I’m lazy and won’t summarize the post..

It’s a nice read..not too wordy or complex, but it makes me interested in that aspect of the game. Information warfare is all about knowing where your enemy is and what his current state is (Yes.. I summarized it.. a bit ). There will be several ways of how you can obtain that information and/or make it more difficult for your enemy to get this information. This gives more options for strategy/tactics in a fight ..and this is nice. Complex tactics tend to be really bad in pug situations though, but I think that this game will tend to push you towards Merc Corp/Faction (aka guild) groups anyways.. everything else would be a too shallow game. It will not be feasible for a solo’er to fight for control of a planet..though solo’ing is possible in some way I think that this is not the richest experience in the game. It’s about teamwork, which is imo always good for a PvP focused game.

So there are multiple ways to search for an enemy and as much ways to counter it.. which strongly enhances the group synergies. In general this all sounds quiet good, though  I remain a bit skeptic if it will be balanced in the right way. I hope that there will be some loop holes so that not every information can be gathered at all times. There should  always be the possibility to surprise someone, otherwise it can get boring/unbalanced.

Premades will already have the advantages of voice chat stuff.. but I have to search the forums again to find a hint how premades are handled. I think that I’ve read something about that..Well anyways.. the more I read about the game the more I’m interested. At least I get to play one year without the Clans.

oh..and I’m not going to play in a Merc Corp. I will be earning many Loyality Points with House Kurita …

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

MWO: Information Warfare

• MWO – role warfare, hmmm yum
• SWTOR, MWO and X news.
• Wrath of Heroes Beta Update
• LEGO Heroica: Castle Fortaan
• Producer’s Interview on Waaagh.de
• MWO: Dev Interview Randal Bills
• The Lord of the Rings: War in the North impressions and gameplay footage
• New ping on my radar
• The Sandbox Ecosystem
• Brainstorming

They were taken on my trips through RvR. No special trips to search for a nice scenery were made. Originally the galleries (well..the series of galleries) were intended to show stuff that a Moba type game like WoH can’t deliver, but the more I played in the last weeks the more I realized that it can also serve as an eye-opener to current WAR players, because some people oversee the nice artwork done by Mythic back when they had money for such fluff-stuff. There is some stuff here people don’t see even though they are passing it nearly every day.. some stuff is a little more hidden.

I hope that you enjoy the gallery as much as I enjoy it when I find such a scene. There are still some pictures left to show you..if you like.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Just scenery (part 2)

• Last post.. of the year
• I had reasons for the silence
• MWO: Information Warfare
• Changes
• Christmas Recap
• New ping on my radar
• About a dwarf and his oath
• Uncovering a Treasure Trove of Old Games
• Who needs a ship?
• SWTOR PvP falls short, my suggestions

Enjoy your time and we will see us in the new year.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Last post.. of the year

Incoming search terms:

• skylanders unrecognized disk
• unrecognized disk skylanders

• Happy Holidays
• Holidays and stuff
• Nintendo Tree, Nintendo Tree, How Flammable You Must Be!
• Happy Winter Holidays
• WAR Producer update
• Just scenery (part 2)
• I had reasons for the silence
• Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Deal Season!
• WAR for the Holidays
• Things to do in the Holiday Break

The whole interview with Randall Bills can be found on the official MWO page.

“Who the.. is Randall Bills?” you might ask. To be honest I didn’t know him before that interview, but it’s a nice read. For you lazy folks out there.. he’s ..I quote here.. ” Continuity Editor and Fiction Content Manager” for MWO. He’s involved in MWO in a way many bloggers want to be involved in a game they like. He comments on proposed stories for MWO by Piranha Games. That’s a job for lore freaks and he is one..When you read the interview you will notice that. (Let’s hope that Piranha is listening to him). Need a proof? Well..here are some imo noteworthy quotes

When being asked what his favourite part of the job is he answered..

..And despite over 15 years working on BattleTech, it still remains one of my biggest geek-loves…the inner 14-year-old in me still yells that titanic metal robots stomping across alien worlds and blowing crap up never, ever gets old…

And this is so totally true.. BT is touching for some reason the inner-child/Teen. It’s ridculous.. big, heavy Mechs fighting against each other .. some story lines are quiet heavily loaded with stereotypes..but yet it’s still fascinating blowing things up with a PPC, no matter if it’s the Tabletop or a Computer game   Sometimes I am surprised by myself.. When I drive on the Autobahn and there are some rolling hills and I think “Oh..that would be such a cool picture if now at that hill a Mech would appear and shoot with some lasers and LRM..”.. as I said..ridiculous, but nevertheless fun and entertaining.

And there is another quote where he get’s a loud “Yeah you’re right!” from me..

MWO: Is there any part of MechWarrior you’d love to just take straight out of canon?

