Pumping Irony

To paraphrase Bill Murray from Ghostbusters: “I came, I yawned, I canceled it’s ass.”

I hopefully won’t turn this into one of those drawn-out hate-filled rants when people quit a game in a glorious explosion of bile and vitriol. I’ve been pretty up-front here and on other blogs about my issues with the game. Most of the technical issues Mythic will deal with, they’ve been pretty quick to jump on the more outstanding bugs this past month. Balance issues will be dealt with, I’m sure. Will they manage to balance the content so more people are playing the game rather than scenario grinding? I hope they do. If all I wanted to do was play the same instanced battle ad nauseum I could re-sub to WoW. Or better yet, I could play any number of FPS’ for free.

Bottom line: I was not having fun. At all. I’d be chatting on Ventrilo with my LOTRO kinship leader and his girlfriend who are both playing WAR on a different server and he’d joke that I needed anger management therapy every time I logged into WAR.

The promise for fun is there. I can see it. It’s just on the cusp of the horizon. But right now I’m so lonely and miserable every moment in the game, I cannot justify continuing the subscription at the present time.

I want to say I’ll be back, but I may be removed from Casualties of WAR by that time which will also remove the majority of any remaining motivation to return someday. The game is absolutely the most anti-social and lonely MMOG I have ever encountered in my life, which is probably the #1 reason that I’m having such a lousy time. The other smaller issues could be ignored oh so easily if there were other players chatting, adventuring and engaging in war. But they’re not. They’re all hiding and grinding the same scenarios over and over. Mythic could just as well remove the extremely laggy chat server; it isn’t being used much. No groups to Open Group with. No Public to Public Quest with. No one to chat with. I’d almost even settle for Barrens Chat and Chuck Norris jokes at this point. But there’s none of that.

If I start reading that all of the game is improving, that population is improving during all hours of the day, that people are actually being social and that I can re-join Casualties, I’ll certainly come back. I bought into the slogan that “WAR is everywhere!” Right now it isn’t, it’s only in a handful of instanced scenarios. That isn’t what I signed up for. When all aspects of the game are being utilized and I can jump into real battles in the open world on a massive scale with players who are having fun and being social… I am soooooo there! I look forward to that day…

Mythic pushed a very small patch today which has enabled cross-pairing Scenario queues, announced on Warhammer Herald:

Greetings!

Your feedback is very important to us and it’s always our goal to make your play experience an even more enjoyable one.

In response to popular demand, you’ll now be able to queue for all of the scenarios available in your current tier, across all three pairings. For instance, if you’re in Nordland, you can queue for the Nordenwatch scenario as usual. You can also queue up for Khaine’s Embrace (the Tier 1 scenario in the High Elf vs. Dark Elf pairing) and the Gates of Ekrund (the Tier 1 scenario on the Dwarf vs. Greenskin pairing), all without leaving Nordland. No travel is required at all; just click the WAR symbol on your interface as you normally would, and use the arrows at the top of the window to scroll through the different scenarios.

We know many have been waiting for this feature and we have a lot more great additions coming on the horizon. We look forward to your continued feedback as we work to take WAR to the next level…WAAAGH!!!

Before today, we were only able to queue for the Scenario in the area pairing our character was in, which for Tukeela has been Gates of Eklund. As soon as I logged in this afternoon, I queued for all three Tier 1 Scenarios and Nordenwatch popped immediately. Immediately! This is huge! Actual RvR! With actual other players! Now if only you people would play some other Scenario besides Nordenwatch…

I just logged out after three Nordenwatch battles, and turning in three PvE quests in between. Destruction won the first two, Order pummeled us in the third.

Now this is fun!

Ok guys, here’s where I need some help. When I load into a Scenario, I can check to view the Scenario Party UI. However, that goes on top of the standard party UI, making it difficult to even see and use. Is there a quick (wait, this is Warhammer, nothing’s quick…) way to get rid of the party UI? Or is no one using the Scenario Party UI?

