Warhammer Grab Bag: Questions, Armors & Tips

Warhammer devs have posted a fairly lengthy collection of community questions along with information about armor sets. See if your question made the cut:

Q. I have spent three points in a Mastery path, but have not received the first Mastery ability. The bars have reached the ability, but there is nothing in my spellbook. Am I doing something wrong?

A. Reaching the ability on the bar unlocks the ability to be purchased. From there, you must spend another point to purchase the ability. You can do this by clicking on the ability to highlight it, then clicking the train button. When you do this, it should spend a point and the ability will appear in your ability book.

Q. Do things outside of normal experience gain contribute to our guild levels, such as achievements through Tome unlocks (although I'd assume those would be personal achievements)? Or renown ranks (I'm assuming those also contribute to guild levels)?

A. In last week's Grab Bag, I mistakenly stated that guilds will get experience from anything that a player gets it from. This was incorrect. Experience contributions come only from killing creatures and killing other players. So, things like tome unlocks and quest completions do not contribute to guild experience. I'm very sorry for the confusion, and have edited the original reply to reflect this.

Q. I read in the Prima Guide that the 19 armor sets all have a hidden "grade" rating that effects damage in dungeons. My question is: Does any of the other armor (not part of these sets) have the "grade" effect?

I'm especially curious if the token purchasable armor sets available in the monarch castles will have a grade and further if this "grade" enhancement will affect all PVE encounters or just the four major dungeons and Capital City dungeons? For example, will they effect the King encounter and contested Capital City PQs, since they are somewhat Person vs. environment?

A. Grade is a number we have used internally to allow us to quickly gauge the relative strength of a set. It is not correlative to any exact value, and has no bearing on the game except as a shorthand to allow us to know which sets we're talking about. Grade does correlate with Wards, however, in that all sets of a specific Grade will share the same Ward. Grade 5 is Bloodlord/Annihilator, Grade 6 is Sentinel/Conqueror, Grade 7 is Darkpromise/Invader, Grade 8 is Warlord and Grade 9 is Sovereign.

The token-purchased armor sets do not exist anymore; tokens are no longer used as an in-game alternative currency.

Read on for more information about armor sets!

Warhammer Server Transfers Coming Soon

Warhammer Online developers have announced that the public testing of the warhammer server transfer technology will begin as soon as next week. Guilds and players will be able to try out the service for free. Check out the official announcement:

Folks,

Over the last few weeks the team has implementing a transfer system to allow both players and guilds to move between our servers. This technology was not available for WAR at launch and building it has proven to be a little more complex than originally expected. I'm happy to say that starting next week we will begin public testing of the service and if things go well, we will be able to offer it free to our players (for a limited time) either next week or the week after that. I apologize for the delay in making this service available but again, it did take a little longer than we originally expected.

We will be posting details next week about the public test and then the parameters for the free service.

Warhammer Online Witch Hunters, Oh My!

Warhammer Online producer Mark Davis has penned a great article that is quite fitting for the spooky season. Featuring witch hunters, Davis gives readers an inside peek at their lives.

"You know what would be cool...?" For some reason these seemingly innocent words, when uttered from my mouth, cause hand-wringing or glares from our schedulers here at Mythic. Despite that, I can't help myself! I'm Mark Davis, and as one of the producers on the Warhammer project I get to use that phrase to your benefit! I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite "Wouldn't it be cool if" moments that I've had a hand in creating.

What's in the box?

Warhammer Witch Hunters are a mysterious and imposing lot. Their methods, while effective, are often dark and secretive. Take, for example, Witch Hunter Drauwulf who hunts down heretics in the village of Bohsenfels deep in the dark forests of Ostland. After completing several tasks for him, he entrusts me to carry a "special box" to an associate of his down the road. But first, I must track down a unique beast in the forest and place its paw into the box. Next, and this he makes very clear, I am under NO circumstances to open the box once I've put the paw in. Now, why did he have to go and tell me that? OF COURSE I have to open the box now! Who wouldn't be tempted to open the box? So, playing this quest for the first time I thought "You know what would be cool? If, when you attempt to open the box, something horrible happens!" Oh yeah, this is Warhammer after all! It's a grim and perilous world of adventure and by opening the box you'll pay the consequences. Opening the box unleashes a horrible essence which in 10 minutes will kill you. You only have that long to deliver the box to its intended recipient to have a chance at surviving. I hope you have your mount handy!

