No Passion For SWTOR

While off work last week I played a lot of SWTOR  and it dawned on me that I’m really not all that fussed about the SW worlds.
I played WAR with many years of GW gaming behind me and I really felt a part of the Warhammer world but I found the SW films all presentation and no substance – typical US tat – and, consequently, I didn’t get into the SW universe.
I started out following the storylines but I’ve begun to spacebar the dialogue, especially the non-class quests; I don’t feel particularly involved in the class quests and it all seems a little shallow – maybe it was a mistake starting several alts.
I’ve got a Jedi Knight and a Bounty Hunter at level 30+ and an Imperial Trooper and Sith Inquisitor both level 10+
I’ll keep plugging away at it though and see if I can break through the ennui barrier.
Where are all the augments? Is no one doing slicing as a craft?

WAR 1.4.5 hit the PTS last week with the return of the fortresses and the new relic thingy http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=1695
with a feedback thread here Dev Discussion – 1.4.5 PTS – Feedback it doesn’t seem like many players turned up to the test.

Wrath of Heroes started its Beta 4 session last weekend – giving away 1500 beta keys; I bet people were queuing overnight to get hold of them. It doesn’t seem to be making much of an impression on the gaming world and judging by the Facebook comments interest is beginning to wane.

There have been various rumours about Dark Millenium being cancelled by THQ to which THQ responded with typical management waffle -  ”no decisions have been made” about Dark Millenium; doesn’t look good.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I believe I mentioned that I would like to spend less time at work and more time gaming – this weekend I ended up with a slipped disk. Ouch!

SWTOR still consumes my waking, and now pain-filled, hours and I’m still with the Bounty Hunter/Mercenary.

I was having a lot of problems with the game eating my RAM – Windows usually takes up 2.5GB of ram on idle (6GB DDR3 fitted with i7 950 CPU) and my video card has 1.5GB (GTX480). Several times SWTOR has maxed out both ram resulting in the game regularly freezing/stuttering which only stopped when I dropped the graphics to Low (I would have thought I should be able to run on the High graphic setting no problem).
So I borrowed 12GB of ram and tried it again – SWTOR now runs at about 5GB ram and 750MB GPU ram with graphic settings on High.
It may be that the Nvidia/Windows settings need tweaking but still that’s one hungry game.
I’ve also been having problems with the left mouse button stopping working – usually during fights – but I haven’t narrowed that one down yet.

It seems that common courtesy is in short supply judging by the number of players who ninja the resources/quest points while you’re busy taking out the enemies guarding said resources/quest points – Bastards.
It can get rather busy sometimes with several players trying to complete the same quest which leads to some interesting chat from people who don’t seem to understand what an MMO is. Still, I’m sure it will all settle down in a few weeks time when the 30 days freetime is up and people start to drift off.

Dark Millenium News

This was posted on the Farseer forum -

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5839558#post5839558

It doesn’t mention why this chap should have access to inside information and could be a load of bollocks but it seems genuine.

Game Design Notes:

• Relic is lending a very small hand in the overall development of dmo. Winking, a chinese based developer is also on board. They helped with Spacemarine as well.
• Vigil is doing 90% of the work. Most of the shared work load is art, and animation.
• Spacemarine is built on the same engine as darksiders (and darksiders 2 respectively)
• Dmo is using the same engine, with gameplay (at least combat) akin to Spacemarine.
• Contrary to what I was told, the art style is NOT like Spacemarine, rather the whole game is more like darksiders (1 & 2), very stylized. The videos released at the last E3 are fairly accurate to the current state of the art style. Less realistic.
• Revision to what I was told by the rep, is that Spring 2012 is unlikely… maybe for more announcements on the game’s progress. Though a Darsiders 2 release in spring is likely, Vigil is working on both.

