January 29, 2009

"Call to Arms" Update & Land of the Dead

Seems like the cat jumped out of the sack before Mythic could post their large announcement. Reading at eurogamer.net, GOA has announced a big "Call to Arms" update. The news include Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer confirmed (in March, early access throuh live-event again), a Land of the Dead zone (in June) which includes an enormous new Tomb Kings dungeon (accessable through a Darkness Falls mechanic: whoever controls the area will unlock the public quests and instances associated with the zone). Two previous live events are needed to be completed by the realms to gain access.

Now lets hope we'll get some more in detail information (and pictures) about the stuff...

Updates from Mythic:
CALL TO ARMS Live Expansion
WAR Live Event: Night of Murder
WAR Live Event: Bitter Rivals
Press Release

Ragbag and Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

This morning i stumbled over the Picasa Web Album from Josh Drescher. Some funny pictures in it, check them out. The latest quirk from the BlackBerry-Generation seems to be using social networks like Twitter, posting short lines online about what you're doing right now. Paul Barnett and Josh Drescher are no exception. ;)

Warhammervault posted news about my Lost Vale map. They did not link to my blog from the news, but directly to the map graphic tho. Better bookmark my blog, in case the map gets updated later on.

Magnus says Karak-Azgal is the largest server in Europe, and also well balanced.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre will come to a Twisted Tower next to you soon. A bunch of bloggers located in the US got mysterious love letters from Mythic. Regis over at Wizards & Wenches sums the whole thing up nicely, he thinks the poems hint towards Death Night as a live event in February. The interesting thing are the numbers and letters on the back of each card. So far 10/13 cards have been posted by bloggers. A nice marketing stunt from Mythic and I'm sure many of the bloggers feel happy about a fun hello from Mythic.
BTW Regis, now you outed yourself as a Lost (TV series) fan... saw what you did there in your blog header.

January 27, 2009

Quick Addon Roundup

Those that look closely at my addon list will know, i update it once in a while. If i kick an addon or use a new one, my addon list will always reflect which addons I'm currently using. Figured it's time to point you towards the nifty additions over the last weeks...

I threw out ItemRack as it was too buggy/intrusive for my taste and installed Equipment Sets, which offers you three sets, saving gear, tactics and morales. Therefore MoraleSets became obsolete for me as well. Three sets are enough for me... tanking, RvR and solo set are doing the trick for my Black Orc.

I started using the alpha version of Arlien's Guild Manager, which gives you a larger guild UI window (extra window, does not replace) and adds more sorting functions, information plus fixes most of the current guild UI bugs.

Useful small addon i just installed is called QuickNameActions: Adds a few hotkey-click combinations, so eg. you can do a shift+left-click on a name in the chatwindow to do a /who. Nifty!

Did i mention I'm using LootLink? It's an ingame database that collects all items (uncommon and better) you see, mine is around 3600 items now. Nice to look up certain items and especially from the endgame dungeons not all are on WarDB. You can also link the items to others, but they can only click/see the link if they saw that item recently and have it cached.

On a sidenote, pray that Mythic won't screw around with the mailbox UI anymore, as z00g is not developing zMailMod any longer, as he stoped playing WAR. O.o

January 26, 2009

Ragbag

The picture shows one of the weird bugs you get from time to time. It's a Black Guard and the "deformation" will stay on your screen until you zone. It looks really weird if a player is running around like Mr. Fantastic. Talking about Black Guards, i recently saw some pictures about their Sovereign gear: gallery 1, gallery 2.

Everyone likes to speculate about upcoming patch notes. Often early posted patch notes are fake, sometimes real. Until nothing officially is being said, you've to expect the "leaked" patch 1.2 notes to be fake... or change completely before the patch. If you want to read them and speculate yourself: read here. I won't comment on them until i know they're real. ;)

January 25, 2009

WAR: Age of Blogging III

The WAR: Age of Blogging initiative so far really exceeded all our expectations. There are so many new blogs, its great. And also due to the initiative some already established blogs got more coverage and found their way into our awesome blogger community. It's great to be able to stick your heads together and talk about ideas & problems connected to blogging and WAR. Mythic & GOA have been very helpful in featuring the Blogging community and also Warhammer Alliance recently started a series, introducing blogs to the community. Great stuff!



