Sorry for the lack of updates all! It’s essay after essay after test after test for me this semester and in my spare time I’ve been trying to enjoy the heck out of Warhammer Online; which I must say I certainly am enjoying a whole heck of a lot.
We, Happy Fun Guyz, adventured into Mount Gunbad tonight in a very impromptu group this afternoon. The afternoon, and the group for that matter, started off grinding PQ’s while queueing up for scenarios when we realized that we had a pretty decent group gathered up. The group consisted of 2 Black Orcs, a Chosen, a Squig Herder, a Marauder, and a Shaman (Graev the SH and me the Shaman). Since we were grinding in Chapter 11 Greenskins which is in Badlands, the trip to Gunbad wasn’t more than two minutes.
Gunbad is an amazing place! Right when you enter the dungeon you are presented with a mini-camp of NPC’s that offer literally a dozen quests, a place to respawn when you die – right inside the dungeon!!! – and a healer to cure that rez sickness. After you see the awesome change of pace that Mythic has given players with this outpost-within-a-dungeon you notice the great atmosphere that this Night Goblin cave presents. It’s illuminated with glowing crystals and light with mushrooms, moss, and cave-like stuff all over. It’s an enormous cavernous place with three different wings. From what I’ve been able to gather it looks like the wings are 23-25, 26-28, and 28-32’ish. The mobs you fight here are Night Goblins, Trolls, Wolves, Spiders, and other cave’ish beings – at least from what we’ve been able to see so far in the dungeon.
We didn’t make it too far, I’ll admit that much. Each pull consists of 3+ champions that hit very hard and must be controlled and kept off the healer(s). My tanks were awesome – I love those guys – and they kept the aggro off me 99% of the time which is why we were able to do so well with my crappy heals. We made it past the first boss which was a big spider that actually surprised us by bursting out of the ground, to a PQ, that you naturally participate in while doing parts of the dungeon, and ended up calling it an evening after the third or fourth wipe on the PQ boss that blocks the path. The PQ boss was a goblin master guy who summoned two large trolls totally by surprise…. surprises happen a lot in Gunbad.
Overall we had a blast in this place and definitely needed a few more levels. Most of the group was 22-23 and the wing was designed for a group of 25+ to do the whole thing comfortably. We will absolutely be going back! The breathtaking environments and the exhilerating combat, coupled with the fact that this is a PUBLIC dungeon, make this a unique and pleasurable experience in a sea of ‘usually’ stale dungeon PvE in mmorpgs.
It’s good to hear that WAR’s got some good PvE dungeons – I’ve generally been hearing that it was fairly weak in that area. I also like the art design you were speaking of in the dungeon, because in my opinion one of the great strengths of WoW’s dungeons is the setting of them – the fights aren’t neccessarily any more challenging than those in EQ2 (for example), but they’re colourful and varied and it’s amazing how much more life and atmosphere it gives them.
You mention open dungeons as though they are a good thing, though. I played many of them in EQ1 and EQ2, who seem to be the main proponents of them, and I think they’re one of the worst things ever and I discussed them at length in my EQ2 play diary. Because they’re open, you can quite often fight to a boss mob just to find him already having been killed by another group or a farmer, and the respawns also have to be quick as its a public dungeon – but this means that you have to reclear the same areas a second time if you wipe or if you lose a group member. It’s all very frustrating, and that’s even before you run into inconsiderate groups/players who might get you killed with a train or just generally grief you.
Overall, I think instances are DEFINATELY the way forward.
Hate, hate, hate, hate PUBLIC dungeons. Sorry, this makes it automatically suck the big one for me.
It’s probably fine right now, with not too many players in tier 3 yet, but if the tier 4 dungeons are public, guaranteed it will be a zoo of trains and zergs.
I strongly prefer dungeons nicely balanced for small teams.
And since when is a public dungeon refreshing and new? It’s the old stale ala UO. This is a concept that should be buried as old and tired by now.
Thanks for the info Keen!
BTW: I’m pretty sure that the dungeons are A) open per realm, so Destro and Order are in separate dungeons and are balanced for max number of players like city siege and B) the final boss is instanced so that when your group gets enough influence to reach him, you have him all to yourself.
Good to hear that the PvE is shaping up! I hope they keep on that track.
Keen what are your computer specs and what settings do you run on? I just got a new rig but I lag in RvR Keep Sieges, really dissapointed 🙁
My Rig:
ATI HD 4850
amd athlon 64 x 2 5000+
vista
2 gigs of ram
Any ideas on what I can do to run the game smoother? It seems it does not matter what settings I put the game on. I also notice some tearing and there is no vsync option in the game yet.
