The Weekly Warhammer Wrapup #4

Progress Report

Spazter sits at level 28 this weekend.  Another week and I did not get to play as much as I wanted.  However, I did get a chance to enter T4 Open RvR this weekend for a few hours.  I had a lot of fun despite the lag.  I am not sure at this point if the game is just inherently laggy in large RvR battles, of if I still have something wrong with my computer.

News From the Herald

This week there was a couple hotfixes in preparation for 1.0.5.  Most notably 1.0.4b was released this week.  If you managed to read through all of the class changes coming for 1.0.5, you may have noticed that they seem to be focusing on the Engineer and the Magus.  The changes coming for both of them are sweeping changes to their class mechanics.  As I see it, right now Engineers do not have a ‘place’ in RvR.  They are week, wearing only light armor, and the only good damage they can deal comes from their turrets.  1.0.5 was planned to change all that by nerffing their damage a bit while giving them quite a boost in defenses.  However, it seems that with 1.0.4b they decided they couldn’t wait to nerf the class.  Since I do not play an Engineer or a Magus, I’d like to know just how much 1.0.4b takes away from the classes without the defensive buffs they promised in 1.0.5?

Heavy Metal Live Event

This week’s Grab Bag was focused on the Heavy Metal Live Event.  The event, set to begin tomorrow, is set to coincide with the release of 1.0.5.  The aim of this event is to get people to do the daily quest in order to get a chance at playing the new classes early.  Honestly, I haven’t had a chance to play my character to 40 yet, and I don’t feel like stopping just to play another character.  Hopefully the daily quests will be fun and there will be enough people doing them that it doable.  Mythic does state that the quests will be solo-able, so we will see.

I think the real value of this event is to give WAR some much needed positive PR.  With the release of Wrath of the Lich King for WoW, and Mines of Moria for LotRO, Warhammer has really been taking a beating from the community.  Blizzard release some interesting statistics from their exit polls last week that 46% of players who listed WAR as their reason for closing their Warcraft account have reopened their accounts.

Why do you play?

Keen over at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog pointed out a post on the vnboards this week from TristianX:

“I’ve come to realize truly what could be warhammer’s greatest flaw, and that is I don’t miss it.”
I have heard this statement from many other gamers.  Unfortunately, I have to agree with his observation.  When I am at work, or generally away from the game, I don’t miss not playing.  I don’t have that drive to play that I’ve had with other MMOs.   Keen goes further and recommends some possible hatchet-like fixes to the game.  I have to say that I agree with some of them.  Especially removing the zone control/locking.  If I am in a raid spending several hours taking keeps and having a great time, I don’t want to wait for enough people to queue the scenario, or finish some quests to move on the next zone.

Furthermore, I think that WAR needs something like Darkness Falls in th game.  Give me some reason to defend my zone.  Why should I defend a keep in Pragg when I know that they have 2 more zones to capture before they are attacking my city.  I wholly agree with Keen in this observation.

Keen suggests removing renown and victory gain from T4 scenarios.  While, I do agree that the rewards need drastically reduced, I do think that you should be able to gain renown in scenarios if that is the way you like to play the game.  I do, however, think that scenrios should not count in zone control.  Keen has s ton more suggestions in his post, if you are interested I would take a wander over and read them over, then come back and let us know what you think can help WAR out.

I personally do not think that Warhammer is in that much trouble.  Christmas is weeks away many newcomers will show up.  I think that after the initial hype of WotLK, most of the players who left will be back as well.  Also of note this week, Korea Gamers are getting a Warhammer Server.  It seems that Hangame has struck a deal with Mythic to provide servers in Korea.

Wrapup

Well, lots of stuff in the news this week.  Hopefully I’ve helped you sort it out.  So, what do you think?  Is Warhammer dieing already?  What can be done to fix it?  How about those Engineers out there?  Was the 1.0.4b nerf crippling?

Until next week,
Get your WAAAAGH on!!!
-cfalzone