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Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox
In this installment of Waging WAR, Greg takes a look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from a few different angles and goes in search of the proverbial "sandbox" in a game that contains neither sand nor boxes. Somewhere along the line during my childhood, I developed a habit for playing games with nearly every game I've ever played. I can even remember a time in my early teens when I sat down with a few friends and collaborated on making our own version of battlechess. Pages of chicken-scratched rules and several dice results-tables later, and we were off and running for a solid week of the most entertaining chess matches I've ever played. Or there was that time with The Sims when I started creating experimental families and then leaving my computer on overnight and not interacting with them, just to see how successful they could be without my help. I could bore you for hours on end with examples of how I twisted the rules and made my own games from the games I've played. I suppose I can blame my penchant for metagaming on my early introduction to pen-and-paper roleplaying (i.e., D&D 1st Ed., to be specific). All I had was a sheet of paper, a handful of dice, a description of the world around me, and my imagination. By its very nature, PnP gaming is sandbox gaming. The reason I'm bringing this up now is that, until WAR, I had pretty much been able to "find the sandbox" in any MMO I was able to get my hands on. Whether it was building hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Online characters, roleplaying in City of Heroes, or achievement-chasing in World of Warcraft, I've never really been troubled with finding something to do when the grind started to wear me down. But now, with WAR, I'm finding most of my old tricks for MMO metagaming just aren't working. To read about what I've tried, and why it didn't work in WAR, follow along after the break.
Waging WAR: A healer's survival guide
This week, Waging WAR steps back from all the news and hype of Gamescom and GamesDay and focuses in on the healing archetypes in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. As we all know by now, Greg plays a healer and he's put together a guide for those who kill by mending the wounds of those who kill by bludgeon or blade. In my time in WAR I've learned a thing or two. No, I'm not writing about my extensive knowledge of how various terrains taste (the sand on the beaches of Nordenwatch and the cobbled brick streets of Praag have become favored delicacies). I'm writing about how to be an effective healer in WAR. While I am by no means invincible or infallible, I do consider myself a decent, relatively resilient and capable PvP tank (let's not kid ourselves here -- who needs plate when you can wear robes, right?). I have some advice to share with those who are interested in endgame PvP/RvR healing, or even those who are already there but seek to add an edge to their game. To achieve enlightenment, click the Read More button.
Waging WAR: A healer's advice for melee-DPS
Waging WAR starts the month of August with a look at archetypes in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and the way they work together in RvR and scenarios. Although Greg's rules apply to pretty much any class-based, group-based, PvP-centric game, he prefers to think of them as particular to WAR, since there's a bunch of game-specific slang in there that he's too lazy to change. Having a role to play is integral to the massively multiplayer online experience, but when the term "roleplay" comes up, it usually means something very specific and closely related to dramatic acting. Taken in a broader sense, it means that we choose our roles when we project the most imaginative aspect of our psychic selves and ask the question "who (or what) do I want to be?" Thus, our vicarious adventures begin. For the purposes of social gaming, it should come as no surprise that those classes usually fit another staple in the MMO universe -- the role trinity of tanker, healer, and damager. While the bond between the healer and tanker is obvious, the unspoken pact between healer and damager is just as sacred and yet all too easily forgotten. For those who were unaware such a promise existed, it goes something like, "I, the healer, promise to keep you alive so you can kill stuff in the face (better)." However, in many cases, the damaging character is delegated an expendable role, compared to the tank's priority or the healer's own survival. These are exceptions that the melee-damager is usually aware of and even comfortable with. But today I'm not here to challenge those roles like I normally would when talking about damage-healer hybrids. As a specialized healer, I've defined a few, easy-to-remember rules that I believe every melee-damage player should follow in group situations (PUG or premade – there is little difference when it comes to these rules). Solo play is an entirely different realm and beyond the scope of this column; I want to focus on the special synergy between healer and melee-damager, and to dispense advice to those brave, wayward souls in their never-ending quest to face blades as they bring their own to bear. I'll bestow these tidbits of wisdom after the break.
Waging WAR: The Nagaryth Chronicles, supplemental
During the last three weeks, Waging WAR took a look at the shadow warrior career in Warhammer Online, in an attempt to gain personal experience and insight into the complaints that most players have with the class. Due to popular demand, this week we return (albeit briefly) to the shadow warrior class to touch up a few frayed ends. We also set our sights forward and look ahead to future issues of Waging WAR. I felt that my review of the career was based on solid ground, given the scope, and taking the setting and focus into consideration, and considering the fact that I had to grind the levels relatively quickly in order to stay on-time and deliver the column promptly. Despite my original intention to simply gain personal insight and experience with the class in an effort to have greater understanding of its hot-button issues, many of the Waging WAR readers who left comments were disappointed with my experiment, as I didn't have time or space to have a serious look at the skirmish and assault trees. So, throughout the last week, I felt obliged to play my shadow warrior, focusing all of my mastery points in either skirmish or assault (starting at rank 30, there are more than enough points available to explore an entire tree, and even a few inter-tree synergies). Follow along after the break to find out how things went for me.
