Stunty Stomper hits 200.000 visitors

Since my Stunty Stomper blog started in September 2008 i recently hit the 200.000 visitors mark. During those months there was quite some time invested in this blog and due to the maps and info provided there are new people finding it daily via search engines. It's quite fun to have someone send you a tell "Heh, i just found this awesome blog of yours and see you play on the same server!". Many readers followed me during this time and i had some great conversations with a bunch of you. Thanks for your interest guys. When i started the blog i had no idea it would turn out like it did. Thinking back, blog related, i think the three most memorable things for me were:

Paul Barnett proving him is him
I laughed hard when i saw the video clip from him, since i really thought it had been an imposter and made fun of the comments. This was by far the funniest moment.

When the WAR bloggers started to work together
At blogwarhammer.net many of the WAR bloggers united, shared their thoughts and tips. When it really started to pick up with activity, this was a great feeling. Since many bloggers stopped playing WAR now, the activity is towards zero there and the WCPI initiative at WHA picked up where it dwindled.

Beyond the Kraken Sea towards the GM Castle
My April Fool's joke for you guys. I spend quite some time in game & photoshop to put it together the way it turned out. The joke did not start a stir like i thought it would, but then again after i got so many tells people spending hours in search of that book, i just had to call it out to be an April Fool's the day after. Tho even weeks after i still got tells or emails from people asking about the book. I hope all of you that searched for it at least got some kick out of it and saw a new area.

Despite what some people think, i never had much contact with the Mythic developers. Exchanged maybe two emails with Paul Barnett back then and thats about it. My contact with the US community team has been zero (tried once but never got any feedback) over this time. I had quite a good communication with the GOA community team (Magnus & Nic) tho there are many issues/questions they are not in the position to organize you more detailed infos/screenshots since GOA is not Mythic. Recently it seems i get the cold shoulder from GOA CMs, if that's due to holidays/sickness or some recent emails where i claim freedom of speech being an independent fanpage, who knows. I'm not really bothered with it since i don't write my blog to get Mythic/GOA approval. Of course it was disappointing to see the US team organized some guerilla marketing and the EU bloggers being left out (like it initially was) or to not get back any answers to your questions. But heh, not necessary to have any illusions about the importance. And no, i never tried to interview any of the devs or something.

My blog is one of the few large ones left and I'm happy there are still so many people reading it and even using the comments to discuss this or that. The next months will show if I'll stick with WAR, but I'll keep you guys posted about what's going on with me... as usual. ;)

To celebrate the 200.000 mark I'll host a small contest/raffle soonish after i had time to work out a few ideas i got for it. Flowers, pictures of your Orc daughters you'd like to see married and other signs of affection you can send by email (contact in the upper left of the header). Stay tuned, stay safe and have fun... Thanks for All the Fish!

I did switch...

...my WAR subscription to manual renewal. So from now on every month I'll think about it properly if WAR is still fun. BTW, the fact you have to do several clicks more in your profile to disable the automatic renewal feels a tad like GOA takes secret hints from Fileplanet to trick people into monthly subscriptions. How hard is it to have a checkbox (already checked with "yes") on the same page where you can untick if you dont want it automatic? The reasons for my change are plenty.

First one is i start to get slowly bored again. If you just log into the game with your high-end char and you only want to play for eg. 30min to one hour there is not much you can do. If you're lucky there is a spot in a scenario group or a tomb group going, but thats about it. Crafting is too easy and you can't really improve it much, nor make any decent money (not that its needed anyway) with it as everyone can craft themselves everything anyway. The well praised "experimenting feature" for WAR never made it into the crafting system. There is nothing i can do solo anymore to improve my character. Joining scenarios solo as a defensive tank is dreadful and usually you give up pretty quick. If you have more time on your hands you go to instances like Lost Vale, which is very tiresome going there a gazillion times, wait for a slot in a scenario group or go to the LotD. The main thing here being the Tomb of the Vulture Lord - due to the DPS race design of many encounters most groups only take on tank tho. Since i really dislike the zerg-style large scale RvR its hard to find good RvR outside of the scenarios. Invading instances in LotD has been fun, but it occurs to seldom. Don't get me wrong, if you have enough people online to play in a decent group (which i prefer anyway) you can still have a lot of fun, but even then your possibilities are very limited.

