Category: MMO

Another look at gold selling Spam

Posted on by Nimgimli

So Mythic made a big fuss about how tough they were going to be on gold sellers and how they’ve made it “easier” to report them.

Hmmm.

From the Herald article, Reporting Spammers 101:

Place the text the player sent you in the second window, which asks for details about what was sent. Also note if this solicitation came in the form of in-game chat (any channel), or through the mail system.

Here is a typical gold selling spam. This is what Mythic wants you to key in every time you want to report a gold seller.

Skdjfhoiertr: Hello, www.asdfasd.ca, is selling warhammer gold, 10g for $3.75, 50g for $ 18.77. Delivery in less 3 hours. Get the gold now and be ahead of others

and another:

Banded: < < www.ignsux.com >> Cheapest Warhammer Online Gold, Price (100G==28 USD) , Order < 20 Mins Deliver. Fast Power-Leveling 1-40 sale $259. ~~Welcome to ( www.ignsux.com )

(I’ve changed the urls a bit for obvious reasons.)

In the first case, just typing in the name of the seller is a chore. And while these aren’t super lengthy passages to type, I just feel like Mythic is punishing ME, the paying customer, here. At least that’s how it felt after submitting a dozen or so of these things, many of them complete duplicates of others. Why do I have to type all this crap out? Either allow us to cut and paste the tells, or do the work yourselves and check the log files. I’m happy to type the name of the person and the site they’re advertising, but why is my typing out the cost of the gold they’re selling relevant?

Then once you do report them, does Mythic respond quickly?

[08/10/05][11:08:51]Joined Channel: [1. – Ekrund – Mordrin’s Watch]
(Me logging in. So it took 18 minutes for this spammer to find me.)
[08/10/05][11:26:22] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][11:35:56] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][11:47:17] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][11:57:56] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][12:10:31] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][12:21:53] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][12:34:43] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][12:46:53] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][13:29:25] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][13:43:19] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][13:59:02] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][14:13:22] Grotidkya:
[08/10/05][16:09:18] Grotidkya:
And I logged out at 16:21, 6 minutes late for the start of the football game. No idea how much longer Grotidkya was spamming people.
[08/10/05][16:21:35]You will finish logging out in 10 seconds.
[08/10/05][16:21:40]You will finish logging out in 5 seconds.
[08/10/05][16:21:45]You are no longer logging out.

How long does it take to swing the ban-hammer? Either a lot longer than it would seem, or Mythic is seriously deluged with reports. But how many accounts can there be? And if that number is huge…say 1000 gold seller accounts. That’s $50,000 in retail sales for EA/Mythic in gold seller revenue! Or is Mythic banning Characters rather than accounts? That seems to be a losing battle.

I’m just going to start ignoring these guys. They were pretty easy to ignore before I started being a good citizen and following Mythic’s reporting rules. But now that I’ve been trying to report each seller, I suddenly feel like a data entry clerk, not a gamer. I’ll install SpamMeNot and let the gold sellers be someone else’s problem.

Side note: A few of these jerkwads spam you for more than one website. Not sure if the sites are all owned by the same place, or if “gold seller spammer” is a new contractual position in the world of bottom feeders.

A taste of RvR

Posted on by Nimgimli

Tonight I got my first real taste of “open world RvR” in Warhammer Online.

I mean, I did plenty of it in beta testing, but when you get handed a level 30 or 40 character and go bash other people who are all level 30 or 40, it just isn’t the same as going out there with the character that you grew from level 1, and who is going to be encountering opponents both higher and lower than he is.

It really brought back memories of pre-Battlegrounds WoW PvP, and I mean that as a compliment. I wasn’t even grouped, just moving *with* a group, and trying to do some quests while dodging baddies, or ambushing them, depending on circumstances. This was in Tier 1, mind you. It was so great to see stuff happening in T1 RvR! Early on I did a bunch of quests in the High Elf T1 RvR areas, and never even saw another player.

I was also playing as a Witch Hunter, a class that has always called to me and that I have, for mostly silly reasons, resisted until now. I’ve actually rolled a WH on not one but two different RP servers, because I really wanted to “RP” a Witch Hunter. But I keep playing on Averheim, so I was ‘saving’ the Witch Hunter until such time as I moved to an RP server. But CoW is turning out to be such a good guild that I’ve abandoned all other servers..well anyway, no matter.

Point I’m trying to get at is that the Witch Hunter is incredibly fun. His basic pistol shot has a snare effect when it hits someone in the back, and he can shoot while running, so he’s pretty useful in RvR even when outmatched, since he can snare fleeing bad guys. (My Shadow Warrior has a snare shot as well, but he has to stand still to fire it off.)

And when it comes in to close up fighting, the WH has a nice variety of melee and close range pistol shots. Just great fun all around.

