WAAR! STORIES

Over on the Warhammer Online Iron Rock server forums, there is getting to be a lengthy discussion about a duo of WH's ganking people. Incomingray and Krieb. I believe both are RR 80, and well they are Witch Hunters....so they pretty much destroy face.

The post started with the following quote:

"I want a duel. 1 on 1. I want to see if you guys are so fail that you have to run around together."

Obviously that spurred a bunch of criticism toward the guy, generally with the standard "QQ someone died in RvR" I can certainly see his frustration though. They are both well geared and well skilled players, playing what is arguably an overpowered class right now. But is that their fault? Certainly not. I for one commend them for taking it to so many of my fellow Destro realm mates day in and day out.

The biggest thing about the situation though, is that they are actually friends that play together. Not just a guildmate, or another "E-Pal". Honest to goodness real life friends that play together, because well, that's what the whole damn game is about. It seems like more and more people whine because they were not given a fair chance in an RvR zone. It's a freaking WAR people, nothing is fair about it. At least go down with some dignity and not make a QQ post about how two superior players just killed you because you were outnumbered.

If you don't like it stick to PvE or find another person / group to roam with. Although those two could probably still kill you 2v6, at least then you should think it's "fair".

"You play to win the game" - Herman Edwards

Let's face it, no one plays a game to lose. Whether it's a football game, or an MMO. There is no better feeling than that of a victory over your fiercest rival, and no worse than that of a loss.

Maybe there are a few people out there who get their rocks off by getting stomped all over the place, but I assure you those people are few and far between.....(in reference to games anyway.)

Think about the first time you outright slaughtered your opponent in an MMO. How great did that make you feel? What an adrenaline rush, right? I often reminisce about those times long ago when I played MMO's 20 hours a day, and did nothing but beat people day in and day out. Alas, those days are gone, and I must try to relive those times as best I can.

Had a few months away recently due to having a new baby, but let me break it down real quick for you. I transferred all my DC Destro toons over to Iron Rock, and have been pleasantly surprised with the action so far. Made a lot of new friends (online), and even more new enemies (not just online). Been playing mostly a Shaman, and currently leveling a greatly underpowered Marauder.

Last night Order was at it again, as they generally stomp Destro into the ground with 150+ of them running around locking zones on the way to the king, and we had a lowly group of 9. It consisted of 3 Shaman, 1 Chosen, 1 Sorc, 2 Magi, 1 BO, and a WE. You might ask, what the heck are 9 people going to do against 5+ warbands of Order? At first I would have told you, not a damn thing.....but then something happened, and we started to win.

Some of the most amazing fights I have ever had on Warhammer, to say the least. While defending a keep, the 9 of us killing 100+ (based on some kill count mod), unassisted by any other Destro. Did that simply by running out the back of a postern and coming up from behind. There was no haxing, no afks.....simply good players, playing well. Quite frankly, we mopped the floor with the pug Order that was running around all night. It was great, and the reason I play. To beat the trash out of other people, until they take their ball and go home.

Well it's been a while since my alst update. I think about 3 months to be exact. I guess nothing really new for me in game much, Warhammer wise that is anyway. It got to be the same ole, same ole. Things have changed though since 1.3b, for the better it seems.

My guild has rerolled Destruction on Dark Crag. I'm currently in the process of leveling a DoK, we'll see how far I take her though. Being on an Open RvR server, is certainly different from the Roleplaying type. Not that I ever roleplay, but the PvP action is a lot more fruitful on Dark Crag.

Rerolling has brought a fresh new perpective to the game for me. It's nice to see how the other side works. Hopefully it's a change that lasts as I really enjoy Warhammer, but the lack of action in the past kept me from loving it. If someone feels the game is stale for them, I'd reccommend checking out the opposite faction.

So, after perusing the usual blogs, I came across Werit's blog discussing the AoE and Keep changes. It really got me thinking about the current situation with certain AoE spells.

Obviously there is a problem right now. When you have multiple PoS / RoF in an area, there is no getting around the fact that you have little to no chance of surviving. The big solution it appears will be put in place is to make it so multiple spells will not stack with one another. While yes, that is a solution, I do not believe it to be a good one. It still does not address the fact that these spells can be placed anywhere, with no threat to the caster. It also essentially can make having more than 1 BW / Sorc in a keep defense utterly pointless. If only having 1 AoE spell being able to be cast on the doors, what are the rest of the casters going to do?

Why not make the spells scale downwards? For every other ranged AoE spell being cast, the next identical spell in that area would be reduced by say....50% dmg? It would at least not let those casters be useless, not to mention drastically tone down the immediate damage that people are taking right now.

There is also the problem of these spells being cast with virtually no AP cost, and no risk to the caster. Perhaps make those spells combustion build faster? At the least the AP cost needs to be increased.

A big downside to the proposed nerf of the AoE spells, is that is severely limits the capability of a small group of taking on a warband of players. As is right now, a 6 man with 2 BW's can definitely kill an entire warband of less organized players. I've been a part of it on more than one occasion. By taking away the stackable effect of these abilities completely, the success rate of that 6 man to actually win against 18+ is drastically reduced. Hopefully Mythic sees the downsides of the current proposal, and a change is made.

