MMORPG Veteran

Think Outside The Box

Very seldom will I give out some of my personal “secrets to success”. Today I am in a good mood, so the Karashur.net readers will get a treat. Some of these techniques are well known to the hardcore, but many of you out there seem to ignore the possiblities. These strategies can be used for most mmos, especially the new ones.

Read the damn patch notes!
There are so many ways to capitalize with patch notes. You can really benefit if the proposed patch notes are released before the patch goes live. For starters, quite a few companies make the mistake of telling us which exploits they are going to fix before actually fixing them… You can also play the market with patch notes. If a certain item will no longer be available, the rarity will increase. Certain crafting mechanics or items tend to change and make millions for those who planned ahead.

Sign up for beta
This is pretty self-explanatory… If you can play the game way ahead of everyone else, you will have a serious advantage. You can also test out bugs for the development team to fix, which brings me to my next helpful tip.

Shut the F*$# Up
This one may be a little “controversial”. If you find out something that will benefit yourself, your clan, or your real life wallet, keep it to yourself. Get as much out of it as you can before you call the police(game developers). Make sure you don’t get banned in the process.

Continue Reading: “Ahead of the Curve”

Hi, my name is Tayman…

“Hi Tayman!”

MMO addiction is a serious problem affecting many gamers whether they choose to believe it or not. Getting and using the drug(game) becomes more and more important than anything else, including job, friends and family.

Read the following paragraph and replace the word drug with your favorite online game:

“One of the most powerful effects of drug abuse and addiction is denial. The urge to use is so strong that the mind finds many ways to rationalize drug use. Someone abusing drugs may drastically underestimate the quantity of drugs they are taking, how much it is costing them, and how much time it takes away from their family and work. They may lash out at concerned family members, making the family feel like they are exaggerating and overstating the problem. What makes this so frustrating for family members is the person abusing drugs often sincerely believes they do not have a problem, and can make the family member feel like the dysfunctional one.

This denial and rationalization can lead to increased problems with work, finances and relationships. The person abusing drugs may blame an “unfair boss’ for losing her job, or a ‘nagging wife’ for why he is increasingly going out with friends to get high. While work and relationship stresses happen to everyone, an overall pattern of deterioration and blaming others may be a sign of trouble.”

Many of us, including myself, have abused the mmo drug in the past. Are some people more prone to mmo addiction than others? Is it the sense of escape from real life that hooks us?

There have been many jobs lost, marriages ruined, health destroyed, college dreams crushed, and children ignored from MMO’s. The key to beating this ‘problem’ is self-discipline. if you are spending enormous amounts of time playing your favorite mmo, make sure you don’t neglect what’s most important in your life. Take some time out to exercise, eat right, and stay healthy. Get out of the rat-race so you will have enough spare time to play as much as you like!

Anyone who has played a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game with player versus player content will agree that there are several advantages and disadvantages to a faction based system and an all out every man for himself player killer system. First, lets take a look at faction based systems.

In a faction based system, it’s much easier for someone who isn’t in a clan/guild to join the battle. Premade groups aren’t always necessary, and there are usually plenty of targets to go after. Huge battles are often and usually don’t require a set time to experience. Unfortunately, you aren’t able to kill idiots in your own faction that deserve to be stabbed to death in real life.

In a player killer based system everyone is a target. No where is safe and you shouldn’t trust anyone. Adventuring alone is suicide since there is strength in numbers and most people will kill you because they can. Only the strong survive in this environment.

The key ingredient that determines if one of these systems is better than the other is Risk vs Reward. If there isn’t a real penalty or reward for kills or deaths, both systems will become boring quick.

As predicted 4 years ago Bioware Should Take Over Star Wars Galaxies Bioware will release a new MMORPG in the Star Wars universe. Our hopes are high for this one since Bioware is already well versed in the Star Wars universe (see: Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2) and have the experience to make an incredible game.

Karashur.net will be thoroughly covering this game from now until release and beyond. We will make sure the hardcore pvpers/pkers know if they should bother looking at this game. Check back often if you want to find out when beta sign-ups will begin.

The more mmo games you play, the more you notice the tremendous amount of bugs and exploits. The worst offenders are dupe bugs and god mode bugs, but usually the problems with end-game content are the biggest threat to an mmo’s financial future. The average joe will quit the game once he finds out all his hard work (grinding) was for a bug-ridden end-game.