My only fear now is the scenarios are going to feel dull after tonight!

Warpapers at Flickr

Posted on by Nimgimli

[EDIT: I just realized that Flickr borks wallpapers. The largest size they offer is still a reduced size. I’ll have to come up with a better solution.]

[EDIT #2: Photobucket doesn’t resize images smaller than 1 meg if you fiddle with the album settings, so here you go: http://photobucket.com/dragonchasers

I set up a “Wallpaper” set at Flickr where I’ll be storing various full-sized “landscape” shots from Warhammer (and other MMOs). If you’re playing the game, you probably can create your own, but other folks might like to see what the world offers.

Wallpaper Set

And a ‘cropped’ set of generic Warhammer shots.

What’s in a name?

Posted on by Nimgimli

Approximately 8 billion bloggers have written on this subject, but now its my turn.

So I was playing Warhammer last night, running a baby dwarf through the first PQs. If you’ve done the dwarf PQs you’ll know that the boss of the first one is pretty tough. There was a White Lion running around doing the quest with us. His name was Jyrk.

Now to me, that’s an odd choice for a name. And the player was berating an Iron Breaker (who was I think level 4) for not tanking the boss. Now yeah, an IB lives to tank, but this little guy was getting slaughtered by the boss when he tried to tank him. He died over and over again, and Jyrk was calling him stupid, or an idiot, or something along those lines. Jyrk seemed to be paired with a Rune Priest named Jynx, but she had to drop heals on the IB so fast that invariably she’d get aggro and when the IB went down, and then she’d be next to die.

Basically it was a difficult situation because we just didn’t have the ranks to cleanly take down that boss. But we were also low enough level that we’d just respawn with no ill-effects and run back into the battle (the spawn point is seconds from the PQ). So there was really NO reason to get upset, and certainly no reason for Jyrk to be berating this dude who was still figuring out how to play his class.

So maybe the name fit. Maybe Jyrk’s player really is a jerk. My experience would suggest he is. But maybe he’d had a really crappy day at work, or he has a sick family member, or he was heavily invested in the stock market. Maybe he was acting abnormally for whatever reason. He might normally be a very nice guy.

But his character’s name was Jyrk, so I can only assume that, yeah, the dude that plays this character is an ass, and I’ll make a point of avoiding him if we ever cross paths again.

So I’m going to be the 8 billion and oneth blogger to urge you to think about your character’s name, and what the name says to other people. For most players you’ll encounter, your name is the first bit of data they’re going to use when they start to form an opinion of you. Neutral names are fine, but if you’re going to use a descriptive name, assume people are going to believe it.

Main > Alt ??

Posted on by Nimgimli

Casualties of War just put a Roster module in-place. As has happened in just about every guild I’ve ever been in, I was asked to specify a Main character. People talk about Mains and Alts all the time. But I don’t really understand what the term Main means, and I’ve yet to hear a really good, consistent definition.

Don’t misread me, I’m not condemning CoW or any guild for using the term. Heck, I talk about being an “alt-aholic” which infers that I have Alts. And having Alts in turn infers that I have a Main. So I use the term too. But what does it mean?

Is your Main your highest level character?
Is your Main your character with the largest /played value?
Is your Main the character that you find the most fun to play?
Is your Main the character you can most naturally role-play as?
Is your Main the first character that you roll on a server?

And from an external point of view, what significance is it that Char A is my Main and Char B is my Alt?

The only theory I have is that your Main is the character that you personally identify as Most Important, and since its Most Important, the Guild is going to give priority to helping you equip/level that character over the Alts of other players. So if a nice juicy loot drop for a Priest appears, and Player A is playing a Priest that is his “Main” and Player B is playing a Priest that is his “Alt” then Player A gets the item (all other things being equal).

In the same way, if there’s one slot open in a guild event, and the group needs DPS, and two DPS characters want to come, the Main gets preference over the Alt.

So assuming all this is true, I can see why a guild as an entity would want you to declare a Main. But why do individuals do it? You see it in chat all the time: “My main is a {insert level cap} wizard!” In this case is it just bravado? A way to prove that you aren’t a noob to be pwned just because you’re a low level character?

I need to pick a “Main” in Warhammer, and suddenly it is becoming a dilemma. My highest level is a Shadow Warrior but I haven’t touched him since Sunday since I’m having so much fun playing various Alts. I guess I need to do some navel gazing and decide what class I find to be the Most Fun, which will make that character the Most Important to me. This is going to be tough since I enjoy them all so much.

And oy! I hope the Alts don’t resent my Main and start accusing me of playing favorites. 🙂

Warhammer Chat Paradox

Posted on by Nimgimli

Two of the biggest issues that people are complaining about when it comes time to complain about Warhammer Online:

1) I always miss /tells because nothing draws my attention to them
2) Gold sellers keep sending me /tells and its seriously impacting my enjoyment of the game

Does this seem odd to anyone else?

