The Last Phase of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Beta (Guild Beta) was officially announced today...



Along with the start of this new phase, some other announcements have been made as well.

First of all, EA Mythic have changed their name back to Mythic Entertainment. Citing examples of other brands under the EA banner which don't have EA attached (like DICE and Bioware), General Manager Mark Jacobs posted on the Warhammer Alliance Forums:



An interview with Mark Jacobs at MMORPG.Com revealed some new information regarding WAR. Mythic has signed well known Anti-Cheat company Punkbuster to handle potential hackers and cheaters in Warhammer, making them the first company to use PB for an MMO.

In the same interview, it was announced that at the games launch there will only be 2 Capital Cities which can be opened up for City Sieges, rather then the previous 6 Cities (or one city for each race). So what will happen now is that in order to raid a Capital City (Altdorf for Order and the Inevitable City for Destruction) your side needs to control 2 of the 3 regions, which is gained based on how many "Realm Points" your side has accumulated.

The last and possibly the oddest news is the removal of 4 of the games classes. The Orc Choppa (the Greenskin Melee DPS), the Dwarven Hammerer (the Dwarven Melee DPS), the Dark Elf Blackguard (the Dark Elven Tank), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (the Empire/Human Tank) are being removed. Stating that the quality of the classes plus some issues with class mechanics caused Mythic to reevaluate them and based on feedback from their internal dev teams they decided to remove them.

You can read the whole interview at http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game ... ature/2041

Edit: I got into Beta

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heh

the choppa, blackguard and knight were 3 of my favorite classes actually. Just from reading about it and trying to figure out what I would start to play with.

From the way I understand it (and this isn't NDA Breaking), Mythic didn't want to have to implement the 4 classes in their lackluster state then work on them later simply so "All races will still have all 4 archetypes".

(Edit)The Choppa and Hammerer were basically being tooted as very generic melee classes and nothing about them was special what so ever. There was a gameplay preview done at PAX (I'm assuming based on my sort investigation to double check) in which the writer played a Choppa for a few scenarios and pretty much reflected that opinion. I'm currently unable to find the review itself but I did find a few youtube videos of people playing Choppas at various Game Conventions etc. I was only able to find like 2 videos of the Hammerer and both of them seem to be generic gameplay footage.

As for the KOTBS, there really isn't anything that I can find publically which reflects the reason to remove them save for the same as the Choppa/Hammerer.

The Blackguard was never in in the first place. Though it was one of the first classes announced, even the general public knew BG's weren't in. So really, not a huge reason to miss them.

As for the Capital Cities....this is how it works now (from what I've read on Mark Jacobs posts on Warhammer Alliance). If you play on Destruction and you want to raid Altdorf (the Empire City, Order Capital City), you need to have zone control over 2 of the 3 regions in the game. This means that you need control over either the Greenskin/Dwarf lands and Empire/Chaos lands or have control over Empire/Chaos and Elf/Dark Elf lands. This way it creates a focus for your realm as to which lands is more important to take. Before, with the idea of 2 Capital Cities in each region you could end up with a server where Order has decided to take over the Greenskin/Dwarf lands (aiming for Black Crag) while Destruction have decided to take over Altdorf. So basically, no resistance is being offered because one side has chosen to focus on one city and vice versa.

They said they plan on adding in the other 4 cities and doing a like a Region Rotation. So one month the focus is trying to take over the Empire/Chaos region and the next month the Greenskin/Dwarf lands. I'm cool either way, I think it sounds mind personally.

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After reading the concept and lore behind the Orc Choppa that was my favorite as well =/ Sad to see it go.

Also unfortunate that they are copy/pasting Blizzard's approach to character diversity philosophy: make fewer classes, but more talent trees. Goddamn that's getting old quick.

Hammerer and Choppa were not playable at Baltimore Gamesday.

My mistake on it being a Games Day that they were playable. I found some videos and such of the Choppa and Hammerer being played on Youtube, I'm assuming that the videos are from PAX as during my search to double check pointed at PAX as the place they were filmed.

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Glad I check my junk email box once every month.....

Since AoC has taken a sad turn for the worst might actually have to try this out. Almost tried to start to remember my EQ account.....

