This is not photoshopped. John Sidney McCain III, when startled, reverts back to his gargoylic ancestry. It is particularly effective at frightening away all manner of witchery and evil spirits. Sadly, it is less effective on debate moderators and political rivals. Of course, Obama, being the Antichrist, is immune anyway.
Although you cannot tell from this picture, special glands in John McCain’s neck and back would also have released a foul tasting mucous designed to deter predators and investigative journalists. While this seldom proves useful in and of itself, many of McCain’s supporters enjoy the hallucinogenic effects they can experience by licking him.
That’s in general. Air Quotes are annoying. They make you look condescending, not intriguingly post-ironic.
Using air quotes around “Women’s Health” in the way that you did, makes you look like a callous unfeeling patriarch who thinks of women more as property than as individuals with the right to choose what happens to their own bodies. I thought you were supposed to be trying to pretend not to be one of them, even if your running mate, Sarah Palin, makes no effort at all to hide her feelings? Opposing abortion even in the case of rape? Seriously? You really think the American people, as a whole, are going to go for that? Or was your choice of Vice President also supposed to be ironic? Perhaps, given both your records on opposing equal pay for women, you picked a woman VP in order to save the tax payer a few bucks?
Senator McCain, seriously, air quotes are so 80s. That does make them about 30 years more modern than your views on women’s rights, but still, you’d be well served to stop using them.
Also it makes you look like Dr Evil. Some might say that is a step up from being compared to Gollum though.
Hmm, has this post been overly partisan? Let us even things out with this “lovely” piece of “music”.
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.
Long-term readers are familiar with my occasional attempts to free myself from the tyranny of the demon-weed that is tobacco. If you have never smoked, what follows is probably going to sound a little pathetic, but nicotine addiction makes weaklings of us all. And hey kids, don’t start smoking.
I was watching BBC News 24, when along comes a story about a pub that is trying to beat the smoking ban by selling these fancy electronic cigarette devices. Essentially, they’re a battery powered stick that vapourises nicotine and propylene glycol into a sort of heated mist. The story was not entirely supportive, talking about how these were still addictive, and not particularly good for you.
But you know what? I didn’t care about that. I’ve shown that I am a weak-willed creature who is not, right now at any rate, in a place where I am able to kick nicotine. However, while I am physically addicted to nicotine, and psychologically addicted to sucking hot gases out of small stick shaped things, I am not addicted to the 4000 or so other chemicals that are in tobacco, that cause the vast majority of the health problems.
So I ordered this one, and it arrived on Friday. I’ve not smoked since, and I don’t want to. My Electronic Cigarette is filling all my psychological and physical addiction needs. If you are a smoker, get one of these. By the way, I’m not being paid to say this. If they had an affiliate scheme I’d sign up for it, but they don’t. But I am fairly sure that discovering this little gadget is a mildly life-changing experience, and I’d be extremely remiss if I didn’t try to share it with all my fellow prisoners of tobacco.
I’m feeling a little unwell at the moment. Some of the usual withdrawal symptoms you usually get when giving up smoking. Without the constant addition of layers of tar, my lungs are beginning to heal, and are starting to feel sore, which will probably last a week or two. Without the carbon-monoxide in my blood, I have crazy amounts of oxygen in there, which makes me feel a little dizzy and nauseous. With the slow return of my sense of smell, I’m thinking I might need to clean my kitchen a little more often. These things shall pass. But the withdrawal symptom I don’t have? Craving. There is no craving. Even with the strongest nicotine patch I would crave the sensation of smoking, but with these, nothing.
I may, or may not, be a vaper for the rest of my life. I’m still addicted to nicotine, but this method of getting it will not give me cancer (Nicotine, while addictive and toxic, is not a carcinogen), and will cost me about a 6th of the money. The possibility is there for me to move to vapours with less nicotine, and even ones with no nicotine at all. Right now, I’ll stick with the medium strength ones that are working for me.
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.
Mordred takes a bow! When last we met our terrific trio, they were in grave danger of becoming charred embers under the fires of Mordred’s rocketship. Has that dastardly villain finally gotten the better of Jack?
This is the final episode in our little series. Making them was a blast, and we’ll hopefully get a second season to you soon.
