WAR Games

Finally it’s been made official. The strong and powerful Orc Choppa and the whimpy Dwarf Slayer (I know, not too objective, but this is my blog, dammit, and I play greenskins) are due out sometime in March along with some other updates and events.

Seeing the game mechanics of the Orc Choppa from videos of Beta, they looked like a lot of fun, but perhaps a tad overpowered.  They continuously get stronger the longer they fight so if you don’t kill them quick, they will quickly kill you.  Yeah, I’m talkin’ ta you Order scum.  Leave my shaman alone already!

I will definitely be trying out this class.  I’m hoping the combo system is something that flows smoothely like the videos of old showed.  As to the Slayer, well, stunties I suppose needed something too; and they do, admitidly, look cool in their own right.  The battlefield will ultimately decide the winner of this contest though.

Along with the official announcement of the new classes, the various Valentine’s Day cards sent out have had their meaning revealed.  The Night of Murder event with the Twisting Tower, RvR dungeon with zombies; and more.  Here’s the schehdule given from the news release:

Call to Arms Live Expansion Schedule

• ‘Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals’ Live Event (March): Successful completion allows head start access to the new Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer careers. The event will also include the new Chaos-themed RvR Scenario, Twisting Tower.
• Two New Careers Join WAR (March): The Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer answer the Call to Arms.
• ‘Call to Arms: Beyond the Sands’ Live Event (April): Details to be revealed soon!
• ‘Call to Arms: Rise of the Tomb Kings’ Live Event (May): The race between Order and Destruction players begins to unlock the Land of the Dead for their Realm.
• ‘Land of the Dead’ Opens (June): The deserts of Nehekhara open to players with the addition of a new RvR-gated dungeon zone. To gain access to the Land of the Dead, opposing Realms must battle for control of the zone to access dozens of new Public Quests, instanced lairs, and a massive new Tomb Kings dungeon to plunder in search of the Casket of Souls.

Mythic is doing well with the updates so far.  As long as they keep these free they’ll get my monthly fee.  If they release a paid expansion before some major issues are addresssed it will be time to move on.  Keep going the way they are, they’ll have me for years to come.

*UPDATE: Tome of Knowledge had the letter “E” contrary to them saying “L” See picture in link below and compare to other letters.

Okay Mythic, what the zog is this? _ T N I _ T N _ V E R A _ Probably simple, but seemingly impossible without the other 3 blogs reporting their letters. And you, bloggers, get off yer git faces and let us know already. All the clues listed below in yesterday’s post, and at the various reporting blogs, we have come up some varying, interesting theories. But without more information, that’s all that they are, theories. These are the blogs reporting in:         *UPDATE: Tome of Knowledge added

• Asuryan’s Flames
• Epic Slant
• Fires of War
• Keen and Graev
• Lagwar
• Rainbow MMO
• /Random
• Stylish Corpse
• Tome of Knowledge
• Wall of Text
• Werit

Asuryan’s Flame, in my opinion, has one the best theories of all for this cryptic #/13.  Missing three letters shouldn’t be that difficult, and it’s not if we look at it backwards.  _AREV_NT_INT_  What are we looking for?  WAR Event Hints.  It fits, makes sense, and is no help whatsoever; it just told us what we were doing, looking for WAR event hints.

So that being determined, let’s look at some of the other clues.   Fires of War had quite an interesting letter.

Roses are Red

Khaine gives me power,

I’ll hunt you down,

In the Twisting

Tower…

So, what can we garner from this?  To me, it sounds like the possibility of an Elven City. At minimum the event would appear to be Death Night, and probably on a Friday the 13th which is coming the 2nd week of February (see Werit’s letter).  This I got from some of the other clues as well, especially all the references to Druchii; the black lipstick, the references to Khaine, the blood all over everything, and the “Which Elf”,  just to name a few.

However, Wrewdinge over at Lagwar has an interesting take that makes sense. 

“inside the Gotrek and Felix series there is a vampris’ who owns a massive mansion, filled with her minions. So I think that they’re going to add a dungeon that relates to her mansion.”

Good thought, and he’s not the only one with this theory.  However, Wikipedia (we all know that Wikipedias are absolutely fact…) has a verse that seems to relate to this:

The holiest time of the year for Dark Elves is Death Night. During this night the Witch Elves rule the streets of the Dark Elf cities, capturing anyone they find (whether they are slaves or Dark Elves) and dragging them back to the temples as sacrifice to Khaine.

Some speculate these are hints at the upcoming Choppa and Slayer classes; I believe they are completely misguided.  Especially since we seem to have deciphered the #/13 puzzle.  These are event clues, the classes are not an event rather an addition.

