So I've played a little more with the CoX character creator, and I've got two new ones for you, plus a PLUG FOR THE WCPI!!!

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SOOOO, in honor of those passing into history, and here's a new bit of Blogs that have sprung up recently!

Warhammer On Gorfang

This blog specializes in the players experiences on the server Gorfang (let me look that up to see where that is?) Gorfang is apparently a North America Core server, and the blogger is a rank 40 Knight of the Blessed Sun. We'll see where that takes him as a tank and an insightful look into the Gorfang community.

Warhammer Blog Times

This is another player who recently started blogging. I read through some of his articles, and they have a lot of good to say. He plays on multiple servers, so he has a good overarcing opinion of the game that isn't Order or Destruction favored. Its a good read if you want to have your finger on the pulse of the community.

WAAAGH Roots

I love this guy. Xerb is slightly crazy, optimistic, and has a good humor about him. His blog covers everything from his painting of a Dwarf Miniature (good idea, i've got tons of those) to his experiences in WAR. He's big into the tabletop, into the Lore, and into RolePlaying. Give this guy a look, for he's sure to suprise you.

WAR Underground

I take an especially keen interest in this site. For one, it has compiled all of the PodCasts for Warhammer into one great place. Second, it has interjected hilarious ads interspersed with multiple podcasts on WAR, among other MMOs. Also hosts WAR Radio. Check this out, lots of great music, humor, and information at this portal for WAR.

So here we go, friends. A bit of the weird, a bit of the old, and a bit of the new (kids on the block)
-Mutters

So City of Heroes/Villains is on Steam for $19.99 right now, so I figured "WHY NOT?" I had some fun with CoX back in the day, and i figure I could spare some time in between grinding out levels on my Warhammer toons. So I made a few WARHAMMER CLASSES in the City of Heroes Character Creator. Here's what I have so far:

DWARF IRONBREAKER



He's a BATTLEAXE and SHIELD Brute.
and I also made:

EMPIRE BRIGHT WIZARD



Love the "Saturday Night Fever" shoes on this guy.

UPDATE:
I also made a...

Magus of Tzeentch

Every Chaos Magus needs Skulls, Skulls, and more SKULLS!

So that's the update for today. I'm still in business, I'm just busy playing Warhammer and messing around with things and FOR GOODNESS SAKES, CALL YOUR MOTHER, ITS MOTHER'S DAY THIS WEEKEND!!!

In other news, I've rolled a Squig Herder on Phoenix Throne, b/c I love roleplay. I'm part of the <Shadowclan> Greenskin roleplay guild, it's pretty awesome. Yes, I am still playing my Order characters on Praag, but we all have to mix it up sometimes.

-Mutters

This is an article I am writing, the bulk of which was a forum post in reply to a thread on Warhammer Alliance. The point of this article is not to praise Blizzard Entertainment or World of Warcraft, or to slander Mythic or Warhammer Online. This article is to show people what exactly goes on in the market of Video Games, and more specifically, MMOs. My premise is this:

The Video Game industry is exactly like the Stock Market. People invest (buy) from the following:

#1 - Franchises. If you liked the first game, you will buy the second game.
#2 - Games your friends tell you about. If your friend loves a game and talks about it all the time, usually you buy it.
#3 - Companies. If the same company of your favorite game made another in the genre, you usually buy it.

In the entertainment business, you live and die by your reputation. People don't just go out and see Jerry Bruckheimer films, Go out and buy a band's CD, or go see a broadway show without previous knowledge or history of the entertainment. For example, I'm not really a fan of Ozzy Ozbourne, but you can bet that I'll go see a live show of him, b/c he has the 'reputation' of putting on a good live show. There are certain forms of entertainment that have built up a reputation for success. Bands that put on great live shows, directors that make great movies, broadway shows you HAVE TO SEE (wicked?). In the video game industry, there are a few shining stars as such. Games that pioneer artistry, replayability, and define FUN in games. There are household names for gamers that bring with them a reputation: Will Wright, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux (sp?). Game franchises that have huge fanbases: starcraft, warcraft, diablo, command & conquer, HALO, CounterStrike, TF2...The list goes on and on. This is the product of franchise success. Success breeds Loyalty, and Loyalty sells games.

