The soon to be defining MMO argument of 2008; WoW or WAR?

While I don’t personally give a rodents rump what anyone else thinks the answer to this question is, I am currently finding myself torn between the two.

I decided about 6 months ago, that WAR was the game for me. Public quests, tome of knowledge, meaningful pvp and the general encouragement to explore appealed to exactly what I look for in an MMO these days. WoW on the other hand has me a year behind everyone else on my server, progress wise, and  a lot of random standing around while I queue or battlegrounds without being motivated to do much else. My excitement for WAR had not relinquished its grasp on me, yet I am finding myself more curious of the changes in WotLK than I’d imagined I would be.

The achievement system in WoW (conveniently timed with WARs tome unlocks?) could be interesting, and a new class in the Death Knight is of course going to be fun. Looking at some of the recently released talent tree information has got me all worked up for how cool my characters are going to be come release. I’ve spent several hours over the last two weeks pouring over them, trying to decide which of my lv70s will be making it to 80 first. The new rogue 51 point combat talent has be all giddy. If you’ve ever played Marvel Alliance (or whatever it’s called) on the Xbox then I’m sure you’ll have that special Wolverine move in your head too. I will literally shriek with girlish delight as my character hops around the screen smushing in faces at every turn.

Now, I have the WAR collectors edition ordered, so theres no question about wether I’m trying that or not. So the question would be whether I buy WotLK right when it comes out, or wait until I get bored of WAR (assuming I do). At the moment I think I’m likely to play both, although with my reduced playtime lately I’m not sure I will manage more than a few hours of each per week.

I figure if I give up; one of my daily meals, “self gratification”, a couple of hours sleep per night, social interactions and speaking to family, then I could add another 5 or so hours per week of gaming. Whether this should be considered a good thing or not is still undecided.

At least we know who has the cooler looking orcs…

So, after picking up Shaman at 28 a few weeks ago, things have progressed fast. Hitting lv30 and gaining Windfury Weapon, along with picking up the talents further down the enhancement tree made grinding a lot easier. Since my last post I’ve gone from 42 to 60, with only a few deaths along the way. The combination of decent mellee dps, ranged damage, mail and healing ability makes shaman a very sturdy leveller.

Shaman is my fourth character to enter the dark portal, the other three being paladin, priest and rogue. So far shaman has been the most enjoyable. Paladin and rogue I entered too early and found myself slightly underequipped, making mobs hard to hit. Priest I enjoyed levelling pre-tbc, but now find a little tiresome on the whole. Though levelling my dagger skill from 1 on lv61 mobs is somewhat sucky…

Other WoW related achievements lately include getting both the S2 maces on my rogue, starting to work my way towards S2 (spell damage) mace on my paladin, and getting a level on my lv41 hunter (now 42, duh).

Now that I’m a badass wih big glowy maces (one even has mongoose!) pvp is the main focus on my rogue. I intend to pick up the S2 legs in the next week, and then hopefully onto the other pieces as-and-when I get round to it. Rogue being the first non-healing class I’ve played to a high level is especially refreshing in pvp. A standard shadowstep/hemo build ensures I can frustrate alliance players as much as possible, whilst allowing me to make up for my not-so-great gear by keeping my enemies incapacitated as much as possible. Its also refreshing to realise just how moronic most players are (in standard BGs, I havent ventured into arenas yet) when fights don’t go exactly as they planned. Makes my honour tick up faster anyway.

Other recent gaming exploits include finishing Half Life 2 Episode 2, and beta testing Atlantica online a little. I forgot I had  a beta key for it, so only managed to play it once or twice before this beta period ended. A turn based mmo seems interesting though, and actually played a lot better than I anticipated. Expect more updates when the beta server goes back up! Unless I find out I’ve signed an NDA of course, I dont recall having done so though.

Someone said always end on a high, so here’s a picture of an adorable little gnome. Sometimes I wish I didn’t hate alliance so much, I want to be a tiny ball of rage.