Life

It does have its own way of reminding you that you’re not always in control, doesn’t it?

I have been busy, busy, lately…so much so that I have barely had the time to sit down and play me some WAR or AOC.  I was finally able to get my hands on Rise of the Godslayer after that little side adventure, so I jumped into game for about an hour yesterday.  I roamed through some of the zones in Khitai and checked things out, got a feel for the place.  The aesthetics of the new continent work very well in my opinion.  There is a wonderful sense of scale that is buoyed by the draw distance of the graphics engine.  Only Vanguard can match AOC on that level.

But I wasn’t really able to play much, though I did take advantage of the Offline Leveling and bumped my Barb up to 76.  Only four more levels to the cap, and the last ones are usually the toughest.  Fortunately, I snagged the Collector’s Edition upgrade and now I have that 12 hour double-xp potion.  So I will be saving that for a day when I can really sit down and let loose.  I need to start working on my Bear Shaman (50) as well.  I haven’t played that class much since I used my free level 50 to get him.

I had completely forgotten about that little perk.  Once you get a character to level 50 in AOC, you gain a one-time ability to create another character who begins at level 50 instead of level 1.  You gotta love little gifts like that, and it certainly brought a smile to my face when I realized that I had not taken advantage of it yet.

As for WAR, I think I will be alternating my time between my SW and my WL for the foreseeable future.  I regret not being able to take more advantage of that double xp Mythic had going, especially for my Shadow Warrior’s renown.  But life just gets in the way of your fun sometimes.  I’ve had plenty of class work to tend to and it has kept me occupied lately.  I am enjoying the Scout spec I have settled on, though, and Scout is still the most viable SW spec in my opinion.  The others have advantages as well, but they just aren’t tuned well enough yet in my eyes.

Moving on to my young White Lion, I want to see how he feels once I get pounce.  So it looks as though I’ll be starting the leveling grind all over again.  I do wish Mythic would get the pat pathing smoothed out, as it still seems to be an issue and has been since launch.  Other WLs are telling me that they alter their specs for large battles not because of actual strategy, but because the WL pet pathing is so poor it detracts from their efficiency and so they switch their spec around so they can still be viable.

That screams…

…to me.  But as with all things, I will level up and see how it plays out for myself.  That’s all I have for now.  Happy gaming! 

Official Shadow Warrior Suggestions

Official Massively Multiverse Shadow Warrior suggestions:

1.  Glass Arrow: add a 3 second stun to the aoe, increase cooldown to 30 seconds

2.  No Respite: Increases chance to parry, dodge, and disrupt by 10%  (crit bonus removed)

3.  Barrage: each time this ability crits it will increase shadow warrior run speed by 20 for 10 seconds (may not trigger more than once a minute)

Just to clarify, this is all coming from an CR 40 RR 45 Shadow Warrior.  The only people I seem to find who think Shadow Warriors are just fine and dandy seem to be RR 50 and up…which says a lot about how important gear is in the game.  But that’s no surprise really, and I will update my Shadow Warrior thoughts once I get higher renown and obtain better gear.

I still believe strongly that Shadow Warriors do need some tweaks to ratchet up the fun factor.  But as with all things, this is just my opinion and you can take it or leave it. 

Round 2: Making the complicated simple – SW Fixes

For those who stop by here and don’t regularly check the Official Warhammer Online forums, a discussion on my previous Shadow Warrior blog post has been raging with many and varied opinions.  So I’ll throw up a link to that thread and then make a few more comments.

http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=archetype_ranged&thread.id=6449

The thing I would like to mention here is partly what I talked about in that thread.  Shadow Warriors are NOT completely helpless, nor are they incapable of killing enemies or dishing out respectable damage.  The fault of the Shadow Warrior class has more to do with the survivability and cohesion between the three stances.  The stance mechanic itself is flawed and clumsy, as many have said previously.

The 5 second timer just makes things awkward as well, as does the ability to go stance-less.  But the point here is simple despite continued attempts to make it more complicated.  Play a Shadow Warrior from levels 1 to 40 and then tell me that you think the class is just fine the way it is, needing no tweaks or changes whatsoever.  If you honestly think that then I respect your opinion.

But the opinion of many Warhammer players is that Shadow Warriors could use a little bit of love to make them more accessible.  SWs do not have that “pop” feeling you get when you are playing a class that is concisely built to achieve a specific purpose and fill a particular role within a game.  Shadow Warriors are a class meant to personify the ability to drift fluidly between the various stages of battle.

