Mirror, Mirror...

Still a lot of stuff to explore and try out in the desert. Overall i very much enjoy LotD so far. The main gripe right now is the not working guild/alliance chat, which is becoming very annoying. This is just a quick post, as a reminder for players that its faster to use the mirror of infinity to travel into the desert then to walk the path all the way through the mountains. When you die and want to regroup you head for the healer anyway in the warcamp. Right behind him (at least for destro, but I'm sure order has something similar) is the questgiver for the mirror transport. Use it! :)

How the ancient zandri pyramid architects botched (Exploration)

Since i like to know my surroundings properly, I went for a proper exploration tour into the Land of the Dead. Before i tell you how the ancient zandri architects messed up the large pyramid at the Temple of Ualatp, lets talk about the other things to find in LotD. There are four glyphs spread out over the zone that will yield an achievment tome unlock each. Tells you an interesting story how the scepter was broken in four pieces and of the casket of souls - don't want to spoil it for you. Should you have trouble finding them, the maps that were spread out over the fanpages for the last event have all marked one glyph on them (nice touch!). There are also a few hidden quests that yield a scarab and in addition some trash item with flavour text, not sure if you can do something with those or not.


In some remote locations there are also small camps with either bandits or skeleton workers that are usually commanded by one of the different disciples. I have no idea what these are for, maybe later during the key of zandri (?) questline you have to find them? Beside those disciples there is nothing really interesting to find in those camps, at least i could not see anything else to interact with.


One really weird thing i ran into the first day exploring the zone is a zombie named "Test". He runs around the whole zone, across the river and through mountains. Hes running quite fast as well. First time he crossed my field of vision i was like "WTF?!?" You can't target or interact with him tho. I wonder what kind of purpose this kind of test mob could have for zone development? Maybe hes running around everywhere randomly and tested for places you can get stuck in? Who knows... *shrugs*

The next weird thing i encountered are groups of spirits/ghosts walking the desert. You can encounter them "from" your own faction or the enemy one. Both groups will disappear once you get too close to them. What is the purpose of those illusions? I don't know, but when you get near the library in the southern part of LotD you can get a glimpse at a mysterious "Mirage Controller" on one of the column structures. It's hard to see or to spot and i could not find any way to get up there or to interact with it.

Now you finally wonder what proof i have the ancient zandri pyramid architects botched? Well, i found a way to bypass all those invisible walls (that really destroy the immersion btw, bad design IMO) you encounter in the zone. Usually there is the "teleport out security" in place, but it has holes and you can bypass it. You can access two areas (at least i found so far) called "zone 306" and "zone 304" this way. The areas are vast desert/mountain parts without anything interesting i could find. BUT, you can access the large pyramid at the Temple of Ualatp from the backside. I tried to climb the huge pyramid, but you can't. :( The thing you can see on the screenshot is, the pyramid got no wall on the back. Ergo there is no collision and you can pass through the inside of it.

The bad thing about this is, you'll end up *below* the floor next to the pyramid - where the architect/glyph PQ is. This could be exploited, since its an RvR zone, you can see everything that goes on above and there are parts you can get up to appear on the floor level again. I'm sure (did not try) you could also attack players there while being below the floor or surfacing at parts where the other players can't access you. This needs to be fixed by Mythic. Luckily it won't be many players that will find the way anway, but you never know. It's not possible to access rooms from there you can't access from the normal floor level. I did not jump of the edge of the world down there, no idea what will happen. Here are a few more pictures from below the pyramid. If you find anything else interesting while exploring, feel free to share with us in the comments. There is also a place up in the mountains where Dwarf miners do their business and you can trigger areas that will port you directly into the library of Zandri. Happy Hunting!

The dead walk the desert

So I'm back in the game. The first day, after being offline for several weeks, felt like being a Black Orc without arms or legs... if you know what i mean. I did set up my UI properly again for Thulf (did not have the heart to do it for my Choppa yet). Did i have fun? Yes, i did. But first things first... Since GOA merged a bunch of more servers towards Karak-Azgal, our server is more alive then ever. Tho many known faces/guilds are gone since people stopped playing. The game performance did not get better, stayed the same then before for me. Some transparent textures still have problems displaying properly and a few things like the obelisk at one PQ did lack textures at first. The screenshot feature for super screenshots is still broken, so i keep using FRAPS.

