Da Newz – June 12

Story of the Week: Population Imbalance Apocalypse!

• So this all started with a poll over at WHA – “Which class will you play on release?” Many people answered. Snafzg of The Greenskin poured the results into a headache-inducing spreadsheet, and came up with the conclusion that, as it stands now, more players are looking to play the Destruction side than Order, causing an unsettling imbalance in a PvP-centric game. Site upon site, blog upon blog took this news, ripped their shirts in twain, poured ashes on their heads, and declared a population imbalance apocalypse on WAR. I like it when people get up in a tizzy over something that hasn’t actually happened yet. It amuses the Syp.

Beta Ticker:

• 728,846 beta applicants
• +8,466 from last week

Quote of the Week:

• “Quite simply, Public Quests are raids without the bullcrap.” ~ Michael Zenke

New WAR Sites and Blogs:

• Say “hello” (hello!) to Waaagh Insider!
• And a “howdy do” to War Noob!
• And a “whassup?” to The Order of Destruction!
• And a “hoo boy!” to Champions of Stuff!
• And a “‘sup homie!” to Werit Blog!

Interviews:

• Waaagh Insider interviewed Snafzg from The Greenskin (deja vu!), as well as Wrenn from Warhammer Conflict (double deja vu!), Arbitrary and Spinks of Book of Grudges (triple vu?), and Keen of Mr. Keen’s Magic Emporium.
• “Massively goes to WAR: Is there any PvE in the end game?” with Jeff Skalski and Juli Cummins
• Mark Jacobs talks subscription models over at Gamasutra.
• TTH got to peck away at Mark Jacob’s head over the White Lion’s white lions — what are these pets like, exactly?
• TTH wraps up its crafting interview with Mark Jacobs with… drum roll please… part THREE!

Misc. News:

• EA has aquired Rapture (again)… how might this impact WAR? Snafzg has a speculation! He’s my hero! Warhammer Gaming Scene extrapolates on this info as well.
• “Massively Goes To WAR: RvR scenarios explained” helps keep these battleground experiences straight.
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Sieging Keeps and Assaulting Fortresses” - is this series almost over? Is it?
• “Massively Goes To WAR: What Worries Us About Warhammer” – There’s just one guy writing these articles, so… why the “us”?
• Warhammer will be heading to Dreamhack in Europe… be there or be an octagon! You can also read about this on the WAR Europe site.
• WAR has flying mounts! Well, at least one! Check it out!
• Josh Drescher preps everyone for Games Day Baltimore, but Mark Jacobs has bowed out of the event.
• WaaagHead has relauched with a slightly modified look! They have cake!
• PC Gamer UK did a spread on WAR and didn’t like the opening levels one bit: page one, page two.
• Book of Grudges got a response to this PC Gamer article from the writer himself — you can read it here.
• Fontline #2 — a German WAR rag — has been graciously translated into English for us Yankee blokes.
• WHA forums has a handful of pictures of the metal miniature included in the Collector’s Edition — Grumlok and Gazbag!
• Is World of Warcraft planning on hijacking the badges/deed log/Tome of Knowledge achievements system in Lich King? WoW Insider points to a possible “yes”.
• The Oceanic server will be located in eastern Australia.
• Warhammer Herald informs us that the Amazon.com pre-order CE codes will not expire this month, so don’t worry.
• War Noob reports that Amazon.com is predicting a September 30 launch date. Other retailer sites have Sept 16 and Sept 23 as theirs.
• Michael Zenke, author of the “Massively Goes to WAR” articles, reports that his visit to Mythic was very hand-guided and he can’t vouch for the game’s stability. (Source: Slashdot, read second comment.)
• Want a job? Mythic is hiring customer support for WAR.
• Josh Drescher explains how you — yes YOU — can get hired by EA Mythic.
• TTH’s WAR FAQ has been updated.

