Savage Justice

While doing the rounds of the new blogs posted on Wizards & Wenches i came across this post on the possibility of Slayer coming to WaR. With this package arriving at keen and graev that possibility seems to have become a certainty.

What hasn't been given much attention is the fate of the orcs counterpart to the old hammerer class. The same exact same problems face the Choppa's that faced the hammerers. When you compare a choppa to a Black Orc basically the only real difference is weapons. Every class needs something to distinguish itself from it brethren & choppas have nothing which marks them out as cool. They are basically the more weedy less heavily armed brethren of black orcs. I honestly can't imagine anyone wanting to play them.
Click to read more

Now i know Mythic are trying to give order more appeal but i honestly feel giving one faction a class with a huge amount of interesting and evocative lore and the other is a pale imitation of existing class both lore visual style & play mechanics.

My personal opinion, hope, & hunch is that mythic wouldn't short change destruction like that.
What im hoping is that we get a class who are a true match for slayers.
What im hoping for is Savage Orcs

Mad, Covered head to toe in warpaint, with no fear. They are the perfect mirror to the Slayer.

The advantages of Savage orcs are:
-A more interesting visual style and distinct silhouette
-They originate in the area in which WaR takes place (Badlands and the southlands of the Marshes of Madness)
-There is a large amount of lore behind them.
and most importantly
-The mechanics used for slayers could be easily transferred (with a few modifications) helping maintain the balance of RvR

Also if implemented Choppas would be the only class in game based on a standard grunt infantryman. No one want to play a grunt can you imagine if Orders new class was a Empire Halberder's, High Elf Citizen Militia, (or Dwarf Hammerers for that matter >_<). The closest thing we have in the game currently is the Chaos Marauder but his mutations give him the distinctiveness needed to set him apart from a Chosen.

the only major downside is that ofc more work has to go into creating two classes than one, but due to savage orcs minimal clothing this isn't as much of a disadvantage as it could be otherwise.

I honestly think if they introduce a class like Choppas which would be a lame duck from day one it would have bad implications for the game in the long term.
anyhow ill keep my fingers crossed that come Jan the 29th mythic will do the game justice. And if i receive a can of blue paint & some bones in the mail ill let you know >_<

A question of WaR

Okies i'm a bit puzzled

lets say your playing a Seprpent's Passage SC there are 2 groups:

1st group:
3 meele dps
2 Tanks
1 single target healer

2nd group:
3 aoe healer hybrids
1 tank
2 ranged dps

one of the aoe healers offers to drop from group 2 and move to group 1 to spread the healing out.

To me there isn't i cant see any way where the 1st group would not benefit from having a aoe healer in there, and whichever player left the 1st group for the 2nd one would still be in a better situation than he was.

As you can guess this was the situation i found myself in today & my suggestions that we rearrange the groups were met with a stony silence.

Laziness, selfishness, ignorance, i don't know, it just frustrates me sometimes.
I just can't understand why

and so it begins

well we did loose but i feel i did a damn good job there, so far my experience of t4 scenarios as a low lvl healer can be summed up thus: If you play to your strengths (in my case find a full group to aoe heal)find yourself a ranged dpser to hang around to fend off WH's(or WE's if your order)and choose a full healing spec you can be more than a little useful.

The introduction of Fortress Player caps and the attendant low level bashing "all they dos is leech" has got me thinking about how the way WaR lets you enter the end tier of open RvR at barely past 60% the way to max level affects the game. I'm working on a little longer & more in depth post on this called "is 28 the new 40" which ill post in a couple of days

The Clearout

it seems i wasn't the only one who took a hiatus from WaR & blogging, today i did what i used to do daily a opened all the links on my blogroll in a blaze of firefox tabs only to find a good60% or so have gone quiet.

I was particularly sad to find Book of Grudges had gone quite, it was one of the 1st warhammer blogs i read and they always had something interesting to say

Another i was sad to see go was Archmagery who has moved onto the world of zombies valve has created in L4D, which imo is the shape of the sort of future game which will finally take wow crown as king of PvE(but that another post entirely)

a few have quit WaR but have kept blogging like walloftext, wingednazgul, Potshot,and The Ancient Gaming N00b

looking at how much we lost i feel like i have to say a quick thanks to all the blogs who did keep active even after many of us went quiet.

so thank you:
echoesofnonsense
Harcore Casual
Keen and Grev
Stunty Stomper
Stylish Corpse
Way of the Chosen
The Greenskin

and in particular a big 'Kudos to you guys' shout to
Syp and Regis for the Blog Warhammer initiative which should be providing me with many new blogs to replace those who's time has sadly gone

Back to WaR: Part 3 Return of the Healer

So story so far...
My WaR career died a death of 1000 cuts (from bad customer service and a mass of annoying bugs)
Which sent me back to WoW which wowed me with a narrative based leveling experience which sadly came to a end on reaching the end game.
Now tempted by tales of mass bug exterminations and a rejuvenated player base i head back to WaR.

