To celebrate the release of the new Spore Creature creator, EA Mythic started a contest for Warhammer fans to make their best squigs, record a video, and post that video to YouTube. Being well versed in Spore already and having a great time with it, I figured I’d give it a try.
Most people think of squigs as red, pink, and purple balls of death. Squigs come in all shapes, sizes, and colors so I wanted my squig to be as unique as possible. While the “ball of death” requirement was still important, I wanted my squig to be yellow, female, and to kill you with cuteness before charging at you and biting your head off. I also wanted to make sure to give my squig the tiny little barely usable arms that most people seem to forget. Well I’m pretty pleased with her. Hope you enjoy her!
A while ago I was rather depressed because what we thought was the Lord of Change looked really bad, simplistic, and didn’t look anything like the concept art for the Lord of Change. Well recently in Paul Barnett’s latest video blog, he had an entry called Animation. Let’s do a comparison between the Lord of Change minuature, concept art, and this video (screenshot to the right).
It seems like they have done a great job with this model keeping true to the concept art and capturing the greater deamon of Tzeentch’s style. I believe the head still needs work and he isn’t wearing the headdress that’s in the concept art. The scale of the model I think is appropriate and to about the same scale of the Bloodthirster. The robes still are lacking detail, but then again they could encorporate the details like the golden cord-like belt into the skin of the robe. The wings aren’t modeled, but that could be that they replaced them with dummy wings for performance while doing animation testing. With how well Tchar’zanek looks (also from this month’s newsletter), I’m sure they will get the texture detail on TLoC down well.
Overall I give Steve and whoever else is working on this model two thumbs up. I can’t wait to see him in game.
Details from the concept art we can see in the blown up screenshot:
Leg / foot structure
Clawlike, slender hands
Feather details on his elbows
Two bracelets on each arm
Staff in his left hand
*Note: Opposite of the concept art, but true to the miniature
Uses non-staff hand for casting as seen in video
Long slender neck with bird like head
Flowing robes that hang down like in concept/miniature
“Crest” like structure on the base of neck/shoulders
June 14th was the deadline to enter the BOOM Studios Promo Code for entry into the closed Warhammer Beta. Being a loyal fan of Warhammer and Dan Abnett, I ordered the comic and had the code entered some time last month. It’s bad enough they delayed the deadline for the entries to June 14th from May 31st, but now all of us are sitting back waiting in anxious anticipation to see if we are one of the lucky 20% who are getting admitted into the beta. Thankfully, I’ve been entertaining myself with Spore, but I still can’t wait to hear news of whether I even got in or NOT.
To make productive use of my time in Spore while waiting on Warhammer, I present to you: The Lord of Change. Yes the Greater Deamon of Tzeentch himself made by yours truly.
3 second big heal was 530 for 40% of his AP.
2 second heal / 5 tick HoT was 293 with a hot of 89 for 25-30% of his AP.
Instant long HoT was also 89 for 10% of his AP.
In other words 6 seconds to fully heal a clothie who apparently at this level has around 1000 HP. Who knows what kind of hitpoints a tank would have at this level… 1500- 2000 maybe?
Yes sir, that’s interesting. I’d love to know more about how that Zealot was speced. It seemed like his big heals were very mana inefficient, using 1/3 of his AP. Considering the recharge rate of AP and how it works in the game… that means HoTs are CRUCIAL to the overal healing experience. Overall it seems like they want you to focus more on HoTs and then be doing damage between Heal/Hot’ing and HoTing. This is just an observation, again completely unknowledgeable about his spec. Who knows he could have been speced for HoTs more so than direct heals. He beat that swordmaster down pretty well just using HoTs on himself and DoTs on the swordmaster.
Another interesting thing to observe here is that even given the normal recharge of AP, if you just sat back and spamed big heals, you’d run out of AP pretty damn quickly. Yes, AP recharge rate is decently fast in WAR, but if you just spammed big heals you’d run out of AP and have to wait for recharge or swap to more efficient Heal/HoT healing and HoT healing. A good healer would be doing this anyhow if he/she cared about “mana efficiency” for lack of a better term.
Overall, I’d say that this kind of Zealot with his spec, compared to WoW works a lot like a high spirit build priest who’s speced mostly in Discipline with some good choices in Holy or Shadow for damage dealing capabilities. I do like how the Zealot was actually taking the time when noone was hurt to instead of just standing there actually using the duel targeting system and doing some damage taking advantage of the fact that everyone’s life totals were ok and his AP was full so he was doing damage.
I love the pace of combat and the feeling. It reminds me of Arathi Basin battle healing with a good organized group of folks. Two thumbs up for the Zealot experience depicted in this video.
