Topics

76

The Dog & Duck / What I have been doing the past week

« on: October 27, 2008, 01:26:11 PM »

I haven't logged on to WAR since last Monday (I think). Nothing spectacular going on, my interests have just been diverted a bit. Those who know me from before prolly know I have a short attention span at times; in fact, the shortest attention span in my family (my youngest kid is 3.5 years, and he can stay focused on things much longer than I ever could).

Anyway, I've been playing three other games the past week.

Dominions 3 and its "Conceptual Balance Mod". I like the game a lot (even though I suck at it), and the CB mod has opened up lots of strategies and tactics I've never before thought of

UFO:Extraterrestials with bman's mod. This game, with the mod, is so much like Laser Squad and X-COM from years back. Played it last week so much I burned myself out by Saturday...

American Civil War. Been looking at this strategy-game on and off. Tried the demo last year, and it felt confusing as hell. A real-life friend swears it is the best strategy game ever made, and that it really captures the same spirit of VG's "Civil War" and GDW's "A House Divided" (old board games we used to play back in 80's and 90's). So I installed the demo again last weekend. First impression was still it feels like shit, to be honest. But I waded a couple times through the short campaign included in the demo, got lots of good advice and answers from the forum (and wiki), so I got a hang of the game. And as I now my friend I just had to believe he can't be totally mad, so I bought the game digitally today (from GamersGate), installed on the work computer and patched it up and tested it on my lunch hour. It looks *great*. Compared to the demo, UI is cleared up a lot, lots of more tooltips. And what is more, easy to grasp scenarios. Boy can a demo give a wrong impression of a game?! Anyway, I guess I'll spend the next couple days exploring this game.


Altough I am already starting to feel the desire to hammer some skulls online in WAR...

77

Warhammer Online / Wish I could have a wish for WAR

« on: October 20, 2008, 07:49:36 AM »

I would wish for the guild-calender to be viewed outside the game (I think I might get odd looks if I installed WAR to my computer here at work). Like is there any guild-activity in the calendar for Tuseday or Thursday evening this week...

78

Warhammer Online / Some sceenshots

« on: October 14, 2008, 05:03:02 AM »

Some random screenshots from the past week or so.



http://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=avelornay4.jpg
Praedor went in his late teens to Avelorn, and saw the invading Dark Elf ships. It was a relief to see at least one of them sinking!



http://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=momik1.jpg
Attacking the goblin keep with guildies and random PUGers in Marshes of Madness. Organ guns, you just have to love them!



http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=horrorszf2.jpg
In Altdorf, after doing some rat-catching in the sewers, the party of guild members invested a rumour about a daemon-infestation. Oh horror! There were horrors, and lots of them!



http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gunbadsn3.jpg
Raiding Gunbad, and a loot chest was recieved after a baddie went down. Notice how the dwarfs form a protective pocket around the chest while Praedor takes a good pose.



http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=highpasshd5.jpg
Defending the human keep in High Pass. Destruction had broken in when Hands of Justice arrived to repel them. However, Destruction broke in through the outer gate again, and the following barrage duel was cruel.



http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fieldcu3.jpg
At Blackfire Pass Destruction forces outnumbered Order forces. Order had maybe 50 troops present, Destruction around 60. The difference was Hands of Justice, altough we were a minority, we did act in an orderly fashion and that gave the whole Order force some back-bone. Destruction forces were pushed away from the field!



http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gatesdh5.jpg
With Destruction forces in a chaotic rout, Order forces charged towards the gates of the keep.



EDIT: Damn, I still haven't figured out how to make the thumbnails work properly. Added in the urls to the pictures.

79

Join Us / Hergo, witch-hunter

« on: October 10, 2008, 04:49:31 AM »

Making an application for my son, because he is not that fluent in English yet.

Characters & Classes:

Hergo the Witch Hunter, Rank 13, Renown 12


Gaming Style:

*Very* casual. Sometimes after school playing 1 - 2 hours, usually doing scenarios. He plays all the classes, on both sides, but the witch hunter seems to be his "main" (at least for now).

