The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning NDA has been lifted

Those of you who have anticipated the release of this game has most likely already read about this and you may also have read some of the comments from the beta testers around the world. If you have then you will have noticed that there is a huge difference between what the US beta testers and the EU beta testers have experienced. But in case you have not read anything or if you want to read yet an other view of an EU beta tester then here is my take on WAR, a game produced by Mythic by the way.

For starters I must say that I am a bit of the old school when it comes to MMORPGs to begin with, I did play WoW for a few months but I did not last long as I do not enjoy the new generation of games in this genre that is released. To me they are far to 'casual gamer' friendly and even though I no longer have the time nor have an inclination to spend the time needed to be in the 'hardcore gamer' camp I still believe that the past years of released games in the MMORPG genre has become watered down. Much because of the great success of WoW most likely.

Anyway, I started playing WAR in early May this year as a beta tester and while I recognised many things from other games such as the simplistic crafting style (even though it is marketed as a recipe free system it still has a lot of similarities with crafting in games such as WoW when it comes to complexity), the character development, the fighting and the total lack of anything else to do in game than either quest or fight other players I still did realize that this was a game totally focused on RvR (or Realm versus Realm). RvR was a concept that was developed by Mythic when they created Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) and essentially it means that the servers are devided into "factions" and these are pitted against each other in large scale Player versus Player (PvP) fights. This is also where WAR differs from all other MMORPGs I've ever played. But lets take it from the top.

The General Frame of the Game
Might not be the best title but I just want to put down some points so we all know what we are talking about here before I start off describing details of the game. So, first off the game is divided into two factions called Order and Destruction. The Order side consists of Empire (humans), Dwarfs and High Elves and the Destruction side consists of Chaos, Greenskins and Dark Elves. Each race belongs to a racial pairing together with an other race from the opposing faction. The pairings are Empire vs Chaos, Dwarf vs Greenskin and High Elf vs Dark Elf. Each of these racial pairings are divided into four tiers each with a different level range, so tier one (T1) goes from level 1 up to about 12 and T2 from 12 - 21 and so on. Just prior to release Mythic changed T4 into a large castle at the end. When a realm holds two out of the three castles from the other side the unofficial T5 is opened up and the city siege begin. Just a few months ago each pairing was going to have a capital city for each of the races that you could fight over but now that has changed into just two capitols for the whole game. So the unoffical T5 consists of the capitol siege and the capitols themselves.

Except for all of this RvR content there are also a lot of PvE content spread out through the tiers. Unfortuantely it has a lot of gaps and, at least to me, it feels a bit detached from the rest of the game and more importantly it seems pointless when compared to the RvR aspect of the game. One thing that Mythic has succeeded in though is to create a new mechanic that they use both in their PvE content and their PvP content and that is the Public Quests. The Public Quest is a quest that you get from just entering an area of the game world. It is not instanced or anything like that and everybody in the area can work on the same quest and most of these PQs you need to be at least one group and sometimes a full raid group to be able to complete. When the quest is completed you take part in a random roll for loot from a chest. The roll is modified by how much you contributed towards the completion of the quest even though if my experience is that you can very often be the highest contributor but end up with nothing. This has however been adressed in a patch recently and hopefully that will not be the case in the current release of the game client.

Character Development
As usually this is done by earning XP to gain levels or ranks as it is called in WAR. When you gain a rank you can talk to a NPC trainer and buy one or more abilities. However, in WAR you also gain renown points which will eventually lead to you gaining renown ranks (or rr for short). You also gain points for each of your rr that you can use to buy abilities from a renown trainer. Your rr also enables you to buy equipment from certain NPCs and this equipment is specifially tailored to be useful to you in RvR.

When you reach rank 11 you will also gain access to the mastery paths, these paths are used to let you specialize in one of your characters areas of expertise. This is how Mythic hopes to give their players a chance to create unique characters. Of course we all know that that is only right to a certain extent as within a month or so there will be cookie cutter builds out on the internet that explains what abilities you should choose to be the most efficient in the game. And yes, that is the kind of sarcastic remarks you can expect while reading this post.

So bottom line when it comes to character development. There really is nothing new under the sun here, we have seen the same kind of character development in several other games and WAR does not really bring anything new to the table in that department.

