Saturday, September 27, 2008

!!!!! Visions of W.A.R. !!!!!


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W.A.R. - Warhammer Age of Reckoning the new Massive Multi-Player Online (MMO) video game from Mythic has finally arrived and I LOVE IT!!! I dont just love it because it includes many of the best parts of the Warhammer mythos (though that is super cool) but I genuinely believe that this is far and away the most fun and best developed MMO I have ever seen. Those of you who have been following my ramblings for a while now may know that I was a beta tester and long run player for both the Matrix Online (MXO) and Star Wars Galaxies (SWG).  I have also played Ultima Online, World of Warcraft and several other MMO  games in a more casual way.


 I have enjoyed them all - but I swear that I have enjoyed the first few days in WAR more than all the time I logged in the other games added together. The environments are incredible - I have wandered the chaos wastes, battled on the front lines of Norsca/Norland against the empire, Stormed Dwarven keeps and spent a bunch of time hunting down High elves in both the Blighted Isle and Ulthuan.


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Sniping Elves In The Blighted Isles



The missions are challenging, fun and stackable so that you can be working to achieve several related goals at once. The tome of knowledge is wonderful and the story/knowlege unlocks are fantastic for immersing a player in the events transpiring. I also really like that I can play solo without difficulty in many zones but that group adventuring is really a core dynamic in the game. This means that I can do all sorts of different things and have very different experiences in any given session.



Burning Villages in Nordland



A few days ago I was wandering solo through Nordland in the town of Emskrank sowing seeds of dissent, helping to corrupt a Sigmarite priest and to bribe a gatekeeper.... Last night I was doing public quests of hunting Dryads and tree-kin (not to mention more than a few High Elves) with my buddy Terry and a group of Druchi in the Shadowlands - what a hoot! On the topic of co-operative play I have actually joined an online guild with several of my friends as well. We are the Dark Sentinels (www.darksentinelsofwar.com) and it is a really wonderful group made up entirely of adults who are well organized but also recognize the realities of daily life and family.  I feel very privileged to be included in this team.


 



My original intent in WAR was to play the Chaos Magus class as I really like the ranged attacks and daemonic "turrets" (summoning flamers is so cool)  and so I played one in beta for a while to get a feel for it. With Beta coming to a close, however, I figured I would try out a squig herder on a lark. I had just seen one trundling along in the inevitable city and thought it looked kind of cool. Well a day or two of herding squigs blew away 2 years of preparation for playing a magus - it was perfect for me. You can see pictures in this post of my actual character in game - yep it really does look that sweet in game play even with my only midrange video card!


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Hunting High Elves along the coast



 I will continue to post pics here over time so that you can see my character as he develops in game but what I really hope is that I will get to meet a few of you readers (or at least your avatar) in game at some point as you give WAR a try! I am Nhurghul and you will find me on the red eye mountain server. Hope to see you there. : )


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