RB: I’ve said many times over the years that if I’d been there the game mechanics of the Clan weaponry would be very different. It’s not just how powerful those weapons are, but that it seemed from the get go to violate the story aesthetics as presented.

Here were these great, in-your-face warriors and yet they had weapons that allowed a player, in game to simply walk backwards and fire at crazy distances to down your enemy. When we introduced the Clan Heavy Lasers years ago those were more along the lines of what I thought the Clans should’ve had all along…really dangerous and powerful weapons, but shortish range, where the Clanner would be in his element, able to take down 3 and 4 enemy BattleMechs in a whirling dervish of expert maneuvering and markmanship.

This is something that’s also been an issue to me. Clan’s want to get into close combat, but have weapons which are exceptionally well at large distances.. it just doesn’t fit and broke a lot of the balancing in the game. So it doesn’t fit on two sides of the game..lore/aesthetics and game balance. Now we should wait how Piranha Games is handling this stuff. Clan weapons exist (note: see below *)..and you will most likely slot them in your Mech as soon as you can.

I don’t want to get too much into possible mechanics there..there have to be more details be announced on it before I comment on them.

One thing he also mentioned is the race to Assault Mechs..and that Piranha is really trying to make even light Mechs important, so not everyone tries to grab an Atlas or so. This is some tricky aspect..

(*especially in two years when Clans will arrive. Remember: MWO is going on in real time..So when the game launches it’s 3049, one year before the Clans attack. One year after the release “surprising” things will happen at the Periphery.)

.. so many improvements (an expansion) is in sight, bringing new …way more powerful..weaponry and Tech. Both giving more bang to more heavy Mechs and making it more a necessity to have some more armor, i.e. getting heavier. Well..we are before facts for the game exist..so it’s still time to lean back and see what Piranha is planning, but I’m really curious how they want to make every weight class in that game ..meaningful.

Just a final note… I wanted to explain why I highlighted the last word. Sorry to disappoint you, but being meaningful on the battlefield doesn’t mean that your Locust can kill an Atlas. This won’t happen.. your Locust will have a role on the battlefield to make it easier for your team mates to blow the Atlas up. This will have to get a team game if every weight class should be meaningful. And this game will …just like WAR..be painful if you solo it.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

MWO: Dev Interview Randal Bills

• Mechwarrior Online, what we know so far
• Latest Mech in the lineup revealed
• New ping on my radar
• MWO – Mech no5 revealed
• MWO – Another mech revealed and it makes for a good comparison
• MWO: Information Warfare
• Producer’s Interview on MMORPG.com
• MWO – role warfare, hmmm yum
• Skyrim So far
• Crafting Choice

As I already mentioned I’ve considered to change the guild, because the old guild is dead. So I changed it last week and am now member of Erengrads Nachtwache. I’m not sure if I should translate it, but Nachtwache means something like Night Watch. Erengrad is obviously from Warhammer.

So here are some pics before change (with guild colors brown and grey) and after the change. I slightly shifted the color scheme with black, but imho it’s not that big optical change like it would be with other careers. I still like the black, red, gold theme of the armor.

The change isn’t that dramatic though, because I’ve already played together with some of EN (I’m lazy to write the guild name..sorry for that ). The alliance is active though, so it’s easier now to get a free spot in a group and therefore I’m not always soloing around, but get to fight in a decent group. It’s definitely more fun that way.

All in all it was the right decision (uhh..I should have made a tv conference like LeBron James. *makes a note*), though it’s still an awkward situation when looking back at the remainders of Grimnirs Zorn. I still have a couple of alts in there, but maybe this will change too. Now the guild is officially dead as there is really no one there who’s active. Just a the alt’s of two of us. The third active member changed also to EN .. though this might get interesting..as he likes to grumble and curse.. and there are some guild in the alliance with people he really..well.. let’s say he doesn’t like them that much

So I’m off to make some popcorn and watch this show

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Changes

• About a dwarf and his oath
• Q and A with James Casey
• Claiming a Fortress
• SWTOR 2 days later
• More Relic Info
• WAR for the Holidays
• Dominus jetpacking to the top of my ‘gimme now’ list
• Belsavis and Voss
• Wrath of Heroes Progress
• MMO Names

This summer I thought that there is no upcoming MMO which makes my interested or at least raise an eyebrow, but then I read that there will be an upcoming Mechwarrior online game ..Mechwarrior Online (MWO). In all fairness the term MMO might not be 100% appropriate, but nevertheless the game got my interest

I could write tons of stuff about the IP and how much I like it. I’ve played Battletech the tabletop game for a long time, read several stuff (novels, tons of rulebooks, etc..) and played several computer games, even though M$ produced the later stuff. It cooled down a bit, because I stopped playing BT and there was for some time no new BT related game released for PC. Then I was hyped up again when a new Mechwarrior game was announced back in 2009 ..and when MW4:Mercs was made freeware.

