Ragbag with Amenemhetum`s Curse and LotD Talismans

Inside the Tomb of the Vulture Lord some rare new crafting ingredients drop for talisman makers and apothecaries. The two new talismans to craft are Odjira & Kamenra. For apothecaries there are two new potions as well. The Sacred White Lotus brews a Speed of the Blowing Sand potion and the Nehekharan Lion's Heart will create a potion called Amenemhetum`s Curse, which will summon a lioness that is supposed to fight for you. In fact, the summoned lion does NOTHING, just stands there for 60 seconds and then dies. With all the bugs for the talismans and crafting items from LotD, you wonder how all that stuff can have passed the QA department. Did anyone try those banners you have to pay a bunch of gold scarabs yet? Do those work at least or are they bugged as well?

Word of Warning for the LotD talismans (drops/vendor) they are STILL bugged: Their timer runs while you are online, you don't have to have the item equipped and in use. Very easy to destroy some good talismans this way. Wonder when Mythic will finally fix this stuff.

Oh, and btw... what's up with the wardb.com website? Their upload of new items has been broken every now and then and currently still is. Seems the code monkey is busy with their new aionarmory.com website? C'mon, can't be that hard to fix the stuff. Pretty please?

WHA posted a nice video from the Games Day Chicago with all Destruction Sovereign sets shown, some look awesome. Too bad it will be near impossible to get those with the way the campaign is going atm, not to speak of my own low renown rank which makes it impossible to even wear them without months of RR grind.

This evening around 20:00 CET there is a server wide protest happening on many EU and some US servers to make a stand against the current way Mythic/GOA are handling the development process. You can read further discussion and info here and here. IMO if you are not satisfied and you feel raising your voice (in a constructive manner) in the game forums has no effect, the only way to vote is with your wallet and the money you pay (or not) GOA/Mythic. But online protests have a long history and can add to the forum voice, so i don't blame people for trying to get more attention to their cause. G'luck guys, I'll try to check it out.

Ragbag & Easter Eggs

No, I'm not already searching for Easter Eggs just yet... only have been rather busy IRL and quite frankly did not miss playing WAR that much. That's why there were not that many posts during the last days. No worries, this blog won't close, I'll keep on playing WAR at least until the Land of the Dead is released (if that's not delivering I might rethink) but so far I'm still into WAR and think its a good game.

Starting to get a little dampen by the feedback from Mythic and GOA tho. Looks like Mythic focuses on their own little US forum and not much else. I wrote about my zero-response from eg. Andy before. The first king capture/kill (EU) took a few days to make it into the herald news. You start to wonder what's going on over the pond. GOA seems busy as well: Two weeks ago i inquired about how exactly the communication between GOA & Mythic would happen and what role the WARforge - Idea Exchange would play. Also the US already uses their "Oracle program", while the "EU Veteran program" is MIA. Since i got no answer to my questions so far, i have to assume GOA does not know the answer yet. Regis "The Box" was spot on if you ask me - so far the communication seems to be more window-dressing then real, at least it looks like this for many EU players. If the two companies that run the game bother so little, why should i? Let's hope they work on fixing stuff... shall we talk about the Realm War Pages again? Better not.

Talking about the first king capture on K8P. Nice! Although from the dev response you can see the encounter was bugged and the CC should not happen on him. GOA posted some screenshots here from the encounter. At WHA (1,2) you find more screenshots from Emperor Karl Franz and the loot. In total the whole raid took around 14 hours (wtf?). There is also a video with a funny song from that night: Destruction in Altdorf, they PVE all night long. LOL

Did you read about the upcoming token system for RvR gear? Wizards & Wenches sums it up nicely and you can read the original dev post here.

If i feel like it, I'll jump on the PTS and check some stuff out... but the weather turned around nicely for spring activities outside.

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...

Ragbag

Tome of Knowledge posted a great article about History and Lore of the Tomb Kings. Good stuff.

