Machinima - use it wisely

WAR needs machinima. The art of machinimating has been pimping out a lot of games and to my mind it often works better than fancy trailers and advertising. To see funny, dramatic or action-packed things within the game really gets me going. Type machinma in You Tube and press search: you will get the idea. The most popular movies have over 5000000 views and among those people there has to be a good portion of those that think "this kicks butt, maybe I should try the game out and see if it really looks as good".
WAR machinima has its ways to go although there are some decent movies already. Warhammer strikes me a as pretty machinima-friendly game, you can really poke around with the emotes, the locations can really give the movie character. To my mind Mythic has done a great job with making the world of WAR: the towers in Ostland trudging through the thick branches, the beams of sunlight coming through the trees and all the fancy and pretty awesome stuff you find in the dwarf locations will make a movie look like a million views! Although the game could use some diversity when it comes to transportation. There could be some ships to go across the oceans or something along that line, there could have been more cities (not like Altdorf or the Inevitable City) or rather towns. I mean the war camps are great but I'd like to see the Lands consisting not just of a big capital and villages.
I realize that you cannot ask the game to change so that it would be better for machinima. It is not machinima that makes a game, but developers should keep in mind that there is a wonderful type of art out there. And you can use it for your greedy needs *evil laugh*.

WoW and Me

While playing WAR today I started thinking about the days when I was into WoW and what I liked about those days. I guess, I sort of miss WoW.
World of Warcraft was my first MMO ever .Yes, call me a what you will, but I never even touched the Dark Age of Camelot or Everquest. The only reason I decided to give WoW a try was (and is) my love to Warcraft III. So I couldn't let go of the chance to play around in the beloved Warcraft universe, the thought of going to Ashenvale or Lordaeron just blew my mind. The fact that it was an MMO made it even more exciting.
The game wasn't perfect but it was good enough to fall in love with it. One should admit that when it comes to PvE, WoW is the best. The dungeons, even the first ones like the Wailing Caverns, had those moments when you had to say "woah, coool". And it got better and better as you progressed. The best locations by far (to my liking of course) were the Hillsbrad Foothills and the Hinterlands. Oh the happy hours spent there...grinding =). But it was all good until I had my "in love with Warcraft" level up. One thing that is pretty important to me is the way the environment is structured. Some people may complain about the "cartoony" graphics in WoW (which is not so bad imo). It actually is a prudent step to avoid massive lagging and it made the game more accessible to people who did not own a high-end PC. And the soundtrack...it is not diverse, the several types of locations had standartized music, but it fit them perfectly.
Now I realize that a major role in my enjoying the game was played by my guild "Azeroth" which later became "the Guardians of Wisdom".* I loved my guild and I liked playing with my friends, doing instances, or just chatting away. It really kept me interested in WoW- it was more than just leveling, it was the friends now. Gear wasn't such a big deal for some reason, we did everything we felt like as long as it was fun. WoW gives you the choice, you can go crafting or gathering herbs if you don't feel like PvE or PvP. Then Real Life had me quit the game for a while. I had to take the graduation exams and start thinking about my future. And WoW took to much time, and I needed a break from it anyway. After plowing through RL issues I finally had time to play WoW a bit. Not as much, but it was enough for me. I got a bit older and the fan-boy excitement was not as strong as it used to be. And there was a big difference from the old days now. I was on my own.
It's all fun while you are a happy little noob, but then comes the grind. The grind for everything - money, gear, levels, PvP. The expansions made thing worse. Blizzard took the easy way out: raising the level cap, introducing loads of new gear, which made everything you worked so hard on useless after the first few levels in Outland. It ruined the game. For me at least. I still wanted to move on, but the constant grind, the fact that I had to kill mobs which are extremely predictable and the lacking PvP did their thing. It was boring. And frustrating to say the least. People in WoW would kill for phat loot, it seems. So the point of the game is not killing Blackwing, Illidan or Arthas. No! It is getting that epic staff of pwning. So I quit again. I logged on a couple of days ago and tried to play a bit and got sick of it in a couple of hours.
Now when I think of WoW and actually start missing it, I realize that I am not missing the game. Oh no, I'm missing the good old days with my first guild running around Hillsbrad. The game itself , although polished, is not doing it's main task - making people (or rather me) have fun and relax after a hard week of working. Instead you have another job online and you have to make money there too, lots and lots of it. Otherwise you won't be able to buy the epic flying mount or whatever.
All this is said with my mind still on WAR. It will have an expansion one day; I hope that Mythic will not make it the way Blizzard did. Great games should not be ruined just because a company has to make money.

*A shoutout to Landriana and Sinnz, the people I had the most fun playing with.

