The quest for chapter 20 rewards

At rank 33 I was running out of decent quests in my area, and the mobs wee giving me very little experience. I tried to do some PQs to grind out some influence but the rewards didn't seem great enough to motivate me to do this. So instead I decided to do a little bit of exploring; running around the map and unlocking as many chapters as I could find. Soon enough I cam to the high elf chapter 20 which gave me a ridiculously good weapon which gave me an extra 8-9 dps. The mobs for this PQ were rank 38 and 39 classified as 'challenging' and 'dangerous'. With my breath held in anticipation I pulled the first dark elf and started hammering away at it. The fight took a bit longer then it would to take down a monster my level (With grudges up and the 'cave-in' ability ready I can take them down in around 10 seconds) but the xp was pretty big; around 800xp for each kill with no xp rest bonus.

Things moved along a bit quicker when I had my grudges up and I was able to take on a the level 39s which I probably couldn't without the grudges. I was getting a fair amount of xp but it was just taking too long and I still needed to kill around 300 more to get my epic influence reward. I quickly advertised in chat whether anyone wanted to help, and after about 30min and a bit more spamming someone said that they'd come along. He ended up being a rank 32 warrior priest, so a 33 and 32 tried together to take the PQ. This time we coul take on two mobs at a time but annoyingly it wasn't twice as fast and soloing so I wasn't really getting the great influence that I longed for. Finally a guildy came along; a 38 ironbreaker and we started rolling through it. Funnily enough we managed to finish the entire PQ with just us three. Rewards were trash (three green bags) and we had to split up after that.

I started to realize simply how much grinding this was going to take when I had barely reached the first reward. However, a couple more groups later, and a few more hours of killing dark elves ended up with me aquiring my ownage new axe. Blissfully I put it on with a sort of ceremony and what do you think I discovered? It looked exactly the same as my old axe.../rage. Mythic, please introduce the dressing room feature..this is killing me.

What you lookin' at fool?

Something pretty sweet that Mythic has implemented is when you target a friendly player or npc (Could be opposing players and enemies as well, I haven't seen it though) you char occasionally turns its head to look at them. Too bad they didn't implement a system where your character looks a the target's head not at the body. Or at least made the dwarves to look up a little bit. Or you get scenes like this one...

1/2 an apology

So I just received the PCPP issue today and got to read the review and have to somewhat apologize for my previous post. The review was surprisingly decent and fair, making some solid points about the game and overall justified the score of 7/10, but what cannot be justified was his AoC review and comments on the forums.

In other news I won't be playing WAR for a while as exams coming up in three weeks and decided not to renew my subscription until after they finished. Hopefully this little determined stance of mine will last and I do decently in them. Probably won't be posting as much as usual but still will chuck up some stuff when my head is crammed with junk.

Professional bias

A few months ago I subscribed to the pc gaming magazine PC Powerplay. These guys have a very active forum which I visit occasionally and on the magazine feedback topic I heard that WAR got 7/10. I have not read it as yet because I live in the west and they like to take years to relinquish anything to us poor citizens but the main issues mentioned on the forum were bugs, population, and lacklustre PvE. Some of my friends always said to me that magazines are the most bias source of info/reviews/wahtnot ever and I haven't really noticed the fact so far (Mostly because I don't follow a lot of games) but with the WAR review it was kinda' obvious.

A couple of issues ago PCPP reviewed AoC, once again I haven't read it as I subscribed one issues afterwards, and guess what it got? A 6? A 7? Nope, a 10! It got one perfect score, it is a perfect game. And this was at launch people. 10 for AoC. What made it worse was the fact that they have a double page AoC advertisement directly behind the cover; the first thing you see when you open up the fresh mag. Now, I wasn't too concerned when my friends told be about the bias situation, but when it actually hits you with something you think is good and something you thi...know rather, is aweful and reverses that for the sake of advertising, it makes you kind of want to rage at the writer on the forum...which is what plenty of people are doing.

