The journey continues

So I've finally dinged RR77 and this friday we went for the Emperor Karl Franz as well. I have to say that I was lucky, the sovereign belt dropped and now i've got a total of four pieces. I was actually quite close to buy it, but I guess yesterday was another proof of that greed pays back. However, I really want the shoulders, since they're basically the best individual Shaman part and they look cool as well. I should afford to buy them in about a week, but of course they'll drop if I fall for the temptation.

I'm happy to say that my ToVL group is doing pretty well, we usually oneshot all bosses now (and yet we wipe on trash sometimes lol), I'm only one part away from the Amazing 5 piece bonus which gives a 5% proc chance to pop Focused Mind, it'll never be as good as the DoK equivalent, but at least it's as good as a Shaman can be. In the end I'll probably be running with 5 pieces of Tyrant and rest sovereign, I.E sov shoulders + jewelry. I haven't looked to much

into it but I think that's the best setup as the game is now. We tried out with a new tank in ToVL so my group wanted me to optimize my gear for healing since I usually just use my T/W RvR gear with decent PVE healing capability, I tried it out in a few Scenarios but I just can't live with being squishy, however I'll try to be a bit liberal when I get the entire tyrant set and try different stuff out, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing those big crits when needed the most!

All I do is complain

It's been a while since I wrote here last time, time has passed and I'd like to say that alot has happened in Warhammer, we can indeed look forward to 1.3.4 and even try it out on the PTS, but is it that much really?

In 1.3.3 basically what we got was the new "Ooooh, Shiny!" graphics, underdog system ( which all in all is just a static point system) and the War Report. Not much, but hey, Mythic surely was working on something bigger. And now, when we all can read the 1.3.4 patch notes I can't say I'm satisfied.

As usual there's three major changes, or updates. They promised us a scenario revamp, which results in that when 1.3.4 goes live, we only have 6 scenarios in T4. I mean, WTF? Isn't there like 26 scenarios in the game and they narrowed it to only 6? Mythic is indeed the only company that removes content from their games, first fortresses and now scenarios? We want more content, not less, and weren't we asking for a premade vs premade mode?

Anyhow, it's not the full story. The scenarios will be online at all times, so no more waiting for Battle For Praag, and they introduced a big bunch of new weapons as well which will be obtainable with new insignias that you get from participating in scenarios and some RvR events. So I'd say that's the 2nd improvement with the patch, new weapons.

3rd then? Last time they gave us the underdog system, this time they thought that what we need is an even more open RvR lake, WAR is everywhere you know? Well, whenever a city goes to stage 2 in a siege the RvR lakes will open up again. It'll probably be just PVE but it's a nice thing since there's nothing to do if your city gets captured.

This makes me wonder what Mythic is working on really, for me this feels like maintenance mode and the fact that they aren't announcing anything more far away than a few weeks at the time just supports the statement. Perhaps they have 80% of the staff working on 1.4.0 or even an expansion, LotD went live last summer so I really hope they're working on something for 2010 as well, but that's all I can do, hope. I'm getting closer to rr80 every day, it's going well with farming Tyrant and I've got several sovereign pieces so my time in the game is coming to it's end soon if they don't make it more interesting. Ah well, the scenario farming starts as 1.3.4 goes live...

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 :)