Actually..Piranha games is the developer who worked on MW, but then got silent about it. In a dev blog on MWO it’s explained why they got silent and why they now chose to make a f2p online game out of it.

Why do I like the IP and the idea of making it an online game? This game just screams for making it pvp focused.. Merc corps fighting against each because someone payed them.. great. No need for a good vs. bad plot.. just lots of rockets, lasers..auto cannons..just mayhem

As MWO will be f2p I will definitely check it out even though I’m a bit uncertain how well the payment model will influence the end product. In a recent forum post the dev’s stated how/why the want f2p..

Now this is where the tricky part starts..reading the post it seems that more money means more firepower, which in the old games translats to pay2win. Offering options for smaller mechs and making them viable for non paying players seems interesting, but somehow this is something delicate to balance. Forcing you to play a class of mechs to support those who pay real money for making the kills seems not like a good option when looking at a game.

f2p seems like the kid everyone on the block loves.. but it’s quiet difficult to raise.

Well..there is some other balancing stuff Piranha games will have to face. They want to avoid circle strafing and long distance fights (which should both be and actually are options in BT), but want to make small mechs viable. This is the game mechanic balancing stuff I’m not sure of how they will be able to manage. Circle strafing was always the most important option for a small mech to be able to survive. Taking this away by forcing most of the fights in a dense city is.. questionable.  Dense city means slow speeds..which translates to small mobility ..which again results in a need for heavy armor, as you will get hit a lot, because you can’t evade attacks that easily..which means.. you need a lot of tonnage..which excludes small mechs

To me both these points.. (f2p and balance of roles and options for small to assault mechs) are game breaking criteria. If done well this game has the ability to be a replacement for WAR for me.. if done improper this will result in just another niche product with a wasted IP.

It’s still some time up to release (summer of 2012)..let’s see what happens until then.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

New ping on my radar

• Mechwarrior Online, what we know so far
• MWO – Mech no5 revealed
• Latest Mech in the lineup revealed
• My 2012 online gaming schedule
• MWO: Dev Interview Randal Bills
• Battle.net Balance and Diablo 3 will earn me money
• Pew Pew Classics
• MWO – role warfare, hmmm yum
• MWO – Another mech revealed and it makes for a good comparison
• A classic bit of Mech to tickle your memory

In September (shortly after the WoH announcement) our guild suffered from a drop in membership. At first people just didn’t log in (as frequently as before) and then some subs ran out and weren’t renewed. This was emphasized because of the queasiness the stat-buffing pets caused.

This led to the guild being ..well..dead. We are currently only three active members, of whom two are only active at prime time ..and one of us two is in a premade from a different guild (which I can’t blame him for). So I’m more or less just soloing (and alting on Drakenwald or Badlands) or getting some invites from some friends to join their groups. As I’m just a fill-in I can’t rely on getting invites and so it happens quiet often that I’m running around solo for my whole gaming-session.  And believe me … Drakenwald is not a server you would like to solo. Maybe WH’s and WE’s are an exception here

After some weeks now I came to the decision that I have to change something. I will change the guild (at least with my main char) in the next days. This is something that I’m not doing often.

I know of several people who change quiet frequently the guild, because of several (valid) reasons. I was never that kind of person and I’m not even sure why. If I choose a guild then I stick with it for as long as it’s possible..If I remember correctly this is in 13 years of online gaming just the second time that I leave a guild..and both times it was because of the guild being dead and not because the game shut down.

Sometimes I think that IRL I’m more dwarf than my appearance might suggest.. I can grumble a lot, I’m often dealing with several sorts of noble metals.. and beer…I have a beard.. and if i join a guild I stay with it, no matter what it costs (ok ..that is not real life, but you know what I mean ). But even though the guild is dead now I have some unpleasant feeling when I will leave the guild. Some sort of bad conscience even though there is no reason for it. We stay in contact through our guild forum and the folks even wondered why I’m still in the guild.

This is strange and there is no real explanation for it..it’s just my personality. Maybe I will understand it better in the next couple of days..so maybe there is a follow-up post on this topic.

Do you stick always to the same guild for as long as possible or are you switching more easily?

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

About a dwarf and his oath

Incoming search terms:

• code to leave shroud heath barrow

• Changes
• A Dwarf and an Elf walk into a bar
• Playing on launch day
• MWO: Information Warfare
• I had reasons for the silence
• SWTOR 2 days later
• Day Two of SWTOR
• TOR Datacron: And We’re Off!
• After Christmas madness roundup
• Gameplay over Graphics

Now..after catching up at work..I have a little bit more time to write again and there are some things I want to write about.. even though Mythic is silent as a studio can be. If there weren’t bloggers writing about it you could not even tell if there was something like Mythic even existent.