Anyway, the three PvE quests helped a little, but it really seems like the PvE quests don’t give much xp, making it arguable if they’re even worth doing unless they reward a gear upgrade. Thanks to the new cross-pairing queues and being able to get into some RvR Scenarios (even if it’s only Nordenwatch again. And again. And again…) little Tukeela is up to PvE Rank 9 and Renown Rank 5! Woohoo!

Update: 2.5 hours later, make that PvE Rank 10 and Renown Rank 8! WAAAGH!

But seriously, Tier 1 could just be renamed Warhammer: Age of Nordenwatch. /sigh

Oh, and as long as we’re going to be calling out asshats, I’d like to mention Cleava, an un-guilded (gee, can’t imagine why) Black Orc who announced he would be intentionally rolling Need for any drops he couldn’t use unless he was healed to his satisfaction. Guess what, Cleava? Tank or no tank, you’re not the only one taking damage. You also weren’t in my Scenario Party, and until I get that UI straightened out, no one not in my SP will be receiving any heals from me. All healers in the entire Scenario collectively gave Cleava the finger and refused to heal him whatsoever the rest of the match.

I’m not just talking about the game’s audio but since I brought it up, let’s address that first: this game is quiet. From sound effects to what little music there is, everything is very quiet at maximum volume. I end up cranking my speaker’s volume up — a control I almost never have to touch — and when out of WAR if I forget to turn it back to normal (which I do constantly because until WAR I never needed to touch that knob) I scare the hell out of myself when I play music or another game because everything else is now so loud.

Oh, and maybe I’m just “adventuring” (if I can truly call it that) in the wrong areas, but WAR could stand to play some music in the background more often than it has been…

No, the real issue is the silence caused by a near-complete lack of life. As I had feared, my usual play time of weekday mornings are having an extremely negative effect on my WAR experience. Actually, it’s much worse than I’d feared: for a brand-spankin’ shiny new game like WAR, it’s shocking just how few players are around. Those hours have always been problematic finding groups in MMOs, but it’s doable and there are usually other people to chat with at least. In WAR, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone. Complete and utter silence. No one playing. It’s difficult to complete a Public Quest without a Public. It’s difficult to compete in Realm vs. Realm if I am my entire realm and there is no other realm to fight. Scenarios? Forget it, I’m in an infinite queue with no entry in sight.

If the solo PvE content were more entertaining perhaps I wouldn’t be feeling this way. In LOTRO, Vanguard, even back in WoW I could be quite content if necessary soloing around and chatting with people until I found a group for something. WAR? Nada. Say something in chat, silence. Say something in a PQ, silence. Say something in an Open Group I manage to find or create, it’s a toss-up but silence has been outweighing conversation so far. The worst has been guild chat. When I was this excited to be a part of a huge blogosphere community guild only to see my “good morning, good afternoon” with smiley emotes, and other comments, mostly go unacknowledged, my heart sinks.

Just to clarify, I’m not upset because they’re ignoring “me” because no one knows who I am anyway. I’m not the type to say “Behold! I am Scott from Pumping Irony!” and expect to be lavished with attention. I don’t think I’m that arrogant, anyway. While I may have a huge list of blogs that I read, I have a fairly small circle of blogs on which I actually participate on a regular basis so I would imagine my initial feeling of a “bond” with anyone would be limited to those few until we all get to know each other. I wasn’t there during beta to be part of the initial clique, and I’m not one of the “Big Name Bloggers” of the guild either. I’m fine with all that. It’s just that I’ve just never been part of a guild where when anyone says hello and makes an effort to be social and fit in, they’re ignored unless they’re a Big Name or a Clique Member. I notice I’m not the only Outsider who’s been trying to fit in…

To be absolutely fair, however, as well as to attempt to avoid breaking that unwritten “The first rule of Blog Club is you do not blog about Blog Club,” I will say that the guild population is tiny during the hours I play and there’s little, if any, conversation happening anyway. Also, while technically the default colors for each chat type are different, they’re close enough that I find I have to actually pay attention to tell if a line was normal chat or guild chat. Given the obvious and depressing low population already and possibly being half-asleep from the mind-numbingly boring solo quests I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it’s just a matter of no one even noticing the chat.