Who you calling a Heretic?

It's not just the forces of order who must respect Witch Hunters, even the forces of Destruction recognize the danger they pose. Deep in the forests of Reikland, the Witch Hunters led by Edvard Kohl have established a temporary headquarters near the Reikguard castle. In order to continue forward toward Altdorf and ultimate victory, the forces of Destruction must crush them beneath their boots. So, playing this for the first couple of times I thought, "You know what would be cool? If Edvard would do what any normal Witch Hunter might do when faced with a Heretic - put them to the stake and judge them"! So, during the final stage of the Public Quest, Edvard Kohl will declare one of the attacking players a Heretic and they will be placed upon the stake and only the quick reflexes of a healer will save them from paying the ultimate price. Now that's cool!

Witching Night

One of the many things I do is working out a plan for our live events. Just recently we all had time to look up from our computer screens to realize that Halloween was right around the corner and we'd like to provide some fun stuff to celebrate the occasion! So, you know what would be cool? How about a sneak peak at what we're prepping for the Halloween season - known as "Witching Night" in the Warhammer universe when the divisions between the living and the dead grow thin, and the power of Shyish, the Purple Wind of Magic, waxes. Evil cults, witches, and necromancers use this time to their advantage, easily raising the dead and calling upon them to spread wickedness across the land.

I love those moments in Public Quests when, on the final stage, the enormous boss monster stomps into the area and the final, epic conclusion begins to draw near. What will that boss do? Will he cast a nasty DOT? Perhaps he'll throw us all back into the aggressive monsters waiting along the fringes? It's a great adrenalin rush! Also equally, if not more so, are those moments in RvR when you're attacking the keep doors while the enemy pours down boiling oil, siege weapons are firing on both sides, and any moment you'll storm into the Keep where the final outcome will be decided! You know what would be cool? What if we combine the two? In the skirmish areas around the entire world during the Halloween holiday, there will be boss monsters lurking for players to kill. They'll have cool loot on them, of course, so players from both sides will want to take them down. I'm sure Order and Destruction will play nicely with each other and share equally with each other for the spoils of the fight - yeah right! What else would you expect from a Warhammer holiday? Trick-or-treating? Nah! Beating people over the head? Oh yeah!

In addition to the awesome conflict happening out in the RvR areas, we've got some unique encounters cooked up for anyone wanting to do some PvE Monster slaying. I don't want to spoil all of the amazing stuff we've got planned, but rest assured that it'll be "cool," rewarding, and very Warhammer.

Thanks for playing WAR, I'll look for you out there on the battlefield!

-Mark "Wouldn't it be cool" Davis

Warhammer: don't call him Big Bird

It seems like the Warhammer Online players really like the Inevitable City. We've gotten so many great Warhammer screenshots from there, and they continue to come in as the days pass. Today's screenshot from regular One Shots contributor, Snacky (this time reporting in from the Red Eye Mountain server) has hit the trifecta of scantily-clad female, a big demon and a cool background! Snacky writes: You just never know when something is going to happen. My dark elf Sorcereress was in the Inevitable City wondering what to do next when all of a sudden this gigantic bird starts walking toward me. I almost fainted! It took me a moment or two before I came to my senses and realized I had to capture this moment to share with others on Massively!

We are certainly glad to get screenshots from readers -- especially when they become regular contributors like Snacky. If you've been considering sending in a screenshot of your favorite game, what are you waiting for? Send them in! We love to see lots of different MMOGs, and we rely on you to help us show off scenes from across the mmogosphere. Just send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, server, guild and a quick description. We'll do the rest and give you the credit!

