IRONBREAKER

WAR/General Ramblings

A while since a proper update. So where am I at currently with my gaming?

I’ve more or less stopped playing WAR after being back a couple of months. I thought the new Live Event might prolong my stay but in all honesty I’ve found it quite boring and very grindy. In Ekrund/Mt Bloodhorn both Des and Order seem to camp on BOs hoping to get the defensive or offensive quotas for the LE. Not sure I blame the developers with this, just a majority of lame players who are more concerned with rewards than actually playing the game (some might say “same old story”).

And if players are not idling round on a BO then they are stood facing a brick wall waiting for a clickable square item to appear. Honestly, it’s as depressing as it sounds. I got the basic event reward buff on my Slayer but couldn’t stomach the prospect of grinding out the elite reward, and certainly not on more than one char.

The new twist on the scenario Gates of Ekrund is not great either. Escorting the NPCs back and forth from the camp distracts from the scenario objective so much that it becomes a farce.

All in all, a mundane affair. I don’t want to come down too heavy on Mythic. I admire them for putting out a new event and trying something different (especially going down to tier 1). But for me it hasn’t worked this time around. This combined with a general feeling of apathy in the lakes for Order makes things pretty unfulfilling. And as I say, I’ve pretty much stopped playing these last few weeks. My finger is hovering over the unsub button with intent.

I’ve been playing a few other games in the meantime. I finally finished Dawn of War 2, picked up a new platform game from Steam called The Cave (which is great fun, much like Monkey Island from the old days) and started with Age of Conan again.

My return to Conan is something I’ve been flirting with for some time. I previously got a char to level 18 after I left SWTOR first time around. It’s a really nice game. The UI seems somewhat dated but the game has a great atmosphere about it, easy to immerse yourself in (the soundtrack is peerless imo). The world of Conan, Hyboria, is in stark contrast to something like Guild Wars. There is no fluff, at all. This appeals to me a lot. So I’m currently lvl23 and moved to the next area of the game. It really is very beautiful. I will shortly embark on some crafting and PvP all being well. Watch this space.

A big part of me feels like I’m now simply filling time until Elder Scrolls Online is released. This is the only upcoming MMO on the horizon which has my interest. Three faction PvP, like DAoC. Also, the PvP appears not to be a “bolted on afterthought” a la SWTOR. Judging from what the devs are saying, it’s a core part of the game - which bodes very well indeed. The Elder Scrolls world is somewhere I’ve spent time previously and enjoyed immensely. Both Morrowind and Oblivion were great. I would’ve very much liked to try Skyrim but didn’t think my PC would be up to it (and I don’t own a console). The long term plan for this year is to build a new PC which will be capable of running Elder Scrolls to a good level.

I’m sure I’ll be flitting in and out of WAR (which is why I’m hesitant to unsub) and I fully intend to buy and play the SWTOR expansion. Hopefully Conan will have some longevity in it. Feels like I’ve been slowly falling out of love with WAR and I’m a bit in limbo. Who knows, I might even try Wrath of Heroes…

Over and out, T.

Grim Hammers

Now that’s what I’m talkin bout.

How awesome do they look?

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat970003a&prodId=prod1870034a

Live Event Ate My Hair

I didn’t sign up for this! Moving into Mount Bloodhorn butchered my mohican!

Screenshots were taken approx 10 seconds apart. Seems we have a minor bug when switching between Ekrund & Mt Bloodhorn. You also seem to get hit for a lot of hp when crossing zone too. Very strange.

WAR Playlist

A carefully selected hour long bonanza of epic riffs and foot tapping rock to perfectly accompany a session of Warhammer Online. Enjoy :)

Http Spotify link

Play As Monster Idea

I recently started giving some more thought to an idea for WAR that I first had quite a long time ago. Here it is in blog form:

Here’s the scene: You queue for a scenario as solo, it pops and you join. During the start countdown you’re viewing the parties window to see who/what has joined your team. Suddenly it dawns on you, there is no healer.

The scen starts and predictably the opponent party (who have a healer or two) wipe the floor with you and leads to fairly unpleasant 10 minutes. People quit and/or the opponents camp your spawn area.

