We are Live!…

Current Killing Blow count: 22

Well we finally got SA formed last night. Southern Armada now has a presence in 3 games, WoW, WAR and EQ2. I must admit I had a fall back, if we hadn’t been able to get enough SA people on-line to be able to actually form the guild, I was going to join TOG. The Older Gamers are a very large Aussie based organisation who have a presence in multiple MMO’s as well as Clans in FPS games, tactical ladders etc. They have been around for a while and I have seen them in several games in the past. When I have encountered their members they have always been decent people and if SA wasn’t going to get off the ground that was basically going to be my new home.

However we managed to easily get enough people on-line and in The Inevitable City and Southern Armada went live in WAR. At the moment obviously we are only very small but we will use the same sort of recruitment system as Shinrai has adopted in WoW. Basically we make it a lot easier to get in, but its also a lot easier to get booted. We want to expand, but not at the expense of the SA way of doing things. Unfortunately Zarthaz has chosen to side with the forces of Order on an open RVR server and he will not be joining us. If we do get to a decent size who is to say we wont have an Order branch as well for Alts and something different. I was actually thinking we could call an order Guild “Northern Armada” 🙂

A very very small part of
The Inevitable City

I’ve been busy levelling up as fast as I can to get past all the stuff I have already done. I’ve made my way to level 15 and completed all of the current quests available in my Tier for Chaos and Greenskin. I was considering a little trip across to the Dark Elf lands to both have a look around and to check out their quests. Don’t get me wrong I have still skipped hundreds of quests as I have outlevelled them, I’ve just managed to clear the quest lines in the particular areas that I have inhabited.

Beta was fun and this is how I looked at the end of my last day in the Beta before go live.
Some of the most fun quests I’ve done so far have been the ones in the Troll lands. The Troll models are just awesome looking with different colours and skin textures on each one, the quests are fun with a decent mix of fedex, kill that, PQ’s etc. Its enough to keep you entertained and running about the place.

a Plaguewood Troll

I had an excellent couple of nights in Stonetroll Crossing both in open RvR and scenarios. I actually had 2 scenarios run to full term and time out. For those who haven’t played WAR, Stonetroll is a chaos human scenario where you have to get a flag in the centre of the map and then take it to 3 different map areas to “capture” those areas for your side. There are a couple of caveats:
Once you have the flag you have two minutes to make it to and capture an area, if you don’t the flag reseats and you start again
It takes 3 seconds of uninterrupted time to capture an area, if you are interrupted by attack you have to start the 3 seconds again.
The entire scenario takes 12 minutes.

So basically neither side could force the scenarios and they timed out, 12 minutes of battling the enemy!.

Usually stone troll is dominated by one side or the other and won or lost easily, so people are starting to learn how this stuff works and its getting harder.

Now I’m not saying this game is perfect, it definitely has bugs. One of them is Biletongue. He is the boss at the end of one of the Stonetroll PQ’s. We completed the second stage and Biletongue became attackable, I engaged and he one shotted me. Just a touch over powered!.

Biletongue

I have also had several one on one and small group battles in the open field areas. In one I got utterly ganked as I ran into 3 bright wizards, one snared me, the other two smacked me down. Its ok, I took careful note of their names and I will see them again, oh yes I will!. I am hanging out for the anti snare buff BO’s get at some point, snares really really drive me nuts as there seems to be at least 3-4 Order classes with a snare including a nasty one that the Bright Wizards get which is also a substantial DOT. As soon as I can break snares, the bloody bright wizards and Engineer’s are toast.

I am a kiwi, but on the SA-WAR KOS list I have added a Guild called “fluffy kiwis” just cause the name is so stupid. Much like the guild “The Elite” on Darklands I take great pleasure in smacking any of them I have met during scenarios or RvR.

RvR stories
I was happily killing npc dwarves in droves when I noticed what I thought was a named Dwarf, so I charged him. He took off and I realised he was a player trying to sneak in amongst the NPC’s to get some sneaky attacks in on us. He took off back to the cover of his warcamp and I didn’t quite have the legs to catch him so I let him go, but I decided to keep an eye out for him as i figured he would be back. Sure enough a couple of minutes later he starts to sneak back. I kept an eye on him making like I didn’t know he was there.

As soon as he was in range I made sure I had my snare up and charged him, I got the snare on him straight away and started to hammer him. He took off back to his base, but I made sure the snare stayed on and I followed him all the way into his base. I had 3 NPC’s on me by the time I got the final blow on him, I’m sure he thought once he was inside his warcamp he was safe. I turned around, hit sprint, outpaced the npcs and went back to the PQ. About 15 minutes later he was back, this time with buddies and it turned into quite a long protracted battle. RvR rocks.

