PvP Synergies
Last night we had our first 500-0 scenario victory, and it was really incredible. We had the ideal situation of a well-balanced group against a fairly disorganized opposition. We weren't a full 15 person warband, but there were enough of us on vent that it made a difference, and we held all 3 objectives with zero deaths. The synergies between tanks and healers, in particular, is amazing. Healers can be very durable in 1-on-1 or 2-on-1, and if you have a tank guarding the healer you can really do some amazing things.
For example, in another scenario, Nordenwatch, one of the objectives is to control a flag by the fortress. It works on proximity, like the flags in Eye of the Storm. We had pushed to the next objective but were repulsed, and the only people alive were Snotspigot the goblin shaman (healer/DPS hybrid, ably played by the dwarf formerly known as Daigan) and myself (Chosen, tank class). We managed to stay alive for what felt like forever, but was probably only about a minute and a half, against 5 on 2 odds until our reinforcements rezzed and made it back into the fight. Between taking 50% of his damage, boosting his avoidance and mine with Hold the Line, and snaring all of the melee on Snotspigot (tab, Dizzying Blow)^3, he was able to kite and HoT and keep us both alive. Because we were defending an objective we controlled and were still alive, we kept control. After the fight we were amazed that we had survived, and I think that is going to be one of my definitive Warhammer memories.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 1
The quests are really well done, at least for the starting areas (only level 6 or so on a couple of characters, and I am not trying to go too far just because I'm going to have to redo it at launch). One nice thing is that if you have to kill something for a drop it's a 100% drop rate. Quest hubs are obvious, and there are highlighted areas on the mini-map that indicate what regions you need to look in to see stuff. The starting zones seem a little more compact, as well, so I feel like there is less time spent running through empty space. You might have heard about the Public Quest feature, which is really great, as well.
The way a PQ works is you wander into a zone and a little alert pops up on your screen indicating that there is a public quest going on and you have the option of participating. When the quest is over, you get a standing based on how much you contributed to the completion, whether it's damage or healing done. The server then does a roll /1000, and you get a bonus based on your preliminary standing (my best finish was 4th, and I got +200 or something). Your final score determines if you're eligible for loot, and there are loot bags down to 9 or 10, with better quality rewards the better you finish. Another nice thing is that the loot bags contain a bunch of different stuff, and you get to pick one- so if you get a piece of armor that's not an upgrade, you can always take cash or a pot. The PQs restart every 2 minutes, so you can do them as often as you like.
The graphics and spell effects are more indicative of a newer game; but the downside is that you might want more beefy hardware to play. The races and careers (classes) are all very flavorful and pretty true to the Warhammer IP. For example, the Dark Elves are the merciless, haughty, backstabbing branch of the elf family. They were banished from the main High Elf homeland, but have come back to lay siege. The 3rd quest hub is right on the front lines of what looks like a successful siege, and the Dark Elves are mostly just mopping up some resistance. One of your quests is to go open up a cage where the NPCs keep their giant lizard mounts so they can go and eat some of the defenders. So you open the cage, the lizard plods over and eats a very whiny High Elf, and all of the NPCs laugh.
You could conceivably PvE your way through the game, at least to the end, but PvP is actually very well executed. Most standard servers are not open RvR- you have to be in a contested area to be automatically flagged. Starting at level 1, you can queue for a scenario, which is a lot like a battleground. When you join the scenario you are given the stats of a level 8, but no abilities. However because you can get experience in scenarios you could level doing nothing but that (although it would be slower than questing). I actually did that when I first got started, and it was entertaining. Then you can take a break, level and train some more, and then queue up for a scenario. You can queue from anywhere, so you can go quest, pop into a scenario, and then it drops you right back to where you were so you can finish questing. You also earn Renown, which is more like PvP experience more than honor, so you are leveling up on 2 fronts. As you gain renown you can buy renown gear, but is usable for questing and so forth.
Another big difference is that there is no mana or rage, everything uses action points (AP). The closest analogy is the Rogue energy bar; it continually refreshes and is drained by doing stuff. Health and AP regenerate quickly when you're out of combat, so there is no sitting and drinking (which is disconcerting for about 5 minutes, and then you're sold).
PvP is balanced around 4 archetypes: Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged (or caster) DPS, and healers.
