PVPlab

In a traditional MMO players often stand toe to toe, dealing damage whilst trying to mitigate the damage of their opponent. Stargate Worlds is not going to be like that, if you picture the “Hollywood style” combat seen in the show you’ll have a much better idea of what it will be like in the game.

Combat will be primarily ranged and as with other MMO’s will use different abilities. Such attacks may include a burst shot, single shot and aimed shot. There will be a melee ability with all classes, but probably not something you want to engage on, at least as a first option. All depends on the tactics though. Melee combat can be a viable option with combination of stealth.

The emphasis on combat in SGW will be to use tactics. Choosing a weapon will no longer be about which has the most DPS (Damage per Second) but will depend more on what you want to do with it. Nor will the outcome of the combat be determined from the hit points of a given player. Taking cover behind objects, using suppressing fire to pin down the enemy and flanking maneuvers to flush them out will all be good tactics. The key to successful combat is likely to be utilizing cover and terrain to protect your team and gain an advantage over the enemy.

To this end, players will have the ability to crouch and move while crouched. Explosives, whether strategically placed in an ambush, used to cover a retreat, or lobbed at an entrenched enemy will be a key part of combat. Players may even be able to destroy some of the play environment, to remove cover or make it, but most likely the environment is mostly indestructible. Trees and that sort of stuff will stand no matter how big explosives you attach to them. How these tactics could work in a possible combat scenario is given here.

Cover will likely play the most important role in combat as both players and mobs will be able to take cover. Mobs will attempt to flank and flush out players and players will be trying to do the same thing to mobs. A player will use cover to diminish the damage he is getting (possibly a buff) and to break line of sight.

The battlefield will not be nearly as friendly as in a traditional MMO. In that sense it will feel a little like a first person shooter, but players will not be nearly as squishy! However engaging in certain behavior will probably result in a short death. This includes, standing around with a shoot me sign, running straight towards an enemy with a fully loaded P90 or drawing the aggro of every enemy and attempting to ‘tank’ them. Even though players will be able to engage in hand to hand combat, in most circumstances this would not be a good idea. In fact enemy fire will be so lethal that even low level players pose a danger to high level players, if engaged without using cover and maneuver.

Groups will add a whole other dimension to combat. Being able to tactically coordinate with your squad-mates will be a key strategy to defeat enemies. A robust command and control interface will enable the squad leader to coordinate attacks or, if necessary, a retreat. If a squad of 4 is really working well together, they may be able to set up an ambush and successfully bring down an enemy group of 15! There won’t be friendly fire, although whether that includes damage from explosives and whether you can actually shoot at your teammates (and do no damage) has not been released.

In terms of what the various classes bring to a combat group, there is little information, and most is focused on the human classes. Both the archaeologist and scientist will certainly have their own combat utility. In addition to the battlefield emplacements that the scientist can build and the misdirection that the archaeologist can wangle, other abilities may include; being able to spot hidden enemies or those at a distance, shield technologies and other sorts of counter-measures. These advanced technologies will add to the tactical repertoire of a team or even make these classes capable soloists. (more…)

The majority of us are used to PvP only taking place in certain battlegrounds, hot zones, or the occasional duel with an ally. EA Mythic, seeks to change the conception of small, isolated PvP conflicts through the next evolution of RvR in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

RvR stands for Realm vs. Realm, examples of realms being Dwarves vs the Greenskins (a Realm is a faction, not a server). The system encourages all the players in the realm to work together, because everything everyone does contributes to the Victory Points of that Realm. Gather enough points, and your realm will continuously progress to the point where you control all the zones until you are at the enemy’s capital city gate, with siege engines slamming stones into their walls, and them making a desperate last stand.

By “everything everyone does” I mean PvE, public quests, capturing enemy keeps, completing battlefield objectives, doing scenarios, and fighting in RvR areas. PvE  is self explanatory, as every time that a player completes a quest, whether that be open world or instanced, the realm receives victory points. Public quests are repeatable, mutli-staged quests that players can join in at any point, and when they are completed, that realm receives Victory Points.

