So Lately...

My guild (SmuG) happened to move away from order to start playing Destruction and I've been playing my squig herder which I happen to really enjoy because I didn't think I would due to how badly I always killed them on my order toon. Anyway, we rolled on Dark Crag and so far, it's been such a fun time, and it's strange to see order wiping a server up a down but it's also kind of fun to again be on the underdog side. My name on Dark Crag is kind of goofy considering I didn't think we would actually play there for very long and its a rando generated one. Splitugdune!!!!!! Sound that bad boy out and call me in the morning. I just say i'll split your dome.
I am level 18 now and have only been able to play sporatically due to the recent addition in the family (my baby girl Carly Rae) and shes been wonderful! Between work and taking care of her and doing everything I need to in this crappy economy to keep my family going and still be able to play some games (which I still love of course), it's been a long road.

On a side note, I recently just got invited to the closed beta test for Fallen Earth which looks rather promising. Imagine a Fallout 3 type MMO and a bunch of different factions stuggling to claim resources to survive in a post-apoc storyline. Sounds like fun. Go apply for the beta and let me know if you get in and lets play together.

WAAGHAMMER!

-Splitugdune/Mikeheal

Mark Jacobs INC.

First and foremost, I am in the hospital with my beautiful girlfriend waiting on the arrival of my daughter Carly to arrive.  We are waiting for some dilation to occur then the labor fun.

Anyway while waiting I started browsing and saw the post from Mark Jacobs on the VNboards and decided to post it up and give you my thoughts on the matter. Look for those at the bottom.

Taken directly from his vnboards post by Mark Jacobs.

When will mythic make a MAC version of this game? sigh... anyway here you go. 

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Folks,

Well, the cat is out of the bag (or would that be the Liche High Priest out of the tomb?) but hey, that's what happens when there is a lot of excitement about a product. We’ve already seen a flurry of interviews and videos about what we are going to be working on over the next few months, so I won't go into excruciating detail now. I will though focus on some of the main things that we are working on, including the "Call to Arms" expansion, over the next five months especially if those things do not fall into the CtA expansion itself.

First, as for the Live Expansion pack, we have always believed in giving our players a lot of subscription-based content for the game. This "Call to Arms" expansion arc represents a large amount of content that will be spread out over a few months. When you factor in all the content that will be added as part of this arc, it certainly makes it one of the largest subscription-based content upgrades/addons done by any MMO developer. The CtA expansion alone is pretty cool but it does not, in any way, represent everything that we are working on (or have been working on).

Second, as for the new careers, what can I say but they are both very, very cool. Players have asked us for a year whether we would put the Choppa back in and many have asked (especially here on the Vault) that we please add the Slayer. The Slayer was never planned to be a part of the game but based on both player feedback and the support we got from GW on this character, we were able to create a very cool career. When we first removed the four careers from the game during development, there was a lot of teeth gnashing and speculation that we would not put them back in until we did our first paid expansion pack. As I said then, we would not do that and we have kept our word. Once the Choppa/Slayer go LIVE, we will have added four careers to the game over the first 6 months of its life, and at no additional charge to our players. No other subscription-based MMORPG that I am aware of has ever added 4 new careers to its game as part of a regular update/addon/free expansion.

Third, as for the Live Events, our previous LEs have been quite successful, so we thought we would add some more over the next few months.

Fourth, as for the Tomb Kings and the RvR dungeon, I think it is very safe to say that DAoC's Darkness Falls was one of the most successful addons to the game. Over the last few months we've gotten a ton of feedback and requests (once again, here on the Vault) asking us to create a next-generation DF, and we are in the process of doing just that. So, if you liked DF, then this zone/dungeon we are creating is right up your alley. It is truly the spiritual successor to DF and I expect that when you see where we're going with it, you'll like it a lot.

Fifth, over this expansion arc, we will also be focusing many other areas of the game. The list of changes and improvements that are happening over the next five months are rather lengthy but here are some of the highlights from the first of two major patches (1.2 and 1.3). Some of the things that we hope will be part of the 1.2 cycle (1.20, 1.21, etc.):

1) Bug fixing - Correcting bugs, even little ones, is still a priority for us. The list of bug fixes in the next couple of patches is lengthy and we will continue to hot fix bugs on an ongoing basis. The team has been working on everything from small bugs (tooltips) to larger issues.

