Given the recent abundance of politics over here in North America (Canadians just voted in another minority gov’t and the US president will soon be decided), we thought it would be a good time to give this comic a whirl. Thanks go out to Cicadymn for the idea! Gorbad-chief… Gorbachev… Brilliant!
Oh, and those with knowledge of Greenskin Lore should find the above comic to be historically accurate. This is my new favorite strip.
In response to some complaints about the difficulty of finding our older comics, I decided to keep them all in one place for easy navigation. An archive if you will.
Please say “hello” to the new webcomic page! You can click on the smaller thumnails to be taken to the larger comic postings. Special thanks go out to past and present contributors, including MrMatthew, Railith, and… myself! 
PS… next week’s comic is going to be a doozy! No pressure, Matt! 
As always, you can submit comic ideas or concepts to me by email (snafzg at gmail dot com).
You should read the whole darn thing if you care at all about the game you’re playing, but here are the top ten highlights in order of appearance:
Overall, I’m very impressed! Kudos to Mythic! I’ve been quite down on the game lately because there were no mentions of my major concerns up until this State of the Game. This pretty much hits everything I was worried about, so I’m anxiously awaiting the 1.1 patch and everything afterward. Even if they’re just words right now, it does a lot to energize me for the future.
MrMatthew is at it again! This time, he brings us a couple totally HoT Warrior Priest and Zealot ladies!
Did you see what I did there?
(Heal over Time… dey haz it!)
By: Geoff
Lately, as I have been logging into Warhammer Online, I have begun to notice a certain sort of tranquility that I have with the game. I log on, do some quests, maybe pvp a little bit in either the scenarios or open world, and then log off. It’s all fairly simple and basic for me. In fact, that seems to be the problem. The game has absolutely nothing in it that really excites me to log on.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I first created my hero in City of Heroes I was excited. Nearly everyday I would log on and play for at least an hour, sometimes just messing with my costume. Then I would roam around the city and kill mobs just for the sake of helping out Paragon City’s citizens-in-need. There was no point in doing either of these things really, but damned if I wasn’t excited to actually do it.
Likewise, when I first started in the World of Warcraft I felt like I was part of the world, as opposed to a character that was part of the world. When I first came upon Thunder Bluff I was awestruck at the sheer size and grandness of it all. I would eagerly look for any and all quests I could find in order to please Cairn Bloodhoof and should there be any threats on the city I would immediately return there in an instant to protect the city, no matter what I was doing.
So now back to the point at hand, with Warhammer Online I feel neither urgency to protect my lands nor do I have any infatuation with doing near anything that doesn’t just progress my characters renown or level. I didn’t feel any sort of grandness upon my first visit to Altdorf, and each zone I wander into looks almost exactly like the one that preceded it so I never really grow attached to any specific location. Something I definitely felt with my last two major MMORPG excursions.
Now is this to say that I’m not having any fun? No, not at all. In fact, I find Warhammer Online to actually be a pretty fun MMORPG that has progressed the genre quite nicely. It’s just that I can’t help but feel like there is something missing, that hook that really draws a player in and until I find that hook, or until Mythic patches it in, I don’t ever really see myself getting as engaged with Warhammer as I did with City of Heroes or WoW.
Of people who left WoW for WAR have returned:
Q: Did you notice a drop off in World of Warcraft users when Warhammer Online launched?
Paul Sams: Not significantly, we’ve certainly had some of that happen, which is the same thing we experienced with Age of Conan and each time an MMO has come out we’ve seen some amount of reduction of use. The good news is that we’ve seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving - they’ve already returned.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz (read the entire interview - it’s a gem)
A lot of people bashed Funcom (aka Fail.com to some) when 40% of Age of Conan players returned to WoW. I wonder if people will be more ruthless with Mythic, considering that number is even higher with Warhammer Online (well over 50% according to Mr. Sams)? Will those same bashers be picking crow feathers from their teeth?
Just to clarify, these are only numbers for people who left WoW for WAR. If 100 people cited WAR as their excuse for terminating their WoW account, “well over” 50 of them have returned.
What I find quite interesting is that Mr. Sams mentions that the number of people who cancelled their WoW subs for WAR was not significant. Let me put on my Cap of Speculation (+5) for a moment. I’d wager that the vast majority of WoW players who picked up WAR didn’t actually cancel their accounts at all, and thus, didn’t make the number of quitters significant.
