Category Archives: Game Logs

Warhammer Online Preview Weekend

Sometime after my last MMO laden rambling post the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (AKA “WAR”) closed beta’s NDA was officially dropped.

Now, I haven’t actually been all that interested in Warhammer Online despite being a long time Warhammer fan. It just didn’t look too interesting to me and Age of Conan looked a lot more appealing so most of my fanatical anticipation was focused on it instead. With Age of Conan finally out and not looking so hot and more and more details of WAR being released my interest in it had finally started building. So, the NDA dropped and the usual places were absolutely flooded with details, mini-reviews, screenshots, and videos. The buzz about the game from testers was quite positive, surprisingly so for an MMO even, and the more I read about it the more awesome it sounded so, with its release imminent, I bit the bullet preordered it.

One of my preorder bonuses was access to the upcoming open beta so I began downloading and patching the client. Much to my surprise after just trying it by chance it also let me in to last weekend’s “Preview Weekend” event and instantly any hope for a productive weekend went flying out the window.

Scouring various forums for reports and other tidbits it seemed as if the Order side had been vastly outnumbered in beta. This isn’t too surprising as Destruction’s Orcs and Chaos are exceptionally cool while the Order’s races are relatively bland. Still, despite being a fan both Orcs and Chaos myself I typically root for the underdog (I played mostly Horde in WoW for instance) so I made the hard decision to go with Order.

“Battling a boss in a public quest. This Dark Elf bastard refused to die.”

Next while scoping out the classes I was reminded that several of them were dropped recently, all of which I was at least semi-interested in. I was especially interested in the Orc Choppa and Dwarf Hammerer as I often lean towards melee DPS classes. This didn’t leave too many interesting DPS classes left. I had kind of started leaning towards High Elves early on – now I’m not normally a big fan of Elves but I’ve always thought Warhammer Fantasy Battle‘s High Elves were quite impressive in their long mail coats and their pointy helmets and I, again going with the underdogs, figured they’d be fairly underplayed. At first I was interested in the Swordmaster class, but not being a big fan of tanks I looked elsewhere. Shadow Warriors looked very appealing but my last main (in Age of Conan) was a bow guy and I figured the stereotypical Elf + bow combo would be played out anyway. This didn’t leave much else but after looking at the beta class population data I found a good candidate in the most under played class in the entire game, the High Elf White Lion.

The White Lion is actually not that interesting of a class mechanics-wise. He specializes in melee DPS utilizing medium/light armor and a big, two handed axe and that is basically all they are in Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In Warhammer Online, however, they also have pet lions. So, in a way, you can almost consider this class a weird (but again not necessarily exotic) combination of World of Warcraft’s Hunter without his ranged weapon and some sort of damage dealing warrior class from another RPG. I admit I wasn’t too thrilled about the lion itself – one of the appeals of Hunters in WoW was the ability to tame virtually any animal you wish and here you’d be stuck with the same fluffy white lion as everyone else but the more I thought about it the more the idea of having this second source of damage running around with you appealed to me.

White Lions can be specialized to, basically, use their lions as taunting, damage absorbing tanks while they themselves do more damage with their axes via position attacks, use their lions as damage dealing powerhouses while they tank a bit and assist with the damage, or a more balanced combination of the two which somehow results in a lot of area of effect attacks.

“Enjoying the view…”

Onto the game itself. First of all I’ve got to note that my screenshots here aren’t spectacular – I didn’t see many graphical options in the client and really I was more anxious to play than to squander my limited time tweaking things anyway. Still, I don’t have AA or many other bells and whistles I might normally have turned on.

As far as the graphics go I think they’re pretty fair. The style definitely appears to be similar to World of Warcraft at first, though as many Warhammer fans have pointed out on various forums, Warcraft (and Starcraft) itself has been highly derivative of Games Workshop’s works for a long, long time now so this shouldn’t be any surprise. The models are a little higher poly than WoW’s, the lighting is better, though the overall polish is definitely lacking a little. The draw distance seems quite short, some of the textures aren’t so hot, and the animations sometimes leave a lot to be desired. It definitely (currently) lacks the high production feel of WoW and isn’t anywhere close to as nice looking as Age of Conan. Anyway, the graphics are apparently locked to low right now, and they say they’re going to be improving the animations so hopefully it will only get better from here.

