Lagolas-Mmorpg.blogspot.com

Revival

2012-01-30T10:18:00.003+08:00

This blog is getting revived! I am almost reaching the level cap on Rift Online. Will do a writeup on the leveling phase of the game soon.

Order is really EZ MODE

2009-10-11T12:52:00.002+08:00

I have been playing my Warrior Priest on Gorfang more lately and I have to say that Order really has it MUCH MUCH easier!

Just compare the DOK vs WP up to level 25 ( since I have only reached lvl 25 on my WP). At level 12, WPs get Smite while DOKs get Essence Lash.

Thats a gamebreaker ALREADY. I find it so easy to keep my Fury above 200 with Smite in medium to big fights or rather in fights with more than 3 Destro.

25ft vs 50 ft.
45 SE vs Up to 100+ Fury on average
10s CD vs 5s CD

Like WTF? I can constantly churn out group heals without having to melee at all just by spamming smite whenever its available. I think not all WPs are realizing the massive utility of Smite and I hope they don't or it will get the nerfbat.

Add in 100 more on the base number of the group heal for WP, you get a better healer. PERIOD!

To prove my point, I can solo heal my party in big skirmishes and they never fall below 60% HP. I can keep my BW buddy up even though he is on CQ and does not have a guard. If my BW buddy has a guardbot, 3man can wipe 1 Destro WB EASILY, at least in T3.

So is that EASY mode or what?

On Selfish Players

2009-10-04T23:43:00.003+08:00

Ok lets admit it, all of us are selfish. We all want our loot and want to gear up our own toons. I admit I am like that too, I have been coveting for the Dark Promise Gown for a month now haha.

But being blindly selfish is destructive to a guild. Me and a few of my close friends in guild have come to feel that we have been extending help to those in guild yet most of them are not reciprocating it.

I understand that I am not paying their sub and I cant dictate what they can or cannot do. I also realize that most people have limited playtime and want to do their own things.

But it gets very irritating when you have time to farm in land of the dead for sandstorm items but dont have time to help out a guildie.

And its over the edge when you boot a guildie from a party(without saying anything) and claim you dont know him even though he is active and very helpful.

I just think that some people have no conscience. Cos I can never be so greedy for my own loot and dont feel bad at all.

BTW, this is a screenshot of an engy exploiting in LOTD. He killed me at the far northern end of the warcamp!

Art of Waaaaagh!

2009-09-24T21:27:00.006+08:00

Ok. How many times have you winced at the line, "Target their healers, you noobs!"

Before many of you veteran War players jump on my throat, I would like to agree that this is a fundamentally correct statement. However, BLINDY charging at their backlines is just a no-no.

To illustrate my point, I would draw a typical layout of a skirmish.

Some Updates

2009-09-24T21:14:00.006+08:00

With the new games season taking its toll, War has been rather quiet of late. Sc pop frequency has been driven down a notch and ORVR is less zergy. (a good thing =P) But we are no longer capped for forts which make it hard to take them down.

However, I did have some memorable moments in the past few weeks. I took a trip to Tomb of Vulture Lord and downed the 1st 2 bosses! =) We are still having problems surviving the inital pull of the 3rd boss since he zips around so haphazardly due to lag.

In addition, I finally had Nkari downed with my LV team + 2 foreign additions, Slyendian and Gatch. They have officially joined Perdition as of Wednesday. Welcome Sly and Gatch!

Below are some screenies!

And Perdition finally hit lvl 37! Hooray for awesome mounts!

My UI Setup

2009-09-15T16:36:00.002+08:00

For the benefit of my friends who were interested in my UI setup. Its a setup that allows for a mix between hotkeying and clicking. As you noticed, the hotbars with the skills most used are on my right since I am a right hander.

Mods used:

1) Pure
2) Squared
3) Phantom
4) DAOC Buff
5) State of Realm
6) Nerfed Buttons/ Nerfed Buttons Sequence Builder
7) Target Ring
8) Warhammer Scrolling Combat Text
9) Libslash

It Gets Better >=)

2009-09-15T16:34:00.003+08:00

As a side point, Mourkain Temple is just such an AOE fest!

My Best Yet

2009-09-11T21:03:00.002+08:00

Nice SC today! Got my personal record in Damage Done and Deathblows(i think). But the Order were mostly scrubs anyway, no way I am getting that sorta of numbers against good Order players.

The Hunter's Guide to the Hunter's Vale

2009-09-02T17:07:00.006+08:00

I am liking this Live Event so far compared to the last one where we were merely clicking boxes for a week. Well reikland factory was a blast but the rest of the Live Event was just meh.

This Live Event is just so hilarious in so many ways! You have warbands chasing after a white stag, someone ganking you only to be turned into a swine and the incessant whining on region chat.

But the best thing about this Live Event has to be the new instance: Hunter's Vale. It is not a very hard instance and you can probably clear it with anni/conq gear in a well balanced group. But it is a painful one if you dont know how to avoid 60% of the thrash mobs to save time. There is only a 34min timer to complete the instance! You can still get your stag cape if you kill Kurnous after the timer ends but you cannot get your gold bags.

A mini guide to the Hunter's Vale:

When your party enters the instance, have everyone group up and the tank at the head of the column. Then mount up and run along the right edge of the main path all the way till the Hero Tree Kin. Take care to avoid the sprites near the small monolith a Y junction in the path. Just keep to the right of the path and keep moving! Don't stop even if you aggro some mobs! Only stop to fight the mobs at the Tree Boss area.

The Tree boss is a simple tank and spank. After you cleared the 3 dryad champs, he will come alive and the MT will have to grab him. When the Tree boss is down, shoot down the decayed tree he was standing next to which will tumble down to form a bridge. Nifty eh? =)

From here on its a race to the 3rd mini boss. Let me explain: there are 3 mini bosses, namely a dog mother (bitch =P), wolf mother and a lion mother. Have your tank at the head of your column again. Run through the pups and go straight for the dog mother who will be resting under a low cavern. Focus DPS on the mother, once she is down run out of the cavern and head for the wolf mother. Do the same thing, focus dps on mother and run through the lion cubs.

This time you got to kill everything at the spot where the Lion mother is before proceeding. I suggest you bring a sorceress for some AOE bursts.

