Boat So Far

The last character I leveled to max was the original Boat.

He was a gnome warlock, and the max level was 70 because The Burning Crusade had just been released. I kept getting distracted with engineering and other amusements but finally hit 70. And it was glorious.

But that's all behind me. Right now I'm a rank 17 Ironbreaker, just trying to get by.

I chose a tank because it always seem like I needed a tank. "That guy does too much damage we need a tank." So now I never need tanks anymore, but instead I always need healers. They are a little more difficult to find. And woe to the scenario groups (of which I've had a few) that lucked into one or fewer healers.

By now I've seen a lot of scenarios. Order doesn't have much of a wait for scenarios, a situation that was not unanticipated. I got through level 15 in about an hour and a half losing scenario after scenario. It was a blast.

Poverty is my biggest obstacle at the moment. Evidently making fifteen gold by level twenty is easy. This makes my 9g50 at level 17 that much more frustrating, as there isn't a lot of talk about how to make the money I'll soon need.

That is, if I make it to rank twenty. I think I will but it seems so distant. My free time started at 7 PM tonight, and it will be 8 PM when I'm finished with the blog. Then I have two more chores to do and then I can play the game. I always think I'll play a new game obsessively but that's rarely the case. I think I've spent more time playing Castle Crashers this week than I have WAR.

I've been procrastinating on my leveling. Level 40 just seems so far away.

Fortunately I enjoy the Ironbreaker. It does great damage, it can take a beating, and it has all sorts of nice things that tanks never had in WoW. I have a ranged attack I can cast on the run. It has a chance of doing huge damage to a low health target. I have a nice powerful DoT that eliminates those pesky NPC low-health runners. I have a knockback which is novel to me, but also much beloved.

I just fell asleep twice writing this sentence and the next. I'll take that as a good omen and wrap it up. I'll see you in game.

Oh, and my addon article is up today.

Eight Quick Thoughts on Cultivation

I knew next to nothing about tradeskills going into release and I didn't care too much. I skipped any sort of crafting in the closed and open betas so I didn't even know what to expect.

But now I'm playing the game and I'm totally gung-ho about cultivating. Why? Well, the answer's simple : there are a bunch of cultivating mods and being a cultivator makes the column easier.

Here are some quick thoughts :

1. I just like cultivating
   
   I know there are a lot of complaints -- people who say it is boring or monotonous. It's not the greatest tradeskill I've ever seen, but it's pretty good for a gathering profession. I'd rank it second to fishing in WoW, which is my all-time favorite gathering profession.
   
   Of course, Warhammer is all about "war" so I don't think we'll see fishing anytime soon. (boo!)
   
   
2. If you're not using PlantMe, you should be using PlantMe
   
   PlantMe displays a little tiny cultivating UI instead of the big unwieldy actual cultivating UI. Also, it has drop down options for items which it auto-detects in your bags. So no hunting in your bags for soil, or water, or nutrient, or even seeds. Right-click, select from a menu, and that's it.
   
   
3. You can cultivate while you're doing something else
   
   Oh, and between the smallness and the no-inventoryness of PlantMe, and the slowness of cultivating, you can actually do cultivating while you're doing a PQ or doing quests or gabbing in vent. Doing cultivating during a scenario is still a bit much.
   
   
4. There are a lot of seeds and plants
   
   I'm sure this isn't entirely right, but it seems like there are two types of each seed at each level, and there are eight or ten types of seeds. Then seeds can produce like three different plants.
   
   So, it's cool to have variety but it's a little overwhelming sometime.
   
   
5. It really burns a hole in your inventory
   
   Not so much the seeds (that you can grow) but the results just take up a lot of space. Since there are fifty types of everything, stacking isn't going to save you a lot of space.
   
   
6. What it needs most
   
   I'd address the two previous problems in the same way : add an extra (large) cultivating bag that not only stores cultivating stuff but sorts it (oooh).
   
   
7. What else it needs most
   
   Some easy way to get high level vials and additives. I don't really know of any way besides running PQ's, so maybe I'll spend my empty-server, 5 AM saturday play sessions to run the hell out of that level 4 PQ.
   
   
8. Are some seeds endless?
   
   I have some double-bladed something-or-others (for weeds for resto pots) and every cultivation they give me a seed back. Of course I'm blowing about 75 copper on consumables for every pot, but it's still pretty cool.
   
   
9. Steelers Win!
   
   In OT. I'm so exhausted. Later.
   
   

What could you do in 48 hours?

So tonight I thought I would play Warhammer. So I did what I do to play Warhammer every night -- and in fact what each of you do every time you decide to play Warhammer.

Starting The Game

First I click my little quick launch icon for WAR.
Then I log in.
Then I click "Launch" on the launcher.
Then I wait through four -- count 'em -- four splash screens (EA, Mythic, Games Workshop, and Warhammer Online).
Then scroll down and hit a checkbox and then accept the EULA.
Then the character selection screen.
Then it loads on the final splash screen.
Then it goes to another loading screen.

Then finally the game is up. Time elapsed (on my fairly fast computer) : 1 minute 15 seconds.

Quitting the Game

Well, quitting is a little simpler. You hit the "Exit Game" button. The game counts down twenty seconds until you can exit. And then the game takes another twenty to twenty five seconds to actually exit. There's only one way to instantly exit the game, and that's to hit the "decline" button on the EULA. Maybe the EULA should be available during normal play so we can instantly exit the game.

But I digress. It takes 45 seconds to exit the game.

The Bottom Line

So, 1:15 to enter, :45 to leave, so that gives us 2 minutes of wasted time every time we play.

So, if my average play session is, say, 1 hour and 30 minutes, that means that around 2% of my playtime is spent waiting on the game. So if I eventually spend 100 days playing WAR (which is likely if I play for a few years) I will have spent 48 hours of my life just waiting for the game to start and end.

Yeeha.

Five Things From Friday 9 : Edition Edition

1. I've been playing Castle Crashers and I really like the game. The gameplay is a lot of fun, but it is also just a funny game.
   
   Consider all the different types of humor present in the game :
   
   Fecal Humor
   Scatological Humor
   Excremental Humor
   Poop Jokes
   
   There's really something for everyone.
   
   
2. So Syp made fun of me this week for compulsively linking to the casualties web site whenever I mention them. It's an effort for me to put links in articles (I hate doing it) so I'm pretty proud of myself when I do. And then Syp just waltzes in and tears me down.
   
   Of course, the only other site I compulsively link to is Waaagh. Perhaps he's jealous.
   
   
3. Do you need to play WAR to blog about WAR?
   
   This isn't the first time this question has occurred to me, but it's Thursday night and I just wrapped up my blog and can finally play. It's also 10 PM (my usual bed time : 10 PM).
   
