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Snafzg returns to WAR (week one): An introduction
Rank 40/44 Squig Herder of Phoenix Throne / ex-dedicated Warhammer Online blogger looking for group!Hey folks; my name is Snafzg. You might remember me from such internet adventures as "Author of TheGreenskin.com," the now-defunct but first dedicated WAR blog, and "A somewhat elusive gobbo of Phoenix Throne!" Welcome to my little experiment: Snafzg returns to WAR. You see, I haven't played the game for quite some time, so I'm going back in for one month (with an open mind) to give it another shot.Some historyWarhammer Online and I have a history dating back to October 2007. I hadn't played an MMO for over six months and was starting to feel the itch again. A long-time gaming friend told me to check out WAR because he was currently in beta and the game was slated to be coming out soon. I started doing research and got so engrossed that I started a blog about it.The game was delayed one month later. Bah! I thought, but I at least I have the first dedicated WAR blog. Let's make it grow while we wait. And wait I did. The game was delayed again from Q2 to Q3 2008. At this point though, I was in beta, so I could wait. To be honest, I felt the game needed a lot more time in the testing facilities anyway. Delaying was a good thing.
Snafzg returns to WAR (week one): An introduction (p2)
And honestly, who knows how they'll turn out in the end anyway? br> I'm in closed beta for some of those games but if the WAR beta taught me anything it's that I'm not much of a beta tester. I have a pretty casual gaming schedule and I'm certainly not interested in spending it in buggy and/or temporary environments.
Mythic prank hints at Orc Choppa career coming to WAR next week
The folks at Mythic Entertainment recently gave a pretty big hint about a new Warhammer Online career to be introduced, through a creative gag. They sent hair dye and a trimmer to WAR bloggers Keen and Graev, a nod to the upcoming Dwarf Slayer career. Lightning has struck twice now though, with what The Greenskin posted yesterday. Mythic Entertainment sent The Greenskin a DVD of Predator, with instructions to go to the meme Schwarzenegger shouts at 1:16:06... "Get to da choppa!" With this hint, it seems a given that the Orc Choppa career is coming to Warhammer Online. The DVD also came with the hint that there would be "more to come" on January 29th. [Thanks Brooke] WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
First week of Warhammer Online Age of Blogging successful
Well, the first week of Warhammer Online 'Age of Blogging' has come and gone. It sure did go by in a Mary Poppins on 'spoonfuls of sugar' blur. So what was the eventual end-product of all those bloggers pounding their fingertips for the last 168 hours? A whole truck-load of posts collected by The Greenskin blog about Warhammer Online from lots of new sources, which was certainly the goal -- albeit for the month of January.There are posts covering everything from exploiting terrain in-game to roleplaying your Orc or High Elf. So hats off to you, new and old WAR bloggers, for taking the first steps towards creating a robust community around your MMO of choice. Of course, now the trick is to keep the steam running high and the rails hot with locomotion. Wait, did we just use a train metaphor? I think we did, oh boy. WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
A player's perspective on top ten priorities for WAR in 2009 (updated)
The Greenskin blog has put together a top ten list of what they'd like to see for Warhammer Online in '09. Aimed at making sure the game finds continued success in the coming year, the list focuses on giving the game a lot of polish and fine-tuning. Specifically it calls for the death of bugs, CTDs and endgame performance issues. We don't think anyone would really disagree with these sentiments, because nothing is worse than suddenly seeing your Pretty Pretty Princess wallpaper right when you were about to capture The Inevitable City.As for the expansion announcement in 2009, we do think it would be very nice to hear, but only if fixes and such have been plentiful by that point. The best thing to do, in our humble opinion, would be to get all the kinks out, massage some new features in and then make an announcement.Update: Mark Jacobs has responded to the list, here was what he had to say,"Folks,Done. While I don't agree with everything contained within the paragraphs under the priorities themselves, I think that the top ten is just about dead on balls accurate. We have a number of other things I'd add to the list but I'll talk about them down the road.Nice article.Mark" WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Video footage of WAR's Reikland Factory scenario
The Heavy Metal live event for Warhammer Online has been well-received, albeit with some complaints about scenario frequency. Reikland Factory is a unique 'event-only' scenario in WAR, which some players lament will end with Heavy Metal. If this is indeed the case, at least one blogger out there decided to capture it in video for posterity. Snafzg from The Greenskin blog has put up video footage of his participation in the Reikland Factory scenario. The footage, with Snafzg's commentary throughout, walks the viewer through the scenario and its multiple types of terrain, both indoors and open air. Snafzg is in combat for much of the walkthrough so it's an interesting way to get a quick visual tour of the scenario. You can find The Greenskin's "Reikland Factory Heavy Metal Scenario RvR" video embedded below the cut: 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!
WAR's cross-server scenario queues akin to socialism
Warhammer Online, despite a very smooth launch, has a few nagging problems that have cropped up in its first weeks of life. Chief among its growing pains is the problem of scenario queuing issues, both on barren servers and the ones that are practically choking on players. Snafzg over at The Greenskin asks if creating a better situation for all Warhammer Online players must entail some degree of sacrifice made by all through cross-server scenario queues, likening the solution to socialism. A situation where the 'good servers' sacrifice for the benefit of 'problem servers'. Snafzg writes, "I'm not saying socialism is bad... but I wonder if there are alternative solutions that don't punish (too strong a word?) people on good servers for the benefit of those on bad servers. I don't envy Mythic here... Make one crowd happy only to piss off another?" He also points out that the core issues of server population imbalance impact the game on many levels, and suggests some potential solutions for both overpopulation and underpopulation issues. If you're not happy with the scenario frequency in Warhammer Online, give Snafzg's "Cross-Server Scenario Socialism..." post a read, and let him know if you agree with his views on the issue. 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!
