Gen Con - Thursday
Posted by Jay | Filed under Blog, Game Industry
Gen Con. Land of pen and paper, imagination and creative non video game products. Imagine my surprise that I spent most of Thursday playing Warhammer Online at the Mythic Booth. Fancy that! I’ll not bother writing a review.
Video Games
World of Warcraft Fans will transition quickly to the game. I suggest for the Wow folks to either (1) learn the new interface, ie the character sheet is “p” for player instead of “c” for character and other changes. or (2) go into the key bindings option and set the keys to your liking. Play is fluid. The atmosphere immersing. The PvE experience is exactly the same as WoW. Tanks, Healers, Melee and Ranged DPS. Standard formula, different presentation.
I got to experience a BG which is called a scenario in War. Action is just as fluid and polished as WoW, the big difference I found is the lack of big one hit kills. I played both a Zealot and Warpriest. My initial impression were that Warpriest were very close to the standard paladin healing except I actually packed a punch! Think holy paladin heals + Ret melee if you used 1H and Shield. Zealot were more clothie. A mix between all the cloth classes of WoW plus some healing. My review of the zealot is crappy because in all honesty the Warpriest was more fun!
In general War is truely balanced around party PvP. This results in a steady pvp experience where coordination and team play are the primary focus. I find WoW’s casual PvP to be more spiky and full of short bursts. Both system work, I’ll leave it to you to experience both before deciding which is more fun.
If you know anything about War you know about the Tome of Knowledge. Its possibly the second iteration of a player tracking system. You’ll gain achievements every couple of hours of play. Its a fantastic system! First iteration in my experience was LotRO, although I imagine more MUDs had a similar version of this system.
General Conning and a cool costume!
I strolled around the exhibition area for the remainder of the afternoon. Not much to report, as I didn’t participate in many demos. I did however meet a Blood Elf Paladin. Great costume! I also managed to convince her to perform the BE healing casting animation, I’ll be posting that later!
Writers and Game Creators
I had dinner with Kevin S and the staffers from Palladium Books. We had great conversations about our first character and the business in general. We ended dinner with a discussion about the gaming habits of todays youth. Without considerable iteration, the pen and paper periodicals business will slowly wither away. I commend all the businesses that are working hard to progress their business to become more attractive to tomorrows money spenders. That was a mouthful, so in short:
Bravo if you’re implementing internet tools and resources alongside your traditional product. Boo if you still think only books will keep you afloat and successful.
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