Obsessive Focus

Top 5 Things I'd .... oh wait.

2010-10-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

Sitting here on my desk I have a geeky little notepad I use for XIV gaming notes as well as a place to jot ideas for blog entries. One page details a list of the top five things I'd like to see changed in the game, and being that I think I can write a "things to change" list without spilling Hateraid all over my keyboard I thought it was a good idea. I've been staring at this list hardcore for two weeks now trying to will myself to stop making cider vinegar long enough to sit down and write it out and today I finally managed to do so. So here we go!

1) Retainers/Wards and their general crappiness. Great idea really, but let's talk about execution-

A. The Markets have been a hot topic since the game's release, and today's maintenance was the first step in making this feature better suited to the needs of the players. With that step we saw the introduction of a one-click targeting system, making it easier to access a retainer's list of wares. We also saw a renaming of the wards combined with a reduced-tax system aimed to promote a more organized distribution of goods, therefore making it easier for players to find the items they seek.

For our next step, we plan on introducing additional features to make navigating the Markets even easier. These include the implementation of a search feature that will not only help players locate items in a Market district, but then display an icon next to the retainers who have those items, reducing the hassle of having to look through the inventories of retainers who may not have what a player seeks.

Ok ok yes I've patched the game. Next one then.

2) The slowness of synthing. I remember the long days of slowly, one item at a time, telling your crystal what to add to the recipe in Final Fantasy XI. I remember searching hopelessly through my inventory for that damned selbina milk for the fiftieth time that night. Why, so many years later, am I fumbling with the same slow system that makes it a chore to craft multiple items?

Q. What kind of changes are planned for synthesis?
A. The late-November patch will see adjustments to the required ranks and difficulty levels of various existing recipes, ensuring that players will have a better chance to successfully create items when reaching the optimal skill level.

For the mid-December update, we will be adding several new recipes, including ones for crafting new gear. In addition, we will be introducing a new feature that will allow players to select recipes from a list of recently crafted items and recipes learned through levequests, and set all of the appropriate ingredients with the touch of a single button, thus making repeated synthesis of a single item a snap!

Well played, SE, well played.

3) Inventory sort! For the love of Nophica and her cute little angry plants, why can't I sort my inventory?! So much nerd rage-

–Inventory Sort Feature
The late-November version update will include the addition of a feature that will allow players to sort their inventories.

Oh, err ... ok. Sweet then.

4) The chat window, the ways the chat window drive me insane. I want to be able to filter the spam better, I understand the initial limits of multibyte characters but I'm speaking English here can I please type more? While we're at it -

Log Window and Chat

New tabs will be added to the log window

Players will be able to open multiple log windows

Controller functionality will be added to the log window

Players will be able to use Ctrl+R to send instant replies to /tells

Players will be able to change chat modes via menu options

The Home and End keys will now function in the chat log

For players typing multi-byte characters, starting a new message with "/" will automatically switch the typeset to single byte

Players will be able to adjust the font color for various chat modes

Adjustments will be made to the transparency of the log window when unfocused

God damn it!

5) Can I get to keep one please? Just one? Ok. How about targeting? I can't count the amount of rage heard on vent over the crappy targeting system. Can I please easily target my party members to, you know, heal them when they're about to die? I'm not trying to heal that Miq'ote a hundred yalms away. No, I swear I didn't mean to target that damned nanny, but she was standing in the imp I was trying to target and polearms are unwieldy things I can't be blamed for -

Targeting

Adjustments will be made to target priority when using the Tab key to cycle through nearby targets

When targeting a party member, a target mark will now appear next to the target's name in the party member list

Players will be able to target party members via the party member list

....

Alright. Alright, SE, point made. Post my blog ideas in a timely manner or have them flat out ruined. I'll be going back to that pile of maiden carp that needs grilling now.

The day that shall live in infamy. (In my house, at least)

2010-09-30T12:47:00.001-07:00

Sometime last year, around E3 I'm guessing, I was sitting at home alone while my boyfriend (and gaming partner, who I happen to have met in Final Fantasy XI six years ago) was off playing Left 4 Dead at a friend's house. I found myself futzing around online and saw an article title somewhere that said simply "Final Fantasy XIV Announced".

Bwwwaaaah? My self said and clicked the link. I hadn't even gotten XIII yet and they were already on to XIV?

What the link lead to was a video. Sweet, I thought, bouncing a bit in my seat as the strains of Uematsu music started. I saw some pretty landscapes, some striking vistas, some oddly familiar hulking thing with an ax ... wait a minute, was that ...? No that couldn't ... wait what the fuck! That was a uh ...

My jaw positively hit the floor as my eyes tried to convince my brain that I was in fact seeing what appeared to be Galka and Elvaan and holycrap even a taru in stunning modern graphics doing something epic.

I watched, I admit with lame fangirl tears in my eyes, until the video faded to a close and the title appeared on the screen:

Final Fantasy XIV

I squeed. But no, they weren't done with me yet. A split second later, with a flourish of sound appeared below the logo:

Online

I can't describe my reaction because it's a haze but if it were possible for a girl to scream, stare gape eyed in wonder and fall into a dead faint all at the same time I would have done so. For six years things had been whispered my house, "What if ... they remade XI? Gave it a graphics update?" Such nonsense, I answered. Square-Enix is perfectly content with dominating the Japanese MMO market with XI. They haven't the time or interest. And yet here was the spiritual successor to my favorite online game of all time, teased in that short little video on my screen.

I never thought September 22nd 2010 would ever come. I was convinced that a myriad of horrible things would surely keep me from playing. My house would explode, a Tsunami would wipe out Japan, something would happen. Yet it came, I had the game in my greedy hands and for the past week I and my once doubtful group of friends have been having the time of our lives.

Today marks the start date for everyone who waited for the standard edition. Today the gates of Eorzea truely open. And like Vana'diel before it, it promises to be my happy home for many years.

How can I get that kind of holiday package?

2010-01-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

It's been a quiet few weeks on the EQ2 front. Those SoE folks must have the best holiday vacation package I've ever seen, or perhaps it's just that compaired to the "Congratulations! You get to work until 8:30pm on Christmas Eve and then be back at 8am on December 26th, Enjoy the Holidays!" that I got it just seems that way. With the developers, Lore Dwarf and others enjoying their free time and holiday bonuses there's been no new official news since the 24th.

The Child's Play Baby Panda is still available until January 17th apparently and if you haven't snatched one yet you should. Frostfell ends on the 7th (so stock pile those frozen furniture pieces to resale in six months!) And of course we do have city festivals to keep us entertained!

I was expecting more than just merchants, but I'm pleased with the new clothing and event though Meleah would rather decorate her home with "acquired" Fae wings than with their craftsmanship she did snatch up one of the lovely desks as well as a new mirror for her bedroom.

I'm hoping for Freeport or Neriak next month, the surprise of seeing what's offered at each new festival for the next few months will be fun.

On a personal note, I still can't pick a darn guild! I need to though since my play partner's interest in a game is directly proportional to how many people he has to play with. He pretty much never logs on unless I'm playing. Everything I find seems to fit either what I want ICly or OOCly, but nothing has yet hit both. My most recent experiences with guilds probably gives me a bit of terror in just choosing one as well.

Sentinel's Fate Screenshots

2009-12-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

I don't know as much about Odus as I'd like, lore wise. It's somewhere that my lowbie high elf self never set foot in in EQ1 and until recently I haven't had any personal interest in Erudites in EQ2. I'm guessing though, that err ... this place didn't use to float?

EQ2 Wire has several more, all that display some really pretty 3.0 shader work. Archive of Ik, MMO-Info and also each have a few more exclusives. I'm impressed with the setting, it seems more varied than what I've seen of other expansion areas as my lowbie little level 42 self. I'm also intregied by the sky and the location of Luclin in it around the Sundered Frontier. People have commented that the sky looks weird in the screenshots and movies we've seen. My theory, given how huge Luclin looks here is that the Sundered Frontier is even higher above Norrath than the Kingdom of Sky zones. I'm seeing upper atmosphere in that sky.

I'm starting to get excited for Sentinel's Fate, even though I haven't even come close to smudging what's in the game already.

Toeing the Line

2009-03-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

Is it just my blog roll that's a bit quiet, a bit dismayed, a bit angry? Even Syp is feeling it and he's suppose to be the light to my shadow! It may just be tunnel vision or one of those things where you notice something once and so you start seeing it everywhere but there is more negativity floating around the blogsphere and forums that I can remember seeing in a long while. And a was Vangaurd: SoH player from beta to four months after launch. I know a negative community when I see one.

I have a love/hate relationship with WAR and I'm sad to say that aside from the IP it isn't anything Mythic has done that's kept me playing. It's been my friends, my guild and it's stellar, awesome roleplay and the great Phoenix Throne community that kept me going. The problem comes around when those same friends start to feel the "blahs" that so many other seem to be feeling.

I think WAR has a lot going for it, it has a lot of potential. It feels to me though, as if it's standing on the edge of a pin and Mythic's actions over the coming months will push it one way or the other. 1.2 was the polar oposite of a miracle patch. There were a lot of little things that were good, I loved all the map updates, the easy PQs, the rallying cry system. I even like Conquest, when it works right. But they continue to break one thing for every two they fix and give half fixes to deep issues like server population.

I think Mythic is stuck in a situation that is going to get worse before it gets better. My complaint from the start of the game is that there isn't enough to do. The PvE can be fun, but it by far not the best I've ever played and the lock out timers on dungeons plus the limited amount of dungeons mean that even if you happen to focus on PvE there isn't enough to make up 10 hours a week of game play. I had hoped, six months after launch that they would have had the core of the game nailed. Back in October I was thinking of all the fun things that could have been added and improved upon by now, but instead I'm still playing RvR lakes and scenerios. Just in a different sort of broken state than they were at launch.

I realize that I am not WARs target demographic, and so the things that would make me want to stick with the game are not likely to come around soon, if ever. I'd love to have things like guild housing, casual clothes, more expansion and diversification of trophies and the ToK, I'd kill for the other four cities to explore. But after six months I can't even /sit or /walk. I am a fluff lover. No one system, no one type of play is enough to keep me interested for 25+ hours every week.

I can have a lot of fun playing Left 4 Dead on XBox Live. And Left 4 Dead does zombie slaying four player action -well-. But I can only explode heads for an hour or two before I get bored. The exact same thing is true of WAR. I play MMOs for their diversity, for the multiple things that I can have fun doing depending on my mood while hanging out with my friends and roleplaying. WAR lacks the diversity, it has always lacked the diversity and Mythic's inablity to fix what's wrong without breaking more things, to own up to the core problems with the game means that I doubt I'll be seeing any diversity for another six months if ever.

It's example time. EVE is a PvP centric game but it is not solely a PvP game. Yet no matter what you're doing in EVE, you're likely interacting with the core PvP in one way or another. Either you're carefully cloaking through a low sec system trying to avoid gankers while you search for a wreck to salvage, you're praying that you can fill your hauler with ore before someone finds you or you're just safe back in the station producing items used by the PvPers. EVE holds PvP at the center of it's game with a myriad of others things to do that brush you up against the player versus player action. It offers both focused fighting for playeres who are very interested in it and a fun challenge of avoiding and a huge list of other things to do for those who aren't, or who just aren't in the mood at the time. It's a balance of risk vs. reward.

WAR sets it's core on an on and off switch. You're in the lakes, or you're not. You're qued for scenerios, or you're not. And if you're not, then you're probably not logged in because you're waiting on your three day lock out timers.

