November Warhammer Newsletter – Finally something worth waiting for!

Last month’s Warhammer Online newsletter bombed in my book. This month however I am happy to report that we finally have something worth waiting for. That works on two levels for me. Lately the newsletters have been lack luster and nothing but regurgitated information and this newsletter was worth waiting for. It also gives me hope and more to look forward to with the game itself. Lately I was extremely unsatisfied with the info they released about flagging, instanced pvp, etc. I was beginning to doubt whether or not Warhammer would ever be able to crawl out from under the enormous shadow cast by DAOC. This newsletter has renewed my hopes for WAR.

The newsletter starts out with the usual suspects. They released information about the Dark elf Sorceress class, a look at the Archmage, and a zone overview. That’s all good stuff and I recommend you check it out but it doesn’t even begin to compare with what else came in the newsletter. First up was the mounts section. We’re given concept art of what we can expect for mounts in Warhammer Online. Boars and Ale powered mechanical vehicles… freaking AWESOME! The newsletter continues with a scenario boss sneakpeak, a zone sneakpeak, yada yada, a lackluster regurgitated grab bag (which is on the bottom of the newsletter now i see), yada yada and the rest of the stuff no one really looks at.

Where this newsletter really delivers is in the podcast. Josh Drescher is probably the most believable guy at EA Mythic right now and he comes at us in a very serious and straight forward “I’m going to be real with you” approach. In the podcast Josh reveals that Warhammer Online has had two parts of the game revamped. Careers and RVR. With careers Mythic has decided to give classes more individuality, specialty, and purpose. Three very strong words when you’re talking about a character that people will dedicate a lot of time and feeling into. From what Josh described it looks like they’re taking a pretty standard approach. You’ll obtain a certain level then be given the choice to spec one of three ways. Given what they have to work with I’m expecting a mix of WoW and EQ2’s talents and achievements system. Probably something along the lines of a Holy and Shadow priest deal. There’s plenty of potential to make this system extremely beneficial to Warhammer but there’s also the risk of min/maxing and having some subclasses be “useless” in the eyes of many players. I’m worried about seeing the “we don’t need any arcane spec’d mages, sorry” crap from other games. Just make sure you balance them all and make them all worth playing – thanks.

Now the best part of the entire thing: RvR! Mythic finally came to their senses and decided to run with the idea that *gasp* DAOC was awesome and we should *gasp* go with what is proven to work! *shock and awe*. Basically they’re introducing keeps, fortifications, and siege weapons to open world RVR. “The addition of Keeps will bring focus and meaning to Open Field RvR” … whodathunkit?!  I won’t rub it in their faces more because they did in fact come to their senses before it was too late.  Kudos to whoever decided to go in this direction.  This should not only add lasting appeal to RVR but it will (like they say) add focus and meaning.  I wasn’t too sure on how fun I could have just running around and capturing flags or working a scenario over and over.  It would be fun for a while but it would undoubtedly die out.  Josh admits that they weren’t really specific at all in the podcast but it’s all good.  Take your time and get back to us on the details next month we’ll be waiting. 😉

BTW, you are now forgiven for delaying the game.