What's In A Name? Apparently Quite A Lot

Along with Syp, I'm going to take these 10 questions from GirlIrl and put out my own take on this. 

1.  What is your current main character’s name (or names, if you play multiple games)?  Explain how you chose the name.

Right now, I'm playing my slayer, Khazgar, who I consider to be my current main. I wanted to have a typical "dwarfy" name, that sounded right lore-wise. The name is an homage to a character from the novel Oathbreaker, Azgar Grobkul. I added Khaz, which is my favorite dwarf name prefix. I actually went into a whole spiel about this very subject, which you can find here if you are interested. But basically, I wanted a guttural-sounding name, that kept the dwarf flavor while still rolling off the tongue.

2.  What was the name of your very first character in an MMO?  Explain how you chose that name.

My "first" character was a Dwarf Hunter in WoW named Sudoh. The name is another reference to a character in a work of literature, this time Sudo from Masamune Shirow's manga Appleseed. However, he got deleted before he hit 30 because he was actually on a friends account who was letting me try out the game. I purchased my own account, and I started a new character to duo with my girlfriend, who is now my fiance. I started a Human Warrior named Zenbei who was the leveling partner of her Warlock. I consider him my first "real" character. Zenbei comes from Zenbe Harada, an obscure character from the manga Lone Wolf and Cub. He was in only one chapter, which was about him killing the corrupt leadership of a starving village, preventing a peasant revolt. After which he took full responsibility for his actions, sparing the village the wrath of the government. I loved the tragic story of this noble character, so I took the name in the hopes that my character would achieve similar heroics.

3.  Have you kept a specific name through various games, or do you tend to change your naming habits based on the individual game?

I used to try and keep the same name, but now since I try to think of my characters as real people, I try to come up with names that a real person in that setting might have. My Empire characters have Germanic-sounding names, like Ulbrecht or Richter. My undead rogue was named Geheimnis, which means "secret" in German. And of course, I try to incorporate the Dwarf language Khazalid when I name my Dwarfs. My Orc was named Kurok, which sounds nice and orc-y. And so on. I try to match the name to the race and class whenever possible. My Tauren Druid was named Wildhorne, for example. He was feral.

4.  Do you ever reserve names, planning to use them for characters that you might play later?  If so, what are they and why do you hold on them? 

I have done this, but it's rare. I normally don't have trouble getting the names I want, except on the most popular servers. I'm also pretty good at modifying names to still work for me, even if the original is taken. 

5.  Of the three common archetypes in MMOs — tank, healer, DPS — which is your current main character?

Khazgar is melee dps, but my first 40 in WAR was a tank.

6.  What archetype was your very first character in an MMO?  Why did you choose it?

My first toon was a Hunter in WoW, mainly because it was recommended to me as an easy class to learn, and the Dwarf hunter in the intro movie was damn cool. Once I learned more about the game, I rerolled as a Warrior, because I realized I wanted to smash faces in. And I wanted to be the knight-in-shining-armor for my girlfriend, who I was duo-ing with.

7.  Are you usually attracted to one archetype over another, or do you play them equally?  Why?

I almost always choose a melee class, a tank is usually my first choice. Then maybe a melee dps class. I've always loved the visceral feel of melee combat. I enjoy a ranged class from time to time, but I never play casters. I like wearing armor and a slinging a two-hander, or stealthy leathers and backstabbing daggers. If I do play a ranged class, it's usually a class that uses guns or bows, anything so long as it's not a spell-slinging career. I don't like healers much either, but I would like to level a Warrior Priest someday in WAR, if only because they are still melee combat based. Right now my Slayer is getting all my playtime, and while he doesn't wear much armor, I still love him. He hits like a truck and is a raging berserker. Besides, Slayers got me into Warhammer in the first place, no way I'm not playing one. I do have a Shadow Warrior in T3, but I'm still wavering as to whether or not I like him. 

