Last night the servers for Warhammer Online opened for the preview weekend. What a blast it was with literally hundreds of people running around the newbie zone doing quests and getting in to RvR. Hats off to Mythic in that not once did I experience a problem where there were to many players and not enough quest NPC or MOB's. What really made my night was I made about 6 levels purely through PvP by playing the scenarios.

Six of my guild mates and I spent a good a couple of hours doing scenarios and leveling. It was the most fun I have had in an MMO doing the starter levels. I now see how someone could completely level just doing PvP. The other good thing was the scenarios were a blast and a couple of hours slide past before I even knew it. Add in the fact that the public quests are also available and if you want you can do the traditional quests, you have a number of paths you can take to leveling. In fact I have made level 10 and have a crap load of traditional quests that I haven't even bothered getting around to doing.

The enjoyment of being able to get into PvP from level one was simply brillant. In Age of Conan (AOC) you can start PvPing from about level 4 as thats the level you are when you reach the other players in the game. However the PvP is pointless in that killing someone does nothing but give you bragging rights. The other problem is the higher level characters tend to sit around the starting area and have there fun ganking people 10 levels below them.

Yesterday I mentioned that we are looking like we will get three servers down under. Well I logged in this morning to see if the beta was open again and I noticed that the server names from yesterday have been changed. Good news is we definitely look like having three servers on launch.



Also those that are not in the closed beta, but have been accepted to the preview weekend can now patch there client. I tested this with my preview account and it authenticated and patched the client.

Cheers
Shane

Mythic have stated they are going to release three server types on launch of Warhammer. Those type are Core, Open RvR and Core RP. So speculation has been what sort of server type would we get down under. Well I think I have the answer.

ALL THREE!!!!!
You heard it here first
Cheers
Shane

Man does Mythic know how to make CGI videos.

Check this out: http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/flash/WAR_cinematic_08.html

Also for those that want to know about quests, maps and all the other things that make up Warhammer, www.wardb.com looks to be a great resource.

Cheers
Shane

I managed to get use of a friends closed beta account for Warhammer Online and I have to say my first 6 hours in game have been very impressive. Which I wouldn’t expect anything less, considering Age of Conan for the first twenty levels was content rich and provided a great gaming experience. I mean if you cant get the first twenty levels right, your game is doomed from the onset.

The NDA for Warhammer Online has been lifted as Mythic prepare to launch there next RVR focused MMO. I stated previously that I was not going to play Warhammer, well I have relented as the guild I joined have all moved from AOC and are starting in War.

One thing I can say is the design documents I have read and the way the game is focused around Realm versus Realm this game is certainly shaping up to be an excellent time sink. Mythic have a lot of experience with RvR in Dark Age of Camelot and therefore should have learned a lot to whats required to make the experience fun and addictive. So for your viewing pleasure I am posting some screen shots of my first romp in War.

Expect more to come over the next couple of weeks as I use the beta period to try all of the characters I can so as to know what I want as a main when the game launches.

Well AOC has been fun. However Funcom missed the mark releasing a PvP centric game that had no point to its PvP. Funcom still struggles to implement its PvP patch. War appears to have the Realm v Realm element well designed and implemented. Which is the benefit of being the company that pioneered alot of the first gen RvR. As much as I cursed the game in my last post, Im going were the friends/guild is going and thats WAR

I just watched this video which is beta footage of Warhammer Online. You can't be serious EA/Mythic, I mean really. Tell me this is not a WOW clone graphically. In fact when I was watching the video I got the impression this was what WOW 1 looked like and the version of WOW that got over 7 million users is WOW 2.

Combat in the footage is absolutely abysmal and the cartoon environment looks already out dated against WOW. I can't believe you are serious and am dumbfounded that Mark Jacobs would even be associated with this project. It is safe to say I wont be bothering with Warhammer Online, which pleases me, as EA has had by gaming dollar for the last 10 years with UO. UO unfortunately is more fondly remembered for being at its best not long after it launched and has been on a down hill slide ever since.

Good luck to those that give it a go, remember its EA and they are fucking hopeless at running MMO's.

I know, this is getting a little bit obsessive in that I keep posting decapitation shots. Ok this is the last one, unless I get a better one. Here is the money shot as I call it, my sword cutting through the neck and taking the head off, the massive amounts of blood and the then the corpse without arms and a head. Even notice the shield laying next to the corpse.

