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 Friday, January 23, 2009
As my previous post will have indicated, Im still playing Warhammer and loving it for the most part. One feature of the game that really stares you in the face and says that Mythic really didnt give it much thought is the PvE content. Like all MMO's Warhammer has obviously a lot of PvE conent. It comes in the form of monsters you kill while leveling and as part of the quest system. Dungeons are not really a prominent feature of Warhammer Online and when you experience them they really appear to be an after thought. The monsters in Warhammer are the dumbest I have ever experienced to the point that they provide no challenge and I often wonder if Mythic would get better server performance if they just removed them. Heres an example of the typical monster spawn point in Warhammer. Say you have a quest to go and kill boss monster X at location Y. You run over to location Y and you find boss monster X and discover he is surrounded by his minions. So you think oh crap I'm going to have to clear all his minions if I want to solo him. No not in Warhammer, if you wait for him to come near you, nine times out of ten you will be able to pull him from his minions and slaughter him while they watch. This is a common theme in Warhammer PvE content. So then you take the dungeons and wonder what the hell were they thinking. Then you realise they were not thinking, in fact some dungeons really feel like they are a total after thought. Take the sewers in Altdorf, the Scaven Tunnels or the Warpblade Tunnels, they all feel like one of the designers asked their 6 year child to design them. The last two are level 40 dungeons and provide zero challenge and even are 90% the same in layout and design.
Saturday, January 17, 2009 Saturday, December 13, 2008
Other than taking three week holidays a couple of weeks ago, last night I finally dinged level 40 in Warhammer. 
Ill give a more detailed update later, needless to say I am still enjoying the PvP in War and looks like its only getting better.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
So its been a while since I updated the site, however the site logs do say people keep visiting every day. So here's an update. Warhammer Online still is my game of choice, its been as good launch for Mythic, however the sailing has not been as smooth as they would have you believe. Mainly due to the bugs being more subtle and therefore not really front page news. The most recent one they fixed has been the slow grind that is leveling in Warhammer. If you do scenario after scenario that's the fastest way I have found to leveling. However when your in a pick up group (PUG) it can become very obvious the average MMO player has no fucking clue as to how to PvP and what role there particular class may be used for. This can lead to unfathomable levels of frustration. I can't count the number of times I wish we had friendly fire so I could help the enemy slaughter some of the dumb fucking sheep playing Warhammer. Fortunately I am in an excellent guild that has a very long history of PvP and therefore getting into a guild group is not an issue and scenario grinding can be a blast. Just to break up the grind you can do quests, which until the most recent patch was a complete waste of time other than trying to get the rare decent equipment drop due to the fact XP from quests was broken after you enter tier two. However some quick testing this morning shows that Mythic may have fixed this issue and quests might actually be a viable alternative to scenario grinding.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Warhammer Online went live recently and The Kelly Gang has been out capturing Keeps and laying waste to Destruction when we are grouped and fighting together. The betas are over and this time it counts. Here's some action shots so far:
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Last night was the final night of the preview weekend and a lot of players turned out on the Oceanic server to put on a large scale siege in the tier two area of the game. Below are a number of screen shots I took while fighting with my order mates in an attempt to take back out keep. One thing that did become obvious to me which I'm seeking answers on is: If Destruction takes our keep like they did last night, how do they defend it and their own keep? I mean as the attackers we only have to attack one keep at a time, but the defenders would have to split there force and try and defend two keeps. Or do both armies just battle it across the map as they run between keeps? On a side note, if I post screen shots and below the post it has read more, click it because more screen shots will be in the post itself. Click the images and cycling through them from the main page only shows the images on the main page.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
As you may be able to tell from the screen shots, I am having a blast in Warhammer and still continue to think Mythic have a hit on their hands. Now that I have managed to spend a lot more time in game and experience more of the content, I still give it a two thumbs up. One of things that I have liked about the character classes in Warhammer is all classes have a job to do and depending on how well they do it will effect the out come of a battle. These first two days are showing that a bunch of people madly running around leveling and fighting is a blast, but when guilds start getting organised in raising war parties and fighting for the battle field objectives its only going to get better. Anyway that's enough of the gushing like a school girl, how does the RvR feel? Last night I experienced my first RvR battle and it was good in that not a lot of people were at that stage of the game and therefore it gave us a view of what it will be like when the games been out for 6 to 12 months and a lot of the player base has maxed out their levels and playing in the higher level tiers. One thing is a party of 6 players is not going to just roll up to a keep and lay claim to it unless they are well organised, meaning small pick up groups wont likely succeed. The keep lord and NPC's that control the keeps are suitably tough and therefore require a little more organisation than just showing up. One thing that was an issue in Dark Age of Camelot when I played was getting siege equipment into the battle field and working. Mythic obviously has this sorted in that siege equipment can easily be purchased in your war camp and carried to the front. This allows sieging to focus on the battle instead of the mechanics which is great.
Ok here are a series of screen shots from this weekends preview. Most of them are PvP focused with a couple of PvE. I rolled a Witch Hunter and have had such a blast playing this character that I think this will become my main when the game goes live. Though the requirement for healers is still something that we need within the guild, only issue is that an effective healer in RvR is a dead healer as they are the first target.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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.
Friday, August 22, 2008
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
Thursday, August 21, 2008
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
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.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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.
Friday, July 18, 2008
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.
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