It’s also a two-way street. I’ve not exactly had a glowingly positive experience with WAR so far, and that directly effects my enthusiasm for playing. I put several hours in Friday, doing some solo and some Open Groups doing PQ’s and such, as well as a few hours in a guild-only group which was a blast. Saturday, however, I was unable to get a group and logged out after 30 minutes, if not less. Same for Sunday. Guild or no guild, I didn’t come to WAR to piddle around solo all the damn time. So if I can’t get interested enough to play, the guild and I can’t get to know one another. When I do play I’ll make an effort to be social, fit in, be funny, whatever. But if I’m not playing, all of that quickly becomes “garbage in, garbage out.”

I did put some time in this afternoon and forced myself to stay logged in long enough to get Tukeela to level 8 (is it level or rank for PvE? The game seems confused on this, using “rank” in one place and “level” in another. Make up your mind!) where he got a very slow-casting, but strong, heal and his first morale ability. I haven’t managed to work his morale bar high enough to use it yet, but I’m looking forward to eventually exploring that mechanic. I also managed to find an RvR Open Group which was another shaman and a squig herder. We were seemingly alone in the area (I think it’s called Eklund or something like that?) just running around killing a handful of NPC’s. The squig herder ran into a keep and a Champion level NPC chased him back out. Next thing I know, a lvl 10 Order is back-stabbing the crap out of poor little Tukeela! Cowards! I think I managed to turn around and get a single DoT on him before I went down and noticed he was in a group of five, all level 10+. I was rather annoyed to discover I respawned in a completely different map! It took a few minutes of running to get back to the same RvR area we were fighting in, which was a little ridiculous. If the whole PvP death/respawn thing is supposed to be meaningless and quick like in an FPS, shouldn’t I be respawning near the action? I did in the other RvR’s I did last week, so this was weird. Anyway, Tukeela is only Renown Rank 4 and if I am understanding this correctly (and I highly doubt that I am) even if the RvR area buffs (or debuffs) everyone to Rank 8, you’re still fighting with the skill levels appropriate to your true rank. Needless to say, we were outnumbered and under-ranked and the cowardly Order gang sliced through our poor, pitiful goblin trio like warm butter.

As promised, I rolled up a Black Orc last night. So far, I’m diggin’ it in PvE at least. The combat system is nearly identical to LOTRO’s Minstrel class, where there are different tiers of abilities and using an ability from one tier opens the next higher tier. That’s perfectly fine in PvE but I’m concerned once more that once I get into the hectic melee PvP scene that I’ll be too flustered with all the hotbar clicking and unable to perform the role I’ve chosen.

The starter area has a lot of personality and humor, such as one of the first quests to go find a barrel along the shore with a dwarf stuffed inside yelling to let him out. A few quests later you end up on top of the dwarven fortress and stuff an unconscious dwarf inside a barrel and toss him over the side! So at least there’s closure to the question of “how and why are there dwarves stuffed in barrels?”

I’ve gotten Vrasaaj up to Rank 6 so far, playing several hours last night and this morning.

Unfortunately I also spent the entire time queued up for the first Scenario and it never activated. Not a good sign. I’m really hoping I get to play this class since the Chosen didn’t quite grab me but it’s difficult to practice the PvP when there’s no one to PvP with in these Scenarios.

Just in case the melee thing didn’t work out, I thought it prudent if I had a backup plan so just after lunch today I rolled up a Goblin Shaman. As I’d feared, not only is “progress bar casting” in full swing with the Shaman (and I’d expect every other casting class) but he has to stand still to cast. Vanguard seriously has me spoiled in that respect… However — I can’t even believe I’m writing this — Goblins have flair; they have style, and I’m really enjoying the Shaman so far. Squishy as hell until I get the hang of the whole Gork/Mork system, but it’s surprisingly fun. I know damn well I can heal in PvP, I did it in WoW and I do it in LOTRO, so if the tanking thing doesn’t pan out I’ll certainly have a part-time job as a Shaman. Everyone loves healers, right? Right?

