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Let loose the dogs of WAR
17 years ago
Alright, Im sure someone else has posted something like this, and Im probably a bit late, but I wanted to play around for a while before I posted anything. Firstly, some of you that know me in SL might of noticed I havent been on much or been releaseing anything new lately. The blame rests squarely on Warhammer Online. Now, I know Im probably biased, since I've been a fan of Warhammer for years, but I can honestly say that Im enjoying it alot more than I ever enjoyed Warcraft. Saying that, I mean as far as the game itself. There are still a few things that are pretty rough and need to be refined some, but that's to be expected with a game of this kind that's only recently come out. I mean, when WoW first came out, nothing worked. But anyway, the quests make alot more sense to me. You're not running into some dungeon to bring back someone's favorite spoon. All the quests revolve around the war that's going on. Yes, there is an actual war in WAR. It's all about killing NPCs that work for the other side, or raiding their supplies, or bringing more NPCs over to your side, and that's just the strictly PvE quests. There's lots of quests that send you either right to the front lines for the objectives, or are all about killing other people, as you'd expect quests to be when there's a war going on.
The Public Quests are great in my opinion. Some people might think it's the same as the rep-grind in WoW, but they'd be wrong. Each area within a zone has it's own public quests and area if Influence, and there can be three or four such areas in each zone. When you wander into the area, you're suddenly part of the Public Quest, and you can take part in it, even without havieng to be in the same group as other people. You can even jump in in the middle of it all. Ofcorse you get loot and exp for what you do in it, and if you see it through to the end, you get a quest reward, depending on how much you contributed to it. A smart idea to avoid those people that just try to jump in when the last fight is almost over. I've even chewed through most of the first part of a PQ, went to do something else, and came back as some other people finished it and got something for the effort I put forth earlier! And best of all, you can do them over and over again! Now, what does this have to do with Influence? Well, killing PQ mobs (that's mmo speak for monsters) or doing the other objectives gives you Influence in that area. And when you get so much, you can go talk to an NPC back at camp and he gives you more loot! Now, Im bet you're thinking that's still like a WoW rep-grind. Well, here's the kicker. If you dont want to bother with it till later, you dont have to. You can skip the PQs and Influence in areas and move on to later ones if you want, and still get those rewards which are higher level than the ones you skipped. Now, you may still want to do the others too, since all the gear is tailored for the level range the PQ is in, so it's a good way to keep your gear up.
Speaking of gear, I LOVE that everything you get from quests is for YOUR career (class in other words) and you wont be vendoring quest rewards just cause it gave nothing good for your class. If you come through the same area with a new character of a diffirent class, all the rewards will be for his class, so you never end up with quest rewards you cant use. Now, dropped loot is another matter. You will still find gear for other classes off of monsters, and that's to be expected. But they also added in junked items. Now, these are bits of gear that are damaged and cant be used, but you can take them to vendors and have them fixed into something useful. And the best part, it will tell you what it can be made into, and the same junked item can be made into something else for any class just about! So if you have an orc with badass shoulders, find a set of junked shoulders that aint better than the ones you got now, mail them to your goblin shaman and he can use them instead!
Now this brings me to the PvP. Oh Dark Gods, the PvP is SO much better than in WoW. All your class skills are useful in PvP, there's nothing wasted. Even the de-taunts you use to make monsters attack someone else cause PvP targets to do less damage to you. The classes work great in PvP. Granted there's a few I think need to be tweeked a bit, but again, that's to be expected. Healers are a major danger in PvP, and not just for keeping the other people alive. They HURT! Not only that, but in the scenarios (their version of WoW's Battlegrounds) healing actualy counts like damage for how much Renown you get at the end. People actualy heal in PvP fights rather than just trying to throw out the most damage to get more kills. The scenarios are more than just capture the flag. There's King of the Hill type ones, relay races, even keep-away ones. Not only that, but you get quests to do each one, and you can turn the quests in over and over again. And the Open World PvP is something I actualy enjoy. Now, let me just say that back in WoW, I hated PvP. It wasnt balanced, there was no real insentive beyond getting better items. The Battle Grounds were only slightly evened out cause everyone was within 10 levels of you, and most of the time it was a constant blur of getting gang-raped while I was trying to find the main group. In WAR, if you're a low level, once you join a scenario or enter a PvP zone, your stats, health, and items all got buffed up to a couple levels below the max for that area. All you were realy missing is the abilities with those levels, so you stand more of a chance. And while on the topic of things being more fair, there is one thing I have to say. ALL HAIL THE CHICKEN! I swear, it was a stroke of divine genius when they came up with that. Say, you're like level 5 in WoW and you're on a PVP server. You run out to do your questing. A level 70 from the other side rides up on his mount, one-shot kills you, then rides off to find the next lowbie to kill. Alright, now say the same scenario happens in WAR. The guy rides up (level 40 in this case), goes to hit you, and suddenly he turns into a chicken with 20% life, no idems, no abilities, and crap stats. Serves him right! If you get your jollies by killing people that cant fight back and makeing them miserable, then this is the reward you get. I know it throws realism out the window but damn it, this is a game we play to enjoy, not to get filled with angst cause someone wants to be a killjoy.