Commentaries & Articles:

• “Six ways WAR can fail” at War Noob — it’s positivastic!
• “Public Quests will radically enhance MMORPG gameplay” at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog and Smoothie Emporium.
• “Marketing WAR: Word of Mouse” over at Book of Grudges gives us an experienced insight into how WAR is being promoted.
• Tobold wrenches apart the joy of PQs to find the misery contained therein.
• What date will WAR release? War Noob seems to know. I think he’s a time traveler.
• The Greenskin’s done one heck of an analysis on the huge WHA poll about player’s anticipated main classes/races.
• Chain-reacting off that and starting a panic (panic in the streets!) Massively bills this as “realm imbalance fears” and urges you to stay calm and duct tape small children to the ceiling.
• Keen feels vindicated when he hears Snafzg’s statistical analysis. Why do I feel like I’m back at college? He follows that up with deep, late-college-night-like conversations about what drives people to a certain class or role.
• MMOG Nation analyzes what a population imbalance could do to WAR.
• Then Tobold comes along to pick his noggin about the topic.
• And don’t even get Champions of Stuff started…
• …but Book of Grudges will certainly end it!
• Keen and Graev host reader mail about “Casual gamers and their future in games like WAR”. I think it’s only logical to assume that gamers like those will be melted down for their basic nutrients.
• A Wall of Text decides… it’s okay to get excited for WAR now!
• Warhammer Vault dissects the Massively Speaking podcast, for better and for worse.
• Book of Grudges wonders: when to drop the NDA?
• War Noob does “Career Smackdown: Squig Herder vs. White Lion”. Surprisingly, My Little Pony wins!
• Werit Blog responds to my “Now Who’s Cloning Who?” piece with “Attack of the Clones?“, MMOG Nation wonders if there’s a bit of thievery going on, and Tobold has his own take on it as well.
• “Keeping Faith with the Warhammer Lore” over at Book of Grudges.
• “Khaos Chooses An Army (Part One)” looks into the Greenskins. Me? I like the Purpleskins myself. Then he takes a look at dwarfs in (Part Two).
• War Noob decides that he doesn’t want to be in open beta, after all. Good for him.
• Armchair Game Design uses WAR’s recently announced crafting system as a launchpad for crafting analysis as a whole.
• “How Alliances Can Save Guilds” — A book report by WGS.
• How long should a day last in WAR? War Noob has an answer, but I say 18 seconds. Or faster. Like “strobe light” fast.
• “Warhammer Online: The Very Basics” takes us “old school”. I hate that new school, anyway.
• Follow that up with a swig of “WAR Bootcamp: Know Your World” over at Werit’s. Ask for the shampoo discount, he’ll know what that means.
• The Cogworks wants to know why we’re not hearing more from the mysterious land of the NDA, and how that affects blogging.
• War Noob reviews the WAR cinematric trailer, and breaks all thumbs involved.
• “Career Smackdown: Black Orc vs. Swordmaster” over at War Noob pits these cuddly fellas together.
• Common Sense Gamer wonders how he’s going to spend the time between now and WAR.
• Should EA Mythic offer a SOE-ish “Station Pass” for its three MMOs? Snafzg says “NO!” Oh, wait, he says “yes”. That was a typo.
• “So you want to be a Dwarf?” The Cogworks asks. Since I’m already short and stout, I guess it’s a moot point.

Podcasts:

• Massively Speaking #8 discusses all of Massively’s latest WAR article spree.
• Speaking of Massively, ChaosCast got a nice mention on their site — thanks!
• Pwned Radio interviews Jeff Hickman & Josh Dresher — not sure when this was recorded (sounds a bit old), but hey, it’s nifty!

Forums:

• CyberVic details a few “Epic” threads over at WHA forums.
• Another week, another awesome Forum Watch over at The Greenskin!

Comics, Songs & Fun:

• Use this clever Orc translator, and never have to worry about fitting in with the Boyz again.
• WHA is posting a definitive Race/Class poll — which will you pick?
• A great read: An Open Letter to MMO Players from Devs, and An Open Letter to MMO Devs from Players.
• A new WAR-themed flash game is there to challenge your memory: Age of Remembering!
• Another Warhammer Geek parody, “Mighty Dwarven Beard”, is prepped for an assault on your eardrums.
• Check out this lovely Chaos wallpaper at Warhammer Vault.
• A funny post at Order of Destruction imagines the chaos caused by WAR’s release.
• The Order of Destruction penned a fictional diary entry about Swosigar the Engineer.
• Paul Barnett stars in the music video “We’ve Got Big Bows!”

Massive Overload

I started writing a superlong article analyzing all 15 or so new posts at Massively concerning their trip to Mythic and quickly ran out of steam after about the fifth piece. I’m sorry, I know you all expect me to be superman, but I’m more like his dog (who could both fly AND lick his own genitals). So instead, here is a list of the 40 most interesting tidbits from all these posts! In no particular order!