Tanks are effectively PvP crowd control. As you level up you get a bunch of snares and knock backs. Plus, the game has limited collision (3 seconds and then someone can push through you), so you can literally be a meat shield. You also get a PvP taunt (which debuffs an opposing player until they attack you), as well a a guard ability that lets you eat some damage taken by a buddy. Sword and Board is very strong, because you can block ranged attacks and spells. If you queue for a scenario at level 1, that's going to be your biggest contribution is just trying to get in front of squishier people and take some of the heat.
Melee DPS tend to be squishier but can absolutely shred people under the right circumstances. I haven't tried a straight mDPS class yet, but I can tell you that I had a caster get repeatedly shredded by one. :-)
Healers have some interesting implementations. There really aren't a lot of what we would recognize as pure healers. The Dark Elves have a melee healer who heals by doing DPS, the Orks have a shaman that builds up healing power by doing damage, and builds up damage by doing healing, and the Chaos (humans) have another melee Healer. Healers in general seem to be extremely durable, even against a pure DPS class, and well-played melee healers (especially when guarded by a tank) are really, really tough to deal with.
Ranged DPS comes in some interesting varieties. The Orks have a hunter-type class called a Squig Herder that summons these little mouths with legs. They were recently buffed and people are calling this the new cheese class. I tried one for a bit and while levelling my squig had at one time 6 mobs on him and shrugged it off while I plinked them down. The Chaos folks have a guy who floats on a permanent disc called the Magus. He drops demons in a little summoning circle who function a lot like stationary gun turrents. It's a neat kind of mechanic as it gives you some versatility for offense or defense. The Dark Elves have a Sorceress who has a combo-point spell system. As you cast spells you build up dark energy, which increases the chance that you'll take some backlash damage, but also allows you to nuke someone when you have the points built up. This is probably the closest to a pure mage class. And the Ork's caster DPS is also their healer, the Shaman.
The cons: the solo experience is probably not going to be as viable as it is in WoW. While there is nothing that prevents you from soloing quests and scenarios, the game strongly encourages you to guild. With the PvP focus communication and teamwork are even more important, and you're not going to get that from a PUG. The only other question mark I have is what is the end game going to feel like. The pinnacle of the WAR experience is supposed to be capital city sieges. I have no idea how well this is going to work. It was well tested, and people who played it said it was extremely fun, but it's supposed to be a major accomplishment, so it happens infrequently. Level cap is a long way off, but it's something to definitely think about.
The other thing I don't like is that you get a lot of the same annoyances from WoW BGs in these scenarios. These all tend to be a consequence of the people involved, unfortunately, which is all the more reason to guild up. PUGs in scenarios tend to get absolutely demolished, so even if you're under levelled you can still be a lot more successful if you're organized. In this way I think the game actually succeeds more than WoW because the rewards for teamwork and skillful play are more evident.
Right now I'm rolling with the Axis guild (Destruction) on Tyrion server (www.axis-guild.com), which for former Watchmen has Petunia as the GM, with Daigan, Pzar, and Trian also playing. I will definitely play the game at least through November, at which point I will have to decide if Lich King is going to pull me back. I actually enjoy PvE raiding, so I'm going to have to see if organized RvR is going to be enjoyable enough to keep me coming back.
Overall the game is pretty well polished, and remarkably stable. Not WoW levels of stability yet, so there are some occasional crashes to desktop, but overall it's quite playable. I imagine you would want a reasonably new computer to really enjoy the game, as 5 FPS is probably fatal in RvR, but I would ask around in that case. It feels similar enough to WoW that you can comfortably jump in and start doing stuff without reading any documentation, and a lot of the conventions are the same. The atmosphere and storyline/quest execution is all top notch, and the PvP has some noticeable improvements. It feels like a solid addition to the MMO field, but it's not going to kill WoW by any stretch.
The way a PQ works is you wander into a zone and a little alert pops up on your screen indicating that there is a public quest going on and you have the option of participating. When the quest is over, you get a standing based on how much you contributed to the completion, whether it's damage or healing done. The server then does a roll /1000, and you get a bonus based on your preliminary standing (my best finish was 4th, and I got +200 or something). Your final score determines if you're eligible for loot, and there are loot bags down to 9 or 10, with better quality rewards the better you finish. Another nice thing is that the loot bags contain a bunch of different stuff, and you get to pick one- so if you get a piece of armor that's not an upgrade, you can always take cash or a pot. The PQs restart every 2 minutes, so you can do them as often as you like.
