Tyranny of Heaven [ToH]

I thought I'd start blogging under this name, rather than Amelante's.

Well, it's been 4-5 months since my last entry. I dropped Age of Conan within the first month. Funcom just really screwed up that game. The game breaker for me was the change to gray-level elite mobs. It prevented me from finishing certain quests. And after level 20 or so, it felt like the content just dried up. It was a really common complaint. I lost the will to play and eventually, I just canceled my subscription before my free time was up. I really don't plan to re-install the game or go back.

Back in August, I finally got into the Warhammer Online closed beta. (Well, it was simply because I preordered the Collector's Edition.) I didn't even know I was in the beta, I just checked my beta center account one day and it said "You're in the beta!" So unfortunately, I lost about 4-5 days of playing time (it took about 3 days to download!). But once I started playing, I was in awe.

I had low expectations, especially hearing about Mythic closing beta and basically re-doing the game late last year. Also, the news about the cut classes and capital cities seemed really disappointing to me. Though what I actually saw was a game that was more or less feature complete... but could use quite a bit of polish.

I didn't really care much about the rough animations or muddy graphics... or the broken pet/mob AI. What I cared about was WAR! Going out there and playing with and against people. PvP in WAR was simply awesome. The moment I tasted it in scenarios (instanced games) and open-world RvR, I knew I couldn't go back to WoW anymore.

And oddly, I did end up going back, for a month. At least, financially. You see, in October, I finally won the FigurePrints lotto. I could finally have an Amelante the Warlock figure sculpted and detailed. Unfortunately, the armor she logged off in wasn't exactly what I wanted the figure to have (it was a mix of T5 and T6 gear). I just wanted pure T5 (sans the helm... after all, it wasn't Amelante to me unless she had her goofy layered hairstyle and goggles). I subscribed and promptly canceled so I would have a month of time.

It was good to be back, if anything just to be able to talk to old friends. I never really played, I just logged in, chatted, logged off every few days. Though one day I got ninja-invited into a guild raid. It was somewhat nostalgic. A lot of the raiders I knew are gone now, so there's a lot of new people. I also joined the ex-GM of Illuminati as well as a bunch of other ex-Illums for a night of PvPing. It was pretty fun... but it also reminded me how much I hated WoW PvP.

Anyway, soon after, WAR open beta started and from then on, it was pretty much continuous WAR for me up through release. I briefly applied and joined another guild. I enjoyed the atmosphere, the community... but their times were not that west coast-friendly, a fact that I didn't discover until much later. Also, our initial server was overpopulated. And Mythic, in what was seemingly a brilliant move then, decided to clone the server.

Unfortunately, not very many people chose the clone. My guild did though (and I admit I voted for moving). But as days went by, I began to regret it. WAR is simply a game that plays best when both realms are highly populated and balanced. So I resigned from my guild and began trying other servers. Trying to find the balance between high population and login queue times.

I drifted before finally settling on two servers, Ironfist and Volkmar. On Ironfist, I play Destruction with a couple of the guys I played WoW/AoC with. On Volkmar, I play Order and am currently totally alone. As much as I would have preferred playing Order (the underdogs), I have fun playing as a Disciple of Khaine. I'm currently level 21 or so, and I'm a bit hesitant to gain one more level and forever commit myself to Tier 3.

Surprisingly, last night, Tier 2 open RvR was quite active. The only explanation I have is the addition of regional chat motivated people to go out and fight for their realm. There must have been at least 30-40 people each side fighting out and about the keeps of Troll Country and Ostland. It was fun, and I even managed to fraps portions of it. But I'll have to enter Tier 3 soon. I hope it isn't as barren as all the forum whiners have been saying.

But Mythic is on the ball. They more or less hot fix the game every day and put out a major patch every week. They also listen to the player base. When 1.0.3 released yesterday, it really instilled confidence in me. Since my free time was ending this weekend, I went ahead and changed my subscription interval to 6 months. Yes, I have that much faith.

Anyway, this entry is dragging out. As far as MMOs go, I look forward to Champions Online in the near future. Star Trek Online also looks intriguing, but I'm not really that excited about it. The KOTOR MMO also looks interesting, but I'm not really into the idea of Star Trek/Star Wars as MMOs. Warhammer 40k on the other hand... but I'll leave my thoughts on that for another entry.

Looking forward to LittleBigPlanet next week...