This post is just a short.. I’m really back now.. and to give you something to giggle..and the members of the “No Elves Club” to cheer..here is the bestest screenshot you can take in WAR

Well.. the gobbo is of course cool .. that’s my shaman btw, but the cloud around the elves head should be a standard feature in this game!

It was never better to be grouped with elves .. and it will never be as good again.

At the course of my alt-ing I made some ..at least in my opinion.. nice screenshots. Maybe I will make them into a mini-series called Karic’s picture book of WAR. That’s it for today..more to follow. I promise

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

I had reasons for the silence

Incoming search terms:

• CHANGE ANDVANCED CLASS SWTOR
• ygnol barrow bugged

• Wrath of Heroes Beta Update
• Changes
• Relic Raid Tests on Warpstone
• Netflix Party Play Removed from Xbox 360
• Just scenery (part 2)
• SWTOR Atmosphere
• PTS Events
• Outlaw’s Den: I only see problems ahead
• Last post.. of the year
• Black Fire Pass

I just wanted to apologize for lack of new posts in the last couple of weeks. I had to travel a lot and work kept me busy. In my free time I played WAR (and some offline Games)..and WoH, but I had not the energy or time to write something. This will change… I promise.

I plan to do at least one additional scenery-post, because in the last couple of weeks I found some nice places in the game and I wanted to show you. Also on my list is a impression of the Beta-playing of WoH. And back to the topic WAR maybe just an update on what I’m doing in the game and some thoughts about the near future there..

So there is something to write.. and hopefully the next post won’t take that long….well that means if there is any reader left after this long break
See you on the battlefield.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Ping

Incoming search terms:

• skrim cade for bleak falls templ
• what is the code for the door at bleek falls barrow in skrim
• skrim bleak falls sanctum door code
• whats the code for bleak falls door i skrim
• skyrim spoiler blake barrow falls sanctum
• skrim falls barrow
• activate bleeks salt sanctum door
• skrim bleak falls sanctum puzzle
• bleak falls sanctum door skrim
• bleak fall sanctum door code skrim

• Just scenery (part 2)
• I had reasons for the silence
• About a dwarf and his oath
• Changes
• New ping on my radar
• SWTOR 2 days later
• SWTOR thoughts coming soon
• TOR Nexus Updates
• Latest SWTOR beta client will be patched for headstart & launch
• Last post.. of the year

At first I wanted to call the title for this post..or posts.. “It’s not you, it’s me”. I wanted to explain why a MOBA is no real alternative for me for playing a real MMO. I could have started with so many points, but it’s not about saying that MOBA’s are bad. Ach..I’m starting to write about stuff I didn’t really wanted to head in the first place

Just to keep it short.. focusing on WoH. In my eyes one of the aims is to deliver a game which actually doesn’t involve a lot of commitment to it. You are not tied to any character, don’t have to invest stupid amounts of time. You just hop in and play. There are many valid reasons why this is a good thing, but there is some stuff I would miss if this would be my only online game and/or I would play it for a whole evening. Actually I would miss this stuff that much that I most likely wouldn’t do online gaming any longer. (Just to make it clear.. I will try out WoH and play it besides WAR and never instead of WAR. You might understand me after this little series of posts)

The first part of things I need in an online game is the scenery .. and having time to enjoy it. WAR has a lot of great places which I actually enjoy to watch and where I often find new spots to look at. Sometimes I’m running through deserted zones (and RvR lakes looking for enemies) and it’s just fun to explore some stuff. In WoH there will be similar places like in WAR, but much more enclosed..and you won’t have the time to watch them.

There are lots of more nice places in WAR.. (and a lot more screenshots in my screenshot-folder) . It just takes sometimes a bit of a not-so-active-phase in a game to be able to realize it’s beauties..

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Just… scenery (Part 1)

Incoming search terms:

• yngol barrow pillars wont activate
• yngol barrow pilar
• shroud heart barrow pillar
• yngol barrows skyrim
• shroud hearth barrow pillar
• shroud heart barrow 4 combination
• shroud harth barrow door 4 animal pilar
• yngol barrow pillars won\t turn
• bleack fall barrpw combination
• yngol barrow pillars wont

• Just scenery (part 2)
• DOTA 2 is brilliant
• A Look at WAR
• The Sandbox Ecosystem
• Netflix Party Play Removed from Xbox 360
• Gameplay over Graphics
• My 2012 online gaming schedule
• New ping on my radar
• SWTOR Crafting: A new take on themepark crafting
• What the player really needs

In short words the to me important stuff is as follows:

• When a ram is destroyed, the defender get a boon (for 60s) which helps them killing some attackers near the keep. This boon goes away when people leave the keep for longer than 5s.
• Players can actively repair a keep door and even rebuild the outer one (inner one can’t be rebuild, but repaired). Rebuilding of the outer door works by sending a non-fighting, but killable NPC from the inner keep to the outer door. He also sells wood for repairing keep doors, just like we knew it from pre 1.4. This time though, it won’t be sold for gold but for RvR currencies.
• Ram gets a bit more defense and cannons are fixed.
• There is no additional renown-tick for defending or doing some of the new stuff

For a more detailed list, please follow the link to the official forum.

