A fork in the road…
The guild has lost some members, some who were with the game from day 1, and some which were members of the original Doppler. We are now but 4 members, slowly grinding away the guild XP bar in hopes that one day our banner can be shown for all to see. Buts its taking a while, and it seems the only thing harder than getting that bar to move is getting more people in the guild. I have been on a Doppler ad campaign every night when I log in. I send out region messages asking for anyone looking for a guild, but I get no responses. At those times when I do group with others, it seems a rarity that anyone is without a guild.
It’s an odd feeling, to say the least. Every other MMO I have ever played has always had some people from time to time in the area chat asking if any guilds were recruiting. I don’t see that in this game. It’s definately caused by the guild XP system, no question. But, is it a good thing? Maybe yes in alot of respects, but for the situation I’m facing, no. I have spoke with other guilds that I see sending up recruitment flares in the region chat, asking them how many people they see come in. One person told me that most of the influx to their guild is from swallowing up other guilds whose numbers were dwindling. We may be in that boat.
We are now at the point where we need to either stick it out as a group, or go wherever the tide takes us outside of the Doppler banner.
Movin’ on up…
The intention of this blog has always been to tell the tales of the guild Doppler. Well, as time progressed, I started writing less about what we were doing as a guild, and more general WAR info. To be honest, the reason I report less on what we do as a guild is because we don’t have nearly the membership we used to, and don’t group much anymore . This IS somewhat my fault being too low level for the others, makes me feel like a kid running after an ice cream truck. But anyways, back to my point. I recently saw an opportunity to take my love of writing about my opinions on WAR, and possibly get them to a larger audience. So, this is my announcement to all who read this blog, that I am now a contributor to the Lagwar website. Nothing will change about what I write, its merely a move to reach more readers. I will still maintain this site, but only when we have interesting things happen with the guild. Like if we get more members and start doing stuff together hehe. Lets get recruiting guys!
Anywho, if you like what you’ve read here, head on over to Lagwar and check it out there.
I hope you enjoy.
Happy Hunting!
Slurms Corner…
Haven’t posted a Corner segment in a while. But, since I made the descision to play the Warrior Priest, I have been taking some random shots around the WARiverse and now I unleash them upon you. Got a couple tome unlocks, a hidden mob, and a couple oddities. Enjoy!
First off, I was amidst questing in Empireland and got a quest to have a drinking contest vs a member of a Griffon Soldier. Who needs Kegs End?
While I was attempting to bring out the explorer in me, I ran behind a PQ in the Marshes of Madness and found a little spot I thought I could climb. And climb I did. I ended up going up a path that actually took some jumping over gaps to get to where it lead. And all I found was 1 mob in a cave at the end of journey. Just so happens the mob was level 40. So I ran away. He’s located at 25000/61000 in the Marshes of Madness if you are interested.
Got this one day when I logged in. To quote the movie The Amazing Colossal Man…”Why don’t you ask me what it feels like to be a freak?”
Last one I found at 38000/29000 in Avelorn. Kinda creepie, but hey I got 1000 exp for right clickin on him.
1000 Hits!
Just throwing a Quickpress in to say the site hit 1000 views!
Not a huge accomplishment, but its a nice round number that signifies there was 1000 people more looking at this site than before the site was in existence. YAY!
My “stand” on Keg’s End…
After coming off an event like Heavy Metal, I had high expectations for Keg’s End. I thought most of the community voiced unanimously that we enjoyed it over Witching Night. Not to say Witching Night was horrible, but it could have been better. I’m not much of a drinker, and when I do drink its not beer. I think beer tastes like dirt, and i’ve tried enough brands to know its just not my thing. So, with that said, the event doesn’t really appeal to me personnaly but I DO love the Dwarven lore that goes along with it. I have only done a little bit of the event, so until its over I can’t say if it gets the Slurm stamp of approval. So take this review as a preliminary review with another to follow after the end of the event.
Pros:
-I like the ease of most of the event thus far. The mobs to kill spawn quick enough and are not too far away from the beaten path.