Class related notes:

• Races broadly put into forces of “Order” and “Disorder” similar to 40K World-wide campaigns.
• The “spacemarine” is a class, with a chaos counterpart.
• Tactical, heavy, assault as specialties.
• Each class starts as something familiar, and through progression changes.Ie. Scout to Marine
• Other classes include: psyker, techpriest, and assassin
• The assassin starts as a guardsman-esque character.
• Chaos have similar counterparts, cultist themed.
• Instead of an assassin, think demon host.
• Orks are with Chaos (disorder), Eldar are with the Imperium of man (order)
• Ork class rundown: Nob, mekboy, runt herda, mad dok
• Eldar class rundown: Scorpion, Avenger, Warlock, Reaper
• Expect Tau & Dark Eldar later, likely an expansion, though dark eldar npcs will be present on release, as well as Necron, and Tyranids. (Interesting idea, going for the ‘faceless’ races as NPCs, though I suspect you won’t be getting quests from the Swarmlord!)
• 60 character levels.

Gameplay related notes:

• A crashed space hulk will be one of the zones.
• Another zone will take place on an Imperial Cruiser, and Chaos Cruiser.
• Expect several instanced missions much like WoW, as well as open world.
• It will include instanced & open world pvp.
• Players will be able to dual weild things like pistols and melee weapons… yes that means two chain swords.
• The featured chapter is Black Templars. (As evidenced by the banner art)
• The featured chaos god is Khorne, at least for playable
• Word Bearers will also take a major role in the Playable chaos faction
• Nurgle & Fabius Bile will have a big Chaos NPC presence. (I suspect not Nurgle himself, but perhaps Typhus?)
• Possible shooter/RPG mode controls, like StarTrek Online.
• Third person action, plays like Gears of War/Space Marine mixed together for shooting.
  Melee is more like Space Marine/Darksiders, with the target lock on.
  Blocking melee attacks is a maybe, sheilds may be NPC only.
• NPC creatures vary from: Necromunda like humans, Chaos Cultists, Dark Eldar; from Grotesques to Warriors, Chaos Daemons and beasts, Orks, Grots, Guardsmen, defected Guardsmen, most of the minor Demons, Dreadnoughts, Tyranid Warriors, Genestealers and more.
• Forgeworld things may be present. Thunderhawk, terrain sets, Aquila landers, FW-esque equipment on vehicles.
• Environments range from snowy mountains, to the innards of a crashed space hulk… from cities destroyed, and orkified, to ancient eldar cities, overgrown with nids… from ancient battlefields, littered with the carcases of Titans and tanks, to a hive city, nostalgic with necromunda…. from the halls of Imperial Cruisers, to tge desecrated throne rooms of Chaos.
• Everything is large, beefy, and sticks to 40k very well. People already invested in the background and game will progress at a snails pace, as we will be distracted by everything.
• Left mouse uses the weapon in your character’s left hand, Right mouse uses the weapon in your character’s right hand. Rather cool mechanic.
• All abilities have a cooldown… No spamminh your “3″ key like most MMOs. This will likely annoy WoW diehards. This pleases me.
• Melee combos – dual weilding gives new moves
• There is sprinting.
• “Guilds” will be present.
• Team/party/squad size is 5
• “Raid” size is 50… subject to change.
• Ranged weapons have infinite ammo, but there is reloading, overheating, venting, and reloading.
• Weapons rarely get to take full advantage of their range when inside… lots of cover and turning corners, it’s very dynamic.
• Hero classes are possible, unlocked once you get a character high enoigh level.Hero classes will begin at higher level…
  • Imperium: Grey Knight
  • Chaos: Chaos Sorcerer
  • Ork: ‘Ard boy or Weird boy
  • Eldar: Farseer
• Likely 40.

A player progressing as a marine will do so as follows:

Lv. 0: an adept, think a marine wearing just carapace armor.
Lv. 10: more or less a scout.
Lv. 20: equipped like the marine character in th sm codex… forgot his name.
Lv. 30: a standard marine
Lv. 40 honor guard or Sergeant, some decoration
Lv. 50 sternguard, maybe captain.
Lv. 60 artificer armor, iron halos, the whole sha-bang.