I learned something in my business classes in college. A quote that goes something like this:

"If you can't be #1 in your market, redefine your market"

If you do something in entertainment, you have to define yourself as being different. Don't ride someone's success, "improve it", and market it as some pioneering thing. Do something better, different. Make your own market. I hope Mythic finds its individuality, and the things that sets it apart as artistry, different and standing alone in what it does. You achieve success in Video Games and MMOs by being different, but still FUN. Mythic doesn't have a reputation within the industry that brands loyalty. ("Mythic." "Who?" "Dark Age of Camelot?" "Never heard of it" compared to "Blizzard." "Who?" "StarCraft." "OH.")

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From my point of view, Mythic is doing just what they intended. They've always said they want to be a 'Zeppelin' MMO, not a 'Beatles' MMO. You also have to look at the business side of things. Blizzard has created games that are masterpieces, as told by their sales. Starcraft has sold 11 million copies. Diablo II sold 4 million copies. Lets put it this way; If I had invented a car, and then sold record numbers of that car and everyone that owned that car was a screaming, frothing at the mouth fan of the car...

AND I made another one, you would bet that those same people are going to be screaming, frothing at the mouth, lining up days in advance to buy my car, because I have a legendary reputation to uphold. Blizzard didn't have to spend a DIME on marketing because of how they do business, and how their games get built. I'm no Blizzard fanboy, but you can't argue with past success, of them owning the record of most units sold in the RPG and RTS genres for PC. If Blizzard released a game where all you did was plunger toilets as Jimmy the Jinxed Janitor, they'd sell 3 million copies easy. It is all about what you've done before, and what the games you produce are worth. They don't pay a baseball rookie 11 million a year in baseball, you have to have a reputation for producing greatness. (for reference, The Sims has shipped 16 million units, with the Sims 2 selling 13 million units, by and far more units than World of Warcraft has.)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ng_video_games

Don't write me off yet. I'm making a point here. Mythic's previous forays into the Video Game Industry where Dark Age of Camelot, where at its peak had 300k subscribers (from what I can find from Google. I couldn't find concrete numbers) And as you can see, Mythic has easily grown into the fish tank that it had built from the reputation that preceded it. I applaud the company for producing a great game on the scale that a company such as Mythic is able to handle from an infrastructure perspective, and a marketing perspective. Sure, EA is backing them, and that's good and all, but take a hard look at the video game industry. If the best selling PC game sells 13 million units, and the best selling console game is Nintendogs at 21.67 million units, its a no brainer as to where EA is going to put its financial eggs. The Madden Franchise alone has brought EA 70 MILLION UNITS SOLD, 7th in a list headed by the Mario franchise at 201 million units. An MMO is a risky venture for a company with little history in the industry (compared to others) It just seems unfeasable for me to compare an Industry Giant such as Blizzard to a Relatively Unknown (to the larger gaming audience) Company such as Mythic.

If you really want concrete evidence that the larger mass of Gamers are Company Loyal and Video Game Companies live and die by their reputations of past games, then see how the KOTOR MMO turns out. Bioware has made some good games in the past, and has quite a following (Neverwinter Nights-2 million units, Knights of the Old Republic-1.5 million units) Still nowhere near in the league of Starcraft or Diablo (15 million units > 3.5 million units) but you'll see the exact same trend in units sold and people keeping and enjoying the game. When you have a certain reputation, people will give you a lot more leeway in what you can get away with.

I hope you can understand, if you've read through this all, that I in no way am bashing Blizzard, Mythic, or any other company, nor their games. I am happily playing Warhammer, and I hope this will be Mythic's 'breakout' game that establishes them as a company that makes great and reputable games.

