10 Days of WAR: Day Six (Crafting)

I was inspired by the furious pace of Santa's elves to meet the Christmas demand and for my sixth day of WAR I crafted.  The crafting in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has always intrigued me.  The concepts are solid, but the execution was lacking at launch. The basic premise is that most monsters and player kills would result in crafting components.  Crafted items are mostly consumable items.  There wasn't traditional blacksmithing or weapon making: there was apothecary for potions, talisman making, and cultivation (which is a gathering skill, but I consider it a craft).

Often times crafting far outpaced a character's progression in WAR due to the mismatch of ingredient levels to a player's level.  The result was often piles and piles of crafted items that were unusable for several levels.  This was not only frustrating, but also impossible to avoid unless a player ignored crafting until they were max level.  To highlight this issue, I created this screenshot a long time ago:

As can be seen, level 30-32 ingredients resulted in level 38 potions for a character that was level 30.

Unlimited Free Trials are the New MMO Hotness (Age of Conan, Champions Online, Warhammer Online, and more!)

Apparently I missed the memo.  Free trials with unlimited playtime, but level and gameplay restrictions, are popping up everywhere.

Age of Conan - LINK
Details:  Unlimited playtime. Players can play up to level 20, but only if registered for the trial before Jan 1st, 2010.  Trading and player chat limited.

Champions Online - LINK  
Details: Unlimited playtime. New players can create an account and play the beginning zone of Champions Online for as long as they want.

Warhammer Online - LINK
Details: Unlimited playtime. Players are restricted to the Tier 1 Empire vs Chaos zones, but can access all scenarios.  Trading and player chat limited.

Alganon - LINK
Details: Unlimited playtime. No leveling or zone restrictions, but trial characters are deleted after 30 days and must be re-rolled.  Limited skill progression and limited chat options.

10 Days of WAR: Day Five, Metaplace shutdown

For Day Five of my return to WAR, I took a break.  However, to fill space, I want to talk about the Metaplace shutdown that was announced yesterday:

Today we have unfortunate news to share with the Metaplace community. We will be closing down our service on January 1, 2010 at 11:59pm Pacific. The official announcement is here and copied below, and you can read a FAQ guide here. We will be having a goodbye celebration party on January 1st at 12:00noon Pacific Time.

I'm conflicted on what to think. On one hand I don't see how the product could ever generate revenue, but on the other hand I could see it had potential. In the end, the first was proven correct and the latter will be left to our imaginations.

10 Days of WAR: Day Four

Day four of my return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was spent in Tier 1 scenarios.  As I stated on Day Three, tier 1 is my favorite part of WAR.  Also, I commented that the limitless trial was one of the best things going for WAR. Unfortunately, after last night, my mind has been slightly changed.

I've never had a problem with instanced content and it fits well in WAR.  Instanced scenarios offer quick and easy action and offer varied challenges. However, I was not having much fun playing last night.

My problems with scenarios in WAR are two fold: teams are rarely balanced and some scenarios aren't worth playing.  Unfortunately, both of these are worsened by the limitless trial.  This came as an unwelcome shock to my plans to play the limitless trial in the future.

10 Days of WAR: Day Three

For Day Three of my 10-day return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, I ventured back into tier 1 to see how the new limitless trial was working out.  I rolled the one Order class I haven't played: the dwarf slayer.  Instead of starting in the dwarf lands, I was transplanted in the Empire starting area of Nordland.  This is meant to make sure that new players are concentrated into a single zone, allowing for the key features of WAR to shine (PQs, RvR, lairs).

I took a screenshot of a new item, the Rune of Transport, that describes exactly what it is all about:

Not only does it highlight the new combined starting area, it also makes a statement about the way the player density in WAR has been heading: down. However, the new starting area is good for WAR and it helps tremendously to hide the player density issues of the later tiers.

10 Days of WAR: Day Two

Day two of my journey back into Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning landed me in the Land of the Dead.

After checking out the map of the zone I noticed that the Public Quest (PQ) markers showed how many players were present and participating. The PQ nearest the starting area was one short of the recommended group size, so I joined in the fun. The first monster I attacked, a giant condor, didn't fall over dead as I had expected. Instead it took flight with me in it's claws and headed up to the mountainside to deposit me in it's nest! I was shocked: MMOG monsters are supposed to die and give me loot, not try and feed me to their children!

Completing this PQ reminded me why I had such high hopes for WAR. PQs are brilliant and fun when enough players are present. Unfortunately since Order just unlocked access to the LotD zone, only the PQ nearest the warcamp had any players participating.

Referencing back to Day One, there are no PQs in any of the tier 4 RvR lakes, which is a damn shame considering that is where Mythic encourages players to spend their time.  Again, it frustrates me that NOTHING has been done to the RvR lakes to encourage players to visit outside of a zerg keep or objective fight.  Also, to highlight the poor design decisions, keeps and battlefield objectives reward increased experience/influence gain in zones where there is NO FUCKING CONTENT! 

I refuse to use the term zone for the RvR areas, as they are one-dimensional lakes.  Players returning to WAR to jump into the tier 4 RvR action are going to find the same sub-par game they left in the first place.  Anyways, back to LotD.

After a few runs of the PQ, I decided to see the rest of the zone. What I found next, blew my fucking mind:

10 Days of WAR: Day One

I started my holiday-inspired return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning by logging into my level 40/ RR 35 Ironbreaker on Badlands. The first order of business was restoring my UI. WAR's default UI serves its purpose, but there are a few things my minimalist gamer brain needs: clean unit frames, consolidated info bars, and easily customized hotbars.

Rebuilding a lost UI can be aggravating, but for WAR, there is a great tool available from Curse for management and automatic updates/installs of most UI elements. I highly recommend the Curse Client.

For clean unit frames, I settled with Pure. Hotbars are managed via Vertigo. Info bars are kept organized with Warboard. The rest: Phantom, Squared, and MOTH.

 

After thirty minutes of  UI customization, I was ready to helicopter on out to the Tier 4 RvR lakes.

10 Days of WAR

I've run the gambit of thoughts on WAR, my final verdict after months of play was that WAR had pockets of greatness, but the overall design was poor. Also, some technical and stability issues arose directly related to poor design that really aggravated me. However, since quitting, I've wanted to go back. So, I've decided to take advantage of the re-enlistment campaign for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

With that will come the following list of nifty gifts:

I have no honest plans to resubscribe because I lack the time to make $14.95 a month a justifiable expense.  However, stranger things have happened.

Welcome to the new Heartlessgamer.com

Enjoy!

Update:  Lost some bottom padding under posts, but cant figure out how to fix it :P Ah well, nothing major. That tricksy padding was trumped by some margin-top with a new class :P

Team Fortress 2 - Crafting

The upcoming Team Fortress 2 update is getting more interesting by the day.  A new crafting webpage has appeared as part of the update, with a promising opening:

For years you have been able to create weapons with your bare hands, using raw steel, in real life. What if we were to tell you there’s now a way to SIMULATE that in-game?

Apparently this will run off of blueprints where various items can be combined to create the item you want. A screen shot of the crafting screen is below:

Valve never ceases to amaze me with the updates for TF2.

Update: Also found http://www.teamfortress.com/war/saxtonhale/poopyjoe.htm