So what am I doing in WAR? My current main character sits at 40/24. My previous main character is a WE, and that pretty much sums that up. I run the odd scenerio, I do ORvR when it looks like Order is making an organized push and destro is of course always in need of healers. I struggle through fort defenses and the pee soup lag and ten second Khaine's Embrace casts to do my part for my team. I log on to run dungeons with my friends a few times a week. Are the horrible drop rates and backwards arse ward system making the dungeon play less fun that it could be? Heck yes. But I'm still here, hoping that the game gets better. But how long can you really wait? Vanguard told me four months, and WARs already got two months on that. I'm not sure what my new number is :(

Tradeskill Addons that Rock my Socks

2009-03-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

I love crafting. I even loved crafting before 1.2 made it cool and everyone and their mother became a cultivator. It's not the most in deapth or fun crafting I've ever seen, but I really do love the recipe-less system and the experimentation that goes along with it. So, two crafting addons that I couldn't live without and you shouldn't have to either.

Miracle Grow Remix

For quite a while I used a cultivation addon called PlantMe. It hasn't been updated in a while and 1.2 pretty much killed it on my PC at least so when I went looking for another one I was a bit scared. The default cultivation interface is clunky to say the least. It's impossible to do anything else while you babysit four little windows that need your constant attention and since the activty isn't particularly engaging or fun, it feels like work. Luckily I found this little gem which I actually like alot more than my old PlantMe.

Miracle Grow Remix takes the bloated cultivation interface and shrinks it down into a little black box, placeable anywhere on your screen. It takes up less screen space than character portrait.

It gives you little boxes for seed, soil, water and nutriant and allows you to que up each thing before it's needed. PlantMe didn't allow for queing so it still needed to be clicked on whenever a stage of growth was completed. This system, coupled with the brilliant "Repeat Process" button that allows you a one click fill if you have the exact same materials in your bag make cultivation so quick and simple that I can now do it while RvRing. If you're a cultivator, you should have this.

Crafting Info Tooltip

I should give Czarnal at The Homunculus candy for pointing this out to me, seriously. Despite it's lack of spandy name this little baby may be the coolest addon I have, next to Tome Titan. It takes all of those hidden properties of crafting items and puts them in the tool tip. For example, did you know that cultivation soil increases your crital chance % while water increases your special moment chance %? Now you do.

This takes that recipe-less, experimentation thing that I raved about loving above and lays it all out on the table. I've yet to find a crafting material that didn't have new information on it's tooltip and it's really increased my productivity. I just have to wonder ... how does it know?

Vacation in Altdorf

2009-03-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

I'm so terrible about timely news. I was going to post this the day after it happened but my server was beset by "OMG Destro exploits!" drama after the keep lords bugged on us and leaped downstairs. Not willing to "gloat" while people were still hot under the collar I waited until Order took a fortress a few days ago and the lord bugged on -them-. I now do not feel bad.

So a day after Order hit the Inevitable City and I was shocked at the lack of fun of it all Destro dragged themselves out of inactivity and spent six teen hours pushing for Altdorf. And I got to see, for the very first time, what a truelly organized force can do in T4. Organization in ORvR is like the difference between a pick up group and a pre-made in scenerios. It was incredably fun. My warband was a bit of a "swing group", set to bounce between the southern BOs and keeps defending as needed. We managed to keep Order on a total lock down in Reikland for the hour and half the domination timers needed and it was pure fun.

So both forts fell and we got to contest Atldorf. I was ready for my PC to sieze up and die here since the only time I'd been to Altdorf on an alt I could hardly move. But pleasantly, it wasn't that bad. What was bad was ... it was the same exact damn PQ that we did in the Inevitable City. I couldn't believe it. It was the same burn things/capture BOs/face a lord that no one can kill set up. It was a lot more fun from the offensive side though.

We were also once again beset by the same disconnect and que bugs as before. We started out in relativly balanced numbers but as people d/ced and no one was able to get back in things swung the other way and we ended up being spawn camped. We also weren't able to find these fabled PvE PQs so no one in my instance saw a single bag after all that work.

Needless to say, it all needs work. I was pleased and not too suprised to see that reworking of the city based endgame was mentioned in the State of the Game. It needs several things in my opinion to work better. In spandy list format!

Smaller numbers. We only get half of the city to fight in and putting 80+ people there makes it very zergy. It's not really that much bigger than an average scenerio, less numbers would make it more fun ... as is almost always the case in my opinion. Perhaps 24 vs 24. 48 vs 48 is just too many in that small a space
Rework the PQ so that it doesn't require superior wards to finish. The whole idea of throwing a lord mob that must be killed into the middle of 48 defenders with little to no way to set up any sort of defense to block them while we beat the NPC down seems silly.
Clear indication of what needs to be done to lock the city. As was the case in ORvR at the start, no one seems to have any idea what needs to be done to lock the zone. From my experience defending it seems very much to lean toward scenerios. Order rocked us in the scenerios with pre-mades and we lost the city. I have no idea why we didn't manage to lock the city ourselves.
Make the ques work properly. Both times, defensive and offense, I was in a half empty instance with more than a warband waiting at the city gates wanted to get in and help. Both times I had members of my warband unable to get back into our instance even though count showed that we had empty room.
Never remove defenders from the zone. Currently, once the city is locked all defenders remain inside the city until they die. Once they're all dead it's the offenders turn to PvE. While I'd enjoy the chance to roam around Altdorf and do PvE things there should always be at least a section of the city that has better rewards and a constant stream of players wanting to beat the crap out of you. Perhaps set gear should only come from the RvR area of the city while the rest remains for the fun "sack and loot" prize.

My first tastes of the RvR "endgame"

2009-03-07T07:34:00.000-08:00

Phoenix Throne saw it's first ever contested city last night and if you'd told me back in November that it would the Inevitable City that fell first I'd have called you nuts.

We all know I'm not much of an RvRer but that I am an insane RPer. Given that, I can not think of anything more out of character and immersion breaking than not being smack dab in the middle of the front lines when things looked as dire as they did a few days ago. It started off with Fell Landing, something that always gets my dark elf behind in gear to defend (though I rarely make it before the population caps, thank you five minutes load screens of doom). So when I heard the call and I happened to be in Caledor I booked it. Fell Landing ... fell. First time Order had ever taken a fortress and I could tell just based on the numbers they were fielding and the way they were playing that chances were very good that things were going to be ugly.

We held Black Crag by the skin of our teeth for an hour or two. I will admit here also that we held it stupidly. Menkara refered to most of the defending force as "un trained rabble". There were attempts by several members of my alliance, Black Blood Pact, to organize but it was like herding cats. Again based on the numbers fielded and the way we were playing I knew things weren't likely to go well. Black Crag fell and Butcher's Pass soon after.

This it where the failure started. Incomming Pull has a run down of what happened at the city that's probably better written and less wordy than mine so feel free to skip my rambling and scamper over there. I would not blame you.

For six months now the population of Phoenix Throne has been working toward cities. From the early days of multiple weekly Destro pushes for fortresses met with zone crash after zone crash to the population shift after the Avelorn transfers leading to daily fort defenses for Destro the point has always been to see this legendary, mysterious end game.

Well I saw it. At least part of it and here is the secret ...

It's a PQ and most of it is PvE.

I know right? Blasphemy you say! I remember reading about the dynamics of city capture, of burning buildings and rampant looting of houses and thinking how freaking awesome it sounded. I had visions of pure chaos in the streets of the cities, masses of people and the feel of a city under seige. What I got was a slight change in the look of the city (The runic glowies on the walls turned from blue to red), NPCs disappeared and freaking barrels were burning as if the chaos touched hobbos of the Inevitable City had stepped out to pee and left them there. There was one central PQ taking up the Apex, Temple and Monolith, the front half of the city. Objectives including holding two flags, killing the oposite side and either making those hobo fires or putting them out depending on the side. My warband was very on and we managed to win the PQ three times but the mobs and the difficulty of the lord that needed to be killed in stage two meant that we never actually got past that stage. (Lord required Dark Promise level wards to tank, more than two at least and there was no reason for all of the invading force not to be piled on top of the lord. Said lord was also tethered and could not be fought anywhere but within a small radius.)

Here's where the bugs started. Members of my warband qued up for the scenerio tied to the city and entered when it popped. Scenerios were unablanced (24 vs 4 for example) but didn't close properly and once they finally did gave victory points to the invaders for their win. When the players exited the scenerio instead of rejoining us all in our instance of the city they ended up outside. Trying to reenter told them that all instances were full and they should join the que, which they did. With the scenerio mess up, the usual DCs and CTDs that happen in mass RvR toward the end of the two hours my warband had twindled to about one and half or two groups actually in the city. And yet dozens were standing around outside the city being told the instances were full and to wait. Why? Because apparently there's a bug that incorrectly tells you that if you happen to be grouped. Had they dropped party and tried to join solo they could have chosen their instance and hopped right back in.

Order took the city in the end and out of the both sides two pieces of gear dropped, both on Order side and both from the PvE only PQs that they aparently have on their side that don't show up on our map. One piece also happened to go to a base rank 32. We're talking RR 50+ gear here. And after the city was locked? Order continued to PvE inside the city for several ours while we sat and twiddled our thumbs.

All in all, it was extrememly lack luster, not terribly fun and buggy. I was left feeling a bit like, if this is the end game ...what have we been working toward all these months? The daily RvR battle is a while lot more fun than the cities. The ORvR lake PQs for the Bitter Rivals event are more fun than the one in the city.

Starting over ... again.

2009-03-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

I've written and re-written this post a dozen times and can't seem to get it as I wish but it's for certain a key moment in my little WAR world and I really want to both share and chronicle it.

Let's start with the obvious. Guilds in WAR are much more than the glorified chat channel that they are in many other games. There are a lot of really key gameplay elements that come from guilds, not just fluff items like cloaks but important things that make the game richer, easier to travel etc. The guild recall scrolls that let you warp to directly to your city are a god send as anyone who has them will tell you. For crafters like me there's NPCs in the guild only area with items that can only be bought from them and the list of items gets better depending on the level of your guild. There's guild banners, which are customizable AoE buff machines that are a huge, huge boon in both RvR and PvE. With 1.2 there's more fluff to be had as well, uniquely colored mounts and as well as better mounts with increased speed, reduced dismounting etc.

All of this stuff takes a lot of effort to gain. I have triends in very small guilds who though they've been around since launch (six months ago) are barely level 10. As far as I know, no one has yet reached the maximum guild rank 40 on my server. Leveling a guild takes people and a lot of time, it's something you gain as a collective effort of all your friends as they go about their WAR lives.

Up until last night I belonged to a wonderful heavy 100% RP guild. We were guild level 22, I joined up in October before we'd gotten basic cloaks. I was there doing flips of joy when we unlocked the teleport scrolls, I went out and did PQs like a maniac the night we were a sliver from 20 and the fully unlocked cloaks. We were one of the top 20 guilds on Phoenix Throne. Really, for a heavy RP guild to be in the top 20 of one of the most populated servers in WAR? That is really, really freaking awesome and I was really proud of it.

A few nights ago though we all learned that both our guild leaders were quitting WAR. That enough would be a sad day for any guild but totally understandable. We all know I've had my issues with the game and I don't begrudge anyone leaving. The sticker though was that they had also decided to disband the guild. Fifty or so active players were all freaking floored. We asked, we begged and then we pleaded for the next few days for leadership to simply pass the guild and let us keep going. We netted however, absolutely no response accept for another officer who was their friend and leaving as well coming onto the forums to say basically "We never liked you anyway, screw off." Guild drama, even when you're in a mature, grown up guild I suppose you can't ever avoid it can you? People do the wierdest, stupidest things under the anomity of the internet.

Once the preverbial shit hit the fan we all accepted that we were going to lose the guild, that six months of the collective effort of probably at least 100 people was going down the drain because ... someone decided to send it there. I'm really not clear, it's nothing I would ever, ever do my online friends so I really can't understand it. I've certainly passed on my number of guilds and fansite in my gaming life.

We scrambled and over the course of few days managed to come up with the RP basis of a new guild, reformed and restructured leadership, I created a website for us and last night formed Umbral Retribution on the Phoenix Throne server. The guild was only two hours old and we had 30 members, all of them active mains. The guild was six hours old and we had seven applications on our forums from prior members of the old guild who wished to come back under new leadership and from people who had never joined but always wished to prompted by the new change to move on from their own stagnant alliances.

