So far there hasn't been too much out there in '09 thats grabbed me yet. I'm playing The World Ends With You at the mo, and finding it hard to get into. The first new game I'll be buying this year is probably Street Fighter IV, so I won't have long to wait to get into the swing of '09.
So I got this email the other day about the public test server for Warhammer Online. Apparently, they were throwing the two new classes (Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun) onto the test server for some focus testing. I like me a bit of focus testing (wait, did I just say that aloud?) so I threw myself in and had a bit of a go at the Destruction class, the Blackguard.
Blackguards are the Dark Elf tank class for Destruction. I'm sure if you wanted to know their backstory you'd look it up, so I'll just stick to gameplay mechanics. The Blackguard is the 'mirror' to Orders 'Iron Breaker' class, and shares a similar mechanic for fueling its attacks, with some slight differences. Where the Iron Breaker builds 'Grudge' points from being hit or from his Oathfriend being hit, the Blackguard builds its Hatred by being hit and by attacking. This paints the Blackguard as a more offensive kind of tank, although in practice it's not quite that one dimensional.
As the Blackguard builds Hatred, it gains access to some of its more useful and powerful attacks, which spend Hatred points instead of Action Points (AP). As well as this, some of the Blackguards AP attacks will become more potent the more Hatred the Blackguard has stockpiled. Because of the need to raise your Hatred to gain the more powerful secondary effects of your AP attacks, coupled with the need to expend Hatred to unleash more powerful attacks to aid in your DPS or damage mitigation, playing a Blackguard is all about balancing the two resources and knowing when to use the right attacks for optimum power in both offense and defense.
As I noted earlier, the Blackguard is painted as an 'offensive tank,' although in practice it's a little different due to the game mechanics. The Blackguard seems to be tooled toward being a supporing offtank rather than a maintank class, although even then the vision is slightly skewed. The main reason for this is that while, iconically, a Blackguard is armed with a two-handed weapon, the drive to actually use a two-handed weapon in Warhammer Online is a bit crazy compared to the more favourable sword+board setup. There are some that believe that the Blackguards DPS should be above that of a typical tank because of its 'offensive' nature, but I disagree. The strength of the Blackguard comes from its myriad of unique and/or powerful buffs and debuffs, that it just so happens to have to be constantly beating on an opponent to fuel. It's overall DPS is sort of pale compared to its mirror, the Iron Breaker, and is a bit harder to use successfully, but it builds its resource at a faster rate and thus can constantly pump out attacks that have some pretty nice secondary effects.
Arguably, alot of the Blackguards attacks are geared toward taking down or mitigating the strength of casters rather than other melee. One of its mastery trees is even geared specifically toward an anti-magic-user role. Highlights include a potential 15 second disorient (!!!!), and the ability to both (with a tactic) cut the healing output of a caster by 50% and reducing its willpower by a large percent. It's been really hard to guage the classes actual strength in this area, because the test server is filled with a bunch of Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun toons, which results in alot of tank battles with 12-18 tanks a side in scenarios. While it is amusing, it's hardly the best environment for testing a class whos strength is meant to pertain to shutting down casters.
In the tier 1 testing phase, the Blackguard left a great impression off the bat. The class flowed perfectly with its Hatred gain/AP use, it was a pretty phenomenal tier 1 pve class, and in the tank battles of tier 1 scenarios, the damage mitigation of a mid tier Blackguard trumped the more party-focused Knight of the Blazing Sun. There were instances where I'd lure 3-4 Knights away from the main battle and simply run in circles while they threw axes at me, popping my damage absorbing Shield of Hate ability to aborb pretty much all of their damage for ages while my fellows captured points with their superior numbers. But tier 1, as anyone knows in Warhammer Online, is not where it's at. This didn't stop alot of people theorising that the Blackguard was (technical term:) OMFG OP!!11!, and subsequently, in the tier 2 testing phase they've seen a pretty harsh change.
