Yesterdays “task” to participate in the new Scenario failed. But it wasn’t for lack of effort on my part. No, since I’m in Tier 4 and beyond no return (rank 33) I need to play the Scenario in Tier 4, and when any normal Scenario pops it’s usually followed by surprised remarks of joy in guild chat. Yes, having a Tier 4 Scenario really is a rarity on my server. Then the ones that you enter usually never last to the end since one of the sides will be horrible outnumbered.

So what does that mean to the Heavy Metal event? I queued all day, and from reports in guild chat almost everyone did, but no Reikland Factory Scenario popped. Ever. I have not seen the instance of this new Scenario that everyone seems to love.

Today’s daily task was to complete 3 stages of a PQ and that’s as likely as getting a Tier 4 Scenario on my server. I followed a guild member’s advice and went to Tier 1 where I solo a low-level PQ. I’m sure this even was made to get some player activity, but so far it has only shown me why the game is unplayable on low population server.

So do I have a chance to get the Elite reward or should I bother past the Trophy (that probably won’t display anyway)? I really wanted to play a Knight of the Blazing Sun early.

Still no news on server transfer. I’m not even sure where I should look for it since I’m in EU and… well, GOA. Don’t get me started.

/depressed

Edit: and after reading the full to do list at Waaagh I see that 7 of the 14 tasks involve the new Scenario. Joy.

Managing bags can be a real pain if you are a Scavenger like me, even with five bags you need to take every opportunity to sell junk to merchants when you deliver quests. Else you will stand there in the middle of nowhere and decide whether to throw away an Mmmm Gud or a Battered Mug. There is a simple thing that can make junk selling so much faster (except the NRarity addon) that I discovered somewhere in tier 2 when you get enough bags to play around with, but a surprising amount of people are completely unaware of it. Thus, as a Public Service Announcement (Threeee Dawgh!), I present:

How To Automatically Sort Bags

Now the picture should tell you all you need to know, but anyway. On the side of each bag is a small arrow-thingy. Clicking on it will bring up a menu like that above, and you get set what items that will go into each bag. You can set it to type or (and this is the gud stuff) rarity.

I run with the following config:

Bag 1: weapons, armor, potions and dye (Misc > Dye). This is usually full with Book of Biding, teleportation scroll, potions, healing gear, bear helmet and whatever I think I might need.

Bag 2: same as bag 1. This ensure that all valuable stuff goes into the bag to be safely kept when vendoring, and the BOE gear then mailed to a bank alt standing in Altdorf.

Bag 3: crafting. Everything I get from Scavenging is placed here and I generally vendor everything except the blue and purple stuff. This bag fill amazingly fast so it’s better to clean it whenever you get to a vendor. Or spillover will enter the second bag as in the screenshot.

Bag 4: grey and white quality (Rarity > Utility & Common). All pure junk goes here. Some dyes are grey or white and potions are white but they will be placed in the second bag unless it’s full.

Bag 5: same as bag 4.

And that concludes this Public Service Announcement. For more things you should know but never ask about see the wonderful thread “6 weeks of WAR and I only just found out…“.

Remember kids, be careful out there in the Capital Wasteland.

I had seen plenty of screenshots on the Warrior Priest forums about it and it always looked cool. A bug they said, but I wanted it nonetheless, bug or not! Yesterday in Eataine it was finally time.

Another random quest I picked up, glimpsed at the rewards to see what I could sell for most profit to the merchant… and was stunned when I saw it. The Sword That Is Not a Sword! (Pun intended.) My eyes said it was a sword, but the world told me it was a hammer. I was confused for a second but quickly focused my mind and the hammer bent to the shape of a sword.

Young Warrior Priests, this is what awaits you when you get into tier 4. A breeze of change in the ordinary storm of hammers.

Only used it for half a level, but anyway. It has a proud place in the bank to be taken out when you feel like showing off. Make a macro saying something like “Behold Excalibur!” and toss a Touch of the Divine. Looks awesome.

Bottom line: no it’s not actually a sword. It’s a hammer that has the model of a sword, and it behaves just like a sword.

Mythic, don’t fix this mmkay?

Until Mythic release information on how contribution is calculated we have only theories to figure out how it works, and it truly is a mystery. But if we would imagine that contribution was perfectly calculated, is the system with contribution + roll perfect as it is or should it focus more on one of them, or maybe exclusively one?

What are the positive and negative effects with the different systems?

Contribution

If contribution matters most you will have people turning their characters into the most effective. Gear, Mastery points and abilities will all be tuned for maximum contribution. In a sense this is already happening, but on a slightly smaller scale than if rolls would be thrown out completely - people don’t have to beat everyone else to have a chance for the best bags.

Positive: players are putting a real effort into finding the best role their career has and fulfilling it to the maximum. It’s done for selfish reasons but it’s also good for the team.

Negative: having one Mastery path that is better (at contribution) than others will result in players feeling forced to go that path, both to get loot and to succumb to group pressure. Just like Retribution Paladins in WoW often get yelled at for hitting stuff and not healing. Players will simply play for numbers, not for fun.

Rolls

On the other hand if rolls are most important the random factor that decide who gets loot will be big. Someone who enters the fight at the last minute will have the same chance as getting loot as the one who has worked on it for 30 minutes.

Positive: big random factor means everyone has a chance on getting the top loot, no matter if they are outgeared and outplayed by other players. You will most likely not see the same person getting six gold bags in one day (happened to me).

Negative: drama. People will feel they contribute way more than the other guy who just stood in a corner the entire fight will see top loot land in the hands of the “undeserving”. In MMO games loot is a big thing and the biggest of dramas has come from the smallest of items going into the “wrong” hands. What’s the purpose of sweating blood and tears if all your work doesn’t matter when the loot is handed out?

