Truly Heartfelt.

To: Fellow Community Members
From: Me
Subject: I'm Sorry

The community has shown me some love and I ignored them. I lagged behind on my blog and WHA checking and it turns that on the 8th, I was part of the Warhammer Alliance's front page WCPI spotlights. Big thanks for the spotlight!
Other links I have missed are the Bloody Twenty, and Ghazghkull.
If anyone else out there has an unacknowledged link to me that I've missed please comment so that I can give proper thanks!

Tell Them Your Name

The good folks over at Sore Thumbs are collecting some research on gaming pseudonyms and why you choose them. I'm looking forward to the resulting article and I hope that anyone who reads my blog can add their own stories. To help you folks along I'll share my deep, dark origin story. No family members were killed but I assure there was much emotional trauma. This is the e-mail I sent out:

Hello, my name is PQQ

This tale has a few steps to it so it requires some back story. I used to game at my friends house alot because I had a Nintendo Gamecube, but he had a PS2 (much jealousy on my part). He also had a very small TV which will come into play later. All of my friends were Diablo II fans to some degree so it seemed like the purchasing, playing and enjoying of Champions of Norrath was a done deal. It was but that's not the point.

The point is name creation. I'd chosen an elf character and I wanted the name to sound elfin. I also wanted it to start with a P because my real name does. I also wanted it to be funny, and dirty. So I started with Poo. I worked it into Poosalot. I ended with Poozaloz. This was elfin enough and many a hero (male and female, the name is gender neutral) would pick up the mantle and do great things.

Except for James Bond.

He was too real of a character to receive an elf's name. When it came to 007: Nightfire's multiplayer, every one needed to create their own profile to save control schemes and such. These profiles needed a name. With impatient friends surrounding me, I had to think quick. I also had to uphold my crass tradition so I'd decided on my first idea back in the Norrath days. I named my profile POO. Well, I thought I did.

Remember when I mentioned that my friend had a small TV? Well the game had an even smaller font and an awkward circle function to select letters. The end result was me choosing the wrong big, round letter next to P. My profile was now PQQ.

The rest is history. It's my gamertag and online handle, While Poozaloz is what I rename main heroines in RPGs to. It is also what I rename Epona too in all Zelda games, unless I decide that she should be LowRida.

Cheers, PQQ.

As a side note on my blog here: I haven't used either of these names in WAR. Poozalaz I didn't think would get past the name censors (I have since found out that you can be called Assblack and Critoris and not get flagged). I didn't want to assign a character my official PQQ tag for fear of not liking that class and having the name go to waste.

What, dear readers, are your naming habits? Do you use the name you gave your first D&D character? Do you rename RPG characters after crushes* or loved ones? Do you go with what you used to sign arcade machine high scores with? Is it a variation of snipe or master chief like half of Xbox live gamertags? Let me know.

*Lol to anyone who did this to Aerith. Double lol to anyone who did this to Aerith even after knowing what happens to her.

Shrewd Marketing

Billboards like this are the reason that my first character was a Warrior Priest. He embodied everything that was bad-ass about Order.

Seven Favourites. Yes, Canadians spell it with a U also. Same with Armour and Neighbour

I should get to posting my seven favourites now shoudn't I?

Favourite Zone: Ekrund. The dwarf starting zone was great for instilling a sense of fighting an uphill battle against superior numbers. The constant war-cries, the giant cannon, the first PQ, cannonballing greenskins; it was all very atmospheric.

Favorurite Race: Chaos. Everything about them is just so unsettling. They're humans, but evil and most likely mutated. Anyone faint of heart who actually reads Chaos's quest text and goals actually get squeemish about doing it. They have the best voice-overs, coolest tanks and are led by Tchaarzanek. What's not to like?

Favourite Career: Copcept-wise, art-wise and mechanic-wise, it would have to be the marauder. The idea of having some guy, morphed by chaos into having these mutated arms bearing down on you, wearing a horned helmet, spiked shoulders and a big wrestler belt is just so cool. And being a melee DPS with medium armour and an AoE damage tree is pretty cool too

Favourite WAR Feature: This can't really be called a feature but I love the rivalries and general side-taking that goes on in WAR. It's very hard to level out a character and not feel an attachment towards your side. And if you're PVPing, a hatred (or at least grudges) toward your enemies. You genuinely feel bad when alting on the other side of the fence

Favourite Skill: Ruthless_Assault for the Witch Elf paired with Kiss of Doom. Attacking 6 times + however many Kisses activate... it just makes my day seeing all of those numbers scroll on by. A close second would be Rampaging_Syphon. Seeing my groupmates' health bars topped off, along with doing a fair amount of AoE damage never gets old.

Favourite Scenario: Lost Temple of Isha. If your in a close one, where the whole scenario is just one big, long, fight at the flag, then there's nothing better than that. Win or lose it always feels like an accomplishment.

Favourite Live Event: Heavy Metal: I liked the idea of being able to sign on for twenty minutes, complete the task, then go do whatever. It was nice that near the end, they dumped the rest of the quests on us all at once to do in a weekend. Reikland Factory was also pretty awesome.

Train Milking and Anti-Peeves

I've just recieved a wonderful link from Syp over at WAAAGH (thanks man!) for my top ten pet peeves post, but then he went and one-upped me with his top ten anti-peeves! So that I don't look like a negative nelly (I'm really not. How dare you insinuate such about me :)) and I'm all for stealing someone's idea, here are ten of my anti-peeves.

