Destruction Playlist

Today I thought I’d talk a little bit about the upcoming Warhammer Online. Specifically, the classes on the Destruction side of the game, and my levels of interest for each one. Interest will be rated on a standard 1-10 scale. Let’s get started, shall we?

Chaos:

• Marauder – Melee DPS. Focused on the mutation mechanic, in which he can transform his mutated arm into a variety of weapons including a spike, a claw, and a bludgeon. He seems ok, but purely middle-ground on the interest-o-meter for me. 5/10
• Zealot – The healer of the Chaos faction. I can’t tell you much about them because I have very little interest in them. From the videos I’ve seen, not even their look appeals to me. 1/10
• Chosen – Heavily armored Tank. Appears to have many magical based defensive and offensive capabilities. Looks freaking awesome, but I don’t have as much interest in them as Black Orcs, as far as tanks go. 6/10
• Magus – The ranged attacker/strongpoint defense. Riding around on floating daemonic Discs of Tzeentch, these guys ooze cool and sweat awesome. They are the flipside of the Dwarven Engineer, using summoned Horrors to protect positions and augment their own magic. 8/10

Dark Elves:

• Sorceress/Sorcerer – The ranged dps caster. I’d say this may be near the top of my interest meter. I like the thought of flinging nasty flesh-eating spells from long range. They also have a DoT/Debuff mastery set, which appeals to me. 9/10
• Disciple of Khaine – Melee healer. This one is interesting. This is a healer who wields two swords and gains healing ability by ‘harvesting the lifeblood of his enemies’ i.e. doing damage. I like the idea and will probably have one as an alt. 7/10
• Witch Elf – Melee DPS. Focused on stealthy yet ferocious twin dagger attacks which do damage and debuff. No interest in this because the characters are female only and I can never bring myself to play a female character. 0/10

Da Greenskins

• Black Orc – Tank, and also the only orcish character remaining in the game now that Choppa’s have been removed. This tops my interest list. They look absolutely amazing, and two of their mastery lines interest me. First is the Path of Da Brawler, which forgoes a shield in favor of a Big Choppa. And the second, and more intriguing, is the Path of Da Boss. Basically a low end tank more focused on buffing his teammates. I like the idea of a hugely survivable character who provides substantial buffs to his warband. 10/10
• Goblin Squig Herder – Ranged DPS Pet Class. An interesting one. The goblin himself wields a bow and spear, but the interesting part is the Squig. Basically a huge fanged mouth with legs, there are a number of types of Squigs with different strengths. Exploding Squigs, Horned Squigs, Fart Squigs. Yes, Fart Squigs. 7/10
• Goblin Shaman – Healer/Ranged DPS. This classes uses the mechanic of the two Greenskin gods, Mork and Gork. Using Mork magic heals and buffs, while Gork destroys. Seems ok I guess, not real interested personally. 4/10

And there you have it, my interest-o-meter for Warhammer Online’s Destruction classes.

Culinary Excellence – I has it

Cooked for the fam last night on my wonderful amazing new GT Xpress 101, best product ever created, look it up. I made some amazing omelettes with the following ingredients:

- Eggs
- Lots of shredded 4 cheese mix
- Diced Onions
- Sausage
- Bacon
- Ham

They were pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. So good, in fact, that my grandmother had me order her a GT Xpress last night, as WELL as one for my uncle’s birthday.

On tap for tonight, either stuffed soup or corndogs. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

Warhammer Changes

So Toa dropped a bomb on me the other night. No, not that you sick bastard.

He told me that he read an interview with Mythic’s man in charge that talked about big cuts from the upcoming Warhammer Online. Capital cities being cut and even four classes being removed! My initial reaction was ‘Hey, that kinda sucks.’ And then after reading the interview, available here, I decided that it really sucks.

Sure enough, 4 of the 6 capital cities are being removed, in order for the dev team to focus on 2 of them, the Empire’s capital at Altdorf, and Chaos’ Inevitable City. Now this one isn’t so bad. Personally, I’d rather have 2 great cities than 6 mediocre ones.

The other, bigger change is that 4 classes are being removed from the game. Choppa, Hammerer, Knight of the Blazing Sun, and Blackguard. That’s 2 tank classes and 2 melee dps classes. This really is going to make PvE a little strange, but I know it’s a PvP focused game. We’ll see how the changes affect the game. I’m not one to be a doomsayer but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little disappointing.

Oh well, if it sucks I’ll just keep playing City of Heroes or (gasp) go back to WoW, although that is hugely unlikely.