8.  What is your favorite feature from an MMO you no longer play?

I'm a relative MMO newbie, so I don't have much prior experience aside from WoW. I did really like how in certain questlines, you were treated to a pretty awesome ingame event. Two examples would be in the Draenei starting zones, you capture a Blood Elf officer who taunts the Draenei present after being sent away by Velen. Upon hearing this, a Draenei officer charges the Blood Elf and kills him outright, /spitting on the corpse afterward. When I saw that, I was blown away, it really brought home the feeling that you were involved in something major. Later on in the same area, after you complete the last quest in the area, Velen, the racial leader, appears along with everyone you had helped up to that point in an impromptu reward ceremony for you. It's a great little event, and again, it really makes you feel like you are part of something. I really wish WAR would do more things like that.

9.  Is there an MMO that you would play if it was free?  Which and why?

Honestly, no. I simply do not have the time to devote to more than one MMO, and aside from WAR, no other MMO, free or not is as compelling to me right now. Maybe when the Bioware SW MMO comes out, ask me again.

10.  How do you measure the success of a character in an MMO (total kills, titles accumulated, wealth, rare items collected, level reached, etc.)?

I consider any character I get to max level a success, but I also take into account how much enjoyment I've derived from playing that character along the way. Gold and gear is a factor, as well as stuff like trophies and unlocks. However, a big part of considering the character a success is whether or not I feel that I can play him effectively and whether I feel like I'm making a difference at endgame. 

I'm Still Alive!

This was a triumph.... no, wait. 

Anyway, I'm sorry about the lack of recent updates. My internet at work went out for a week, and that's is where I do most of my writing and research for this blog. Internet restored, crisis averted. 

Currently I just hit Rank 33 on Khazgar, and I'm leveling at a steady clip. Content-wise, I'm working on another book review, this time on Nick Kyme's Honorkeeper. 

Now that my internet is back, I'll be posting at a more regular pace. I'm sorry if you've been wondering where I've been all week, thanks for bearing with me and this blog. Your readership is highly appreciated.

Getting Closer to T4...Oh So Slowly. And an Update on Stats.

I hit Rank 29 on Khazgar last night. I also hit Renown Rank 25, and purchased my Devastator Torc as well. Now I have the Devastator Boots, Armbraces and Shoulders. All I have to do now is participate in as many keep sieges as I possibly can, and hope that the contribution gods smile on my rolls for a gold loot bag. I really want to complete my Devastator set, but I'm also really looking forward to getting to Tier 4. 

This time around, I really tried to include regular RvR and scenarios into my questing rotation. Normally, I'm doing PvE first, while doing scenarios in between. I would also wait  until I was in the middle of the tier before doing sc's. On my first 40, I was rank 40...and renown rank 23. Heh. I definitely like it better this time around. I started doing T3 scenarios as early as rank 21, instead of waiting. And I run around with warbands taking keeps and BO's much more often as well. I should have done that sooner. 

On a related note, my guild was running a small group around Thunder Mountain last night taking BO's and keeps, and they asked my near-useless rank 28 slayer to tag along. So I did, feeling sorta sheepish, as I really couldn't do much aside from assist dps and not die. We took the west keep in TM, and I got a lesser loot bag. But what's this? I have TWO Massive Loot bags?! My guildies had donated their gold bags to me! It was awesome, I came away with the Annihilator Helm and Torc. I really want to thank them here. I can't mention their  names since I'm unsure if they'd want to be named online. But you Candies, you know who you are, Khazgar thanks you! 

Update: I'll be hitting Rank 30 tonight with any luck. Recently I just ground out the Dwarf Chapter 14 Influence for the Runic Stone Waraxe. I really like two-handed axes, even though dual-wielding is arguably superior. I will say that when I played around with the 2h in scenarios last night, it felt like my targets were dying quicker. I'm also a fan of the Deathblow ability, it feels awesome to use especially when it crits. I'm planning to grind out High Elf Chapter 14 tonight while doing scenarios. I'm am trying to collect more "split-stat" items, in preparation for when the planned changes to all stats gets implemented. Currently, they are testing new changes to all stats in upcoming patches. For example, toughness will also grant a small amount of hp regen in combat in addition to the current effect. For melee classes, some big changes to our crit damage are planned as well. Weapon Skill will now add to your base bonus crit damage, which will be affected by your targets Initiative. So say that you have 0 WepSkill, and you crit someone who stacks Ini, you may do as little as 5% additional damage. 