The Shaman is also the first time ever I’ve made a character with a “silly” name. Here’s why: when playing through the starter quests last night with Vrasaaj, the goblins kept being referred to as a “Gobbo.” Don’t even ask me why, but for some reason Cabo Wabo tequila popped into my head. I almost named him Kobbo Gobbo but WAR doesn’t allow a last name (at least not that I’ve seen) and who’d get that anyway? So, I ended up with “Tukeela.” Not incredibly creative, and trust me, I always cringe when I see retarded character names but ya know what? I’m gonna roll with it anyway this time. Y’all can just deal.

This article’s continuation of the “disappointment” theme is this: as linear as WAR may be, it needs players to drive the content or it falls flat on its face. I spent 4 hours or more queued for that scenario and nothing. I took the Shaman to his first Public Quest and there was no one there. Even though I’m enjoying the questing more this time around because I’m enjoying the classes themselves, the bottom line is that the PvE is still lackluster at best. Without other players around, there just doesn’t seem to be much of anything to do in WAR, and that concerns me.

Having come to that conclusion, and having found two classes that (so far) I am enjoying, I think it finally might be time to let Casualties know I’m here and see what a difference that makes.

I finally cracked a smile and honestly had some enjoyment just now. I think I even had fun for the first time in WAR! What managed to get me to smile, you ask?

I was ganked!

I’d just finished yet another ass-whooping in the Nordenwatch scenario and was queued up for another so I decided to go exploring and perhaps work another PvE quest or few. I ended up in a whole map with the town of New Emskrank which was flagged for RvR. Finally, I get to see some of this much-lauded open world RvR. I saw an open raid, so I joined but everyone was just meandering around, no fighting. I saw a couple items flashing, which turned out to be quest objectives for the “Sacking of New Emskrank” quest. As I walked over to click the item — BAM! — out of nowhere some goody two-shoes foofoo Order jumped out of stealth and waylaid me. While he laughed at my vulnerability, thinking he’d found an easy target (I’m sure I deserve a “Gank Me, I Suck” title, but I don’t think Mythic has added it to my account yet) he found himself the object of a painful gang-gank from my raid-mates.

Maybe there’s something to this open RvR stuff after all…

Sadly, I think Draevus will be parked for now. I think my disappointment from my expectations and assumptions of what the class would be in contrast to what it is (so far) has created such a disconnect between me and the character that I’m wondering if that isn’t part of why I haven’t been enjoying WAR. What I wanted was my Dread Knight, reimagined in the WAR universe. What I got was an ugly Black Defias reject. Cool auras aside, I didn’t come to WAR to play a human, even if he’s a nasty and ugly human. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming while I reload WAR to roll up a Black Orc…

Actually that’s not entirely true. It isn’t the first if I want to be absolutely honest and technical about it. After my two RvR scenarios last night, I stumbled into my first PQ area around 2am but it was empty and I had no interest in having my very first Public Quest lacking the public part so I logged out for the night.

Today I was running back and forth doing more soulless PvE questing and wandered into a new Public Quest called “Destruction of the Weak.” As luck would have it, there was even a “public” participating. Joy!

I’ll admit, PQ’s are not exactly — actually, not at all — set up how I had imagined. Most of the PvE quests I’ve done so far are of the Kill Five Foozles variety. Step across the PQ line and it’s Kill Fifty Foozles, which while not being terribly exciting, makes sense since it’s “public” and there could very well be multiple groups contributing to its completion.

Draevus achieved Rank 6 during the PQ and also was #1 on the contribution list and received +500 to his loot roll. Whatever that means. No idea how that actually worked out, but hey… at least I managed to do something well.

With Public Quests, I was hoping Mythic had a new take or even solved some of the issues with normal maximum group size and group panels. Nope! When I first wandered into the PQ, I just ran in and started hacking at mobs the other players were hacking on. The X/50 counter still increases, but I immediately started wondering how a healer would actually heal anyone in this situation when there’s no group panel whatsoever? One really great feature WAR’s UI has is that when you look at a character’s name if he’s not at 100% health you’ll see a green health bar whereas at 100% there’s no health bar. By contrast, in LOTRO I have to actually mouseover a character I’m not grouped with to see their health level. So in WAR, with but a quick scan of the battle a healer can quickly determine healing priorities. The problem at that point would be actually managing to click or otherwise select the character to heal from the gang of other characters or mobs.