They cripple their enemies from a distance, swiftly move to skirmish mode when things get tight so they can continue to fire their bows while moving, and then unsheathe their swords in melee range to finish things off.  The problem with all this is that Shadow Warriors are very squishy and die quite often.  Yes, I am well aware that the CR 40 experience improves greatly once your RR gets higher and you get some good gear.

But an MMO class should not only thrive once it hits the cap and gets nice gear.  An MMO class should feel adept at its purpose throughout the leveling experience.  This is difficult to achieve and most certainly speaks as to why MMO classes are always being adjusted and tweaked over the life of an MMO.  My point is that Shadow Warriors need to be able to survive just a little bit longer in a fight, as well as being able to switch between their stances with greater ease.

I would honestly vote to dump the whole stance mechanic for Shadow Warriors altogether, but that won’t be happening so I will focus on what we can do to make the experience more enjoyable.  We can either buff up the defensive capabilities of the Shadow Warrior, such as attaching some new dodge/parry/disrupt boosts to each stance.  Or we can give Shadow Warriors a little more utility to help them maintain distance from their enemies, such as the Glass Arrow buff I suggested or the VON enhancements.

I am not asking that Shadow Warriors receive a massive amount of buffs.  I like that Shadow Warriors are complicated and require a great deal of thought in order to play well.  What they need is to have their overall fun factor buffed through allowing them to serve their purpose better.  They are a class that shifts through the battlefield like water, utilizing their tactics to best suit the situation.

Adjusting Shadow Warrior survivability would certainly permit them to fill their niche more efficiently.  It would also give players a greater sense of fulfillment when they choose to join up with the ranks of Nagarythe’s elite, the guerilla warriors of the Elf kin and the arm of Ulthuan’s vengeance.

You can’t cure stupid

This post is mostly for entertainment purposes, so I am playing myself a little more over the top than usual.  I am sure some of you have had similar experiences so feel free to share them in the comments!

So at last I find myself in a competitive Scenario with the score sitting at Destro 458 – Order 452.  Order has the Lighthouse, Destro has the Fort, and the Barracks are up for grabs.  A huge battle is raging at the Barracks so I sprint back up to take the Fort while the mob of players is engaged.  I get there and see a Witch Hunter standing near one of the rocks.  “Excellent,” I think to myself.  He will come in handy when the Witch Elf pops on me, which is almost sure to happen.

With the groundwork of the story complete, I am now going to employ a sophisticated technique known as foreshadowing.

The score now moves to Destro 488 – Order 487.  I am standing at the Fort with the Witch Hunter and we flip the Fort to Uncontested.  I watch with fervent anticipation as there are no Destro in sight and the ownership bar slowly fills up.  Then the unthinkable happens…using his undoubtedly ingenious tactical knowledge, the Witch Hunter decides to run off.  And so he goes, as useless as a writer on a movie set.

Does he not realize that I am a Shadow Warrior!!??  You can’t leave us alone!!!  We are like lost puppies by ourselves!!  *grins*

So I am left to fend for myself at the Fort while the crowd is still engaged at the Barracks.  I start to say something to the Witch Hunter in Scenario chat when…you guessed it…a Witch Elf pops out of stealth.  I die in about 5 seconds, she retakes the Fort, and boom…Scenario over and Destro wins.  So I would like to take a moment and say to said Witch Hunter…

I understand the plight of the moronic…I truly do.  It’s not your fault that you were born with a deficiency that prevents you from processing logical thought patterns.  So the next time you get distracted by a fly would you mind taking one little step off the edge of that bridge over there?  It’s completely safe, I promise.

*sighs*

Clear blue ocean…clear blue ocean…

Making the complicated simple – SW Fixes (Expanded)

My Shadow Warrior experiment is going well I suppose.  I have been trying different talismans and switching my specs up a bit to see how they play with the increased wounds in particular.  The conclusion I am beginning to draw from all of this is not surprising.  Shadow Warriors tend to go as their group goes.  If you are playing with competent people then you can do some damage as a Shadow Warrior.  If you are participating in lots of pick-up groups or find yourself in one-on-one situations then your frustration is probably mounting because you find yourself taking dirt naps far too often.