Recently some of us more popular bloggers had to deal with a bunch of plagiarism. Beside the single map or article that gets "stolen" and posted without credit, there are also others that use your RSS feed to automaticly repost all the text and try to fill up their content for their website quickly, so they get better search engine rankings and usually they try to sell game gold or gaming guides. If you read my blog through a RSS feed reader, you might have noticed the little graphic at the end to identify the text as coming from my blog. Now you know why this was added.

Should you have missed the first wave of blogs new since WAR: Age of Blogging, check out the list here.
To continue the influx of new WAR blogs to check out, have a look at those:

A Gamer's Yarn
Biel's Chosen Words
Blood, Faith and Fire
breakfast at war
Clockwork Landmine
Dark Crag Dispatch
Echoes of WAR
Girl IRL
Girly Elves
God of Healing (German)
Knights of the Feathered Hats
Kutu's Blog
Mudjai's Frog Blog (DoK)
Nerf 'Em All
Ninjagon Metalstories (czech/english)
Pwnsan
Scarbigrot's Warhammer Misadventure's
Shadow WAR
Shock 'n Waaagh!
Sneaks Speaks
Spank the Tank
Spearhead
Stefson's MMO ramblings
The Kitchen Philosopher
Waaghammer
WARart (spanish)
WAR according to Godstomper
War is Everywhere
WAR is the Answer
WAR of Alts
Wide Eyed Newb

Keep up the good work guys. I think after the month is over I'll go through each blog again and write a bit more about my favorites. I already added two of the blogs to my links.

Lost Vale Map

Since i saw another map of the Lost Vale floating around now, i figured there is no use to keep you guys waiting longer. Of course my map has more information and does look better. ;)
As a bonus for those that participated in the Lost Map Challenge, i gave them credit for unlocking the map on the map itself. Thanks for joining the fun! As for the last question from Challenge III: How many Gorgers in total live inside the Gorger Cave in Enclave? It was 29 in total when i went in there. The other two challenges would have been "find that place" and i would have posted screenshots, you had to find the place. I'll keep those for some upcoming challenge...

Here you can grab the high-definition 1600x1900 Lost Vale Map (choose free user).

January 23, 2009

How to count Dragon Teeth

Part of the current Challenge for the Lost Map of Lost Vale was to count how many teeth does a dragon have. I hinted in the comments there are different ways to do so. Since i was asked yesterday to share what the different ways were, here are the different solutions i came up with when preparing the challenge:



Artwork & Sculptures

As we know, sculptures of living things are often quite close to the original, not always 100% exact, but give a good impression. There are a few places with huge dragon statues around the world, eg. in Dragonwake. They are large enough so you can count their teeth from the ground.





Scientific Research on Fossils & Bones

All over the world are places with large localisations of dragon bones, especially in the Elvish areas and also in some greenskin places. Looking at the jawbone of a dead dragon will give you an idea about the amount. Even when some teeth are missing, you can still see where they were before.



Last but not least of course there is the encounter of living species. In several places around Warhammer you can encounter large, breething dragons. I confess most are heroes, some champions, and i can imagine counting their teeth might be difficult for squishies... but you could always bring friends. ;) BTW, the challenge is still going on, participate now and unlock the map!


On a sidenote, over the last weeks i had some people create chars on my server just to talk with me. While many just PM me through WHA or my guild forum, some folks were wondering why i don't have a contact email posted on my blog. Well, tbh i never felt the need to be "reachable" much. And if i would have been, I'd probably have missed out on Paul's video message, proving him is him, for me. ;) But to make it easier for people that want me to father their children or convince me to convert to Order, I did set up a contact mail now... as sometimes while ingame i don't have that much time to talk, because I'm busy running a dungeon or RvR. Please refrain from asking me about Tome unlocks or encounter strategies tho. You can click the mail-icon at the header to get my email.

