Isolation and Industry - A Civ IV Roleplaying Story

I've blogged before about a mod for Civilization IV called Fall from Heaven II. In short, it's a major overhaul to the game, focused on a fantasy-oriented game with demons, elves, magic and of course, dwarves!

It's a very fun mod, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in a fantasy-based strategic game.

Anyway, on the Civfanatic forums, one player by the name of Shatner posted a story about a game where he decided to roleplay the Khazad (the dwarven civilization in Fall from Heaven), as isolationists focused on making money, and challenged everyone else to give it a try as well. In Fall from Heaven, the Khazad have a unique game mechanic called the Dwarven Vault. Basically, it provides happiness (or unhappiness) based upon how much gold you have on hand divided by the number of cities. To get the biggest benefit from the vault, you need to have 500+ gold per city. So, the rules for this game were as follows:

* You are not allowed to place a 2nd city until your gold reserves reach 1000 gold. And you must never let the Dwarven Vault drop below Overflowing (500+ gold per city)

* You must refuse any and all trades with other players, as well as Open Border agreements

The story of his adventure can be seen here, and below, you can find a summary of my attempts at this type of game!


Game setup: Advanced Start, Panagea, Barbarian World and No Tech Brokering

Khazak was founded in what would be later called 0 A.G. (Above Ground) on a hillside next to a quiet river overlooking the ocean. Layers of valuable marble lay nearby as well as a cows and cotton. This mission to the Sky-gazers world had been funded with great reluctance, and we had strict orders to show that it could turn a profit before expansion would even be considered.

As it turned out, we were actually in a backwater corner of the world, with three narrow land bridges connecting our section of the world to everyone else. The northernmost path was blocked by a mountain, and the southern two were firmly in control of the Bannor people. Isolation it seemed, would not be hard to achieve.

Small dwarven war parties were sent out to scout the lands. They found a number of suitable sites for future settlements, and also kept the barbarians in check, repeatedly raiding and burning a village near a small lake that the orcs stubbornly kept rebuilding.

Starting early on, the Bannor people found themselves constantly at odds with two of their neighbors, the Balseraphs and the Sheaim. The Bannor people were caught in-between these powers and knew only war for their entire lives. But unfortunately for them, they weren't particularly good at it, and their borders steadily shrank.

Acquiring the funds to prove to our sponsors that this expedition was worthwhile proved to be a long and arduous task. But Kilmorph smiled on our efforts, and we found valuable ores in a rock that fell from the sky (which some sages claimed was proof that there is a ceiling above the sky after all). But something clearly wasn't quite right with some of the dwarves. Perhaps that had stood in the sun for too long. Or perhaps this was an initial sign of the coming evil. Whatever the case, we had to deal with no less than four instances of troops who were caught torturing prisoners for fun. The first two times, the troops were summarily dissolved, by the third time, it seemed there was little we could do to halt the process entirely, so only a reprimand was issued, and the fourth time, well... the fourth time was none other than Bambur himself, and the old grayhairs simply muttered into their beards and suddenly found reasons to check the tallies on their gold reserves.

As we waited patiently in our splendidly walled city for the vaults to fill, the Runes of Kilmorph religion was founded in Khazad and skilled dwarven soldier-builders were drawn up into regiments, ready and capable of whatever tasks might be given to them. Not long after, we met our financial goals that had been set, and quickly founded a second settlement nearby called Halowell. Many troops of loyal Soldiers of Kilmorph marched to the new town and quickly erected palisades, walls, a monument and a temple. Within a short few years, our new settlement had all the amenities and its rapid development was a source of pride amongst the architects.

Due to our remote location and adamant refusal to open our borders to anyone, news of the outside was scarce. Oblivious to most of the happenings in the rest of the world, the Dwarven people celebrated their success and wealth, founding a third and then a fourth settlement. It seemed as if everything was going according to plan. We had almost yearly requests from one side or another to join them in their wars against other civilizations that we had barely even heard of, but every envoy was sent away empty-handed. Over the years, the attitudes of the other leaders became increasingly hostile, but none ever went so far as to declare war.

While my dwarves were slowly expanding their territory, things were getting a little wacky in the rest of the world. Keelyn founded Ashen Veil, which was immediately adopted by his Sheaim neighbors the next year, and the Hippus the year after that. It was not long before the Infernals also arrived on the scene (~turn 200, which is the earliest I've ever seen that happen on Epic speed). Evil was quickly encompassing the world.

The dismantling of the Bannor empire proceeded apace, and I quickly found myself with a new neighbor, the oddly strange Balseraph. The only reason the Bannor remained an individual nation at all was because his final two towns were locked behind my securely shut borders and he obviously had a strong moral compunction against swearing fealty to a king who openly sacrifices at the Altar of the Veils. With the Balserpahs came the Broken Lands and Burning Sands. In fact, as I would later discover, about half of the world had been converted to hell terrain by this point. Falamar had also converted to Ashen Veil

The Ljosalfar had (of course) founded and adopted Fellowship of the Leaves, and it turned out that they had a sizeable empire on the other side on the world-encompassing continent. But the only other good civ, the Malakim, foolishly declared war on Hyborem and found themselves also beset by Keelyn, the Lanun and the Clan (who were locked behind the Malakim and with whom we never even had contact). This eventually proved to be too much, and the Malakim bent their necks to the yoke of the Lanun. But interestingly enough, they were allowed to keep their tree-hugging religion and remained known as a Good civilization.

Surprisingly, during all this time, none of the AI players ever declared war on me. Most of them were hostile (except for the Lanun for some reason), and they continued to make various demands, but none seemed willing to rouse the legendary dwarven ire. But I knew it would happen eventually, and my small empire, now encompassing 5 cities would not last long against their combined might. The first gauntlet was thrown down by the Hippus as a stack of horsemen and Diseased Corpses attacked me through my new border with Keelyn.

They were resoundingly beaten and destroyed. Ditto for the next army that was sent my way. But now everyone wanted in on the fun, and I soon had war declarations from Os-Gabella, Keelyn and the Infernals as well. I pushed across the borders and found three nearby Balseraph cities, two of which were on hills. Unfortunately, the coffers were not full enough for acquisition of another settlement. And I didn't want to start razing a bunch of cities and drive up the Armageddon Counter (I was already advantage of every opportunity that I could to lower it), but something had to be done to keep the battles from ravaging the developed parts of my lands.

The dwarven elders gathered together in their deep halls for some serious discussion and finally agreed that something drastic would need to be done. In the dead of night, secret envoys were sent out to the beleaguered Bannor people. The Khazad borders were opened to select foreigners for the first time ever. Thankfully the Bannor population was pitifully small and they showed little willingness to venture into Dwarven lands. Another promise was made to the Bannor by the dwarves. We would strike at the Balseraphs and attempt to free the enslaved towns, bestowing any on flat land back to the Bannor, keeping only two settlements for ourselves, both of which happened to sit atop a lovely set of hills (well maybe not so lovely with demons, disembodied screams and other such nightmares stalking their hell-scarred slopes, but that would be dealt with later). To try and help bolster the pitiful humans, we also sent them free shipments of Iron from the famous Mines of Gal-Dur.

And so it began, Bambur led the main Dwarven assault force, consisting of Trebuchets, Stonewardens and Axemen. The dwarves had taken riding lessons, but alas, it turned out that there were no pigs to be found anywhere and the early experiments into cow-riding ended only in disaster. So this would be it. Solid dwarven muscle tramping off to battle on their own two feet. That's how it should be anyway. By Stone and Hammer and Rock and Thew we would prove our worth!

The first flatland Balseraph town fell easily and was returned to Bannor control. Unfortunately, their army had apparently not gotten the memo, so it fell to the dwarves to defend the town from retaliatory strikes. This sudden switch from attacking force to occupying policemen brought my progress to a grinding crawl before it even started. Eventually some Bannor defense forces arrive and I was able to move away from that town and approach the first target. But as the war machines slowly slogged through the scarred landscape, assassins and taskmasters jumped out from behind every rock, destroying many Trebuchets before they could even get in range of the city walls. So again my attacking armies ground to a halt, fortifying on nearby hills as more siege engines were ordered to the front lines. Unfortunately, it turned out that only one settlement had the know-how to create these magnificent rock-slingers, so production was slow.

And then, not two turns before I was about to launch a full-out assault, a Royal Guard moved into the town I was about to siege. Royal Guard, fortified, in a city, on a hill, and I only have a handful of trebuchets. This isn't good. I obviously needed more firepower. So more troops were called up, research into better weapons was ordered, but it was already too late. As my forces gathered in the hills, enemy armies from all the evil nations began marching into my lands. Every 10 years or so, a new army would approach. Sometimes it was the Infernals, their Imps driving the demons and undead forward. Other times it would be the Hippus, with armies of catapults, flanked by horsemen. But they always followed the same path than brought them right between the hills were my armies were gathering. These were destroyed every time, but my losses were just enough to keep me static. And the opposing forces began to field meaner and nastier troops. Ritualists, Berserkers, Arbequeses, and finally even a Phalanx. Things were not looking favorable for the dwarves...


