The Raven Council

I know what I'll be doing my next free week. Good timing too, just got severely bored with WoW, and this looks promising!

http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/2934_t ... of_angmar/

I played it in beta. It was nice (interface very wow-like), with some refreshing changes over the genre. Couldn't keep me away for long from wow though when tbc came out .

khila wrote:It was nice (interface very wow-like),

I wish it wasn't. All new fantasy MMOs seem to thrive being like wow (Vanguard interface, for instance). They could try being a game of their own instead.

The main selling point for me with lotro is that it's a whole new world to explore. One with potential to boot. I've always been an explorer, not a grinder, so lotro is also a potential wow-killer (or at least comatiser) for me.

I really don't care if it has flaws in animations or the like right now, I'm so goddam tired of doing the same thing over and over.

Update from the other world

Just hit 20!




Full UI shot.

EDIT: The game saves it as JPG, thus the crappy qual.

I have a new alt - and it's on a different game! LOTRO!

I bought and installed this over the weekend. I'm equally impressed and unimpressed by it. It's not as smooth and polished as WoW BUT it does have some nice little touches. It won't ever replace WoW but may help me combat the burn-out that I think is very close by.

If anyone still bothers with this I'll be there extremely casually with a Hobbit Minstrel (level 4 atm) called Finch (on the RP server).

is the rp server good? is it pvprp?

There is no world pvp - everyone is a good guy.

How it works is when you reach a certain level you can create a monster character, you can then take your monster (various orcs, worg or giant spider) character into battlegrounds. When playing your character you improve your monster, when playing your monster you improve your character. That's as simple as I can put it - just going from what I've read though.

So far I've seen very very few non-RP names, seen quite a few people chatting IC, but I'm not far enough in to say whether this is normal or not.

If your download speed is poo hot I believe you can download the client (4gb or so). If you fancy doing that I'll email you the 14 day trial code if you want to try it.

sure that would be great thanks dling now

5hrs 50 mins @ 177kbs. guess i'll make some tea while i wait

You'll have to wait til I get home before I can send you the code - to where shall I send it?

just pm it if you want, and tell me which server to join!

Lately I have been disgustingly frustrated with WoW. Complete and total burn-out. Haven't had any this bad.

I picked up Guild Wars (all 3 campaigns) and am having a blast with it. And it's free too.

So, I am not sure if and when I'll be returning to WoW. Some of you have seen this coming for a while now, so it shouldn't come as too big a surprise.

For now, I'll probably freeze my account. I may be back, I may not be back. It all depends on the mood, I guess.

Better take some time off then Tryx and relax.

I'll water Tryxie's plants and I'll try to remember to feed Grimbol's goat in the meantime. Did Leomir still have that fishtank?

PS - could you up Cel a rank during your break

Enjoy your break Tryx, hope you enjoy GW. It's a pretty good game, but I found it very shallow (this was prior to the expansions though). Not being a big PvP fan probably didn't help :S

Let me know what it's like with the expansions, and I might be tempted to give it a try as I'm still a bit unsure of LOTRO as a back-up game to WoW.


Anyway, hope GW isn't too good, but enables you to rediscover your love for WoW. Hope to see you back in /g and /o soon, it won't be the same without you.

I'll be sure to gank Conte for you if I see him.

I took almost a full year of time off WoW before I started again - last summer, at the end of which I joined the RC with Rezag. Got burned by a hardcore raiding guild at that time. Anyway, it has given me pretty much the idea on knowing on how to take WoW in moderation

Too bad there isn't some sort of IRC-Guildchat gateway anywhere.

Guild Wars isn't any more shallow than WoW. In fact, I'd even go as far as saying it's deeper.

In WoW, anything you do, has NO effect on the world whatsoever. In GW, on the other hand, it does. This is of course a direct result of the fact that any quests/missions you do are instanced. It's just you and your party. If a quest giver tells you to go kill a certain named mob, you will never, ever come across that mob again. Unlike WoW. "Hey. didn't I kill that naga boss 5 minutes ago? What the hell is he doing alive again?"

Also, PvE is a HUGE part of GW. To think that the game is about PvP and nothing but PvP is a big mistake.

One of the main things that has turned me off from WoW big time is the community. One look at the realm forum, or a few minutes in General in Stormwind or Ironforge, will tell you that the communiity on DB sucks major backside. For every OOC-idiot, there are two even bigger RP-police idiots.

I don't exaggerate when I tell you I honestly couldn't stand it anymore.

Anyhoo, I haven't frozen my WoW account yet, but I don't think it'll be long before I do. Somehow, I keep hoping something will change. To be honest, the only thing that's made the WoW experience somewhat worthwhile the past few weeks was the guild. But if being in a great guild with cool, funny, awesome people can't even get me to double-click that WoW icon on my desktop, something is wrong.

I guess starting on a different realm, or maybe even seriously switching to Horde side could have made a difference, but I really have started to feel lately that WoW is lacking something very substantial. This is where the main difference between a game like WoW and a single-player RPG comes in: the fact that YOUR character is THE hero. I don't feel that in WoW.

