Pumping Irony

September started with me doing a lot of Xbox 360, especially Crackdown. I mentioned re-started Crackdown in last month’s summary post since a friend got a 360 and the game, as well as Oakstout and Aaron. Oakstout and I tried that first night to get a co-op game going but it was late and he needed the downloadable content packs to get his game version the same as mine. Aaron tried to nab me for a game one afternoon but I was on the way out the door to get a few miles in before our daily afternoon storms rolled in. The MMOG scene started picking up steam as WAR neared so I still haven’t hooked up with either Aaron or Oakstout yet. I did manage to get several more Achievement Points in the game before switching back to mostly MMOGs on the PC. Mass Effect? Still having a hell of a time staying interested and focused. It’s so lonely…

Speaking of lonely, WAR launched to much fanfare. It’s on every site and every blog. Over 1.5 million boxes sold. Over 500k subscriptions. Cloned servers. However, if Age of Conan taught us anything, it’s that those numbers don’t mean squat until after the third month has passed. The first month numbers will be telling, but it’s only after the third month when we start to see what’s really going on. Wrath of the Lich King will drop a bomb decimating the population (even if only very temporarily) of nearly every other MMORPG next month as well. Anyway, WAR. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. If nothing else, so far (on my server, at least) WAR has proven me partially incorrect that PvP-focused games will always attract the horrid little smack-talking “PvP kiddies” which are the MMOG equivalent to your average public Xbox Live kiddie who ganks, swears, insults and exhibits the worst in anti-social and selfish behavior. Contrarily, while I’m certain they’re out there in WAR, it’s difficult to tell because no one says a god-damned word. EVER! I have never in my life experienced such a feeling of loneliness in an MMORPG. This is a whole new aspect of anti-social behavior. I could login to some piece of shit Korean F2P game, surround myself with farm/spam bots and have more lively conversation. No one talking in chat, everyone is anonymous and hidden so the social panel and /who lists are empty. Occasionally I might see someone running around. Every once in a blue moon I’ll stumble across a Public Quest which — gasp — actually has a Public in there doing the Quests. If it weren’t for PvP Scenarios popping (actually “scenario” since no one will queue for anything other than Nordenwatch in Tier 1) sometimes I’d wonder if this was a subscription-based single-player game in which case I’d be better served just sticking with Mass Effect or something like Two Worlds.

Otherwise, how’s WAR so far? First, to compare it to World of Warcraft, to those of us coming to WoW from the Warcraft RTS games that were all about the battles of Horde vs. Alliance, WAR is what WoW should have been from the start. WAR finally has both open world and instanced battles between the two factions, and to some small degree those battles have meaning or impact upon the world. Totally ignoring WoW’s focus on the core raiding end-game, WoW had a very, very good PvE leveling game as well. That’s what hooked most of us into WoW to begin with. That’s also what WAR lacks. It’s PvE leveling game is just about as mediocre as I’ve seen, and that includes the Public Quests as well. While it’s certainly possible to PvE to level cap, there is no way I would stick with it exclusively. It’s just something to do in between battles. I often read the PvP fanatics from Guild Wars claiming that GW is a PvP game with PvE slapped on. Comparing the amount and focus of PvE content to PvP content in GW, I would very strongly disagree. However, that’s exactly how I feel towards WAR. It’s 100% focused on the PvP game and the PvE is just… there. If WAR’s PvE leveling game was as fun, interesting, and yes polished as WoW’s, it would be a pure win on both sides of the coin, raiding be damned.

I will also say that for those who usually dislike PvP in their MMORPGs WAR eases the barrier to entry. While the PvP is certainly faster paced than the bland, usually one-on-one PvE combat, it’s still more relaxed and slower than you’d find in WoW, LOTRO, whatever. There’s plenty of time to look around, see who is fighting where, choose your targets and your actions and just get in there and join the fray without feeling like the whole affair will turn into a panicked button-mashing twitch-fest. That is a Good Thing. If WAR can get otherwise strictly PvE players to willingly engage in its PvP game and enjoy themselves, that will be its greatest success story, because it gives us a more populated and more importantly a more diverse group engaging in WAR’s Realm vs. Realm (RvR) PvP game rather than just the PvP fans.

