Category: MMO

Improving OpenRvR in Warhammer

Posted on by Nimgimli

Jobildo has a great post up outlining some ideas to make OpenRvR in Warhammer more appealing than it is now. It is (unsurprisingly) a well thought-out post and you should go read it if you haven’t already.

I was honestly a bit shocked when I learned how much exp you can get from playing a scenario mini-game. Now I understand why everyone does them over and over until they start talking about the boredom of grinding scenarios.

Note to Mythic: When players start putting the word “grinding” ahead of one aspect of your game, it’s time for you to pay attention. For many (not all) players, Grinding isn’t an affectionate term.

Note to Players: We’ve seen evidence that Mythic listens and responds to player feedback. So don’t get discouraged! As Moltke said, keenly anticipating the age of the MMORPG, No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and WAR is a matter of expedients. I’m pretty sure Mythic’s battle plan didn’t anticipate people ignoring 3/4ths of the world in order to sit in a scenario queue all night, and that they’ll continue to refine the game until players are enjoying all aspects of it. Mythic’s method seems to be to slowly add bonuses rather than to go overboard and then have to nerf. Smart fellas.

What can we do? Provide feedback to Mythic, either on forums or in blog posts. Link to good posts like Jobildo’s to get it more attention. Make some noise and let Mythic know we want to be able to progress at a reasonable pace via OpenRvR!

It will come in time. WAR is Everywhere and Everwhen. It isn’t going anywhere; at least not anytime soon.

Keep Cap Exp, huzzah!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Today Mythic added some experience rewards for capturing a Keep, so the Casualties of War decided to go see what that was all about. We had Tier 3 and Tier 2 groups roving the RvR Lakes; I was with the T2 groups.

Great fun. For the record my Rank 15 Witch Hunter got 2300 exp for taking a keep (and 700 renown). My understanding is that at 15 he’s pretty much getting the max, and honestly given the organizational time, cost (for siege machines), and difficulty, it should be more, but this is a step in the right direction at least.

In all the excitement I only took a couple of screenshots, and none of them at the Keeps, but here is our merry band standing around “defending” a Battlefield Objective. (No Destruction types were silly enough to try to take it back.) We had 1 full warband of maybe 75% CoW members, and a second Warband that I’m thinking was about 2 groups. Keep battles were still a challenge since some of us were in Vent, some not, and there were 2 warbands so /shout was the best way to communicate (we probably should’ve created a channel…an idea that only just now occurred to me). Plus the design of the keeps can make it hard to bring all troops to bear at once…

Anyway, click for a much larger version:

Defending Altdorf

Posted on by Nimgimli

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!”

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

Posted on by Nimgimli

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 pretty – strong – reactions 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.

The clothes make the Witch Hunter

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night was all about the PvE. I wasn’t really in the mood for company, and my Witch Hunter wasn’t really in the bracket for it, either. Well, when I started up for the evening he was rank 11, which is exactly the point where you should enjoy some RvR, but soon after he rolled over to 12 and was a noob again.

I also hit Troll Country for the first time; I thought things were grim in Nordland and Norsca, but these poor bastards…their gods have abandoned them. It is beyond me how they continue to hold on to any sliver of hope, faced with troll incursions on one side, demons on the other, and a mutation plague running rampant amongst them. Stinking nobles can’t be trusted.

Along the way to rank 13 I upgraded just about every piece of gear I own. I also finally got a cloak and spent a bit more time than I’m comfortable admitting to in deciding what colors to dye it. I think we have here a perfect indicator of role players vs non-role players. When you see a Witch Hunter run past with bright yellow thigh-high boots and a plain white cloak…you can pretty much bet that’s not a role player. 🙂 I ended up going with forest green and a sky blue trim, and dyed those awful yellow boots a basic brown with forest green highlights (these images don’t reflect the latest boots). Next bit of kit was a bandoleer and now I’m looking like a witch hunter. I just need the hat.

I feel like I’ve burned through Troll Country awfully quickly, unless there’s a bunch more quests I’m about to unlock. I’m stationed now at the last fortress before leaving the zone, I think. But a couple more levels and I can head out into the contested areas and see what that additional 50% exp for killing opposing players feels like.

The pendulum swings: Is Warhammer about to crash?

