Tag Archives: MMOs

Quick update

Here’s a quick update about what I’ve been up to lately… and a bunch of Warhammer Online screenshots because… why not?

First, starting with Warhammer Online since it is probably pretty apparent that I’ve been doing a lot of that.

I finally got to my main character to tier 4 despite being distracted by several new alts. All of the various tier 4 zones I’ve visited lately have been relatively awesome – Eataine with its super bright blue skies, lush green fields and orchards, and beautiful Elven towers, Praag with it’s massive city sprawl, Reikland with its centerpiece, Reik River Observatory, keeps, and walled towns galore, and Kadrin Valley with it’s scenic snowy mountains, valleys, and epic Dwarven structures.

“Checking out a cool tower in Dragonwake.”

I quickly made the most of my limited schedule and put my nose back to the PVE grind stone questing in the relatively boring Elf lands once again. After gauging how much experience I was gaining and the levels of the mobs in the adjacent zones I decided I’d break away from my original plan of sticking only to my racial lands for solo PVE and ended up completing (including grinding out chapter influence!) the first zones in Empire and Dwarven lands as well long with the beginning chapters and first 3 side zones of the next set of zones. I just finished wrapping up the second chapter of Dragonwake back over in the Elven lands and am currently sitting just another short sit-down away from dinging 40 – the end is almost here and still absolutely tons of potential PVE content to go through! Perhaps the most exciting part of my character advancement, until I get to 40 at least, has been qualifying to use all of the great gear that I’ve slowly been gathering from off the auction house. That doesn’t sound that great but I’ve already maxed out my chosen mastery and don’t see any major benefit in using the leftover points in other trees and I’ve also got my tactics pretty much locked in until I get my forth slot at level 40.

I did do my first couple of Tier 4 scenarios as well, though so far which was interesting to say the least. I, of course, played the current flavor of the month scenario in tier 4, Serpent’s Passage, which is thought was pretty bizarre. It seems to be one of those scenarios where it is either absolute chaos or an utter beat down and seldom anywhere in between. I also played Thunder Valley a few times which I enjoyed. The I think my policy of waiting until I was further along in the various tiers to PVP much has been a sound one. 🙂

“My Swordmaster alt posing in Nordenwatch.”

With the recent releases of World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and Lord of The Rings Online expansions and Warhammer Online rapidly losing its “oooh, new, shiny game!” appeal for a lot of players we’re really seeing a lot of population drop off. Our server hasn’t suffered that badly, nor has my guild, but some have been utterly decimated. Still, my guild has it’s own problems – we’ve suffered plenty of membership attrition for a variety of reasons. With a mature focused guild like ours though they tends to be more because of various real life issues than game hopping or silly drama. This is all further hampered by the raging case of “altitus” everyone seems to have which included the establishment of a Destruction guild on a second server which has generated far more interested than I think any of us anticipated. I’m one of the few hold outs but it is pretty disappointing logging on to see no or few other guildmates online and no fun at all listening to my former allies talk smack about Order while cheerleading for Destruction on our voice server. We’ve taken some steps to help the situation out including having a serious discussing about the issue one night recently and looking seriously at joining an in-game guild alliance. Still, I sadly fear that my time in this guild may be nearing an end if things continue down their current course.

“A convoy of Imperial Steam Tanks escorted by Knights of The Blazing Sun.”

Speaking of those new expansions I’ve been resisting picking of Wrath of The Lich King as I don’t really feel like it offers me too much. I’m sure the 70-80 PVE content is great (if not more of the same) but the new class and other additions don’t do much for me. I’d definitely still like to check out EQ2 and return to LoTRO at some point though but neither idea seems feasible until I’m over WAR. Sadly one game that I had talked about here not too long ago including plans to return to it some day, Tabula Rasa, has announced that they’ll be closing their doors early next year. I’m pretty bummed by the news as the game had tons of potential and the development team seemed to be putting an outrageous amount of effort into updating the game post release. Respect to those on the TR live dev team and I hope they’re all able to find great jobs somewhere else if they aren’t reassigned to other NCSoft projects.