Siege weapons, keep assaults, battlefield objectives, city attacks, the list of awesome PVP goes on. But there's only one big problem with WAR right now. It. Needs. People.
WoW has been around so long, there are way too many people that are afraid to leave it. Worried about havieng to start over in something new. Afraid to leave something they know for something diffirent. People keep saying there's so much more content in WoW. Firstly, when they look at the map of WoW and the map of WAR they say that WoW has more zones. And it does, but the zones are ALOT smaller. If you actualy look at the area of each zone in WAR and WoW, WoW is only slightly bigger, which means it only has slightly more content (latest expansion not included). They also say that WoW has more stuff. Well, they've had what? 5 years? Ofcorse they'll have more stuff since they've had more time. Doesnt mean that WAR isnt going to be adding more stuff or that WoW's stuff is better. Any MMO that comes out now or later is going to be compaired to WoW and you have to realize that the longer an MMO is out, the bigger it will be, and any new games need time to expand before they can fairly be compaired to one that's been swelling for years. Hell, WAR is about to do something that WoW has never done, add in classes in an update patch. WoW has only now decided to add in a new class.
I can understand sticking with WoW if you're afraid to change, if you dont want to leave your comfort zone. That's fine, it's your choice. But when you look at the two games on the barest level, WoW doesnt stack up to WAR. And it's annoyeing the crap out of me that a game like this doesnt have the playerbase it should just because people are afraid to leave WoW behind. It's had a good run, WoW has been alot of fun, but it's time to move on and grow up.
BTW, if I've offended anyone in my little rant, I'd just like to say that this is my opinion, and you're free to form your own. But still, I do have a point with all this.
The Public Quests are great in my opinion. Some people might think it's the same as the rep-grind in WoW, but they'd be wrong. Each area within a zone has it's own public quests and area if Influence, and there can be three or four such areas in each zone. When you wander into the area, you're suddenly part of the Public Quest, and you can take part in it, even without havieng to be in the same group as other people. You can even jump in in the middle of it all. Ofcorse you get loot and exp for what you do in it, and if you see it through to the end, you get a quest reward, depending on how much you contributed to it. A smart idea to avoid those people that just try to jump in when the last fight is almost over. I've even chewed through most of the first part of a PQ, went to do something else, and came back as some other people finished it and got something for the effort I put forth earlier! And best of all, you can do them over and over again! Now, what does this have to do with Influence? Well, killing PQ mobs (that's mmo speak for monsters) or doing the other objectives gives you Influence in that area. And when you get so much, you can go talk to an NPC back at camp and he gives you more loot! Now, Im bet you're thinking that's still like a WoW rep-grind. Well, here's the kicker. If you dont want to bother with it till later, you dont have to. You can skip the PQs and Influence in areas and move on to later ones if you want, and still get those rewards which are higher level than the ones you skipped. Now, you may still want to do the others too, since all the gear is tailored for the level range the PQ is in, so it's a good way to keep your gear up.