WAR vs WOW copies Scenarios

Blizzard is announcing some changes to the current battleground system. The changes reflect a direct competitive move from Blizzard to counter Mythic’s Warhammer Online. The proposed changes from Tigole (official Blizzard post) include allowing players to que from anywhere on the map, experience gaines through pvp, and an overall shift back to being more PvP-centric.

“Over time, we’d like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance — the core of our game.”

So Blizzard is taking the first major punch at Mythic’s version of the battleground, The Scenario. It will be interesting to see how Blizzard plans to adapt a “Realm vs Realm” centric system within a strong PvE centered system.

“We’re also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We’re also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.”

If we take a look at Warhammer Scenario’s, you can see Blizzard is “copying what works”. Scenario’s offer a player to gain exp through pvp, que from anywhere on the map, gain loot, and gear your character through Renown Points. Warhammer Scenarios offer a player instanced pvp but still allow the results of the match to effect the entire realm. Both games have unique content, but one thing WoW will have a hard time competing with is Warhammer’s RvR System. Only Mythic can deliver a true RvR experience. It should be interesting to the two games compete as time goes on. It’s a win win situation for the mmo fan!

The Warhammer Performance Guide

For the most part, Warhammer is a well polished game and Mythic deserves a lot of credit for creating it. There are a few graphical anomaly’s and the occasional drop in FPS. However, there are some reporting a “memory leak” in the game while others are complaining of “lag” when loading new zones. Then there is a minority of players complaining about Bluescreens (BSOD), disconnects, horrible FPS throughout the game and unplayable conditions when playing in RvR areas and Scenarios.

Dailywarhammer has decided to create a “Warhammer Performance Guide” designed to help improve your system’s ability to run Warhammer. We cannot guarantee any of these steps will “cure” your issue, but at the very least they should help your overall experience. This guide will be available in the Forums. We ask that you signup and contribute to the thread as we will consistently add information to improve the guide. We want this to be a helpful guide for those who are having issues running the game. The guide includes tweaks, macros, addons, and strategies to improve system performance and frame rate.

If you have not already done the basics (chances are you have) then please follow this guide starting from part 1.

Part 1-The Basics

-Defragmenting: Defragment your hard drive through windows. You will g

ain increased performance in and out of the game. You should already know how to defragment your computer. But if you don’t just do a quick google search and the information is there. Defragmenting should always be the first place you start when trying to increase performance.

-Task Manager-Stop Unwanted Programs: This will help eliminate some unnecessary programs from running in the background. This will free up valuable system resources. CTRL+ALT+DELETE will grant access to the task manager. Look under Processes and use Tasklist.org to indentify which programs can be ended and which programs are needed. *Note* Please research the names thoroughly and don’t delete necessary programs that will make windows unstable. We do not take responsibility for your actions. We are merely stating that, if this is done properly, it will help your overall system’s performance.

-Antivirus: You should run a complete anti virus scan and anti spyware scan.

-Power Options (Vista): Windows Vista has some advanced power options that have a huge impact in overall system performance. Windows XP doesn’t seem to have this. For those having shuttering frames in Vista, please try the following:

In Vista:

1. Open Control Panel, type power in the search box.
2. Click “Change power-saving settings”
3. Make sure the power plan is on “High Performance”.
4. Click “Change plan settings” under “High Performance”.
5. Click “Change advanced plan settings”.
6. Scroll down to “Processor power management” and expand that window. Check the values for minimum and maximum processor state. They should both be at 100%. If not, change both of them to 100%.

This seemed to help some “stuttering” issues within the game. We found that our settings were at 5% min and max. By increasing to 100%, we noticed a moderate difference in overall frame rate.

Part 2-Drivers & Settings:

-Drivers: Nvidia has released new drivers for all graphics cards as of September 25th. If you do not have Nvidia hardware, check with your hardware manufacturer for the latest drivers and software updates. We also recommend you boot into safe mode, remove drivers from Add&Remove Programs, restart back into safe mode, install your new drivers, and then restart into windows normally. If you have Drivercleaner, run this program after uninstalling the drivers through the Add&Remove Programs Utility. This will create a clean installation to eliminate any registry problems or potential blue screens in the future.

