Da Newz – May 29

Beta Ticker: 700.255 (+0 since last week)

Quote of the Week: “I would rather hear William Shatner and Roseanne Barr singing a duet while having my fingernails pulled out one by one while sitting in a pool of molten lava than have Mythic’s own Official Forums for WAR. How’s that for clarity?” ~ Mark Jacobs

Story of the Week: White Lion career confirmed. As little of a surprise as it ended up being, the cat is finally out of the bag (heh) on the last High Elf class and the final revealed class of WAR: the White Lion career! GameSpot and Warhammer Alliance jumped the official gun on this by a day or so, but Mythic doesn’t seem too sore, and the official White Lion page is up. Meanwhile, GameSpot has a g-r-r-r-eat White Lion video to watch and a more fleshed-out interview to read.

In Other News:

• Read the full May newsletter here!
• Keen asks, “Now that you’ve played AoC, are you more or less excited for WAR?” Well, I haven’t, nor will I really, play AoC, so someone else will have to answer that.
• Massively posted a Possible WAR Expansion Races Wrap-Up. I like lettuce wrapups.
• From the Warhammer Herald comes a new dispatch, including “News From The Front: Advance On Altdorf”!
• Warhammer Vault has a shiny new Bright Wizard wallpaper for you to download and enjoy!
• Guntar and Brett Norton discuss WAR on a podcast of Online Gamer Radio.
• Book of Grudges has done some nice research into Dwarf Lore for ya.
• The WHA Waaagh has a new article entitled “WAR-Colored Glasses” encouraging us to take a realistic look at our upcoming game of choice.
• Will WAR be the Holy Grail of MMOs? Mark says… not so much.
• WHA has a beautiful White Lion concept art for you to print out and hang over your bed, to the disapproval of your wife/mom/dog.
• “What does Europe have against edible halflings?” Thank you, Book of Grudges, for asking that vital question.
• The blog questions keep on coming: Sneezy asks, “Is WoW an unstoppable train?”
• For the record, the only two unstoppable trains in the world were Blaine and Charlie.
• Mac users interested in WAR might want to perk their snobby little ears up at this news: Apple is courting EA to promote their system as a gaming platform.
• Book of Grudges urges you to go vote for WAR in the 2008 Golden Joysticks!
• Female dwarfs. Perhaps they should be exterminated.
• The MMORPG Center — which we can only assume is like Muppet Labs — takes a look at WAR’s RvR system.
• “Elves Again…”, a new Secret Life of Mobs comic, is ready to accept your humble laughter!
• Mark Jacobs reminisces over DAoC’s launch, with the obvious comparison to WAR’s future launch.
• Warhammer Vault sums up a whole lot of forum posts between players and devs about Mythic’s lack of WAR forums. Are we still talking about this? Seriously?
• Warhammer Geek presents their newest musical parody, “Rock this WAR”.
• Book of Grudges follows up my rant on WoW/WAR comparisons with one of their own.
• Snafu has picked out his eight Greenskins vs. Dwarfs interview questions out of the ones submitted.
• Syncaine doesn’t think WAR’s graphics look anything like WoW’s, for a change of pace.
• Attack of the WoW Clones continues, with Heartless Gamer weighing in on the topic.
• The Greenskin furthers your basic WAR education: What is Realm vs. Realm?
• New WAR sites seem to be rolling out about one a week now, and this week’s is “WaaagHead”. Check it out!
• Mark Jacobs had a quote in an Escapist column, “The Fallacy of MMO Innovation”.
• WHA first broke the quite unsurprising “news” that the final High Elf class was indeed the White Lion.
• Book of Grudges is really big into checking out Altdorf, as in, “Hey sexy thing! If I told you you had beautiful cobblestones, would you let me walk all over you?”
• A 25th class? Can it be? Dare we hope? Mythic presents… The High Elf Artisan class!
• Keen digests the new crafting video as well as Tobold, and they burp a little.
• Big Download has a big article with a big name: “PvP vs. PvE – EA Mythic on Warhammer: Age of Reckoning”. It’s a chunky interview with Jeff Hickman, and worth a read.
• Keen and Graev posted a couple (one and two) pieces of mount concept art — the dwarf one looks so James Bondy!
• Like the crafting podcast? Then read GameSpy’s 5-page (!) follow-up interview with Mark Jacobs about the wonders of WAR crafting and gathering skills.
• “The Rules of Launch-gagement” over at TTH lists three gamer no-no’s of any MMO launch.
• Vid — you know Vid, right? — has posted his thoughts on the May 2008 newsletter.