EA Sports chief Peter Moore is no doubt proud of his team’s “Madden” and “Tiger Woods” games this year.

But when I asked him what the highlights and lowlights were for EA Sports this year during a quick sit-down interview in New York last week, the first positive thing that came to his mind was … a Korean version of “FIFA.”

Why?

“You hate to point to certain franchises, but I can’t overstate the importance of ‘FIFA,’” he told me while his PR handler was getting him a coffee. “Not only because, of course, we can sell ‘FIFA’ in just about any country in the world — particularly here in North America we’re selling very, very well. But the opportunities to iterate off our ‘FIFA’ franchise into a mid-session game [like] we gave you an example of with Asia [are] important.”

Moore was referring to a presentation he gave earlier in the day at the BMO Capital Markets Conference, during which he said that the “FIFA Online 2” game in South Korea has been a rousing success. The game is free to play on PC but, like many Asian multiplayer online PC games, offers players a bevy of cosmetic and gameplay items for small fees. Moore said that most people don’t buy any items, but those who do have bought an average of $28 of goods since the game’s launch.

It wasn’t just the Korean version of “FIFA” that has pleased Moore. It’s also the success EA has had in challenging Konami for soccer/football game dominance: “FIFA” vs. long-time global leader “Pro Evolution.”

“Three years ago, we were the second-place guy,” Moore said. “You may recall we took a big risk of jumping right in and spending on a new engine before Konami did…It’s one of those examples where we simply swallowed hard and said we have to go to a new engine. All of the grief, it costs you. And sometimes you don’t get it right the first time… I’m very proud of “FIFA.”

Thriving because of spirited competition? Some might see irony there, given that EA notoriously faces no formidable challengers in the making of American football games.

How could he say fitness games are the new music games?

However, EA will be facing tough competition next year in fitness games. The morning of Moore’s presentation in New York was also the morning EA announced “EA Sports Active,” a Wii-exclusive workout game designed to be used with specially packaged leg bands that can hold the Wii remote or nunchuk.

Moore maintains that the game is “complementary” to, rather than competitive with, Nintendo’s runaway hit “Wii Fit,” primarily because he characterizes “Wii Fit” as espousing a more balance-oriented fitness routine compared to EA’s emphasis on heart-pumping physicality. What was most striking in his presentation was Moore’s declaration that fitness games are the next big market, the new hot genre following the rise of the music game category exploding with “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”

How could he say fitness games are the new music games? Moore feels it in his resume. He was a physical education teacher 30 years ago and then worked for nearly two decades at Reebok. Fitness, he said, is what people want.

“There are a huge number of people that need to work out, that want to work out, that recognize that they have some health challenges but are not comfortable, don’t like running, don’t want to go outside, are perhaps not comfortable in the gym and perhaps most importantly, don’t have time,” he said. “We looked at some stats: 61 percent of the U.S. population is overweight; 89 percent of all women in surveys say they need to lose weight. Whether they need to or not, their perception is they need to lose weight. We’re also looking at time compression. We’re looking at the cost of working out. Gym memberships and things of that nature. And then when you look at how many Wiis are embedded in homes around the world, and you do the correlation, it’s a strong business opportunity.”

But really, are these the new “Guitar Hero”s? “I’m bullish,” he said. “Do I have any basis for knowing what this market is? I really don’t. My only basis is having been involved with this market for 30 years in one way or the other. Seeing the innovation. We have driven this hard for the past 12 months.”

In our survey of highlights and trends, Moore also said he was proud of his division’s attempts to try new intellectual property this year, despite what he called “mixed results in some cases.”

So EA Sports sounds like a different division than the “Madden” factory some casual observers might take it to be. Is it a division headed in the right direction? Moore’s highlights, if nothing else, shows the track they’re running on.

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Ever wondered what exactly those little symbols next to peoples' names are in Gears of War 2 lobbies? Well, you have probably worked out that they are rank icons, but the fact that you've played loads of matches and it hasn't changed is probably bothering you. It seems to have bothered a few people, which is why Epic has had to explain it.