Posted on by Nimgimli

A week ago, the gaming blog-o-sphere was rife with posts talking about how much fun Warhammer Online is. Everyone (I’m speaking figuratively here) was RvRing and questing and PQing and having a grand old time. Now, not so much. Blogger after blogger are putting up posts expressing concern with the leveling rate or the leveling style or the lack of depth in the game.

These are people who have played the game for a few weeks and are basing their posts on real and significant experience, so I’m not going to disagree with them one bit; we all come at these games with our own expectations and desires. A lot of people seem to be just killing time for the new WoW Expansion as much as anything, and there’s much doom and gloom about how Warhammer will be a ghost town when Lich King launches.

I can’t deny this makes me sad, because they may be right.

I also have to admit I was feeling a wee bit of burnout/excess grindiness earlier this week, after I spent Monday and Tuesday nights playing all evening (and having fun, I might add). My personal poison is PQ Grinding. Like everyone else, I’m finding it harder and harder to find groups to do PQs with; and I don’t feel comfortable skipping them since my character is so dependent on the gear we get as Influence Rewards. Killing Easy rated mobs over and over for 100 Influence each gets kind of dull. And as soon as you finish one, you literally are directed to the next one and have to start all over again. It feels endless.

I’m bored with Scenarios as well, but those I can safely ignore since I can get Renown via open world RvR (which is wicked fun); the only way to get influence rewards is to do PQs.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the weekend. I barely played at all Wednesday, and Thursday I didn’t log in until after 10. Not having a lot of time before bed, I figured I’d just grind some Influence and hit the hay. It felt good to step back into the shoes of my Witch Hunter, and I just started running around, knocking the dust off my gear and making sure I hadn’t forgotten any skills or anything. And instead of grinding Influence, I got caught up in a quest to find a stolen chest. This ended up being the first step of a “treasure map” kind of quest. Each step gave a clue as to where to find the next step. And it was a lot of fun.

I had to log soon after, but now I find myself counting down the minutes until I can get out of here and start the weekend. I don’t know how long this will last…I might be starting to feel the burnout again by the end of the night. I can never predict these things. It was just weird to almost grudgingly log in last night, and then end up being really happy to be in-game.

Some small part of me *wants* to get burned out on Warhammer, to be honest. There’re a bunch of single player games incoming that I really want to play, and there’s the Mines of Moria expansion for LOTRO set to arrive on Nov. 18th. Will I contribute to the ghost town-ification of Warhammer Online?

I just don’t know. I’m going to play while I’m having fun, and stop playing when I’m not. These are games, after all. If they aren’t fun, there’s no point in playing them.

To the bloggers who’re leaving, I sincerely hope you find a game that you find enjoyable, and thanks for helping to make Warhammer enjoyable during the time you were in-world with the rest of us.

New Wallpaper repository: Photobucket

Posted on by Nimgimli

A few posts ago I mentioned I was putting some Warhammer “wallpapers” on Flickr. Well it turns out Flickr resizes images on you. Grrr.

But Photobucket is a bit more forgiving. It won’t resize files smaller than 1 meg in size. Problem is my wallpapers are about a meg and a half. So I had to resave them at 95% compression to get them to fit under the 1 meg limit. This costs a bit of the ‘pop’ of the original, but for now its the best I can do. I guess I need to install a gallery here at DC.

Anyway, here’s my new Photobucket page with some random Warhammer “landscape” wallpapers for you. All are 1680×1050. More to come when I get around to processing them!

http://photobucket.com/dragonchasers

Here’s a couple samples:

Norsca Woods Altdorf Docks Dwarf Span

8489 banned for selling gold

Posted on by Nimgimli

That’s what the front page of the Herald says. Assuming these copies are being bought at retail, that’s $424,450 USD in sales. EA must be having a good month. Or someone is stretching the truth. 8489 what? Accounts or characters? If they ban characters, then that could be a meaningless number. If they ban accounts, then.. whoa!

And I’m guessing the serious gold seller outfits set up shop as a distributor and get copies of the game wholesale.

The flip side: a night of “solo” War.

Posted on by Nimgimli

So last night, I was feeling pretty cranky and unsociable, but I still needed my daily War fix. I logged on for some solo fun. I was thinking “Log in, kill monsters, log off.”

Turns out it isn’t easy to solo in Warhammer.

