Yes indeed! In the absence of any other MMO I much feel like playing at the moment (though there are quite a few incoming) I have jumped aboard the FreeRealms bandwagon. As I already had an SOE Station Access account, I get FreeRealms membership included on that which allows me to access some extra content over the free version, so I figured I might as well give it a try.
It’s rather fun! While I am not sure there is enough there to satisfy the hardcore gamer for long, even after it loses that new-game shine I can see me popping in to play my favourite minigames. My favourite so far is Penguin Produce, which is a penguiny take on the old game where you build turrets to destroy successive waves of evil-doers, to prevent them from reaching your tower. I’ve not had so much puzzley fun since Yo Ho Ho Puzzle Pirates!
Free Realms update notes for the 6th of May are after the jump.
Continue reading Free Realms! + Free Realms May 6th Update notes.
No sooner have we received 1.0.6, and the plague of newbie tanks that has accompanied it, than 1.1 has hit the US test server.
Lets have a rummage through, and I’ll interject as we go.
Continue reading Warhammer Online 1.1 hits the Test Server
The winds of chaos have swirled and swooshed through the Old World, and none of us will be left untouched.
These update notes are fairly huge, and every class has been altered. Without numbers, it will be hard to judge exactly what the effect will be, so I encourage everybody to get onto the public test servers, once they materialise, in order to provide Mythic with quality feedback.
Let’s see what has become of us: Continue reading Warhammer Online 1.0.5 patch notes. The Class rebalance is upon us.
Yes, I’m grumpy at the moment. That is because Mythic keep making bizarre design decisions that seem to fly in the face of reality. Also, I need caffeine.
Campaign Adjustments
Tier 4 zones now require fewer scenario victory points to be captured. The mechanics of capturing a zone have not changed however. Zones which have no scenario opposition can still be captured if players join the queue for scenarios based on that Zone. Victory points towards zone control will be granted if a realm has enough players in the queue to launch the scenario and the other realm doesn’t. If players in those queues join a launched scenario or leave the queue, the victory points towards zone control will be forfeit.
In other words, using “Join All†to queue for all available scenarios is still the fastest way to get into a scenario, but joining the scenarios in a specific zone will have the greatest impact on control of that zone, and by extension the greatest impact on the campaign in that pairing.
Wooh, woh!!! Stop right there! If one faction has enough people queueing up for a scenario, and the other faction does not, the faction with the most queuers gets victory points?
Are you insane? Do you understand that on many servers, one faction or another simply cannot muster enough people for a scenario in certain tiers. On my server we have never had a tier 3 scenario. I don’t know which faction, maybe it’s both, does not have enough players signing up. But, Mythic, it was you who decided the minimum number of players needed to launch a scenario, and set it so high. How are we going to balance the populations if you explicitly go around rewarding the higher pop faction?
Not only that, but you are forcing people who care about the overall war to sign up for scenarios, even if they’ed rather do Open RvR. If they don’t, there is a risk of allowing the enemy a free victory. You have been saying that you want to move people out of scenarios, into open RvR, but this will have precisely the opposite effect.
If the higher numbered faction, on low pop servers, is going to be receiving a constant stream of extra victory points from failed scenario launchings, that makes a complete mockery of the war. The lower population sides are already having enough trouble in open PvP. Now you want to make it so that they auto-fail scenarios?
I was really hoping for a scenario fix in 1.04. One that would have allowed me to actually play in a tier 3 scenario. Maybe a scenario randomiser so that in tiers that do have scenarios happening, we don’t keep doing the same one. Instead, I hear that I may be going to be punished for Mythic’s own bad scenario launching design that won’t let me play. That annoys me.
Here’s my proposed fix. First, only grant victory points for scenarios that actually take place, as happens now.
Next, figure out how many people each side has signed up for a scenario. Launch a scenario with equal numbers on each side. Use the blasted Nordenwatch map if you think the tier 3 maps are too big for the number of players available. If Nordenwatch is too big, make a map for smaller numbers. But, and this is what I care about, LAUNCH A SCENARIO!!!! Let us fight! I’ll fight one on one in a cardboard box if that is all you have time to design. That is preferable to our opponents just being given free victory points.
