Kill Ten Rats

Most of the Order and Destruction classes echo each other. The Rune Priest and Zealot are pretty clearly the same class with different coats of paint. Take a Bright Wizard, substitute “dark magic” for pyromania, and you have a Sorceress.

Other classes are clearly the same but sure feel a lot different. Take the Engineer and the Magus. You get it when I tell you that the turrets and the summoned demons are the same; the graphics are different, but you see how a “flamer demon” and a “flame turret” line up. Except that the flamer demons lines up with the grenade turret, and we’re just getting started.

My Engineer throws Acid Bomb: they burn and take away your Corporeal resistance. “Glean Magic” is a soul drain, doing exactly the same thing with Spirit damage and resistance, but getting your spirit sucked by a demon summoner seems a fair ways from an acid burst. You get the same switch between a Sticky Bomb and infecting the enemy with a Seed of Chaos: either way, boom. Does Surge of Insanity feel like a Flashbang Grenade?

The Greenskin and High Elf classes tend to mirror each other, but no one is mistaking a Swordmaster for a Black Orc, a White Lion for a Squig Herder, or an Archmage for a Shaman. Well, until the last two pull out their death rays, then they start to look a bit alike.

: Zubon

See the Rune Priest. Some differences appear at later levels, but they are almost the same class at level 10. Instead of a big stick, the Zealot has a dagger before him along with poor Yorick.

Zealots seem rare and/or difficult to kill. They are the only class for which my Engineer does not have “kill 25” completed. I assume the other options win out. If you want a healer, you can be a Disciple of Khaine (redefining overpowered) or a Shaman (great flavor, green death ray). If you want to play Chaos, you can summon demons from your hoverboard, turn your arm into blades and tentacles while shouting “Tetsuo!” or play the only armored knight-looking class in the game. “Slavering cultist” is less cool, as is the special mechanic “a buff.” They do have the advantage of being nearly invisible on the battlefield except for the characteristic slouch and dagger slash.

As a healer, the experience differs because the number of tanks does. Destruction has too many tanks while Order has too many ranged DPS. My Rune Priest ran a scenario in which the allied team was all Bright Wizards and Witch Hunters (one of them above level 5). My Chosen ran a scenario in which his team was five other meleers. These are only slightly unusual. As a healer, I prefer teammates who can survive the few seconds I need to notice damage, switch targets, and cast a spell. The Bright Wizard is blowing himself up even before two Marauders start mutilating him. The slavering cultist likes hiding behind meat shields.

: Zubon

Over at Hardcore Casual, Syncaine writes about the need (mostly aimed at WAR players) to slow down and enjoy the game.  One of the best points, hidden in the middle of the post, is how to “correctly” do Public Quests (“PQ’s”).  Oh allow me to remember those days when I kept up with the hardcore pack, and PQs were constantly rolling over so that one could merely stand in one place and rack up the glorious influence.  Now, I see ghost towns.

The key to completing PQs is to achieve a critical mass of players. This takes time, and it is very hard not to take the immediate satisfaction/rewards of scenarios. However finishing PQs can pay off. Your best bet to start the petri dish growth is to call out and party up with guild or alliance members. A simple tank/healer combo can deal with most of the early parts of the PQ easily, and if you add in a DPS-type player, Stage II will be nothing. When other players see three (oh my gosh) players hitting a PQ in the open groups panel, the decision is easy. There is now instant gratification.  The PQ population will start gravitating players on its own.  I have seen this time and time again playing as the initial spore for the PQ.

The best part of being the initial player to call to arms at a PQ is you can choose which PQ you want to play. In the nearly bygone days of the rampaging hardcore it was nearly impossible to snatch players away from the PQ that was closest to the rez point.