1. The Magus will get summonable demons (with limited movement).
2. The possibility of us moving into open beta is set at a minimum of “one month”.
3. The “Old World Armory” (items) is one of the last sections currently in development for the Tome of Knowledge.
4. There will be Tome unlocks for having your city statue destroyed, completing a public quest without wearing armor, and for killing guild leaders.
5. WAR is described by Mythic as “hardcore”, so they’re focusing hard on making it easily accessible to the casual player willing to learn.
6. You can have only one gathering and one crafting skill; you can’t have two gathering or two crafting skills.
7. Crafting can result in both criticals and “supercriticals” — ooh, I like the sound of that!
8. Talismans are magical because your characters *believe* they are, not because they actually are.
9. The contested city instance is 48 v 48 players for capital city warfare.
10. There’s a suit of armor that you can earn only through doing PQs in an enemy city.
11. Capital cities are laid out in a way that will allow designers to go back and add more to them later!
12. You will be able to visit a capital city as early as level 7-8, but some sections of the city are closed off until you’re a higher level.
13. In Altdorf, there’s a traveling troupe of actors that wander through the city and put on shows!
14. Cities have programmable events/looks for certain occasions and seasons.
15. There’s a PQ in a city that’s nothing more or less than a BAR BRAWL!
16. Alliances are formed from up to 10 different guilds.
17. There will most likely be an out-of-game guild component to keep guildies up to date on news and events.
18. The icons available for guild heraldry number in the “hundreds”.
19. Standards can only be wielded by select people in a guild.
20. Mythic’s first office was actually two condos, one across the street from each other.
21. Each career has its own unique UI design!
22. Goblin shamans channel two types of Waaagh!: Mork and Gork (not Mork and Mindy?).
23. Shamans have 28 spells and abilities to choose from (including masteries).
24. The UI ring at your character’s feet always points to teammates and objectives.
25. Items and gear can actually increase your spells and skills above level 40.
26. Instead of cloaks, Engineers have backpacks and Black Orcs have backracks.
27. The Engineer has at least three types of turrets to place, including machine gun and flame.
28. Other Engineer tricks include healing ale, barbed wire and land mines.
29. You can make your character dizzy if you spin the screen too much.
30. Engineers can get a huge sniper shot skill at the end of one of their masteries.
31. A Chaos Marauder’s mutations have different graphics for the same mutation.
32. Marauders get — pretty much — a grappling hook ability to suck enemies right up to them.
33. Squigs can fart!
34. White lions can catch an enemy and toss them back to their master with a flip of the head.
35. Rune Priests can bestow temporary abilities on classes that normally couldn’t use them (like tanks using healing skills).
36. Chosen can have up to three dread auras up at a time.
37. Everyone at the end of a PQ gets a roll for good loot, but those who participate more get roll modifiers.
38. You also build up “influence” for PQs, which will eventually unlock good loot from nearby vendors.
39. “Public Quests are raids without the bullcrap.”
40. You can participate in scenarios even at level 1 — and be effective.

Da Newz – June 5

Beta Ticker: 720,380 (up +20,125 from last week)

Quote of the Week: “We’re sort of winking at you, you know? We’re saying ‘oh, we know what you’re going to do.’” ~ Carrie Gouskos on the Tome of Knowledge

Story of the Week: Massively visits Mythic. Michael Zenke just became the most envied person in the Warhammer world, as he was invited into EA Mythic to conduct numerous interviews, play testing and investigations into WAR. A week later, and we have 15 (!) articles for his work. Here they are:

• “Massively Goes To WAR: Your Questions”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Jeff Hickman’s View of Warhammer Online”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Emotions behind the Tome of Knowledge”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Interview with Senior Designer Dan Enright”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Insights into Warhammer’s crafting system”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: How to Conquer a Capital City”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Exploring Warhammer’s Capital Cities”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Everything You Need To Know About Guilds”
• “From Tabletop to Desktop: WAR’s Destruction Careers”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: The Early Days of Mythic Entertainment”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Spotlight on the Goblin Shaman”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Spotlight on the Dwarf Engineer”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Spotlight on the Chaos Marauder”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: Every Warhammer Class Explained”
• “Massively Goes To WAR: How you get your public quest loot”
  
• Finally, you can look over all the screenshots used in the Massively Goes to WAR gallery.