Here is an additional screeny for today as I managed to capture my fine axe taking the head of a victim. You may notice she no longer has any arms either, they came off before the head

Today's screen shots are of the guild I am in and us raiding some of the dungeon instances. One thing I have to say I am really impressed with is the implementation of horses in AOC. They handle like you would think a horse will and they provide a travel boost that is well worth the gold investment.

My character hit level 57 last night and is still powering along. For the casual gamer AOC is friendly from a leveling perspective. Some levels can be a grind if you don't have a guild or your not interested in pick up groups to complete the group quests that are available as you level. If you dont mind grouping or are in a guild then leveling can be a breeze. The only issue in leveling to fast is that at 80 there's not a lot to do currently. Funcom are fleshing out the upper end of the game and therefore those that have powerleveled can either level another character or on the PVP servers go and grief lower levels than them.

Personally I am enjoying the game and think by the time I hit 80, Funcom will have addressed some of the concerns. The game is still only two months old since release. Yet if you read the Funcom forums you can get a glimpse into the truly mentally challenged in life. The general forum has at least 30 percent of posts complaining Funcom have removed boobies and the ability for more hard core adult themes. It really is a sad reflection when that's your biggest complaint.

This weeks screen shots capture the "M" rating in Age of Conan. The first couple of shots are of people being decapitated by my axe. The fatalities sequences in AOC are very entertaining. I have one where I cut the victims arms off and then their head.

The last three screen shots are of myself and two guild mates as we did a 6-8man instance with the three of us. Also considering I was apprenticed up for this little killing spree, it was a good effort as we managed to kill all three bosses.

I am currently in the process of switching hosting providers due to the extreme lack of professionalism with my old provider. As you may have noticed the site was down for three days. The response I got from the hosting provider was these things are complex and therefore take time to resolve. Well if you can't keep a web server up and think that its a complex task then maybe you should not be in the hosting business.

So those looking for hosting, my advice is stay away from these guys as they are flat out spelling the words web hosting let alone provide it five nines.

The podcasts are currently still being moved and therefore if you click a link to listen to a podcast, it will error. This will be resolved over the next 24 hours.

Cheers
Shane

When I started AOC I thought the game client was excellent and I couldn’t understand all the problems people kept complaining about. Now that Im in my mid 50’s I have an appreciation of the problems people are complaining about. So for the last week or so my client experience has deteriorated to the point I can understand why the less technically savvy would quit the game in disgust.

Until I was finally forced to deal with the issue, my client was crashing nearly hourly. If I zoned more than five times, it would crash or I would restart the client so it didn’t crash. However speaking in guild chat a few of the guys mentioned this wasn’t their experience and that they only have the occasional crash and the odd memory allocation crash.

The other big problem was and is the cause to my previous post was that after a crash the bloody client could decide it needed to download anywhere from 1 meg to 1 gig of files. This can happen extremely randomly and is the source of much angst and gnashing of teeth. However there is a solution and those prepared to take the time the majority of problems I have found can be resolved.

Today I was playing AOC happily enough. I logged off to do some other things and when I returned I get an error with the client loading. The fix for that error is this:

Not much of an update today as I spent the weekend in Noosa and away from a PC, so I didn't get any AOC in since last Friday morning.

Siege PVP in AOC is a big part of the end game and heres another video showing the potential of this. I suggest you click the download button just under the video and copy it locally for better quality.

http://files.filefront.com/Vae+Victus+2nd+Siegempg/;10869271;/fileinfo.html

Funcom are also putting up a test server and it looks like reducing there patching policy from 2 a week to who knows what. They didn't patch last night when they normally do and they have not said when the next patch is.

I see alot of complaints starting to build up with alot of players making level 80 and not having a lot to do. It sucks when you power level through the game and then wonder why theres nothing left to do. I gather Funcom are madly working on content for the end of the level curve due to the fact that leveling is not that hard even for none power gamers. Shit even Im level 43 and I've been playing for about 3 weeks.

Anyway, time for work, expect more updates this week as I try and hit the upper levels so that I can participate in guild raids and PVP events.

As the title suggests in todays screen shot update we have some boobies and lots of blood and gore. Nothing like playing an "M" rated game. I also managed to hit level 40 last night before the server update, which allowed me to purchase a horse. Level 40 puts me halfway to the end game which is the reason I'm am playing. For siege PVP and generally PVP battles over zones.