Questing feels quite a lot like WoW although I admit I didn’t read much of the quest fluff as I’m saving it for when the game goes live. A lot of people seem to think its well written though. I don’t think I ran into any very grindy kill or collection quests nor any massively long FedEx quests though which is a good thing. Where the interesting PvE aspect of the game comes in is with Public Quests. Public Quests are kind of like repeatable quests that are tied to a specific area in a zone. The idea being that anyone can quit and join a public quest whenever they want by simply strolling into the area. These quests usually have multiple stages and typically culminate in some kind of a boss fight. At the end of the PQ contribution is calculated and added to a random dice roll to dole out loot. I’ve read quite a lot of whining on forums from who I’m assuming are greedy bastards about how unfair the loot system is but, personally, I think the extreme randomness of it really fits in fine with the casual, come and go as you please nature of participation. Loot aside, you also earn influence which earns you special items and you only need to run a few public quests to max out you influence per area, never mind that you gain plenty of experience points and the loot that drops normally during the course of the quest.

The Tome of Knowledge is pretty damn cool though I didn’t read much of it for the same reason I didn’t read much of the quest text. I do really like the fact that it keeps all kinds of bizarre stats and achievements and, of course, I love the unlockable titles associated with many of them. I definitely plan make full use of this feature in retail.

“Fighting another public quest bo… Holy crap, laser eyes!”

While I did mostly enjoy my White Lion unfortunately the lion’s AI was severely busted. It would usually run off in strange directions, ignore my commands, and attack enemies that had already died the few times that it did actually attack. Apparently it had been working more or less fine shortly before the preview weekend and they’ve since said they know about it and it will be fixed. Still, it was pretty frustrating in PVP when I felt like I was ~30% dps off of what I should have been doing because of it. The mobs weren’t much better and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people will be shocked with how much more challenging the game will be when the mobs are acting a little bit more intelligently.

One negative observation I’ve got to make is the lack of distinctive gear. Gear for the most part seems to be restricted to one particular class and, at least in the first two tiers, there doesn’t seem to be a huge variety in it nor how it looks. On one hand this goes a long way in making sure player characters look like the type of characters they’re supposed to represent which Mythic may feel is important given that they’re representing someone else’s intellectual property. That doesn’t bother me… In fact, I love the fact that I haven’t seen any mismatched, stupid looking clown suits in this game thus far. On the other hand, however, the lack of diversity means that virtually everyone looks the same. Collecting cool looking loot and customizing your character is a big part of most online games these days and I suspect this will be a big deal for many MMO fanatics. Still, rumor has it that the variety is quite a bit better in higher tiers and there’s nothing to stop them from adding more models and textures in later patches.

PvP (or “RvR” which I don’t find to be all that accurate in Warhammer Online’s case either) was interesting. I only got to play in one PvP zone and it was a pretty uneven affair. At first I didn’t see another soul, though I soon wandered up to a fight in progress via the minimap battle markers and joined an open group. Open groups, by the way, are another awesome concept owing to the same kind of thought process that spawned Public Quests. Anyway, at first we dominated. As noted before my lion was fucking useless but my axe is a nice, slow, powerful weapon and absolutely murders casters and other squishy classes. There were other times, however, when the PvP degenerated into huge lines of skirmish with most people on either side being too afraid to directly engage, with the occasional unfortunate individual who did cross the line being mobbed to death quickly. It is definitely very easy to be singled out and drawn away from your group thanks to the character collision system. This is something I’m not sure I’d ever experienced in a game before this. The zone I played in didn’t feature the keep siege warfare though I did visit one of those zones and it did look quite cool. I didn’t get to partake in any “scenarios” (AKA Battlegrounds WoW players) as I sat in queue for one for what must have been an hour. I’m not sure what was up with that!

“This time it is someone else’s lion acting stupid.”

A little later inspired by my lion’s continued uselessness and perhaps by my observation of the possible utility of ranged combat in PVP I decided to give the Shadow Warrior class a spin. Once I developed some basic ability rotation techniques it actually surpassed my expectations and was a very fun class to play. I felt like having to switch between long distance and close combat stances felt natural and fun, but the addition of the “skirmish” stance complicated the flow of combat quite a lot and I never did get a hang of using it to kite mobs around effectively. Still, I thought melee combat with my Shadow Warrior was surprisingly effective so I didn’t put as much effort into it as I probably should have. I didn’t get to PVP with the Shadow Warrior but I strongly suspect that I’ll end up making an SW alt in retail.