Speaking of gear, I LOVE that everything you get from quests is for YOUR career (class in other words) and you wont be vendoring quest rewards just cause it gave nothing good for your class. If you come through the same area with a new character of a diffirent class, all the rewards will be for his class, so you never end up with quest rewards you cant use. Now, dropped loot is another matter. You will still find gear for other classes off of monsters, and that's to be expected. But they also added in junked items. Now, these are bits of gear that are damaged and cant be used, but you can take them to vendors and have them fixed into something useful. And the best part, it will tell you what it can be made into, and the same junked item can be made into something else for any class just about! So if you have an orc with badass shoulders, find a set of junked shoulders that aint better than the ones you got now, mail them to your goblin shaman and he can use them instead!
Now this brings me to the PvP. Oh Dark Gods, the PvP is SO much better than in WoW. All your class skills are useful in PvP, there's nothing wasted. Even the de-taunts you use to make monsters attack someone else cause PvP targets to do less damage to you. The classes work great in PvP. Granted there's a few I think need to be tweeked a bit, but again, that's to be expected. Healers are a major danger in PvP, and not just for keeping the other people alive. They HURT! Not only that, but in the scenarios (their version of WoW's Battlegrounds) healing actualy counts like damage for how much Renown you get at the end. People actualy heal in PvP fights rather than just trying to throw out the most damage to get more kills. The scenarios are more than just capture the flag. There's King of the Hill type ones, relay races, even keep-away ones. Not only that, but you get quests to do each one, and you can turn the quests in over and over again. And the Open World PvP is something I actualy enjoy. Now, let me just say that back in WoW, I hated PvP. It wasnt balanced, there was no real insentive beyond getting better items. The Battle Grounds were only slightly evened out cause everyone was within 10 levels of you, and most of the time it was a constant blur of getting gang-raped while I was trying to find the main group. In WAR, if you're a low level, once you join a scenario or enter a PvP zone, your stats, health, and items all got buffed up to a couple levels below the max for that area. All you were realy missing is the abilities with those levels, so you stand more of a chance. And while on the topic of things being more fair, there is one thing I have to say. ALL HAIL THE CHICKEN! I swear, it was a stroke of divine genius when they came up with that. Say, you're like level 5 in WoW and you're on a PVP server. You run out to do your questing. A level 70 from the other side rides up on his mount, one-shot kills you, then rides off to find the next lowbie to kill. Alright, now say the same scenario happens in WAR. The guy rides up (level 40 in this case), goes to hit you, and suddenly he turns into a chicken with 20% life, no idems, no abilities, and crap stats. Serves him right! If you get your jollies by killing people that cant fight back and makeing them miserable, then this is the reward you get. I know it throws realism out the window but damn it, this is a game we play to enjoy, not to get filled with angst cause someone wants to be a killjoy.
Siege weapons, keep assaults, battlefield objectives, city attacks, the list of awesome PVP goes on. But there's only one big problem with WAR right now. It. Needs. People.
WoW has been around so long, there are way too many people that are afraid to leave it. Worried about havieng to start over in something new. Afraid to leave something they know for something diffirent. People keep saying there's so much more content in WoW. Firstly, when they look at the map of WoW and the map of WAR they say that WoW has more zones. And it does, but the zones are ALOT smaller. If you actualy look at the area of each zone in WAR and WoW, WoW is only slightly bigger, which means it only has slightly more content (latest expansion not included). They also say that WoW has more stuff. Well, they've had what? 5 years? Ofcorse they'll have more stuff since they've had more time. Doesnt mean that WAR isnt going to be adding more stuff or that WoW's stuff is better. Any MMO that comes out now or later is going to be compaired to WoW and you have to realize that the longer an MMO is out, the bigger it will be, and any new games need time to expand before they can fairly be compaired to one that's been swelling for years. Hell, WAR is about to do something that WoW has never done, add in classes in an update patch. WoW has only now decided to add in a new class.
I can understand sticking with WoW if you're afraid to change, if you dont want to leave your comfort zone. That's fine, it's your choice. But when you look at the two games on the barest level, WoW doesnt stack up to WAR. And it's annoyeing the crap out of me that a game like this doesnt have the playerbase it should just because people are afraid to leave WoW behind. It's had a good run, WoW has been alot of fun, but it's time to move on and grow up.
BTW, if I've offended anyone in my little rant, I'd just like to say that this is my opinion, and you're free to form your own. But still, I do have a point with all this.
...Spite.
((Makes a mark in the Book of Grudges.))