A last comment to make is that WAR never advertised in the magazine, they never got the front cover or a preview. (As far as I can tell) Its as if PCPP purposely ignored them for the entire period of time leading up to launch then finally realized that they mgiht as well fill some space and give it an average score. Poor form. I'm not against them giving WAR 7/10 (I would give it an 8 though) as long as they back it up not only with logical and reasonable words but also a fair attitude towards it. As The writer of the review said on the forums;

As the one who reviewed AoC, no I'm not "gun-shy" - AoC is still in my opinion, the greatest MMO yet seen on this earth, and I stand by my comments and score 100% You don't like it, fair enough.

Sack that fool
/end faboi-disguised-as-justice-seeker rant

In a perfect world there wouldn't be blogs

In the past month there has been many new blogs popping up all over the place, some bloggers begin to post more, others slack off; enjoying the game. But a large majority of the posts around are ideas to improve the game, complaining about an aspect of the game, or just giving a autobiography of their toon. A month in and there is still plenty to talk about, the 'State of the Game' announcement, scenarios, PQs, population woes, and on and on and on. My point is that without the problems in game we bloggers wouldn't have a whole lot to talk about. If everything about WAR was great then we would only need to make one post 'Grats Mythic' and close our blogs.

So I guess some of the bloggers could thank Mythic for having the many problems, that it is only to be expected, but problems nontheless, for without it every WAR dedicated blog would have shut down a few weeks ago. Because we all know that rage posts and frustrated posts are a joy to read we should all thank Mythic for being only human (Or as human as a compnay can get) and giving us bloggers something to write about.

The appeal of the melee frontline

Over at Wizards and Wenches there is a post that sums up a lot of my experience in scenarios as a tank really well. The deficiency of not only melee classes but also capable healers is a problem that results in being constantly pushed back. As an ironbreaker I just charge in there do as much craziness as possible then die and run back. I don't mind the dying part as long as I have achieved something before I do so. With Order's obscene amount of bright wizards at hand, all ready melt into a puddle of squishiness if a chosen or marauder so much as looks at him my method is not always so effective.

Funnily whenever I do a kamikaze run I target I always seem to target a squig herder or a shaman. 50% of the time I'll be able to take him down but even if I do there is no follow up by the rest of Order, they just won't push with me. So I die and the squig herder/shaman gets a rez and keeps on rolling. No matter what scenario I do there will be always at least four melee Destruction lined up to go beserk, and 4-6 bright wizards in my group ready to do piddly all. And I blame Mythic for this, surely at some point they realized that they were making Destruction appear to be by far the coolest faction and Order to be the boring old good guys, so lets look at their main, most played melee classes as opposed to ours.

Chosen - A crazy spiky warrior whose weapons and shields look fearsome, probably Destruction's favorite character.
Marauder - Not so much armour but arm mutates and does obscene damage, especially to a squishie. This class appears to me like a beserker, who barely can be killed.
Black Orc - This class just never ever seems to die. I've seen one black orc take on three Order for about a minute, just refusing to die. These big brutes are the ultimate in survivability.

Ironbreaker - IMO the best melee class; they are tough and reasonably good looking. With a decent healer and grudges up we can destroy everyone on the battlefield. Path of vengeance allows us to take down squishies so easily; knockdown, slow, they ded.
Witch Hunter - Squishie melee, while they look cool they cannot survive a decent fight and are constantly sculking around the place, picking their fights.
Swordmaster - Well, its an elf...who wants to play an elf? These guys look like they can barely hold up their massive shields. But they do tank well.

Witch hunters can barely hold a frontline so that leaves the job of being a wall to the ironbreakers and swordmasters and these two class just do not have the appeal of the three beastly Destruction classes. With the KotBS making a comeback hopefully later this year this might even up a little bit; hopefully they have added a little spice to the mix for Order, but I'm sure they won't be able to top the ironbreakers for sheer stunty awesomeness.

A WAR interrogation; how elite are the bloggers? Part 4

Today we get to learn the ins and outs of WAR's most pimping blogger; Syp. The scores I have been giving for the past couple of ones haven't been too impressive (*I-expected-more-from-you-son-look*) but we're not over yet and someone could still get some truly awesome marks. Enough procrastinating, lets dissect Syp the blogging fiend!

WAR interrogation - how elite are the bloggers?