That about wrapped up my participation in the Preview Weekend. I did eventually acquire the legendary 10/6 PvP gear but I never got to actually test it out in PvP thanks to some things that came up in my schedule and although I played around with other classes/races in the character creator I didn’t get to test any others out. I believe I’ll probably spend the official open beta on trying out some of the other numerous classes just in case something else ends up hooking me and I’ll leave the White Lion and Shadow Warrior alone save for testing the (hopefully) improved lion’s AI. One thing is for sure: I’m really, really looking forward to the launch of this game and having to wait two weeks for open beta is already killing me. 🙂

More MMO madness

“You’d think someone with pigtails would be a little more cheerful.”

After writing the last article I took a long, detailed look at what had been patched recently in Age of Conan and had been unpleasantly surprised to see that they had done even less than I’d suspected. Until we see some of the new content I mentioned before (which, by the way, still seems a long ways off and sounds like it may not be enough regardless) I remain really quite disappointed in the state of the game. I loaded up a new character to show the game to a friend the other day and after just a minute or two of wandering the beaches whacking bandits and crocodiles I quickly remembered why I liked it so much – the beautiful graphics, the awesome and unique setting, and the fun combat mechanics. 🙁

“Lazy screenshot: One of the very first fights in the game.”

I will definitely be coming back to Age of Conan again at some point in the future unless it ends up closing its doors much earlier than I’d expect. However when I do so it will be to play through with a new character on a new server and more or less as a single player experience with the objective of soaking in the PVE content. This is in sharp contrast to my original plans of attempting to dedicate myself to all aspects of the game (guild membership, PVP, crafting, end game stuff, etc.) for the long term.

That leads me to Tabula Rasa. The game came in the mail soon enough and I started playing it immediately. It really is quite innovative and fresh in a number of ways. Here’s some quick notes:

At first I was a little underwhelmed by it but after getting the hang of it I’ve got to say that I really enjoy the combat. It plays almost like a 3rd person shooter. You’ve got to aim at your target, you’ve got to click to fire, you’ll be reloading your weapons, and sometimes even changing equipment loadouts around, in addition to using special skills here and there, and unlike almost every MMO I’ve ever played combat is typically very quick. I’ve actually found myself wandering around, engaging in combat just for fun.

“Enjoying a peaceful moment between massive alien assaults.”

I like the way zones are structured. They tend to feel more like large, sandboxy areas, almost like a level in one of the GTA games or its successors. Perhaps that is being a bit too generous but by the time you’re around the middle of the level range for a zone (which is a pretty small range, by the way) you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything. It might not always be easy, but you don’t really run into “fenced off” areas like you did in a lot of older theme park style MMOs.

Each zone also has an associated “targets of opportunity” quest which goes on to help enforce this feeling by providing you with a lot of random, free form objectives such as “kill xxx enemies” and “go to all these different areas”. We’ve also got achievements as well, which earn your character titles and experience, although they tend to fairly boring and very repetitive.

To further this less structured feel of the game every map has some “control point” bases that can be taken over by the enemy mobs in large, chaotic battles. It’s usually in your best interest to defend these bases or help take them back if they’re under enemy control. Again, very free form and surprisingly fun.

I also appreciate the fact the almost all of the content is soloable. You may have to wait a few more levels to run an instance dungeon area solo and it may still be challenging, but it isn’t impossible nor do you have to wait so long to do it that it is no longer be rewarding.

“Not actually anything like Mass Effect.”

On the top of my list of negatives against the game is that despite being innovative and just plain cool in many areas I don’t necessarily feel compelled to keep going through the levels. The zones seem to quickly become repetitive – sure, new areas, new layouts, new enemies even, but the same “targets of opportunity” quests and achievements for each one, the same experience with attacking and defending control points, and the same laundry list of boring quests to work through. The combat isn’t quite fun enough to keep me playing month after month on its own.