Grey knight fits in fairly well at around 40.

Other classes progress similarly.

Misc. Notes

• Tech priest are very, very pure adeptus mechamicus themed…Backpacks with a robot arm.
• A cover system is implemented.Waist high cover and standing cover.
• Cross platform is very possible.
• Shooting mechanics will have aim assist
• Similarly, melee attacks will lock on.
• Abilities work similar to Warhammer Online. A common resource, then each class has a unique resource used with abilities.
• Weapons inxrease in “coolness” as far as progression is concerned.
• A lv. 1 autogun may be it’s familiar form in necromunda and early IG… by lv 60, sone autoguns look cool enough for inquisitors to be using, lathered in fancy trim, aquilas, etc.
• Same goes for other weapons…. think Call of Duty, as you unlock the various weapon upgrades, you guns start looking cooler.

Each class has 3 specialties.

• Marine: Tactical, Devastator, Assault
• Assassin/guardsman: the major assassin type, callidus, vindicare, eversor (however you spell it)
• The Marine is by far the most flushed out.
• most abilities are still very WIP.
• Jump packs- not sure how they’ll work

A Psychopath In SWTOR

I recently read Jon Ronson’s The Psycopath Test after attending UnCon 2011 where he gave a talk on the subject; I can highly recommend it – it’s interesting and entertaining but also slightly disturbing.

I mention this because last weekend I was levelling up my Jedi Knight when I came to an area where there were too many people all running around trying to do the same quest. Rather than hang around for them to finish and read their inane chatter I jumped onto my Bounty Hunter.
As I was levelling up and taking out more and more people it began to dawn on me that I was actually enjoying being a really evil darkside mofo.
It also began to dawn on me that this might be an indication that there is a psychopath hidden inside, biding his time, waiting to get out.

There is a psychopathy check-list drawn up by Robert Hare (the main subject of The Psychopath Test) which, when administered by a qualified clinician, gives an indication of whether a person can be diagnosed as a psychopath or not.
I don’t consider myself qualified to use this check-list correctly and it would be very dangerous to take this seriously (especially for my future well-being) but my alter-ego seems to score very highly in the Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism” category.

Still, it’s only pretend, isn’t it?
There’s probably a study been made by a Zachary Hosenbugler of the Maydup University somewhere in the US that proves we’re all psychos.

Do you choose your responses based on the Dark/Light side awards or do you ignore them and respond as you think appropriate?

Have a look at this – it made my day – Pingu: The Thing

WAR – Just The Same Old Bollocks

MMORPG published an interview with James Casey – shame he can’t be arsed to talk to the playerbase directly – Interview - there’s no indication of when it took place.

Bear in mind that Mythic find it very convenient to talk about Warhammer Online as a catch all, they can then talk about WAR and WOH in the same breath. This makes it look as though all the work on WOH also applies to WAR – this is a load of shite as we all know.

So what does James tell us apart from the same old “there are things to come”

He passively absorbs feedback via the forums and blogs – the Bioware and Warhammer Alliance forums must make for difficult reading nowadays and just how many WAR bloggers are there left?
Mythic continue to look at the subscription model to see how it will benefit both Mythic and the players – just how long can Mythic continue to gouge it’s subscribers to support WOH and how long will the players put up with it.
What can we look forward to in 2012 – 1.4.5 with Govrod Caverns, Relics and Fortresses, T7 armour and the return of Ironclad and things he can’t tell us about.
So it’s all just the reintroduction of old features with the addition of the Relic mechanic and a bit of cosmetic fluff.
I seem to remember Sylvania (Vampire Counts) was once hinted at but seems to have disappeared and what about the bleedin’ WAR website?

So it’s just the same old guff they’ve been feeding us with all through 2011.

Community reaction can be found here MMORPG Article

I Snogged My Companion

My Jedi Knight’s female companion had been showing increased affection for some while now and during a quiet moment in the spaceship she asked why Jedi can’t have fun.
As I saw it I could answer the question in 3 ways -
Meh
Flirt
Kiss
I chose the latter expecting a polite rebuff but – the clench was on.
So where is it all going to end?
Will we settle down and raise lots of little evil Jedi?
Will she run off with a Wookie?
Will she die in a heart wrenching way?
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment.