And that's were I ended. Keelyn is the dominant evil power, with the Sheaim and the Hippus as his vassals. On the opposite side of the world, the Ljosalfar have the highest score and they, along with their angelic allies, are at war with the evil empires as well, but no cities have fallen for either side on that front.

I probably could keep playing and just hunker down, fortify the hills near my borders and snipe at any armies that try to pass by as I play tech catch-up, but seeing as how I'm fighting with Axeman, Soldiers of Kilmorph and Stonewardens and my enemies are now sending Phalanxes my way, that sounds a bit too tedious and frustrating for me.

Post-game Thoughts

Despite my imminent doom, this was a pretty fun game and I'll likely try it again. Being limited to one city for so long allowed me to build up plenty of soldiers so that any subsequent cities were quickly filled with whatever buildings they needed, which is a very nice way to expand. But I'm not sure what to do about the tech gap. I can see where disabling tech trading could help, since that will be limiting the AI to some of the same self-imposed player restrictions for playing as Isolationists. Despite having seen such an early founding and adoption of Ashen Veil, and also an early entry by Hyborem (who for once wasn't consigned to the icy wastes), the Armageddon Counter only stands at 22. I know I happened to get a couple of events that allowed me to lower it a bit, but I am a bit surprised that it's not much higher. Perhaps the elves had also been working to keep it low.

My attempts to bring the Bannor into it and break the Pact of Isolation were purely self-serving, and ended up having little effect in the long run. Having only five cities for production, I had hoped that the Bannor could at least contribute some warm bodies to the fray. Which they did, but it was not enough. And since my coffers were not full enough to support another town, I wanted some way to push control back towards the Balseraph lands without leaving a big empty area with a razed city were anyone could come along and plop down a new one. And ultimately, the city limit is what hurt me. I was forced to delay my attack of the hillside town for many turns while my funds built up, and by the time I could attack, the defensive forces were too much for me to overcome.

Steam Customer Service Sucks

Title pretty much says it all. Avoid any dealings with them if you can! If anyone is interested in hearing the details of my experience, follow the link below...

So I've used Steam for years, though only recently have I ever made a purchase through their system. Over the holidays, I bought several games during their New Years's sale. One of them, Mosby's Confederacy, never would work. It always locked up when I tried to go into a mission. I finally gave up, uninstalled it, and decided to ask Steam for a refund for that game (though I wanted to keep the other 4 games I had purchased at the same time since they worked splendidly).

1) First, I had to create a completely new account just to enter a ticket for customer service. Despite having this built-in cart/game launcher and updater/community service in one hand-dandy application, they couldn't add any customer support to it?!

2) Several days later I got the following response.

Thank you for contacting Steam Customer Support.

Unfortuately, refunds issued are based on the transaction itself and not the individual items within the purchase.

This means if you have requested a refund for a cart purchase, once the refund is issued, it will be for the entire cart purchase.

Note: Emphasis is mine. The spelling error with the word 'unfortunately' is theirs. Oh, the irony!

You have got to be joking me! They can't do line-item refunds? I can go to any store in the country, including McDonald's, and get a refund for a single item that was broken or non-functional or simply unacceptable. I worked for a number of retail shops in the mid-90s, including ones that used a computer system to track transactions and we could give line-item refunds. The company I work for now has a crappy shopping cart from the year 2000 that barely communicates with our other back-end server software, and we can give line-item refunds.

Yet here it is, 2009, and an online tech company that is hoping to position itself as a leader of downloadable games is unable to handle such a simple request?!! Utterly, friggin' ridiculous.

Improving RvR in Warhammer Online Part II: Keeps

My first post about improving RvR in Warhammer Online dealt with Battlefield Objectives and suggestions to make them worth taking and defending beyond the simple desire for free bonus renown and influence. In this post, I'll delve into the keeps and my suggestions for improving keep battles, both for offense and defense. Though some of this applies to fortresses as well, I think that Fortress attacks should be truly spectacular rather than simply a larger, laggier keep, so I'll have a more detailed Fortress post later on.

I originally started writing this several months back, and since then, there have been some changes to keep defense that I would like to touch on before we get to my ideas about improving keep combat.

First off, and the change with the most impact, was the fix/addition of the ability for melee DPS to enter keeps via the postern doors. This has added a welcome facet to keep sieges. No longer are you always safe while pouring the oil or manning the walls. You have to always keep an eye out for that Witch Hunter or Choppa sneaking in through the side door and charging into the defenders. Single-player defenses are much less effective than they were before.

Another new feature is the addition of Ordnance. Ordnance can be found as drops from players, and in random locations around Battlefield Objectives and Keeps. Players can use these items to purchase upgraded, ranged siege equipment that does more damage. Sounds great on paper, but the exorbitant cost makes this addition completely useless. It costs 900 Ordinance to purchase one of these siege engines. After several weeks of play, picking up Ordnance everytime I see it and grabbing a dozen or so from our Guild Vault, I have a grand total of 50. So, at that rate, I can look forward to trying out one of these new siege engines in October of 2010!

And finally, we have the new keep upgrade system. This allows guilds who have claimed keeps to spend more gold to upgrade the keep. Again, this system looks great on paper, but the charges are ridiculous, resulting in players upgrading keeps when they come under attack, and then downgrading them once the attack is repelled. Basic cost is 3.6 gold per hour. Each upgrade after that adds anywhere from 1.2 gold per hour to 6 gold per hour. So with just two upgrades, you're already looking at paying at least 10 gold per hour, which adds up very quickly. (note: and apparently, the upgrade costs are being taken from the guild vault every 3 1/2 minutes instead of every 5, which further compounds the issue). I understand that there needs to be a noticeable cost for owning a keep, but this is a little much. I think that increasing the base cost of keep ownership and lowering the cost on most upgrades would be a step in the right direction.

So there we have the recent changes. And though I like them, and they have altered keep battles a little bit, it's still not enough. Follow the link below to continue reading and see my suggestions for further improving keep combat in WAR.

Currently in WAR, keeps are very simple affairs. Bash down the door, bash down the second door, kill the keep lord. This has been slightly improved recently with the change to allow melee DPS to enter enemy keeps via the postern door, but it's still basically the same assault and defense, modified only by the number of defenders and attackers.

Keep sieges should be epic events. Siege engines firing on both sides. Tanks cursing as they swing the ram against the door and do their best to avoid being boiled alive. Attackers trying to scramble up siege ladders and gain a foothold on the wall while the defenders throw them back. Battles swirling across the entire keep area and surrounding environs. Something to be remembered and where different tactics can come into play on a siege by siege basis.

One of the main problems with keep defense is the sheer speed that a warband can tear apart an undefended keep. A full warband can destroy both doors and the keep lord in under 5 minutes. Simply receiving a message that a keep is under attack, running or recalling to the nearest flight master, flying /loading to the correct zone, and then running to the keep can often take several minutes. And that's just for a single individual. Trying to actually organize a group to defend the keep takes much longer. Generally, significant keep defenses only occur after there has already been some activity from both sides in a zone. This has changed a bit with the ability to upgrade the amount of hitpoints on keep doors, but they are still very flimsy when focus-fired by a significant number of players.

On the other side, taking a heavily defended keep is extremely difficult. So often, the general strategy when hitting a zone is to take both keeps first, as you'll hopefully be able to secure them before any sizable defensive force arrives.

Improving on these issues requires a careful balance. We want to make keeps hard enough to get into that it gives potential defenders a time to respond once they hear that the keep is under attack, but we also don't want to make it overly difficult to assault a keep.

So there are several things I hope to accomplish with this proposal:

* Provide more time and easier methods of responding to keep attacks

* Make it easier for attackers to stop stragglers from entering the keep

* Provide more assault options to reduce the issue of single, monotonous bottlenecks

* Spread the combat out in and around the keeps

* Provide more decision points for both attackers and defenders during a siege


I'll break this down into specific sections, though of course, since this is all about keep battles, there will be overlap between the concepts.

Defense Improvements

Front doors. Currently, keep doors are ridiculously fragile when hit by a full warband. I've seen them destroyed in as little as 60 seconds. Front doors should mitigate 90% of all non-ram damage. This puts the door focus back on the ram crew, which is where it should be. Everyone else should be guarding posterns, manning siege engines or trying to lay down suppressing fire on the walls to help keep the ram crew safe.

Oil. Oil should do more damage, making it nearly impossible for anyone to go beat on the door while the oil is being poured. It does decent support damage currently, but any group with decent healers can easily outheal the oil damage. Oil currently relies on other AoE attacks at the ram in order to kill anyone who isn't overly squishy and/or missing a healer.

Patrolling guard groups should have a champion to lead them. The leashing range on patrols should be heavily increased. It would be nice if they would chase all over the keep, only stopping if they lose line of sight for a few seconds. To avoid someone kiting an entire patrol on their own, ranged guards should have a snare attack.

Ranged guards on walls. Regular guard-types, except they are rooted. Also, the biggest problem with rooted, ranged AI in MMOs is their inability to switch targets. If their current target runs out of LOS, they should look for and acquire a new target. They should also be killable and respawn at the same rate as other guards.

