2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for putting all the time you have done into your blog posts and videos. You sold me on the idea of a Shaman, when I was sure I'd swear off healing. I'm having a wonderful time with him on an OpenRvR server.

However, I hate you for calling 36 middle aged ;-)

September 17, 2008 10:24 PM

Bendyr said...

Love your blog. Just curious, are you still subscribed to/playing wow?

I have been playing WAR since the start of the open beta, and I was thinking of quitting WoW, and seriously RIGHT THEN, I got a wotlk beta key. It was like giving a heroin addict a free syringe.

So right now, I'm splitting time between leveling my new WAR toon (I started on the SE date), and playing around with the new builds in wotlk beta.

Haven't really decided what I'll be doing come november, but right now I'm enjoying both games.

September 18, 2008 4:08 PM

I feel the time has come for me to give my full Warhammer Online review. Tomorrow is the day of reckoning for Mythic and now the game counts. No more character wipes, no more focused testing, and all progression gets saved. Its where the rubber meets the road, and I think that I can start my review now as it may wind up being lengthy. Anyone that visits this site regularly knows that I like this game, it has basically taken over this site and taken it from A Wall of Text to a A Wall of Warhammer. While it may be overkill that I do a review of this game, I decided that I would like to document my thoughts on War at launch, so I decided to forward with a lengthy review. This particular review will bring us back to our roots of walls of text, so go get a drink and take a bio break if you plan to read this in its entirety. I'll break it up into pieces and start with part 1, which may help give you some insight into why I have followed War so closely.

This review is going to touch on many different aspects, and will be my OPINION of things, so consider that when reading. I know that this game will not be for everyone, and that some will disagree with me. Before you dive in full tilt and begin reading my review, I think some background is in order. That being said, let me begin...Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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Part 1: First some background:
I'm a middle aged guy, 36 years old. I've loved games all my life, starting with my first Atari system that my Dad got me many moons ago. I've never grown out of that love for games, and perhaps never will. I'm still that 10 year old kid in so many ways, love for games included. I've played alot of games, from FPS to RPG's, but have decided that MMORPG's suit me the best because of their social aspects. I've grown to the point where I don't like playing against artificial intelligence or scripted encounters, I like playing against other people. I took no joy in beating any game's AI, except to do it as practice for the real competition - other gamers. I still have very fond memories of the upsets, grudge matches and trash talking that happend in our college apartment over Madden football on the now ancient Sega system. Ok enough of ancient history, and on to the recent past. Bear with me, I'm getting there!

After long stints with SOE's games, EQ/EQII/SWG I landed in Blizzard's Azeroth 3 years ago. I was married then, but we had no children. I had plenty of time to raid every night for hours on end, and I did just that. My Alliance guild would clear Molten Core and BWL in the same night, at record speeds. We did all the end game dungeons, the soon to be gone Naxxaramas included. In the end, the raiding treadmill burned me out and I couldn't do it any longer. My wife and I had our first child, and I had way less time every evening to commit to it anyway. Blizzard then introduced the Burning Crusade, which brought in Arenas and small scale raids. This kept me playing because I could do smaller raids with less time investment, and eventually, leave raiding behind entirely in favor of doing almost nothing but PVP related activities. Ok, I burned out on that too, frustrated by the implementation of their PVP systems and raiding treadmill and began searching for other games that might cater to my play style a little more.

I found Age of Conan, and I've covered that disappointment in depth so there's no reason to go there again. I also started to read about this game you might also have heard about, Warhammer Online. I decided that after AoC's failure I would watch the game's development as closely as I could. I never played DAoC, as I was a raiding/PVE only guy and liked EverQuest at that time. I regretted never having tried it, and promised myself I'd give this new title from Mythic a good look. I began to read some really good things, design ideas and thoughts about MMORPG's that I really agreed with on a philosophical level. Finally, it felt like a game developer understood me. I shouldn't need to sacrifice so much time to have fun in an MMORPG. It would be balanced around PVP/RVR, it would try to take as many of the good things from past games and keep them, while throwing out what sucked about them.

Great! Sign me up, I thought. But being a pessimist by nature (and experiencing SWG and AoC first hand) will always make a sceptical gamer out of me. I've fallen in love with games and the ideas behind them (SWG) only to face disappointment as the game I love was ruined by a myriad of factors (damn you SOE) that caused me to be wary yet again. So, I've been caught between getting excited about a game again and being scared of all the pitfalls that can lead to failure of even the best games out there. Regardless, its better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, right? So begins my Warhammer journey, deciding to ride the wave for better or worse. Now, you know something about me, and also something about how I became such an avid follower of this new MMO. And then I got invited to the Warhammer Online closed beta and found the answers to my questions... read on for Part 2