I finally managed to play my first couple of online matches of Warhammer: Battle March (Xbox 360) with my brother. They mostly consisted of me showing him how to do various things and some experimentation but it was fun none the less. I’ve instructed him to have a 15,000 point army of his choice ready to do battle for next time. I hope to get into the final chapter of the single player campaign which features Orcs and Dark Elves soon and finally get this game out of my 360 so I can move onto the next thing in my backlog. 🙂

“Sightseeing in Dwarf lands.”

Speaking of the 360 the new “NXE” dashboard update was released last week. Personally, I’m pretty happy with it. First of all, although I didn’t get to see how/if it effects matchmaking, the new party system seems like a simple, logical evolution of the old chat features. The avatars are neat – we definitely need some more customization options, especially with clothes, but I was able to make my avatar look quite a bit like me according to a couple of people who have checked it out. They don’t really add much to the experience but I’m not necessarily bothered by them either. The new friends list, which shows each of your friend’s avatars in a room, or their party in a room, and what they’re doing is pretty neat but much less useable than the old one. Of course you can still access your friends list the old way via the guild button which I assume most people would be doing while gaming anyway.

“My Xbox Live facsimile. Yes, I really do have stupid sideburns.”

The dashboard itself is much more responsive and feels a lot less cluttered – I know some people have complained about the adds, but personally I feel having a few Xbox 360 related adds within each menu is much more tasteful and much less intrusive than having little blinking ads scattered all around the screen, blocking your wallpaper as with the old dashboard blades. Netflix streaming is great and we’ve already scoped out several shows and a movie on it since we’ve had it. The rollout itself seemed to be pretty trouble free. You always hear horror stories of freeze ups or entirely bricked systems during these things but, for the most part, it seemed to go extremely smooth. The update downloaded and installed very quickly and the whole process was quite painless for me.

“About to cook some smores in Isle of The Dead.”

Lastly, after the release of a couple of new game that interest me, the Castlevania and the DS version of Chrono Trigger, for instance, I’ve finally decided its time I upgrade from a GBA to a DS. Hopefully this’ll end up being a Christmas present – I’m actually pretty stoked about it. 🙂

Halloween

“My main, a High Elf White Lion, posing at rank 29.”

So, I’ve killed a lot of undead recently…

“Attempt number two after we managed to pull all 35 of them at one time.”

I spent a little while grinding on the first stage of a couple of public quests in the Empire zone in order to get some influence items I wanted and while doing so hooked up with an open party run by a guild I’d never run into before, Crimson Phoenix. A bunch of rowdy dwarves but seemingly pretty cool people. We ended up running through both of the nearby public quests a couple of times and had a lot of fun. Naturally, many zombies were slain.

“There’s Destruction around here somewhere!”

Later that week Mythic launched their Halloween related event, Witching Night. One part of it involved participating in a public quest to kill enemy players in the RvR zones while another consisted of killing some new, rare undead mobs that were spawning in pretty random patches all across the world. I first hooked up with an RvR warband which was pure, awesome chaos. There must have been somewhere between 4 and 6 warbands worth of people total all fighting in one spot. It was actually a lot less exciting than it sounds as the two sides held their lines resulting in a battle of attrition with all out combat being pretty sparse.

After hanging around there for 20 or 30 minutes I linked up with some of my guild mates and we decided to attempt some of the PvE parts of the influence quest. We wound up slaughtering Restless Spirits until each of us had at least one of their rare Witching Night mask drops. Between not being too into grinding annoying, hard to find mobs or participating in annoying, hard to fight RvR battles and my play schedule doing the limited time that the event was taking place that was about all of the Witching Night event I could manage.

I’d have to say the event was hit and miss. I thought the amount of content for a week long, seasonal event on short notice was good. The mechanics of the event itself left a little to be desired but I’m sure they’ve learned some lessons for next time.

“Over the hill!”

On Halloween night itself I ended up occupying myself for part of the evening by testing out some of my new AoE moves by grinding out a Bestial Token for killing 1000 zombies. It only took an hour or so but it was still pretty painful. At least I managed to leave the place with a backpack overflowing with loot and a shiny new trophy…

“I’m having Dead Rising flashbacks!”

