Tenfold Hate

After tiring of huffing it to a war camp each night for the first flight to Altdorf so I could empty bags and hit the Auction House, I created a bank alt. I went with a White Lion. Does anyone else find it weird that there’s now a class in an MMO named after a hair band from the eighties?

And allow me to take this opportunity to state how happy I am that the hair metal power ballad is almost two decades dead-and-buried. Though things are seriously frightening in the good old U.S. of A right now, it wasn’t all wine and roses back then either. We have the scary talent of White Lion to remind us of that.

But even scarier then bad hair bands is my recent fixation with High Elves in WAR. I’ve hated elves of every shape and form as long as I can remember, whether we’re talking Tolkien, D&D, Santa’s helpers (yes, they’re not exempt), Oliver Stone’s Legend, or on a box of Keebler’s (that little bastard is not exempt either, though he makes delicious cookies). I never could stomach the new agey-ness of them or the too precious way they are always portrayed. But WAR High Elves have something that makes them palatable for me–something that makes me not want to pummel them (unlike Dark Elves, blah).

In fact, I’m enjoying my High Elf Swordmaster just as much as my “main” Warrior Priest. They’re still snooty, pompous, and pretty-as-a-picture, but WAR’s environment kind of forces them off that pedestal they are placed upon in much fantasy lore. They may THINK and ACT like they’re the prom kings and queens of medieval mythos, but in WAR, they’re not. They’re scrappy. They’re screwed. Fending off attacks from their Hot Topic reject cousins on one side, in an uneasy alliance with the crass humans and even more crass dwarfs on the other.

I know what you’re thinking. ‘STFU, you made a bank alt who’s an elf. Big deal.’ Well, for whatever twisted psychoses I harbor, this is a huge step for me. Thank you for listening.

My WP was busy this week, jumping from Rank 19 to 21–so this weekend, I’m planning on giving my beloved Swordmaster some exercise and working on my gobbo shaman a bit.

In other news, my WP earned the title “The Fashionable” last night. I love the armor customization options in WAR, so every time I get a new piece, I tend to head straight to a merchant to screw around with the dying options. Do this 25 times, and earn the title.

Previously, I’d stuck with the title “The Purifier”–which in my mind is pretty bad ass (and fitting for a WP). But the concept of heretics being hunted down by a bald guy in orange and purple robes with the title “The Fashionable” under his name is just too fun to pass up.

I’m three weeks in and WAR is just as engaging as the first day I booted it up. Last night, my Warrior Priest became my first character to get his mount, I’m having a ton of fun with the fight mechanics of my Swordmaster, and I rolled a goblin shaman on the Phoenix Throne server to participate in the Warpath podcast guild started by Phillip and Stephen (whom some of you might know from The Drone Bay podcast). On a side note, I’m glad I didn’t roll a shaman earlier. The greenskin zone–and the shaman’s healing mechanics–are so damn fun that I probably never would’ve rolled alts if this had been my first.

This is the first Destruction character I’ve spent some time with. I’m not sure if it’s just Phoenix Throne or what, but I seem to have dodged the bullet on the whole “Destruction have obscenely long wait times for scenarios to pop” issue. Sure, scenarios don’t pop as frequently as they do for my Order characters, but the longest wait I’ve had during prime time for the Tier One scenarios was three or four minutes.

I must say though, the mail on Phoenix Throne is lagtastic. It took me a good five minutes to extract all my Collector’s Edition bonus items from the mailbox when I rolled the gobbo this weekend. This may have been remedied in yesterday’s patch, but I was having too much fun on my WP last night to check things out on the green side.

While Open World RvR on my main server (Chaos Wastes) is relatively healthy compared to some of the core servers where it seems people cling to that “open world is for questing/scenarios are for PvP” mentality, I’m sure we’ll see an influx of new players moving towards taking keeps and siege warfare over the next month or two as they reach level cap.

My only moderate gripe so far has been with the lack of public participation in PQs after I hit around Chapter 7. I’ve tried High Elves, Empire, Dwarfs, Chaos, and Greenskins across three different servers (2 Open RvR, 1 Core) and I’ve never had problems grouping for PQs through those initial chapters. I wouldn’t be so grouchy about it if I hadn’t gotten a taste for how fun PQs can be.

Though my lower level characters still see plenty of PQ action, since his late teens, my WP has had to grind out Stage One of each PQ repeatedly if I wanted to reap a particular influence reward. And as any WAR player knows, though easily soloable, Stage One is really designed as a group activity–since it frequently involves killing 50-100 mobs in order to set the more challenging stages of the event in motion.

