Huh? Blizzard? Who're they....

While it would seem that almost every other blog in the MMO blogosphere is talking about the news of Blizzards latest expansion, I for one, am not all that bothered by it. The updates to the ‘old world’ (Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms) sound interesting, and I may have to download a trial of the game after it’s released just to see what changes they’ve made.

BUT…. I know for a fact that I won’t be subscribing again. The rest of the features in the expansion follow the tried and tested blizzard game play extension method- add more grind (and more shinys to make it seem worth it). And even though they seem to be actually trying to do something with the PvP, They’ve never been able to get it right before and I doubt they will now. I suppose they may surprise me but I won’t hold my breath.

Right now in WAR I’m having a lot of fun in the lower tiers, My Chosen, Athekkhar, is Lv 23 and I ventured into the RvR lake in Tablacland for the first time last night to defend a keep. The initial 8 of us in the group managed to hold off the 12 or so Order players until our WB had filled up. So had Orders’, who came back for a big push and got through the outer doors, only to be beaten back by the brave defenders before they managed to enter the keep proper.

What followed was a rampage through Tablacland, the frenzied host of Destruction managing to hold a roughly equal Order force at bay while capturing all the Objectives and locking the zone! I have a suspicion that this was almost certainly due to several fantastic healers keeping us all alive, but it was a great introduction to T3 RvR none the less!

And speaking of healers my little Shaman Gazgreb is still in Tier 2. Progress has been pretty slow with him due to me playing almost exclusive PvP when I log him in, healers don’t seem to get all that much experience when purely healing; surely someone else must have noticed this? Or maybe I’m just not all that good at playing a healer :)

Still formulating my thoughts on patch 1.3.1 but I’ll probably be posting them in a couple of days, my general impression so far is fairly meh, but ive net had chance to examine the changes in any detail yet so it would be unfair to comment!

downtime blues

So im sat here waiting for this huuuge new patch to download, even though I thought I'd been clever and downloaded the bulk of it last night. Just skimming through the notes, I'm liking the sound of the improved performance for the animations. My rig isn't the best in the world and on balanced settings with 2x forced anti-aliasing it gets pretty choppy when the PvP heats up. Hopefully this will be sorted but I'll have to wait and hope for now.

In other news I've been enjoying oRvR over the past few days, there's definately more of a drive to keep hold of the zone after all the objectives have been capped to get that sweet lockdown bonus. This has led to some pretty determined scraps between Order and Destro in tier 2, the only problem is when Order doesn't come out and play, it can get a bit boring waiting around in the RvR lakes waiting for scenarios to pop.

My only negative experience so far has been trying to take the keep in Shadowlands- a small army of destro had assembled in all its vile glory before the keep doors, only to be held at bay for what seemed like an eternity by battlements quite literally bristling with Order scum, cackling gleefully through mouthfulls of juicy renown points as they farmed us for all we were worth. Seemingly no amount of focus firing at the oil would destroy it and try as we might we just couldnt get though the gates without being mown down by a torrent of righteous flame and AoE spammage from the bright wizards and friends.

I'm really hoping that the extra ramp added to the keeps in 1.3.1 will help even the odds when there's a lot of defenders, but then I think it'll also make it nearly impossible for a small group to defend against a much larger one without being over-run. The question is will the improvements outweigh the negatives? this WARrior says an optimistic, and possibly uncertain yes.

Ahh, the patchers at 90%, time enough to squeeze in an hour (or so) before bed :)

*EDIT* Had a quick play last night and got a few impressions of patch 1.3.1 i want to jot down. I'll have a longer session tonight and write my initial thoughts up soon.

It's been a long time..

My curiositys got the better of me, I'm coming back to WAR!

I've been keeping up to speed with whats been going on in the game and it sounds like Mythic are trying their damndest to sort out the problems that the players are bringing up, and it sounds like they're putting a fair bit of thought into it too. I've had a niggling urge to re-sub for a few weeks now and I finally caved in. Never been one to resist temptation :)

So, I'll be posting the odd musing and how I'm finding the game now. I doubt anyone still checks this blog but I enjoy writing my thoughts down every now and again, it seems to help me organise what I'm feeling into something that makes sense.

Seeing as its still summer I'll probably be playing prettey casually untill the nights start to draw in and the weather turns back to being typically British but ill still try and put up a couple of posts a week and take it from there.

Karak-Norn watch out, I'm back!