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Warhammer Online Update

2009-01-22T18:12:07.264-05:00

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.

Why am I whinging about PvE when if you have read this blog and have heard my podcasts then you will know I am a 100% PvP focused player. Well Mythic FORCE you to PvE once you reach level 40. That's right, once you get to the end game you CAN NOT just PvP, you HAVE TO PvE if you want to get the decent armour sets. Certain pieces of the high end armour only comes from bosses found in those crappy dungeons. The other thing that needs fixing is the Capital City raids are more PvE focused than PvP. That's right, when you finally get to attack and attempt to sack your enemies city you need to PvE public quests to attempt to get to and kill the king. Come on Mythic, if your going to force PvE content down our throats at least have a crack at producing some interesting and compelling content.

Rant off, the PvP in Warhammer to me is still extremely fun and engaging, especially when your with a guild that knows what their doing. The funny thing is a lot of guilds we run into in the RvR lakes are PvE guilds trying to PvE the keeps to get the better armour sets. I don't know how Mythic is going to solve the requirement to PvE for the high end armour sets. You can see why they did it otherwise the system would be gamed by the slime that always clings to the underbelly of any game.

The large scale battles are getting better and the last couple of fortress sieges have not crashed the server, Mythic still have got some work to do in this area as the interim fix they have put in should remain just that, an interim fix. The largest battle I have been in where the lag was not that bad and the server didn't crash was with about 250 people in total from both sides. It was a blast as tactics really can make the difference. The number of times my guild has been out numbered and we have owned the enemy are adding up fast. Zerg guilds and pick up groups (PUG's) will normally get smashed by small groups that use tactics and voice communications. Of course that depends on the size of the zerg. If the zerg is to big then we will go into skirmish mode and start laying ambushes and breaking off before we get over run.

By far the RvR in Warhammer is a blast and only getting better. So if your on the fence, start leveling up a toon and get into the War. Make sure your in a decent guild because half the fun of War is being in an organised War Party.

2009 and Warhammer is still going strong.

2009-01-16T19:55:48.668-05:00

Happy New Year and all that jazz. Thought I would post some screen shots of Warhammer and the continuous action on the Darklands Server. As you will see from the number players in some of the screen shots the PvP has a lot of people participating and is a blast. Sure the game has its faults, but I haven't had this much fun PvPing since UO.

Ding, level 40 at last.

2008-12-13T03:03:57.65-05:00

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.

Im still alive and Waaagh still rocks.

2008-10-10T20:06:23.078-04:00

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.

Open RvR has not really played any part since tier one due to the fact that the rewards from an XP perspective are not worth the time. Our guild when we first reached tier two took 5 keeps which really didn't seem to provide us any benefit and generally said was a waste the time taking keeps until the end game. Killing the Keep Lord results in a public quest style roll for loot, however the loots roll we had in all 5 times was for green bags only.

Mythic need to make open RvR more viable from a leveling perspective if they want to draw people into the RvR lakes. Reason being is that leveling is the primary concern of most players on there first toon and therefore getting to the end game is what they want the most. So making open RvR provide decent experience might actually draw people in. Though I do think this will change a little as those that make the end game start leveling alts while they wait for there mates to catch up.

Some of the other features I have enjoyed are the extremely extensible user interface that Mythic have provided. The addon developer have been busy and some really nice addons have been made. Mythic seems to be keeping an eye on them and the obvious addons seem to get adopted by Mythic and built into the game. Mythic have been very responsive to annoying bugs that the community have feed back which has been pleasing to see. Overall the experience that has been WAAAAGGGH has been most enjoyable and I can see me sticking with this game for a while to come yet.

Now it's really WAAAGGGHHH

2008-09-19T09:34:53.995-04:00

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:

Site Update

2008-08-28T21:40:34.1150579-04:00

I'm currently waiting for Warhammer Online to launch and therefore have been doing a little house keeping in regards to the site.

On the right hand menu you may notice I have added an FAQ page, if you have any questions you would like me to answer then send them to shane at uopodcasting dot com and Ill get to answering them one day, hopefully before the sun burns out or man has nuked himself into oblivion.

Cheers
Shane

Sieging a Keep in Warhammer

2008-08-25T17:54:26.049-04:00

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.

Second Impressions

2008-08-23T20:31:21.731-04:00

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.

We managed to break down our enemies keep front door, however not having enough healers in our group didn't allow us to take the keep. Also we had to keep fighting off the defenders as they tried to thawt our plans. At one stage they smashed us and when we returned our keep was under siege and the front door had been smashed down. We fortunately repelled them and drove them off. Open RvR is going to be the domain of guilds as organisation and strategy that requires people to be in on the plan is required for successfully sieging a keep.

Another feature of PvP that I like is most classes have a skill that allow you to attack the enemy as you chase them, it doesn't do a lot of damage, however if they keep running and you keep chasing you will kill them eventually. So it forces the fleeing enemy to either fight or find help as they will die if they just flee. This is a pleasant change from a lot of PvP games that if your enemy flees you have to either chase him till he makes a mistake or you give up. Last night I chased a guy across the map and eventually enough shooting him in the back forced him to stop and try and fight, unfortunately for him by the time he made that decision he was half way dead and when he stopped I got to unload on him.