Mythic makes good use of their forum and tells us what they're working on with regard to the high end dungeons. In addition they're thinking about applying some of the changes they did to LV to the city dungeons. Well, from our last trip there i have to say the repairable items are useless for good equipped players (and with sucky gear you can't run these dungeons anyway). I read tho, that Mythic is re-evaluating the ward system currently and tackling ideas to seperate it from gear more. We'll see if they can come up with something useful. More gear choices would be appreciated.

Talking about the forums, does anyone else have the feeling the EU/EN ones are not used that much? Seems people rather stick to Warhammer Alliance. While at the US forum there are interesting discussions every now and then, not so much in the EU forums from what i saw so far.

If you're bothered by casting lag in WAR, there is an interesting discussion going on here. While it seems not as bad as some think, its definately an issue when the UI is not responding to the game fast enough.

Ever felt Lost Vale is too hard for you? Well, maybe do it with seven people then: LV Seven Manned. LOL

GOA confirmed that EU players will also get the Signet of the Cursed Company when pre-ordering BattleForge. I'm not going to buy a game just to collect a WAR ingame item, tho the signet is one of the coolest transform items so far.

Ever wondered what will happen during stage 2 of an Inevitable City siege? On the Eltharion server it happened and there are several pictures and some info here and here. In addition there is a nice video from the Sacellum/Arena stage 2 PQ here. Looks like some serious fun, always wondered why Mythic does not use the arena for regular fights to entertain Destruction in the capitol more. Even the pit fight inside the tavern could be an event you can trigger every now and then.

Ragbag with Choppa and EU Forums

Tonight will be the EU dev chat on IRC. We'll probably be in Lost Vale so i won't attend and i assume someone will post a transcript. I don't really expect anything major new, but its nice the chat is taking place. We'll see how the Mythic developers will influence the EU forum later on.

My Choppa Stuntystomper is meanwhile rank 23. Soonish I'll see if i can gather a group for Mount Gunbad. Since we have access to the direct MG teleport scrolls, it should be easier to convince people. Despite having an easier time to move around with the Choppa due to Charge & Sprint, i'm glad i can use a mount meanwhile. Since so many players create alts at the moment, you can sell all the greens you find during your adventures for easy money at the AH. I think my Choppa alone made around 70g and i dye every piece of armor i wear and spend enough for gear at the AH and bought my mount etc. Since this is a ragbag i won't go too much into detail about my Choppa now, but intend to write a longer post about him in the upcoming days. One particular post i found useful: Choppa Influence Reward List

The super-screenshot feature is still broken. Until Mythic fixes it i won't create any further wallpapers, just not worth the time. I PMed Andy (Mythic CM) more than a week ago about it but did get zero response back from him, not even a simple "no idea". From my experience with the community teams so far Mythic vs GOA is 0:1 I've to say. Maybe the US CMs are too busy sending out USB drives with pictures, who knows. *shrugs*

Finally i was able to log into the new official EU forums. Apparently its possible to use some html code, which is nice. If you need pointers how to edit your signature or post pictures, check those guides people posted. If you need html color codes check here. Did you realize there are server forums, they're just not expanded by default? EU EN server forums here. BTW, if you want to edit your message you need to use the options menu to the upper right of your post, from what i saw at the forum many users missed it. The waaagh button apparently is a way to say a certain post was a good contribution, possibly some way to try and track good posts/posters for GOA.

Tip of the Day: After Mythic enhanced the quest log to two pages there is a problem at a certain point when new quests don't show up as marked areas on your map. Looks like the quest tracker can only show quests for one page, but not two. So make sure you eg. untick the ones not in your area and then sort quests after the zone column and check the ones you would like to track.

Ragbag & Bitter Rivals

Since the EU servers crashed completely (again) and we're stuck at the initializing screen since quite a while, i thought i'll update my blog with a new ragbag. Some of the pics are from wierd bugs i encountered after patch 1.2, seems it was just temporary glitches tho as i did not encounter them again.