My first reaction to this proposed changes is quiet..positive. First of all I like it that it’s not just a renown-bonus for defending. Mythic seems to learn that this is not the way how fighting is encouraged. Thumbs up for this.

Overall this changes will most likely slow down the campaign and help defending a keep. The only drawback are the numbers.. Mythic has a tendency to not get the right numbers, i.e. in this case duration of the buff, the amount of the affected stats that are increased, stability of the ram, damage of siege equipment after the canons deal less damage..etc..

This has to be tweaked carefully to not stop the campaign all together or e.g. make the ram unkillable.

Another problem to me is that the campaign will still be focused around the keep.. after you can get the ram, there is no big need for doing something in the RvR lake other than trying to get to the keep. Gromson proposed that it should be mandatory for a zone flip that all the BO’s are tapped at the time the flag in the keep is tapped. I’m not sure this will help, but the general idea is nice because it helps small groups in defending and makes the zerg have to split up a bit. I also so there the problem, that a small, very well organized (high-RR) group can stop the whole campaign.. which would also not really be a good thing. Oh..where we both agree on is that the renown tick for locking should be removed all together Well..but this is all a different battlefront.

This time it’s about the keep defense and I think that this might encourage people to fight more at the keep as defenders have an incentive to kill the ram other than just having fun on a suicide mission. The bonuses help you in killing people and this grants you renown..especially when you have AAO. All this will be tricky though because it will be delicate to balance, but finally it seems that Mythic is getting the grab and not just throw out more (renown) stuff.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

WAR: Defending a keep

Incoming search terms:

• shroud hearth barrow outer ring
• outer ring shroud hearth skyrim
• outer ring skyrim shroud
• shroud hearth barrow inner ring answer
• Shroud Hearth Barrow Outer Inner
• skyrim break wooden barrier embershard mine
• skyrim shroud hearth barrow outer ring

• Relic Bonuses
• More Relic Info
• 1.4.5 hits the PTS
• LEGO Heroica: Castle Fortaan
• No WAR Boots?
• I don’t mind how Bioware has handled SWTOR launch so far
• Skyrim Black Falls Barrow Tip
• Thanksgiving Bonus Weekend
• Thanksgiving Bonus Weekend
• Bonus Weekend 02/03 – 02/06

Of course everyone is showing you the official announcement trailer. Or some nice PR-pics like this

Shameless as I am I just generate traffic without posting much on my own now

So check out what Mykiel has to say about the announcement and how Mourkain temple works in WoH.

Gaarawarr writes about his experience while playing the game during the Bloggerinvasion. He’s also showing some of the skills some heroes had (it’s not finished yet and so everything is not fixed), but it’s not all WoH. He also has to say something about WAR of course.

Bruglir isn’t decided on what he should think about WoH.

On the “German Front” Gromson and Njnel are quiet sure what they should think about WoH….

Of course there are Werit and Bootae writing about it, as well as there’s a discussion on Waaagh.de. Werit is more writing about his experience playing the alpha while Bootae prepared an interview.

I will write my own thought on this game later.. there are some points made in the overall discussion which makes me think over some stuff. There is one thing that surprises me though..well two things.

The first one is the overall reactions..I had expected a bigger rage-storm, but maybe people are just fed-up with how Mythic is handling stuff  and they just don’t care anymore- Move on to another game and so on…

The second stuff that surprised me.. even Buffed.de (a not really WAR-friendly site) is posting about WoH, even though their post shows that they have absolutely no clue on a game outside of WoW Because of all that re-branding stuff Mythic is no longer connected to the Warhammer Online game and especially with WoH..at least the pc-gaming websites cited the announcement to be made by Bioware (which isn’t false, but somehow it’s strange) and not Mythic.

Darn..I thought that I could get away without new stuff from me Well..I kept it to a minimum… for now *ta da daaaaaaa (imagine a dramatic music here)*

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Lot’s of WoH

Incoming search terms:

• skrim shroud hearth keycode

• Holidays and stuff
• Space Stallions
• I had reasons for the silence
• Well spank my arse and call me Charlie! WAR stuff
• Pew Pew Classics
• Gameplay over Graphics
• New ping on my radar
• Just scenery (part 2)
• StarDrive Alpha Video
• SWTOR Beta Impressions

There is a lot I wanted to ask more, but I wanted to keep it short and solid facts to ask for weren’t simply there or I had no clue about them. I still hope that you enjoy it anyways.

Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role in development of WoH.