Then comes the first bump in the road for most people. The Lion king and his Queen. You will destroy a vine gate and have everyone enter the cave before engaging or someone will be trapped when the vine gate closes. Throughout the fight, focus dps on the Lion king.

After the Lion king is down to about 80%, the Lion queen will appear. DO not kill the Lion queen while the King is alive. Doing so will enrage him and he will one hit everyone!

The Lion queen will randomly target members in the party and charge at them. There seems to be a bilelord mechanic here where the further she runs the more dmg she does, but I am not sure. The person who is charged should detaunt the Lion queen if he is a squishy. For your information, the lion queen can be snared and stunned. However, kiting and CC the queen is only necessary if you dont have a offtank to guard the person being targeted by the Lion queen. If not, the offtank just have to switch guards to the person being targeted by the queen. As a result, everyone will have to stay close throughout the fight for the guard switch to be effective. Once the King is down, dps down the queen with her cubs and the fight is over. As a sidenote, if the fight drags and there are quite a number of cubs, AOE them down so the healers can have less trouble healing.

After the Lion boss, the party will reach a mini puzzle at a place called stonehenge. If done properly, 6 eagles should spawn which will take you to the next encounter. Right click the eagles for a ride. =)

Then comes the mastermind behind all this nonsense. The spirit of Kurnous himself. For a god, he is quite a pushover but he still can own you if you do not understand the fight.

There are 2 phases to the fight.

Phase 1

Once Kurnous drops below 70%, he will emote and disappear into one of the vine portals. DPS down the vine portals quickly while avoiding the javelins that shoot out of them. Its best to stand to the side of the portal that is active and avoid the middle of the treetop place. If you do not dps down the portals quickly enough, Kurnous will respawn and own your party with some MAD AOE which the party has to dodge. FYI, you cannot rez in this fight.

Phase 2

Once Kurnous respawns, he will go into different beast aspects throughout the fight. There are 3 aspects, namely Lion, Lupine and Canine. Each aspect grants him a different special attack. Lion aspect grants him a blizzard like AOE, Lupine grants him a frenzy attack and Canine grants him a pindown attack which disables the victim.

To survive the encounter, you have to pick the right animal to help you for each aspect. Picking an animal will grant you a ability to mitigate Kurnous' special attack.

For simplicity:

If Kurnous is in Lion, Pick the Dog.
If he is in Lupine, Pick the Lion
If he is in Canine, Pick the Wolf

In summary, Lion>Wolf>Dog>Lion

After you survive each aspect, Kurnous will return to his original form where you can attack him again. After about 4 rounds of transformations, he should be down. Congrats on clearing Hunter's Vale! It has no lockout timer so farm it as you wish. =)

Additional Link to another guide: http://grimnir.mmofansites.com/posts/1492-hunters-vale-tips-and-strategies

Hi To my Guildies!

2009-08-29T03:13:00.003+08:00

Haha I was very surprised some guildies managed to find my blog since I dont get many visitors anyway. It is a good thing that I did not blog anything bad about Perdition here =P

Not that there is anything bad about Perdition anyway heh.

A little update on my War progress:

1) Got my full invader set after 3 visits to Altdorf
2) Wearing 4DP/2Inv now and loving the increased survivability
3) Loving how Perdition premades roll Order like sushi 90% of the time
4) The other 10% of the time we bump into our old pals from Ironclaw

Missed the LV run that was brought forward to Thursday since I was in NTU doing cheerleading (hehe orky). And Sorceress boots dropped! Boo hoo hoo!

Been having some rough bumps in real life as well. Suffice to say that I was almost single. It wasnt easy letting go of the relationship. Its like the time when I had to force myself to quit WOW so I could concentrate on University.

I hope I wouldnt have to force myself to quit War one day because I love the people I am playing with right now. Even more than the people I used to play with in WOW. WOW is a tad too hardcore for me since I am going to start work soon. Like I was commenting the other day with a guildie, War is a game that allows to remain competitive even though you take it easy from time to time.

Now I am a computer nerd since I dont go out much anymore till I start work. Gonna work harder at War to gear up my Sorc and perhaps level my dusty shaman haha.

Target: Full DP and RR68

On the first Night in Volkmar, I went to Altdorf...

2009-08-22T03:24:00.002+08:00

So after the dust settle from all the hassle in the server transfer, the Oceanic peeps have finally started to rise in Volkmar.

On Thursday night, most of us were just content to follow the Destro PUG Zerg. In fact, most of us were too engrossed in enjoying the non stop scenarios to care much about ORVR yet haha.

Then comes Friday, most of the original Ironclaw guilds and alliances were rebuilt. The real action began. Ironclaw veterans finally pried the zerg leadership away from the Volkmarians. Revitalised by the new leadership, the Ironclaw veterans led Volkmar destro to 3 fort pushes in 1 night, of which Reikwald and Shining Way fell.

The door to Altdorf was opened! Finally after 3 months of wait, Ironclaw players get to step into Altdorf again! Then we got screwed by Mythic's server instability and maintenance haha. But it was still awesome!

I beemed with Ironclaw pride when I see our veterans leading the Destro to roll out Order. These Volkmar Order were too busy sitting on their laurels. Laurels that were earned through pure numbers. I made a strong post on WHA forums regarding the very apparent mediocrity of the Volkmar Order players compared to our beloved Ironclaw Order. The indigenous Order defended themselves with the concept of "US Prime time". Load of crap. There is no more prime time! Volkmar has action 24/7 now.

I missed out on taking screenies of Altdorf and forts since it was rather laggy for me but here is 1 of me in Inevitable City.

Since Famine was already taken, I decided to take hold of this opportunity to rename myself to Arcee( the female autobot in transformers). I even dyed my toon to look like Arcee! =P

Bottom line is I am really enjoying War right now on the new server. Although i have to tolerate about 1s delays in using abilities and about 2x lag, the RVR is much more rigorous. For that, I can overlook the drop in performance. Not to mention, that the reduced performance could be due to the server instability after patch. I am tired after a night of intense SCs and RVR, gonna crash now!

Order on Volkmar watch out! The tide is turning!

Server Transfer!

2009-08-20T16:38:00.002+08:00

Ok. So finally Ironclaw gets their turn at the Server Transfers. However, another spate of problems surface.