The graphics and spell effects are more indicative of a newer game; but the downside is that you might want more beefy hardware to play. The races and careers (classes) are all very flavorful and pretty true to the Warhammer IP. For example, the Dark Elves are the merciless, haughty, backstabbing branch of the elf family. They were banished from the main High Elf homeland, but have come back to lay siege. The 3rd quest hub is right on the front lines of what looks like a successful siege, and the Dark Elves are mostly just mopping up some resistance. One of your quests is to go open up a cage where the NPCs keep their giant lizard mounts so they can go and eat some of the defenders. So you open the cage, the lizard plods over and eats a very whiny High Elf, and all of the NPCs laugh.
You could conceivably PvE your way through the game, at least to the end, but PvP is actually very well executed. Most standard servers are not open RvR- you have to be in a contested area to be automatically flagged. Starting at level 1, you can queue for a scenario, which is a lot like a battleground. When you join the scenario you are given the stats of a level 8, but no abilities. However because you can get experience in scenarios you could level doing nothing but that (although it would be slower than questing). I actually did that when I first got started, and it was entertaining. Then you can take a break, level and train some more, and then queue up for a scenario. You can queue from anywhere, so you can go quest, pop into a scenario, and then it drops you right back to where you were so you can finish questing. You also earn Renown, which is more like PvP experience more than honor, so you are leveling up on 2 fronts. As you gain renown you can buy renown gear, but is usable for questing and so forth.
Another big difference is that there is no mana or rage, everything uses action points (AP). The closest analogy is the Rogue energy bar; it continually refreshes and is drained by doing stuff. Health and AP regenerate quickly when you're out of combat, so there is no sitting and drinking (which is disconcerting for about 5 minutes, and then you're sold).
PvP is balanced around 4 archetypes: Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged (or caster) DPS, and healers.
Tanks are effectively PvP crowd control. As you level up you get a bunch of snares and knock backs. Plus, the game has limited collision (3 seconds and then someone can push through you), so you can literally be a meat shield. You also get a PvP taunt (which debuffs an opposing player until they attack you), as well a a guard ability that lets you eat some damage taken by a buddy. Sword and Board is very strong, because you can block ranged attacks and spells. If you queue for a scenario at level 1, that's going to be your biggest contribution is just trying to get in front of squishier people and take some of the heat.
Melee DPS tend to be squishier but can absolutely shred people under the right circumstances. I haven't tried a straight mDPS class yet, but I can tell you that I had a caster get repeatedly shredded by one. :-)
Healers have some interesting implementations. There really aren't a lot of what we would recognize as pure healers. The Dark Elves have a melee healer who heals by doing DPS, the Orks have a shaman that builds up healing power by doing damage, and builds up damage by doing healing, and the Chaos (humans) have another melee Healer. Healers in general seem to be extremely durable, even against a pure DPS class, and well-played melee healers (especially when guarded by a tank) are really, really tough to deal with.
Ranged DPS comes in some interesting varieties. The Orks have a hunter-type class called a Squig Herder that summons these little mouths with legs. They were recently buffed and people are calling this the new cheese class. I tried one for a bit and while levelling my squig had at one time 6 mobs on him and shrugged it off while I plinked them down. The Chaos folks have a guy who floats on a permanent disc called the Magus. He drops demons in a little summoning circle who function a lot like stationary gun turrents. It's a neat kind of mechanic as it gives you some versatility for offense or defense. The Dark Elves have a Sorceress who has a combo-point spell system. As you cast spells you build up dark energy, which increases the chance that you'll take some backlash damage, but also allows you to nuke someone when you have the points built up. This is probably the closest to a pure mage class. And the Ork's caster DPS is also their healer, the Shaman.
The cons: the solo experience is probably not going to be as viable as it is in WoW. While there is nothing that prevents you from soloing quests and scenarios, the game strongly encourages you to guild. With the PvP focus communication and teamwork are even more important, and you're not going to get that from a PUG. The only other question mark I have is what is the end game going to feel like. The pinnacle of the WAR experience is supposed to be capital city sieges. I have no idea how well this is going to work. It was well tested, and people who played it said it was extremely fun, but it's supposed to be a major accomplishment, so it happens infrequently. Level cap is a long way off, but it's something to definitely think about.
The other thing I don't like is that you get a lot of the same annoyances from WoW BGs in these scenarios. These all tend to be a consequence of the people involved, unfortunately, which is all the more reason to guild up. PUGs in scenarios tend to get absolutely demolished, so even if you're under levelled you can still be a lot more successful if you're organized. In this way I think the game actually succeeds more than WoW because the rewards for teamwork and skillful play are more evident.