The recent changes to classes/careers don't look to me like Mythic will jump over their own shadow and redesign the CC system, only work on the symptoms and not the root cause. On top of this i have the feeling again that GOA does not do a good job for the same amount of money we pay. Their website is still in a similar desolate state then it has been since launch, the EU forums are in a mediocre state, my last email with questions has been unanswered (not even "we have to get back to you") since ten days and so far no one could provide any intel that the communication between EU playerbase and US developers has improved significantly since the official forum launch. Apparently the EU veteran program is running and closely tied into the US Core Tester program, but no proper info on this subject. BTW, the banner "contact our customer support" on the EU website only works if you're logged into the website, else it does nothing - just in case you wondered. Oh yes, and let us not forget that the EU still, after months, does not have access to similar promotion programs than the US offers.

The final thing is that IMO the overall campaign with the capturing of the enemy king is too complicated to execute and takes way too long. Once you are inside the enemy capitol its very tedious and boring, not polished enough. I don't know about you, but i lost interest after I've been there a few times.

I'll still write my blog about what's going on ingame and what i do. I'll still write about the fun times i have in WAR - yes, i still have them - but I'll make a note about the times i get bored and should those come to often, I'll rethink my time in WAR.

PS: For those that asked... No, i won't write about the CB4 Aion weekend, since i had no valid beta key and did not play. But today i decided to organize me one and test some more, so you can expect more info on this front as well.

WAR: Age of Blogging Wrap-Up

You think: "Yo Thulf, man you're a bit late... January is over since more then two weeks." Yeah, but who cares? I don't like to rush things and if i write about other blogs/websites i want to have a look by myself and not just quickly post a link to a site I've never looked at. That's why my personal wrap-up took a while longer. But i included all blogs that showed up on my radar since then. You probably have read about the initiative on many other websites, it was a huge success. Not only did a lot of new blogs surface, but IMO also did Mythic/GOA see that the existing blogs work together very well and are a fan-network on their own that can have a good impact.



Here is the third (part 1,2) list of new blogs to have a look at:

A Squishy's Time in Warhammer
A WARriors Tale
Ahh sh**! I left my axe at home!
All Things Rob Wild
Blaaagh!
Blog o' Knowledge
CDN Dragoon
Confessions of a WAR rvr player
Cry Me a RvR
Da'Toughest (revived)
Flintlocks R Fun
Gaarawarr Gabs
Ghazghkull
Glow of Mork
I Saw A Ratman
Khaine Stole my Bike
Midget Legion
Portraits of War (drawings and illustrations inspired on WAR)
Rambling On Addon Addon Addon...
Signs of WAR
So, I married an MMO addict
Starbreaker's Adventrues in the Old World
The Blue Scribes
The Casual WAR!
The Dreaded Chosen
The Homunculus
Thunzok: The Blog
TufMudda
War Games
WAR 'n Pieces
Wheres the War?
Wiqd Reflections

I had a look through all the 97 (!) WAR related blogs i posted since we started with the Age of Blogging again and added a few more to my personal link list - which means I'm reading them on a regular basis. Make sure you introduce your blogs to blogwarhammer.net, that's where most of us are watching. Keep on blogging guys, I'll flip through all the blogs once in a while and see how they're doing, maybe adjusting my link list. Of course wrapping up the Age of Blogging does not mean that no new blogs will be looked at. Just that i won't feature any of those long blog lists anymore. I'm happy i found a few blogs that will be entertaining myself on a regular basis and i hope they keep blogging frequently. Keep up the good work!

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.

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.

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.

Brew that puts hair on yer chest

I'm still working on two longer posts to write, one about exploration in WAR and the other about my personal view about the state of the game. For the exploration one I'm still deciding about how much in depth i want to go, as i don't really want to post my secret traveling routes across zones but on the other hand want to give my readers at least one or two smaller things to explore themselves. I have tons of screenshots for that one tho. The state of the game writeup is getting longer and longer. Right now I'm tending towards just taking parts out of it and write about certain aspects/features from time to time, as i think a complete writeup will result in a wall of text no one will read.

The patch 1.1c notes state there have been some improvements for the blurry textures issue. Hmm... for many the issue just recently surfaced, what is so hard to check the code before and after to find out what got messed up? The patch fixed the ground texture flipping in IC for me, but not the NPC/Player textures or from the doodads. Luckily i found this thread and the advice seems to fix it for me. Basicly you change the \Warhammer Online\user\UserSettings.xml by yourself (change it to texture_Cache="1.00") via text editor and then make the file read-only so WAR can't mess it up again. This works for me, maybe it helps some of you as well. Don't forget that you can't change/save any options as long as the file is read-only. Apparently the "messy" patch can't decide properly about the RAM for some gfx-cards and that causes the problem. Seriously Mythic, you must be kidding me... i still hope one day we'll get proper advanced video/graphic settings for WAR.

