Fight on the Flag

Since December a small group of us has been playing World of Warcraft. I was very conflicted about even admitting it because I’ve been on the fence about whether to stay (truth be told I still am). I get the feeling we are only playing WOW because there is nothing better to do.

I remember the good things about WOW PVP with my guild. The way we could turn the tide of a battle, especially in Alterac Valley, has been awesome.

Summoning Lokholar is still as fun as it was the first time we did it.

(Click to embiggen)

It never ceases to amaze me how few people have seen Lok and how excited they get when he starts to rampage. I don’t think the Alliance even bothers to summon their Lok counterpart.

Our guild name is still very relevant.

One thing I do want to do is try to recruit more people to play with us. We have five active players with full PVP gear. We need five more for rated BGs. I always approach recruitment with a degree of trepidation because you have to wade through so much crap to be able to get to the good players. I feel it’s almost not worth it.

Now, on to the really, really bad.

The BG queues have been broken for at least a week. You can be in queue for 30 minutes and never get a single pop while others can be in queue for 5 minutes and get in. While dozens of players have posted about these problems, I do not believe Blizzard has responded to a single complaint. This concerns me but I am not really surprised. The last time WOW screwed with BG queues we all quit the game (remember patch 2.4? I do and it’s been three years).

As a result Saaz and I have preemptively canceled our accounts. I hope they fix this by March.

I’ve enjoyed my time off from gaming, but I knew I had to try Starcraft 2 when it came out. One of the first things my husband introduced me to when we started dating was Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness. This started my love affair with Blizzard’s series of real-time strategy games. I have liked each of Blizzard’s RTS titles, from Diablo to Starcraft and the aforementioned Warcraft series.

Starcraft 2 is an amazing addition to the Blizzard RTS family. The graphics are top notch, and a huge, huge upgrade from the previous Starcraft.

But as I am playing the game, I cannot help but think: parts of this storyline seems awfully familiar. I’ve been having fun with it so far, replacing “Dominion” with Firefly’s “Alliance,” and Jim Raynor, leader of the resistance, for Malcom Reynolds, the pilot of Serenity. There is even a mission with trains!

Raynor kind of looks like Mal, if you give Mal a beard and about 20 years.

I saw Firefly and Serenity for the first time last year. I know, I know. I’m a bit late to the game considering the series came out in 2002. Busy people, no TV and a general lack of desire to even watch TV all contributed to this serious lack in my nerd education. I haven’t participated in passionate online debate about the meaning of certain aspects of the series, like “who the hell is Shepherd Book anyway?”

Once you leave the Mar Sara missions it loses the Firefly feeling. I loved the storyline and cannot wait for future installments.

Despite what some people think (even on Twitter) I am actually not a dude. Yes, the odds are stacked against me because so many people who play video games are actually male.

Now, even the internet has turned against me.

The analysis is based on the last 10 posts, and I guess I cuss a lot, and don’t talk about unicorns, kitties and babies.

As for my gaming life I am playing a lot of Starcraft II. It’s a fun game with a very detailed storyline. I may have a post about it soon, and I may not. I am really enjoying this time off, although I miss the friendships in my guild.

Hey get your mind out of the gutter!

If you watch Werit’s video of the King fight from the test server, you will see a cameo by our very own Grilar! We sometimes call him the traffic cone because he often dyes his armor orange. But in Werit’s video, Grilar became one of the champions (look for the huge orange engineer). I shall call him the traffic cone…. of doom!

Watch the video in high quality also.

The fight looks a lot more fun than previous city sieges. Even if you’re getting your butts kicked at least you get to be huge for a while. Read more on Werit’s blog.

EDIT: It appears Mr. Belford was referring to a DAOC patch for today. Well played, Andy. Well played.

Just a heads up, the big Warhammer city patch might be tomorrow. From Andy Belford, hot off the Twitter presses:

Here is a link to the patch notes for 1.3.5 from the test server. The devs also saw fit to nerf the Bright Wizard spell Scorched Earth and the Sorc equivalent. IMO this only makes it harder for scrub BWs. The really good ones (such as the ones formerly in FOTF) never depended solely on Scorched Earth, although if a Destro jumps in the middle of three BWs while I’m taking a screenshot, I can’t take responsibility for what happens.