I got involved in another battle across a wall where Greenskin and Dorf PQ’s are on opposite sides of the wall. We were happily outpacing the Dorf killing speed and they kept losing their PQ’s. So they decided that it was going to be easier to come across and try and stop us. They attacked en mass while we were heavily engaged with large numbers of NPC’s. The battle raged for a good 15 or so minutes with Dorfs and ourselves rezzing and racing straight back into the battle. We finally managed to complete the PQ with about 30 seconds to spare and the Dorfs at that point backed off. It was an awesome battle with no quarter given on either side. Kudos to the Dorf Skum for a great fight.

Undead Dorfs

Ulaa at 10th Level

I will update the screenie every ten levels so I can track how the ‘look’ changes.

WAAAAGH! – Again

One of the things I’ve seen a lot of bitching about on various web boards is a perceived “imbalance” of sides. The usual whine goes something like “Waaah Order has 2x as many players, there is no way destruction can win”. I have to say bollocks to that. I’m 15 now and I’ve been participating in PQ’s, scenarios, solo questing, open RvR and battleground RvR. Every single thing that you do generates influence points, completing a questing, participating in a PQ etc. So even if you don’t directly participate in RvR, you are still contributing to your sides victory simply by showing up and playing. You can PvE all the way to the top, apparently you can PvP all the way as well.

Influence points go to a running total of “who owns the zone”. Battlegrounds and open RvR tend to generate more direct influence, however I’ve been in a lot of fights now and “who has more peeps” on the ground has sod all to do with victory. If a battleground has a massive imbalance it will shut down and send the players back to their start points.

Open RvR is a little different, if there is a massive imbalance it can make a considerable difference, however this game is strongly tactical and a well organised team will decimate a zerg rush. The focused fire power of a number of DPS classes will crush any target its directed at. Once you add in the use of siege weapons, which can change a teams advantage in seconds then there is a lot more to it than just the numbers of people engaged.

Once guilds start to get seriously involved (and they are beginning to) and people sort out how the game is played, RvR will be dominated by tactical squads of skilled players. A team that knows what they are doing will beat a zerg rush every time. I was involved in a keep siege last night where the enemy were using boiling oil to defend their gates and we were using siege weapons (buy able from your friendly local neighbourhood dealer for only 20silver!) to attack the defenders at the top of the towers. Open field RvR is one thing, fighting inside a building is a completely different experience and I’m really looking forward to large keep sieges and city fights!.

I went and had a look at The Inevitable City last night, the Chaos home town. I have to say WOW. I have no idea how it gets taken by the enemy but its HUGE. Ogrimmar looks like shite next to it and it stands up against even best of the VG dungeons without the corresponding hit from framerate.

One of the things I’m enjoying is that there is always a choice of things to do, you can PvP (solo or groups) you can PQ (solo or groups), you can run scenarios (groups), you can run battlegrounds (groups), you can solo quest or you can just explore. This is all without the advantages of a guild to chat and learn with. I ran around between all of the above last night, both in green skin lands as well as Chaos lands. At the moment all the good PvP is in Chaos territory as the cowardly Dorfs don’t seem to want to defend their own lands. This is going to be a game that will be better the more people that play. If every PQ is full, every open RvR field is raging, battlegrounds are restarting every 10 minutes and players are everywhere this game will rock.

My one concern would be a lack of people. If a server is half full I think the experience will suffer as, like VG the world is truly massive. It wont feel “empty” like VG did as the world is very cleverly designed to keep your horizons low, there is always a new village or war camp just over the horizon. The fun in the game tho comes from its interaction with other players and without them the game will suffer. I certainly hope they have the technology to be able to run 10,000+ players simultaneously on a single server, then WAR really will be everywhere all the time!.

I really hope we can get an SA presence going in WAR. It will be a huge amount of fun to share the battles of this new world with my comrades in arms of the last decade.

WAAAAGH!

Ulaa Da Black Ork Level 14 beta

WAAAAAGGH! The NDA is down!.
I logged into Warhammer Beta last night and had an absolute blast. I fought in 5-6 PvP battles both in Battlegrounds and in open RvR zones. Now PvP is something I’ve never, ever done before and I loved it. After each fight you can see the “zone” capture tabs swaying one way or another between Order and Destruction as to who owns the area. Initially Destruction was dominant and the zone capture was definitely moving towards Orkies, then the Order guys started to rally and by the end of the night although order hadn’t gained ground, destruction had definitely lost ground.

Reading the manual also showed me a lot of stuff they are planning for guilds and it all looks really cool. Being in a guild is going to be a lot more than just a shared chat channel, Guilds have levels and can affect and be affected by the world. Guilds will be able to design their own Heraldry and the Standard bearer for a Guild will provide the Guild with a definite advantage on the battlefield.

Public quests are cool, I participated in 3 different public quests, you can end up in a PQ without even realising it just by joining in a group that’s in an area where a PQ is ongoing. All the quests I did come with a real sense of humour, the gobboe wolf rider wants you to kill the orcs boars to feed his wolves, the orc boar boy wants you to kill the gobboes wolves to feed his boars. Every thing that you do contributes to zone control and the War, from joining a PQ, fighting in PvP, to making and selling goods to other players.