Mythic have progressed the testing of the Blackguard from tier 1 to tier 2, and some pretty heavy changes were made to the class due to the overwhelming feedback in the tier 1 testing phase. The main point of interest to many was the Hatred mechanic, and how quickly it seemed to build compared to their sister class the Iron Breaker. Much QQ and BAW was made, and in response, Mythic slashed the rate at which Hatred was gained at higher ends from 3 points per attack down to 1 point per attack. As I surmised, however, cuts to the rate of Hatred gain of the Blackguard in its attacking capacity is extrememely detrimental to the class in higher end RvR, where their highest rate of gaining Hatred (being attacked) would be nigh on non-existant, therefore forcing them to expend over a thousand AP (the Blackguards static AP pool is 200) to reach 100 Hatred, and thats completely ignoring the use of any Hatred fueled attacks they might use. Mythic has responded to this by planning to restore the old Hatred gain numbers but hamstringing some of the high-end Hatred gaining and Hatred cost reducing tactics, which I believe is a good move. A mechanic shouldn't require the use of tactics in order to work.
The other point of contention was for the Blackguards first skill. The first skill a class usually gets as a melee is a low damage skill with no cooldown that costs 30AP. For tanks, it also builds increased hate (not to be confused with Hatred). The Blackguards version of this skill also contained an extremely powerful toughness buff that could potentially raise the toughness of the user by 45%. For a tank, this is a pretty huge buff, although in practice I felt it wouldn't be a huge thing, since a Blackguard that is trying to deal enough damage to hold aggro from, say, a Black Orc, would be expending so much Hatred to hold aggro to never see over 90 Hatred at any one time. In an rvr situation, the toughness buff would be moot since tanks are only ever attacked when there's no-one else to attack anyway. They have since moved the secondary effect of this skill to a tactic in the defensive mastery tree, but tbh i don't really miss it.
In conclusion, the Blackguard looks fairly promising. It has the potential for some fairly reasonable single and aoe DPS for a tank if specced offensively, but would require a degree of skill to manage both the Hate and AP side of the class to optimise the output. As a main tank, I don't feel the Blackguard looks close to trumping the Black Orc, the toughest Destruction main tank, but would still hold its own in a Black Orcs absence, and its debuffs and party buffs (including a party-wide AP restoring skill) would make it a great supporting offtank that can lend some pretty decent DPS for a tank. Oh, and an extra Guard never hurts ;) I believe though, that the strength of the class is in its debuffs and secondary effects of its skills, as some of these are extremely powerful in the right situations, especially against low-armored and caster-type foes.
I'll post more as the test server gets patched.
So i had this appointment scheduled, and the letter told me it was on Tuesday. Since the letter was posted last week I thought it must have meant today, so I woke up early and got ready to go out. I arrive, and it turns out the appointment was for NEXT Tuesday. Since when do they give you one weeks notice for these things? I dunno..
Anyway, its been so long since I've posted anything, mostly because I've been playing a ton of games lately. like i said in my previous blog post (which is now ancient), I've been plugging through some older games, but its that time of year when stuff actually starts coming out. Final Fantasy 4 on the DS finally made its way over here in Australia, so i snapped that up. I also downloaded megaman 9, which is fantastically frustrating and totally oldschool to the core. i even posted a review here on giantbomb for it, i thought it deserved some praise.
Lastly but by no means leastly, I've been playing a TON of warhammer online.
And by a ton i really mean a ton. My tome says I've played for something like 8 whole days of game time already. I really don't know how I managed that... Too many late nights. I think alot of people already are sold or not on that game, but if you want a brief summary of what i think:
 Warhammer Online is a great mmo, but whats gonna keep it great depends 100% on the population of its servers, even moreso than any other MMO to date. Everything in the game that is fun requires you to be doing it with a ton of other players. Sometimes, there just aren't a ton of players around where you are, and the alternatives are alot less fun than if there was a group of dudes to hang out with. This is simultaneousely what makes and breaks the game.