Hell, I feel you on the AoC thing Turbo. That game reeled me in then kicked me in the nuts with their stupid game mechanics changes (or lack thereof in some areas) and asinine patches. I could stand in one spot as a guardian, pull 2-3 melee mobs, and pop counterstrike 1 and counterstrike 2, and never attack again (since they inexplicably stack), and watch their life just drop to zero from the DoT's and damage shield. Yet in pvp, I could fight in a 10-minute potion-quaffing snorefest where no one dies, both people get bored, and leave. Exciting. Because we all know that heal over time potions with no cooldown at the end are a GREAT idea.

I'm also burned out to hell and back on WoW arenas. So, I did the unthinkable... I re-activated EQ2 under that living legacy thing, and a few of us are having a lot of fun with it back on Crushbone, surprisingly enough.

I hope Warhammer is more interesting than it looks. Maybe I should just just actually start USING my Xbox 360 or something, because it gets harder and harder for an MMO to feel "right" these days to me. On a side note, I downloaded the "Too Human" demo on Xbox and I *really* enjoyed it. 1.5 hours and 6 levels of mindless hack and slash rpg action later, I walked away satisfied...

Dude, get Gamefly and play the hell out of the 360 for 6 months.

Ya I was so ready for a change when I went to AoC I at first didn't notice the bad things. After raiding for awhile and seeing some of the changes they were making the game just wasn't going in the direction I liked to want to invest all my time in.

I'd come dick around in EQ2 with you guys but I think WAR is really going to deliver and have a huge enough market share to be able to keep the game fresh and developing for years to come so I might as well start getting used to all the classes etc before it goes live. After 4-5 days of playing it really plays/feels kinda like wow but better. So many different things you can do even right out of the gate at level 4-5. The public quests are pretty damn cool, PVP flows decent enough etc. I will have to see how raiding looks before I decide forsure but the rest of the game is really polished for still being in closed beta at least at the start so we will see....

Just like you were convinced Vanguard would deliver. Just like you were sure AoC would be better. Why don't you just play WoW and get ready for the expansion to hit?

Neesha has a point!

To its credit, Conan could have/should have been the "one" game to be the alternative, but as we know, it isn't. The irony of it all is, it is because of patching and lack of feedback since release that will destroy it and not all the corporate bullshit that ripped Vanguard apart.

It had enough going for it at the beginning to make it shine like a new penny. The story was pretty entertaining, almost FFXI like. Pretty good action and amazing graphics. But, as typical as of late, it was just a big turd polished really really bright. No shame in giving it a go.

Vanguard we knew went from a possibility, to caution, to complete shit before it hit the streets. Even without an inside man feeding us info. I flip flopped on it so many times it was unreal.

This is the summer of suck for mmo gaming. Every summer has a bad lull period. This one is particularly bad. Most people are taking the time away from WoW, since with a looming expansion on the horizon, there is no point in busting ass to kill Tier 5 content. Tons of guilds recruiting, but they cannot field a raid force to even kill Hyjal trash, let alone Vashj/Kael. I transfered to join a T5 guild mid week, they went from having SSC/TK on farm, to not being able to field a full kara badge farm without pugs. Fuck that rebuilding shit. I'm going to go look for the honey pot.

Those in Sunwell just backtrack to BT to have something to do, aka farm warglaves. Everyone jumps ship from those guilds to hit up the "Sunwell on farm and ready for lich king" advertisments.

Can't say I blame people. There is almost zero stability across the board as far as guilds go. As soon as I find honeypot "hey want to join our clique of people and run 10 mans every day" I'm jumping on it.

Or playing Warhammer probably. Nobody wants an enhancement shaman nowadays anyway.

So yeah, while I shit on Turbo for his rabid Vanguard devotion, knowing full well what the game was and offered, I can't shit on him for wanting to find a game that he enjoys. It's ok if you like World of Warcraft. It's ok if someone doesn't. I play it because there isn't anything worth playing MMO wise besides it at the moment, and scraping aside all the attention whoring, who is fucking who, suck shit sub par 200 DPS bull dyke drama bad player bullshit, WoW raiding is an enjoyable thing. But not for everybody.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. However, I think Turbo fooled himself into thinking everything was better than WoW just because it was different. It kind of reminds me of a guy I knew who used to always eat the shit that nobody else would touch and pretend that he enjoyed it just to be different. Vanguard sucked from day one and never changed, yet Turbo somehow convinced himself that it was good. AoC came out and Turbo posted almost the same exact type of post about how awesome the game was that he first made about Vanguard. He'll do the same when Warhammer comes out as well. Don't take my post(s) as a bash on Warhammer because I am actually interested in the game. I just think Turbo is setting himself up for yet another disappointment when he could just swallow his pride, play WoW, and actually get some enjoyment out of a MMORPG again (since he obviously enjoys those types of games more than others), rather than sitting there wishing things would get better. WoW is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it is far and away the best thing out there and the best thing that will be out there 6 months from now.

ps: I have a feeling that DC Online (if/when it ever comes out) will just be a glorified Marvel Ultimate Alliance, so please don't wait around for that one, too, Turbo.

