are many ways to do it and they will not all work all of the time, but without strong leadership and quick thinking you can ensure that you will die quickly and spend some time taking a dirt nap.

You slyly sneak past the enemy warband pounding on the door to your keep. As you walk to the third floor you decide that instead of defending you will be taking the keep back in the secrecy of the post cap chaos.

Crash

The first door to the outer wall comes crumbling down and you hear the rumble of hundreds of feet approach the main entrance and someone in the crowd calls for the ram.

Crash

The second door is down and they are running in like a pack of while alpacas only stopping long enough to position for the rush to the final room. Unchallenged and running with superior numbers they surprise the keep lord and beat him into submission quickly. As he is lead off to the stockades a few others claim the keep, and are sent off to patrol for others, but never do they think to check to top floor or even the spires.

As a bit of time passes the small group of us who where so sneaky to get into the keep un-noticed realize that the destruction would not be coming, in fact they had left to siege yet another keep in the lands so we used this opportunity to come out of hiding and position to take the newly anointed keep lord. With a rush of swords and the air filled with magic he is engaged and quickly defeated leaving no one in the way for the capture of the keep.

As we all slink back out of the keep and into the distance you could see the confusion in the enemy ranks, but it was to late to put up a defense let alone any type of attack because others had came to defend it a second time, but now with numbers on their side the story would be different.

Last night I was asked by a guildie who plays a Rune Priest what direction he should be taking at end game to be the most effective at healing. I politely told him that I felt that AOE healing in its current form is the most efficient, especially in pve where a majority of fights are spent dealing with or mitigating AOE damage.

Now this is a statement that I can say is true 90% of the time, even in RVR where you are trying to keep your group alive, and still perform effectively, but what happens when you are healing a group without a healer, or with an inept healer. This is where the rune priest and I started to get into a theory crafting session in regards to keeping people up. I told him that my current strategy was to throw hots up on the target then funnel essence, and then go into big single target heals. In his case I stated, you need to throw hots, then single target heals, but you also need to be preemptive since you have all of your healing split in 3 trees your hots/single target will not be near as effective.

This raised another issue though why is the zealot/rune priest lines of healing forced to specialize where as my archmage is easily a pure healing class. Each has to forgo damage to be able to heal amazingly, but each serves a different purpose. Where as the zealot/rune priest are more bridge/swing healers an archmage is more of a pure healing class. Archmage get less survivability at the cost of being able to put out decent dps or amazing healing. Where as a rune priest does less dps unless purely focusing on it, and really good on the move healing.

All of this plays into the strat and how you play your class. I don’t think that any one build is better than others it is all in the player behind the character and how they play the class, but I do think that there is an efficiency issue with anything outside of the healing line and more over the reliance on AOE damage almost pushes you to those lines.

This is something that happens eventually in every game, but we are now several months down the road and people are tiered of their servers what ever reason but we are still stifled with the in ability to selectively transfer to what ever server we want to. I know that part of the reason I don’t play my Zealot on Vortex is because I don’t feel that the PVP part of the population is really there. Where as my Archmage on Skull Throne gets tons of play because there is always oRVR going on and any hour of the day.

I know this is true for many servers and I also know that people want to play with friends without the hassle of leveling up another toon. So why not open up character transfers? Allow people the choice where they want to go. Even if you have to pay for the service, it is one of the few micro transactions that I think is good for gaming. Additionally the player base might surprise the developers by balancing out servers better.

Just a thought to make life a little easier on the player base.

Well it has begun; destruction is actually putting up a fight on Skull Throne. In fact every BO or keep we try to take there is a force there defending it. It is a very nice change to musical keeps and finally gets down to the nitty gritty of oRVR.

This all seemed to trigger this past weekend with Slototh hit rr80. He is the primary oRVR leader on destruction and now that he is not farming up levels he is finally bringing the fight to order. Now the means less renown for order but it gets the game to its core. Large scale fighting. Now I have played on my Zealot and seen the exact opposite, and even more so on Skull Throne until very recently.

Maybe what is needed is that people who are making that hard push finally hit rr80 then real fights will start happening for those of us who wanted that from the beginning. This is one way I see good fights picking up but there are certainly other ways that have yet to be explored.