In Other News:

• /random is frustrated by the bounds of the Warhammer NDA, but I think you can read around the lines to know he’s excited about the game.
• Another week, another great Forum Watch, brought to you by The Greenskin!
• Australia now has 6,000 copies of the WAR Collector’s Edition on sale.
• A Q&A with Mark Jacobs at Venture Beat – it’s a really insightful interview that doesn’t just rehash over the same-old, same-old.
• New dwarf art is available for your discerning tastes at Warhammer Vault.
• Keen’s Korner – “Crafting a new way of Crafting”. See what he did there? I did!
• Book of Grudges asks the question we’ve all wondered: “Is PvP really just for the hardcore?”
• WAR Europe has a neat section on the website entitled “Fan Tales” for beta players to post stories.
• Josh Drescher is a nerd.
• WAR-RvR.net is taking questions about the White Lion career for next month’s grab bag — so go dump your mind there.
• Warhammer Geek’s latest parody is a subject near and dear to many a heart: “CyberSex Mistell”.
• Warhammer Vault continues to impress us with two new wallpapers: a Greenskins and White Lion throw rug!
• The Tome of WAR — a Warhammer Online mod/addon site — is in the making, and the creators want to share their vision and get feedback on this WHA thread.
• Josh Drescher gets personal. Oh yeah baby. Oh yeahhhh.
• There’s a new Warhammer novel that’s being released online, and you can read it as its published, chapter by chapter!
• Art director Greg Grimsby popped by the WHA forums to explain how the dwarfs ended up with the gyro-harness mount.
• RadarX over at TTH evaluates whether or not the $80 Collector’s Edition is worth it.
• There’s a really cool — freezer burn cool — review of WAR from the NY Comic Con. Methinks the guy liked it!
• This doesn’t have so much to do with WAR as it does MMO development as a whole, but I love this article over at Eating Bees like I love my non-existent children.
• Mania’s Arcania, a WoW Hunter Pet blog, has written up a piece on WAR’s White Lion class. Cheeky!
• Book of Grudges reports that Play.com has apparently sold out of the WAR CE.
• Warhammer Conflict’s announced a pair of new features: Richest Members and Sudoku!
• And then they had to go and add Conflict Pets just to mess my little duo news tidbit up.
• Should you update your Dxdiag file if you change your system and want to get into closed beta? A WAR dev answers the question here.
• Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen — the newest Greenskin Forum Watch is here!
• Mugs up, ale down! A new dwarf blog is on the scene: The Cogworks!
• Three new crafting screenshots are now available at TTH, which come from the new crafting interview with Mark Jacobs. I’m lovin’ it!
• Book of Grudges chews on the new Engineer info.
• Jeff Hickman popped onto the WHA forums to calm some minds over large-scale RvR.
• The Cogworks has the latest Engineer News for you to digest.
• Hardcore Casual mulls over whether WAR will be a serious threat to WoW or… not.
• TTH has a recap of all the crafting info we’ve been handed.
• “That’s WAR!”, a new Warhammer podcast is available — if you can understand German, that is.
• “Warhammer Online: End Game” over at GameZig discusses the much-anticipated massive PvP bouts.
• Another one hooked: “Warhammer Online: My interest unlocked”
• Warhammer Conflict has another Guild Chat Event this weekend — get wooed by WAR guilds!
• James Nichols clarified how you use your Amazon pre-order codes.
• New Secret Life of Mobs comic: “Skaven Army”
• Over at Video Game Theory, they muse about how WAR’s guilds will outlast other MMO guilds by a long shot.

Random Thoughts On The May Newsletter

White Lion career – Okay, this was a surprise to nobody, as this has been the worst-kept secret for months now (so why did Mythic even try to hide it?). I think Order now has a new top favorite career (along with Witch Hunter), in an already popular racial choice (elves do pretty well, demographically, in other MMOs). It’ll be cool to have a pet that grows alongside of you for the entire game, and pet class lovers (like yours truly) will appreciate the bond this creates. Then again, I hate cats, and WoW is absolutely stuffed with cat-leading hunters. Do we need another class like that? At least the White Lions are melee-oriented, which is a switch from most MMO pet classes (where the player tends to be ranged while the pet tanks).

Paul’s Video Blogs - Does this man not know how to hold a camera straight? “Mike Confesses” is a nice testimony about how the WAR dev team actually likes playing their own game. “Orc Lighting” shows off how nice WAR’s graphics look with proper lighting. “Orc Teeth” gives us a brief glimpse on how people are chosen for beta. But the best is all of them recording cow noises.

