Thirteen

Richard K Morgan is one of my favorite authors. I have his prior works, the Altered Carbon series and Market Forces, and enjoyed them greatly. Thirteen (known as Black Man elsewhere) is one of his latest releases and I finally finished it. It wasn't that it was long, its just that I got distracted in the middle of reading it.

Over-simplified summary: In the near future, a genetically engineered dude kicks ass across the planet.

Unlike his previous works, I did not really enjoy this one. The story was good, but the problem was the characters. I did not like or care about any of them. Part of me was hoping for them all to lose. In a way they do, but it wasn't satisfying. Usually Morgan creates a very compelling main character. In Thirteen, he seemed pretty unlikable and one dimensional. Grrr, I'm a badass but it's how I was designed, so grrr!

I wouldn't call it a bad book, but it just wasn't for me. Next up for me to read is The Steel Remains. It is the latest book by Richard K Morgan and also his first journey into fantasy.

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Post-announcement thoughts

The big announcements from Mythic have come and gone. I have always felt it is best to sleep on things in order to get a good perspective. Now that I have, on to my thoughts!

Night of Murder. As alluded to by the cards from Mythic, it is a Valentines Day event. In fact, it starts in a week! The Marked for Death mechanic sounds pretty fun, should make for some interesting fights. Also, you can loot someones head and send them a gift. Should be an interesting week, looks very fun.

Bitter Rivals Event. To usher in the new classes, there will be a live event. This is a lot like Heavy Metal, which was a big hit. A new scenario is introduced too, Twisting Tower. As I enjoyed Heavy Metal a lot, I am looking forward to this one too.

Siege Weapon Rewards. As a part of Bitter Rivals, the advanced reward are new siege weapons. Flame Cannons and Giants! I am very excited about this, almost giddy. Almost. I will have this reward, no matter what the cost in time :)

Slayer and Choppa. The class picture painted before release will now be complete. Order will have a flood of melee DPS, which will hopefully lead towards a better balance. This is a much welcomed addition, especially Slayer over Hammerer. The Choppa? Well, that is just one more class for me to kill :)

Call to Arms Events. There are 2 live events (April and May) to bring in the new zone/dungeon. I think this is a great idea to help pass the time and spice things up. Without them, we will have have an uneventful stretch. There aren't too many details yet, but it sounds good to me.

Nehekhara. The zone in which the Land of the Dead dungeon is located. I can't wait to see what the world team does with a desert. It has a lot of potential to look amazing. For lore info, look here.

Land of the Dead. The new RvR Dungeon, akin to Darkness Falls and LoTRO's Delving PvMP dungeon. Many folks had been calling for this to be added, as it was a popular feature of DAoC. I was never really for or against it. Now that I have grown to like WAR dungeons a bit, I think this could be a lot of fun. Of course, it is all in the implementation, but I am looking forward to it.

Zone Domination. As seen here. It is clear that changes had to be made to the zone locking system. Mythic has added a way for capture to take place via open RvR. Now the old way still exists, but this will offer an alternative. While I have concerns, I would like to see the campaign get moving again, so this is a good thing.

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There were two things I really wished they had announced:

Keep/Fortress fights. Stuffing 100's of people in the Lords room and on the ramp/stairs is just not that fun. Neither is the same basic fight every time. Break down doors, rush keep Lord. I would have loved to hear that they were going to make changes here.

Capital Cities return. This isn't that big of a deal to me, but still something I want to see. I'm not sure if 4 more cities even have a place in WAR anymore. Would be nice to see them though.

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The new announcement brings excitement, but it also worries me a bit:

Event Loot. Giving out PvP useful loot in rare/one time events does not feel right. I have the Heralds Cloak which is quite nice, but a lot of players have no chance of getting it. In PvP especially, this isn't quite fair. All should have at least the opportunity to get everything.