Turns out, while I was participating in the PQ itself, I was solo. Hence no group panel. Every so often when crossing into a new area, a tooltip pops up informing me there are Open Groups available to join. I had assumed (there I go again!) Open Groups were one thing, a nice way to find groups easily, and Public Quests were something else entirely. Bzzt! Wrong answer. Open Groups can be setup for PvE, RvR or PQ’s. Doh! Lesson learned. I joined the open group of players I was hacking mobs with and filled their group, which brings up a standard (albeit rather large) group UI panel. I saw a second group in the earlier phases but they left before the final phase which my group completed ourselves. The final phase was simply pulling three Hero level bosses and killing them. I’d call it a standard tank and spank but I still don’t have any type of taunting yet so whomever is dpsing the most becomes the tank until someone else gets the aggro. So it was mostly just “dps them!” and hoping players were able to manage their own aggro since I’m unable to force aggro on me yet.

Oh, and for aggro management, a UI option to show my target’s target would be nice. Maybe it’s less important in PvP, I don’t know, but c’mon… Again, every other MMO in recent years has had this feature. Does this also mean there is no skill forwarding? Can healers target an enemy player or mob and their heal gets cast on the tank automatically because that’s who the enemy is focused on? If not, that’s even more reason for me to not play a healer. I’m looking for games to push UI’s and the presentation of information forward so I can play the game more than I’m playing the UI.

All in all, the PQ is probably the closest I’ve come to being entertained so far. Not because of the content itself, but simply because I was in a group that was cooperating with each other. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say it was “fun” but I’ll give it a solid “entertaining” at least. I said in a previous post that I’ve really heard no glowing comments regarding the PvE in WAR and in my few session and six ranks so far, I’m in complete agreement. Normally I consider soloing to be at least a bare minimum of “entertaining” while I wait to get grouped for the “fun” content. In WAR the solo PvE content is outright boring and uninteresting. In less than 6 ranks I’ve already lost any interest whatsoever in actually reading the quest text telling me the back story of why these particular five foozles need to be killed or why I need to bring an NPC back five decapitated foozles heads.

WAR is also the first MMO I can remember playing where the generic vendors offer better gear than quest rewards. Maybe that’s intentional? It was just disappointing and made me feel like I’m completely wasting my time bothering with these boring quests at all if I can just buy what I want from the nearest vendor. Even the couple of PQ rewards I saw people get, including myself, were useless. I chose the cash reward since I would have sold the items to the nearest vendor anyway. If the rewards are not worth the effort, why bother? That goes for the repeatable Public Quests too. It was neat the first time, but if there’s no point to it and — just like an instance — it’s going to reset in a few minutes anyway, that seems like it greatly diminishes any aspect of replayability these PQ’s might have. I can say I’ve completed “Destruction of the Weak” but I have no interest in doing it again, and that’s the real shame.

I just finished my first 30 minutes or so in WAR, so these are quite literally my first impressions.

First, I’ll start off by reminding myself “remember what you said about making assumptions?” Yeah… So, apparently Chaos are people. I’ve been all fired up over playing a Chosen because all the screenshots (fully armored, of course) look cool and because the description of the class are so reminiscent of the Dread Knight from Vanguard. My Dread Knight is an orc so I had assumed that I’d be playing an “ugly” humanoid monster race in WAR as well. Nope! Turns out Chaos are just homely and not-very-nice humans. That one’s my fault though for making assumptions as well as not knowing a single iota of Warhammer lore. Color me disappointed nonetheless. If the Chosen ends up not grabbing me, off to Black Orc land I’ll be heading.

Since I can’t play the racial type I’d wanted, I went for the “voodoo” look, dreadlocks and all and a rather pissed-off look about him. Here’s Draevus, currently at Rank 2.

All I’ve done so far is a handful of PvE quests, gained Rank 2 and some heavy boots. I hate to play the WoW card so soon, but Chaos reminds me way too much of WoW’s humans, which I always thought looked extremely goofy, so I’m looking forward to getting Draevus covered in armor as soon as possible. I don’t normally like having helm graphics showing but I’ll be making an exception in this case. This is exactly why I’m always preaching about not going into new games with pre-conceived notions; the whole race thing has really bitten me in the ass and already puts a dark cloud over my first character. Hopefully once I get him covered up in armor and can forget he’s a Stormwind reject, the class itself will have enough coolness to draw me in.

