Fight on the Flag

For those of you who don’t know, Mythic’s billing department screwed up big time.

A quick survey of FOTF members shows that members were billed between seven and 15 times per account. The amount of the charge depended on how you repay (month to month or several months at once). One guildie said he had more than $300 in overdraft fees from his bank.

So far every person I have talked to has had this happen. This is huge.

Thankfully Mythic is  posting on their Web site that it should be cleared up within 3 business days. Many of us who have overdrafted are concerned that this could go onto our credit reports. Keep an eye on the Warhammer Herald for more information.

Here are links to what other Warhammer bloggers are saying about the issue:

• High Latency Life: EA/Mythic’s huge error
• WASDstomp: Warhammer Online Charges Me 16 Times Today
• Grimnir’s Grudge: Look… guys… if you need money, at least ask first…
• I heart Gorfang: You know, if you needed cash, and Here is how you “make this right”
• Slashdot: Games: Warhammer Online Users Repeatedly Overbilled

The comments of these posts are pretty golden. Healeroftru of Gorfang is calling it “Warscammer Online: Age of Thievery.”

The big assumption is banking institutions will refund the overdraft fees, from Slashdot:

They haven’t specifically promised to refund overdraft charges, only to ask customers’ banks to refund them once the actual charges are refunded. They seem to be assuming banks will have no problem with this.

A poster on Slashdot who supposedly works for Visa says there are some steps we need to take, regardless of whether Mythic takes action to reverse the charges:

So to summarize, call your bank if you were one of the ones fucked over by EA and request an immediate dispute on all charges beyond the one authorized and agreed upon charges (and then proceed to cancel your subscription to Warhammer). Also, as a word to the wise, make sure to ask your bank to stop subscription charges from EA. Just canceling and getting a new debit card isn’t enough. If a merchant has an authorization for subscription billing, they can still bill the card even after the card is canceled, since they have an authorization already.

Canceling the account could be our best recourse if we are afraid of that sort of thing. Instead we would have to buy game cards if we want to continue to play.

Four bloggers are visiting Mythic HQ this week. For a couple of hours Thursday they answered questions from the Twitterverse.

Read the answers to some of the questions (more will be posted later by the authors):

• MykielWAR: Mythic, Dev Round Table, and a Magical tour
• ShadowWAR: Mogwai, don’t feed them after midnight
• Werit: Mythic Day 1
• Gaarawarr: Mythic Answers Your Twitter Questions!

I plan to write an analysis of the full Q&A after it is posted. It sounds like MykielWAR might post the audio later and I will listen to it all if he does.

Perle is also on Twitter if you are interested in following. I am trying to cultivate all of the Warhammer tweeters I can into one list for ease of following:

Here is my list of Warhammer Online tweeters (mostly found via searches during the Twitter Q&A)

Every time I see this guy I think of the song “Earth Angel”

Orkangel,
Orkangel
Will you be mine?
My darling dear
Love you all the time
I’m just a fool,
A fool in love, with you

I can’t wait until you’re 40, Orkangel.

(more…)

Woot! After many hours of trying we finally downed the Vulture Lord himself!

Sorry for the crappy quality of this screenshot. My desktop died a couple of weeks ago and we are in the process of replacing it.

This fight, I thought, was actually really fun. We seemed to have spent far less time learning this fight than boss 7, which was really, really frustrating until we figured out a couple of tricks. Essentially for the VL, we had a heal-spec WP and everyone else went DPS (aside from the MT of course). We had to really think about the fight and ways to maximize our damage. All in all, I thought it was a very fun encounter.

Grats to me on my AM cloak, and to Riamin for the six funerary masks (which we all passed to him so he could get two pieces toward his Tyrant set).

This is a long-overdue update of the FOTF blogroll. These are people I consider worthy of taking your time to read their material either for information or entertainment value (in no particular order of course):

• Super Effective — Wow, what can I say? I really like this clever blog. It’s got a nice mix of links and very frank talk. I can tell this person loves PVP and Warhammer.
• I Heart Gorfang — by Gorfanger Arisechicken (definitely read the post about the prestigious Bright Wizard College)
• Erbse Goes MMO — by alliance mate Cirashar on Gorfang
• Grimnir’s Grudge — Videos and such, including tutorials
• Blurring Shock — A new Warhammer blogger showing some promise
• One Shard — A blog from a casual player about the Warhammer Online universe

Know of any other great Warhammer blogs? Post them in the comment or email me at fightontheflag at gmail dot com!

We’ve been talking about doing this for a while. After a while of playing on one server we tend to get restless and need a change of scenery.

FOTF members have been in dungeons trying to gear up when PVP is lackluster. We are so tired of this carebare atmosphere. The RUA server provides that escape. But wait, Perle! What does RUA mean?

I can’t tell you. I have to show you.

Robot Unicorn Attack provides the escape we need. I mean, come on, you’re a Robot Unicorn who eats fairies and attacks glass stars.

Don’t believe me? Try it just once. Once is all I ask. If you like you can even join our RUA guild. Membership is easy, you just have to memorize the lyrics to the song:

Open your eyes I see
Your eyes are open
Wear no disguise for me
Come into the open

When it’s cold outside
Am I here in vain?
Hold on to the night
There will be no shame

Chorus x2

Always, I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony, harmony oh love

Melting the ice for me
Jump into the ocean
Hold back the tide I see
Your love in motion

When it’s cold outside
Am I here in vain?
Hold on to the night
There will be no shame

Repeat chorus and fade

So thank you to all Gofangers. We’ve had a blast!

