Talents "might" work in WAR, as the entire premise is built around PVP. That means that players won't have to choose between PVE and PVP builds.

I agree with you about the WAR release date. If Mythic is doing a major revamp - and they clearly are - there's no way in hell WAR is balanced and polished enough, to compete with WoW, unless they push back the release until Christmas 2008.

And that would place WAR directly in the cross hairs of Lich King.
 

Three talent branches sounds familiar because every game is going that route lately. ;)

They made DAOC and they did RVR right. Might as well stick with what works.
 

I'm pretty worried about the direction WAR is going. It seems like they're still making pretty massive changes during this 2 month hiatus, which does not bode well. I do hope they can pull it off but DAOC was so mismanaged I don't have much faith in Mythic.
 

It all depends on when WAR is released. Give Mythic another year and anything is possible, but I'd be very worried if they're forced to go live sometime next Summer. I think those last few months can be huge difference makers.

The good news - as I've heard WAR is quite a system hog - is that the 8800gt should be pretty darn cheap in 12 months.
 

I used to have high hopes for WAR, but not any more. Just my personal opinion based on nothing substantial, but every time I've seen this kind of thing in the past, it hasn't been pretty. You can't change an entire game around in the course of a few months and expect to get something good.

Aah well, there's always AoC. And beyond that... Uum...
 

You can't change an entire game around in the course of a few months and expect to get something good.


Isn't Funcom doing a major revision of Age of Conan?
 

I'd say Christmas 2008 is still optimistic if they want to redesign some of the core mechanics. It's probably for the better: somebody at EA Mythic with decision making power realized that there's just no market for a mediocre MMO (this is different from sports games).
 

On a different note, (but applicable to what these games are up against, and a testiment to WoW's replayability), I started a human Warrior over last weekend and found it refreshingly fun to play and faster at leveling than I imagined it would be (this is before the new quest experience bonus you get after level 19).

Granted he's a twink, but a couple of friends started playing 2 weeks ago for the first time, and I'm catching up to group with them through some content.

I've been bored with the end game content since I am not willing to commit to a raiding schedule.

My 70 is in a raiding guild but now as a casual, and it is refreshing not being asked to join raids anymore when logging in. No pressure. Between him and my alts, I just make my spellcloth, make potions, mine for ore, gather herbs, or blow through a lower level instance for greens to twink out my new character. =)
 

"And WAR is adding more battlefield objectives for open world RvR, borrowing features like keeps and siege weapons from Dark Age of Camelot. Or as they say, better well stolen than badly innovated."

Feel free to be as partial as you want, as this is after all your blog, but for it to be 'stolen', it would have to be an action made between two different development companies. However, EA Mythic (formerly Mythic), who's doing WAR, just happens to be the company that made DaoC. ;)

About WAR becoming a clone to the much-hated-by-Tobold-MMO, I'm not worried about it because there's the chance they'll do what WoW has done and correct a lot of the flaws that make it not as casual friendly as it should be.

As far as the talent trees thing goes, it's imho a decent way to approach character versatility. In DaoC I gave up playing as you could only respecc at specific levels (very far apart) and if you wanted to be a 'different kind of rogue' than the one you were, you'd have to start a whole different character.

R