Here’s my list of initial impressions.

+ Pros:

• The font is awesome! In the UI, Quest Log Tome of Knowledge, combat text, etc. it’s very clear and has character (pun intended) that I feel fits what I’m seeing. I love the way it looks and reads with one exception, which I’ll note in the cons list.
• Chat bubbles! Sure, City of Heroes has them but these are just cool and remind me of old-school Star Wars Galaxies. Chat bubbles fit the art style as well.
• The quests tell how much XP will be rewarded! This is one of those tiny little things that make you smack yourself in the head asking why no one has done this before. Every other game’s quests inform you how much money they pay and any item rewards, so why not just tell you up-front how much XP as well?
• Fading between texture swaps! I’m tempted to say “every other game” but I’ll go with “LOTRO and Vanguard” since I’ve been playing them and this is in my face constantly. LOTRO and Vanguard each show low resolution textures on the environments then as your character gets closer to certain features, will swap to the high resolution texture. Unfortunately, it’s often a very jarring experience, sometimes even causing a split-second hitching. LOTRO uses fade-in for a few other effects and I’ve often wondered (often as in “every time I play”) if a fade-in for environmental swaps would work or not. WAR has answered my question: it works beautifully! Turbine needs to add fade-in to their world textures immediately if not sooner! My only minor gripe is that WAR’s radius for high resolution textures is relatively short. It probably helps performance in PvP but I’m not to that point yet so it’s quite noticeable here in the starter area.

- Cons:

• No integrated VOIP. It’s almost 2009, are we seriously going to release new games without VOIP? Especially games that are supposed to encourage grouping and teamwork? Sure, Casualties has its own Ventrilo server, but come on… I’m sure I’ll be PUG-ing at some point. Public Quests anyone? Turbine licenses Gamespy’s VOIP which works ok. Blizzard has their own proprietary VOIP. All the cool kids these days are licensing Vivox.
• No key bind to toggle names. Again, I’m in late 2008, not sure what year Mythic is in but if need be I’ll call Doc Brown and have him get Mythic a flux capacitor so they can get to us here in the future.
• UI toggle only works while held. Huh? What. The. Fuck? [Edit: Disregard, this was a one-night fluke and works properly now.]
• The awesome font doesn’t scale well. It’s extremely difficult to actually read names over NPC heads until pretty close to them.
• No FSAA. Even though I’d have it turned off most of the time for the sake of performance, it’s nice to have it there for screenshots.
• Tooltips do not give class information. I see other characters running around, and the tooltips tell me what rank they are and that they’re friendly. That’s it. I saw some other Stormwind rejects with shields running around who look just like Draevus so they’re probably Chosen. I saw a guy riding a non-animated (ugh…) frisbee thing, no idea what the hell class he is because it won’t tell me. Even inspecting him yields nothing. Am I supposed to roll one of each class to figure out what everyone is?
• Global cooldowns. This annoys the hell out of me in Vanguard, and I’m really not appreciating it here either. Hey, I have a great idea: it’s 2008, how about when I use an ability only that ability has to refresh? Do I seriously need to see a timer and animation for every single ability on the hotbar refresh every single time I use one? Seriously? I’ll excuse Vanguard because it thinks it’s “kickin’ it old school” but WAR isn’t getting off that easily.
• Progress bar casting. Yeah, WAR is just another first-generation Diku-MMO. I knew that. But I have to watch a progress bar to throw an axe? As soon as I get a better ranged ability, axe throwing is getting deleted from my hotbar. If every damned ranged ability is considered a spell and I have to watch a damned progress bar constantly, the odds of me sticking around in WAR are much lower. If I have to start staring at progress bars to use melee abilities, I’m gone. This alone has just negated any possibility of me rolling any type of caster, including a healer. I am sick to death of staring at progress bars. Cue up some Twisted Sister, because I’m not gonna take it anymore!
• Exit Game… doesn’t. Well, it does, but it logs out first. 20 seconds. I don’t think I will ever understand that particular annoying mechanic in MMOs but in this case, every MMO gives me the option of “log out” and “exit game.” In every other game “exit game” does exactly that and it does it right now. Not in 20 seconds after it “logs out” first.

