West Karana

The blogger at the Playing Age of Conan With a Wiimote blog quits Age of Conan…

I admit it, life before Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was fairly bland and meaningless. My life before I became consumed by WHOOOOAAAAA was just a shadow — a shadow OF a shadow, really. Before Public Quests, how could I really do a quest? Before the Tome of Knowledge, how would I know what to do? Before Open Groups, how would I ever find a group? MMOs before WAR were mostly people just standing around, without direction, without anything to do.

WAR changed that, and changed it forever. Changed it to death. From now on, no other MMO developer will ever dare confuse players by not telling them exactly what to do and when. But really, when you already have WAR Everywhere, what do you even need other MMOs for?

It’s time for all those other game companies to really examine their lives, to just sit back and wonder why they are even in this crazy business when the one game to rule them all has already been written? They should all roll up those masters of high elven magics, those twisted sisters of arcane allegiance, the Archmage, and go WAAAAAAAAA on someone.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

Your basic Archmage is always doing the wrong thing. When its just trash mobs everywhere, the Archmage is making them light up like fireworks at Christmas. When the boss is up and the Bright Wizards are all lighting up the bad guy, doing their part, the Archmage is looking for people to heal.

“We’re BURNING here, Ossandra-the-Amazing!”

“Wait, Lego Lass has a nasty scratch, be right with you!”

*Crunch*Crunch* boss picks Lego Lass up in one meaty hand and bites off her head. Ossandra brightens up. “See?!”

The Bright Wizards laugh and nuke the boss dead while Ossandra gathers her magic for a huge blast — finally. “Um, where’d he go?”

Archmages are famous for fighting the wrong mob at the wrong time. They bring dobermans to cat shows. They drive in the carpool lane without anyone else in the car. They show up to birthday parties a day early and send the present a month later.

Playing an Archmage? Here’s a news flash. Nobody wants your cruddy heals. Just toss a few around to build up the power for the nukes you were hired for and try to ignore the Bright Wizards doubling over in laughter. Your guild leader has a clue in the guild bank just for wild cannons like yourself. Go get it.

Gandalf would have looked damned silly trying to get some quick heals off on Samwise so he could fight the Balrog.

Get over yourself. Archmage is the high elf word for ‘hopelessly confused’.

—

Wow, has this really been three weeks of Straight Talk Warhammer? Very nearly! Three weeks since all our lives were changed forever. This is also the last Straight Talk Warhammer — for now, anyway. I’ve enjoyed doing them very much, and they’ve made me want to pick up the game and give it a try. But there are other games out there that need a pin in their balloons, and satirizing every class in Warhammer just to do it is definitely taking a good joke past the point where it’s amusing. Starting next week, Stout Henry will be back with his twisted take on MMO combat with ‘Stout Henry Goes to War”.

For those few of you who stuck with STW this long, thanks :) Your laughter and comments made this worthwhile!

There’s just so much to say about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning that people don’t even talk about. I’m don’t mean innovations like Public Quests or the Tome of Knowledge or Open Groups or stuff like that, but stuff that really makes you sit down and go, “damn, why hasn’t any other game ever done this?” It’s that “I coulda had a V-8″ forehead slap moment.

I’d have liked to have been in that meeting where some nebbiish dev looked up from his books and said, in a quavering voice that would change the direction of the game forever, “why don’t we have DWARFS in our game?”.

The sound of helicopters… the tragedy of bunnies… Every person’s mind was immediately gripped by the tale of the dwarf Alderich, who forged a magic ring deep within a volcano’s maw, a single ring that would rule the entire world.

“Nobody has EVER done THAT,” agreed everyone else. “Nobody’s gonna figure out that we stole the idea from an OPERA!” And thus, the race of dwarfs was born, and among them, that stalwart example of dwarf obstinacy, the Ironbreaker.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

Standing four foot high on tippy-toes and waving their stubby little arms above their heads, you’d be forgiven for thinking the best way to deal with an Ironbreaker is by treating them like your annoying kid brother, who wants the toy YOU have, that you keep tossing back and forth with your sister on the other side of the room.