After digging, and compiling this information I’ve  come to the realization; I hate Valentine’s Day.

Best Youtube ever. Just had to share…fuck you!

Does Valentine’s Day = Death Night? Well, maybe it does.   Warhammer Alliance consolidated some posts from various blogs around. Like the Choppa/Slayer announcement, Mythic is once again being cryptic. Here is a little of what can be figured out from available clues.

_ T N I _ T N _ V E R A _ (UPDATE: three bloggers remain silent; this is what’s known so far.)

The above is assumed by various clues with number/letter combinations on the back of the bloody cards received; which when taken collectively indicate a 13 letter word or phrase. Check out the comments on WHA and the other blogs and you be the judge.

2nd week in Feb.
See you in RvR
Be there + beware (I believe from the original card at Rainbow MMO it is intended to be a “+” not an “&” symbol. In other words add the two words together somehow)
In anticipation, (again, something maybe in the word “anticipation”?
Which Elf (well, this one is a given)

Some people are equating the black kisses on the letters and such to vampires. I don’t know. But, from Keen and Graev’s:
Roses are red,
My heart is black,
If I tore off your head,
I’d mail it right back

This could still be applied to Death Night where the Brides of Khaine go around capturing peeps and sacrificing them to their god of murder.

Could this possibly be more info on when we get the Choppa and Slayer? Well, in a little over two weeks we’ll know.

Okay, rumor and speculation have been abundant since comments made a month or so ago by Mark Jacobs.  Now The Greenskin Blog and The Keen and Graev Blog report some interesting PR stunts.

The Greenskin, which represents us green bruddahs of da WAAAGH!, got this:

The clues lead to the line quoted at 1:16:06 in the movie the Predator, “Get to da choppa!” It speaks for itself.   When added to the other clues it’s a shoe in that the Choppa will be added or at least confirmed on 1/29/2009; the little WAR sign gives us the date.   Either this, or Mythic truly hates Destruction.

Check it out for yourself, it’s on Youtube.

On the Order side of the fence, Keen and Graev got the following:

Stinkin’ Stunties, always needin’ ta keep up wif us greenies.

From the looks of this package it was assumed that the Slayer would be coming to town, not the Hammerer.  Probably rightfully so, the red hair dye, again with the ominous 1-29-09 placard, and a hair shaver.  For those who know your Warhammer lore these fit nicely with the Slayers.

Well, I don’t play the Order side much but I do so adore my greenskins, and the Choppa was always a favorite.  I am very much looking forward to smushin’ me sum red haired stunties in deir skivvies.

We play it, we love it, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and finally we’re starting to get some of the numbers for which we’ve been asking, sort of.

The numbers being addressed at this time are faction populations.  The numbers per server are not given but it still gives a good overview of the number of Order vs. Destruction.   They break it down between Monolith and North American servers with the following figures (first set of numbers for Order, second for Destruction):

Average of All North American Servers

Active Accounts Per Faction: 49% / 51%
Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Average Exp. Per Character: 50% / 50%
Average RP Per Character: 50% / 50%

Monolith

Active Accounts Per Faction: 44% / 56%
Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Average Exp. Per Character: 51% / 49%
Average RP Per Character: 51% / 49%

SOURCE

So what does this say?  From the looks of it, it would show  a near even pairing of the two factions with a slight advantage going to Destruction on the Monolith servers.  The thing is, it gives us no useful information, such as an hourly breakdown of the two factions and in what tiers.  This is a good primer but not sufficient.

What can I say?  I’m a numbers person.  I want the breakdown of all the data in the game so I can determine if something is worth my time.  But sadly the devs have come out and said they will never give exact numbers as they don’t want people gaming the system.  Mythic has been forthcoming with most of what they do, but giving calculations or any numbers they’ve always been cryptic at best.  Overall faction population numbers is a start, sort of.

After doing some further reading on Darfall and some comments from a guildie, I felt a retraction of sorts was in order for my article referencing Darkfall. The details on their site, http://www.darkfallonline.com , show a lot of innovations and creativity that I simply did not give them credit for.

First, although not completely new, something I haven’t seen since the original Everquest and with many improvements, you must aim at your target in order to hit it. This goes for spells, archery, and melee. This feature alone would make this game worth it for me.

It has a robust alignment system as well. I think every MMO should have some sort of alignment/faction system, and from the hype on this, it’s done well in Darkfall. Even though you play an Ork, it shouldn’t make you automatically evil, just perhaps inclined to such.

Without going in to detail of all the features of the game, I will say this. My last article was about MMO innovation, and Darkfall answers a lot of what I was calling for there. If it wasn’t for the fact that I am waiting for a decent SciFi MMO (Champions may have me here ‘cuz I like the superhero genre as well), and the fact they have female orks I would definitely try this game out.