The little symbol by your name is based upon your TrueSkill rating. TrueSkill assesses your wins and your losses and then decided how adept a player you are. What it also does is use statistical history to predict who should win and who should lose a match. 

"TrueSkill is like the chess ELO system, which tries to predict who should win the match based on the skill of the players," explains Epic rep SixOkay. "If you were predicted to lose and your team wins, then your TrueSkill goes up more than if you won and you were predicted to win. This holds true for the inverse scenario: If you were predicted to win and you lose, then your ranking drops more than if you were predicted to lose."

That's pretty cool. I'd quite like to see one's personal stats indicate how many matches were won against the odds and how many were lost that shouldn't have been. SixOkay points out that the ranking system is not like an RPG and won't keep increasing with experience. It will change or remain the same depending on performance, your rank can move up or down and it could take many tens of matches before a suitable skill ranking is decided. 

... I hate only being rank one.

While everybody’s favorite science fiction video game may not be playable on most handheld gadgets, there is absolutely no reason why your love for all things Master Chief can’t be reflected on your phone. iPhone users have iHaloStats (a webapp for viewing Halo 3 stats on the iPhone) and now, thanks to the generous and graphically gifted Halcylon, Blackberry 9000 owners can add a sleek new Halo theme to their previously Spartan-less inventory. The first of three currently planned, iHalo features a variety of medal-esque icons with a touch of humor only true Halo fanatics will appreciate (the “delete item” option is accompanied with a killjoy graphic!). Drool over the preview images after the jump and then download the iHalo theme over at MediaFire. Looks like I may need to get myself a Blackberry now!

At the same time as Epic was apologizing for Gears of War 2's multiplayer screw ups, some statistics were shared about how multiplayer is shaping up. If you're interested in meaningless numbers and percentages like I am, then you might want to know these.

It's interesting to note that, despite complaints about the shotgun being considerably weakened, it is still the most statistically lethal weapon in the game. With the amount of complaints you hear about the Lancer being too strong, it's quite fun to see that it's still not the most popular cause of death.

Here are the stats, in any case:

• Almost 3 million multiplayer matches (excluding Private) have been played.
• Almost 1 million screenshot photos have been uploaded to gearsofwar.com
• The most popular multiplayer mode is Horde.
• The most popular multiplayer map across all modes is River.
• The most lethal weapon is the Gnasher shotgun with almost 29% of all kills.

The popularity of Horde doesn't surprise me, and it explains why it takes ten minutes for me to get a match started in that mode. The amount of matches being played on River also makes sense, since I tend to see that map more than most. I think it's because everyone knows where the Boomshot is on that one. 

Also, that's a lot of multiplayer matches being played.

The Shadow Odyssey November / 18 / 2008

The Shadow Odyssey is now live! You can visit EQ2Players.com to read news and articles about the latest EverQuest II expansion or you can dive right into game and visit the new airship near the Sinking Sands docks to visit the newly discovered Moors of Ykesha.

An all new map system has been added for all players.

GAMEPLAY

You can now mitigate critical attacks done to you. Critical attacks work as before but the player can mitigate the amount done to them by having higher agility for melee classes or higher intelligence for priests and mages.

In addition, you will now find certain creatures can critical against you. They will use their calculated damage times their critical multiplier to determine their damage. PvP based combat will now also follow this formula. Players against an npc will continue taking the higher of max damage plus one or damage times critical multiplier.

There are also some items which now reduce the amount of critical damage you take while in combat. As a result of the critical mitigation addition, damage formulas have changed slightly.

Damage is now calculated the following way: base damage calculation weapon attacks add in dps and weapon multipliers spell and weapon tier multipliers attribute modifiers base damage multipliers normalized damage ( +spell/ca/heal amounts ) critical multiplier All of your characters will now receive a 10% experience bonus for each character at the maximum level. (Up to 50% max).

You'll also receive a tradeskill experience bonus for each character at the maximum tradeskill level. Your current experience bonus will be displayed on the character selection screen. This experience bonus can be disabled on a per-character basis by right-clicking on the experience bar.