I don’t actually know if the number of those who quit WoW for AoC (and then came back) were very significant either, but I can guess that the number was probably higher than it was/is for WAR. Why? Well, back in May/June, many people were disgruntled with WoW and Blizzard still hadn’t announced a launch date for WotLK. Without any improvements in sight, you can imagine a great number of people cancelled their subs, cited AoC as the reason, and gave AoC a whirl. And then over 40% of them went back…
The launch of Warhammer Online wasn’t nearly so timely. Hours (or was it days) after the release date for WAR dropped, Blizzard counter-announced the release date for WotLK - and the difference was only weeks apart. WAR dropped in late September and WotLK is dropping in early November. If I’m a WoW player, why would I bother cancelling my WoW sub just to give WAR a whirl? It’s not like I would be out very much money because the majority of the time in between both game releases will be covered by WAR’s first free month…
In regards to the number of those returning being well over 50%, well, I can’t honestly say I blame them. Do I hear BOOs and HISSes? Let’s talk straight here. WAR has had a pretty good launch, but it was far from perfect. The polish (in-game bugs, client stability, etc.) just isn’t there and while they’re dropping hotfixes every day and weekly patches, for many, it just isn’t quick enough. Whether you like it or not, your game’s polish MUST stack up to the competition, or you just look bad. I’m not saying you have to have as much content, but the quality of that content must be impeccable or you might as well kiss your subscriptions (gained from the competition) goodbye. The population balance isn’t there either. Every single server where Mythic is offering population incentives is Order, and there are quite a few of them (seven by my last count). And finally, their European launch was worse than horrible (the German-French community calls it Über Horriblé) - nearly one month later, things are still in rough shape over there.
I agree with Mythic that it’s not a good move to panic and try fix things with duct tape and glue sticks. Real solutions to these problems will take time to implement.
Unfortunately, time isn’t something in abundant supply with the world’s largest MMORPG dropping a highly anticipated expansion in a few short weeks. Say what you will about how brutally long it takes Blizzard to make an expansion with “more of the same.” People eat that shit up (even though I have no idea why). TBC did huge things for WoW and even though WotLK is TBC in shiny new giftwrap, I have no doubt it will make the same splash…
I’ll go out on a limb and predict right now that if they don’t make some major improvements within the next quarter, WAR will eventually have to settle for 500-750k players. Hey, that’s a nice number and anyone deserves a pat on the back for that accomplishment, but I don’t think an experienced studio like Mythic with the financial backing of an industry leader like EA would or should settle for that. Becuase if they can’t do it… well let’s just say your kids kids kids will be bringing Blizzard-brand Cheese Whiz sandwiches to school.
It’s time for a blogging intervention, or maybe an exorcism!
“The power of Christ compels you!”
I think he’ll appreciate the use of mixed-movie-metaphors. That, and the increased Google ranking for one of the most memorable quotes evah.
Srsly d00d, you’re making me look bad! What mere hooman can keep up with that!?
I have done it, I’ll admit!
You know when? Not at the start… no, I like to give my healers a chance to prove themselves. I’ll go it solo after I’ve died from a lack of heals because our Shaman was too busy nuking that IB/RP (pointless effort imho) or the DoK was hacking and slashing away with blinders on.
Zealots are usually pretty cool, obviously because they have very little better to do. Instead of focusing on the enemy, they’re focused on keeping their group mates alive and kicking. The only time I don’t get heals from our PuG Zealots is when they’re too busy keeping others alive, which I’m fine with - but if I keep getting ignored, yeah…
That’s when I’ll open up the group window and create my own little party of one.
I’m all for teamwork, but it’s a two-way street. I’d say I end up solo in about 1/3 scenarios.
Caption: I am evil incarnate!
It took me two weeks to get from rank 17-23, and most of those ranks were gained this past weekend! Overall, the past couple weeks have left me with mixed feelings on the game’s progress and my career of choice.
Even after recent patches, my character is buggy as hell. I swear, I think he’s career-confused, because he continually stands like he is a shaman and will randomly animate like a shaman as well (waving around his spear making conjuring motions). Apparently, he likes holding an imaginary staff…
My pet was a nightmare to handle for a while, but lately things have improved. I was also pretty bummed out about the terrible pace of PvE. I spent a few days running around solo finishing up quests from my log and trying to complete a few chapters I had been neglecting. It was god-awful slow but it eventually got me to rank 19 with a few scenarios mixed in. Now that I’m in T3, post T3/T4 XP boosting patches, I find it much quicker.