January 22, 2009

Warhammer Character Naming Policy

Recently a guild mate of mine came in contact with the CSR and the Warhammer Character Naming Policy: His char was named Smutpeddler, which IMO only is a funny word play for a greenskin and means dirt dealer. The urbandictionary.com also lists the meaning of "smut peddler" as a porn dealer. Apparently that was why someone felt disturbed by it and the CSR renamed his char, leaving him with the option to appeal for a name change later on. Beside the fact that the CSRs take their time to get back to him about his suggested name changes, i started wondering about the naming policy. The CSR told him "smut" would not be allowed in a name... huh. There are tons of really bad names running around on the servers, some with nasty offensive RL references and greenskins can't use smut?!? If i look in my dictionary, the synonyms that head into direction of dirt & mud outweight the other double meanings by far. Are you offended by a name like Smutpeddler?

Character Naming Policies are always tricky to handle and involve some very emotional discussion by players & guilds if they used the name since years. I know that after server transfers some guilds had the problem they could not re-create their guild name again as the naming policy changed in between. The GOA Community Team stepped in and was able to clear it up for them. Then there is often the trademark issue with players/guilds using names related to already existing brands. As this is a tricky issue and involves legal implications for GOA/Mythic, i can understand they simply avoid those legal problems and are not really willing to discuss the approach on this and be rather safe then sorry.

So how exactly does the policy enforcement work, i was wondering. Magnus (GOA) answered my question and told me its a reactive approach, meaning someone needs to report you (or your guild) first. This goes both ways of course, should you see someone with an offensive name, you need to report them first for actions to be taken. Then it's up to the judgement of the CSR working your case if the name is deemed improper or not. Because of the human factor involved the results will most likely vary. As with every job, there are good and bad service reps (some really have no clue, like the CSR that told another player that fading (on a timer) talismans would start to tick once crafted, wtf?) and you can only hope you get to deal with a good one. It's basicly like when you call your ISPs service callcenter. ;)

In the end all CSRs seem to be highly trained ninjas.

But where to gather information about the naming policy? Usually most players just accept the Code of Conduct and have trouble finding the info again on the web. Your best bet is to check the EU Warhammer FAQ (did you know this FAQ existed?). While the Category "Naming Policy" does not have a link towards the WAR Naming Policy, you'll find it as part of the Code of Conduct under Character and Guild Naming Policy.

Despite the emotions involved when your name is "attacked", I'd advice you to stay calm (those guys are only doing their job and not on a personal crusade against you) and try to reason with the CSR, explaining why the name should be allowed. If you think you can support your claim for your name and the CSR does not seem to get it, you can always ask polite & nicely for him to escalate the issue to a "senior CSR" (Customer Service Supervisor). Of course this will only yield results when its not an obvious violation. As a last resort, should you feel mistreated by the CSR, you can always complain about them directly. There is no use to do so just to "try again" to have someone else look at your case, but only if you really feel treated bad by the CSRs. Contact adresses are:
EU: Help Form here (choose Sanction Appeal and correct language)
US: disputes@warhammeronline.com

Overall I've to say I'm quite happy with the names on Karak-Azgal, while there are always stupid names that break your immersion, i think many players chose good & funny names on our server. One reason i often played on role-play servers are the names, which are usually enforced by special (harder) policies on those servers.

Maybe this post will help you, should you search for pointers when in need for them.

January 21, 2009

New Black Orc Mounts Follow-Up

Since i posted the screenshots of possible new mounts and also the cheerleader miniature, i checked out some more figures from the table-top game. I really have to say that Mythic did a nice job of creating the looks those "originals" have into the game. Looking at a bunch of those miniatures shows some very cool war-boars, that actually look like you could fight with them. So an upgraded model with those long tusks would look very cool. I like those a lot, looks like they crossbreeded boars with other animals.

