Patch 1.3.4 preview

Andy from the Mythic comminuty team recently posted a teaser about next patch on the US forums. He couldn't yet go inte to details, but let's discuss the announcement.

"At this point the plan is to have 1.3.4 on PTS by the first week of February or (at the latest) early the second week of February. Patch notes, of course, will accompany the opening of Warpstone."

The EU servers usually open up some days later, but at least it's not long time left.

"We will be introducing an entire new line of weapons earned via RvR (this is the "feature players have been asking for"). These weapons will be purchasable via a vendor and will not be bought using medallions or crests, instead utilizing an entirely new currency system earned via Scenario gameplay from tiers 1-4. More information about these new items and how they're earned will be forthcoming in a Dev Diary with Developer Sean Bosshardt."

This is indeed interesting. I've certainly been waiting for new weapons, the bloodmoon staff I use tends to get a bit old (and it's impossible to find a sandstorm one). The suprising part is, that by "earning new weapons via RvR" doesn't translate to oRvR, but instead to Scenarios. I certainly would have wanted the weapons to be attainable from oRvR to give it more purpose, at the moment I find being in a good WB to be the best part of the game, but there's no real purpose or treat that attracts me there, except Altdorf pushes of course. Instead they want to give a purpose to scenarios, some people argue that scenarios in itself don't have any real meaning, but I don't know, I was satisfied with the anti zerg RP farm/crest mode scenarios were, soon we can get weapons as well!

"Speaking of Scenarios...

We are completely reworking the current structure of Scenarios by removing some of the less popular and streamlining the tiering of Scenarios. There will be more details upcoming in a Dev Diary from Content/RvR Lead Mike Wyatt next month."

Many thought and hoped for a premade vs premade mode when they announced their scenario remake, but it has been confirmed by Andy that they're looking into it, but it's not going to be introduced in this patch, however, we'll finally get rid of Thunder Valley at least!

"The last tidbit is a change to the way that the campaign functions. Starting with 1.3.4, once a Contested City flips into the Captured state (otherwise called "Stage 2") the Open RvR Campaign will now restart, leaving the realm sieging their enemies city with a tough decision: Stay in the city, possibly defeating your opponent's King, or retreat back to the open field to defend your realm?"

This is good, extremly good! Instead of people logging of for three hours they get the chance to go and do RvR instead. It'll probably be PvEish at first, but at least it's not the peak of boredom anymore when your opposing realm sieges your city. This will make the campaign alot more fluent, but they still need to reduce the god damn reset timer to at least 15 min....

Oberheim AWESOMENESS

Have you ever wondered where I got my nick from? Probably not, however, everyone knows that I am awesome, so did the guys that founded the company, named by me: Oberheim. They produce (since 1973) great and fat sounding synthesizers, hence my second name. Just listen to the sound of Oberheim OB-12 :)

Friday

What a day, not only did I play ToVL, have some awesome RvR, ding RR76 but also killed the Emperor Karl Franz my second time! Take a look at some nice Eyefinity screenshots from today :)

Warhammer online on Eyefinity

So ’ere it is, me brotha finally got ’is dird screen an’ I got a chance to try WAR wiv dem. It is simply amazin’, you right see da environments an’ dat’s one reason I recently cleared up all me addons which prevented to see da game I was actually playin’. Now I’s able to see da stunties ’eads get smashed into pieces in true widescreen mode. Yummy!

Resolution: 5860*1080, not bad... ;)

facerolling Gajlord

I posted this picture basically because I wanted to show Facerolling how my interface currently looks, it enables squared style grid and disables the party window when in scenarios or WB. I'm quite happy since I see alot more of the game now :)

Emperor Karl Franz killed by Inglorious Basterds

Me and Jucka switched guild yesterday, we moved to Inglorious Basterds and I have to admit that I had some hard feelings about that, me and some friends started Kittens With Klas about a year ago when we rolled on WAR and have been playing together since then. So it felt a bit like leaving a part of my archievements behind somehow. But times change and this morning I was in my first king kill. We pushed stage 2 and I have to say that the king encounter was so... Mythic. I guess you understand what i mean.

