A Little Bit On WAR.

I just wanted to give a couple of quick thoughts about the Warhammer Online closure. WAR released five years ago and it's safe to say it launched with huge expectations. Unfortunately WAR was never able to live up to the hype.

I will admit to being surprised when I read the article on Massively last night that WAR was permanently ending in December, yet I had been expecting this announcement for quite some time. I really liked WAR, it was the first MMO that I really wanted to get better at PvP since it was such a large part of the game. So much so that I purchased my first Razer Naga after using a trackball mouse for years.

It's sad to see a game that you once enjoyed end but I don't regret not playing WAR all these years as there have been other MMO's that I have enjoyed more. I'm sure we'll see a flood of blog posts doing some sort of post mortem which is fitting. It's unfortunate that use of the Warhammer license is such that going f2p can't keep WAR from shutting down. Reminds me of SOE and Matrix Online. Now that's a game I regret not playing more of.

So to sum up my few thoughts: I liked WAR, we'll probably never see another MMO using the Warhammer Fantasy setting, I'm sad to see it's closing down but it's probably for the best.

More WAR today!

I had mention in my last post about in WAR players will need to gain the emblems/crests in order to purchase gear, so the accelerated renown gain from the Progression Patch isn't such a big deal. Well it was something along those lines, but anyways I made the same comment on twitter the other day and Openedge politely pointed me to the last part of the 1.4 patch notes, which I will copy and paste here;

* To accommodate the addition of new armor and item sets into the game, we've made the following changes to reward distribution.

- Annihilator: This Renown armor set is now exclusively available on the RvR merchants and no longer costs alternate currency.

- Conqueror: This Renown armor set is now exclusively available on the RvR merchants and no longer requires Conqueror Crests to purchase.

- Warlord: This Renown armor set will now be attainable in Gold bags rewarded for the capture of a Tier 4 Keep.

- Sovereign: This Renown armor set is now attained in gold bags awarded when victorious in Stage I of the City Siege public quest.

- Non-set armor and weapons previously awarded in Stage III of the City Siege public quests are now found in Stage I of the City Siege public quests.

- Non-set armor and weapons previously awarded in Stage II of the City Siege public quests are now found in Tier 4 Keeps.

- Players will now receive Warlord Crests as a reward for successfully capturing an ORvR zone.

- Players will now receive Invader Crests for their efforts if they do not receive a bag after successfully completing a Tier 4 Keep public quest.

- Players will now be awarded Invader Crests as the alternate currency option inside all public quests bags from Tier 4 Keeps.

- Players will now be awarded Royal Crests from Stage I of the City Siege public quests.

- The losing realm will now be awarded Royal Crests from Stage I of the City Siege public quests.

Actually this is just the portion dealing with renown gear, but I did find it very interesting. The Annihilator and Conqueror gear no longer requiring rvr currency is awesome in my opinion. So with the increase in renown gain and these two sets of rvr gear now just costing gold, it helps players like myself be a bit more competitive out there on the battlefield. To me that seems to be the idea with these changes. The rest of the changes seem to be Mythic's way of streamlining rewards for keeps captures and city siege's. Nothing there really sticks out to me as being a bad thing.

I still don't think that the accelerated renown gain coupled with the changes to some of the renown gear is going to unbalance WAR at all. Call me an optimist, call me a WAR fanboy it if you must, but I think this is only going to help improve the quality of pvp in T4. That's my hope anyways.

War Tract Please!

There has been a lot made about the Specialized Training Pack, or the ten dollar free level for WAR. I can understand how this can look bad and why some people are overreacting to this (as they tend to do with many things). It's my understanding that players can only purchase one per character, that's it, and it's only for XP and not Renown.

Let's get one thing straight, no one is going to be purchasing their way from r1 to r40, won't and can't happen. What will most likely happen is smart players will pick up a free War Tract that you can get in game along with a paid one to skip the last two mind numbing levels up to r40. Sorry but the sky is not falling, this is not going to unbalance the game and WAR is not going to die from this.

WAR is a pvp game and a players Renown Rank is actually more important in the end. With the accelerated renown gain from the Progression Pack players will still need to gain the emblems/crests to purchase the high level gear.

In the end no one really knows what effect patch 1.4 will have on WAR till it's released. But I am going to go out on a limb and say that things will turn out just fine.

Today's Hodgepodge.

Todays post is just a few random thoughts that are too long to tweet and too short to really flesh out a blog post about. Besides, none of it's all that interesting anyways!

Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants for winning the World Series. Turns out they were the better team even if I think they were lucky to even get in. Look for them to not make the playoffs next year. I wanted to go to the parade in the City, but I kind of forgot about it this morning. Plus I was being lazy and I hate driving there so I stayed home and watched a couple episodes of Mythbusters while playing more Fallout: New Vegas.

Speaking of FNV; I have completed the game not once, but twice now. The first time was on Saturday afternoon and the second was late last night. Today I started my third play through so we shall see how that goes. There is so much content in this game, between the main quest, the side quests and then the free quests that don't show on your pip boy, plus all the exploring I doubt I ever do everything in the game. The problem with playing so much FNV is that I haven't spent time playing WAR. I logged in for about ten minutes on Monday before logging out and getting back to FNV.

Speaking of WAR; the new 1.4 patch notes were published today, so it seems it will hit live servers end of this month or early in December. There seems to be some buzz about the new RvR packs and the new item store for WAR. I would be surprised at anyone who thought the RvR packs would be free, so that's not the issue. What seems to be the hot button is the Progression Pack that unlocks Renown Rank also gives players an opportunity to advance to rr80 at a faster pace. Not only that, but players can also purchase Writs from the EA store for only ten bucks that will give players a free level.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. As someone with a low RR toon, I would give anything to be able to avoid the seeming endless grind. But on the other hand WAR doesn't have your traditional endgame dungeon grind like you see in WoW, good gear is tied to PvP and a character's RR. I get the feeling just from browsing the forums a bit is that some are worried this could cause an imbalance of some sorts. Not sure how true that is but I do believe there is some cause for concern to be had. What I do know is this next month will be interesting for those who play WAR.

Switching gears if I may; the new James Bond game was released the other day. After watching the trailer I am half tempted to pick it up. Only half because on review I read mentioned that the game was somewhere in the 5 hour range, and at fifty bucks that doesn't sound like a good thing. Is it me or are games getting shorter and shorter, but the price remains the same? Or in some cases releasing with a sixty dollar price tag. I spent sixty dollars on Modern Warfare 2. I did get my moneys worth, but I will not be spending that much on a game again unless it's for a collector's edition. Or till all games have that price tag.

So if I don't pick up Bond then I might take a few days to catch up on some WAR then replay Mass Effect 2. I've done the Paragon side, now it's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum as a Renegade! Or maybe Borderlands on the PC cause Anjin keeps talking about it. Or how about one of the many neglected PS3 games sitting on my shelf. Oh the trials and tribulations of being a gamer.

Generic WAR post.

Werit had a post yesterday about some PvE content being apart of Thanquol's Incursion, the new 24v24 rvr instance on the test realm. What caught my eye wasn't something in the post, but the first comment and Werit's response to the comment.

The comment was along the lines of not being happy with having to grind another twenty levels of renown when the new RvR content goes live. To which Werit responds by saying that he doesn't feel it's a grind and no matter how long it takes, he's going to enjoy the ride. That right there my friends is an awesome attitude and it really struck home with me.

Now let's go back a few days to a post on Bootae's blog about play styles in oRvR. It's a post about how some players prefer running solo, some will only run with a group and how either way is fine, but to be a well rounded pvper, it's best to try and learn to do both. Sounds simple right? Well for some it's not.

So what do either of these posts have to do with one another, or anything for that matter? They made me think about how I play and view my time in WAR. Last week I made a post about WAR and how I was going to tough it out in T4. Well as it turns out, that didn't last long, cause a few hours after that post I cancelled my sub to WAR. I made that post then proceeded to play some awful oRvR for about an hour, so I told myself that I have had enough. It was the last day before the next billing cycle and I figured that I would just stick with the Endless Trial instead.

Being the stubborn type, I decide to jump back on with my Black Orc and for the next three hours or so I had the most fun in T4 to date! That day wasn't about zerging or rage quitting if things went bad, it was about discipline and control. The warband I was in followed instructions, they didn't complain and most importantly it seemed that everyone was having fun. Not only did we have a successful zone flip, we also had a successful city siege, it was great. Needless to say I have an active account once more.

The moral of the story is that there's no reason to be in a rush, there's always something to do in WAR and most of all just enjoy it.

The WAAAAAAGH....