I only found one picture of those mentioned "magical machines", the Ironback Boars and have to say i don't really like their look. Then I'm rather giving my vote to the earlier mentioned "classic" looking WAR boars. If you want to get an idea about some cool looking Orc armor, dig through some of the miniatures... some very cool stuff. Although WAR already has some cool Orc armors, its just that they're only used on NPCs and a lot of shields or the Darkpromise gear just use placeholder models at the moment. Let's hope that changes soon...

This one is for scribbler: I found this thread about a guy creating an Orc Boss miniature, while the Orc is riding a hybrid between a Rhinox and a Boar. Check out the pictures in that thread, hes posting all the different stages. While I'm not into miniatures myself, i found this a cool project nontheless.

Talking about WAR, how cool would it be if you could also dye your mounts armor?

January 20, 2009

The small, but annoying, stuff in everyday gaming

I was recently talking with another player about some of the annoying "little" things (bugs & design flaws) you have to deal with every day while ingame. Here is my toplist:
# Fix the guild & alliance UI. It's embarrassing that i have to rely on addons to properly manage our guild as the standard UI is borked and i have to use slash commands.
# When you bid on something at the auction house, the view "jumps" around. When i select an item and bid on it, that window view needs to stay exactly like it was before.
# Getting dismounted when entering The Apex inside the Inevitable City
# It's not possible to dye the primary part for Black Orc Sentinel gear. The shoulders have no trophy slots.
# I disabled all the smart/follow camera stuff. Nontheless, when i die my camera spins around and after respawn often zooms in, so you need to use the mousewheel every time to get out. Additional problem is the camera often gets "stuck" and you have to zoom in before you can zoom out. While talking about the camera view, I'd also really like to be able to zoom out a bit further.
# EDIT: One more thing that sprang to my mind.. when you take screenshots the game numbers them not counting down, but by the next "missing number". This means if i delete screenshots in between, the game will save new screenshots not with the next chronological number, but will fill the spaces in the number range, mixing up my screenshots.

In addition there is a weird graphic bug i (and others) encounter: It looks like some skill animations and some other doodads use a kind of transparent layer. This layer prevents seeing char/NPC names properly as the text is rendered *behind* it. You can easily see it at the cores (1st pic, i used the mount cloud to make it visible) or the mailbox in IC, the second picture shows a layer that stays on the char for some time after you use certain skills, like can't hit me. It's annoying you have to adjust the view to be able to read monster/player names.

On a sidenote, my Empire war story is still missing and only showing ???. I tried deleting the cache but it did not do anything. I talked to the CSR again and he basicly suggested to delete *everything* - aka the standard answer when they have no real idea what's causing it. I'll fiddle around with it some more and try to nail it down, as i refuse to just simply delete all my settings. I'll keep you posted should i find which files to delete. I know some other people have it as well.

2008 Greeny Awards - Silver Goblet

The 2008 Greeny Awards polls closed and the result were posted. Stunty Stomper won the silver goblet for your Favourite Warhammer Online Blog with a good second place. Thanks to all who nominated me and voted for this blog. It's always nice to know people like your site. A guild mate of mine asked me why i did not promote the Greeny Awards inside our alliance - we're part of an alliance with eight large destro guilds - to get those guys voting as well. I did not even promote the awards inside my own guild further. Why? Because i wanted to see how far the reach will be when i only post it in my blog and not get a few hundred people in where some might only read my blog once a month. And secondly, cause i did not care that much... some people like my blog enough to nominate me, that should be enough. The waaagh! blog came out on top and i have no problem to see Syp up there, hes doing a good job with his blog and also supporting the community. And hes lucky looks don't count beside the inner values. ;) Sorry Syp, could not resist to make a pun towards your "new layout" again... if i keep it up, maybe it will become a running joke, who knows. ;)

Thanks again to all who participated and also to Snafzg for hosting the awards.

