Howdy folks. I’m writing this from my parents’ place up in the Okanagan, where my fiancée and I are spending part of our holiday break (and New Year’s.) I also haven’t played WAR since I got here, so I’m feeling a little bit of withdrawal. Sigh. It’s sunny this morning, though just below freezing, and there’s a good chunk of snow on the ground. What better time to put together a new WAR rollup?
You may have noticed that I’ve sneakily switched the former “weekend rollup” to be a weekly one. My schedule is pretty unpredictable right now, so it’s probably best that I don’t commit to a specific day to posting these, and just surprise you once a week with a new grab-bag-esque post. :)
An eventful year
On a personal note, although the reroller blog is quite new (we launched on December 1st, just under a month ago), this year has been a significant one for me, between starting a new day job, running my other site, Protagonize (which just celebrated its first anniversary on the 27th), and now launching the first phase of reroller, our MMO blog.
The year 2009 is looking to be even more hectic, with the next phase of my megalomaniacal plan for reroller to be released at some point early in the year (this is only the beginning…) and a whole whack of new features coming to Protagonize, as well. I’m moving to a four-day week at my day job, which should allow me one full business day a week to work on my side projects. This is a major step for me and quite exciting from a career perspective. I’m looking forward to starting down that path in mid-January.
Also of note: a group of well-known WAR bloggers are launching a new initiative to encourage blogging in the community and helping to cross-promote interesting WAR-related blogs. I’ll have more about this on our blog tomorrow. Should be fun!
PvE dungeons overview on the Herald
While I’m sure that if you’re reading WAR blogs, there’s a good chance that you actively follow the Warhammer Herald (Mythic’s official WAR blog) as well, you may have missed an interesting new series of PvE dungeon overviews that they’ve been posting.
Part 1 was buried in a grab bag earlier this month, and discusses several of the city dungeons: the Sacellum and the Bilerot Burrows in the Inevitable City, and the Sewers and Sigmar’s Crypts in Altdorf. Part 2 is the most recent Herald post and covers world dungeons such as Gunbad and Bastion Stair, and another pair of city dungeons in the Warpblade Tunnels and the Bloodwrought Enclave. For those of you (such as myself) who have only been to one or two of these dungeons, it’ll definitely give you a good teaser-style overview of the dungeon, as well as the entrance locations, which are handy to have if you’re heading there for the first time.
New careers confirmed (sorta?)
I’m probably jumping the gun on this, but I’ve been hearing sporadic rumblings amongst the WAR blogs in the last few days that Mythic will be announcing the two remaining careers at some point in Q1 of 2009. There were also rumours that one of the two outstanding careers may be replaced by something else, though we’re not sure what. Werit is reporting that the Dwarf and Greenskin melee DPS careers appear to have been somewhat confirmed in GOA’s “Happy New Year” post from earlier today.
Could it be true? You’d think Mythic/GOA would be vetting this stuff before posting it for the world to see, so we can assume that the new classes will at least be of the originally anticipated races. Now we’ll just have to find out of they’ve switched the Dwarf Hammerer over to being a Slayer (which some apparently don’t want to see happen), or something else entirely…
10 reasons why you should give WAR a second chance
I thought this was a great post by Syp over at WAAAGH! — while some may not be bullish on WAR’s accomplishments for the year, and we’ve seen a lot of MMO gamers’ heads turn in the direction of that other game in the last six weeks, WAR has evolved nicely and I’m happy to say that I’m more satisfied with the game now than I was two months ago.
Syp’s post highlights all of the outstanding work that Mythic has done to improve WAR for us since launching just over three months ago, and he concludes by giving us a few things to look forward to over the course of 2009, including the two new careers, the RvR fame system, and a “big surprise” in the Spring from Mark Jacobs, among other things.
As an old-school Dark Age of Camelot player, I was really looking for a spiritual successor to it in WAR, a DAOC 2.0 if you will, and I think the game is definitely moving in that direction. I’m happy to say that for once, I’m really looking forward to the next year of MMO gaming, instead of considering it a massive time-suck that eats away progressively at both my work productivity and real life™ commitments. :)
Blaming the healer… as usual
Having played a healing class, the Warrior Priest, for the first time (for an extended period) in an MMO with WAR, I’m really starting to see the other side of the coin in how underappreciated and vented-upon healers are in these sorts of games.
A few blog posts from the last week or two really resonated with me, as well. If you’re either a healer or you just expect to be healed, I’d suggest you check out these posts from some notable MMO bloggers:
- Blame the healer at Tobold’s
- MEDIC!!! at WAAAGH!
- Warrior Priest Thoughts over at Metro Gamer
- WAR: When is it OK to tell your healer that he sucks? at /random (a little older)
After reading that selection of posts, I can see why people sometimes wonder if removing the healer archetype from MMOs altogether might be a valid argument. But really… aren’t some of us just a glutton for punishment? :)
So, that’s a wrap for 2008. Happy New Year (and celebrate safely!) to all of our loyal (ahem) reroller readers, and we’ll see you next years. Cheers!