The Land of the Dead reminded me immediately of Stygia, which i liked in AoC - so its not a bad thing. Atmosphere is good in the new zone, a mix between Stygia and the Mummy movies if you ask me. Although there are a few places you run into invisible walls, which destroy the immersion of a vast desert. There are PQs all over the place. PQ rewards are bags with crafting materials, scarabs (new LotD token currency) and sometimes a r31 epic weapon. So for r40 players the PQs are just a giant timesink, since you have to do them to collect glyphs, which you need to enter the four Tombs (sun, stars, moon and sky). The scarabs you also collect via the PQs are ok to buy a lot of new stuff, but eg. the best talismans cost a shitload of scarabs and are on a short timer. I don't see anyone getting those. Most new talismans are special in a way that you need special weapons/shields from LotD to use them. The tomb bosses drop epic/mythic talismans as well... there are a bunch of new sexy procs/attributes for those (some are even permanent). A few talismans for weapons are bugged, you can't see what they do. The tomb bosses can drop new epic r40 weapons and some are badass. The tomb fights - i visited sun, stars and moon so far - are nicely done and fun. Mythic needs to fix the bugged/exploitable sun boss tho. All fights have a nice twist to them and are something quick to do, IF people have the glyphs already. Else you run around for a while and have to collect the missing glyphs for party members. I'm not so sure yet the glyph mechanism is a good timesink, can imagine it will become rather annoying once its less people doing the PQs (right now its fast to get them). The only glyph very annoying is Ricci's Raiders. Basicly its a caravan of bandits running around you have to find and from the looks of it they don't respawn immediately. Therefore many people lack the scorpion glyph. Some of the PQs are nicely scripted as well, not all tho. To enter the Tomb of the Vulture Lord you *have to* finish the Temple of Ualatp PQ and enter the door while the reset timer runs.

IMO it's too early to say how LotD impacts RvR on my server. So far there is always RvR going on, either inside LotD once access is being flipped or in the normal world to regain access to the zone. If too few players are fighting for zone control there might be a push towards a capitol. So far it looks ok to me and inside LotD its more small-scale RvR, which is great. I haven't been to the Vulture Lord tomb yet, but I'm not sure for how long Land of the Dead will entertain people. There are some nice new items, but Mythic also reused a bunch of crap items (like useless blue repairables) that didn't even get unique models to look cool. I fail to understand why they can't use some unique models at least so you can run around with some of the lower level items in the capitol or something, just for fun.

Overall there are still a bunch of bugs in LotD, some you wonder why they have not been fixed yet as they are major annoying... like guild/alliance chat is bugged in the LotD zone. You can only read it from people you're grouped with, no one else. It does work while you're inside a tomb tho. stupid.

A few more things i noticed:

GOOD:
- The dismount at the stairs at the Apex in IC is *finally* fixed.
- New & powerful pocket items with "use" (absorb damage, immune to crit hits for 10secs, etc.) from LotD. Good stuff, cooldown 1 hour.

BAD:
- There is some kind of bug with the enhanced bags, sometimes half of them becomes unresponsive. You have to switch eg. between crafting/normal to get rid of the bug.
- They implemented the new whacky tradeskill titles, but those (like me) that "triggered" it before still have ??? and can't use the title.
- Friendlist is broken for me. Doesn't show if people are online or not.

This post has been long already, so I'll write about some LotD crafting stuff and tome unlocks next time.

Loading WAR...