I play on Darklands server, which is the highest pop oceanic core server. I didn't go on an open RvR server even though i played on a PvP server in WoW, mainly because the open RvR server rules stink. I'm all for the ganking/being ganked thing, but after a little time on the RvR server in beta i found out that PvP on a core server is just alot more fun. Open RvR has no bolster buffs, so you basically have to grind out pve to be decent in pvp for a level or two before moving to the next tier and having to do that all over again. BTW, a bolster buff is basically a buff that you get when you enter a scenario or open rvr area that buffs up your stats to a mean rank for that tier (for example, in tier 1 your stats would be buffed to r8, in tier 2 r18, and so on). This means you can jump into scenarios at level 1 and still be able to do something, unlike in an open RvR server where you'd still be level 1 facing alot of twinked out level 11's, which is just not fun at all. unless youre TOTALLY into gimping other people in pve, then id suggest to just go onto a core server. the pvp there is much more balanced, accessable and fun.
Even being on a high pop server, early going on my main was really lonely. I think someone in my guild told me i was the first disciple of khaine on darklands server to hit r40, and like 8th in the world or something. it was a little bit of a drag though, with so little players at the same tier. PvP was basically non existant, so i leveled mainly through pve. on my alt, though, which i started a few days ago, scenarios in t1 and t2 pop like crazy, which is where it seems that most people are doing their leveling.
Anyway, after these 8 or so days ive managed to hit one character to r40 (a disciple of khaine), and another to r17 (a black orc). My disciple of khaine is my main, although im finding i liked it more in earlier tiers than in tier 4 (content is broken up into tiers of 10 ranks, or levels, tier 4 being the endgame tier). Since alot of my guild arent really up to tier 4 yet, i find that the lack of organized support in a proper group is really detrimental to a disciple in tier 4, where it requires support in order to support its party. While this might sound like a turnoff, all classes in warhammer online are balanced for grouping. You won't find a min/max pvp class that will own everyones face in 1v1. there just isnt a class like that in tier 4. combinations of classes working together is another matter entirely. a well excecuted plan from an organized group can easily mow through a disorganized rabble of players. I do fairly well as a backline support, although not really in the way youd think. i spec mostly into dark arts (the healing mastery) and a little in torture (the DPS mastery). most of the time i put myself in the backline near the other backline classes to help them out with my covenant (a party-wide persistant buff) that raises armor by 660, a considerable amount. if melees break through to the backline, i can support the backline by doing dps while healing both them and the frontline with area and party heals. it seems to work fairly well in PUG scenarios so far.
On my alt, a black orc (which is a tank class), ive almost exclusively been doing scenarios to level. its given me a huge chance to learn the ins and out of the class in rvr, whereas with my disciple i learnt pretty quickly that in t1 and 2, disciples are unstoppable killing machines, but in t4 they taper off in a pretty big way in the 1v1 department. I'm really enjoying playing tank in warhammer, a class archetype thats usually pretty boring to me. alot of this has to do with the fact that tanks in this game are pivotal to pvp groups, whereas in alot of other rpgs tanks generally get ignored in favour of softer targets. Warhammer gets around this by making the enemy want to hit you, and they do this by giving you skills that buff your allies or yourself as long as youre not getting hit. The pve taunt is useful in pvp: it raises your damage by 30% against that target until they hit you three times. this can stack, too, so if you taunt the same target and they completely ignore you, you can do tons of damage to them. later on tanks get a pve area taunt, but its also useful in pvp: it reduces damage done to your entire party by 30% until you are hit 3 times. add to this the awesome guard buff, which you put on an ally to reduce damage done to them by 50%, and playing a tank is not only alot of fun but really important, too.
as you can probably tell, im totally into warhammer online. last night, we rolled around in a warband with tier 4 dudes in a few other guilds in the rvr lakes and systematically took all the keeps and objectives in all the tier 4 areas. then we chain-entered scenarios and won until we finally pushed the war effort from thunder mountain to kadrin valley, a step closer to taking over orders main city. it was pretty exciting, and whole lot of fun, especially when we met with some resistance from order players. I cant wait til more people get to tier 4. its gonna be so awesome.
anyways, better get back to the grind. o/
Being a poor man, I tend miss out on playing alot of games. I'm sure alot of people can relate to me on this one. Anyway, while taking a break from GiantBomb for a little bit, I went down to the local pawn store (Cash Converters, a shitty place to sell, but a great place to shop!) and found a bunch of old games. Well, some of them aren't so old, but you know. I'll write about em as I play through them all, so without further ado heres the first one the list:
*Tears hair out*
Yeah, the disparancies between the editor and the final product on a main article can be frustrating when images are involved, especially when you're trying your hardest to space the pictures evenly so they don't clutter the text. Sometimes entire lines can be cut off, and editing these cut-off lines meld the text with the caption of the picture, and blah... well, just look at the Metroid (concept) page and you'll see. It's a little bit of a mess, setting-wise, and all attempts to fix it have phailed, because the editor and the preview pages are different sizes and translate to eachother pretty literally. blargh.