-It gets people in Open RvR. Anything to get people to do this is a good thing.
-The fireworks are great! Suck it WoW, You and your crappy fireworks!
-Beer! (for those who like that sort of thing) Makes it kinda feel like a big party.
-New emotes. I love how they incorporated the new emotes into a quest for the event. I think I still need a couple Destruction classes and I’ll have it completed.
Cons:
-Is it moving? The bar moves sooooo sloooow. I ran through 4 camps of PvE mobs and the kegs within solo last night. You only get like 10 INF per kill and 5-6 INF per keg….solo!!! I miss how fast the bar moved for Heavy Metal where everything you did gave you a quarter of a bubble.
-It gets people in ORvR. Yea its also a pro, but the con side of it is that the performance issues just get worse with more people. (although I will say the improvments they made on one of the last patched did actually help, just not enough).
-Drop rate of the items. As I stated above, I ran thought 4 PvE camps solo last night, during this time I only got 5 dropped kegs, and 3 fireworks. The keg part of the quest requires that you get 100 of them. ONE HUNDRED. And it took about a half hour to get 5 solo. I don’t forsee this one being completed.
-The emote part of the quest should have a checklist showing you which classes you have boasted and toasted. I ran around like a madman /toasting people and had 10 of the 11 classes on our side done. It took a while to figure out which one I left out. A simple checklist (since I know its checking them off a list already) should have been an easy inclusion.
So far not bad. As I said, I’ll post another (final) review when the event is done. But overall, so far its been mediocre. I just wish there was more incentive like there was in Heavy Metal. At least there we got a nice item out of the deal.
Happy Hunting!
Ideas for Open RvR…
Over the past month or so, I have been running my mouth on Vent (usually Schmitty is the only one there to hear it, sorry Schmitty!) about ideas I have that I think could help Open RvR in WAR. I have posted a couple ideas on here, and even submitted a couple to the dev’s. But, I thought it might be a nice idea to list all of my ideas on one post.
So here they are:
- Open RVR Quests – I submitted this one to the devs about a month ago and I still think its a good idea. The problem I have (and I know im not the only one) with Open RvR is there is no real benefit to holding a keep. Sure being able to oil attackers is great, but theres no REAL incentive for keeping a keep under your realms control. My idea was to have repeatable quest givers at each keep. The quests they give would highly rewarding in terms of exp and renown points (and now that the influence bar is included, maybe add a large amount of INF as a reward). These quests would keep the player in the Open RvR zone, and replace the kill X number of enemy players which overlap with the scenario version. Or maybe add a “escort” style quest which makes the player escort a caravan from the keep to a BO, or from the warcamp to the keep where you have to keep X amount of NPC guards alive on the caravan.
- Keep Guards and Lord – This was something I have been running into more frequently lately. Sure I’ll say the guards aren’t hard to kill, and any organized group should have no problems, but I think when a keep guard or champ goes down, they stay down. I really think that they should respawn based on the same timer that the keep doors are on. As for the Lord, I think he should either be allowed to be pulled to the lower room, or not reset when he runs like a little girl from combat. One possible fix for this is something Schmitty came up with and that is have more entrances to the Lord room. Having 2 or 3 sets of ramps to that room could make the human wall/lag fiasco more manageable, and make defended keeps less impossible to take. Nothing sucks like the other night when we were seiging a keep for almost 2 hours and never moved from the ramp. I can understand losing to a good defense, but Its sad when the walls and doors of a keep are easier to get through that a ramp up to a room.