Basically, Mythic is trying to address the issue of arguably "useless" stats. Players currently stack their main offensive and defensive stat, like Strength and Wounds, while ignoring other stats such as WepSkill and Initiative. So many items that have these unwanted stats get ignored my a majority of the playerbase. So the plan is to give additional bonuses to stats like Toughness, while making stats like WepSkill and Willpower more attractive by tying them into your bonus critical damage. In a way, this is similar to what WoW did with stats like Resilience and Spell Penetration. 

Of course, whether this will be an overall positive or negative change remains to be seen. While I like that Mythic is trying to make spreading your stats out more attractive, I'm sure that many players will lament the end of stacking 2-3 stats on their gear. Also, I predict that we will see an overall lowering of dps across the board, at least at first. This is actually a good thing, because players will live longer in combat, instead of getting insta-gibbed, the moment they get focus fired. Even squishy classes should see an increase in their overall survivability, as killing power decreases for anyone. I know that players will be up in arms about this initially, but I think as players realize that combined with the nerf to stacking AoE, this will result in survivability getting better for everyone. Right now, even tanks are complaining of getting melted within moments. AoE is considered to be out of control. Even melee dps say that they are cut down long before they can actually make it to the back lines. Time To Kill is so short, that it is extremely frustrating to many players who feel like they are constantly dying within seconds of entering combat. 

With increased survivability on the horizon, I hope that we will start seeing slightly more tactical combat, with a less spammy feel. Let's cross our fingers and hope these proposed changes work out for the best.

Why Does WAR Discourage Alts?

If you have spent any time reading this blog, it is immediately obvious that I'm an incorrigible altaholic. So far, six months out, I've only managed to level a  single Rank 40. My Ironbreaker Stahlrek. In that same time frame, I have now have a 27 Slayer, 25 SW, 24 WH, 18 Engi, 32 Blorc, 23 Blackguard and more alts in the 8-15 range. I'm sure you see the problem. Recently, I've given some thought to rolling up a Swordmaster as well. So I rolled one up, got him to 8 or so, and now he's parked in Altdorf. Why? Because I don't know if I can commit to leveling him through T2 and T3 again. Having one tank at max rank has taught me that leveling up a tank can be an arduous process. Now I know that doing scenarios while questing is the fastest way to level. However, my server sc pops are busiest at night. So I play my Slayer at night, so I can maintain my RR. This means because I can't take advantage of scenarios for my SM, because my Slayer needs the renown as well. Which forces my alt SM to do mostly PvE, in the mornings when the server is pretty dead. And I gotta tell you, I've done T2 PvE over five times, I don't want to do it again. 

You know, I really wish WAR would allow me to "gift" some levels to my lowbie alts. Say, once you reach Rank 40, you can give one alt of yours a certain amount of ranks, depending on the tier. If the character is in Tier 2, you can give 5 ranks, Tier 3 you can give 3, etc. Each alt can only be gifted ranks once. WAR already has the Collar of Servitude/Rod of Service items that allow you to bring a lower ranked player up to within two ranks of your level. Why not allow players who already have a rank 40 to do the same? 

The thing is, WAR rewards the player who plays one character exclusively. Your most played character will have the best gear, highest RR, most unlocks, etc. Your alts, especially ones that you don't play often will be significantly less progressed than your main. In addition, the sheer amount of time needed to get to T3 or higher is pretty intense. If you have limited playtime like me, you often don't want to mess around on alts because you feel that the time is better spent leveling your "main" character. Also many careers don't quite come into their own until later levels, usually around 21-24. For example, my Shadow Warrior didn't quite click with me until I got to rank 18 and picked up the Split Arrows tactic, and later at 21 acquiring the Shadow Sting ability made a huge difference to my enjoyment of the class. There are some really interesting builds i want to try out with my SM, but I don't know if I have the time to level him up to an appropriate level. 