My last article got me thinking. What is lacking from all the new MMOs constantly coming to market? Innovation. The Wii debunked many developers beliefs that their beautiful next-gen graphics would trump game play. They couldn’t have been more wrong. What the Wii did better than both Sony’s or Microsoft’s game system was innovation; a new way to play games that haven’t changed much over the years. The graphics on the Wii are notably last gen, but the game play is short of revolutionary.

Another thing the Wii brought to the market was a platform that the casual gamer could enjoy. Their games are not the same old game mechanics of where you need to buy the strategy guide just to figure out how to beat someone up. You pick up the controller and it’s intuitive with most of the games on what you need to do. You don’t need to put hours into a game, you can play as little as you like or as much as your body can take. My parents even bought a Wii after I brought mine up this last Christmas and they saw how fun it was.

So, what can MMO developers learn from the Wii example? Innovative game play and appeal to the casual gamer can go a long way in selling games. It’s still difficult at times to find a Wii on the shelf at your local game store. Better graphics and copying mechanics from other games doesn’t cut it anymore. The masses don’t want to have to always upgrade their computer whenever the new flavor comes out.

First we have the grind. Every MMO has it. Why? Even a game I see with some fun innovations, Warhammer Online, still has a major grind mechanic. Kill this mob and/or player to level up and get the uber gear. It’s always the same. There are other ways to level. Earth and Beyond gave you experience for many different things such as mining, so it can be done. It may not have been the best, but I liked the change. I’m tired of always needing to kill/disable/arrest something or someone in order to gain levels.

Then we have something that relates to the first point, the gear needed in order to play the game. This alone has caused numerous violations of game’s rules by having players buy with real money gold and armor or whatnot from Ebay or the inevitable advent of the Gold Farm website spam from the economy this creates. I play these games to immerse myself and get away from real life, I don’t think someone should have to be an economist to play an MMO. This has been the downfall of many games of yesteryear.

Then we have character customization. I don’t want to look like everybody else, I want to be unique. Fine, if I want to be pimpin’ I realize that I may need to grind a bit to get that flowing cloak of the earthwatcher or whatever, but I should be able to make my general appearance unique and not look like everybody else. City of Heroes/Villains did this right, in spades. However, their game has flourished by a disease I call altitis. Alts are what has let this game survive over the years as there is little end game content. There is a lot of content, but as the grind ensues so you create another alt and start over. So although CoX may have the best character creation I’ve seen, it may have been overkill.

My last point is more an observation. We used to call these games MMORPGs, that is Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games. Now we just call them MMOs. Why? The RPG element is still there, mostly, but I think the game element has fallen by the wayside. It feels like work when I’m playing these games and I get enough of that outside the game world. I want games inside of the game, something I can do besides kill A to get B. In short, I want innovation.

While browsing the Internet for this story I find I’m not alone in my thoughts. At massively.com they have an article similar to mine. So come on developers, listen to the players. Wii want something different!

When did Orcs become breeders?  This is a pic from the upcoming Darkfall Online MMO, and as you can see they’ve taken certain liberties.  The game does look promising, and I may try it out.  However, ever since Tolkien Orcs have been grown.  In WAR, the Chaos Dwarfs created the Orc race from spores and they now reproduce by simply dying.  They tried to be original…they are Orks of Morak.  Yeah…

The open RvR in Warhammer is good, the best I’ve played; but some things such as fortress sieges need a lot of love before I’ll say it’s great. Darkfall has “innovations” that sound quite similar.  Time will see how well it is implemented.  They have a duel mode which still hasn’t been utilized in WAR yet.  The crafting/economy does look interesting as it looks to have some depth.  However, closer examination makes me think it’s just another fantasy MMO mostly copying features from other games; and I just can’t seem to get by the female Orks.

I’m still waiting for a SciFi genre to take money like City of Heroes/Villains once did.  Speaking of, I need to check out Issue 13.  Looks like it’s time to buy a time card.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

(preliminary) Final word: Graphics -  A
Gameplay- N/A
Originality – C+

Well, we all have to begin somewhere, even if it is actually starting over.  What is WAR Games?  Is it games about WAR?  Well, sort of.  This blog is my take on current status of gaming in all forms, but currently it will be mostly about WAR, that is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning as it is the MMO I am currently playing.

For those that play WAR, I play primarily a shaman, Gorlik, on the Phoenix Throne server.  So if ya want ta join me wif da WAAAGH!  feels free ta holla.  If yer on da Orda side, Zog off!