If the chat system is so bad that you don’t notice tells, then how can the gold seller spam be so annoying!!?

I’m just askin…

And, like Ysharros, I’m sorta tired of the WAR bashing. If you don’t like the game, that’s fine. We get it. No game is right for everyone. But why put so much energy into a string of anti-Warhammer posts? It seems to me like it takes one, maybe two, posts to say “I don’t like Warhammer because of X, Y, & Z. If these are big issues for you too, you might want to hold off on buying the game.”

Then move on and share your *enthusiasm* for games you like. Because enthusiasm is infectious and fun to read. Whining, not so much.

And yeah, I realize the irony of me whining about whining. 🙂

Warhammer Update 1.01

Posted on by Nimgimli

We’re getting a big Warhammer update.

Highlights from the Herald:

* Players no longer need to scroll down through the EUALA when logging into the game. The window now defaults to the bottom, and players need only check the Agreement box and click accept.

* The war against the gold sellers continues! We have made improvements to the Appeal system to allow players to report spam messages from gold sellers more quickly.

* TAB-targeting should now more consistently select the nearest enemy in the player’s field of view.

* Corrected an issue that was preventing players from adding new friends to their friend list even while the number of existing friends was below the list’s size limit.

* Fixed the issue that was causing players to sometimes get stuck in a particular animation state.

* Monsters which change velocity while moving in combat should no longer return “Target is Out of Range” sometimes when attacked by players.

* The /ignore command will now work more consistently.

* In response to player feedback, we have made improvements to player pet movement and behaviors.

* The Pet window should no longer disappear when its master is zoning or entering the game.

* We made many UI fixes including a new “autoloot” feature requested by many players.

* Guild cloaks will now display their heraldry properly.

* We have made several improvements to the chat window, and it should now be more intuitive to use and set up. A number of chat window issues were resolved in the process. We are continuing to work on your requests about chat, with more improvements to come in the future.

Not bad at all. Seems like they’re working on the hottest issues, to me.

Good show, Mythic!

Bonus XP in LOTRO

Posted on by Nimgimli

[EDIT: Not only is it a bonus XP long weekend, but former players can come back and play for free for a few days in the Welcome Back Weekend.

From October 2-6, 2008, we’re offering free LOTRO access to our former players, and +25% bonus experience gain for everyone who logs in and plays. Returning players are invited to patch up, jump in, and start playing on their old characters to get them ready for Moria!

SOURCE
/EDIT]

In preparation for the release of Mines of Moria, Turbine has announced 25% Bonus XP from Oct. 2nd to Oct. 6th. I’ve been meaning to log back in to LOTRO — I don’t want to totally lose touch with the world — but Warhammer is shiny and new and comes with a monthly fee (I coughed up the $$ for a Lifetime Founder’s Membership to LOTRO back when it launched, so the game is now ‘free’ to play for me.) so I haven’t gotten around to checking in with Middle Earth since WAR launched.

Perhaps this will be my incentive. Balancing two MMOs is pretty difficult for casual gamers that get at most an hour or two per weeknight to play. This challenge is made worse if, like me, you’re an alt-aholic (I have 14 Warhammer characters already…granted lots of them are level 2 or 3, but still).

Honestly LOTRO is probably a better “workday” MMO for me in the long run. By the time I log in, I’m generally tired and cranky and fairly impatient, which doesn’t make me a great group member. The stronger PvE focus of LOTRO is a better fit for me under these circumstances. But for now, Warhammer is providing plenty of solo PvE enjoyment. I don’t really get all the hate that the PvE aspects of War gets, honestly.

Getting to know you…

Posted on by Nimgimli

My Warhammer guild has turned out to be an interesting social experiment. Usually when I join a guild in an MMO, it’s because I’ve run into the same people a few times, grouped with them, and have some idea of what I’m getting into. Not so with CoW. I learned about it through reading the blogs of some of the founders, but once the guild was formed (and it grew very rapidly) I was in this group of total strangers who nevertheless shared a common interest: blogging. And, well, Warhammer Online. 🙂

Things are going pretty well and so far the guild drama quotient is pretty darned low. A lot of people assumed a guild made up of a group of (by nature) opinionated bloggers was doomed to fail. But I can tell you that so far at least, there’s no sign of pending collapse. Quite the contrary.

In any group of people this big, you’re going to meet folks who have values that don’t coincide with yours. I’m working through that issue right now, in fact, and I keep expecting this to turn into major drama (given that the person in question is an officer) but again, thus far its been very much a “You do your thing and I’ll do my thing and we’ll both respect the other’s personal choice.” kind of situation. No harm, no foul, everybody having fun.

