There are certain parts of Warhammer Online’s content that cannot be accessed once you outlevel them. For instance, once you reach level 12, your character may never take part in any of the Tier 1 scenarios, such as the ever popular Nordenwatch. Once again, at level 22, you are now unable to access the tier 2 scenarios. Also, entering those tier’s RvR zones results in you turning into a 1 hit-point chicken. You’re not going to get much done as a chicken.
As you can only complete the tier 2 Obliterator RvR armour set by scoring a gold bag from a keep capture, if you haven’t gotten your chest piece by the time you hit level 22, you are completely out of luck.
The reason this is becoming an issue for me is that there are large groups of Warhammer players complaining constantly that the game is not giving them enough experience, and Mythic has reacted by repeatedly increasing the amount of xp we receive. So now I feel I am being rushed towards the 4th tier content. If you are going to throw xp at me because of other peoples complaining, please allow me to choose not to level if I’m not ready to leave all my friends behind, give up my chance to complete quests and armour sets, and move to the next tier.
Mythic clearly intend the lower tier zones to remain in constant use, as the trickle-up of victory points is an important mechanic. But within a few weeks, will I ever be able to get enough people together to take a tier 2 Keep, even if no players are opposing us? NPC Keep defences have been buffed repeatedly in the last weeks. I’m sure the tier 4 stuff is great, but is all the rest of the game going to become a desolate place?
Of the regular battlefield objectives, in tier 1 they are defended by 4 level 8 regulars, and one level 10 champion. That is just about duoable. Tier 2 Battlefield Objectives are guarded by a level 20 hero, and 4 champions. They respawn quickly, and all must be dead at once to take the objective. So to even take an ordinary objective, you’re probably going to need a full group. I imagine it gets even trickier in tier 3.
My issue is not that taking keeps and battlefield objectives is hard. It ought to be. But the pool of people who are going to be of the right level to be able to participate is going to shrink, and the more xp we get thrown at us, the faster that pool will shrink. Why is it so hard to have some sort of mechanism whereby a tier 4 character can be delevelled temporarily in order to be able to take part in a tier 2 or 3 keep assault, or scenario? If we increased the number of people eligable to take part in a given scenario, we might see scenarios actually start up a bit more often.
It’s possible that some of my opinions are biased by the fact that my server is one of the lowest population ones. Already, if it’s not prime-time, you’ve no chance of getting into a scenario. Perhaps this is not an issue for the more populous servers. I’m not sure if server mergers are even possible in a system (that I agree with) where you can only have characters on one team on any given server. Did DaoC ever have server merges?
Warhammer Online Patch 1.03 is now live on the US servers, and will be hitting Europe on Thursday morning.
Highlights
* We’re pleased to announce the addition of a new regional chat system. This item has been one of our most requested features, and you can find the details below.
* We have made additional improvements to the functionality of the /ignore command. This command should now work more consistently.
* A “new mail†icon has been added to the edge of the minimap to alert players when new mail messages have arrived.
* We have made some additional improvements to the handling of NPC speech and action text in an effort to reduce the amount of chat players see from NPCs.
* In order to provide a more challenging and rewarding experience, we have adjusted the overall speed at which players can gain control of zones and move the campaign.
* Pet behavior has been improved and should act more naturally when changing between passive and defensive modes while the pet is fighting multiple enemies.
* The war against the gold sellers continues! We have introduced a new “report gold seller” command that works as follows: when you type /rg, the game will automatically fill out a gold seller appeal using the name of the last player who sent you a tell. If you get an unwanted /tell from a pesky gold seller, type /rg to start an appeal and get them busted!
* We have added a new option to the user settings that will allow players to enable or disable shader caching. This is a graphical performance option, and for a full explanation, players can hover their mouse over this option in the user settings window. This should help improve performance on many systems.
Regional Chat System:
* Chapter-based chat channels have been replaced with a farther reaching chat system, referred to as Region Chat. A region is defined as the contiguous zones that make up a tier-based racial pairing area. For example, Blighted Isle and Chrace make up one region. Region Chat consists of two channels, Region and Region-RvR.
o Region encompasses the entire region area.
o Region-RvR encompasses the RvR-focused areas, such as the Plain of Bone.* How to use the Regional Chat System:
o To type in the Region channel, use /1 [message]
o To type in the Region-RvR channel, use /2 [message]
Note: You must be in the RvR-focused region to use the Region-RvR channel. Players on Open RvR servers will have access to Channel 2 at all times.
o To disable these channels right click on the proper chat tab, go to “Tab Options” then “Filters.” Scroll down to Region and Region-RvR and uncheck the channels you no longer wish to view.
o If you have disabled either channel and wish to re-enable them simply return to the “Filters” menu and re-select the appropriate channels.General Changes and Bugfixes
* In order to ensure that the Apothecary skill remains a valuable crafting profession potions will no longer drop as frequently.
* Seeds for Cultivation will no longer drop as frequently throughout the world.
* Monsters should no longer disappear and then reappear when attacked at range by players.
* In some rare cases, the game would leave “ghost images” of NPCs who had moved away or de-spawned. As a result, players would see NPCs that were not actually there. We have taken steps to correct this issue, and players should see far fewer of these phantom NPCs.
* We fixed an issue that would sometimes cause monsters to break off in mid-combat and attempt to walk away.
* We have made some additional improvements to the pathing and behavior of monsters. These fixes should reduce pathing issues sometimes seen when pulling monsters at range.
* Nurglings will no longer continue to make aggressive sounds after they have been killed.
* Fixed a crash-issue that sometimes occurred when entering city dungeons.
* Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when searching the Auction House.
Content
* We have made some adjustments to the Hydra boss in the Sacellum dungeon to bring this encounter more in line with the original design and difficulty.
Realm vs Realm
* Reduced the interaction time required to deploy a guild standard
* Reduced the interaction time required for players to pick up standards that they own. Please Note: This does not include the capturing of enemy standards.
* Capturing an enemy standard will now reward the capturing player and his nearby allies with renown.
* Players can no longer be queued for a scenario while they already have an invite pending to a different scenario.
* Attempting to join a scenario that has already ended will no longer send players to the character select screen.
* Renown gained from healing players was granting more renown than intended over long periods of time. Players who heal other players will still earn renown for aiding their friends in combat, but large heals or repeated heal-over-time spells will result in lesser renown gains than before.
* While going over the data collected for renown gained by healing, we discovered a few incorrect values that led to players earning far more renown than designed. To ensure equal renown gains for players regardless of their chosen career and whether they group or not inside scenarios, we have made several adjustments to the way renown is granted from healing other players:
o Earning renown from healing players was erroneously granting renown while outside of RvR. This has been adjusted so getting renown for healing players outside of RvR or from a player that is not RvR flagged will occur less frequently.
o Healing players will grant renown correctly if the healed player has earned renown from killing other players recently.