Shield Block chance is no longer an uncontested avoidance. It will now multiply your base chance to block with a shield rather than add. Pet buff icons will now tint when out of range. Examine data will now also list the range of the spell. Combat arts will now properly use the max damage + 1 as the minimum critical amount when attacking an npc. PvP combat arts will still use damage time the critical multiplier.

Fish and water-only creatures should now stay underwater.

Item purchases that require items other than gold in exchange now have a confirmation dialog.

Characters will now continue to get Apprentice I versions of spells and combat arts placed in their spell book at appropriate levels above 50.

/load_uisettings will no longer work while the crafting window is open.

Glide/Slow fall can now be suspended by holding the jump key while falling.

SPELLS

Fighter: The recast time on Rescue has been reduced.

Druid: The Darklight Wood portal spell will no longer be removed while betraying.

Summoner: Improved the hate amount of the pet's defensive based stances.

Brawler: Devastation Fist has changed slightly. It is now a high damage attack without a stifle penalty. Against higher end creatures it will be more potent. Brawler: Defensive stances now grant additional agility and parry skill. The combination stances also grant additional parry skill.

Bruiser: Brutality now improves the base damage of combat arts and increases the strength of the raid. Divide and Conquer now has a positional hate boost and is not interruptable. However, it now has a slightly longer reuse timer.

Berserker: Screaming Rage line will now grant the raid additional dps instead of health regeneration. Reduced the casting time of area of effect abilities and increased their damage. Insolent Gibe will now inflict melee damage in addition to the taunt. This melee attack cannot be parried, riposted or dodged. The Rampage line will do slightly more damage. The Stifled Rage line will grant additional shield effectiveness. Blood Rage will give a small rush of adrenaline to the berserker now healing them for a small amount when hit. The penalties for Adrenaline have been reduced.

Coercer: Possessed Essence should no longer be able to mesmerize targets.

Conjuror: There are new appearances for the Inferno Golem pet. As a result the spell has been renamed to Fiery Magician.

Guardian: Added agility and wisdom bonuses to the defensive stances. Also improved the Aggression bonus. Increased the hitpoints on the Battle Tactics Line. Increased the mitigation amount of the Rallying Cry line.

Monk: The Wisdom of Zephyl line has had its casting speed bonus reduced slightly.

Paladin: Castigate will now add in normalized spell damage effects. Vigor of Trust now improves the base healing of spells. Lay of hands has had its recast lowered but now consumes power. Lowered the casting time of heal spells slightly. Single target spells now cast at 0.5 seconds and their damage is increased slightly. Reduced the duration of the Incite line so the full taunt amount is gained faster and before the spell is reusable. Added intelligence to the defensive stance. Improved the spell Divine Favor so it scales more appropriately for level.

Shadowknight: Contract from Below now improves the base damage of spells. Adjusted the damage and casting time on a number of spells. Many DoTs were also given more initial damage to go along with the pace of combat. Tainted Sacrament and its upgrades have changed to be an area of effect taunt and damage spell. The Harm Touch line is now a 5 minute recast. Mana Sieve now drains health and converts it to power. Draw Strength line now also reduces intelligence of the target and gives it to the shadowknight. The defensive stances now grant additional intelligence for the shadowknight.


ACHIEVEMENTS

Crusader: Avenger's Relentlessness now grants double attack. Improved the casting bonuses of Avenging Invigoration. Removed the mount restrictions from the Agility line. Aura of Leadership is now a small protective replenishing ward. Reduced the recast of Divine Aura to match similar skills of other classes.

Berserker: Altered Perseverance to give a heal when the berserker drops to low health. Gut Roar will now riposte the next melee attack.

Brawler: The Strength line has undergone a number of changes and has had the weapon restrictions removed. It will also grant a bonus to improve deflection chance.

Guardian: Improved the riposte damage reduction of Cripple.

Paladin: Changed Prayer of Resuscitation to modify Lay on Hands and its upgrades.