The LotD hit WAR and i figured its time to go back into the game and get a look for myself what going on, if i should keep my subscription active and get back playing or not. First thing was an "orgy" of patches and updating addons, which nearly gave me a headache. I'm still in the process to set up my UI again, since a few mods i used for hotkeys etc. are not working anymore i have to redo it completely, meh. When i logged into the game the first things i checked out was the enhanced bag space (nice!) and the new ward system. Hmm.. at least its very viable for me to get the Darkpromise Wards without getting the drop. At least something... Although i saw so many people running around in Invader gear and even bits of Warlord, it would take ages for me to get the required renown level. If i understood right you need to equip the gear to get the ward, right? Just having a warlord item in my inventory won't be enough, or? I checked the AH if there were any new items to buy, but nothing of interest for me. Of course due to me not login into the game for such a long time all my mailbox stuff (loads!) decayed and is gone. Ah well, i still have enough gold left to get back on my feets and due to some recent bugs that made it possible to make thousands of gold coins easily i hear the inflation is hitting WAR badly anyway atm. Probably as there is not much else to buy with gold still. Strangely one of my characters got "duplicated", i have no idea why and its just a low level with not much stuff on him (8g, yay!).

I traveled to the Land of the Dead and checked out the "starter area" but due to my UI being messed up so badly i could not go on further. I'll have to fix that first and hopefully will have some time during the weekend to have a proper look.

What happened in the meantime? Mark Jacobs left Mythic. A lot - and i mean a LOT - of WAR blogs closed their sites due to people not playing anymore. GOA did send some bloggers letters, finally, like the US did, maybe the less and less blogs are the reason it was only three blogs? Well, we will see how this translates over the near future, but i was quite shocked to see so many blogs close. People lost interest, time or are waiting for Aion (I only had a brief look and could not decide yet if that would appeal to me). What is the status about the EU merchandise programs or even the announced WAR veteran program? Anyone knows? Is there anything important to know for crafting or a Black Orc that happened during the last two month? If so, feel free to share with me and point me into the right direction to get me up to speed again.. ;)

Edit: Talking about Aion, i just saw that Eurogamer is handing out keys for the next beta-weekend. Check here. In the comments is a link that will let you download the client before.

Yes, it's true...

...I'm still alive, despite the rumours Order got me. =)
So what's happening? I wanted to update my blog a long time ago, but did not just want to post some lame ass post without any content, when i started to look what happened while i was gone i saw that a large bunch of other blogs vanished and people stopped playing WAR. huh. :S So i figured i had to havea closer look and then just got caught up with transitioning relationships and looking for another job. Simply a lot of everyday stuff that kept me from getting back into WAR. I still did answer email requests tho. BUT my account is still being payed for (tho i guess my mailbox vanished meanwhile) and i intend to stick around for the land of the dead. I'll be at a large Rock festival for the weekend and hopefully next week i can take some time to log back in and start posting again. Maybe not as frequently as i did before, but we'll see...

I'm back

Just a quick note: I've been on an international fair for more then a week and due to preparations and fair attendance had no time to write in my blog. So no, not dead yet... just have been very busy. ;)

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.

April Fool's, Lost Vale and Rant

Just so the people reading my blog through a newsfeed reader don't miss it and spend hours searching: The entire Beyond the Kraken Sea towards the GM Castle post was just my sophisticated April Fool's joke. Everything was fiction and photoshoped. If you spend some time up there searching for the Journal (and i know some did *g*) i hope you had some fun at least and maybe saw a new area. ;)



After the evening in Lost Vale when the server started to screw us over, we went back another evening to finish the instance. We encountered some strange bugs (most is covered on the forums) during our run and especially at N'Kari i think we had the pleasure of encountering all of the ones mentioned here. Running several meters past an orb and picking it up was no fun. Also it felt like the stupid channeling-tomes are even harder to pick up now. Took me around 100 clicks to pick one up at some point. I fail to understand why the end-game instances does not seem to have any priority in the bug fixing process. At least they give people something to do while Mythic works on fixing the real end-game. But when you run an instance with a five day lockout and its bugged like hell, you start to ask yourself "Why am i doing this again? I want to have fun and not bite my keyboard due to stupid bugs..."
We did not get many items we could really use during that run, but i was lucky enough to grab Da Choppa of da Chieftain, which will become my new main weapon. I still wonder why there are just more or less generic weapons and not some designed for specific roles so eg. you can obtain a tanking Choppa - guess its part of a somewhat lazy itemization.