80

Warhammer Online / WAR guild calendar times

« on: October 08, 2008, 07:55:25 AM »

There was some confusion last night of what time-zone the times in the WAR guild calendar are. The same confusion did exist already during beta, and it hasn't been decently clarified, because the answer is possibly too simple

The time seen in the calendar is *your* time.

Lets say you live in Germany and see in the calendar there is a today a Gundabad run at 8:25 PM. That really does mean 8:25 PM in Germany. If you live in Scotland, you would see 7:25 PM. If you live in Finland, you'd see 9:25 PM.

Let me iterate: You don't need to think how to convert the time in the calendar to your time-zone. The time in the calendar *is* the time in your time-zone (or rather, the time-zone your computer is set to, but that should be correct by default) 

81

Warhammer Online / The concept of Effective Health Points

« on: October 07, 2008, 01:15:36 PM »

EHP, Effective Health Points, is something familiar to those who have played a tank class in a MMO. In WAR I think it is something everybody should be aware of, because in a PvP enviroment everybody is a tank

Lots of the theorycrafting and examples are taken from http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100152 , please do take a look there for a more vivid discussion on this


In WAR we have two things affecting health: Wounds (each wound add 10 health) and Toughness (each toughness reduces incoming damage by 0.2 DPS). In items Wounds and Toughness (and everything else too) have same value: Same item in its different variations can give +20 Toughness or +20 Wounds (or Iniative, or Weaponskill, etc etc).

50 wounds is 500 health. 50 Toughness reduces incoming damage by 10 DPS.

Lets say you recieve 250 damage from a single source over 5 seconds. If you had 50 toughness more you would instead have taken 200 damage, but if you had 50 extra wounds you would now have 200 health more left. Isn't wounds simply way better always?

Let's say you are a paper-doll with 6000 health. Let's say you are taking 2500 damage over 5 seconds from 10 different sources (for example 3 players whacking you and a couple dots on you).

If you had 50 wounds extra, you would have taken effectively 2000 damage (6000+500 - 2500), but if you had 50 toughness extra instead, you would have taken effectively 2000 health. With the extra wounds you would thus be at 4000 health, while if you had the 50 toughness extra you would be at 4000 health too!

Now calculate in healing. Lets say you have warrior priest that is able to heal you for 1000 points every five seconds. Lets see what the health is after each 5 seconds if you are the "paperdoll" (1), have +50 wounds (2), have +50 Tougness (3)

1) 6000, 4500, 3000, 1500, 0
2) 6500, 5000, 3500, 2000, 500, -1000
3) 6000, 5000, 4000, 3000, 2000, 1000, 0




Now, I don't claim Toughness is better than wounds. It is not! But in situations where there is lots of healing available and lots of sources of damage, it is better to stack up on Toughness really good. Especially the tanks, but others too, might be adviced to hold on to "Tougness gear" if it is equally good as "Wounds gear" otherwise. As a general rule of thumb, Wounds let you survive the initial spike damage, but Toughness keeps you going for longer (if you just made it through the first seconds )


In essence, both Wounds and Toughness increase you Effective Health Poins. It is important to keep these two balanced, and if necessary, swap in different gear for different situations

82

Warhammer Online / First day defending Reikwald

« on: October 06, 2008, 08:56:10 PM »

Glorious victories at Reikwald today. Twice!

As usual, I didn't remember to take any good screenshots   But I got something....



The Dwarf with words, Sven, told the story of the first battle with elegance!

http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=svenun3.jpg


A few hours later Destruction was able to conquer Praag and Reikland again, so they got to attack Reikwald for the second time the same day. HoJ members were rushing in from around the world. When I got to the outer wall, Destruction breached the outer gate (there were perhaps 3 warbands worth of Destruction present at this phase). Running back like mad in the middle of Destruction warriors, I made it inside the keep, barely alive. Climbing upwards I noticed the wall cannons were already manned. Climbed up one of the high-towers, and there I could deploy my hellblaster. Much carnage followed, as I had a field day spraying death from my high and safe position (high enough that spell-casters couldn't nuke me, so I was safe up there even being the sissy rank 21 I am ).

