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Waging WAR: Battle for Badlands season 3 finale
With so many awesome things happening for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning lately, with the Verminous Horde expansion, the new store, patch 1.4 and all the rest, Greg has decided to turn his all-seeing eye sideways, to a land called the Badlands, and take Waging WAR along to explore a community-driven event that has been held there for nearly a year now with great success. Since launch, WAR has enjoyed a great community. With every great community, a great event is inevitable. I've been around the block since WAR was released and have experienced the game on several different servers. I originally rolled my first character, a Swordmaster named Xiimmel, on Iron Rock. Later, I rolled an Archmage named Feiyen on Dark Crag, who I eventually moved back to Iron Rock where she was renamed Veeo. I never did get a chance to explore Phoenix Throne, which was collapsed along with Dark Crag some time ago. Recently, I joined the Badlands community on the side of Destruction with a variety of new characters, and the community there has been good to me so far. Part of that experience the last few weeks has been the opportunity to participate in a community-driven phenomenon known as the Battle for Badlands. Since this is all quite new to me, I decided to do a community spotlight on the event in today's Waging WAR. Read on past the cut where I play 6Qs and deliver the details about the Battle for Badlands while I try to answer your 5Ws and maybe an H.
Warhammer Online 1.0.6 patch adds new classes, tidal wave of updates
All those Warhammer Online players who where playing along with the Heavy Metal event in November will be happy to know that today the fruits of their labor has arrived. That's right: Today, Mythic brings us Black Guards and Knights of the Blazing Sun! For those who didn't finish the full Heavy Metal event, don't worry, the classes will become available to everyone next week. Servers are going down at 3:30AM PST / 6:30AM EST for North American players with Oceanic servers following at 9:00AM EST. No specific time-frame was given for the updating process, so we'll just have to sit tight and wait it out.New classes aren't the only thing found in this patch, however. There's a ton of general game updates, performance updates, bug fixes and class tweaks coming with the 1.0.6 patch, too. In fact, there are so many class tweaks that Bright Wizards, Chosen, Engineers, Ironbreakers, Maguses (Magi?), Shadow Warriors, Sorcerers, Squig Herders and Swordmasters are all getting their mastery points refunded. Combat also seems to be a big focus, with a ton of improvements to auto-attack animations, ability responsiveness, morale responsiveness and root responsiveness.All in all, we're pretty impressed with Mythic on this patch, as it delivers some substantial changes that many players have been waiting to see. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
The Elves of WAR round-up
It's been a busy week here at Massively as we've been preparing for the eventual NDA lift while simultaneously bringing you early looks at the first half of the Dark Elf and High Elf content. With the announcement that the full NDA is being removed today, we've decided to go ahead and gather all of the Elves of WAR content written thus far into one easy-to-access place. Expect to see lots more from the Massively crew as we bring you information on all of the races that will be butting heads in Warhammer Online. Meet the Shadow Warrior, levels 1-5Our overview of the High Elf ranged dps career, the Shadow Warrior, may not be enough for you. So here we are with an examination of every skill from level one through five. Meet the Swordmaster. levels 1-5Maybe the High Elf melee dps and healer careers aren't your preferred playstyle. It's time to look at the High Elf tanking class, the Swordmaster, in our continuing exclusive pre-NDA coverage of the Elves of WAR. The Digital Continuum: Dark Elf days in WARSo we've gotten official approval to speak our minds early and often about the Dark Elf (High Elves too, but bollocks to Order, I say!) experience in tier one and two as much as we like. That led me to decide that it would be fun to give you my personal take on them. Meet the Disciple of KhaineThe Bloody Handed god has priests like any of the other gods in Warhammer Online, only his priests come with a twist. They are known as Disciples of Khaine and they relish dealing death to their enemies like the rest of their brothers and sisters. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
The Elves of WAR: Meet the Swordmaster levels 1-5
Maybe the High Elf melee dps and healer careers aren't your preferred playstyle. It's time to look at the High Elf tanking class, the Swordmaster, in our continuing exclusive pre-NDA coverage of the Elves of WAR. We've already written up an overview of the class and its chain-combo fighting style, but now let's start from the beginning and work our way up.Level 1Graceful Strike - 40 AP, Instant cast, 5ft rangeLeads to Improved BalanceA swift attack that deals 10 damage and Cripples for an additional 20 damage over 5 seconds. Monsters struck with this technique will hate you more.Throw - 20 AP, 1sec cast, 5-65ft rangeA basic throwing attack that inflicts 10 damage. Has a chance to deal 90 damage to a severely wounded traget if you are behind them.Throw is good for pulling, but Graceful Strike is your bread-and-butter dps plus taunt ability and it starts your combo chain by shifting you from Balance to Improved Balance.
