'Happiness at the misfortune of others' ... that IS German!

-UPDATE FOUR OF MANY-


I think I'm going to be playing Gronogg (and possibly Pyn) for the remainder of the preview weekend. I tried rolling a High Elf White Lion, but it was a little too buggy to enjoy. Plus, Order sucks.

Speaking of bugs, I'm currently working on getting my final influence reward from a group quest in the Kron Komar Gap, but it still needs a few kinks worked out. The final bad guy (Goren Something-or-other) often gets stuck in walls/statues and becomes unable to target, and his little dwarven minions often do the same. It's not a huge problem if you know how to handle it (get off the hill), but for those who will start playing on the 7th or 18th...I can forsee a lot of Greenskin deaths due to not knowing any better.

I found a flight master later today. Flying from one location to another is handled via 6-second cutscene, which is a welcome change from the ol' 20-minute flight time in WoW. I miss flying over the land and seeing everything in real time, though.

Have I talked about Renown level and all that yet? The more you do for your realm (I think), the more renowned you are, the more things you get. Example: I've slaughtered enough stupid dwarves to be get Renown Rank 1. There are weapons/armor merchants located in the town I'm currently in that will only sell their wares to Rank 2 people, so it looks like I've gotta get stukk in wit da Boyz some more....I got a nice-ass shield, but I can't do a thing with it until I get a nice-ass single handed Choppa.

I just notice while looking for renown-related screenshots that Pyn is a higher rank than Gronogg. What!?

"Easy Mode Unlocked"? You died so much the game took pity on you? Man.

-UPDATE FOUR OF MANY-


Did you really think I'd ignore the healer class? Meet Pyn, Disciple of Khaine.

First and foremost: Melee healers are kinda weird. So far it looks like they don't actually use mana, but rather 'Soul Essence'. Healing and beneficial spells use Soul Essence, and damaging spells and melee attacks regain Soul Essence, which pretty much negates the idea of sitting in the back healing if you roll Disciple. That's all good and well and innovative and stuff, but what if some big bad boss has a huge Consecration-eque AOE attack?
It might be too soon to call, though, but it looks like Disciples heal with HOTs. I wonder if other healing classes (Goblin Shaman and the like) use direct heals, or if it's all HOTs.

Anyway, back to that screencap with the dragon. Got a nice-ass belt from it (and a crapton of Influence).
The Dark Elf starting area has this whole "pretty-buildings-crumbled-to-the-ground-decaying" atmosphere to it, kinda like the Ghostlands.

Oh yea, I've either died enough or reached a certain level or something with Gronogg; everytime I die now I get a penalty. Fortunately, there are these little Healer guys by most rally points who will take the debuff away if you pay them. I've had to pay 18 bronze so far, hopefully it'll stay that cheap.

More pictures:

You missed! How could you miss? He was three feet in front of you!

-UPDATE THREE OF MANY-


An ode to group quests...

Ahem.

Group quests are awesome, especially in a game where new weapons/armor can be hard to come by. Out of the many quests I've done, only a small fraction have given me any type of new gear. This might be because I'm still in the single-digit levels, but that's irrelevant. In the same amount of time it takes me to complete a quest that might only result in XP and gold, I could do a group quest, which results in XP, Influence, and occasionally gold. Rack up enough influence and you'll be able to buy shiny things. Yea, influence is pretty much WAR's way of pronouncing 'reuptation', but unlike Rep., Influence doesn't take nearly as long to rack up. During a 20-minute phone call I was able to replace my old Choppa (3.4 DPS) with a shiny new Choppa (11 DPS and +14 Willpower). On WoW it probably would have taken me a good couple of hours to upgrade my weapon...especially if PVP is involved. Granted, I'm sure in the higher levels the group quests will probably become more involved, but it's still better than avoiding them alltogether and walking around with 10-level-old derp gear.



I started a profession in between questing: I'm a scavenger.
Long story short: I kill humanoids, loot them as normal, and then take any thing else they might be carrying. I've found what looks like a lot of great stuff, but this is one of those jobs that requires me selling my wares to the players to make a profit. Apparently, merchants don't want my awesome and potentially rare stuff. I've been thinking about switching my job to butchering, but I don't know if butchers make anything or if they just cut up animals and sell the meat. I could use a couple healing items, especially with things get hairy, but I have no idea if being a butcher is similar to a WoW/FFXI Cook.