Identify yourself! (Blogger name – what blog – class)

Syp, WAAAGH! A Warhammer Online Blog, Playing Syp, Dwarf Engineer

1) Where you at? (Normal rank – renown rank) - 3.5/5

Rank 24, RR 19

2) We want dedication soldier! (Average playtime every week) - 3/5

18-22 hours (a few a night, plus a few extra on Thursdays)

3) On a scale of 1 to 10 how skillful would you rate yourself? - 2.5/5

Ability to die heroically - 9.5

Ability to jump around Destruction players and be an annoying fly in their ear - 8

Ability to make a thick stew - 4

4) Who are you working with? (Class you like the most aside from your own and why) - 4.5/5

Probably Runepriests, because they take pity on my broken corpse and rez it so that it may receive more punishment. Plus, they look like short fat Jedis with wooden lightsabers.

5) Give me names (Class you dislike the most and why) - 4.5/5

Witch Elves. Witch Elves. Witch Elves. A cuter rogue in form, but a rogue nonetheless -- and just as cowardly, overpowered and unforgiving as rogues in other titles.

6) What do you really want? (If you could make up one ability what would it be?) 4/5

A puppy cannon. The enemy would never be prepared for a face-full of puppies, and it would give me the psychological edge.

A good start Syp, quite a good level although you don't seem to be grinding enough scenarios to get your renown rank up there. :P
Reasonable playtime but I guess we can't expect something like 80 hours a week because of your obscene post rate.
I would like to think you could be a bit more awesome then an annoying fly..
Runepriests are apprentice jedis with wooden lightsabers, protecting use fom the evils of Destruction!
Too true, my pocket runepriest only has time to open his mouth before those Witch Elves have hammered him into a stunty pulp.
A psycological edge over something like a black orc may not be that much of an advantage as it has no brain, but still bonus points for creativity.
You have reached rank 40, you gain 22/30 points of 1337ness!

Solving scenario problems

A post over at Word of Shadow gave me an idea for a way to make scenarios less monotonous and avoid getting the same scenario again, and again, and again. People complain that scenarios are grind fests; you get in, you grab the item, and start farming the opposition or of course the reverse happens. In a game so totally focused around an RvR campaign the scenarios seem rather out of place; you teleport into this unknown battleground and fight for a keep before teleporting out and doing it all again. We don't know where this battleground is, what it is there for, and why we are capturing it, well maybe we do...we're capturing it so we can get more renown and xp. Going from the epic struggle of the zones to a seemingly increasingly linear scenario experience is something that probably should be addressed.

This linear experience is partly created from doing the same scenario over and over again and partly because the battle has no real context. My idea is to firstly create a scenario cycle; where you just join the scenario queue, and you have no idea which one is going to pop. You get in and complete that scenario before the cycle begins and you move directly onto another scenario. You can leave the group whenever you like which allows other people to join. In this way you would get rid of the boredom of repeating the same old scenario time after time.

The second thing I would do is tie each scenario into a part of the actual game. I would make Tor Anroc an actual place in the game where people can go, with this you could fit in a story of how important this area is to both factions and give a reason why they are fighting. After the Tor Anroc scenario is over you can move on to another part of the map where you can continue the struggle. This other scenario would be carefully linked to a seperate place in the game which in turn would be linked to the Tor Anroc place ingame. This connection would tie scenarios in closer to the actual game and prevent it from being a linear grind experience. To take it a further step the scenarios could be programmed to have some effect on the same place ingame. Say if Order wins Tor Anroc 500 times in one day then the place ingame becomes a special Order warcamp for one day which gives access to unique instances/quests/gear. Alternately Destruction could win 500 times and the same would happen for them.

If these two ideas worked then scenarios would become a whole lot less linear and grindy, but knowing players, most would still just do it for the renown and experience. Many have said that doing scenarios is the fastest way to level, so as a final measure nerf the experience and renown gaisn in scenarios (not too much though) and increase them for open RvR. In this way I believe the game could become more balanced and interesting.

A WAR interrogation - how elite are the bloggers? Part 3

Part three and today we get close and personal with Brent. Not only does he produce a great blog but he also made a bunch of vids on youtube before the NDA was lifted and they are some of the bet warhammer gameplay videos around, you can check them out here. But what is really important is the score so lets put brent through his paces.

WAR interrogation - how elite are the bloggers?