Shadowknight: The Siphon Hate ability has changed and now protects the shadowknight from a large hit and then increases hatred for the shadowknight on termination. Reaver now adds additional spell damage.

Warrior: Changed Gladiator's Revenge to do additional riposte damage. The stamina line no longer requires a buckler but since you are no longer penalized for a lesser shield the double attack values have been reduced.

PLAYER VS PLAYER
The recent kill list has been increased to 20 players but anyone on it is still removed after 30 minutes.

ITEMS Ayonic Axe, Lamentation of the Intrepid, Marrow's Song, and Incandescent Blade have all been changed to a 4.0 delay. Removing an item which grants additional effects to a spell will cause that spell to cancel. Certain cases where the player is disarmed in combat will not cause the spell to drop though. Overloaded Heal and Empowered Heal have had their effect radius reduced to 25m. Pond Wash and Mind Wash have had their radius increased to 25m. Lesser Overloaded Heal, Overloaded Heal, Empowered Heal, Holy Water Sprinkler, Pond Wash, and Mind Wash can now only trigger once from Area of Effect heals. The trigger chance on some of these effects has been increased to compensate.

HOUSING & GUILD HALLS Three new amenities added to guild halls! Achievement Counselor, Collection Binder, and the Mariner's Bell: Island of Mara. The choice of where to go with the Druid Portal hireling has been moved to the portal itself, instead of a list of dialog choices. The created Guild Hall portal now functions like a mariner's bell. The "collect an item" window used to retrieve items in a house will now display the owner's name for NO-TRADE items that you cannot pickup. The guild hall supply depot now contains sortable columns for item name and level. No-Trade house items can now be returned to their owners via email by anyone with Trustee access or higher. The Guild Hall Faction Market Broker will now properly appear as a purchasable amenity in Tier 2 Qeynos PvP guild halls. The Slayer Poster amenity will no longer sit buried into the ground when first purchased. Training Dummy Supply Chest will now properly enforce Use Access. The hitpoints of the placed Training Dummy has been doubled.

CLIENT The "Flora Displacement" option has been optimized and does not reduce framerate so much. Lowered memory usage in large zones.

USER INTERFACE All windows with a Help button have had the help button's position swapped with the settings button to reduce accidental opening of the browser. Charge counts and stack sizes on icons will no longer become misaligned after using the /loadui command. The stats section of the Persona window has been expanded to include more information.

CHAT CHANNELS Many of the alignment-based chat channels have been replaced with non-alignment versions on PvE servers. Good_Help / Evil_Help is now Help Good_Newbie / Evil_Newbie is now Newbie Good_Crafting / Evil_Crafting is now Crafting Good_Traders / Evil_Traders is now Traders All race and class channels have been merged into non-alignment based channels. If you have joined any of these channels, you'll need to leave them and join the new channels as the old channel names will still remain valid as custom channels.

TRADESKILLS Two new tradeskill collection quests can be found for those who wish to seek them out. The deity historian in Butcherblock Mountains is now selling a book of "Decorative Deity Shrines" recipes, for those who wish to display their deity's influence in homes and guildhalls. Fixed an issue where recipe tooltips would display an incorrect number of components when components were separated into multiple stacks. Outfitters are now able to produce vest versions of cloth armor in the level 10-19 range. Tailors now have recipes for crafted canvas, ruckas, and broadcloth vests. Sackcloth and tranquil sackcloth shoulder armor now have appearances. The tranquil threadbare shoulders remain without specific appearances. The tailored tranquil dragon's breath armor set now has a slightly different appearance from the regular dragon's breath armor set. All tailormade armor with a robe graphic is now called a robe, and all tailormade armor with a vest graphic is now called a vest. The tranquil sackcloth vest is now a slightly different shade from the "dashing tunic" acquired in Sebilis.

ZONES

Veeshan's Peak Phara Dar will no longer critically attack when Khalan is dead.