Instead of playing valiant defender, I finally got to play the raider of the fort. It was interesting considering that it happened after the changes to fortress raids, but none the less it was exciting to see it from the other side finally. We made the push up into the lords room with a very bruised team and where quickly dispatched by the lord, but we had killed all but 3~4 destruction which was very rewarding and I was excited to see that we are finally getting over the in-fighting and down to the business of taking fortresses.

It was a long grind and things we all have learned.
A. Stay out of the zone you are trying to cap until you have gotten 40 or more VP's from scenarios.
B. Make sure all warbands out running know the plan.
C. always run high level premades 40's preferably, but people 36+ should do fine.
D. Bum rush the zone once you have 40 or more VP's and take keeps first because they are harder to take and easier to defend, then go for BO's

Finally enjoy the ride, and have fun while doing it. It is certainly a sight to see several hundred people working to the same goal by doing various tasks in order to reach the final goal. The Inevitable city.

Grats all who participated on Skull Throne, both order and destro did an amazing job.

I finally got my first piece of darkpromise this weekend for my archmage. It was the darkpromise belt, although I will not be using it until I get at least one other piece since I don’t want to kill 2 bonuses from sentinel. As it stands though, there are only 2 pieces of the darkpromise that are even better than sentinel, which is very dissatisfying since it is the pinnacle set of PVE in War.

The bonuses on the set are very nice, but there are blues, and purples that have better stats, and better effects than those of the darkpromise. It almost seems as though this set was left to rot when the others where buffed. This set should be in line with the invader set which is for lack of better terms amazing in comparison. So why did this set get left in the dark. If it was going to be so worthless why only allow one piece to drop potentially 2 from bosses I a very difficult zone. This really leads me to question Mythic's itemization even more. Ward required form city mini-bosses with stats that are worse than the set before it.

So the first person to hit rr 80 happened this weekend on Skull Throne. I will have to do some fancy work to see if I can ask him a few questions. Fun things I know at this point are:

He was given a static 20% dmg increase
He plays a magus
And he has over 50 days played on the account.

Once I have some more information I will pass it along, or if you have any questions you would like me to ask of Slototh please post them below.

This is a tad off track from my normal but I thought that it warranted some narration on my behalf. So the guild I am a member of is always looking for outstanding players to join out ranks. Weather it be class A/B doesn’t matter. So this past weekend the guild leader starts to have a thing for a married woman who plays the game. Which already irritates me and several of the older guys who we play with because we are all married and know what kind of drama this will bring.

So we start a Gunbad run for chagrins and we are running several of the lower level guys through the zone and he invites her along, which is fine for now at least. Then he invites her to join our vent and this is where it starts to go down hill. Conversations go from being at least mildly educational to bad pickup lines from almost every guy in the channel. At this point I leave the group because from this point on they are whipping, as 40's mind you, to trash in Gunbad. I leave the vent channel and go back to oRVR.

Now from here I start getting tells, "Are you mad" and so on. Several of the older guys in the guild join me and we discuss it. From there on we confront the guild leader and inform him that she needs to either apply to the guild or become one of us, or move on because we don’t want any drama that would come with her to be in the guild. Since that point she has not spoken to anyone in the guild, which I personally find pleasing. I don’t mind finding love on the internet, but I don’t pay to be a member of your soap opera. I know several of you all have seen this happen before in other games, myself included that is how I knew to stay away with a 10 foot pole from the start. Be wary of what is brought into your guild, it could mean the end of something good.

So last night I log into bantering by the people why have been running around dong 1v1 RP farming. It is almost sad how badly they are trying to justify their actions. I have to say the fact that they are trying to defend it squarely puts their hands in the cookie jar, and it only shows what kind of people these folks are. I am hoping that this does not become a trend on other servers, but I am sure that it is already going on.

Last night was my first trip back to a fortress since the recent changes to the player cap for the fight. I will first start off with the negatives of this. Being that I am on a server where my side, order, is out numbered, and the fact that they make it so that there will always be less defenders than attackers I feel like we are put at more of a disadvantage. If for an instance you consider medieval keep defense, there is no set limitation on how many are there to defend. I think that this will be the big sticking issue.

The next issue is that as soon as it starts there is already a level cap in place. Anyone level 31 or lower can not get in. So we had several guildies who where first wave people to the keep who had just hit 30 get sent back to the war camp effectively telling them you are not welcome to help defend your city. That was a nice big FU to them, and really kills cohesion.