The need for Server merges, boosted leveling speeds, & greater rewards from RvR were all so obvious that its a mystery to me why they were not implemented sooner after release (or even before release).WaR's launch was reasonably smooth but if everything had been at launch as it is now perhaps percentage of those who tried out the game could have been retained.
But there no point swelling on this too much, the game seems stable now & i feel hopeful we can look forward to long term growth.

Looking at the state of the end game there are encouraging signs but also worrying ones.
The two most worrying issues are the issues surrounding fortress capture which as so succinctly another blogger put seems allot like a bad case of make do & mend.
The most promising sign overall is that there is very little sign of overall class imbalance now, both tanks & healers are well represented now. And unlike wow there is very little sign of the 'i want to be dps but ill heal for a raid spot' philosophy which ultimately leads to a huge amount of burnouts.

I've chosen to roll a Disciple of Khaine and so far the experience has been overwhelmingly positive.

Back to WaR: Part 2 Azeroth Strikes Back

Once i started writing this i realized there is going to have to be a multi-part story (although god knows how many parts in total). Anyways let us move onto part two dear reader, when i last left you a bugged career combined with lackluster customer support had driven me into the arm of my old lover WoW.

My experience of the initial release of wrath was decidedly mixed. Magetheridon EU has been my home now for almost 4 years, the last 3 of which have been spent in the same guild. Magetheridon has a few very successful PvE guilds and so attracts ALOT of wannabe's so the starting zones were hideously swamped at launch so after a day or 2 of putting up with ques of people camping spawn point for NPC's i decided to try out the new class since the feedback id been hearing from people was overwhelmingly positive.

Allot has been made of the Death Knight starting area, on paper phasing sounded pretty underwhelming but in practice it is anything but. The unchanging nature of most mmo's is always a immersion breaker, and phasing while not completely solving that problem takes a giant leap from most previous attempts. Playing through a proper storyline builds far stronger bonds with your character than doing 100's of "Kill X", "Escort Y from A to B" quests, by level 58 i was hooked. My Shaman is still 71 almost untouched since i first rolled my Death Knight.

Playing a Death Knights also help deal with the over analyzed nature fo much of WoW's PvE & PvP environments. Although many forums have started deconstructing the class in earnest it still remains a aura of mystery.

But this post is titled "Back to War" so the astute can guess that paradise could not & did not last. The Spell WoW had cast on me began to break once i hit 80 and slowly but surely the flow of new stories to explore began to dry up and the familiar grind of gearing for raiding began again. The Dungeons as always were well crafted but after one play through even the extra challenge of achievements couldn't enliven a badge grind.

Arena season didn't start until recently but long before then PvP in WoW was dead to me. Magethrion EU is unique as far as i know in that it is the only server where faction imbalance was that bad they only opened transfers away fromt he server for the horde & to the server for the alliance. For those of you who experienced the populations imbalances on some WaR servers after launch believe me this was on another scale altogether. During Leveling my Death Knight i don't think i came into contact with only 2 alliance players between 58 & 80, one lonely Dwarf Hunter in Zangarmarsh and a lone Death Knight.
So with on my server WoW attempt at RvR dead in the water the weight of expectation fall on scenario's. Vehicles are interesting novelty items at present but don't offer anything tactically. Combat itself still lack that extra little something it does in WaR.

And so just as WotLK arrived perfectly timed to take advantage of my disillusionment, so news of the implementation of Server transfers and open RvR influence lakes along with XP bonus's for leveling began to reach my ears.

Back to WaR: Part 1

So after quiting the game for a while i'm back, so it only appropriate that I cover what caused me & many others to stop(part1) & some of the reason i and other came back (part2) .

So why did I quit? I think like a lot of people there was a lot I was still enjoying about WaR but a lot of minor niggles which were making the experience a lot less enjoyable.

Witch Elves had & still have a lot of endgame issues, many people learned to play around some of the bigger issues like the continuing bugged state of pick lock by just becoming war machine operators or postern guards, but it is still a class which feels out of place in many of the bigger RvR skirmishes.
The state of RvR wasn't great either, a lot of the time id watch with despair as warbands played a strange came of keep trading.

But what tipped me over the edge was GOA handling of guild relations. I was part of a small guild which lost members after the free trial period was over one of which was our GM. GOA will not pass control of a guild until a character have been inactive for 6 weeks, so we had to endure weeks of uncertainty, slowly more people drifted away with the guild unable to form alliances or promote new officers. During that time more officers left & I ended up trying to keep people motivated best I could. I had Veteran rank so I sent a email to customer service asking if whether when the GM's account went inactive, the leadership would skip the inactive people & pass to someone active (either myself or another vet) I was reassured that it would do so.
Eventually the day arrived when the guild was due to pass from our absentee GM, and it did, to one who had been absent for 3 weeks meaning, we would have to wait again for it to pass on, which it did, to another inactive character.
At this point I was just fed up & demoralized, and there like a old friend along came Wotlk which offered me the security of my WoW guild (which I've been in for 3 years) and new content.