   Is there like a WAR blogger union or anything? Can I just blog about WAR and then go to bed? Is that OK?
   
   
4. I did another addon column and compared some cultivating addons. I hereby encourage the reading of said column.
   
   
5. I remember the oft-repeated insult in WoW, that hardcore players had no lives. I never found that to be true. In fact, most of the hardcore players I knew basically played WoW like a full-time job, and then took weekends off to hang out with their friends. That was bad for me and my wife, as we couldn't find groups on weekends (when we actually had time to play).
   
   So of course I was playing tonight. I hit rank 16/RR 13 just doing Mourkain all night. Yeeha.
   

My First Keep Siege

Two nights ago I participated in my very first keep siege with my guild. JoBildo already talked about this particular raid so I'm not going to go into too much detail about the highlights of the raid itself.

(Basically, we tried to siege a keep, were unsuccessful, went away, then came back and helped finish the job. Yeeha.)

Five quick thoughts :

1. My Awesome Contribution
   
   I was 4th of 71 players. I must be really good. Either that or the keep door closed on us halfway through the siege and I spent fifteen minutes banging away at it.
   
   Considering the inadvertently shady way I got the points, I wasn't too broken up about ...
   
   
2. My Awful Roll
   
   
   
   Yeah, so I went from 4th to 37th. Like I said, I wasn't too upset. Note the contributions of the loot-getters :
   
   Belmirus (5th contribution)
   Ruebar (below 10th contribution)
   Jobildo (7th contribution)
   Oakstout (8th contribution)
   Taea (below 10th contribution)
   PenutButerJely (3rd contribution)
   Pietor (9th contribution)
   Erazer (below 10th contribution)
   
   Although the 1st and 2nd place contribution didn't get any loot, five of the eight loot-getters were in the top ten. So, like Mythic said, it's not just but it's fair.
   
   Or maybe they said it was not fair, but it was just. I forget.
   
   
3. Eight Lesser Loot Bags?
   
   I've occasionally seen greater loot bags but it's surprising how many T2 Public Quests only drop lesser loot bags, regardless of the number of participants. This is a little disappointing, especially considering it's a keep siege.
   
   Not to mention -- 8 bags for 71 participants is also a little disappointing.
   
   
4. The Waiting
   
   I believe it was Jimmy Cagney who explained that he was paid "for waiting". The acting, he said, was a delight and he'd do it for free.
   
   Funny that I always think of this quote when I'm playing MMORPG's. Somewhere deep in my heart I hoped that no more PvE raiding meant no more waiting. RvR would surely be the antidote for that.
   
   It was a little. We didn't have to hold up the raid for healers or tanks.
   
   But we did have to wait for a keep to fall so we could take it back. And then we had to leave for a second keep because it was clear we wouldn't take the first keep. And then we had to come back because the second keep was already under order control. Then we came back in time for the first keep to be taken.
   
   So there was still a lot of waiting.
   
   
5. The Leaving
   
   I was tired and had to go to bed, so I just said good night and logged off. No guilt, no hole in the raid, no problems. That was really nice.
   
   Getting in the warband was equally easy. Didn't have to worry about it already being filled up with tanks or ironbreakers. That was also really nice.
   
   
6. The XP and Renown
   
   I got very little XP or renown for the night's activities. It was fun to siege a keep with guildies but I think they'll soon be a tier ahead of me anyway.
   
   And even if they weren't I felt pretty ineffective as a rank 13 in a T2 scenario. In the future I'll probably avoid keep sieges unless I'm at least in the upper half of the level bracket.
   
   

Mythic's First Five Enhancements

Yesterday I talked about the first five things I'd like to see Mythic fix now that the game has been released. Today I'm going to tell you the first ten things I'd like to see Mythic implement :

1. Item Links
   
   Pretty much everybody has been clamoring for item links and I'd just like to add my voice to the chorus. Since you can get gear in this game so many different ways it's just exceptionally confusing. Item links would go a long way towards smoothing that out.
   
   
2. More Flight Masters
   
   I read a blog post the other day where someone literally said they like how the long runs make the game feel epic. When I have to take a nice long run I experience epic boredom.
   
   For a game that prides itself on "jumping into" things, the whole five-minute-run-between-every-quest-hub thing seems particularly lame.
   
   
3. Capitol City Progress
   
   I know that our Altdorf is level 1. I don't know how close we are to level 2. I have no idea what even gets us closer to level 2. It would be really nice to see a progress bar that lets us know how close or far away we are from level 2.
   
   
4. Individual Guild XP/Cap City Contributions
   
   Likewise, it would be nice to know how much we ourselves are contributing to both the capitol city progress and our individual guild XP.
   
   
5. In-Game Addon Management
   
   In WoW there was (eventually) a neat utility before you logged on that allowed you to turn mods on and off, see which mods were working, and even set custom mods that would be used only for specific characters. It would be really nice if Mythic added something similar for WAR addons.
   

Mythic's First Five Bug Fixes

We are released! Yaay! I've given Mythic about nine days before I demanded changes in the game, which I think is fair. These are the fixes I would like to see now, pronto, post-haste:

(Note that in the spirit of this blog, when I say "five" I don't want to be constrained or limited by the number 5, which is a western, manocentric term anyway. Also note that these are not the enhancements I'd like to see, that's another blog.)

1. Working Auction House Categories
   
   I select the little guy that says "Only Ironbreaker Gear" and then I get ... every kind of gear.
   
   I know that the AH is the last thing that Mythic introduced, I just want Mythic to recognize that the AH is the last thing they introduced and get this (and any other AH bugs which I'm sure exist) fixed quickly so I can use the darn thing.
   
   
2. Clunky Combat
   
   The combat is fun but never feels quite right. Especially those times when I'm smacking some guy and have to hit Binding Grudge like five times before my character actually casts it.
   
   If I hit a spell I should cast the spell unless I'm violating a cooldown or something.
   
   
3. CTD's
   
   If you're acronym deficient (or "AD", as I often call it), CTD means Crash To Desktop. Although this list is in no particular order the CTD's are definitely the worst problem. I probably get a CTD once every one or two hours, which is way too much.
   
   
4. Alt-Tab
   
   Related to the CTD's. I and many other people are seeing lots of crashes when we alt-tab out of the game. Please don't go all FFXI on us, give us back our alt-tabs!
   
   
5. EULA
   
   I know your lawyers say that players need to click it every time they play the game. Your players, however, don't want to have to move the scroll bar, click a checkbox, and then click the bloody button every single time.
   
   So, here's the compromise, which I think is fair : send your lawyer and the EULA into a room. Two go in, one comes out.
   
   
6. Quit Game
   
   Typically in video games, pressing the "Quit Game" button allows you to quit the game. This makes a lot of sense, as if a player presses the "Quit Game" button they probably want to quit the game.
   