That finally finishes off my back log of WAR screenshots. Well, that is until I procrastinate on posting any new ones I take. I’ll keep posting my interesting ones in the future but hopefully they’ll be a little less of them and a little more variety to my posts now. My main is currently rank 31 realm rank 24 and after I PvP my way up to rank 32 I will be putting his nose back down onto the PvE grindstone for a while. I’m almost to the end game… I can taste it! (It tastes kind of like stale vanilla waffers if you were wondering.)

Destruction Classes

I originally wrote but never posted my views on fighting against the different Destruction classes as a White Lion while I was still in tier 1. I’ve come back and revisited these notes with updates taking into account where I am now, at the end of tier 3. I’m throwing a few basically unrelated lake RvR screenshots into the mix as well. Oh, here’s one now!

“Hey, I think I can see my house from up here!”

Witch Elves – Tier 1: More than anyone else Witch Elves seem to rush out ahead of the pack to jump on targets even if an entire order line is headed towards them. Stupid players? Maybe, but from a roleplay perspective I suppose it fits well with their blood thirsty nature. I don’t usually have much problem killing them, even in a one on one situation, although they are surprisingly tough and do take a lot longer to kill than you’d expect from someone running around practically nude. Still, I enjoy putting the overzealous ones in their place. Tier 3 Update: My opinion on Witch Elves hasn’t changed a whole lot. They seem to be a little less reckless and many will rely on their stealth ability more to get behind our lines and go after our healers more effectively. While I still have no problem killing them, generally, I respect their damage output more than I did in tier 1. They are definitely capable single target damage dealers and dueling one can quickly go the wrong way for me.

Disciples of Khaine – Tier 1: What the hell? I learned quickly not to consider DoKs a target of opportunity as they can really take a beating and often outlast me in one on one combat. This screwed with me pretty good at first as they look pretty squishy and, well, they’re healers right? Wrong! DoK’s are Destruction’s Warrior Priests – they can take and deal a respectable amount of damage AND heal… Ugh! Tier 3 Update: Still a massive pain in the ass for me. Since it is generally agreed upon that taking out enemy healers first is a good strategy for winning fights, and there’s almost no debate that a good enemy healer can change the tide of an entire skirmish, I do end up going for DoKs pretty frequently. In a good, chaotic battle I have little trouble burst damaging them to death before they get off more than a single heal but in one versus one situations they still often tear me up. I honestly feel like they’re just a little out of balance. Last night, for instance, my 31 White Lion was absolutely destroying his opponents. I felt unstoppable… Literally ending scenarios with double the damage of the next guy in the list and, by the way, setting a new personal best record. During the end of one of these fights I encountered a lone Disciple of Khaine and after ignoring him initially yet having him give chase decided to attempt to teach him a lesson. With the scenario clock ticking down I very nearly died to him solo – saved by the bell with just a sliver of life left. Just before the screen faded, however, I noticed that he was only rank 18. Seriously?

Sorceress – Tier 1: One of my favroite targets. They die pretty damn quickly and I’m not sure I’ve ever been killed by one unless it was a total gankage situation. Tier 3 Update: Still pretty easy to kill although I definitely noticed a sharp rise in their lethality in tier 3 scenarios. Particularly their annoying and deadly Pit of Shades AoE spell which seems to devastate some of the more crowded areas such as the walkways in the Doomfist Crater scenario. Obviously RDPS classes excel more at some situations than others and there are definitely times when I’ll go out of my way to put these foes down quickly.

Black Orc – Tier 1: Argh… Black Orcs are some tough mofos. I usually avoid them if possible, especially one on one. A Black Orc who is at the top level range of their tier, well geared, and played well does service to the term “tank”. You and your buddies can literally beat on one of these fools for minutes without seeming to make much progress. Tier 3 Update: Not much as changed here. They still don’t do enough damage to feel like a threat to me but they can be so insanely difficult to kill that I often avoid trying to fight one unless there’s no better targets. If one of these guys has a healer than I won’t even so much as dent him without turning my attention to his support first. I haven’t encountered a large amount high level, well geared Black Orcs in tier 3 but I expect they’ll be an even bigger headache at rank 40.