Our alliance, Black Blood Pact, has been so incredably stellar through all this. From the moment the disband was announced we have been flooded with offers of welcoming members into their guilds, offers of a CSR ticket blitz to attempt to get guid leadership transfered to one of us, to alts to help level up our new guild, to gold and items to make up for all that mysterious disappear from our vault. They started the vote to kick the old guild from the alliance as soon as we announced we were just going to bite the bullet and leave and they are eagerly awaiting our new guild reaching level 6 to reinvite us. Really ... I have just been totally blown away by the friendliness and helpfulness of our server. And I'm going to get mushy and say that I heart Phoneix Throne. Yes, even you Syp. I heart a dwarf.

Goodbye Arha Khaladh. You were flat out the most active RP guild I've had the joy of taking part in throughout my years of gaming.

Hello Umbral Retribution, may you eclipse the levels of awesome and show me what creative, mature, adults can rock out.

... I was going to compare the numbers of guild xp there and say how much was left to go... but it's just too painful. You all do the math.

Drama Equals Fan Art

2009-03-02T02:10:00.000-08:00

In the face of hellish real life stress and now with bonus in game drama on top, my original plan for my Monday morning post has flown out the window. With that in mind, I give you something simple. Fan art!

This is my two main characters Sevren (the witch elf) and Menkara (the DoK) as drawn by my wonderful guild mate Laryu. I can not believe how fantasticly she captured Menkara's personality. Revel in the awesome.

(click for full size)

Revel I tell you!

(God guild drama sucks.)

The Unsung Details of 1.2

2009-02-25T16:22:00.000-08:00

In the midst of a whole lotta upset witch elves, sorcerers and bright wizards, a full rework of the zone lock system and of course choppa/slayer there's a lot of little things that shine about 1.2 that haven't been mentioned much.

Crafting - I've always bemoaned the crafting in this game. In fact, it's a long running joke amongst my guild to reply with a disbelieving "There's crafting in this game?!" whenever anyone on the forums mentions it. The recipeless system was great in concept I think. In concept I also always thought I'd have fun messing around with, testing out things. Like my theory that those wind touched vials (Aqshy-touched Vial etc) all enhanced different potions depending on the character of their specific wind of magic. In practice thought it was hella confusing and there were so many -things- to play with that I spent more trying to juggle bag and bank space than I did actually testing anything.

1.2 has streamlined it. I am usually anti "dumbing down" of crafting systems. (EQ2 ... I will never forgive you.) But Mythic seems to have done it right. Lyst is a 200 apothocary and 190ish cultivator so I copied her to the test server and played around with things. The first thing I noticed is that a huge chunk of my blue and purple cultivation items are now useless. They do convert into things so they're not totally wasted but I feel a bit cheated when I turn a purple 200 cultivating water I've been holding on to for months into a green 150 level water.

As Thulf mentioned, you can not start with one seed and through a process of ctrl + right clicking turn the grown plant back into a seed. This means that seeds are no longer in the loot table for mobs which I am hugely happy about. So sick of passing on seeds.

Apothocary is set to see an influx and increase in number of additives, something that most apothocaries probably didn't get much of a chance to mess around with prior given their terrible drop rate but additives to increase number of potions, increase duration, make effects larger are more abundant now. There's also whole new potions, including one that gives 25% moral gain boost and ... a raise potions. Rejoice!

Map markers - Ahh, the minor detail that rocked my socks. From day one in WAR we've all had to contend with buggy map markers. Those little grey squares only ever showed your party rather than your warband, where hard to see and flat out didn't work sometimes. Party markers are now very easy to see little green jewels. They not only show your full warband but also dynamic and consistantly move. So detailed that Turnip could sit in the warcamp and know that his choppa boss Beetz is fighting a stuntie because Beetz little marker is spinning in a tiny circle. Being able to know exactly where everyone is and watch them move around is a huge boon.

Party and Warband window - All I can say is about darn time.

Able to see open parties in any zone from any zone, the ability to set yourself as LFG with specific tags (I showed off dungeon groups here, but there's tags for RvR, PQs, Quests) to create open parties with easily visable note about what you're doing. Also not pictured is a fully reworked party and warband management window. No more right clicking on portraits and hoping the command to change master looter works.

Powah to da greeeeeeen.

2009-02-23T17:01:00.001-08:00

After saying in my last post that I would be okay if there was little to no CC in the game I've had a chance to experience something very close to that over the past few days and I've had a total freaking blast.

Choppa and slayer are very low CC classes. They each get a low level snare and a mid-level short duration knockdown. Slayers I think have a moral ability knock down as well. Bored a few nights ago I elected to check out choppa and ended up instead rolling a shaman on the test server as that's what I'll be playing with Calintz's choppa and I wanted to see how shaman works at level 18. It was, as said, a blast.

I RvRed more in the past two nights on the test server than I have in the past two months on live. It's simple, there's no cheap tricks (Except the few engineers that the slayers seem to bring, hello disable) . It's just "Heres da boyz, deres da gits. Time ta smash." And I've noticed a hell of a lot more teamwork come out of it than I've ever seen on the live servers. If a shaman is getting hit there are suddenly four or five big choppas or a random black orc physically surrounding him and pushing the dwarves away. Honestly, as if they cordinated it. It's a beautiful thing to find yourself suddenly in the middle of a giant green box, protected not from crowd control abilties but good old fashion collison physics and teamwork.

There was also a tactic I like to call "the first aid run". When you create a level 18 greenskeen on PTS you're dropped already geared and ready to go into the Marshes of Madness warcamp so naturally the Marshes RvR lakes is hoping, constantly. The keep there has a bridge that links the plateu the keep is on to the main road creating a nice little bottleneck if order chooses to take that route (which... they have almost always done.)

What happens with no other cordination is the members of the giant green wall form up fantastically on the bridge with slayers washing against them. The healy gits (shaman) stand at the end of the bridge. When a choppa finds himself at low health he turns and runs back toward the shaman, his place in the wall instantly filled by another choppa. The hurt orc is spotted, spam healed and usually turns on his heel before he even reaches us and is back in the fray while passing another hurt orc on his way to Mork's First Aid Station. It made me laugh out loud several times to watch every orc there doing it and how well it worked, like a brilliant moment of unplanned teamwork.

Save a random ironbreaker managing to throw all the orcs off the bridge and rush the healers the only way to break that set up is for a group of slayers to come up the side of the hill, from behind and wipe out the shaman before the orcs can save us. It would be a very simple tactic, and effective, if they'd use it. But for some reason they haven't yet, they just keep bouncing off the green wall.

Yesterday we also got a chance to take back the keep while it was playing host to a slayer convention. A new feature of 1.2 is that you can not take down a keep door without a ram. If you're ram-less and relying on regular abilities the door stays at 1% and refuses to break. Makes freaking sense to me, who ever heard of knocking down a six inch slab of a wood with a knife? The ram doesn't have to be up at the time the door goes down, but a ram has to have damaged the door at some point for it fall. We had our ram out until the slayers managed to gather enough excess grease from their mohawks to fill the oil cauldron. We took down the rest of the door with shaman spells, choppa axe throwing and random kamakazee choppa bashing. Once we got in it was a gloreous push. There were no bright wizards to single handedly wipe us all out with AoEs, only one or two engineers, a ton of slayers and a few runepriests hiding in the back. We took the keep on pure "throw as much green as it as you can" tactics. Choppas charged, choppas died, choppas rezed and choppa charged again. It was very touch and go, especially when the respawned slayers nearly took us from the floor. But we actually managed to take it and it was fantastic fun. Little Turnip the Shaman even got a gold bag out of it.

My question is, why doesn't/can't this simple fun exist on the fully classed live servers? Is it as I guess an issue of CC and ranged damage dominating the full game? Is it a question of the prevelant zerg mentalities of WAR that state if you can't win bring twenty more friends? Or is it just because greenskins are that awesome?

Scenerio Tactics for DimWits

2009-02-21T16:11:00.000-08:00

Regis over at Wizards & Wenches has inspired me with a post of his (hers? Damned internets) titled "Things To Do and Not To Do In Scenerios". It's so perfect in it's simplicy and no-duh list of tactics and gameplay hints that it's actually things that I never imagined people didn't already do. Why didn't I imagine though? I've certainly played enough scenerios where I'm telling my computer monitor (who is sick and tired of my directions, by the way) to stop attacking the tanks, to not run directly into the mob of melee, to stop leaping about so I can heal them etc etc.

I'd once planned on writing a tactics guide to some of the more popular scenerios, thinking that perhaps telling people that the bauble holder needs a healer, and to stop bumrushing order, or that the part runner is very likely to get cut off half way to the turn in and needs more than just my sorry DoK butt to guard him it might do some good. But Regis made me realize that I think we need to go even farther back to the basics. If people would just grasp the basics then perhaps we can move on to the "complicated" stuff.

So here's my list, in addition to Regis' and with some things likely restated because I think they need to be stressed.

Open your eyes and look before leaping

Take two seconds after you encounter the enemy to scan the crowd before you rush in. Note first the make up of the group, the classes there. This is where is pays to be able to pick out the classes of your oponents by sight. Ugly hats = witch hunters. Giant hammers = Warrior Priest or Ironbreaker. I won't get into describing the visual difference between dwarves and humans because I just had lunch. (Haha! Dwarf insult for this post finished). If the group is melee heavy you can be certain that they're going to rush your lines very soon. Take note of where the healers are, how well defended they are and if they're grouped together. Healers who stick together are hard to kill, we tend to look out for each other. That straggler goblin attempting to hide behind a rock over there is easy pickings though. Don't simply target the first person you see and never run blindly toward your enemy just because you saw red on your screen. You're not a bull.

Stop. hitting. the tanks.

A tanks job is to ... tank things. This is the guy that can sip tea and alt tab out while taking hits from that hero mob that two shots you. His job is to absorb damage and if there are any other classes at all on the field you should not let him do his job. Tanks are the last things to be killed in most cases, focus fire is the only way to take them down and if you either a) attempt to solo the tank or b) attempt to focus fire the tank while there's plenty of other targets one of those other targets is going to rip the crap out of you and/or your teammates while you're doing a two step with their Black Gaurd. I know it's really hard to see a dwarf charging at you and not desperately want to smash him (Two!) but if you do then he's doing his job. He's distracting you while you could be doing something far more deadly like killing his healer or the witch hunter who's busy killing your healers. Ignore the tanks until there's nothing else to hit, it annoys the crap out of them. And for cripes sake never try to melee a tank with a shield face to face, attempt to get at their back with everything you've got. Parry and block do not work from behind so coming from behind leaves you only with their several thousand armor to deal with.

Use the terrain

Scenerios are really well designed battle fields. All those trees and rocks, those little hills and sharp turns aren't just there for looks. This is very individual to each scenerio but the basic hint here is to pay attention to everything that's around you, not just players. In Tor Anroc for example, there's a small lip you have to pop up over to gain access to the central bauble crater. It's possible for a sorceress to stand just out of line of sight under that lip and drop Pit of Shades from realtive safety right smack into the middle of the battle. Also in Tor Anroc there are several paths to take to the crater and to the enemy camp. Two or three witch elves stealthing up one of these paths from behind can almost always focus fire a bauble holder down before he knows what hit him. In Serpant's Passage if you're being chased by the enemy go directly into the cart holding the turn in, this keeps you safe from any attempts to knock you out of bounds and nicely bottle necks the enemy trying to kill you so your team mates can better kill them.

In Morkain Temple there's several little places along the broken walls that offer a fantastic pocked for ranged DPS and healers to stand and still have line of sight that gives you an extra minute or two to do your thing before the enemy notices you. Some of the most fun I've had in scenerios involves hiding in one of the full coverage pine trees in Phoenix Gate and nuking or healing without a soul noticing me. (Warning: When the tree shoots a doombolt it's a dead give away. Stick to instant casts.)

There's tons and tons more I haven't mentioned, and even more I'm sure I've never found. The basic hint here is: Never go exactly where the enemy expects you to. Take another path, stand in another spot.