The Keg End event started today. Again a lot of tasks & things to do. All over the land are camps with Brew-Thirsty Ogres & Drunken Gnoblars and beer kegs. After the intial bonus a full camp will yield 90inf (10 per mob and 5 per keg). Be careful not to use AoE skills while fighting close to the barrels. While you can't target them initially, you can still destroy them very easily with AoE damage. Once you killed all the mobs you can drink the kegs. There are also camps of Explosive Snotlings around the world. Once you tagged the Snotlings it does not matter if they explode, you still gain the 10inf and can loot them. Inside the RvR lakes (close to the keep entrances) you'll find lvl 38 heros: Massive Ogre Butcher & Massive Ogre Irongut (those take away morale, nasty). They yield solo 600inf and drop 3-6 of the event items. They have a massive amount of HP tho, takes me around 10min to solo one. The Keg End mobs drop Dwarf Beer Keg (need 100 for event task and each yields 5inf), Common Firework (screenshot, random color), Impressive Firework (screenshot) and Magnificent Firework (screenshot). IMO the event is a bit too much Stunty focused, but heh.. what better reason to stomp an extra stunty along the way. If you want to check out more possible events according to the warhammer lore, check here.

Basic reward is the title "The Drunkard", if you complete all tasks you'll gain the title "Keg Slayer". There is a rare world drop as well: Battle Brew Backpack. While i don't have one (yet), i found the above screenshot of the stats from the T4 version (there are again 4 different cloaks, pending on tier dropped) and it looks pretty decent. Again, if you want to check out the event go to the US website, as GOA didn't even manage to link all screenshots right. They really should start to pay some proper people to update their website... and while they're at it fix the Realmwar Pages. Did i mention the player statues inside the capitol cities are not working for EU either? GOA still adds one fail to the next, if it was GOA developing the game i would have canceled my subscription already.

Some of the new loot from the city dungeons and bastion stair looks really good. Especially some jewelry from the city dungeons looks appealing to me. We found a few pices during our latest dungeon crawls... it will be interesting what more there is to discover. Trash mobs inside the dungeons have a small chance to drop those as well from what we discovered.

City Dungeons
of the Warden
of the Watcher

Bastion Stair
of the Bloodborne
of the Bloodcry

As a last note: We had server transfers towards Karak-Azgal from three different servers. The influx of new players is very welcome. Finally the Inevitable City feels alive again and as the "new players" with their guilds & alliances are out to try making a name for themselves, open RvR activity has greatly increased. A warm welcome to all those who recently joined our server! Oh and btw, Thirst is still recruiting, should you search for a new home. ;)

Paul loves my blog... No, really!

If you followed the recent posts and comments you know "some guy" was posting as Paul Barnett. Looks like i was a bit too suspicious and it in fact was Paul, leaving a comment on my blog and not an imposter. I've to confess i had to laugh when i saw his youtube message, proving him is him... in a humorous way via video message. So the devs indeed read fanpages and look beyond their own nose & office, you see. If you ever wondered what the crazy colored wall behind Paul in his video clips is, watch The MMO Report with Paul Barnett... it's a fun trip around the office with Paul.

On a sidenote: Yesterday the PTS patch notes for 1.1 were posted and it looks like some good stuff and long awaited fixes are coming soon. As all the stuff is still subject to change, just check it out for yourself.

The Brasse published a comic strip some might be able to identify themselves with, should you try out the new classes: Begun, the Clone Wars Have.

Ragbag

Since i posted some statistics about how my blog is doing i got a few offers to work together with some website, blog elsewhere, write articles, etc. I was quite surprised about that to be honest. None of the offers were even slightly interesting, so no worries everything will stay like it is right now. Talking about moving blogs: Syp moved his waaagh! blog to gameriot/Chaos Moon and is still getting settled over there. But man, that site makes my eyes bleed. I like clear and easy to read blog pages... Syp, hope you'll be able to adjust the blog layout some more - makes me go waaagh! right now, if you know what i mean. Like your blog, so hopefully that can be resolved. His RSS feed changed as well fyi.

I recently listened to the latest lagwar podcast #8 and discovered Stunty Stomper has been featured again. So a friendly "Orc, Orc, Orc!" to Brilen & Ziss - check out their podcast, its fun for the casual gamer.

Sidenote: I updated the Bilerot Burrow Map and will keep updating the Bastion Stair Maps as well. I still have to finish the wing 3 map, which is about 60% done i would say.

Since machinimas became so popular with MMOs (think about all the cool ones there were for WoW) I'm really enjoying them. It's a lot of work involved in creating a cool movie with a story using a MMO engine. The latest good work i saw for WAR is The Raid II by Beam. While the story is not developing *that* much, its very well done nontheless.

