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!

Do you subscribe to more than one MMO?

I quite often do. I’ve always had one main game, which will take up the vast majority of my online gaming time, but I regularly have at least one other MMO active that I tinker with a little. I tend to find with my main MMO that once you reach the end game, everything needs at least an hour to do, so I like to have something else for those moments when I’ve only got 30minutes spare. Something to just dip into, where I don’t have to worry about talent specs, raid gear, organising things or answering 10 whispers from people wanting to join Kill Frenzy the moment I log in. Somewhere to be anonymous and a perhaps bit detached.

This is perhaps a bit odd. I’m effectively subscribing to extra MMOs, but I play them as single player games. Why don’t I just play a single player RPG? Why am I paying a subscription fee for something I barely play?

After doing a bit of reflection, I think the main reason is curiosity. I’ve been playing MMOs for 12 years now and as a result I’ve grown to be very interested in the genre generally. I’m not interested enough to play them full time, but I am curious to see what it is that people like about game “X” and what the game world feels like. Each MMO gamer, if they realise it or not, has contributed to the evolution of the genre. By subscribing and talking about game “A” we have impacted on the development choices made for game “B”. If we had chosen not to play WoW and it had been another MMO with the traditional few hundred thousand players, what would the latest batch of games look like? Even more dramatic, imagine if Everquest had not been successful and Ultima Online’s original harsh world had remained the benchmark... Things would be totally different (for the better! :P ). Playing a range of MMOs can give you a bit of an insight into what people are into now and as such I would think it shows where MMOs are headed, which is an interesting thing to ponder on.

Another big reason why I have multiple games active is that to enjoy an MMO you don’t have to play it full on and dedicate hours of your life to it. You can have some light hearted fun, but still get some progression for your character, albeit slow. You can just log on, explore a bit, kill a few things and log off. The difference with most single player games is while you can still slowly explore and progress a character, it is essentially a finite experience and it will come to an end. With an MMO character you’ve always got the option of much to come, what with patched new content, expansions, etc. When you’re not playing a game in full, it’s world seems to feel some much bigger.

Of course this very casual play maybe harder to do if you are a full on hardcore raider 24/7. Over the years I’ve played all manner of different types of MMOs and played them in different ways, from casual, to hardcore raider, to roleplayer, to big time PvPer, you name it. When I was in a hardcore raider phase I would only have one game active, because there simply isn’t time for more. At least not if I wanted to keep my real life marriage intact… These days I find it quite easy to juggle various games. Sure, I play WAR far, far more than anything else, but with no need to grind rep, materials or any of that crap, I don’t have to spend every waking moment logged in. I am free to dabble!

Over the last year alone I have had a wide range of MMO side projects, including Ultima Online (I activate for a while every year), Dark Age of Camelot, Eve, City of Heroes/Villains, Age of Conan, World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons Online and various betas. I’ve considered many more too. At this exact moment I have 3 MMOs active, WAR, WoW and now Champions Online. WoW is a temporary arrangement for me to get a character to 80 ready to look around Cataclysm next year. At 80 the sub gets cancelled again. Where as Champions I’ve just started toying with and will probably dip into here and there. Having played City of Heroes quite a bit I already knew how Champions would be a shallow PvE fest, but the shallows can be fun to fool about in.

Long-term WAR will most definitely remain my main MMO. The game is still fun, getting better all the time and now that Mythic have woken up, I genuinely see the future as very bright. Plus, it’s Warhammer! The Warhammer lore and artwork is vastly superior to everything else out there now (or in future), which for me is very important. However, like all my “main” MMOs before WAR, what I play alongside it will continue to chop and change.

How about you?

Career Coaster

Many careers in WAR have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride since launch. They plummet into the foul depths of nerfdom, rocket skywards to bask in the light of an overpowered sun, only to go down faster than a skint chavette.

Right now with my Chosen I’m in sight of that overpowered sun, not quite getting a healthy tan, but I’m certainly catching enough rays to be very comfortable. I don’t think we’re overpowered yet, personal bias perhaps, but I honestly don’t think so. For me it’s more a case of paper scissors stone; Chosen are a stone and some people playing scissors seem to think that they should cut up everything easily... That and how the good players stand out and the bad ones are forgotten, with a class as popular as Chosen (they look awesome) there are plenty of good players to remember and the mass of crap ones (that’s you Mr Ravage Spammer) just meld into the nameless zerg. It’s when you fear the name of infamously bad players that you’ve got to start worrying about their career. That said, I won’t argue against those saying that a well geared and played Chosen is one of the better careers in WAR right now. However, it wasn’t always like this.

