Tag: Warhammer

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.

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)!

Warhammer 101: Choosing a Server

Posted on by Nimgimli

So the news is good for Mythic & EA. Half a million accounts created in about a week. Friends of mine who’ve shown no interest in Warhammer are suddenly contacting me and asking me what server they should roll on, so I guess the word is spreading.

Picking a server is pretty much the first decision you have to make in an MMO, and with Warhammer it turns out to be a fairly significant one. So let’s think about this together.

You’ve got two “axis” to work with. Core vs OpenRvR and Core vs RP. The latter is more a thematic decision. I generally prefer RP servers just because of the naming conventions. Stupid names bug me. But that’s just me and its a personal opinion; you need to make your own choice there. Just don’t roll on an RP server, name your character ChuckNorris and then bitch about “naming nazis” when someone complains about it.

The Core vs OpenRVR decision is huge, and I’m going to urge you to choose Core for your first character. There’s still plenty of RvR on Core servers. Now I’m going to be honest and admit I haven’t played on OpenRvR servers in Warhammer, but I just don’t see a reason to. If you’re in the mood to fight other characters in a Core server, you head to easily accessible RvR areas or enter a scenario. If you’re not in the mood to fight, you stay out of those areas. To me, Core = more choices, which is always good. Saylah has a lot more to say about this choice and I urge you to read her thoughts before rolling OpenRvR.

So assuming you know what *type* of server you want to play on, how do you determine which specific server to pick? And the answer there is, look at the population during the times you’ll normally be playing (which means you should probably first play War during your ‘regular gaming time’). Your instinct (OK, *my* instinct) may be to look for a server with a low or moderate population. No one wants to have to camp spawns on a crowded server, right? But that would be The Wrong Choice for Warhammer. You want to join a server with a High population for your intended side. But of course you don’t want to wait around in login queues, so avoid Full servers with large waiting lists (the number in parens after a server name indicates how many people are waiting to get in). Also look at the other side. You want the two sides to have relative parity. I honestly haven’t seen a server where the sides are terribly out of whack (high/low or whatever) but if you find one of those, avoid it!

Remember, you need another team to fight against. If your side has a higher population you’re going to be waiting a long time for scenarios to begin. If your side has a low population then you’re going to get rolled pretty frequently in open world RvR, and control of zones is going to be problematic. Everyone likes to win, sure, but the most fun comes from good competition on both sides. And if a server is low population on both sides, then both sides are going to be waiting a long time to enter scenarios and open world RvR is going to be sparse at best.

So to recap, pick RP or non-RP. Avoid OpenRvR unless you’re really sure of what you’re doing. And look for servers with High/High population counts during the times you’re going to play. One of those is your server, and your best chance of having an enjoyable, well-rounded Warhammer Online experience. Granted this isn’t an exact science; pure population numbers don’t indicate player levels or RvR affinity. But you have to work with what you’ve got, and hopefully this post can help you stack the odds in your favor a bit.

An evening of relative peace

Posted on by Nimgimli

Spent a lot of time in front of the TV tonight. The DVR was filling up, so we got around to watching the 2-hour Heroes season premiere (first half was meh, the second half better), then a bit later this week’s Ghost Hunters and then an old Destination Truth.

That’s a LOT of TV for one night and didn’t leave much time for WAR, which might be a good thing. I was getting a bit *too* wrapped up in it; trying to parse too many things at once: new game mechanics and new places to explore, new classes to check out. All of which I wanted to do at the same time, all the while also wanting to keep up with much more hardcore guildmates, who I was trying to get to know. I was reaching that run-down, irritable state that Ysharros calls “enervated.”

And really, that whole previous paragraph could have and should have been written by her, because while it was me experiencing it, I wasn’t observing the Why of it all. Then I chatted (ok, griped) at her a bit and she just pegged exactly where I was at. Just feeling frazzled and tired and annoyed by really trivial issues. Time for a step back, let things settle a bit in my brain, get the perspective back, then move forward re-energized.

Anyway, I raise my glass to Ysharros. Guild officer, amateur therapist, and all-round good people.

Of course I did sneak in to get a couple of levels on my baby Witch Hunter, but at this point I can do the first few levels of Empire with my eyes closed.

Warhammer soothes the altaholic

Posted on by Nimgimli

One of the things I love about Warhammer Online is the number of characters per server Mythic allows (10). I am definitely an ‘altaholic’ when it comes to these games. I won’t ever play all these guys to end game, but I do like to sample a wide variety of classes just to get an inkling of what they’re all about. Some games limit you to X characters per account, others are more generous but limit the number per server. Back in the good old days, offering plentiful character slots was the norm; let’s here it for Mythic going retro!

Whoa, wait a minute. I still have room for two more!