My name is Graham Bennett and I’ve been working on games for nearly a decade, most recently as the Lead Designer on WoH. I joined Mythic last year when they tempted me away from rainy England with promises of sun and burgers (though they neglected to mention the tornados). I’ve been a long time fan of all things Warhammer so getting the chance to work on WoH was fantastic, and even better I got to be in from day one.

WoH is all about fast, furious fun. The raw entertainment of WAR Scenarios combined with the excitement and tension of 3 teams competing for the same goal. That’s right, Mythic is bringing 3 team combat to Warhammer0!

One of our goals was to avoid selling “power”. WAR, and indeed Mythic, has a great tradition of strong competitive gaming and that’s not something we want to sacrifice. Instead you’ll be unlocking new options, both tactical and cosmetic. Most things will be available using the currency you earn just playing games, and there will be accelerators if you just want to save some time.

It was looked at, several times, and every time the conclusion was that the WAR experience wouldn’t survive the transition. Subscription games and micro-transaction games are very different beasts, relying on different drivers for players. WAR would have become a game very different to the one so many of you are dedicated too, and that wasn’t acceptable to us.

At the Skype presentation and Blogger invasion (Impressions from that and stuff about Fortresses) you told us, that WAR will benefit from WoH. Many naysayers will now call WAR to be doomed (ok, they will do it anyway ) and declare that most casual players will leave the game. In fact you even said that WAR is for the competitive type of gamer and WoH to be more of a casual game. In what way is WAR having benefits because of WoH?

At the feature level it’s all about compatibility. WoH is being built using the same engine and tools as WAR and that makes it easy for us to move things around. So any work, particularly visuals, which are developed for WoH have the potential to be used in WAR. We already have a boatload of new armors which I’m sure the WAR team will want to talk more about. Another of our goals with WoH was to develop Champions which aren’t currently playable in WAR. We have quite a few of these lined up, from Vampires and Ogres to IP characters you’ll recognize from Warhammer. If you can play it in WoH then it’s a theoretically possible for it be a play-as-monster option for WAR, simple as that.

The WAR and WoH teams are very close and there’s constant knowledge and experience sharing. As to whether we’ll see a specific WoH scenario in WAR? That’s definitely a question for the WAR team

Last one – Döner Kebap or Currywurst with Fries? (At first I wanted to ask Pirate or Ninja, but then I remembered the Döner ).

What’s wrong with just Fish & Chips? I really miss Fish & Chips … I checked with Kai and unless he’s trying to trick me Currywurst sounds pretty good, certainly preferable to the suspicious Kebap! (Ninja all the way!)

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

WoH: Interview with Graham Bennett

Incoming search terms:

• woh warhammer
• warhammer woh

• Happy Winter Holidays
• Upcoming Free Server Transfers
• Interview with James Casey
• SWTOR Warzones have no level brackets
• WAR Producer update
• Best and Worst Games of 2011
• Promising PvP news for SWTOR in January
• My SWTOR PvP experience so far
• WAR 1.4.5 Q&A
• What the player really needs

Shortly after the announcement a Producer’s Letter from James Casey has been released which adresses the effect this will have on WAR.

Also Werit and Bootae wrote something about it. For those german speaking..visit Waaagh.de for the discussion.

What is WoH about? Well..in very short words the essence can be describe as: it’s f2p and 6v6v6.. 3 teams beating each other up

Well. I know that it’s not something many people expected..and wished for.. and even I am not sure if this is something I want, but I will give it a try. I will post on my thoughts in the near future.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

WoH: Wrath of Heroes announced

• I had reasons for the silence
• Last post.. of the year
• Just scenery (part 2)
• About a dwarf and his oath
• Changes
• MWO: Information Warfare
• SWTOR thoughts coming soon
• WAR Producer update
• Hello world!
• SWTOR Custom Items

Engineer

-Field Repair moves to Rank 22. This ability is renamed to Shock Grenade. You remove stagger effects from your ally target and 5 others in a 25 foot radius around them.

-Redeploy moves to Rank 3.

-Fixing the issue with Extra Ammo causing wild mobs to agro.

-Land Mine will no longer have a cast time. This should fix most of the issues of receiving an “Invalid Target” message on placement.

-Flak Jacket will no longer have a cast time. The value of the armor buff is reduced, but will stack with other armor buffs. The buff lasts 60 minutes and will no longer have the 20 hit removal condition.

Magus

-Strengthen Thrall moves to Rank 22. This ability is renamed to Shocking Jolt. You remove stagger effects from your ally target and 5 others in a 25 foot radius around them.

-Resummon moves to Rank 3.

-Fixing the issue with Lasting Chaos causing mobs to agro. We are also fixing the tactic Chaotic Attunement.

-Daemonic Infestation will no longer have a cast time. This should fix most of the issues of receiving an “Invalid Target” message on placement.