During our LV run we were talking a lot about the current "feel" of the game. The main problem right now is that there is not much to do that you can call endgame. Once you're not (or very seldom) running city dungeons anymore, because you got full sentinel, you can only do Lost Vale (which has a long lockout, you can't switch team members and its bugged), do oRvR and scenarios. The thing about oRvR currently is tho, that its a zerg-fest. Those of you that played AoC may remember some of the cool small scale PvP you could do there. That's the feeling i want in WAR as well. Zerg attacks are freakin' boring. Attacking Keeps involves too less strategy and the capitol raids are boring as well, once you've been there a few times. The whole end-game is not polished enough to be fun. And the thing that really bugs me are the very few possibilities you have to "upgrade" your character. Farming renown just feels like a grind, as does running LV currently. If we would not have such a fun crowd to play with in the guild, i think many more would have quit already. Once you have full Darkpromise gear you can only upgrade via Warlord gear (rr64-70). If i will hit a wall when i have to grind 30 renown levels to be able to wear the next item upgrades and there is no other possible upgrades... probably I'll rethink the "fun" I'm having. Mythic is re-thinking the ward-system and i hope they're doing it properly. In addition i know for a fact, that when the Land of the Dead does not deliver towards end-game fun and the "feeling" you can upgrade your character more, WAR will face hard times.

Beyond the Kraken Sea towards the GM Castle

Edit: Like the date indicates, this entire post was my April Fool's joke for you guys. Gotcha! =)

Those of you that like to explore will know there are certain places in WAR that are called "dangerous territory" and are unused areas or parts of the map you're not supposed to be in. Many places have some kind of teleport security in place, if you trigger it you'll be ported to your binding location. Some places have "security holes" and you can explore into the unused zones. Usually its not very exciting, just vast emptiness... But do you remember the GM island in WoW? Well, there is a similar place in one of the unused zones in WAR. Its the only place i found so far that looks like a game designer joke placed there in case someone would find it. The area is only sparsely designed and its not that many ojects there, but it includes a larger castle and more important: A QUEST GIVER!



Description how to get there: Fly to Eataine and ride towards the place marked on the map close to the PQ. Behind the tower is a small slope that leads up into the mountains and can be climbed. Once up, comes the hard part as you'll be entering dangerous territory and your map & minimap are useless there, ergo no system of coordinates to use. I'll give you the direction as good as i can, but its really easy to get lost up there and lose your way. Once you have been there, you'll understand why as it all looks the same. Even i could not find the area one day and got lost. Incoming Pull blog has been there recently as well (and posted a video about it), but i assume he did not find the way to the GM Castle since its not very obvious.

Word of warning: If you dismount in the dangerous territory you won't be able to mount up again. You can ride around on your mount just fine, but its not possible to remount by whatever reason.

Once you ride up the mountain try to keep NW (orientation from your viewing point, not from the last map location) and look for a huge steep face "wall" you can't climb. In that zone are three different of these kind of huge walls that look similar, but only one can't be climbed to the left or right side - that's the one you need to find. The other two you can go up slopes to the sides. Since everything up there looks the same and there is not much you can take for orientation, you'll just have to ride around and search some. Maybe if i find the time to clean up my HD i could create a video as well, but no promises. At the base of the steep chasm wall, in one small jagged corner approximately in the middle, you'll find the "First Journal of Aperire" on the floor. Using the book will teleport you to the top of the wall you can't climb otherwise.

On top of that mountain luckily you can mount up again. Behind you is like a smaller mountain range and you want to take your way around it to the left. After a short while you'll be able to leave the mountains behind you and you'll see a larger structure in the distance. You nearly made it! The place has a small castle in the back and a tent in front of it. Strangely enough the castle and the trees right next to it don't have any textures for me. Dunno if its because the place is unfinished (sure looks like that) or if its me. But i don't have any other texture problems ingame. There is a lonely unicorn walking in large circles around that place. You can't interact or target it in any way tho. In front of the tent is a humanoid named Pentu Ratlab and he is a quest giver! Else there is not much to see, beside a few trees the area is the same vast emptiness like the rest of the dangerous territory.