Wow, just wow. What a great day for some positives for the Warhammer community.

Two HUGE notifications on the herald today. One being the Keep Upgrades, and the other being patch 1.2.1. Both of which could seemingly have an enormous impact on the game.

First, the keep upgrades. My initial thoughts.......perfect. What better way to promote open RvR than to make keeps much more difficult to take? If it is taking people much longer to take keeps, the more apt they are to be just running around looking for fights. Being able to increase door hp, add guards, bump up guards to champion levels, have HEALING guards (Finally), and the ultimate Divine Favor Altar could potentially be game breaking as far as T4 goes. The only way I see this as being bad, is if it is poorly implemented making keeps just entirely to difficult to take at all.

As far as 1.2.1....Finally:

Combat Responsiveness Improvements – This subject has been an object of much discussion, both internally at Mythic, and externally among the community over the past few months and the team has been focusing especially heavily on this issue over the past few weeks. The result is that we have made a number of important improvements to this aspect of the game. In V1.2.1, casting times have become more accurate under normal play conditions, and players should no longer see a significant “stretch” or “pause” when casting spells while playing in “normal” conditions. We have also changed the UI display so increments of ½ second will be shown to give the player a more accurate and correct representation of time, and in high-lag situations, there will be a slight pause after the bar has filled up instead of the current “stretching” system. We have also made improvements to the animations and special effects-systems, which will result in better transitions especially when players are “chain-casting.”

Will we actually see little to no "cast lag"? Will I not have a cast bar when using an insta cast ability? Hopefully this goes in perfectly.

RvR Zone Control Rewards- We have made a number of improvements to reward players receive for capturing an entire zone as opposed to individual Objective and Keep captures. Battlefield Objectives will also buff players in the zone, and the players who have captured a Keep or Battlefield Objective will also see a doubling in the amount of Renown gained when the zone is captured.

Also probably a good thing. Now that it will be more difficult to take upgraded keeps, people should be rewarded as such. Nothing like doubling your Renown earned.


The Battle for the Gates of Ekrund Expands! – We have added a special 6-on-6 version of the Gates of Ekrund for players between the Ranks of 19-24. This will help players at these Ranks gain experience faster while the team continues to work on other improvements to the experience-gain pace for those Ranks. Of course, this new Scenario “Broken Gates of Ekrund” is also accompanied by its own quest.

This to me seems like something more geard for future patches. A lot of players are wanting more skirmish fights (myself included) What better way to test that out than with a 6v6 instance? Not sure if this is getting to close to WoW Arenas though....we'll see where it goes I guess.

With all of those changes not to mention bug fixes, career balancing, and Beyond the Sands, the next few months for the Warhammer Online community are seemingly going to be great!

Over the past week or so I have realized that while the Warhammer game itself is supposed to be centered around WAR, the only real WAR I seem to have is finding enemies to fight. Sure there are times when I may find a single warband out to fight, but for the most part I find that the Destro and Order communities on PT avoid each other in order to be successful in taking Keeps and BO's. I find this to be a critical flaw in the RvR system that WAR currently has in place.

Right now, Zerg mentality is king. If you can swarm a keep with 3 WB's, it is that much easier to gear yourself. People are to concerned about gear in this game. I wish people would actually compare the gear to see the very marginal difference there is between even Annihilator and Darkpromise. Because of the gear concern on people's minds, zergs are created. When an opposing zerg shows up, it is then time to fly to a new zone.

Currently there are no real quests or any incentive to fight in Open RvR. It is always, defend xx keep, defend xx BO, take xx Keep. Other than the kill 25 players, what other incentive is there for ORvR? There are little gear drops for those of us who are interested in that. The Renown is good, but really you can get 7k renown for just taking a zone. Influence is much of the same. Other than actually wanting to have small scale, ORvR battles, there is no reason to do so. Something needs to be done about that.

Perhaps promote ORvR in locked zones by increasing renown gain by 10%? Maybe increase the amount and level of gear that does drop from players? How about creating quests that reward Renown and Influence, rather than 1 gold?

Hopefully Mythic gets it right soon as it is no secret that the T4 action in Warhammer is lackluster. There is no sense releasing more content, when the current content you have is currently unproven.

Well finally, for the first time in what seems like forever, my guild was able to run nearly a 6 man group in ORvR yesterday. We ended up running with only 5, but it was a solid 5 at least. Slayer / BW / RP / RP / KotBS. Probably not your "ideal" group setup, but it worked to perfection.

As we ran around Praag during prime time, obviously we tried to avoid the 3 WB vs 3 WB zerg that was running around, virtually doing nothing but camping each others warcamps. Sure we got zerged down a few times, but there were other times that were simply magnificent. And I must say that while I do attribute most of it to our skill, I must give some of it to the fact that AoE right now is crazy. Just maybe crazy perfect.....

We were able to, several times mind you, kill an ENTIRE Destro WB! With, that's right, only 5 of us! By using terrain to our advantage, mainly the closed in graveyards in Praag, we were able to really bottleneck people into the doorways and AoE them down. It was probably the best time I've had in WAR to date. It left me pretty satisfied with the state of the game right now. And finally, it left me with the feeling of wanting more from open RvR in WAR.