WAR ad infinitum

Day 2, or is it Day 3 of my foray into Chaos.

I've found that it does help immersion to zoom in a little closer, and scream "For Chaos" in the little chaos cultists and berserker marine voices of the RTS Dawn of War (WH40K).

"Blood for the Bloo...er..Raven God!" doesn't have quite the same ring, though. So I'm a Khorne-ite deep in my bones, so sue me.

The Open Grouping system is beginning to get as addictive as CoX PUGs. You never quite know what you're going to get - but it generally turns out decent on average, with the wow, pretty sweet groups now and then, and one or two stinkers.

And it says something about the design that the stinker groups are just those who can't quite decide where they're going or what they're doing, and so end up with members spread across the map doing their own thing.

The best thing about the open group system is that it shows the area and general activity (RvR, PvE, PQ) the group is in. Because WAR is structured in such a way that you generally participate in whatever thing is happening in that area, you can pick your groups to suit what you feel like doing.

Many a time, I've just checked out the open group, realized there's a bunch doing a public quest just under a minute's run from where I am, and jumped in to do it too. Ditto RvR. See, if you run into an RvR area alone, you're just asking for gankage. But if you see a 11/24 warband (aka raid group) flagged for RvR near you, well, safety in numbers and all that.

I finally hit level 14, and ran to the keep to buy and deck myself out in PvP armor. A minute later, the keep got taken over, so it was rather good timing on my part. (I fled via recalling.)

One thing very positive I must say for WAR: I haven't had a money issue yet. I'm earning money at a good clip, and have enough to spend for a few luxuries: such as basic crafting ingredients, PvP armor, some cheaper dye colors to give said armor a more unified look, a siege weapon or ten for RvR sieges and so on.

This is so damn different from many games I could think of offhand: WoW - where I'm staring at some basic arrows with my nose pressed up against the shopkeeper's glass and a fortune was spent trying to fly out of highbie hell. LoTRO - where crafting is just another excuse for a moneysink. AoC - what, I can't buy my level 40 horse until I get to level 55 and earn enough?!

Spiffy PvP armor has definitely improved my game. If only because I now have decent armor and stats for my level, and a non-sub-par DPS axe.

I also relooked at my skills and rearranged my power bar for my main path. Who knew that something labeled "Path of Savagery" (but missing a "This can only be used on the Path of Savagery" requirement in the description) could also be used with a "Path of Brutality?"

Now I'm actually sporting a decent debuff to go along with my single-target damage. Which I also rearranged so that my 'backstab' button is on button 1, instead of button 5. I find I get more targets of opportunity this way, if more "target must be facing away from you" spam messages.

I spent the greater part of the morning engaging in siege RvR. Which is quite an interesting mini-game. I'm quite a wuss, so I found a fairly comfy niche shooting a siege weapon (cost me 20 silver) from a distance, systematically sniping people and destroying the enemy siege weapons - instead of following 75% of the warband in running up like a lemming to batter the door and get scalded by seriously hot Empire Oil.

Things livened up when a smart level 20 (we're only exemp'ed up to 18) witch hunter snuck out of the keep's back door to come and harass and brutally kill all of us siege-snipers (who are locked into a shooting view). So there was some respawning, running back and back and forth 3 on 1'ing the witch hunter, etc.

Maybe it's my lack of skill, or just my class, but I haven't figured out how to 1 on 1 anybody in RvR yet. But I can get some beautiful assist-kills by finding a fight and stabbing the enemy in the back with my DPS powers.

Sometimes it feels just a little bit cheap. Whether in PvP or PvE, I always seem to be the lightly armored hoe (no, hang on, that's a witch elf. How about medium-armored sonuvabitch?) coming up from behind to *snicker-snack* end the fight and steal the kill in a few hits.

On the bright side, mob-tagging rules remain the same - first person to initiate gets the goodies (unless you're in a group), so maybe people don't mind the extra "help" - I hope, anyway. After all, we're all supposedly on the side of Destruction together.

Leave you with a funny story. We'd finished taking over the last keep, leaving the forces of Order routed and scattered to the winds. Presumably most had given up, or were rallying somewhere else, with only a few clueless noobs of low level still running around inside the RvR area.

I thought Order might be rallying to attack the other keep (since Destruction was swarming over their newly taken one and buffing it out the gills with siege weapons) so I bravely went running over by my lonesome to scout it out.

Clomping through the woods, I found a Chaos Chosen locked in combat with a lower level Bright Wizard (or was it a Warrior Priest...something in robes, anyway.) Couldn't resist the temptation, so I ran up to join the fray and clank-clonk-ganked the poor outnumbered soul. Then I sprinted off, on my little scouting errand.

All seemed well at the keep when I got there. So I circled round it for a bit, found absolutely no one but the NPCs, shrugged and decided to run back to the entrance / war camp, instead of porting out to a town further away.

Clomp clomp clomp, went I, running back. And right about the area where I had passed 5-10 minutes ago, guess who I stumbled on. The same Chaos Chosen. Again locked in mortal combat with another low level Order dude. I couldn't quite recall if it was the same one. Heh. Well, the same story repeated itself. I ran up, did a gank-and-run and left.

Goodness knows what went through their minds. Wtf? Him again?!

P.S. My noob self has finally found a Flight Master. I took a little trip to see the Inevitable City. Which is pretty durn big and scary for a level 15. (Things are all lvl 20-40 in there.)

P.P.S. The point of the title hasn't really been referenced in this post. Which has just sort of been a diary description of events. I just don't know if I'd call what I'm doing "fun" or simply just addictive in a hamster-chasing wheel manner. And whether I'll be happy to do it over and over repeatedly.

It's certainly decent enough to play through on one character to see all or most of the content. But to last through WAR's vaunted Five Year Design Plan? Eh, I dunno if I want to get that deep.