I am Wreck-Gar! I am only good for one thing: GARBAGE!

-UPDATE TWO OF MANY-

And lo, my second character was rolled. Meet Valarin the Chaos Magus.
I gotta say, the Chaos starting area doesn't feel nearly as polished as the Greenskins, which is odd, because it was about 3 times more populated. The players of the Chaos seem a little more...talkative as well. Could the Chaos be the annoying Blood Elves of WAR? It's probably too soon to tell.

Anyway, Magi. Maguses? The first thing that will leap out right at you as a Magus: FLOATING DISKS. I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about Warhammer lore (unless it's 40k), but apparently Magi are bound to these energy-channeling things, which make them look really unmenacing. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe the disks are cool, Whatever. As of right now, there's nothing too eye-opening about the class, except for the possibly broken Pink Horror.

I think these little grinning bastards are supposed to follow you around and move about, not unlike a hunter's pet or a warlock's demon. But all of mine stayed in the same spot, even when I told them to attack an enemy. I've yet to see it officially written that Pink Horrors are supposed to move around in game, but when the lore describes them as "Their form is constantly shifting as they scamper around with boundless energy, madly cackling and shrieking as they go", what am I supposed to think?



More pictures:

Ted, you know my rule about personal problems. I'm not interested unless it involves my loved ones. Or possibly my wife.

-UPDATE ONE OF MANY-


Check that out. I'm not just Gronogg, I'm Gronogg The Wise.
I logged on today at about 7:30 AM...it's now 10:18 and I am level 5. It's a combination of low-rate experience gains (yay!) and how awesome just running around touching stuff is.
Remember Mythic's big "if you kill a ton of things and then a quest guy wants you to go kill those same thing, the game will remember what you do" claim? Yea, that's not in here. I was a little bummed, but not enough to start freaking out and uninstalling the game or anything.

Group Quests and RvR stuff is awesome. I've been in one where we fight waves of dwarves and one that involves killing tree monsters and choppin' trees. The Dwarf one was a little frantic and I didn't get any loot from killing the main badguy, but when there's 20 other Greenskins all attacking 1-4 dwarves, I guess that's too be expected. I can only imagine it'll be like this until a couple months after the game is released.

I've been playing a Black Orc so far, I might roll a Chaos something-or-other shortly to get the most out of preview weekend. Black Orcs have this weird combo points/stances/Angry-O-Meter thing (It's the little green Orc symbol above the action bars in the screenshot) that requires you to use small attacks in order to use the big attacks. It's kind of interesting, but it makes me realize how bad I suck at playing Warrior classes. I've actually died a couple of times so far (One time was my own fault, I got curious about fall damage), but so far there hasn't been any de-levelling or rez sickness or duration penalties or anything.

I've yet to hear if WAR will allow addons, but you can fully customize your UI in game. I haven't fiddled around with that much yet because I'm still learning what buttons do what, but just having the option there is awesome. Also, I have seen a few graphical screwups in the game, such as magic attacks hovering over a corpse long after they're dead, shields/swords dissapearing into people's backs, freaky slow-motion squigs, etc. There are a few framerate problems as well . It's pretty funny to watch people walking around all jerky, like old Doom/Wolfenstein sprites though. In Mythic/EA's defense, I'm still in the Orc starting area and it's fucking CROWDED.

One last thing: This little blocked off portal/cave/instance thing piqued my interest. Maybe a starting dungeon for Orcs? It's probably nothing, but the glowy WAR symbol and it's placement in the Orc starting area makes me speculate...





More pictures:
(NOTE: The fuzziness is due to me trying to condense these down into little .JPGs. Everything is MUCH clearer in game)

Wot da Zog?

It's been quite a while, has it not? I've been out of the MMO scene for about a year now...since then, I've gotten a new computer, got back into Dungeons and Dragons, got a worthwhile job, developed an odd obsession for all things WALL-E, and I've been following the slow-and-steady progress of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. Long story short: after months of not getting into the closed beta I went out and pre-ordered the damn thing last fall, insuring that I'd get to play in open beta.

Well, open beta will FINALLY be starting shortly, with Preview Weekend taking this place this Friday (got my invite; can't wait). I'll be logging my WAR progress just as I did my WoW characters. That'll be fun, right?
Right?

So you're not coming back to WoW?

• Not at the moment, no. Idachi didn't even have a piece of T4 gear; she'd be useless nowadays. Also, I'm a little burnt out at the moment.