The variety of equipment available could be a bit better, with not a ton of different options for visuals, but I dare say that it’s not too bad. Most people tend to wear what has the best stats regardless of visuals anyway.

The class system seems a little on the restrictive side given that every class is more or less restricted to their own types of weapons and armor. Still, coupled with the unique cloning system that lets you make a copy of your character which you can spec differently or even fork into another class, and the fact that none of the classes or equipment feel particularly underpowerered in the first place, its hard to really cite this as a major problem.

The lore doesn’t do much more me. It borders on generic sci-fi and I really feel like it could be a lot more compelling. Some people are really into it though so I’ll chalk that up to personal taste. Still, the whole “logos” system, and indeed “logos” powers themselves do nothing for me. In fact the logos powers are somewhat of a negative to me by themselves – they seem like another attempt to shoehorn magic into a setting that doesn’t need it so that they can compete in a genre filled with fantasy games. What is wrong with just having guns, bombs, and other, more unusual technology? At least to Tabula Rasa’s credit it isn’t 1:1 a magic system disguised as something else like in, say, Anarchy Online.

“Apparently future man is still captivated by shiny objects.”

Anyway, I’m grasping at straws now. To sum it up, in its current, patched up state, the game has a lot to offer both in terms of entertainment and advancement of the MMORPG genre as a whole. If you’re looking for or even just want to try out another MMORPG that isn’t Everquest inspired fantasy theme park #203 I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot.

I’ll talk more about TR later, I’m sure, as well as possibly write a proper review of it in the future. For now though I’ve had to put it down in anticipation for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning!

More fun with ArmA scripting

I spent much of my precious little free time this week playing with my chopper evacuation script again. This time, as I had planned, I cloned the escort chopper portion of the script replacing the attack chopper with a transport chopper.

Unfortunately I had quite a bit of trouble getting this part of the operation to work as smoothly as I had imagined. No matter how I got my script working it seemed that the whole rescue squad that disembarks, waits for the player to board, and then hops back on concept was destined to failure. Most likely the squad would be slaughtered while leaving the chopper and, if not, the chopper would probably be full of holes before any of them decided it might be a good idea to shoot back. I decided to simply put an infantry squad on the chopper in case it got shot down but that was it – nothing fancy. I figured the door gunners could suppress the ground a bit if enemies were around and hopefully even fire while waiting on the ground.

After doing a bit of testing with live enemies in the immediate area of the landing zone I was pretty dissatisfied with the whole thing. The Blackhawk barely returned fire at the enemies on the ground and often got shot down or, better yet, destroyed after landing on the ground. Still, it was pretty exciting, dynamic stuff. Here’s proof:

I spawned standing only a hundred feet or so from a full squad of enemies who were luckily all facing the other direction. I quickly jumped to the ground and dialed up both an escort and an evacuation choppers on my radio. Soon enough I got to see the awesome sight of both helos flying in together as if in formation over my position as I crawled behind some bushes – the Cobra coming in low over the enemy squad and the Blackhawk swinging around to make a quick landing on the nearby beach.

After a few short bursts from its miniguns the Blackhawk actually lands quickly for once so I leap up and make a mad dash towards it, circling around rocks and bushes to put some soft cover between the now very aware enemy squad an I. As I’m about 20 feet away from the Blackhawk… BOOM! A massive explosion! Most likely from an enemy RPG. It doesn’t blow the Blackhawk up but definitely disables it. The living squad and crew members immediately disembark just as I make it to the door of the chopper… Doh! The squad begins to spread out and take cover behind the unexposed side of the Blackhawk, the sound of bullets spraying its thin metal armor deafening.

The Cobra swings in a few more times over the enemy squad unleashing a small volley of rockets and then zooms off towards the enemy armor in the distance to do what it does best. The remaining enemies continue lighting up our position with automatic weapon fire as they start to slowly advance on the sight of the downed Blackhawk. As the volume of fire lessens slightly I decide to creep up through the underbrush to see what is left of the OPFOR.