Land of the Dead Loot. Keen makes a good point. Where will the rewards from this new dungeon fall? Will they be very good and a lot easier to get than city loot? I would love to see a lot of customization rewards, like new mounts. Even just different looking weapons (same as in stats) as what I have would be neat.

Will the City still matter? As mentioned above, will players lose interest in the city capture with the addition of LotD? In order to get access, you will have to fight in Nehekhara rather than any of the traditional zones. This could work itself out though, as if you abandon the normal zones they could be captured and your city lost. We will see if players-at-large care though.

Zone Domination. My main concern with Zone Domination is that the entire war will be over while I sleep. I don't want to leave a fight Friday night where things are even, and wake up at 8am to find our city has been taken. Will this happen? We'll have to wait and see.

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Overall, I am pretty happy and excited. This is all happening in just 6 months too! I know some folks think that is too long, but to me it sounds just about right. When you get older, time just flies by. Still, waiting is hard when it sounds this good.

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WAR Announcement : Call to Arms

Check it out: http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=599

This is also my 200th post, great timing Mythic :)

For those of you at work, the press release:

FAIRFAX, Va. - Jan. 29, 2009 - Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) studio, today announced the new "Call to Arms" live expansion for its award-winning MMORPG, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning® (WAR). Call to Arms will introduce an array of new content for WAR players, including two highly anticipated new careers - the Orc Choppa and the Dwarf Slayer - and a new dungeon zone called "Land of the Dead," set in the desert realm of the Tomb Kings.

The Call to Arms live expansion, set to roll out for free in early March and running through the beginning of June, will also include three in-game live events, a new Realm vs. Realm™ (RvR) Scenario, added functionality to the Realm Wars section of the WAR website, the opening of the official WAR Forums, and a new free trial version of the game.

"The launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was only the first step in our ongoing quest to make a great MMORPG that players will enjoy for years to come. Over the next few months, we are going to be treating our players to the first of our 'live expansions' planned for the game," said Mark Jacobs, VP and general manager of Mythic Entertainment. "With the addition of new careers and a huge Tomb Kings dungeon that is the spiritual successor to the Dark Age of Camelot™ ™ dungeon, Darkness Falls, Call to Arms is an outstanding example of the massive amount of free content we are committed to delivering to WAR players now and in the future."

Call to Arms Live Expansion Schedule

• 'Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals' Live Event (March): Successful completion allows head start access to the new Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer careers. The event will also include the new Chaos-themed RvR Scenario, Twisting Tower.
• Two New Careers Join WAR (March): The Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer answer the Call to Arms.
• 'Call to Arms: Beyond the Sands' Live Event (April): Details to be revealed soon!
• 'Call to Arms: Rise of the Tomb Kings' Live Event (May): The race between Order and Destruction players begins to unlock the Land of the Dead for their Realm.
• 'Land of the Dead' Opens (June): The deserts of Nehekhara open to players with the addition of a new RvR-gated dungeon zone. To gain access to the Land of the Dead, opposing Realms must battle for control of the zone to access dozens of new Public Quests, instanced lairs, and a massive new Tomb Kings dungeon to plunder in search of the Casket of Souls.

More details on these and other new features soon to invade the Age of Reckoning will be revealed as the launch of Call to Arms grows near.

Bitter Rivals Answer the Call to Arms!

The Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer may be bitter enemies, but they have at least one thing in common: they live, eat, and breathe close-quarters melee combat. Choppas are ornery and savage, with a one track mind dead set on bashin' heads! This savage dedication makes them ferocious fighters, wreaking havoc throughout enemy lines purely for the sake of satisfying their own self-indulgent bloodlust.

The Slayer is driven by a solemn oath to atone for past sins through an honorable death in combat. However, Dwarfs are a stubborn folk and dying quietly is simply not in their nature. Slayers therefore become ruthless and terrifying fighters, throwing themselves into battle with no regard for their own well-being.