The Ironclaw community wants to stick together since we are one of the most close knit cross realm War community. It looks like there is going to be a huge debate on Gorfang vs Volkmar.

I am all for offpeak activity since I am starting work mighty soon and I might start logging on at offpeak timings. But I also want to stay together with my Order nemesis' who has provided me with such a challenge. I know that its just a mindless zerg on many servers.

I look forward to the armistic spearheaded by one of the Order players tonight to discuss the future of Ironclaw.

Are you good enough to be bad?

2009-08-19T21:54:00.001+08:00

Just came across this manga version of the dark elf sorceress. Liked it alot and decided to put it on my blog.

Props to the artist, Yousei San who drew it!

Ironclaw Resurrection and the AOE Sorc

2009-08-11T03:01:00.004+08:00

For the past week, Ironclaw server has been seeing some very good clashes in T4. Like 2 Order warbands vs 1 Destro warband to 3 Order warbands vs 2 Destro warbands.

The hand of chaos seemingly swept across the RVR lakes and that was an understatement. Scenarios are popping up more as well. Whats more, Destro fought their way to Altdorf over the weekend! Cheers for that! Although I missed it haha.

Admist all of the chaotic brawls, I have been having lots of fun on my Destruction specced Sorceress who really excels in large scale fights.

Some tips for Destruction Specced Sorcs:

1) Stay out of the thick fray till the tanks and mdps have engaged each other

2) Use shattered shadows as much as possible, you would be surprised at how it tears the Order ranks apart!

3) Only go in up close and personal with Infernal wave, Ice Spikes plus Disastrous Cascade when

a: Order starts to rout
b: You have reduced most of the Order mass to half health
c: You have awesome healers

4) Harass from 80 FT as much as possible with POS, Shadow Knives etc and your Agony spells, after a while Order will get impatient. Some will overextend and give you a chance to break their lines.

I have to emphasize that after the aoe nerf patch, Destruction specced Sorcs are not OP bombs anymore. They have reverted to what they are supposed to be.

Team Support. You support the team by:

1) Breaking enemy tank lines
2) Protecting healers from MDPS with triumphant blasting
3) Putting stress on enemy healers, force them to move midline to group heal

I hear alot of QQ about the aoe nerf but I still feel very empowered by my spec. I dont know whether my team feels it but I somehow feel I am always a cog in the impetus that turns the tide.

Lost Vale!

2009-08-03T03:30:00.004+08:00

I finally got invited to a Lost Vale run by a fellow guildie together with some peeps from another guild.

It was an awesome run, not to mention that its a pretty neat tour for a first timer. The run was pretty smooth and we only had problems at Gorak due to his massive AOE damage.

The run was done over 2 days because one of the party members had gf aggro =P. We were up to Nkari and decided to leave it for another night. Already got 2 pieces of Darkpromise, the gloves and helm and the nasty pack of a weapon from the tree boss! That makes me 3/6 Darkpromise. =DDDD

Not bad at all for one run.

Good to visit. Not good to stay. =P

1st Wing Last Boss.

I forgot to take screenshots along the way after that haha. Will put them up next time!

6m Parties ftw

2009-07-30T21:18:00.002+08:00

Even though War is full of alot of imperfections, not all of them are directly caused by the developers.

Quoting my guildmate, " In a game full of retards, you get stupid actions like..." Yes I am inclined to believe that the playerbase is also partly to blame for the boredom of T4.

If you beg to differ, then leave the main zerg warband and hook yourself up with some decent players and roam in a 6m party. A well class balanced and organized party can literally kick a warband's ass when circumstances permit.

So many players in War get so focused on the gear and renown that they lose sight of the smaller wins. Small technical wins like punting your enemy's healer off to a lower ground so he loses line of sight with his warband. That healing void of few seconds can just kill a seemingly "OP" ironbreaker who just doesnt die.

In the case of my Sorceress, running the least popular tactic "Triumphant Blasting" would grant you an extra CC and ability to use terrain to your advantage.

In many occasions, players just need to learn to use their brains more than their fingers. In an organized 6m party, War can really provide some excellent gaming experiences.

For eg. Today I was tagging along with the zerg warband who was really making alot of mistakes here and there. Then my guild leader logs on with his zealot, Reverend. He is a really awesome healer! Destro was on their way to defend a keep from order in Black Crag. There was about 2 warbands of order and Destro only numbered 1 warband.

As it was starting to look bad for us with Order fast on the inner door with more healing than us, Reverend calls me and some other guildies to form a private party.

And WE MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE. The destro zerg just fell in behind us and followed our lead to root order. We pushed order back to the top of the outer walls where they took a very strong stand. The zerg warband was just standing outside the inner door looking across at the order on the outer walls.

Only my party decided to find an alternate way in besides the stairs right under the Order warbands. We managed to start punting some Order off the top of the outer walls and Order slolwy got disorganized. It was not long before we tore through the Order defense and wiped them.

An impetus. Started by a 6m party. A hell of a slaughter that we were laughing about 10m later.

Ironclaw's Bane: A Corporation View at Mythic's Failure

2009-07-27T13:36:00.004+08:00

Warhammer is a very good game built on some very solid ideas but the management of the game is just pure ditto.

I dont know what is going on down at the Mythic studio but as paying customers, we are stakeholders in the game, we should get more information from the developers. Of course, the hush hush from the developers might be imposed by EA.

I suspect there is some very rife office politics down at Mythic. A develeoper vs profit hungry board war so to speak. The EA board just wants their company share price to go up, thus, they just want to have increasingly growing revenue/profits. This means lowering costs and increasing game sales.

Strategic management demands a pie view of the company's businesses or a business portfolio analysis. This can be done through the Mckinsey matrix.

As one can see, a desirable business to invest more resources in would be those with high sales growth rates namely the "Stars" and "Question Marks". Stars are the sources of strong cash flow within the organization and Question Marks are potential areas for increases in investments.

On the other hand, the businesses with low or dwindling sales growth rate would be the "Cash Cows" and the "Dogs". Obviously a company should abandon a Dog business. However it will hold on to the Cash Cows without investing more resources just to farm cash from them to channel to the Stars and Question Marks. Over time, the Cash Cows would degrade to Dogs as the business loses competitiveness due to lack of injection of resources. It will get discarded by the company in the future.