So, yeah. My first 30+ minutes and my con list is already twice the size of the pro list. I’m not playing at the moment because I was aggravated a little, so I haven’t queued up for my first Scenario yet. Also Van Hemlock is tapping his fingers impatiently for me to hurry up with this article and get into Guild Wars so… more WAR impressions later!

My WAR SE just arrived in the mail from Amazon.com, and it’s installing as I write. I’m undecided if I will actually play today or wait for morning; it will mostly depend on how my evening plans go.

I approach each game with a mindset toward that particular game, rather than the genre. I think that’s a large part of why I’m able to enjoy underdog games like Guild Wars and DDO, even Vanguard, the way I do when everyone else seems to say “every MMO should be XYZ” which I just don’t get. If every single MMO actually were XYZ then every MMO would, in fact, be outright clones of each other. LOTRO is no more a “clone” of WoW than EVE is a “clone” of Elite. However, WoW and LOTRO are both first-generation Diku-MMO’s so by their very nature they will share similar mechanics, along with every other first-gen Diku-MMO.

However, I am going to WAR with a few pre-conceived notions and/or expectations, not all of them positive.

I haven’t been reading any in-depth articles on the game, but have obviously scanned through the majority of WAR-related posts from my favorite bloggers this past week, so I have a very vague idea of what they’ve been describing. Prior to that, and to an extent even now, here are some of my expectations prior to launching the game for the first time:

• A first-generation Diku-MMO. I won’t call it a WoW clone, when WoW cloned everything before it (most notably EQ and AC2), but I can’t very well call it an “MMO clone.” So, Yet Another Fantasy MMORPG. With “shiny new Feature X” which would be Public Quests in this case.
• An emphasis on PvP. I’m no fan of first-gen Diku-MMO PvP and I’ve made no secret of that. I find it to be mostly an exercise in boredom, frustration and futility, and the RPG conventions make me feel a step removed from truly being “player vs. player.” To make things worse, I’ve committed myself to being a tank. Of all first-gen Diku-MMO PvP roles, I’m the worst at melee. Ranged or healing, no problem. If I find the game, and guild, entertaining enough to continue with but I utterly fail at the melee I may have to resign myself to being a back-line healer, if such a beast exists in the game.
• A lack of emphasis on individual characters. Most RPG’s will put you into the role of some type of “hero” in one form or another. My notion of WAR with its Realm vs. Realm factions is that we are less important as individuals and are cogs in the wheels of war (see what I did there?) making the realm as a whole greater than the sum of the individual characters (and players) who compose it.
• Lackluster PvE. I have yet to read a single description of WAR’s PvE content that would actually make me look forward to it at all. “Generic” and “run-of-the-mill” seem to be the most-used descriptions, with a few even saying there’s not enough PvE content in the whole game to keep strict PvE players interested. Since PvP bores me pretty quickly once I start to recognize the same patterns every day (just like raiding the same dungeon every night is boring) this may be another strike against me sticking with it.
• Median graphics. Unlike many who have been whining about WAR’s graphics, I will make my point by echoing Brent’s sentiment (identical to my own) of “you can’t have a massive game if it has massive system requirements.” Age of Conan proves this. We’re just not to a point in processing, graphics and networking tech yet to handle photorealistic MMO’s. Funcom had to build Hyborea as population-controlled public zone instances in order to get the graphics quality as high as they wanted. Even then, get a lot of those high-poly-count and high-res textured character models in the same high-poly-count and high-res textured environment for massive-ish PvP and watch your frame rate take a nosedive. WAR is focused on PvP (RvR, whatever) and to have it playable, it needs lower overall graphics quality. Besides, art direction is far more important than “graphics” alone.