- XP/RP/INF Balance – Yeah, I know they are working on it, but part of my frustrations in ORvR come from this problem. I had a previous post from when I played the Engineer in which I told tales of my 1 man keep defense. I single handedly held off 1 full group of attackers by placing the oil while they were on their ram and killed them in a mere 2-3 spills. The amount of XP I gained from this feat was on par with what I would have got from a good, winning run of Mourkain’s Temple. It was and still is the best experience I have received in Open RVR. Everything else I do only gives me trickling little amounts of RP’s and XP. Last night, for example, I ran into Troll Country with Schmitty. It was just the 2 of us grouped seperately from the warband and at one point I came accross a witch elf who I did approximatly half the damage to before the warband saw that I was on her. They quickly came over and took the rest of her life away, and at the end of that 20 vs 1 skirmish, I received a little over 1000 xp. Thats good right? NO! At my current level I can go kill 4 PvE mobs and get that much. I could be killing PvE mobs that are much easier to find and kill, and which could be part of a quest which will yield me a larger sum of exp in the end. All of this needs to be considered for Open RvR exp. Wheres the idea Slurm?!? I have lots of ideas for this, but unfortunatly they all come back to simply increasing the amount of XP you get with the current system, but placing a cap on max XP so if you solo kill somone (which would be the most rewarding way to get ORVR XP), you only can possibly get so much. I think the cap is already in effect, but the amount you get based on percentage of participation in the combat with the enemy SUCKS. Really, how often do you 1v1 in open RvR? I have only ever twice, and last night was one time when I chased a Chosen around Barak Var for about 10 minutes. What a wimp.
Thats all I can remember right now. As I come up with other ideas, i’ll add them to the list. If you have any ideas, or suggestions on how these could be better, let me know!
1.1b..come out and plaaaaaay…
Sorry I’m a little behind on the posts since last week. I was a bit under the weather and only got in about an hour each night this weekend.
But anyways, servers are being patched as I type this for 1.1b. This almost seems like a hotfix more than a patch, but hey, there are SOME improvements in it. By some I mean 2. And here they are:
- Renown, experience, and Influence rewards have been added for attacking and defending Fortresses. I’ll have to see how much of a difference this makes tonight, but any addition to xp/rp/inf gain for keep defense is a big YAY in my book. I wish when they added something like this that they would explain how it works. Not to the point of giving the formula away, but at least give some stipulations as to when you will incur these bonuses.
- Renown gains: This patch includes a significant fix to the amount of Renown gained in both open Realm vs. Realm combat and Scenarios. The intent of this change is for players to gain Renown based on the differential between a player’s Rank and Renown Rank. (You can read the examples and the rest of the patch notes here.) Basically they increased the amount of renown you get in ORvR by X wheras X = lots. This is all well and good, but I wish this patch note said, “This patch includes a significant fix to the amount of Renown and experience gained…”
I guess we will see how this works tonight. Or maybe we won’t…
I love that the ORvR system is being looked at so heavily by the Dev team. But it doesn’t matter how much better they make it if the Destruction players on Volkmar don’t come out to play. The last two nights I have done nothing but participate in Open RvR, and its been a bit dissapointing. Both nights, we formed warbands and took back BO’s only to find little or no resistance. It just seems that destruction (who are supposedly overpopulated) are low in number when it comes to people interested in fighting. Time will tell I guess, maybe they are all in T4?
See you in game!
Ooh ooh 1.1…
1.1a? When did we switch from the double dot naming convention? Shouldnt this be 1.1.0?
Anyways, It figures that right after I post the message about being excited for 1.1,….they patch for it! Thanks Mythic!
Cliky here for the highlights.
I’m on track to hit 19 tonight, but I may be postponing my leveling affair for the RvR….or maybe an easy PQ (yeah, can’t wait to see how easy it is with 100 other people there all trying to check it out – instances please!!!)
Or I may go to bed because I hit 18 at 4:30am today because of being sick and not able to sleep.
See you in game!