Now before you say that I'm looking for an easy way out, this is not the case. I just want to get to a point where I can really get a feel for the class. I'm not asking to be magically 40, just for a quicker way to get to 20-22. I've already leveled multiple characters through that level range, including another tank. It's not like Mythic doesn't already have the Bolster mechanic in place. I also don't really see a downside to providing this convenience. It's not as if it skews the population or anything like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the leveling curve is nowhere near as grueling as it was after launch. Mythic did a great job making the grind to 40 less arduous, no doubt. 

I guess I'm just frustrated that there are so many classes I want to play, with not enough hours in the day. Mythic may not purposely try to discourage playing alts, but it certainly feels that way to me when I get excited about a class, roll one up to around 10 or so, then park them because I simply don't have the time to level an alt effectively alongside my main.

Keep Upgrades and a PQ Proposal.

If you don't check the Herald obsessively like I do, you might have missed some juicy news bits that Mythic has released over the past few days. Namely, first details on a Keep Upgrade system and while not on the Herald, Adam Gershowitz posted in the official forums regarding a planned change to the GTAoE spell system. These changes have potentially game-changing ramifications. Let's start with the official word:

For the full release, here is the Herald link. 

One of the first new things will be the addition of a Guild Broker, who is the Upgrade Merchant. 

Here is the Upgrade window. As you can see, you can upgrade Keep Doors, spawn new NPC's and access more amenities for your keep. the quick list and explanation is below:

        • Door Hit-Point Increase: Hit Points are upgraded 20% per upgrade Rank, up to 5 Ranks.

• Door Repair Merchant: An NPC that sells door-repair wood.

• Guard Numbers: More guards for your Keep by 2 guards per Rank, up to 5 Ranks.

• Patrol Guards Upgrade: Upgrades all patrolling guards to Champion-level guards.

• Static Guards Upgrade: Upgrades all stationary guards to Champion-level guards.

• Standard Merchant: An NPC that sells guild standards.

• Siege Weapon Merchant: An NPC that sells Siege Weapons.

• Healer: An NPC that cures death penalties.

• Banker: An NPC that allows players to access their Personal Vault.

• Guild Vault Keeper: An NPC that allows players to access their Guild Vault.

Skimming through the list, you can already see some tasty upgrades. The Door HP upgrade is staggering; up to 100% more HP! Combined with some other upgrades, this alone can be a huge factor in a keep defense. The Guard upgrade is nice, but warbands tear down champs pretty quickly, so the effectiveness may be debatable. However, if a smaller wb tries to attack what appears to be an undefended keep, the Champion Guards would probably slow them down enough for defense to arrive. YMMV, of course, this is just theoryhammering. 

Some of these new NPC's seem a bit dubious, though. Adding a Healer NPC that cures death penalties sounds odd. To my knowledge, in a Keep siege, when someone is resurrected by a player they don't suffer any death penalties as is, so having an NPC to do this sounds extraneous at best. Also, you can purchase Ritualist NPC's that will heal or lifetap, to aid in ground-floor defenses. I'm also mildly confused as to having bankers in the keeps. It's a convenience, sure, but using a guild recall scroll and running 10 seconds to the bank isn't that much of an inconvenience. More interesting is the Guild Bind NPC, who allows guild members to re-spawn inside the keep. This would definitely help on the defensive side, especially if in the middle of battle your healers are too busy keeping tanks up to rez you. This would save you the run back through potentially hostile territory. 

While the bulk of the upgrades seem to be geared towards the defense, Mythic is also adding a resource called Ordinance that can be used by the offense. This resource is collected and traded in for items including:

• Rams that have double the Hit-points of standard Rams.
• Ballista that do twice the amount of standard Ballista damage.
• Self-only Oil Immunity potions that last 30, 60, or 90 seconds.
• Caltrops which place a small PBAoE Snare/DoT field on the ground.
• Dynamite that is a direct-target DD plus a knockback, which can be used against players or siege weapons (deals double damage versus siege weapons).

