Chat Channels and Community

Yesterday, patch 1.0.3 went live, and one of the features it brought was a re-vamping of the chat system. When the game launched, rather than having zone-wide chat channels, the zones were broken up into chapters, with each chapter having a seperate channel. So in a given zone you might have 3-4 different channels, plus a seperate one for the RvR lake.

This ended up being a bad idea, as the channel was useless for organization purposes, and wasn't large enough to be a bullshit chat channel. So it was silent. Which meant that most days, you could log on and never hear a word from anyone but your guild. It made the population seem smaller and the world seem emptier.

And then yesterday, they put farther-reaching channels in. Not just zone-wide, but a channel for each pairing in each tier. So you have a region channel that covers, say, all of Avelorn and Saphery, since that's the Tier 3 High/Dark Elf area. And it was like flipping a switch. Suddenly there was chat. Some of it lame, sure, a few scattered Chuck Norris jokes and someone asking about Mankirk's wife, but also people asking genuine questions and being answered, people gathering warbands for RvR, reporting about keep status, etc. It was a real, live, MMO community, and it instantly changed the feel of the game.

I didn't realize that I had missed that feeling. I loved WAR from day one, but it did feel a bit different from WoW or LOTRO, and I wasn't able to put my finger on why. Turns out that was it. So while a lot of people are going to be filtering out /1 soon and whining about "Barrens chat", I will be leaving it on, at least for a while.

Altdorf did not fall OMG

The big news around the interwebs is that Altdorf has fallen on the Volkmar server. The sky is falling, the game is over, OMG. Even Tobold has succumbed to the hysteria.

Except it didn't happen. Destruction forces on Averheim simply GOT INTO Altdorf. They got in early in the morning when few Order were on, spent a few hours ripping shit, and then got repelled by the people who had logged on in the meantime. They didn't make it to the Emperor, much less kill him.

But the story you can piece together from various forum posts, if you don't actually read the whole thread? Oh, that's much worse. To hear these people tell it, 500 Destruction logged on at 5 AM when literally zero Order were around, ninja'd every T4 zone and the fortress, snuck into Altdorf like thieves, and capped the city completely at 7 AM.

If people are going to whine this much every time a city goes contested, they're going to be whining a lot. I suppose that's to be expected. But we need to establish some sort of reasonable lexicon here. When people say "Altdorf was taken", I need to know what they mean. Did they mean it went contested? Or that they achieved some minimum level of success in the Capital PQs and scenarios? Or that the King fell? If I don't know what we mean by these statements then they just become sensationalist blogger posts.

Ever forget? Happened to me.

So, I totally forgot I had this blog. Maybe I'll start posting again. For now, quick recap and old news.

Previously, most of my posts had been about how I was waiting to get into Warhammer Online. We'll, obviously, it's out, and I'm playing. I'm playing with The Six Mouths, a Penny-Arcade affilated guild. We're on the Ulthuan server, playing Destruction.

I'm playing a sorceress, and really enjoying it. It's balls-to-the-wall ranged DPS, very little in the way of survivability or crowd control. Large clouds of large numbers popping up over the heads of my enemies is a hell of a feeling.

I also have a Chosen alt. It's a nice change of pace from the sorc. It's like spending a lot of time on a tiny fast street bike, and then driving around in a military-surplus Humvee in your spare time.

State of the Blog

I've been more than lax about posting here lately. Here's some highlights on how things are going in various games, in as much as they affect me.

Warhammer: Still not in the beta. It's not looking promising to get in anytime soon, which is a shame, because I'd really like to ride this wave of enthusiasm before it crashes. The delay to Fall is probably good in the long run based on the beta reports, but I still was a bit disappointed.

City of Heroes: I haven't played in over a month. I like the game, but I don't like to solo, and my girlfriend, who is my usual duo partner in CoX, has been very busy, and so it just hasn't worked out lately. I like my characters, but I think CoX is destined to be my "second game" forever, even when I don't have a first.

Everquest 2: In a fit of gaming ennui, I actually bought and downloaded EQ2, complete with Kunark expansion, just to see what the talk was about. I was very excited about a lot of things about this game, and in the end two things killed it for me. One is that the client is buggy and crash-prone, which a 4-year old game has no right to be. The other is that the game is EXTREMELY arcane and not newbie-friendly in the least. I just couldn't see through the fog of war as it were; couldn't get over the initial learning curve, and it isn't grabbing me. It's very pretty for an MMO and I had fun with my Sarnak Wizard, but I won't be lasting past my free month in Norrath.

Conan: Comes out next month. I really don't care at all about this game at this point.

D&D 4th Ed.: In light of my new resolution to use this blog to talk about tabletop games as well as MMOs, D&D 4th Edition is the thing I'm most excited about. I've been reading the PHB Lite that some internet folks have compiled, lots of forum grazing and the like. I'm just very excited to get a fresh start on D&D and clear out the trash that has built up over the 7 or so years since 3rd first came out.

D&D 4th

So since 4th Edition D&D will have a significant online component, or at least significant online integration, I think it's fitting that I use this blog to talk about it some.

That's not to say that I have anything in particular to say about it NOW, just that I will use this space to do so.

Also, check out this page for all the current info, both confirmed and rumored, about 4th ed.