WAR Blogger Challenge - The Award Show

Back when WAR was new the internet was awash with WAR bloggers. There were loads of the buggers (myself included, as I am indeed a bugger) and quite quickly a friendly little WAR blog community was established, with things like the WCPI (War Community Promotion Initiative) and a bit of mutual back slapping to promote other bloggers. And then with a resounding slap, we got hit by the WAR Street crash of 2009… After a rocky launch the number of active bloggers declined dramatically, as people moved onto other MMOs or quit the genre entirely. The community was left with a mere handful of active WAR bloggers and seriously restricted the community’s alt-tab at work reading material. Yeah, that’s right… I know when I get the most hits, you slackers! Do some work! OK, nah screw work! Read more WAR! :D

In recent months the WAR community has seen some dramatic growth with a lot of new bloggers stepping out to join the long in the tooth little core of us WAR blogging veterans, which is a damn positive sign for the game in my humble opinion. However with a game that’s been as up and down as WAR, it’s sometimes hard to keep writing, it’s not like we get paid to do this and sometimes for whatever reason we will get times where we just can’t be arsed. At moments like that I personally find any recognition for the effort is a great motivator. It could be Mythic’s posts on the Herald, links from other bloggers, comments on our posts, or simply my ever growing amazement at the number of hits I’ve had for my rambling bollocks.

I think that anything giving WAR bloggers recognition for the effort they make is a good thing. So it’s about time we gave out some awards for both the long time servants of the WAR community and the hot prospects for the future of WAR blaaaaaaaghing, as Mythic would say. I’m going to give an award to one veteran and one promising youngster, it would be nice if they and other WAR bloggers could find some awards to give out for others ;)

For outstanding service to the WAR community I award Werit with a large slice of Squig Cake!

Werit has been a bloody hero. Not only does his most excellent blog have a smorgasbord of news, guides, info and videos from WAR, but every week Werit posts “News from the Front” highlighting other blogs, videos and more from the community. A one dwarf promotion machine!
I highly recommend you watch his vids btw, nice framerates, in decent resolution and always informative. A proper little trooper you are Werit, now go enjoy the cakey schmakey.





For showing great potential I’m going to let Keagan lick the bowl!

I was sorely tempted to let Krossus in on some hot bowl licking action, but I linked him recently and Keagan bless his floaty feet is playing a Magus. As a fellow Magus player I know how much they need some sweet love... (ARE YOU LISTENING MYTHIC!) Plus Keagan’s blog is really bloody good. He’s not the most regular poster, but what he puts out there is well worth a read. Excellent Magus guides are hard to find. Actually, any Magus guides are hard to find, uhm... no, no, Magus (Magi?) are hard to find, period! Anyways, it’s a great blog and an absolute must read for anyone considering or already playing a Magus.

Now I'm off to the after show party... Those Witch Elves gonna get some bowl lickin goodness.

Blogger Challenge: The Results Show

3 of the WAR community's top bloggers took up my challenge and posted their thoughts for WAR's future. A hypothetical future where they had control of Mythic and no limitations.

Mr Meh delivers an incredibly detailed post with all manner of dramatic, but also feasible, improvements for WAR. Amongst them is the very interesting idea of a new anti-tank career type. As a Chosen this disturbs me :p but damn it I would make one of his Ed Shrink’r Orcs faster than Katie Price eats men.

Heartless gamer goes on a very different path with WAR adopting a free to play model. However this is a bit different to the usual F2P stuff and includes a most intriguing "tax" system. Though my heartless friend when you ask "who calls it Autumn?", I must point out it is Autumn, not Fall. Well... at least for us Brits and any others still blessed with the Queen's English :) Back on topic, please do check his post out, it's well worth a read and certainly contains some of the most revolutionary ideas for WAR I've seen. 

Werit has big plans for a live expansion. An expansion that is far bigger than the Land of the Dead and would give us something really meaty to get stuck in to. He's also cottoned onto the fact that our currency loot bags are packed with bloody officer medallions and maybe we should have something to spend them on. A very, very good point and one I hope Mythic are considering.

A big thank you to the guys for accepting the challenge! It's been really interesting to see the different routes we would take. Of course the question now is will any of us see our ideas matched by Mythic?

Blogger challenge – If you were Mythic what would you do in 2010?

A challenge for my fellow bloggers!
 
First take the assumption that the game isn’t in the alleged maintenance mode and there’s not only money for new content, but you have access to new content that’s been in development over the last year. So we’re writing this in a happy place. Now then, if you had control of Mythic what would be your plan for WAR in 2010?
 
Broken down into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, what would be your strategy for changes, improvements and expansions to the game?
 
Here’s mine…
 
In case this is not completely clear … Everything that follows is completely made up by me and most probably has no bearing on reality. Of course if by strange coincidence any of it turns out to be true, then clearly Mythic are very sensible people and should be commended, well... apart from whoever is in charge of their marketing/advertising/promotional/thingy strategy these days, as they need dragging through a hedge infested with angry Squirrels. Bring back the teasers, clues and hype please. It may have led to false expectations, but at least it was interesting and gave us positive ammunition. Aaaaaaanyways, here goes:
 
Spring
With the first major patch in a long time, Mythic unleash a cunning plan. A plan that will make realm pride a factor once again. The patch will change the way the campaign works, with simultaneous locking of all 3 zones within a racial pairing required to lock the area and count towards a city siege. Combat is spread across the zones, individual guilds and warbands become more important than one single zone crashing zerg, the game lags less and WAR makes a huge step towards having a truly epic campaign. In tier 4 no longer do you have a maximum of 1-3 active zones to fight in, oh no sir, now you have 3-9! Not including Land of the Dead! Once more it becomes difficult to actually siege a city, making city sieges something that actually feels like an achievement. Plus roaming world PvP and genuine strategic play return.
 