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So, I'm going to give a little shout out to my friend Bootae over at Bootae's Bloody Blog. He has a post up to "Pimp his chosen" where he highlights all about dying his armor and gear. I'd like to also give you a little rundown of what I'm doing lately in WAR.

I started with a Dwarf Engineer, Mutters McBooms. The Engineer is an interesting class, highlighted by its horrible DPS, low survivability, and inability to do anything other than harass people with knockbacks, or die. This was a very frustrating time in the game for me, having played an Engineer in the Open Beta, Preview Weekend, PW+ and loving it. They nerfed this class right before release to make it useless, and I spent a long time struggling against this uphill battle. I had given up no this class by the time I reached rank 20, then they BUFFED ENGINEERS, but I haven't gone back to give the class much time.

From there I moved on to Calibre Gunn, my Witch Hunter, an oft maligned class as well. This was a marked improvement from the Engineer, being as playing him felt like I was actually doing something. I died a LOT, but I was used to this with the Engineer. At least I got a few killing blows to offset the limited survivability. This class felt good up until the 20s, when I just got disabled a lot, knocked around, and felt just as useless as the Engineer did, only without range. By the time I had gotten used to the class, the class quickly became useless. I wanted a class that felt like it was worthwhile to have around, a class that bleeds usefulness. I gave up on Witch Hunters, THEN THEY BUFFED THEM.

So I rolled my Rune Priest, Stutters, who I am currently playing. The Rune Priest has its ups and downs, mostly downs, as I get focus fired and trampled over constantly. I leveled up through the teens (rank 15 currently) and the trampling has tapered off a little. I think the Rune Priest is great so far. I've always played healers in my previous incarnations of MMORPGS, A Cleric in EQ, and a Druid in WoW, so Healing comes naturally to me, and I'm quite good at it. One thing I love about the runepriest is the instant cast heals. The mobility of the healer feels a lot like Druid healing to me. On the downside, I feel like the Rune Priest is on the short side of the balance stick right now, but with my track record, once the Rune Priest feels worthless, I'll give it up and it'll get buffed.

So in a roundabout way, I'm introducing Stutters, and posting screenshots of him, and also promoting Bootae's Bloody Blog. Pimping out both of these great things in my awesome friday post here at work. I'm aiming to get level 20 on my Rune Priest this weekend, so wish me luck.


Heh, oops! That's the wrong screenshot! Yeah, So this is why I play Dwarfs a lot. The scenery is great!

Wait a minute....Here's the right one.




Aah, there I am. Doing particularly Dwarfy things. Drinking, not healing, and laughing at the guy who's dying. So off I go to level. Oh, and someday, I plan on killing GirlIRL. She's a Sorceress on my server, Praag. Praag is a pretty good server, for an ORvR one. Lots of good action around, pretty even population on both sides. Once i get high enough, I'll be killing her softly...A lot.

This message has been brought to you by the:

If you have not yet read Part 1 of this Series, it would be helpful to your understanding of this part to read that one first.

Now for all of those too busy or too lazy to read Part 1 that involves the topic of Sitting, I shall endeavor to enlighten you in the form of a TL;DR.

Sitting is awesome. Men are awesome, hence Man + Sitting = More Awesome.

A more verbose way to put it is that Rest and Relaxation are important to all of us, and a primary motivation of Man is to be Sitting as opposed to running, standing, or working. We do uncomfortable things such as work and such to pay for the comforts of a nice chair, a nice television, a climate controlled house and other niceties. I am thoroughly convinced that the sole reason for technological advancement is to increase leisure time. If you think about it, you know it is true. Man used to get his news from the paper, but that involved getting off the couch and walking outside to actually fetch it. Never mind holding the paper and actually reading it. It is much simpler to hit a button and have news 'read' to you, hence, technological advancement. In the ancient days, they had horses and bikes for transportation, but that was oh so slow. Today we have cars, because we need faster transportation so we can decrease the time it takes to get to and from places, thus increasing our leisure time. List 10 technological advancements in your lifetime. I am willing to bet that most to all of them in some way make life easier and lazier for us. From medical advancements to make us live longer, and thus have more time in retirement, to different ways of entertainment to improve the 'quality' of our leisure.