Crafting
Crafting in WAR has been marketed as being recipe free and yes it is, it is also something I have pretty much avoided testing as as long as I have been beta testing it has not really functioned well or there has at least not been any game mechanic around to explain how it is supposed to function. Thus it has so far for me been an utter disapointment.

Mark Jacobs did an extensive explination through videos a while back on how crafting in WAR was supposed to work. He spoke about how there would be no grinding and how wonderful it was that the whole thing is not based on recipes but as we all know there is again just a matter of time until the recipes is posted online, something I believe (if memory serves right) Jacobs also has stated that he realize. Also the whole thing about crafting not involving grinding is of course just nonsense. The only reason to not grind would be to create items that are not top of the line and the only reason to do that would be see how they look ... or gain the next level in crafting which will of course lead to grinding out massive amounts of items that just get trashed and we have exactly what Jacobs claims the system does not include.

By the way, as far as I can tell the crafting system is pretty much of the same complexity and usefulness as in WoW. That is the top of the line items might be a bit useful but thus far the items you build up to that point will just be scrapped. This might of course change and for all I know it may already have as I have not tried out crafting in the last few patches.

Fighting
As mentioned earlier the focus of the game is RvR, which means you are meant to be fighting against other players pretty much all of the time you are logged in. If you do not do that you will miss out on the essential part of renown ranks which will hamper your ability to fight other players later on in the game.

But if we start with the mechanics then there really is no visual difference between the mechanics of WAR and WoW. The 'global cool down' is apparently longer in WAR than in WoW and the auto attack damage in WAR is much less than in WoW (so gear is less important in WAR than in WoW). Otherwise it is essentially the same mechanics behind the fighting.

An other thing with WAR is that while there are 20 different classes (or careers as they are called in WAR) in WAR they are all mirrors, which means that it actually is only 10 which then are mirrored once to produce a career in the other faction with exactly the same game mechanic. Some of these mechanics we recognize from WoW, the most similar one would be the Iron Breakers Grudge points that he builds which are very similar to the Warriors Rage points from WoW.

Realm vs. Realm
I really have to make a sub section for this as this is the essential part of the game. This is where this game shines. I have to give it to Mythic for succeeding in creating a world where "war is everywhere" (something that they have chanted for a long time now). The RvR combat is easy to get into and most importantly it is fun. I have played MMOGs for about almost 10 years now on and off and while I have not played DAoC where RvR was created I have played other games with PvP in and I have always felt that PvP in other games has been absolutely pointless. In WAR it is quite the opposite though, I happily through myself into a PvP fight even though I personally have no chance of winning the fight but I know that I can help the players on the same side as me and while my rewards might not be great I will at least get something out of it.

The RvR fights are held in specific zones of each tier. These zones include Battle Objectives (or BOs) and from T2 also Keeps. The Keeps get larger for each tier and the fights to take them and defend them can turn into epic fights where several raid groups fight on each side of the battle. Both the attackers and the defenders can use siege equipment such as catapults and other things. The attackers also has to use a ram to get through the keep gate and the defenders can then use oil to fend off rammers.

The majority of the renown points you gain are gained through taking a keep or BO in one of these RvR areas of a tier. There are however also instanced scenarios that you can queue for and join. They usually take about 15 minutes or so to play through and there is a room for around 10 - 15 players per side in them. The scenarios are played on a very limited map usually with a few flags on that you try to take and hold on to. The longer you hold on to them the more points you gain and the first side to 500 points win the scenario.

Well that should cover the basis of RvR in WAR, you really have to try the game yourself to get a feeling for it though as it is impossible to describe how it is to run together with 40 other players up towards a keep on a hill and fight your way in through the gate and eventually kill the keep lord.

Player vs. Environment
PvE is as I have alluded towards earlier in this post a big waste of time, in my own humble opinion, in this game. For starters it is way to easy to finish quests by yourself so there is not much insentitive to group up while questing and the awards you get from the quests are not really worth spending the time on getting. Compared to other games on the market the PvE of WAR is not really that different except that it does not have much in the form of instanced dungeons. That however is something that might very well come and there is a few already in the game it is just that I have not tried them and they are very few compared to many other games.