This doesn’t change my need for a break. This weekend was incredibly relaxing. I am playing a bit of Guild Wars, but it’s really low key.

I’m about 100 pages into a book I’m reading about human psychology and recovery from traumatic episodes (i.e. post traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans). No connection to the game of course, it’s just an interesting topic because I have a lot of family members who have seen combat.

This is not a ragequit post.

I’ve canceled my WAR account, which expires today. I need to take a break. I’ve got some super busy weeks coming up at work. I am not leaving for another game although I will be playing Guild Wars occasionally (which I might also post about). If I come back it will be sometime in June, July or maybe August. It’s hard to say at this point. I might come back to try out the city changes too. It depends on my schedule which is far from certain at this point.

I will keep blogging about Warhammer (just not as often, maybe once a week) and I will stay on Twitter.

For this site, I will be revamping a few things, like changing the category and tagging system.

Reasons I’ve canceled:

• I am super busy at work. It’s budget season and I’ve been handed a special project to manage by myself and I’m really stressed out.
• Some of my long-time gaming friends are also taking a break from the game (including my RL husband) so it seems this is a good time for me to take a break as well.
• I cannot remember the last time I read a book cover-to-cover. I have a good list of books I want to read and it’s not getting done by itself.
• I want to go camping this summer. Summers in the Pacific Northwest are beautiful and I really want to take advantage of them. I’m probably also going to visit Europe at some point.

If you want to see what I think needs to happen for this game to become more successful, please visit my previous post about the Top five problems WAR needs to solve.

So, what happens to members of FOTF? A number of players have jumped to Knights of the Sepulchre. Dilek is a great guild leader. They are a fun group to play with. I respect them a lot and I think if you go there, you will have a lot of fun.

Overall Warhammer was a fun experience, but it was only fun because of Fight on the Flag and its members. The players in that guild have been incredibly fun to play with. If I do come back I might not want to lead the guild again depending on my time. But I will want to reconnect with all of you.

Again, if you have not become a member of the FOTF Facebook page (sorry, current or former guildies only) please e-mail me at fightontheflag@gmail.com with your in-game name and I’ll send you an invite. I check that e-mail about once a week.

Here are just two more WAR bloggers I’ve been following:

• Testpig, who had the epic videos about how to improve WAR game design
• Healeroftru, who happens to play on Gorfang. He posted a funny earlier this week about the woes of PVP without the renown bonus

Very interesting posts all around!

Are you a former FOTF member from either Warhammer, Warcraft or Dark Age of Camelot (we were Legacy of Storms on Albion/Bedevere)? Please drop me a line at fightontheflag@gmail.com and I’ll invite you to our Facebook page. Include your in-game name and in which game you played with us.

All of us veteran DAOC players yearn for the times of yesteryear, of relic raids and Emain roaming.

Testpig posted an amazing way to add relics to Warhammer and utilize the dead fortresses.

I love his idea so much. Please watch the Youtube video. Trust me, it’s worth the nine minutes:

I like everything about this video.

• Add influence as a main currency instead of the current system is a great idea because it doesn’t encourage one type of influence gain over another (ie. scenarios vs ORVR).
• The underdog system in the video would be a great addition to the current underdog system (reduce guards/keep door health)
• My one reservation: In Fortress attacks Testpig suggests that we add defender and attacker respawn points within the Fortress zone. I am not sure what to think of this idea, because when Order was underdogs at the beginning of the game we would often cut off their warcamp and kill stragglers. Testpig’s idea would work well if the realms were equal.

If Warhammer were to change to this or a similar solution I would have lots of hope for its future.

One question though, would Games Workshop flip out of this were to happen? I have no idea if this is against the game lore or not.

If you wanted to get into some of the minutae, Bootae has a few good ideas, also taken from DAOC.

EDIT: Werit thinks adding relics is a bad idea because it only makes the powerful realm more powerful. WARAyleen said relic raids were mostly alarm-clock runs anyway. Is nostalgia getting the best of me?