Well it's just over half way through the month of October and I have yet to post anything. So while thinking or something to write about I decided to look through some of my older posts when one caught my eye. It was a post on April 16th of this year and it so happened to be about Warhammer Online.

A few weeks ago the unruly folks over at Multiplaying.Net started playing Warhammer Online again and talking about it on their podcast. I have always felt that on paper WAR is the MMO I should love the most: multiple races with differing starting areas, lots of PvE, and varied PvP gameplay that I can participate at my discretion. I think the main sticking point for me is the PvE content; the quests are really well written, seem pretty varied at times, but there is so much running around and the level grind was tough to stomach after playing WoW so much.

But I decided to use my Call to Arms 10 day free play, and I have been reminded of why I both like and dislike the game. I will say that leveling seems to be going much faster now, primarily due to the huge amounts of rest xp I have, so that was a pleasant surprise, but there is still a lot of running around at my level. In the short amount of time I did play that was really the only complaint that I had with the game, it's been a lot of fun doing scenarios and running around doing oRvR in T2.

But my free play ends today and with all the hockey going on right now I will not be reactivating my account. At least not yet. I figure that once the first round of the NHL playoffs are over there will be more time to play games, but right now I am DVR-ing everthing and watching games before and after work, I love it.

I bring this up because WAR has been my MMO of choice for the past two months, and pretty much my game of choice really. I don't remember how much WAR I had played before this most recent stint, but I do know that I had a very different mindset about what I was looking to get out of the game.

When I wrote that post in April, I was still looking at WAR as a pve game with optional pvp content to satisfy me, but it's the other way around. WAR is a pvp game with pve content used to fill time when there is no oRvR going on. Back in August when I resubbed, I started of questing and leveling till about rank 6. At that point I thought I would see if there was any action going on in T1 oRvR, and it was at that point when my experience with WAR changed. No longer was I looking to quest, level and do some PQ's, I was only interested in how many Destro players I could kill from that point on. That was of course when I was playing my Engineer, I have since gone back and spent most my time with my Black Orc.

But not everything has been peaches and cream. T2 pvp was awesome, it was fun and it was easy to get into. T3 was when the game slowed down for me and finding consistent oRvR was a pain. I eventually had to resort to questing in order to rank up and to gain some gold, cause pvp was not making me rich and it was an extremely slow way to gain rank.

Then came T4. Once I hit r30 I immediately headed to T4 looking for some oRvR. Unfortunately the game really changes in T4, and my first impression was not positive. Frankly the pvp is not as accessible as the previous three tiers and the game becomes very gear dependant, something that turned me off to WoW's pvp.

The thing is I still love WAR. I love the look, the content, the pacing of the combat, but I don't love the lack of oRvR when I am eager for some and the pacing of the game really slows down by the time you make it to T4. So what does the future hold for me and WAR? For now I plan on toughing it out in T4 with my Black Orc while messing around with the various other characters I have. I do love this game.

Dub's Playlist of the Week.

My playlist this week is going to be kind of short. The week has been dominated with Warhammer Online. I understand that Civ V was released this week and I do plan to play more of it, but WAR has really sunk its teeth into me. There was a little tiny bit of Bad Company 2 and Jolly Rover sprinkled in, but it's been all about WAR.

Dub's Playlist of the Week.

I haven't done one of these in awhile, so I figured it was time for another. My playlist has been dominated primarily by two games over the past month: Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Warhammer Online. There has been the occasional other game like Jolly Rover and Napoleon Total War thrown in there, but according to Raptr those other two have been the games of choice.

Sport the WAAAGH...

My MMO of choice the past month has been WAR, and boy has it been fun, most of the time. I am a PvE carebear at heart and generally stink at any sort of PvP in MMO's. So when I initially came back last month, I created an Engineer on the Iron Rock server and instantly went back to the Dwarf T1 starter area. So for about six levels I just quested and ran a few Public Quests while waiting for scenarios to pop.

Then one day I had this idea that I would go ahead and check out the Empire vs Chaos T1 oRvR, cause with all the free accounts there has to be some PvP going. Let me tell ya, after that night my way of playing WAR changed. It was as if the rain had stopped, the clouds had opened and a ray of sunlight hit me in the face, all the while angels where playing music as if to tell me 'Now this is how you play the game!'. From that point on I logged in, joined an open warband and proceeded to blast Destro into tiny bits.