This has happened countless times in my experience. Healers are the obvious shortfall, but the same scenario also applies to the other classes too.

I believe a nice solution to this problem could be achieved via the much maligned “play as monster” mechanic.

Add 4 NPCs to each scenario warcamp. Each NPC represents a class (i.e. tank, mdps, rdps and healer). By clicking on the NPC you commit to playing as that class monster for the remainder of the scenario. There could possibly be a number limit on each class of say 2.

Playing the monster gives you say 5 or 6 abilities, similar to the current Skaven/Aqshy implementation.

Perhaps the healer would have one single heal, a group heal, a dot heal and a couple of offensive ablities. The tank has a couple of offensive abilities, a guard and a few CC abilities. Etc etc

The idea would be that the monster classes wouldn’t be as good as a regular player class (so a balanced party would ideally have no use for them), but would be good enough to accomplish the role and bring balance (and fun!) to the scenario.

In terms of development it needn’t be huge (it seems obvious that resources are limited). The monster models could use existing NPCs. For example, the Order ranged DPS monster could be one of those Empire riflemen you see in zone warcamps, the Destruction melee DPS could be an Ogre (which are all over the game) etc etc. I’ve no idea how much work doing the animations for the abilities would be.

Class abilities could be mirrored for Order and Destruction so that no advantage could be gained.

I believe something like this could make existing scenarios more balanced and enjoyable. Not only this, but also add a whole new dimension to the game.

What do you guys think? I’m happy to be shot down if there’s something obvious that makes it unworkable.

T.

Irontweeter

Seeing as it’s a new year and a time of resolutions I finally created myself a Twitter account for the blog:

@TurinoIB

Go follow :)

Back In The Game

So I finally got bored with SWTOR. I knew it would happen sooner or later. As I always find with these things, it seems to come almost out of the blue. I was set to log into the game and then thought “actually I cant really be bothered”, and that was it.

It’s been fun playing SWTOR again. I surprised myself this time around by mainly doing PvE stuff. Got myself some nice gear, got a new crew skill (biochem) up to 400, did loads of flashpoints (thanks to group finder) and enjoyed the new Section X daily area. Didn’t actually get around to doing the HK-51 epic mission. So there is at least one thing for me to go back to.

I rather suspect I might leave it now until spring when the expansion is due. Increased level cap and new planet sounds quite exciting. We will see.

A funny coincidence is that my 90 day game card is due to expire any day now too. Seems it was just long enough to keep me interested. I ought to remember that next time around.

So what next? Initially I spent an evening or two investigating current and future MMOs. I enjoyed Conan a lot last year for a month or so. Tempting to go back. Secret World is free2play too now. Again, tempting. But similarly not tempting enough for me to actually get involved.

Grezko has been in contact, asking me to try Guild Wars 2. He did a good sell via google chat. Enough to get me to rethink and reinvestigate. Sadly I eventually came to the same conclusions as previously. The PvP may well be fantastic, but I simply can’t fall in love with the way the game/chars/races look. It would seem a stumbling block that I simply can’t get over.

And what of the MMOs of 2013? Well, after some thorough investigation it looks extremely unexciting. The only title that seems to grab my attention is Elder Scrolls Online. Other than that it looks pretty bleak. Of course, 2013 was supposed to be year of Dark millenium :( I’m still quite gutted about this (particularly as I’m still enjoying the Horus Heresy novel series so much).

Anyway, to cut long story short I cranked up WAR again. I hadn’t unsubbed from the game. I logged my Slayer and had some great fun in scens. Time will tell but I’m hoping my WAR mojo has finally returned.

My main motivation will be to get my Slayer, Turambo, into the top scenario bracket. Although the step up in Worn Sov will be tough initially, it means I can be more sociable with guildies and join premades. He’s rr68 now so not too far. I’ll look to get him kitted out in ToVL jewellery too if I can.

Happy new year, T.

Future Warhammer Computer Games

Just been reading that Creative Assembly are going to start making a new Warhammer game in 2013. They make RTS Total War (which by all accounts is pretty good).

