What Genre?

Well, on beholding my Biker regalia, Loopinvariant had this to say:

That's just as bad as adding space ships and space goats in BC. They could at least have made an attempt to fit it in with the genre. Not cool, no thanks.

I have to ask: What Genre? The Dwarves have had Steampunk technology since at least Warcraft 3. This is again in line with the Warhammer world they ripped off, where the Dwarves have the self-same Gyrocopters they introduced for Engineers in WoW a couple of patches ago.

Blizz are focusing on making the game fun rather than "authentic", which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. There are MMO's out there offering a more "authentically Medieval" fantasy experience, like Age of Conan or Lord of the Rings online. I'm happy for Blizzard to follow their demented muse wherever it takes them, as long as the end result is fun.

Afterall, look up Fantasy at Dictionary.com some time. The first definition you'll see is:

imagination, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Like a true nature's child, we were born, born to be wild...

Full Defias Leather set
Bandit Shoulders
Furious Gizmatic Goggles

I'm ready to get my Engineering Bike in Wrath of the Lich King!

Preparing for Wrath...

I've been slowly getting my ass in gear for the Expansion.

First thing up is getting my hands on my Epic Flyer at long last. Between powerlevelling professions, respecs and the occasional splurge on epic gems on the AH, I must have squandered nearly 20k Gold over the 18 months or so I've been playing Ulushnar. This is gonna stop now, I'm going to grind my dailies like a mad thing and get Artisan Riding for Ulu at least. I'm currently 2k gold in with 3k to go. should be doable if I don't slack.

I've also got my hands on a decent one-hander for Hammer of the Righteous. Depending on Wether or not the speed's been normalised in the Expansion, I'll end up using either the Spiteblade or King's Defender unless something better drops in the meantime.

I'm also giving consideration to dropping Enchanting for Mining closer to the expansion release date. Mining gives a healthy stamina boost now and it'll also make levelling Engineering in the Xpac much easier.

Finally, I'm thinking about my raiding situation post-WotLK. There are people who I enjoy raiding with in CD, but I'm more and more attracted to the notion of setting up a small 15-20 man guild and focussing solely on the 10-man side of content. The new Guild Calendar introduced in Wrath seems really nice, and along with the Guild Bank, it seems the non-guild Raid Group is something of an awkward anachronism.

Of course the problem is that a lot of the people I'd currently want to fill this ten-man guild are in Guilds that they have friends in and probably wouldn't leave.

Ah well, we'll see what the next couple of months bring.

Thoughts on Warhammer Online

Well, apparently the relase date for Warhammer Online has been announced as September 18th, and I'm honestly not bothered. I've had a changeable and varied relationship with Games Workshop's fantasy franchise which dates back many years.

I used to play the wargame a lot, but I left behind my love for the wargame in my teens, where it was basically a case of whoever bought the newest army was instantly the most powerful.

I did play the RPG a couple of years back and I really loved it, even with it's clunky career system. It was brutal, harrowing and relentless, starting out like D&D but quickly turning into Call of Cthulu. I can remember turning to my GM at one point and asking "I can't understand why my character shouldn't give up in the face of the overwhelming powers arrayed against them." His answer was basically along the lines of "well if you don't, who will?" It was one of the first Fantasy RPGs I played that defined heroics as more than "slaughter a villageload of Goblins, kill the evil wizard and get the treasure."

But the things I loved the RPG for just wouldn't translate into an MMO.
What's basically left is WoW. And yes, I know Blizzard liberally borrow Games Workshop's character designs, but ultimately that kind of nitpicking doesn't matter. If Blizzard made a tabletop wargame with minatures, I'd call it a Warhammer rip-off.

It's also a Wow focussed around PVP which is "Realm vs Realm". At one point it sounded like an interesting notion where each race had their own capital which was locked in a border skirmish with a race on the other faction. Of course, expediency and a desire not to clash with Wrath of the Lich King's immenent arrival has meant that this has been reduced to basically one captial for each faction.

All the races in a faction together from the start? I'm not seeing a gigantic difference to WoW at that point. Then there's the fact that there's 14 playable classes in a PVP-focussed game, each with the requisite three talent trees that have been de rigeur since Diablo 2. Wow has enough problems balancing 9 classes, and I'm not loving EA/Mythic's chances with nearly twice that number.

I'm glad they're getting it out when they are. With a month or two between Warhammer and Wrath of the Lich King, it'll be enough time for some folks to try WAR, get sick of it and come back.

It's time for Good News/Bad News.

Good News: One of my guildies decides she doesn't want her WotLK Beta key from the '08 WWI. She sends me the code on Saturday the 2nd of August and I promptly redeem it.

Bad News: I then find this forum post :

The deadline for redeeming your code for the current round of invites is Friday the 1st of August. Codes registered after this date will not be eligible for beta entry until a later date, so we encourage everyone to register early and be part of the vanguard into Northrend.

Ah well, I'll be getting into Beta. At some point. Maybe.

In other news, I've decided to take a short break from 25-man raiding. At the moment it's still a crapshoot about wether or not a raid will go ahead on a given night, and for every raid that goes ahead and does well, there's 2-3 that either fail to go ahead, or end in us going with a suboptimal group and wiping a lot. Since I have, for my sins, taken a seat on the CD council again, it means I'm in the unenviable position of telling the 15-20 people who did show up ready to raid that it's not going ahead.

Not the mostest fun job in the world.