Adding another dimension to the RvR system is Renown, an experience system for RvR that lets you gain distinct rewards (titles, items, abilities). Players gain Renown by killing enemy players, participating in scenarios, capturing and holding battlefield objectives or keeps, and controlling zones. A player’s Renown rank (level) can only be as high as that player’s character’s rank, however, so you cannot access level 40 Renown items at rank 10.

A final interesting feature pertains to open-field PvP or fighting in RvR areas. Especially with the battlefield objectives, as well as keeps, you really feel as if you are fighting for something, and the fact that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has collision detection only reinforces that feeling. When you stand between your enemy and their goal, knowing that they cannot simply walk right through you adds another aspect of realism and seems to encourage team play by giving a sense of responsibility to all the players.

All in all, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is looking to be a fine MMO, especially in terms of RvR. If you havn’t registered for the closed beta, you should definitely consider doing so. A limited open beta is launching later this summer for people who have preordered. Check back at PVPlab for future updates on Warhammer Online and other titles.

Let’s face it, when it comes to choosing gear for your pvp battles, much of it is cut and dry. You have your set of arena/honor gear that cranks up your resilience and gives you just enough damage potential to lay waste to your opponents in short order (I’m sure rogues and a few other classes may have a piece of PvE gear they prefer in these situations as well, but its uncommon). Trinkets, on the other hand, are the one of the few truly versatile slots that you can make changes to on the fly and utilize for a number of different beneficial effects.

(more…)

With the recent announcement of a brand new achievement system in Warcraft come expansion time, as well as Wowhead’s full database of achievements, I figured I’d take a look and see what the system has to offer PvPers. Sifting through the other achievements, it appears that so far, in total, there’s about 43 pvp oriented accomplishments available. Some look quite easy, others will take some serious dedication to manage, and a few I can probably never hope to get. Here’s how they break down:
(more…)

I’ve been playing Age of Conan for a couple days now and I’m really enjoying it.  The combat system is great, albeit with a couple bugs, as with any MMO.  At any rate, my goal is to rock out some levels and get to the real large-scale pvp action where the game really shines.

There are tons of guides out there for sale (like this one from Ashling which I hear is decent) but why pay when it’s free? Here’s the guide I’m using to make this happen.  Extra credit goes to Gravemaker and Hexan for their informative thread on our guild forums.

(more…)

With Blizzard recently releasing their own official version of the talent calculators we’ll see for the expansion, the forums are already buzzing about what talents border on overpowered and which one’s produce a collective yawn. Having looked over my current 70s, I figured I would toss my hat in the ring as to what I think is looking good and what needs some tweaking. As it stands, I have a 70 Paladin, Warlock, Mage, and Priest, so I’ll stick to what I know, giving my 2 cents for my particular class and spec. Feel free to toss in some of your own feedback in the comments about these and others!

