A WAR plan

As I stated in the previous post, I plan to quit WAR and go back to WoW in a month, and I stated my main reasons in that post. This post is about what I did in WAR up to now, and what I plan to do until I quit. Due to personal and work related stuff getting in the way I didn't play quite as much as I would have wanted. But I did level a shaman to level 19, I learned both salvaging and talisman making to over 125, and I currently own a fortune, 150 gold, ten times what a level 20 mount costs.

So where do I go from here? Obviously I want to reach level 20 and buy a mount. I might want to continue to level 21 or 22, and see some tier 3 content, the next group of scenarios, the bigger keep battles, the public quests. But then I think I'll stop playing that shaman, because I feel I made a mistake rolling a healer in WAR. As Serial Ganker Sid67 so correctly remarks healing is a frustrating and thankless job. And as you can read in the Book of Grudges, many people in PvP target the healers first, because that is the clever thing to do. Last night I was in a scenario where somebody shouted "Don't try to kill the tanks. Tanks are not targets!", and that really made me want to play a tank. In RvR I do like doing the strategic stuff, capturing flags, guarding our flag, and a tank is much more suited for that. And if the enemy is persuaded that tanks should have diplomatic immunity from being targeted, that just increases my survivability even more. As a healer I just die too often.

And it isn't just PvP, I'm not really happy about my shaman in PvE either. Healers aren't all that great in killing mobs, no surprise there. But in World of Warcraft that is balanced by healers being absolutely needed and sought out. As I wrote about my WoW healer, playing a holy priest in WoW is a social engineering choice: You might have trouble soloing, but you'll always be able to find a group, and you're first in line for raid spots. WAR doesn't work that way, because nobody assembles groups. Groups just happen, they assemble themselves. And if there is no healer, people just play without one. There might be a general idea of "we can't attack that keep without healers", but that doesn't lead to "we should look for a healer and be nice to him". Instead the best you can hope for is no feedback at all, because otherwise all you hear is "why didn't you heal me!". And only in good guild groups did I ever see a tank trying to actively protect me with his special damage redirection abilities or by trying to stand between me and the enemy. So usually in PvP I'm the first to die, and while waiting for the respawn get angry comments of why the hell I'm not keeping the others alive. Doh! Because I'm dead, dude!

So I think that shortly after reaching level 20 with the shaman, I'll switch to my black orc, currently level 6. The good thing is that tanks in WAR, just like in most other games, are heavily dependant on the quality of their gear and stat bonuses. So having a main who is both rich and able to make great stat boost talismans should make playing that tank easy. I think I'll move over to the dark elf area, and level up there, to play through another series of quests. That leaves the chaos area in case I come back to WAR later and want to play a damage dealer, like a surfer dude Magus.

I'll probably be playing that black orc until November 8. The GOA account site finally came up, and I saw that the combination of the "free" month I got with the box, plus CE pre-order free time, plus free days for the problems with the headstart add up to me being able to play until then without ever giving GOA my credit card details. Would be silly to subscribe on the 9th, only to quit the game on the 13th. I'll sign back up when I grew bored of Wrath of the Lich King.