Dwarfs are going nude

I've been thinking about the introduction of two new classes to WAR - the Slayer and the Choppa. Enough has been said about the two, both are melee DPS classes and represent berserks. They hack away at their foes paying no regard for defence. A useful thing in RvR I should say.
Two new classes are definitely going to make WAR more diverse and colorful. Especially the Slayer (although that is totally IMHO). It's not that I don't like the Choppa, on the contrary, I adore the greenskins. But Destruction has enough character already, the bad guys have never been as awesome as in WAR. The Choppa, despite his cool animation, will not serve to make Destruction more attractive to players. I mean can you make Destruction more attractive? Nor will the Choppa make the greenskins (look) any different. He will be a valuable addition to the army but he will not make a revolution.
The Slayer has pretty interesting lore. A dwarf who has disgraced himself to the state when he had no other choice but to seek glorious death in battle. He has a unique look - red mohawks, elaborate tattoos, really cool armor that doesn't look like anything we're used to. I hear a lot of people saying that they would try playing Order just because of the Slayer. I think that Mythic might have hit the nail on the head with Slayer. He will most likely lure some people on the side of Order, he is just to awesome to ignore. A naked suicidal dwarf with big axes and a flaming mohawk - try beating that.
But there is a downside to the awesomeness of the Slayer, he may become the dominant class on Order. Melee DPS is great but imagine a third of the warband consisting of Slayers, there are not enough tanks out there and tanking is not what berserks are good at. I really wouldn't like the Slayer following Death Knight's steps. Mythic has a pretty big task ahead of them: introducing the new classes without harming the others, not to mention class balance.

"WAR Comes to Russia" or "the Second Coming of the Launch Day"

Wouldn't it be sweet if one wonderful event could come back to brighten your life? Well it can happen and it is not the Solstice - it is WAR's launch. And I'm proud to announce that I know how it feels. On February 5th WAR officially opened servers for Russian players. I was lucky to experience the "big day" and feel like a little kid ripping away at the box of presents on Xmas day! Cool steel boxes, complimenting the game inside, appeared on the shelves luring unsuspecting gamers into the RvR net.
I must say, I had doubts about WARs success in Russia as I didn't see the amount of advertisement the game deserves; I mean when Wrath was about to launch Arthas was all over, you had to either be living in a cave or be completely oblivious of everything game-associated. WAR never enjoyed such amount of publicity and I was in all seriousness afraid that there just wouldn't be enough players for the game to be played as it should be. Promotional events in shops just don't give the game the needed horde of fan-boys stooging around the shop the night before the game finally launches.
And I have never been so happy to be wrong! Joy to the world - WAR is doing just fine. Russia has greeted the game with traditional Russian hospitality. The servers assigned for Russian players a "high-high" already and if that keeps up, Mythic will have to open some new servers. I guess they have learned their lesson with opening to many, so it's better safe than sorry. The launch day itself went pretty smooth, thankfully the game did have some time to polish out the glitchy scratches. Ten days have passed since WAR arrived in the country of endless forests and no gold sellers in sight. It is either the Banhammer or the fact that gold sellers decided to spare the effort in a game where gold is not such a big deal. People seem to have taken to the RvR and are taking keeps like crazy; things are going good so far, I just hope that it won't change as soon as the free month is over. But at least there is no "this game sucks" or "WoW is waaay better - you can actually sit down" and that gives me some confidence.
Today I witnessed a queue on a core RvR server, a thing a haven't seen in a while. And, believe it or not, the queue was for Order. I'm not ready to declare the Order majority in Russia but still it is pretty unexpected. Oh how Russians love to good guys! What is even stranger Destruction seems to be very keen on PQs while Order sweeps the RvR lakes. I believe it is just the beginning stage of the game and things will come back to the state that we are so used to.
Of course Russia is not a major gaming country but it will provide a solid amount of customers for Mythic.

...and we begin

The fist post...hmm.
First of all, welcome to The Magree Blog and many thanks for reading (if there is anyone out there actually reading this stuff).
I guess I shouldn't go beating about the bush and just cut to the chase. I will mostly write about MMOs and a bit about real life, so there will be no "my life is a lie", "I hate McCain", "I hate emo kids" or "the financial crisis...". I am not a hardcore gamer - I would've been if not for real life...we all have responsibilities, right?=)
I focus my attention on Warhammer Online, as this game is just what I yearned for playing WoW. WAR has the best PvP (RvR) action, even if the game itself is not as polished as its juggernaut of a counterpart, but take into account that it took 4 year of constant tweaking to reach such solid gameplay. I'll write more on the WoW-WAR issue in a relevant post later.
I realize that I'm not being original by writing about WAR because there are loads of great mmo blogs out there - take A Wall of Text for instance - but nevtheless I desided to start my own blog. I got some thoughts, ya'see?
So much for the introduction, more to come.