It’s time to pick up the hatchet; the time for using a scalpal has come and gone.  I think the following fixes, changes, and additions need to be made.  Some of these will come off as drastic and over the top, which they very well may be, but I want you (those of you playing WAR right now) to visualize in your minds what the game would be like if the game were this way.  Also, do not interpret my tone as “bitchy” or “angry”.  Read this as constructive criticism from someone who loves the game’s potential from what he saw in beta and feels that the game is moving into dire times.

Remove the zone control/locking from the game. The system was neat on paper and it worked in beta, however it is not working right now.  Flipping zones is entirely too messy and the process is strenuous and devoid of strategy and fun.  Having a zone sit stalemated for a week, with no major action going on at all to keep it contested, can not possibly be working as intended.  What we need is a far more simple and streamlined process for moving from one zone to the next after capturing the keeps and battle objectives.  If there is a large force of players moving on enemy keeps and taking them one after another then the army should not be stopped by a little lock symbol on the interface saying “sorry, you can’t go any further”.  Alternately, if you leave zone control/locking in the game then it should involve Keeps and Battle Objectives ONLY!  None of this scenarios, PQ’s and PvE counting rubbish.

If the enemy chooses not to defend then the fight should make it to their capital city.  A city siege has never once happened on Wolfenburg or Phoenix Throne (two “very populated” servers with supposedly active RvR).  If players are going to stay then they need to experience city sieges and be faced with a truly imminent realm war.  This is a realm war and players need to feel the pressure of losing territory to feel motivated.  Mr. Jacobs, tear down this wall!

Make keep taking meaningful by adding a Darkness Falls type dungeon. Warhammer Online, back in November 2007, was delayed in order to transform the game to align closer with DAOC’s RvR but it forgot that one crucial element… the PURPOSE.  Sure, city sieges are a purpose but let’s be realistic - a keep is under attack in Praag… why would I go defend if it poses no threat to our city?  It’s going to take like 8 keeps, 2 fortreses, and a TON of RvR to make our capital city vulnerable.  As of right now a city siege is not going to happen.  So, we come back to the PURPOSE.  I strongly feel that Darkness Falls provides that purpose.  Find out more about Darkness Falls here.

Remove renown and victory gain from T4 scenarios. Scenarios should not be a means for progressing your realm rank when scenarios can hardly be considered RvR.  They are unbalanced mini-games that have been abused by the players (whether intentionally or not) to level up and race to the end.  I don’t think the solution is to remove them altogether, but removing or curtailing the ability to advance in what is considerably the “end-game” player progression (realm ranks) in these arcade-like mini-games is necessary.  Removing victory gain from scenarios is also necessary because these should not influence the realm war.

Merge the servers and merge them now. Let’s face it, WAR was designed in such a way that a lot of players participating in the realm war is mandatory.  Right now, especially in light of recent mmorpg competitions’ releases, we’re seeing the populations dwindle.  Merge the freaking servers and you will improve the enjoyment of the game globally for all players.

Revamp the PvE in the game. This one has multiple levels.  It’s already apparent that the PvE itemization in the game is becoming arguably more trouble than it is worth.  The ward system has gone from being nonexistent to moderately important in RvR to WoW-treadmill and back to moderately important again.  Just remove wards and do an itemization pass on all gear to improve stats.  Additionally, move to a token system for gear.  Also, the PvE gameplay in the game needs to be revamped.  Right now I feel like I’m playing a single player game when I go out to PvE 90% because of how shallow and dumbed down it feels.

Additionally, the PvE in the game is not at all what was promised.  I’m talking mostly about questing.  It was hyped up to be different from the average mmorpg but I can find absolutely no different in the quests here from WoW or LOTRO or pas iterations of the questing system.  The idea of having already killed bears to satisfy a quest giver’s desire to have you go kill bears before you’ve met him never made it into the game.  I feel somewhat lied to here.