Portcullis. Every keep should have a portcullis (gate) on the inside part of the main entryway through the outer wall. This cannot be destroyed, and must be opened via a lever in the tower above the gate. Bashing down the front gate is just one step of the attack. There should be a lever in the tower above the gate that controls the portcullis, allowing the defenders to drop it down in the middle of a charge, cutting the attacking force into two parts. This creates a strong incentive for the attackers to grab and maintain control of the gate tower.

Keep recall scrolls. At some point, this was listed as a reward for high-level guilds, but either its been removed, or its much too far up the guild progression meter. These should be relatively expensive (lets say 50 silver), and when used, should send you directly to the keep that your guild has claimed. If your guild doesn't have a keep claimed, then the scroll is unusable.

Offense Improvements

Rams. Rams should be more interactive. Hitting it near the sweet spot should have a major effect. Currently, its hardly noticeable. Whats more important is having warm bodies on the ram. As long as the controller is swinging, it really doesn't matter much what the other players on the ram do. I often take the opportunity to grab a drink or go to the bathroom when I have a secondary spot on the ram. If everyone hits the ram meter at 50%, the ram should do 50% of normal damage. Make hitting that 90-100% section more important than it currently is. Rams are already difficult to set up due to AoE, oil and the extremely low health of the ram pad. But getting one into place should be the primary focus of a frontal attack. Rams should also mitigate 75% of the incoming damage to those using the ram. Manning a ram is already a boring and thankless task. At least make it easier to survive while staring at the door and the ram-o-meter.

Postern attacks. Postern doors should be attackable and destroyable. The doors should be tough, and the area just inside the door should be a narrow, cramped, killing zone. Attacking through the postern should not be the best nor the easiest choice, but it should be an option.

Opening the gate from the inside - A lever in the room above the outer door that allows an enemy player to open the door. Casting time should be long (15 seconds maybe?), and should be completely interrupted when receiving any damage. Add a couple of champion guards.

Siege ladders. 5-second casting time, completely interrupted on damage. Once in place, it takes a defender 5 seconds casting time to throw them down, at which point the ladder is destroyed. Climbing up the ladder also takes a 5 second, interruptable cast. On completion, you're transported to the top of the wall where the ladder is anchored. These are only usable on the outer wall (and if it helps, you can even add in 'pads' for them). They should also have a cooldown, maybe 30 seconds or so (and only triggered after successful usage) to prevent insta-invasion via siege ladder.

General Improvements

Doors - Postern doors AND front doors cant be used while you are in combat. ALTERNATIVELY, make them actual doors that open and close so that if you want to open the doors to allow your friends inside you can, but, if there are enemy players nearby, they might be able to dash inside as well. At the moment, it is much to easy to run through the sieging force and jump in the front door, which is completely ridiculous. You should have to fight your way inside. Or, if that's impossible, harass the sieging force from the outside, picking away at their numbers while causing a distraction and forcing them to turn some of their forces to deal with you. Even if you can't get in the door, it's still possible to be ressed to inside the keep as long as you have a friendly healer on the walls. But the dash through the middle of an enemy warband to be insta-ported to safety inside needs to be thrown out entirely. Excursions from inside against attacking forces should almost always come from the posterns. Hopping in and out the front door to harass the ram crew is another annoyance that needs to be removed from the game. If you're coming out the front door in the middle of a siege, it should be because you have an army behind you that is charging out as well.

The main issue with this suggestion, is that once you're in combat, it's hard to get reflagged as being out of combat during a siege. I'm not exactly sure how to resolve that. One option would be to allow exit door usage during combat, while disabling the ability to enter a door during combat. That way, if you want to go out and make a suicide run, you're welcome to do so. But getting back inside safely is not as simple as frantically clicking on the door.

Ranged Siege. Ranged Siege is almost useless in most keep battles. Their damage output is too low, and the speed with which the front door usually falls makes their setup time. Increase siege engine damage. Add a short knockback to ballista attacks and a short-duration snare to catapult attacks. It also doesn't help that a number of siege pads, both inside and outside of keep, have poorly planned placement and/or LOS issues. Someone should take the time and carefully go through each and every siege pad, trying out various siege engines to make sure that every option is viable.

Multiple Points of Interest Inside Keeps

Another big problem I have with the current WAR keep design, is the fact that 90% the space inside of the outer walls goes unused. And some of the keeps have a number of buildings and other such things that would make battles in and around them interesting, but there is no reason to hang out away from the main keep unless you're trying to hide.

So, I propose that there be a number of important capture points within the walls that if owned by the defenders provide from defensive advantage. Unfortunately, a lot of the Tier 4 keeps aren't designed with this feature in mind, so you have places like Bloodfist Rock, which is nothing but barren ground inside the walls, and XX, which has almost no space to place any points of interest, so there would need to be a pretty significant overhaul of the keep layouts in order to make this idea work.

Here are a couple of suggestions for possible Points of Interest that would be worth fighting over within the keep walls.

Barracks - This will be the spawn point for all patrols in and around the keep. There will be a flag here, guarded by the guard captain (hero level NPC). Once the captain is killed, the attackers can take control of the flag (which would be presence-controlled, like many of the flags in scenarios). If the attackers control this point, guard respawns stop completely.

Respawn point - For the defenders. That's right, a respawn point within the keep! This would make it much easier to defend the outer walls (which will be needed with the alternate methods of getting past the walls mentioned earlier in this post), and also give those who can get in via the postern something to focus on besides the oil cauldron.

Teleport-in pad - To go along with my suggestion above about allowing guilds to recall to their owned keeps, there should be a certain, controllable spot within the keep walls that the attackers can take to prevent the Keep Recall scrolls from working for that keep.

Final Thoughts

So there are some ideas. Even though a lot of details are glossed over, I'm going to cut it off at this point to avoid writing a novel on the subject.

In short, I would love for keep sieges to be larger, more varied and more interesting affairs all around. A lot of these concepts won't stand alone, and some may be hindered by current game mechanics, but no armchair design doc should ever be implemented as-is. But I do think that some tweaking and brainstorming around these ideas could lead to some exciting and innovative changes to siege combat in WAR.

Eurogamer vs Darkfall

In case anyone doesn't keep up with these things, Eurogamer gave Darkfall a 2/10 score on their review. Obviously, Adventurine wasn't too happy about this score and after trying to sort it out with Eurogamer, took things public.

Tasos' first post.

To which Eurogamer responded, which prompted a followup post from Tasos yesterday, and then a 'final' post on the issue today.

I think Tasos comes off as too defensive and uppity a lot of the time, but I did like his final post. Also, I never realized just how much weight is given to these professional reviews. Personally, I prefer reading reviews on individual blogs instead. They generally point out good and bad things while approaching it from a true gamer perspective rather than a paid reviewer perspective.

/end

Demigod: Intial Impressions

I've played a lot or RTS games, starting with Dune 2, and proceeding through a plethora of others including Warcraft, Command and Conquer, and many more. But in recent years, it seems that the emphasis has shifted towards more and more micro-management and base baby-sitting, which I don't get a lot of enjoyment from. One of the best variations (and one of my favorite games of all-time) was the Myth series. One of the best features of this game was that it focused on controlling you troops. There was no base building, and when a unit died, it was gone for the rest of that match. This allowed the player to focus on the strategy and action of the game. Alas, the company behind this game pushed out one too many games in an attempt to cash in, ended up folding under, and no one since (that I know of) has tried to resurrect this type of gameplay.

Bu now, along comes Demigod! Demigod is an RTS game, and there is micro-management, but you're not worrying about sending peasants out to harvest gold or making sure that your Space Marines are securely nestled into their bunkers. That's all piddly stuff, beneath the notice of one who is aspiring to ascend to godhood. Instead you focus on your character (who can easily carve their way through waves of soldiers without breaking a sweat), crushing the pitiful mortal forces arrayed before you, clashing with enemy demigods, increasing your power and skills with battlefield experience and acquiring powerful artifacts as you and your team try to emerge victorious over the lesser contenders!

It may sound confusing and overly simple at first. "All I control is one character?" I can hear the laments even now. But, despite its seemingly shallow gameplay, once you get into it, you realize that Demigod is a complex game with enough variations to make sure that no two matches are ever exactly alike. Each Demigod has their own distinct playstyle, and even then, your strategies and options vary based on which skills you choose to focus on.

Gameplay is based around already developed bases that each side controls. Each base has a number of defensive structures, a shop to purchase basic equipment, portals that spawn computer-controlled soldiers (who are nothing more than fodder for your elevation to godhood), and a citadel where you can purchase upgrades for your entire team. The objective is to break the defenses of your opponents and destroy their citadels. In between the bases are various flags and capture points that provide a range of different bonuses to your team. Only the demigods can capture these flags, which creates an interesting dynamic as you frequently have to decide between aiding your troops or taking a detour to try and grab a nearby resource flag. There is a surprising amount of back and forth on the maps. The presence of one or more demigods in an area can radically shift the balance of power on that section of the map. And having your defenses broken does not mean the game is over. In a recent match I played, my team was not only assaulting our enemies' citadel, but we had captured both of their spawn points, which cut off all non-demigod reinforcements for them. I figured the game was a lock, got careless and died. Ten minutes later, they were in our base, doing the same thing to us, and my team eventually lost. I was both astounded and delighted to see such a major swing of momentum when playing with nothing but AI opponents. I imagine that multiplayer matches get even crazier!