There are still a few problems with PQs. First, they are unforgiving with class balance.  Not having a tank is the worst when standing against hard-hitting Hero mobs, and life is never easy without a healbot.  Second, the open grouping system still needs tweaks.  I think for PQ open groups, the group should be location-based (ala Meeting Stone) rather than following a free-roaming person.  Many times I have searched out PQ groups only to find they were not anywhere near the PQ that the system claimed. I feel that within the year’s end we will get an update for them, but Mythic has to see what a “stable” population is doing with them.
–Ravious

Never seen that one before. It looks like everyone got full experience.

: Zubon

The Rune Priest is the most vanilla healer class. It special mechanic is giving you a buff that also lets you fire an attack once/minute. Other than that, it has all the standard healer abilities with names that start with “Rune of.”

Very early on, you realize why these things are buggers to kill in RvR. They get an insta-cast burst heal at level 1, while most classes have HoTs and/or casting times. Level 3 brings an insta-cast HoT, 8 brings the big slow heal, and 10 gives you the combo burst with HoT. The insta-cast HoT is the best except for the fact that it takes 15 seconds to give that massive amount of healing. The level 1 insta-heal is nice for RvR panic healmenowomg, but it is not efficient at all. The same 30 action points and 0 casting time gets you more than 5 times as much HoT. Again, “oT.” You also get a bubble at level 6, which is great even if it does not do much against RvR focus fire. It can give you enough time to stack your other heals on the target.

Continue reading Rune Priest at Level 10

Players in MMOs are well known to create their own fun apart from the developer-created fun.  Guild Wars has had rallies to save an evil enemy race.  Lord of the Rings Online has had chicken races going all the way to Rivendell.  Even World of Warcraft players will take time to march in-game for presidential candidates.

One of the best fallback player-run events is role-playing, especially in Warhammer Online where dancing is not allowed.  Role-playing can occur anywhere, and if you are imaginative enough (read: clinically insane) you could even roleplay with the NPCs.  So it was that a band of three Greenskins: Bukket the Shaman, Teefs the Squig Herder, and Lolrus the Black Orc, set out to WAAAAAGH!!!, and along the way roleplay by macro.

We each created 3-6 chat macros, where our character would speak upon a simple button press.  I am sure that more complex chat macros could be created, but ours were simply “/say [TEXT].”  An example of one would be Lolrus saying “TEEFS SHOOT YER ARRERS FASTA, GIT!!!”  Of course Black Orcs have to yell, but you knew that.  The interesting part was that with only 3-6 sayings each we were creating whole Greenskin conversations, which probably only really worked because we were Greenskins.

Teefs: Bukket you iz a smelly fungus.
Lolrus: DAS GOOD, BUKKET!!!
Bukket: Shut yer git-face, Teefs, and shootz da stunty!
Lolrus: TEEFS SHOOT YER ARRERS FASTA!!!
Teefs: Lolrus, you iz da biggest git I knowz.
And so proceed ad infinitum (until Mythic told me in chat to think about what I am saying).

It was great fun, and just a few button presses (that really didn’t affect gameplay) enlivened the game a lot. I loved the Heroes (and Henchmen) in the later Guild Wars modules that would speak out during combat and down-time, and the ability to emulate it was great. You too might want to consider a button-press combat shout to make sure the troops are awake. It can only add to the game. There is an add-on made especially for such fun: Think Out Loud for Warhammer Online that activates when you use skills.  If nothing else, it is super useful to auto-call rez’s.
–Ravious

Credit to Mythic, responses to issue have been timely. Early server clones, spammer updates within a week (and SpamMeNot recommendation in the meantime), leveling rate updates, a variety of bug fixes, and assorted post-release tuning. They are doing a great job with first month tune-ups, much of which is a credit to the state in which the game released.

I am expecting some new patch and a big announcement this week. This is purely based on timing: the free month is almost over, so you want to get people to stick around another month. Give them a bone, give them hope, and you have another month to work out any issues.

They seem to be doing this without a test server. I have this horrible vision of a Herald update: “We have taken servers down to resolve a bug that deleted any character that attempted to log in under the last patch. We have already restored deleted characters and are working on a way to deal with the rollback to the last full save point.” Or maybe I am just having EVE flashbacks there.

: Zubon