Grab Bag #26 - Each capital city boasts three dungeons, two PQs for opposing forces and one raid boss event. Lots more stuff in here about capital cities, but honestly? It’s not the most exciting stuff in the world. We’ve seen a lot about Altdorf and the Inevitable City (Empire/Chaos), but virtually nothing so far on the other four capitals.

Crafting Podcast – Hey is that Mark Jacobs doing a podcast? Wow, I think it is! He’s not the best speaker, but he does seem passionate about crafting. He talks about how other crafting systems require you to make hundreds of junk items to level up (which he hates), and didn’t want it to be recipe-based (which has been overdone). Two crafting professions are confirmed (for now) to be apothecary and talisman making, while the four gathering professions are cultivating, butchering, scavenging, and magical salvaging. You can only have one gathering and one crafting skill at a time. Crafting trainers start showing up in the second chapter.

Cultivating grows weeds and fungi, which feeds into the apothecary skill. You can grow things anywhere from seeds/spores. Weeds and fungi take time to grow, and you can affect the growth speed with soil, water and nutrients. Magical salvaging breaks down an item for its bonus and magical essences (essences are used to make talismans). Scavenging and butchering extract resources from creatures (scavenging = sentient creatures, butchering = dumb beasts). Flies around a corpse tells you if it can be scavenged/butchered.

Apothecary creates potions, lotions and powders. Main ingredients + additional ingredients = experimental effects. Lots of experimentation and variety due to trial and error. Talismans are minor items of power that attach to items.

Above even the White Lion career, this crafting info was the most exciting part of the newsletter. I love the disposal of recipes, and instead the move to encourage players to combine and experiment! Apothecary and cultivating look the most interesting to me at this time, but I’m sure I’ll try them all.

Witch Elf Career Masteries – I know we’re still months from launch, but between now and the NDA drop, I’d really love to see Mythic get a bit more specific with skill, mastery, morale and talent lists. The generalizations (like in this career mastery section) is just too vague for me. Details, people!

Zone Overview/Scenarios 101 – Either Mythic isn’t presenting it the right way, or I’m just not naturally inclined to be excited about these types of articles, I don’t know. Big “pass” for me.

Concept Art: Dark Elf/Dwarf Mounts – Cool, yes. Although I’m a big fan of steampunk, WAR’s dwarfish engineering look doesn’t sit as right with me (as say, World of Warcraft) (heresy!). Still, jet packs!

Beta Journal – Eh.

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.

Da Newz – May 8

Beta Ticker: 684,885 (+17,567 from last week)

Quote of the Week: “Death! Kill! Custard!” ~ The slogan on the 8-Bit Paul Barnett t-shirt

Story of the Week: The dev team did a huge conference call with 23 WAR and game review sites last week, prompting a plethora of articles more or less saying the exact same thing. We here at WAAAGH! were not invited, and thus are drowning in a vat of bitter tears and tabasco sauce.