So far I've only played the single-player game (though since all the maps are designed for team games, there were numerous AI-controlled Demigods who do provide some decent competition). I wanted to get a feel for the game, try out all eight Demigods and become more knowledgeable about a few of my favorites before diving into the maelstrom of fighting other players. And apparently, their multiplayer setup has been having some major difficulties. But that's alright. I'm fine with honing my skills against computer opponents while they work out the kinks in the system.

The number of maps are pretty limited at the moment, but I'm sure that list will expand in the near future. The developers have also stated that they plan on having free releases in the future that will include new Demigod characters. Demigod is easy to learn (which is good since there isn't a tutorial). I was able to dive right in and start playing. The basic controls and UI layout were very intuitive, and I pick up more advanced strategies and tricks every match I play.

All in all, I've found Demigod to be a very entertaining game that helps to grow the RTS field in new directions (though technically, the free player-created mod for Warcraft III, Defense of the Ancients, has had similar gameplay for a number of years now). This game should be enjoyable for anyone who loves RTS games, and also for those who found the genre, but disliked the amount of micro-management generally required to play most of them.

Here are a couple of related links about the game that you might find interesting and/or useful.

Tom Chick's overviews of each Demigod character

Demigod wiki

How to Acquire RvR gear with tokens in Warhammer Online

Another in my series of WAR guides, attempting to explain Mythic's poorly documented RvR schemes.

The latest RvR system change comes at us with recently released patch 1.2.1. As of this patch, there is now an additional way to acquire the RvR set gear. These items can still be found in gold reward bags from keep/fort/city captures, but now you can also collect the new medallions, and use these to purchase the gear.

The are several sources for these medallions: drops from enemy players; rewards from keep and fort captures; rewards from keep and fort bags; and rewards for T4 zone captures.

Enemy players now have a chance to drop one or more medallions as loot when they die in addition to their normal loot. The type of medallions players drop is based on their renown rank. The highest level medallions can only be found as drops from players with a renown rank of 71 or greater! Loot bags from keep/fort/city captures now give you an additional choice of taking a lump of medallions instead of the other rewards. If you don't win a loot bag at a fort or keep capture, you are automatically awarded Officer (or Conqueror for forts) medallions which will appear in your backpack. Being present in a zone when its captured will also automatically drop a number of medallions into your pack. Successful defense of a keep, fortress or city invasion will award medallions also. And finally, there is a repeatable, chained series of RvR quests in each warcamp for which the final quest rewards 4 Officer medallions.

High-level medallions can be broken down into numerous smaller ones, but they can not be reassembled into larger pieces, so take care when breaking down a medallion.

So what do you do with all these medallions you have collected? Well, you use them to buy armor! All of the RvR set gear, from Obliterator on up through Sovereign now requires these medallions to purchase, with prices increasing as you go higher up the ladder. You can no longer buy any of the RvR set items with gold alone. The vendors in keeps still only have a limited selection of the RvR armor sets, but there are not several new vendors in the Viper Pit that sell all the pieces.

Note: RvR set boots still have a chance to drop as loot from players based on their renown rank, so it is still possible to acquire the boot armor pieces without ever winning a loot bag or a single medallion.

Edit: As of April 24th, Mythic applied a hotfix to the servers which now gives a chance for gloves from all the RvR sets to drop from appropriate level players. So you can now acquire two pieces from each set without using any tokens.

How to Dominate a Zone in Warhammer Online

With the release of patch 1.2 yesterday came the new Zone Domination system for Tier 4 RvR areas. As a supplement to my previous post about How to Lock a Zone in Warhammer Online, I present my summary of how this new system works...

First off, I find Mythic's mention of 'points' in the domination system is kind of misleading. There really is no accumulation of domination points. You can't save points for later nor can you gain multiple points from one objective. It's more of a binary system. You either dominate a zone or you don't. To dominate a zone, you have to have full control of ALL objectives and keeps in that zone. To gain full control of a keep, it has to be under your realm's control, and claimed by a guild for two hours straight. To gain full control of an objective, it has to be controlled by your realm for 30 minutes straight.

In short, to lock a zone via domination, everything in the zone needs to be controlled by your realm, and all the timers displayed on the map need to finish counting down. If an objective is under your realm control and has no timer, then you don't need to worry about (aside from stopping your foes from taking it from you). If a keep is under your realm control and has no timer, first off, check to make sure that it is claimed by a guild. If it is, then everything is great. If it's not claimed, then you need to get a guild to claim it ASAP if you're trying to lock the zone via domination.

Allowing the other side to take an objective adds a minimum of 45 minutes before you can lock the zone via domination (15 minutes until you can retake the objective, and then you have to control it for another 30 after that). Allowing a keep to fall adds a 2-hour minimum wait (not including the time needed to retake the keep) before the zone can be dominated and locked.

So if you're going for a domination lock, acquiring, claiming and holding the keeps is of primary importance. Objectives are more fluid and you don't have to stress out too much if they get taken while the keep countdown is still going. But, once the lowest keep timer gets to under an hour, you will want to capture all the objectives and keep them out of the hands of the other realm. This usually equates to stationing a few people at each Objective to slow down attackers and to also send out a timely warning. You'll also need a decent sized group at a central location that can respond to these attacks in a swift and brutal manner.

On the other side of the coin, to stop a zone domination, all you really have to do is take a single objective every once in a while. The difficulty comes when the opposing realm has enough bodies to follow the tactics outlined in the previous paragraph. You either need a warband that has enough force to quickly overwhelm an Objective and then hold off attackers for the three minutes it takes to capture the flag, or you will need multiple coordinated strikes and feints so that your foes aren't able to respond quickly and effectively enough to interrupt the captures.

Also, one very important thing to remember is that Zone Domination is not the only way to lock a zone. The previous system is still in place (IE, accumulate ~97 victory points). Zone Domination is simply an alternate method of locking a zone, and you can work on both paths at the same time. Zone Domination will likely have a larger effect on servers with severe population imbalances and off-peak times on all servers.

Warhammer Online: Patch 1.2 First Impressions

Here are some random thoughts from my 4 hour play session, of which ~90% of that time was in the RvR areas.

Seems like load times for zoning have decreased. My lag was about the same as usual. I didn't have any of the crashes that a lot of players were complaining about last night.

The Twisting Tower scenario is interesting, though it does seem overly laggy. Also, I'm really tired of the whole pie-throwing gags, especially in scenarios. We don't need extra distractions in the middle of a pitched battle. Add in achievements for accomplishing the goals in the scenario rather than throwing pies! I also had WAR lock up on me in the middle on the new scenario as the eye 'cleansed the tower'.

Being able to see everyone in your warband on the mini-map and full-size map is pretty sweet. And the graphic dot used to denote the position of other players in your warband is very distinctive and readily stands out on the maps. I can finally tell where everyone is with a quick glance at the map! Certainly you can say that this is something that should have been in on release, but at least they've polished it up at the same time they fixed whatever issues were causing players to not show up.

Not much comment about crafting, as I don't really do any in WAR. I do have a low-level cultivator and was happy to see seeds available on the guild quartermaster. It was also exciting to occasionally get dye ingredients. I haven't read up on the details, but I thought I would be able to get seeds back when harvesting, which so far, hasn't happened. Perhaps my skill level is too low?

The new RvR domination system is interesting. It definitely spiced up the RvR last night. I think we've had a total of 5-6 zone flips since the patch (probably more by now). I haven't yet decided whether the constant zone flipping will be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run. Previously, I always felt a strong sense of accomplishment when we locked a zone. And I still felt that last night (especially after expending a lot of energy to defend numerous assaults on Objectives we had locked down), but I wonder how quickly that will pass.

Some RvR zones have now have a contested PQ. We completed it a couple of times in Black Crag as we passed, simply by killing the dwarf slayer guarding the flag. Not sure if something different happens when you keep your hero alive instead. It also wasn't clearly explained that you pick up your reward in a chest off to the side of the warcamp. If someone in our group hadn't known, we probably would have missed it entirely.

Things are a bit different in PvP now. I'm still working on figuring out how I want to setup my tactics since a lot of abilities have changed. And I'll need to respec my mastery points sometime soon, as one of the mastery tactics I had previously purchased is now a 2-hander buff (I use a one-hander and shield). I ran the Da Biggest shout pretty much all night. Not sure if anyone in my group noticed the additional buffs they were getting. And despite knowing beforehand that melee DPS would be able to enter the postern doors of enemy keeps, it completely slipped my mind in the heat of battle and I was very surprised to have several White Lions charging up the ramparts! I look forward to seeing how this plays out in the future. It did seem overly easy for them to simply run through the patrolling guards and get to a spot that was safe from the NPCs. I think there should be several guards stationed inside of every postern so that they have to fight to get inside rather than simply Flee their way in.