Last but not least, a friendly word from your healer:

I know leaping around makes you feel really cool but I can't heal you when you're pretending to be a rabbit.

Lots of healers, self included, do a fair bit of healing via direct targeting. I can see the health bars over the heads of everyone in front of me and find it often easier to pick my targets that way. I see the witch elf over there getting the crap beat out of her and I'd love to keep her on her feet for a while longer so she can poke things but I'll be darned if she isn't leaping around like a jack rabbit. I don't like playing the click ten times and miss while trying to target someone to heal game and if I miss you due to your inability to keep your feet on the ground you're not going to get the heal before you die. This also goes for running directly up to me when you need healing and jumping in my face in some attempt to get my attention. I see you, honestly I do, and I'd heal you if you weren't leaping away from my curser every time I try to target you. Feet on ground please.

I have arrived... again. Can I go home now?

2009-02-19T17:02:00.000-08:00

About time for an update I figure.

I posted on January 14th that my DoK was at level 34. It's taken me until yesterday (over a month) to get to 40. If that isn't a statement of a lackluster drive to play WAR I really don't know what is. But this might be, my tome at the time of dinging:

Yes, that's right. That is a level 40 character with 1218 RvR kills. I absolutely despise teir 4 RvR, I hate it even more than I hated Scholo runs in vanilla WoW back in 2005. It's a combination of many small things, most of them going by the name of knock down, knock back, stun, disable, disarm, silence and hahahaScrewYouForTryingToPlayIrolledaDwarflol.

I think crowd control has it's place in the game, but I think it has it's place more in -other- games. In a game built around small skurmish, small group or solo PvP it is definantly fun and effective to have CC abilities. In a game where you regularly go up against 30 vs 30 or much more than that it's a terrible freaking idea to give every single one of those thirty or one-hundred people multiple crowd control abilities. If maybe the immunity timers were longer, or worked properly all the time perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. But being disabled, drooling on yourself for a solid twenty seconds while you die with zero chance to fight back or counter it is simply not fun. For another WoW annalogy it's like suddenly finding yourself up against nothing but stun-lock rogues and undead shadow priests.

Teir 1 is FUN. I really like teir 1, teir 2 is also pretty fun. Teir 3 can be fun, depending on how many Ironbreakers are in Tor Anroc (CC yet again, this time with bonus lava!). Teir 4 is just god aweful. And I've heard people on forums and blogs expressing this same sentiment, that for some reason the lower teirs are more fun. I had chalked it up to "the game is new for you in lower teirs" but having taken two characters to 40 now and a third one about to break into teir 4 hell soon as well I can say that's not it. I still have more fun in teir 1 and 2 than I ever do in teir 4. If I could cap my sorceress at 31 I so would :/

There's also that even though teir 4 has a metric buttload of scenerios given the zone locking mechanic I don't really like any of them. I love Khaine's Embrace, I give a happy sqeee whenever Morkain Temple pops. I adore the heck out of Doomfist Crater. Of all the teir 4 scenerios that I've played I haven't really liked any of them, and I flat out hate Serpant's Passage. It could just be that CC thing rearing it's head here, but I'm trying to be objective in my critique of the gameplay of teir 4 scenerios. None of the frequently popping ones are very fun.

As I said to a friend a while ago, I would be happy if they totally removed most/all crowd control abilities in the game and we instead had to rely on teamwork, skill and the awesome collision physics to keep the squishies defended. I'm sure I'm a minority in that thought. But I bet you all rolled dwarves. /StareAtSyp

Sunny side

2009-01-14T02:32:00.000-08:00

Today marks a momentous occasion.

Finally, finally, finally got to run an in character six man in Bastion Stair with my wonderful guild. It was admittedly short, we did the first PQ once and then ran into a rash of DCs and weird server lag that combined with my guild leader's short amount of playtime just lead to an all out bust. But it was the first time in the Stair for everyone there other than Calintz and I and the general sentiment seemed to be "I have so been missing a good dungeon crawl, we are so doing this again." That of course put Calintz into a state of pure glee as he's been going a little bit insane over the past two months trying to get pick up or alliance groups for dungeons runs on his 40 DoK.

On a high from getting to do something we've been looking forward to for three months we made a leveling push on Menkara (DoK) and Calintz (BG) in an effort to provide better main tanking and healing to our small all DE group tomorrow when we're suppose to try again. So we went to Praag, which is I admit, not my favorite zone. We had no in character reason to be there so we elected for a purely OOC grind fest and managed to go from 32 - 34 in about four hours. That's right folks, a level every two hours. Bow before our PvE might *pantpantpantfalloverdie*

We were joined toward the end of the night by Drakis, a magus guildmate, who seemed really exciting by the xp you can pound off in an AoE party. It was a lot of fun to level with him even OOCly because it's almost always just the two of us either because we're RPing as we go along in storyline that wouldn't invole others or because we're not RPing at all and so don't tend to invite the members of our 100% IC guild. It was a fest of spinning halberds, belching demons, floating humans and frantic party heals but we got a hefty chunk of xp together and a friend seemed to have fun.

So that brings me to one level 40 and a level 34. I feel like a certified hardcore gamer, which is laughable if you knew that it only took me five years to get a character to max level in FFXI and that was my first and last prior to WAR. Calintz and I have set the goal to grind to 35 because there's several nice pieces of gear for us there and from then on to just let xp come as it does. Getting to 40 twice while all but two members of the guild haven't gotten forty yet would be a bit ... boring as freaking crap frankly. Calintz does need to work on grinding off a ton of renown to get warded for city dungeons though which means that so do I ; ; My first forty isn't even warded yet. Getting me to grind scenarios in T4 is like pulling teeth, it hurts so damn much.

In the world of Ainilome, where roleplay fun beats the pants off of Fortress battles and zone flips, there's been a marked increase in WAR fun factor over the past week or so. Both Menkara and Calintz have managed to become involved in at least one storyline, have gotten some serious RP with someone other than each other and just generally became a lot more fun to play. I think my play time will continue to be reduced from what it was when I started, there is just not enough to do at 40 that doesn't involve being disabled, disarmed, rooted, knocked back/down/up/around until you're ready to pull out your hair. But there is enough to keep me going with hands down the best roleplay guild I've had the pleasure of being a member of in my six years of MMO gaming and probably the best group of roleplayers in twelve years of RPing. Mythic should give Arha Khaladh some cookies, because they're the reason that we're still giving them $30 a month.

Oh, which reminds me, Arha Khaladh gained Guild Rank 20 yesterday/today and we finally get to display our full heraldry. Woo for us!

It's suppose to be dragon eye, if I remember right. Our guild name roughly translates as Night of Dragons in Druhir. But I'm pretty sure with the blood drops that it's actually Khaine's eye?I'm a bit off on my Druchii symbology. Awesome either way. Great to no longer have that generic destro symbol on my back.
(Again with the jagged edged in my screenshots when I have no AA issues in game :/)

A plea

2009-01-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

We interupt this regularly schedule blog for a public service announcement.

If you happen to play Destruction on Phoenix Throne, or have just been toying with the idea of rolling destro there. Please... for the love of Khaine, roll a healer. If you have a healer from T1 to T3 that you haven't played in a while... dust it off. You will be loved and adored.

This message brought you by a bakers dozen of scenerios with 3 Runepriests, 2 Arcmages vs. 1 DoK. Thank you.

I offer visual proof. This is the norm for T3 scenerios the past week or so on both my DoK and my sorceress, it has also for me been the norm in T1. As Menkara today after about three hours of scenerio runs I had two... TWO scenerios where I wasn't the only healer on destro.

I should have named the blog "Pointless Rambles".

2009-01-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

First things first, a big welcome to the slew of new bloggers our WAR: Age of Blogging initiative have brought in. Cabal of War , Asuryan's Flames, Alt Much, Grumble and Mutter, From the Forging of Fire and Ice, The Rant, WAR! For Casual, The Tome of Gonna, In the XOne, Schlotzky's Game Blog, The Grumblings of Gorebash, WAR Addons Reviewed, Cry Moar Noob, One Side of the Fence and Rainbow's MMOs. Whew.

And now for another pointless ramble.

I've been concidering dusting off my sorceress. Lyst was my original character, thus the name of the blog being a Sorceress ability. I had even planned originally to focus a good portion of my content on the Sorceress class, from it's abilties to it's very awesome lore. But then along came the pokeypokey portable blender joy of Witch Elf and the launch of Blackgaurd and poor Lyst has been sitting at 24 for months. Teir 4 has instilled a deep hatered in me for MDPS (ok, annoyance. But I'm a Dark Elf, I can be emo if I like.) and while healing with my DoK is fun it doesn't satisify the blood lust so well. There's also the fact that she's been sitting at 140ish cultivating and apothocary for all those months with a vault and mail box bursting with supplies from my 200 scavanger and my boyfriends 200 butcher. I spent about an hour crafting a few days ago and she's now just below 175 in both. I do like the potions I can pump out, +70 to a stat for 10 mins is really awesome. I am wary of switching to another alt when my main isn't getting much play time and I have completely failed at getting my current alt into the rampant RP of my guild. Which brings me to my original point of posting.

I have no idea what my problem is. Perhaps it comes from years (yes, yeeeeeears) of really only roleplaying with my boyfriend's characters but I'm like an RP hermit. I created Menkara's character specifically so that I had the drive and means to get involved in multiple storylines. She's a seer, of the strict Druchii variety and based very heavily on the various seers and prophets of the Malus Darkblade novels. I've gone really in depth learning about how exactly the Druchii seers peer into the future, the tools they use, what they see, how concrete it is etc. I worked out a storyline for her entrence to the guild with my guild leader and she ended up being named High Priestess of the House.

But she's hardly interacted with anyone. If I may be blunt and open, being that this is my personal blog, I and she was/is a bit off put by the fact that even though I had her character sheet up on the forums for months before she actually started being played within a week of her entrance to the guild there were two other seer or psycic characters created or joined. It sort of took the wind out of my sails. I had all these grandeous ideas of her established standing as a semi well known seer of Har Ganeth, infamous for the powerful people she has backed giving her a lot of "buisness". Of people coming to her to employ her talents. She's very cheap after all, she's made it clear she works for anyone and the only compensation she requires is that of flesh sent to her temple for sacrific. The average price is a dozen Asur or two dozen human. Affordable rates! But that fact is that no one seems to even remember that she's the High Priestess, much less that she's a seer. Is it my fault? Probably. As I said, I seem to be a hermit. I just can't manage to get myself involved, or in the right place at the right time, or not busy when events are going on or finding conversations that Menkara doesn't find insepid to take part in in guild chat. I think my failure at this character that I had so many hopes for is contributing a lot to my lack luster drive to play WAR anymore.

She has an awesome, awesome storyline going with her leveling partner, Calintz. Their RP continues to be dynamic, unique, varied and highly emotional. But her relationship with the House is about nill. I log on, she greets the house, everyone says "Greetings, Menkara" and then I fall quiet. A lot of time it's because I get swooped up into personal RP. It's very hard to chat idly in guild when Menkara and Calintz are busy argueing or some other drama. It goes back to what I said in a post months ago, RP is what you put into it. And I think that's where I fail :/

I promise to keep the ratio of emo to non-emo posts at a steady 1:2 ration by finishing my comments on the several totally usless abilities that DoK get or a run down of my biggest pet peeve in the Sorceress vs. Bright Wizard debate ... wait, would Sorc vs. BW count as an emo post?

I'm starting to feel the itch.

2009-01-05T01:30:00.001-08:00

What itch?

The "I need a new MMO" itch. I'm not sure what it is about me, it could very well be a mental defect, but it is exceedingly rare for me to be able to stick with an MMO for longer than a handful of months. All in all, WAR is doing pretty well. I've been playing since about two weeks after launch, so it's been a few months. But I'm starting to get restless. I'm unsure if this has to do specifically with the game I'm playing or that I just really love trying new games. In this case since the itch I'm getting is to return to games I've played previously (namely, EQ2 and/or Vangaurd) I'm thinking it must be something to do with WAR itself.

