June Newsletter: Where Are The Tribbles, Darn It?

Okay, let's get the biggest announcement out of the way first: you just KNOW that the Bastion Stairs dungeon is going to be abbreviated "BS" in in-game chat. "4 more for BS," they'll say, and then warrior-poets with a thesaurus and a heart full of lies will show up.

The Bastion Stairs is the big surprise of this newsletter -- our first-ever peek into a full-fledged WAR dungeon (first ever at least to my eyes and knowledge). And it looks pretty darn awesome. The video flies through the entire place, which looks fairly expansive, if not hugely packed with dense swarms of mobs. Lots of red, high walls, flames and such. It made me wonder how fast we're going to be able to go through these dungeons -- will WAR be like WoW, where each pull is a carefully orchestrated maneuver of trapping, crowd control and tanking, or will we be able to wade into the fight without spending 15 minutes setting each battle up?

Questions, questions.

You might've noticed in Jeff Hickman's video podcast that he briefly shows a screen with guild ranks and rewards. I haven't posted on this stuff yet due to NDA, but since it's right there, the ranks/rewards that you can see are as follows:

1. Guild Vault


2. Taxes and Tithes


3. Guild Calendar


4. Entry to Sigmar's Hammer, Access Alliances


5. Crafting Components


6. 2 Standard Bearer Titles, Recruit's Battle Standard, Tactic Slot 1, Tactic Point


7. Guild Auctions


8. Objective Claiming, Tactic Point


9. Heraldry Reservation, Base Pattern, Base Color


10. Recruit's Standard Tactics Slot 2

The heraldry creation screen that Jeff shows has the options for 2 shapes, 45 base colors (and yes, pink is one of them), 3 patterns, 45 pattern colors, and 276 emblems (!). Jeff says that's about 30,000 unique banner choices. Unique's a key word here -- no other guild on your server will have an identical banner, apparently.

He then goes into a lot about the standards guilds can carry into battle -- with heraldry, trophies and tactic slots on them. Heraldry can go on people's cloaks, too. The standards are a very cool battle feature that does reinforce guild unity, as well as make it feel more medieval war-like. Standards can be used to claim keeps, providing bonuses to the area, and giving the guild a constant stream of XP (another motivation for guilds to keep the keep, eh?). Standards can also be captured for rewards and tome unlocks, which gives another PvP objective.

Very nice video, as always. I sort of wish the entire newsletter would be done like this, they do such a great job that the rest of the newsletter is anti-climactic compared to it.

Moving on to the White Lion grab bag... again, might just be me, but really nothing new is being said here, only possibilities limited. White Lions come in one variety, two genders, don't live on after master's death, match the level of the master, are affected by masteries not your gear, don't know yet if we can ride them as mounts, and can be healed by its master. There. That's the whole grab bag. Whee.

There's a pretty funny video about Guild Mongbat that "captured" the Mythic offices, a la keeps. Of course, this idea was -- or soon will be -- first thought up by Chrono Chaos, once we get H.G. Wells to stop monkeying around and fix the time machine.

Paul's Video Blogs were a toss-up, as they often are. "Character Customization" gives us a tantalizing glance at the many character head options. "Orc Teeth" shows how Orcs have a variety of lower jaw teethies to pick from. "Win the Loot" shows the treasure box graphic that plops down on the playing field after you beat a PQ.

I like how much Paul cheerfully bashes marketing. "Evil marketing!"

That might not be the full newsletter as published next week, but that'll be the meat of it -- if you want to check out any of these articles or videos, stay tuned to this thread on WHA.