In my opinion, the Mythic game studio and the Warhammer Online game is now viewed by Mythic as a Cash Cow. They have relatively high market share of the MMORPG market alongside games like EVE Online, Everquest and WOW. However, sales is starting to dip as players are starting to leave. EA doesnt concern itself with why players are leaving, thats for the Mythic studio to figure out, they just keep pummeling Mythic to produce desirable sales results. Mythic is probably understaffed right now and I suspect that Mark Jacobs was not the only one at Mythic who got axed. He was probably caught in the "streamlining" maneuver executed by EA.

Since Mythic and War is just a Cash Cow for EA, they do not want to devote more resources to the development of the game. They just want to keep it afloat as long as possible. Right now, they are probably focusing on their Stars such as Bioshock and the upcoming Question Marks such as SWTOR.

As to the question why Ironclaw was not merged with the other Oceanic server, my answer would be that Mythic is understaffed and they just want to focus first on their North American playerbase which is larger. Server merge is a database management nightmare. Besides, they have thousands of other kinks, bugs and problems to solve with their overworked and understaffed studio.

A Classic MMORPG Movie

2009-07-23T05:25:00.000+08:00

Replay video | Share video | Watch more videos

Enjoy. =)

SWTOR: Instanced MMORPG?

2009-07-19T16:09:00.004+08:00

Take a look at the newest video released by Bioware with a sneak peek at SWTOR's gameplay. The lightsaber combat looks really intriguing however, the prospect of a heavily instanced world based on immersive story telling doesnt appeal to me.

I am still quite a PVP freak and I believe more than half of the MMORPG player base prefers to duke it out with a human opponent. A heavily instanced game with a huge emphasis on story telling would mean PVE PVE PVE. I think it would be very hard to slip in some open world PVP in this game. At best, the game would provide arena based combat much like Guild Wars or PVP hubs where players queue up for scenarios.

As of now, this is a game that should be left for the Star Wars fanboys.

The AOE Nerfbat

2009-07-18T16:35:00.002+08:00

What nice timing! Just when I was mulling over a respec to Destruction/Calamity, the 1.3b AOE nerfbat notes are released. Bright Wizards and Sorcs took it the the hardest.

Most of the AOE abilities radius were markly reduced with damage scaled down about 30% on average. That really gimps the Destruction tree! So now, I have to think of a new way to cause havoc amoung enemy lines. The crux would be ice spikes. Even though the radius and width has been reduced so that it affects only whatever it hits, the damage has been increased. Furthermore, this is a calamity line spell and might provide some good firepower with chilling gusts. The fact that its harder to hit enemies with it now is mitigated by its spammability.

Depending on how much Gloom of Night has been nerfed, I might changed to this new Agony/Calamity Spec.

As for my Archmage, not much nerfs except to the radius of Law of Age and Mistress of the Marsh. Mistress of the Marsh in instant cast now though! Depending on the revamps to the Vaul tree, I am still clinging on to my support/healing playstyle for my Archmage.

Moving On In War

2009-07-12T01:24:00.001+08:00

I have left my previous guild to accept an invitation from one of the top guilds on Ironclaw Destruction.

From feeling like a big fish in a small pond with no space to swim, I feel like a fish fry in an OCEAN. Haha its back to the feeling I had when I was in Untamed Trinity on WOW.

New, Green, Hungry to sharpen my game. I look forward to becoming a better Sorceress, hopefully one that Order screams at and run away from. =)

I am now in Perdition.

The Archmage and the Sorceress in Retrospective

2009-07-10T14:35:00.011+08:00

I have recently rolled an alt on Dark Crag server to take advantage of the American peak time which coincides with Ironclaw's ghost hours.

I am a sucker for elves, find humans too bleh and dwarfs too ugly. So... I rolled an Archmage! I would have to say Dark Crag is a a hell of a server, its what War should be. Scenarios pop every 5min and RVR is rampant. I am still in T1 so I cant say about the other tiers but I have heard very positive feedback from my friend in T3.

A little review on the Archmage, I plan to go 9 Isha/ 11 Vaul to suit my playstyle. This most likely has something to do with my 1st character being a Sorceress.

A small epiphany while I was toiling with my Archmage, I relived the experience of healing when I was a Druid on WOW. I got shellshocked and recalled how stressful healing was especially with rampant AOE Damage tearing your group and Melee on your ass.

This has led me to consider respeccing my RR45 Sorceress to 9 Calamity/ 13 Destruction from 7 Agony/ 13 Calamity.

In my opinion, I could contribute much more as a Sorceress if I was weakening a mass of opponents(possibly taking down a few) instead of taking down 1 which can be rezzed the next instant. Of course, this spec is very healer dependent to be effective.

*Update* Just thought up this new spec that leverages on Tapping the Dark. Hmm.

That is why I am delaying the respec till I can get about 6.5k wounds and near 300 toughness with 950 Intelligence. This could probably be done with 4 Conqueror/ 2 Annihilator/ Influence Crit Helm with Bloodfist staff. Throw in the LOTD vendor jewellery and I am good.

Back to my Archmage, I find myself effective at healing and dpsing at the same time though it requires more concentration than my Sorceress. The juggling of roles is challenging and brings a whole new ball game. I am still messing around in T1 but I would most likely stick to the spec I have planned till the changes to Archmage and Shaman goes live.

Endgame Dungeons: BB and BWE

2009-07-06T22:42:00.006+08:00

So I managed to get a decent group to run Bilerot Burrow and Bloodwrought Enclave over the weekend. Managed to complete both of them, have to say that BB is much harder than BWE.

BWE finished in about 20min while BB took about 1.5 hours. My party wiped about 4-5 times on Bilelord because of the Champion adds that spawn before Bilelord eats the party up. Both dungeon runs were meh cos i didnt get any loot haha. But the good thing is I have completed all the lesser wards dunegons!(except tomb of moon and sky in LOTD) Hooray!

I have to say that compared to Mount Gunbad, the endgame dungeons I have been to so far are not as well made. Mount Gunbad gave a newcomer a "WOOOOH" feeling everytime he reaches a new boss while BB and BWE were just a chore to get through. I actually enjoyed Mount Gunbad!

Oh yeap! I finally got all my Greater Wards after a fort defense and I can head to Lost Vale and Tomb of the Vulture Lord!