And by that I don’t mean that going solo is hard or overly challenging. I mean that there are so many easy ways to group up with other players (implicitly or explicitly) that before you know it, you aren’t solo anymore. You have to kind of go out of your way to play by yourself in this game. (Just to be clear, this is a compliment.)

It started when I realized I still had a few quests left in contested (RvR) areas. I coulda shouted out to the CoWs for help but like I said, I was cranky and didn’t really feel much like talking. I figured I could chance it. After all, everyone is in Scenarios in Tier 1, right?

I’d just hit my first quest goal when I spotted a level 10 Marauder skulking about. Those guys are about as heretical as one can get, with their freaky arms and all. So I did what any good Witch Hunter would do. I shot first, planning to ask questions later. It was a good fight. Level 10 DPS vs Level 10 DPS. Sadly for him, he flinched first… his first reaction was to run, letting me get in a few shots before he decided to turn and fight. Pretty soon, one dead Marauder.

I figured he’d be back with friends. I figured right because before too long three Destros showed up. Three on one didn’t seem too favorable so I ran like a little girl. Popped my Flee, downed a potion and got away before the assorted DoTs and Snares could bring me down. I ran to the guards (I’m sure they had a few choice unmanly names for me at that point) and kept running, circling around to enter the RvR area from another venue.

Y’know what’s creepy & fun? Running into a town square and finding a bunch of bodies that haven’t decayed yet, and wondering which side won. I was whipping my camera back and forth scanning for action and finally spotted movement. Friendlies! A rag-tag bunch of order came running back from the direction of the Destro guards. We took back a control point and hung around for the 3 minutes it takes to solidify the capture. I wasn’t in a Group but I was in a group, if you follow me. We took another control point and hunkered down to finish the cap. Destro kept fainting at us from different vectors, but we held strong. When the timer went off and we got the bonus renown, everyone cheered. By then I’d finished my quests so I headed out of the RvR area.

It was time to leave for Norsca, as I’d finished all the quests in Nordland. In Norsca, I noted one more RvR quest that I’d lost track of. I had to scout a control point in a cave on an island. This is the one thing I really did Solo all night. I ran out there, not a soul in site. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for attacks to start. I hoped to trigger the quest from outside the cave, but nope. I crept inside. Empty. No guards, no players. The control point was Lost, which meant it had changed hands fairly recently (too bad, I was hoping for a solo cap!). I crept back out. Stealthed away, then ran like heck. Success. Sounds boring now, but doing it wasn’t at all.

It was getting late, but I figured I’d start grinding out some Influence in the Chapt 4 PQs. I wasn’t looking to get involved with anything, but when a group invite popped up from a Bright Wizard, it felt rude to ignore it. After all, this WAS a PQ I was doing. We chatted a bit while we ground out the first stage of the PQ. Then another player joined us. And last, a level 23 White Lion. Suddenly we could take the PQ seriously.

We beat it, and of course all got loot bags with such a small group. After a quick discussion we ran off to another PQ, adding a couple more group members but dropping one. The next PQ was completed in fairly short order. The White Lion had a Standard and it gave a +20% Morale Buff and a +3% Exp Buff. My Morale gauge was filling up faster than I could use the skill! With that PQ done, we headed off to yet another. By now the group was in the swing of things, chatting, joking, killing, helping each other out. People were rolling Need on things they could use, and Greed on things they couldn’t. Everything was fun and easy-going. No stress.

The next PQ had a surprise inside. And I’m not going to spoil it, but OUCH! During this one there were a few dwarves running about; they never joined us but definitely were integral to our ultimate success. Nice guys, too. We had a nice chat after the battle.

Finally I *had* to go to bed. Lady Luck was with me; I’d rolled for first place once, and second place twice in our PQ lotteries. I’m not sure what happens with a high level character in these things; I ranked first in contribution on one of them. A level 10 ranking 1st when there’s a 23 in the group? I’m guessing he gets penalized for being so high level, or just doesn’t get in on the meters at all? Anyway, 3 loot bags came with 3 equipment upgrades: tunic, boots and a new rapier. Woot!

So during my whole “solo” night I really did one thing alone. And I’ve specifically mentioned the chat that was happening in /group and in /say because I keep reading articles about how quiet Warhammer is. I don’t find it quiet, really. I’ll grant you that region-wide chat channels are quiet. But face to face conversation seems fine to me. I really don’t miss anonymous-ish chat channels with their petty flame wars and Chuck Norris jokes. When you’re standing right there in front of a person, or are grouped with them, chances are you’re going to treat them more like you would in ‘real life’ and not just randomly attack. And that’s been my experience so far.

