Oyayu

Recently I have been playing about a little on Order to see how some of their classes play in comparison to their Destruction counterparts.

My first port of call was Witch Hunter, which I took to almost at once. I have tried Witch Elf since, and it is relatively similar to Witch Hunter, but for some reason doesn’t have quite the same feel to it, something I can’t put my finger on. Perhaps it’s the difference between playing something out of Van Helsing, and something out of a cheap porn movie…

Anyway, I figure less words, more pictures… So here! Have some picture spam!

I took a small excursion into a Lair to fight against… Something… We won! I can’t really remember too much, it was one of my first proper PvE encounters, and I think I spent at least half of it dead.

This was a little while ago… So excuse the patchy reporting. I need to blog more often…

After that one evening we decided to go and raid a Keep… It was fairly chaotic, but we didn’t have even nearly enough people in the right level range to do it as a guild only event, so in the end there were just the 3 of us from Pwny, and the rest were randoms…

Even so it went fairly well, we claimed the keep at least, which is all that matters!

A few evenings ago some of the other Pwny’s decided it was time to go and check out the sewers of Altdorf. Now ordinarily I don’t go playing in other peoples shit, however on this occasion I decided to take up the offer… Another excursion into PvE content could be an interesting eye opener.

There was relatively little trash in these instances, and I wasn’t entirelly sure of the point of them actually… There was one boss in one “wing” and two in the other we tried. The were all entirelly uncomplicated fights, and although we died a few times to completely unavoidable AoE (which I feel isn’t quite balanced right) - it was an “alright” experience. I can definitely see why Mythic aim themselves at the RvR market.

Well, that’s all for now… We’ll see how things work out on my little Order detour soon!

I’ve done a lot of Tier 1 RvR recently, playing both a Witch Hunter and a Bright Wizard just to see how they they work out when playing them.

I couldn’t tell you how many Tier 1 scenarios I’ve done, but we’ll just go with “a lot”… So here is my overall analysis of each one, including why ultimately Nordenwatch wins out as the most popular RvR to queue for.

Khaine’s Embrace - this is a fairly small battlefield scenario, involving two flags. Whoever gains control of both the flags wins the round effectively. Due to the smaller battlefield size, fights can get pretty intense here, but this also leads to whoever can zerg the best winning through, especially at this low level. Very little tactic to Khaine’s Embrace from what I have seen, which is fairly suitable for the average player I suppose.

Plus points: Something different, Small battlefield leads to concentrated fighting.
Minus points: Zerg-factor comes in to play a little

Gates of Ekrund - interesting scenario that involves capturing and holding points which are situated fairly close to one another, with the central one becoming the main pressure point. I like this one as both a ranged DPS and a healer, because you can stand up on one of the upper ledges and heal those fighting below while nuking out the other doing the same on the other ledge… Pretty interesting setup here.

Plus points: Good pressure point in the middle
Minus points: Lower middle area can become a bit of a melee death zone if there are a lot of ranged DPS up above

Nordenwatch - the most active/popular tier 1 scenario by quite a way… It’s a fairly simple concept, capture the flags and hold the flags to win. There are three flags, two that “by default” belong to Order and Destruction respectively and the last that should act as a middle point to fight over. Due to the zones design however you can just as easily reach Lighthouse (Orders first point) from Destruction as you can Fortress (the middle point)… So this adds a little bit of a mix to things, which can make things interesting.

Plus points: Familiar concept, good execution, fair to both teams
Minus points: People can get fairly spread out between points, though this isn’t so much of an issue

Well, Nordenwatch clearly pops the fastest, however both the other tier 1 scenarios have their good points which should lead people towards playing them. Why do I think that Nordenwatch wins out? It’s a very familiar concept regardless of your gaming background, it has a fairly fair layout, and there’s a good pressure point at the Fortress which resulsts in some great battles.

How does the RvR play out on your server? Does Nordenwatch pop the most on other servers too?

First off, I have decided to remove the tag from the beginning of my blog posts explaining which MMO they are about, as most from this point forward are going to be about Warhammer.

Sorceress, where to begin? I started my Sorceress after getting a Zealot to level 20… At this point levelling solo became an annoyance to say the least, healing in scenarios is fun, healing in PQs is less fun, but still a little entertaining, going out and killing mobs is a straight up pain in the arse.

So I began my Sorceress coming out of a class that spent a long time killing mobs herself, and straight into one that could 2 shot a mob with ease, this interested me greatly! I spent a lot of time running about, mainly blowing myself up with backlashes, and 2 shotting as many mobs as I could find.

I joined scenario’s straight from the beginning too, and found it insane fun blowing people up, throwing about AoE’s, and generally causing as much havoc as I could before ultimately either killing myself via a backlash, or throwing myself into the nearest group of order while spamming my AoE, which incidentally often ended with me backlashing myself to death anyway.

The following are my observations from 20 renown ranks worth of RvR…

1. Don’t Expect Heals - This is a fairly major point, obviously if there are HoTs being thrown about, it is normally enough to keep your backlashes from killing yourself, if you are like me however, and enjoy keeping your dark magic as high as possible, prepare to die. A lot. I got lucky here, an old friend is levelling a shaman, and he enjoys to RvR as much as me, so generally came with my own pet healer.