Now for good things. I liked the fact that the node did not crash on us; in fact we held them off for the duration of the attack and pushed them out of the fortress which was nice. Most cases prior to this there was a stalemate until the timer reset. Additionally it seemed like it took destruction a lot more time to take down fortress doors and left them sitting within striking distance for quite some time.

I noticed very few major lag spikes last night as well. This really helped bring the feel of a fortress defense home because it allowed us to effectively attack and defend those incoming as well as provide a steady base to push back against the enemy.

I still do not like the idea of a cap for these areas. When this game was sold it was sold under the guise that as many people as you can get can help take/defend these locations. The fact that they have back tracked, and put in a lackluster fix is sad, and I would expect more from Mythic than this. I think at this point they need to get the core of this problem fixed by either upgrading hardware and streamlining code or instancing fortress captures like city sieges are but require that an even number of attackers and defenders per area are present to ensure that fortresses are not just farmed.

Several months ago, when I first started running Lost Vale we ran into a huge issue. It was not lack of skill, my group was compromised of some of the best players in their class, but there is a point in this game where skill no longer means anything and gear takes over as the primary deciding factor as to advancement.

Those of you on destruction know how the scaling goes, you run Bloodwrought and think that Bilerot will be cake, until you get to the first boss, or trash mobs that are harder than bosses. Bloodwrought can be run without any wards very effectively, Bilerot you need some to be successful, but by the time most start running these zones they have a lot of their annihilator set so it is really negligible. The first real test is Lost Vale.

Lost Vale is the panicle of pve right now, and it is difficult for new groups in it, but it gets greatly easier with the more wards that you have, in fact, so much so that it is the only determining factor for success in the zone. I have to ask what happened to the game where "wards" of for that means any zone specific items where not required to complete content. As it stands now skill and determination don’t mean anything, in fact any armor piece that does not have a ward on it is almost worthless because of how tied this game is to the ward system

You can’t fight a king effectively without ward; you can’t do forts effectively without wards and so on. This type of gear grind is a killer in games, more over it effectively limits the amount of content people see, although as it stands the pve path provides the easiest gear progression for anyone seeking it.

I think the way that this can be fixed is by scaling the mobs correctly and removing wards completely. If people "beat" the game sooner rather than later, it means that you need to add more content plain and simple. By putting an artificial cap on progression you really kill people who want to see more of the game but are on time constraints.

Ultimately this is how I see this is wrong; coming from playing 2 toons in full sentinel, annihilator, and most of Bloodlord with very unlucky drops in LV so no DP. I think that gear progression sucks, I think that forcing people to rely on wards kills the creativity and forces people to be the same, instead of using items that are better stat wise, you are wearing warded items for the "chance" encounters.

This kind of ties in with my last post about RP farming. Have you been in an RVR zone to only have destruction get the drop on you at every turn, or when you are in a less than traveled location? Well this is also what is happening on Skull Throne; there are a hand full of characters, most not even high enough to be in T4 who run around following the warband giving away its location.

Thanks to the heavy use of IM and voice chat, it is easy to get this information out, but when you are already in a situation where you are out gunned in every fight to only have one of your own giving away coordinates...there is a problem.

This issue was brought up to me by a guildie who noticed that we where getting jumped a lot, way more than normal over the past couple of days. In addition to that there was a lowbie following us who when we where attacked, he was left untouched, and in fact would run around in the destruction group while the attack was happening. So I have started to watch this and I find it interesting that people stoop to such a level for a kill, wait no I don’t I almost expect it. It is good that they have an agent among us, but without the ability to lose them for all intensive purposes we are stuck with someone always giving us up at every corner, by releasing numbers, how much support we have and exact locations.

I know Mythic really frowns on this practice, but it is also very hard to prove, in fact extremely hard to prove. So that leaves us with always having to expect the worst and preparing for the worst, but when you are always out gunned you are up a creek most of the time.

Well there are people on Skull Throne who would tell you that you are doing it wrong, considering that they have a private 1v1 club going on. Now I don’t mind the occasional 1v1, but this particular group is relying on it to gain their renown ranks. Now I am a huge fan of doing 6v6's, because it tests skill, and brings out a lot of good competition, but what is happening with these 1v1's is that there is no fighting it is just have a healer and another person on each side communicating on vent just killing each other without a fight for renown.

This clearly not the way this game was intended to be played, it is like the people who cheat at CS, there is no reason to do it other than to stat pad, but even then you are proving nothing when you get into a group and can't perform up to par with everyone around you.