“Mine! MINE! I WANT MINE!!!” screams the Ironbreaker, his face going all red and cute, but he just can’t get the toy, can he? Can he? Here it is! Whoops! Over to Sis! Awwww.

Ironbreakers are the whiny little brothers of Warhammer, forever running around, hoping people will hit them so they can run and tell Mother. “MOTHER!!!!” cries little I.B., “He HIT me! And then SHE hit me! And then all these OTHER people hit me! MAKE THEM STOP!!!” and Mother comes out, looking like she wants to hit the little urchin, too.

Wait. YOU’RE an Ironbreaker? Sorry, I didn’t see you right away, crouching there behind the rock. Oh? Well, standing behind. Oh? OKAY. Standing on TOP of the rock, waving your hands. Well, so you’re an Ironbreaker, are ya?

Well, your job is to stand places. Yup. That’s it. Stand over here, stand over there, and be all whiny so people will hit you. You want to be hit. You CRAVE being hit. You want people to give you a real BEATING. To walk over to where you are, standing still, and then HIT you.

Yeah. You like being hit. Every bruise is a badge for you. You live for the moment when Mother walks up and you can say, “SEE what they did!? And I didn’t cry, not once!”

You’re one whiny, sick, Oedipal bastard.

—

Wondering what your Warhammer career says about your personality? You won’t find that hot info anywhere else than here at Straight Talk Warhammer, where we know you better than you know yourself.

Was your life as devastated as ours when one, two, and then three days went by without a Straight Talk Warhammer? Did you feel feverish, slipping in and out of consciousness, and have long and repetitive arguments with yourself about whether or not Sokka from The Last Airbender was inspired by Xander Harris from Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Friends, we know exactly how you feel. But from those pits of despair and dreams we have wrangled news of one of the most excitingly original careers ever conceived of by a game which has already proven time and time again that a war between orcs and humans was too good an idea not to copy, the Witch Hunter.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

The problem with being a Witch Hunter is, not enough Witches to go around. Like, you come to a village, and you see normal people going about their normal jobs. How can you tell which are witches?

Luckily, there’s an easy test. Have your minions line up the villagers and send them into Witch Hunter Central one at a time, and see if they match any of these tell-tale witch signs in our handy “Description-Prescription” table.

Simple truth is, a good witch hunter can’t be really effective against the minions of darkness if there’s any sign of taint in their so-called allies. I mean, how sure can you be that you yourself are not a witch?

Witch hunters always place themselves behind the allied lines, so they can keep a sharp eye both on their friends AND their enemies. Because witch hunters have no friends. They can’t afford them. They have seen too many friends willingly and with great intensity shrug off the illusion of Order to reveal the demon hiding beneath after it was shown to them that their homes, wives, children and fields were unholy.

It doesn’t matter who you are, really. The Witch Hunter has looked into your soul with his steely, unforgiving eyes, and what he sees disgusts him. Prepare to burn.

—

There’s only one blog that will wade through the scourges of fire and fever to bring the Straight Talk about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and that’s this one. You won’t find this on any Tome of Knowledge… is not given as a reward in a Public Quest… but dammit, it should be. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting edition of Straight Talk Warhammer, where we discuss that bane of pressed clothing, the Ironbreaker.

Whatever was sneaking up on me Friday turned into full-blown influenza Sunday morning. I’ve been spending my time alternately dreaming and hallucinating; I’m not sure which I’m typing this in. I want to sit up but can only do it in five minute stretches.

Two dreams I remember, but… body wants me to lie back down so they will have to wait.

I’d like to direct you to Mythokia’s impressions of his first 16 days in Singapore’s National Service. It’s a surreal depiction of life in what’s supposed to be a giant, two year bonding exercise for all of Singapore’s men.

You love you some Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, but the game isn’t addicting enough. There should be some way of making your time away from the game an interminable hell. If only… if only there was a career that could give you such a high that when you came down, all you could think about would be your next fix — and the next after that.

Meet the best friend you will ever have in the game, the one whose number is #1 speed dial on your cell phone, the one who always has what you need — the Runepriest.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

There’s nothing subtle about the Runepriest. You’ll see him in the dark shadows of every battlefield, surrounded by his Witch Elf honeys, dispensing the runes. You know you want that health rune, dontcha? Yeah you do. You feel uber with that health rune. And that strength rune, man, that fuggin’ turns you into a Public Quest pretty much. Dude just got in some Runes from the Empire, them are Elf runes, and they’ll totally mess you up.