Talking about glitches: On Karak-Azgal a group encountered a weird bug... they wiped at the skeleton sub-boss in BWE and afterwards the tank had an aura that attacked friendly mobs. After some killing of other players and aggroing the large ancient protector bird inside IC, this resulted in killing the whole leadership crew inside the Eternal Citadel. He wanted to become king instead of the king. Forum thread is here and there is a youtube video as well. I thought this was funny, worldfirst kill of a king. Although IMO now we have to shoot him, being a traitor to Destruction and all... i know others had the bug as well and some got suspended for abusing it to kill other players.

The Bitter Rivals live event is close to an end, so better finish the remaining tasks now if you want to flag your account for Choppa/Slayer access or want those titles. To flag your account with max event INF you can leave two tasks out. The Twisting Tower scenario had some really good ideas in it (base jumping, transformation, etc.) but the layout could have been better IMO. The Reikland Factory had a very good layout concerning access to all parts. Did you know that you can just jump off the tower if you want to keep your transformed state a tad longer? With the pie throwing back in game, its also possible again to obtain the two titles "Pie Assassin" (killing blow with a pie) and "Death by Pie" (get killed by pie).

The live event overall was okayish i would say, but i really wish Mythic will put some more work into the event tasks. Its the same boring stuff all over again most of the time. I know some kill tasks and collect tasks are designed to draw people into oRvR and try out the new scenario, but why not come up with something more unique? It would be easy to spice up some tasks with scripted events. Like the Slayer/Choppa attacks, but a bit more. Beside the cool "Stuntie Stompa" title, i thought the "treasure map hunt" was a great addition. There are three different map pieces to obtain: Bloodstained Map Piece, Glyph-covered Map Piece and Sand-stained Map Piece - those you can get in RvR, from some champ/hero mobs and also from the Slayer/Choppa NPCs that roam the greenskin zones. Once you finished the map, you can use it to start a small quest chain. At the end of the quests you'll get the title "Navigator of the Sands" and the final map as a pocket item, that does nothing (yet?). Would be cool if the map will obtain some kind of function once the Land of the Dead zone is released.

What more to mention about Bitter Rivals? The Slayer/Choppa NPCs can also drop a Broken Axe, using it will give you the title "Oathrender".
A sidenote on the Stinky Troll Bait reward (from event INF): When you use it (has 5 charges) it will generate an extra item inside your bag, called Boulder Throwing Troll - that is a huge kickass troll "siege engine", throwing boulders. Awesome! I have this idea stuck in my head about using those for an ingame game called Bouldertroll™, maybe I'll work on this further. ;) Just don't use it before you need it, else you'll be stuck with additional items. I used one and they look really cool (see picture). The Choppa/Slayer NPCs can also drop Redfang Grog sometimes.

Meanwhile the EU got a 10 days trial offer for WAR as well. Makes me wonder if/how we'll be able to get access to those recruit-a-friend pets the US has. If GOA works out a similar program for the EU *after* the trial offer, it will be hard to get those as people will have used the trial offer already. Hum...

While i haven't engaged in any capitol combat after patch 1.2 i hear some rumours about the first PQ acting very shaky and the boss mobs being a bit overpowered now.

There has been some heated discussion about the pick lock ability (you can bypass the postern door) in addition with the banner rez, as apparently some people exploited it and rez people inside the keep when all doors are still strong. Having an additional rez ability at hand for non-healer classes can be nice sometimes, especially in PvE. The main ingredient for the new rez potion meanwhile cost 15g at the guild vendor. I doubt i like anyone enough to spend that much gold on them. ;)

Should you not have realised it yet: Everyone can meanwhile read the official US Warhammer forums. They are still "beta" and some layout/color scheme issues IMO need to be improved, but at least they work alright from the looks of it. My personal guess is we'll have to wait until they move out of beta before the EU gets their own forums.

With patch 1.2 there are some addons that stopped working or some function that were disabled by Mythic. Luckily many of them got fixed to work properly: zMailMod broke with the patch. I saw this coming and cleaned up my mailboxes before the 1.2 patch. But rejoice: Despite z00g not playing WAR anymore, he uses a trial account right now to fix the mod. The first version is up already, tho the mass collecting function seemed shaky to me, not sure if it was the mod or the mailserver. If you're a cultivator, you should check out the new & improved version of Miracle Grow Remix from Irinia, which has some awesome improvements like queueing additives and such. Also check out the thread with the latest beta version here. If you use Crafting Info Tooltip, there is a beta version (with eg. the new seeds included) available here.