I really don’t know if it is happening on other servers because I have only really seen it first hand on Skull Throne, but I would not be surprised if it was, and it is more prevalent since they started doing the statue system for most renown gained because people who no one has ever heard of are appearing in the top 10 spots. This very well could be looking to deep into this, but I highly doubt it and sadly I do expect people to do stuff like this to get an edge in a video game.

Have any of you had this happening on your server? Do you think that it is causing an issue with the way renown leveling works?

So I have been thinking about the last Live Event, Keg End, and I find myself asking when will I ever use a Battle Brew Backpack, or most of the items that came with it. Then I look back at Heavy metal which for lack of better words, this was the best live event so far. We got to do a new scenario, received an item that had use, and some fluff items. Additionally it kept most of the focus on PVP and not on PVE; specifically grinding 9k Explosive Snotlings to get a GD backpack.

Now Keg End could have been amazing, a beer fight, or something of a "fluff" scenario, where instead of killing you raced to get drunk or something. It would be more fun to get out and interact instead of soloing 20 massive ogre tyrants...At the end of the day, this is a PVP based game so please keep the "fluff" content focused at what it should be...

I think that I would have enjoyed this event more had I not spent so much time just grinding mobs, and instead got to go do group events. I more so like the questing idea that was given in heavy metal since you had X item to do today...and so on, and they where quick, and did not involve killing 50 of X, Y, or Z. I think that live events need to be put into the cooker a bit longer. It is clear that heavy metal had some real though put into it, but I have to ask why they couldn’t make keg end as exciting.

This is a huge issue that I am dealing with right now. In large scale oRVR there is copious amounts of lag, and I have found that Squared does not play well with it. So I find myself almost exclusively relying on aoe heal, and if I need to spot heal I have to keep clicking the person in squared until it finally recognizes that I am trying to target them.

Now there is no problem with this until you are lacking healers in other groups. Then you are in a situation where you are truing to keep others up when the limitations of the game registering that you are trying to target them. This in turn leads to more deaths, more time spent rezzing and so on. I have yet to find a solid way around this issue, and sadly I don’t think there will be for a while just due to game mechanics. Additionally I know that other classes experience a lot of activation lag in situations like this.

So this all leads me to believe that this is something that needs to be handled on the server end of the connection and not the client end, although having a sub-par pc could exacerbate this issue. I would personally like to see the back end of this process sped up to a point where it is back to point and click and not click, click, click...and hop that it is registered.

Last night was the first "loss" that my order guild has felt. I know several of you are in larger guilds and it happens more frequently, but I am in a really small guild, 25 people in fact...well 24 now. One of our Shadow Warriors quit the game, he did so because there was not enough to do in T4 which is a sentiment that I can respect. We have enough to run 2 instance groups on a good night when everyone is around, but the last week or so we have been short 1 or 2 at our pve time so we where only sending one group into the instances and he was having to sit out from time to time so we could cycle other DPS in.

Now I remember in WOW getting burned out, I would take a break and come back and there where things that hooked me again, but I don’t know if anything like this exists here. When you reach RR cap what do you do from there? The key to success is keeping people coming back for more and while I am still very enthralled in the game, there are people who are falling off the wagon. When I look at realm war for my server almost all of the top 10's in their classes are now not playing the game, or have taken a hiatus, but when their hiatus is over, what will draw them back?

This is a question I keep asking myself. I find that I no longer run scenarios largely because I want big fights, very big fights. From there I usually run PVE at least every other night right now, and I make sure that the off nights for me are on nights for others in the guild so that they are getting to experience as much of the game as possible. I personally keep coming back for people. I enjoy the guys in my guild and we all seem to be working on the same goal. It is not high pressure raiding, or a we must clear X before someone else does, it is casual. I do think that Mythic is adding more and more to draw people in for more, and starting to get a hook, but now that they have the train started, they need to get it rolling.

I think that they can do this by adding simple things:

A. More high end pve content, but keep them to small zones like what is already in the game.

B. Put even more of a focus on pvp

C. Correct the issues with lag in fortress caps, or instance fort caps and put and minimum amount of people who can be involved

D. Add more focus on oRVR zones so that people keep going in, infect my thought would be contested raid level mobs. They spawn once every few days and have a really good loot table with items that complement sets.