Hot off the hot fix presses at EAMythic, a new change to keep doors:

Realm vs. Realm

Keep doors will no longer respawn after being destroyed. Players must now use the “Wood” purchased from Door Repair merchants to rebuild a destroyed Keep door.

When I told my guildies of this change this afternoon, the response was a resounding “Awesome.” And it is clear that FOTF members are not alone in being happy with this change.

We all remember what keep takes and assaults in DAOC were like, and frantically repairing the door before another assault wave hit was part of the fun. I think about how we all carried various levels of wood with us (many times to the point of encumbrance), and another member had a spreadsheet that told us what kind or how much wood to use depending on the door’s level and state of repair.

All long-time DAOC fans will be able to appreciate this. I never had a strong opinion of the previous door situation, where doors automatically repaired after 15 minutes. I have to admit it was kind of frustrating to have the doors close behind us, but the added bonus was the epic gatehouse defenses we had when Destro thought they had pinned us down.

Unfortunately I’ve not had a chance to test this new feature. I have a lot of questions about how it will work (Can we repair in combat? How much wood does it take? Can you get super wood in game with ordinance? Because that would be cool!). Now the door repair merchants will have a use! I will be sure to stock up on stacks of wood to test it out soon!

And for old times’ sake, our Doorhammer video:

FOTF has a lot of news to share! First off, we’ve beaten the seventh boss of the Vulture Lord dungeon. Big thanks to Istaflysiii from Blitz for some very useful advice. That encounter literally took hours and hours and hours to figure out. A big thanks to all our players who have helped us get this far. Those of us who completed boss seven are: Perle, Khaevil, Grilar, Riamin, Andora and Brewz, but I also have to mention Anatheos and Truncheon because they also helped with that fight at one time or another.

Now we are on the Vulture Lord himself. I think we have him down but we are encountering some bad luck. We can consistently get him to phase three, but then our buff shears might not work as quickly as we hoped. I have to say even though we wiped many times at the VL, it was a really interesting and fun fight, as opposed to the boss seven encounter, which is soo frustrating.

Here’s a pic of the Vulture Lord encounter (click to embiggen):

I am looking forward to completing this. We are almost there!

Anatheos also hit a new FOTF record for healing, previously held by Truncheon:

I think this was also my heal record but I am not 100% positive because I don’t really keep track of that sort of thing.

Finally, Fight on the Flag has its first rank 80s! Over the weekend Truncheon hit the mark first, followed by yours truly.

This /special screenshot is a homage to when we first formed FOTF on Gorfang. I couldn’t have been more than level five in this screenshot. Just to think, a year ago this month FOTF had just completed its first N’Kari kill (with the ironic post title of “FOTF completes PVE content”) and and we also did our first Inevitable City raid. This was back when we were required to take two fortresses just to get there, uphill in the snow, BOTH WAYS!

How far we’ve come!

I really don’t know why it bothers me so much, but whenever I see a solo healer in scenarios it makes my blood boil.

Let’s face it, there’s only one real reason to go solo in scenarios: to leech renown. I’ve only gone solo only a few times in scenarios. Most of the time it was because another group left mine and I was alone. But my God, when I do solo, it’s very easy to see why many are tempted.

The guy with the blanked name was solo the entire time (though we mocked him in vent for his failures at healing and gaining renown):

Despite the above screenshot showing the aforementioned healer getting terrible renown, the amount of renown gain for solo healing is probably why the issue is so polarized. You can find many many threads on the forums of people complaining about solo healers soaking up the renown. I’ve seen solo healers getting 13,000 renown in a scenario (of respectable realm rank) while my team gets a pretty high amount, 3,000 to 5,000.

(As a side note: I think Mythic was actually rather forward thinking in choosing to award renown for healing people. In DAOC it used to be you got no renown for heals, but you got a sizable amount of renown for ressing someone after a fight. Many healers would watch someone die only to res them to get the reward.)

So when the healer (shown above in the screenshot) said in alliance chat “Ding RR 70!” everyone was quick to say grats. Everyone but me, because I couldn’t not say something anymore. I had to do it. I said something to the effect of “Grats on 70, solo scenario healer!” One guy said “Grats rescinded.”

I cannot think of one non-selfish reason one should consistently go solo in scenarios on purpose as a healer. The aforementioned solo healer was saying he was a great solo healer and it would be pointless for him to be in a group because he was not group heal specced. Another person sent me a tell in his defense because the guy was trying to get to 70 to be fully warded for king. Fair enough. Maybe we won’t see him solo healing anymore but somehow I doubt it.

I have a few reasons why solo healers should consider grouping instead of going solo:

• Guard
• Buffs/chants/auras
• Teammates being able to protect you better because you’re in the group
• Getting heals from other people
• Other people not hating you because you’re a freaking LEECH and we will wish they could tell Destro to kill you so they can enjoy the sweet, sweet Schadenfreude

I don’t think anything should be done about solo scenario healers, however. It’s always nice to see who the selfish players are for future reference.

Monday we went to LOTD to knock out some Tombs. A benefit is we check most of them for Destruction. We heard Arsenal was in TOVL and decided to pay a visit (click to embiggen):

We won the battle after disabling the fire trap (to be fair they just arrived as we beat the trap so they must have been pretty far in). Three of our members won purple bags.

Unfortunately when the instance timed out we all got a 30 minute debuff that said we couldn’t join or invade any more Tombs ( What was that about? Later someone said that Arsenal was still in there despite us purging their instance. I’m guessing they found some sneaky way to remain there after death.