1. Warlock: I primarily stick to affliction, since I enjoy not ever running out of mana and a variety of ways to earn back my health. It doesn’t look like I’ll have any shortage of methods to do just that, in the expansion either! Death’s Embrace looks particularly fun, increasing life drained but also giving affliction locks’ an ability similar to a fire mage’s Molten Fury talents. The low-life DPS increase will be particularly useful for raid encounters. Eradication providing spellhaste for affliction locks who typically don’t rely heavily on the stat seems a bit odd. Haunt is a wonderful collaboration of effects, including direct damage, a debuff to help out your dots, and health upon expiration or being dispelled. Overall I think my warlock looks to be very happy come expansion time.
2. Mage: Having bounced around between arcane and frost for most of my mage’s lifetime, there are a number of improvements to the trees that I’m happy about and a few that I’m not. I’m iffy about the addition of talents that rely on spirit. In BC, much of the itemization was retooled so that mage gear and talents didn’t rely heavily on spirit, and now we have two talents (potent spirit and student of the mind) that add spirit or rely on it. I’ll reserve judgment until the expansion hits to see how things are itemized, but I know that I do gnab spirit where I can as an arcane mage since mana regeneration is an important aspect of the spec. Arcane barrage looks interesting, proving burst damage for pvp scenarios whilst also giving us a quick punch to use on clearcasting procs. I’m not familiar enough with fire to make any comments on the new talents, but as far as frost is concerned, I’m underwhelmed by the limitations of deep freeze. A 1.5 second cast stun that requires the target be frozen to cast? I’ll pass.
3. Paladin: Holy paladins have it pretty rough these days, and I’m glad to see that some of their pains will be eased come expansion time. One of our biggest complaints is that we lack any ability for AoE healing, given that there are so many situations where your group or a number of groups will be taking consistent damage (Netherspite, Kael’thas, Hex Lord, etc.). At present paladins can only plug away at one healing target at a time, but the newest end-talent for holy is an AoE, HoT spell that I think will be quite useful. It has a quick cast time and be cast on any group/member, healing everyone near them. I doubt it will be able to crit which is disheartening, though. Sacred cleansing looks fun for both pve and pvp. I’m on the fence about the judgment talents. I’d love to be able to use judgments for the groups benefits while healing, which is good, but I wonder if they’ll be mana efficient enough to use in long fights.
4. Priests: My priest has always been holy, despite the…lackluster talents available at the end of the tree. Lightwell has been modified so that people taking some damage will retain the healing effect (30% of your total HP or less). This could actually be useful for raid healing given that change, and the stupidly long cooldown has also been mercifully reduced down to 3 minutes. Circle of Healing has been changed so that it now hits whoever happens to be close to your target, be that a raid or party member, which means you won’t have to go targeting different groups with it, you can just go where the damage is. Test of Faith is a welcome addition (And fun for lolsmite procs from surge of light). Guardian spirit certainly seems nice, but 10 seconds is a very short duration, I think it could go to 15 at least, given the 3 minute cooldown.

Obviously this just scratches the surface on what’s out there, and there will undoubtedly be a number of sweeping changes before we get to launch. That said, taking a look over your own character talents, what strikes you as the “best?” What do you think needs to be changed? Feel free to let me know!

Since I started playing MMORPGs with Anarchy Online, I’ve wished there was more of a push for sci-fi genre games rather than all this fantasy stuff.  Enough with the Orcs, Elves and Dwarfs already.

Finally, it seems that Stargate Worlds might be answering that call for me.  While I loved Star Wars Galaxies because I’m into Star Wars, I really have no idea what’s going on in the Stargate world.  I’ve never watched an episode of the TV series and I’ve only seen the original movie once when it first came out.

But how will the PvP be?  According to the unofficial wiki, it looks promising.

Player versus player combat will form a strong part of the game, particularly for elder gameplay. It is in PVP that the developers hope the revolutionary combat system will reach its full potential. In addition some classes, such as the archaeologist will have viable non-combat methods to resolve PvP interactions. Exactly how this will convince an enemy Jaffa not to kill them is unknown. Although only a small amount of information has been released it is known that PvP will be an opt-in system but there will be content that is accessible only through PvP. PvP will be an opt-in system through use of both zoned and flagged PvP. 

At some point after release there will be ’special zones’ similar to battlegrounds for PvP, although players will be able to do battle elsewhere. Players from the two sides will battle to control these contested worlds, that are rich in various resources. To control these worlds and gain access to the resources players can engage in combat, quests and trade. Players may also be able to sway influence with local populations and gain a valuable foothold on these contested worlds. Cooperative play is also likely, with both sides being encouraged to join together to fight greater threats, such as the Ori.

There will be at least one Free For All PvP shard in addition to regular PvE shards (with opt-in PvP), although a decision on exactly how the shards will work is yet to be released.