But watch out for those protection runes. Yeah, they totally give you a high so high you can see the next chapter without even looking up. But you have to keep paying the Runepriest, or he’ll take your protection away, and then you better be watching out for your wheels and your women, ‘cuz without the Runepriest protection, they is up for grabs.

What? You want to be a Runepriest? Well, let me cut you in on a little secret: It’s all about the connections. Because the other Runepriests don’t want your dwarf wannabe ass taking a slice of the rune pie. And no way you can make it out there alone. What you have to do is make some friends with the local law. You can give them some gold, and they’ll stay bought until it’s gone, but lay some runes on them and you have friends you can count on.

And then you can be all like, yeah, I have some protection runes, local stuff, good stuff, but I just made some really wild stuff, real rare, and to be honest, I don’t think you can handle it. And they’re all, yeah, I can handle it. I can take whatever you got. And you say, this is gonna cost you, I can’t be making these things every day, you can’t even afford it. Lemme just bag you up a dime bag of the regular runes. And they’re like, dude, I ranked #1 on five PQs last night, show me what you got. And you’re like well, okay, if you think you can handle them, but I better not see your saggy human ass banging on my door in the middle of the night unless you got some shinies in your backpack to pay. Cuz I got plenty of strung out junkies like your own self being my doormat ALREADY.

And they’re all, hey, dude, I’m not like that. Here’s the swag, now gimme the bag.

Yeah. We’re talking repeat business. We’re talking logging in, and seeing guild chat light up with people wanting your runes.

Damn, it feels good to be a Runepriest.

—

Strung out and hung over waiting for the next edition of Straight Talk Warhammer? Don’t be! Read about the secret details of every Warhammer career every weekday. This is the only place you can get the straight dope that Mythic won’t tell you. The only place that dares tell the truth about Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.

Ever since Blizzard created the MMORPG genre with World of Warcraft, generations of people wondered if the genre they invented would end with that game — it was just so good, such a shining gem of perfection, that to add or subtract any one thing to that game would just mar its sublime beauty.

And then Mythic dreamed of a new game, one as polished as WoW, but with things WoW had never imagined, like two sides forever at war — at WAR! — and battlegrounds where the two mortal enemies could meet in order to take on well-defined challenges for points. The name of this paragon of innovation?

None other than Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. That’s WO:AoR, which is kind of like how a ghost would say “war”. And there’s no WAR class better at turning people to ghosts than WAR’s own little mad bomber, the Dwarf Engineer.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

A dwarf engineer walks casually out of a post office, schoolhouse, shopping center, whatever. He scratches a match to fiery life on the back of his knuckle, lights a cigar, and — BOOM! — terrified screams are brought to a sudden end as the entire building goes up in flames. He takes a deep drag from the cigar, smiles, and walks slowly away.

Because Engineers don’t kill people one at a time. An Engineer isn’t happy unless he is killing people by the dozens. An Engineer isn’t happy unless he’s destroyed the peace and happiness of an entire nation.

Try and turn away all dwarfs at the border, and they protest and call it ‘profiling’ and tie up the international courts for MONTHS. The is why you must fight dwarfs THERE so you don’t have to fight them HERE. Take the fight to them. That’s the only way to kill an Engineer. Hit them where they live, hit them fast, and hit them hard.

And you don’t even want to KNOW what an Engineer can do with an eight ounce bottle of Listerene. Three ounce bottles of Listerene are okay, though. They can’t do anything with those.

Dwarfs are really pretty skinny — not many people know that they are wiry little guys and gals. Why do they look so round?

Reloads. A Dwarf Engineer was once apprehended by the virtuous agents of Chaos and found to be carrying three shot guns (one with a sawed-off barrel), ten grenades, enough plastic explosive to level a city, three bandoliers with two hundred shells each, a dozen detonators, two rolls of duct tape and a hundred meter spool of copper wire.

