Ragbag

Last update has been a few days ago, as i was busy creating a new space for our guild alliance Inevitable Destruction. But now that's done, lets check what happened over the last days...

Major news from Mythic on the fortress fight front. They'll cap fortress fights and teleport players out that can't get in anymore. The cap is a dynamic one and will raise the needed player rank in steps. Lower rank players that are at the fight from the start won't get ported out as it will only affect players trying to enter the area, as clarified by Andy. I think i speak for many if i say the player base hopes its only a temporary fix and the code/hardware will be adjusted further in the future. While i don't think its the best way to go, at least Mythic works on making the fortress fights more stable. A hotfix on the US servers apparently also fixed the bugged city siege PQ contribution, where the same people did win the gold bags every time. The contribution system did build on the contrib you gained during the first PQ done and did not reset - so now we have a few lucky people run around with nearly full Invader gear they gained in one night. EU should hopefully get the fix tomorrow then.

BTW, you got a Wii? Well, looks like there are some folks that try to play WAR with the Wii-Mote. While i doubt its very effective playwise, maybe something fun to try if you're bored.

There has been some buzz of blogging (1,2,3, etc.) about the WAR ward system recently. Some initial misinformation shows that Mythic/GOA should inform players better about the ward system and how it works, *inside* the game. If even some of the regular bloggers don't know 100% how it works, how should the average gamer? Why not have a special tome unlock, explaining in detail how it works and where to find stuff, once you gain your first piece with a ward? This would close the info gap many players have. Of course it's annoying to have to obtain certain gear items to progress, but then again so far no MMO i played was able to abandon a certain gear grind at the endgame, as else players will get bored with the content faster and there is no need to run certain dungeons over and over, resulting in a huge unsatisfaction about content. I'm not saying i enjoy the gear grind, but some sort of endgame grind is necessary i think as else the content will run dry rather quick. I DO think Mythic needs to adress the dungeon drops to create a better system via tokens or such. And NO, i don't think you need to be able to use ALL the drops, but running eg. Lost Vale and not being able to use any drops at all is frustrating. I had to run the city dungeons a gazillion times to finally get my Sentinel chest piece and i know others are in the same boat. Of course dungeons per se are faster in WAR then in many other MMOs, so once you mastered the content its not such a pain as running Molten Core all over again. As far as i recall city dungeons usually take us between 35min and one hour, depending on group and speed approach.

There is a lot of critique about the ward system, but IMO people tend to forget one thing: The ward system enables Mythic to make the high-end set pieces not to overpowered in RvR while still create a PvE content progression in "power". In other games the high-end sets are so powerful, those wearing them will trash everyone with only high-rank blues. This is not the case in WAR. While i do think there is not much variety gear-wise and Mythic needs to adjust eg. the droprate in Lost Vale (only one piece per wing boss, should IMO be two at least) of course they could have achieved the ward system also by means of extra slots like talismans for all high level gear - that way you could have at least used more variety depending on play style. In some departments the itemization is still lacking (eg. no "real" tanking weapons) and like i mentioned before, the new Bastion & city dungeon drops are way better then most things in Lost Vale.

On a sidenote, i catched another person "borrowing" a map from me, editing it and posting it as their own. A site called PlayerQuest used my Bilerot Burrow map and just deleted all the other info stuff from my map and threw together their own version. How can i know? Well, especially the BB map needed some editing due to the different levels and i had to use some editing tricks to make it look properly. The impudent part is they have a Creative Commons License on their blog as well. If they know what that really means, they should have realized they are breaking mine in not giving credit and using a different license. Ah well, i left a comment asking them to at least point to the original. Like i mentioned before, I'm very relaxed in letting people use my stuff, but if people just take your work, don't ask you and post it as theirs, it annoys me big time.