This is quite different for a Shadow Warrior than a Bright Wizard.  This is because a Bright Wizard can still top the charts even if Order gets destroyed in a Scenario.  That’s not going to happen with most Shadow Warriors.  But what we usually hear in these cases is the old “balance for group argument.”  Yes, Mythic, we know…WAR is not balanced around one-on-one fights.  This makes perfect sense as well, but I think the point they are missing is that classes still need to be fun and Shadow Warriors could just use a little love.

Survivability is the problem here and it really isn’t that difficult to fix.  A tweak here or there would drastically improve things for Shadow Warriors in this regard, but for some reason Mythic just doesn’t see it that way.  Adjusting the range of Takedown to work from point-blank range would work wonders for starters.  If you throw us one more utility bone other than that and we would be in business.  It’s that simple, folks.

I am looking very hard at Glass Arrow right now because it genuinely seems to be the most useless ability I have ever seen.  It has a 2 second cast time and does crap damage.  It really is pathetic and I can hardly believe that they still have it there in its current state.  So here’s my thought…leave the damage as is and lower the casting time to 1 second…then add on some kind of utility to the skill that Shadow Warriors lack.

A 5 second root would work wonders, though I am not keen to add even more crowd control into a game that already has too much.  But this would give us one more regular ability other than Takedown that allows us to put some distance between us and the enemy.  Everyone can do crowd control in WAR so generally speaking, the snare on Takedown is not very useful because your foe just snares you back.  So adding some kind of utility proc to Glass Arrow to help SWs get some distance would go a long way towards helping people enjoy the class more.

The only other ability I would look at right now is VON.  Adjust the cooldown to 1 minute and we are good.  Two minutes seems like way too much for a skill that is useful but I would hardly call it overpowered.  VON could truly be turned into the primary support skill for Shadow Warriors, as they could use it far more often to proc all kinds of fun little abilities.  Some skills already work this way of course, but you could certainly add some other procs to make VON even more interesting.

I could go into a lot of more things but I don’t want to muddy the waters.  You could do lots to make the Shadow Warriors a more enjoyable class, though.  The stance mechanic is also faulty in my opinion, as the five second cooldown just makes it feel clumsy.  In addition, the ability to accidentally go stance-less if you press the wrong key adds to the overall feeling of bleh.  But I doubt Mythic will change the cooldown so maybe we can just hope that they might eliminate the ability to go stance-less.  It’s ridiculous and does nothing but make SWs more frustrating than they already are for some.

That’s all for now I suppose.  Till’ next time. 

EDIT:

I would like to say a little more regarding the concept of fun.  Class balance has always been and is still a major flaw in Warhammer Online.  I do believe much of this is due to the fact that we have 24 classes in WAR and trying to balance all of them must be akin to getting Israelis and Palestinians to stop killing each other.  I do have empathy for the class balance process, because developers are sifting through tons of voices all screaming for different things.

At the end of the day, however, it was Mythic’s choice to put 24 classes in the game and so that represents a contract of sorts with the player.  Mythic’s job is to make sure all of the classes are enjoyable and fulfilling to play.  Too often I hear the words “WAR isn’t balanced for 1 v 1″ used to hide from some of WAR’s more serious balance issues.  Shadow Warriors need some love and they are not alone!

When a Witch Elf pops onto me I should have at least a moderate-small chance of survival.  But nine times out of ten I am dead in under 3 seconds.  That is not fun.  That is not rewarding.  That is not balance.  Yes, Witch Elve’s should be a major threat to Shadow Warriors as we are exactly the kind of class they should be looking to kill.  But the fight should not be over in 3 seconds.  That is absurd.

If you want to play an FPS and light people up with headshots then that’s fine, go play an FPS.  But MMOs are supposed to have a little bit more thought and strategy built into them.  I am NOT saying that Witch Elves should be nerfed, however.  I am saying Shadow Warriors should be given a little bit more survivability.

That is all. 

The Experiment

Good Shadow Warriors, who have traveled from villages near and far…lend me your ears!

After endless deaths and a general rebellion against the Shadow Warrior’s lack of survivability…I have decided to conduct an experiment.  I am CR 40 and RR 43 atm, so without the benefits of top gear to boost my damage numbers I am inclining to think outside the box a little bit.  I have decided to dump a large pile of ballistics in favor of wounds and toughness, hopefully making me a little bit harder to kill.

This will take some extensive testing to determine whether or not this is viable for a young level 40, but I shall report back with my feelings once I have run with this a while.