   So I find it interesting that pressing the "Quit Game" button in WAR does not actually quit the game. Instead the game goes into a laborious 20 second logout cycle. Well, it does if you're lucky. If you're not lucky you're in combat and the game won't let you exit at all.
   
   So if I'm playing a scenario and my son wakes up crying, I can't just say "hey, I want to quit". I also can't just leave, because I don't want to go afk in the scenario. Instead I have to alt-tab, bring up the Task Manager, find WAR, and kill it.
   
   Amazingly, when I do this it does not break the game. Servers don't explode. I don't lose my character or anything. So what I want you to do, Mythic, is to use this idea of "killing" the process, and apply that functionality to your "quit game" button. Because the whole alt-tab-task-manager-finding-war-killing-it thing is getting really old.

So what bug fixes would y'all like to see?

Taking Your Guild To The Next Level

Being in Casualties has made me think a lot about how guilds work, and how they can be better. I'm not saying my guild could be better, of course. My guild is perfect. But while I'm playing with my awesome guild I often think about how bad other guilds are, and how they could be better.

This probably mirrors your own thoughts. Why is my guild bad? Why can't it be as good and as cool as Casualties?

Well, I'm not in your guild, so your pretty much sunk right there. But yet, your guild could be better. And there are a lot of ways your guild could get better, but today I'm only going to talk about one.

Making Your Guild Better Through DKP Minus

Noobs are everywhere and it seems like there are more noobs everyday. In fact, the number of noobs is increasing rapidly. The UN High Commission on Cyberhealth estimates that by 2017 there will be more than seven billion noobs in the world.

Now, the limits of modern technology do not allow your WAR guild to contain all seven billion noobs, although it may seem that way. Nevertheless, it still likely that your guild is, as a statistician might say, bleeding noobs from its eyes.

Never fear! There is a brighter tomorrow and its name is DKP Minus. DKP stands for "Dragon Kill Points", and it was one of many innovative systems developed by Everquest players to distract themselves from the fact that they were playing Everquest. Of course, the basic idea of DKP is that you reward players for helping the guild, and they use that DKP to "buy" things from the guild.

But those are really just trivial details. What's really important in a DKP system is subtracting DKP from players. Now, the biggest misconception people have about negative DKP is that players should lose DKP for bad performance. Now -- of course -- of course you should subtract DKP for bad performance, but negative DKP should be so much more.

You can dock players for making your guild look bad or mouthing off. You can dock DKP for having useless tradeskills or playing a bad class. You can even subtract DKP for out-of-game infractions, like living with your parents or being fat. Penalizing your guild members for these problems now is only going to save you problems in the long run, or at the very least justify a DKP Minus 2x Multiplier next time around.

So, what infractions require DKP subtraction?

Starter DKP Minus Infraction List

Section 1, Ventrilo

Having your mic too loud (-1 DKP)
Shouting in Ventrilo (-1 DKP)
Swearing in Ventrilo (-1 DKP)
Chewing on Ventrilo (-1 DKP)
Chewing on Ventrilo but you didn't bring enough for everyone (-20 DKP)
Singing in Ventrilo (-5 DKP)
Humming the Rocky Theme in Ventrilo during a boss fight, either the Fanfare or Eye of the Tiger (no penalty)
Refusing to shout, swear, chew, or sing in Ventrilo when asked (-10 DKP)
Shouting, swearing, chewing, or singing in ventrilo when asked (-15 DKP)
Talking out of turn (-7 DKP)
Switching Vent Channels (-1 DKP)
Logging off Vent (-1 DKP)
Tying up Vent Server Spots when you aren't even around (-5 DKP)
Using the term "Bio Break" (-10 DKP) (( Instead you should say something like "Hold on, I can't play and hold this bottle at the same time." ))
Bad-Mouthing the Guild (-10 DKP)
Sugar-Coating the Guild's Many Crippling Problems (-30 DKP)
Chewing on Ventrilo (-5 DKP)

Section 2 : Leveling

Not Rank 40 Yet (40 - rank = DKP Minus per day)
Not RR 80 Yet (80 - RR = DKP Minus per day)
Making guild look bad by hitting rank 40/RR 80 while they still level (-15 DKP)
Saying leveling is Hard (-5 DKP)
Saying leveling is Boring (-5 DKP)
Saying leveling is Easy or Exciting (-20 DKP)
Chewing while leveling (-5 DKP)

Section 3 : Guild Chat

Typing messages in hard-to-see light blue text (-10 DKP)

(etc.)

Here is what I want you to do Today to make your guild better :

1. Stand up to the noobs in your guild when they make mistakes. Tell them "I'm not going to take your noob behavior sitting down, I will not let you ruin this guild, noob." Then swear at them.
   
2. There are No Warnings, only DKP Subtractions
3. Dock DKP everyday.
4. If you forget to dock DKP one day, you need to show the guild that everyone is treated the same when it comes to failure. Subtract DKP from every player in the guild.

Now, some of you might say "Hey boat, I am not an officer and my guild doesn't even have DKP." And this is the beautiful thing about my system -- this system will still work for you. Merely keep your own personal record of DKP for the guild on a website or blog. Make sure you inform your fellow guildies when they receive a DKP minus.

Now, your results may vary, but within a month of implementing my system your guild will probably be the best guild on the server. Remember: never get too comfortable, and never quit subtracting DKP.

Five Things From Friday 8 : Sunday Night Edition

1. So Mythic really dropped the ball on the whole grace period thing although they fixed it (mostly). I think that's about as mad as I have ever been -- not just at Mythic, but at any developer ever.
   
   I mean, it's one thing to try and fail, and therefore screw the customer. It's another thing to wake up some morning and say "let's deliberately screw the customer."
   
   Now, I know many people facing nerfs say, "the only possible justification is that they were trying to screw the players." And I would just laugh and say, "well, they aren't doing that and they would never do that." Well, I was only half right.
   
   
2. In the Department of Making-Me-Less-Mad, EA did 2-day my CE on Thursday (even though I had free shipping and handling). I had it on Friday and it is beautiful. Also cleanses the palate a little after my only other CE ever -- the Hellgate: London CE.
   
   
3. Casualties of War has a sort of sub-officer-but-above-member title called "Founder". And I'm not a "Founder", which is funny, you know, considering this and this and this.
   
   Should CoW make me a founder? I don't care, really, as I couldn't even squeak a "Thing From Friday" out of a promotion, let alone a whole blog post.
   
   Ultimately, although I complain a lot on my blog, most bad things that happen to me actually make me happy. I'm always dying for blog topics.
   
