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Choosing your race in Middle-earth: Man and Elf
In many ways, picking a race for yourself in an MMO is very much a personal choice. However it can help to have some tips and an overall viewpoint on the subject. This guide is here for old players or new players that are unsure of the the finer details of each race in Lord of the Rings Online. The goal isn't to answer the question of which race is best, but rather to give a few tips and some advice on the strong points of the races in Middle-earth. In this first part of our guide to help you choose your race in LotRO, we'll explore the races of both Man and Elf.Obviously if a player has their heart set on being any single race, this guide isn't going to change their mind. Even if you've already made up your mind on a race (or already chosen it), this guide could contain a couple helpful chunks of information.
The Daily Grind: Updates to your favorite game
It's a fact of life as an MMO gamer that your favorite worlds are always going to be changing. Patches and expansions can change the face of gameplay and inspire us to spend more hours in game to level and explore. But new content coming too quickly will leave players feeling constantly behind the curve, while new content coming too slowly will leave players bored and looking for new entertainments. While MMO developers no doubt have their own ideas of how much content they have to put out how often in order to keep players interested and playing -- but today we're not talking to the MMO developers, we're talking to you. How often does your favorite game need fresh new content (new zones, new levels, new races, new classes?) to keep you interested in a game?
Our 2008 Tabula Rasa wish list: it's sci-fi-tastic!
The past year was a big one for Tabula Rasa and all who call it a virtual home. While most players only had a scant two months to enjoy the worlds that Richard Garriott and company created, the news came thick, and the time was exceedingly well spent. And Massively has been there from the beginning. From the end of beta event to the 24 hours of Tabula Rasa contests, from our visit to the NCsoft office to Richard Garriott's lecture at George Washington University, we've been all over Tabula Rasa like white on rice, and we plan to keep it that way.Having said that, we have a few things we're looking forward to from the Destination Games crew for the year 2008, from the more mundane to the potentially fantastic. As much as we enjoy blasting the Bane in the game's current state, if we had our way, this wish list would be on the public test realm tomorrow.
Yet another Stargate Worlds interview, this time with actual details
There have been a couple talks with Stargate Worlds devs or reps this past week. There was the live chat last Friday, and then there was the Kevin Balentine interview at WarCry that we wrote about yesterday. Some vague revelations were made, but both instances were light on details.Well, there was another interview this week, this time at MMOsite.com, and we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of information contained within. Kevin Balentine listed several of the races and classes and explained character advancement and combat a little bit. For example, Goa'uld characters include "the classic Goa'uld with minions, the stealth-oriented Ashrak and a combat-oriented Goa'uld." The floodgates of information still aren't completely open, though; the rest of the interview was the same fluff we've been seeing time and again.Oh, and Balentine assures us that beta time is "rapidly approaching." So that's kind of exciting.
Breakfast Topic: The clothes you wish you could wear
It happens a lot: you see some random NPC in the world wearing a certain item or clothing and you wonder "hey! Can I can a polearm like that somewhere?" You might even do some searching and find it's not available for players, only NPCs. Most often it's a weapon of some kind, but sometimes it's a particular set of shoulders, or a matching set of armor the like of which doesn't actually exist. Sometimes it's a unique item with a really powerful pizzazz.I always liked the nifty scarf featured here on Baron Rivendare, as well as on the death knight pictured in yesterday's breakfast topic. It probably would be hard to make this sort of scarf work for tauren, but all the other races could wear it pretty well, it seems. It would definitely be a match for death knights who want to look the part, or anyone who wants that certain dastardly debonair look.What items have you seen NPCs wearing that you wish you could wear too?
Breakfast Topic: Resemblance
Just a quick question this morning, from Indigo on Livejournal: if you compared the way you look in real life to a WoW race, what would you be? Indigo would be a Female Dwarf, and I'm sure lots of people would be human. Who would be a Tauren? Actually, now that I think about it, Samwise Didier, lead singer of Blizzard's L70ETC, would be a pretty good Tauren. But only because Pandaren aren't in the game yet.No doubts here-- I'd be an Ogre. Just the one head, but considering my height and size, you can call me High King Mike. I can definitely break out the dance, though, at a moment's notice.