"The Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer are two of the most iconic characters in the Warhammer universe, and I have no doubt WAR fans will go berserk for them," said Jeff Hickman, executive producer of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. "Choppas represent the pure anarchy that the Greenskins embody, and the crazed, mohawk-sporting Slayers are their ideal archenemy. It won't be long before you see both of them adding a new level of insanity to the Age of Reckoning!"

Based on the popular tabletop war game from Games Workshop, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning features revolutionary Realm vs. Realm conflict that will provide players with an engaging battleground for years to come. Available now for PC, WAR is rated "T" for Teen by the ESRB.

To answer the Call to Arms and learn more about the live expansion, as well as the new careers, read the January issue of the WAR monthly newsletter at www.warhammeronline.com.

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Call to Arms and Bitter Rivals

UPDATE

Winged Nazgul, in the comments, gives us this. If this is true, it should be a very interesting spring/summer.

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In a recent Herald news story about Comic Con, there was a hidden nugget of information:

"lots of new info about Call to Arms, Bitter Rivals, and the new careers"

We pretty much knew about the new careers, but what are these other 2 systems mentioned? Today is the announcement day, so it seems like a perfect time for some good old speculation to pass the time.

Call to Arms. To me, this sounds like a RvR information system. A while back, Mark mentioned they did want to add ways for players to get a better view of where the war was taking place. This is one of the features I have wanted for a while. My game time is limited, so I don't want to mess around looking for fights.

One piece I hope Call to Arms includes is a way to get to keeps in order to defend them. Information is great, but it is of limited use if they already have the keep surrounded. The link provides some more information on my thoughts.

Bitter Rivals. I am going to guess this will allow you to set opposing players or guilds as rivals. Anytime you defeat them in battle you will get a bonus of some sort. Perhaps this ties into the Fame system Mark mentioned a while back? While bonuses are nice, I hope the Tome of Knowledge is heavily involved in tracking information about your fights with rivals.

I would also predict there will be a cooldown on setting your rival list, as some smart add-on will just change it to whomever you are fighting. It should also not apply to scenarios, as everyone dies in scenarios many times.

Both systems sound promising just due to their names and I am looking forward to actual information soon.

What do you think Call to Arms and Bitter Rivals will be?

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Werit the Forge Guard

A few days ago Tirew, my Engineer, reached Renown Rank 40. His Battle Rank sits at 39, inching ever closer to 40 as well. I was pretty happy about reaching RR 40, even if it is only half way to the cap (80). It is nice to get a new title, Forge Guard in this case. Other than a renown point, nothing else really happens at this milestone.

Let's take a look at Tirew:

I am wearing the full Annihilator set and have dyed it green (one of the CoW colors). On my right shoulder I am wearing the Herald's Signet which I got for my time in Heavy Metal (Basic reward). On my left shoulder is the Silver Heart Rank, which I got for dying 1,000 times in RvR. I have killed over 1,000 players too, but no trophy for that.

And for the ladies, the rear view:


I am wearing the Herald's Cloak, from Heavy Metal, but it is just not rendering correctly with our guild heraldry. The dancing cow doesn't look so hot. Also the rifle clips with the cloak, which is mildly annoying. I would just hide the cloak, but I must sport the cow! Hopefully these kinks will be worked out soon.

I have decided Tirew needs some more trophies. Soon he will venture out of the RvR lakes in search of Bestial tokens which can be exchanged for trophies. At the moment, I have one... which may be turned in for an Emergency Keg. That is more of a necessity than a trophy.

Battle Rank 40, here I come!

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Werit gets something in the mail!

I found a little surprise in the mailbox today.


If there is one thing I don't need, it is love from a Witch Elf. They... hurt. Notice the spelling , 'which' and the question mark. A mystery is afoot.

I guess we will have some Valentines Day love coming our way! :)

UPDATE:

On the back was '11/13 R'.

Wizards and Wenches has some good thoughts and coverage here.

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Stairway to Hell

I logged into WAR Saturday night and found a group of CoW's heading into Bastion Stair. I had never been there before, so I joined up. We ventured into the Trial of Carnage, which was for ranks 33-34. I was Rank 38 but it didn't really matter. I am not usually a big fan of dungeon crawls, but I had fun.