Example: you're level 10. You have just rid Elwynn from one its most dangerous threats - Hogger. You feel great about yourself. You think you're ready to take on anything that might endanger the poor farmers of Westfall. So, you are on your way there, you pass Westbrook Garrison, and and lo and behold: there's that bugger Hogger again!

You know what I mean.

I played Morrowind once. I single-handedly saved the world from a major threat. I was the hero. I was the man! No respawns. No "LFG Hogger" in General.

I guess I've really been waiting for an online game that offered me the same kind of feeling.

Guild Wars has been around for a long time. I've always known that the dev team resonsible for that game were originally Blizzard peeps, and that they left there because they didn't like the way the company was treating WoW. I seriously disliked the raid-centric approach the dev team were taking on WoW. Which wouldn't be THAT bad, if that didn't give hardcore gamers a major advantage over the less hardcore gamers. Which, again, wouldn't be THAT bad, if we weren't playing on a PvP server.

I got tired of being one or two-shotted by characters who had more time to play than I did.

I got tired of people's ideas of World PvP being one-shotting lowbies in contested areas, just because they could.

I really wanted to try a game where skill didn't equal gear. Of all the games with a PvP element out there, Guild Wars IS that game.

I haven't been PvPing much, but I did try it a few times, and it's true: PvP in GW isn't about gear. It's about tactics. What kind of runes do I put on my armour? Do I bring my Heroes (customizable NPCs who fight alongside you) or "real" people? Which skills, out of the dozens I have right now, do I equip (you can only have 8 skills on your bar at any time)?

Oh... I've written a novelette, I guess,

It's not my intention to put anyone off from WoW. I'm merely trying to explain what's been bugging me about it lately. There's a lot more, but I'll keep that to myself for now.

Fact is, I'm having a lot of fun playing Guild Wars right now, and I can see myself playing that for a long time. Hey, after all, no subscription fees.

LotRO has tremendous promise I think. If the game irons out some stuff, and gets tweaked a bit here and there, I could see myself paying for it. But not now. I tried it, but it lacked something.

Anyway, perhaps you'll see me again some time, perhaps not. I don't know. Right now, the urge to log onto WoW has been taken over by the urge to log onto GW.

the thing is. you will never be able to be the best at an mmo. unless you are some no lifer who plays 24/7.

i am in complete accord with you regarding single player rpgs, they are great and give you a feeling of proper power towards the end. the difference with an mmo is while you may not be the toughest, when you get that new sword etc. you can use it to lay the smack down on someone. which can be fun every so often.

so ref GW, what are the gfx like?

These are *exactly* the reasons why I went on hiatus before - before I started playing again and joined RC last summer. I'm having a bit of same feelings as well, mostly regarding the Kara raid today (which basically consisted of bashing head to a wall for 4 hours).

Granted, back then I was stuck in a raiding guild. Anyway, one of the things I never understood was people going to same instances over and over again, even AFTER all the quests had been completed? Chasing after some loot? Huh? I had killed the boss, why should I go for it again? I *never* went to an instance more than once unless a Quest demanded it - I think first ever was Uldaman, and later BRD/BRS. Not a lot of people understood that all I wanted in MC was to see what's in there. I also wondered how it can be that there are no quests into that place..

That had me stuck at the end-game instances - didn't really like to go to UBRS the umpteenth time. Then we started raiding, and Molten Core was great for a while (we were mostly green-geared so it took time to even get past the first two giants). I did PvP for a while since there at least was some "changing" content - until Blizzard decided to screw over Alterac Valley by turning it into a racing contest.

Anyway, I then transferred my char to RP server (DB) after probing around with a low-level alt. The atmosphere seemed so much better (in a sense, people making their own stories). So I started playing again - then I found RC (with Rezag). During the "scout-out" summer even the old instances were ok since I had forgotten most about them.

Then there's wowwiki.

Two years ago, there wasn't. I had no idea what all those fancy loots were about, why should I get them, and what the heck do they mean.

And I still think that doing quests is the best part of the game since you actually have a goal. Anyway, all the background info, all the lore, all the nice tidbits in wowwiki really give SO MUCH more depth to all that stuff that it actually seems much more immersive place - even when repeating same thing over.

End result: Baron 45-min runs and getting full tier 0.5 set, with the peeps from this very guild. So there was some "new" stuff, just something I hadn't experienced before. I was actually excited about the game again.

The staticness of the world does suck. When Naxxramas patch hit and the necropolises started appearing around the world, I was wondering if Blizz *finally* would start some sort of realtime war against scrouge. Oh well. Guess not.

Of course, the staticness was mitigated a lot when TBC came. Suddendly there's a whole new world. Of course, by now it's familiar to everybody. And there wasn't any class-specific quests. I loved Rhok'delar, basically a solo hunter q for that epic bow.

Why do I still enjoy this poo for the most part? Because it's still new. I want to see the Prince and Gruul go down. Karazhan is a wonderful instance. Except for the parts that suck.

My primary problem with the game these days are completely artificial things that block progress. Why do Karazhan trash mobs respawn? Why do they respawn in 30 minutes, no less? What good does that do? Why the rep-grind?