Pictures!

Looks like an entrance to the Hive in Aliens.

Fatboy himself! Better drop sentinel gown next time!

LOTD Lairs

2009-07-03T03:32:00.006+08:00

Past few days in War were decent~
Got into some decent RVR and won rolls on some phat loot namely Warlords and Invaders. I got my Invader castbracer and Warlord wardshoes woot!

Its also encouraging to note that RVR is slowly returning to the main zones in War. Order is coming to defend zones that are being locked by Destruction because they don't want Destruction to farm LOTD and get stronger. At least thats what I think motivates them to come out of LOTD and defend zones. More likely is that LOTD is losing its hype and lustre. The call of RVR has prevailed!

In the multitude of zone flipping, I managed to get into a solid lair group when Destruction had access to LOTD. We defeated the bosses in Tomb of the Stars and Sun. We also took a peek at Tomb of the Moon but got wiped and decided to call it a night.

I got 2 Ankhs and the purple pocket item Eye of Rah Nutt that gives a 3515 melee damage bubble over 20s. Hows that for phat!

Tomb of the Sun

Did it with a Shaman, Blackguard, 2 Squig Herders and A Disciple of Khaine. RDPS is very important in this fight and the trick is to keep moving when the Boss starts tossing those huge damage discs at you. They can be easily avoided. I found myself jumping around tossing dots like a Mario game haha.

Tomb of the Stars

Easiest Lair fight so far! Basically a Tank and Spank fight. A zealot is crucial for decursing so the Scarab Swarms do not spawn to heal the boss. Most groups find it helpful to tank the boss in the upper left or right corners to point the clouds away from the group.

Movies anyone?

2009-07-03T02:47:00.002+08:00

As much as many of you would think otherwise, most gamers have a life outside of their MMO commitments and I am no exception. We still go out and watch movies, eat thrash food, get piss drunk etc. -winks-

The month of July is a good month for movies so allow me to digress from the focus of this blog. I just caught two eagerly anticipated movies, Transformers 2 and Ice Age 3.

Transformers 2

Its the question of whether size matters. Seeing the monumental success of the first installment of Transformers, Michael Bay went all out to make everything go boom in its sequel. Boom! Literally! Everything out of the window! But is bigger better?

I admit I was going Oooh when the first BIG Mean Decepticon appeared. The scene of autobots hunting down Demolisher was way cool, not to mention the scene of Arcee and her sisters chasing down Sideways through Shanghai dwellings. The first breathtaking battle ends with Sideswipe slashing Sideways into 2 sides (pun intended) and Optimus putting the brakes onto Demolisher.

But after that, the movie went to hell. The battles got too haphazard and messy. I was straining my eyes to identify which Autobot or Decepticon was in the fray pummeling who. Michael Bay got over enthusiastic with the pyrotechnics which obscured many of the fight scenes. In addition, the newcomers to the Autobots and Decepticons don't get a handy introduction not like in the 1st installment. Moreover, incumbents such as Ironhide and Ratchet seem to have their roles diminished to nothingness.

The director gave in to public whims and propelled Bumblebee to ninja leetness. Bumblebee seriously looked more powerful than Ironhide in his battle in Egypt which does not adhere to logic since Ironhide is the veteran with the huge guns.

Plotwise, the movie pretty much tries to stick to the Transformer lore of the Fallen and the Primes. There also alot of jokes and funny bites thrown into the mix as we see a return of Agent Simmons.

Overall, I give the movie a 3.5 out of 5. Decent but a little disappointing.

Ice Age 3

Ice Age 3 was a blast! The old characters were further developed in this sequel, with the addition of some new herd members. Elle is pregnant and Manny is turned into an uptight father to be and the herd gets turned upside down!

Sid gets into a whole new mess (as usual) and the herd has to go save his Sloth ass! Hahahaha! I just couldnt stop laughing through the whole show. The baby characters in the show were so darn cute. I love the baby T rexes!

And the most successful part would be the addition of wild eye Buck complete with the swashbuckling attitude of an Aussie adventurer. He is the epitome of a jungle quack and he leads the herd through a lost land under the ice to save Sid. Many pokes at the Discovery Channel are being made in the process and I wont spoil it for you here hahaha.

The ending was great and it is an excellent family show! 4 out of 5!

Celebration!

2009-06-29T00:55:00.004+08:00

In time for 4th July, this has been a good War weekend for me. For starters, I reached level 40 on Thursday! Cheers!

Then I finally got my Annihilator Shoulders to make it 5/5 Annihilator and Renown Rank 38! Really got a few great things going for me right now. Now that conqueror bag just need to drop for me hahaha!

So to celebrate my ascension, I went on a 1 Druchii quest to hunt some mythical beasts! They are none other than the Level 40+ Champion Hydra and Level 41+ Champion Manticore in Caledor! They are quite a chore to get to since its on the Order side of Caledor. You will have to start from Dragonwake Warcamp and ride westwards. Specific directions at Warwiki here.

Warhammer Maintenance? AGAIN?

2009-06-26T22:13:00.003+08:00

I have been seeing the servers going up and down like a whore. Seems that Mythic released Warhammer 1.3 like a piece of cheese. Full of holes.

They are frantically plugging all the holes now that should have been addressed during public test. God what is the Public Test server for?

I mean one or 2 hotfix patches relating to LOTD would have been fine. But I think I have already seen 4 not counting those that I did not come across.

Aion? Anyone?

Major Upheaval at War's Dev office

2009-06-25T06:22:00.005+08:00

"Today we have important news to share with the community. EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. This newly formed team will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Ray becomes Group General Manager of the new RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Ray. BioWare’s studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Ray.

Mark Jacobs, co-founder and current General Manager of Mythic, will leave EA on June 23, 2009. We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward. Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.

Mythic retains a strong team led by Rob who co-founded Mythic in 1995. Rob played a critical role in the development of Dark Age of Camelot. In his previous role as COO, he was responsible for all day-to-day management of the studio including all development, operations and support.

Please join us in celebrating the union of these two award-winning studios."

What could this mean? Mark was one of the more player centric person that consistently responded to players on the forums. Although his sardonic humour may not find favour with many, I find his brute honesty refreshing from the silent devs.