They would have had more, but they’d just been running down to the corner store for matches.

—

Holy smokes! We’ve come to the end of another edition of Straight Talk Warhammer! Come back tomorrow, same time, same place, when we discuss the Dwarf Engineer’s less psychotic cousin, the Rune Priest. Remember, if it’s Warhammer, and it’s Online, there’s only one place to get the Straight Talk about it.

Just a shout out to my newest reader, whom I won’t name. It’s another blog scraper taking my entries, which I write for my own fun and the fun of others, and trying to make money from them! And not giving me any of it! It just isn’t fair!

And it sounds like my newest scraper could afford to send me some money. I sure could use it!

Anyway, if you’re seeing this on a spam blog, my blog is called West Karana, and it’s at http://westkarana.com, and wouldn’t you rather read it without any ads?

Do you remember what life was like before Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning? I sure can’t. Well, sometimes it comes in little bits and pieces… a world where to do a raid or join a group, you had to talk to people, and sometimes, make friends. Brrr. We’re all pretty glad THOSE days are over! The exciting new Public Quests and Open Groups and Scenarios keep things nice and anonymous — just like watching porn in a movie theater! And that is the mastery AND mystery of Mythic’s groundbreakingly innovative new MMO that will forever change what we think of, when we think of MMOs — Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The is the AGE where we will be RECKONED. And who will perform the Reckoning?

None other than the Empire’s shining light, the Warrior Priest.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot

Take your hands off the character creator. You’re not GOOD enough to be a Warrior Priest. Just go ahead and log in with your dwarf engineer or whatever and go about your business. When you join a group with a Warrior Priest in it, don’t think you’re getting any heals, ‘cuz you’re not. The whopping you take will be ATONEMENT. And you should thank him for not letting you suffer life as the insignificant worm you are.

Life for a Warrior Priest is simple. You are either a SMOTER or a SMOTEE. And you know the WP heals might as well be self only.

Okay, now you went and did it, you didn’t listen and you rolled up a Warrior Priest. Fine. If you’re gonna be one, start shouting “FOR SIGNA!” at appropriate times. Like, on a bus. In the bathroom. While stapling papers. It’s okay. “FOR SIGNA!” <staple><staple> “LET THE PURIFYING LIGHT” <staple> “CLEANSE THIS FAX” <fold>.

Sit up. Actually, stand up. Chin up in the air, 45 degrees (pi/4 radians if you’re Canadian). Eyes forward. Take your sword and start swinging it wildly, with great force. It doesn’t matter if you can’t see what you’re swinging at with your chin up like that. Friends would know to get out of the way. Enemies will either run or perish. Because you’re one bad priest, and the complete loss of peripheral vision is a small price to pay for being RIGHT. All the time.

“The enemy approaches!” whispers the forward scout. The hunting party looks to the Warrior Priest, who silently, but with great strength, shakes his head. “No enemies,” he rumbles.

“No, it’s a whole bunch of orcs and goblins and even a Dark Elf Witch!”

“You lie,” grumbles the Warrior Priest. “I think you are the enemy. I think it time you die.” The WP stands up, lifts his mighty hammer, sticks his chin up in the air at a 45 degree angle, and begins to smite the scout. Except the black-feathered arrow from a Chaos bow kills the scout first. The WP quickly kills the rest of his team to build up healing power, gets some good heals going on himself, and runs off, once again, the lone survivor.

Warrior Priests are the lone survivors of battles with disturbing frequency.

—

OMG! Six issues of Straight Talk Warhammer, and you’re still here! We hope you have enjoyed this latest entry in the only Warhammer guide that dares tell the truth about life and adventure in the Lord of the World of Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning. Come back tomorrow, when we reveal what the Dwarf Engineers are building in that locked room they never let you into. The astonishing truth will shock you.

Jaye wrote this weekend about the notion that bloggers might be press, and she goes on to define press as the process of getting information out to the public. Presumably without bias or commentary.

If that’s what the press is these days, they’re doing a really poor job of it. Turn on the TV and watch coverage of the presidential election, and see if you can tell who is for which candidate. One thing you can say for bloggers, agree or disagree with us, at least you know where we stand. Our biases our right out in the open.