Crowd control is still out of hand. I spend over half of any large-scale fight either disabled, knocked down, disarmed or rooted. It's especially bad for melee as roots effectively bring your contribution to the battle to 0. Burst damage also seems to be pretty crazy at the moment. I started thinking about equipping the wounds and/or toughness tactic for most of my tactic sets. I'm also hoping that will start seeing some small class tweak patches over the next few weeks.

Small and Independent Gaming Links - Part III

Time for another installment of links and minor commentary on a variety of small and independent games.

First off, we'll start with a couple of purchasable games. Both of the following games have downloadable demos available.


Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble - This is an odd sort of game. Kind of an unholy union of Clue and the Choose Your Own Adventure books. You control a gang of girls in a 1920s high school who set out to solve mysteries at their school and around town. You move to various locations, choose which girl from your gang will interact with the other characters, and through a series of lies, taunts, exposing of secrets and other such pettiness (all resolved through a series of mini-games) you'll discover the sordid side of this small town. It costs $20 for the full version, but you can download a demo that will let you play for about a half hour or so and give you a good overview of what the game will be like. It has a very interesting aesthetic look and feel to it, and I found the demo engaging.

Venture Arctic - I think the best way to describe this game would be as an environmental Populous. You play god over a small section of arctic wilderness, encouraging the creatures to breed and eat via altering their area through placement of food, encouraging births, warming and cooling the ground, and sometimes even direct intervention. The big issue is balance. Even though some animals are predators and some are simply grazing herd animals, there needs to be food for everyone, and not an overabundance of any one type. I found that the micro-management required was a bit much for me, but then again, maybe if I was a proper force of nature, that wouldn't have been the case. I also disliked the direct intervention part of the game. You can make specific, individual creatures pregnant or sick, and you can also place new creatures directly. I think this genre would be better served by instead giving you more generic tools to encourage growth or migrations. But aside from that quibble, all in all, I found this is an interesting game. It's cartoony aspect would probably also make it fun for kids. The demo lets you play for 30 minutes. The full game costs $20.


Now onto the free games! These are all flash-based and can be played in any modern browser.

Grow - Interesting little animated, puzzle game. You select from a series of pieces that fire off a particular animation. But, what happens with each piece depends on what pieces have gone before and which ones get placed after it. Sometimes they will interact with other pieces in new and interesting ways. You have to figure out what the right order is to place them in, basing your guesses on the animation results. That's about the best I can describe it. Anyway, it's free, and there are actually a number of different variations to play. Definitely worth checking out, though if you're having trouble with a certain puzzle, it can get annoying to have to sit through the same animations over and over.

Mastermind - Become an Evil Genius and take over the world! Send your minions out to rob, steal and kidnap while building up your base, researching superpowers and managing a coffee shop as a front! I find the interface a little awkward and cramped, but for a free browser-based game, its a fun little distraction. And who doesn't love being evil every once in a while!?

Majesty of Colors - Odd little mood-evoking game that puts you in control of a colossal, underwater, Lovecraftian creature and gives you choices of how you want to interact with various humans and other things that come into your domain. The game doesn't last very long, but it does have multiple endings to explore based on how you choose to respond. It's all drive by the mouse. No keyboard interaction. Worth taking a few minutes to look at.

The Space Game - This is a tower defense type game set in space. You start off with a single station and need to assign miners to gather minerals from nearby asteroids, set up turrets to take care of incoming pirates and upgrade your base and other components to be stronger and more efficient. Fun little game. It's flash-based, free and has a number of levels specifically designed for people to try and get high scores on.

Sagrario's Room Escape - This game is in the traditional, click-on-the-picture format. You're tasked with figuring out how to escape a room with seemingly no exits. You have to look at and interact with the few items that are in the room to solve the puzzle. The interface takes a little getting used to, and sometimes the clue is simply clicking on the appropriate two pixel square on the screen, which can be annoying sometimes (for example, opening the briefcase on the first room). Another important bit which I probably wouldn't have figured out without reading some hints, is that you can sometimes view items in your inventory, then use other items from your inventory on them. That wasn't really an intuitive interface interaction for me. I also had a lot of trouble figuring out how to correctly spin the dial on the safe. This is an interesting puzzle game with potential, but the interface flaws really kill it for me. Might be more fun for someone who is more in sync with the author's thought patterns than I am.


And I'll close this post off with two links are good spots to go look for other Indie games that might interest you.

Indie Games Blog - This is a very active blog (at least one post a day), giving short reviews and links to a wide variety of small, indie games.

2009 IGF Finalists - These guys always have some interesting games to bring to the public eye. This link goes to the page listing their finalists for their 2009 awards.

And there you have it. Several distractions to keep you from doing any real work!

We Need a Sandbox PvP MMO Done 'Right'

Over on Broken Toys, Scott Jennings made a post stating that players don't really want hardcore PvP in an MMO.

While I agree that his basic arguments are correct, I think much of the crash that PvP-oriented MMOs have regularly suffered there is simply due to lackluster and/or half-assed implementations. There is definitely a lot to be said for doing a game 'right'. If someone would make a PvP-centric sandbox game, AND do a good job of it, there is plenty of room and interest for it to be successful. More thoughts through the link...

And if you lok back on the 'Holy Grail of games', as many old MMO players fondly remember Ultima Online, it wasn't ONLY about non-consensual, full-loot PvP. It had an extensive crafting system, tons of non-combat skills, semi-interactive environment, options for dying clothes, and the ability to have fun, experience the game and interact with other players without ever leaving your starting city. In fact, some players never even stepped into the wilderness or a dungeon in UO.

In my opinion, there are two very important factors that no PvP MMO should be without:

* Resources to fight over
* Non-PvP activities

Don't just say, here's Important Spot #1. Now fight! Important Spot #1 should actually be important beyond a developer attaching a flag to it and giving players points for interacting with that flag. Why is this spot worth more than that one down the road? Was it just arbitrarily chosen? If so, throw that idea out of the window.

Let the playerbase decide what is worth fighting over. Put one of a kind resources on the map. Plop a keep down onto a narrow pass that happens to be the only way through the mountains. If the players aren't fighting for the spots that the developers thought they would, then look at what they are fighting about, re-evaluate your premise and tweak your world as appropriate. Make those large battles meaningful. Let players affect the status of their world.

But even more important than that (if the combat is fun, players will fight even if there is nothing to gain or lose), is providing some alternatives to 24 /7 combat. Some players just don't enjoy PvP, and even those that do need some downtime occasionally. Crafting, PvE, mini-games, world interaction; these are all aspects that both increase the worldliness of your online world, and also provide alternate outlets of fun for your player base. Even something as seemingly superfluous as animated emotes can provide hours of entertainment.


As an example, lets look at Shadowbane, which was a game about guild vs guild PvP and city sieges. There wasn't even any crafting or other activities in the game. Spawns were exceedingly static and PvE was pretty boring overall. So ALL they had to rely on was their hardcore PvP selling point and their city building / destruction system, and they couldn't even do an effective job of implementing that limited feature set. Lacking in other areas, Shadowbane had all of its eggs in the PvP basket. IF they had delivered a polished, functional and fun city building and siege system, they would have likely had a lot more success. (And for any who are curious, I tried playing Shadowbane on three different occasions, dropping out after shorter periods each time.)

Eve is a good template to look at for how to make PvP combat meaningful and provide alternate forms of entertainment beyond blasting other players to space dust. Territory control and PvP are crux of the end-game for a lot of Eve Online players, but there's plenty of other things to do such as playing the market, mining, creating equipment and blueprints, salvaging, etc. There is a lot more to PvP than the PvP itself. An army doesn't run on fighting alone. It requires infrastructure and support. MMOs need to realize that this infrastructure can be as fun and interesting as the actual combat, and it should be just as important. And they didn't open up the game and then tell players that they had to go out and fight over 0.0 space. Instead they put the more valuable minerals out there and allowed players to decide on their own what to do about it.


Unfortunately, putting all of this together requires a lot of work. So far, all the studios that have tried going this route have been forced to cave into outside pressures and released half-baked games (Shadowbane, Horizons, Tabula Rosa, Roma Victor, just to name a few). I don't know about you, but eating something that is half-cooked is never a pleasant experience for me. And to continue the metaphor, once you've had that first, awful bite, its very hard for anyone to convince you to try it again.

Sadly, Darkfall is looking even less than half-baked and will likely join that long list of MMOs that had interesting ideas and great potential, but simply failed to deliver. And that, I think, is what results in the constant failures of the 'hardcore PvP' MMOs. Its much easier to build a successful themepark MMO. But I'm still holding out hope that one day, someone takes the time and money to look back on these failed trailblazer MMOs, learn from their mistakes and their successes, and build a truly enjoyable, PvP-oriented, sandbox MMO.

WAR 1.2 Patch Notes - Initial Thoughts

Last week we were given the first iteration of the patch notes for Warhammer's much anticipated 1.2 patch. And, as of today, the PTS is up and running, though character transfers are not yet available. My comments below are from simply reading the patch notes. I have not yet seen any of the changes in action myself.