I now have this hideous vision of thousands of solitary gamers power levelling a Jedi Knight to get to this point – possibly disrobing their companion for added effect – weapon in hand.
/shudder

2011 – What A Shite Year That Was

If I were to put 2011 on a graph it would look like a ski jump.

In February my wife’s mother died – in March my dad died – in between those two my dog died and this week my wife’s cat died; not to mention the rabbit being killed by a fox.

On the gaming side – I finally removed my Warhammer Online blinkers, briefly played Space Marine, toured Skyrim and started the SWTOR saga.

Warhammer Online – Mythic put a few more nails in the WAR coffin.
To try to reignite interest in WAR Mythic invited several bloggers to an update meeting then slapped an NDA on them. What was the point? All they got to tell us was more “good things round the corner” bollocks.
They also published a photo of all those, supposedly, working on Warhammer Online but neglected to tell us that the vast majority were working on a side project called – Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes – a little disingenuous methinks.
So WAR was left to flounder while Mythic developed a play4free game for their EA overlords; they also took to the stage to slag-off MMOs and tell us how boring WAR is.
WAR now has minimum development and very little support – while Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot get a nice polish – not really acceptable for a premium price MMO.
The final nail, for me, was James Casey telling us that he couldn’t get the reintroduction of the Forts online this year because his test server was faulty!
They really must be on the bones of their arses or they just can’t be arsed either way they’ve made a complete arse of a game that a ready-made and loyal Warhammer following had a lot of hopes for.

Space Marine – A bit of a disappointing console port.
THQ captured the feel and atmosphere of the 40k universe but it was over all too soon. Shooting multiple orcs with exploding shells felt good but got a little repetitive with no way of escaping the standard corridor-run storyline. I was hoping for an expansion with a new story but it wasn’t to be – not this year anyhow.

Skyrim – The long-awaited sequel to Oblivion.
The game that spawned a thousand arrow to the knee jokes >–()–> and YouTube mod videos.
I’m still playing this but taking down dragons is getting to be a bit of a bind now. The stories are well crafted and I can’t get enough of the underground/dungeon type crawls. It’ll be quite some time before I get everywhere in Skyrim and by then there’ll be an expansion to keep me going – a mod to get rid of the bratty-yank kid voices would be nice too.

SWTOR – The long-awaited MMO from Bioware.
Star Wars has a ready-made following (like WAR) and it would take an act of gross incompetence to make a failure of this game.
The launch was fairly painless and has settled down nicely. There are some excellent innovations especially around the companion/crafting mechanic and, despite being a bit simplistic, the space battles are a nice diversion.
It all feels slick and very well produced and I’m sure it will be a great success – as long as they keep Carrie Gouskos away from it.

So what’s in  store for 2012 -

Legend Of Grimrock – I have many fond memories of playing the Dungeon Master and Wizardry series and I’m really looking forward to this dungeon crawl. There’s even going to be an option to automap – no more graph paper – I’ve still got my original DM maps somewhere.

Dark Millenium – Not a great deal of information on this 40k based MMO from THQ. It’s due for release in 2013 but I would expect beta testing to start sometime in 2012.

In the meantime I’ll be immersing myself in the Star Wars saga and continuing with Skyrim, I may even get around to a few of the many Steam games I bought in the December sales – my son is recommending Metro 2033.

My New Year resolution is to spend less time at work and more time playing games and my New Year wish is for Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning to be bought out by an independent and given the love it deserves.

See you in 2012

Bye Bye WAR

I do all my best thinking when I’m out walking the dog in the early hours of the morning – the trouble is I’ve forgotten most of it by the time I’ve had my breakfast and got to the computer.
I tried to justify covering SWTOR, Skyrim etc. in what was supposed to be a Warhammer blog but I can’t so I’m just going to change tack and make the blog about Warhammer, gaming in general and whatever springs to mind.