Decide

So what is the perfect system? The one we got right now (up to 500 contribution and 1-1000 roll) or should the result be determined more for contribution or rolls? Maybe only one of them?

I got a poll to the right I would love if you participated in. Feel free to add a comment if you want to explain your choice.

So how about this idea? Holding an Objective or Keep in a zone gives Victory Points over time instead of instantly? Holding all Objectives and Keep for 24 hours give you enough points to capture the zone, and even if the other side recaptures things the points will still remain, they will just slowly go the other way.

As the zone gain VP over time all people in the zone will also gain renown and experience. This make people stay to defend and the battle and it’s just as important for others to take up the torch when you log off as when you captured the things in the first place. Killing enemies in range of Objectives and Keeps give extra renown and experience.

This also removes the possibility of capturing zone in the middle of the night. You could still do it and capture the objectives, but the zone still won’t be captured until the points have slowly trickled in.

I must admit that WAR is turning a bit dull for me. Days has gone past without I felt the old urge to log on and play a few hours, and that’s pretty bad considering that feeling grew in my mind first after months and months in World of Warcraft. Tier 1 was fun, tier 2 was also fun, but somewhere in tier 3 it all went wrong. Nearing the end of tier 3 I started to do PvE less and less, and when I actually logged in the first thing I did was find out where the RvR warband was and joined them. Questing was incredible dull, there were never any PQs running, and scenarios were also rare. I have run Gunbad twice, the Altdorf instance never. That’s all the PvE instances I have done so far in WAR.

So I guess I took the joy where I could find it, by capturing objectives and Keeps (before the XP on capture mind you) in every area. More often than not it was incredible dull and you could watch TV with one eye while watching a Hero die with the other, than it was just mount up and on to the next objective (with a few minutes of dead time standing still waiting for it to be captured). It became a habit to tab out of the game and browse the forums because I knew there wouldn’t turn up any Destruction while we were standing there. There were no incentives to defend anything, and now two months into the game there still isn’t. Meanwhile the incentives to attack Keeps and Objectives has increased with XP, renown and gold bags. The rewards for defending stuff really have to increase or warbands will capture Keeps and objectives on time schedules in the end.

But there are days, like the last Thursday and Saturday, where the game completely turn around and becomes the game I waited so long for. I guess it was the same people I always play RvR with, and around the same time, but what was different was that there was opposition. They had a warband, we had a warband, and it was war. No rules of engagement here, if you were fighting a Hero when we attacked your rear you just had to improvise. And I had so much fun. I think they had too, and everyone else in my warband judging from the overflowing emotions that bubbled to the normally calm surface in forms of outrageous outbursts in the chat.

The last Thursday it was on the streets of Praag, and while I cursed every other tier 4 RvR zone I had even more fun in Dragonwake on the Saturday. Usually we had half a warband, give or take, and the opposition was about the same. They had more tanks than us (duh!) but we had more healers, so it turned out pretty balanced. It never became so many people that it turned into a zerg, so tactics and personal skill really came into play. We could be beaten in the middle of the zone, and as Destruction was chasing the survivors they crashed into our respawn and we beat them. Then we crashed into their respawn and back it went. There was good times, and bad times. I even recorded some of the fights and if I can just get some more of it I could throw together a movie.

The next day on Sunday when I logged in we captured every single Objective and Keep in all tier 4 zones (Destruction held it all) without any opposition. That really made me think on why I do it. Taking Keeps and Objectives serve no purpose; we know they will just be retaken when we have logged off. So far no side has been able to capture a single tier 4 zone, all we do is trade Keeps and Objectives between ourselves. I agree with Keen that claiming a zone is too complicated. When I became interested in this game my view of the campaign was that you took all Keeps in a zone and then you were able to move on. Oh no. You need to do scenarios (or queue for them because we get one tier 4 scenario average per day), to kill players in the zone (but there isn’t any), to do quests and PQs (huh?). What effect does capturing a lower tier zone have on the higher? As far as I know, not much. Why should you care to capture a lower tier zone when what really matters is tier 4?

Back when Altdorf was captured (or almost) many was concerned that the game would be balanced around players that could stay up during night when there were no defenders. With all the restrictions to capture a zone it’s very hard to capture a zone even with a full warband on prime time, because there won’t be opposition in the zone or in scenarios. Hardly the game I imagined. If all you would need to capture a zone is the Objectives and Keeps you can be damn certain that the entire Destruction population will stand on the walls when you get to the last Keep in a zone. Just make Keeps harder so you actually need a full warband to take one in the middle of the night, even without defenders. With enough time and no defenders a single group can take a Keep, that’s just silly.

Sometimes this week our server is eligible for server transfer and my guild are taking our stuff and moving to Karak Norn. Hopefully it will be better there (scouts have said it is) so maybe the game isn’t completely lost yet. If only we could get some server mergers, it would solve so many troubles. I guess the game is losing subscribers every day because on low population servers the game isn’t no way near what has been promised - it isn’t fun.

I checked and the name Cara is taken on the server (damn you!) so I’m torn between getting a completely new name or just try something similar to the original. Anyone got suggestions?

“Healers are like Mafia, if you piss them off, ‘accidents’ happen…”

- Heard in the Warrior Priest forum

We have a new logo! The amazing art is done by none less than Greg Moran himself, and I must say it look perfect. I was expecting nothing less than a wonderful job but I got stunned in amazement nonetheless. Now I just need to level my little Warrior Priest enough so she looks like that. Also took the time to change the menu a bit.

What do you think about it all?