I was expecting this early in the day, but just got it now. Oh well. A couple of cool things, but nothing you probably don’t already have in your inbox. I’ll leave you with this picture from the newsletter, my personal favorite.
Last month’s Warhammer Online Newsletter was hardly worthy of being sent out (at least if you are believing what I write, and really, who wouldn’t) but they have a chance to make that up as I just received the February 2007 issue of the Newsletter.
It’s again more of the same, and none of the professions/classes really get me too pumped, but the “Warhammer Online Grab Bag” this month did have one question that I’m interested to see how it pans out. For those who don’t want to look, the grab bag is a bunch of questions that the CM responds to in the Newsletter about the game. I’ll quote the question and answer below.
Q: I’ve heard it said that there will be no “healer-only” classes in WAR. I am used to games where there are healers, and there are hybrid healers. Unfortunately, many groups tend to bark at hybrid healers, and say that if you can heal, then that’s all you should do for the group.
How are you planning on preventing that, and making it so that a group would want, say a Zealot or War Priest, for something other than a healbot?
A: Oh, this is such a pet peeve of mine. I tend to play games at work, because I have the coolest job ever, but playing at work means I solo – it’s hard to get groups, and I often have to dart away at a moment’s notice to do my actual job. That’s not fair to the one group I do manage to find, you know? Anyway, my circumstances push me to play a lot of hybrid types – a little magic, a little brute force, a little healing, etc. Then at night, I find a group… and aaaaaaaall they want is one of my many tricks, and they complain that I fail to be BEST at the trick they want.
But I digress.
The answer is pretty simple. Boiled down, the answer is “We’re not going to have any one-trick ponies, so your healer will be welcome.” But that’s not nearly as interesting as the conversation I had with Designer Steve and Designer Josh, and I thought you guys would enjoy a peek at the inside of the carnival. It’s no Paul Video Diary, but it’s still cool! It starts up after I sent the original question over to Steve, with my own acerbic commentary for flavor.
STEVE: It boils down to fulfillment of critical roles. Our healers are capable of being a 100% effective healer. They are also capable of fighting, but no healer is ever going to be as good at fighting as a true fighter class.
The reason they will want our healers is because they can fulfill their healing role AND contribute in other ways as well. Besides that, there will be no single-issue healers…all of our healers can fight as well as heal. There will be no preferred healer that is ALL heal, and better at it than the others.
SANYA: Er… no, I think you just directly contradicted the point I made. Players may want to BE the guy that can heal and contribute in other ways, yes, but the groups that those players join do not want their healers fighting. Ever.
JOSH: Being a “pure” healer will be an inefficient play-style based on how our careers are designed. The Warrior Priest, for example, builds Righteous Fury by dealing melee damage. That Fury pool gates some of his support abilities and augments others. If the WP hangs back and just tries to use his baseline, non-fury abilities to act as a pure healer, he will suck like a diesel-fueled vacuum cleaner.
It will be impossible to “focus” on healing rather than damage, so players won’t be able to ignore combat healers in favor of “pure” healers because pure healers won’t exist.
STEVE: Right. The point I was making is that there is no class that is more effective “just” healing.
For instance, WPs also [at this time] have an aura-based buff system that buffs friendlies IF they are within range of him. This means that he is better off being in the front line where the fighting friendlies can both fight and be in range of his buffs. If he held back and just healed from range, he would not be doing as much good as getting in the thick of it.
SANYA: *squints distrustfully*
STEVE AND JOSH: Have you tried it yet, or are you just assuming?
SANYA: *leaves to go try it*
Okay, Steve and Josh didn’t actually say that last line even though I did give them the evil squinty eye. They didn’t have to. Does this design work in practice as well as theory? Well, so far, so good… you guys should let me know how you feel once beta starts and you get your hands on it all.