   (9/22 NOTE : Since Jobildo posted and apologized, and my goal was kind of to have nobody post and apologize, I'll add that I did not feel slighted, and in fact I pretty specifically said in my original proposal that I wanted to be in a blogger guild but wanted no actual responsibility for said guild. That still holds true today and I just shared this story because it tickled me.)
   
   
4. It's weird but I completed my addon post for Tuesday today, Sunday morning, while my Five Things From Friday I'm doing on Sunday night. This is one of the many reasons I write my blogs while driving a customized Delorean.
   
   
5. I probably should have mentioned this in my addon column, but here's my current Addon loadout :
   
   ApproxFPS
   AutoLoot
   CleanUnitFrames
   FlowerPower
   LibSlash
   PlantMe
   XpStatus
   zBuffBars
   zChatWindow
   
   
6. Have a nice weekend, heh.
   
   

Cloning > Transfers

So, evidently, Mythic's approach for dealing with server overpopulation is :

1. Notice a problem
2. A short time later, clone the server, which is much better than allowing server transfers because nobody has to deal with character transfers -- or missing the character transfer if they were away for a week or their guild decided to move at the last minute.

Contrast this with Blizzard's approach :

1. Notice a problem
2. For about three to six months, deny there is a problem
3. Allow server transfers. Note that if you happen to be away for a week or your guild decides to move at the last minute you may be screwed. Also note that for a long time WoW did not allow at-will transfers either, so if you missed the window to move -- hey, guess who gets to roll a new character?

I don't remember Mythic even mentioning the server cloning. I have to say I'm quite impressed. Although the CoW destruction guild had already moved from one of the cloned servers because of overpop, I wonder if they'll stick with the new server or go back.

The Weird Wild Legal World of Mythic

So, as I mentioned yesterday (and others have mentioned as well) Mythic has a ridiculous pair of agreements you must accept every single time you log in. Syp pointed out that this enormous, crippling pain in the rearward areas is deliberate :

the less effort required to agree to something, the less is its juridical (sic) weight.

Which is a very interesting idea. So interesting, in fact, that someone should mention it to the American Legal System, where you only need to sign a contract once for it to be binding. In fact, the real, important contractual agreement probably occurs when you fork over your money, not when you play the game (first time or otherwise).

Of course, this isn't the first time that software company lawyers have developed "innovative" views of the law as it pertains to software. At my company it still requires an Act of God to be allowed to use any open source software, despite the fact that it has yet to bite anybody in the ass after a decade or two and billions of dollars of software written.

That isn't Mythic's only interesting contract. A while ago I started to write an article on Mythic's extremely interesting and extremely creative contract for their fansite kit.

On top of a number of clauses that limit your rights to talk about the game (you may not misrepresent the game, whatever that means) or prohibitions in terms of running ads on your site if you use the fansite material, there's also this one, my favorite :

When your WAR Fan Site interacts with players in/from the Game, you agree that You and all affiliates shall not:

(snip)
# Privately ask to meet players in person with the exception of clearly posted public gatherings.
(snip)

So if you run a fan site with the Mythic Fansite Kit, you may not ask to privately meet a player from the site. Brilliant.

At least it's good to know that Mythic takes the same creative, innovative approach to contracts as they do to game design.

Mythic provides XP for modders!

So I was sitting fooling around with a mod at the very end of the open beta, I alt-tab back into the game -- to find myself getting experience! Order had just recaptured the zone.

If Blizzard had something similar I probably would have several extra level 70's in WoW. I realize in three hours you might be lucky to get like 100 experience. I've spent years AFK working on mods. This is great news.

No real post today because I want to play -- but my addon column is up at Hammer of War. Again like last week -- I'm begging for questions for the addon mailbag once again.

Two Other Things :

1. Mythic, please do not make me accept your terms of service (twice) every bloody time I start the game.
   
   
2. When I hit "exit game" it is not meant as like this creative idea I am throwing out at a poetry slam. "Whoa, cool idea man, that's something I should think about." NO. F*** YOU WARHAMMER ONLINE.
   
   If I say "quit" I mean ****ING QUIT. Do not give me some **** about "Oh you're in combat you can't quit", because guess what : I CAN. I alt-tab out of the ****ing game and then kill it.
   
   If I am forced to alt-tab, your game is broken. That's all I have to say.

Other than those two things I am loving the game. But both of those things are seriously pissing me off.

This Time, It's Personal

So, after taking two characters to ten and then losing them, I'm having a hard time getting really attached to my new real character. I know, let's write a blog about that instead of playing him.

I can start to see how that would be an issue.

Anyway, so let's just talk about some random stuff since I've already blown like 20 minutes dawdling and I want to actually play tonight.

Operation Flowerbuy that I mentioned yesterday was successful beyond my wildest dreams. My wife was surprised by the flowers but this time she did actually remember the other times I got her flowers. We figured out the other three times were 1. WoW Launch, 2. TBC Launch, and 3. Hellgate Launch.

I only played Hellgate for about three weeks after launch. My wife noted, "I didn't really earn the Hellgate flowers."

I got the flowers at the grocery store because nothing else was open. That's why the grocery store is awesome. But it isn't the greatest store -- the greatest store is Target. I'm not sure if you have a Target near you, but if you don't you should. My happiest retail experience ever was the day I walked out of Target with Dawn of War : Winter Assault (on launch day) in one hand, and a gallon of skim milk in the other. Videogames and skim milk are without a doubt my most prized material posessions and a store that sells both is possibly too awesome.

Interesting piece of news if you haven't seen it -- and I haven't looked at any other blogs today so sorry if everyone has linked this already -- Tobold is going to use his Free US Account to play with Casualties! Yaaay!

One thing I keep thinking about Casualties -- I mean we are a bunch of intelligent, fun-loving casual players who are going to have fun no matter what we do. You're probably thinking what I'm thinking -- we're going to need a hell of a lot of angry, jobless ringers to become a great guild.

Recruitment is closed right now, so if you are an angry, jobless ringer, tell the guild officers that you are my dad and they'll send you an invite. I did this once before and they totally went for it.

Thottbot for WAR

This is something that I've mentioned briefly before but after talking with my wife last night I decided to revisit. I've spent about 20 hours playing WAR and I've only ever had one instance when I said "I really need to look this one up." In twenty hours of WoW you'd probably find yourself hitting thottbot or wherever at least once or twice an hour.

And this is really exactly how it should be. I never understand why all game developers (not just MMORPG developers) are so stingy with in-game information. Why should I ever have to quit playing a game just so I can look at a FAQ? How is that fun? And if you're a game developer and you think it's fun, why don't you just release an entire game that revolves around reading FAQs?

Often you hear players say that they want to really "discover" the game on their own, but the nice thing is that these two goals are really compatible. Let the player discover everything in the game, but then tell them that they've discovered it. Keep a record of what they've discovered so they don't have to go look it up even though they've already done all the leg work once before.