The Elves of WAR: Meet the Swordmaster
Massively continues its exclusive pre-NDA look into the Elves of Warhammer Online. This article focuses on the Swordmaster, the High Elf tanking career specializing in combo chains called the Blade Dance. Through the use of enchanted Great Swords and Shields as well as natural elven agility, Swordmasters not only endure the incoming attacks of their enemies, but also unlock powerful abilities as the battle progresses. Every Swordmaster has a Balance state. At the beginning of battle, their Balance state is Normal, but special attacks improve their Balance and unlocks a new set of attacks. When the Swordmaster reaches Perfect Balance they can unleash their most fearsome abilities, but at the cost of resetting their Balance back to Normal.Being a tank class, most of their abilities are focused on taunting, debuffing and protection of their allies through attacks on the enemy. But through mastery trees, each player can customize the class in different ways. Through the Khaine (offense), Vaul (defense) and Hoeth (magic) mastery trees the Swordmaster will not only gain new abilities, but will buff core abilities that improve Balance in a way that works with the chosen playstyle. Plus, there are three different blade enchants the Swordmaster has access to, though only one can be active at any time, that will also get buffed by the corresponding mastery tree.
From Tabletop to Desktop: WAR's Order careers
It's been a month since we last took a look at how Warhammer Online's Destruction classes have made the transition from the old-school tabletop game to a full-fledged MMO experience, and a lot has happened. We've shown you a huge amount of new coverage with our Massively Goes to WAR series, and even got some more hands-on details of each of the game's many classes. We know that the guild beta is practically within our reach, and the open beta never leaves our minds, though it still lies just over the horizon.Since our last look at the WAR's tabletop roots was so well-received, we went back to the drawing board to bring you part two - focusing this time on the races on the side of Order. If you plan on joining the ranks of the Dwarfs, Empire, or High Elves and lack the proper appreciation for how the game's classes came to be, read on! From Tabletop to Desktop: WAR's Order careers >>>>> %Gallery-26491%
Warhammer Online's High Elf Swordmaster Class
Hey everyone, remember Warhammer Online? That one MMO that's supposed to come out later this year? Okay, step away from the Conan beta and listen up, because we have some news on the Warhammer front concerning the Swordmaster. According to a recent MMORPG.com interview with EA Mythic's Adam Gershowitz, the Swordmaster of Hoeth is the High Elf's entry into the tanking profession. It uses a flurry of swordplay to deflect the blows of its enemies as opposed to simply using heavy armor, like most tanks. As with the other classes in WAR, the Swordmaster has three mastery paths that are variations of differing playstyles: Path of Vaul - Includes combos that draw aggro while still increasing your defense. This path caters to situations with multiple foes. Path of Khaine - This path is for your area attack combos, introducing more of an offensive twist for the more aggressive tanks. Path of Hoeth - This is the tank path that utilizes magical abilities to aid in both defense and offense.
IGN and Gamespy preview WAR's Elven starting areas
Partners-in-crime IGN and Gamespy recently visited Mythic to get some hands-on time with a couple of the starting areas in Warhammer Online. IGN ended up with the High Elves, taking Swordmaster as their class, and Gamespy chose the Dark Elves and picked Sorceress. One of the things that Gamespy commented on was the close proximity of the High Elf and Dark Elf starting areas to each other. They also noted that some of the newbie quests deliberately brought the two races together, within striking distance, giving players the choice to either scowl menacingly, or jump straight into PvP. There was unfortunately no mention of a meet-up and subsequent rumble with their noble High Elven counterparts though. Both teams ended their playtime by participating in a public quest, and you can read all about it from either IGN's or Gamespy's perspective.
WAR Online Newsletter out, it's elf-tastic!
Even though we knew beforehand that the October edition of the Warhammer Online Newsletter was going to be prefaced with bad news, it was still a welcome surprise when it greeted us in our mailboxes this morning. This month's issue (which marks the two year anniversary for the newsletter) focuses on those always-polarizing High Elves, looking down their noses at the world from their marble palaces in Ulthuan. On the list of goodies, players can watch a video on the High Elf Shadow Warrior (or emo elves, as Paul dubs them), take an in-depth look at the High Elf Swordmaster, read the general description of the High Elf army and the Chrace zone in the north of Ulthuan, and peep at a number of other video updates.As always, the WAR crew does a great job of inundating us with such a quantity of topical and behind-the-scenes content that we almost forget that the game still has a long way to go. While you can find all the information scattered about the WAR site, the easiest way to get it all is to simply subscribe to the newsletter, which we heartily recommend anyway.Make sure to stay tuned, as we'll have our first-hand impressions of Warhammer Online later this morning.