I come across a couple of bodies of the friendly squad from the downed chopper and grab myself an M4 and an AT4 so that I can actually defend myself. I crawl up further and spot an enemy laying a couple of hundred feet away and hear the crack of his weapon’s report as he evidently spots me as well. I duck behind a small bush and then peep out to finish him off. Suddenly our Cobra is back although all it is doing is hovering over the enemies and not actually shooting at them… I really need to look into that. At least its letting me know there are still enemies around. As I crawl forward a bit more I see another and immediately start trading shots with him only this time I’m not having much luck actually hitting him. Luckily another friendly soldier takes a knee 15 feet or so behind me and is able to finish him off. Sensing his work is done the Cobra zooms off back to base.

Well, I’m stuck out here with a handful of soldiers I have no control over (something else to add!) and with no way home I might as well go over the hill and see what kind of damage the Cobra did to the enemy armor I had setup for earlier escort request tests. I slowly make my way over hill after hill until I can just barely make out the thick black smoke of a downed tank – I’m close. As I crest the next hill I come across an lone BMP-2 sitting in a small valley. He doesn’t see me so I sprint out, take a knee, and launch my AT4 at him – direct hit but oddly not much happens. Doh! This one has already been destroyed by our Cobra friend. I’m so out of practice…

“Don’t pilots get paid too much for this shit?”

I again very, very slowly make my way over the next hill. This time I can see the smoldering wreckage of another BMP and a couple more wrecks as well. Strangely enough I don’t see any of the enemy soldiers that I know should be in the area. I do see what appears to be two intact BMPs although they don’t seem to be manned. I put my AT4 on my shoulder and carefully toast both vehicles and now that I’ve effectively announced my presence I see a small group of enemy soldiers make a dash out of some bushes and onto their bellies – time for some action! I start lighting them up but it quickly becomes apparent that their are way more of them than I expected never mind that I’m having serious issues with actually hitting any of them because of the distance.

After moving back and forth between bushes to attempt to conceal myself somewhat, popping out on occasion to try to take out some of my targets, I pretty much finish off the last of the guys I can see and at last stop taking firing. That was an intense little firefight! I cautiously creep forward just a bit more and suddenly hear the roaring of a tank, possibly multiple tanks, starting up. They wouldn’t be moving unless they had a good reason to – they spotted me!

I dart 20 or 30 feet back to where I came from and dive behind a bush and a large protruding boulder. It sounds like they’re getting closer and closer – what in the hell can I do? My AT4 is empty and I’ve got nothing else that can harm a BMP let alone a T-72. Then it pops into my head – my Cobra escort made it back to base… he should be available for another mission! I quickly dial him up on my radio and try to stay calm as I listen to the loud engines and crushing tracks of the enemy armor getting closer and closer. If they see me before my air support comes, which will probably take quite a while, I’m done for.

“Watching the fireworks.”

Finally after what seemed like an eternity of hiding curled up in a bush making peace with my maker I hear the all too familiar sound of the Cobra’s rotor slicing through the air. It slows down drastically as it sees the enemy armor, at first I think he might even be going down, but no, he launches a couple of missles and soon mops up the remaining enemy armor on the beach. Thanks, that was intensely close!

In the commotion I saw several more enemy soldiers running around so I inch around, assault rifle dug deep into my shoulder, looking for any sign of these stragglers. An enemy machine gunner unleashes a massive spray of fire at me but totally misses and I smirk as his tracer rounds spray ridiculously far off target. I spray indiscriminately at the bush he is taking cover behind and the fire sppm stops – one down! I inch forward a bit more and squeeze off a few well aimed rounds at another enemy who is taking pot shots at me from prone position about 40 feet away. I slowly make my way forward, towards the sight of the majority of the now destroyed armor, as the Cobra circles over head.

Black smoke fills the horizon and then, suddenly, the sound of a new engine and the addition of a new, brown, puff of smoke joins the others making an obvious contrast. What the fuck? Someone just jumped into another abandoned BMP! The chopper appears to be out of ammo as he circles it harmlessly and I still have no means of taking something like this out on my own. Hoping the luck is on my side I slowly approach the body of the last enemy I shot and… eureka! He had an RPG!

“Well, it might have seemed like a good place to hide…”

I grab the RPG, reload it, shoulder it, peer through the sight, and squeeze the trigger resulting a direct hit to the back of the BMP before any of the crew even have a chance to notice me. MISSION COMPLETE! Man, what a tense and action packed little scenario, especially considering it all started out as such a simple little code test. Damn, I love this game! 🙂