The Heroic instances, while nice, they also do away with the last vestiges of pretending that there could be some personal plot where you, as a character, experience each instance only once. No, you are *expected* to return to them, even IC.

Anyway, today at Kara I got pissed at Blizzards design, especially after bashing head in the wall (curator) for 4 hours. They claimed that in TBC, they added Shammies to Alliance and Pallies to Horde so they could do a more "class-independent" instances since now all factions can be of any class. At Kara, as we learned today, this is seemingly just crap. If you have anything less than the absolute optimum combination, you are screwed. We already learned at earlier bosses that you absolutely need 3 healers, and Moroes probably needs two priests for shackling. At all bosses, two mages minimum for DPS, no hope otherwise. Make one mistake and there's no recovery. One missed heal, one broken CC. Make two mistakes and oops! The trash has respawned, clear again, waste a hour. Right.

This is the new "casual friendly" raiding that TBC was supposed to have? Why couldn't they have some sort of "scaled" dungeons? Where they somehow, similar to arena matchups, detect how tough the raid is? Maybe even based on the quickness on how fast they down trash? That would mean that when a group without the fully-thought out choreography could actually enjoy the place. Heck, even Moroes could actually have his adds decided by the raid composition, not just randomness - to make him always challenging, but beatable (with a sensible upper limit of course).

It's quite telling that the best, funniest, most enjoyable ZG run I ever had was when one weekend Kara was cancelled due to lack of signups and we went there - just a bunch of 70's. Just blazing through...saw finally Hakkar go down too . And it was actually FUN for a change. No need to do military-perfect execution of tactics, as long as things were nearly there (only had a few probs with Thekal).

I just don't like the fact that a Karazhan raid could be formed with 2 warriors, 3 priests and 5 mages - and probably they would blaze through all bosses and survive. Why bother having other classes in at all, Blizzard?

Point that I'm getting here and the reason that I'll still go for Kara even though I'm pissed NOW at Blizzards design and I just threw quite a rant:

- We do it seldom enough, max three times a week and there's no one forcing you to raid. I've signed up most of the time since the times suit me, but if I actually have something else to do I can skip raiding.
- We are still making progress, we have everything to Opera on farm status - Moroes and Maiden are finally getting beaten consistently
- I'm sure that with mage-squad present we'll flatten Curator all right
- I want to see the damn questline finished, meaning taking down Prince eventually (so there's actual goal). Don't really care THAT much about Tier 4 crap.

Not really all that good reasons? Well, too bad is that WoW is still the best MMORPG there is! All the others are either older generation and even worse, or clones (LotrO) that haven't really progressed (as of yet). And yes, I tried guildwars.

Heck, I played the good old MUDs back in the old days, they had one thing: User-generated content. When will "web 2.0" come to MMORPG world? When you get past a certain level, you, instead of an adventurer, you have enough resources by that time to own your own lands and castles (or space stations), and you can start building up your own contraptions for eager adventurers. BatMUD was great (and still is!).

Problem is: only the no-lifers who play 24/7 get to be the best, and it appears there are a LOT of them in WoW.

Graphics in GW are, in one word, awesome. Which really surprised me at first, since the necessary pc specs are lower than those of WoW. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. Only in instanced zones (PvE or PvP) can you use spells etc., so lag is at a minimum. No asshat mages spamming AoE spells or warlocks summoning big-ass demons in towns and outposts.

The world of GW is more realistic than that of WoW. No cartoony feel. Grass sways in the wind, water looks like water (including reflections) and shadows aren't blobs, but actual shadows. Lighting is beautiful as well. The scenery is wonderful. Characters look like real people. Warriors are big and bulky. Elementalists (mages) are lean and slender. Rangers (hunters) and assassins (rogues) look agile and limber. Necromancers look nasty. You get the idea. Every class has its own look and build. Character animations are gorgeous and, again, each class has different animations for spells and moves.

Another great thing is that you can choose two classes for one character. Imagine a WoW rogue with warlock secondary. You get the picture.

Furthermore, you never have to group with real people if you don't want to (except for some PvP elements, but those are purely optional). In the first two campaigns (Prophecies and Factions) they had already introduced the concept of henchmen. Those are NPCs, of different classes, you can select and add to your party and go and explore the wild with, or do quests/missions with. In the third campaign, Nightfall, they added customizable henchmen, called heroes. Unlike the old henchmen, you can actually equip these with weapons you find, or respec them with new powers/spells/moves, or reassign their "talent points" differently, or give them a different second profession (class). And you can do so as many times as you like. No penalty, no costs. The same goes for your own character. Once you choose your professions, you're stuck with them, but you can respec your points as many times as you like. Heroes also level up alongside you, unlike regular henchmen, who are always of the level "required" for the particular zone. Furthermore, you have a certain amount of control over your heroes. Think: hunter pets or lock minions.

The henchmen and heroes have surprisingly good AI as well, which makes them infinitely better than real people. Most of the time. Say you play a squishy class, and you go down. Don't expect your monk NPC to rez you right away when he/she is busy keeping your tank alive.

Novelette Part II.

There's no player-generated content in GW either, but at least a guild can buy its own island and use it as a home. And use it as a battlegroung for guild vs guild skirmishes.