Identify yourself! (Blogger name – what blog – class)

My name is Brent, my web alias is br3ntbr0. I run the blog "A Wall of Text" at http://textwall.blogspot.com. I play a Goblin Shaman on the Thorgrim server and a Dwarf Ironbreaker on the Averheim server in Warhammer Online.

1) Where you at? (Normal rank – renown rank) - 4.5/5

My goblin shaman is level 22/20 (lvl/rr) on a low population server, so the PVE leveling has been slow. On a higher pop server my order characters are able to level via scenarios and I have a 14/14 Ironbreaker, 9/9 Rune Priest, 10/10 Warrior Priest and 8/8 Bright Wizard. I suspect my Shaman would be in his 30's right now if scenarios would only pop more for Destruction on my server ><

2) We want dedication soldier! (Average playtime every week) - 3/5

I play 2-3 hours nearly every night, and slightly more on Sat/Sun if schedule provides the time. I'd say I'm probably around 20 (give or take 5) hours a week, which I consider to be alot (probably too much) time with gaming.

3) On a scale of 1 to 10 how skillful would you rate yourself? - 4/5

I'm not a great twitch gamer, but I try. I might give myself an 8 simply because I have alot of experience with these kinds of games, and I'm an IT professional and I understand software a bit more than the average gamer. I try to be a student of any game I play and am constantly on the look out for new information that might help me be more competitive, especially with PVP based games. If there's a mod, macro, or piece of hardware that might help, I'll probably try it.

4) Who are you working with? (Class you like the most aside from your own and why) - 2.5/5

I like the Shaman and Ironbreaker the most right now, closely followed by Bright Wizard and Rune Priest. The Shaman is a really flexible character. He does good dps for a healing class, and since he's a healer he's a welcomed sight in just about an aspect of the game. The Ironbreaker is just the most annoying class to the Destruction side I can think of. Hard as nails, knocking people all over the map, snares, knockdowns...just fun. The Rune Priest is the best healer in the game (zealot too) and the Bright Wizard will absolutely wreck people if left alone.

5) Give me names (Class you dislike the most and why) - 4/5

I dislike the Witch Hunter, because they have crap survivability, and in these kinds of games survivability is my thing. With those classes, once you come out of stealth to attack someone in anything other than 1v1, you'd better pray you get spam healed or you pretty much die as others will turn to focus on you since you are squishy. There's no vanish-like mechanic to get in and get out. I'm not big on low survivability classes, which is the only reason the Bright Wizard isn't my main character in War either. The very first class I ever made in War closed beta long ago was the Witch Hunter and loved everything about the class...until I started doing RVR with him. The next one I made was the Bright Wizard, and while better in RVR (since he's ranged) but he was even less able to survive.

6) What do you really want? (If you could make up one ability what would it be?) - 2.5/5

Like I mentioned in earlier, if Witch Hunters had an emergency escape skill like the Rogues have in WoW...something in addition to their normal stealth...then I'd probably start playing one instantly. To the same end, if Bright Wizards had a 2nd crowd control skill I might consider playing him as well, something like the Blink spell that WoW mages have. I know the War/WoW comparisons have been beaten to death, but I think those classes in War would be well served to study thier WoW counterparts and bring something like those abilities in to War.

Time is up and the results are in, but just a few comments first.
You got good marks for keeping your RR up with you normal rank and pretty good leveling considering your play time.
Not a bad play time but not a particularly good one.
Go on...give youself an 11, you know your worth it.
I said aside from your own!!!! You named all the ones that you were playing!!!! If you can't listen to instruction then you had seriously better consider whether you belong here! *Stand over your cowering frame and leer*
Everyone hates Witch Hunters so you get good marks for that one.
Bright Wizards are already the most over powered class in the game except for their squishieness which stops them from being absurdly op, a blink ability would just make 50% of Order who doesn't already have a Bright Wizard main roll one.