You may also want to re-install your soundcard drivers (unless you have onboard sound) and any other PCI device drivers you might have.

-Video Card Settings: Depending on your system and specs, you may want to adjust your game settings and video card settings to acquire better performance.

Our system:

Intel e6700 core 2 duo over clocked to 3.25 GHZ.
BFG 8800 GTX OC2 (NO SLI)
EVGA 780I SLI
4GB (800mhz) OCZ Platinum Edition RAM
Windows Vista x64
Koolance Liquid Cooled System
Nvidia Control Settings:
4xAA/4xAS
AA Gama Correct: On
AA Mode: Enhance The Application Setting
AA Transparency: Supersampling
Conformant Texture Clamp: Use Hardware
Error Reporting & Extension Limit: Off
Anisotropic Sample Optimization: On
Negative LOD Bias: Clamp
Texture Filtering Quality: Quality
Trilinear Optimization: On
Triple Buffering: On (only when vertical sync is on)
Vertical Sync: On

Note* Try adjusting vertical sync on and off. Make sure to adjust triple buffering to the same setting (on or off) as vertical sync. Vertical sync makes the game stay in sync with your monitor’s refresh rate. We had best results with it on.

Adding WAR.exe to 3D Settings (great article on warhammer alliance)

-Ingame Settings: Choose between “balanced”, “best framerate”, or “high quality” for your game settings. We did not notice a huge difference between the three. But for low-end systems, use the “best framerate” option. The game still looks great regardless of the option you pick. But we are looking for the fastest performance.

Windowed Mode: Set your game for windowed mode, and set the resolution to match your desktop. For some reason, windowed and full screen modes look exactly the same, but windowed mode is far superior in performance. This will help your framrate. Uncheck full screen, and check windowed mode for best results.

Part 3- Macros & Addons

-Macros: “A few macros increasing performance” is an article written at Curse.com which includes a list of macros which seem to help low-end computers play Warhammer.

-Addons:

Buffthrottle from Curse “adds a minimum delay in between consecutive refreshes of a given frame’s buffs and debuffs. This helps performance immensely in situations where there are a large number of buffs/debuffs flying around.”

The default delay is set to half a second (0.5) - you can tweak it to your liking by setting the BuffRefreshDelay variable, like so (change the number to the delay you’d like, in seconds)

• /script BuffRefreshDelay = 0.5″

If you are experiencing poor performance in RvR situations where numerous players are in close proximity, then this should help improve frame rate.

Squared is a highly-customizable unit frame addon similar to the widely-known WoW addon “Grid”. It provides a very compact view of health for you, your group, your warband, or your scenario. Clicking on a square will target the associated player.

To install this Addon, simply create an “Interface” folder in your base directory, and an “Addons” folder in the newly created interface folder. Unzip addon into “Addons” folder.

Part 4- Tweaks

/reloadUI in game will drastically help performance. This will reload the games UI which should help clear some issues with performance. Use this regularly.

Please Note* This project is constantly being updated. If you have an issues or want to contribute to this project, please post your thoughts, experiences, and feedback.

Warhammer Performance Increasing

The War Journal posted this article with some rather easy modifications you can to Warhammer and your system to increase Warhammer Online performance (for free, of course).

One of the things you should do is install the BuffThrottle interface addon, which you can download from Curse. It should have a significant increase in performance of the game, especially in large battles like scenarios.

The second trick is related to modifying several setting in your graphics card drivers. You can find the instructions for both nVidia and Ati below.