-Daemonic Armor will no longer have a cast time. The value of the armor buff is reduced, but will stack with other armor buffs. The buff lasts 60 minutes and will no longer have the 20 hit removal condition.

As with the SW/SH the focus is not on increasing damage, but giving some more/better utility. Overall I like the changes.

Especially the Shocking abilities (Shock grenade and Shocking Jolt) make the Engineer/Magus a nice addition to a group. Steven added a bit later that the ability has a 20s cooldown, is in throw range (i.e. 65 ft, so in general melee range ), has no cast time and costs 0 ap. Sounds a bit too good for this skill, but I’m sure that this stats are not final and are subject to change.

The stagger (land mine Daemonic Infestation) getting his cast time changed is a work around as you can see from the notes. Overall I have still difficulties with the land mine as it fires off inconsistently, but the cast time reduction may help at least with the positioning of that %(§”(*! .. thing

The self-armor buff changes were something many folks demanded for a long time. There is nothing said about the value of the buff, but I like it that it stacks with potions and other abilities..a bit more survivability is nice as I think that both careers are a bit too soft, concerning the ranges of most of their skills.

Are this changes raising the Engineer and Magus to new heights..making them OP ? No, but overall I think that these changes are nice.  I like the approach of giving both careers more utility .. especially against those stagger-bots.

Does this mean that both career are perfect? No.. but at least the changes are heading in the right direction. This is something not all changes in the near past deserved as a comment

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Shocking Engineers and Magi

Incoming search terms:

• what are the pillar placements in ansilvund in skyrim

• Tier 7 Armor Sets – Round 6
• Mining in Skyrim
• Choosing a Class
• Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure … 3DS!
• First day of SWTOR and plenty more to go
• Wrath of Heroes Beta Update
• Empire and Chaos Generals
• RvR in SWTOR?
• Christmas Recap
• Dwarf and Greenskin Generals

This time it’s the perception of the own strength/weaknesses people seem to have about their career. First of all..only very few folks in the forums say that they can’t handle the career that they are playing for an extended period of time. If something is going wrong then it’s someone else has done something wrong (most likely dev’s don’t being able to balance *cough*, dps-healers don’t doing the stuff you think they are supposed to do, i.e. serve you as heal-bot, and so forth).

Bah..I didn’t mean to write that stuff in the first place and better stop this line of thought… I wanted to point your attention to the Shadow warriors and Squig Herders complaining about the changes to their careers.

I understand to some point the complaints from the SW’s.. at first sight the changes will change the way their career will function a lot. Many see it as a nerf, because one of the crucial offensive weapons (knockdown) is replaced by a self-knockback, which most of them don’t see as needed with their current style of play. How this will work for the SW’s ..I have no idea. So I’m cautious in rating it, but from a healer’s perspective it seems nice that they can get away from melee’s as SW’s are often horrible tanks

Turning to the Squig Herder. This self-knockback is imo definitely nothing a SH needs. Both gobbo careers are kings in kiting. They don’t need a bit of more CC. Oh..but we deal so little damage they will say.. but a ranged career that can’t be killed by so many other careers is still strong I will say. Ok ..a SH can’t solo-kill all enemies in 1vs1, but he..well..it.. can kill a lot. So whining about not getting enough love by this changes is ..somehow funny.

Before any of the PRDPS demands more damage.. let’s see how the mitigation stuff will be handled. You can’t ignore those planned changes. This will affect the PRDPS a lot and in the long term a straight damage buffs to the abilities right now won’t do any good later. Handling mitigation will be ..fascinating anyways. If it’s done wrong, than melee setups will be even more favored than they are now. So working on the CC abilities of those PRDPS first seems like a good approach, but it shouldn’t be the last one. What I wished for would be a faster schedule on the changes to PRDPS. Waiting another two month seems too long..but those times with hotfixes and tweaking at a higher frequency are gone..

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Back from holiday

• Tobias and Rockgut
• Bounty Hunter PvP
• Dwarf and Greenskin Generals
• Would Reckoning make a good MMORPG?
• Would Reckoning make a good MMORPG?
• SWTOR Beta Impressions
• A Dwarf and an Elf walk into a bar
• Out with the old nemesis
• Just scenery (part 2)
• Christmas Recap

On another note..the big announcement from Mythic that was planned for today is postponed and is planned for Gamesday in Cologne (17-21st Aug.).

Just as a small appetizer.. I’ve done a very short E-mail interview with a Mythic dev and will publish it after the announcement. This is my first interview done for this blog and I hope that you will like it..but as the announcement is postponed so is this interview. So stay tuned while I walk on the beaches of Rømø.