2) RvR code fixes - Over the last two weeks, the number of Fortress crashes have shrunk down to a total of one per week total across all servers. The number of Fortress takes/sieges has also increased every week and it is safe to say that things are better than ever in this aspect of the game so I can happily steal a line from The Princess Bride and say "Have fun storming the castle!" even now. Work will continue until those crashes go down to zero. Once that happens, we can look at increasing the hard cap.

3) RvR changes/improvements. - This is a rather lengthy list which includes a new scenario, changes to the Zone control system, lots of Keep Upgrades (this is only our first pass at it), oRvR events and additional rewards for Zone and Campaign captures.

4) Career balancing - Lots and lots of changes/fixes in this next patch across all careers. As I mentioned in one of my posts, I was going through the preliminary bug fixes/balance changes patch notes and after reading through 15+ pages of them, it’s safe to say that the C&C team has been rather busy lately. We know how important balancing the careers of an MMO is to the players and that’s why the team has put so much effort into it to date and will continue to do so going forward. Every career has gotten some attention from the team in 1.2 whether it is fixing bugs or balancing their abilities. The team has paid particular attention to crowd control abilities and will continue to do so with 1.3.

5) Changes to "quality of WAR" such as new armor and mount color diversity for high-level guilds, flight masters added to every zone that doesn't have one, ability to attach multiple items to mail system, improvements to the Guild and Warband UI, and improvements to our Guild Reward systems.

So, that's just some of the things that will be coming down the road over the next few months. Again, this is just patch 1.2 cycle, patch 1.3 will see even more stuff coming from us in 1.3 and even 1.2. These patches contain a tremendous amount of content, fixes,the introduction of new systems and balancing, and combined with the appearance of the Tomb Kings and their RvR dungeon, the new classes, etc. represent huge additions to the game. Patch 1.3 is another big patch from us and we’ll start talking about it after 1.2 goes LIVE. Expect that we will continue to focus on oRvR (some new systems, improvements to fortresses, etc.), careers, guilds, bugs, and a whole lot more.

In terms of 1.2, that is intended to go to the Public Test server in early February. Normally I’d do a full “Sneak Peak” at the patch by the next week (and I still might) but as I’ve been saying over the last few weeks, I wanted to talk about some of the other highlights today. There’s already a lot of coverage of the expansion around the web and if you haven’t been to some of the major sites that cover WAR, you might want to take a look at all the cool stuff that we are working on.

As always, we thank you for your patronage, support, and patience.

Mark

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My thoughts:

Top part:

First, awesome but a lot of this stuff should have been in your released product.  Although all this "new" content is sweet, again it should have been in before hand.

Second, I'm so excited about the addition of the slayer. However, from what I read here you said you've never seen any MMO add 4 NEW careers for free. These aren't new. You are adding things that should have already been in your final product and you only changed the Hammerer into the Slayer class. 

Third, the live events are pretty cool and inventive. However, again these tasks that you are having us do are SOMETIMES pretty boring.

Forth, playing DAoC since beta when it didn't have a DF, the release of this is going to be huge. This was one of the best ideas for a game you guys have for your RvR based MMO's. DF was so fun and I hope this one is very similar to that. Way to go on the future addition of this. 

Fifth, well read below for that. :)

Patches for the future part:

1) Sure bug fixes are always excepted and wanted by all players of every game. Not much more to say on that.

2) Does this mean they let the amount of people taking/defending cap away? I hope not actually.  It kind of balances the taking/defending out a little bit. Agree or disagree? Give me a comment about it.

3)Awesome. The influence rewards from Orvr are, AWESOME!  I hope they are also changing the system to where if a keep is owned by a guild, it takes a lot more effort to take that keep.  Open RvR events are always fun.  Starting with Heavy Metal, wow they really had something their which is why they put that into the game afterwards... Hopefully it sparks even more innovations for the game.

4)Class balances/tweaks are always excepted as long as they don't overdo it.  I think I speak for everyone when I say that.

5)Sure living guild system improvements are cool but come on mythic get the rest of the game out to us before... To me this is kind of dumb when not all the classes are even implemented yet and it's also not more important than a lot of other things/changes in the game.

I hope to get some comments back on all of your thoughts. Thanks for reading and in the near future I may just post about my new daughter. :) (I'm excited)

Have a great day!

- Mikeheal

AFTER MARCH!!?!?!?!

My god must we wait so much longer? This was me after I read the post about how long it would be before they release the Slayer class and the Choppa...

