10 Days of WAR: Day Five, Metaplace shutdown

For Day Five of my return to WAR, I took a break.  However, to fill space, I want to talk about the Metaplace shutdown that was announced yesterday:

Today we have unfortunate news to share with the Metaplace community. We will be closing down our service on January 1, 2010 at 11:59pm Pacific. The official announcement is here and copied below, and you can read a FAQ guide here. We will be having a goodbye celebration party on January 1st at 12:00noon Pacific Time.

I'm conflicted on what to think. On one hand I don't see how the product could ever generate revenue, but on the other hand I could see it had potential. In the end, the first was proven correct and the latter will be left to our imaginations.

10 Days of WAR: Day Four

Day four of my return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was spent in Tier 1 scenarios.  As I stated on Day Three, tier 1 is my favorite part of WAR.  Also, I commented that the limitless trial was one of the best things going for WAR. Unfortunately, after last night, my mind has been slightly changed.

I've never had a problem with instanced content and it fits well in WAR.  Instanced scenarios offer quick and easy action and offer varied challenges. However, I was not having much fun playing last night.

My problems with scenarios in WAR are two fold: teams are rarely balanced and some scenarios aren't worth playing.  Unfortunately, both of these are worsened by the limitless trial.  This came as an unwelcome shock to my plans to play the limitless trial in the future.

10 Days of WAR: Day Three

For Day Three of my 10-day return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, I ventured back into tier 1 to see how the new limitless trial was working out.  I rolled the one Order class I haven't played: the dwarf slayer.  Instead of starting in the dwarf lands, I was transplanted in the Empire starting area of Nordland.  This is meant to make sure that new players are concentrated into a single zone, allowing for the key features of WAR to shine (PQs, RvR, lairs).

I took a screenshot of a new item, the Rune of Transport, that describes exactly what it is all about:

Not only does it highlight the new combined starting area, it also makes a statement about the way the player density in WAR has been heading: down. However, the new starting area is good for WAR and it helps tremendously to hide the player density issues of the later tiers.

10 Days of WAR: Day Two

Day two of my journey back into Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning landed me in the Land of the Dead.

After checking out the map of the zone I noticed that the Public Quest (PQ) markers showed how many players were present and participating. The PQ nearest the starting area was one short of the recommended group size, so I joined in the fun. The first monster I attacked, a giant condor, didn't fall over dead as I had expected. Instead it took flight with me in it's claws and headed up to the mountainside to deposit me in it's nest! I was shocked: MMOG monsters are supposed to die and give me loot, not try and feed me to their children!

Completing this PQ reminded me why I had such high hopes for WAR. PQs are brilliant and fun when enough players are present. Unfortunately since Order just unlocked access to the LotD zone, only the PQ nearest the warcamp had any players participating.

Referencing back to Day One, there are no PQs in any of the tier 4 RvR lakes, which is a damn shame considering that is where Mythic encourages players to spend their time.  Again, it frustrates me that NOTHING has been done to the RvR lakes to encourage players to visit outside of a zerg keep or objective fight.  Also, to highlight the poor design decisions, keeps and battlefield objectives reward increased experience/influence gain in zones where there is NO FUCKING CONTENT! 

I refuse to use the term zone for the RvR areas, as they are one-dimensional lakes.  Players returning to WAR to jump into the tier 4 RvR action are going to find the same sub-par game they left in the first place.  Anyways, back to LotD.

After a few runs of the PQ, I decided to see the rest of the zone. What I found next, blew my fucking mind:

10 Days of WAR: Day One

I started my holiday-inspired return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning by logging into my level 40/ RR 35 Ironbreaker on Badlands. The first order of business was restoring my UI. WAR's default UI serves its purpose, but there are a few things my minimalist gamer brain needs: clean unit frames, consolidated info bars, and easily customized hotbars.

Rebuilding a lost UI can be aggravating, but for WAR, there is a great tool available from Curse for management and automatic updates/installs of most UI elements. I highly recommend the Curse Client.

For clean unit frames, I settled with Pure. Hotbars are managed via Vertigo. Info bars are kept organized with Warboard. The rest: Phantom, Squared, and MOTH.

 

After thirty minutes of  UI customization, I was ready to helicopter on out to the Tier 4 RvR lakes.