E. Fix influence contribution

These are just simple things and I am sure that others have gone over them in more detail, but I still feel that they will help hook people to this game more and more. With the ultimate goal of expanding the population.

This is an interesting thing that I want to believe does not effect all servers, but I am sure that it does. Musical keeps; on Skull Throne, there seems to be little to no fight. On both the destruction and the order. In fact the only time there appears to be any defense is when a fortress is on the line, then and only then will a defense be mounted.

I honestly don’t recall any real fights in oRVR in T1-3, and T4 the magical land of 40's where oRVR is king, it is lacking. Don't get me wrong, I like the influence system that has brought more into oRVR, but now we need incentives to fight. Epic fights in fact. I want to see a sea of destruction coming to raid the keep, only to find a sea of order waiting on the other side. I think this is what many want to see, but it is rarely delivered.

Why? I think this goes several layers deep. The first are the people who are just there to renowned farm, AKA RVE. Now this is a good reason to do it all, but there really is no benefit to finishing the RR race early, no magic doors other than the "I did x first" statement. The second theory that I have is that people are afraid of a real fight. One that means some will die, others will live and glory will be had. This one is a bit more interesting. We are not dealing with living people; we are dealing with pixels on a screen, so why not go out and bash each others heads in. The final thought is lack of organizational goals. I see this a lot when two separate warbands are in the same zone. Instead of following one guise, people often head out and do another. This creates fracturing and in-fighting among the same faction.

What can be done about this? Well, I think starting your own warband with guildies, leave it open and claim a keep. Stand watch hiding so the enemy does not see you and wait for them to come, and they will. Then fight, show that even a greater force can not defeat a well defended position. This is where fun is from, when you are on the brink of wiping and save it. When people in the warband say after the fact that it was an amazing fight.

I challenge everyone to bring the fight to the enemy, pin them down, and force them to fight you. You may lose the fight but you will gain respect from your opponent and your peers.

As a healer not only are you a prime target to attack, but you are also always looking for the perfect spot to stand to reach everyone without having to worry about being attacked. I have found on many occasions that standing out in the open is not an option. That really screams kill that one. So I have become much more adept at finding locations to hide at. Since as a healer you don’t need to "see" someone to heal them you can use the various party menus to heal people you can hide in trees, or behind rocks, and so on to keep from being in LOS of the enemy or even keep them from noticing you are there.

Now you can’t stay in the same spot forever because eventually someone is going to catch on, but by moving around and keeping behind cover you increase your survivability a lot.

You might be asking well what heals would be best for this scenario, well your aoe group heal is a no brainier for your group, but when it comes to others you will need to be adept at getting into LOS of who you need to heal, get your heals off then get back into cover.

Just like the WWII movies we all watched as kids, hiding is key to staying alive. Relying on hit and run tactics can not only keep your group and others up but keep you alive substantially longer than the healer who thinks they can tank a zerg. Those are the healers you get to spend time rezzing to watch them go do it again and again.

In all, War provides a lot of good places to hide and using them not only will help you be a better healer, but it provides you the necessary cover needed to keep the healing flowing to your group and to others.

I know that several of you who read this are, and or play healers. Others are people who play classes that rely on us to keep you up and running. There are always grateful people, and the people who thank you or all of the healers for a great job, but in most cases we are forgotten. Then, there are the people who will demand that you heal them, by yelling, sending rude tells, and so on. These people are not grateful in the slightest; in fact they are lacking simple things such as manors.

When I am running in PUGS, or other than my guilds warbands, I have a priority on which I heal. Myself first, if I die so do others. From there it would be the tank that is guarding me, then the dps'ers. Now I understand that people need heals to keep going and I am more than happy to supply them, but when push comes to shove, things that mean help me with self preservation are key. This is the same reason a tank will defend me or guildies will kill anything that gets within striking distance of me, because they know that without me our assist train quickly gets derailed and we all get to take a dirt nap.

Now I don’t expect to be able to save everyone, but in the off chance that someone dies, this is when it starts. In /sp or /region you hear them crying to high heaven that they died and not someone else. Death is part of this game, in fact scenarios are like team death match COD4 where you just keep getting up and running like Lazarus, but berating the healing is not the way to win them over to why you need heals more than the next guy. In fact it is counter productive because the time it take you to type it out, could have been 3 or 4 kills, possibly more. Show your worth and you will receive in kind is how I currently see it. If there is a BW doing 500k dmg, and another at only 90k, they guy doing massive dmg will get more of my time because he is carrying a lot of the weight of the combat where as the other seems to be playing laxidaisily.