I do know that my first Scenario saw me with 7080 hit points that were buffed to 7880.  I am still running in Scout stance with a toughness of 311 and Ballistics of 839.  I know what you are thinking…why beef yourself up and not just go Assault to boost armor as well!?  I may try that to be honest, but for now I would like to see how Scout handles the extra hit points and mitigation.  I did not die once in the entire Scenario (good heals too) and honestly felt like I survived a few barrages that I would not have before, with much higher ballistics and lower wounds/toughness.

This obviously lead to me being alive more often and gave me more time to do damage, even if my bonus numbers were nothing to write home about because of my dropped ballistics score.  I still managed to finish 6th in overall damage when the Scenario was over.  I will continue to try this out and see how it goes.  I may throw in some different specs as well, we shall have to see.

Pugs and your will to live…a symbiotic relationship

I was going to begin today with an epic wall of text regarding the trials and triumphs of the Shadow Warrior, but I am going to put that on hold.  The main reason for this is I don’t feel that my current experience is reflective of max-level Shadow Warrior gameplay.  I have been absent from WAR for a long time and am only RR42.  I’m currently operating in gear that was adequate the last time I ventured into the lands of WAR over one year ago, but now that same gear is woefully outclassed.  I am in need of more power…

There is also another statement I would like to make at this time.  Pugging Scenarios can demolish your will to live faster than a…

I sometimes wonder if this is one of the primary reasons that so many people complain about class balance in WAR.  While I do agree that class balance is a problem, I think this is compounded by the fact that many Scenarios end with one side facerolling the other and nothing in between.  It’s amazing how ugly it can get out there.  I ran 7 Scenarios this morning and Order got absolutely hammered in every single one.  I felt frustrated, perplexed, and ready to throw my keyboard out the window.

I was trying my best to analyze how I could do better and wasn’t coming up with much.  I am a Scout Shadow Warrior and my gear has talismans to reflect that.  I have tried many different builds in the past, from Assault to Skirmish…but I find that Scout just suits me best.  If I wanted to be a melee dps class I would have rolled one, and my current gear is just not good enough to run with Skirmish…I simply die too quickly.

It’s no secret that the main problem with Shadow Warriors is SURVIVABILITY. Get used to that word, Mythic, because you are going to be hearing it from me ad nauseam until SW’s get a little more of it.  I’m going to wait until I get better gear before saying more, but I am confident that my primary concern for the Shadow Warrior will be the same even then.  But as for these Scenarios…I was just at my wit’s end.

Run just one more, I kept telling myself!  Surely my luck would have to change sooner or later.  So against the pleas of my wiser angels, I dove into the Scenario fray one more time.

The Scenario was Caledor Woods and I entered just a bit after it had begun.  Order was backed up to their camp on the little hill and things did not look promising.  I ran up to the collection of terrified Order on the hill and thought, “Pugs…crushing your will to live since 1997.”  I stared at them for a fragile moment while nothing was happening.  I could not understand what they were waiting for…we were all there so why not jump the hell down and make a fight as best you can!  And so I did, leaping gleefully down into the frothing mouths of the Choppas that awaited me.

This sparked several other to jump as well, and before you knew it we were all there screaming at the top of our lungs with weapons swinging wildly.  Several melee were on me in a flash, and I thought for sure I was a goner as I switched to Assault for the disarm.  To my utter and complete shock…I was still alive as I spun about, disarming the one and using Whirling Pin to slap the other into place.

I retreated as the heals flowed through me and moved back to Scout…debuffing and dotting up my target as I popped Von and UF for the Festerbomb.  I followed with a Fell the Weak as a few others chipped in and the Choppa was down.  But our victory was short-lived as the other melee was on me, announcing his arrival with an axe to my left nostril.  I thought for sure it was over, but again to my bewilderment the heals erupted into me, buying me time to get a little distance while we melted the target beneath a hail of damage.

These guys weren’t too bright for focusing on me instead of the Warrior Priests, but I wasn’t complaining.  “So that is what getting heals is like,” I thought.  I had quite forgotten after all that pugging.  The battle soldiered on as the two sides swayed back and forth like a branch on the cusp of the wind.  We ultimately lost, but to my astonishment I did not die once.  As a Shadow Warrior that is no meager feat.