Overall an interesting set of patch notes. No real major changes to classes, but tons of tweaks and fixes. Every single class got a buff of some sort, and a few classes had minor tweaks to reduce abilities. I also notice a lot of notes about changing abilities to receive less bonus from stats. This sounds like they're working hard to keep the emphasis away from gear. This also tells me that Mythic is confident with the foundation of their classes performance, which I can mostly agree with. While some classes could use some rejiggering, I don't think any current classes need a complete overhaul (though there was a developer post stating that they planned on making future changes to how the Shaman / Archmage class mechanic works).

It's interesting to note that neither Disciples of Khaine nor Warrior Priests, both classes which are generally considered to be slightly overpowered, received any nerfs. In fact, they both received a number of minor buffs. But looking at all of the changes we see a lot of minor damage increases and changes to damage types for abilities for every class across the board. I would hazard a guess that Mythic feels that this general damage increase / change will help balance out the incredible survivability that these two melee healer classes can demonstrate.

I like all of the animation fixes. I get stuck animations on a regular basis, either as a result of being disabled or having my target die during the animation. Hopefully they'll actually work properly! And though I didn't see it specifically mentioned, I pray that the 'ghost' mounts issue will be resolved as well.

Crafting changes look nice. Cultivation got a lot of love, which it desperately needed. It's also good that they've reduced the insane variety of additives. And of course, I think everyone will be happy about being able to use potions and have their effects stay with you for the entire duration, even through death! I think that crafting will be a lot more interesting after this patch.

Good to see some RvR changes as well, though I imagine a lot of players will complain that its not enough. But from the looks of things, I would guess that more intense changes are coming further down the road. This patch mainly just fixes a few issues. The zone domination concept is interesting, though it seems like it will overly easy to flip zones in off-peak hours. Allowing melee DPS to get inside of keeps is huge and should make keep defense much more interesting (and probably obsolete my late-night 1-orc, oil-pouring, wrecking crew). Already there are lots of threads claiming this will make it impossible to defend keeps. And while it will make things more difficult, especially for small, defending forces, it wont make it impossible. And you have to keep in mind that this is simply a first, small step to making Keep and Fortress battles more exciting.

Lots of other fluff-type fixes and changes such as changes to the party / warband UI, new variations of mount graphics, the ability to right-click on items in your pack to use additives while crafting, and many many other little tweaks.


All in all, good stuff, in my opinion. And, of course, this patch is also the beginning of the event to introduce the Choppa and the Slayer! The addition of these classes will certainly liven up the lower tiers as well as fill a much-needed role in Dwarf and Greenskin guilds.

Darkfall, the next Messiah of MMOs?

A little MMO called Darkfall is looming on the horizon, with its release date currently slated for February 25th, 2009.

This game has been in development for many years and has made enough promises to make it seem like it will combine the best aspects of Ultima Online, Shadowbane and Age of Conan. A skill-based character development system, the ability to build towns and villages, ship and mounted combat, the ability to craft almost any item in the game, dynamic weather and NPCs, smart AI, meaningful factions, open PvP, twitch-oriented combat, the ability to loot your enemies and 'real' stealth. Sound too good to be true? Well, it probably is!

Besides the fact that this game has been hyped since 2001, with only a few marginal gameplay videos and screenshots to go on, and the fact that they took applications for a Clan Beta test in 2005 and never followed through, and that previous games over-promising something different and grand in the MMO universe have generally flopped, probably the most disheartening part in my opinion are the latest patch notes. You would think that something as basic as 'Dungeon monsters are now enabled' would have been taken care of and tested sometime before the final month of development!!

That being said, there are still lots of high hopes for Darkfall in the MMO gaming community. And I expect those high hopes will be crushed. I'm taking the route of low expectations to avoid disappointment, myself. I'm expecting to pay to play an early beta release, with lots of bugs, exploits and balance issues. I'm just hoping that they do indeed have a diverse, interesting and fun core game that can be tweaked and polished on a regular schedule after release.

The developers have certainly talked the talk over the last seven years, and I applaud the fact that they've stuck with the game this long, I only hope that they can deliver on enough of their promises to avoid turning this into another Horizons, Roma Victor or Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Improving RvR in Warhammer Online Part I: Battlefield Objectives

This is the first in a series of posts with details about how to improve and embiggen Open RvR in Warhammer Online. This post deals with everyone's favorite renown farm, Battlefield Objectives! For this post, I'm not going to deal with whether or not BO's should given renown/influence/experience. Instead, I want to focus on making Battlefield Objectives a meaningful and important part of Open RvR that are actually worth fighting over and defending.

Click the link below to read on for details.

The basic concept here is that Objectives give bonuses / advantages to those who control them. However, I've also thrown a wrinkle in to give them more flavor and to also make it so that pushing zone control back towards a fortress becomes harder as you lock zones. So, the bonuses for Objectives work for both sides in the center T4 zone, but then as that middle zone is locked and the war is pushed back towards a fotress, the Objective bonuses only benefit the 'defending' side. The attackers will still want to control the Objectives to deny the bonuses to their enemies, but they won't receive the bonuses themselves. This concept is designed to instill a desire for control of the Objectives prior, and during, keep assaults.

To give specific examples, I decided to create a list of potential Battlefield Objective bonuses for all BOs in the Dwarf / Greenksin pairing. I tried to match the bonuses to the official Tome of Knowledge Lore for each objective, but some objectives just don't really make sense. Thunder Mountain is particularly bad about this (come on now! An out-of-the-way, tapped-out Gromril mine that goes nowhere?! Who cares?). Below are my partially thought-out suggestions, along with the official, in-game descriptions for the Objectives.

Black Crag

Lobba Mill - Though goblin constructions are semi-chaotic messes of thrown together bits of whatever is handy (which often includes weaker goblins), their machines are suprisingly effective. The Lobba Mill is one of the most productive spots for production of siege engines in all of the Greenskin lands.

Control of this objective grants a 20% damage bonus to siege engines for all Destruction players in the zone.

Despite its unassuming name, the Lobba Mill is Black Crag's most prolific rock lobber construction camp. The mightiest Lobbas in the Waaagh! are built in the camp, and the abandoned Dwarf stone quarries that dot the mountainsides provide more than enough ammunition for even the longest sieges.

Squiggly Beast Pens - These pens are the source of some of the biggest, nastiest Squigs around.

While the Pens are controlled by Destruction, there will be several champion-level squig and herder patrols added to all keeps controlled by Destruction in this zone.

While the Night Goblins of the Old World Mountains have always been the most cunning, nasty and independent of greenskin tribes, its often easy to capture a few here and there. When kept in small groups they are more craven than rats, and easily forced to work. Most often they are put in the squig pens, where their considerable expertise helps Grumlok and Gazbag's Waaagh! grow the some of the most vicious squigs in existence.

Madcap Pickins - The mysterious shrooms found in this area of the Crag have been known to drive some shaman crazy, but their potential for bolstering magic power is too great to ignore.

While this Objective is controlled by Destruction, all Destruction players and RvR NPCs in the zone have their chance for critical heal and spells increased by 3%.

If there is one thing that Goblin Shaman know how to do when they aren't eating mushrooms, it is growing them. Among the dank mountain caverns many different varieties grow, and every shaman knows that the best mushrooms grow in the darkest, muddiest, and smelliest places. Of particular valley are Madcap mushrooms, a type so potent as to enhance the sorcerous power of the Waaagh! to unpredictable intensity. Consuming a single mushroom will turn a normal Goblin into a frenzied, frothing lunatic. Few Goblins, shaman or not, survive and encounter with a Madcap mushroom, but that hasn't stopped them eating them by any stretch.

Rottenpike Ravine - Controlling this objective allows the Goblin Shamans to harness the restless spirits that linger in the area and utilize their energies for protection.

While Destruction controls this objective, all Destruction players and RvR NPCs in the zone have their magic resistances increased by 100.

This brambled and terraced ravine has been a hideout for all sorts of riff-raff, vagrants, and vagabonds. It is a place of death, and is haunted with the spirits of the innocent men and women who were killed here. In the middle of the ravine is a bend called Hell's Half-Angle where everything from bad luck to full-scale military ambushes seem to occur. The debris of dozens of carts and wagons and towed items such as cannons are strewn about, and even found in piles, and made into defensive redoubts by some forgotten army. In terms of the war, it is an ideal choke point on an obvious line of advance, and both sides desire to control it.

Thunder Mountain

Doomstriker Vein - Controlling this important source of Gromril is vital to creating higher quality weapons and armor.

While controlled, Doomstriker Vein increases melee damage and armor by 5% for all players and RvR NPCs on the controlling side.

While many Dwarfs march to secure Thunder Valley against the coming greenskin Waaagh!, an elite few must follow the direct orders of the High King and obtain the gromril needed to complete the Doomstrikers. Only through the strength granted by these mighty weapons do the Dwarfs have a hope of turning aside the massive horde commanded by Grumlok and Gazbag.

Gromril Kruk - Though the Gromril in this mine has long since been tapped, controlling this mine is a source of pride for both sides.

Whichever side controls this Objective will receive a +3 bonus to Morale generation.