If you don't use it yet, you should check out UpToWar DevTracker. It's hard enough to keep track of Mythic/GOA posts without official forums, UpToWar covers them all. Good Stuff!

Talking about GOA I'm still very disappointed with them. They're doing a crappy job. They did not fix any of the Realm War bugs yet - that thing is still in beta. And if you check out the US version, they meanwhile got a ton of cool new features (you can follow the war campaign out of the game). When GOA posted the latest patch notes, they did (again) some half-arsed copy&paste job and that's why the initial patch notes posted talked eg. about DPS ward system change again. Seriously, for the money we pay them they should do a better job. I won't buy any GOA stocks soon. Personally I'd like to see Mythic put a bit more pressure on GOA, but i guess as long as the servers are running and people can play, that won't happen.

Thirst Recruiting & Stunty Stomper Celebration

Recently we opened recruitment in my guild again. We're especially looking for two rank 40 healers (Disciple of Khaine or Zealot would be best), but will take other classes as well. Check out the application forum on our website. Thirst is a guild with almost five years history in other games (WoW, AoC, LotRO, DAoC). We came to Warhammer Online at launch and have been steadily growing since. We have about 45 members and are a very active guild. Despite being one of the smaller guilds, we're guild rank 24 and one of the top three guild ranked destruction guilds on Karak-Azgal. We're part of the alliance Inevitable Destruction. So should you play on Karak-Azgal (EU) and think you got what it takes, then join us. You can always poke me ingame for more info if you like.







My Stunty Stomper blog started back in September and after being active for three month now, i thought it's time to check how I'm doing. Since the blog start Stunty Stomper had more then 51.500 hits from 100 countries all over the world - the most visitors come from USA/Canada with a very close follow up from the EU countries. Around 45% of the visitors find me through search engines like google. At the moment i have constantly between 600-800 visitors per day on average. My WAR screenshot folder is more then 1GB and i still have tons of stuff i want to post, so pending the spare time i have you don't have to worry I'll run out of things to talk about. ;) One of the next "looong" posts i intend to work on during the week is about exploration in WAR and posting some weird screenshots from strange places. I'm happy so many players like my blog and that especially those readers playing on Karak-Azgal have been really nice and polite when it came to bugging me with questions.

Orc, Orc, Orc!

The absolute best emote for my Black Orc so far is the /cheer - when the orc goes Yeehaw.. Oi, Oi, Oi! and raises his arms in the air. It's funny, i like it. Another good one (i wish i had as a real emote) is when you use the Deflect Oil ability, as you'll bang your shield for a short while. Have 3-4 Black Orcs standing in one line next to each other and use it, looks impressive. I realized i did not take much time to write about my Black Orc and what I'm doing with him, or how i play him. There is just so much stuff to talk about in WAR... always something looks more important or I'm asked some questions I feel others wants to know the answer to as well. Once i write it in my blog, i can just refer people to it when they ask me the same stuff already in here... hehehe. Talking ablout the blog i have to say the response from other players has been great so far. Beside the comments (always appreciated if you discuss with me here) i had many players on my server Karak-Azgal that talked to me in game, or you enter a scenario and in the time before it starts someone cheers for you and makes a compliment about the blog. The amount of hits this blogs generated in the short amount i started it is incredible as well, i daily expect some pictures to go down because of the traffic. ;) And people have been responsible as well when it came to asking me stuff ingame. So far i only had very polite and friendly questions, which i very much appreciate... as talking to people and explaining stuff of course takes away from your game time and sometimes you're in the middle of things and don't have time. So a cheers out there to all readers and especially those playing on Karak-Azgal.

While i see many Orcs running around with a big 2H weapon, Thulf has been through all of his 27 ranks a defensive specced Black Orc. Of course i keep a strength/weapon skill/2H set as well to quickly grind lower level trash mobs, but usually i go with my wounds/toughness/sword'n'board set-up. I'm becoming a bit upset with quest reward choices for tanks tho. Often you have the choice between eg. 2-3 different items, but all are DPS ones that differ only very little. You really have to search for great tank upgrades meanwhile. I invested all points into the Da’ Toughest tree so far and while i took Less Stabbin' Me and Ya Missed Me, now I'm working my way up to Can't Hit Me!, which will be the next skill i take in this tree (taking lower ones later) - as i think this will be a great one to have. Quick sidenote on Ya Missed Me: It's a reactive skill (after a block), which i don't find troublesome to use, that works great... the damage can't be defended and it lowers the damage of that target by 20% for 10 seconds. The tooltip of the debuff is wrong tho and says the damage is periodically, which my combat log says is not true. Also worth to mention, after the block you can use this skill on any target you want - does not have to be the one you blocked.