January 19, 2009

I got a Mysterious Package from Mythic as well!

After Keen & Graev got a package from Mythic to cut & dye their hair orange, i was suprised to find one in my mailbox today as well! A small parcel with a huge WAR stamp on it. Althought i have no idea what the content is supposed to tell me about the upcoming greenskin class... huuuge cigar-smoking Orc Cheerleaders?!?
Alright, was just feeling silly and wanted to pull your leg, i confess. I stumbled over this miniature pic and wanted to share it with you. ;)

The lost Map of Lost Vale Challenge III


The challenge for the lost map of Lost Vale is going into the third round. This time you'll have to adventure into the world and visit certain places to solve it. It's great to see people having fun crackin' the questions... maybe i can talk Paul out of a pair of his red sport shoes and we'll have another contest in the future. ;)

Challenge III tasks: Numbers
How many ships/boats can you see from the beach in Lost Vale? 9 (Aquaduck)
How many statues are placed at the large maingate towards the Stunty capitol? 12 (Aquaduck)
How many teeth does a Wyvern have? 22 (Sekrish)
How many teeth does a dragon have? 40-56 (Sekrish)
How many Gorgers in total live inside the Gorger Cave in Enclave?

Map info & Contest Rules

Ragbag & New Black Orc Mounts

What to do with all the cash? Gold so far is pretty useless in WAR. Mythic stated they don't want gold to be that important, but there are enough players, like me, that like to trade & craft and pile riches like Stunties. Shouldn't there be more money sinks people can work on? Like really expensive, but good looking, dyes? Or how about prestigious mounts that will cost a fortune. I don't really care if they're even faster, they should just look different. Talking about Black Orcs, my vote would go to these three creatures: Juggernauts of Khorne (cloaked in sheets of steel and brass), Rhinoxen (furry Ogre mounts) or as an enhancement of the already used boar theme: Tuskgors. Which creature would get your vote? Talking about mounts: Mythic, why do we get dismounted when riding into the Apex in the Inevitable City? Am i the only one that thinks this is annoying?


Werit wrote a nice post about Creating WAR Web Tools, how to read information from webpages and use them to create an online tool. He'll talk further about this subject, so check his blog.

Magnus guarantees that your characters will stay intact for a minimum of six months, should you cancel your subscription or take a break.


A lot of players still have difficulties to understand the zone capture & victory point system. Like with the wards system, its something Mythic does not explain properly ingame or elsewhere, so people fail to understand it. I'd also advice you to either use the macro to show VPs or use an addon like Compact VPs that shows the correct amount and not rounding to 100 to cap a zone. If you want to read up on it, check here for a more detailed description how Victory Points and zone control work.

The lost map of Lost Vale challenge is going great, the next challenge will be posted later today.

January 18, 2009

The lost Map of Lost Vale Challenge II


The response for the first challenge was much greater then i expected. Nicely done guys! Some of the later tasks will actually require you to venture into the warhammer world and check certain places, stay tuned. :) Alright, so here are the questions for the second part...

Challenge II tasks:
What kind of architect was Doctor Zumwald? architect of the plague (Mazar)
What is a Slayer's (Stunty) job? To die a honourable death on the battlefield (Sekrish)
What is the last name of Caledor, the high elf mage? Dragontamer (Mazar)
What have a Wise, a Goldhound and a Dragonsbane in common? they all were lieutenants of Runelord Ranik Valayason at Grom Rodrin (werit)

The third challenge is up...