Also, controlling Gromril Kruk and Doomstriker Vein at the same time provides a teleport option between the two locations. If either becomes contested, the teleport is disabled.

For the Dwarfs, Gromril Kruk has transformed into the cruel joke of Thunder Mountain. Recently discovered, the area was heralded as a ripe new source of gromril from which the Dwarfs could finish the Doomstrikers and rebuild their kingdoms. However, the vein gave out quickly and suddenly, proving as false as an Elven promise. No sooner had the Dwarfs come to grips with this truth than a contingent of Orcs took up residence in the barren mine. Now the Dwarfs must contend with a constant stream of enemies from the depths of their false hope, while they scour the mountains for what gromril they can find.

Karik Palik - 10% damage bonus for all players and RvR NPCs on the controlling side.

I couldnt find a description for this objective.

Thargrim's Headwall - 10% armor and resistance bonus for all players and RvR NPCs on the controlling side.

The campaign to capture the summit of Thunder Mountain is a long, painstaking affair. The route to the top of the mountain is narrow and treacherous and easily defended if one holds one of the many choke points alongside the mountain.

Thargrim's Headwall is a large defensible stone redoubt overlooking two smaller redoubts below it on the path up the mountain. As the first major choke point in the route up the mountain, he or she who controls the Headwall can easily frustrate the movement of an enemy army up the volcano.

Note: The above two Objectives were hard to create flavored bonuses for. Apparently, they are both meant to be choke-points, but they really don't serve as that function in-game. Riding past either is no problem, though Karik Palik could potentially be a choke-point if there were player defenders there.

Kadrin's Valley

Gromril Junction - Keeping the trains running on time is important for quick manuevering and defense of this zone agains the rampaging Greenskins.

While Gromril Junction is under Order control, there will be an active teleport to/from Order warcamp and this Objective.

The Dwarf railroad stops at this station at least once every day, as the train engineers proudly boast. The Dwarfs are as hard-nosed and inflexible about keeping this train running as they are about anything else, and will not tolerate any mischief that would cause the trainmaster to have to delay the timetable. The greenskins are fascinated with the idea of interfering with the train, stealing its valuables, slaying the stunties who run it, and at last, breaking the thing into small pieces if they can.

Dolgrund's Cairn - Possession of the Cairn instills a sense of pride in the Dwarven folk and their allies.

While this objective is controlled by Order, all Order players in the zone will receive a +3 Morale generation bonus.

Dolgrund Dralminsson, former commander of the Gharvin's Brace Regiment, gave his life fighting a rear-guard action centuries ago, single-handedly saving the lives of a hundred seven Dwarfs. The burial site of Dolgrund Dralminsson is sacred to the Dwarfs, for no action is as undeniably Dwarfy as an embittered last stand. The greenskins have sensed that they can easily goad the Dwarfs into a fight at the Cairn with a few well place piles of drek, yet such a decision may prove foolish at such a revered location.

Icehearth Crossing - This tunnel provides a quick, easy and secure route for forces moving north and south through the valley. Securing and maintaining control of this tunnel is of vital importance.

As long as this objective is controlled by Order, there will be level 55 Dwarven hero guards blocking the north end of the tunnel.

Icehearth Crossing marks the main passage through the Icehearth Crag. During the winter the cold is so intense that only a being blessed with the legendary stoutness of a Dwarf could bear to cross from one side to other. In the battle for Kadrin Valley, the underpass has proved a valuable route, and both Dwarf and Orc bleed in its chill caverns.

Hardwater Falls - The icy falls provide a source of fresh, clean water for the dwarven camps in the zone.

While this objective is under Order control, all Order players and RvR NPCs in the zone have their health increased health by 10%.

A large waterfall continually pours gouts of fresh water into the Kadrin Valley, where the water collects in many small pools and streams that trickle through the lush terrain and rock formations.
The Dwarfs now call the area the Hardwater Falls after the freezing torrent of water that blasts down from the rock above. The Dwarfs are trying to preserve this source of water to keep their armies supplied, but the Orcs seek to defile the waters in anyway they can.

Are these suggestions balanced and fair? Probably not. Are they all equally useful? Again, probably not. But I'm not a Mythic developer. This is merely meant to be a rough sketch of what could be done to make Battlefield Objectives important, valuable, and interesting.

Addendum

Personally, I would actually consider taking it a step farther and making the bonuses race-specific for the zone. For example, Madcap would only effect goblins. While I'm sure a lot of folks would complain about it being unfair, so what, life is unfair. These additional restrictions would add a different dynamic to the game. I can imagine that Greenskin and Dwarf players would be more interested in fighting in the Dwarf / Greenskin zones because thats where they would get the bonuses.

But if it were race-specific, then you could do interesting things such as making the bonuses bigger and/or adding in potential negative side effects. For example, we could say that Madcap Pickins increase the spell crit chance by 10% for all goblin shaman, but also gave them a 2% chance of being overwhelmed by Waaagh! energy when casting a spell and being disabled for 3 seconds.

But, I know how much most players hate that sort of restriction, so I'm merely adding this suggestion as a note rather than incoporating it into my main proposal.

Pimpin' the Interface, WAR Style: Part II

I figured it was about time for a followup to my initial post about altering the UI for WAR. Unfortunately, Mythic hasn't done much of anything to address UI issues and make their default UI more acceptable (in fact they made it worse by introducing an annoying global cooldown flash that appears on ALL your buttons EVERYTIME you use an ability. I had to download an addon just to disable that 'feature').

So, I am now up 19 addons! Much more than I generally want to maintain, but every one feels needed and or useful at the moment. Click the link below to read all the details and see the screenshots (click on the images to see larger versions of the screenshots).

Here is a basic screenshot of what my UI looks like when I'm not doing anything in particular.



The square mini-map in the corner is provided by Custom Map. In addition to being more compact than the default mini-map, it also allows you to zoom out to region map feature, and displays info about your current influence level for the area you're in.

Simplified group and warband health displays provided by Squared. Has a ton of settings available. I have modified the class colors, the bar size, the text, disabled showing buffs for others and chosen a texture to give the display some pizazz.

Vertigo allows for creation of action bars. You are still limited to the six that the game comes with, but you can define how many buttons they have, and how many rows and columns each bar has as well. Excellent addon for those who like to customize their action bar layouts.

I have a four action bar setup. You can see my main action bar at the bottom. It uses three pages and is controlled by PlanB, which makes it auto change pages based on the progression of my Plan (Black Orc mechanic). Though this hasn't been updated in a while, it still works like a charm. Highly recommended for all Black Orcs and Swordmasters.

The bar on the right hand side has various potions and miscellaneous abilities. Most of my other abilities are on the other two bars which are hidden using Phantom, which is an addon that lets you hide all sorts of basic UI windows and parts that the default UI doesn't allow for. I have run into some issues where it won't reshow previously hidden bars. Something to do with configuring it on a different character. I'm not sure of the details, and it hasn't bothered me enough yet to look for a fix. But the author for it is one of the most respected and active modders for Warhammer Online, so I feel confident the issue will be fixed sometime soon.

War Effort is the little graphical display at the top, center-right of the screen. This addon shows the current status of all T4 zones, including current victory points for the contested zones. The display can be toggled on and off with the little 'W' icon next to it.



In this second screenshot, you'll notice that my current target has red vertical bars around them. These graphics are courtesy of Target Ring. This addon makes it much easier to keep an eye on your targets in a crowd. It uses green bars to denote your friendly target (unfortunately, I didn't have one at the time of this screenshot).

Clean Unit Frames are used to show health for myself, my target and my friendly target. Just a simple layout, without any unneeded fancy borders or graphics.

Duff Timer gets rid of the annoying cluster of buff icons (the number of buffs, debuffs and DoTs in this game is insane) that are constantly shifting and changing during battle, and puts them into a nice, timed display that includes the name of the effect. You can configure, move and size buffs and debuffs separately for yourself, your target and your friendly target.

The black boxes in the bottom corners are courtesy of SNT Panel. Pretty simple mod. It lets you create background panels that can be moved, resized and made transparent via the default UI configuration options. I use this for my chat windows, because the fade-out really bothered me and made it hard to see the text depending on the brightness and color of the terrain I was in. It took some careful resizing and placement, as well as help from a chat mod called Chatty Cathy to get the chat windows looking good in relation to the panels. Chatty Cathy allows you to remove the fluff from the chat windows, including the tabs and scrollbars. A simple slash command redisplays these items if you need to resize or change settings for your chat tabs.

Dammaz Kron is THE must-have mod for anyone that wants to track their PvP kills and deaths. It's very full featured and even integrates directly with your Tome of Knowledge. I'm so impressed by this mod, that I've included a screenshot of it, just to try and encourage others to check it out.




Then there are the addons that can't be seen in the screenshots.

alertMod - This mod allows you to change the size, vertical location, and duration of the text for the alert messages that pop-up in the middle of your screen, for example, the notification you receive when gaining a level. The default text is rather large and can be annoying when it appears in the middle of a fight.

Aura - Lets you configure pop-up icons and/or text messages that appear when certain events occur. As one example, I have an icon that pops up over my character's head when my health drops below 40%. Helps me quickly and easily know when I need to fall back or drink a healing potion.