• The full April Newsletter is available on the main site (for some reason, my e-mail copy comes late every month) — check it out here!
• Start your day off right with a cup of coffee and a read of Massively’s “Catching Up With WAR”, an update on the closed beta. Good news: Jeff’s wife loves the crafting system. Murder Ball sounds fun!
• Keen’s Corner looks at “Moving Away From A Gear-Centric System” — so break out those sprockets, springs and hinges!
• Josh Drescher mentions the conference call Mythic had to about a bajillion WAR and news sites. I most enjoyed Warhammer Vault’s summary, if you only have to read one.
• Speaking of which, here’s TTH’s take, as well as GameZone and GamePlasma.com’s writeup of the call.
• Finally, Keen shares his thoughts on the highlights of the conference call.
• What we like to see in a WAR site: “Five Things To Worry About” Because worry and speculation is all we have right now, folks! (well, that and rocky road from the ice cream truck down the street)
• It’s been a couple weeks, but The Greenskin is back with another Forum Watch of interesting posts and comments culled from the boards!
• Have questions about the Tome of Knowledge that even I, Tome King, was not able to answer? Check out Ten Ton Hammer’s Tome FAQ!
• The Wizard of Duke Street brings us a few thoughts on crafting in WAR. Are your tastes whetted?
• Warhammer Vault whipped out another awesome wallpaper, this time of a naugh-tie Dark Elf.
• Canadians have another option to pre-order the CE — this time at The Source.
• If you’re having a hard time keeping track of dates in May, Warhammer Vault has an excellent calendar for you.
• WAR-JOL has an excellent writeup on WAR’s living guild system, complete with screenies!
• Warhammer Conflict is now offering Conflict Wiki as a wikish service — head on over and help them fill it up with info!
• Get your official 8-Bit Paul Barnett t-shirt (death! kill! custard!) at the Mythic store.
• Is WAR trying too hard to imitate WoW? Tobold seems to think so, but he’s a cranky monkey anyway. Hardcore Casual has a rebuttal.
• TTH elaborates on some of the NPC’s featured in the April newsletter. We think Gortek is quite the dreamy hunk.
• Get your weekly dose of gameplay footage here – check out the weather and lighting effects!
• MMORPG gives us a decent overview of the High Elf Swordmaster class: it slices, it dices, it rinses thoroughly after each use.
• A couple of other RvR videos have surfaced on Jeux Online – watch them here.
• Warhammer Geek’s first “Podcast of Reckoning” is now available for your audio enjoyment.
• GameSpot did a nice video interview with WAR’s Josh Drescher, giving us another basic overview of WAR.
• Be sure to watch Justin Goes to Comicon for all sorts of Warhammery goodness: Part 1, Part 2, and (my favorite) Part 3.
• Jack Black isn’t going to be a voice actor in WAR. How are you dealing with this tragedy? Let me know, I need help!
• Warhammer Conflict defines what “WAAAGH!” is, exactly. And no, it’s not just the name of the most awesomest blog on the planet.
• TTH delves into the Dark Elf Sorceress career – this particular class looks to be a fan fave so far.
• Warhammer Vault has archived six must-see movies for your entertainment!
• Warhammer Gamers notes that the WAR CE is still in GameStop’s top 15 best sellers — #10 to be precise!
• This week’s WHA Waaagh discusses “Gamer and the Paul Hype Factory” — how much are we buying into the hype and how can we sort it out?
• Warhammer Vault points us to three new videos from the 2008 RPC.
• New Secret Life of Mobs comic: “Beercraft Fanboy”!
• Apparently I’m in a comic now. I think I look like a tumor. I don’t wanna be a tumor!

Eleven Best WAR Features Touted This Past Week

Because everything should go to eleven, dontcha know?

1. The Collector’s Edition – In the field of collector’s editions, WAR is poised to outdo them all with a collection of great out-of-game bonuses (art book, graphic novel, figurine) and plenty of in-game goodies (character heads, unique quests, fun items). $30 for all this? Consider it a steal!

2. Mark Jacobs weathering the delay fallout on Warhammer Alliance Forums – Right, wrong or somewhere in the middle on the decision to delay, Mark nevertheless hit the community with a preemptive olive branch of communication and diplomacy. For a good couple days, he answered the many, many worries and questions people had about the WAR delay. It proves we have a great dev team that not only cares about the game, but in the community.

3. This quote by Paul Barnett on a video interview – THEM: “W-w-why would that be there?” PAUL: “‘Cause it’s a Chaos Demon!” THEM: “Well what’s the reason for it being there?” PAUL: “Because its CHAOS! It’s just there…” THEM: “W-well won’t people get upset?” PAUL: “No, they’ll get KILLED! …It’ll be AWESOME!”

4. Plungers of the World – Instead of falling off a cliff to your death or getting stuck in an obscure piece of terrain, WAR will reward you for your exploration and then blow you the heck back into the map with large explosives.

5. Crafting – Really nice to get to see a bit of this, nicer still that gathering will come solely from mobs you kill (no node farming!), but it would be the nicest of all to get a more complete run-down on this facet of WAR.

6. Altdorf/Inevitable City walkthroughs – Since these will not only be the capitol cities of their factions but also the staging ground for end game RvR battles, it was great to get fully fleshed-out tours through them.

7. There’s a guy. In Altdorf. Who’s sitting on the can in an outhouse. And you can get a quest from him.

8. Guilds get their own UI look, as well as their own banners. Spiffy!

9. Open beta is announced to start “sometime this summer”. I know it can’t be soon enough for most folks.

10. The new WAR website – not only looks great, but they’re being pretty good with updating it regularly!

11. The March Newsletter – and I’ve been so busy going through all the other WAR info released recently, I haven’t even read mine yet!