It's been a pretty stressful day. I had to run through alot of red tape today, and I'm pretty stressed out. I did manage to get the Metroid concept page done, though, even though its a little messy. Luckily, it's the end of the day, and I can rest soon. Or can I...?
out,
~Makari
Writing all this stuff on Metroids has just given me the harsh realization that I won't be playing a new Metroid game for a looooong time. It saddens me... So i recently started playing Super Metroid again. Playing through it again, its pretty crazy how attentive to detail the Retro guys really are. Even the small details you take for granted about some of the environments and creatures, its pretty crazy how their art team got the whole thing down in the first Metroid Prime. It's sorta like watching a movie for what it is, then watching a really in depth making-of and going holy shit.. they went that far?
Anyway, I have Metroid on the brain. I just finished penning another 10 main article subs or so. Right after submitting them, though, I always think of something else to add. I already have to go back to Dark Samus and add in some boss strategies for all her forms and linkify alot of junk, as well as add more linkifys to more junk because of more junk being added to the DB.... but hey, I'm closing on 1000pts, so soon I'll be able to do all that stuff without impunity. Maybe after this round of subs is cleared, I'll be free!
out time,
~Makari
The image moderation tool ran out of images for me to moderate. Does this mean the queue is finally easing? Hell, my friends, is freezing over.
~Makari
This is the first blog I've ever written. Pretty crazy, eh? I don't know what's come over me. I'm also using correct punctuation, on the internet! Giant Bomb is some crazy shit. Anyway, I digress.
I guess i should start with what's going on today. It's currently 8:05am on a Tuesday, and there isn't really all that much to do. It's damn cold, and my heater is busted, so I'm here at the PC where its warm (finally a use for overheating PC towers) and typing away at stuff. Well, typing away at this blog, and THEN I'll get back to typing away at stuff.
My first big sub got approved today. I know it's a bit crazy, but it made me all tingly inside. I don't know, maybe I'm just sad. It's given me a bit of a confidence boost, really, and I've been going hack with submissions. Hey, would you look at that! Just got an E-Mail telling me my Fou-Lu submission was accepted. Rock on! Oh crap, I just noticed some spelling mistakes. Where's a copy editor when you need one? I'll have to double check my submissions in the future to avoid that.
Other than tapping away at submissions, I've recently been wasting some time with some free MMORPG's. Yes, I know. I am crazy. The thing with free MMORPG's is, you can play one, and immediately find out the good and bad parts of the game in the first few hours you play them. It's a shame they get such a bad rep, because many of them have some really awesome ideas and apply them really well. Unfortunately, ideas and concepts don't equal all that much in the overarching entity that is the rest of the game, and so you see them falling over in more places than they can pick themselves up. Add to that the obvious Cash Shop imbalances, and, well, you know what they say. You don't get nothin' for free.
One of the free MMO's I've been screwing around with lately is called "Atlantica". Being a classic RPG completionist, this game actually appeals to me, since it has all the trappings of a really old-school Japanese RPG. Let's dispense with the story. No-one cares about story in MMORPG's, and if they do they're crazy or Blizzard fanboys.