So I decided to end my run of Scenario pugging on a high note and moved on to other things.  After 8 tries I had finally found some healing and a group that acted as if they had actually played the game before.  With a restored will to live and determined focus to find premade groups for Scenarios rather than pick-up ones, I logged out of Warhammer Online with this lesson well in hand.  Until next time, folks. 

Be back tomorrow with more commentary

I just wanted to throw up a quick post to let you guys know that I will be back with some more commentary over the weekend.  I’m just settling in and getting used to my Shadow Warrior again.  I made my first foray into Land of the Dead today, so I look forward to exploring it some more and sharing my thoughts.  I really like the aesthetic feel of the zone so far, with its howling winds and sand blasted temples.  It’s a nice departure from the current designs we have in the mainland.

I will also be sharing my updated thoughts on the Shadow Warrior class once I feel things out a bit more.  I have noticed some surprisingly good changes thus far, but I still feel like there is something missing and I hope to offer some suggestions.  Until then I can only say this…Warhammer Online is rocking and rolling these days, so whether you are an Endless Trial player or a regular subscriber I suggest you get out there and WAAAGGGHH!!!

And the steel-tipped arrows shall fly

It’s time to send a big, hefty truck load of thanks and appreciation to Mythic/EA Customer Service!  I am proud to announce that yes, he’s back…his class is still a little gimped…and he is very pissed.

On the bright side, he still has the ability to deliver the Festerbomb.  So life isn’t all bad. 

Warhammer Online has a pulse

Back in October of last year, Bright Hub posted a fascinating look back at Warhammer Online; analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, and ultimately where it went wrong.  This was not an attempt to bash the game, as the writer pointed out from the get-go.  It was intended to help us gain a better understanding of where WAR went awry, what might be fixable, and how it could be avoided in the future.  I remember feeling that this article struck a deep chord with me when I first read it.  So I am going to post a link to the article here, and then revisit some of these points and assess where Warhammer Online stands now, from the perspective of a returning player.

http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/mmo/articles/44427.aspx

The writer’s first point goes without saying these days.  Regardless of how you try to frame your remarks, any attempt to point out the faults of an MMO tends to result in a massive…

Luckily for me, I was able to snatch a tried and true flame retardant suit off of eBay.  This thing has stood the test of time and some intense heat along with it.  Tiger Woods is still regretting the day he sold it at auction.  Ben Roethlisberger keeps calling me about borrowing it, but I think it has its hands full here so I keep having to turn him down.  I could follow that with a real low blow but my better angels are telling me to let it pass.

So moving on…

People do seem to have lost the capability to agree to disagree, or to at least disagree with some measure of civility.  But let us see how this goes.  So the writer points out that Warhammer Online is in fact, not a terrible game.  It has many enjoyable aspects and various things about it can bring a smile to your face, so to speak.  WAR is a game of ever-present action.  Battles await you at every turn and that gives the world a true sense of glee, if in a slightly sadistic kind of way.  The Public Quests introduced by Mythic were also full of win, though they could have stood to have a few less than they do now.  But as this writer said, WAR has plenty of virtues and I couldn’t agree more, so let’s get on to the stuff that ticks people off.

First Point:  No Third Realm

Yeah, this was a whopper and I just don’t know what to say anymore.  Looking at Warhammer now, it still seems painfully obvious that so many of the troubles would be cured by the presence of a third realm to balance out the warfare when it ends up too one-sided.  Most people I have spoken to can agree on this, so let us continue.

Second Point:  Too Much CC

Once again, I can’t argue.  Though I am happy to report that Warhammer has finally instituted some genuine resist timers, so things do seem to be a little better on the CC front.  I will never understand why Mythic felt the need to give everyone 3 or 4 CC abilities to begin with.  It turned Tier 4 battles into an epic clusterf*** of “You have been knocked back, You have been stunned, You have been disabled, You have been disabled, You are Dead.”  This was not exactly what people wanted to spend their time doing during a fight.  So old players will be happy to know that CC is a little bit more under control now than it was during launch.

Third Point:  Class Balance

Ahh yes, the third rail of PvP MMOs…the dreaded Class Balance card…and what a problem it has been for WAR.  Let us take for example the Bright Wizard compared to the Engineer and Shadow Warrior.  These are the 3 Ranged DPS classes for Order.  I am pretty sure that the Bright Wizard has undergone several patches of nerfs since launch and they can still outdamage an Engineer and Shadow Warrior.  The writer points out that a third realm could have helped this as well, and I cannot argue that point.  If one realm had possessed an overpowered class, the two others could have ganged up on it.