Eurogamer link here

I suspect it will be a more polished “Mark of Chaos” type affair, but time will tell.

Interesting that it’s only the fantasy side of the Warhammer license that they have acquired to do this (THQ hold the 40k license apparently). I don’t claim to understand how the license stuff works, but is it a concern for WAR? Will it impact Mythic/EA’s license to sell WAR?

After clicking a few related links I also found out that a turn based strategy game for Space Hulk will soon be developed too. I played the original board game and had the first computer conversion on my Amiga years ago, so I’m quite interested in this one. As a self confessed Apple hater, I really hope they make an Android version too.

On the subject of mobile gaming, development is well underway for Hero Quest conversion Warhammer Quest. Hero Quest (as I remember it) was Games Workshop’s attempt to go more mainstream “back in the day” by producing a more accessible (less technical and not steeped in lore) board game sold on the high street. I think it did quite well.

Then of course there is Dark Millenium, which was supposed to be the 40k MMO we have all been dreaming of. Sadly due to job cuts this project has now been scaled down to simply a multiplayer rather than MMO. Can’t describe how gutted I am about that. Not heard much about development on this title, but it’s safe to say that my enthusiasm for it has significantly dropped.

So lots of stuff for Warhammer gamers to be excited over. But nothing for us MMO fans to get giddy about just yet.

Hibernation

A overdue update. The blog has been quiet for a couple of weeks, reason being I’ve not been playing WAR at all. My gaming time has been spent in SWTOR. I can see this continuing for a while yet. Undecided about whether I will unsub from WAR or not, but it’s looking possible. Either way, I very much doubt I’ll be updating the blog much in the next few weeks.

Some good news regarding WAR: 1.4.8 goes live tomorrow. This minor patch consolidates the RvR currency and also gives some extra options with what you can buy with the new crests. Werit has done a nice post about items available at the new vendor.

The XP off is a nice idea. It’s something I suggested Mythic should’ve done quite some time ago. My suggestion was to add it as a pet you could buy from the store, but they have gone with a pocket item available from the new vendor. Could be useful to those players wanting to get items from say LotD without getting loads of XP at the same time. That said, I don’t really know how their implementation will work.

SWTOR is going well. I’m still flying solo in my “guild for one” but it’s not really a problem thanks to the Group Finder mechanic. I’ve actually done more Flashpoints in the last few weeks than I ever did when other guildies were still playing.

On reflection I actually think part of the reason I’m enjoying SWTOR atm is because I’m able to just log on and please myself. While being guild leader in WAR is not exactly taxing, there is always a certain responsibility and expectation that comes with it. It’s nice to take a break.

The latest patch is great. I’m saving the HK-51 companion quest for a rainy day when I’m looking for some new content. There’s plenty of other stuff going on in the game at the moment to keep me interested. Not least I decided to respec my Crew Skills. I’d maxed out Armormech on my BH, and while equipping my alts (and companions) as they level was useful, it’s actually a pretty redundant skill in the endgame. I’ve started levelling Biochem now instead. This will enable me to self produce medpacs (reusable!) and stims (i.e. liniments) which will come really handy in Warzones. My main alt (Juggernaught) has also been respecced from Armstech to Cybertech so he can produce some nice grenades for my BH.

With plenty of ways now to get Black Hole Commendations I am steadily building some nice PvE gear. I recently got my first (chest) piece. Very shiney. I’m not sure I’m a “raid” sort of player but this is also an option for me at some point if I want to branch out.

Having returned to the game, there really feels like a good selection of options available at endgame now. This certainly wasn’t the case when I left the game originally, and was one of the main factors for doing so.

On a side note, it was really nice to see patch 1.6 go onto the PTS a few days after 1.5 was released. A PR masterstroke. WAR take note!

Posts on this blog will be sporadic from this point onwards. I’ll get the WAR itch again at some point I’m sure (I always do eventually - you can’t beat it’s PvP afterall). And when I do I’m sure I’ll start wanting to post about it too.

T.