The combat is turn based, and rather than fighting with a single character, you have a Hero and a party of up to 8 (starting at 4 and increasing as you level). You can change around mercenaries and their place in the formation, which is a 3x3 set of spaces, outside of battle. The formation you place your dudes in becomes pretty important, with your typical instinct to put tanks in the front and squishies in the back. Of course, some monsters can attack ignoring, or penetrating, your front line, and some attack multiple ranks at once, or cast spells that can effect your whole party. The classes in the game, as well as having a very small amount of skills to choose from (1-4, at most), all have different ways they can effect an enemy formation. For example, any character can only initiate an attack on the front row of an enemy formation, except for the Archer class that can fire at any single member of the enemy party regardless of rank. Gunners can initiate an attack on the front rank that will pierce up to three ranks, Vikings swing their axes in an arc and can hit both the target and adjacent ones to the left and right, etc etc. Your formation becomes very important as their limited skill pool means you really need to be thinking about what your party can do as a team rather than the individual. The class choices start out small, but eventually you can acquire elite class mercenaries with more unique and specialized powers.
The monsters are milling about in the overworld, and making contact with them shunts you into a random-battle, where you choose actions with your dudes and the cpu will slap you fucking silly with theirs. There's an AP (Action Point) system where your characters with more AP act faster, and different attacks take different amounts of AP to use, and of course, needing a base amount of AP a turn to act. AP is randomly generated each turn and adds to your reserves, and 'Wait'ing in battle will allow you to save up your AP for later turns to use more powerful spells and skills, 'Guard'ing using up less AP and reducing damage you take, and so on. You have a 30 second time limit to make all your moves, after which the monsters take their turns.
In the beginning, things are pretty simple. In later levels, though, the classic RPG stalwart comes into play though: If you bring the wrong thing to the party, you're totally screwed. Some of the bosses are very unfair, as well, although they can be defeated with a combination of luck, spell scrolls, and good ol' overleveling your characters to a point where their attacks suck. This is a shame, though, because the game actually does fairly well in shunting you along with quests rather than making you grind a whole lot. When you reach a boss you cant beat, though, you're pretty much stuck at that quest and need to grind up some more levels so you can progress.
Crafting nuts will be happy with the wealth of crafting options available. You can craft pretty much anything in the game, including weapons, armor, potions, food, bullets, arrows, skill books, even buildings for your guilds town.
Speaking of which, the guild town stuff is pretty nuts, and sorta reminiscent of Sim games. Your guild buys a town with the points you accrue from doing guild quests and such, after which you need to convince people to join your town and make it a thriving community. There's wandering dudes that you can convince to come to your town, increasing its population, but of course, not everyones gonna like your town. To make your town more attractive, you have to do town quests to raise the towns commerce, food stock, culture, and other levels to make your town more attractive. Making buildings will raise the max amounts of these values allowing you to better attract people and house more people. Every wanderer you convince to join will bring an amount of people to your town, and your entire guild gets an exp boost depending on that value. To add a bit of a twist, other guilds can 'cut you off at the pass' and convince wanderers your guild has convinced to come to their town instead. The wanderers will go to whoevers town is more attractive, giving you more incentive to make your town a better place to live.
Other carrots-on-sticks include recent RPG staples like a monster list that you can fill by repeatedly fighting monsters, with three tiers of data: name, location, and drops. Having more completion rate awards you with more Will, which is a sort of value that recharges slowly and it used for things like teleporting between towns, teaching other people crafting, persuading would-be residents, etc. Theres also an item list too, which will tell you the vital stats of the item and also whats needed to craft it, handy for saving up materials youll need for later levels of craft.
Theres pvp also, including arena battles, duels, regular automated tournaments with prizes, betting on arena battles, all that good stuff. it won't be everyones cup of tea, though, considering it's turn based, meaning your team makeup, strategy and levels can make all the difference. Still, you don't need to be any good to bet a few thousand gold and come out with a few hundred thousand.
In all, Atlantica is a pretty decent free MMO if you're really into turn-based RPG's. The learning curve is shallow, although the difficulty does ramp up considerably as you go through, and the combat is fairly deep when you get well versed in it. There's plenty to see and do, the world is decently large for a beta version, you can craft out your wazoo if you like that shit, and it hasn't been ruined by Cash Shop yet. There's always the looming presence of typical MMO grind, but if you're playing an MMO you sorta come to expect that. If completionistic turn based japanese rpg-esque MMO sounds appealing to you in any way, you might wanna have a look at it.
Hot damn, that actually turned into a review. Maybe I should add Atlantica to the database? Nah... Free MMORPG's aren't real games, are they? :P
Signing off,
Makari
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