Another Ragbag, with AoE, Keep upgrades and Bio Breaks

Hum? Another Ragbag? Yeah, I'm a bit short on time these days due to me organizing a conference for the weekend. So its just some short pointers. But i'm writing on some longer articles as well, I'll post over the next days... exciting stuff. ;)

Syp got hoarse crying waaagh! and figured its time to take a bio break. Good luck with it man, feels like the right thing to do when reading your reasons. And finally you got a clean layout again. =)

I saw i was awarded a sticky keyboard award as well, and two times. I did not have time to have a closer look tho. But thanks in advance guys. While Regis said I'm good with pigs, Girl IRL naming me an old-timer, made me feel... old. ;)

You possibly read about the Incoming 1.2.1 GTAoE Changes Adam posted. The good news is Mythic is working on this stuff, the bad news its not nearly enough yet. There are several threads discussing these changes on the forums, but if you want a nice diagram head over to breakfast at war and read hey adam, ur doin’ it wrong from pancakez

Interesting stuff upcoming with next patch.. a short preview for v1.2.1 Patch and a more detailed description of the upcoming Keep Upgrade System. Sounds like a good start, but no where near where we need it... keep going Mythic, i seriously hope you nail down the endgame better before more people get bored.

And what the freakin' hell is wrong with the EU servers? Last night we were inside Lost Vale when the Inevitable City was attacked and Order even managed to get to stage two of the capitol siege. Inside LV the lag was about two seconds when you wanted to use a skill or move stuff inside your bags. The mobs behaved irratic and were teleporting around, which made some boss fights not that much better. Around midnight then the whole server infrastructure went to hell and people (me included) got disconnected all the time up to a point we could not even start the patcher anymore. Great! :( Now whats the reason? Is it again some "internet infrastructure" problem like the last time? Or did GOAs servers could not handle the stress? They really need to do something here, it was annoying as hell and all of us were fed up yday. And why is the lag inside an instance so horrible? All other MMOs i played organized the cluster in a way that you could at least "flee" from server lag when going into an instance. Seriously feed the hamster better or spank the internet monkey harder, i don't care... but fix it. Ah yes, we found one item in two wings we could use yesterday... everything else was crap to salvage.

In a hurry, no gfx today folks...

Boiling Pot: AoE Stacking & Pick Lock

Beside the ragbag, I'm introducing a new category for hot topics about game flaws: The boiling pot.

Since the changes to resistances, which were needed, there is a lot of discussion about eg. damage from Bright Wizards, especially AoE, being over the top. There is always whining on the forums about nerf this and nerf that, but the BW AoE stacking causes some serious issues in RvR currently. The problem is a certain combination of abilities/skills in connection with the lower resistances and the game flaw that there needs to be no LOS to do this AoE, then stacking it with a few BWs. The video from the picture caused a lot of uproar on the US forum, as it shows three BWs killing around 20+ players without even being in danger. If you tried to take a keep/fortress with BWs stacking AoE in front of the door and realising that no melee can even get to the door without dying, but you can't even see the BWs stacking their AoE - there is not much you can do against it. If the RDPS could at least shoot at them you have a chance, but else its becoming very difficult. Add to that those warbands running a ton of Knights that just stand behind the door and repair it... its frustrating to say the least. Adam already acknowledged those flaws, so we can only hope Mythic works this out fast.

Another thing that should not be possible is Witch Hunters or Witch Elves using Pick Lock to enter a Keep, then abusing the still existing flaw that you can pull the Keeplord to eg. the balcony and solo killing him while all doors are up and the guards are still alive.