Top Ten Superheroes that need their own movie

I was checking out a newly discovered blog, Bam Kapow and saw a link for the 10 marvel characters that need a movie of their own. It was ok, but only ok. I thought I would post my own version of this. Despite being a top ten, these are in no real particular order.

10. Deadpool – One of only two that I really like from Bam Kapow’s list. I think it would be a great movie. Self centered-ness, comic relief, and a healthy dose of bad-assery makes for a good flick.

9. Rom: Spaceknight – Only because I have about 8000 of the comics and it would be cool.

8. Corsair and the Starjammers – Pirates, Superheroes, crazy alien races. HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER.

7. 1602 – I actually heard they are in talks on this one. GREAT graphic novel, I hope they go through with it.

6. Cloak And Dagger – Maybe I’m just in a film noir mood lately, but I think these two would make for an awesome one shot movie.

5. Green Lantern – Sure, not Marvel, but c’mon. I’m positive this one is in the works somewhere.

4. Multiple Man – The second one in which I agree with Bam. Tough to do and would take a heck of a lot of CG, but I think it would be interesting.

3. Psylocke – Just for the hot factor. Well, and the awesome factor of a hot psychic ninja stabbing bad guys with her psi-blade. Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise being replaced with a hot asian chick.

2. Moon Knight – This goes back to the whole film-noir kick I’m on.

1. Doctor Strange – Easily takes the number one spot, and the only one of these that is actually IN the right spot. A little bit of a break from the four-color superhero movies that seem to be the norm. I wouldn’t want them to go too far afield into the horror realm, but throwing a bit of the occult in would be great. This would ONLY be good if they threw in some classic Strange catchphrases: By the All Seeing Eye of Aggamotto, etc.

On a personal note..

So debt has been kicking my ass for the past year or so. Just between credit cards and a personal loan I’ve had for a few years, I was paying over $600 a month just to keep them current. It was rough. So I checked out this CareOne credit counseling place. I started filling out their info on line, talked to a counselor afterwards and within oh…. 2 hours or so I went from over $600 a month to $313. And I’ll be 100% paid off within 5 years.

Talk about stress relief!

Age of Conan – Thoughts and Experiences

After a LONG time playing World of Warcraft (since it’s release in 2004), I decided it was time for a change. I had been keeping my eye on Age of Conan for a little while. The gritty universe, the mature rating, and the promise of blood and boobs was enough to pique my interest.

I was lucky enough to get into the beta, and I enjoyed it. There were quite a few bugs and framerate issues, but word on the grapevine was that the closed beta testers were running a different version of the client that had FAR fewer performance problems. I was willing to wait. After all, I had already ordered the game.

So beta came and went, then it was time for the pre-release headstart that was available to those who preordered the game. I was stunned. It was a totally different game. What has come to be known as the ‘Miracle Patch’ had hit. The client ran more smoothly. The graphics were better. Numerous bugs had been squashed, and it was game time.

Let me take a step back and mention the real innovation with Age of Conan: the combo system. Unlike most MMO’s in which you hit autoattack and merely use abilities as you can, every single attack in AoC requires a keypress. You start the game with three directionally attack buttons bound by default to 1-3 on your keyboard. An upper left attack, an overhand swing, and an upper right. Later in the game you receive a lower left and lower right attack. All combos and abilities, unless you’re a spellcaster, utilize a sequence of these attacks. It sound’s a little complicated, and it is at first, but after you get the hang of it it was pretty intuitive and mostly fun.

So there I was. I had rolled a Herald of Xotli (a kind of melee based mage with the ability to turn into a demon), and was powering through the content, generally having a blast. Then I noticed as I started to reach the higher levels that content slowly dwindled away. I was being forced to grind for hours to gain experience rather than questing. This was when the game started to lose its appeal for me. As the grinding continued even the spiffy combat system started to become tedious. I started thinking about a raid situation. Do I want to be standing here for 15 minutes on a raid boss mashing buttons? I thought to myself. And the answer is a definite no.

There just seems to be no hook to the game. I find myself with little to no desire to log in, and when I do, I am bombarded with bugs. Yes that’s right. Despite patching twice weekly, Funcom (the game’s developer) seems to be breaking as many things as they fix. So at this point, I would give Age of Funcom a failing grade. Not enough to do and frankly, it’s just not much fun.

The beginning of long and (hopefully) beautiful friendship.

Goooood morning Internets! This is the first of many posts on this wonderful place known as ‘my blog’. I’m working to get myself in the habit of writing something at least once per day, so I expect to see articles and thoughts often. I’m currently working on a writeup of my thoughts on Age of Conan, which should be up by the end of the day. After that are some thoughts on Warhammer Online, and perhaps a few sentences on my burnin yearnin for an iPhone.

Stay Tuned!