WAR so far has been totally FAQless for me which has been awesome. How do you guys feel, do you feel that you won't need a thottbot?

My Launch Day Tradition

I have a little tradition for the first chance I have to play on Launch Day. I go to the flower shop and pick up my wife a dozen of her favorite roses.

It's not so much to butter her up -- after all I could do that the day before the launch. It's just my way of saying that out of the 362 days I could randomly get her flowers, I chose the day when I most value my free time.

Of course, I'm slightly modifying the tradition this year. I'm going to go get her flowers before I play the game but not before I'm in the game, since I need to finish my addons article and going to get flowers is probably more fun than writing that article.

The nice thing is that I'm sure my wife will be surprised. Unfortunately, she'll be surprised because every time I do this she doesn't remember that I've done it like three times before.

Oh well. Any of you have any Launch Day Traditions?

Five Things From Friday 7 : Why Lakes Edition

1. So I'm a little mystified by the latest news from the herald :
   
   RvR is confined to lakes and Scenarios.
   
   Uhh -- lakes? Why lakes? Why not meadows or abutments? Maybe I missed that podcast.
   
   "Hi, I'm Mark Jacobs and I'm here to talk to you about lakes. Now, lakes are one of the greatest new features of Warhammer Online. In fact, they are so good that any future MMO is going to have to copy them. Any MMO released after WAR will have lakes."
   
   I did eventually figure out that "lakes" probably means the open world RvR areas. But it still makes me wonder where the f*** did "lakes" come from.
   
   
2. I did get pretty good traffic this week but far more comments than usual, which was awesome. I'm not sure how other bloggers feel but I consider comments to be my most important metric -- even more important than visits.
   
   
3. Oh yeah, a mini traffic milestone. I went over 5k visits as of this week (yaay). I also went way over 1k visits from Syp's site, actually to about 1500, which is awesome.
   
   Thanks everybody for visiting. Thanks Syp for sending me over a quarter of all my traffic! :)
   
   
4. Well after I read this Important Archmagery Article I happened to check my email and had a very similar email -- but not from the same gentleman. This disappointed me immensely. I read this Penny Arcade comic several times in a failed attempt to cheer myself.
   
   
5. Tobold linked to my Toboldgate piece this week and that sent me a huge amount of traffic. (Thanks!) I have been thinking more about how silly the criticism of him was. I'm certain that if he so desired Tobold could parlay his website (which currently has no ads) or his name and ability into substantially more than $15 a month.
   
   What is $15 a month worth? Well, wonder why I'm writing a weekly column for Hammer of War? Considering Tobold is at least ten times more popular than me, and at least twenty times more talented I would posit that a mere MMO subscription is a little thin.
   
   Incidentally, I don't know that I would ever drop game blogging income on the floor like Tobold. The real selling point isn't the money -- it's that if could make decent money blogging about games it becomes a part-time job and then guess what becomes a tax writeoff? Any games, subscriptions to games, and gaming hardware. Of course, I believe Tobold is from the UK (EDIT: I meant Belgium) so I don't know if they have the same tax law.
   
   
6. The new blogroll link this week is Book of Grudges. I actually posted my Formal Rules Of The Blogroll the other week because they derolled me when they cleaned their site. I was a little sad but I understood and reciprocated. I wrote the rules because I didn't want it to seem (no pun intended) arbitrary. I didn't mention them last week because they are awesome and I didn't want to seem dramatic.
   
   So this week they've added some bloggers back to the blogroll including me -- so -- all that stress and rule-writing for nothing. It's good to be back though. When I started I only asked Syp and Arbitrary/Spinks to list me. All the fame, glory, money, expensive cars, and exotic hallucinogens I now enjoy are thanks to them.
   
   
7. I had a lot of feedback to my stalemate blog this week, which I appreciated. A lot of the comments talked about something similar so I'd like to respond :
   
   I realize that WAR is not meant to be balanced 1v1. And that is fine (or at least somewhat acceptable). But I do not think it's acceptable for 1v1 simply not to work -- i.e. many matchups resulting in stalemates. Now, I don't expect the game to be very balanced at level 10 -- I'm just hoping it gets better.
   
   Funny that Mythic has finally given us PvP as a leveling mechanism, and as a reward has to hear constant complaints about balance at low levels. I guess you can't win for losing.
   

Does AP Mean Stalemate Heaven?

So, I noticed something interesting in beta. I'd be running around a scenario on my Ironbreaker. You know, owning noobs and everything. And then I'd see a lone enemy healer, and we would fight.

And fight.

And fight and fight and fight and fight and fight. He would heal all the damage I would do to him, and he'd barely be doing damage to me. So like two minutes into the fight he'd be at full health and I'd be at like 75%.

I realize a theoretical eight-minute fight isn't a stalemate. In fact, I never made it eight minutes, two was about the max as eventually another player would come along and tip the scales.

The end of this fight in WoW would have come when the healer ran out of mana. But with AP the healer can just keep healing forever. And fighting another tank wasn't as slow, but it was still slow.

So people have been saying 1v1 isn't balanced, but this makes me think. Is it possible that it's worse than that? Is it possible that 1v1 just plain old does not work? Can certain careers only be killed by focus fire?

Now, I'm admittedly uneducated about the later levels. Maybe the Ironbreaker gets more "deepees" as we use to call them. Or maybe my healer adversary does. I hope something happens, I'm not a huge fan of eight minute 1v1 fights.

That's Why It's Called Beta

The other day I was reading a post on Warhammer Alliance stating that RR gear was broken. Something about the acquisition levels changing, and those new changes sucking -- I don't remember exactly.

But what amazed me is that there were still people saying (five days before Head Start begins) that "this is just beta" and "this is what beta is for"

I have to say, I personally have put a lot of stock in Mythic. In fact, I think I went almost a month at the beginning of my blog without every saying a bad word about them. When they talk about developing the game they make sense. They know what they are talking about.

But even I have limits. Mythic is not going to be fixing anything between now and launch unless it will cause someone to literally die. If it's broken now in beta, it will be broken at launch.

Mythic in this way really reminds me of Blizzard. When Blizzard decided they wanted to do something well, they really just hit it out of the park. However, many people played the game for years without Blizzard deciding to really pay attention to their pet cause.

I liked crafting. I always wanted crafting to be better. And it did get better, but it never really became great. Blizzard just never decided that crafting should be great, so it never happened.

I think we're seeing the same thing in WAR. For the past two years Mythic has been talking about all the things that are important to them, and we've seen in the beta that they've nailed those things.

Many of the details though -- not so much. And they may never be great because they'll never really get Mythic's attention.