At launch we were excellent RvR Sword & Board tanks, but very poor with great weapons. Then we got nerfed in all manner of ways and combined with (at that point) many bugs, we became known as the worst tank in the game. Things changed over time and with the infamous Rending Blade buff we became overpowered killing machines. We were absolute bloody monsters for a month or two. Then it was Rending Blade’s turn to be nerfed. At the time it was a change I thought killed the spec, but to Mythic’s credit it wasn’t that long before I realised it was a sensible nerf and ate my words. Which roughly leads us to today’s Chosen. As mentioned above, with good gear, a decent spec and a good player, the Chosen is very influential on the battlefield. We can solo well, provide a wide range of group buffs and can contribute very well to both large and small scale RvR. Thing is, we should enjoy it while it lasts, because at some point the nerfbat will come swinging our way again.


Every career is on a roller coaster, but not everyone has a dramatic ride. You’d think that Bright Wizards, Warrior Priests, Sorcerers and Disciples of Khaine would be getting bored looking down at everyone by now. As far as I’m aware they’ve never been anywhere close to average, let alone sub-par. Where as many Marauders, Blackguard, Shadow Warriors and particularly Magus have already got off and strapped themselves into a new ride. Though experience tells us that what goes around, comes around. If you’re riding high, you need to be ready to fall. Look at Ironbreakers for example, still a solid class, but nothing like the invincible death machines they once were.

Every MMO I’ve played has taken us on it’s version of the nerf/buff roller coaster. From Ultima Online onwards (TankMage or MageTamer anyone?) it’s always been the same. I still have nightmares about Enchanters in DAoC... I suppose when you think about how every MMO seems to have this, perhaps its understandable that a game like WAR is not going to break the mould anytime soon. With so many careers and the focus on PvP combat, career balancing is not a job I’d fancy.


Plus we, as players, are so often blinded by the shortcomings of our own character, would we recognise a balanced game if we found one? We’d probably just whinge that everything’s too samey.

Aion can’t come out soon enough

I’m so bored of people smothering WAR forums with their hate for WAR and telling us how we should all go play Aion. No thank you! I don’t like the fairy elf look, don’t like the game play and whilst WAR has its problems, I’m quite happy here. Now please bugger off and post your crap on Aion forums, after all you’re not playing WAR and don’t like the game, so why are you reading and posting on WAR forums? Or if you really must spew your bile then please make a blog and put it there, that way at least we have a choice to read or not, rather than stumbling into it in threads about totally unrelated topics.


People that have not played the game in months telling us how WAR is dying, how the servers are all low/low, that it will be turned off by Christmas, blah bloody blah. Bollocks mate. The server I’m on is high/high most nights, in fact in the evenings looking at the server list there’s only been a handful on low/low and some nights none. I can’t speak for others, but in my guild we’re getting as many people reactivating as we are quitting and I’m regularly meeting new people just starting the game. Plus have folks no bloody clue on MMO population numbers? It has to get insanely low before a game is turned off, simply because subs generate so much cash.

Not that WAR is blameless here, the game sold in the region of 800,000 copies at launch and I don’t know how many more afterwards, which at the last count was reduced to 300,000 subscribers in the US/EU. So that’s at least 500,000 potential haters twiddling their thumbs until Aion/Champions/whatever :P

Hopefully once Aion comes out they’ll be too busy fluttering about (well when flight works, it’s not the limitless flying you may have hoped for) and we’ll not have everything invaded by WAR hating Aion fans on some crazed self justification trip.

Good Wild Hunting

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a WAR live event cause such mixed opinion. Some very vocal people have been calling it out for being a load of PvE rubbish, some have been saying it promoted great RvR around the portals and then others just loved the whole thing. I found it a bit of a mixed bag.

The Hunters Vale
The instance was good. Ok, other than the cloak there was bugger all gear relevant to me, but to be honest it would have sucked if the dungeon brought in the latest uber weapon of doom. It doesn’t have to be an arms race anytime something new arrives; sideways itemisation is no bad thing. By giving the dungeon armour from the Ruin set, moderate weapon drops and the stag cloak, it ensured that instance was relevant to everyone.

The dungeon itself looked great. It was very pretty and absolutely nailed the wood spirit theme. The mini bosses were not the most exciting ever tactic wise, but that’s fine for a live event, you don’t want to be researching tactics for an instance available for just one week. The puzzle and main boss fight (which had a bit more too it) worked perfectly, not too hard to learn, but not one everyone would instantly beat either. Also having the PQ timer to complete the instance in (or you got less loot) added a bit of spice to the dungeon as a whole. On the subject of time, Mythic got this exactly right. Depending on your group it took between 20 to 45mins to complete, which is spot on. I like mixing in PvE to my gaming, but I don’t like having to spend 4 hours in a dungeon. I’d love it if Mythic added lots of instances on a similar scale to Hunter’s Vale. Oh and I didn’t encounter a single bug in HV.