It’s not that bad when it comes down to it–it’s fine filler when waiting for scenarios to pop–but it gets a little disheartening when Stage Two hits and it’s just you and some Witch Hunter staring at each other blankly, knowing you’re about to engage in a drawn out fight with a bunch of champions just to have the timer reset on you, or you’re about to receive a royal ass-kicking from a mob of heroes.

Do I think Mythic should nerf Stage One PQs to eliminate the grindy WoW feel of them for solo players? Not necessarily. How about nerfing Stages Two and Three to make them more accessible to smaller groups of adventurers? Absolutely not. Not if it means compromising the “public” in PQ. How about boosting rewards for players who participate in PQs? I wouldn’t.

As anyone who’s participated in PQs knows, those loot bags are pretty sweet as is. Is there a solution–or does there really need to be–in a game with so much other stuff to do? I think if there is a solution, it has to be something that does not compromise the integrity and initial concept of what PQs are. I just don’t know what the solution might be. After all, this is more a community issue than a design issue, IMHO.

WAR’s greatest strength is it’s greatest weakness–the reliance on it’s population to make things gel. But isn’t this what a massive, multiplayer game should be? At the end of the day, the bumper cars aren’t gonna drive themselves, kiddies.

My first full weekend in Warhammer Online was a blast. I got in a solid five plus hours’ playtime both Saturday and Sunday, tooled around with some different classes, and got my Warrior Priest to Rank 15. Despite my anti-elf tirade last week, I created a Swordmaster and I’m really enjoying it.

The High Elves are so stereotypically, annoyingly, exaggeratedly elfish that I actually have a soft spot for them. I also found her a relaxing break from the micromanagement and constant thinking-on-your-toes necessary to play a WP. I tried a Magus too and I think I can safely say I’m just not meant to play a caster. I always like the idea of reigning hellfire and massive amounts of DPS on my adversaries, but outside of the ultra-fun warlock class in WoW, it seems squishy magic users just aren’t my bag. I’m gonna give the sorceress a shot before I make any final decisions in WAR.

So far, this game has been strangely zen for me–playing in the moment and enjoying the new journey with complete disregard for the destination. I don’t care what the “golden carrot” is awaiting me at journey’s end, I just hope it’s as sweet as what I’m experiencing now if I get there. There’s no “Oh sheesh, gotta plow through to this level so I can PvP” or “I need to race to this level so I can group up for a viable dungeon crawl.” Progression seems to occur AS I’m enjoying myself–it’s not some hoop I have to jump through in order to get to where I “really” wanna be or what I “really” wanna be doing. Go figure!

Traditional PvE questing is generally bland in WAR, but only because PvE questing is generally bland in any game after the first fifty thousand times you do it, be it EQ or WoW or whatever. There’s only so many ways you can reposition kill-and-collect quests and keep them fresh. In this sense, WAR is beginning to spoil me. I still quest, don’t get me wrong. But I use traditional questing more as a springboard–an excuse to explore and get to know an area and its inhabitants when I arrive in a new region. WAR has been the first game to show me I don’t have to grin and bear it anymore.

The tiered scenario system came as a bit of a shock to my system once my WP hit 12. I was really having fun with the three Tier One scenarios and kind of didn’t wanna grow up quite yet. Once you think you’re finally grasping the ins-and-outs of say, Nordenwatch, you hit Rank 12 and have to move along to Stone Troll Crossing. Outside of stumbling upon New Emskrank and having my ass handed to me by some higher level Destruction players, I haven’t even gotten my feet wet in the open world contested areas yet. But when they say “War is everywhere,” they mean it.

I only need reflect upon the ignored objective towers strewn across Azeroth and the Outlands (that no one bothered with) to remember how PvP can be handled poorly–and how that was reflected in the attitude of a game’s community. There was no sense of urgency, no sense of threat, no sense of genuine allegiance to one’s faction. Not in WAR, my friend.

Last night, I was working on a PQ in Troll Country. When a Chaos Chosen and a Squig Herder ran down the road, all five of us (a PUG mind you) without speaking, stopped what we were doing and went after the Destruction players. Because that’s the play environment Mythic (with ample source material from Games Workshop) so masterfully created. We weren’t debating in party chat whether we should kill the last 6 zombies to finish that leg of the PQ first. Our little avatars are brutal little avatars fighting for their virtual survival in a brutal virtual landscape, dammit! Fun stuff.