The music of your class
There's a rather atrocious radio station that I pick up sometimes when I'm "station surfing" in the car that has an equally annoying jingle that advertises itself as playing "The Music of Your Life." I'll pause here so you can all run to the medicine cabinet to grab the nausea medication of your choice. Personally, I like the pink stuff, but I digress. It's no great secret that World of Warcraft players usually turn off the in-game music within moments of installing the game. Some listen to mp3 players while they play, or perhaps they have a stereo blaring nearby in the background. But what about the music of your class? What about a class theme song? What do you listen to when you're staring at the big boss at the end of the raid and you want to get your groove on? I posed this question to some paladin friends on another server. Their suggestions for the paladin class were "I Can Go The Distance" sung by Michael Boulton (the theme song from the Disney animated "Hercules") and – more amusingly – the chorus from "The Power" by Snap! That's just a couple of ideas for one class, but what about the rest? What about races? It's time for you to sound off with your suggestions.
Breakfast Topic: Priest racials
One unique thing about the Priest class is racial spells. Every race has their own traits for all classes, like Dwarves' Stoneskin and the Undead's Cannibalize. However, Priests also have special spells that are only available to certain races (each race gets two of the racial spells). Fear Ward is probably the most infamous; it's a 10-minute duration targetable buff that absorbs one fear effect, and is available only to dwarves and draenei. This leads to the common contention that the best race to roll for an Alliance Priest is dwarf, because Fear Ward is far better than all the other racial spells. Some racials are obviously trash -- my own Priest, being a human, has Desperate Prayer, which is a free instant self-heal on a 10 minute cooldown, and Feedback, a sort of very expensive mana-burning aura. Desperate Prayer is pretty decent, but Feedback is such utter rubbish that I can't even bring myself to spend the money on training it.As you may imagine, this is perceived as a sub-optimal situation by many Priests, including this blogger. However, it's not immediately obvious what the best way to fix it is. Remove racials entirely, possibly making some of them baseline abilities trainable by all races? Keep the lower-powered racials and baseline/remove the high-powered ones? Eyonix recently said it's likely that at some point in the future, you'll see additional improvements to priest racials -- what improvements would you like to see?
Breakfast topic: Favorite race
All the way back in October 2006, we asked you what your favorite race was, and since we have two more now, I think it's worth asking again. Of course some races have incredibly useful racial abilities -- will of the forsaken and fear ward come immediately to mind -- that make race choice an important one. But just as often a player's choice of race is made for cosmetic reasons, due to preference in starting zones, or because of personal reasons we may never know. Why do we have troll mages, orc warlocks, or night elf priests, after all? It's not because they're the best racial options for their faction or class -- it's because someone sincirely liked those races.As for me -- I've got a troll priest. Why not an undead priest? I could have cannibalize (great for soloing), will of the forsaken (excellent throughout the game), touch of weakness, and devouring plague. Instead, I have berserking, hex of weakness (not bad for raid situations, and entertaining for annoying people in PvP), and shadowguard. These skills have their uses, but overall, the undead's racial abilities are distinctly better. So why a troll? Well, I happen think they have very cool hair options, and I'd prefer playing them to an undead any day. So what's your favorite race -- and why?
BC's effect on the census
The Burning Crusade has been upon us for two months, and already, as I'm sure you've all observed, it has had a dramatic effect on the race/class balance of the game. First off, due to the massive influx of Blood Elves -- they are now the most popular Horde race! -- the Alliance:Horde ratio is more even than ever at 1.3:1 (though of course individual servers do vary substantially). Draenei have not been quite as winning as our love-to-hate-'em elfly friends, placing solidly in the middle of the pack for Alliance races (between Gnomes and Dwarves on the one side and Humans and Night Elves on the other).How about classes? Well, the stereotype is true: more Blood Elves are Paladins than are any other class (35%). This has made Paladins 6th most popular class for the Horde, which is kind of surprising for a class that just became available recently. Who thought so many Hordies had been secretly longing to bubble-hearth? This having been said, Draenei Shaman are even more popular, relatively speaking, than Blood Elf Paladins -- 49% of Draenei are Shaman. That's a lot of space totems. This also means Draenei represent almost half (48%) of all the Shaman in the game; 39% of Paladins are Blood Elves. Due to the relative unpopularity of Draenei, though, Shaman is still the least popular Alliance class, as it has been for the game's history (not entirely by choice for most of it, of course).All of this data is from the ever-lovely WarcraftRealms.com census data, and ignores characters below level ten. Head over there if you want more detailed stats of any kind. How is your realm doing?