Oh Yeah

My first column at Hammer of War ran today. I'll be doing a piece on addons every tuesday that I called the AddOn Roundup, which I hate but can't think of a better name. If anybody can think of a better name I may or may not mail you a free framing nail or two. I don't want to make any promises, but, you know, there could be nails (or nail) in your future.

Anyway, the column is called Addon Roundup : SCT, Approximate FPS, and Mechanic. I hate to brag about my own work, but it's a non-stop action thrillride.

If some enterprising reader went there and asked me a question about addons I would have some stuff to fill out my column next week and I'd be eternally grateful...

First Quitter Posts Spotted In The Wild

Wherever there are MMORPG forums, there will be people who post and claim that X was the last straw and they are quitting.

Now, since WAR hasn't been released yet there's understandably been a dearth of these posts. But never you worry -- after all, there are pre-orders to cancel!

I've been waiting 10 years for this game and now I've cancelled my order with Play.com.

GOA removed any confidence I had in being able to play the game with their lies, double-talk, unprofessionalism and general incompetence over the past couple of months.

It's days 4 of the open Beta which I still can't get into...
Doesn't bode well for live launch, does it?

I have another order with HMV which I'll cancel tomorrow and then I can relax instead of stressing over the uselessness of GOA.

How can you wait ten years for a game that's only been in development for three years? Maybe he means 10 like in binary. Perhaps he has a time machine he has used to wait for the game multiple times.

This reminds me of a story I have queued to run. I will be the first person ever to quit WAR.

I Quit WAR
(scheduled for 12:01 AM, 9/14/08)

I was looking forward to my first time playing Warhammer : Age of Reckoning at release. I logged on and immediately went to the character selection screen. Unfortunately it was still the lame, broken character selection screen that people have been complaining about all beta. I've had enough of Mythic and their broken promises. This is the last straw. I quit.

Toboldgate Biggest Scandal Ever

So anyway, Mythic decided to give Tobold, MMORPG blogger extraordinaire, a free US subscription to WAR. Tobold disclosed this but noted he'd mostly be playing in Europe (where he would pay to play).

Madness ensued. Some people were jealous. Some people were cautiously accepting, and some were just mad -- one guy in Tobold's comments section went nuts.

Unexpected and unfortunate.

You've been fairly even-handed with your thoughts on Warhammer so far, but no matter how you dress it up you're going to sound like a paid stooge now.

I love how you try to brush it aside as no big deal since you're still going to pay for it so you can play on Euro servers.

I wonder...how many other bloggers out there are on Mythic's payroll?

So, should we care? What should be done?

I think we should care about this, and what we need to do is educate people.

Critics

In the Entertainment world there are these people called "Critics". "Critics" write, or "critique" pieces of entertainment. There are all sorts of critics. There are book critics. There are movie critics. There are music critics and there are television critics and, unbelievably, there are also video game critics.

How Critics Review Stuff

Generally, the publisher or distributor of the will provide the appropriate type of critic with access to the piece of entertainment. Book critics will get a copy of a book ahead of time. Movie critics will generally get a press preview. Music critics will get copies of music and tv critics will get advance copies of certain episodes of tv shows. Video game critics will get advance copies of video games.

And, here's an important part of this : these things are all free. The cost is generally negligable, and there's not a lot of worry about corruption, since critics are given access to pretty much all appropriate media according to their stature and not their opinion on any particular venture.

Now keep in mind that in some fields it is a little too expensive to allow critics to keep their "review copies". Car critics and PC hardware critics are generally just given loaners since these things cost large amounts of money.

How MMORPG's are completely different

Now, we've seen how it's well accepted and ethical for ordinary entertainment reviewers to accept free access to the material they are reviewing. But it's important to keep in mind that MMORPG's are a completely different ballgame.

For starters, an unlimited MMORPG account is worth a lot of money. But wait, isn't it just worth a lot of money over a long time? Wouldn't that be the same for everybody? A movie critic might just get a single $10 pass to a movie, but the same distributor might give them 40 passes over the course of a year. A book reviewer only gets a $25 book, but they might get five or six books from the same publisher every year. A video game reviewer only gets a $60 game, but they might get five or ten games from the same publisher every year. So maybe MMORPG's aren't that different.

If you think about it another way, none of those other things quite provide the entertainment bang-for-the-buck that MMORPG's do. The $10 movie might only last 90 minutes. The $25 book only takes 5 hours to read. The $60 game can be completed in 6 hours. But for $15 you can get a whole month's worth out of entertainment from an MMORPG. And since the game keeps changing it makes sense to provide continued access to critics.

But Wait

But Wait. Tobold isn't a professional game reviewer. Is that why it's not ok? Well, I'd guess not. In our modern world of blogs and flying cars there are a growing number of amateurs covering not just MMORPG's but books, movies, etc.

And this amateur coverage is particularly important to the MMORPG community, because we just aren't served by any substantial professional effort right now. I visit a "professional" site when they have some exclusive news but otherwise rarely. In fact, most mainstream gaming sites eschew MMORPG's. They'll have news when an MMORPG is released or patched or when there is some Big News, but the day-to-day intrigues are generally left unexplored.

What Is Actually Bad

Now this is not to say that the commercial interests can never get out of line when it comes to critics. It's not appropriate to threaten the critics, and it's not appropriate to give them much more than what they are reviewing. A subscription to Warhammer is OK, a subscription to Warhammer and a New Car is not.

In Conclusion

Like I said, we need to be concerned about the reaction to this news and try to educate people. In this post I hopefully explained why bloggers getting review access to MMORPG's is no big deal.

More Open Beta Thoughts

1. Either Ironbreakers are really powerful or they just seem really powerful. I was grinding a PQ for influence. Mobs were about two levels less than me and I would pretty easily kill five at a time. Sometimes I would kill three waves of five at a time with no break. One time I must've killed twenty with no break and it was the first time I've ever used a pot in the game.
   
   On top of that, 1-on-1 in scenarios I can kill anyone who can't heal. If they can heal we'll just pound away at each other for a minute or two, at which time I theoretically would die, but it takes so long that usually another order or destruction person shows up and turns the tide.
   
   The AP system is little frustrating here, as I know I'm never going to run a healer out of AP the way they would run out of mana.
   
   
2. Mobs still bug a lot. They will sit there and do damage to you but when you attack them you get a warning saying you can't attack that target.
   
   
3. Clicking has never made sense to me. Sometimes left-clicking works, sometimes right-clicking works, sometimes neither work and sometimes both seem to work. Plus clicking is really, really sensitive to mouse movement. If you click on something and your mouse moves just a tiny bit between the mouse click and release, the selection doesn't work. Obviously there's a little "give" but there needs to be a little bit more -- it's much harder to select things in WAR than it is in WoW.
   