Then in late Spring, the Fortresses make a triumphant return. Ex-DAoC players get what they wanted; Relic raids… Each fortress can be attacked and a relic stolen from the central keep, the player carrying the relic then has to be escorted all the way through that pairing’s RvR zones to their own fortress. Owning a relic provides a small realm wide buff. The more relics you have, the greater the buff. To stop fortresses getting in the way of accessing a city, when a pairing is locked in the new improved campaign, the fortress is left open, the relic unavailable.
 
Summer
Leaping out of the shadows like a ‘shroom fueled goblin in a ninja suit, Mythic deliver the first of two new live expansions. The 4 cities removed before launch are coming back baby! This live expansion introduces the Dwarf and Orc cities. Each racial pairing now has a city for each faction and control of the 3 RvR zones provides access to siege the relevant city. But new cities bring new risk and reward… Now if a king is killed, there’s a proper downside as that city is unavailable for 24 hours. If a faction loses all of it’s cities, then sorry chaps you’re based in warcamps for a day. Risk and reward... now go find that realm pride we’re missing.
 
Autumn
And it’s the next live expansion, that naturally follows on from the Summer of Orcy fun. This one bringing in cities for the tree huggers and emo-kid pointy eared elf gits. This now means WAR has 9 RvR zones and 6 cities. WAR is indeed everywhere.
 
Winter
The main event… Winter and with a Christmas release, will see the WAR’s first paid expansion. It will introduce Skaven and Lizardmen as playable races for Destruction and Order respectively. The campaign will be expanded to include the south American themed land of Lustria, home to the Lizardmen and also a segment of the Skaven’s secret underground empire. New zones for each tier and of course 3 new tier 4 RvR zones, 2 more cities. WAR now has 12 RvR zones and 8 Cities.
 
I’d love a third faction as regular readers will know, but I’m starting to think it’s just not feasible at all. So the above is what I’d do, assuming I had the money and the backing. How about you?

Blogger Challenge! What is YOUR ultimate MMO group?

I had a surprising moment a while back when I was choosing which of my World of Warcraft level 70 characters I would take up to 80. My first idea was to use my old “main”, a fury DPS specced Warrior. What I discovered was directly comparing character archetypes between games, without relying on bias memory alone, can lead to large piles of MEH! I can safely say I will never, ever play that Warrior again. When compared with my Chosen and Choppa from WAR, it feels floaty and to be frank, a bit shit. There’s no feeling of connection between your weapons and your enemy, its just numbers flowing upwards and no oomph. Somehow WAR’s melee feels so much more substantial. Perhaps it’s the different pace of combat, the associated sounds, the visuals themselves, or a combination of them all. I’m not sure, but whatever the reason it came as a bit of a shock. I played that character for years; did it always feel so lacking in clout?

Anyway, before I go tangenting away even further from what this topic is meant to be about....
*/slap Bootae*
The whole episode got me wondering, if WoW's melee DPS suck compared with WAR, which MMO has the best melee DPS ever? In fact what are the best ever classes for everything? Which then got me thinking up my ultimate 6 man group, picking classes from any MMO I've played. A group made up not only of the most effective, but also the most stylish, fun to play and all round bloody cool.


So my challenge to readers and fellow bloggers is; pick your ultimate super group!

Only rules are:
1) The group must consist of 2 tanks, 2 healers and 2 DPS.
2) MMOs only
3) Give some reasons why.

Here is my group of total uberness:

TANKS
Chosen (WAR)
It looks amazing, IMHO the best looking character in any MMO ever. Equally good as a main or off tank, respectable damage and auras that both buff your allies and debuff you enemies. Flexibility and awesomeness combined in spikey armour. This is up there with my very favourite classes of all time. Pure pimpdom.

Paladin (WoW)
A heavily armoured tank, that’s also hard hitting and can heal? AND has excellent buffing abilities? You still want more? OK then, one word: Bubble.

Who would have thought an entire enemy faction would tremble in fear (or frustration) from a god botherer blowing bubbles? Strange world of warcraft.

HEALERS

Cleric (DaoC)

They hit like a truck, could heal like buggery and for a long time were invincible killing machines. Excellent healers in both PvE and PvP and with a smite spec they could be devastating. In chain mail, nice.., One of the best healing classes ever.

Druid (WoW)

Treeform… I mean come on guys, it’s a walking tree and it can dance too! The undisputed king of HoT healing and the most fun class I’ve ever played as a pure healer.

DPS
Bright Wizard (WAR)
Insanely powerful damage, good crowd control and a crazy haircut. Without doubt they have had more impact on RvR than anything else in WAR. I hate the buggers, but there is no doubting their uberness. It’s hard to think of a DPS class anywhere near as potent. Except for the next one...

Mage Tamer (UO)

The power of a traditional nuker, but with a tamed Dragon or worse in tow? Not some little hunter pet crap, oh no, we're talking about a full on Dragon. Oh yeah baby! I can quite confidently say that if you've not played a Mage Tamer in Ultima Online, then you haven't experienced REAL power in a MMO. The single most devestating character set up ever, but one that took a lot of time, practice and persistence to suceed with. Ahh memories ;) Taming my first Nightmare... Glorious!

Now my friends, over to you!