Simply put, I don't like T4. I'm not really much of an RvRer, I was in fact pretty much anti-PvP before coming to WAR. I've had a lot of fun with it though, so it's not just a general "I don't like RvR" thing. It's several things. At the moment, I hate my server. A month or two ago Avelorn was merged with Phoenix Throne and what had in my opinion been a pretty darn balanced server is now Order heavy. T4 is and has been swarming with Order constantly, I hate to use the term "zerg" but that's what it feels like. Destruction is for the most part getting steamed rolled everywhere I turn. I honestly feel that my sever is now TOO full. Maybe I just don't find the fun in 200 vs 200 battles ... I don't know. I had a lot more fun when it was 20 or 40 on either side.

This has lead to a serious downward spiral in my sides moral over the past few weeks. We are terribly, terribly defeatist. And even when I try not to be defeatist when everyone around you is being so it's very hard to keep your spirits up. It doesn't help that, honest to god, I have not won one.single.scenerio is nearly two weeks. That's in T4 with my witch elf and T3 with my DoK. Not a single win, flattened to a pancake every damn time. It gets old... very old.

I'm not saying I wish to win every time. But that fact that I lose every time means that somewhere on Order there's someone getting the luck of the draw and WINNING every time. Three or four loses in a row I can deal with, it happens. Seven... eight... a dozen. I just give up and log off, because at that point the game is actually making me sad and upset. And it's suppose to be fun. Scenerios with four rune priests and two arcmages vs our side with one zealot and a DoK are the norm. There is no way to win like that. Throw in the insanity of Engineer disables and knockdowns and it's a recipe for pulling out my hair... or logging out. (Yes Syp. I freaking hate Engineers. Twelve seconds of CC and I'm dead before I can even hurt them.)

Add in the fact that it's a game completely devoid of any sort of open roleplay, or interguild roleplay, I can't even freaking sit or walk and the crafting is terrible and I just can't figure out why I'm logging in anymore. It's terribly sad. I want to like the game, I want to feel the drive to log in. But unless you're RvRing, aside from chasing tome unlocks there isn't anything to do. Once Menkara hit tier 4 I just saw never ending Serpant's Passage runs, being camped at my spawn point, fetched my WL and destroy in seconds flat over and over and ....this after never ending Tor Anroc runs with dwarves eeeeverywhere throwing me about like a soccer ball. It just isn't fun.

I want to like the game. And I continue to log in for a few hours everyday just to putz around and RP. My boyfriend will freaking kill me if I want to jump games yet again. But I don't know what WAR can do to get my devotion back. But I keep thinking about the depth and fun of Vangaurd's crafting, the amount of crazy fun to be had with collections, book quests, heritage quests and everything else in EQ2. When I look at WAR I only see "It's got RvR and Druchii." Vast as the ocean, as deep as a backyard swimming pool.

Maybe a win would help.

Ideas to get you started

2009-01-02T12:30:00.001-08:00

For all the new bloggers (or the old ones):

That's right folks, it's a WAR meme. Or what my writing teacher referred to as "seeds". Small questions or themes to get your creative juices going and jump start your writing.

- What's your favorite thing about WAR? Now, in what way could that favorite thing be made ever cooler?

- What's your least favorite thing about WAR? This one should be easy, everyone likes to rant.

- Write about a time when you really, truly loved your class. When you really kicked butt and thought "Hells yeah. I'm glad I rolled this."

- How's your server? Do you feel that it's balanced, or is your side on the wining/losing end of most things? Is RvR hopping? Were you recently merged to or with another server and how has that changed things?

- What made you start playing WAR? What caught your attention and made you pick this game over the eight gazillion other fantasy themed MMOs.

-Do you see yourself playing the game next month? Six months? A year? Either way, tell us why you'll stay or why you won't.

-What's your current goal in the game? Do you have any other long term goals?

-Ah, the ever present class discussions. Tell us about your class, what you like and what you don't. What works and what doesn't. Would you have picked something else back when you started if you could?

-Alright, blogger person, why are you blogging?

WAR: Age of Blogging

2009-01-01T14:58:00.000-08:00

New Years, New Years... resolution time! How about, "This year I resolve to be more creative, express my thoughts and opinions while enjoying the things that I have the most fun with." Ooo, blogging sales pitch.

January marks a new initiative by the WAR blogging community to motivate those of you who read and think "I could do this" or "Man, Syp is as full of crap as he is of beer. How should I best tell him that?" to get off their bums, make your own blog and give it a go. Those of us who are established (I chuckle at the thought that my little blog is considered established but allow me my delusions of grandeur for a moment) are going to spend the month attempting to motivate you all to start your own blogs, providing links, how tos and the much needed emotional support to anyone who starts a blog in Jaunaury. Best of all, we'll provide the All Mighty Link Back(tm) to swing those blog hits your way.

The first step is to create your own blog somewhere such as Blogger or Wordpress, write at least three posts to get yourself going and then introduce you and your new baby to the folks at BlogWarhammer in the introductory forum.

Starting a blog can be a bit daunting, especially for a first time blogger. The best advice I can give is the most simple, just keep writing. Also, don't assume because no one comments that no one is reading. Just like forums, for every one person who takes the time to post there's a handful who never do. This month will help anyone getting started in WAR blogging with the single most difficult part of blogging, making yourself known. If you write it, ~~we will force them all to read~~ they will come. You've got an opinion and thoughts, even if you're Order ... I suppose, so share them. Nothing keeps a game going like a vibrant, varied and vocal community.

WAR: Age of Blogging is supported by:
Me!
Stunty Stomper
WAAAGH
Wizards & Wenches
The Greenskin
Way of the Chosen
Werit
RP That Way
Lagwar
Reroller
Tome of Knowledge
Fires of War
Blame the Healer

Mmm... linkbacks. The bloggers candy...

I'll also be starting my own personal initiative to use this as a chance kick my butt into finishing all the half written posts I have sitting around and actually you know... post them! So darn it, get to blogging.

Where did the year go?

2008-12-25T15:41:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone.

Lesson learned this year: Don't put off shopping until a week before Christamas, because when it snows in Seattle the city shuts down and there's nothing like Christmas with no presents and little food in the house. Boo yah.

Ask and ye shall recieve!

2008-12-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Something I said a few posts ago after noticing that hide helm and hide cloak are now visable to other players:

"Freak yeah! Now if sheath would work, and they'd finally add /sit and /walk I'd be nearly perfectly happy with the game. I really am that easy to please. "

I noticed late last night... night before, they're all jumbling together in my winterbreak screwy sleep schedule, that sheath NOW WORKS. If I put my swords on my hip, people around me actually see it. I was so delighted that I actually turned in wonder to my boyfriend beside me who had just noticed as well. He sheathed and unsheathed his sword and shield and then we both whooped with joy.

And while I'm on the subject, I can't be sure this was wholey my doing but I can't imagine anyone else being lame enough to /bug it so I'm just going to assume.

You know the little level 1 critters that run around? Hares, eagles, deer etc. There are little birds I noticed about a month ago, their name was "blue bird" but while they are indeed blue they're obvious not bluebirds, they're bluejays. There's a big difference in a bluebird and a bluejay.

So I /bugged it and explained. My boyfriend laughed at me... until last night when we run past a properly named BLUE JAY and I stopped to laugh my arse off.

Death of a Carebear

2008-12-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

I had a very well worded, poignant post about the state of ORvR in WAR written in my head. But then I stopped to make the best damn spagetti I've ever had and totally forgot it.

So this will be less poignant, but from a happier viewpoint since I am now full of pasta.

The past few days have been a roller coaster when it comes to RvR. I've seen the lows, times when I'm so angry at my teammates that I mention to my guild "I almost wish I were Order, just so I could beat the shit out of our allies." And times where... well, we didn't exactly rise to occasion cause I did have to leave one WB (but managed not to call them cowards this time. IC I swear! >.>) but I did have the most fun, challenging and longest lasting RvR battle that I've had since the week after launch.

So lets start with the lows. A few nights ago in a rare moment of activity Sevren (the smexy pokey witch elf) decided to take part in some keep taking in Dragonwake. It was a fairly mundane, boring run. The sort I've come to expect of ORvR, we took the first keep with no oposition. Hum drum, we claimed a few BOs on our way to the second. Took the second again with little to no oposition. At this point the WB leader declares that we're moving on to Chaos lands. That came at the exact moment that I spotted a group of five or so Order on the outside walls. Being me, I immediately put the word out and stealthed at the bottom of the stairs upward. I stood and watched a dozen people pour out of the doors without a care in the world but two or three others came with me. The order group was obvious organized and balanced in classes and pretty flately owned our hodge podge of DPS in the face. The most amazing (but not so really) thing happened.

Destruction didn't give a crap. Order continued to pour in through our already open doors, I warned my group that there was enough there to take the keep back. The response was "Who cares, let them take it. Means more loot when we come back through to reclaim". I and a few members of WB reacted less than friendly, calling them out for avoiding a fight. There was a few minutes of arguement before the WB leader finally spoke up and said, "Ok, Let's forget CoF. Move on to Chaos lands." I saw red, promptly told them "Forget cowards." dropped WB and went back to attempt to at least take out a few while order tramped all over our newly claimed keep. They took it of course, didn't even have to drop a ram. I ended up logging off. I don't get angry during PvP any more, I use to, but I don't any longer. If a member of Order takes me down, good for them. If I run into a group of them, my fault for not paying attention to where I am. How do you fight the conflict avoiding, shiney carrot seeking tendancies of your own side?

Fast forward to last night. 1.1 brings in the RvR influence rewards. They are, absofreakinglutely awesome. Serious, Sevren's purple set has so much +crit chance that I almost feel sorry for Order. I ended up however, on my low t3 alt (20, just barely. but she's a healer! Deal with it) fighting in Avelorn. And I had a BLAST. Order was really kicking butt, in fact they could have claimed Ghrond's but elected not to. Instead they just stood on the bottom floor and let us come to them. They were very much there for the fight and I LOVED it. It was back and forth for nearly four hours. Things only really trickled off because everyone needed to go to bed. I heard things like "Doesn't Order have to go to work in the morning? Ugh!" a half dozen times in regional. Beaten by bedtimes, feh. It was as a whole, exactly what WAR is suppose to be ... war. And yet, in the middle of the tug of war my warband wanted to play musical keeps again. At this point we'd never lost Ghrond's and had taken a chance after pushing Order back to dash south in Saphrey to take The Well. Apparently, even when Order is still there, still fighting, still pushing and in vast numbers it STILL means that it's time to move on. "Going to Chaos now." my WB leader says. My leveling partner ask, "Why would you leave when there's a fight still raging here?" The answer was of course "More loot." I polietly told them no thanks and found another WB.

I'm ok with it. While they're fighting NPCs and singing kum by ya I had the most fun, intense, long lasting keep defence battle I've ever seen and I really got to push my limits as a healer. It was a beautiful moment. I've PvPed very rarely with my DoK and I really only squeeked by on years of prior healing experience as I frantically tried to keep up with the damage. I'll take that to the Tour de Keep Lord Smashing any day.

People keep saying that Mythic needs to do something to make ORvR more inticing. I think at this point that they've done just about all they can do. At some point, it becomes the the community's fault for not taking part. Honestly, I've been a "carebear" for six years of MMO gaming while playing things like EVE and Lineage2. I was under the impression that the PvPers were blood thirsty, always looking for a fight, always eager to "ruin my fun" by blowing me up while I'm trying to level. Come on now, WAR is currently only proving my long standing point that most of the fun people find in PvP is griefing. If it's concentual, you all would rather avoid it completely? Or is it honestly that people need the carrot? You can't get a gold bag by killing Order, so why should you stay and have fun if it doesn't mean phat loots for you?

It always comes back to RP

2008-12-07T16:33:00.000-08:00

I'm no Syp, that's for sure.