All in all, another night of great fun and adventure in Warhammer Online. I began the night at level 9 and finished about half-way through level 11, without touching a scenario. (I keep hearing that doing scenarios are the fastest way to level, but 2 dings on a weeknight seems pretty good to me.) What’ll be next!!?

RvR: Open World vs Scenarios

Posted on by Nimgimli

So last night I got together with some guildies to do Tier 1 Open World RvR in Warhammer Online. This was the first time I’ve done ‘organized’ Open World RvR since launch, and the first time I’ve done it with a character I’d ‘grown’ naturally. (We did a lot of RvR in beta testing, but it was always with an insta-leveled character that I never had a good feel for.)

Short version of the story: It was a blast!

Long version: There was a bit of give and take early on, as some folks really wanted to do scenarios even though the ‘scheduled event’ was open world RvR. Nice thing about War is that this wasn’t a deal breaker. Some of us went one way and others went another. We swept through all three pairings taking objectives. Sadly only Nordland/Norsca was heavily contested and thus that pairing was the most fun. But it was the first outting for several of us and getting out there to get a feel for the lay of the land of each zone was entertaining and helpful. We left our Warband open and some random folks joined in the fun. At least one of them asked if the guild was accepting new members (they asked me via private tell) and I had to let them down gently. For now our recruitment is closed.

Anyway, all of this led me to the question of Scenarios vs Open World.

I seem to be in a minority in preferring Open World RvR. In fact, some people think Tier 1 RvR is broken. and maybe it is, but I haven’t noticed. I personally find Scenarios to feel awfully “flat” and while they’re a nice change of pace, I think I’ve already had my fill of the T1 Warhammer Scenarios. This is definitely a personal preference and plenty of people are still *loving* the scenarios.

Y’see, I’m a role-player at heart, even if I’m not on an RP server. By this I don’t mean I have some elaborate backstory for my character. But I mean when I’m playing, I AM my character. Maybe I should say I’m a VR junkie rather than a role-player. Immersion is important to me, which is why stupid names and Chuck Norris jokes bug the hell out of me: they strongly remind me that I’m playing a game.

And Scenarios do that too. Every one starts the same and ends with a big fat score-card in front of my face. Scenarios are a sport, and I’m not much of a sports guy. They feel like a video game and I don’t want a video game: I want a virtual world to lose myself in.

Open World RvR is random. You head out and you don’t know if you’re going to encounter an overwhelmingly powerful force….or no one. I LOVE that. That’s like a big old Christmas present under the tree for me. Surprise!

The downside is, well, I’m an aberration. The vast majority of people seem to prefer Scenarios, and I can even understand that: they’re quick to get into (on our server at least…a five minute wait is a long wait on Averheim/Order) and you *know* there’s going to be competition. And they give lots of experience, and mostly people are eager to gain new levels. Scenarios are a very “theme park” feature, and as we’ve seen, Theme Park MMOs are very popular.

Hopefully this mindset will change in higher tiers. I’ve done only one Tier 2 scenario: Phoenix Gate. PH is a “Capture the Flag” scenario and to me… well, cleaning the toilet starts to sound like fun when compared to Capture the Flag in any and every computer game I’ve ever played. I just despise CtF as a theme. Again, totally a personal preference. Probably has a lot to do with sucking at gym class when I was a kid. Chasing a flag carrier and not being fast enough to catch up brings back a lot of bad memories. 🙂

But the point I’m trying to make is, I sure hope either other scenarios are more interesting in T2 and beyond, or there’s more Open World RvR up there.

And I’d love to see Mythic add more incentive to OW RvR. Maybe if instead of just telling us how much personal Renown we’ve gained for taking a control point (lots, btw, I gained 5 renown levels in a few hours) we also got a more concrete indication of how much we’ve moved the “Realm Control” needle when we capture a zone? I mean, everyone loves the ‘kapow!’ of our side capturing a tier, right? Not to mention that nice Victory Call buff?

Anyway, another wall of text. I’m going to make an effort to try to organize more Open World RvR in our guild, and I’m going to try to find some good Destruction Guilds on Averheim and call them out when I do so. Let’s do what we can to make that “War is Everywhere!” battle call to be true!