Overall great job Brent and you have been awarded with; 20.5/30

Ten things I hate about you; Tor Anroc

Number one is the fact that I queue for everything yet only you pop
The second; even after the patch people run out of spawn and then afk stop
Third; every single bright wizard forms a separate group to farm renown
Number four is when Destruction reach the bauble before we get halfway down
The fifth thing I hate has gotta be the AOE knockbacks that throw half of Order into the lava
Six now and destruction fall back, running back from respawn could barely be further
The seventh hate is to die slowly from dots while standing next to a dps specced healer, /rage
Eight and I'm waiting 28 seconds for global rezz, gives me time to shout at that noob archmage
Number nine whine is when all Order squishies are pushed to spawn, then begins the blame game
And the last hate of all is 'Game over'; I'm top Order damage yet get half the renown of anyone else, now to get out and do it all over again

Those are not in any particular order and while it might not sound particularly great, or have no rythym or technical qualities, it comes from the heart...it comes from the heart...

A WAR Interrogation - how elite are the bloggers? Part 2

Receiving various bloggers' responses to my 'questionnaire' it was interesting to see how much each wrote, some wrote a fair amount while quite a few wrote one liners. But I will mark them all as equal! Today I decided to fit in two, yes two, different bloggers answers because they were short enough to do so, and also that Thallian didn't look so lonely up there on the leaderboard, so with out further ado; Tobold and Crimson!!

WAR interrogation - how elite are the bloggers?

Identify yourself! (Blogger name – what blog – class)

Tobold - Tobold, http://tobolds.blogspot.com/, shaman
Crimson - Crimson Starfire, Word of Shadow (http://word-of-shadow.blogspot.com), Warrior Priest (Starmantle) and Archmage (Bloodfire)

1) Where you at? (Normal rank – renown rank)

Tobold - Rank 20, RR 17 (3/5)

Crimson - Starmantle - NR:20, RR:18 , Bloodfire - NR:21, RR:20 (4/5)

2) We want dedication soldier! (Average playtime every week)

Tobold - Around 20 hours (3/5)

Crimson - 35 - 40 hours (4/5)

3) On a scale of 1 to 10 how skillful would you rate yourself?

Tobold - What's your definition of skill? I rate high on knowledge skills,
understanding game systems, knowing what to do. I rate low on fast
button mashing skills. (4.5/5)

Crimson - Nine (The most arrogant - lol) (4/5)

4) Who are you working with? (Class you like the most aside from your own and why)

Tobold - Tanks, obviously. I like to hide behind a black orc and keep him alive. (2.5/5)

Crimson - Like working with the Ironbreaker because they are easy to heal, hard to kill and deal and enormous amount of damage when needed. The Ironbreaker/Archmage make a great combo. (4/5)

5) Give me names (Class you dislike the most and why)

Tobold - Witch hunters, because of their invisibility. (5/5)

Crimson - I like all classes. I do enjoy killing Witch Elfs the most though :) (2/5)

6) What do you really want? (If you could make up one ability what would it be?)

Tobold - I want a knockback ability, shamans only get one very late, and only
if they specialize in one talent tree. (3/5)

Crimson - Teleport (Like blink from WoW) (3/5)


Well done bloggers, short and to the point makes good reading. Crimson gets brownie points for having two characters at a reasonably high level, would like to see a bit more commitment in a single character, however, to get more points.
Answering a question with a question Tobold; you know how to play this don't you? Crimson, if you are going to be arrogant, you might as well go all the way, but a good self assessment there. I was going to mark you both up on question 4 because you both said you love tanks, but then I realized Tobold was talking about a Black Orc/Shaman tag team which lost him all his points, I hate those creeps; impossible to take down!
Tobold hit the money on the head, but there is a Destruction class who also has invisibility and you didn't mention them - I'm starting to think you favour Destruction...Crimson, your message of world friendship is disgraceful but since I can relate to you with WE (Always killing my healers) you didn't do too badly.
Nothing too creative on the last question which was a bit disapointing but overall you guys did pretty well!

So the final score is;
Tobold - 21/30
Crimson - 21/30

Its a tie! We have just a few more bloggers to go but things are beginning to look very close!

Glitchy fun

Some of the odd things that happened to me while stuffing around in Reikland. These two happened when I jumped down from the massive observatory tower thing into the water (you don't die) however when I swam out I found myself walking through the ground.

This also happened in Reikland round the back of a monastary, I think I might have been looking down into the lower levels of the building, it was pretty cool.