Talking about addons, i found this addon recently: Bloody Mess. The mod adds a gore effect to all damage done and received. While i don't use it myself i thought its creative nontheless. :)

On a personal sidenote: I started trading 175/200 apothecary mats for rare hybrid plants. If you're interested to acquire some of those plants you don't have access to, especially being a Butcher, poke me if you want. Maybe we can work something out.

Did anyone else noticed that apparently the super-screenshot feature stopped working? WHY? *sobs*

Ragbag, EU Dev Chat & EU PTS R40 Templates

Right now there is a lot of misinformation spread when it comes to the difference between EU and US service and upcoming features. There ARE issues, i talk about them regularly as i think the EU customers should have access to the same features and service then the US got and that not months afterwards. PhoenixRed posted a larger article at the Warhammeralliance about "The Treehouse of WAR Customer Service" and the problems between EU & US service. You can read my answer in the thread (here). Regis at Wizards & Wenches, a fellow EU blogger, talks about some of the issues in his blog here. Despite the issues you'll find in those threads (and that i have myself), i feel there are a few facts people often mix up or are misinformed about. You can read more critic at the above threads, but here are some infos...

Facts
# Due to timezone and translation into four other languages, GOA usually is one day late with updates, patches and info. (Question remains if this delay could be prevented if they would get a day headstart from Mythic)
# Official Forums: While people are afraid (due to the lackluster GOA website) the EU forums won't be of the same quality then what the US hosts, GOA promises (credible) they'll be equal and of the same quality then the US offers.
# While people are afraid the split between EU/US forums will take us (EU) further away from the developers, it does not have to be that way. GOA already mentioned they'll get dedicated forums for better direct access to the developers so they can ask questions the EU community has and also relay issues the EU community points out faster.
# Did you realize there will be an EU dev chat on the 19th of March? I know i missed it, as i read the herald announcement right before and they looked the same more or less. Thanks to Nic for pointing it out to me. GOA states the EU dev chats will be a regular thing.
# GOA states they have access to all promotional stuff Mythic does. EU WILL get access to dog/wolf pets and EU players WILL definately get a shot at the special Choppa/Slayer heads. GOA works this out at the moment and we should see news on it soon. While its obvious that different marketing campaigns will have a different focus/timing, question remains why Mythic/GOA can't work this out ahead so details are ready at the same time, would prevent an uproar like we see at the forums now.

Overall things could get much better soon, but deeds will show, not talk and promises. And to be honest i fail to understand why GOA/Mythic don't come more forward with correct informations aggressively spread over the forums to counter all the negative opinions, when some are formed purely due to uninformed players.

With the upcoming official forums, GOA offers you to change your nickname that will be displayed with them. Go and check what you entered back then and change it if necessary.

Since we were discussing findings on the PTS in the forum these day, we found out that the EU PTS indeed has been running on an older build then the US server. For the testers this is very confusing as we talk about the same things but about different numbers with our fellow US players. GOA says it was because Mythic wanted the EU PTS to focus test different things. Well, might be so, but it still is confusing and why can't the focus test run with the current build? Talking about the EU PTS, it was just updated to the latest build and also available now R40 Templates for Choppa/Slayer, equipped with fitting gear. Go crazy!

Did you know that with 1.2 the quest part of your tome can have more then one page? I did not either until i read it over at the Captain's Blog.

Some of the new blue items inside Lost Vale will be repairable tokens all classes can use. It remains to be seen how useful those really will be, but at least for RvR where wards play no role, this could be viable. More info and some stats here.