Hopefully PvE is something that Mythic intends to spend a lot of time on after release as in my opinion it will prevent those players that just want to run about with a Warhammer character and do something in the Warhammer environment from playing the game.

End Game
End game is of course RvR and more RvR and capitol city sieges. There really is not much to say about this other than if you get WAR with the intention to not partake in the large war then you will not have anything to do once you reach level cap as the whole game is built to allow players a nice experience filled with RvR on their way to level cap and once there they are supposed to take part in the epic and constant struggle to reach the point where their side can siege the other sides capitol.

Graphics
Not much to say about the graphics. Partly because my system is at the low end of the requirments but also because the game has been built with low end systems in mind so they do not differ much from an other well known game ... yes, I mean WoW now too.

Conclusion
If you believe that you will enjoy fighting against other players constantly and your only interest in a MMORPG is PvP but you have think that other games has lacked purpose in that department then WAR is definitely the game for you.

However if you want to enjoy some interesting PvE, crafting or just plainly goof around with other things then WAR is not the game for you. In that case I'd recommend a game like LotRO instead as that has set the focus on PvE. On the other hand, LotRO is also a casual gamer friendly game so I would not really recommend that either to be honest.

Lastly, I posted an article about my experience of MMORPGs earlier on this blog. You can find that article here.

News flow and critique of sources

I just red a piece by Peter Bart, the editor in chief of Variety. He wrote in his column this past Friday about 'Fear and loathing in the blogosphere', it's a piece about how the news flow works in Hollywood today. He describes how the executives marvel at the fact that they can fire somebody at 10:15 and read about it on the web at 10:14. Something that might seem a bit disturbing and something that might seem as grounds for firing in itself in an other business as, at least to me, it would seem that somebody has definitely leaked inside information.

Bart goes on to make more examples of how people has received news that affects them through internet and blogs before they have received it through the official channels and he also explains that this is how it works today and that it would seem unproductive for the executives to try to work against it even though they still do to some extent today, if they do not just simply ignore the fact that this is how it now works.

Something that struck me though when I red Bart's piece is that it seems that people has completely stopped using criticual thinking or at least simply ask themselves where the information behind the news comes from or who might benefit from the news. Which pretty much means that the rumour mill can run haywire in Hollywood because nobody seems to stop to think why the news is out there or where it comes from.

So my point is simply this. The new newsflow that Bart is talking about in his piece should not really be such a problem for the executives and established traditional newsagencies as both of these carry with them a large piece of credibility while most blogs or other online sources does not. Sure some of them have been established for so long or have links to traditional press that has been around for long enough to create credibility but the vast majority of the sites out there has not. So the executives should be able to carry on with their press conferences for a while longer if you ask me.

But there is also something very disturbing that surfaces here and that is the general movement towards not using criticism of the sources in general and that is something I have notices over a long period of time through my online activities. While I was taught about this in school when I was around 12 it would seem that people in general are not even talking much about this anymore. It of course differs a lot depending on where you are from, as an example I met a Russian in the mid 90s that said that you really had to read between the lines when you read a news paper in Russia and during the late 80s and early 90s he was most likely right but the thing is that today it might be even more important but in a totally different part of the world. Today it is not politics that try to control the news flow but rather large corporate interests and this should not really come as news as this has been the case for many decades at least.

Unfortunately it would seem as though people has become complacant and just take things at face value. Which of course makes me life a lot easier as a blogger but at the same time it makes me wonder about the world of tomorrow.

'The Cure' releases new material

As an old 'The Cure' fan it is hard not to notice that they still produce new things even if I have not really listened much to their stuff since their 'Wish' album in 1992. It is not that I do not like what they do any more but I have to admit that I was a lot more into their early 80's music than I was into their later material. Possibly because I was in my mid teens when I discovered them around 1990 and their music suited my mood a lot back then but also because I feel that they left their niche and unique sound and moved towards popular music to much with the 'Wish' album. They have not stopped moving in that direction since then either so I have pretty much stopped listening to them.