Right now I'm rolling with the Axis guild (Destruction) on Tyrion server (www.axis-guild.com), which for former Watchmen has Petunia as the GM, with Daigan, Pzar, and Trian also playing. I will definitely play the game at least through November, at which point I will have to decide if Lich King is going to pull me back. I actually enjoy PvE raiding, so I'm going to have to see if organized RvR is going to be enjoyable enough to keep me coming back.
Overall the game is pretty well polished, and remarkably stable. Not WoW levels of stability yet, so there are some occasional crashes to desktop, but overall it's quite playable. I imagine you would want a reasonably new computer to really enjoy the game, as 5 FPS is probably fatal in RvR, but I would ask around in that case. It feels similar enough to WoW that you can comfortably jump in and start doing stuff without reading any documentation, and a lot of the conventions are the same. The atmosphere and storyline/quest execution is all top notch, and the PvP has some noticeable improvements. It feels like a solid addition to the MMO field, but it's not going to kill WoW by any stretch.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Vista's UAC and World of Warcraft
I recently bought a toy computer to play games on, and it happened to come with Vista Super Premium Mocha Lattechino. I've got a techie background so I figured I would give it a go.
My first major decision was that I was going to try to live life as just a normal, unprivileged user. So after setting up the admin account, I made a nice ordinary user account for me. I then tried installing Ventrilo and was pleasantly surprised when it started asking me for password prompts. Welcome to something approaching multi-layer security!
Long story short, I install WoW and Wowmatrix (my addon manager of choice) and go to town. I launch the game from Wowmatrix, everything seems fine. I quit to uninstall some addons, and when I relaunch WoW none of my addons load. Yowza.
So I try to open an addon folder, and the first thing that happens is that UAC kicks in and asks me for my password. Hrm. So by now I am getting the picture that WoW runs in an unprivileged state (which is normal), but then it subsequently does not have the privs necessary to read the addons, which were installed by an admin-privileged instance of Wowmatrix.
All of my folders were set to read-only, and I would try to unset them and it would not stick--UAC kept reverting them. After a fair amount of cursing and some research, I determined that I essentially had 3 options:
After switching to the admin account while keeping my account open (another feature I'm glad they copied shamelessly from Apple, who copied it shamelessly from the Unix world), I found Wow.exe and went to properties > security tab > advanced > and checked the "run as admin for all users" box. Switching back and I confirmed that, voila, all of my addons were working.
I do have to type another password now whenever I launch WoW, but I feel that is a small price to pay for having a less-vulnerable system. Microsoft has finally caught up to the rest of the world in its approach to security, and I would commend them for that. I think better documentation, however, would go a long way towards allowing people to understand what is going on.
So if you happen to stumble across this page in your Google search for Vista UAC and World of Warcraft / WoW problems (gratuitous keyword reusage), I hope you find it useful.
My first major decision was that I was going to try to live life as just a normal, unprivileged user. So after setting up the admin account, I made a nice ordinary user account for me. I then tried installing Ventrilo and was pleasantly surprised when it started asking me for password prompts. Welcome to something approaching multi-layer security!
Long story short, I install WoW and Wowmatrix (my addon manager of choice) and go to town. I launch the game from Wowmatrix, everything seems fine. I quit to uninstall some addons, and when I relaunch WoW none of my addons load. Yowza.
So I try to open an addon folder, and the first thing that happens is that UAC kicks in and asks me for my password. Hrm. So by now I am getting the picture that WoW runs in an unprivileged state (which is normal), but then it subsequently does not have the privs necessary to read the addons, which were installed by an admin-privileged instance of Wowmatrix.
All of my folders were set to read-only, and I would try to unset them and it would not stick--UAC kept reverting them. After a fair amount of cursing and some research, I determined that I essentially had 3 options:
- Disable UAC entirely
- Make my user account an admin account
- Grant WoW (and ancilliary programs) the ability to execute as admin
After switching to the admin account while keeping my account open (another feature I'm glad they copied shamelessly from Apple, who copied it shamelessly from the Unix world), I found Wow.exe and went to properties > security tab > advanced > and checked the "run as admin for all users" box. Switching back and I confirmed that, voila, all of my addons were working.
I do have to type another password now whenever I launch WoW, but I feel that is a small price to pay for having a less-vulnerable system. Microsoft has finally caught up to the rest of the world in its approach to security, and I would commend them for that. I think better documentation, however, would go a long way towards allowing people to understand what is going on.