Whether this management reshuffle is a boon or bane for the game remains to be seen. Many theories have arised with regards to Mark's untimely departure but most seems to suggest that he has been fired for War's shortcomings of late.

Who is this Ray fellow anyway? I hope he knows what he is doing!

Anyway back to the Land of The Dead, when the server came back up after the short maintenance (most likely to bring the Tomb of the Vulture Lord Live), Order got control of LOTD. 0.o

I dont know how and why because I logged in an hour after the server went up. If it went back to Order control by "default", I am gonna scream at Mythic!

Destro on Ironclaw worked so hard for a week to secure that 1 day private access. In the end Order gets their own mini private lockout for free due to server maintenance.

Anyway, we capped 2 zones and were back rumble and tumbling with Order in LOTD although albeit out of our primetime. We harassed them out of a few PQs before we got our asses handed to us at the Quay. We learnt not to do a PQ while Order is around =P.

I realized that the Quay would be a major defensive position as it is the chokepoint between the 2 Warcamps since the River Mortis is uncrossable for now. With a little zerg, we pushed Order back to their own side and were looking at the gates of their warcamp!

However, we were sorely outnumbered, about 8 Destro to 14 Order. In the end we wiped and everyone decided it was bedtime. We will get our revenge later!

Land of the Dead Critique

2009-06-24T18:24:00.004+08:00

The Land of the Dead is out and I would say Mythic has done a fairly decent job. The landscape looks straight out of a scene of Brendan Fraser's Mummy show and the PQs have a refreshing twist.

Most of the PQs have some simple puzzle or mechanic to it besides killing X mobs or X objects then tank and spank boss. Some of the PQs are downright irritating but some are rather interesting.

There are 4 Lairs to visit in LOTD which drop silver ankhs if you defeat the bosses. In turn these ankhs can be exchanged for some cool rewards. I am loving the smaller rewards that the tokens are giving! Like the 90 magic power 2 piece cloak/jewellery set.

The downside is you need certain glyphs to enter the dungeons and lairs. These glyphs can only be obtained by completing PQs. Each PQ grants you one type of glyph. There are about 12 glyphs if I remember correctly. However, the glyphs required to open the lair will reset once the lair is done.

Constant PQ farming I reckon but when the 1 day lock is over and Order pours in, it will be a whole new dimension. Imagine Order coming in to whoop your asses when you are in the midst of a PQ.

Not to mention there are alot of tome unlocks and wandering Lord bosses in the LOTD! LOTD looks set to be a grindfest and I am hearing many ppl complain but I am optimistic. The scarabs drop easily and the rare talismans drop like flies. Its a grind nonetheless but less of a grind compared to WOW. I easily got 25 gold scarabs in 3 hours.

I will post pictures up soon when I get over the hype of LOTD haha.

Pictures are up! =)

Land of the Dead finally Here!

2009-06-23T21:01:00.007+08:00

The Oceanic servers were just brought down to prepare for the opening of the Land of the Dead. Oh i cant wait to get my hands on the new Tyrant set. But I figure I wont be able to achieve that for awhile judging by the infancy of my guild. Perhaps if I get lucky in PUGs.

PUGs can be just awful. Just the other day, a lvl 40 Chosen nearly drove the whole Warband nuts with his incessant noobstakes (noob mistakes). He aggroes mobs before the Warband is ready with his aura and does not tank on the champs. Instead he is happily slashing at the hounds while the daemon champ goes to tear up the squishy dps!

He made the same mistakes over and over again. In the end we concluded he bought his character from Ebay. We were all making digs at how much he bought his toon for. To make it more frustrating, he was from the guild Nocturnal, which is quite well revered on Ironclaw server. My guild leader remarked that it was a wonder how such a dork got into Nocturnal.

So this Chosen, BABRUTAL was either a 11 yr old behind the keyboard or he bought his toon from Ebay. On the other hand, he could just be a total retard who simply RVR-ed his way to 40 and knows nuts about PVE.

This demonstrates very well the fallacy of a game that focuses on PVP yet tries to mix in some PVE. In the process, they force these PVP fanatics who only know how to button mash to go PVE for PVE exclusive gear. This produces a very undesirable spillover effect of pissing off more experienced gamers who like PVE.

Ok ok! Enough ranting lol. Back to the Land of the Dead. Kudos to the Destruction on Ironclaw server for besting Order in the resources race with a constant 5000 to 10000 lead. Although we started with a handicap of 20000 resources due to late login after patch, we still kicked their OP assess.
It was a close fight with Order catching up and overtaking us today but we banished them back to where they belong. =)

I am quite excited about the new PQs and the console game style puzzle and traps in the dungeons. Needless to say, I hope my FPS will not take too much of a beating when I zone into the Land of the Dead with 100 others. (my FPS was terrible today in fort defence btw >.<)

OK BRING IT ON MYTHIC! SHOW ME WHY I SHOULD CONTINUTE PLAYING!

Damn You Microsoft Starhub!

2009-06-22T22:56:00.005+08:00

Microsoft has done it again! I succumbed to their FORCED IE 8 Upgrade and now both my Firefox and IE browsers are not displaying images on some sites.

Damn you Microsoft! I have tried removing IE 8 but it doesnt seem to solve the problem. I cant even view my own blog properly! Lest say the blogs of others!

I curse you Microsoft! If I had a few thousand, I would probably pour it into Microsoft shorts. Since I am pretty sure that its stock price would plummet with the huge uproar its IE 8 is causing!

*UPDATE*

The problem solved itself the next morning! So i figured it must be caused by STARHUB'S LAME CABLE CONNECTION! DAMN YOU STARHUB!

Devs play order?

2009-06-19T23:54:00.004+08:00

I have been reading on the forums that Devs only play Order characters because Order classes are always better than their Destro mirrors.

Up till now, I have always dismissed it as a rant from unhappy gamers who have suffered with gimped classes for way too long. Or apathetic gamers from servers with rampaging Bright Wizards that chow down their warbands like cheese.

After today, it seems that this might be possible. I have started to notice that Order activity on my server starts to drop dramatically about 15min before the pop up maintenance window appears.

Today, we managed to cap all the Objectives and Keeps in Praag and Eataine. Both zones were about an hour from locking. Then when we took our last BO in KV, the maintenance pop up window appears with the 30 min timer of doom.