For nVidia graphics cards

• 1. Go to Control Panel, and open the ‘nVidia Control Panel’
• 2. Select ‘Advanced View’ and then ‘Manage 3D settings’
• 3. Click on the ‘Program Settings’ tab, click ‘Add’, and point it towards your WAR.exe location. What this does, is only applies the changes to Warhammer Online, not other applications.
• 4. Set Anisotropic Filtering to 16X
• 5. Set Anti-Aliasing to something to you know your card can handle. 4X is a safe bet.
• 6. Set Texture Filtering to ‘Performance’
• 7. Set Negative LOD Bias to ‘Clamp’
• 8. If you are using an LCD Screen, set ‘Vsync’ and ‘Triple Buffering’ to ‘Force On,’ if you are not using an LCD screen, make sure these two are off
• 9. Apply the changes and close the control panel

For non-nVidia graphics cards, set your custom graphics card settings to something similar to this:

• Anti-Aliasing: 8X, Temporal enabled, Edge-detect 24X
• Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled (It messes up the transparent parts of face polygons.)
• Anisotropic Filtering: 16X
• Catalyst AI: Disabled
• Wait for vertical refresh: On
• Triple buffering: Enabled
  

For ATI graphics card

It’s similar like with nVidia GC.

• Anti-Aliasing: 8X, Temporal enabled, Edge-detect 24X
• Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled (It messes up the transparent parts of face polygons.)
• Anisotropic Filtering: 16X
• Catalyst AI: Disabled
• Wait for vertical refresh: On
• Triple buffering: Enabled

In-Game Settings:

- All Enabled to Maximum Settings

- lightmaps=”false” in UserSettings.xml file and made that file read only. This gives a huge FPS boost in scenarios. My armor no longer glows that nicely anymore when I get knocked into infamous Tor Anroc lava pits. But I would trade that glow for much smoother gameplay in PvP.

–

Hopefully this helps you run the game more smoothly, especially those of your with lower end PCs.

More Warhammer Online

Worried about Warhammer slow leveling?

Many Warhammer Online Players worried about Warhammer slow leveling. As usual, that is old news. As we blog about it, Mythic looks into it. Check that Herald out fellow bloggers, never know what may be popping up there!

Experience Enhancements: Phase 1

from Warhammer Online Herald Current
News Feed

by Robert Mull

As part of our ongoing effort to tweak
Warhammer Online based on player play patterns, we are making some adjustments
to the rate and manner of experience gain in certain parts of the game. We
continually analyze the data from our in-game metrics tool and as a result, we
have made some changes to WAR. These changes will ensure that you will see a
noticeable improvement to the rate at which you gain experience in tiers 3 and
4.

Quest Experience Rewards

We have revised the experience
awarded for completing quests in chapters 10 through 22.

New Repeatable
Quests

We have added new repeatable PvE quests to all tier 3 chapters
(chapters 10 through 14).
The new quests offered in chapters 10 and 11 may
be completed twice each.
The new quests offered in chapters 12 and 13 may be
completed three times each.
The new quests offered in chapter 14 may be
completed four times each.

Skirmish RvR Experience

The
experience earned for killing an enemy player in an RvR lake will be increased
by +50%.

Warhammer Black Orc Healing bug

Warhammer Black Orc Healing bug

Da Toughest

A grand war cry to proclaim yourself da toughest! All your attacks gain a 25% chance to increase your wounds by 57 for 10 seconds. You will be healed by the amount increased.

You may only have 1 War Bellow active at a time.

Right now, you can click off the Da' Toughest proc buff.
When it procs, it gives you a 10 sec wounds buff and heals you for the same amount.
Clicking off the buff will remove the wounds buff, the healing obviously stays as it is not a maintained buff effect. This allows it to proc more often than 10 seconds. Likely not intended. It takes a lot of micromanagement to PvP well while clicking off buffs so much, especially as a tank class, but it makes for some nice extra healing if you do it correctly.