With those bullet points, it sounds like I’m going in with a poor outlook and to a degree I suppose I am, namely with the PvP focus. I don’t mind that it’s YAFMMORPG. Mythic never claimed it was going to be anything but that. I’m not expecting next-generation with WAR at all. First-generation is perfectly fine for some things, and while I’m extremely excited that the real next-generation is finally upon us with APB, Agency and DC Universe, that doesn’t mean I will be dropping all the first-gen titles and never looking back. I’m an equal opportunity gamer.

I do have some hopes for myself in WAR, however:

• That RvR will foster a good community. Assuming (dangerous thing to do, that) that I am correct in the emphasis on the realm over individuals, and assuming people get that through their thick skulls and actually cooperate as a team both in PvE and PvP instead of being the usual PvP asshat crowd. If asshats rule the day, I’m out no matter if the Casualties guild is cool or not. If the guild itself degenerates into the asshat PvP attitude in-game, I’ll likely cancel and unsubscribe immediately, though I haven’t gotten the impression that I’ll need to worry about that happening. WoW always said “For the Horde!” but it really wasn’t. It was sometimes “for the guild!” or “for the group!” but mostly it was “for ME!” So I am really hoping that the game design and content will cause the players to play for the team, for the realm and have more of a sense of realm loyalty over selfish gain for a change.
• I will enjoy and immerse myself in the character. I’ve said a few times I’m looking at the Chosen because its description mirrors Vanguard’s Dread Knight, which I love. Problem is, that’s a PvE character and I am very aware of my Suck Factor at melee PvP, as I said earlier. I’m hoping the Chosen is cool enough that I can get into it from an immersion or role-playing aspect enough to tolerate the PvP.
• I will enjoy the PvP. I’m really, really hoping that WAR will be the game that finally brings PvE and PvP together and that I will finally have enough fun that I will take the time and increase my skills at melee PvP (since I have none, they have nowhere to go but up after all…) and that I will enjoy it, provided it’s not just the same ol’ PvP day in and day out.
• I will enjoy the game on its own. I actually intend to play awhile on my own and checking out my impressions of the game play and the community before I ever contact anyone from the guild to invite me in. I’ve been on the guild IRC channel a few times, even on Ventrilo once, and I’m sure I’ll get along with everyone perfectly fine on a guild chat level. But I want to get a really good idea if I will enjoy the game for the game, and the community for the community, first. A great guild can make or break a game, that is always the case. But I want to make sure I’m not allowing my enjoyment of a (hopefully) great guild to keep me in a game that I would not enjoy and would not play without that guild.

With those final hopes, the installer has notified me that it’s finished. So, off to make sure my Mythic account is activated and to get the game patched up and ready to go…

My lunch was interrupted by alarms of incoming — and virus-free — email so I popped back to the desk to see what atrocious chain email any number of e-friends decided to include my address on. /glare

However, it was from Amazon letting me know my Warhammer Online had shipped and I should expect to receive it early next week. I order from Amazon all the time, do they always ship via USPS and I just never bothered to notice? Then again, I can’t say I ever pace back and forth wringing my hands and asking the ceiling “Why? Why hasn’t my novel arrived yet?” Oh wait, I haven’t been doing that with Warhammer, either…

In any event, since WAR seems to be a team approach to otherwise standard first-generation MMORPG fare, I’ll have to come up with a list of preconceived notions and expectations to stick to prior to logging in for the first time next week.

This may actually have worked to my benefit in one regard: the Destruction side of Casualties of WAR has already had enough of the queues on the Volkar server and has decided to pack up their bags and re-roll on Thorgrim.

I still don’t know a whole lot about the classes in WAR but I’m still leaning towards the Chaos Chosen as my primary choice for a main character. As I mentioned when I first decided this, the Chosen primarily appeals to me because the character concept sounds so similar to that of Vanguard’s Dread Knight, a class which I thoroughly adore playing and after so many years of playing “pretty” heroes I was readily able to identify with the darkness inherent in the Dread Knight.

I took Prima’s “WAR Personality” test just now. ‘Lo and Behold, I am Chaos!

Of course, the questions are heavily steeped in Warhammer-speak, but even not knowing a single damned thing about Warhammer lore, I was able to take educated guesses at the “correct” answers to arrive at this result simply based on the Dread Knight and my own “inner role-play” concepts for the class.