Are most companies forced to spend resources developing more exploitable content? The common sense approach suggests that they should fix the pre-existing problems before adding new ones. Unfortunately, the mmo world is big (serious) business. Which often means more time is spent on attracting new customers with shiny uber loot and broken dungeons.

It’s much cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to find a new one. Why does the mmo world seem to ignore this?

As most of you already know, many of us play Warhammer online on the Dark Crag server. Recently, we were able to attack the opposing sides keep only because the final fortress was taken at 3:00 in the morning. If you are unfamiliar with city sieges in Warhammer Online, here is a brief explanation. In order to start the siege of a city, you must control two fortresses in different zones. Unfortunately, each fortress siege usually attracts 500 or more players. There have been other games that were able to pull off massive sieges like this, but the Warhammer Online servers crash each time. Is this a whine post? Not quite…

As MMORPG’s truly become massive and not instanced garbage for a handful of players, will the infrastructure of the internet and the current server hardware available be able to keep up and remain profitable. Most people seem to think so…

Either way, congratulations to Mythic for creating a game that can attract so many players at one time to complete a single task. It is definitely a step in the right direction for all mmorpgs.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the patch notes, here they are:

The team here at Mythic has been busy this week making improvements and fixes based on your feedback to further enhance your gameplay experience. While these may change read on to check out the latest of these exciting updates coming to a server near you!

Highlights

* The war against the gold spammers continues. We’ve added new code that will hinder the spammers as they seek to carry out their nefarious deeds! This is only the next step, not the final one, in our continued battle against them.

* We have added a ‘Join All’ button to the scenario window which now allows players to join all scenario queues in their current tier at once.

* In order to promote realm and population balance, some realms on some servers will now award their players with a +20% bonus to renown and experience. This is not a permanent bonus, but rather a temporary incentive to promote balance. Realms currently offering this bonus are marked on the server list with a colored icon; blue for Order and Red for Destruction - Check the Herald for the latest list!

* In response to player feedback, we have made several improvements to the behavior and responsiveness of the siege weapon interface. In addition we have fixed some issues with the control and release processes of siege weapons.

* In an ongoing effort to deter players from going AFK while in scenario starting areas, we have made the following changes:

o First, players who join a scenario and remain in their realm’s spawn area for two minutes will be automatically removed from that scenario.

o Second, upon entering the spawn area of a scenario, players will receive a debuff that prevents them from earning renown and experience. This debuff will be removed when the player leaves the spawn area.

* The level range at which players are able to receive the “Bolster” buff while in RvR has been expanded. This buff will now be available starting three levels lower than it had been previously. Please note this change only applies to Scenarios on Open-RvR Ruleset Servers.

o In tier 2, the buff will apply from rank 8 to rank 17, and will raise players to Battle Rank 18.

o In tier 3, the buff will apply from rank 18 to rank 27, and will raise players to Battle Rank 28.

o In tier 4, the buff will apply from rank 28 to rank 35, and will raise players to Battle Rank 36.

* In response to player feedback, we’ve added RvR and NPC chat tabs for new players. These tabs filter scenario chat and NPC chat respectively. In order to minimize frustration to users who have already customized their chat window, we will not be overwriting any current settings, so this change will affect only new players. Players who wish to add these tabs may do so through the normal chat configuration options.

* While in scenarios, players will no longer be able to select “Need” in their loot windows unless their career or race can use the item being offered. Please note: players of a lower level than required by the item are still able to roll.

* We have fixed an issue that was causing claimed keeps to forget that they had been claimed after a server restart. Improvements have been made to how pets follow and they should now return to their owners more quickly.

* We continue to work on the issues with the pet window. We have identified and corrected another bug which was causing this window to disappear.
Improvements have been made regarding an issue that was causing pets to teleport back to their owners after combat.

* Fixed a bug that prevented players from creating an alliance with more than two guilds. Now that this issue is resolved, alliances can grow to great numbers to crush their enemies!

* Fixed an issue that was causing the chat window to reset to its default position at logout.

General Changes and Bug Fixes

* Ongoing improvements have been made to client and server stability.

* In order to deter players from spam-mailing, WAR continues to enforce a 5-second delay between sending mail messages. However, we have reduced this delay to 1 second for mails being sent to alts or guildmates.

