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!

Guild XP gain…

…a.k.a “There goes my Theory”.

For a while now I have been wondering why guild XP moves so slow. You could say that, in our case, its probably due to the low number of active members we have in the guild. I still think this is partially true, but there is one aspect of guild XP gain that I have felt was acting against us, but it turns out I was wrong. I had thought that if you had inactive members in the guild, that it actually slowed the pace at which your guild would gain XP. A la’ “if you have more inactives or alts, you gain less XP based on the number inactive while XP was being gained by those active”. Or something like that. BUT over on the Warhammer Alliance forums, a Dev popped in to set the record straight:

Q. My fellow guild officers and I are having a ‘discussion’ about whether or not we should alts in the guild. How does guild leveling work, exactly? Would having a bunch of extra inactive characters cause our guild to level more slowly than if we were all active?

A. No, having inactive characters in your guild roster won’t slow down your guild advancement. A guild gains experience and ranks through the actions of its members. Anytime members earn experience and/or renown the guild earns experience as well. So having a battalion of inactive alts is not a detriment to your guild’s ability to level.

You can read the entire post here:

Missy from Mythic discussing the guild XP system

Unfortunatly, she doesnt give any juicy details on how XP is actually calculated (other than to say that you can get it from gaining XP or Renown. She didnt want to give any details on it due to the possibility of the system being exploited. Which basically means that there IS something specific that can be done to increase the pace of your XP gain, and if you figure it out, you get the cuffs!

I have seen guilds with 15 members be rank 20 and guilds with 100 members be rank 15. I have yet to come accross anyone who has stated they found the magic way of gaining guild XP, but id be willing to bet that its simply a matter of guild members grouping frequently, and completing events (scenarios/keep seige/PQ). Who knows, but all I know is…

I just want my cloak.

PQ’s are great,but…

…theres a little bit missing from this game.

Instanced dungeons.

It’s something that has been touched on by people in the guild, and at the time of the discussion, I didnt agree. But, I think I’m turning around with the advent of the 1.1 patch notes and the thought of a “soloable/small group PQ”. When I read that Mythic was going to implement a PQ that could be done by 1-3 people I got rather suspicious about how it would work. Won’t lowering the level of difficulty of one PQ in a region make it THE single most popular PQ in that region? That is unless the influence gain makes it less worth the effort, and then in turn, not even worth the time to partake in anyways. The more I thought about it, the more the same solution came into my head:

 Leave PQ’s alone Mythic!

They serve a purpose. They are a fantastic way for people to come together and work towards a common goal.  And, they provide loot (sometimes) and good exp.

What about the times when there just isnt enough people in the area to complete a PQ? The answer is simple, bring in instanced dungeons. Almost every zone already has some form of a cave already in existance, just take out whatever resides within, or create a portal off of the entrance for an instance dungeon. Make it just as it was in DAoC. The level of the mobs inside go up based on the number of people in your group. The catch should be that the loot rewards should be AT BEST a green bag type item, and the influence gain should be reduced so that the instances aren’t farmed, making PQs pointless.

I see good things comming in the 1.1 patch, and with any luck, my little rant here will be wasted because we will be getting better XP and gear from open RvR anyways. Heck, maybe ORvR will be so popular that ALL the PQs will eventually be reduced down to 1-3 man doable because of lower interest. Lets hope.

See you in game!

Player Statues, a closer look…

Mythic (via Developer James Casey)  just posted a Dev Diary about the player statues that are comming in 1.1…

Click here to read it.

James says that the system will be dynamic, but unfortunatly doesnt specify exactly what about the statues will be dynamic.  He says “art was commissioned for statues of every class in game in both male and female varieties (where applicable). ” So, the “Top Ten” statues will update themselves as players hit the top of the chart. Does this mean that there is 2 statues for a Bright Wizzies (1 male 1 female), 2 statues for Warrior Priests (1 male 1 female) and so on and so on? If the statues actual look remains the same for any 1 class/sex regardless of who it is, I think the system is….poo. If all that will be changing is the name on the plackard, then just have a spot with visable leaderboards in game rather than waste time with a statue that doesnt look like me.

If the “dynamic system” actually DOES change the look of the statue based on my current gear and/or hair style choices, then I say BRAVO MYTHIC!!

What do YOU think he means? Would you be let down at all if the statue doesn’t look like you, like if you wear an eyepatch but the statue has a good pair?

Inquiring mind(s),….mine….want to know!

Quick thought on PQ’s…

This thought just popped into my little head. I’m not sure if im the first with the idea, but I think it needs to be implemented NOW (Mythic, I hope you’re reading this):

Public Quests, if participated in, give you about 100 influence towards your chapters influence meter when killing mobs solo. The more people in your group, the lower the amount of influence, but hey you kill faster so it makes up for it right? WRONG! I dont seem to move that silly teal bar any faster as a group than when Im rockin’ stage 1’s “Kill 5 trillion mobs” solo. The items you get from the chapter reward system are nice, but it just seems to take soo long to get to that 3rd stage elite reward that it hardly seems worth the time (Grinding PQ’s sucks!). I dont think they should make these items any better than they are, in fact I cant wait until they look like pieces of armor constructed from tinker toys when compared to RvR rewards. But what I do think they should do, is let 100 influence be a flat rate. Regardless if you are grouped or not, you get 100 INF per kill. These are PUBLIC quests, there should be an incentive for people to group up in these areas. Last night I found myself in a chapter 1 PQ (rolling alts) and got an invite to group with another player. I rejected it. I knew I was going to see no difference in INF gain (if not worse) by grouping with him. This seems counterintuitive.