We were like "what the hell!" There goes like 9000 renown and 15 Officer medallions! And not to mention that Order resistance became negligible about 30min before the server was slated to go down for maintenance.

I made a joke on the Region Chat that the Order players were gone cos Devs play Order and they logged out to fix bugs. Or they purposely arranged this time for maintenance to piss us off (farfetched of cos)

So I am now 50-50 on the hypothesis that Devs play Order. Hmm.

Land of the Dead: Forgotten Guardian

2009-06-19T15:37:00.006+08:00

I just attempted the open world spawn boss for the Land of the Dead Live Event. The boss is a lvl 40 Hero named the Forgotten Guardian.

It is spawned by bringing all 4 glyphs to a statue in Thunder Mountain and right clicking on the glyphs.

The Boss is not too hard, manageable by half a warband. Preferably there should be 3 tanks, 3-4 healers with the rest being ranged DPS.

The Boss' normal attack does about 350+ unmitigated damage and its AOE Knockback does about 900+ unmitigated damage. The main tank should position the boss to face the cliff wall so the knockback does not throw half the WB into the lava.

The boss also spawns about 6-7 lvl 41 skeleton mobs during the fight. Ranged dps should get on them and AOE. Its also good to take note that the Boss seems to go after the next guy in the threat list when the main tank is knocked away. So main tanks must quickly retaunt the boss after the knockback.

It drops a pretty cool blue called the cloak of ravening that has +5 AP/s and +36HP/s with a talisman slot so it is applicable to all classes!

Star Wars: The Old Republic

2009-06-18T21:58:00.005+08:00

I am a lukewarm fan of Star Wars and used to play a MUD called Dark Forces that was based on Star Wars. I still miss my outlaw character heh.

Unveiled at E3 2009 was this megacool trailer for the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Feast your eyes!

Currently only 3 classes are revealed on the game site. They are namely the Trooper, Smuggler and Bounty Hunter ({> the Mandalorian armour!). The game is set in the era of The Treaty of Coruscant which is 3500 years before the appearance of Darth Vader. It is a time when the Jedi were bountiful and the Sith made a comeback by sacking Coruscant.

Not much in terms of gameplay information has been released and I am hopeful that it will be a good MMO title. I am missing the lightsaber duels I used to sink hours into back in my heydays. I am hoping that Jedis and Dark Jedis would not be too overpowered compared to their non force attuned buddies. This would allow for a greater range of PVP tactics.

For example, smugglers could be the sneaky fellows who would plant bombs at strategic points or launch surprise strikes to weaken their opponents. Troopers and Bounty Hunters could be the tanks while the Force Powered guys would be the DPS-ers. There is no clue to what archetypes are available in the game yet and there hasnt been a sneak peek at the combat system

We can only ogle at trailers released by Bioware for the time being and hope for the best!

Follow Up On Aion Beta

2009-06-18T17:35:00.006+08:00

Despite all the hype about Aion and the good comments on its North American Beta version, I am still spooked that it has traces of the all telling signs of Asian Crap MMOs.

Below is a video made by Keen from Keen and Graev Gaming Blog.

Yes the graphics are astounding but graphics can never be the deciding factor, gameplay must be. However I have yet to see the combat system of Aion. From what I have gathered so far, I have heard that it is smooth and fluid. There seems to be little in terms of character class specialization unlike WOW and War where you have talent trees and careers. In Aion, it seems that you only have the 2 class upgrade choices from your basic class. For eg, the basic Mage can ascend to become a Spiritmaster or Sorcerer. This puts Aion in a dangerous situation of becoming the next "Dark Age of Castalot" where a dominant class fills the game. The other archetypes get abandoned by the players and causes a drop in the diversity of classes in PVP. This will reduce the depth of the gameplay. A scissors paper stone system should be introduced into Aion where each class has its own nemesis.

Its very smiliar to Mu Online and other Korean/Asian MMOs in terms of the gaudy garments, the class ascension system, right down to the "glorious" wing cloaks straight from Mu Online.

I am still a skeptic.

Western Gamers vs Asian Gamers

2009-06-17T19:10:00.005+08:00

I used to be a really hardcore MMO gamer back in the early days of WOW when Black Wing Lair was endgame and getting to lvl 60 was HARD WORK.

I started out on Kalegcos before switching to Gorgonash server as I heard there were more SG WOW players on that server and my friends were heading there. I joined an Elite Guild, easily the top 5 Alliance guild on that server. Its name was Untamed Trinity (UT). It was led by a military personnel who literally ran the guild like an army lol.

But the guild's achievements were vast, usually one of the 1st 3 guilds to break new content. The members were also one of the most well geared even for the newcomers. However, raiding was a harsh affair in UT. DKP were deducted for mistakes like aggroing thrash mobs and causing the raid to wipe and the raid leader will literally hurl obscenities through vent. But all is well when the raid finishes fast and efficiently and everyone gets gear.

It took my lvl 60 druid merely a month to get to Tier 2 in that guild. It was awesome. I had the chance to meet many of the players in real life and I enjoyed WOW then. Then came my time to enter the University. I made the tough choice to quit WOW and retire into casual gaming.

3 years later, I am out of the University with a decent Honours and awaiting employment. I figured WOW has degraded too much.

Too easy. Catered to kids. Thrashy.

I desired less grinding and more pvp. So I naturally got attracted to War. I joined the Ironclaw Oceanic server which had a majority of Aussie players. All was nigh and fine till I joined on a guild raid to Mt Gunbad.

MAN. I had a culture SHOCK. These guys had no qualms on wiping on silly mistakes like aggroing thrash mobs or tanks not being able to offtank properly. They could go AFK on a whim to grab a beer and say "BRB m8 =)".

It was amusing till the wipes got old. I got tired on wiping in an easy dungeon on the same mistakes. MOUNT GUNBAD!! Come on! Its like wiping in Scarlet Monastery in WOW with a guild raid. Unacceptable to me. Call me an elitist gamer but I think there should be some sort of PVE learning involved at least. At least mistakes are not made over and over again.

My guild has not got to the end boss of any Gunbad WING btw. The guild leader is lower level than me. (I was 12 when I joined the guild, he was 25) The only lvl 40 player does not organize anything. And the guild leader does not seem to have a vision for the guild.