When you know the biases of the writer, you can decide whether it colors their news, or blog updates. Real journalists hide their biases. They have them — everyone does — but you don’t know what they are, and that’s much less honest.

Should bloggers be given press credentials if we aren’t really press? My gut feeling says no. Once bloggers start thinking that they are anything more than a regular player with a website, they may suddenly feel they are speaking for the community when they write, that their opinions should be given more weight.

That’s totally not the case. Bloggers speak only for themselves, and all any of us are, are players with a website. We are not press.

And I can’t really see anyone PAYING me to write snarky things about their game, anyway :)

We’re baaaaaaaack…..!

Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning, brought public quests to a public quest-less world, Tomes of Knowledge to the forgetful, open groups to the friendless, and in all ways has transformed the world.

Warhammer Online has twenty unique classes or ‘careers’, and each one plays like no other class in any other MMO, proving once again that WAR’s innovative and unique game play will have every other MMO dev yelling to their computer, “Why didn’t WE have something like that!”

It’s because it took until now before someone got the idea for a robe-clad magic user who summons fire from the skies, something called, “Bright Wizard”. Now that WAR has blazed the trail (sorry), every other MMO is sure to implement something similar.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot

The Transportation Safety Authority has a special wing in Guatanamo for Bright Wizards. See, they set up in a major airport, like Chicago or Atlanta, and they get on the PA and ask Blaze McCharmander or Ash Daboominator to pick up the white courtesy phone, and then when they do, they’re like, we heard Bright Wizards couldn’t set a match on fire if it had been soaked in gasoline and gunpowder for a week and was dangling over a pool of lava. And then Cinder Blastitall will start shouting about “Gonna burn that! Burn! Boom! Hahahaha! Light ‘em up! BURN! KILL! BUUUURN!!!!!”

And that’s when they take them away.

When Bright Wizards watch Lord of the Rings, they’re cheering for the Balrog and wondering why Mount Doom didn’t get more screen time. Pompeii? Early Bright Wizard convention.

Get one of these in a strategy meeting and when the Bright Wizard raises his hand, the guy at the head of the table sighs a little inside and tries to change the subject, but the Bright is always going, “oh me me me pick me oh me me” and then the head guy says, “Okay, WHAT. And you better not just be suggesting we set the whole thing on fire.” And the Bright kinda lowers his hand and looks away, muttering, “well I didn’t want to come to Susie’s surprise birthday party ANYWAY.” And then he’s all pouty until you promise him a puppy for Christmas. And THEN he’s all like, “Ooooh! A PUPPY! I’ll hug him and love him and name him George!” And then you give him a long look until he promises not to feed the puppy anything that will make him explode.

These guys are always asking the DJ to play Disco Inferno and writing to Stephen King asking when the sequel to Firestarter is coming out. These are the guys who dream about being stuck in a burning building and wake up smiling. These are the guys who eat nothing BUT chile con carne because they heard about this heartburn thing and it sounded like a good idea to them.

Need to find a Bright Wizard? Just follow the flaming trees.

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Looking for information about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning careers, cities, public quests, Tome of Knowledge, open groups, and how you can make concrete burn? Well, then, you’ve come to the right place! Straight Talk Warhammer is the only blog series that gives you the Straight Talk… about WARHAMMER! Online. Age of Reckoning.

Welcome back, Openedge :)

Back in 2003, The Quon was having trouble getting people to realize that their class was crap because they were not a cleric, the class around which Norrath revolved. And if they WERE a cleric, they were crap because they were not The Quon.

I can just imagine that The Quon is starting a Warrior Priest on some server *right now*.

If you wanted to group with The Quon, you better know your responsibilities to The Quon — and because he was JUST THAT GOOD, he wrote up a list of his expectations for his groupmates, by class…

—

The Quon teaches the classes to the masses.

As a part of The Quons ongoing mission to bring a deeper sense of understanding and shit to the peeps of Norrath, I’m dropping the first in a series of definitive class breakdowns.