I’m hoping this works out well though I can’t be sure if I’ll like it when it comes right down to it. I enjoy playing a pure healer class at times and not having one per se might be something that turns me off if it doesn’t work well enough. Of course, if it does, and the way they describe it the mechanics at least sound interesting, I would definitely try it out as I think it will definitely add something to the role of healing.
warhammer online, newsletters, mythic entertainment, upcoming games, healers, hybrids
There is no point in trying to explain it any better than what is said in the e-mail I received, so I’ll quote a piece of it (the one that relates to Corum Online (see post title)).
[New MMORPG] Corum Online!
GPotato is proud to announce our new MMORPG, Corum Online! Corum Online will be beginning it’s Closed Beta at 5:00PM PST on January 10, 2007 (Wednesday). Players can participate in the Beta with instructions to be found at http://corum.gpotato.com or at the General Forums at http://corum.gpotato.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8 or on our beta partner site, www.FileFront.com.
Corum Online, which was a huge success in both Korea and Japan, is a fantasy MMORPG with a very unique Guild and Dungeon system. Guilds and Clans unite in order to not only clear dungeons and instances for loot, but also to claim those places as their own. Instances all over the world can be controlled and owned by guilds. Those instances give those guilds certain bonuses such as resources or even power. Not only that but you can train and summon your own guardians that will defend these instances for you while you’re away.
Like all GPotato games, Corum Online will also be Free to Play so your current GPotato ID can be used to start right away! So what are you waiting for?!
Now, given that so far GPotato/Gala-Net has given us gems such as Space Cowboy and Fly for Fun (along with Rappelz which I have no post about to mention how good it is yet) you should be interested in this game already. Chances are you aren’t, in fact, I would bet most of you didn’t even realize they were releasing a new game, but if you take a few minutes to search the game’s site I think you’ll find some of why it could turn out to be great.
The beta will begin today so take the time out to look at it.
Last month I thought that the newsletter actually did a good job of getting me excited. Not so much with this month. Not to say that it doesn’t have some good stuff, and a ton of new info, just none of it appealed to me that much. Well, that’s not entirely true, the write-up about the Witch Hunter class did seem pretty cool, but I was hoping for more than that. At this point though, I’ll take what I can get.
So, for now, I’ll highlight the Gamespot interview about the Witch Hunters, which is pretty cool. As for the rest, I’d recommend just skipping it.
Warhammer Online, Witch Hunter, Gamespot, EA, Mythic, Games Workshop
NCSoft posted a few days ago that they updated some stuff on the PlayNC site relating to Aion. This includes some nice screenshots and a trailer, and it reminded me that I had all but forgotten about this game. Looking at it now I remember just how incredible it looks graphically and the trailer is awesome.
Anyway, just wanted to share for those of you who haven’t seen it. It’s only a bit below Tabula Rasa on the games I want to see list.
Blizzard has failed to impress me once again. It’s starting to become a habit with them from what I can tell. Notice I’m not saying Blizzard has done anything wrong, I’m just saying they aren’t doing anything great.
One would assume (oh so logically of course) that I could say this and not have reason, but that’s really not my style, so I’ll back up my complaint with how, this time, they have failed to impress me. Let’s take a look at the new Battleground that will be in the expansion (one of them anyway). If this sounds “totally super cool” to you, congratulations, you are officially addicted to the game. You no longer have any semblance of original thought, you believe only what Blizzard tells you to believe.
If that does describe you, even better because you won’t care that this battleground is the same old junk you’ve been playing for over a year. Well, maybe not exactly the same, I mean, hey, they did throw two ideas into one giant idea. Hell, they are creative geniuses just for thinking to combine these two things.
I can only imagine the brilliant discussion that built this battleground.
“Guys we need to come up with an idea for a battleground to release in Burning Crusade.”
*Long Pause*
“I’ve got it, why don’t we do a capture the flag battleground.”
“We can’t do that, we already have a CTF battleground, Warsong Gulch.”
“Oh yeah, right…”
*Another long pause*
“Okay, you’ll love this, we have a battleground with different objective points that players have to hold, and as they hold them they gain points, and after they get to a certain amount of points they win.”