I have no clue what WAR will be like, this is a first weeks worth of impressions....but its good enough I rather wait for a fresh start there instead of trying to catch up in WoW. VG is still my favorite game and I would be playing that if I had 1% faith that SOE was going to dedicate the resources it needs to continue to develop.

AoC did alot of things right but kind of headed the wrong direction for me /shrug. First half of the game was a HELL of alot more polished then the end game and I was really excited about it but that definitely wore off. They take a different approach to things, some good some bad. But you are correct that I got to excited about it being "different' not better. Sadly AoC is the first game ive ever just woke up and said fuck...this isn't really any fun anymore so I deleted and haven't thought of it since. I would not remotely put AoC anywhere near the quality of VG.

And curious neesha did you play vanguard all the way through the end game or griffion quests? Or are you just basing your vg sucks because thats what you read on the forums omg! And let me save you the counter of no the subscription #'s tell the tale because anyone who follows these things know VG had a fucking shitty release that would scare any MMO player who started with WOW. The game was great in alot of areas, the reason all the dedicated players left was because SOE had made it quiet clear they were just going to put it on life support and rack in a few dollars.

WOW is a great game obviously I won't argue there. WAR might be the first game that really looks at exactly what makes WOW successful and implements very similar mechanics with a few twists of their own. The public quest idea is pure brilliant (needs abit of tweaking to prevent group afk'rs) that provides hours and hours of things to do with chance at loots etc. Influence rewards is a nice touch, essentially very localized faction with a few rewards for each which can be got doing public quests anyway (which creates a more social atmosphere since you can't solo public quests or even 3-4 man them).

They did away with mana, all classes use action points which is a great idea when it comes down to balancing etc. PVP rewards and fights right out the gate that seem pretty engaging (you fight for control over things that can be triggered and emit a huge death explosion that kills everyone, not sure how scoring exactly works). Combat seems paced alright as a castor but definitely feel more of the "glass" not the "cannon" at the moment.

To me, the thing that makes WOW successful is you basically always feel like you are working towards a goal when you are doing something. The carrot on the stick always seems obtainable and rewarding. So far WAR hit the nail on the head and even surpassed it from a "noob" starting point anyway.

I can only play so many games of Civ Revolutions....this is a good break from it!

No, I did not play it all the way through, or even close. But I did waste my money and actually play the game. I didn't feel like I needed to waste my time to make something out of nothing, so I quit pretty early on after frustration after frustration.

I don't know what the public quest thing is, but let me tell you a bit about WoW. When AQ was released (in a patch, not as an expansion), entire servers had to work together (on Alliance side and Horde side) to gather items and move the story along before people could access the raid zones. Tons of quests had to be completed and it ended with a massive event that opened the gates. Some servers had to wait much longer than others to have access to the raid zones, it all depended on how much their servers worked together.

When the Sunwell was released (again, in a patch, not an expansion), the server again had to work together to open up various things. As your entire server worked on quests, you had access to more things and you actually saw the zone change dynamically. It started out as an almost entirely hostile zone but as you killed guys and completed quests, the "good guys" took over more of the zone, which opened up more things (such as vendors with new awesome items, a blacksmith to repair your shit, etc). Even the big raid zone, which is the current end-game raid zone, wasn't just opened the day it came out so uber guilds could clear it the first week. You had to "unlock" (for lack of a better word) bosses to advance in the zone. This is the type of thing that you're missing by being so stubborn.

I understand not wanting to play the game because you feel like you're playing catch-up, but now is the perfect time to do so. People are just plodding along waiting for the expansion so you have no real need to feel rushed. They have made leveling from 1-60 much easier, they have changed things so you get your first mount at level 30, and they have really done plenty to cater to people just now getting into the game. I really don't know why I am wasting my time in this thread trying to convince you to give the game a try, but I am doing so. You really seem to want something fun to play and I honestly don't know why you won't just bite the bullet and play WoW (again?). Hell, if you already have an account, it won't cost you much to do so.

