Not long until the big announcement from Mythic… lets hope its not being built up too much eh br /br /Bug fixes are always great (and probably top priority for a lot of people), but I’m particularly interested in what oRvR improvements and new content is added. Here’s the things I’m expecting/hoping to see:br /br /strongspan style=”color:#ffff00;”oRvR/span/strongbr /ulliZone Domination, well we already know this is coming. It sounds great to me, having to do PQs for a zone lock is dull, dull, dull! I’m not a big fan of scenarios either, so anything promoting oRvR is all good./liliOn top of Zone Domination, I’d like to see further importance placed on holding objectives. Certainly more incentive to hold them. Keep and BO swapping needs to go./liliEmphasis on the emstronghope/strong/em here, but Darkness Falls please I think most people that played Dark Age of Camelot will be with me here. Darkness Falls was awesome. An epic sized oRvR dungeon with access to it controlled by what you own in the outside world… Which means you can lose access whilst you’re inside. That can get pretty crazy /li/ulp/ppspan style=”color:#ffff00;”New Content/span/pulliSlayer and Choppa. This is as good as confirmed it seems. I can’t wait to start my Choppa I’ve been putting off properly starting a melee DPS alt to wait for this./liliThe missing Cities. I’m expecting to see some kind of release schedule for these, probably one pairing at a time. I’m hoping these also bring more dungeons with them and make the tier 4 greater wards less of a pain to get./li/ulpAll in all I don’t think I’ve said anything different here, lots of people having been saying the same and with those missing bit’s it would seem fairly obvious what new content is to come. You never know though./ppThe Darkness Falls bit I’m actually expecting to come in an expansion, a few of us have talked about how we’d make an expansion for WAR and something of that scale could make sense there. I’ll be posting over the next couple of weeks about our idea for an expansion. Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done first, but there’s no harm in a bit of speculation /p

It seems Mythic have been at it again… with more clues sent out to a selection of bloggers. Check out the link below to walloftext to see the latest.br /br /a href=”http://www.walloftext.info/2009/01/mythic-was-right-no-official-forums.html”http://www.walloftext.info/2009/01/mythic-was-right-no-official-forums.html/abr /br /I have to agree with the post there too. I’ve certainly not missed official forums, Mythic are far more active on non-official forums than Blizzard are with their official ones. And with teasers like this, it’s all just a bit more interesting.

Watching Obama’s inauguration today got me thinking about a lot of things, most of which had nothing to do with gaming, but it did lead me to think about racism in MMOs.br /br /It’s something I’ve seen in every MMO I’ve played and alas WAR has not proved to be the exception. It’s strange that when you have someone hidden behind a monitor they consider it acceptable to be try and insult other people online with racial slurs. And nearly always in region chat to make sure they get as wide an audience as possible.. You can bet your arse they wouldn’t shout it out on the street in real life. But thanks to the protection of their monitor, its all safe and well, worst they get is a ban from a game. If people said some of the crap I’ve seen online on the street here you would most likely get nicked and/or or a slap.br /br /So far in WAR I’ve only seen this sort of crap once and thankfully the GM’s responded quickly and got rid of them. I’m hoping that will be my only experience of this in WAR, because in WoW I saw racist nonsense far, far too often. Particularly against Jews, which considering the events that happened in Europe not that long ago, I find particularly disappointing to see on our servers. I used to think sometimes WoW needed footage of Belsen included in it’s manual.br /br /Is it a sad fact that racist twats are inescapable or is it just ignorant kids trying to show off? I dunno… but I just wish that part of the real world didn’t make it into our online ones.

One of my favourite online reads is Keen and Graev’s gaming blog. Check out a href=”http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=1843″this/a post about a package Mythic sent them this morning…br /br /Electric shaver, orange hair dye? 29th January more news? Bring on the 29th!br /br /[UPDATE!]br /GOA confirm Hammerer is out and to be replaced by a new class… See a href=”http://werit.blogspot.com/2009/01/slayer-cometh.html”this/a post for links.