Some nice stuff there, I especially like the Caltrops, which I would use to catch stragglers sneaking into the defense through the postern doors. Quite often, unless you have a large group camping the posterns, it's hard to kill someone before they can make the sprint to safety, unless you outnumber them 5-1 and can insta-gib them on sight. As a melee class, I really like the potential of this. 

So far, the new content seems skewed towards defense, which arguably is already in the superior situation. Many players argue that trying to take a well-defended keep is an exercise in futility, that it only feeds the defenders free renown. I hope that we will see more news down the road that will make things slightly better for the offense. An idea I read was to implement a "tunneling PQ" for the offense. This would actually be great if implemented properly. Here's how I see it: 

   • At designated locations on the outer wall, there will be an damaged or broken Dwarf/Greenskin earthmover. Which is surrounded, either by large groups of defending mobs, or smaller groups with Champion defenders. The offense is tasked with acquiring Ordinance and using it on the broken machine, while fending off the mobs, who respawn at a regular rate.

  • The machine has to be receive a certain amount of Ordinance in a certain time limit, or else the PQ resets. The goal is to keep the mobs busy while others gather the resource and use it to "repair" the machine. Once fully repaired, the machine will tunnel for 10 seconds and when finished, the mobs despawn and there will be a clickable tunnel or cave graphic. Players can then click on the tunnel and spawn on the other side of the wall, similar to using a postern door. 

The advantage of this design is that Mythic doesn't have to redesign terrain or anything like that. They just add the broken siege engine, spawn in some mobs, and code the PQ. Afterwards, you can have a basic cave graphic to click on. Failing that, just spawn a clickable pile of rocks and earth in place of the siege engine and on the opposite side of the wall and there you have it! 

I think I'm going to write up a separate article on the AoE changes, as this is in danger of being a bit too long. In any case, what do you think about the upcoming changes?

No Arenas, Please.

A few days ago I was reading the dev chat transcript over at Wizards and Wenches and something just jumped out at me. One of the questions was regarding implementing Arenas into WAR, to which one of the devs replied "definitely possible". More recently, Snafzg over at The Greenskin gives a rundown into what features he would like to see in a Warhammer Arena system. Yesterday, this article over at Wowinsider.com states that Arena participation is down a whopping 65% from last season! I consider myself strongly anti-arena, not because I don't like to compete, but because there is no real way to ensure balanced competition. Below, I'll go into my reasons for my stance.

• No such thing as an even playing field. The very nature of an MMO means that it is an constant state of evolution and flux. With real class balance being more of a moving target than an attainable goal, an MMO can not sustain truly "fair" competition. Every patch changes the dynamic of the game, classes rise and fall in effectiveness, etc.

• RvR in Warhammer is based around large-scale pitched battles. Of course, there is also quite a bit of smaller group pvp, but the niche that WAR ascribes to is massive pvp. Thus, the classes are usually balanced around a group role, taking in to account that they will be part of a larger force. You can't have large-scale pvp as a balance goal, then rebalance around small-scale arenas. Blizzard made this mistake with Arenas, and the repercussions are still being felt. If massive battles are the goal, don't dilute the vision by trying to be all things to all people.

• Arenas breed the "e-sport" mentality. While e-sports certainly have their place, most games that support competition at the highest levels of play, usually follow a certain design. I'll go into this more later, but one must remember that there is a reason the "pro" gamers only play certain types of games, namely FPS's, RTS's and 1-on-1fighting games. Also from a community standpoint arenas are more divisive than they are uniting. With all the posturing and e-peen comparisons already going on the community, can you imagine how much worse it's gonna get when you get inter-faction pvp? Hardly conducive to realm pride. I'm against cross-server scenarios for this reason as well.

• WAR just doesn't need another "thing to do" right now. While WAR is in great shape overall, it has its fair share of issues. Tier 4 still needs work, the players are clamoring for AoE to be toned down, ALL careers need their fair share of nerfs, buffs and tweaks. End game City sieges underwhelm many players, more polish needed in late/endgame etc.etc. Many players feel Mythic needs to work on current problems, before potentially introducing a host of new ones with an Arena system. Lets get the game to a much more stable point, before rocking the boat again.