WAR Eyefinity

WAR on eyefinity, two screens at 3840*1080, imagine this on three screens....

My brother put together a new computer recently and the new 5000-series ATI Radeon video cards support a technology called "Eyefinity". Which basically means that you can use several screens with native resolution without any stretching in games. He got his second 1080p screen today and I simply had to install WAR on his computer and these screenshots show how it looks. It's simply amazing, I have yet to see how it looks in T4 RvR, stay tuned for more screenshots!

DING RR75

Yey, I finally dinged RR75. We have been playing with a meleetrain setup for a few days in KwK and I have to say that it works quite well, it's definiately alot more fun than bombing. Though Facerolling refuses to get the addon calling which makes it a bit more complicated when the rest of us uses it.

Calling is kind of essential when using a meleetrain setup. You get two macros; one for calling and one for targeting which you then drag to your spell bar. It's really handy for me since I usually don't have time to look for a particular target but now I just have to push one button and then I can cast my AP drain/healing debuff or whatever I feel for. Thumbs up!

Download Calling here

Radiation Sickness

This is my sorceress, Radiation Sickness, currently RR43. I thought that I'd write the ultimate, most sophisticated guide ever on how to play with her.

Just follow these extremly hard steps:

1) Run in to the big zerg of order

2) Infernal wave

3) Disastrous Cascade

3) Pit of shades

4) Repeat from 1)

I understand if it feels hard at first, really, you need three spells so it's completely acceptable if it takes a few months to learn this spell rotation completely. If you want to be hardcore or are aiming for becoming extremly skilled, you can enhance the rotation with M2 (focused mind) + Shattered shadows or just rooting + 1800dmg to everyone with your M4, and then go for the rotation. Sorcerers are so insanely nerfed so we have to live with this hard-mode ;)

Karl Franz is down

Oh crap, I just woke up and was drinking my usual coffee. When I booted my computer o got a message from Jucka which translated to English leads:

"KARL FUCKING FRANZ!
HAS BEEN KILLED BY THE ALLIANCE!!!! \o/
Manjare tanked him.
\o/ KARL FRANZ IS OUR BITCH \o/"

hmm, this is great, extremly great. Tcharzanek has been killed a few times on order, but that wasn't until recently after the Eltharion merge and about a week ago KA had his first Karl Franz kill, by two Eltharion guilds as well. So our alliance got the first "Core KA" king kill, which I'm both proud of and happy about. Too bad I wasn't online though, but next time I guess :)

The future of WAR - Skaven

We are all waiting for an expansion, or at least a major patch. Since Mythic doesn't like to share what they do inbetween their constant coffee breaks we can do nothing but guess, or interpret some random statements from now and then. I CBA to look up sources, but the community generally agrees on that if they gonna put in new races Lizardmen/Skaven would fit best. I'm a destro player all the way, but I'd really be tempted to roll an order alt if they implement the Lizardmen, the possible classes/mechanics look promising as well... I first decided to write about both races, but I had to narrow this post down alot and you can look forward to reading about Lizardmen in a few days.

Skaven

These fearsome rats indeed have alot of exciting opportunities, when examining their wide selection of models in WFB (Warhammer Fantasy Battles) I get really excited. I'm by no means an expert in WFB, I do indeed own an Orcs & Goblins army, but becoming familiar with any race requires alot of effort and studies.

The Skaven, are in short explained as "a race of malevolent rat-men that inhabit the underground of the Warhammer world"

in their army book. Traditionally they fight with numbers and have a hierarchical social structure as seen in many other races' armies. The Skaven society is structured into a number of clans, no one can trust each other and their shy attempt on politics is dominated by endless treachery, betrayal, labyrinthine plots and scheming. The clans are usually led by a Warlord and below him is a clear hierarchical ladder based on the law of strength and cunning. They consist of, starting from the bottom: slaves and creatures from other races, above them we have the workers which represent the majority of their population. Above them we have the clanrat warriors which are few and strong, which are led by the Warlord at the top. Even though the Warlord is strong, he lives under the same circumstances as Bosses of greenskins, anyone can come and challenge him for his position, so he usually spends alot of his time eliminating rivals

which also is a sign of how paranoid the skaven are. Here below I picked some models I particulary like and that I think would be cool as classes in WAR.

