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http://www.mortalonline.com/content/open-beta

I have been trying to get in but it looks like the patcher is down. Game looks like the spiritual successor to Ultima Online. Hopefully I will get a chance to play some this week.

Update: After DAYS of downloading and re-downloading the client and patches, I have given up. I finally got it to patch to the correct version and what do I get….Invalid version, please re-install game client. I GIVE UP! I have played plenty of buggy game beta’s but this might be the worst.

If you have the time and energy, it looks like there is an interesting game once you get past the patcher but for me I am done!

I returned recently to the MMORPG fold by playing Warhammer Online. In pretty much every MMORPG that I have played (Too many to count), I normally play a support class. I decided on my return to WAR to play something I had never tried before…..a Healer. (A Zealot to be exact).

My reason for this stemmed from my first month playing WAR when the game released. I played as an engineer and saw the complete lack of healers as a major problem. I also figured playing a healer would be a low stress way to blow off some steam after a hard day at the office. Boy was I wrong……..the amount of abuse healers take from the other players is amazing!

So that got me to thinking, maybe I can help shed some light on the whole situation from an unbiased view. So here are 5 reasons your are/aren’t being healed.

1) My first priority is keeping myself alive

Surprisingly a dead healer really will not help the group. So if I am being assaulted by assassins, thieves, and mages….I AM GOING TO HEAL MYSELF! If you help me remove the threat to me, I will be more than happy to heal or rez you.

2) My second priority is to my party

A good party has a mix of talents. My job as a healer is to insure those guys stay alive. If you are not part of my group, I might not even notice that you are taking damage let alone die. Playing a healer is like playing Wack-A-Mole, you smack….er heal the characters when you see the life bar move. The hard part is juggling multiple characters while trying to keep an eye out for danger. Add into this more players and the job gets even harder.

3) Don’t go running off and get mad when you die

Nothing is more frustrating than seeing (or not seeing) your wall of tanks disperse around corners. Unless you have a heal ability that does not require line-of-sight, you can not heal. Stick together….running off just makes you an easy target and I am not running off to find and rez you….sorry. It is not worth a run back from thewar camp/city/graveyard for me.

4) Don’t get mad when you die and blame the healer 

I know it is frustrating when a healer “misses” and you die. The first response I got when a party member dies is “%*)#@$() HEALERS! WTF! WHY ARE YOU NOT HEALING!”. First….we are healing….just maybe not you. Second…..we are probably healing someone more important to our survival. Third….you might want to take responsibility for your own actions. If I had a dollar for every time I would see an armored up tank go running head-long into a massive group of enemies and then get upset that he dies in about 1.5 seconds….I would have at least $15 dollars. Please understand that we do our best to help but we are not miracle makers.

5) Sometimes we want to do something different

One of the reasons I chose a Zealot in WAR was that it actually could do a little ranged damage. If everyone in my group is healed up, I like to contribute a bit of damage to the fight. What is frustrating is when I hear (more like read) angry players telling me to quit attacking and start healing. I know that is my JOB but the last time I checked…this is a GAME! If I wanted to sit around and see how fast I can push buttons over and over again, I would take a typing test.

Hopefully this will help shed some light on the Healer class and why we do what we do.

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Thanks!

I played Warhammer Online shortly after it launched last year. Overall I liked the game but I found it got boring pretty quick. About 10 days ago, I decided to give it another shot……and so far…..I like what I see.

My first play through I had 3 main issues.

1) The Realm vs. Realm combat felt VERY stale after a while.

2) The servers were barren outside the starting areas.

3) The game ran slowly and anything outside a small scale PvP fight was unplayable.

On my second go-around, I noticed some vast improvements.

1) The Realm vs. Realm combat seems more interesting. The first thing I noticed was changes they made to Keep defense. Keep defense is just what it sounds like. In the original game, assaults on a keep were pretty much useless if there was even a small force defending. The defending force would be able to block the one avenue of advancement to the Kings quarters. The only way to take keeps was to deploy a network of spys who would look for undefended keeps and try to assault quickly. Talk about boring PvP. The new changes open up multiple avenues of attack which make defending a bit harder and more fair in my opinion.

2) They merged a ton of servers. This has helped the game immensely in my humble opinion.  I hate playing a MMORPG only to play for hours and not see another Toon. It also helps one of Warhammers greatest strengths….it’s Public Quests. These are setup for public groups to get together and try to accomplish a single goal. With some of these being in RvR (Realm vs. Realm/Open PvP) areas, the action can get quite intense….as long as you have other players involved. Hopefully the Warhammer Online player base continues to grow. The starting areas are still hopping but some of the second and third tier areas look a little bare.

3) (Full disclosure: I did upgrade my PC a bit between play cycles. I went from 2 GB of RAM to 6GB of RAM) I still notice some slow downs and stuttering but the large scale combat is generally lag free. Since I am playing as a healer, timing my heals and insuring that the “health bar” I am looking at is an accurate representation of what is happening is a huge issue. Lag makes playing a “healer” a pain in the butt…..but whatever changes they did on the back end seem to make it smoother.

Overall, I think the game has changed for the better. I wish there were less “FedEx” quests and that they continue to work on class balance. At the same time, I would love for them to come up with a way to further customize your characters abilities. What I love about “skill based” MMORPG’s vs. “class based” is the character customization. In UO, I used to run a Grand Master Wizard/Blacksmith…..why…..because it made him interesting. I hate “cookie cutter” avatars. Give me something different. I fear that the “Class Based” system will be what forces me to quit again. I am trying my best to enjoy it but it is going to take some time.