2. Expect To Die First - People will target you. Especially if you’re good. I saw a very obvious correlation between my position on the damage charts, and the number of Witch Hunters who popped up to shove that pathetic Fencing Foil up my arse. Don’t worry too much about these guys, disarm them, and show them the meaning of pain. Yes, it could go either way if they get the jump on you, but whatever you do, don’t try and run, it won’t work, and you just look like a pussy.

3. Single Target DPS When Needed - I love to AoE. I love to AoE, a LOT. However our single target DPS is unrivaled, especially when we have high dark magic. We have the ability to nuke out a target before a healer has a chance to heal, do not forget that, and use it to our advantage. I am talking about Temple here. When there is a cocky Swordmaster dishing out some damage while holding the artifact, obsessive focus on him, and destroy him.

4. When All Else Fails - AoE! - This may not be a popular option with many people, but when all else fails, I tend to swing towards AoE. Why? It causes people to panic, panic in the enemy is good. If you can throw 700 (conservative) damage out to 5 or more people at a time, you’re going to get many healers, especially bad ones, flustered. This will either cause mistakes, or distract them long enough for someone else to make a breakthrough.

5. Save Dark Magic - Personally, I build dark magic, and I keep it. I have little to no concern for my own life, as anyone who has seen me running face first into a group of oncoming Order will tell you. If it’s the difference between doing a 400 damage Doombolt, and a 1300 Doombolt, there’s no competition to me, even with the chance of a backlash to the face. It’s a risk I am willing to take.

You should obviously take all these observations with more than a pinch of salt, remember: Often I had my own pet healer. This is a totally key point to my play style and success, if you’re not getting heals, this will not work! You will need to play a little more conservatively, and consume your dark magic as and when it is nessesary.

I leave you a picture of Emerald. Go forth, and Pew.

Sorceress is now top of Tier 2, so here is a selection of clips from this evenings RvR… Enjoy!

This resulted in a couple of results that looked something like this…

You can download a larger version of the video here (47mb).

The image speaks for itself really, doesn’t it?

I took a bunch of videos while doing the Nordenwatch scenario as my Sorceress, but this little clip really summed it up… Enjoy!

More to follow soon no doubt! Onwards to the Temple…

I’m not a massive fan of just linking off to someone elses blog posts, but this one deserves a mention as it has some great potential!

Chad over at SpellDamage has just released his Sorceress Action Damage Calculator, a pretty handy tool - If you’re playing a Sorceress it’s definitely worth a gander.

So I decided to hit up RvR really hard tonight as I was at the top of my bracket (started level 9, ended level 11) - and I got to say… It’s seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY fun! Watching peoples faces melt while you’re throwing bolts of shadowy goodness at them is just never ending glee.

I have included some screenshots of the outcomes below, they speak for themselves really…

If you wanna have some fun for a wee while, make a Sorceress… And go melt faces.

Well it has been decided. We will be rolling on Karag Orrud, Destruction. 

Check out the forums @ mylittlepwny.eu if you’re currently homeless and want to join us - See you on the battlefield!

Well we could be saying what a wonderful Open Beta launch Warhammer Online had in Europe, but unfortunately Mythic deemed it necessary to trust in GOA to run their European operations again.

I was almost lulled into a false sense of security by the GOA representatives towing the party line of “trust us” - “we know what we’re going” and “we WILL launch successfully”. How wrong can you be? 

Yesterday there was a news article posted on the WAR Europe site stating that registration would be open from 08.30 this morning. There was no stating which timezone this was, but assuming GMT is normally best. Apparently this was CET. Not that this really matters, seeing as this time came and went in multiple time zones and there wasn’t hide nor hair of the Open Beta registration.

Some wise soul then went on to post that it was necessary to register a new account in order to enter your Open Beta key, so I believe a good 90% of the Warhammer Online community then attempted to make new accounts, which ultimately led to the website having a bit of a spaz. This, it seems, was also not the case and we were later told that we can use our original WAR Europe website accounts when registering our Open Beta keys.

The Beta servers finally came online at about 5.15pm CET, so much for an early afternoon launch. However this will be no help to any of the people who are yet to register their beta keys, as the authentication servers for the website have been taken offline, meaning no one can currently register a new account or login to their current account to register their beta keys.

I am just shocked mostly the GOA left everything to the last minute, again. Making that mistake once is fine, but I’m sure Mythic would have been damn pissed the first time around, let alone letting them make the mistake a second time. The US were treated to entering their Beta keys 2 weeks ago or more, with 2 weekendsworth of previews inbetween for players. What did the Europeans get? Lied to, a broken “open” beta launch, and some GOA employees trying to make out everything is fine and dandy.

If only we could transfer to the US servers, or perhaps Mythic would like to open some European operations for their next MMO launch, hopefully GOA won’t have screwed things up too royally so Mythic can actually make some money to do that!

I wrote this on Sunday evening after a very very frustrating day, I wasn’t going to publish it, but I figure my anger can be vented publicly, perhaps someone from GOA will realise they’re a joke company.