Warlock Engineer

These guys are indeed interesting, they aren't natural born wizards,

so they try to control the energies of the wind magic by their weird sorcerous science. To do this they wear impressive pieces of equipment which are known as warp-power accumulators on their back. They pick up and concentrate magical energy through an antenna. As I understood they don't know any spells, but are instead dependent on the equipment they wear. In WFB every model you choose costs a certain amount of points, you can then choose to enhance this particaular model with extra equipment and for 25 additional points I can choose to buy a "Storm Daemon" which is a Warpstone device that can be used by Warlock Engineers. This devide grants its bearer a Warp lightning spell.

Assasins

Similiar to the Witch Hunter and Witch Elf the Skaven could have their own stealthy assasins. They are described as follows in their army book: "They're the masters of the secret lethal arts of Clan Esbin. They have the reputation of being able to turn invisible, appearing from the shadows only to deliver poisoned death to their destined victims. "

It's questionable if we want or need another stealth class in WAR, but they're indeed cool and I enjoy playing my WE alot.

Skaven Plague Censer Bearer

There's a big range of models that could fit as mDPS classes, I myself think that Skaven Plague Censer Bearers are cool, they carry deadly weapons known as plague censer, these weapons are flails whose spiked heads are filled with burning warpstone incense. Not anyone gets the honour, only the most deranged and fanatical worshippers of disease are chosen for this task.

2010 - The Year of Quality

Yeah, Mythic conciders 2010 to be the year of quality, we can all agree on that especially with recent patches, performance has been improved alot. I read a statement where they said that they're satisfied with current performance which has been their #1 priority, so they are now able to focus more on new content.

"Next year is going to be an exciting one, and I am looking forward to sharing more of our plans during the frigid days and long winter nights of January. We’ll have exciting new Live Events, new weapons and cloaks earned by spilling the blood of your enemies in RvR, a new Scenario structure, economy and loot drop improvements, adjustments to the King and Warlord encounters to convert them to RvR-only battles, UI customization enhancements, Tier 4 RvR campaign improvements, daily quests and so much more - and that’s just our near term plans for 2010."

(source: 1.3.3 Producers Letter - Bruce Maclean)

Itemization

Sounds fair and good, I'm really looking forward to see the new weapons, the Bloodmoon staff I use tends to feel a bit old. I really hope that they implement them wizely, they should make oRvR more appealing to high RR players and new weapons could be a nice carrot. The problem is, which I've noticed in our alliance as well, that many of the "good" players /ignore oRvR, I really can't blame them, 'cause scenarios are just way alot more rewarding.

No more r29 ruining your scenarios

The most promising announcement (for me at least) is "a new scenario structure", which naturally could mean anything. But all we can do is hope for a tournament mode in style with Guild Wars, that game was brilliant really, what NCSoft did was that they made an ongoing constant competitive battleground mode, you could join a queue with your team and then fight your way to the top. Well, I might be wishing for too much, but at least give us a premade vs premade option will you? :)

Warlord/King PQ restructuration

Oh dear, they plan to make 'em RvR only, which could end brilliantly or just make it impossible to complete any of them. This game is and should be as much about RvR as possible, but I enjoyed the only WB raid instances in the game, so hopefully they don't remove them entirely, but well, they have so much lore to look in to that they should come up with something fresh and fun.

In overall their revealed plans are fine, we're still waiting for the armor rewamps as well which they stated were to be released in 1.3.3, so hopefully they're finished to the next patch. However, I'm still waiting for the "next big thing", these patches we get are more or less maintenance mode, I'd like to see what the creative team has been working on since LotD (1.3), if they have. This game needs proper endgame (rr70-80) content, but that's another post.