In both cases above, they both get heals but one gets substantially more attention than the other. At the root of this is the mutual reliance on others. Without tanks there is no solid defense, without DPS killing each other is like hitting someone with a swimming noodle, and finally a healer finishes the trinity by supplying a means of repair. So...have you thanked your healer today?

So I ran a few premades this weekend and I began to notice a few things about them. A. I was normally the only healer, I partially attribute that fact to the negativity people give healers, and the fact that Mythic has not been to kind to them. B. the few other healers who did get into the scenario that I was in, they would be dpsing and almost always be 4:1 dps to healing ratio.

Now I am no rocket scientist, but when you play a healing class and you are dpsing 4 times more than you are healing there is a problem. More over when your group is dying because you will not heal anyone else but yourself there is a problem.

I don’t know what started this trend, but it does make it hard for those of us who do heal in scenarios. Now if it is a steam roll, then you will find yourself doing more damage than normal, but most games are very well balanced. So when people are not performing their role, it gives the advantage to the enemy and in turn usually leads to a loss.

This is one reason I don’t like scenarios currently on Skull Throne. It is already a very stressful time for a healer, and to compound it by not having other healers healing that makes it a very difficult time for those who are performing their role. My question here is why do people think that healers are doing dps instead of healing in scenarios? What could be done to fix this issue and how would it be implemented?

I was always raised to be polite, I know it is harder now a days with a lot of people acting like they where raised in a zoo, but even in games I try and be polite. So, this weekend my guild leader let me have the reigns of the oRVR group running around. Normally, I run all things PVE so this was not a huge challenge, largely because destruction did not come and try and contest us so we where playing musical keeps.

Of course people come and go in the warband as we go from zone to zone, then we reach KV for a second time and start to take it. We are on the last BFO when destro starts to go on the offensive at the north keep. I ask the warband if they want to go or move on; someone scouting says that they have 4 warbands to our 1 and they are already through the first door. With that information I make the call to move on. This is when trouble hits, and of course it is only one person. He starts yelling in local that we are doing rve, and that we don’t have any clue about what we are doing.

Now, I am no fool, and the last thing I would do is run from a fight, but when you have almost a 4:1 odds there is no point unless you are already barricaded in the lord’s room ready for the attack. So we move on and interesting Mr. Speak out follows us back to Reikland.

This same individual is with us at the BFO right before the last keep which was already Order's so we where just finishing up the BFO's. So, destro strikes the south keep, and there is a warband in it already, so we where waiting for the bfo to finish capping. Several of the warband members keep asking to go defend so I say go to the south keep and a few of us stay to defend. This is when the outspoken speaks up again saying that we all need to be there and that he knows better than any of us, mind you coming form a level 30. So after it caps I kick him from the warband. Then it starts in region chat.

Now I usually don’t entertain this but he kept crying about getting kicked and they we don’t have any clue how to play so I tell him, I tried to contact the warband in the south keep to get an organized communication between the two of us. They chose not to reply so I chose to do what was in the best interest of the collective and not this one individual. If they had wanted help it was there, I offended it, but people are stubborn, and I can’t make them ask for it.

I have yet to hear back from him but I did get a tell from another healer who frequents my warbands and he stated that the above individual will fade away like those before him who thought that screaming and kicking against what everyone else wanted to do would be successful.

Now I understand that we are a team, and I respect that fact, but as a team we have to be supportive and communicate. If there is no communication then there can be no solid support. Even being out numbered, as long as you have good communication then you can have effective defense and very effective offence. More over people who are being blatantly rude, there are ways to approach a situation without being a jerk. Talking like an adult is one way, and not dropping and F-bomb in every thing you say is another. I will respect any opinion that is presented, whether I agree or not. I think that is a valuable part of leadership, but going so far as to insult me, my guild, and the people who are having fun playing the game with me. That is not acceptable but it divides our forces, so we are defeated even before the enemy gets to us.

As I stated in an earlier post and I still agree with it, respect goes a long way. Even if you don’t agree, follow for now, maybe even try your hand at leadership and see if it is everything you expect. Ultimately I, no one can make everyone happy; there will always be someone who thinks they can do better, so let them. Let them see what it is like then they might understand.