I was invited to a Mount Gunbad raid about halfway through rank 19 and things were going quite nicely while I was in the party that was pulling the mobs. Unfortunately, there’s a weird warband bug or flaw in game design where the only party that gets xp is the one that tags the mobs. Our original warband disbanded about an hour into the raid, so we made a new one with guild-only members (two full parties). It was nice to finally get into a guild group, but this run through I was in the party that wasn’t pulling and the XP was terrible. I eventually resorted to tagging mobs before our main tank just to feel like I wasn’t completely wasting my time. That’s not very good teamwork, but then, it’s not a very good situation to be in either. Let’s hope Mythic adds an XP-share toggle at the very least.
I eventually dinged to rank 20, at which point I could get my entry-level mount!
At the time of transaction with the mount vendor, I had about 33 gold. At this point, I realized that I had forgotten to set my personal guild tithe. I’m now donating 10% of my cash to the guild because I don’t really need the extra money and I hear keeps are insanely expensive to maintain in T3/T4. Like over 140g per day expensive!
I took Friday off work as a vacation day and spent most of it completing the Chapter 11 and 12 public quests with a few guildmates in an AoE group. Compared to the Marauder and Sorcerer, I don’t really think my weak gas squig AoE attack and me spamming Explodin’ Arrer on its 10-second cooldown were helping very much… Ahh well, at least I was raking in the influence and XP! After completing a few PQs, I was at rank 20.4. I did scenarios until rank 22 to feel the uberness of being at the upper level range. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel very uber.
Caption: It’s either a visual bug or a Marauder’s attempt at being seductive… Neither is very appealing!
Speaking of a lack of AoE abilities at my current rank, I actually haven’t learned a single useful ability since Not So Fast at rank 18. I’m currently rank 23. Oh, my trainer has offered a few tactics, morales, and abilities only usable as a Battle Squig (completely useless btw), but I haven’t found any of them worth training at all. I’ve been specializing in the Path of Big Shootin’, and I’ve found the Aimin’ Quickly tactic to be indispensable; so much so that I don’t bother using any other tactic right now. Shrapnel Arrer is available for training from the Big Shootin’ path, but I’m not sure if it’s even worth the point. It’s basically a weaker version of Explodin’ Arrer. Yeah, the AoE is bigger, but the damage is just pathetic. I think I’ll be saving up for Poison Arrer at rank 26 instead because I also severely lack burst damage.
I don’t want to complain too much here, but I’m starting to feel as though my career is lagging behind others in terms of damage output and survivability.
Two-handed Ironbreakers/Swordmasters, Witch Elves Hunters, and White Lions tear me to pieces within seconds unless I’m getting heals. Even with all my tricks up, there is very little I can do versus them to simply escape or flee. All three Order healing careers can easily outheal my damage output as well, slowly whittling me down toward death. This is somewhat strange because I thought RDPS was supposed to be Scissor to the healing archetype’s Paper? I can understand dying to people that are built to beat me (dem Rock, me Scissor), but not being able to kill people I was built to beat is pretty disheartening. At the moment, my only “fairly-certain” kills are Engineers, Shadow Warriors, and Bright Wizards (as long as I get the jump on them - not the other way around). Scissor vs. Scissor - he who pokes first, bleeds his target out the quickest.
I’ll give it a bit more time before I bitch too hard. Hopefully, this is just a temporary lull in performance.
I have a crapload of new gear though and a vault worth of items to grow in to. The public quests were dropping items “like woah!” Seriously, every pull in our AoE group would yield 1-2 green items. Not only is my vault full, but so is our guild vault. I put over 35 new items into the guild vault this weekend alone! Here’s one of my new bows and some wicked gloves/arm-wraps:
The gear is finally starting to look a bit different too. It was getting pretty depressing to get a brand new fancy blue item, only to have it look exactly the same as green stuff from five ranks earlier. Another comment I’ll make on gear is that it’s tough to find stuff with stats I’m actually interested in. Right now, I’m focused mainly on Ballistics, Wounds, Toughness, and Initiative; in that order of importance. I don’t care about Strength or Weaponskill because I rarely ever whip out my spear. If I’m within spear range in RvR, I’ll be dead pretty soon anyway, so what’s the point? I’ve also been getting a lot of stuff with Willpower as well. Why would I need that? My final observation is that its very hard to find items with resists on them at rank 23. Over 75% of the drops and PQ/quest rewards I’ve been getting lately don’t have any resistance stats whatsoever. Even worse, the lack Talisman slots, so I can’t even add them myself.
I still have a ways to go before I look like this guy!
One thing I’ve been neglecting lately is renown gear. Can you get any decent stuff at rank 23, renown rank 19? Can you find it in the cities or do I need to trek all the way out to a T3 keep? Help please!
That’s all for now. I’ll give you an update once I’ve hit rank 25 or so.
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