Granted there are people I don’t actively like: the constant complainer, the “I know more than anyone” dude, etc. Any reasonably large group has these characters. I still get along with them, but I don’t seek out their company, if you know what I mean.

But mostly I’ve been having surprisingly enjoyable experiences. For instance, y’know I’m a voice chat hater. But I’ve been running Ventrillo when doing RvR in CoW groups just because I can’t deny that it is easier and more efficient. Generally I just listen even though I have a mike set up. And I have vent coming through the speakers (I run it on a 2nd pc).

Saturday night I was in a CoW group, getting our arses handed to us in a Tier 2 scenario (we were pretty badly out-leveled), and one of my guild mates had his Vent on ‘handsfree.’ He was being pretty chatty, which should have driven me bonkers, but instead he was doing a grand job of keeping us entertained and keeping the ‘sting’ of losing at bay. Not only was I in stiches, but so was Angela, who was next to me playing EQ2.

To make things even better, someone in another group shouted “Why do all Shadow Warriors suck in RvR?”. I was the lone Shadow Warrior in the scenario. I just ignored the idiot because I didn’t feel I was doing particularly badly, given the circumstances. I’m usually the first one to come down on myself if I’m screwing up; I hate letting down my group mates.

But I digress. As I said, I just ignored the comment, but my guildies came to my defense, which felt pretty damned good. It wasn’t a big deal and the shouter never said anything else, but its the thought that counts, y’know?

So yeah, being in CoW has been a very rewarding experience so far. Would it be going over-the-top to say its even been restoring my faith in people, to some extent? I always expect the worst out of any group situation, and my expectations are generally met. I expected CoW to be an awkward experience; I’m not very extroverted and tend to hold myself apart from groups. But so far, its been a joy to get to know this group of strangers bound together by a love of gaming and a love of writing about gaming.

My first Warhammer gripe

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve been playing MMOs for a long time, and I’ve seen bad launches and really bad launches and complete and totally disastrous launches. I fear that this exposure has made me very forgiving of the problems that crop up in games that have good launches. Warhammer, in my opinion, launched very smoothly and I’ve generally been very content with it.

A lot of people gripe about the UI but I find it to be OK, and add-on support makes it even better. I don’t mind (and sometimes prefer) using some slash commands, and all the disappointment aimed at the chat interface baffles me, because it seems fine. That’s the old man in me coming out. “You spoiled kids! When I was young we didn’t have no steenkin’ tabs or filters! We had to write parsers to split out chat uphill, barefoot, in the snow!!!”

But the one thing that has been really, really bothering me lately is the lag, and in particular, root lag (I think I just made up that term). I’m mainly playing a Shadow Warrior, who uses a bow a lot. As is typical, there’s a minimum range for using a bow. SW’s get a root melee attack that, in theory, let’s you root opponents and run away to get enough range to unload a few arrows into him/her/it.

But what usually happens is I use the root and run, and the mob stays stuck right on me. If I try to shoot I get “Target too close.” Then suddenly the game will “catch up” and the mob will teleport back to where I rooted it.

If this were just a visual thing it’d be annoying, but it seems to impact game mechanics too. Like I said, I’ll get a “Target too Close” one second, then the thing will teleport away and I’ll be able to shoot the bow at it.

All of this is awkward in PvE, but in PvP it makes my root more or less pointless. Since players can resist the root, and don’t act predictably, I never know if the root took or not. I never know if I can try to attack them because they’re rooted and the game is lagging, or if they’ve resisted and they really are in my face. If I guess wrong, it generally means a Respawn incoming.

So essentially in PvP, I use the root as a last, vague hope for when I’m running away from someone bashing my skull in.

I’m 99% sure this isn’t specific to Shadow Warriors and other classes suffer through the same frustrations. I’d really like to see this fixed, and soon, because its really starting to detract from my enjoyment of the class, particularly in RvR.

Bonus gripe: What’s up with Morale Abilities not firing? I was talking to Fizz last night about this, and he confirmed the same thing happens to him. The ability is ‘charged’ and isn’t cooling down, and you click the icon and nothing happens. Click it two or 3 more times and finally it’ll fire, assuming your target hasn’t roamed out of range by then. Using the keyboard doesn’t seem any more reliable, either.

Here’s hoping Mythic is working hard on this stuff, working to get the game as lag free as possible. This Root Lag happens even out in the wilds with just me and 1 mob, so I don’t think its client-side. Or if it is, it shouldn’t be. But my point is, it doesn’t take me being in a crowded RvR Scenario for it to manifest. And it’s 100% consistent. The root never works immediately.

So c’mon Mythic! Fix my class (and any other class that requires a Root & Scoot technique)!