Think Out Loud - Another mod that wouldn't be required if Mythic allowed you to put more than one action into a macro. This mod simply allows you to say configurable text when using abilities. You can even set the percentage chance that the text will fire.

Global Cooldown Remover - The flash appearing on ALL of your icons is especially annoying when you have multiple action bars. This mod simply removes the global flahs for that 1 sec global cooldown. This is one of those mods that I never should have needed to begin with. But when I had 4 visible action bars on my screen, seeing all of the buttons light up everytime I used any ability was driving me insane.

Realm Status - This is another RvR mod. This one has a couple of different features. One is that it shows you a summary of all victory points for all zones. This display can be shown and hidden with a simple slash command. But, the feature that I find most interesting is a pop-up window that informs you of any change in VPs for any T4 zone. Mythic isn't very good about accurately updating the status of keeps (and since the RvR addons rely on information that Mythic provides, they are generally slow to update as well), but when I see a popup window telling me that the victory points for a zone have changed by 15+ points, I know that a keep has just been taken.

Lib Slash - Required mod for slash commands.

Clean Cast Bar - Simple but sexy looking cast bar.

So there you have it. I actually consider this post a sort of mid-term update. The modding community for WAR is getting better at what they do, and the addons are becoming much more versatile and slick. I already have a couple of new ones that I'm keeping an eye on. Look for another WAR UI post in a month or so, hopefully with better screenshots as well!

The Liberation of Black Crag: A WAR Story

I wrote up this little RP story about one weekend afternoon when the Destruction forces on the Ostermark server locked the Black Crag zone, pushing Order back to Thunder Mountain. Now zone locks have become rather common on our server and occur daily at this point, but the reason this particular one stood out for me was twofold.

1) Order had pushed the conflict into Black Crag and controlled Thunder Mountain for several weeks prior to this. And being a very nationalistic orc player, that was just unacceptable from my viewpoint

2) This was the first time I had ever felt like I personally (along with a few guildmates), had made a distinct and noticeable impact on the zone control.

Click the link below to read the story.


"Skahin' hoomeez," Azh muttered as he picked up the limp body of the shaman, Khargug.

"Wake up ya dum git! It's time ta get ta smashin'!" Azh roared as he violently shook the poor goblin back and forth. A Witch Hunter assassin had snuck right in between the hulking Black Orcs and skillfully stuck a blade into the tiny shaman. The human had tried to make a quick escape afterwords, but while Orcs are often slow on the uptake, nothing stirs up their bloodlust quicker than seeing one of their own cut down in front of them. The red, pulpy remains of the assassin still lay at the end of the road leading out of the Black Crag warcamp as a few ravens circled, eying the fresh meat.

"Oi Boss! Me wakee, me wakee," Khargug groaned as he slowly opened his eyes. Azh set him down on the ground and the shaman muttered a few strange words, calling upon the power of Gork (or was it Mork, Azh could never remember which was which) to mend his grievous wounds.

Azh grunted in satisfaction as he saw the final two Greenskins of his band ride in across the bridge, two not yet fully-grown gobos, Pachum the Shaman and Scraak the Squig Herder. Along with the two other Orcs, Mlarak and Grubdug, Azh had gathered this small Shadowclan force here to probe the enemies defenses and see if they could wrest control of the Crag from the damnable stunties who had inhabited the many ravines of the area for much too long.

Azh had checked in with the goblin scouts at the warcamp who informed him that both keeps were already under the control of Destruction forces. All that was left to secure were the small, odd ruins below the Skar called Rottenpike, and the Squig Pen caves in the north.

But first, it was time to try and throw a wrench into the stuntie machine that allowed them to maintain control of the area. In a small, out-of-the-way niche amongst the many gorges and dead-ends of Black Crag, there was a vital crossing point over which the Greenskins and Stunties fought on a daily basis. Each side had a small encampment nearby, flanking a seemingly never-ending supply cache of Stuntie Boom Barrels. If the Greenskins could permanently blow up the stuntie camp there, they would have a tremendous advantage in pushing the front back towards Thunder Mountain.

So the Shadowclan band gathered their choppas, prepared their mojo and moved into the fray known as Howling Gorge. After nearly an hour of constant combat, including a number of encounters with the same Witch Hunter that had impaled poor Khargug earlier, Shadowclan withdrew, battered, tired, victorious, but ultimately unsuccessful in their attempt to drive the stunties out of the area completely. Numerous booms had been placed, many foes slain and much blood shed, but it was not quite enough to destroy the stuntie camp. Shadowclan rode away from the Gorge, patrolling past Rottenpike and the Pens, discovering in both cases that some other clan had already secured these points. Continuing their patrol of the winding chasms and paths, the Greenskins happened upon a few unlucky Order and gleefully chopped them into little bits.

Finding no other activity in the area, the Shadowclan force once more headed back into the meat grinder known as the Howling Gorge, more determined than ever. This time was different. With the Black Orcs stubbornly carrying the Boom Barrel repeatedly, at great risk to themselves (Orcs aren't known for delicately handling anything), the Destruction forces set up a chain of support from the center cache to the stuntie camp, flowing back and forth in response to pushes and attacks from their Order foes. Explosions echoed through the rocks as the stuntie camp was obliterated from the Gorge once and for all.

Battle yells of victory rang out across the land as the powder-singed Shadowclan force emerged from the Gorge. After months of fighting the stunties on the doorstep of the Greenskin fortress, Black Crag had finally been liberated from their grubby little hands, and the push on the dwarf capitol could begin again in earnest.

Azh raised his choppa and gestured northwards as the group mounted up. "Guud job, boyz! On ta Tunder Mownt. Dem stunties gonna be hoppin' mad an us gonna be der ta greet dem when dem come out ub dem holez!"

Azh let out a roar and led his troops onward to the next battle.

How to Lock a Zone in Warhammer Online

6/22/09 Note: This post is about locking via victory points. If you are looking for information about locking a zone via domination, please see my other blog entry on the subject.

In Warhammer Online's RvR endgame, locking zones is the key to pushing the war front closer to your enemies and opening up fortresses and capitols to assault. However, the way this is done is not especially intuitive. So this post is my attempt to summarize what I have learned about the process over the past couple of months.


To lock a Tier 4 zone, one side needs to gain ~97 Victory Points in that zone. Victory Points are gained for controlling objectives and keeps, winning scenarios associated with that zone, completing Public Quests in that zone, and controlling the Tier 3 zones for that pairing.

Victory Points go as high as 97 and as low as 0 and will decay slowly over time if there is no action in the zone or its related scenarios (but the VPs will not fall below whatever the baseline is for the controlled keeps and BOs). Each objective is worth ~6 Victory Points, while keeps are worth ~15. So controlling all six points of interest in a zone will only give you about 54 total points.

Scenarios can contribute significantly to your faction's VP total, but the key is winning on points rather than having time expire. This makes the scenario objectives vitally important, something that many kill-happy players don't seem to understand. Winning a scenario with 500 points will grant your side 6-7 VPs for the appropriate zone. Winning because time ran out, on the other hand, only generates 2-3 VPs. Quite a difference!

PQs only give 1-2 points, which makes grinding PQs to flip a zone rather difficult and not especially efficient. PQ grind should only be considered if you just cant seem to get those last few VPs to lock the zone, or there is major overabundance of players on your side in the zone.

Skirmishes between players in the zone seem to contribute almost nothing to the VP total. Occasionally you will see a 1 or 2 point gain as the result of a large battle, but that's pretty rare.

The bulk pressure of locking a zone still seems to rely on scenarios. And as a result, scenarios are not always the casual, quick fun that they are in the lower tiers. And remember, scenarios only affect VPs for the pairing they are in, so if you're trying to lock a zone, it's best to queue for only scenarios in the pairing that you want to lockdown. Unfortunately, this relies of the other side also queuing for that scenario, but there are usually enough players choosing the queue all option to make it work. Supposedly, if the other side never tries to join the scenarios and you have enough people queued to get it started, your side will still get a few VPs, but I'm not exactly sure how this works.

In my experience, one of the best ways to lock a zone is to first win a bunch of scenarios to push your side's VP total up. If your opponents control the keeps, so much the better. It is unlikely they will notice your point creeping upwards unless you take a keep from them. If you can reach 40 or so VPs without controlling any objectives or keeps in the zone, then you're pretty much set. Run out and grab all the points of interest as quickly as possible, running a scenario or two at the same time to buffer your VPs and keep VP point decay from setting in too much.

To assist in your zone-locking attempts, I recommend installing an addon or two that will give you more information about the Victory Point progression. I use Realm Status and War Effort, myself.

War Effort is a nice addon that shows a window with basic info about all the T4 zones, including current VP count and keep status.

Realm Status is dual-featured. It has a window with VP info about every zone, and it also has popup windows that notify you about changes in VPs for the Tier 4 zones. I almost never look at the main window, but I love the popup notifications. By keeping an eye on these, I can generally get a good idea of whats happening in each zone without actually being there, which makes it easier to see when the RvR focus needs to be moved to a different pairing