I never really felt part of anything big doing the AQ or Sunwell quests. Especially Sunwell. Both just seemed like a fast way to make cash and faction. Even today with everything unlocked, Sunwell is just a giant place to get cash before raids to buy consumables and collect primals along the way.

When he says public quests, imagine the game world as one giant Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm without the fagflag. Now, imagine what it would be like to be rewarded for playing well as you defended and captured objectives with something other than a handful of marks of honor.

^- /agreed

AQ was a particular borefest for me especially because all it was was just a faction grind. Great, lots of fun. Sunwell was better in the sense that it actually had quick and interesting(at first) quests to do. You could spend 30-40 mins on quests, get em done, and you've just advanced your server by a decent margin(or basically, as much as you can on a single char).

I would not have wanted to touch the AQ mount quest with a ten-foot pole.

I look back at those AQ times with complete agony, and thankfulness that WoW has moved on from that period. Holy shit gathering up those costumes to summon mobs was retarded for such a minimal amount of faction and loot.

Anyhoo.. the final summoning event was kinda cool I guess, I was there for it when it happened on Doomhammer(and I had a slightly crappier computer back then mind you). 5 FPS for the friggin win. But that's the only good thing about the whole chain I can say, at least everyone got together at the end and a little pvp flagging madness to boot as well.

No event for Sunwell but who cares it gave me a few more dailies to do.

Turbo is right, Vanguard after the fixes was a most enjoyable game. Too bad not many stuck around to see what it turned into. Out of all the MMO's I have played, my monk in VG was the absolute most fun I have ever had playing a toon.

Those who left pre-lvl 30 really can't say what the game was like, even pre-fixes. It is still one of the most beautifuly landscaped games I have seen to date and had a great combat system, IMHO.

I've been in the WAR beta for over a year. If you are a PVP fanatic, then it is for you. If not, /shrug.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

God help me, I agree with Khan on something.

Frankly, I'd still be playing the game off and on at least if there was any hope for a future for it whatsoever. Honestly the development team is sucking on the tit of SOE just to keep it on life support, it's only a matter of time before they let it go. It's sorta to be expected in a PVE-style game, but I heard the PVP server is so bad that there are only a handful of people on at primetime and that they considered shutting that server down(and it's only one of like 4-5 servers!).

But yea, I'm not sure if it was necessarily a completely different game after 30, but I felt like the level of fun increased a bit. You have to do it with a good group of players that enjoys dungeon-crawling, though. The dungeons are designed masterfully(I spent soooo much time on the air platform dungeon; mainly it was to collect my tier pieces, but it was still fun).

The normal style PQ's don't require large amounts of people working in perfect unison, simply have 3 stages in a limited area range that need to be complete. For alot of the PVE its not in RVR areas so you just have to have 5-6 people around (more helps but alot of the earlier ones can be done if you have a tank/healer and some dps). It really is a good system, I haven't gotten to try out the raid style PQ's at the end of the game in the citys you have to capture so I can't comment on them.

I started a bright wizard today and lvl'd to 11 strictly on PVP and I really hate to admit it but the PVP is starting to grow on me, especially once I start learning more about what the other classes are doing to me. Its very chaotic but still stategic at some points (and others I see 2 melee run towards me and just start screaming like a little bitch because the "glass cannon" goes down fast.

If you PVP only exp and pvp exp flows great but you don't get enough cash to really keep up with buying your reknown pvp gear and your skills from the trainer so need to do abit of both. Pick up scavening when you first can to help!

Last comment.....the sorc/BW's have a mechanic they tweaked now that basically you build "combustion/dark magic" on almost every nuke you do, it adds crit % chance and crit amount damage based on how much combustion between 0-100 (spells range from 5-25ish to build combustion). The downfall....the higher combustion you have the higher % chance a spell might explode and do damage to you as well. Its an interesting thing to manage....the explosions hurt too. At lvl 11 I had like 1400 hps or something and they were hitting me for 250-300. So when you are fighting you can dump your combustion with a spell that does damage based off your combustion amount. But when you start pvp'n and have 10-20 people in a cluster you just go for broke and half the time kill yourself heh. In a sick sort of way I like it...kind of like chaos volley in VG.

Oh this game does sound like it will be a lot of fun for PvP folks