Not only skipped my heart a beat when i found the area, but i would not have expected to find a quest giver there. The quest itself tells you about a clan of Troglagobs that stole a magic book. Doing some research via internet provided me with the info that Troglagobs are a race of aquatic goblins: "Troglagobs are by far one of the more unusual types of Goblins. They are Goblins that dwell in the sea, making coastal raids against the Empire, Tilea and even raiding the shores of Ulthuan and Lustria. Recently, many of these ocean dwelling Goblins have been sighted on Albion in great numbers, in the muddy southern tip of the island that has come to be known as Trogland. Troglagobs can have greenish skin like their Goblin cousins, though most tend to reflect a more seaish green such as turquoise or similar blue green color. The hands and feet are webbed like that of a frog making them exelent swimmers with exceptional speed. Troglagobs actually have both gills and lungs, allowing them to breathe comfortably above and below water. However they will not venture too far from their aquatic habitat, as they need to refresh themselves at least every few days of else they will dry up and die."

There is a large water surface (endless sea?) to the right side of the castle area where the ground goes down quickly. So supposedly thats where the aquatic goblins came from. But be careful not to step into the cold water, as you'll drown and die very quickly from taking drowning damage. Nothing else to find when i searched the area, no real shore either. The quest asks you to find the book somehwere in dangerous territory, which could basicly be everywhere. The reward shows a key trophy (why is this uncommon and not epic?) and the quest text tells you about entrance into the castle to claim your reward. If the reward is that trophy or something else is unknown to me. But would be cool to enter that game master (GM?) castle and possibly being able to re-enter while wearing the key?

Since there are so many different areas with dangerous territory and its hard to search/navigate in them i figured its worth posting this secret quest so more explorers can help with the search. Maybe the quest is unfinished (since the castle structure seems to miss textures plus the place looks weird) and you can't complete it, but who knows? Would be awesome to be able to enter the game master castle and see whats behind the doors. Anyway, thought this post makes up for the still missing article about exploration in WAR i wanted to write for aeons. Happy hunting...

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.

3rd Party Tools

Since there are a few WAR related "tools" i use, i figured its worth an extra post. Because these are external programs, use any info provided here at your own risk. While it works for me, don't make me responsible if your dog puppy dies.

As Mythic screwed up the super-screenshot feature and the standard jpg screenshots look really wretched, I'm toying around with 3rd party tools to take the screenshots in WAR. At the moment i switched to FRAPS and take them as HQ .tga pictures since you can't adjust the jpg quality there either. I have to convert them later on as they take quite much space, but i just run a batch processing from IrfanView or Photoshop with high quality settings.

Here is another wallpaper i created while testing the different settings, shows the demon from the chaos camp in High Pass:

You can download the large files containing 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 versions here (choose free user).

Another small tool i started to use is the nomovie patch from kuntz. I was running the patched beta client to play WAR, so i never had any intro movies or long logo displays to deal with while starting the game. But with patch 1.2 my startup also showed a looong chain of all the logos etc. Especially when your game crashes and you want to get back in as fast as possible, its annoying. Kuntz created a small program that patches the original WAR files. You run it once and all the startup stuff is gone, its great! There has been some discussion on the forums that this violates the WAR Eula, so he removed the program from his website, but tbh if Mythic wants to ban me because i get rid of the movies... i need to find another home anyway. I found an uploaded archive of the latest NoMovie v1.2 here. He even provides the source code for it to let people check it does not alter anything else. I use it, it works great... when you start WAR, you get nearly immediately to the login screen.

One more tool i want to tell you about is EasyMyp, which is a file explorer for Mythic's .myp files. Be aware tho, this tool i suggest only to the advanced computer user and there is not much of a manual yet. They have a forum, but the program is still in the early development. Since EasyMyp will allow you to open and expand .myp archives this might especially be useful for addon developers to check out some lua code or if you need icons/textures from the game to pimp your website. And NO, you can't view any WAR models or other 3D stuff with this tool, its just a file explorer that will let you extract files out of the archives. I was searching for a few things from the Mythic files for a project I'm working on, thats how i found EasyMyp and thought some of you might find this interesting.