So if you happen to stumble across this page in your Google search for Vista UAC and World of Warcraft / WoW problems (gratuitous keyword reusage), I hope you find it useful.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
I have a Mistress...
...and her name is Warhammer Online.
The astounding lack of vision and communication regarding the Paladin class in general and Ret paladins in particular is only highlighted more by this post at Warhammer Alliance:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61523
I'll wait.
Not that long, I have ADD.
I've been in the corporate world for a good long time, and I realize that the more power and influence you have, the less you should say. I also realize that you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. What is missing, however, is a lot of the "Why". Everyone wants to know Why, and someone (even if not the devs themselves) should be able to articulate that response. Kudos to Mythic for understanding that.
The astounding lack of vision and communication regarding the Paladin class in general and Ret paladins in particular is only highlighted more by this post at Warhammer Alliance:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61523
I'll wait.
Not that long, I have ADD.
I've been in the corporate world for a good long time, and I realize that the more power and influence you have, the less you should say. I also realize that you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. What is missing, however, is a lot of the "Why". Everyone wants to know Why, and someone (even if not the devs themselves) should be able to articulate that response. Kudos to Mythic for understanding that.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
I am made of pure Fail
Everyone has horrible pick-up group experiences. Everyone thinks everyone else is terrible. Chances are though, that at some point it's been you.
Lat night I offered to help 2 guild mates get through normal Magister's Terrace. "Find a healer, and I'll tank for you" I offered. Well they did, and off we went. Our group was Tankadin, Holydin, Elemental Shaman, Hunter, Rogue. Not my preferred group (no real AoE damage), but 2 cc classes, so it seemed workable.
My first clue that we were going to be horrible was that the holydin was really undergeared. Mostly greens, with the engineering helm. No problem, I thought, I would just use (shudder) crowd control to help him keep up. Never mind that Kael is hard for a good paladin to heal...
We wipe on the third trash pull when our hunter (who, to his credit, had never been in the zone before) face-pulled the trash pack on the other side of the tree while I was busy marking the pull in front of us.
The shaman send me a tell "If we wipe on the first boss I am out of here".
First boss goes down easy, and we actually power through Vex in one shot, although me and the holy are the only ones left standing in the end. Then the shaman has to leave. I hit the LFG
tool and there's a resto druid available. Well, 2 healers is probably not ideal, I thought, but we need a body and this is only normal mode. I grab the druid and we start clearing to the Priestess.
On the first 6 pull we almost wipe, but pull it out at the end, with just the druid and the holydin dead. On the second 6 pull we utterly fail at cc and wipe totally. At this point the druid says "I've had enough," and leaves. I look at the clock and decide that we might as well call it at this point.
Now put yourself in the druid's shoes. You get pulled into a PuG with an insane tankadin, an undergeared main healer, a hunter who can't trap, and a PvP-specced rogue. How long would you give us?
I am willing to give most people the benefit of the doubt. I think last night I was too forgiving... I knew, as soon as I saw who was in the rest of the group, that we were doomed. Yet I stuck with it, for probably too long. Then this poor druid comes along and finds himself in the middle of a horrible PuG and eats 2 deaths in the space of about 10 minutes. Yeah, I would quit too if it wasn't my guild-mates.
I'd like to blame Blizzard for this one, but the sad truth is that last night it was my turn to play the role of the "PuG from hell".
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tankadins in WotLK
I am very, very excited about the class changes that were proposed for Paladins in Lich King. Seriously, I cried a little with joy when I first read the notes. IRL.
We have absorbed another guild, the Exiles of Loradeon, into our ranks, and we hope that this will push us over then edge into hitting critical mass for raiding all the time. We got a lot of good players, the trick is going to be trying to get people settled and comfortable.
We have absorbed another guild, the Exiles of Loradeon, into our ranks, and we hope that this will push us over then edge into hitting critical mass for raiding all the time. We got a lot of good players, the trick is going to be trying to get people settled and comfortable.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
3 months
So it's been just over 3 months since my last post, and I haven't had the desire to write much. The demise of the Watchmen was sudden and painful, and I put myself into a position of responsibility by assuming a leadership role. Now, 3 months elapsed, I have been able to oversee a successful merger, and a return to T5 content. I want to do a post on how to do a successful guild merger, as well as thoughts on new content and so on.
I'm glad to be back.
I'm glad to be back.
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