Good news for oRvR! Mythic are implementing an additional way to lock zones, called domination. Basically if you capture all the keeps and battle objectives in a zone and then hold them, after some time it will lock the zone. You can still do the other normal victory point lock down (farming PQs, scenarios, etc), but you don’t have to anymore br /br /I presume if you dominate a zone and do the other stuff it will lock a zone down even faster. All told this is great news. Finally a good reason to take and hold keeps and objectives. This could lead to some really interesting battles on multiple fronts.br /br /Bit of worry about how this will work with no lifers taking fortresses at 4am, but have to see how it works in practice.br /br /Paul Barnett’s video talking about it linked over a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvHFxbuQyuA”here./a

a href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW-PE1INHUI/AAAAAAAAABM/brn2-3EtGYA/s1600-h/160×600_02.jpg”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291605400327363906″ style=”FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 86px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px” alt=”" src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW-PE1INHUI/AAAAAAAAABM/brn2-3EtGYA/s320/160×600_02.jpg” border=”0″ //a I mentioned earlier that I hope the announcement from Mythic will include them dropping the Hammerer class and replacing it with the Dwarf Slayer as Order’s missing melee DPS class. I’m not alone in thinking this, there’s been a lot written all over the place saying the same for a while and for good reason.br /br /All Warhammer classes are based on the tabletop game’s background, which means options for the classes can be very restrictive. Particularly when it comes to their appearance. Dwarf Hammerers wear heavy armour and wield massive, you guessed it, hammers. Which isn’t that different to great weapon wielding Ironbreakers. Sure the background story for the two is very different, but visually and gameplay wise they are in danger of being very samey. People don’t get very excited about Hammerers, sure they’re the elite royal guard type dudes, but they’re still just heavily armoured dwarves with hammers.br /br /Slayers are a totally different kettle of fish. A Slayer is a dwarf that has committed some terrible crime, like breaking an oath, failing to avenge an ancestor or having it’s beard shaved by goblins. They then dye all their hair orange, shave it into a mohican and take the slayer oath. This oath is to die in battle against the most dangerous foe possible, the catch however is they can’t just suicide (that would be dishonourable), they have to test themselves to the utmost and get the most spectacular death possible. That and they can’t wear any armour, so just walk around in their kecks. They also have a tendency for face paint and lots of tattoos. So basically a Slayer lives a life of constant battle, roaming the world in their pants, getting in fights with pretty much everything, Now that sounds much more interesting than a Hammerer. Which is only a good thing for boosting Order’s numbers on servers that need it.br /br /Q) So how do you implement equipment for a class that doesn’t wear armour?br /A) Easy! Face amp; body war paint, eye patches, nose chains/rings, bandanas, nails hammered into their head (yeah I’ve read the Gotrek series ), chains, strapping, piercing, studs, more trophies, etc, etc.br /No reason why any of those can’t have stats on them.

From Mark Jacobs:br /br /emspan style=”color:#ffcc66;”Folks,/span/embr /emspan style=”color:#ffcc66;”/span/embr /emspan style=”color:#ffcc66;”It will be a pretty good announcement as far as announcements go. Basically, we’ll be laying out the major initiatives that the development team is going to be working on for the next five months along with a rough monthly schedule. And yes, more bug fixes and career tweaking/balancing is part of it along with a whole lot of new stuff. It’s a pretty aggressive schedule (with updates coming fast and furious) and I think, based on what I’ve been reading here and elsewhere this month, that there will be a lot of happy people after they read what we’ve been working on./span/embr /emspan style=”color:#ffcc66;”/span/embr /emspan style=”color:#ffcc66;”Mark/span/embr /br /a href=”http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109955468/r109959341/”source/abr /br /That’s exactly the kind of announcement I was hoping for. When it arrives lets just hope the plan is what we want to hear br /br /My money is on the Orc Choppa and instead of the Order getting a dwarf hammerer, it to be changed to a Slayer. Which is a way cooler class to do and people have been asking for it.br /br /Hopefully the missing cities will be included too.