Like i said, some of this stuff I'm not sure how Mythic feels about it and i doubt they really approve, maybe tolerate it. So use at your own risk.

Get Your Personal Free Skeleton Warrior Pet

Since we don't have any access to the wolf/dog pets in the EU yet... What shall you do if you feel lonely and want a companion? Here is your chance to grab your own personal skeleton warrior construct to accompany you. You will be able to summon it everywhere (yes, also in IC) and it will even fight alongside you (tho its rather weak, just fluff). The downside: It lasts only for 55secs, then you have to abandon the quest and retake it again in Averlorn to get a new one. It looks great tho as you can see on the picture and people were pointing fingers at me when i was running through the Inevitable City with it. ;)

How to get it: In Averlorn chapter 11 (destro ofc) there is a quest called Bone of Contention starting at Kyathor Blackfen. When you advance the quest chain further, you'll come to the last step where you have to enter the camp of the Arkaneth forces and slaughter some. The info on WarDB is a bit messed up. But once you have the quest to slaughter the Arkaneth forces you should have the Blackened Stone ready in your quest inventory. When you use it, you'll summon the Enthralled Construct from the picture. If you want to get another stone, you'll have to abandon the quest. Then go to Morridan Darkrager (at 22170x42842) inside the camp itself and talk to him. He won't be very chatty but you'll find another gem in your quest inventory afterwards. Use it once to accept the quest again, now the gem is charged and you can summon another skeleton warrior. Rinse and repeat as often as you like. What says better "Stay away Stranger!" then your personal skeleton warrior bodyguard? ;)

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.

Official EU Forums - Beta Version Fails to Impress

Today the official WAR forums for the EU opened their "beta" version. To give you the bad news first: They failed to impress me. When you try to login, you have to route over the GOA flash login, which spins for 45secs and then greets you with the good old error code 414 - login failed, you can't login to the forum and post. Splendid! If this starts while only few explore the new forums yet, what will happen during prime time? Sloooow access i would guess. Browsing at least works... Hmm.. next thing you realize: The EU CMs have some new nicknames on the forums... WTH?!? I fail to see the bigger picture behind this tbh, its only confusing for people. The good news: The forums are hosted at the same company the US forums are and not many people complained about those. The forum itself (excluding the GOA login) is fast and does work well. The design is okayish but not awesome, guess its personal taste. Since i could not login to the new forums yet, i could not test the rest. Bummer GOA slipped this again and instead of creating some awe inspiring stunt its just something mediocre.

Let me know if you find anything interesting and don't forget the contest GOA is hosting to hand out some Skaven Cloaks and the unique Choppa/Slayer heads.

Thulf the Quest Giver

Those that follow my adventures from pre-WAR know i have always played MMOs on a roleplay server when i had the chance. I'm not a hardcore roleplayer, but i like the immersion and dislike people standing around in the major city talking about the Superbowl or having names like xXPowerBarbie13Xx. In addition its great that you can run into player driven events any day. With AoC being a PvP centric game we had some issues the political/diplomatic kind on the RP server tho, an attack always became a major affair of state when you just wanted to have some nice PvP. Therefore the decision for WAR to move to a "normal" server.


From the Witching Night event i still had tons of those Leather Mask of the Gobbo items. Since quite a while i had the idea to pose with Thulf as a quest giver in the greenskin newbie area and hand them out.

What better occasion than a lot of Choppas running around there? On Friday early evening i placed myself at the Snouts' Pens in Mount Bloodhorn and posed as a quest giver - asking for grey trash items from the Stunties to bolster the greenskin supplies. One thing i realised: The chat messages have to be quite short, if you add too many item links, those will make the message too long and it won't display. Therefore i had to shorten my message a bit. In addition to some pre-thought of lines for communication i also used the OrcTalk addon for slang flavour...
I know on "normal" servers players often are not that open for roleplay, as they're not used to it or don't have any interest in it. In addition the english servers are cross-cultural and some players don't speak english that well.


