WAR 1.3.3 PTS: Part 2

Last Thursday, Mythic held the 2nd part of the 1.3.3 testing event on Warhammer's PTS.  The primary goal this time was to stress test the client while using the 'Oooh Shiny' setting.  Over 200 players participated and for the most part the results were good.  There is video of the battle after the break.

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WAR 1.3.3 PTS: Part 1

Last night a PTS event was held to put the latest patch (1.3.3) through its paces.  The focus of the event was on the new WAR Report system.  I ended up wandering around the world checking out the new HDR/Bloom graphical option.  Read on for a run down, pictures and a video!

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WAR Quickie

Later today I will post an article about the PTS event last night. I made a video for it, but it will take some time to render and upload.  By the way, the WAR 1.3.3 PTS event continues tonight at 8pm est.  There are a couple things to talk about until then.

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PTS Event Tonight

Tonight on WAR's PTS server is the first part of  the testing for patch 1.3.3.  It is an official test, so you have a chance to win a special mount for just participating.  The test usually doesn't last too long and is a lot of fun.  I will be there on my Engineer named Werit. 

The download for the patch is already available.  It came in at a hefty 1 gig, which you may want to start downloading sooner rather than later.  The 1.3.3 patch introduces HDR and Bloom graphical effects, so your performance feedback should be very valuable to Mythic. You'll need to enable them in game.

NOTE:  The PTS event has been moved to tomorrow (Wed) night.

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Warhammer Online Game Card

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WAR Siege Video 1.3.2 Part 2

In Part 1 of the 1.3.2 PTS Siege Event we saw Order on the offensive.  Performance was very good, but the video did not really show the true scale of the Destruction force.  In Part 2,  Order is defending the keep.  This actually happened prior to the first part.  Did performance hold up inside the keep?

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WAR Siege Video 1.3.2

As I mentioned in the last post, I took 60 gig worth of video from last nights PTS event.  I think this does a good job of showing just how far WAR's performance has come.  My graphics were set to Balanced and I was using Fraps to record.  Over 250 players participated and still the video came out pretty good.  Check it out after the break.

NOTE: Part 2 is up!

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1.3.2 Impressions

Last night, Mythic held a PTS event to test their performance improvements.  The goal was to get a whole bunch of people attacking a very well defended keep and see how it holds up.  Over 250 players ended up fighting over the keep. How did WAR do?

NOTE:  Check out the video of the siege. 
NOTE:  Part 2 of the Siege Video is up.

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WAR's Battle Royal

On Friday night, a PTS Event was held for WAR called the Battle Royal. Originally it was supposed to be Thursday night, but it was delayed. The purpose of the event was to test the new ramps that were added to tier 4 keeps.


The event moved from zone to zone testing out every keep. Each realm would defend and attack the keep. It was organized by Mythic personnel and turned out to be pretty fun. After each zone, they handed out a special mount at random.


A lot more people showed up than I thought would. The estimates I heard put the total at 220+. The performance was actually pretty good. I had to go down to the Balanced graphic setting, but it was playable. There was some lag though.


I think that the added ramps will be both good and bad for the game. On the positive side, they will make large battles much more fun. There is more room to move around which will add an element of strategy. Sure, the 2nd ramp does not make much sense if you look at it from a real world perspective. This is a game though and sometimes things must be done for gameplay reasons.


The downside is that I think this will make defending the keep much more difficult for smaller groups. Prior to the added ramp, a smaller (but still large) group could field a tank wall and hold off a larger force. Now that same force would no longer be able to use that same tactic.

Players are very creative. I would not be surprised if smaller groups are able to use the multiple ramps to their advantage. I've been on fortress raids which were wiped by much smaller groups because they dropped off the ledge and attacked us from behind. This type of strategy may work here as well.

You should expect this change (and the city siege changes) to go live pretty soon, as the pre-patch has been up for download. It should be interesting as keep and city sieges will be quite a bit different.

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Battle Royal - Tonight!

Mythic announced a new PTS event for tonight, a Tier 4 Battle Royal. This looks like they want to test out how the new keep layouts fare in battle. They will also be giving away mounts to some lucky players. While I don't really want the mount, I do want to help out.

They will have templates available for use if you don't have a Tier 4 character. The templates are decked out in Sovereign Armor, so you will at least look awesome. Although, I tried a Knight template last event and I had no idea what I was doing. I ended up just running around hitting random buttons.