I am of the assumption that all of this leisure has made us soft.

Hear me out, fellows, for I am not saying that Man has become namby pamby in his technological bubble of greatness. There are many things that are Man that still to the core of his being make him rugged and awesome. As you can see, I am leading into the second part of my series, with a foreshadowing of why I seem to be calling all Men weak pansywastes that are soft and lazy.

Man has an inherent need for:

VIOLENCE

What is this VIOLENCE, you ask? It seems as though I'm committing a logical fallacy here. On one hand, I am calling men soft, and on the other I am advocating violence? Here, here, my good friend. Let me explain what I mean by this. Men have an inherent need for BATTLE. For a contest of wills, brains, brawn, muscle, blood, sweat and beef jerky. Think of what really motivates Men, think of what their leisure activities consist of:

1) Sports (Football, Baseball, Basketball)
Sports is an easy observation we can make about Violence. In an age where life gets easier and easier for our younger generations, they become all the more thirsty for something real, something WAR-like that they can hang their feral urges on and cheer on the conquest of opposing forces. Sports are miniature organized battles that fulfill Man's thirst for challenge and conquest.

2) Outdoorsmanship
Some Men love the great outdoors. Hunting, Fishing, Camping, Hiking. Many of these things the Man yearns for. To subjugate the very elements beneath his Technology and to hunt animals harkens Man back to a simpler time when Man did fight with those elements on less than favorable terms.

3) Video Games
Aah, here is the crux of where we find most of you and I. Being as this is a video game themed site, I would suppose that most of your are 'Gamers'. You see, Violence meets Fun and Sitting here in the virtual world. First, we don't have to leave the comfort of our own home, and thus we can game as a form of relaxation. To 'blow off some steam' as it where, a place to ease some of the stresses the world puts upon us. Second, it is inherently violent. Most video games I know involve some contest of arms, armor, magic, technology or some other vehicle for violence within. You begin as Pauly Player 1 the Hero of Hamshire and level up to become the SAVIOR OF THE WORLD. Any number of extrapolations can be found within this, from Aero the AcroBat (Super Nintendo, for you old gamers) to Zelda, where our hero Link resides. Video Games offer an easy, accessable way to live out those conquests and other lives.

"Did you Ever Know That You're My Heroooo..."
Everyone wants to be a Hero. Heroes save the day, Heroes get the chicks, Heroes drive fast cars, eat what they want, and don't gain any weight. Heroes have good teeth and great muscles. Let's face it. On a good day, most of us couldn't even be a sidekick. BUT, we don't have to be. Some of the magic that video games provide is in the opportunity to be that Hero. I think in some ways, that is why we get so into our characters. We've traveled with this Avatar, or toon, for 40, 60, sometimes 80 levels through changing worlds, quests, stories and battles. We feel like we know our characters through their wardrobe, their weapons, their achievements, their titles. In a lot of ways, those Avatars are a representation of our own achievements. So what if I'm Jimmy the School Janitor in the day. I'm Jupitor the Juxtaposer on the nights and weekends. I'm a level 40 Bright Wizard/Warrior Priest/Zealot/Black Orc/Ironbreaker/Black Guard in full Dark Promise(s). To someone, somewhere that means something. Every level 10 noob just getting their Green "of Vengeance" gear looks up to you and says "COOOOOL". Someone wants to BE you. Someone wants to BE LIKE YOU. I think, if we all look deep down inside, some of what we want is just acceptance. That's why a group of friends is so important, because they don't care who you are, or how many purples you have. They're cool with you in greens.