I like this video more than most Zealot videos because for once the zealot is doing his job well and the team wins. The other team which seems less coordinated and less efficient heals is being dominated by a team that’s obviously communicating well and sticking together. You can tell because toward the end, they line up in a V formation, preparing for the next wave of the attack. They did a good job of keeping each other alive during the fighting as well.
I’ve started an interesting side project recently which is why I haven’t blogged in a couple of days. It really has been bugging me about what I’ve been wanting to do with my blog. I don’t want my blog to loose too much focus on ME as a person because again as I’ve stated before, my blog is mostly for me and my internal thought processing. So the tone of this site will stay what it is, but I’ve been wanting to do something more… something… bigger. In all the years I’ve been making websites, running websites, and building things professionally in my career, I’ve never taken the time to start a personal project of major worth for myself.
So an idea hit me and I went with it. The website is still top secret as I continue work on putting it all together and getting starting content in there, but so far here is what people are saying. Who knows if you comment on this thread, maybe I just might give you a sneak peak. Here is what people are saying so far:
A very ambitious project, for which I will be the first to pledge my support! To my knowledge, this has never been done before, and innovation is something to be commended.
Wow! That’s an excellent idea for a website. I dont think anybody has ever done anything like that before.
Yes Blizzard, it’s ok to admit it. We’re not all stupid. You fear a superior game and to steal some of it’s thunder you’re stealing half of it’s good ideas. I wouldn’t be surprised if we continued to see more ideas and innovations from Warhammer appearing in Wrath of the Liche King. So far you’ve done a great job of copying these things from Warhammer.
Blizzcast = Warhammer Production Podcasts
Gadgetzan Times = Warhammer Online Herald
Epic Siege Warfare = RvR Siege Weapons
Destructible Buildings = Keep Capture (watered down)
WoTLK Achievements = Tome of Knowledge
It’s bad enough that the Warcraft Universe is based on the Warhammer Fantasy Universe dating back to Warcraft 1, but hell we’ll just let that one go. One upping Warhammer before release, that’s just plain dirty. At least I know Blizzard will never steal the living guild system. Blizzard cares too much about making an individual’s E-peen feel bigger than caring about guilds and their community.
Hit max level tonight in GuildWars and starting to know what the endgame of GuildWars feels like. So far I’m liking it and after getting my first Epic spell last night, I’m seeing how powerful endgame characters can be over people who just hit level 20. Working my way up to ascention which is apprently going to be a semi-arduous task.
I like the inovations that GuildWars put into their game. Endgame is not about gearing up, but rather more so about skilling up. Right now I have around 15 spells per spell circle and my understanding is that there’s around 150 spells per class. Of those I have around 40 or so for the monk. If I were to compare this to Warhammer, I would say that the tactics and renown abilities are equivilent while still having a game that’s a bit… more focused around gear, but not necissarily as heavy as World of Warcraft.
Ok, so I’m quite addicted already to Warhammer Alliance. Above all the other fan sites, Warhammer Alliance clearly SHINES above all others. The thing I like about WA is that for the most part their posts are very educated and don’t turn into flame wars. Recently there have been some amazingly epic threads, some of which I’ve started. Anyhow, here they are:
“We made a couple of tough decisions. There will be no namby pamby healer-only classes. There is no sitting at the back going ‘And I heal! And I heal! And I heal! And I heal! And I heal!’ because it’s BORING! I’m really sorry, if you’re really one of those people who just like being a medic, who like sitting at the back not doing anything, going ‘And I heal! And I heal! And I heal!’ … go away. Stop watching. Click away. Don’t even leave a comment on the board going ‘I HATE THIS GAME BECAUSE IT HAS NO HEALERS’ because we’re telling you now… we’re not the game for you. We’re the game for the people who want to matter. Every single character can do damage. Every single character can make a significant attempt at beating the living snot out of people”
A quote from the mighty Paul Barnett. I’m kind of depressed now.
I’ve been blogging since 2005. Over the years I’ve run a personal blog, a professional blog, and some gaming blogs. I got tired of blogging in so many places that if you are a reader of my blog you know that about a month ago I merged everything “under one roof” so to speak. Now that I’ve merged so many of my different blogs into one place, I am now forced to ask myself… do I have an audience? Has the merging of my content into one blog helped or hurt my ability to advertise and get comments on some of the things I blog about?
I originally made my blog for my own memory keeping purposes, but I wonder if this has changed. Do people care about the things I’m blogging about? I’m sure my guild cares about some of the guild blogging I do, but does the general public care about some of the leadership blogging that I do or general gaming blogging. Should I blog about game reviews more? I’m not sure anymore.
So in an effort to answer the question “Do people care?”, I head out to WarhammerAlliance.Com to ask the writers out there for feedback. Maybe people do care and I just haven’t ever bothered to advertise my blog. Maybe I should. I await their comments.
So if you’re reading this. What’s your opinion of my blog and should I bother advertising it?