“They’ll never find my massive siege weapon hidden in this bush.”

Squig Herder – Tier 1: Hmm! One of my Destruction counterparts has sadly never been a big concern to me which really makes me wonder how Destruction players view White Lions. Their bows don’t seem to do much and neither do their Squigs. They can be pretty annoying, as can White Lions, but don’t seem to be nearly as lethal. They die quite quickly. Definitely seem to be a support class and seeing 3 of them up on a wall raining arrows on individuals below made me think that they are probably quite effective at that role. Tier 3 Update: I’ve noticed them putting out a little more damage than they had at lower levels but it is still hard to consider them a threat. When some of the RDPS classes get some damage love in patch 1.05 the story could very well be quite different, however. As far as killing them goes they’re generally an even easier target than their Shaman brethren.

Shaman – Tier 1: Shamans seem about the same as Squig Herders to me. Their attacks can be annoying but the main thing I worry about when facing a Shaman is who they might be healing. Like the Squid Herder they die quickly. Tier 3 Update: Shaman definitely seem to benefit from more survivability as they rank up. Given their height and their tendency to stay back from groups they can be hard to focus on in the first place and when you do finally go after one they are often quite tricksy with their damage shields, roots and the like. Sometimes I’ll have trouble cutting through one’s shields or landing that last, lethal blow before they heal themselves up a bit, but generally I still don’t consider them too difficult of an opponent. Their healing abilities do definitely get my attention, however.

Chosen – Tier 1: Not nearly as impressive as the Black Orc. I usually avoid them though when I do face them I fare much better. Good defense, decent damage, but fairly bland overall. They sure look cool though. 😉 Tier 3 Update: Nothing new to report here, sadly enough. I was kind of expecting Chosen to come into their own but as opponents they still feel like weaker, easier to kill Black Orcs to me.

“Another nice view from the battlements.”

Marauder – Tier 1: My other Destruction counterpart. I love killing these dorks. Seriously, when I see a big mob and I’m looking for a target of opportunity I usually go after a Marauder if there’s no one half dead hanging around. Marauders seem, err… Over confident in their abilities. They’re always running around aggressively but I usually have absolutely no trouble taking them down. I will say that I once fought one particular one in a scenario who seemed to have good gear, was at the top rank range in his tier, and seemed to be played pretty well, who was very tough and quite deadly, but that was definitely the exception. I do, however, wonder if I’ll be seeing more Marauders like him as I level up. Tier 3 Update: Not much has changed on the Marauder front other than I see a lot more of them going for AoE damage than I used to. If a Marauder catches me in a bad spot (low health, etc.) or has back up he can usually kill me before I can finish him off but the rest of the time I usually have the upper hand. I’ve run into more of these higher level Marauders packing good gear and apparently being played well as of late though and they seem as if they might indeed out damage me. Still, this game isn’t about dueling and over all, in the situations I run into them the most in, I feel that I am superior.

Magus – Tier 1: It seems like I’ve rarely fought Maguses but when I have they usually run for their lives as soon as I engage them. No real problem taking them out and their spells seem more annoying than anything. Tier 3 Update: Again, not much has changed. They don’t seem like they pack a ton of damage or maybe my class just isn’t a favored target. They’re easy enough to kill. Like the Squig Herder they should be getting some damage buffs in the next patch which may entirely change my view of them.

Zealot – Tier 1: I don’t think I’ve seen very many Zealots at all and those I did weren’t much of a concern. They died quickly and didn’t do much note worthy for the short period of time that they were alive. Tier 3 Update: I still don’t see a ton of Zealots running around and when I do as healers they’re often one of my first targets. They don’t seem to be able to defend themselves as well as Shamans – maybe they do more damage to me while I’m chasing one down (?) but I bring them down quicker and every time and that is usually all that matters.