Update: Hello to Book of Grudges, and Tobold readers!!! Some more thoughts.
The supporters of this change seem to be convinced, when they want a scenario and it doesn’t launch, that it’s because of some sinister plan by the enemy trying to deny them victory points. They are trying to suggest that the opposing faction is so organised, so dedicated, so of one mind, that none of them sign up, even though scenarios are fun and grant good rewards.
That is one possible explanation, but I can think of a lot of simpler ones.
1. Population being low.
2. The requirements for launching a scenario being too high. I spoke to a CSR this week and he told me that the tier 3 scenarios need 18 people on each side.
3. That there is something wrong with the way scenario launching works. I especially suspect this with regards to how it decides which scenario to launch when everyone hit the join all button. Also, if everyone hits “join all” but one single person picks a specific scenario, presumably that would be the one you would get every time, as it would reach the launch criteria soonest.
4. That it is far fiddlier to sign up for a scenario than it needs to be. Why can’t I sign up for a tier 3 scenario when I’m in a tier 2 area? Or when I’m in Altdorf? And if I do get into a scenario, or if I crash, I have to travel back to the specific tier in order to sign up again? Ridiculous! Before you start punishing our realm for not signing up for scenarios in sufficient numbers, hows about you remove all the pointless barriers to signing up?
Update 2: And hello to Kill 10 Rats readers!
The human mind is wired to find patterns everywhere. Often we ascribe intent and purpose to these patterns. That is how superstitions begin, and I believe that in a similar way, people are assuming that the enemy faction is responsible for the scenario situation, when it is simply an artifact of a poorly designed system. Unfortunately, this patch note appears to be attempting to resolve a superstition, a mere illusion, instead of fixing the very real problems with scenario launching that lie at its root.
Anyhows, the the rest of the 1.0.4 Warhammer Online Patch Notes continue below. There’s nothing else in them I feel strongly about either way, apart from the Witching event that I’ve already written about, and am looking forward to.
Continue reading Scenario Insanity in Warhammer 1.0.4
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.
Me and my friends have been having a fantastic time in Warhammer Online so far. I’ve gotten rather a taste for RvR not matched since my DaoC days, and many an orc has fallen to the guns of Osgard, Dwarven Engineer! I do have a few concerns though.
Mostly I’m worried about open world RvR. With so many different RvR zones to choose from, finding where, if anywhere, the action is, can be pretty time consuming. I know a lot of people, on reaching tier 2 and finding they can’t just walk up the hill in Nordland to find a scrap any more, just start a new character. That’s not particularly ideal. There is an attempt to help, in that you receive a warning if a Keep in your current pairing is under attack. Unfortunately that warning is usually a complete lie. I have stood on the battlements of Mandred’s Hold and been informed that the Lord was under attack when there was not an enemy in sight, much less one inside the keep.
Are there just too many battlezones? Most open world RvR seems to involve avoiding the enemy army, and going to an empty zone to take objectives and keeps before the enemy figures out where you have gone. I am wondering whether some sort of count of players in each RvR zone might be a useful piece of information to be able to display. Or would that upset everyone who likes to take objectives without a fight?
There are special sets of armour that only drop during RvR. For tier 1, it is the Decimator set, and tier 2 it is the Obliterator set. That’s a great idea. My problem is that I’ve only seen about 5 pieces drop since I’ve been playing, and they were all foot items. Maybe the other parts are gained some other way? I have no idea. There is no hope of anyone completing the lower tier RvR armour sets before they have outgrown the tier. It may be different in the higher tiers, but the tier 1 drop rate needs to heavily raised, and the tier 2 drop rate could use an increase also. Once you outlevel the tier, you can’t go back and get these items later , and as they each give you an unlock, that hurts.