I had no expectations for this experiment and was prepared to stand there lonely for a while. I posed as a quest giver for around 40min and had two or three really nice conversations. I only handed out a few masks as many players were just running past, busy with their newbie quests, not reading the chat or not being interested in any interaction. Only one conversation i can describe as roleplay, the rest was people wanting to do the "quest" but needing pointers or high level players on their alts that already had masks themselves, but thought its a cool idea. As it was early evening the area was not bustling with activity the whole time tho. The result was okayish, but not great. I guess I'll try it again once everyone can create a Choppa and see how it goes then.

I can only encourage everyone to add to the server life with player driven events, be it regular 6vs6, player quests or just any other event that is open for others to participate.

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.

Braaain, mooore Braaain...

The mission was simple: Find the camp in the middle of the forest, descry the revolting Orcs and kill their leader Cannot Rememba. The young Choppa sneaked through the woods, enemies everywhere. There! The camp he was looking after... how would he disable the guards standing watch? Crouching up to every single one, slit their throat? The final solution was a different one: In plain daylight he walked in the middle of the camp, used a knife to attract the boss from their middle and killed him slow and painfully. While everyone was standing around, looking dumb and shouting: Braaain, mooore Braaain...

One major thing that bugs me while leveling - and i had nearly forgotten about - is the stupid Artificial Intelligence (AI) the NPC monsters have. You can walk in the middle of a camp and if you start killing stuff, it does not matter how long you're standing there or what noises you make, NO ONE, not a single guard, will be alerted by it. In the high level dungeons you'll always pull packs. It does not have to be some major brain surgery, but just *a little bit more* AI from the NPCs would increase the fun to kill stuff in PvE. Is this a sympton of wanting to make computer games easier and easier? I know i like a higher challenge rating then most... but c'mon, at least *some* challenge that keeps you thinking. More patrols to watch after, mobs alerting each other at a medium distance, etc.

On a sidenote: Didn't Mythic say they fixed the wounded mobs running away?!? On my Choppa i regularly encounter mobs running away wounded at full speed and then they run so far away that they leash back and reset to full health again. SO annoying!

Choppa Fire Sale in T1

Yesterday evening the servers came back up and everyone wanted to try out the Choppa & Slayer. Everyone? Holy Moly... everyone and their mother! T1 was insanely busy yesterday night. There were so many Choppas running around it was awesome. Downside was the mailsystem stopped working at all in T1 greenskin zone, i had to fly to the Inevitable City to take some stuff out - mailbox there was working properly. The first PQ behaved irratic as well with all the people standing around, the last bodyguards bugged out and were running around before you could attack them. Took a while but then they could be killed. Stuff died so fast: You're not eligible for loot. *lol*

We were running several groups for scenarios and luckily some guildies decided to create healer alts. BTW, we're in the process of a guild merger, but I'll write more about this some other time. Going back into the Ekrund scenario or Nordenwatch was really fun, has been a while for me. Doing the newbie quests, running scenarios and afterwards doing all the quests in the Inevitable City gave my Choppa, called Stuntystomper, enough XP for rank 9. And seriously, a minute after i took the screenshot i got shoulders. One thing i noticed, Mythic fixed a bunch of bugs and odd behaviour on the starter quests since i ran them with Thulf. For example when you have to bait a wolf in the woods and before people could attack him when he started running for you, but now he only becomes aggressive once he reaches that bait.

Funny to see are all the people that wear the promotional hats, masks and everything else you can put on your head. Until you're high rank enough to wear the first helmet with stats it doesn't matter. Looks great as people look so different. I also like the fact they enabled the "paint"-tattoos, which make the Choppas look like Savage Orcs. Although it seems to many watched Lord of the Rings and 50% of the Choppas are running around with their face painted white. Annoying was the spam in region chat. Sheesh... every second player was so excited he had to spam the chat how he'll chop some stunties or what a badass his Choppa is. I turned region chat off after 20 seconds into Mt. Bloodhorn. Overall it was a very fun evening and it seems to be a great time to level an alt.