Breakfast Topic: When discrimination rears its ugly head
I play a Shaman as my main, and I've said it more than once to my guild already: as much as I can, I will outright refuse to group with Paladins in the Burning Crusade. I don't care if they are on our side, if they do bring that sweet, sweet Judgement of Wisdom, and if they are really corrupting the light-- a Pally is a Pally. They're my sworn enemy, and that means they have to die (as soon as that shield fades, anyway).And I'm not alone-- Jingle refuses Blood Elves in general on behalf of the entire Horde. And interfaction discrimination doesn't have to wait until the Burning Crusade-- Julious points out that Gnomes seem to get no respect at all, even from Alliance. Hey, I respect Gnomes plenty. I respect them at dinnertime with a fine Durotar wine, usually after they've been grilled or charbroiled.So where do you land on all of this? Can't stand the sight of some of your supposed allies (I'll just assume you already hate the other faction), or do you think we should all just get along?
Breakfast Topic: Bad Guys?
When I first started playing Warcraft games, way back in high school, I always chose the humans in multiplayer. Why? Well, I was a pretty straight laced fellow, and the humans were the good guys! The orcs were terrible, evil folks who allied themselves with the equally as nasty trolls. And ogres. Why would I want to associate myself with that? Then after Warcraft III hit, the line was completely blurred between the good and bad. The orcs didn't seem so terrible, and boy, those humans sure did screw things up. The storyline in World of Warcraft has really done nothing to change that blurred line. Which leads me to my question for you folks...is there any true villain race or faction in WoW? Sure, the Undead seem kind of creepy, and they send you off on some truly questionable quests, but they are counterbalanced by the Tauren, who I think may be the most virtuous race in the game. And for some reason, don't the humans seem a little shady? Onyxia fools them and hangs out in their capital city and, in all honesty, I think they stuck it to Van Cleef. Come the expansion...what about the Blood Elves? They surely don't seem as nice and docile as their Night Elf cousins. So what do you guys think? Which WoW race is the most evil? Which one the most noble?
2006 DARPA Grand Challenge teams announced, prize plummets to zero dollars
If there's one event we look forward to even more than the annual Robocup competition, it's DARPA's Grand Challenge, where teams from academia and corporate America butt heads to see whose autonomous vehicle can complete a previously-unknown course in the shortest amount of time. Since the 2004 Challenge ended in utter disaster (no one even came close to finishing the entire course, and most competitors barely made it past the starting line), DARPA ran the same race in 2005 with much better results: several teams succeeded in crossing the finish line, with Stanford's VW Touareg leading the pack and taking home the two million dollar bounty. Well DARPA must have figured that it had a great source of cheap R&D at its disposal with these Challenges, so this year will see a total of two events -- one up Pike's Peak (already completed) and an urban version of the original scheduled for November 3rd. To that end, the so-called Team A participants for the Urban Challenge have just been announced (including most of the usual suspects) -- these groups will get up to $1 million in development funds before the race even begins -- while the unfunded (and therefore dark horse) Team B applicants will be revealed on October 18th. Although we doubt that most of these competitors are in it for the money, a recent Congressional ruling now prohibits DARPA from offering up cash prizes, so instead, the top three teams this year will all take home shiny new...trophies. Team B wanna-bes have up until the 13th to submit their applications, but now that you know there's no riches or funding involved, you really gotta have a love of the game to participate -- unless those trophies happen to be 24-karat gold and studded with diamonds, that is, in which case they should fetch even more on eBay than Team Buffalo's losing Yamaha ATV from 2005. [Warning: PDF link] [Via GoRobotics]
Draenei: Paladins and Shamans?
When the Draenei race was initially announced, a Blizzard poster said that, tentatively, Draenei could be warriors, priests, mages, hunters, and paladins. With the more recent announcement that Draenei would be able to become shamans, many (myself included) wondered if they would still be able to be paladins. However, Tseric recently confirmed that Draenei will still be able to play paladins - which seems fair, as it would leave the Alliance with three paladin races and the Horde with three shaman races. Lore-wise it seems somewhat murky territory - weren't the Draenei supposedly a shamanistic society before their integration into the Burning Crusade, when it was revealed that they were introduced to the Light? I was never much of a loremaster myself, so the changes that seem to be getting made to the history of Azeroth continue to baffle me...
Gnome Race at Birdie 16
During Birdie 16, a large LAN party held in Sweden, they arranged a large Gnome race from Ironforge to Stormwind - and have shared the fun with us in the form of this video. Enjoy!
Cultural Borrowing in Warcraft
Terra Nova has an interesting article about the "cultural borrowing" that takes place in World of Warcraft - the way certain races in Azeroth have characteristics shared with social and ethnic groups from the real world. However, I do wonder whether the characterization is really a negative one when the different factions (both the primitive Horde and the refined Alliance) are shown with equal strength and capability. Regardless, the article does present some very interesting food for thought.