When i play in my tank set, i usually have zero downtime needed for healing and can easily play at the edge of chapters i can't use the rewards yet. If i stay longer in an area i might switch some items from the tank set to get more str and such. For solo play and RvR alike, my tactic set up atm is I'm Da Biggest! and 'Ave Another One. The latter really increases my damage done nicely (57+250 atm). I did use Wot armor? for these cases at first, but RvR tends to be so fast paced the effect from direct damage in a skirmish feels better. In scenarios i often do as much damage as some "DPS classes" which is rather astonishing given the fact i don't even go for DPS, but for annoying the heck out of people. In my tanking gear i can take quite a beating. Of course focused fire takes me down hard as well, but eg. in a Black Fire Basin scenario recently i had 5 tank/melee banging on me for ages while a team mate sneaked in and stole the flag in the back, hillarious. I see my task in RvR in protecting the healers (and maybe other squishies) and else i try to be as annoying and disturbing as i can. Sometimes charging around the mob of enemies and trying to take out a healer in the back and cause confusion. Sometimes it works and your group can open up the enemy front line to multiply the distraction between the enemies, sometimes it doesn't. Of course if you pull a stunt like that without backup chances are very high you die if enough enemies notice you and focus fire. Often enough I'm one of the top three renown points (RP) in scenarios, works well enough for me. If we go in with a team of guild mates, usually we come out on the top as a team. I've to say it's great how Mythic implemented a real tank being useful in RvR, i really enjoy it.

In RvR my usual skill rotation (with above tactics) is Follow 'me Lead as a starter. Then it depends on the situation. If the target could run away and is taking good damage, it's Trip 'Em Up (snare & good damage over time). Should my target hit someone else it's Right in Da Jibblies, should it be me it's either RidJ or Tuffer 'n Nails. If i (or others) need space or the enemy is standing on top of a wall or something (lets not talk about TA) i use Big Slash for the knockback. While KBs are fun, i hate how many players use them wrong and knock back a target that's nearly dead - therefore working against the team. The finisher skill is Savin' Me Hide ofc then, as it does more damage then Skull Thumper for my tree. You should watch your skills closely once you invest points into the mastery trees, as quickly some abilities tied to your tree become better then others due to invested points.

While fighting multiple enemies (RvR or PvE) use Challenge, and use it a lot. Some Orcs seem to forget this skill in RvR and use Taunt instead. You can still use Taunt, but use Challenge for the sake of your team as well please. Raze and Distracting Bellow are the fun morales to use for RvR so far. If you time them right, they got quite an impact. Raze is awesome for enemies standing close together or crowded into a doorway. Let me finish with mentioning two other skills: Save Da Runts - use this always on some squishy. It also helps to switch targets during battle if you see someone taking a beating and maybe you can prolong his life enough for a healer to get there. Hold The Line! is great to retreat yourself or to protect people standing close to you when the enemy is moving onwards our group. In addition: Bind your Lob Choppa to a key you can press while running, it does insane damage to a wounded foe running away from you. Shatter Enchantment can be of situational use as well and is often forgotten, but requires you to know the possible enchantments to look for.

Of course i know my approach will change with rank 40 and more skills to my disposal, but so far I'm doing very well with the ones i have/use right now. My next goal is to get my hands on some Action Point regeneration gear, I'm always at the limit and could really use more. Get 'Em is good to use when my AP are at 50%, but its cooldown is very long. I did not mention tanking much, as so far PvE tanking has not been a problem or very challenging at all. The first few levels as a tank in WAR suck for PvE as Squigs basicly are the better tanks/taunters, but after you gain access to taunt yourself it changes. When you gained challenge and at rank 25 the Menace tactic you're set anyway. If someone pulls aggro from you often, either let them die or use your guard on them to share threat. PvE tanking has not really posed a challenge yet, it's more about tricky crowd control and people using focus fire then about threat generation. I could go on and on, but the cards will be shuffled again at 40 and this post is much longer than i intended it to be anyway. If you got questions, leave a comment, else I'll talk about skills once a really good new one became available to me.

Stunty Stomper - A Warhammer Online Blog

For around two years i blogged my adventures while playing WoW and after that neither LOTRO nor AoC gave me the feeling to create a new blog. Starting with Warhammer Online I'll make it my habit again to document my adventures and talk about Warhammer game related stuff.