I’ve not played WAR for a while now because I’m having far too much fun in SWTOR despite the servers going on and off like the lights on Cleethorpes prom.
Unfortunately, there’s just nothing in WAR to get me to log back in at the moment – maybe the things just around the corner will persuade me but I doubt it.
WAR took a nose dive in 2011 after Carrie Gouskos got her hands on it and it hasn’t recovered; the trouble is Mythic don’t seem too bothered, preferring to expend their resources on UO, DAOC and WOH.
Maybe Mythic are polishing the older games to come up with a more enticing model – one subscription for UO, DAOC and WAR. Maybe they hope that their bastard child WOH will turn around their fortunes. Who knows? Mythic are not know for their communication skills at the best of times.
I’ve invested over 3 years in WAR and I’ve had some good times playing it but the past few months have shown me just what contempt Mythic have for their subscribers.
When you see what can be achieved with F2P MMOs why should anyone bother wasting money on a game that has no support and no development.
It’ll be interesting to see what MMO model THQ will follow with Dark Millenium next year – will it go straight to F2P?

Anyhow, as far as festive forum fun goes this just about took the mince-pie – Class Action -  It was about everyone getting together and taking Mythic to court but the discussion has been removed.

So it’s onward and upward with SWTOR and dragon slaying in Skyrim – see you in 2012

/Cheers

WAR Relic/Fortress Proposals

James Casey has started a Dev Discussion about the proposals for the introduction of the Relic/Fortress feature with full details

Dev Discussion: Relic/Fortress

There’s also a new sceanrio line-up as of today -

Tier 1
Nordenwatch
Battle for Praag
Gates of Ekrund (6v6)

Tier 2
Nordenwatch
Mourkain Temple
Gates of Ekrund (6v6)

Tier 3
Nordenwatch
Mourkain Temple
Gates of Ekrund (6v6)
Reikland Factory

Tier 4
Nordenwatch
Mourkain Temple
Gates of Ekrund (6v6)
Reikland Factory
Caledor Woods (6v6)

and 50% bonus to XP and RR until the 4th January

Brokeback Mountain Quest?

I’d like to be bad but, as chance would have it, I’ve chosen the same server for my Empire chaps as PC Gamer’s guild and I can’t get back on without a lengthy wait. The same happened with WAR on Norn and I eventually ended up as the Guild Leader for them (PCG AOK).
So I’m plugging away at my Smuggler on Rogue Moon – going for the Gunslinger speciality. Everything is going very smoothly – one or two niggles: no means of scaling the ui, can’t move the boxes around and can’t move the companions abilities on the hotbar – if you know how let me know please. The background music and effects kept dropping out last night and some enemies were invisible except for their ID but nothing game breaking.
Which brings me to the companion – with my Imperial Agent I got a female companion who was just as evil as I felt like playing and looked at me with adoring eyes whenever I went Dark; no problem. With the Smuggler I have a male companion who doesn’t like either the Empire or the Republic; he says bugger all when I give him some nice new armour or weapons but goes all gooey when I do a good deed – he has affection for me. I’m not in the least bit homophobic but I feel a little awkward when this guy does a happy dance after I give him a present. Maybe I’m getting into the role a bit too much but I half expect him to sidle up to me in a cantina and offer a Brokeback Mountain quest any time soon. So for the time being I’m going to look on his affection as hero worship and hope he doesn’t get too clingy – he’s doing a lot of solo work at the moment.

WAR: The server merge seems to have sorted out the lack of action with many players returning and plenty of action in all tiers.
There’s an XP & RR bonus from tomorrow (22nd) until the completion of Keg’s End and the new Scenario changes will also come into effect.
James Casey has apologised for the delay in getting the Forts back in this post.
Apparently it was due to a technical fault with the test server but it’s something to look forward to in the new year.
There’ll be a Dev Discussion around the Forts/Relic proposals later on for comment.