That was all well and good, till I hit T2 with the Engineer. At this moment he sits idle waiting for me to just take my punishment like a man, cause everyone knows starting out in a new Tier is like having your face kicked in repeatedly, eventually it will stop, I hope. I did have two other characters already in T2, my Chosen on Badlands and the Black Orc on Volkmar. Well I remember when I used to own face back with the Chosen, I'll just dust him off and give it a go.

That didn't last very long. I know I am not playing this class correctly, but it's really discouraging to get creamed as a heavy armored bringer of death. So I decided that I would mess around with the Orc; that turned out to be a great decision. It was a bit rough at first, but eventually I got the hang of the Black Orc and started wreaking shop in T2.

But once again, that was all well and good till I hit T3 with the Orc. T3 on Volkmar is a mixed bag so far. Last night was probably the best night in my young T3 days. We had a full warband take a keep and some BO's and get the elf lands to flip to Destro. I will say one thing, the renown xp is nice. But again, being on the beggining end of the tier, I am easy picken's for high level Order.

Regardless, I am still enjoying WAR, I look forward to going home after work every night and logging in, evern if it's for an hour or two.

Fallen Earth Revisited.

Thanks to the blogosphere craze over Fallen Earth after launch, I decided to pick myself up a copy. Here's some advice; sometimes it's ok not to listen to bloggers, cause Fallen Earth for me was a big dud. There's no real one thing I can point to as to why I wasn't enjoying the game, I just wasn't. Mostly it was that the ranged combat was borked and by not wanting to craft, I felt like I was only playing half a game. I never hated Fallen Earth for what it was trying to do, it just wasn't for me. So after playing less than ten hours during my free month, I cancelled.

The almighty Jaye Dubb

As time went on and the game was patched more and more, I had a slight desire to return to Fallen Earth and see how the game compare to when I first played. I won a code to FE off another blog, but instead of using that, I thought I would start with the 14 day free trial, give myslef an extra couple of weeks in case I was enjoying the game.

The good news is I am enjoying the game thus far. It looks better, runs smoother and I am actually interested in trying to craft this time around. The bad news is that crafting is still overwhelming, the starting towns are very empty and if I quit today I don't think fell like I am missing something. Like I said, I am enjoying the game, I'm just don't see myself playing FE like I have other MMO's.

The basic tutorial hasn't changed; you wake up in some facility that I wasn't paying attention to learn where and you must escape. What has changed is some of the extended tutorial you can do once you pick a started town. I picked Zanesville because it was a combat town that focused on pistols and rifles. The once was a mission to get a free horse, but it seems to be given to you, at what point I don't know cause I wasn't paying much attention to the mission text.

To be fair to FE I have only been playing very casually, maybe and hour a night. But I do think that part of my enjoyment comes from knowing what to expect this time around. I know how the combat is, I know half the game is crafting and I know that it's not a great looking game. I am not interested in trying the PvP, and I have no idea what the 'end game' is like, but I am interested in getting out of the started town and crafting some of the better gear and weapons. It would be great to not be using BB guns for once.

Tates like chicken!

The month of August is shaping up to be a good one for MMO addicts such as myself. There's the new EQ2X beta starting in about a week, Champions Online is getting some huge patch I believe, City of Heroes Going Rogue launches and all of this on the same day if I heard correctly. All of this along with a renewed interest in WAR that has been growing for some time. I am going to continue with Fallen Earth after the trial  for at least the free month and possibly playing WAR, but who knows with these things.

The WAR is over, for now.

A few weeks ago the unruly folks over at Multiplaying.Net started playing Warhammer Online again and talking about it on their podcast. I have always felt that on paper WAR is the MMO I should love the most: multiple races with differing starting areas, lots of PvE, and varied PvP gameplay that I can participate at my discretion. I think the main sticking point for me is the PvE content; the quests are really well written, seem pretty varied at times, but there is so much running around and the level grind was tough to stomach after playing WoW so much.

But I decided to use my Call to Arms 10 day free play, and I have been reminded of why I both like and dislike the game. I will say that leveling seems to be going much faster now, primarily due to the huge amounts of rest xp I have, so that was a pleasant surprise, but there is still a lot of running around at my level. In the short amount of time I did play that was really the only complaint that I had with the game, it's been a lot of fun doing scenarios and running around doing oRvR in T2.

But my free play ends today and with all the hockey going on right now I will not be reactivating my account. At least not yet. I figure that once the first round of the NHL playoffs are over there will be more time to play games, but right now I am DVR-ing everthing and watching games before and after work, I love it.