I will have to watch what I post here and only comment on official press release content from now on as to not break any NDA rules. It will be tough to do this because I’m sure I would have a lot of amazing things to say. I’m glad because this means I’ll be able to seriously take part is testing and fixing a lot of the problems that may or may not exist with the zealot, disciple, and shaman class (they will be my two main focuses during testing since I’m a healer).
Just got back last night from a 3 night, 4 day camping vacation over the weekend. We went to the high desert of Oregon, East of Mt. Hood. We went on a 5 mile hike, enjoyed a lot of great camping food, saw places of Oregon we’ve never seen before, rowed a raft across a VERY large reservoir, and got plenty of rest and relaxation. Kerrie took tons of pictures and I’m sure if you’re curious she’ll have them up on her blog soon. ;-) More information on the Prineville Reservoir can be found at: http://www.prinevillereservoir.com/
As a result, I haven’t blogged in a while, but now it’s time to catch up on life, the goings on in the Warhammer community, and do some gaming.
Oh yeah and on Thursday I fractured 2 of my bottom front teeth and chipped one of my top middle teeth resulting in 2 root canals and to ensure proper reconstruction of the bottom of my mouth, they did a total of 4 cap reconstuctions. Right now I have temporaries in and the perminents come in the first week of August. But hey, they took a bad situation and as a result my smile, bite, and overall mouth health will be better in the long run.
I’m tired of the drama. The game will still be awesome. Shun the unbelievers!
I think for launch it actually makes more sense the more I think about it that there is only 1 pairing and then as the game goes on, they add the other capitals. There can be storyline explanations they can put into why and make a cool launch event when they add the capitals in.
For example Dark elf / High elf pairing, it could be that simply the dark elf/high elf invasion is new…er than the Chaos / Human. Remember the Dark Elves are INVADING high elf lands raiding on a Black Arc. Orcs / Greenskins are more tribal and don’t have LARGE capitals in general. Over time they could come into play. Likewise since those are “newer” invasions as far as storyline maybe the Dark Elves haven’t decided to raid the High Elf city yet or visa versa. Same with Dwarves, maybe they are SOOOO defended that you can’t invade them yet at launch. Likewise you could spin the story where it’s a “need to enter” only restriction on who can enter the capitals. They are PHYSICALLY there you can even see where they are, but you can’t enter. I’ve seen the dark elf capital in screenshots, it’s a HUGE Black Arc (although it could have been a different Black Arc), but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed inside. Maybe you’re not high enough ranking yet, they don’t want you inside.
Regardless, the tier pairings will be there. The content will be there. I hope at launch they get the other 4 classes in ASAP. Then start working on the other capitals one at a time with a few month launch windows between them. Assuming they launch in the fall, I hope they have the classes all in by the end of the year and hope they have all the capitals in by summer 2009 and I’ll be happy.
Regardless of my wants and wishes, I give Mark Jacobs and the entire Mythic Entertainment team props for stepping up and saying something unpopular now rather than wait until launch and try to sweep crap under the rug like Age of Conan did.
Although this is a bit late it’s still important and worth mentioning. On June 15th, Hit it like you mean it, my guild and band of brothers hit their 2 year anniversary mark. I made another slide show style video showing off all the great times that have happened in the last year. Almost every single one of us now has the Collector’s Edition of Warhammer and we’re eagerly awaiting Open Beta and launch of the game.
I’ve written many articles in the past on inflation and the economic stability of an MMO. Many of these were on Tabula Rasa because well… honestly the inflation and economic state for the most part was pretty good at the time in which I was playing. Today I read an interview of Josh Drescher on Ten Ton Hammer titled “WAR: A Look at Living Guilds with EA Mythic Part 1“. This article got me thinking. Not about Keeps and RvR, more so it got me thinking about the economy within Warhammer.
Right now we know very little about how the economy works within Warhammer but we know this much:
Paul Barnett hates grinding
There is no money sinks like armor repairing
There is no monetary cost associated with death
Tradeskilling was presented to useful, but not a money sink
Player equipment trade seems to be rather insignificant
Keeps capture is a “significant event” with a “significant cost”
Siege weapons are supposed to be costly
Guild banner loss has a small monetary cost
NPCs in PVE and PCs in RvR all drop gold
So the questions that arise are…
What keeps the player economy in check?
Does gold become a trivial thing that only matters to endgame guilds?
Does gold matter at all to the individual player?
What stops server gold inflation from getting out of hand?
What does the individual with no guild have to spend money on?
Does money become essentially pointless over time?
Do the few sought after tradeable items become insanely costly?
After doing some research into how DAoC handled inflation, they did so very well through tradeskill money sinks. Some of the better items in the are crafted and very expensive to make. This lowered the amount of liquid gold in the economy, replacing that gold with hard assets in the form of gear. Of course this is assuming they used a BoE (Bind on Equip) system for gear. A non-BoE based equipment system is no better than having no money sinks at all. If gear is easily traded from one person to another, items keep their value in original gold prices and actually their initial value decreases over time as demand for lower itemed gear drops as a server grows. In fact if they don’t decrease in value, some rarer items increase in value and you have an item based economy (search Google on Diablo II’s economy).
I certainly hope Warhammer has some kind of A. money sinks and B. BoE / BoP based equipment system or else you’re going to find a very week economy within a few months from launch. Tabula Rasa underestimated this and I’m sure Age of Conan suffers from similar problems (because it also lacks a BoE / BoP concept, at least at lower levels anyhow). You cannot simply ignore the economy of an MMO. Human beings are capitalist animals. We need a tangible reward for the effort we put into something. An environment with too weak of an economy is boring and unaccepted by the human psyche. The perfect Utopian world where everyone has enough money for everything they need and never wants for anything is unrealistic and boring. Although it’s great for lazy people. Last time I checked Warhammer wasn’t for lazy people. Lazy people play that other game. People who want a challenge goto WAR.
I saw this on Kerrie’s Blog and had to do it.
(click photo for credits)
The instructions to create the mosaic are:
Type your answers to each of the questions below into Flickr Search
Using only the first page, pick an image
Copy and paste each of the URLs into the mosaic maker
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name.
It’s now been 3 full months since HILYMI committed to Warhammer. I know a lot of other guilds have been waiting a lot longer, but the suspense is killing us. We all have preordered the collector’s edition. We all are just randomly playing games until WAR comes out and we’re all hoping to have our names drawn in the next round of beta invites which should be coming very soon.
My random MMO of the week is Secret of the Solstice. Considering it’s just past the summer solstice, I figured it would be fitting. The game at first look seems like a simpler, but better looking Ragnarok Online with better UI and more group oriented play focus. Of all the MMO’s I’ve always gone back to from time to time, Ragnarok Online is one that always kept my interest. It will be interesting to see how this newer game based on the same engine plays out.
It’s time for a change of blog title. The other day I made a really awesome Lord of Change using the spore creature creator. Well in the Waaaagh! Blog’s News Blogs and Sites updates, they described me as quoted above. I don’t blame them, but it did make me want to spring into action. I’ve been thinking pretty hard for over a week now and came up with a somewhat witty title and encompases my blog pretty well. “Thoughts of an MMO Gamer” with the subtitle “By Victor F. Laurence: Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer”. Basically I removed CyberVic out of the title all togehter and put my name in the subtitle.
EDIT: After thinking more on it this weekend I decided on “O Rly?! Ya Rly! No Wai!!!” with the subtitle “A witty, random, and sometimes serious blog by Victor F. Laurence”.