P.S. Should Patches the Official Doppler Patch Notes Cat remain? Or do we get a new mascot? Any suggestion? Im up for posting my eye-patched mugshot or photoshoping something (not that im good at it)
P.P.S btw, Pirates don’t PvP,…Pirates ARRR VEEE ARRR
All I want for Xmas is my 1.1…
I’m excited about the next patch. How excited? I get all tingly when I think about it. Not tingly in my no-no place, but just a general warm fuzzy feeling like on a cold winter day with a cup of hot cocoa in front of the fire. I thought the patch was comming with the open availability of the new tanks to the game, but I was wrong again. ETA Mythic? Its on the test server currently, and if I didnt have lofty goals for the speed at which I want to level my Warrior Priest, I’d go check it out. But, there are some who have this time in their day and heres a couple of peeks at the new influence system rewards:
ORvR influence reward sneak peak at pwnsan
Stunty Stomper looks at the test server ORvR rewards
This is, in my humble opinion, a step in the right direction for the game. Sure, we don’t know the extent of stats for the rewards yet, but I’m willing to wager that they will be some of the better items you can get for each tier (maybe not T4). Do I think it will cure the ailments in ORvR? Heck no, but it will make it worth doing for more people, meaning there should be more action in all tiers. Not that there hasn’t been more action as of late. I don’t know what got into everyone when the new tanks came out, but ORvR has been hopping.
The only thing that is missing from the formula is EXP. Level gain in Open RvR, while better than it was just after release, is still…..junk. I want to be able to log on, join an RvR Warband, run to wherever the action is, and level, not just move my Renown bar. Traveling in a Warband to take or defend a keep just does about nothing to my exp bar regardless of how much I put myself in the thick of things. I did notice, however, that following the warband solo seemed to gain me a decent amount more. On top of that, the only thing in ORvR that actually doles out large sums of exp is solo dumping oil. EPIC SYSTEM FAIL! I love the effectiveness of the oil, but the rest of the exp influx per kill-capita in ORvR needs to be brought up to this level.
See you in game!
Another brick in the wall…
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in Morkain’s Temple. Once my Engineer hit 20 I pretty much gave up on it because I think about half his experience in Tier 2 was in that one scenario. I was burnt out. I really didn’t want to go back, but last night I faced hard times.
I’m attempting to level my Warrior Priest in somewhat of a hurry. I at least want to get him to 25 by the end of next week (currently at the time of this writing I am 17) I just want to get him on par with where my Engi was and then I can resume my normal pace. In my expidiated attempt to level, I went with the mindset; “I’ve already done these quests (alot of them anyways) just click and run, don’t read the details, just do them as fast as possible.” So I did, and at level 16.8 I ran out of Empire quests. I thought to myself what the next step should be and I had a couple options. I either go quest in the Elven and Drawven lands, or run scenarios. I went with the third option and ran off to quest in the Marshes of Madness and queued up.
After being queued for about 10 minutes I got my first pop into Mourkain. This would be one run out of four for the night, and one of three that we would lose horribly, one was so bad I only got 550 exp (yeah that was worth my time). What I found aggravating about the events last night was the human wall. I don’t remember the wall being so prevelent in my past experiences and I chalk this up to two factors:
1. I haven’t ran scenarios as a melee class in quite some time. Last time I did was as a Witch Hunter and I spent most of my time running behind the scened messing with casters.
2. More tanks…lots more tanks. Since im effectively leveling my WP along par with the new tank classes, theres a different sort of balance in the game. There used to ever only be about 4 +/- 1 tanks in any scenario I ever ran in the past. Now add about 3 more. When you run up against 2 groups, half of them are tanks.
I know the collision detection is in the game for a reason. Last night showed me that it works as intended when used properly, and I LOVE IT. There was one scenario in particular in which I was attempting to close in on the rock carrier and was stopped by the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers. There were 3 Black Guards, 2 Black Orcs and a Chosen who all thought I was the biggest threat in the zone. It was like a flock of kids in the summertime and I was the ice cream man. There was even one moment when a Black Guard died, but before I had a chance to hop over his corpse to freedom, another filled in the gap and kept me stuck untill I was laying next to his fallen brother.
You might be thinking, “Slurm, you said it was aggrivating, but,…you love it?” Yes, it was by far one of THE most aggrivating experiences I have had in the game thus far. I was held down like I was rooted via a spell but in fact it was merely line of players using the collision system. It sucks when It happens to you, but when you do it to others, it’s gotta be great.
See you in game!