However, it is cool to see that they (or should I say Robert Smith) is still going strong and while I might not listen to their music much any more it is still nice to hear their new release 'The Perfect Boy' and realize that their is still a lot left of that old The Cure sound that I feel in love with almost 20 years ago.

If you have not seen the video for the new tune then have a look at it over at YouTube.

Tropic Thunder premiers tonight

In the USA the film 'Tropic Thunder' premiers tonight and since I have to wait until at least the 18th of September to see it I thought I would have a look around the internet and see if there is any more news about the film and I soon find out that yes there is.

For starters they have made a "mocumentary". Actually, they have not made a complete one but at least they have made a trailer and a site. It's called 'Rain of Madness' and just the site itself is worth visiting. It takes a lot of inspiration from the documentary that was made about Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now', 'Hearts of Darkness', and so it is filled with totally crazy things.

They have also made a viral video, that is also a bit insane or should I say in a true Jack Black and Ben Stiller spirit. It of course also includes the third main actor of the film, Robert Downey Jr and what is supposed to be Stiller's nephew although I have no idea whether that is true or not but it would not surprise if it was true.

What personally interests me a bit about these things around the film is that these things, together with the three sites for each of the characters [1] [2] [3], tries to draw on the power of the internet for advertisement in a relatively new way and that is through viral advertisement, well new to me at least even though the concept has been around since the late 90's. Which of course include this very blog post but I on the other hand look forward to this film so much that I do not mind helping in marketing it a bit.

By the way, do not miss the trailer for this film over at Apple and you can also find the review for the film over at Variety.

The Swedish government is "tapping" all Swedish citizens

I have to admit that I'm not an avid blog reader myself. Well, some blogs I read every day but I'm quite bad at checking the general blog flow through ping services and such and so I have totally missed this as it is something that has not been a big thing in traditional media for some very odd reason. That could also be the reason why the Swedish blog community has pretty much exploded around the subject, again something that I have totally missed until I red an article on SvD's site (a Swedish newspaper).

What is going on is that on June the 18th the Swedish government pushed through a law that allows FRA (Försvarets Radio Anstalt, translation: the National Defence Radio Establishment) to listen to pretty much all communication in Sweden. I say pretty much because the law states that FRA is only allowed to tap communication that passes the border but today that pretty much means all communication such as email, sms, webb traffic, IMs, cell and landline phone calls. This in practice means that the Swedish government through one of its' military departments is listening in on everything the Swedish citizens has to say over electronic communication devices (which today is everything except snail mail) whether those citizens are criminals or not. Further more, they do not even need to ask anybody for permission to do this. The law gives FRA a blanket permission to record everything 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Of course this should not really come as a surprise to us Swedes as our government has moved closer and closer to the USA way of doing things for the past years and the US government has been listening in on phone calls and internet traffic for a while now according to these two [1] [2] articles on arstechnica. com. So that the Swedish government wants to abuse their citizens in the same way is not really surprising.

To work against all this in Sweden a website was started not too long ago called stoppaFRAlagen.nu. It is a party independent gathering of organizations and regular citizens working to get the new law ripped up and trashed because they believe that the law is a huge dent in the democratic process and personally I can only agree with them. For the democratic process to work the citizens should be able to raise their voice about anything without being nervous of the government cracking down on them. This law pretty much means that the government classify all its' citizens as criminals that needs to be checked on 24/7 and that is not a good basis for a democracy.

Asimov's Foundation becomes film

Ok, so it is not really news any more for a lot of people but to me it is. I first read about it today and I have to say that I am excited. It is Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, the producers behind the successful 'Lord of the Ring' films, that has decided to rework Isaac Asimov's work and release the Foundation triology through their rather newly created company 'Unique Features'. Asimov happens to be one of my favourite sci-fi authors and so it will be very interesting to see what they make of these books as they are not really made for the screen. The Foundation triology is quite philosophical and not so much filled with action, even if there are parts that can be very thrilling and exciting but it is still far from being a 'Matrix' story.

In 2004 an other of Asimov's books was reworked for the screen, namely 'I, Robot'. While it was considered a success by Fox, it was considered an utter failure by many of the Asimov fans. Personally I quite enjoyed the film even if the story differed somewhat from the book and I do not have a problem with Will Smith as an actor which some people seem to have.