Defending Altdorf

Tonight on Averheim, Destruction took another shot at Altdorf. In fact the battle rages as I type this (slain by the bedtime monster!).

I was determined to get involved, so off I went, a mighty rank 15 Witch Hunter ready to kick some Destruction ass!

OK not really. I knew I wouldn’t be any help but just wanted to see how things worked. The first challenge was getting to the battle. At first the fight was in Stonewatch, and I was still trying to figure out how to get there when Destruction moved on Reikland. I had come out the exit in the slums of Altdorf (the back exit, I believe) and crossed through the Heinrich Estate to the walls, except I was on the wrong side of it!

Luckily I found a Postern Gate and got in, then up on the walls. Destruction already had a ram on the main gate. I got close enough to pew pew with my pistol, but the best that did was earn me a scalding from some finger waggler. I had to run for my life and heal up.

I was looking at the map and talking to a guildie when the gate came down, and Destruction didn’t bother to stop to kill a level 15 on the walls. I closed the map and found myself alone on the walls. I manned an Organ Gun and for a while used it on incoming destruction reinforcements.

So the first thing I learned… if you have low level guildies who want to defend, let them take control of a siege weapon and they can make a meaningful contribution.

That said, a single siege weapon wasn’t killing anyone and we all know how fast one heals in WAR, so I judge my efforts there futile. I jumped down off the walls and ran up to the Destruction Horde pounding on the door of the keep. I shot one, and he turned and came after me. A level 40 marauder named Nobody. I fled of course, out through the gates, getting hung up for precious seconds on their abandoned battering ram. It was enough for Nobody to catch me and soon I was releasing back to a warcamp.

For some reason this was a camp at the other end of the zone. Rather than run back I flew into Altdorf and came out the main entrance and ran towards the battle. I ran around a corner and right into a marauder who more or less 1 shotted me. As I looked up I saw that it was… Nobody!!
I had to laugh, I’d taken the big circular route around the battlefield and came back to run into the same darned guy.

Next trip, I ran the length of the zone, getting a look at the lay of the land. Took me quite a while…

Thing two I learned. Fly to Altdorf and run out, it’s much faster.

..and soon I was back at the Postern Gate and slinking through. I ran all the way back into Altdorf to catch my breath, then back into the fray, ducking between some High Elves in full armor (I should note that there were open Warbands but I didn’t want some healer wasting their healing juice trying to keep a level 15 alive, so I remained solo.).

Suddenly the elves reversed direction and about trampled me. I rolled out of the way, jumped to my feet and followed them to… a sewer opening? People were clustering around it, pushing to get through. I followed, elbowing a dwarf in the head in order to cut in front of him. Inside was a claustrophobic spiral staircase, up I went, and popped out to face grim Order faces looking at me. Before I could ask “S’up Doodes?” I started taking damage. As I ran I glanced behind me…there were like 10 Destruction troops standing there… sneaky Destruction types, they were clonking people on the head as they emerged from the stairwell.

It was getting late and I’d learned a couple of things so I called it a night.

I can’t wait to get a few more levels so I can get into these battles in a meaningful way. Right now, in spite of what anyone tells you, there’s darned little a Tier 2 player can do, short of manning a siege weapon (It occurs to me that this might not be as true with Healers). A good tight warband of Tier 2 players could in theory act as a harrying force, but they’d have to be players that didn’t mind getting killed over and over again, and have a couple of healers hidden somewhere just to do resurrections.

But practically speaking, it makes more sense to spend your time gaining levels vs throwing yourself at much players twice+ your level.

And here’s where my personal weirdness comes out. I had a BLAST going out to defend Altdorf!! Being in a group of 20-30 players all running out to fight the enemy was great fun in DAoC and its great fun here, too.
Pretty Flash
Yeah, Altdorf might fall tonight, who knows? I don’t honestly care that much. What I care about is that the battle was fun. If it was fun at level 15, I can’t imagine how great it’ll be at 30 or 40! And I also care that Order was reacting and organizing. There are players on the Order side who want to put up a good fight.

I’m excited about the future of WAR, and I’m glad to be on Averheim. It’s a great server to play Order on.

And on the off chance that Nobody reads this (as opposed to the usual nobody reading it) I have to ask, and be honest. You came after me cuz I was so damned flash, didn’t ya!?? 🙂 I mean, what self-respecting Marauder could resist taking a shot at the Witch Hunter in the purple armor!!?

Update: Saylah hung around for the whole battle. Read her account here: Order on Averheim say, “No, you can’t take it during prime time!”

Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus

My eyes are red and tearing from my last heroic push to complete this tome. Do I get an unlock for that? Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus is a collection of three books (Trollslayer, Skavenslayer and Daemonslayer) from William King and based on Warhammer Lore. The first two books are collections of short stories and novellas while the third is a full length novel.