1. Your own head as a pocket item. I saw someone who said he got three. What a lucky (or unlucky) guy. Now why can't I get one? Am I too uber to not die enough?



2. Getting that big heal off just as your partner was at 1% health and then winning the battle. There's no bigger rush than that.



3. The Dark Elf quest givers may hate you but Order quests generally reward you with some thankfulness. It makes you appreciate fighting the good fight.



"I'd like to further show you gratitude in yonder tent"



4. You know how whenever there's a quest to find a lost scout or something, and they're always dead when you get there? I thought it was pretty cool that there was one Dark Elf quest to find a dead body but it turns out that he was alive. The quest giver then tells you that you should have killed him in a typical Dark Elf "thanks."



5. Reading a kill collector or Rally master's Tome unlock. They always have something bad-ass to say.
   



6. Spotting Tzeentch's little hydralisk claw for the first time. It's there in the cinematic and everything but I never noticed it until about a month ago.
   

   

This took me months to spot




7. How oppressive the atmosphere of the IC is ... to Destruction. You've got the Dread Sentries (their tome unlock is very chilling by the way, a recommended read), the constantly watching eyeballs, constantly fighting beastmen and marauders, a coliseum, and a general unfriendliness and untrustworthiness from every NPC that makes you wonder why it is that you're helping these people anyway. And then you remember that it's for personal glory, endless gifts and riches, and crushing Order scum.
   



8. How a Greenskin warcamp's outer walls are just whole, uncut tree trunks tied together. It just fits so perfectly with their aesthetic. It's rough, shoddily built and simple, all while serving it's purpose.


9. The sheer amount of patches I've seen. They always seem to aim to fix things that I've specifically seen mentioned in blogs and forums, and the speed at which they come out is good too. For example, do you know how many blog posts there were for "WAR needs its own Darkness Falls" and "change keeps so that a tank wall isn't the be-all-end-all defense"?


10. The frequency of live events. There's always something around the corner to generate buzz and chatter and there's never a time when I'm not looking forward to logging on.

And there you have it. Now it can't be said that I've never said anything nice about the game.

Character Copying. By Pop Culture I Meant Geek Culture.

Seeing this post over at girlirl, while being a good commentary on the lack of character customization in WAR, also made me want to challenge that notion. And I'm going to do it the only way I know how: recreating characters from pop culture.




Here's the Hulk, but this one was a gimme. You can't give orcs hair so it wasn't perfect but all you really need him to be is big, green and shirtless so this one is a success.










This here is the face of Everquest, Firiona Vie. This was the closest ponytail style, but I think using a Sorceress would have made for a closer stance. Just pretend that the sword is a staff and we're good to go.












It's the gamedom's favourite lawyer Phoenix Wright! I found that the Bright Wizard had the most unique hair and beard options. There was, sadly, nothing to match Apollo's hair though.






It's Wolverine! To be honest, that Bright Wizard hairstyle just wrote itself. Too bad he didn't have any non-ridiculous sideburns to choose from. It's was either foot-long mutton chops or nothing. Think of him as Wolverine if he was conceived back when that beard was in fashion. Which, come to think of it, was always.







This Saber actually came out pretty close, even though there was no 'tiny nose and mouth' option. WAR is definitely not anime-friendly







As a bonus though she even got Saber's invisible sword.










Gerard Way was easy to recreate once I started using girls. This was expected.







As a special one I'll show you what a fair portion of people tried to do anyways. A BW Goku. To test this I searched for Goku on Realmwar under just Bright Wizards. 9 Gokus, 5 Gokuus and 17 Ssjgokus. This isn't even counting the other classes, or names like Sephirothxgoku.








Speaking of which... Pretty close eh? And I used a male character and everything. This was not expected.





In summary, I found that the only thing you could really customize was the hair, scars and eye color so I think my challenge failed. It was definitely underwhelming to someone who just came off of Fallout 3 (My guy looks like a Mythbuster). All of this doesn't matter though cause we all wear helmets right?

What Really Excites Me

Everytime I see one of these I get more and more excited for this game. It has something that WAR lacks: playable Skaven. Even though there hasn't been any gameplay details, it looks to be a mix of my favourite things: Games Workshop IPs andd football. Screw not being able to wait for the Call to Arms, I can't wait for Blood Bowl.

A Blog Gets Noticed. Take His Bait

I have to commend Biel's blogging goals as it seems like exactly what Paul Barnett mentioned in his interview, specifically the "How to get noticed by Mythic" question. A blog dedicated to posting about issues that need addressing while trying to also be a platform for every body's 2 cent's worth.

If commentors can come out of the woodwork and voice their opinions in a non forum-whining way, this could end up being a great resource. It will reduce the awkwardness of trying to wade through the countless WarhammerAlliance posts, and be a central area to gripe and make constructive criticisms. If it can stay organized and get a good community of posters around it, I do believe it will be the bees knees. More power to ye Biel Warbringer.

This is how I picture Biel in my mind, due entirely to his last name.

Also, how can you not get replies when you start off with such bait as What parts of Order are OP? Especially since everyone and their little sister seems to be rolling a Warrior Priest right now.