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Warhammer 40K MMO Announced

There you go. I would avoid caring about it for a few years, but some of you have been hoping for it since Warhammer Online was announced. Perhaps that is how they justify “one of the most eagerly anticipated MMOs on the horizon” [citation needed].

I am going to assume it is vapor and forget about it until they reach open beta, but feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

: Zubon

Demigod

Demigod is similar to Defense of the Ancients All Stars (DotA), but feels more like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War than Warcraft 3. It has that pacing, with the back-and-forth around flags.

If you don’t know DotA, it is a custom map for Warcraft 3 that constitutes a new game and is starting to spawn a new sub-genre. You control one hero (of 80+) who levels up and buys items in classic CRPG fashion. Your goal is to destroy the enemy base, which is guarded by towers along the three entry paths. Waves of troops spawn at the end of each path at each base, crashing at the intersection. You support your troops, destroy enemy troops, and fight the enemy heroes doing the same, until one of you destroys the other’s base. It is a great game, and Warcraft 3 is worth buying just to play it.

Demigod is a lot of fun, and I’m not even playing it to its full potential. I have been playing alone with computer bots, learning how the heroes work. It is possible that it will all turn to ashes once I play real humans, who exploit imbalances instead of relying on an “as intended” AI, but I have been enjoying my time. I expect it to be even better on the LAN.

Continue reading Demigod

Nerf the Runekeeper

Nobody likes to be nerfed.  That’s a given.  Part of the joy in playing these games is watching your character get stronger and stronger.  You kill bigger and bigger things until you’re able to solo the gods themselves.  But when the nerf-bat hits you, you can’t solo the gods anymore, and you get the opposite of the joy you felt at leveling up.

But sometimes, nerfing is a good thing.  In Lotro, I’m playing this Runekeeper.  This chick heals great, deals the best damage in the game, can restore her own mana, and has a number of stunning abilities as well.  I find this character to be so strong that I’m actually looking forward to the nerf.  It’s silly for both hunter DPS and minstrel healing to be secondary to the same class.

The big question I keep wondering is, “Which will they nerf?”  The healing or the DPS?

Lotro’s Legendary Item Grind

The whole time I’ve been leveling up, I kept hearing about what a grind the legendary item system was.  People complained about it and I said, “Do you really HAVE to have the best weapon in the game and does it have to be max level”  Now that I’ve spent a couple weeks working on my legendary weapons, and it’s time to reflect.

Yes… the legendary item system is a grind.  I’m beginning to wonder if running Helegrod 300 times while hoping for a super-rare drop is actually a superior system.  Let me explain why my feelings have changed a bit.

The task of getting  a super-rare drop is running an instance.  You’re hanging with friends, you’re killing big monsters, and you’re watching the loot pop up like a slot-machine.  One of my kin-mates put it like this, “The rarer the drop, the bigger the rush when you get it”.  The only drawback is being forced to wait for a group who wants to do it.

For my legendary weapons, I’ve been doing solo instances over and over again.  Even if I want to hang out with a friend to do the instance, I can’t.  I need to just be all by my lonesome the whole time.  The instances are not particularly challenging either.  I notice when I play these solo instances, I usually become quiet on my guild’s teamspeak server.  I just sit there playing the instance in silence.  At it’s core, the solo instances are not fun.

Do I have to do all this grinding to be capable of tackling the content?  No, no I don’t.  Yet that is my perception alone.  I’ve already been refused admission to a turtle raid because of my equipment.  Psychologically, that makes me want to be as close to the cap as possible so that I feel sure I am an asset, not a burden, to a group.  So I grind my little weapon away… trying to get better relics, trying to get higher level weapons, and trying to get higher deeds.

Make Them All Giant Monsters

Yesterday’s comments prompted a weird proposal: remove enemy levels entirely.

For those of you who do not know City of Heroes’ giant monster code, they treat all characters as even-level. You should have the same chance to hit (and debuff effect, armor, etc.) as everyone else, and you receive level-appropriate damage; I think damage does not scale perfectly, because higher-level characters seem to do a lot more even after taking into account higher level enhancements, and healing is still level-appropriate so level 1s do jack for level 50s.

What happens if you apply something like this to every single enemy in the game? You can still have levels, when you get new skills and improvements to them, but they are equally effective against every enemy in the game (modulo resistances). You can still have higher-con enemies, but they will be orange to everyone.

Continue reading Make Them All Giant Monsters

WINNERS

I have chosen the winners (it was not easy) of the 5 retail keys for “The Lord of the Rings Online™: Mines of Moria™ Complete DIGITAL DOWNLOAD” as part of our five year anniversary celebration and they are as follows:

Merimet
Genda
bonedead (I’ll pass on the trade offer though!)
Sean
yunk (I’m not positive yunk was entering but his comment was epic)
yunk has passed so the new winner of the 5th and final key is: Rocqu

I will contact you via the email you used to post in the thread. If you would like to pass, let me know and I will choose one of the runner-ups.

Thank you so much to Turbine for donating the keys and congratulations to the winners!

– Ethic