Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The State of The Union

Hellbent, my guild, is a relatively small group of friends, some of whom have known each other for over 10 years of gaming in the MMORPG community. Our history goes all the way back to Meridian59, however most ties were established in the golden age of original EQ.

We have played and tested many many games including the aforementioned EQ and M59. We have played or tested EQ2, AC, AC2, Planetside, DAoC, Horizons, AO, LoTRO, CoH, and WoW, among others. We spent a considerable amount of time playing on the Test Server as a guild (under a different name) for DAoC.

Our home for the past two to three years has been WoW.

We generally split our time between PvE and PvP. We've never been much for grinding. Unfortunately, the WoW PVE endgame for us has turned into exactly that. A grindfest. Grinding for materials, grinding for faction, grinding heroics for gear with a horrible risk vs reward balance. The saving grace for us has always been PvP.

Unfortunately, Blizzard has chosen a path for PvP that some of us find distasteful. They are pushing to turn WoW PvP into a professional e-sport and are completely abandoning the roleplaying-based PvP that the game was sold on. In short, there is no WAR in World of WARcraft. The only thing of importance now are arena matches, which is nothing but dueling in a confined and controlled enviroment for e-peen gratification.

We want PvP with a purpose. We want our wins and losses to have an impact on the gameworld around us. We want PvP in a world enviroment, not in some small arena.

Thus, we are in transition. We are stuck with a game that we are becoming increasingly disatisfied with, but possible salvation (Warhammer or AoC) lies a long ways off in the horizon.

We will be seeking to get into either beta, to see if they deliver what WoW has abandoned.

Warhammer Online
Age of Conan


-- Oozo/Chromed

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope your guild has already signed up for guild beta, it's closed now. If not, then there's always closed non-guild beta.

Raggok said...

Yes, we signed up as a guild for Warhammer. The announcements will be made sometime (?) in June. It's a longshot, but worth a try IMO.

Quite a few of us actually spent a lot of time on Mythic's test server and internal boards for DAoC. That might be good or bad though. Hehe.

Cake said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cake said...

Ok... Just need to change some things on my google account... Don't want to throw my real name in the face of the world !

Nevermind, I'm happy to find this blog, always been a great fan of your videos and I can't wait to see the new one.

Hope you will put some feedback about AoC and Warhammer when you'll try it. I probably abandon WoW to go there if it's good enough.