September also found me renewing my Vanguard subscription with the arrival of GU6. I enjoy Vanguard’s combat system; for an otherwise normal Diku-based game, the reaction system adds quite a bit of interactivity to combat and when reactions trigger I have to stop and think about the current situation to quickly decide which reaction would be most beneficial at the time. I’d been running all month using the Reduced XP debuff on (it’s actually zero xp, not reduced xp which would imply there is some xp gain happening) while doing several parts of the Shadowhound quest line because I’m also in the middle of the Coterie Infineum Sanctuary dungeon series and didn’t want to out-level it. The last time I played, however, I went ahead and clicked the xp back on and achieved level 31! I figure one level won’t kill me, CIS will still be a challenging and viable dungeon and there’s (hopefully) no way I’ll reach level 32 while in there. If I do get near 32 I can always choose to turn the xp off again. Any VG players, here’s my question: I’m normally using CoreUI3 because I like the hotbar layout and the info bars at the top. However, I really really really dislike the HUD and the group UI. If I could turn the HUD totally off and get something closer to the default group UI, I’d be a happy camper. Ideas?

Finally, LOTRO. I’ve been hot and heavy, damn near hardcore in LOTRO since my Lore-master level-capped last month. I’ve turned into an instance whore, jumping on everything I can. Mostly because I intentionally played casually and enjoyed the ride all this time while everyone else, including my kinship, was doing these instances last fall. With Moria on the very-near horizon, I’m playing catch-up to see this content and perhaps even gear up, though gear sets are much less important than in WoW. Also as I’ve mentioned, I parked my two alts that I was very casually leveling and started a minstrel so that I’d have an end-game alt who’d be nearly guaranteed a slot in any instance group. I’d avoided that because I didn’t want another generic back-line healer where I’m bored, out of all the action and fun while I just stare at health bars. Guess what? Minstrels rock! Who knew? Not only do I heal but I’m loaded up with all sorts of group-wide buffs so I have to keep pretty busy fighting in order to keep those buffs up for the group’s benefit. When I’m soloing I can use War Speech where I turn into a dps machine. I could almost draw a comparison to Holy vs. Shadow Priests in WoW, the difference here being that I don’t have to respec. I can turn War Speech on or off depending on the situation, which enables or disables certain skills as well as strengthening or weakening my healing abilities. This gives me much more flexibility and allows me freedom in strategy instead of being locked into a single path which means, for me, this particular healer class has some complexity. So does the Goblin Shaman in WAR, which I am appreciating and enjoying. I love my lore-master; I love the diversity, utility and complexity of the class and she’ll always be my main, but I’m having so much fun with the minstrel… it’s crossed my mind that if I had gone for the minstrel at launch I may have never looked back at having alts at all…

I’ve also been participating in a Friends and Family Beta for one of the highly anticipated MMOs for 2009. The game should be going into Closed Beta in October hopefully. Unfortunately at this stage, the NDA prohibits me from saying what game it is, so… there ya go. I will say it’s been a real eye-opener seeing just how raw these things are at this very early stage of development. Despite the fact it’s getting so close to entering Closed Beta, I just have to say… whoah…

I was going to try something different with this summary and include some boring site statistics, history, etc. but I’ll hold off and do that some other time. I will, however, thank Shawn over at Massively.com for linking to my PvMP article earlier in the month. While not many actually participated in comments, which is the truly fun part of the whole blogging thing, that link created a new daily record in page hits. Thanks, Shawn!

In personal news, I jokingly and teasingly mentioned marriage the other day. My girlfriend jokingly and teasingly accepted. The catch is: we’re both pretty anti-marriage for ourselves. We’re extremely independent. She’s been very sick and barely able to speak since last weekend so we haven’t discussed it any further than that, but it makes me wonder if perhaps I could in fact bring myself to go down that road again…

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under MMO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.