Looks like Funcom patched in some bugs with last nights updates as the servers went down at 9pm last night our time and they are currently still down 08:30am the next day. They are the joys you get when you play a MMORPG that is less than 6 months old. I have also noticed some more annoying bugs that are starting to show up as I progress through the levels. One very annoying bug is when you try and sell things on the auction house, they don't sell so you decide to sell them to a vendor just to make some coin anyway. Well vendors wont buy things that have been on the auction house. Its like the vendors are snubbing your business for not selling to them first. My understanding is that king Conan has sent word to the merchants union that they better fix the issue or it will be off with their heads.

Anyway heres the screen shots for today.

Part of enjoying Age of Conan is playing with friends. So I recently joined a guild called The Kelly Gang which was a little ironic considering when Oceania came up I started a guild on that shard called The Kelly Gang. Anyway one of the features of Age of Conan is the apprentice capabilities. What this allows is you to adventure with friends that are several levels above you.

One person takes you on as an apprentice and you get a temp level boost to one level below your master. This is a stats boost only which means you earn experience at the rate the group earns at and you don't draw all the agro. Other games give an XP penalty when you try and power level with higher level players, AOC actually have addressed this issue and even made it fun.

So todays screen shots are of me being power leveled with two members of my new found guild mates. Notice in a couple of them I'm level 36 and then I'm level 50.

The series of screen shots are from Age of Conan found in the guild I have joined. I have permission to use them here as they are in the private forum for the guild.

In my last post I mentioned I was making some mods to the site so that I could post screen shots without having to load a new page. I had some issues with Firefox and they have since been fixed.
So my plan is to try and do daily updates with at least some screen shots of what is a stunning looking game. I recently changed my video options to max out the video settings and I switched to a AOC UI Mod called Mirage.

The second part of the new update is being able to group images together and view them like a gallery. So these next couple should work in this fashion.

While the AOC servers are down and being patched, I decided to update the code behind this site and make a quick modification.

Heres a good video I saw on the potential of the end game for AOC.

http://www.afraidyet.net/forums/showthread.php?t=46388

So far I have to say I am enjoying AOC a lot and think it has some real potential. The down side is I saw how Funcom handled Anarchy Online and that leaves a shadow over this game for the long haul.

In the meantime I am having a blast. I'm playing on a free for all PVP server which is the way I like it. Sure you get your share of wankers that can't compete with players at there own level and need to be a cyber bull. However the worlds big enough that if you encounter one of these digital fools you can either get help, leave the area and do some other quests or just stand there and offer no insults or challenge, there tiny brains eventually get bored and they will seek someone who bites and sends them tells complaining.

The PvP in AOC has a lot of potential and if you see this video you can appreciate that button mashing has an art form and its more than hit combo and wait. Those that say its purely button mashing truly have no clue and most likely return to UO as the only game they ever where any good at.

So the day has dawned and I have closed my accounts for the last time. UO on Oceania is dieing a slow and painful death and I no longer wish to be a part of it.

I maybe moving to the US next year to work for Cisco in San Francisco and if that pans out I may reopen my accounts. However I have started playing Age of Conan on a PVP free for all server and am loving it so far.

I have been ganked a number of times and truly feel like the old days of UO when reds used to hang out just on the edges of town and gank anyone that stepped outside. Funcom have some issues to sort out, however Ill make another post soon about my take on the game so far.

I am on holidays and shall return to posting again shortly. However something happened today that compelled me to post. I was cleaning out my Keep when I found a bag of 110 scrolls that I didnt need. Instead of throwing them out I decided to give them away at Luna bank.

All I asked was those that helped themselves only take what they needed. As you can see from this next screen shot that policy was working well. 

Of course what was I thinking. Along came a person from a guild I can only assume has a low standard of hiring as this person after being asked to only take what they needed proceeded to collect all the scrolls for themselves.

The guild this person is a member of is POC. I had a little more respect for them until this incident and now have them as KOS should I see them in Fel. Which I havent seen any of them in Fel in the last 2 months so its very unlikely I will get to show them the disrespect they showed me.

Anyway, my next podcast wont be for a couple weeks as Im on holidays until Saturday when I fly to Bangkok for work for a week. After I return ill get a podcast out and it will focus around Petrify's new guild One United World.

Cheers
Shane

If your shard is like the one I play on, PvP is on the decline. There dosent appear to be much coming from EA in getting people to come back to UO, so on our shard some of the hardcore PvPers have decided to take it upon themselves to try and inject some life into this dead horse called PvP.

To do that these guys have broken away from their current guild OPK and started a new guild One United World (OUW). This guild is for anyone that wants to learn to PvP, Spawn and survive the Felucca facite.