Are you thinking about doing your own podcast? Or need some pointers which programs to use? CoTCast has some tools & guidelines for you. CoTCast is by far the funniest WAR podcast i know, check it out if you haven't. Hmm.. maybe i should record them a bumper if i can come up with something. ;)

As a last funny thing, i was pointed to this WAR machinima: "Part of dis Waaaagh"

We definately need more machinima for WAR!

And the official patch 1.2 release notes are posted, patch will be applied to US today, we should (hopefully) have it by tomorrow then.

Ragbag & Test Server Info

With Mythic hyping the 1.2 patch and especially the upcoming two new classes many players were eager to try them out on the test servers. In the beginning of February along with some others i was approached by GOA and invited onto the upcoming test server. The test was supposed to be restricted, but under no NDA... so i was happy to be able to try out the Choppa pre-release (will take test server access over Mythic love letters anytime) and write about the new classes. Unfortunately things developed different: Mythic decided to release the patch first to their core tester group, which operates under a NDA. GOA was not able to create legal agreements in this short amount of time (for different countries as well), therefore no "private" pre-testing of the upcoming content. The EU will get a public test server together with the US probably in about one or two weeks. The PTS won't have the two new classes online in the beginning tho, just the rest of the patch. Bummer I've to say. But I'm happy to see that GOA starts to show some love to the EU community and is trying within their possibilities to make things happen - of course those things are easier for Mythic to do. I know many EU bloggers were disappointed about not being included in the "lover letter affair", so if GOA works closely together with the EU bloggers that makes up for it, at least for me it does.

Does anyone play on the Dragonback Mountains server? What's going on there? Seems some players are massively exploiting the Keep Lords and also by purpose trying to bug out the city invader PQs like the Brightwizard College. GOA is taking an official stand and punishing those players harder now. Another issue that Mythic needs to adress is those "banner walls" some people set up, IMO that's an exploit as well.

A little ripper pig told me this magazine is where Mythic gets the new ideas for boar mounts. Notice the Babes & Boars calendar. *laughs*

Watching the Ten Ton Hammer panel discussion video and reading the interview from eurogamer gives you a good impression about the upcoming new zone. Will be interesting to hear how many players you need to beat the Tomb of the Vulture Lord tho. I kind of like the fact that the current high level dungeons don't need a massive amount of people to beat.

Ragbag with Puppet Paul

Maybe you saw the recently appeared rag doll of Paul Barnett, possibly in the "home invasion" video. Paul's latest video blog entry shows the puppet as well. Looks like the rag doll was created by Angie, a software tester at Mythic, and i think its really funny. If someone creates a muppet show puppet from you, you really made it, no? ;) Check out Puppet Paul Almost Watches the Superbowl and stay tuned at her youtube channel for more.

Talking about videos, the Warhammer Vault has an exclusive Mythic Studio Tour video. Check it out so see some faces and offices. Looking forward to the Pendulum of Doom. On a sidenote about the Warhammer Vault, they got a poll running (right side navi) to vote for your favourite blog. Stunty Stomper is in the list as well, drop a vote should you read their site.

Just to give you an example about the lack of certain bug fixes: Patch Notes for 1.1.1 were posted and finally the red orbs at N’kari will be fixed. But seriously, these are bugged for so long, i can't even remember when it started. Stuff like bugged encounters really need to be adressed faster. BTW, anyone else is afraid Mythic might take a bunch of cool NPC armor models and use it for the Choppa before fixing endgame gear models for Black Orcs? I know i am... if only i could dye my Sentinel gear properly. *coughs*
I'm looking forward to the Night of Murder event and I'll take the fun content vs. grind level for my own judgement about the praised "content patches". If NoM is as uninspiring as Keg's End was, this won't give me a warm feeling for the later coming Live Events.

This comic made my day: Mr. Matthew over at the Greenskin posted a comic about the Mythic love letters, i laughed.

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.

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. ;)

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.

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.

