So I switched to WordPress. I’m able to see statistics about my blog, and I have a theme that makes it interface just like Twitter.

Blogs ARE just long-winded twitter, right?

SkuzUI Ep. 1

SkuzDPS!

 

…didn’t make it.

I am hoping to work with someone from the forums that is doing a full rewrite of Tortall’s DPS though, hopefully he will see more success in completing it than I did.

 

I did make up a neat little toy over the weekend. Due to the nature of the AddOn, I probably will not let it go public. I may hand it over to a select few bloggers but I’m not sure if I should.

Without going into too many details, the AddOn almost guarantees I get into a new scenario within seconds of leaving one. It’s basically taking advantage of my load times being slightly faster than others’.

The problem with releasing it to the public is that we’ll have a group of people that are queuing for scenarios at an unfair rate compared to the other players who just finished the same scenario. Obviously it’s entirely inside of the API and completely within the TOS… but I don’t think it would be very good for WAR if more than a few select people have it.

SkuzQueue stays in-house.

 

Of course Curse is still hosting some previous AddOns of mine:

SkuzLoad – Shaves off the fade-time on the loadscreen

SkuzWarning – Send GM announcements to your warband/group

SkuzSick – Iron Rock inside joke

Double Standards

This is just a quick one while the thought is fresh.

Did anyone else notice that soon after the billing issues, doomsayers were pretty sure thousands of people were leaving… but now that they’re getting mounts as an apology, suddenly there’s going to be thousands of people with mounts?

Sounds like a successful apology to me.

Performance, sir. Performance.

My WAR experience should be greatly improved this time around because of a few tweaks I’ve made and a couple of equipment upgrades. I’ll go over them and what it means in terms of WAR.

Disconnections

I had disconnection problems last time I played, and they were definitely not server-side. I was blaming my IP.

The problem with Disconnections in relation to WAR is that the game just does not handle a disconnected player very well. If you’ve ever been disconnected on your end or in between, you may have noticed a few things.

1. It takes 5 minutes to get back in.

2. You’re now kicked from your Scenario, or back in your Warcamp.

The game isn’t handling people that disconnect quickly very well at all, in fact unfortunately I’d have to call it one of the worst MMORPGs I’ve played in terms of handling these situations.#2 that I listed is probably dependant of #1. #1 seems to be the server not realizing that you’re fully disconnected, and taking a few moments to log the character out fully. This is the part I believe could be handled much better.

How I fixed this… was not amazingly simple, but to me it wasn’t so bad. First off, I bought a new router. The Linksys WRT400N. This is a very nice router, and it was amazingly stable for about 1 month. After that 1 month however, stability flies out the window and no amount of flashing back to the original Firmware will do you any good. I switched the firmware over to DD-WRT, which is an open source firmware created by some very talented people. I did have some problems with the power output of the antenna, but using my old router to transmit Wifi is working perfect until it’s updated.

As of this post, my router has been up for 25 days, 8 hours. The connection has been up and stable for 23 days, 10 minutes.

General Performance

Simply put, I got a quad core CPU. AMD has one for $99, there’s just no better deal.

I also got an SSD, though it does not seem to improve the load times for WAR.  This could simply be the engine struggling a bit, but no worries there. It isn’t exactly an MMO engine but it’s doing very well at it.

It blogs! Also chops, dices and starts fires!

It’s pretty much like a sponge for awesome, that pops out and wrings itself out on you, sending you back to the warcamp with your pride and… well, your pride sore. A little soggy too.

While I was writing that, it was telling me that I was spelling Warcamp wrong. Chrome spellcheck, I hate you:

…really?

The Warhammer IP invented Spell-Check, or something.

Whatever they’re saying these days.

Anyways, as I’m coming back from my journey through wasted time and hard drive space, I figured I’d blog like everyone does. I have some things to say, and it’s probably best that I not say them in random places on the forums. For the sake of the children, at the very least.

I fully regret my decision to leave in the first place, but I can’t take that back now. What I can do is come back and help to make WAR as good as it can be. Certain competitors to the PvP scene are seeing very rough… well, game design right now. I saw it first hand, if WAR isn’t gaining new players right now, I’m really not sure what to say.

My monthly MMORPG budget is long-spent thanks to a short bout of depression and me reaching out to the nearest MMO I could and spending money on it: AoC. I quit it again within a couple of hours (or by the time the install was finished). Here’s where I won’t say anything bad about AoC. Definitely, Funcom could have used some of the $30mil they had banked at the beginning of the initial population decline to actually fix some things instead of advertising everywhere. They didn’t however, and I still loved it a lot. I was actually a Follower of Asura, and encourage anyone playing AoC with acceptable English skills to help them out.

http://cs.ageofconan.com/Public/

Something just didn’t sit right with the game for me. I love every aspect of AoC. The combat, the quests, the story, the immersion… all of it. I can’t name something I don’t like. It just doesn’t grab me, but I still encourage people to try it out.

So WAR will see my return about this time next month. Skuzbat may or may not exist anymore as a Goblin Shaman, we’ll see. I’ve been wanting to give Order a try but I’m not sure I could give up my Manticore, or Old Folks.

It feels good to say it again,

WAAAAAAGH!