January 17, 2009

The lost Map of Lost Vale Challenge


Like i wrote earlier, i created a complete map from Lost Vale. You may have already seen the teaser, below is a new one from the final map. As creating a proper map from an outdoor instance has been more work then the other smaller dungeons, I'll not just post it, but you can unlock it! I'm launching the Challenge for the lost map of Lost Vale:

The Rules:
The challenge will have five parts. Each sub-challenge will have certain tasks/questions. Once all sub-parts are solved I'll post the next sub-challenge. To solve a task, just post your solution in the comments to that task (if you post your char name, you'll get credit for being the first solving it). It's not necessary to answer all at the same time, I'll update the post with those tasks that have been solved already. If necessary post a screenshot to support your solution. There is no time limit for the challenge, but the final map will only be unlocked (posted) once all five challenges have been solved. Sounds like fun? Then get started right away...



The original map to be unlocked is 1600x1900 pixel in size, shows all three wings with necessary points of interest and has some basic guides where you need to go. Orientation inside the outdoor instance is pretty easy once you found your way around, but many players like the other dungeon maps for initial orientation.



Challenge I tasks:
We'll start off with some easy questions...
Which of the magic winds do Necromancers that turn into Liches learn to master? Wind of Shyish/Purple (Yavvy & Walo)
How do you call a hybrid creature half chicken, half lizard? Cockatrice (Snafzg)
Who or what is a Shartak? A Dragon Ogre (Mileena)
Which creatures do Ogres use as mounts? Rhinoxen (Snafzg)

The third challenge is up...

January 16, 2009

The 2008 Greeny Awards


Stunty Stomper has been nominated for the 2008 Greeny Awards at thegreenskin.com by fans & readers. Cheers! So if you read my blog and want to show some support, head over there and vote for this blog. I mean, it's greeny awards... shouldn't at least a greenskin win? ;)

While you're over at the thegreenskin.com also check out the latest podcast ChaosCast #9. It's always fun to listen to those guys and Snafzg had some nice compliments about my Stunty Stomper blog. Thanks man! So a friendly waaagh! to Syp, Snafzg and Keen and their podcast.

Character Portrait Contest at ToK

Greg Moran over at Tome of Knowledge hosts a great Character Portrait Contest i need to point you towards: Write a small 500 words description of your character’s personality, background, and origin and win an awesome character portrait created by Greg. Time to get creative, you don't need to play on a role-play server to participate. It's also nice to see that GOA recently posted some pointers to role-play in WAR. I played on role-play servers before and it can be a lot of fun, you should try it some time.

A sneak peak...

of the upcoming Lost Vale Map. It will be a full map with all three wings in one map. The final map will have some additional guidance where to go compared to my other maps as the multi-level outdoor environment can be confusing else by just looking at the map. Until its unlocked, you can use the map Grabz created, which i thought was funny. =)
BTW, voting for the 2008 Greeny Awards will go on until the 19th, so place your voice for the best community sites there.

January 14, 2009

WAR: Age of Blogging II

Like i mentioned earlier, the WAR: Age of Blogging initiative is going very well. A larger amount of people started new blogs and in addition we were able to draw more blogs into the blogger forum we use. It's nice to have a place to be able to put the heads together with other bloggers and especially for blog-newbies, this can be very helpful. The motivation for people to blog is different, but we all share the interest for the game. If you want to read some brief statements why people blog, head over to the Garrision of War, the blog did a few one question interviews with some of us bloggers.

The main reasons i started blogging were two: I started back in 2005 while playing WoW. I was playing on a roleplay server and part of a small guild. There were not many groups that were running the end-game content initially, so it was hard to get a spot for a tank if it was not your guild running the show. So i was searching for ways to heighten my character profile on my server and get to know more players. I've been involved in writing articles before and always been interested in blogging. Therefore i thought those two things are a great match and started my own blog. As I'm involved with marketing IRL it also gives me the possibility to try out new things like search engine optimization, etc. and play around with blog possibilities. Since I've always been curious and explored a lot of content, i realized there is more then enough topics to talk about. In addition i really like to discuss certain aspects of the game that interest me and its easier to get your message across on a blog then in a forum, where all the different threads are a pain to track. Although it takes quite a while until you get enough readers that come forward and discuss with you inside the comments. Overall it does take some time, but it can be a lot of fun.