My $0.02

P.S. Also Mythic, please remove the system that lets PQ’s contribute to zone control as it is pants-on-head retarded. Thx

1.0.6…

Well, it’s the big day! The day when players may come back to WAR to see how the class changes/balances and the tank additions will change the game. A day which will see those people and the current player populous re-evaluate the systems that Mythic has put forth for us. More than anything, I’d say this is the perfect day, if not the perfect couple weeks, to sit and think about what you want to be doing with the game. If you are like me, you are starting to hunger for endgame, if for no other reason to just be done with the grand quest of having a max level character. Or, you want that level 40 so you can rate the endgame of WAR, see if the oRvR is worth the time spent, or if you should just roll around in T1 and T2 with various alts until the system becomes more robust and worth your time. You can ask yourself if the character you are currently running is the “fit” for you. If its not, these two weeks provide you with the perfect opportunity to reroll a class that you think makes more sense to you.

Me? I’m still not sure. There’s a big part of me that would rather play a more healing support role (a la Warrior Priest), but I have so much fun playing the Engineer that I don’t know if I want to go though two and a half tiers of the same stuff I’ve already done to get a WP to the point I’m already at. But, seeing as the majority of the player base WILL be rolling for one reason or another, I think the next couple weeks will give me an opportunity to play around with a couple lowbies if at least for a break from the Engineer. It should either show me that I need to stick with my guns (engineer pun intended) or seek other options.

1.0.4b…

I believe Mythic wants to make certain that 1.0.5 is done right and will test its brains out. But, its seems that there are some goodies that Mythic knew we didnt want to wait for and are releasing them via 1.0.4b.

Heres the patch notes.

-First off it seems that Mythic has taken my suggestion to add more loot bags for keep taking. (yeah im sure it was just me that suggested it AND they read this blog…naysayers!) I say Kudos, I think If 1 full group could possibly take a keep, each member deserves a bag, but regardless of how many people are on the raid, you now have twice the chance at a nice reward.

-Population balance between Scenarios?!?!? YAAAAY! Hopefully this will put them popping on an even keel. I’m actually quite thankful before we get our rerolled characters to tier 3. I played some scenarios in T3 with the Witch Hunter and I can attest that YES, Tor Anroc is the only one that pops during peak hours….and I dont like it. I have had the chance to play a couple of the other T3 Scenarios are they were a BLAST! Cant wait to get the Engineer to 22 and start rockin’.

-And the only other fantastic news was the addition to Rally Masters at all Warcamps….HOORAH! Only question I have is: Are there currently Warcamps in zones that we could not fly to that will now enable us to fly there? (did that make sense?) For example: There is a Elf Zone that we could not fly to as Order, is this now open to us? Because I’d love to do some Questing there, I just never went because it made me feel somewhat stuck there. (I hate running after tasting the speed of a mount). Regardless….this addition of flight paths will surely quell the anger of our grand poo-bah.

See you in game!

Heavy Metal…

Mythic has used the money spent by the gold spammers (well, the money leftover from the purchase of Marks new car) to expediate the tanks that were once removed from the game and reintroduce them in the best way possible…another live event!!

HEAVY METAL

oops wrong kind of heavy metal…

aahh here it is…HEAVY METAL!!!

Seems like a good idea. Im honestly don’t think I will be busting my hump to do a weeks worth of daily quests in order for 1 week of extra play time on the new tanks. (im not sure if I plan on playing either of them anyways), BUT if there is anyone in the guild who would LOVE to make a Knight of The Really Long Class Name (im telling ya you shouldve went with The Knights Panther Mythic!!!) and has admirations on making this a possible main, I am willing to blow the dust off of the lvl 6 Warrior Priest if you’d like some healing.

One note I crinkled my nose at was that the new RvR scenario (Reikland) will only be open for the duration of the live event. BOOO (i guess no open RvR that week)

All I can say is if Mythic can keep churning out live events once a month, then I dont see me finding another home anytime soon. (but just make them better than the Witching Night thx!)

Witching Night…day 1…

I was excited all day yesterdat because I wanted to see the Witching Night event in action. Well I got on as soon as I could muster (right after the kids go to bed) and ran right off to my nearest Open RvR area to see what all the hubub was about.

I saw probably 200 people running around killing eachother.

While I thought it was great to see that many people in ORvR, I also thought it was a little dissapointing that it was simply RVR Deathmatch. There was no goal to be seen. When the PQ for the event finnaly popped, it was in such a small area that there was no way that everyone was going to be in the PQ radius at once. The other problem was that it took so long to pop, and it was completed faster that you can imagine (as if we were in a scenario that only made you score 50 points).

I may only speak for myself with this problem, but It was lag-city for me. At one point I could see everyone moving around, but thats it. I saw no one fighting, no casting, no dying,….nothing but people just running around. THEN the packet finnaly caught up and I saw every action that had taken place in that 5 minutes of running around. It was kindof neat seeing my xp bar grow like that.

Again, it was great to see people run in open RvR, but I wish it was a little more constructive than that. I almost wonder if Mythic said “well, we dont think more than like 50 people will go out into the lakes for the event, this should be fine.” One thing that could have helped is if they placed this form of PQ in EVERY lake, not just one per Tier.

I think tonight I will attempt to find the mobs needed to kill for the influance prizes (as a side note, I never saw my INF move during all of the open RvR last night….bugged? or did I happen to not be in the 20′ x 20′ patch of space for the reward to catch?).

If I have no luck finding the mobs, i’ll give the rvr another try. If this doesnt pan out, I think i’ll just boycott the event and go run quests and scenarios.

Hey Mythic! Hotfix the event!