“Oh that’s good, and the more objectives they hold the faster there points could go up.”
“Yeah, excellent thinking.”
*High-fives and celebration*
“Wait, you guys, we already have that, it’s called Arathi Basin.”
“Dammit, we’ve already thought of everything we can possibly do in PvP, there’s nothing left.”
“Hold on now, something is coming to me, I think it might be…yeah…wait, no…oh, it is; everyone shut up, I just had a freakin’ idea.”
“Someone break out the champagne boys, we’re about to make a few more million.”
“I haven’t even told you what the idea is yet.”
“Right, um…carry on, but be ready to get that champagne.”
“Here it is, we do a battleground like Arathi Basin, except we stick a flag in the middle, and returning the flag gets you points as well as holding objectives.”
“Holy $%#@, that’s incredible.”
So as not to make it look like a rant I’ll stop there, I think I’ve made the point. What I’m saying is…why am I going to bother playing this battleground, aside from a few rewards and the couple of new, cool-looking places, this isn’t anything I haven’t done before. Where’s my no-gear female night elf mud-wrestling battleground? Call me when they put that in.
World of Warcraft, Burning Crusade, Eye of the Storm, Battlegrounds, Blizzard, PvP
I got the 12th issue of the Warhammer Online newsletter, and some cool stuff was revealed. First off there is some images of the Empire (people and buildings).
Also, the last two careers for Greenskin and Dwarf were revealed. We have “The Choppa” and “The Rune Priest” respectively.
Quite a few other cool things in the newsletter as well, so if you aren’t signed up yet, I recommend going to the site and doing so now.
Reminding me of how I never want to conduct an interview The Killer Betties have an interview with the Tabula Rasa team. I don’t mean to say anything bad about the interview, I just wish that every interview (not just from this group) I read didn’t ask the same questions about the game. At any rate, the game does sound pretty sweet, and I’m definitely interested in seeing where things end up going, especially in regards to the combat which sounds like it will be a blast for those of us who are a little sick of click to attack, wait till enemy dies, move to next.
If you’ve had enough of swords and sorcery you probably are already looking at Tabula Rasa. An MMO set in a sci-fi universe with shooter-like combat and the development of an RPG. All seems grand. At least, that’s what I was thinking, being a huge sci-fi fan this was going to be the game for me. Mind you details on, well, anything, have been slim, but that didn’t stop me and many others from just imagining how mind-numbingly cool this game was going to be. The excitement was, and still is high (take a look at the screenshots or videos to see why). This article has me a bit worried though. To quote a small piece:
The system requirements will be fairly steep, with a 3.5 GHz processor, 2 MB of RAM and a high-end video card currently recommended.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy they are utilizing the best stuff to make this game and all, but, if that’s the recommended, what will just the base needed be? If I’m running on the low-end with my computer will the game even be worth playing? My big problem is, from a pure business perspective, requiring such high system stats alienates a massive amount of your possible player base. Part of the reason WoW is so popular is because most people didn’t have to go out and buy a new computer/video card/more RAM, it’s recommended requirements weren’t very steep even, most people could buy it and load it right up, no upgrading required. For me, and I assume others as well, playing this game is going to be a bigger investment than the ~$50 and the ~$15/month charge if we want to get the most out of it, it’s going to cost us $1000 or more (most likely more). Call me crazy but, I’m not sure I really want to spend that much money to be able to play a game.
I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong though, maybe the necessary system requirements will be low enough that I won’t need to sell my extra kidney to play.
If only it was 40k!
Now that that’s out of the way let’s move on to the fact that this is still Warhammer ONLINE! This is one of the games I’m most looking forward to. To really get the most out of the little bit of information we’ve got out of the game check out the main site.
In the morning you woke up and immediately started buying and selling on the market. Later in the afternoon your sell-through rate plummeted as competitor products hit the market at half your price. And tonight you're going to slay a dragon.
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MMO Gaming Author(s)
» Brandon