Fourth Point:  Population Balance

If it were possible for me to walk up to the Mythic offices and hold up a sign other than “WAAAGGGHHH”, it would be a sign that read “Population Balance!”  Nearly everything in WAR is dependent on population.  We have three different racial pairings and each pairing has 4 separate Tiers, each pairing has its own RvR Lakes within said Tier, each pairing has its own Public Quests that require groups, and each Tier has its own Scenarios that require people on both sides to pop, and…are you getting tired yet?

I have never played an MMO that seems so insistent on segregating its population at every step of the leveling process.  They had a model in DAOC that worked beautifully, as all three sides had their own lands where they leveled up and prepared for battle.  Then the frontier lands opened up to all and that is where the warfare took place.  Mythic is trying to alleviate some of this by streamlining scenarios and the like, but this still leaves us with RvR lakes that are void of anything except the occasional…

Fifth Point:  PvP that lack emotional connection

This is what happens when you break everything up into pairings and then into Tiers on top of that.  DAOC had realm pride, and that was because you felt a definitive attachment to your own lands.  In WAR, with all the lakes spread over pairing and tiers, it just doesn’t happen.  There is no cohesiveness to the conflict.  Taking keeps as a guild and then claiming them also feels pointless, as the segregation just leaves everything with a hollow feeling.

Sixth Point:  Performance

The article’s last point may be the area where WAR has made its greatest strides.  Performance is much improved on a wide variety of machines, making the majority of those battles a little less lag-tastic.  This is a welcome change, and WAR even looks a bit better to boot ,with recent additions like post processing.

So where does all of this leave us today?  Here is how I see it.  I think that perhaps for the first time, Warhammer Online has a pulse.  There are issues, yes…some are fixable and some are inherent to the game’s design.  But I truly feel like Mythic is on the right track for the first time since launch.  Right now their focus is on the City Sieges, perhaps the last vestige for realm pride available to either side.

The sieges that launched with the game were PvE-filled disappointments of epic proportions.  The first reports came out and the general response was…

So now Mythic has gone back to the drawing board and given us an outline for the new sieges that sounds much more like…

They have put a hold on PvE content for now, because they recognize that theirs is a PvP-first game.  Once you get that right then the rest will follow.  They already consolidated their newer players by creating a new player tutorial and funneling everyone into the same racial pairing.  They have given us better peformance, improved graphics, tweaks to RvR and how the pairing are locked down, CC timers, new RvR weapons and armor, improved ways to earn gear with special tokens, the list goes on and on.  We also have a statement coming from the head of EA’s MMO Division, Bioware.  His name is Ray Muzyka and on the topic of Warhammer Online he had the following to say.

“It’s a really high quality MMO, and it’s one of the highest-rated MMOs of all time. We are really proud of the team that did it.  They did an amazing job delivering a really high-quality experience.  It’s been very successful; a lot of people have played it.  Right now it’s really profitable business unit within my group. I think the team is really focusing on continuing to make sure it’s a stable, high-quality service for the fans who enjoy the universe.  It’s neat because,we’ve actually seen more people come into the universe which is fun.  We’ve tried some free-to-play models for some of the earlier levels, and I think that’s actually drawing people back in.  We have new content planned and all kinds of cool expansions for it.“

I highlighted the parts that should be of interest to everyone.  That is all you want to hear when the head of your division talks about your MMO.  Warhammer needs to be profitable and doing so could pave the way for an expansion and serve as a rebirth for the game.  I think Warhammer Online has discovered the light at the end of the tunnel.  I think it is slowly crawling its way out of the doldrums of mediocrity and into the haven of profitability.

Warhammer Online has a pulse, my friends.

And it doesn’t matter whether the game boast 100 servers or 10…as long as they are active and the game is profitable…that is what clears the road for continued development.  Yes, some of WAR’s faults really can’t really be undone at this stage.  I’m well aware of that and it is something I have come to accept.  I never even mentioned some of WAR’s other issues, like the total lack of a real economy to help make the world feel alive.

But all of this pales when compared to one simple idea.  If the foundation of a game is enjoyable and rewarding then people will overlook many faults.  Mythic is focusing on the right things now and that bodes well for the future of the game.  So this is one returning player who is eager to see what lies in wait around the corner.  *says a quick prayer for Skaven*  Until next time!