As I mentioned, the big change in Tier 4 RvR are the keep layouts. They added a 2nd ramp, which is too big to be tank-walled off. It will be interesting to see how this changes the siege. The pessimistic side of me thinks that it will make defending the keep very difficult.

The most likely result is that the tank wall will be moved to the door. In my experience, a tank wall at the door never goes well due to Rank 4 Morale abilities. It is much easier for the attackers to target these at the door area compared to the ramp.

That is what tonight is for though, so get on and have some fun.

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Crafting in the Land of the Dead

Crafting received some additions in Warhammer Online's upcoming Land of the Dead expansion. When you venture to the new zone, you will find several new ingredients that can be purchased from vendors for scarabs. Apothecary and Talisman Making both got two new types of additions.

Let's look at Apothecary first, as my character on PTS is trained in that field. There are actually 6 new ingredients, 3 potency levels for each of the new potions. As I was short on scarabs, I chose the cheapest ingredients. A few minutes later I had an Elixr of Ptra and an Elixr of Tahoth. These are their effects when consumed.



I was able to test the Elixir of Ptra by letting a carrion beat on me. When I had low health it healed me for 1,500. The bird kept attacking and I eventually died, so it doesn't trigger all of the time. Remember, this was the cheapest version.

Like Apothecary, Talisman Making has 6 new ingredients, 3 levels for each new talisman. I couldn't make any, but here are the described benefits.



Both of them sound quite nice. I wonder if speed means attack speed or movement speed? Draining energy sounds like a nice addition for a tank.

I have heard that there are new items to salvage and such too, as a cultivator I was not able to verify. PQ bags still drop crafting materials as well. I really hope some new seeds are available in the zone.

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Tomb of the Vulture Lord Footage

Last night, the Tomb of the Vulture Lord was opened for testing on the PTS. I managed to find a group and ventured into the new dungeon. The video does not really spoil anything for a couple reasons. One, I hate spoiling content before it even hits the live servers. Two, I was not on long enough to get very far.

At no extra charge, this footage contains an experimental new technology, PopUp Werit. That's right, yours truly will guide you through the video!



Direct Link.

The Warhammer Blog Times also has a video up.

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Land of the Dead - In Action

I put together another Land of the Dead trailer, this time with more action oriented video. I hoped to get some Destruction players in it, but such are the pitfalls of filming on PTS.



Direct Link.

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Vessel Weapons

One of the new features that the Land of the Dead will be bringing us is Vessel Weapons. These are weapons that are less powerful by default but offer more in the way of customization than other weapons in the game. They come with a dps value, a single stat and multiple Talisman/Soul slots. Here you can see two vessel weapons I won in blue bags. NOTE: This information if off of PTS so it is subject to change.



Basic (blue quality) vessel weapons can also be purchased off of a vendor in your warcamp. They have versions for Rank 31 and Rank 40 available.

One handed weapons get 2 Soul/Talisman slots while Two handed weapons get 3. Before you slot a soul in a two hander, you must convert it to a large soul. This will normalize the power of the soul to take into account that dual wielders will get an extra soul slot.

A soul is basically a souped up talisman. Much like stars that burn bright, a soul will usually last a shorter time than a talisman. They also offer different benefits. For example, souls can add proc effects to your weapon. You can obtain souls from vendors using scarabs or from loot drops throughout the Land of the Dead. You can place old world talismans into these slots as well. However, you cannot place souls in old world weapons.

I cashed in some scarabs and got a lucky loot drop (the epic soul) to get the following talismans.


You cannot place 2 proc souls in the same vessel weapons just like you cannot place multiple +strength ones too. That means I will have to put a +toughness soul in each weapon. These are placed just like normal talismans, so the result is:

There are numerous souls to choose from, so you do have a nice amount of options. This adds some nice customization aspects thanks to the proc souls. This should also keep the Land of the Dead relevant for a long time to come as players need to replace souls. I wonder if we will see this system applied to armor sometime?

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Land of the Dead Fan Trailer

To continue this weeks video trend, I put together a Land of the Dead (on PTS) trailer. This is my first attempt at such a thing but I think it worked out well enough. Not much action in this one, maybe next time.



Direct link.

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The Glyph Bar

There have been a few questions about a bar of blocks that appear in your Land of the Dead interface. It is your Glyph bar and the star of a new video!



Direct link.

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Through the Looking Glass

I am in a video mood today. Here is another quickie showing a new way of getting around the Land of the Dead (PTS).



That Elf creeps me out.

Direct link here.

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Werit enters the Land of the Dead

Last night was the Land of the Dead opening on the Public Test Server. It got off to a rough start as most people had no idea what was going on or what to do. Eventually Order unlocked the Land of the Dead.

