Today, we are happy to interview our honored BFME 2 expert, Val'. Surprisingly has never been interviewed and is now being interviewed for the first time in 10 years!
Onyx: Hey there Val'! Would you like to share with us a little bit about yourself? How old are you? What's your name?
Val: Hello. My real name is Charlie im 28 years of age. I work in the disability sector, caring, outreach, that sort of thing. Most of my spare time is devoted to patching but hopefully that is all over very soon.
Onyx: Patching for BFME 2? What is the sort of work that you have done recently if you don't mind sharing?
Val: I've had my dirty little hands in patching for a while, originally just an aid to MaDDoX from 2005, and began doing it independently around 2011 as MaDDoX & Rainmaker had moved on. Those were the days of Battletest Patch(BTP). I had taken a few large breaks over the years and when I came back in 2011 it became apparent that BTP still could use a lot of work in terms of both balancing and visual appeal. So I began working on BTP 3.0 series. After a while Echelon and Archangel became involved as well, so we had a nice little beta team happening. BTP turned into 1.07 & 1.08 in the interest of making a simple patch switcher and easy definitions for the community as a whole to follow. 1.08 was the first patch to introduce new art/cosmetics, which will heavily follow suit in the upcoming 1.08.01. This patch has been worked on for approximately 3 years and is going to be pretty special.
Onyx: Wow, it sounds prodigious! We're all excited to see the release of 1.08.01.
Back to your gaming experience in BFME 2, where did you get the inspiration for your name?
Val: The name is from the books of The Riftwar Saga, I've an obsession with Dragons, the Valheru are the Dragon Lords. I used to draw a lot of fantasy art as a kid, much of it stemmed from the worlds that Raymond Feist created in his epic novel series.
Onyx: Quite unique and talented! I'm surprised you have never gotten interviewed!
So Before BFME 2, was there any other RTS games you played?
Val: That's testing the Ol` memory a bit, when I was growing up the first Command & Conquer titles were coming out aswell as Warcraft. The first Red Alert was my favorite(1995?) A lot of nostalgia there, I really miss units like Tanya and spies. Than I had a break due to harder years at school and finally came back in the end to Battle For Middle Earth 1, and shortly after the 2nd iteration. BFME2 was my first serious attempt at getting involved in the competitive scene, tho, in the early days of its life the patches were really bad. But never fear, BTP came along eventually. I used to play a lot back then and my skills were a lot sharper then they are today, as now I spend most of my time in development rather than spamming games. However after this enormous patch I intend to get back into the swing of things and stomp some folks with Goblins.
Onyx: Command & Conquer was definitely a good series to start with.
It's quite interesting how one game can influence our love for RTS. Do you feel Command & Conquer would have been more successful if another company or development took over (such as Eugene)?
Val: I'm not sure if it's just nostalgia or not, but I do feel that the quality of the CnC series went down a fair bit in the later iterations. It's actually really difficult to find an RTS that I enjoy outside of BFME. I played StarCraft 2 for a while, its a nice game but it felt like it lacked any sort of depth. I.e, no heroes to level up, no powerpoint trees(even CCG had power trees), the level of progression just didn't seem apparent. All's your doing is building units and expanding, and when I played it, keeping high ranked units wasn't exactly paramount to winning either. Everyone has their preferences, I just found it quite boring due to this element of lacking a real sense of progression. I haven't tried the SC2 expansion. I also tried CoH, nice game, just a bit too slow for me. Haven't had much experience in any other titles, seems the game industry is heavily focused towards MOBA's these days.
Onyx: This leads me to ask, what made you play BFME 2?
Val: That's an easy one because I loved the books, the films, and the fantasy world as a whole. All things considered Peter Jackson did an amazing job, I remember being so overly pleased when I found out Ian Mckellen was doing Gandalf. I think its hard to not get attached to the characters you read about and see in the films, its a greater sense of immersion in the game, something similar to the attachment you can get in the Warcraft Universe. So even after 10 years its still enjoyable.
Onyx: Definitely a superb reason that lead you to BFME 2!
And during your quest to a more competitive view of the game,
Do you feel acquiring the expert badge was a difficult task? Why or why not?
Val: Actually I got that only a few years ago haha. Expert Badges weren't around when BFME was in it's prime years, they came a bit after when things had slowed down. This was a bit retroactive.
Onyx: Then most definitely took skill to achieve such achievement
You've been around since the start, in your opinion what was the best period of BFME 2?
Val: I think it depends on both the people and the patch. 2006ish was so much fun because the forums were so alive, tonnes of players, replays, content. There was always a new stupid list going up, such as 'Top 10 hated players', 'Top 10 players', fights between clans, and generally just non stop entertainment. The patch though I would much rather the current than what we had back then. Overall tho I'd say 2006-2009 was the best period.
Onyx: With all the situation and entertainment that was going on in the past,What do you see for the future of BFME regarding the population and activity?
Val: I think all things considered it's doing really well. All three games in the LOTR franchise have patches being developed and active communities. That's a lot more than I can say for other old legacy games. Unfortunately BFME2 has 3 different player bases, for a plethora of reasons, and Rotwk has 2. Do I think either game will ever have one unified patch? No. However, as time goes on the ratio's of the patches will change, but I see this as a long term event, it will take years. The folks doing T3A online servers do a great job and this sort of thing helps post-official patches gain some ground.
Onyx: When you're playing any game on BFME 2 (ffg, cw, etc.), what is your attitude going in game?
Val: Just a bit of fun these days. Though, I'm the same as most of the clanwars players, find games vs noobs too boring. I love playing 2v2 the most with friends like Otto, Randy etc. I am getting too old to take it seriously.
Onyx: Some of us are aware that you're extremely good with goblins, what made you choose that faction?
Val: lol good Ol` Gobz. I think I got hooked on the unit voices when I first played them. Spider Riders and stuff have the best sounds. But on a serious note their a really flexible faction, fast units as well as the tunnel system is amazing. Much of it at the time was also because of the host advantage. Its not an unreasonable statement to say that Goblins suffer the least off-host out of all factions. Opposite is Elves as their units are a glass cannon requiring host a lot. The one last thing was late-game strength, goblins have the best at the moment, its always been attributed to either Men, Mordor, or Goblins. This is going to change in the next patch.
Onyx: Interesting to see these new changes come up in the new patch!
What is the thing about BFME 2 that you will remember the most?
Val: Hard question! I would have to say when an old clan friend Systematic used to Cave Troll rush every game. People used to think he'd never do it twice in a row on cws.cc, but sure enough, he did. He was always doing that in 2v2, couldn't get enough of trolls.
Onyx: If you had anything to tell the community of BFME 2 what would this be?
Val: Have bacon and eggs every morning and tell your mum you love her at least once a week.
Onyx: Best advice I have ever heard.
Thank you so much for your time Val', we greatly appreciate your detailed responses.
Til next time!
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