Order and Destruction guild heraldry art collected
It seems that plenty of Warhammer Online fans are excited about the standards and heraldry aspects of the game. Some of us here at Massively feel the same way. In fact, we've just come across a slew of guild heraldry images, for both Destruction and Order, which are certainly worth a look if you're into the customization aspects of Warhammer Online.Check out the hundreds of examples and combinations (we're not exaggerating) of Destruction guild heraldry that Atole of Monolith has put together, grouped by color, shape, pattern and emblem. For a look at the Order side, you'll probably want to see this equally impressive collection of guild emblems. Take a look below the cut for a sampling of each. 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!
Mythic's stance on monetizing cut WAR content
A thread/poll over at the Warhammer Alliance forums recently asked its denizens if they would be angry at Mythic Entertainment for charging money for the previously-cut Warhammer Online content via an expansion. The results appear to be drawn down the middle. While that may not be indicative of how the majority of players would feel about Mythic putting the previously talked about content in its first expansion, it's not the most important side to the story. The important thing to take from all of this is the post that Mark Jacobs makes very early on in the thread. He compares the cut content to a director cutting specific scenes out of a movie in order to make it a better experience and releasing said content at a later point on the DVD release.If that analogy doesn't make things quiet clear, Jacobs helps assuage possible fears by ending his post with, "if/when we bring back those classes and these cities (sorry for the if, don't read more into it, just being careful) that players will not have to buy them from us as part of a paid expansion but rather just part of the content updates that we did so well for DAoC." We're happy to hear it and hope for an expedient release of that content. We really had our hearts set on being a Blackguard.[via theGREENskin]
EA CEO Riccitiello doesn't think investors care about quality
When you're playing your favorite MMO, how much thought do you put into the finances of the game? Do you wonder if the game had initial investors, or if they were banking on a big-name publisher? Maybe they're an indie developer out raising their own investment capital? In the case of an MMO, the most-likely scenario is initial investments made by a big-name company, or in the case of Tabula Rasa, a big name dude.In a recent statement by EA's outspoken CEO John Riccitiello, he says, "I don't think the investors give a sh*t about our quality. They care about our earnings per share. They wait for it to happen. We had three years where we didn't make our expectations. If I were an investor, I would wait and see." As controversial as this statement might be, we get treated to an interesting interpretation over at The Greenskin blog.
Are you a worshipper of Tzeentch?
One of the delightful things about the development of Warhammer Online is that it has breathed life into a tabletop game that, for many, was an every-present fantasy standby as they grew up. While few people we know of were actually rich and/or talented enough to put together that 2000 point painted and converted army that is the stuff of dreams, just about everybody could inhale the lore in the army books and fancy the day when they could.Cicadymn over at The Greenskin is doing his part to get everybody back into a Warhammery mood with a recent blog post about the chaos god Tzeentch--pronounced "Zeench" for those who tend to side with the forces of Order-- the first in a series highlighting the plethora of Warhammer gods. As he rather astutely points out, Tzeentch, as the changer of ways, is really the patron god for any MMO player who strives for the next level or who has ever gone back to fix his talent layout. More than that, we think EA Mythic opted to go with Tzeentch over one of the other Chaos gods because they couldn't stand the thought of making a game without those nifty Discs of Tzeentch.
Warhammer Online's realm imbalance fears
When Warhammer Online releases later this year do you think there will be a skewed realm population? The GREENSkin blog seems to think so, but history would disagree with them. Whenever a game has been faction-based the "evil" races tend to be popular during the beta period. This fear of imbalance was a issue in Dark Age of Camelot and in World of Warcraft. During both of those instances beta testers expressed worry that the more evil of the realms would be entirely overpopulated post launch. However, the exact opposite happened to the complete befuddlement of beta testers everywhere.
Why PvE shouldn't be a dirty word in WAR
For almost as long as we've known about Warhammer Online, we've known that Mythic has intended for the game to be a PvP player's paradise. It's a game that from the beginning has emphasized the merits of its RvR gameplay. Tired of mindlessly killing bears for bear pelts in World of Warcraft? Come to WAR, where instead you're rewarded for besting your human-controlled foes in battle. It's not a grind, it's a test of skill! Over at the Greenskin, they're cautioning us not to drink the RvR kool-aid. While player versus player combat can certainly be a center-piece of the WAR experience, it has the capacity to be every bit the boring grind that PvE gameplay is. Substantively, is there really any difference between collecting 1000 player skulls and 1000 NPC skulls? The DAoC expansions suffered from an over-emphasis on PvE for progression, so their hope is that WAR benefits from that experience and Mythic implements both in moderation. After all, as we've explored before, aren't PvE and PvP really complementary? Doesn't PvP depend inherently on the faction ties we develop collaboratively tackling public quests? It's a good point, and one we hope Mythic keeps in mind in their recently-extended polishing period.