So I sat down last night and got to editing, I have added the music and all I need are some intro's and closing credits and you all will get to see a nice run through Sigmar Crypts.

Yep, that is right; I completed my Sentinel set this weekend by picking up my shoulders. The first in the guild to get it, but with a little luck others will have it soon. Additionally I reached RR 50, only 30 to go.

More over we killed our first boss in the Lost Vale. This is a new thing for this guild, although I have already done it on my zealot, it is still a nice achievement. We ended up getting a nice 2 handed axe for dwarfs, and a dark promise staff for bright wizards.

All in all a good fun weekend with some nice successes in pve, and several nice successes in oRVR.

As you can see from today's postings I had a lot bottled up with the holidays. So...during the break I finally ended playing my Zealot, personally I was not happy with the toon and I notified my regular pve group and interestingly enough several of them where only still playing their toon. So one of them followed me back over to Skull Throne and has rolled a Bright Wizard.

I know yet another BW, only 10-bagizilion of them, but none the less he played a sorceress and really enjoys DPS classes, more over he is having more fun on his Bright Wizard than he ever had on his sorc.

Out of all of this, aka...the fallout...him and I have become much better friends, starting over in a small guild with more group oriented people who don't care if we ever clear lost vale or if we are the "Uber" guild of the server. We are just 25 friends who can sit around drink a beer and kill some destruction, and sometimes even do some pve.

1. AFK auto following the warband in order to leech renown/influence: This is a bad one because when we actually have to fight 1/4th of the forces are out doing something else over inflating the numbers of our own warbands.

2. Random Loot bags on keep sieges: This has been here for a while and it still gets to me. Someone afk's the whole keep take only to run in at the last minute to place 1st in contribution and get a gold bag.

3. The ease of getting into the east keep in Caledor: Nothing like defending a keep only to have the destruction zerg run up the mountain side of the keep, completely avoiding the outer gate.

4. Healers DPS'ing: Nothing like seeing the only other healer in a warband DPS'ing while you are trying to keep the whole warband alive.

5. People fighting for leadership: Oh this is a huge one on Skull throne and I am sure it is on other servers. People who should not be leading yelling at each other in local about why one person is doing one thing while the other group is doing another.

So the guild went out and did premades most of New Years day for excitement. We where rolling with 2 bright wizards, 2 shadow warriors, and 1 iron breaker and me...the archmage. Most of the day was spent in Caledor woods trying to flip Caledor into the fortress.

The fun things about this scenario are that it is A. not serpents passage B. very focused around zone control and C. it has a lot of ways to play active defense with trees and objects all around.

As a healer it provides great cover, but also means a lot of the time you are prime pickings for witch elves when you are hiding in the back lines and moving behind objects. This is certainly when being in a premade is nice since we are almost always on vent, but for those of you who pug it, make macros that spam /sp chat so people know you are in trouble and can come to defend you.

Other than that, the scenario is a blast, and winning is not based on kills or anything of those means, but zone control. It also gives you as a healer the opportunity to learn the value of cover: D

This is certainly something that years in the military will teach you, professionalism. On the server I predominantly play on, Skull Throne, there is a huge schism in the order player base. Instead of seeing oRVR as something that we all should collectively work on, it is seen as those we are competing with the Jones’s at every turn.

This really came up last night when we where as usual playing musical keeps. A new warband hops into the zone from KV and their leader instantly starts berating the other warbands for not going to KV to try and defend against the destruction horde, and ultimately helping him do his agenda. At this point in the conversation there was no respect and tact presented. As a team, I know this is hard to understand in an MMO but we are a team. As a team we should be working to a common goal. Having one group holding off the horde while the other tries to flip a zone under their nose is really the way to go, but this brings in another issue.

Ego's, and this game has it to say the least. There are people who for lack of a better term are egomaniacs who want to control everything and not let people have fun and go for a goal. Instead of sending a tell to the other warband leaders asking for help in KV, the above individual stayed in zone, got mad, then came to Reikland and had it out in region chat.

Now to the heart of this Professionalism, or respecting other players and groups. We all have our own agendas in games. Sometimes others have the same as you, and you group more and more with them, but others don't necessarily have the same agenda and they will focus on their own goals. Really though at the end of the day we are on the same side and we all want to invade the Inevitable city and to do that we need strong leadership who can at least stand in the same room together without berating each other.

R.E.S.P.C.T.