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Gone for a week

• I had reasons for the silence
• About a dwarf and his oath
• Last post.. of the year
• Just scenery (part 2)
• MWO: Dev Interview Randal Bills
• MWO: Information Warfare
• Interview with James Casey
• Changes
• Q and A with James Casey
• New ping on my radar

My identity. You know what people say. There are so much douchebags on the internet, because of anonymity, not fearing any consequences for their doing. I don’t think that I fall in that category

There are others who chose a name and stick to it for most of their online activities..that’s more me. I picked the name Karic back in 1997, so I’m quiet used to be called by that name on many occasions. Some folks I met IRL only know be by that name. If I appear to be rude in any way on the webs it’s because I am that way..not because I hide behind that name. Honesty can sometimes be as bad as being a douchebag

But that’s not the thing I wanted this post to be about. The problem is that this blog’s title is Zizlak’s Travel Diary…and I wrote most of the stuff signing it with Zizlak. This is because I wanted to play a shaman in the first place, but chose to play Order, because shortly before release of WAR it became more apparent that there will be more folk playing Destruction than Order. I didn’t want to join the bigger team then..and don’t want to do it now (that’s why my Destro toons on Drakenwald are..frozen).

It felt wrong to write something about Order and Runepriests signing it with the name I chose for my shaman (btw. you can greet him if you see me on Badlands ). That’s the reason why I switched back to Karic.. the name I chose for my main character when I can play a dwarf. Now I’m sort of a split personality as in some comments I still sign as Zizlak (sometimes forced to) and some comments are made as Karic. This feels strange and I’m thinking about trying to switch some of the accounts to Karic and drop Zizlak . Having one identity again..not two.

Do you stick with one name for your (gaming) internet presence or do you switch around and have no fixed names? Is this name for you an identity or just a label?

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

Identity

• I had reasons for the silence
• Just scenery (part 2)
• About a dwarf and his oath
• SWTOR Warzones have no level brackets
• Server Merges Incoming
• I don’t mind how Bioware has handled SWTOR launch so far
• New ping on my radar
• SWTOR Launch Preparation
• PvP Stats: Not Necessary Before, Not Necessary Now
• Drinking from the XP Fire Hose

Maybe you are interested in what I mentioned when I was being asked what was the best and worst thing Mythic has done in the past 6 months (actually 1.4.0 and after). If not..well..then you can skip the next paragraphs

So..the best. Well..nothing too surprising. I’m with most of the other bloggers and say that the changes to RR-cap on lower levels and the adjustment to RR-requirements for lower gear is the best thing that Mythic has done. Imo it smoothed the progression from T1 up to T4 and you enter T4 with a..gear not being totally crap. You will be no hero, but it’s much smoother. I also mentioned that this changes bring problems to “veterans”, i.e. r40 players sitting on rr40-50 because the changes were brought after they hit T4.

What I forgot to mention were the bad things that these changes brought to T2 and T3. It’s trying to maximize rr by constant locking zones (without getting much exp), which sadly leads to scenarios never pop. The whole experience get’s …dumb. For a theorycrafter there’s a nice side effect. You can see that the lower armor sets are somewhat balanced. When you enter T3 with pretty crappy gear you still can be competitive. The increase in power is not that much like it’s in T4 with sov and above.. the game is less based on gear than on actual playing skills. This makes T2 and T3 more than once more entertaining than T4.

This leads me to the worst thing that Mythic has done past 1.4.0. Imho it’s actually the implementation of rr100 and all the stuff related to it ; i.e. gear, effective ranks.

Again I should have been more wordy on that..but I think that James took my criticism as being to general and not..fixable and wanted quickly to move on

So I’ll add some more explanation here. All that the RR100 stuff brought was more.. grind, selfishness, gear and power gap. It watered down the skill needed by the player behind the keyboard and emphasized numbers (stats, procs) which you as a player can’t influence anyways, because some of the stuff is always there or fires off automatically. This made most of the fights just a gear/rank/rr-comparision and that is imho a very bad thing for a PvP/RvR game.. RR/Gear should give advantages to you, but they should not be so big as to be the decisive ..well..only..factor determining the outcome of a fight.
But I’m starting to repeat myself.. so I’ll better end here

–

Karic (doomdiver.wordpress.com)

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

What I said..and forgot to say

• PvP Stats: Not Necessary Before, Not Necessary Now
• MWO: Information Warfare
• A bit more Skyrimming
• Elf Generals
• Dwarf and Greenskin Generals
• Empire and Chaos Generals
• Raid Lockouts Should Be Removed
• Best and Worst Games of 2011
• Taking my foot off the SWTOR pedal a bit
• SWTOR 2 days later

Full post: WarhammerFeeds.com

To all the blackguards out there

• SWTOR or Skyrim?
• Skyward Sword Impressions
• Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and stay current on all things Keen and Graev
• After Christmas madness roundup
• More Relic Info
• MWO: Dev Interview Randal Bills
• SWTOR 1-40 Commentary
• Out with the old nemesis
• Countdown to Skyrim
• Version 1.4.5 Comes to PTS