Done some nice pvp yesterday exploiting this

p.s

also was first at healing in few scenarios :P

Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan notes Warhammer server imbalances

If you assumed that Jeff Kaplan, the game director of World of Warcraft, would have been an active participant in the Warhammer Online Beta ... well, you'd be wrong. Despite Kaplan's position, connections throughout the industry, and enthusiasm for the genre he and a number of other Blizzard employees were excluded from the Warhammer Online closed beta. MTV's Tracey John continues her string of insider-info articles on the employees and practices of Blizzard Entertainment, noting Kaplan's good relationship with Paul Barnett. In a response to the initial posting of the article, Mythic head Mark Jacobs wrote in saying that "it was Mythic's company policy to not allow competing games' developers into "Warhammer"'s closed betas. Jacobs also said he would've been happy to have any Blizzard staffers join the open beta but was unaware of a specific request to do so."

John also asks the WoW honcho about his opinion of Warhammer as it is post-launch. Kaplan, like many players, is working with a Destruction character and is finding the game's population imbalance a bit frustrating. "I'm at the point where I'm thinking about quitting because it feels like the best way to level up is in the battlegrounds ... it takes me 30 to 45 minutes to get in the battleground queue," he said. Check out the brief interview for more on Kaplan's view of Warhammer, and head over to Broken Toys for some background on this exchange via Scott Jennings.

More Warhammer Online

Mythic Entertainment rebuts Jeff Kaplan's WAR critiques

Yesterday we noted an exchange between MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John and Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan, talking about Blizzard's exclusion from the closed Warhammer Online Beta. After that article went up, John put up another post touching on Mythic Entertainment's response - specifically, a phone call from the company's head Mark Jacobs. Jacobs specifically called out the following:

World of Warcraft featured a number of lengthy queues just to get onto servers when the game first launched in 2004. Jacobs noted that EverQuest and his own DAoC featured customizable interfaces long before World of Warcraft was even launched. Though WAR does have many similarities to WoW, the team developing the game made many choices specifically to stray from WoW's template. "If you look at the innovations in Warhammer, you'd be hard-pressed to find as many in WoW." Ultimately he goes on to note that Warhammer has just launched, and that they're really happy with the way the game is going so far. "The game stability has been unbelievable and it blows away any other online game ... we're going to be continuing to be doing a lot for the game over the next six months, or nine months, or six years."

More Warhammer Online

Warhammer has only just begun to compete with WoW

Warhammer and WoW; Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft; WAR and WOW

If you've been following this particular exchange you'll know the score, but let's recap: Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan just like turned around and said some stuff about Warhammer Online, about how he wasn't even in the Beta and stuff, and Mark Jacobs was like whoa, and he totally turned around and said some stuff about World of Warcraft, and now Mark Jacobs is all, like, dude, bring it, and everybody's like, ohmygawd, it is so on.

In his discussion with gamesindustry.biz, Mark is upfront about competing with Blizzard. 'We're in this space to be successful and, when you have a competitor that is as successful and important to the games industry as WoW has been, you don't go into this space unless you're willing to spend money and spend time and really compete against them.'

He also makes the point that the first major patch to WAR is indeed one way of competing with the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, as observers had surmised.

But bellicose statements aside, Mark raises a point that's all too often missed by many advocates of particular MMOs: 'Any comment along the lines of 'well if they're in my game they're not playing in another game,' flies in the face of all research that's been done among MMO players... The idea that you only play one is really kind of silly.' This isn't tribal warfare; you don't have to pick one competing game and fly its standard above all others.

More Warhammer Online

Warhammer realm population bonuses

Mythic Entertainment announced their latest list of Warhammer Online servers to receive realm population bonuses this week. Not surprisingly, five of the seven (Core) servers listed impart bonuses for playing Order.

Mythic stated: "Great rewards await those who take up their charge and help bolster their army's strengths where it's needed the most... these bonuses are temporary boosts to help new players get into the game and strengthen their allies' efforts on servers where their realm struggles to keep up with the growing armies of their enemy. For one week, these chosen servers will bestow divine gifts upon the designated realm to help swell their ranks and give them the power to try and turn the tides of battle. Players who join the vanguard will receive a 20% bonus to renown and experience." The list of Warhammer servers that give these bonuses is found in-game at the Server Select screen; the currently listed bonuses will expire on October 24th.