The scenarios are still proving to be a blast and once again guilds are going to have a ton of fun in them. Playing in the scenarios is also a blast for the soloist as you are still fighting for the same cause. I would say I have managed to gain 75% of my characters levels just through scenarios and PvP. The other thing is you get coin for killing people in scenarios so you are able to make money. This wont make you rich and is where you will most likely do a lot of the public quests as its an opportunity to makes some levels while earning gold. Plus you get the added bonus of influence rewards which are not to shabby.

So overall I have to say as I did in an earlier post, Warhammer Online will be my new MMO addiction and will certainly help me bury Ultima Online for good.

Its Waaaaaggggghhh!!!!!

2008-08-23T20:07:55.6021538-04:00

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.

I have found my new addiction.

2008-08-23T00:31:32.124517-04:00

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.

Mythic have removed this capability as the higher you get you are moved through the quests and rewards so you will need to go to higher level areas. If decide you want to go back to a low level area and start ganking low level players, the game engine will turn you into a chicken as soon as you flag for RvR and try to kill a lower level player. Also PvP has purpose in that you can gain renoun and rank which lead to you being able to buy PvP gear, tactics and other items you would want. So wasting time chasing low level players for you jollies is nothing but a waste of your time.

Mythic so far have impressed me with the game and the focus it has on being fun. I have had a blast so far and doing back to back scenarios and fighting the enemy while leveling and earning gold has made it clear to me that my next addiction has started. Obviously theres a long way to go and the preview weekend is only open for the first two tiers of the game. Which to me is fine as I have heard from guild mates that have played the closed beta the game doesnt get worse as you go like AOC, it just gets better.

The next thing I want to try which I havent yet is open Realm versus Realm and sieging a keep and planting out guild banner to claim ownership. However going off how well the scenarios appear, this can't be anything but be better and more enjoyable.

When I get more than five minutes to myself and I'm not playing Warhammer Ill post some RvR screen shots and also what I think I'm going to roll as my main.

Cheers
Shane

Mythic still working on server names

2008-08-21T16:57:42.6000072-04:00

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

Three Oceanic Servers?

2008-08-21T05:53:34.575-04:00

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

Warhammer Stuff

2008-08-20T23:07:18.078-04:00

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

First impressions of War.

2008-08-20T20:42:55.25-04:00

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.

However Warhammer Online brings a number of innovations to the table that put it above the rest of the new releases to date. First off you know from the second your character spawns that you are in the middle of a War. You are made aware of the conflict through quests and the fact the enemy are knocking at the door to your starting city from the onset. The beauty about Warhammer is that you can contribute to the War without having to fight other players. Your efforts in PvE and completing quests that assist the War effort can be substantial. However if you want to get into the thick of it you can and the another great aspect of War is you can viably get into it from the first level.

In fact if your not into PvE you can get quests that require you to enter the fray from level one and fight the enemy such as other players. I last night completed my first scenario which is in an instanced battle over a preset set of objectives. It was a blast and once I realised how it worked which didn’t take long at all I was totally immersed in the conflict. At the end of the scenario I had completed a couple of quests, the first one was to participate in the scenario regardless of the out come and the other was I had to kill 5 enemy players. The concern I had with the kill 5 other players when I took it was that I am a clothy/healer and therefore this may have been a challenge for my class. Well when you enter the scenario you are grouped, if your group kills an enemy player you are awarded a mark towards your quest goal.

This totally put a new incentive on PvP as it allows those that are not confident to PvP to get involved and complete PvP related quests by grouping. Get into a guild and you can total level your character through PvP only. Name a game that can do that today? Other innovations that Warhammer has brought to the table is the open grouping system and public quests. The open grouping is that groups can have anyone in the group invite others which allows groups to very quickly form. As the group leader you can make your group private if you wish, however in a public quest this systems rocks. Especially as a healer as I can easily identify people that need healing. Now I have an incentive to keep people alive because it counts towards me getting rewarded when the public quest has been completed as the more that I help the more chance of a reward and the more doing the quest the quicker we get to the loot. Its a win win scenario that actually works.

Public quests are an excellent way to get a boss monster encounter that normally requires you in other MMO’s to sit at the dungeon entrance and SPAM the world chat channel looking for people to group with to do the encounter. Warhammer offers this in public quests and allows you to just run to the quest area and automatically take part in the quest. If you sit on your hands and let others do the work, then when it comes to rolling on the loot you wont fair so well at all. The loot is something else that was also a pleasant experience in that when I did win a reward for the public quest, I got a loot bag with loot in it that was specific for my class. No more getting loot and then having to give it up or sell it as it was useless to you.

So my first impression are that Mythic have got a real contender on there hands to give World of Warcraft a run for its money. There are enough features in this game to entice all play styles and the over all Realm versus Realm theme that allows you to contribute in any fashion you want, makes this game a bloody good reason to purchase it and give it a shot. That coupled with the Aussie server and the sub 100 millisecond ping time makes this a very enjoyable experience. If Mythic also make the maintenance cycle to suit the Aussie crowd, which EA does for UO, they are really going to draw a crowd.

My next write up Ill cover the guild system and the character I am playing, a Rune Priest and some more of the mechanics.

Cheers
Shane