Fight on the Flag

Face it, no game will ever be perfect, although Warhammer came awfully close. Aion could also be that game if it didn’t take so much PVE to get to the point. Our guild has always been full of staunch PVPers. For most of us it is very painful to try to grind through the levels. It is very boring.

Several of us are on our last legs in Aion. Khaevil even vowed to never play MMOs again after this experience.

An obvious question: What now? This has caused me to look back at Warhammer. From my previous post you would think we would never, ever go back. But time has changed the game from when we last played it.

The BIGGEST thing that killed Warhammer for me was a lack of people to fight. That rationale is no longer an excuse:

This screenshot from Gorfang was taken on a Sunday morning, back when we used to think all of the Destruction were in church. My account was still open so I thought I’d check things out. Order on Gorfang is now seriously outnumbered, out-organized and outclassed.

My second point in the aforementioned post is that Land of the Dead forced people to PVE to keep up with everyone else. While this is still true, there is some sad news on the PVE content front:

Mythic has had some pretty massive layoffs in the creative department:

Mythic laid off 80 people today (Nov. 9), which is about 40% of the company and responsible for 90% of the content. According to a friend of mine who left before this happened, they’re putting Warhammer into “maintenance mode.”

I say sad news because I hate to see anyone lose their job. I am not happy they have lost their jobs at all. While some say “maintenance mode” means that the game is dead, Organdonar has a more optimistic outlook:

If they aren’t adding new content then they aren’t fucking up the game.

Yes, this still leaves LOTD in the game, but frankly if we had not played Aion and stayed in Warhammer we might have most of that gear by now and we wouldn’t have wasted our time with so much PVE. With the creative team mostly gone, this means they won’t add more PVE content to the game anytime soon. Then all we have to do is wake up and PVP. Awesome!

Lastly, my third complaint (Mythic was slow on server merges) could be resolved soon. From Massively’s interview with Jeff Skalski:

Q: Would it be better to merge servers again?

A: Yes and no. Merging a server affects a lot of people, and some players rejoice while others get upset about the change. It’s a tough call really. Right now we’re closely watching Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne. Both have passionate players on them, but we wish the populations were higher. With the recent release of 1.3.2 ,we’ll be holding off on any merges until we get a few more weeks of data. Then we can make final, informed decision if needed.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Where does that leave us? I am sending out my recruit-a-friend invites to members as I can (I only get one per day, how lame is that?). With the recruit-a-friend invite we get 10 free days of game time to check it out. (If you are interested in an invite, send me a PM on the forums and I will add you to the list.)

We thought we’d ruin some Order’s PVE by running in Land of the Dead for a while on Sunday. For such a highly touted expansion, there was hardly anyone there. But when Order gained control, a lowbie zerg of Shadow Warriors leaped off of a cliff we happened to be hiding behind. Most of them ended up at half health, or worse. They were easily dispatched.

Those aren't all rocks, they're corpses.

Yeah killing a bunch of lowbies wasn’t terribly challenging or brag worthy, but watching renown (albeit very little renown) falling from the skies was pretty entertaining.

Fighting over the weekend, especially Saturday, was awesome. Destro really wanted to get into Land of the Dead, but Flags in Space wouldn’t let them! Rumbles at the Battlefield Objectives were pretty good for our tiny server:

Several times we attacked the Destruction in Praag. Most of the time we were repelled by their sheer numbers. This is how fighting should be all of the time. I did take a video of a small fight. I would post more videos but the view from my Archmage is pretty boring.

Sunday we explored Land of the Dead. The officers talked and we discussed how much we want to be chasing gear vs fighting Destruction. Initially we chased gear because we were getting flat-out owned. But now, we seem to do just fine against Destro. We decided that we only want to chase gear when there is no fighting going on (usually early on Saturday/Sunday).

Personally the little I’ve seen of the Tyrant set, I really want it for my Archmage. But the bosses don’t drop the pieces every time /sigh. I really wish Mythic would realize that most people who play this game for PVP do not want to do endless equipment grinds. A few of our members have been running Lost Vale since our very first attempt, and they only need one piece to finish their set.

Just an FYI for all of you running LOTD while Perle works nights this week.

The guide, written by Jistabell on the Warhammer Alliance forums, is comprehensive from both Order and Destruction sides. Hopefully by the time I log in Friday evening, some of the bugs will have been worked out.

If you care about lore for the Tomb Kings (I don’t), then read here. Bestiary and tomb unlocks here, and boss strategies for Tomb of the Vulture Lord here.

Enjoy the PVE while I’m gone for the week.