Update: I just read an interview that tells us where to find the rest of these armour sets. The Decimator chest can be looted from the champions guarding tier 1 objectives, the Obliterator chest comes from Keep Lords, and the Obliterator gloves can be purchased from a renown vendor. Nevertheless, I have never seen any of these items drop, and I’ve killed a whole lot of tier 1 champions, and tier 2 keep lords. Given how many people it takes to defeat a Keep Lord, and how many of them you are likely to defeat during tier 2, your chances of getting a chest for your class is damn slim. I have found my Obliterator gloves hiding at the bottom of the list on the renown vendor though, so progress has been made. Just need the chest now.
The Warhammer looting system (standard “need”, “greed”, “pass” system) had been breaking down in scenarios, where people can’t be kicked out of the group, or otherwise have good behaviour forced upon them. On our server we’ve had a few people taking advantage of that by “needing” every single item, while being completely silent in the face of community condemnation. While there is some small satisfaction in adding them to my blacklist, and letting them die, it has been extremely frustrating, and terrible for community cohesion. I am extremely pleased that 1.02 will only permit “needing” in scenarios if the item is usable by your class. I suspect this complete exploit was being used as a source of funding for goldfarmers, and overall it is going to make scenarios much more relaxing.
Another problem with scenarios has been that for some reason, you can only get into some of them. In tier 1, folks only seem to sign up for Nordenwatch. It’s a nice map, but frankly I’d rather play Ekrund. I have still never got into the tier 2 dwarven scenario. In a recent patch, it was added that you could sign up for a the scenarios for the other pairings provided you were in the right tier of land. In 1.02, you will be able to sign up for all 3 with a single click of a “join all” button. I hope that helps. But one annoying thing is that if I am in a tier 1 land, or in Altdorf, I cannot sign up for a tier 2 scenario at all. You have to be in a tier 2 land, and that seems to be to be a rather pointless limitation upon us. Also, getting into the Nordenwatch scenario removes me completely from the Ekrund queue, meaning that if I ever want to play Ekrund, I am not allowed to play any other scenario while I wait. Once again, needlessly limiting.
I am told Tier 3 has five scenarios to choose from. I wonder if it’ll still be just one or two that I ever get to play. I would prefer it if we didn’t pick specific scenarios. If the scenario was chosen at random when it launched, we’d see a much better mix.
I am not as concerned about all these issues as I might otherwise be, because Mythic is actually doing a really good job of addressing Warhammer’s problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if 1.03 chops the head off a few more of my worries.
Warhammer Online Patch 1.02 is now live on the US servers, and will be hitting Europe on Friday morning. Lots of good stuff in there. The patch notes continue below. Hit the link if you’re on the blog’s front page.
Continue reading Warhammer Online RvR thus far.
With Early Access for all the fancy-pants with their Collector’s Editions due to start this Sunday, many problems that have been flagged up by the Warhammer Online beta-testers are addressed in this patch. I hope it has been thoroughly in-house tested, as it’s kind of late to be introducing any new problems.
I’ve had a chance to spend a few hours on a friend’s beta account, and the game seems reasonably solid, though the newbie zones do tend to be the most polished part of any MMO in it’s early days.
The combat animation seemed a bit limited, at least for the two classes I’ve had time to try, as did the character creation options. Turns out those extra heads you get for having the collector’s edition might be more useful than I realised, as you sure don’t get many options with the basic package. Given the limited number of classes in any newbie zone, and that everyone from a class is dressed identically, with no chance to choose clothing colours during character creation, and you have a newbie zone that is comically heaving with almost identical looking people. Like a terrifying clone invasion devouring all before it.
I did not crash during my few hours of play, which I find to be a refreshing change from other recent new releases (I’m looking at YOU, Conan!). It all seems pretty playable, and there is are many aspects of the game I have yet to try, so I’ll be joining the other regular pre-orders early access folks on Monday, to find out what this War has in store.
Below you can find the patch notes for Warhammer Online version 4.1.1 Just hit the “Keep Reading” link if you’re not on this post’s own page.
Continue reading Warhammer Online’s last minute patch before Early Access begins
|
|