I did veer wildly off topic, but back to Violence, then. part of the ramblings here are just to give you some philosophical insight into what motivates gamers, and why they do the things they do. On average, most Gamers are Male, and thus most games are built with that market segment in mind. Violence is the inherent male need for battle and challenge. In a world where things come easy, to stave off boredom, Man has invented challenge for himself. It keeps our wits at end, our minds sharp, and trains our wills to a steely resolve. Without Violence, man will go soft. He will become lazy and unmotivated to do much of anything. Man strives to be challenged and to but his will and might towards insurmountable odds.

This is Violence. This is challenge. This is Man.

Find a Challenge, and beat it to death with a stick.
Mutters

Just thought that I would promote the "Recruit A Friend" initiative put out by Mythic for Warhammer Online. Here's the deal with the Recruit A Friend:

1) You login to WarhammerOnline.com
2) Find the Email of your friend.
3) Pick your Server and Faction.
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!!

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

If TWO, that's right...ONLY TWO of your friends sign up for the

game, you get a FREE PUPPY!!!!



AWWWWW!

So Recruit your friends, my friends. Not only will you
SAVE A PUPPY,
but you can
HAVE MORE WAR!!!!

FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN!!! THINK OF THE


PUPPIES!!!

If you want to be recruited, drop your email in a comment right here below!

You should Check out:

WARBander's Handbook v1.0


I read through this and was AMAZED by all the simple, yet utterly effective strategies you could bring to an organized warband. I'd even be happy if Destruction gets hold of this, because strategic positioning and tactics have always interested me. I'd like to see this in action on the friendly side, and experience it from a defensive angle as well.

By the way, Forjador edited this graphic for me for the WCPI!


Golly Gee Willikers! I'm in the Warhammer Community Promotions Initiative!

So today I grace you with some lovely art from MSPAINT. I did this horrible drawing to contrast with the wonderful drawings of Forjador over at Portraits of WAR. He's a real artist, and does quite a bit better than I do. Although, if I am to critique my own artwork, I'd say that I have aptly conveyed the RAGE and ANGER of the Dwarf and Orc battlefront drawn in 8-bit minimalism. Anyway, go check out his stuff. You'll be aptly impressed.

In the immortal words of Wyatt Earp...

DRAW!

Mutters

So there's an interesting thing in the community now, an underground of resistance fighters that are banding together to form an evil empire of great information, Warhammer fun and fanaticism. And its the:

You see, the WCPI stands for the "Warhammer Community Promotions Initiative". Its basically all of the participating blogs, podcasts, community fansites and random people talking about other blogs, podcasts, community fansites and random people. Apparently I'm a member, so says this ginormous graphic above, so I'll tell you why this is a good thing for the community.

A community is only as good as the sum of its parts. NOT the parts of its parts, but the SUM of its parts. That means that if Nick Nurgle the Newbie wants to play WAR, and he goes to a fansite and the fansite is shoddy quality and says the game sucks in a million ways, he'll think twice about playing the game. If the fansite is great however, offering good constructive criticism about the game, minimal fanboyism, and overall offers good content, then Nick Nurgle the Newbie will get just as excited about the game as we are. The more great fansites there are out there, the more as a Sum Of Parts we benefit. In this mindset, we press forward into the future knowing that we have each others backs in the community, promoting each other and spreading the Gospel of WAR.

A side note to this is that by promoting each other, each of our parts becomes more important, therefore becoming a bigger part of the community. Since we are all banded together, Mythic can count on us to promote the things they give us at little to no cost. Also, as we've seen with the 'Bitter Rivals' event, Mythic even used a few blogs to promote their upcoming changes. I appreciate this, and look forward to many more members of the community being highlighted not only by the community, but also recognized by Mythic. This gives us a sense of legitimacy that is often needed amongst the labor of love that is running a community fansite. Find yourself a WCPI Member Today!

Sometimes it pays to be a little tough, but it always pays to be a little wounds.
Mutters