Are you a former FOTF member from either Warhammer, Warcraft or Dark Age of Camelot (we were Legacy of Storms on Albion/Bedevere)? Please drop me a line at fightontheflag@gmail.com and I’ll invite you to our Facebook page. Include your in-game name and in which game you played with us.

No posts in the past few days. Needless to say work is quite busy or I would’ve acknowledged this sooner (doing the work of people who have been laid off in addition to regular duties is very stressful, but I do still have a job).

Andy Belford posted on the Mythic site linking to various bloggers. He mentioned Fight on the Flag! Yay!

Fight on the Flag – Dey is talking about fightin, dat’s gud!

No insight today. Time to get back to my 50 hour-a-week job with one-hour commute each way.

By now most of us have had a chance to review the April 2010 Producer’s Letter, wherein Carrie dropped a bomb on us:

By 1.3.6 players will have the capability to play as both Order and Destruction on the same server.  We did this in Camelot, because we wanted to give players more choices about where they wanted to play and who they wanted to play with. We’re aware of the possible downsides (such as cross-realming) and we’re aware that people have a lot of realm pride, which we believe is very important, so we’re going to be introducing a significant lockout timer to switch between realms.

I have mixed feelings on this. I will not lie: there have been many a time when I’ve been tempted to roll Destro on Gorfang simply because Order has been outnumbered and all I want is a good fight where I am vastly outnumbered (most people want to be on the other side). Carrie admits that there’s a potential for cross realming, which is very real. I also think that some players will exploit whatever they can to gain a better advantage. A good example of this is the recent free-to-play trial. I know of a guild on Gorfang that rolled all new T1 toons and then proceeded to summon them (with summon stones before the ability to do so was removed) to several different zones to get tactics, gear, etc.

For me the main question is “What is the definition of significant (referring to the lockout timer)? This question may have already been answered somewhere, but I do have a life and work and a husband to spend time with. If someone knows the answer please post.

Shadow-WAR has a timer I could get behind: Six days.

The biggest trick of this entire deal is going to be the lockout timer.

If it’s too short, it won’t matter, people can hop from side to side at a whim, with no impact on their play. If Destro suddenly decides to come out and play today, they can hop over and zerg-surf to 80 and full sovereign in empty city instances, and do the same tomorrow if Order does it. If it’s too long, people won’t make use of it. So, the crux of the entire problem lies in timing.

The answer to the problem: 144 hours. That’s six days.

The reason? The final lockout for sovereign gear is 68 hours, just shy of 3 days. This lockout timer is short enough, that you can do it multiple times per billing cycle (5 times), and long enough, that you’ll think about it seriously before using it. It also ensures that you’ll most likely see at least two city siege attempts where you can gain loot.

Over at Backseatdev, Tyanon writes that people who want to cross realm are already doing it, and “paying for two accounts to do it.”

His other good points:

• Obviously one of the biggest problems with the city siege being participation-based is you need to rely on realm pride to be greater then the desire to just roll over and let the enemy take your lands if you are locked out on offensive city timer and can get loot for defensive city timer.
• It is going to hurt some guilds that have members jump to the other side with their main account, then be locked out of their current guild. (My comment: This leads to a degradation of community which is a bad thing for player retention. Players stay in a game longer than they normally would because of their guild.)

Healeroftru on Gorfang thinks this is going to be a huge detriment to the server and the game in general:

Mythic wants the player opinion?

Me: Good idea, maybe.
Gaentin: Stupid
Dominateme: Looks like 1.3.6 is the end for me.
Uthrax: Junk
Yel: Life will go on
Laudine: Proof the game is failing
Ravashack: …one more step towards the slippery slope of death.

Does the player base have a say in whether this happens or not? Hard to say. Most things that Mythic announces tends to come to fruition simply because they want to be trusted and don’t announce things that are iffy anyway. My opinion? I am not sure, but leaning toward no. I have no desire to play two realms. (My Destro character has only been logged in on Badlands to create a guild and maintain leadership.) I only want a good, fair fight. I am not sure that will happen if we have people switching factions all the time.