A WAR interrogation - how elite are the bloggers? Part 1

Partly because everyone loves interviews, and partly because I thought it would be interesting, I have gone about and asked/interrogated various blogger about them and their WAR experience.Some were enthusiastic and wrote a short novel for each question (Thanks brent) and others kept it short and sweet, while others probably deleted the email as spam. :P But the aim of this is to find out just how elite are the bloggers, there are six main questions which each will be marked out of 5 for a total of 30 points, after a couple of days we should find out just who is the most elite blogger! First off the plate we have (drumroll please) Thallian!!

Identify yourself! (Blogger name – what blog – class)

Thallian is my pen name-Thallian and Anton's MMO and random rambles blog

1) Where you at? (Normal rank – renown rank) - 3/5

I have three "main's" Rumples the IB is rank 13 on Praag, Thallian the SM is rank nine on Averheim (hes in COW) and Erustark the RP is rank 8 or 9 on an rp server which is some thing I'm trying out for the first time. Really, I've come ot the conclusion so far that they aren't that special. I dunno my pvp rank but its pretty on par with everyone else's at these low levels.

2) We want dedication soldier! (Average playtime every week) - 2/5

Ummm yeah dedication lol. Obviously not a lot of that other than the dedication to not quit!!! I play about 2 to 4 hours of warhammer a week and 2 to 6 hours of Lotro if I get permission from my gf (the boss)

3) On a scale of 1 to 10 how skillful would you rate yourself? - 4.5/5

On a scale of 1 to 10 I am super great.

4) Who are you working with? (Class you like the most aside from your own and why) and 5) Give me names (Class you dislike the most and why) - 3.5/5 and 3/5

Sure, I hate fighting Disciples of Kain, they are too beefy. I also hate fighting shamans unless I have them outnumbered and outgunned. Marauders are powerful but quite killable so I don't mind them I think thye are neat. On the Order side I dont like archmages, they are too hard to kill and wonky. I bet I wouldnt like warriori priests too if I played destruction more often. I have two destruction chars I'm toying with playing, a zealot and a DoK. Maybe a marauder. I love the Ironbreaker. Undecided on the Swordmaster but I like how he's different than the ironbreaker. Lastly I dont think the runepriests are super cool but they are ok and I need to try the engineer

6) What do you really want? (If you could make up one ability what would it be?) - 4.5/5

If I could make up an ability or two, one would be the ability to domino effect. Push one person with a move and it pushes the people behind them. This would make for some great fights in crowded places. Umm Second I vote for full collision detection with no pushing through against the enemy. You want to push through you gotta kill em. Nuff said. Not enough thought went into the lameness of the push through decision.

Congratulastions Thallian, you have completed your exam...I mean interrogation. Kudos for you trying ou all the different characters, points were deducted for saying 'pvp'....its RvR! Play time is a bit disapointing but the gf saved you from a complete embrassment. I like the fact that you answer a simple number question with a sentence - bonus points - its what we want to see in our men. Good coverage of classes, but its uspposed to be that you hate all Destruction and love Order, but anyway. And chain knockbacks is a brilliant idea and it should definitely be given to Ironbreakers.
You final score is 20.5/30 which puts you in the lead! One down several more to go...who will be the most elite blogger?

You know when you always ask in school 'when will I ever need this?' finally I have found a use for the simple mathematics!

Now that my riveting title has drawn you all in I can now bore you with some maths! The realization of how long it would take to get to the higher renown ranks came to me while working away in Tor Anroc trying to catch up to my normal rank. I needed around 15000 renown to level and the renown I gathered from each scenario varied from 300 to 1500 renown. Even if I achieved 1500 renown a match it would take 10 of them to level. When each Tor Anroc generally goes for around 10 minutes that is 100 minutes of pure scenarios to level, which doesn't seem a huge time period, however it is different when you consider the 300 renown. 1500 renown at 300 renown per scenario adds up to 50 10 minute matches before leveling totally 500 hours of gameplay, making 100 and 500 minutes the two extremes. With a bit more maths the average works out to be roughly 160-170 minutes which is still a significant amount of time. And this wasn't a very high renown rank, I forget the exact number but it was in the low 20s.