Since the promotional Choppa/Slayer heads for EU are still MIA, I got another idea in my head. Maybe I'll find the time tonight to do it, we'll see... and yes, i will tell you about it once its done. ;) I hope i can chop some stunties together with Regis from Wizards & Wenches, as he rolled a Choppa on my server. Yes, its mine... i paid for it.

Fortress Fights & Zone Domination

With the recently introduced zone domination system (ZDS) slowly more and more people feel compelled to jump to their capitols rescue. One aspect of the system is to make it easier to flip zones if no defenders show up. In addition to me it looks like it makes it also easier for smaller forces to play a vitale role in defending a zone. Of course if you're getting steamrolled by a huuuge zerg, there is not much you can do against it. But walling yourself into a keep/fortress you can prevent a takeover for quite a while even with a smaller force, if done right. If you want to read a good sum-up for the ZDS, read How To: Zone Dominate at lagwar.

Part of the intended change was so there would be more capitol city raids and players could experience the "endgame content" (quotation marks as Mythic still needs to work hard on this) more often. Well.. this change did it, there are city sieges happening much more often. On Karak-Azgal they are happening more frequently as well now. But one major problem was not adressed by Mythic with the latest changes: What happens on the servers where there is a huge faction imbalance (talking about active RvR, not player numbers) due to whatever reason? With the capitols now losing city rank, some server factions are basicly locked out of the rank 40 city instances six days a week. The capitol needs rank 2 for guild tavern and lower of the two rank 40 dungeons (in IC thats BWE) and rank 3 for the higher rank 40 city dungeon. How would you feel if your capitol gets bombed back to Stone Age and the assaults keep coming so you can't rebuild it fast enough? Doing a lot of city PQs just to be able to get rank 3 again to enter the dungeon, next day your capitol was attacked again. Reads nice on paper, but try to imagine how you'd feel about that with only very few options to access proper dungeons for endgame content. This needs to be adressed. Every time a city is pushed into a contested state it loses a rank is a bit too much if the enemy is inside your city every night and the city dungeons are the only shot at Sentinel gear. My personal focus is Lost Vale, so I'm not bothered that much about it - but others are. Read: The Darker Side of Zone Domination at Knights of the Feathered Hats.

Interesting tidbit i found on the US forum: Victory Points from empty city siege instances are worth less to overall Zone Control. Reads to me like more power to small organized teams that beat the crap out of an instance full of n00bs. Question arises tho: With this change, what happens if no one would show to defend their own capitol, could the attackers gain zone control at all? The zone control system is another example at how Mythic fails to communicate such details to the players. I know people should read patchnotes & forums, but they don't. There needs to be a proper RvR guide at the official websites to spoon-feed peeps those important systems.

On Monday (?) evening we were defending the Inevitable City against a larger Order force. Not really the city, but the Maw fortress. Despite having much smaller numbers, we were able to fend the attackers off by walling ourself properly in, inside the fortress, and preventing another zone lock. While the whole thing was fun, there are a few things that are still not working like they should. The lag was awful again, seconds until your skills hit, sometimes attackers not rendering properly on your screen, etc. When my respawn timer went out it took a minute or longer until i did respawn. I know the EU servers had some trouble these days, so hopefully this was the cause and will improve fast, but others say their RvR performance went much worse with 1.2 patch. One more thing *very* annoying was that the fortress lord was constantly jumping between upper and lower floor. Mythic said they fixed the lord pulling down, but apparently they did not properly yet. If Order could pull him down by intention or his leash was just wacky, i can't say. In addition the guards he spawned behaved in a similar way, teleporting up & down and also were behaving pretty braindead, their AI was a major fail.

Like i wrote in another post already, I'm a bit disappointed to see many guilds only running certain combinations (3-4) of classes as they can use their skills together to a rather overpowered combination. IMO that's something Mythic should look into as well, feels weird not only from the immersion standpoint.

EDIT: Just saw a good recap at the US forum about some of the primary complains concerning AoE is out of control.

Because it fits the context somewhat, also read Things To Do and Not To Do in Scenarios at Wizard & Wenches if you haven't yet. Now read it again.