So how about you start your own blog today? WAR: Age of Blogging is still running. ;)

There has been an awesome influx of new blogs... if you need something to do, while stuck at work, check them out here:

Alt Much?
Asuryan's Flames
Blame the Healer
Bootae's Bloody Blog
Bow & Stab
Bugmans Best
Cabal of WAR
Casual Chaos
Da Bloggy Tingy
Doodz Wherez my Blog
From The Forging of Fire and Ice
Grumble and Mutter
Healer at Heart
High Magic
High on Chaos
Incoming Pull
Laughing Lion Tavern
Live for the Ding!
My personal WAR
Nerf the Cat
One side of the fence
Rainbow MMO
RP That Way ===>
Schlotzky's
Skurmish
Sneaky Gitz
That's Skar With A K
The Rant
Tome of Gonna
WAAR Stories!
Warhammer Addons Reviewed
WAR! for Casuals
WAR Roleplaying for Dummies
Yitus Warhammer Blog (German)

I looked at all of them and will keep following their development over the next weeks. Only those centric around WAR are listed. Check blogwarhammer.net for even more. Some blogs seem very promising. Keep up the good work guys!

New Blogger Tip of the Day:
Use paragraphs. Seriously, use paragraphs when it fits the content. This will make it much easier to read instead of a wall of text critting you for 30.000 spiritual damage. If you talk about different topics in one post, highlight keywords to guide readers faster through the text. Also use some pictures to break up the text and make it visually more attractive. Best would be to use ingame screenshots (fitting the content if possible), but even a creative use of Google Imagesearch is better then nothing.

January 13, 2009

What I'm working on

Felt like i could make a short post about what's in the pipeline and what I've been working on. I really want to finish my follow up on the WAR: Age of Blogging. Our initiative has been very successful so far... we got a lot of coverage, even the latest US GrabBag was refering to it. Edit: The WAR EU website posted about it today here. More important tho, a large amount of blogs introduced themselves. Thats the reason I'm lacking behind, as i at least want to have a brief look at every single one of them. I should get it done these days tho. Then I've been toying around with my personal version of RvR setup. I bought a bunch of gear and talismans from the AH, threw away some, got some others. I'm too lazy to respecc all the time, so I'm working on my own best version of a tank setup for RvR. I'll keep you posted once i was able to test it more. I also have all the screenshots for my post about exploration in WAR laying around, just need to write the article.

One more thing I'm working on is a map for Lost Vale. As it's an outdoor instance, its not that easy to create a good map for that place. The basics are meanwhile done tho, only need to polish it and add the POIs and some waypoints to it. As this one was more work then the other ones, I'm thinking about creating a scavenger hunt for it, so readers of my blog will be able to do some tasks/exploration and finally unlock the map, resulting in it being posted. Once the map is done, I'll talk more about this project. Stay tuned.

On a sidenote, Denman, a guild mate of mine, created a great Black Orc RvR video. Fun to watch!

January 12, 2009

Since the EU CSR has no clue...

maybe one of you guys encountered this as well and has a solution for it. Ever since our first or second Altdorf city siege the Empire warstory in my Tome has gone "missing". All pages are blank and only show ??? for the different entries, while nearly all of it was populated before. The single entries i eg. can access via the RvR influence bar are still there and also my inf shows as well. The CSR answer to the first ticket said i should try /reloadui while having the page open. Did not work. The second answer i got today reads:
Thank you for your report. We have investigated the issue and what you have described is perfectly normal as long as you haven't flown to empire and taken quests in that area. If you have completed quests in the empire area then you should see more information instead of the ??? depending on the quest you have done.

I'm rank 40 and traveled the world for Gork's sake! So far CSRs have been useless in most games I've played, why do i even bother? I can't really approve their investigation skills. Anyone had this as well and was able to fix it somehow?