Now these guys are well know for not really giving a care for what anyone else outside their guild thinks. They have been know to grief the players they are now trying to attract and they have been know to scam people as well. As stated by one of them, PvP is dying and really the only option is to try and introduce more people to PvP. So these guys want to recant their old ways and start a guild that anyone can join and hopefully benefit from.

Many people have knocked the idea and said its purely a ruse for them to get some slaves to spawn for them. Well thats not likely, getting scrolls on our shard is not exactly a challenge especially when one of them completed another Rats solo that day.

Me I believe that they are on the right track and all I have got to loose from getting in and trying to help them is some time. Seeing as I see the benefit should these guys be on the level that I think my time is worth the investment for what it could achieve. So far so good.

We even had our first outting last night with the first four memebers of the guild. We even managed to beat OPK back 3 times before one member had to log and eventually we surrended the champ to OPK. So if your on the Oceania shard and want to try your hand at PvP, then give OUW a shot as this guild is for you.

For those that are interested in some easy insurance money, keep an eye out for these two chars of mine: Frogskin (Blue) and FrozenYoghurt (Red).

Cheers
Shane

In PvP battles anyone can ress anyone else and they are back into it within seconds.

Heres my fix for it:

It should be that every time you die in a PvP battle (which would have to be a time period or location), it takes more people to ress you.

So die once, any person can res you.
Die twice, two people have to res you
Die three times, three people have to res you.
Die ... you get the idea. Cap it at 5 or 6 maybe.

This answers all angles for requirements and puts the onus of the guild to keep each other alive.

A moment of brilliance I must say

Cheers
Shane

Posted on Stratics UHall: Draconi_EA

Helloooooo everybody!

Winterland is up and running, and more and more activities are coming online every day.

Here's what's happening right now:

* Britain decorated for the season! Snow, party favors, and more!
* Paint stations: Use any hue from 0 to 2000
* Pet Bonding and Spellweaving Gates
* Giant Holiday Tree: The decorations keep piling up!
* Wishlist: Leave three wishes behind as a memory of the shard. (Some, especially the selfless ones, may be answered!)
* Dance Floor with Live Band: A result of one of the wishes, a live band is playing some of Britannia's favorite songs.
* Tunnel of Love: Another wish, try " *kissing*" under the mistletoe for a stat reward
* Decorated the Winery for the U.Hall Party: The party is on the 20th, and the Winery's halls have been decked out There's an ice sculpture, speaker's stage, chairs, table decorations, spa, and functioning restrooms. There's a gate near the Holiday Tree in Britain
* UO Devs in the Pillory: A few of the people responsible for UO chained up in front of cannons, waiting for their just desserts. You can find this north of the Winery at Empath Abbey

More to come! Including Snowball Wars, a Fair... - stay tuned!

Activities Guide

Paint Stations
* Double click, target item, type in the hue you want
* 0: Bleach - returns to natural color
* 1: Pure black
* 1150, 1153: White, Bright White
* 1152: Glacial
* 1154 - 1179: Fun neons
* 1180's: Crazy...

Wishlist
* Double click, and type in a wish! It may or may not come true.
* Three wishes

Dance Floor with Live Band
* Turn on Music in the Options
* Walk onto the dance floor, wait for the band to rotate into the next song (may be a minute or two before you get caught in the rhythm.
* Popular favorite: Selim's Bar

Mistletoe
* Stand under the mistletoe, with someone else within one tile
* Say "*kiss*" or "*kisses*" or anything that starts with "kiss"
* You'll glow a bit and see a message at the bottom part of your screen, and get a 150 base stat change to either Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence
* You can only be the kisser once in a while (cooldown period)

Restrooms
* Walk inside the stall, sit down, wait for a little bit
* Drops food satiety in half
* Requires several hours before another attempt

Edited by Draconi_EA (12/17/07 12:08 PM)

Well it is time for another excellent podcast coming from UOPODCASTING.COM if I do say so myself.

In this podcast I have a small rant about EA and there disrespect to the UO community when it comes to this years Christmas gifts, or should I say last years gifts. Then I get onto another interview from one of our shards most notorious PvP guilds OPK. In this interview I speak to Petrify about a new guild he is starting with Draconius in an attempt to spark interest in PvP on our small shard as well as help those that have wanted to learn the thrill of defending a champ spawn and walking away with the scrolls and insurance money of the raiders.

So dont be shy, tune in your listening ears and listen another stella Ultima Online Podcast coming to you from the Gold Coast Australia.

Cheers
Shane