If it takes almost 3 hours to level one renown rank in low T3 what must it be like when you hit the elite ranks of 60+? While in Altdorf I visited a renown gear merchant who offered 'Mythic' gear for renown ranks 75 and 76, they did look shiny but when I thought about how long it would take to reach that rank the stats seemed paltry, surely by then the stats on those types of gear for that type of rank to be almost as good as some of this kind of gear.

Calling all elitists!

After a bit of discussion my guild, Psygnosis, has decided to make our recruitment process a bit easier on those wanting to get in as we want more players in so we can have more of a hope capturing and defending keeps, as well as all the stuff we normally do together. (Scenarios, nude marathons, etc...) We are one of the smallest bestest guilds on Ironclaw with 20 members with members mainly from NZ and Aus.

How exactly absolutely awesome are we? Well, website ranks all the guilds in terms of renown gathered and we have the third highest renown per member on the server. (Don't trust everything you see on that website though, we are actually rank 16 now) But don't be too scared but how elitist we are because we are a great bunch of people that just want to cream Destruction. Head over to the guild website to check us out and say hello, bringing muffins always helps with the recruitment process...

Powerlvling Mythic

Ah, what the wonders of population imbalance can do! In an effort to confront the massive favoritism towards destruction Mythic have announced 20% bonuses both to xp and renown. When I heard this I wondered whether my realm would be lucky enough to receive the bonus but alas it was only for half a dozen random ones. Something I found funny was the fact that they put the faction that was getting the bonus up there with 'Order' in blue. What a suprise! Never would have thought of that. The real issue is whether it is going to work, and the answer imo is that it will not.

The reason people chose Destruction is because it looks the coolest, because Mythic have made it out to be the evilest and creepiest. (Between posh British people and Lord Byron on drugs who would you choose? Nobody even likes the British!!) Maybe the xp and renown bonues will persuade a few people to make alts there but it will not have any long lasting effect. As a final note, I believe that for all servers there is an inbalance and I know for Ironclaw there are a significant amount more of Destro the Order but not as much as others, but for only a half dozen of servers to be named for the bonus there must be a massive inbalance, maybe something like 4:1....5:1?

-Chappo

Of farming renown

I first heard of it over at Word of Shadow and soon after that I noticed it going on in some of the scenarios. The theory is you get a lot more renown if you make your own party for the scenario, and because you don't have to share any renown that 'you' earned you generally get a whole lot more then the rest of the peeps on your side. A lot of people in the game have said that they never heal those who make their own group to farm, and I know that if I was a healer neither would I. People may say that there is nothing wrong it or Mythic would have done something about it, but it seems to break a certain code in the game.

In my previous post I talked about the scenarios and how they differed from WoW's battlegrounds, how it was more important to get support your team and get the win then get the kills and damage, and I think this practice goes against that. Through the practise I've often seen these people at the top of the damage charts with a massive amount of renown, while the rest of their team had very little renown or experience having lost the match. Renown farming is selfish as the people care more about how they go individually in the scenario rather then how their team went (Whether they won or lost) as it doesn't effect them nearly as much. Then again, this entire post could be because as an Ironbreaker I'm useless at burst damage and can't farm renown myself...

-Chappo

Grats Mythic

Well Mythic have announced that they reached the 750,000 mark. Not subscriptions, or copies sold but number of 'players' registered. Now why would they release something like that? An announcement which no one really understands? Well, WotLK is looming ever closer as well as the end of the free month that came with the game so there are interesting/challenging days ahead.

-Chappo

First thing first...T1

So lets get down to the important stuff. During the open beta I tried out my three original top classes; Ironbreaker, shadow warrior, and warrior priest, however because I only had two days to test them I didn't get to explore and expand a whole lot. In the end I decided that the ironbreaker certainly looked the coolest (Stunty spiky ball is just the cutest thing) and they are really fun to play. So saying at the headstart I jumped on Ironclaw where my guild was rolling, and breathlessly made my little stunty as cuddly as possible.

During the headstart I slowly made my way through T1, doing a couple of PQs which were intense, did a lot of exploring and questing and just a little bit of scenarios. Coming from a big background in WoW's battlegrounds (4 twinks) I was excited about the experience/renown/loot aspect of it as well as the role the scenario plays in the game, even though you can't twink in WAR. And there was a difference, a very significant difference; all of a sudden these scenarios mattered, you really desperately wanted to win. You wanted to push your enemies back and rule the castle, something that was completely lacking from something like WSG.