The reason I do not like typical dungeons is that they tend to be very slow. The trash in dungeons and raids just ruins the experience for me. WAR has taken a different approach with their dungeons. They separate the trash and bosses by placing the former in an open area and the latter in an instance. So you can bring a large group and just run through the trash quickly. Once you get to the instance, you split into groups.

The trash, at least in this wing, are part of Public Quests. This at least makes them a little bit interesting. At the end of these PQ's are bosses and rewards. It worked out great I thought. We went in there with 8 and made quick work of the non-instanced areas. No stress at all, just fun.

We also cleared out the instanced boss, Thar'Ignan, beat up on the second PQ Lord boss, Azuk'Thul and did the first PQ a couple of times. All in all it took maybe 2 hours. That was longer than I planned on staying, but I could have easily left without causing the group to have to find a replacement or quit.

I am pretty impressed with the dungeon system so far. Sigmar's Crypt was not on my list of things to do, but now it is.

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Free vs Paid Expansions

Is there anything more exciting than new MMO content? Maybe, but for this blog post, no. Most often this new content comes to us via expansions. Sometimes they are free, sometimes they need to be paid for. Each MMO has its own idea of how this should be done. For this post, content additions and expansions are roughly equal.

On the free side you have games like Eve, Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes/Villains. They tend to release new content, at decent intervals, for just the cost of the subscription. SWG recently released the Battle for Hoth and an Appearance Tab system. CoX put out Issue 13, which had many improvements.

If you added up all of the free content those games release for a year, would it add up to a paid expansion? I think in many cases it would, but then you would have to add in the fact that you had to wait. Free expansions allow for more additions, quicker which means a more dynamic game.

On the pay side, you have games like WoW and Everquest. These games do put out free content upgrades too, but usually they are few and far between (I am looking at you WoW). When they do put out a paid expansion, it is usually packed full of content and worth the wait. The downside is that paid expansions can be slow to hit the marketplace.

Finally there is the hybrid, like Lord of the Rings Online. They put out free content updates (Book 13 ) pretty regularly and a rather large paid expansion (Mines of Moria).

As far as WAR goes, we will have to wait and see what approach they take. I think it will be a hybrid, but I can't recall where I heard that. They have released 2 new careers so far and have plans to release another two soon. These were cut from launch, but are free content none the less. I can't wait to hear their ideas for a paid expansion.

What kind of expansion do you prefer?

I would have to go for LoRTO. It seems that they are giving their customers the best of both worlds in terms of content. I really do like the free updates, however, I suspect a paid expansion can be very healthy for a game. Maybe it is just psychological, but the expectations are higher when shelling out extra money, regardless of the amount of free content they have been releasing.

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New Blogs on the Block

Or is it NBotB?

Anyway, the Age of Blogging has brought to light many new blogs... here are a few to check out:

• The Kitchen Philosopher - As seen here, papgwan has put a lot of time and effort into bringing us the dark, dirty details of WAR combat.
• Shadow WAR - Perspective from those elusive elves with the bows.
• Healer at Heart - Remember, always kiss up to the healer. Also, I think this is a very nice looking blog.
• Nerf the Cat - Don't call it a comeback... Arbitrary (Book of Grudges) is back for more.
• Clockwork Landmine - Dwarf, Engineer... how can you go wrong?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, just bloggin stuff

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Where in the World is Werit?

Warhammer has some amazing scenery. Most of the time it is ignored, as the only thing I am interested in is killing that Orc in front of me. I thought I'd start a little weekly contest...

Where in the world is Werit? Need a specific answer, not which zone.


Bonus Question: What does the title of this post pay homage to?

What do you get? Everyone's favorite prize, recognition!

Edit Results:

Esri got the bonus question, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

As for the screenshot, Sara got it. It was taken on a wall at Drakebreaker's Scourge in Dragonwake.

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