Talk about the laid back Aussie attitude.

Vast difference between Asian and Western gamers. Asian gamers are more aggressive and meticulous. Some treat their MMO like a career and hate to waste their gaming hours on failures.

Western gamers treat a MMO as well... what it is, just a game.

Warhammer 1.3 Patch !

2009-06-16T23:37:00.002+08:00

Warhammer's 1.3 patch is here! I am currently patching the game as I blog.

On my wishlist:

1) Improve Server Performance!!!
2) Let my Sorc be less squishy!
3) Give me a purple random drop when I log in >=)

Full patch notes are here
http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=824

I will update again when I have tested out the fruits of Mythic's labour. If it is rotten, its high time to migrate to another MMO before War starts to trap me in its vice grip.

*Update*

Server performance has been slightly improved but I have not tested my FPS at keeps and forts yet.

My sorc is dealing much more dps =)))))

The Live Event tasks are quite menial and lame lol.

Roleplaying Itch

2009-06-15T21:12:00.000+08:00

I am suffering from an intense itch to do some roleplaying. I might start scribbling a story about my Warhammer Sorceress, Famine this week.

Hmmmm.

Aion Online

2009-06-15T20:51:00.002+08:00

From what I have scoured from the various forums and gaming blogs, Aion Online seems to be giving other MMO titles a run for their money.

And the North American version is still in beta testing!

One common feedback from the gamers who had beta tested the English version was about the alluring graphics and SMOOTH gameplay. They even compared the smoothness to that of WOW. It even makes a mockery of Mythic's Warhammer for its lacklustre performance compared to Aion.

A relief of "ability lag" and "lagcasting" would be a refreshing idea. After all Lagolas' level 35 Sorceress keeps dying to lag in War's RVR.

SIGH!

And War had so much potential! I loved its lore and the world of Warhammer! Mythic really screwed it up with the unsatisfactory server performance and gameplay issues. Even before I turned level 40, I am already feeling the RVR grind.

So will Aion match up? Only time will tell when the full release is out in September!

But I am still skeptical. For one, it is developed by an Asian gaming company. We all know what kind of crap Asian companies dish out. Crap like Mu Online and A3. Mindless hours of grinding. I remember I jammed a straw into my keyboard to maintain continuous casting while I went AFK in A3. I came back 30min later to drink a mana pot and on my sorceror goes.

That was really a joke of a game! I hope Aion does not turn out like this.

Graphics vs Gameplay (MTV Blogger Contest Entry)

2009-06-14T23:15:00.001+08:00

Graphics vs Gameplay? Gameplay comes as a natural choice.

I recall the times when I devoted hours to MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) which are online DOS based Role Playing games brought to life with text.
Yes TEXT and TEXT only.

The rest is up to the vivid imagination, fantasization or fetishes of the gamer. =P

The games then were still as fun or in most cases even more fun than the games on the shelves today.

Why? Most people might ask? Arent rolling walls of text boring? Arent the kick ass graphics of today's games supposed to be a winning factor?

However, there is a paradox to graphics. Graphics is a double edged sword. It limits gameplay. Yes you heard me, it limits gameplay!

Gamers out there! Ask yourselves! How many times have you sunk about a week into a new MMO when you fervently wished that you could do a certain emote? Or owned a house in the capital city? Or marry that lass in your guild who talks with a sexy voice on ventrilo?

Yet what you see in the game is very often what you get. There is very little room for user-created content in MMO titles nowadays. Of course, there are exceptions like Spore and Sims. But for the majority, most are lacking in some fluffs that roleplayers desire. It can be as simple as a /sit command or something requiring more work like player owned dwellings. Developers arent so keen to answer to the gamers' requests for fluffs as they might be heads over heels in other aspects of the game. After all, we know graphics take a lot of work.

This puts a larger dent on the depth of gameplay than most developers would like to recognize. With limits on user created content and roleplaying, a MMO Role Playing Game isnt looking like a "roleplaying" game. Instead, gamers get moulded into gameplays dictated by the developers.
In the end, the subscription money goes to bug fixing, gameplay balancing issues and creating more content which in turn requires more... graphics!

So gamers out there! Make sure the money you are paying goes to a game that you want to play!

Many of you will probably go "Duh" when you read the above. Yet many gamers are holding on to the characters they have spent months on even though they have many gripes about its gameplay.

Behavioural scientists call this "escalation of commitment". Its similar to the sentiment of holding on to shares that are tumbling in price in hopes that the price will rebound.

Back to our case on gamers. Many gamers would actually hold on to their characters in the hopes that developers grant their wishes.

Here is an excerpt from the Warhammer Online forums (along with the bad english =P)

"ive not been able to get onto the test server , so i dont know the full story here but am i reading it right is 1.3 NOT going to have major changes? fricken hell ive been waiti wating biting my tounge thinking 1.3 would fix our class

if its not happening me and 7 other ppl are outer this game! why would we pay for a game that after months of not being able to play even close to the style of game play we would like would we still play?

kurgan

getting so ticked off with this..."

And the motivating factor that pushes gamers to cling on to their characters is again graphics! Its the gaudy pieces of liniment on their characters that puts a vice grip on their owners.

Therefore, I implore to all gamers out there to look beyond the graphics and play a game for its merits based on gameplay!

OP!!! Nerf!!!

2009-06-14T22:28:00.000+08:00

In every MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game title that I have played, I have come across players that fall broadly under these categories:

A) The Casuals
Players who do not devote a lot of time to the game and are not very attached to its development.

B) The Fanboys
Players who are avid followers of the lore behind the game and will launch bodily attacks (sometimes literally) against developers for warping their perception of what is an accurate representation of the game lore.

C) The Hardcores
Players who literally live breathe and eat the game. They devote 60% or more of their time to the game and know their characters inside out. Plus they have numerous alternates which they "twink" (deck out in the most expensive gear) to bully other players in lower levels for kicks.

D) The Farmers
Oh our favourite Chinese Farmers! What will we do without their supply of quick gold for real life cash? >=)

And all of the above categories of players have 1 thing in common. That is at some stage in their MMO gaming, they would say something like this, "BUFF MY CLASS, its underpowered!!!" or "OMG that class is overpowered, NERF!!!"