Traditionally competitive games are based on the premise that the game rules are laid out, and static. Characters, weapons, maps etc, can all have different characteristics, but within the game, these characteristics never change. There can be a multitude of variables within a game, but these variables will be consistent. For example, let's look at Ryu from Street Fighter. He has a horizontal projectile, a leaping anti-air punch, and a spinning kick that travels across the screen. Each move has some variation, for example the projectile can be thrown at different speeds, but it never leaves the preset height at which it travels. And so the challenge is to utilize these moves with maximum effectiveness whilst minimizing their risks. Other characters have their own moves, with their own attributes. In Counterstrike, the guns all have different rates of fire, stopping power, etc. But every player has an equal chance to earn and use the different guns. In an MMO, nearly the entire game is based on modifying how the rules apply to your character. This is done by altering your stats via gear, leveling up, learning new abilities, etc. And so, short of modifying how gear and abilities work in the arena, a true balanced and fair playing ground is not possible.  Lastly, reread this article if you have to. Read the comments. That's a pretty good argument right there.

Of course, this all assumes that WAR Arenas will follow the WoW example. For all we know, it might be a casual thing where people can just try out new specs and tactics against different opponents. This type of arena I wouldn't mind at all, but I think WAR needs more issues addressed before we add something else to the mix.

Quick Reflection on Open RvR.

Yes, I know. It's yet another blogger going on about his own personal take on ORVR. Yes, I'm gonna do my own. Okay, for those of you who are still here, here's my deal.

Since rolling a Slayer, I have been more involved in ORvR than I have ever been before. Normally, I PvE first, with scenarios added into the mix. My goal has always been to hit rank 40 in the most efficient way possible. This time around, I've been playing a LOT of ORvR. I'm glad my server has a nice healthy population that can support multiple wbs going around taking keeps and BO's almost every night. I've been having great fun these past few nights running around and participating in lightning sieges or frantic defenses. The other night, in Fangbreaka Keep, my warband was involved in an epic defense, we had capped the BO's and sieged the keep as quickly as we could, but destro got into the keep just as the lord went down. What followed was an intense defense with our wb holed up in the lord room, trying to survive against what seemed to be 2-3 times our number of destro. Amazingly enough, everyone followed orders, and we blocked up the ramp with a tank wall, while Slayers and other dps cut down any who were foolish enough to try to break the tank wall. This went on for a good 20-25 minutes, constantly beating off destro assaults. In the end, we were overwhelmed, and they pushed us out of the keep, but we made them pay for every inch of ground with their blood. It was very 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. 

Enough about that, here's my observation:

ORvR is great. RvR Influence rewards are great. 

Separating the Influence by tier and having rewards bound to that particular tier you have max influence in, not so great.

My problem with this system is that unless you have a lot of time to play, you will find that during peak times, the ORvR action tends to take place within the same pairing most of the time. Which results in you getting full influence in one paring pretty quickly, while struggling to get any in certain pairings. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that by the time I max out influence in multiple pairings to get the items I may want from that pairing, I'm pretty close to leveling out of that tier, unless I start real early. My current situation is that I'm doing a lot of RvR in the Dwarf/Greenskin zones, but the elite reward is not something I particularly want. However, no one seems to want to do much in the Elf or Empire zones. 

I suggest that instead of dividing the ORvR Influence by pairing, they could either consolidate all ORvR Influence by tier. So that instead of say, Dwarf T2 Influence, you would only have Tier 2 Influence. Also, this would allow Mythic to let you pick and choose rewards from all the pairings. So instead of grinding up three different bars, you would only have to do one, which would open up all the rewards, instead of having to grind out pairings individually. To balance this, I'd let them slow the rate of influence gain a bit, perhaps by 15%. Getting inf 15% slower would be a worthwhile tradeoff for having access to the rewards from every pairing.

That way, you could gear up slightly faster and still have some ranks left to actually use your new gear before you level out of the tier entirely.