Sure live events are good and all but damn thats frustrating when the class you wanted to play in the first place gets cut out of the game and then delayed longer and longer before you can play it.

I was kind of happy about a few things I saw on the post though. The live event schedule wasn't a bad thing at all. Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals (live event in march) and is what they are calling the release of these two wonderful classes. They are also making an event in April called Beyond the Sands and all it says is powerful riches and great weapons come from the south. The next installment after that is going to be the June live event and it is titled "Land of the Dead" which is going to be a new RvR dungeon zone for more PvEness and some awesome Loot i'd expect.



Concept Art for the Choppa and the Slayer:






Read the rest at
Warhammer Online Herald

Now i'm off to work.

-Mikeheal

BTW Mythic

Where's my "love letter"? It must have gotten lost in the mail. I doubt they would have forgotten about me and waiting me to post about the new event that could be coming up.... I'm getting kind of antsy about awaiting the post from mythic today and so far getting up early isn't working out and now I can't seem to fall asleep again. (although I don't want to)  

Keep reading the bloggers of Warhammer! All of them because they are all unique and really fun to read. We love you all.

This will be short.

I've noticed on thegreenskin that he has a screenshot posted up about the Choppa gear that a friend of his had sent him. Also I'm awaiting the 1-29-09 post on the herald for the news.

Just a few thoughts about this.

1. I hate how they are making us wait for "new" classes over time. All it's doing is making everyone restart and then all you fight is that "new" class in T1. Over and Over.

2. Just release all the new classes already and quit holding out on us.

3.  I love the sound of the new classes and I can't wait to try them out, but my god this waiting for "new" classes when they should have been released with the game is really quite annoying sometimes. Mainly because of #1.

Anyway the podcast is being worked on and will be up rather soon, so I hope people actually have been checking my blog sometimes and checking for updates. Hope to read some comments sometime soon.

-Mikeheal

SmuG Populations

EDIT: Any Suggestions about better blogging, please shoot me an e-mail mrmikeill@gmail.com

Over on the server Ironfist, things have been really really fun. Every time I log into the game and get on that server I see the populations listed at Low/Low. Also on my last post I said I was playing a Kotbs, HOWEVER, since then I at the request of my guildies got back into playing my archmage. I'm a healing machine. Going back to what I was saying, Low/Low population, I find the Open RvR in T4 to be packed with people and fun. My guild really tears it up and we farm RP and XP since none of us are 40 yet... The balance of the sides seems right on par which adds to the fun effect of the game because both sides push each other back and forth and it's like an infinite struggle of fun. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that I wonder what a Med/Med and High/High population servers open RvR would be like? Would it kill my computer? It's a gaming rig from around 2004ish and I can't afford to upgrade it because the lack of funds. Now I'm not blaming my future daughter, which she is gonna be here in about 6 days!!!! (I'm excited to be a daddy) but It may contribute a little bit to my lack of funds ;)

Another thing I wanted to get into is, over at thegreenskin.com which is what inspired me really to start WAR blogging, although I've gotten no recognition from them yet but i'm sure it's because my blog isn't good enough!!! Yet... They have posted the mysterious packages that Keen and Graev about the possible addition of the slayer and thegreenskin received a package containing a DvD of The Predator and telling them to go to a certain spot on it which of course was "GET TO DA CHOPPA!!!!!" pretty much confirming the addition of the choppa class as well. Lets hope that thegreenskin is correct by saying that Mythic isn't playing some sick and twisted joke to play with the minds of us wonderful WAR players.

Last thing I want to address is the people on vnboards.ign.com warhammer board. If you aren't currently a subscriber but a past subscriber, do not think you know how this game is nowadays. It has changed so significantly for the better and the game that you once played is quite a bit different. Also just shut the hell up. No one wants to read about your crazy ass ideas that say this is how the game should be, because you know what, not every player wants your stupid ass vision of the game. So far, I love what they have done to WAR to improve things. As I said in a previous blog I am a pretty big supporter of mythic since before they were a known company... Let them do what they do best and you just sit there and don't post stupid shit.
/end rant

On that note, I think I will head out and go play my AM because my guildies are wanting me to get on so they have some heals /flex

Just a heads up, I will be doing a monthly podcast pretty soon from the guild on the Ironfist server. Consists of a couple of awesome players such as Usefulidiot, Raeplion/Ignore, Avoid/Scob, Sigshoe, Drop, and me Mikeheal. So be on the watch for that and check back again real soon. Until next time, thanks for stopping by. -Mikeheal