Bards - Band geeks who’s natural defense involves a drum and blurry feet. Sounds like the wet dream of half of VI’s geek ass dev team. On the aesthetic tip, The Quon digs the female bard in a big way, not a dog race in the bunch. As a class though, they have one of the worst naming track records in the game. Seriously..Notes, Chords, Melody, and such shit. C’mon, if I see one more Bard with some name like Halfnote McSongandDance or Minstril St.PolkaSinger, The Quon’s gonna SL the whole class just on general principle. Not like that would matter much. When’s the last time anyone actually hunted with a Bard anyway? I catch Mana Song whiffs every now and then around the nexus or in the GY’s in PoP, but The Quon sure as shit never groups with one. I’m guessing there’s a Swarm Kiting zone out there where they follow each other around in a clockwise circle jerk for xp. Fun. But I miss them, if only cause I want to bust out my old hot key, “Play mana song and rub my feet.”

The Quon’s general heal strategy for Bards: Hit ‘em with a Celestial periodically as a gesture of good will, and if they insist on selfishly requiring the MCs valuable mana I wait until they’re at 40% and i send them a /tell to “run!!”. Then I giggle my ass off.

Beastlords - The Quon can count with his nuts the number of times he’s grouped with these aberrations. But it seems like every fourth rez request is from one of these freaks who’s all like “I need your help”. If they pays, The Quon plays. Beastlords are another class dangerously close to mass Shit Listing based on having the most stupid names per capita. Petme SoftPuss, Catank, Tigerlily Growlinflower, WTF? The only way someone would invite a name like that to a group is if the group leaders were Seigfried and his man-toy Roy.

The Quon’s general heal strategy for Beastlords: After I rez one, Celestial usually does the trick. In group? Who the fuck knows?

Way more after the break :)

(more…)

Добро пожаловать, камрады. Мы собираем здесь так, что мы будем мочь приветствовать нашего самого нового друга, Openedge, к палате спасения разыгрыша Москва мемориальной. Камрад Openedge, несчастливо, нет в самое лучшее здоровья. Американское общество жестокосердно к такому чувствительному человеку. Кремль имеет полное веру в его быстром восстановлении.

40 long years ago, an intrepid Swiss scientist first discovered that aliens had come to Earth many times in our past, always guiding mankind toward sapience, civilization, and the stars. They made us who we are today, and they brought us Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Only the alien intelligences that have already brought us public quests, open groups, the Tome of Knowledge and Realm vs Realm could bring us the dark wonders of the Inevitable City.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot

So, you’re a Greenskin, or a Dark Elf, or whatever those creepy little toothy things are, and some disgusting Order folk come marching up. Naturally, you want to kill them, and they you, it’s just rousing good fun.

But let’s say they get past, get into the city, start killing stuff, who’s going to stop them? The forces of darkness? Like they’re gonna lift a finger to protect some NPCs and merchants. Probably the same merchants that charged double the going price for food ’cause of the growing unrest in the area. See, the evil guys are always thinking, always scheming. They’re gonna let the Order folks waltz right in… close the doors, and then head over to the good guy city for fine dining on the hoof.

Because you know? Good is, essentially, stupid. The Destruction folks will say, well, there can be peace in our time. But you have to give US something. And the Order guys will say, like, what? And the Destruction guys will say, well, we think we want us some dwarf. And the Order guys will say, okay, go ahead, they’re really smelly. And then the Destruction guys will push the advantage, and be all like — AND we want the Witch Hunters! So how do you like THAT? And the Order guys will say, huh? Why would you want THEM? And the Destruction guys will go, well, we have all the WITCHES. Just makes sense.

And then the Order folk will stand around looking like a bunch of geese that thought Interstate 95 was the Mississippi River. Kind of dumb, and then, BAM, up comes a semi, and it turns out nobody has to have the smelly dwarfs after all.

So when you see a bunch of Order folk looking kinda dazed, standing in a circle, maybe giving each other a comforting hug, probably that was just some Destruction people having a little bit of fun.

Because good is STUPID.

—

We all really appreciate you coming by for our third exclusive feature on Mythic’s newest MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Remember: Mythic is going to beat the pants off of Blizzard, because while the folks in Irvine may have “World of Warcraft”, Electronic Arts has Ultima Online, and guess which one the terrorists are using to train?