Thanks
Dahras is correct that final bosses (and bosses that drop loot, etc) are instanced within the public dungeons. In WAR you have to consider public dungeons not as dungeons but as zones. They have PQ’s, named mobs, normal mobs, quests, etc. The way Mythic has created the public dungeons IS fresh and new because they have taken what sucked about some of the public dungeons in other games and fixed it here. This is anything but old and tired – heck, if you experienced this for yourself (which you must do before you critique it) and you still think it’s “old” and “tired” then you’re jaded beyond help and you yourself have problably become “old” and “tired”. 😉 Try it out and THEN denounce it; it’s worth at least a try.
Also, there are more than just public dungeons. Mount Gunbad is public but there are private ones as well – IE: Sacellum in the Inevitable city, the first dungeon that Destruction players can enter, is private.
I can’t wait to see the harder wings of Gunbad (This place is huge it seems) and then move on to even more dungeons!
@Russel: I found THIS thread on WHA and it has really, really helped performance. It has also made the game look better. I highly suggest you look through it and the posts it links to and see if it helps.
Instances are terrible and I hope future games do away with them. Glad that WAR isn’t all instanced.
No easier way to kill community than force everyone into their own little version of the game. The reason EQ dungeons were overpopulated was because they didn’t create enough content and it was a PvE gear farming game. Not because they had public dungeons.
@Russell – the most immediate thing that will help you is more RAM, you have far too little. If you’re running 64-bit Vista add at least 2 more gigs. If you’re running 32-bit you won’t benefit from much more than 3, so either just add 1 more gig, or add 2 with the understanding you won’t get the full benefit of it.
@Ender: The “all instancing is bad” approach throws the baby out with the bathwater. I ~like~ instancing when used appropriately. Dungeons are one of the best examples, mini-games are another.
The dungeons in EQ sucked whether they were overcrowded or whether just one clown came to mess up with your pull. It doesn’t need a high population to exploit the problems.
@Keen: Fair enough on trying it out first, but it does sound like an oddly complicated bandaid to something that didn’t work well. Why fix what never worked right when there’s already a complete solution?
I’ll just have to see I guess. Yeah, I’m very jaded on things that sucked 100% of the time elsewhere, go figure.
And I’m turning 40 in a month, don’t call me old or I’ll call you a whipper-snapper. =P
See we just disagree. EQ dungeons were a blast because they were busy and you had to communicate with others to coordinate things. They were even more fun on a PvP server when you could fight over spawns.
There is a point where they become too busy and it is a drag and that mostly happened at end game dungeons due to lack of content.
I do agree that some minor instancing is fine. Scenarios are fine. Instancing small sections of a dungeon for scripted events is fine with me. It is instancing the whole thing that I hate.
@keen
Hi keen im playing a shaman, but i have a question, heals are a shit, and the damge is worst, i dont know if the order is overpower, but i feel like i cant kill anybody.. is the shaman better after lvl 10?
Thank u
@Marcus: Shaman are really under-performers until they get into the high 20’s. In the early levels our heals are the worst, our survivability is the worst, and our damage is so bad that many can ignore you altogether. It gets better, especially if you spec your points well.
You might as well call this “Keen and Graev’s WARHAMMER Blog” since that all you guys talk about heh…
Maybe you guys could start talking a little more about other games you play? Since I’ve tried WAR and don’t really like it (I play WoW, make fun of me for playing what I like if you must, I’m use to it by now, but I’m in Beta and it’s just too much fun!).
I just love your guys take on games and explain their goods and bads (although sometimes I have to disagree, but their not called opinions for nothing). Just saying it would overall keep me checking for frequently and more attracted to this blog if you guys spread your games a little bit more. That way all people can enjoy coming here.
Good night. (or day, really not sure what your zone is)
Anyone know of a site that has maps, walkthroughs, and/or guides for the PVE instances? So far I haven’t been able to put my fingers on much information.
I think the real question is…
How was the loot!? Sacellum had terrible drops, so I’m hoping Gunbad is better…
You can take a warband into Gunbad btw and raid the public quests for an easier life if you’re in the lower 20s. Not tried taking a warband into the instanced boss sections yet, but I presume you can there too.
Just noting, in-dungeon outposts/respawn areas aren’t that new. At the very least Tabula Rasa’s had them since beta.