Destruction was kicked out, but they came back for more. I was one of the many who were at the outer wall, me again trusting in the mad-firepower of the hellblaster. Cannons on both sides started spewing death.

http://img134.imageshack.us/my.php?image=duelqs4.jpg


But Destruction was running out of time, and the defences held.

http://img134.imageshack.us/my.php?image=victoryou9.jpg

Order reinforcements arrived, and Destrction was once again pushed back to Praag (when you succesfully defend the "gates", ie can repel the attacker for one full hour, the attacker is pushed back one more area, so a succesfull defence at Reikwald turns also Reikland to Order control).



EDIT: Couldnt get thumbnails work as I wanted, so for now just links to the pictures until I figure this out

83

Join Us / Praedor the Warrior Priest

« on: September 29, 2008, 12:25:46 PM »

Characters & Classes:

Praedor the Warrior Priest, Rank 17, Renown 14


Age:

39


Location:

Finland


Timezone:

+2 CET


Gaming Style:

Some weeks I play a lot, others I play very little if at all. Sometimes I have a very early shift, which means I have to get to bed very early the previous night, but might log on quite early next day.


About you:

I am the average teen supermodel girl of the internet, aka a bald, overweight middle-aged male who likes beer. I am a pharmacist, married, four children. I am quite fluent (at least I like to believe so) in Finnish, Swedish and English. My working hours fluctuate quite a bit from week to week and day to day, so at times a bit hard to plan further than my nose. I am a strategygame geek (I play only multiplayer games, such as Europa Universalis, Dominions 3 and Empires in (H)Arm (as PbEM)) and a P&P roleplayer. I play base (and guitar when it gets dull to hammer the base alone), and in my youth I actually was at one point hellbent to become a professional rock-musician (sadly it seems you actually need some musical skill to become that ). I used to play football in the lower divisions (Position: left defender, my nickname was "The Scythe" (roughly translated) amongst my teammates, as I didn't mind that much what I was kicking at as long as the opposing player with the ball didn't continue towards our goal). I like to watch football on TV and sip some beer. If there is no football, like to read books and sip beer, or play games (either computer or tabletop) and sip beer. Did I mention I like beer?

I was in WAR closed beta since last February, so I've been around in the game (I mainly played Witch Hunter (Tracer), Ironbreaker (Grungnir) and Discipline of Khaine (Quelthor) during beta). I've played WoW since about launch (bought the game 1st of March 2005), altough the past year or so has been quite "casual" (ie sometimes there are weeks when I don't log on at all) and I have now been cold-turkey from WoW for a bit over a month. I also played LOTRO and AO a bit, and I was a beta-tester for AoC (and played a couple weeks of the "free" month, ie enough to see the good stuff (Tortage and the couple levels after that) on all archetypes).

I am known as a zealot troll crybaby on some gaming forums. I have  opinions on basically everything, and usually I am dead-wrong :p  I am possibly the nicest man you've ever met when I am in a good mood, but when I get annoyed at something I make it sure everybody will be aware of the situation. I bear grudges like a dwarf, but I like to believe I also never forget it when somebody has done a favour to me.


Questions for us?

I am but one of (hopefully) a few. Me and a few online friends (from a multinational gamer group, originally from a strategy game forum who went and formed a WoW guild, which got more similarily thinking mature players, then split around as interests broadened etc, but still kept together on the forums) are looking for a guild of mature players. We didn't sadly succeed to pull more people to WAR, so forming our own mini-guild seems rather pointless; WAR is after all very much about guilds doing things together. Thus my question is:
Would it be possible to wait a bit with your answer to me, so that I'd see if my friends are applying too, and then give us the answer as a group? I'd like to join a guild together with my mates, or not join at all

I have actually a second question too:
Do you have "social" members, ie members that don't necessarily contribute that much to the guild (for example, they don't play very often or are not so very "hardcore" in the game-mechanics), but are significant real life people to some guild-member?