The Tome of Knowledge is great but we need substance. This isn’t to be taken as a slight to the ToK because I feel that it was really well designed.  However, I feel like too much emphasis has been placed on the ToK as the end-all-be-all of accomplishment.  Going to Chucky Cheeses or the carnival and walking away with a few knicknacks is fun and all… but it doesn’t beat a trip to Toys R Us for that awesome GI Joe action figure.  Know what I’m saying?  Expand the substance of the game.  Bring the player in deeper.

Add content to the game! This one is simple and many of you will probably go “wtf does he mean?! WAR has tons to do!”.  For those of you who would say that, can you answer me the following?  What dungeons have you done or can you do?  What, other than scenarios, does your average day involve?  I’m willing to bet that for most of you it’s PQ’s, quests, and scenarios.  Some of you may experience open-rvr but for most of you it’ll be those three things (the holy trinity of WAR?).  I think it’s time to stop looking at PQ’s and quests as content but as concepts for methods of delivering content.  There needs to be much, much more content.

Find some way - any way - to make the world have more ‘place’ and less ‘utility’. Discussion on this topic occured in the comments of this post.  The game lacks the immersion that DAOC had.  What exactly happened here to cause this problem is probably rooted in the core design of the game.  However, I think a lot of this can be fixed from changes recommended above.   The game being truncated into all these tiers and pairings and flight paths has done a lot of harm to make the world feel incongruous.  One way to perhaps give players the ability to magically forget this problem would be to develop the gameworld to be more immersive.  Expand it somehow and help the players to feel lost in the world.  Yes, I actually like getting lost in a world.  I remember one time when I was playing Midgard that I wandered too far off the path and ended up getting lost in the forest.   I was turned around and couldn’t find my way back to the road and wandered in a random direction.  It was then that I first found Spindelheim (a dungeon).  I’ll never forget that.

If you thought I was joking when I said that a hatchet, rather than a scalpal, was needed… perhaps you see that I was serious now.  These changes wouldn’t be the end-all-be-all fix and maybe they aren’t even the right way to go at all.  However, I think that something like this is needed if WAR is going to survive long-term for a lot of people.  Big change is needed for WAR one way or another.

The people I talk to, my friends, etc, all mirror the same sentiments towards WAR right now:  The game has fun parts that are extremely well done, however getting to that fun requires that I spend the majority of my time online doing stuff that I find completely boring and horrible.

WAR is in an odd place right now.  It’s a game that is really unlike any other out there even though it’s obviously trying to be several games at once.  It needs to find itsself right now because, more than anything, I think the game doesn’t even know what its supposed to be at heart.   It has hit a few bumps… or boulders… on the road right now but it still has the potential to keep moving.  The best thing that Mythic can do is acknowledge that its time to rethink a few things and set the game back on the path that it was on during beta.

I’m not ready to surrender and lose this ‘war’ just yet.

• Multi-player - A co-op mode where you can battle monsters to get rare items
• Jump Start - Install part of the game on the memory stick to make loads faster
• Academic Quests - Players will take on quests that the professor assigns. If you fail your mission, you may have to stay after school. Also depending on who you work with for your assignments, the outcome of the story will change.
• Avatar Crafting - Personalize your characters by "crafting" skills and stats instead of just leveling up through combat. Crafting skills and stats allow the player to create unique characters like a warrior that excels in summoning magic or a magician that's an expert at snipe shooting.
• Item Crafting - A comprehensive item/ weapon crafting system. Create anything from healing potions to swords through alchemy.
• Team Crafting - Craft items using your team's recipe
• Symbol Encounters - No more random encounters. Visually confirm and engage enemies.

In addition to reducing the amount of damage received from high-level encounter NPCs, each Ward on high-level armor set pieces worn will now affect the amount of damage players are able to do to those NPCs. Players not wearing any pieces of the appropriate armor set will see their damage greatly reduced. For each piece of the appropriate armor a player wears, their damage against the boss monster will increase. [Source]