   
4. It seems like the only point of quests is getting some extra experience, at least at low levels. I just did scenarios for about the first 60% of level 9, then I ground out almost an entire chapter's worth of influence from a single PQ. Nobody's up so I pretty much did an entire phase I (100 guys) by myself. I think there was another guy there but he was just killing one guy at a time and I didn't see him in the thick of things.
   
   Of course, this is another thing to hate about off-hour playing. Phase III's and some Phase II's are harder to solo so you can only PQ for so long.
   
   
5. I can't believe I forgot something until now from the closed beta. To figure out where quests are done, go to the map and keep clicking on-and-off the "map" tracking, until you can see the area that's clicking on and off.
   
   It seems like there has to be an easier way, although it's still 10000 times better than WoW. At no time have I ever felt like "Hey, I need Thottbott". Well, I guess there was that one time. Once it happened in closed beta. You had to talk to a guy who turned out to be a hard-to-find corpse.
   
   
6. Renown Rank Gear is seriously good. I'm just finishing Dwarf Chapter III and the influence rewards are far inferior to the RR gear I got two and three levels ago.
   

Three New Things I've Learned In The Open Beta

1. There's something called an Alliance, where guilds can join together. Maybe this was always around but I had never heard of it.
   
   
2. At least at early levels, your Renown Rank cannot surpass your rank. I guess that's how Mythic will keep people from just doing scenarios to max -- they aren't the best XP and you're just dropping renown on the floor.
   
   
3. Syp (that Syp, I believe) is on my open beta server. I didn't notice until the end of one of the scenarios but me and another order chased him down and killed him (his Black Orc was running away). Unfortunately I didn't get the killing blow or I'd have a screenshot.
   
   Was that the real Syp? And if it was, Syp, I've been playing scenarios all evening, where are you?
   

Five Things From Friday 6 : Combover edition

1. Title Track
   
   I skipped Five Things last week, but my first item was going to be how I wanted to see combovers as a character option in the game. My little gnome warlock in WoW, Boat, had a combover and that was awesome.
   
   So lo and behold last night I log on for the preview weekend and what do I see? Dwarfs just had combovers added as a character option! YAAAAAAY
   
   
   
   
2. The Rules Of The Blogroll
   
   1. If You Link Me On Your Front Page I Will Link You On My Front Page as long as you remain active
   2. Eventually anyway, I generally only add a link or so a week
   3. I'm going to limit it at about 20, although right now I'm nowhere close to that.
   
   It's kind of lame but I just go through my google analytics and see who is sending me the most traffic that is not on my blogroll. Last week's I added Zizlak's Travel Diary, this week I added Kill Ten Rats, who incidentally was the inspiration for my "20-blog blogroll rule", as they must have 100 links on their blogroll.
   
   
3. Column at Hammer of War
   
   I'm also going to be writing at Hammer of War, I'm going to do a weekly column about addons. Looking at the blogroll there it looks like there are about twelve of us now. Yeeha.
   
   
4. Traffic
   
   I took the entire Labor Day Weekend Off and boy, was that a mistake. Killed my traffic all week. I guess this does kind of mean that people must read my weekend posts during the week, which is something I always worry about.
   
   I have to say, that's one of the weirdest (and most frustrating) things about doing the blog -- you really get traffic based on what you did a week ago. So if I wrote a ton of great blogs last week I'll still get traffic this week if I write nothing. But if I'm writing a ton of great blogs this week I won't get any traffic if I slacked last week.
   

My Own Custom Tome Unlocks

Sometimes I survey the vast wasteland of my WoW /played. I think it was around 70 days when it was all said and done, and that was less than many.

But then, what else would I have been doing with that time? Writing a concerto? Or watching TV and thinking "Man, I Hate TV! I wish there was some other way to pass the time that didn't suck."

That's not to say that there couldn't be some improvement, some greener pasture. WAR Boat can be happier and better than WoW Boat.


My Own Tome Unlocks

1. The Higher DPS Half - Con the wife into playing WAR.
   
   She's still not sold on WAR and she's worried she'll get "too" into it like she did with WoW. Noooooooo!
   
   
2. Barely Literate - Knock off a book (monthly repeatable)
   
   I'm reading Churchill's Six Volume history of WWII right now. Technically, each "volume" has two "books", that's two months of reading, right?
   
   
3. WAR Is Not The Answer - Spend ten hours playing another game (bi-monthly repeatable)
   
   While I played WoW I would totally miss out on other games I wanted to play, and a good unplayed game always makes me sad.
   
   
4. Unlock Less - Have fun playing with guildies instead of being obsessed with the next milestone.
   
   Like I said. In WoW I would always pass up guild fun to do some stupid farming for something I don't even remember now. Have more fun with guildies!
   
   
5. Level Thine Enemy - Get a character from the opposing faction to max level.
   
   Never did this in WoW, and by the time I tried it was after five alliance characters and it was just too much of a shock to relearn everything.
   
   
6. By Spending Money I'm Achieving My Goals - Buy the new video card and monitor I want, play WAR in glorious 16:9.
   
   "And honey, you always say you want me to achieve my goals, right?"
   
   
7. The Cleaner - Clean and Organize my study (aka "The Boatcave") before the game comes out.
   
   World's Greatest Disaster.
   
   
8. I'm Mod As Hell - Create and release a mod.
   
   I actually did do this one last time, but it was so much fun and so rewarding that I'd like to make sure I do it again -- because it was also a huge pain in the ...
   
   
9. Blog Helpful - Write at least one blog (my first ever) that will teach or explain something about the game.
   
   Ever notice that I've never, not even once, ever blogged anything useful? Hey kids, here's how RvR works. Hey, here's how Crafting works. Hey, here's a good way to level up your Scavenging. Nope, never.
   
   I'm fifty blog entries deep now and I've never posted anything useful. I just want to try it once, to know what it feels like.
   
   
10. Milk it like a Polaroid Picture - get at least one more blog out of this lame Custom Unlocks idea.
    
    If I do this in like another two months nobody will remember this post, right? In fact, maybe I already did this two months ago.
    

So, what custom tome locks would you guys create?

Some Cool Inside Information about Game Design

The developers of Shred Nebula (an overhead-shooting XBLA game I'm going to have to check out now) decided to share the two documents they used to "sell" their game to Microsoft for XBox Live Arcade.

One is a "pitch" and the other is a "60 seconds of gameplay" document, which I've never heard of before. Evidently it is 60 seconds of "defining" gameplay early in the game. The pitch is longish (35 pages) so I've only made it partway through, but man, I love some of this stuff.

If you're interested in game design they should be fun to check out.

Also, in another piece of cool (but non-WAR related) news, Steam now has the entire set of X-COM games! Previously they were missing at least one of the strategy entries, I think because Gametap had it. Of course, I checked and Gametap still had it, so ... whatever.

