Hey, that’s what my nuts taste like!

Patch Notes: Combat & Careers

Unshakable Focus: This Morale ability has had its effect changed. It will now give you +100% critical hit chance for its duration.

Oh really?

Guys,

As I said in my preview….

• AoE damage is being reduced
• Single target damage with high base values get more bonus from stat
• Scout & Skirmisher lines both have ability improvements.

I’m having a hard time understanding how this is a bad thing… The worse thing you have to deal with is waiting the extra week or two for PTS phase 2 to begin for these items to be patched up.

Before you break out torches please A) read the post carefully B) Wait to test things

Shadow Warriors are not getting worse with this patch, thats for sure.

-Adam

Good to know where we stand I guess.

Get yer scarabs! Read all about it!

Go here.

They gave out all sorts of clues when it came to the choppa/slayer. They sent out loads of creepy valentine’s gifts to a few lucky bloggers for the holiday event of murder. They even sent out a few tid-bits here and there early on when Land of the Dead was announced. Well, apparently they’re going to hit us full in the face with more Land of the Dead stuff, as well as get people reading! What’s the incentive to bother going over all this drivel we put out? Prizes of course! Scarabs of doom can be found if you’re clever enough to decipher the hieroglyphics that the community instigators we call bloggers show to the world. Lets all hope they’re not selfish bastards and keep them to themselves. (It seems one at least has been kind enough to share.)

The slow realization

“This shit is hard!”

I appreciate you letting us know though. I’m also sure that you guys can appreciate the massive backlash you’re going to recieve, particularly from the Shadow Warrior community. First it was, “RDPS changes will go in at phase 2 on the PTS!”. This followed by, “Oh, just kidding, SW and SH changes will be phase 3, along with the tanks.” And now the bomb of, “Oh, ummm, all changes are being put on hold, let me studiously not mention the archers of the game, and avoid saying anything tank related like the bubonic-fucking-plague.”

Inspiring confidence in your customers, you’re doing it wrong actually.

It’s not as if we didn’t expect this. Why would you try and do a complete re-balance of the classes while concurrently putting out an expansion and all the testing that involves as well? I appreciate the enthusiasm, but that just seems mildly retarded. Testing things require controls, the more variables you toss into any test, the less likely you are to get accurate results, and yet somehow Mythic thought that changing everything all at once would be good, solid ground to base results on. Poor decision making. I’m sticking with you Mythic, because it is a fun game, and there really isn’t any decent PvP game out there, but come on, get over this JV f-ups.

Cautiosly optomisitic in a sea of fear

There are a whole lot of angry and fearful players of Shadow Warriors on the various forums. I can see their side in this very easily. We were told time and again that the second phase would have the RDPS changes for the game put in. Then Mythic drops the, “Just kidding!” bomb on us, and lets us know we have to wait for the THIRD phase of testing, along with the Squig Herders. The message that this delivers to the SW community isn’t that you’re taking the time to do it right, or that we need so few changes that it could wait till last, it’s that you left us till last because you seem to not know what to do. This problem is only going to get compounded by the fact that we will now have the shortest time to test any changes. An extra slap in the face is this “incentive” program to be get on the PTS and help out with the progression. What incentive does any SW player have to get on there right now, other than to help out someone ELSE test their character. Even that would be a poor decision, given that those tests would give incredibly skewed results.

Like a punch to the gut

Oh really?

Patch 1.3

So much stuff to go over.

I’ve already talked a little about sigils. – Major Win

A hotfix yesterday “lowered” the cost of token items. I use quotations because, yes, the officer medallion portion has been lowered on pretty much everything, but for everything above conqueror, it seems like the crest portion has been increased. –Major Fail

I’ll hit some highlights for me from the 1.3 notes.

• Extra bag space for tradeskills, one at the initial train and one at each 100 skill for both your gathering and your crafting. These bags are only for items related to the tradeskill. – Crazy Win
• AoE damage decreased across the board, mostly be the area. – Insane win
• SW being included in the above. – Epic fail
• Talisman making revamped, no more tier 10 curios, heavy reliance on the fragment for the outcome now. – Mega Win for salvagers (me!)
• Talismans will now have a level requirement, goodbye twinkage. – Win
• Multiple liniments have had their duration reduced. – Fail
• Deadbolts for inner posterns. – Mother-fuckin’ win (Fuck you MDPS ninjas!)
• Pass on PQ bags. – About time Win.

Overall, pretty good stuff. More wins than loses, but that’s how it should be. Still waiting for news of a serious Shadow Warrior revamp. It hurts when I play my DoK and people in my alliance jokingly refer to SW as “free-RP”. On a related note, I’ve been playing the hell out of my Knight. It’s been crazy fun.

Edit:

I want to throw up a link for the specifics of what is being talked about for Shadow Warriors with 1.3. So here it is. On a quick glance, it seems like a it’s a break even maybe. I’m not sure yet. Need time to think on it.

More good news

I keep reading all sorts of goodness out of this Games Day Baltimore. This tidbit makes me particularly happy since they specifically mentioned the Shadow Warriors. It seems like we’ll get some minor tweaks with everyone else, and then maybe some seriously focused attention. I’m just tickled that a developer has officially responded to the concerns of the Shadow Warrior community. It’s happened before, but was immediately followed by someone discounting the sentiment with a phrase along the lines of, “That person is not on the class balance team, their opinion is only their own, and does not reflect or indicate the concerns of that team.”

Also, upgraded keeps giving greater loot than before? Thank you! When keeps started being more difficult to capture than fortresses because it’s rank 10, the work needs to be rewarded. Those things truly are beasts to get into. Also, complete swapping out of old keeps for new keeps once more ramps have been installed! This makes my heart go pitter-patter with joy, now if we can just instruct all the cowards who are scared of virtual death to go up one ramp, while the rest of us that want to push can go up the other, things will be A-OK.

Holy shit, sigils!

Go here.

Pay particular attention to the stuff about wards and the new sigil system.

Wards seperated from armor? That’s got to be some of the best god-damn news I’ve heard in a while.

This should help with people forgetting to swap out to ward gear, or maybe even the gear bug that made wards on your armor stop working.

Goodness I see here.

Land of the Dead at WHA

About 23 minutes of information. Thanks guys!

Of Numbers and Subscriptions

EA’s fourth quarter fiscal report.

Gamespot’s info on subscription numbers.

Thanks to Ariwyn’s post at WHA.

Much doom and gloom from some people, and partially justified. It says 300k dedicated subsribers. What does that mean? Players who have been subscribed for the entire time? For three months? Two? Is that just NA/Oceanic, or does it include the recent Russia-Taiwan markets? The more answers we get, the more questions we have it seems.