Stag chasing…
For a week Benny Hill has been alive, well and playing WAR. There were these Lord level Stags that run through the zones and if attacked they just keep running. Part of the Live Event required us to kill these 5 times, which obviously resulted in zergs of players chasing bloody Stags around everywhere trying to hit the damned thing. The zerging whilst funny to watch was dull as hell to take part in, but if you chased a stag in a quiet area it was potentially great fun. I grouped up with Khalie a sorc from Kill Frenzy and we went stag hunting in Etaine. At first there was nobody else there, but then a few Order turned up and joined in. What followed was running battles around the zone trying to not lose sight of the stag, while fighting off enemies. It was actually a brilliant laugh. Small scale combat rocks ;)

You’re the Piggy Pig!
Some of the other popular tasks were killing or being killed as “beast hexed” players. What happened here was whilst in the PQ area people could get a hex on them, they then had 20 seconds or so to pass the hex onto another player or they would turn into a pig. This could be both frustrating and fun. When in Zergland it was very hard to get credit, but in smaller scale stuff it was most amusing. It also provided the epic title “Squeals like a pig”. Alas no banjo though.

Other bits.
Other tasks were a bit meh. Kill a variety of animals, a brief PvE quest, do some elf scenarios, that sort of thing. Nothing to shout out about.

All in all, it was a fairly good event. If you got into it and ignored the “its all PvE” crying then you’d find there was something for everyone and I certainly had some quality PvP scraps out of it. The dungeon shows great potential and I really hope Mythic pick up on this. On the negative side there were too many humdrum tasks and I know some people had problems completing certain tasks because of zerging.

Not as much fun as the Night of Murder one, but it had its moments.

Stagawk? Hawag?

In a sick Chaos experiment, this week we forced a War hawk and Stag to do the wild thing. What we'll call their wierd siamese twin sprog I don't know...

Altdorf Revisited

A couple of posts back I talked about my first visit to the new Altdorf and the revamped city sieges. Since that post I’ve been back to Altdorf, but this time I was in an instance full of players from both sides. It was really, really good fun. What an amazing transformation from the previous RvE fest! Seriously, it was brilliant.

As previously stated the city siege starts off with a giant version of Nordenwatch and with a busy instance this stage was where the most fun is to be had. I was fortunate enough to be leading a warband half full of Kill Frenzy and topped up with friends from other guilds who had joined us on ventrilo. Fighting alongside was a warband made up of members from one of the other major Destruction alliances, which when combined with us lot meant Order were in for a proper scrap. The Order we were facing were not so organised and struggled to match us, but they made up for it with bloody-minded persistence. They just kept trying to zerg us, constantly… After every wipe they formed up and WAAAAGHH!! We had to play with some cunning. While the other warband held them off and used choke points to nullify their greater numbers, my warband would make flanking moves through the city’s winding streets. My favourite is a good tuna mayo sandwich (with cucumber and plenty of pepper ofc), but that night I got a taste for Order.

We might have won the battles, but there was no pause and no let up for a second. Fair play to those Order, they just kept hurling themselves at us and refused to quit. If WAR’s blood effects didn’t fade, then the streets of Altdorf would have been waist deep in blood and gore.

Eventually we got Altdorf to the new “captured” state and decided to have a crack at the recalibrated Bright Wizard College raid. After battling through those stubborn Order (which took a while, they REALLY did not want to quit) we made it into the instance. I know some people had problems/bugs with this instance, but for us it worked perfectly. We first timed it and some of the guys got some nice Warlord loot. Afterwards we went back out, battled the Order yet again and then after a bit of a kafuffle we got into the Temple of Sigmar raid instance. This didn’t go so well. I’m not entirely sure if that was down to us doing it wrong or not. I’ll not call it bugged, as that might be unfair; I think it’s more likely we just didn’t have our tactics down right. Anyway, after a couple of tries on the Grand Theogonist I had to log off. It was getting rather late and I was feeling the impact of a rather good Sicilian Merlot.

I remain unconvinced by the raid instances, they’re ok, but are a bit of an anti-climax after the massive fighting against players beforehand. That said they are a clear improvement from their previous incarnation and it wasn’t a bad experience. Also in the interview I linked to yesterday Mythic have alluded to making the Warlord and King phases involve more RvR, which can only be a good thing.

Right now, the fighting in the streets was the best stuff by miles. Whilst in theory it’s only a small change, in practice it’s been a huge step forward. You never know, maybe one day we’ll see City sieges that match the one on that oh so uber video. You know the one, it teases us everytime we start the game.