I've beaten UFO Defense (on super-easy mode) but I've never beaten Terror From The Deep or Apocalypse (although Apocalypse is probably my favorite).

The nicest thing about these "re-releases" is that it means there are now playable versions of these games. I already own all three of the games I mentioned (sometimes more than once) but it is nearly impossible to get a fifteen year-old game to run correctly on XP.

Two ideas for guilds

There's an episode of The Simpson's where the teachers go on strike and Bart and Lisa can do pretty much whatever they want. At one point Marge mentions that Bart is flying a kite at night and describes it as "unwholesome".

The family is out of town, they left today. I just spent two hours reading and blogging and it's only 7:30. Unwholesome. By the bye, anybody up for some Castle Crashers?

Oh yeah, my two ideas for guilds

Houses

If you're like me Houses only come to mind when I think of Harry Potter, although I think have some repressed memories of Roald Dahl discussing them. The brits have such great ideas when it comes to sports, don't they? I'm a huge fan of the English Football system (or whatever they call it), it's just awesome. Less a fan of actual English Football, but that's ok.

Anyway, apply the House System to your massive game. Divide the guild into a number of smaller groups (you could call them squads). Then have neat little team-building competitions between the groups. Players get to know people in the guild. You encourage people to help level and get goodies for the guild. I'm not sure if WAR will show guild contribution by player, but if so that would be a good measure.

Best of all, WAR provides a nice little bonus you can give to players chosen randomly (or semi-randomly) from the winning group every month : The Guild Standards.

Tours of Duty

I don't think this is really a WAR idea -- at least I'm hoping it's not.

I've been in a hardcore raiding guild in WoW and the biggest problem is burnout. You look at the road ahead and see nothing but more raiding. You have to give it to the super-hardcore guilds (the 12, 14, 16 hour raiding guilds) because they actually finish raiding and get time off. But a lot of fairly good guilds just go and go and go, and consequently go and go and go through members.

People need a break. They need an end point. So give it to them.

Divide the year up into three-month portions. Each portion is a "Tour". The guild raids for the first two and a half months, then quits for two weeks.

The two and a half months are not a cakewalk. Raiders are expected to be on time and prepared every night, and this should be enforced by mod. 95% attendance is required. If you quit in the middle of a tour you are out of the guild.

But at the end of the tour all the pressure goes away. Every player has a week to make the same choice -- do another tour or not? There's no pressure by the guild, no guilt trips. If you made it through the tour you got the gear you got and you have no further obligations. After the decisions are made the guild spends the next week filling in any empty slots and then it's time for the next tour.

If you decide not to do the next tour you can stay in the guild as a backup and alternate. You can even try to enlist in the next tour.

A lot of people (and especially a lot of guild officers I know) would be hesitant to let all that loot just walk out the door. But the truth is, the loot walks out the door anyway, on the backs of burned-out and stressed out raiders.

It's better to give your good people a break, and let them feel like they don't have to raid forever.

Should Gear Live Forever?

Some people think so.

Some people do think that if they work really hard and get the best item in the game that it should be the best item in the game forever.

But that never made sense to me. You're playing an RPG. Advancement is the whole point of the game. What do you do when you have all the best items? Well, if WoW uberguilds are any indication, you quit until more content comes out.

What just ****ing counfounds me, however, is how people are still surprised and shocked by this, especially in a game like WoW. "The best gear in the game" has been replaced by better gear not once, not twice, but like ten times.

Why is this still a surprise? I don't know. Maybe raiders are only players with less than four months of WoW experience. I know if you ask around many casual WoW players were once raiders, maybe the opposite is true.

I already see the same undercurrents in the WAR forums : why should I work for gear if it will be replaced?

It makes me think of several recent criticisms of WAR from various bloggers : they expected the game to be revolutionary and it was not. I don't know why they expected it to be revolutionary. Mythic certainly never said it was revolutionary. In fact, they laid out the entire feature set of the game for anyone to see. "Hey, they only have one or three revolutionary features, I guess they are not revolutionary."

But no, it takes playing the game to finally pound this into some people's heads.

I see this same issue coming with Gear Longevity in WAR. Mythic (fairly long ago) said that gear wasn't going to be super-important. There's been all sorts of extrapolation and exaggeration and hopes and dreams built on this one little exchange that I can never even find.

They've also said, however, that they plan to make the game more sustainable in the long term. RvR is fun but people are really going to be itching for the best gear. What happens when they get it? Is Mythic going to say "well, that's it -- just horizontal expansions from here on out and this will still be the best gear in the game in ten years."

No. In fact, I'd wager that the launch top-level RvR gear will be replaced before the first expansion. You just have to give people some kind of advancement, and gear's the easiest way since (among other sensible reasons) it allows new players to "skip a bit" and catch up to veterans.

WAR receives unofficial/official Penny Arcade endorsement

Nobody had mentioned this, but being a huge fan of Penny Arcade I was happy to recently see WAR ads on the site.

As Gabe and Tycho have stated in the past, they only carry ads for good games, so I'm assuming they played WAR and thought as much.

Of course, they also have an ad right now for the "Wii Active Life Outdoor Challenge" which is the first ad I've seen in a long time that makes me think they've abandoned their policy.

WAR Modding and Support Thereof

I wonder if WAR modding will receive the same support from Mythic that WoW modding has from Blizzard.

Aside from technical support, no sub-community of WoW receives quite the amount of attention that modders get. The UI & Macros Forum is probably the only forum with frequent posts from a developer, or perhaps the only forum with any posts from a developer. It's definitely the only forum where you can ask for a feature and get a developer response half a page down telling you that it's been added.

This is for various reasons. Unlike most forum posters, modders aren't asking for fixes to game balance, they're just asking for a slightly better interface to the game. Modders are also a little smarter (they ask for things that make sense) and more mature (not many 20-page threads in the modding forum complaining about the latest patch) and this makes this forum one of the most interactive that Blizzard provides.

Blizzard doesn't provide any official documentation for modders but forum support is one of the two things that really make WoW modding so accessible and so prevalent.

The other, of course, is that much of Blizzard's interface is written in the XML/LUA combo that the mods use and so serves as another invaluable resource.

So what is Mythic going to do? Well, we already know that the UI developer is not going to be hanging out on the official UI forum, because there isn't one. We also know that, like WoW, they will not be providing official documentation for the UI.

And it doesn't get any better. Judging from the beta install, Mythic either did not implement their interface with the XML/LUA that modders use, or I cannot find it. I think it's the latter, as there are API listed on the web. Still, every time I have to hit the boards to ask a question it makes authoring a mod far less likely.

Hopefully this situation will improve as release gets close and we get more information. Time will tell.