Today marks eight days since my last post and probably once or twice each of those days I started to say something and stopped. Maybe I'm winding down from my 40 push, maybe I'm distracted by the stress of finals week falling on the same week as "holy crap pay rent" week. Maybe a bit of both, I'm just never going to find as much to talk about as others I fear. Ah well.

1.6 has come and gone and in classic me style the most exciting things for me are the lamest for others. There is of course the release of BG which I'll get to in a minute, but for me the most exciting thing was:

Hide cloak and hide helm are working now and visable to other players.

Freak yeah! Now if sheath would work, and they'd finally add /sit and /walk I'd be nearly perfectly happy with the game. I really am that easy to please.

I haven't rolled a blackgaurd myself (didn't even unlock it actually) but I've been caught up in the alt rush because my boyfriend has and I've rolled a DoK to pair with him. It's exciting to finally get to play these two as we've had their basic character and storyline written and waiting for a month and a half. And as is always the case, watching new characters grow and evolve unprompted as you play them is some of my biggest RP delights.

/beginRPramble

I tend to play romantic characters... ok, more than tend. I always play romantic characters. It's the girl in me, and I'm super blessed and lucky to have a boyfriend who enjoys that sort of RP as well. In the past we've made a lot of couples with tense relationships, those that didn't get along at first. I've always seen a clear path for how they would likely get from at each other's throats to the mushy stuff but that isn't the case for this go round.

He's managed to make a real and true freaking -bastard-. I absolutely hate his character, on an OOC standpoint as well. He does a wonderful job of being bull headed, bossy, egotistical, single minded, controlling, dominering and down right evil. So much so that he's blind sided both I and my character with his bastardness so much that I have to gap at my screen and take a few minutes to figure out how to respond at times. And I've managed to make a girl so set in her ways, so prideful and confident in herself that the two clash beautifully. If they're out on the battlefield he wins, as in the arguments go his way, he can push her around. If they're in camp, having a meal together or in any other social situation it's "her battlefield" and she's begining to learn how to handle him. But even on "her battlefield" he has the upper hand due to their storyline. But I can not for the life of me see how they're going to come close to a loving relationship, a lustful one perhaps, but not loving. I think she'll always hate him, and he will never love anyone other than himself. But in their own very Druchii way I know they'll eventually meet in the middle and care for each other. This game has really been an eye opener for me in playing evil characters, I'm having a blast.

/endRPramble

With the new alts and having reached 40 Sevren and Telvarian haven't been getting as much playtime. I kind of expected that honestly. There's very little to do at forty other than RvR and it's probably no secret to anyone that I'm not a crazy RvR fan. I like it sometimes, but it's something I tend to take in small doses. We're also the only 40s in our guild and there's only a handful of other t4s. We knew that would be the case though. I'm genuinly dreading grinding off the last few renown levels I need to equip all my Annhilator's set. Ugh, and poor Menkara and Calintz (the alts) have a terrible renown to base level ratio. I RvRed with her before BG came out and had a lot of fun with it, I tend to play healers a lot and this is my first in WAR. But good god, RvR in teir 1 and teir 2 SUCKS SO MUCH currently. I just can't take it. Nine blackgaurd versus eight KoTBS and their runepriest minions. I keep ending up being the only healer. And DoK is just not a healing powerhouse pre-20. I think I'll have fun with it once I get out of this weirdo tank heavy set up it's currently in, but I'm going to be ashamed when I get renown rank 10 at base rank 20 something -.-

I have arrived!

2008-11-29T01:09:00.001-08:00

9 days, 23 hours of playtime and roughly one month of being activly played (that ratio is SCARY):

Dun dun duuuuuuuuhn!

I have finally arrived. My second max level character in a game ever. (The first was FFXI. That's right folks, I only got to 59 in vanilla WoW before my boyfriend finally let me quit and I do not regret it) Just in time for my subscription to run out and my broke arse to be unable to pay it for a week or so ; ; And just in time to start it all over again with DoK when my BF rolls his blackgaurd. I don't really mind, I'm hella excited by their characters and storyline and look forward to playing them. But 958,000 xp from 39-40 was scary as crap and I don't feel like doing it again anytime soon.

PS: Why are my screenshot always so jaggedy when I have no AA issues in game? Weird.

RvR weenies.

2008-11-25T23:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Heavy Metal task was to kill 15 people in open RvR. This is of course, an awesome idea. I enjoy open RvR, there's just some key elements to it that keep my lazy butt from doing it very often (1: Lag 2: Lag 3: Travel time). But when I logged on in Eaitain I was happy to see an open warband of about twelve people which my boyfriend and I promptly joined and took off for Dragonwake.

Dragonwake didn't seem much going on, or rather, I showed up too late to see much going on but the group decided to head for Kadrin Valley since it was unlocked and had tasty looking blue on the map. When we got there scouts reported that Order had just flipped the last BO and was heading for the southern keep so off we went.

At this point, there are thirteen of us. We set up our seige weapons on the first wall, set the fire under the oil and were waiting when Order arrived. Remember now, there were thirteen of us. Taking a headcount as they arrived I counted at least 18, most likely a few more. The battle over the door was pretty fun. Against the norm they actually brought their own ballistas and managed to destroy the ones we'd set up against them promptly. There was an awesome five minutes of fighting over the oil as two or three bright wizards nuke it to pieces and four of us constantly repaired it and lobbed it at their heads. Conversation on our side was to the tune of "Do we have enough to hold them off?" "They seem pretty organized" etc.

First door goes down and we all fall back to the keep. At this point we start putting out calls to the rest of the zone to come help but Order has such a lockdown on the postern door that no one can get in and the handful that went out to try to chase them away ended up dead in seconds. As it becomes clear that the door is going to be falling soon I left my post at the top of the keep, taking another quick head count of the front and back door before falling back to the keep lord room.

The count by my eye almost exactly even. We had 18 people, Order had 19-20 people. Chances are that in fact they had a few more since I can clearly see how many people destro has but it's hard to count two doors as people are running about. Conversation on our side continues along the lines of "Can we do this?" We quickly organize a tactic. We have two chosen and a black orc as well as several sorcerers. The plan is simple but beautiful, the tanks block the top of the ramp with their big beefy tankness, the sorceres nuke like maniacs and hope that a BW doesn't get them in sight and the healers keep them alive. (What was I doing you ask? Oh, I'm a MDPS. I sit on my thumbs.)

Order breaks through the door and rushes in! Tense moment! Conversation on our side is reassurance "Be patient, just stay still. They'll rush us any moment, be ready." So we follow orders and wait... and wait a bit more. It becomes clear that Order is waiting on -us- to get impatient and come down to them. They finally send up a scout who throws himself at the tanks, blows up and promptly gets raised. Alright! Scout means action soon. Then something funny happens.

Nothing.

That's right folks, after roughly an hour and a half of back and forth skin of your teeth battle over the doors, on equal or greater footing with destruction, Order finds themselves unwilling to gather their courage, come up with a tactic and come for what they came for. They all freaking left without setting foot on the ramp. When we finally got that they were chickening out we ran down the ramp to find one lone Iron Breaker standing his ground and ready to take us on. Poor guy, he must have hated his team mates but I'd like to shake his hand.

After this display of what tactical defense looks like we fully expected to see Order at their keep to the north when we left to claim it. Did we? Of course not, not an ever loving soul was there. One of our members stated "Pfft, if they're going to be this lame I'm going to bed." And so I logged out with 8/15. (After taking all of Praag without seeing a soul.)

The good news is that I got two pieces of Annihilator's, head and shoulders. The bad news is that I lost a bit of faith in humanity.

Open RvR Update Repost

2008-11-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

A straight copy paste because it was lost off the front page of the herald already and is too awesome not to point out:

"Folks,

Over the last few months I’ve spoken about our continued focus on improving our open RvR systems. While we have taken some major steps in the last month, we believe that there is much more we can do to encourage people to take part in oRvR throughout the entire evolution of their character(s). Over the next few months we have some very exciting changes and additions taking place. Please note that as always, this does not represent everything that either we are doing or thinking about doing, just what we, as of now, plan on adding to WAR.

We have a number of major initiatives planned for oRvR in WAR. Please keep in mind that these changes/systems apply to oRvR only and not to scenarios. This is not all we are working on but these do reflect the majority of oRvR additions that we are currently working on/planning for the next few months.

First, we have created an RvR Influence system. This system is designed to reward our oRvR players with lots of new stuff that you can only get through oRvR. This will be a complimentary system to our PQ Influence system. This system is already implemented in 1.1 and is scheduled to go LIVE along with that version in December.

Second, we want to improve the visibility that players have into oRvR and make it easier for players to get involved in the action quickly and easily. We have a number of wide-ranging changes going into our map and travel systems to allow players to better understand the state of oRvR in our game and also allow them to get to the action faster. We have already taken one step with putting a Rally Master in each Warcamp but we will also add the ability for people to have a second bind point to make it even easier for players to move around the maps. We will also make it easily for players to see where players from their Realm are engaging in oRvR, a Campaign HUD for all tiers and other improvements We will also improve Tier-wide messaging about what is going on in Battlefield Objectives and Keeps. Other additions include changes to the UI, in-game manual improvements, map enhancements, and a few other changes.

Third, we want to provide greater incentives to players to participate in oRvR. In order to accomplish this we will be adding additional layers to the questing system of oRvR including the addition of Keep Quests, “Daily Event Quests”, Chained RvR Missions, improve the initial Tome Unlocks and other oRvR-oriented Events. We will also improve our BO itemization. Our goal is to provide players with even more incentive for participating in oRvR than we have already.

Fourth, we want to encourage guilds to take and control keeps, and we will continue our work on adding better rewards for Guilds who own Keeps as well as the addition of a system of Keep upgrades. This system will be added to the game in several stages beginning in the late winter.

Finally, we will begin work on a global oRvR “Fame” system that will be tied directly to the Tome of Knowledge which will provide more rewards, titles, experience, etc. for participating and being successful in oRvR. This system will provide even more incentives for people to participate in oRvR than the current systems and one that fits nicely both with the ToK’s concept as “This is your life” as well as an additional advancement and reward system.

Please keep in mind that these additions are subject to change and given the nature of these changes/improvements, they will not go LIVE until we have thoroughly tested them. However, these are crucial improvements to WAR and are being treated as such by the team.

Finally, I want to close this out with a brief explanation about the role that we believe that oRvR should play in WAR. It’s really as simple as this, oRvR should be a major focus for leveling, item gain, etc. in WAR. Some of the systems are already in place and in Tier 4, oRvR is alive and well. On other Tiers, however, oRvR is not being engaged in as often as we had hoped when we launched WAR. Our goal is to ensure that oRvR is the place where players can level the fastest, get the best items and overall, have a great time while doing it. It is supposed to be riskier, more challenging but ultimately, more rewarding than any other place within WAR. What is outlined in this letter are some of the ways we plan on making this happen over the next few months and beyond.

As always, we thank you for your patronage and support. We won’t let you down.

Mark Jacobs

VP/GM Mythic Entertainment"

All I can says is: Freck yeah. And also, I serious need more ram and a new video card before all this stuff makes me want to do ORvR 70% more than I do currently.

For the Record

2008-11-24T03:58:00.001-08:00

I'd just like to say, in an effort to counter balance Syp's isistance that the WAR bloggers are all negative:

I love WAR. Do I think that it has issues? Of course it does, it's a two month old game. I usually don't play MMOs at launch for that very reason but the boyfriend was threatening me with WoW torture. (That's sort of like water torture except more painful and more repetative. Plus more idiots jumping around everywhere.) I am level headed and experienced in MMOs enough to know that it will get better. I trust Mythic, just based on the amount of fixes and content added already, to continue to make things better. They're not Destination Games after all. So! For the record, Ainilome/Sevren is a happy WAR camper and not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Sevren is now 38. The rate at which I've leveled has seriously blown my mind, I have put in a stupid amount of playtime in the past month. The sort of playtime that I'd be ashamed to tell my mother. But I'm nearly there and still loving the hell out of witch elf. I've done it mostly on PvE because ... brace yourselves now..