Gotrek Gurnisson is a Slayer; a dwarf who has suffered some shame (this far the details of which have yet to be revealed) and as a way to make amends is seeking a glorious death. Felix Jaeger is the son of a rich merchant; a scholar and poet, who was expelled from university after killing a fellow student in a duel. After this, he somehow provoked the famous Window Tax Riots, during which Gotrek saved his life. The two went out and got good and drunk together after this incident, and Felix swore an oath to travel with Gotrek and record his doom.

The books are written from Felix’s point of view (which fits well as he is the chronicler of Gotrek’s journey), and it is his growth as a character that keeps things interesting. Gotrek is more or less a force of nature, running towards any and every hopeless battle while Felix reluctantly follows along and inevitably ends up performing better than he ever hoped he would.

Trollslayer has the pair cavorting across the lands encountering all manner of evil in a loosely linked series of stories. Skavenslayer is more focused and concentrates on the Skaven (rat-men) plot to take over the city of Nuln. King’s rendition of the Skaven is wonderfully awful; cowardly, malicious creatures who are always one scare away from “squirting the musk of fear” or chewing their own tails out of nervousness or frustration. In Daemonslayer, Gotrek and Felix take part in an expedition into the Chaos Wastes of the North.

As a stand-alone book, Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus is great fun, a wonderful swords and sorcery (and bit of steampunk) yarn. My only real Warhammer connection is Warhammer Online, and I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed the book any less had I not been playing WAR; I’d recommend it for any fan of s&s fantasy.

On the other hand, reading the book really helped keep me in the mood for playing the game, so if you’re a WAR subscriber you might want to keep that in mind.

You may be a bit lost at first (I was) since the first book is all short stories, but soon enough you’ll get a feel for the characters and really start enjoying them. King’s skill as a writer improves through the three books as well (or so it seemed to me). The writing seems to get better and better as the series goes on.

I don’t usually get caught up on price, but this is also quite a bargain. Amazon lists the book $8.79 USD at the time of this writing, and it runs 763 pages. The downside is that it’s a mass-market paperback with about a 1.75″ spine, so it probably won’t stand up to too many readings without the spine cracking.

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

But I do indeed feel fine.

So at 7 am on Sunday, an alliance of Destruction guilds on Averheim launched an attack on Altdorf, Order’s Main City. Semantics aside, they got into the city but failed to kill the King before they were ousted. For a few hours, only Tier 4 Order Characters could enter the city and that was to defend it. A few hours later, Altdorf was back to normal and if you’d gone out to enjoy a beautiful fall day yesterday, you wouldn’t have ever known anything had happened.

Unless you checked in with the blogosphere & message boards where people are sharing prettystrongreactions to this event.

For Ardwulf, this is reason enough to quit Warhammer [EDIT: see his comment to this post and his blog post on the topic. My apologies for mis-representing his reasons. This was more like a ‘final straw’ thing than his main reason for leaving]. Saylah seems concerned that players can use the clock to get an advantage (the attack started at 7 am), and lucidly points out some weaknesses in the system. I hope she offered these points as feedback to Mythic. And the VN boards are just an explosion of whining, as is typical of the VN boards. In game, we had a guild member seemingly very upset and declaring the war over for Order and that it was pointless to keep playing (I paraphrase, but that was his tone).

I am surprised to find myself surprised by these reactions (meaning the reaction of people on various message boards; I think my fellow bloggers make good points). You’d think I’d learn by now. Warhammer is an RvR game, and RvR (or PvP) isn’t always fair and its almost always messy. Sometimes you’re going to win and other times you’re going to lose, but if you want to win early and consistently, you pretty much have to be hardcore. Casual players/guilds/sides aren’t going to win as often as people who build their life around a game. (This, by the way, is why in general I prefer PvE games, but I’m making an exception or Warhammer since the RvR is so fun.)

One specific note as to the time. Mythic has stated that all the objectives have to be taken within 12 hours in order to capture a city, from which one would infer that this might be a 12-hour event. Given that, 7 am doesn’t seem to be so off the mark as a good time to start.

What no one seems to be considering is how much fun this is going to be when more of us are level 40. We did City Attack and City Defense during beta, and wow, was that some fun stuff, running through the streets of a city, sacking and pillaging, or saving and protecting. It was fun on either side.

And it’s part of the game. If you don’t want to play a game where you are sometimes inconvenienced by events in the world then quitting Warhammer probably is the right thing to do, honestly. People so often complain that their actions in a MMORPG game world have no consequences: well in Warhammer they do have consequences, but not all consequences are good ones.

The impact this attack had on me was to get me anticipating even more getting into higher tier RvR. I wish I’d been high enough level to help defend the city. Next time hopefully I will be. And I’m looking forward to the day when we try to give as good as we’ve got and make a play for the Inevitable City.

And when this back and forth gets tired, I’ll move on. Another puzzle (to me) is people wondering how Warhammer will sustain our interest for years to come if people are attacking the cities already. I’ll say right now that no game is going to sustain my interest for years to come, nor am I looking for such a beast. There are SO MANY games to play and more coming all the time. Life is short and I want to play and enjoy as many of them as I can.