Basically, if you don’t have any of the set you do 1dmg per hit to the mobs in the dungeon (100% decrease), if you had 1 set item you do 80% reduction, 2 peices a 60% reduction, etc.  (Source of these findings)  This change effectively placed Warhammer Online onto the same path that Trials of Atlantis took Dark Age of Camelot.  Essentially it was going to turn Warhammer Online ito a gear-treadmill based game just like World of Warcraft.  Instead of needing the gear to make your character’s stats and abilities better, it would simply be needed to let your character do any damage at all to the mobs.  It was forcing players to spend their time farming Dungeon A to move to dungeon B to move to dungoen C, and so on and so forth.   There’s no need for me to explain much more about why that is a horrendous form of game design since Mythic hotfixed it out.  The players spoke - and they spoke loudly.  Here’s what Mythic said tonight:

In response to player feedback we have reverted the recent change to the Ward system on high level encounters throughout the game. Players will once again do regular damage and the set bonus will only impact your resistance to the encounter’s attacks.

The ward system will continue to undergo further testing and development on our internal and public test servers. In the future we intend to introduce improvements to not only the ward system but to the item rewards tied to the system as well.

Please note if your character is currently logged in you will need to un-equip and re-equip the pieces in order for this change to take effect. [Source]

I think improving the item rewards and the dungeons themselves is the first step.  Although it feels like WAR has a lot of items, in reality the ones worth using are limited and players have already designated the “best” gear.  I want to avoid the pitfalls of having to PvE-treadmill in order to take out the Kings of a city (which would have been a likely result of the 1.0.4b change) and just have the encounter be dynamic and aided by having the gear - not required.  WAR is not a PvE game and quite honestly the PvE is lackluster (what I’ve seen so far - I still need to see Lost Vale and some city dungeons).  Forcing me to do specific dungeons/raids/etc will only cause people (myself included) to find a game that has better PvE.

So again, good call on taking this one back Mythic.  There are plenty other directions to go other than treadmills.   PS, Darkness Falls now kthx.

On a side note, Wrath of the Lich King releases tonight at midnight.  I’ll be honest and admit that I had an urge to get it and play but when I saw that the content was all 65+ (probably 70+ in reality) I became uninterested.  Vertical expansion FTL.  Tomorrow will be an interesting day for many games out there… I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of tumbleweeds.

My renown rank (rr) is horribly behind my character rank (r) in Warhammer Online, sitting currently at 17rr, 26r. This is mostly due to how I’ve been playing so far, staying out of the scenario grind and completing tons of PQs and quests. Odd that in a game with such great RvR, I’ve had trouble pulling myself away from PvE…

Up until last night, my RR trailing my rank has largely been a non-issue. Sure I’m missing out on some renown-point fueled stat increases, and I can’t purchase renown gear as quickly, but neither of those has been a huge motivator to go out and really work on my renown. Again, that was until last night. Logging in, I noticed four keeps in Tier 3 were Order controlled, including two in the Dark Elf area I was currently in. Noticing 5-6 players in the warcamp, I figured why not try and take the closest Keep back, at worst we will get a good fight from Order and earn some xp/renown.

Forming the warband with Forsaken and CoW, it took perhaps 10-15 minutes for the warband to completely fill up and everyone to arrive. Siege weapons ready, we stormed out of the warcamp and began working on the outer gate of the keep. With little resistance, the door soon fell and on to the next we went. Again Order only had a few defenders, and again the door fell. Storming up the stairs, we were able to control the lord and his guards, bringing them all down eventually. Thanks to the recent boost to keep chests, three gold bags and a bunch of greens were available, and I was lucky enough to score a top 3 roll. My options from the gold bag were an epic helm (rank 29), some blue gloves, and a blue Devastator set chest piece. While the stats on the chest piece are only slightly above average, the set bonus is amazing, and I could not pass it up.

Which brings me back to the original dilemma. In order to wear the Devastator set, I not only need a higher rank, but a much higher renown rank. (25rr to use the item) Looks like it’s time to shift my focus a bit, and go renown hunting. A nice mix of scenarios and capturing Objectives should do it, and it never hurts to be around for a zone control flip, since that gives a nice 1000+ renown point bonus. Hopefully I hit renown rank 25 before I hit rank 30, that’s my short term goal.