I like PvE. I know! /gasp. Dark Elf lands at least have some really awesome and fun quests, some interesting storyline and great things to roleplay through. My only complaint is that even mixed with a scenerio every now and then there isn't enough content in DE lands to get me to 40. Every level since 31ish I've had to go somewhere else to finish half a level and unlock the quests at the next camp. I'd like either more quests or just a raise in XP given, or reduction in XP required. But it's minor in the end, I just put on my RP blinders and grind off quests in Greenskin lands out of character. Not nearly as fun as staying in my home zone though.

My other complaint is one common to witch elves. Our itemization really, really, really sucks. And is quite buggy. Twice now in Bastian Stair I've won a purple bag with an awesome helm. Problem is, the "helm" is actually Chosen shoulders and hovers big WoW style shoulderpads four feet off my shoulders. Awsome! Only not. And the final influence reward from Bastian Stair? The shoes are actually gloves and the gloves are actually shoes and BOTH of them have Willpower as a main stat with not a drop of strength. Honestly, the poor guys at Mythic must have been pulling eighteen hour shifts near launch to manage goofs like that.

Yesterday saw a day of questing for the the proc weapons and I am now the happy owner of Nightfall and Frenzy, smexy things that they are. I would hug them if they weren't so sharp. Varian got his proc weapons as well, going with Midnight and Cenbur.

Except Cenbur is a chalice that's actually a sword, or a sword that look like a chalice.

Honestly now Mythic.

1.05

2008-11-18T17:35:00.000-08:00

The unsung, unpraised best change in 1.05:

New horn sounds for calling mounts.

Never having to hear a chorus of "bweeer nuuuuur" ever again is simply priceless.

What it means to be a Druchii

2008-11-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: This will likely come across as a rant, as it's one of those thoughts that have been bubbling in my mind for a few weeks and have been pushed to the point of being put into words. Also, I very dearly love roleplaying and probably more so love the lore and background history that developers of fantasy worlds spend so much blood, sweat and tears laying out for us. I could rant equally as well and as passionatly about the poorly done Egyptological "specials" on the History Channel. It's just how I get about history and society, even made up ones. I also desperatly LOVE talking about my characters, their motivations and quirks and could brain storm OOCly for hours with fellow RPs and have done so in the past. None of this is meant specifically about any one person and as it's not posted on a public forum but a private blog, it is of course, only my thoughts and shouldn't be taken as law. (as if it would be.)

Nearly every roleplaying Druchii (dark elf) I've crossed paths with across two servers now has suffered from one thing that makes it terribly hard to believe their character.

They are far too nice.

Druchii are not.nice. They may be pleasant in company they enjoy, when it suits their needs or when the person they are being pleasant to is higher ranking than them. They have absolutely no qualms about stepping all over anyone below them and do not give a scaven's fuzzy ass how you're feeling today. I understand that it takes a special type of roleplayer, the serious sort with a strong sense of what is IC and what is OOC, to play a giant ass hole. But if you rolled a Druchii... you ARE a giant asshole and I expect you to be as such. When a druchii smiles warmly, bows, asks me how my day is my character's immediate reaction is "What the hell is wrong with you? What do you want?" and my personal reaction is a quiet groan.

In our day to day life, in sane normal human society we expect everyone around us to be neutrally pleasant. That certainly isn't to say everyone is (ha!) or that it's expected to be sincer. The druchii are not humans, they are not exactly sane either, from our point of view. The whole race and their entire society is not set up to expect everyone you meet to be neautrally pleasant. Druchii do not quietly converse about the weather while standing in line at the store, nor do the check out ladies at their stores remember your name or ask how your child's cold is doing. (Real world example, it's a good contrast.) The idea of congenial friendless is devoid in their society. When meeting a druchii of the same rank they are expected to be curt, cool. When meeting one of a lesser rank they are expected, by social stadards, to be demanding and dominering lest the lesser see a chance to unsurp you.

My guild (Khaine bless them!) is both heavy RP and dark elf themed. I love them to little tiny pieces. Sevren? Freaking hates them all. She is however, the lowest rank of the guild currently and so does her proper sucking up. There are perhaps, three characters in the whole rather large guild that she mildly respects and that doesn't include it's leaders/officers. She pays them the lip service they deserve, but she is not personally impressed or sincerly respectful of them. She is a druchii. Respect is earned two ways. By outranking her (which they very much do) or by scaring the shit out of her (which they don't).

I understand that as stated above, it takes certain types of roleplayers to be ok with being a giant arse. Some are just too nice in real life to feel comfortable doing it without the express permission of those they're talking to, or perhaps just don't want to. And it also takes a certain type to -get- that it's strictly in character. But if you claim to be a roleplayer, and can't understand that the guy over there threatening to "peel your skin back like a scroll" (<3> Korinth) doesn't actually want to do so, you need a more solid ground into your hobby. Me and my character are two very, very different things. Just because Sevren is a bitch to you, doesn't mean we can't laugh and goof off and be best buds OOCly. Prime example above, OOCly I respect the hell out of my guild leaders and think they do an awesome job. But with the heavy 100% focus of the guild I know that real life feelings do not need to influence my character. Because they're roleplayers too, and get it. I can also -hate- your alt, and love your main. Because character is not player. So be a jerk! I get it.

This isn't to say that everyone should be cliche evil. (No one should be cliche anything) Or that it's not possible for a semi-decent dark elf to exist. Too much nicey nice is ... well, too much.

I play a Druchii. I am an evil bitch at my very core. Sevren doesn't think she is, because it's just how she is, how her people are. I just wish more played that way, fleshed out their characters that way and got more into the spirit of their race. Because a lot of dark elf characters could just as easily be high elf by switching the "Blood for Khaine!" rhetoric for "Hail Asuryan!"

Also, I reserve the right to beat the everloving crap out of anyone who greets me with "Vendui" or makes their name T'Anything. (I'm only half joking about that.)

Also, anyone who plays a Druchii should be required to read at least a few chapters of the Malus Darkblade books. (And I am not joking about that.)

Treadmill (Plus RP rambles)

2008-11-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to feel the grind.

Sevren just hit 30, heck of a lot of levels in a week or two, for me at least. Varian (the boyfriend) plans on being 34 or so by the time we go back to school on Thursday but I think I'm going to die if we push for that. I understand the push, we're in a game we love, both playing classes with love and we're not the lowest level players in our guild. All of those things are EXTREMELY rare in the grand scheme of things. I don't have a problem putting the time in to level, it's just...

The grind.

Yes yes, it's not -that- bad. I realize that. You're talking to a girl who's played Final Fantasy XI for five years. I know a grind when I see one, but regardless. I played for seven hours straight today, focusing on questing chapter 13 and 14 in greenskin lands while doing scenerios and it still took me that whole time to go from 40% to 100%. And now 523,170 experience from 30-31 makes me want to sit down and sob. Quests that give between 6,000 and 10,000 (the latter being very rare) exp plus Tor Anroc giving 3000-11,000 depending makes that five.hundred.thousand. experience points look gigantic.

I concider myself a hardcore player in a lot of ways. Gaming is my main hobby (mostly, my only one). I live with my boyfriend who's just as big a gamer as I am. We're both full time students with plenty of free time and have no problem spending a whole day hanging out at our PCs smashing Order in the face together. If I look at the required exp from 28ish to 40 and reel I can't imagine what a more casual player feels.

I'm sure it only feels like a ton because I'm actually pushing for max level, something I don't usually do. I should take more breaks to roleplay with someone other than Varian (or just at all, grind grind grind the last few days). My guild obviously has a whole ton of storyline and interactions going on but being new and also being driven to level, I've not managed to even hear about them much less take part in them. Sevren's goals need a bit more hashing out I think. She's very selfish and very uninterested in pretty much anyone else. Her priorities are Khaine and the standing of the temple and helping Varian with the goals he holds centered around his own house. Re-reading that I see what my problem with her is. She's a servant type of character, a follower and her leader just wants to get to 40 tomorrow! *flails*

I also need to figure out how to get them involved in my personal RP. Crap on a stick, Varian -ran Sevren through and threatened to slit her throat- in a blind rage a few days ago and somehow I managed to communicate none of it to our guild. (caused by Sevren making up the wrong story and claiming to have slept with his biggest enemy. Druchii wise, she asked for it.) It was such an awesome bit of unplanned RP as well. It certainly advanced and changed their relationship, but not a soul heard of it and probably never will. Sometimes, the hardest part of roleplaying isn't being in character or making up storyline, it's getting others involved... or getting yourself involved, depending on standing.

They exist!

2008-11-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

Ah HA! Look! Elf men do in fact possess legs and I bring visual proof!

See it? Right there ... peeking out of the skirt. Mythic's concept artists are even getting sick of all the damn skirts.

Joking aside, my biggest fear for Black Gaurd is that they'll suffer from the same thing Swordmaster does since their armor is extrememly simular. All Swordmaster's look alike. Skirt + cone head helm = Random Swordmaster. I'm fairly resigned to being stuck with more men in skirts. But I'm afraid they're all going to look the same at level 5 as they do at 40. Mythic kicks such butt at Dark Elf female armor as is proven by my collection of "robes" and "armor" for my girls. Why do the men have to be so blah? /le sigh.

Dark Elf Female Phrases

2008-11-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Risset at The Inevitable City I spent a half hour or so right clicking myself and listing the different phrases that dark elf women say. I'm really amazed at how much voice work there is, as Risset noted several phrases have different versions (marked by "x2" in my list) and I'm sure there are more versions unmarked as they're only noticeable if they're said near each other. I kept thinking that my list had to be complete and then I'd hear another. Such an untapped resource for voice emotes.

"My regards."

"Hail."

"It's always better to conquer."

"It's not personal, it's buisness. The buisness of war."

"Only the weak die."

"Fear will keep the weak in line."

"You have quite the reputation."

"The end of this war is the begining of another." x2

"Malekith's favor is a double edged sword."

"Leave me be."

"Greetings."

"Well met... I suppose."

"You have a certain ... simple charm."

"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

"I suppose you're here to raise moral."

"You must find favor if you are to survive."

"Be on time, that way you can strike first."

"Above all else, be armed."

"I will remember you."

"Slaughter our weakling kin!"

"I've no time for fools."

"What do you seek?"

"Now what?"

"It seems the rumors about you are true."

"Rise from one ambition to another."

"I see you have illusions of adiquecy."

"Seek favor, power and the downfall of your foes."

"Never beg..."

"Ah, the exception that proves the rule."

"I suppose you're useful to someone..."

"It is always better to conquer."

"I offer you nothing but the chance to die."

"Your face offends me."

"What news?"

"Hail Malekith!"

"There are no friends, only rivals."

"How brave of you to annoy me."

"You're very bold."

"Ulthuan will be ours!"

"When this war is over ... beware."

"You remind me of our weakling cousins."

"I never met a foe my sword couldn't strike."

"If I throw a stick ... will you leave?"

"Presumptious cur!"

"They say you're easily lead, they were half wrong."

"What an interesting odor..."

"Titles do not grant honor, people give honor to titles."

"Palace politics are never related to morals."

"I didn't know the commander kept a pet."

"The strong survive."

"Why do you distrub me?"

"Promises are often a necesssity of the past."

"Go away."

"I am busy." x2

"I've heard of you."

"Peace and parley."

"Treaties are for the beaten."

"Are you trying to anger me?"

"Above all despise weakness."

"Interesting look ... I can see what you're trying to do."

"I know what they're saying about you."

"Hurt enough so vengence is impossible."

"We are here to overthrow. That is our nature."

"Treat your men generously or destroy them. It is the only way."

"Hate is gained by good works as well as ill."

"Respects to your house."

"What do you seek?"

"Excuse me?"

"You might have washed."

"The wise do once what the fools do finally."

"We don't want peace, we want victory!"

"If you wish to be obeyed, know how to command."