Ragbag

Did you ever wondered what would happen if you kill the chaos giant Friderax inside the Sacellum arena during the PQ? Me too.. when it started i went in for the kill and fought the big boy. While he hits like a schoolgirl, nothing special happens. The PQ "fails" and you don't get any shiny loot from him. I was only able to claim his smelly pants for me - maybe I'll sell them on the auction house, some people like used panties. If you look at my UI screenshot and wonder what the new unit frames are i use, the addon is called Pure. The addon is still in alpha stage, so don't use it if you're not willing to deal with bugs. The configuration is very cumbersome atm as well. But for me it serves well more or less out of the box. The unit frames are similar looking to agUF if you recall those. If you use the addon, help wikki (author) with bugs and such. Looking forward to the release version, this is the best looking unit frames addon so far.

If you want to see how the epic Keg End backpack looks on an Orc, check here. The tier 1 version looks rather powerful for a rank 5 cloak. Meanwhile i got the Bottomless Stein trophy, it looks better then the trophy from the last event. You can have the mug at shoulders or belt.

I still wonder what the deal with the UpToWar (DevTracker) WHA newscrawler is. Apparently the WHA team did not work together with them yet to solve that problem. As i like to have one devtracker, i hope this gets resolved soon.

I recently stumbled over the CotCast Podcast. A bunch of folks from the guild Circle of Trust (Ostermark server) have their own round table podcast. If you like alcoholic beverages, Justin Timberlake, playing the flute and are not afraid of explicit language, this one is for you. ;) They mainly talk about WAR related topics of course. While they did not directly feature Stunty Stomper they refer to my news. So as apparently they read my website, a friendly waaagh! to the CotCast team, cool show... reminds me a bit about our own vent server at times.

On a sidenote we went back into Lost Vale yesterday night, so i might post some screenshots from there once i looked through them.

PS: Because i was asked about my "texture fix"... the manual edit of the settings only solved the blurry texture issue for me. I still see the green surfaces every now and there.

Tip of the day: Enable "monster emotes" in your chat filter for your main chat window, else you'll not only miss important infos during boss fights, but also info from gadgets around the world when you use/click them.

Ragbag & Death by Pie

Hillarious. You can't get another impression as the guys at Mythic really are having fun working together. After the last video message when Paul scolded Colin about the lunatic code™, some people apparently got the wrong impression. I seriously wonder why as IMO it was obvious they were not that serious. Anyway, the latest video blog entry from Paul Barnett clears the air in... unexpected ways. I think Colin should buy Paul a T-Shirt with his very own "Death by Pie" title, he earned it for being a good sport. ;)

The patch 1.1 is running on the PTS (looks like we'll get one for EU as well now) already and slowly infos start to trickle in. If you want to see some screenshots of the UI changes and set items, check the Garrison of War (1,2). In addition Mythic seems to try to introduce more money sinks into the game, i read that flight travel prices doubled and that dyes at the vendor are increased by a lot (someone said 40s vs 10g for whole gear), tho atm its just the same old crapppy colors. Why not introduce some new (read: better looking) colors and put a hefty fee on them? Also, should you work on your talisman skills still, better hurry as the patch won't let you salvage any vendor gear anymore. In addition it looks like the next live event is just around the corner and this time, it's about beer: Keg End event.
Edit: Forgot to mention that PTS reports say the Wall is finally fixed, tho the appearance changed into a normal shield.

My latest trip into Bilerot Burrow rewarded me with gloves: Sentinel Andsplate, which leaves me with 4/5 Sentinel wards. Slowly getting there... as patch 1.1 will have a 50% belt drop rate, i should obtain that one hopefully rather quickly as well.

Should you use zMailMod i urge you to install the latest version as there are many improvements, especially in taking out mail/items/coin. Truely love this mod. I left the suggestion for z00g (author) that he exports the auto-complete for names from zMailMod into a seperate mod (that takes into account party, warband, friendlist and guild names) which you can use in chat to quickly tab through names as some people just use weird and painful to type names.

Referring to my ingame xmas wishlist, i just found a book i might get myself for the holidays: ORCS by Stan Nicholls. Did any of you read it? If so, is it any good? Supposed to be a trilogy about a warband of Orcs... do i hear them shouting Orc, Orc, Orc! in the distance?

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.