diva href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW5FyXaq6fI/AAAAAAAAAA8/MwMvW4bwRzw/s1600-h/Bootae3.jpg”/abr /br /diva href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW4hLG-j_nI/AAAAAAAAAAs/PKO8U1HRwMw/s1600-h/Bootae1.jpg”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291203086942207602″ style=”FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 317px” alt=”" src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW4hLG-j_nI/AAAAAAAAAAs/PKO8U1HRwMw/s320/Bootae1.jpg” border=”0″ //a I really like the Chosen class in WAR; in fact I’d say it’s my favourite PvP tank class from any MMO I’ve played recently. I like the fact that it’s not a class for personal glory; it’s all about working with your group and being a team player. I can charge straight in to the enemy, chuck on some of my funky debuffing auras, hit people with my 65ft range cone AoE knockdown (the Quake ability from discord mastery, it’s a must have IMO) and start messing with healers and squishy types. I create opportunities for my groups DPS, screw up the enemies healing and generally be a pain in the arse. I might not get the kills, but I can create the winning situation. And crucially, unlike the tedium of WoW’s protection specs, the Chosen remains dangerous enough that the enemy can’t really ignore you.br /1v1 I have a good chance against most classes, but I’ve got to be on the ball or I’ll pay for it. Also there are some classes that are nigh on impossible assuming an even skilled or better player. Ironbreakers are a real pain… But then all classes have their nemesis. Unless the class I’m fighting is very squishy fights can take a while, but that’s more fun than 1 shot instant kill crap. br /br /a href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW4pUpste7I/AAAAAAAAAA0/3OoabL5dl4Q/s1600-h/Bootae2.jpg”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291212046974417842″ style=”FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px” alt=”" src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW4pUpste7I/AAAAAAAAAA0/3OoabL5dl4Q/s320/Bootae2.jpg” border=”0″ //aSome of fights can be truly epic. I was scrapping a Rune Priest for literally 10 minutes recently; in the end we both saluted each other and went our separate ways, which was actually a kind of cool moment. Of course I realised after that I’d completely forgotten the whole fight to remove his blessings, doh br /br /That said, I’ve been rather disappointed with great weapons. I’ve tried them in RvR a few times (with Dread mastery) and I just can’t get on with it. Mainly because the trade off between increased damage and survivability seems nowhere near worth it. In WAR shield blocking is a big deal, without a shield you take a LOT more damage. I did ok with great weapons fighting 1v1, but as soon as I got into warband+ RvR I got battered, it was like playing a squishy. Perhaps it’s a play style thing, or I need to dramatically change my stat balance to make the most of it. In fact I’m building a set of armour based around strength talismans to test this out a bit. I’m using the oRvR influence rewards as they’re all about DPS. The idea is to mainly use this set and a great weapon when a guild group is short of a DPS for an instance, so I could at least half fill the role. But I can’t see this /divdivworking for RvR at all.br /br /a href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW5F6tPUPLI/AAAAAAAAABE/dGD-h_8l4hk/s1600-h/Bootae3.jpg”img id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291243487085477042″ style=”FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 166px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px” alt=”" src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW5F6tPUPLI/AAAAAAAAABE/dGD-h_8l4hk/s320/Bootae3.jpg” border=”0″ //aBefore the game released I was planning on playing a great weapon wielding Chosen, so I’d be interested to hear other Chosen player’s thoughts on great weapons.br /br /Great weapons are my only real gripe with Chosen, I really hope they get improved somehow, but regardless it hasn’t diminished my enjoyment of the class to any real extent. It’s an awesome class to play, as long as you’re not too obsessed with epeen stato crap. Chosen also happen to look totally kick arse, which (if you’re a sad git like me) is very important.br /br /br /a href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YbXHpJPLjjM/SW5FyXaq6fI/AAAAAAAAAA8/MwMvW4bwRzw/s1600-h/Bootae3.jpg”/abr /br //divdiv/divdivbr //divdiv /div/div