* We have fixed an issue that was causing monsters to lose their aggression toward players in some rare cases.

* We have identified a small percentage of monsters in the game that were slightly less challenging than originally designed. We have adjusted the abilities of these monsters to bring them in line with their intended level of difficulty.

* Fixed an issue that was allowing players to change their tactics configuration during combat.

Content

* We have made several fixes and improvements to the behavior of monsters and encounters in the Lost Vale dungeon. Access to this dungeon has been granted once more, and it should now provide an appropriately challenging experience for high-level players.

Items

* Warlord Set Trinkets were missing their career requirements. Career requirements have been added to these items.

User Interface

* In response to player feedback, we have made several improvements to the behavior and responsiveness of the siege weapon interface.

* The words in the chat tab labels will no longer disappear when players change the game’s graphical resolution.

* The chat window will no longer slide upward when being resized.

* Fixed some issues with the creation of chat tabs. Newly-created chat tabs should no longer continue beyond the border of the chat window.

* Players who interact with guild vaults while their inventory is full will no longer see items in the guild vault disappear.

* We have fixed an issue that was causing the game not to remember the chat prefix (/tell, /g, /wb), forcing players to retype it each time. The game should now correctly remember the chat prefix.

* Chat font settings will now save properly.

* Fixed an issue which was causing healers to lose targeting on a player who they just resurrected.

* A number of game actions and NPC and monster communications were being sent to players through the wrong chat channel. We have made several fixes relating to these issues.

Realm vs. Realm

* The pre-scenario countdown timer should now work properly once again.

* We have fixed an issue that was causing claimed keeps to forget that they had been claimed after a server restart.

* Players’ use of siege weapons will be no longer be interrupted when those players take damage.

* We have fixed an issue that was preventing players from opening the main door of a captured keep which belonged to their realm.

This problem seems to show itself in every “pvp” oriented MMO. Let’s keep this post short and sweet….

***IF YOU ARE ATTACKING SOMEONE AND THEY ARE BEING HEALED, KILL THE HEALER!***

Before you enter a battle, have a plan to eliminate your biggest threat(the healers). Every second in battle is precious. The time you spend beating on a high armor tank with gobs of health, the rest of the team is getting destroyed.

Here are a few reasons why it is extremely important to kill the healers first:

1) If you can outdamage the heals your target is receiving, you will never kill your target.
2) The healer has the ability to resurrect fallen players.

The healer is the most “clutch” player on the field. Ignore the healers and you will lose the battle.

WAAAGH!!!

“Now this is a wonderful surprise! Maybe they have fixed the crash to desktop issues so many are facing.” -Tayman

WAR is Coming and the world is ready. Hundreds of thousands of players will descend upon the Age of Reckoning this Sunday, September 7th.

In order to make this world-wide event the best it can be we’re welcoming all Preview Weekend attendees back for two more days to rev things up and get the party started. We invite all Preview Weekend players to join us for Preview Weekend+ this Friday, 9/5 and Saturday, 9/6 starting tomorrow morning.

This epic weekend will be one to remember as you herald in Open Beta and the Age of Reckoning to the entire world!

The tides of WAR are coming…we’ll see you on the battlefiled!

We peeled ourselves away from the game for a short period of time to give you an idea of what to expect. First and foremost, if you are a MMORPG fan, you WON’T be disappointed. Many of the MMORPG issues Tayman(and the rest of the Karashur.net staff…) has discussed have been addressed. One thing worth mentioning is the public quest system.

Public Quests are area based quests that you trigger by crossing over into a designated Public Quest location. Unlike most quests, it’s not initiated by speaking with a specific NPC or finding/ looting a random item that has a quest attached to it. You are alerted when you enter the PQ zone. The message informs you that a Public Quest is taking place and what you would need to do to be a part of the quest. These quests can be very difficult for an average group to accomplish in the time frame provided. This is where the word “Public” comes into play. The quests are geared for everyone of the same level in the zone to participate in.

As you progress in the quest, you will face mobs with “Champion” status (they hit harder and have more xp). Eventually you will face hero class mobs.

The system encourages teamwork and eases the monotony of killing the same mobs over and over. There are many rewards to be had from completing the quests. Once you complete the quest, you roll for an item. It is difficult to earn the items, but it’s based on your contribution to the effort.