Back in my WoW days, I was very much a solo player, all I wanted to do was rack up the most dmg in a battleground, not really caring about the actual result of the match. And while I still get a rush from seeing my name at the top of the board its not as important as the result of the match. Scenarios were a ton of fun, even though I didn't participate in too many of them, and some of the fights were so intense when I was finally hit with the 'respawn' message I had to take very deep breaths and slink a bit deeper into my chair and family members gave me funny looks.

One thing I noticed though is that Order have a ton of ranged dps (Majority of which are Bright Wizards) but few melee classes and fewer healers. This became a frustration for me as I would often charge at the destruction frontline and have no support while everyone nuked from a long way off, leaving me to die. Also healers would often refuse to heal me, instead concerntrating on the ranged dps classes hanging around them. I have had frequent /rage moments because of this, but luckily it doesn't happy all the time.

As a final note on my T1 experience, I even got to do some open RvR action. I had unknowingly run into an RvR area (A bit hard I know when a big red message comes up, but it happened) and was killing some mobs when a squiggy ran into me. My first thought was to run, but I thought that if I did so he could easily just nuke me down, so I ran at him. he actually appeared at the perfect time because I had my grudges full and also my health full. The battle was over with 20 seconds with me standing victorious, barely losing any health. I was lucky that he hadn't been prepared and had just run into me else the result might have been different, although people say squiggies are useless against melee anyway.

So that was my T1 experience, it was great fun, especially since there were plenty of people around to do stuff with especially PQs, I'm not entirely sure how much I'm going to write about T2 because I hardly remember anything about it, it all goes so quickly...
But if you want to say gday ingame just send a tell to Chappo on Ironclaw, I might not respond straight away because I'm farming renown at the moment.

-Chappo

Updating files...

So its been ages since I last post and a storm of things have happened in the gaming world! WAR came out....Spore came out...and a lot of other stuff as well, but those are the main ones. I didn't even consider paying Spore actually as never felt that it was truly deep enough to enjoy very much, many people were proclaiming it as the next greatest game yet after a few weeks it appears that there are signs of people viewing it as a time filler.

Ok, onto the interesting stuff. I am playing WAR! With a minuscule amount of money left from purchasing my new computer I had to borrow heavily from my brother to pay for the game. I bought it from the EA store and chose the download option, and this is where the problems started, or maybe they started a few days before.

A fellow guildy apparently received an extra open beta code and standard edition headstart code which he very kindly gave to me. Eagerly I jumped onto fileplanet to start the download but was met with a 500+ queue...treeek. I waited a little while but the estimate came up to be around 5 hours or so. There was another queue that appeared to be moving quicker so I joined that one aswell then went to bed.

In the morning I got up to find that I had got through both queues but that the downloads had started automatically so I had downloaded 2GB of one file and about 4GB of another. I quickly cancelled the shorter one and waited, shivering, for it to finish. Unfortunately, I had aimed to finish it all in my off-peak time but it was just taking too long so as the clock hit 12 the download came to a standstill. /rage. Another day that I couldn't play the game, and just sat around watching HD gameplay videos in full screen and pretending I was actually playing.

Next day the download finished, and after patching (which took a rediculous amount of time) I finally got to play....for about 2 days before the open beta period ended. I had great fun during that time but another problem was brewing. The dreaded war.exe oceanic rubbish stuffed me up so I couldn't play after the headstart. /rage. I tried downloading the new one that 'they' said would work, but no suprise when it didn't. Seeing no other option I decided the download the 10GB game for the 2.2nd? time. I downloaded it, it worked, I was happy. My adventure had begun.....finally.

-Chappo

I'm Alive

Yes, I still exist. Its been a little while since my last as did a bit of soul searching (of sorts) as well as a fair dose of hardcore lvling in WAR, but I'm back for another stab. At the moment I'm dedicating all my time to playing WAR and cramming in some study before exams in a couple of weeks but missed my misadventures on my blog so decided to start up again. Once again I will diligently blog my experiences in-game just so you can enjoy reading about someone else playing a game rather then you actually experiencing it for yourself.

-Chappo