"You remind me of me when I was young and foolish."

"Do I know you?"

"You stink, mongral!"

"I don't want to be seen with you."

"The high elves will fall!"

"Don't! Get away!"

"I never lack a good reason to break a promise."

"Are you stupid? Leave me be."

Some of these got a good laugh out of my boyfriend and I, they're all perfectly Druchii in nature.

Heavy Metal

2008-10-29T13:00:00.001-07:00

My boyfriend is stupidly excited by the arrival of Black Gaurd and the live event leading up to it. He's going to be one of those maniacs doing every single task and being fanatical about getting the one week preview. Only one thing could make me excited about Black Gaurd. And that thing is ...

Pants.

For cripes freaking sake. Who's idea was it to stick EVERY male elf in a skirt? One skirt. Two skirts MAYBE. This is just dumb. There are no male elves who get to wear pants. Perhaps if it were just dark elf men I'd be slightly annoyed, but it's the same with high elves and I'm sure they'd like to see a bit of variety too. As a elfman fangirl I don't request getting to see a completely masculine silhouette. I demand it damnit.

... please? ; ;

If Malus Darkblade can do it, we can do it.

Witching Night!

2008-10-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

I admit it, I'm a giant girl about holiday events. Honestly, holidays are probably one of my favorite parts of MMOs. I don't really know what it is but it probably centers around my well founded collector tendencies. I love limited edition things to collect. Things that you won't see till next year, or perhaps even never. I still have items on my very first MMO (FFXI) that I've kept for nearly six years and love to show off to newer players who ooo and ahh at them. This is why I should always be kept away from "free to play" mmos. Because I will so pay $5 for that stupid Valentine's Day sword if you tell me I can't only get it for a week.

Witching Night sounds really fun. Putting influence/PQs in the ORvR lakes has been suggested a few times as a way to boost action there and I really look forward to seeing how it works this time. Kudos to Mythic for finding a way to test the mechanic without actually launching it. I'm a bit annoyed at the time frames they suggest, hours between PQs, but not really for myself. School this week is pretty light so I'll have time to focus, but ugh how annoying would it be if the PQs never managed to happen during your play time? Or if you caught the tail end of one knowing that it wouldn't respawn for a long while. I guess that's what it takes to create both truely rare items and also concentrate slaughter.

But the highlight for me as I said... goodies!

While I want all of these masks the one I'm most after is the beautiful purple one. Both Sevren and Lyst would love one, Lyst especially. The masks are going to be available in several different ways but rare in all of them. I wonder if the masks will be enough to pull people to the RvR lakes or if the PQs there will hold regular loot as well. I admit I'm not in touch enough with the general PvP crowd to know if they give a flying fark about cute "useless stuff" or not. I'm counting on Phoenix Throne to be pretty hot after them though. Kudos again to Mythic for giving multiple ways to get the items, both PvP and PvE. While I realize that WAR is an RvR game I really wouldn't be here if it was the only thing to do. What I love about WAR is the options available to gain items and advance your character. More options are always good.

I'm less excited by these, I'm just not much of a cloak person. Even more so with the bug (or just plan bad decision I'm not sure which) that makes the "Hide cloak" option userside only. Both of my characters run around cloak-less unless in PvP. Girliness again I suppose, or perhaps just being an RPer. I care about what others see when they look at me and neither of my girls would wear cloaks unless cold. Lyst is annoyed enough by her heavy velvet skirts and Sevren refuses to hide the "asset" are armor puts on display so well. I'm curious if they can be dyed and if they can, will the pretty satin looking parts keep their texture? If so I'm a bit more interested.

I'm ten times more excited about Witching Night in WAR than I am about actual Halloween. Is that sad?

The Girls

2008-10-24T16:22:00.000-07:00

Lyst is just about 24 now, I think about 15% short. I'm excited by my next level because I get a new moral ability that just seems evil,Scintillating Energy . Things have been going slow for her recently, both because quest xp seems to have dropped, Destruction sucks at Tor Anroc and because of the next girl you'll meet. All in all I still love Sorceress, and have fun playing her. Roleplay wise she's still pissed as hell at Itheleos for forcing her to disobey a direct order from her Matriarch that he didn't wish her to follow by cheap shotting her in the head with his staff. Hard to follow orders when crumbled in a heap on the floor of a tent I suppose. Jerk.

This is Sevren. The class I originally wanted to play was Witch Elf but driven but how much I sucked at Rogue PvP in WoW and expecting Witch Elf to be just as direction focus as that class I left her sitting at level five for weeks. (Remember how Rogue PvP in WoW was mostly about spinning in circles as fast as you could trying to get to something's back? Yeah. I suck at controlling a character that fast/well) However, when I finally came up with a definite character and background for her I started leveling her along with my boyfriend's DoK and have fallen in love. I adore getting to kill things without blowing myself up in the process. Coupled with having a healer in my pocket most all the time the survivability both in RvR and PvE compared to our sorc/sorc duo is just incomparable. She's currently level 16 and very quickly moving along, at this rate she'll catch up to Lyst in a few days. Sevren has been the reason that Lyst hasn't gotten to 24 yet. It helps that my boyfriend is really loving his Disciple. It's so rare for him to play the healing class, I'm loving it as well :P

Roleplay wise she's ran into an old friend she grew up in the Temple with (The DoK) who she hasn't seen in a few decades. She's a lot like a few other characters I've played; trouble making, greedy, thieving, quick to anger, blood thirsty. She's a riot. And playing along with her DoK friend who was like a brother to her growing up but now has this fully grown, fully err... featured woman on his hands makes for all sorts of fun RP. Plus, well... look at her. She's cute as hell ^^b

Of course ... I had to catch Sevren blinking. I thought that only happened when you were taking a picture, not a screenshot -.-

PQ Pass Rolls

2008-10-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

This is a recipe for frustration:

Five people gather together to help a friend get their hands on a piece of equipment that comes from a blue colored bag. The group does a PQ four times before seeing that ellusive blue bag. Only one person of the group of five wants the bag, the other four are more than happy to pass it on to their friend. The dice rolls click by, the bonuses are added and lo and behold, the guy who wants it with his 1 in 5 chance of getting it doesn't. Friend number three does and takes the coin for the achievement before going back to more grinding.

After spending hours today helping my boyfriend do a rarely done PQ over and over on his alt with backup from my sorceress just to finally have a yellow bag drop and ME win the darn roll he had a suggestion that I thougth made a lot of sense.

Ability to pass on bags in public quests. I don't know how many people end up helping friends/guild mates do PQs for specific colored bags but I do fairly often. Just the option to back out of the roll if you choose, no forced need vs greed or any such, just a way for organized groups to get the ellusive gear to the people who want it. That purple bag that would make our DoK a happy elf might contained a belt with massive willpow and initative (read: crap.) for the sorcerer. Colored bags are rare enough, adding the fickle dice to the matter when only one or two people are actually after the loot is just torture.

Also useful for the times I'm out doing ToK unlocks and stop to help with a lower level PQ that lacks a tank or healer but could be swayed by the DPS of a nukeynuker. I'm happy to help, especially if it clearly wouldn't have happened without me, but I hate it when I accidentally take a bag that I don't even want from someone who could use it. I'd totally pass if I could.

On the subject of suggestions, Risset at The Inevitable City had a great suggestion today about The Inevitable City: The feature I wish we had The ability to use the many voiced lines that your character spout when right clicked on command. Like voice emotes. I thought it was a great one and I'll add it in tonight along with my daily plee for them to fix my legs so that I can sit and walk.

How WAR saved me from WoW

2008-10-22T12:17:00.002-07:00

In August I was playing Lord of the Rings Online and pretty happy. I was excitingly looking forward to the expansion and gladly provided information, pictures and movies from PAX to my fellow LoTRO players. In September I got into the Mines of Moria beta and also got my minstral to 45, five levels bellow cap. I'm not sure what happened but I got bored. I think as much as I love Tolkien and his works, playing a character in his world is just a little ... bland. Perhaps it's my preference for a more sword and sorcery type of setting. Regardless I was playing way more Tales of Vesperia than I was LoTRO.

Then that day came. The day I dread fairly often. My boyfriend, my gaming and roleplay partner, the love of my life said words that cut to my heart....

"I'm thinking about going back to WoW."

In a instant panic attack full of visions of duo farming SM for that dagger I never got my 40 rogue and countless hours of mind less gulch farming and a world full of men with shovels for hands and barrens chat my mind raced for a way out. The first thing I thought to say was "I won't love you anymore if you make me go back to WoW!" but I deemed the situation not quite at that level yet. Taking a sharp turn to the right my brain scrambled for something, anything to divert him from that terrible idea. "Sex!" There was a good idea. "I'll do you if you don't go back to WoW." I felt this was probably a short term solution and I was not ready for dedication it would take to make it a long term one.

"We can play Warhammer Online!"

I said these words not a week after stating that Warhammer Online didn't interest me and that it seemed like a PvP centric gankfest. (Can you feel the carebear shining through there?) But faced with the threat of a return to the land of epic farming, faction farming and ... and ... Goldshire (!) I was desperate. Blessedly, he said that would work.

I bought a copy of WAR the next day while my boyfriend was at work. Just one single copy. You see, I still wasn't sold. I'd read a review that stated very clearly "If you are not a fan of PvP this game is not for you." I am in fact, not a fan of PvP, so I was pretty sure the game was in fact not for me.

By the time he got home a few hours later he had to nearly pry the mouse from my clutches and peel me away from the desk to get a chance to play. Even then I hovered over his shoulder, pointing out the Tome of Knowledge and how it was "a deed log on steroids" and shoving at him like an excited kid telling him to join a scenerio que and yammering about class combinations that would work well for us. Needless to say, a second copy was in my hands the next day.

Bug Fixes

2008-10-22T12:17:00.001-07:00

I need to make a post with more substance, I know this. But I had a random thought:

Though Warhammer has some slight bugs, mostly of the graphical and animation sort, as any new MMO will have I really apprieciate the rate at which Mythic is releasing bug fix patches. Nearly every game I've played previously has seemed to follow the pattern of 'Only fix things that are major instantly. Everything else can wait to be applied in a giant bug fix patch a week or so from now" Even when whole quests lines were broken and unfinishable they'd remain so until the devs got around to their next weekly or bi-weekly patch.... if then (Hello, Vangaurd.)

Neary every day I check the patch notes and find a small patch fixing a handful of bugs. And I wonder why more developers don't do that. It seems a vastly superior way of doing things. Heck, last Thursday there was a scheduled maintence that applied a rather large patch including some crafting reworks. Shortly after the patch there were issues with the login servers and realms came down again for a few hours. When the servers came back up they'd taken the downtime as a chance to apply EVEN MORE bugs that they'd apparently finished off between 10am and 3pm that work day. I love that

Waaaaagh.

2008-10-22T12:16:00.001-07:00

*sigh*

That's about all I really need to say. I never thought I'd be playing Warhammer Online, much less loving the hell out of it. I've never liked PvP ... but I'm having a ball with RvR. Not only that... I'm playing destruction! I'm beating up high elves and laughing maniacly. It's all the Dark Elf women's fault. Give me fantasy girls in skimpy clothing and I'm all over it. I was the same way with Dark Elves in Lineage 2. I'm a straight girl, I don't know what it is. But once I compaired Dark Elf outfits to High Elf outfits my side was chosen.

The roleplay is a bit lacking, though I largely blame Mythic for that. How the hell do you release a modern MMO without basics like /sit, /walk and social gathering spots? Even more mind boggling given that they have flagged RP servers with a pop up explaining the rule set and letting you know it will be enforced. I joined an RP guild, and Brit and I are of course roleplaying with each other constantly as usual.

I'm also suprised by how well I do in PvP. I sucked so hard at it in WoW and avoided it like the plague in EVE and Lineage 2. I'm usually top ranked in scenarios I do, second only to Brit who's also a Sorcerer and of course better than me at it.

Yeah. WAR. Rawr.

Sorry LoTRO.