As you can see from the snapshot below, a few people were interested and taking a trip down south.


This is the first view you get when you arrive.


Just outside of the warcamp is a nice look at a couple of PQ areas.


Near the entrance to the pyramid. That statue looks like it is watching me. What am I worried about, it's just stone right? ;)


Here is a nice look at the pyramid. The enviornment in the new zone is very nice. The artists outdid themselves.


I tried out a PQ and won a bag! The PQ itself involved lots of snakes. The mechanic here seems to have been killing a creatures friends before it would take damage.


Now Mythic, we need to talk. What real use is this spanner that I won? How important do you think Strength is to an Engineer? The 2 Talisman slots are nice, but you can see my current hammer there which is pretty low ranked in comparison. Why would I switch?


That's when I called it a night as it was getting late. My character is logged off somewhere in the Land of the Dead ready to surprise some Destro.

The only major problem of the night was that animations were broken on npc's in the new zone. They were a bit stiff.... ha? It was a fun time, but I will be saving most of the new content for when it hits live.

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Werit goes green

That's right, I rolled a Choppa. Since I am a one realm kinda guy, I will save the Slayer for when it is live. In the mean time, it's Choppa time! I only got to play for a little bit, making it to Rank 3. The Choppa reminds me of the Incredible Hulk with a loincloth. How can that not be fun?

Here is me, Werit the Choppa.


Loincloths everywhere!


Choppa pain train...


Oh yea, there were new little Dwarves too. I'm just taking a break here, honest.


The scenarios were pretty crazy with just Choppa vs Slayer in almost all of them. We had a Shaman in one, he was mauled by many naked Dwarves. What a way to go.

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Werits PTS Adventure

Yesterday, the WAR Public test Server opened its doors to the public. While it does not feature the Slayer or the Choppa, it does have most of the rest of the 1.2 patch. Copying my character, Tirew, over and logging is was a breeze. In fact, I was able to rename Tirew to Werit for the PTS!

Upon logging in, I had to reset a lot of my UI settings. One thing I noticed is that the game looks better. I'm not sure if it is just me, but everything looks crisper. It was set at high quality which is what I normally run at in non-rvr situations. Either way, looking good.

I also noticed my gun had a sweet new model. I would post a screenshot, but the server is offline. The old model wasn't bad, it just was not placed on my characters back properly. Instead is was above his head. The new one is placed correctly but looks a lot different. I did get some compliments about it :)

The map is coming along nicely. There is a tooltip for the battle indicators which give a vague idea of how many people are there. I had always thought the different battle indicators served this function already. Also, you can navigate to the other maps with directional arrows on the sides. Nice touch.

Zone Domination is in, sorta. You can click on the zone control bar to get... 4 other progress bars. Each representing one aspect of the zone control (i.e. Objectives, Scenarios). I hope they work on this a bit. I was hoping for numbers rather than bars. Also, it does not really tell you how much each bar matters in the scheme of things.

With zone domination, you now have to hold objectives for a set amount of time (30 minutes and 2 hours for keeps). The times appear on your map. As of yesterday, they need a bit of work since they are not really lined up with the objectives. Also, you don't seem to be able to retake objectives and other strange bugs. But it is a test server.

Keeps are going to be wild and crazy places due to pick lock actually working. In the few keep fights I was in, there were always folks inside the keep. I'm not sure how much I like this whole idea. Keeps used to be a safe haven, now the only 'safe' spot will be standing on the keep lord. Gone are the days of a small desperate defense. Keeps will only be worth defending if you have a good sized force.

Chosen were probably having a great time on the PTS. Their Blast Wave skill was bugged. It was changed to debuff wounds rather than resistances. Someone neglected to fix the value it debuffed for... so we had Chosen taking away 4,000 health AoE style.

I did get a message about Order making a Rally Call. I have no idea how this applies to Tier 4, which is where I saw it.

The new Groups menu looks very nice. I was not able to do a Tier 4 wide search for RvR groups though, however that ability will be very helpful.

It was very nice to have my Barbed Wire animation back. Actually, I noted a lot more animations... I guess they added a bunch more.

The keep/objective defensive quests in Tier 4 have been upgraded to reward 1.5 gold which pretty good compared to what is on live. I was unable to find the RvR Quest chain though.

By evening, they had to turn off region chat and scenarios. Such is life on the test server. With Chosen wrecking everyone, seemed like a good time to call it a night.

So far things are looking good.

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