Of course, this is all just information picked up from bits and pieces of leaks and snippets of dev posts on the official forums.  It does look good though.

Welcome to the so-called “Notoriety System.”

A player is flagged in three different ways using this system: innocent, criminal, and murderer.

• Criminals and Murderers will have an icon showing their status.
• Innocent: No one can perform hostile actions on you without being flagged as a Criminal.
• Criminal: Performing a hostile action on an Innocent player will flag you as a Criminal for 5 minutes. Any further Criminal acts during the 5 minute time will refresh your Criminal Status.
• Attacking Criminal players and/or killing them will not flag you as Criminal.
• Killing Criminal Players will not cause you to gain murder points.
• Murderer : Players who have attacked and killed innocent players enough times to generate 100 or more points will be flagged as Murderers. Killing lower level players (outside your XP range) will result in a larger penalty towards the murderer limit.
• Murder score is capped at 1750 points.
• For every other real time hour that passes, your murder score is reduced by 1 point.
• If you die in PvP and lose PvP XP, you will receive a 3 point reduction to your total murder score.
• Killing mobs which yield XP will reduce your murder score at a rate of 1 point per 1% of a level worth of XP. Completing quests for XP will NOT contribute.
• Murderers cannot access traders or vendors. 
• Guard NPCs will attack murderers on sight.
• Dying while flagged as a murderer results in the following: a. 100% increased loss of PvP XP for the murder b. 100% increased gain of PvP XP for the person killing the murderer c. 100% increased chance of dropping an item.
• Any players interacting with a Criminal or Murderer (that includes grouping with them or trading with them) will be flagged as a Criminal.
• If you group with a Criminal or Murderer, you will be flagged as a Criminal for as long as you are in the team, and 5 minutes after the team disbands (or the Criminal/Murderer leaves the team).
• Any team member performing a criminal act will flag the entire team in the vicinity as a criminal.

From the official forums:

Sound like any other game you have played? This is really annoying because it takes all of the FFA pvp out of the game, you can only fight if it is consensual unless you want to risk losing your gear (exactly like lineage). Even lineage had guild wars where you could attack an enmy guild any time, anywhere, if it is going to be like this they need something like that to support it.

Great.  Why do developers love to make everything so cookie-cutter?

I’ve played with the idea of starting a World of Warcraft arena team a couple times.  Problem is, I just don’t have the commitment to go back to WoW and spend the time to make a great arena character — let alone hone the skills necessary.

Arena play in WoW is serious business these days.  Unfortunately, you can’t just get into it for fun.

At any rate, after several weeks of intense competition, the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament’s second qualification round has come to an end. The qualifying teams from the second qualifier will join those from the first to face off in their respective regional finals. Regional finals will be held in the coming months in Boston, Madrid, Seoul, and Taipei. For more information on the tournament, check out the Arena Tournament information page.

Good luck to everyone who qualified for the regional finals!

I recently bought Age of Conan after hearing some decent things about the PvP and blissfully ignoring the various gripes about the game mechanics.

As I usually do when it’s available, I grabbed the digital download.  I’m a child of instant gratification so it’s usually the best option.  Plus, it limits real-world time at an actual store.

This is a great idea in theory.  You grab your disc images and you’re good to go — from the comfort of your own home.  The problem is, Funcom uses torrent-style downloading (and uploading) to grab the files.  This is brilliant if the game is at peak times and rocking tons of peers.  However, it’s absolutely brutal during these slow times.

Not to mention, most people are leeching assholes and limit their upload speed to a crawl.

So, I install my cool kid Age of Conan downloader and start my download.  I make sure my firewall is playing nice with it and ports are forwarded from my router.  No worries.

After more than 72 hours, my download is blistering along at 15k/sec.  Great.  I could have gone to the store 500 times and picked up the DVD by this time.

Publishers: if you insist on using torrent downloaders, make sure you have an abundance of amazing peers constantly feeding the files!