PvP is going to be interesting, the green skins seem to have lots of Tanks and DPS, the Dorfs have lots of DPS and healers. Those bloody Dorf tank/healers are HARD to kill. PvP is easy to enter and a fight (at the level I’m at) is about 12 minutes. I have entered a couple of open PvP zones and had some small battles, Im really looking forward to getting thousands of people on line and having huge battles. I got XP and a title for dieing so much in one battle :). I got an achievement for the numbers of criticals I had done in PvP. The lorebook is fantastic, its a game unto itself and ALL the lore/knowledge for the game is in there if you want to read it.

Orc quests are fun, yes there is the usual go and get me X, but there is always a twist. Go and get the head of this dorf, take it back to town and put it on a spike cause it will make this gobboe laugh, talk to the gobboe once done. Go and find unconscious dorfs, put them in this barrel and then kick it off the side of the battlements , we are having a competition to see who gets the barrel furthest etc etc

I am seeing higher level Black Orcs around, I can tell they are Black Orcs because of the model and I know they are higher level because of the cooler gear and adornments they have. I also know whether a BOrc has gone down a defensive or a DPS path from their gear.

Graphically, the world has a sort of WoW look, but I wouldn’t mistake one for the other and the models look utterly different. Think WoW landscapes, burned, strewn with debri and corpses and Vanguard models. I have this nasty feeling I am going to be spending a lot of time killing filthy dorfs, then filthy humies, elvses etc. I knew from the minute I stepped into the world that I was in an orc encampment and that I was in the gathering of the next WAAAAGH and exactly who my enemies are.

This game rocks and I would highly recommend peeps giving it a shot.

I’ve been playing for about 5 days solid now. I haven’t found any of what I would call major bugs yet. I’ve seen one graphics anomaly (one mob in a bunch of about 20 was all warped) I have had one CTD. That wasn’t to do with the application, it was related to the authentication server crashing. I had one piece of equipment that I couldn’t equip till I logged out and back in again.

The PvP and PvE streams are beautifully integrated. You get PvE quests in PvP areas and vice versa. There are PvP quests around the killing of different enemy classes (they say it much better in the quest but its like kill a dorf priest, engineer and warrior) and you get gold and XP as a reward. You get a PvE quest to scout an area (such as a remote tower) in a PvP area. There are literally hundreds of quests.

I have finished Tier One (thats a PvP tier) in Orc lands, so now whenever I enter a PvP zone at level 12 I get a warning and then I get turned into a chicken!. So I have moved up a Tier to Tier 2 and I am starting to PvE and PvP in there. To give you an idea of how much content there is, I would guess-timate that I have done maybe 30% of the content in the Ork/Gobbo PvE T1 zones (about 4-5 “zone areas” in each zone, about 2-3 PQ’s per zone area). I have done about 20% of the PvP content and participated in only 2 of the battle grounds in those areas. I spent some time in the Chaos Zones doing PQ’s, quests and PvP and I’ve done maybe 10% of that content. I could easily create alts in each area cause they are all so utterly different.

PvP seems to be run in two ways. There is zone based PvP where you sign up to a battle queue and when there is enough people a battle is created. This can have as many as 36 players per side involved. I’ve seen 3 battlegrounds so far, one in Chaos, two in Green skin lands. Think WOW battlegrounds but with different objectives, in some its hold certain points, in others its kill the messenger etc. Then there is open world PvP, where you are warned when you enter the area that you are in a PvP area. each area will have multiple objectives to take and hold. There will be quests in the RvR area (Both PvE and PvP quests) you can choose to do them or not. Two I liked were “Blood on your hands” and “Green Faced Killa” which are repeatable and involve killing enemy players for an xp reward.

The designs of the battlegrounds are the same of the open world PvP, so after doing an instanced based battleground, eventually you will reach the real world area which is the same place and recognise it. The PQ’s work in the same way, you will get a PVE quest to go to a certain area and kill stuff and on the way there, or while there, you may run into an area that’s a part of a PQ. Joining a group in a PQ or anywhere in the world is as easy as “show me open groups” button and “join” button. PQ’s have their own rewards based on something called “reknown” which you earn by taking part in PQ’s. PQ’s also have RvR elements. You may be doing a PQ to kill the Dwarf attackers and be busy killing NPC’s. The Dwarf PC’s will have a PQ to kill Ork Attackers. Whoever finishes first resets both of the PQ’s, so you could be interfering with the enemies plans. War really is everywhere.

Some players may flag themselves RvR and attack you while you are doing a PQ under cover of the NPC’s (I’ve had this several times) so then you are fighting PC’s and NPC’s together. Its a blast.