Beckett Gaming

Four major cities gone and four classes gone. It’s shocking news to say the least, especially since the news was dropped so suddenly. Obviously my first reaction was shock, and then a feeling of being let down. Or relieved?

On the one hand, it’s upsetting… after all of the release dates being moved back and a strangely untimely announcement of the final class, we find out that four of the classes, two of which have been around since the beginning, are gone with nothing more than a “they’ll be released at sometime in the future.”

There’s also the fact that the tanks especially are very hard to replace. Let’s face it, every class brings their own flavor to a game, but WAR still only had six who could stand up in front of a big monster and laugh as it hits them. That’s a big blow, and it puts a lot more pressure onto the four remaining tanks to pick up the slack left by the untimely departure.

Not only that, but the Empire and Dark Elves who play in their particular zones will now no longer have tanks running around to join up with, especially when they start looking towards the Public Quests. Before this announcement, I was really looking forward to playing a Warrior Priest (I love playing DPS/Healing hybrids like Monks in games). But now that there’s no tank for the Empire, I’m not so sure anymore. What am I supposed to do now, heal the Bright Wizards while they run around pulling a boss and everyone runs after it trying to DPS it down?

I was also looking forward to trying out the Knight and Blackguard. What little I had heard about them sounded like a lot of fun. But who knows now? Maybe people would’ve been happy with a class that only plays okay (gods know I’ve been playing a Rogue in WoW forever, but I still enjoy it). And quite honestly, there are always going to be changes to classes. Players always find ways to overpower certain skills, and people will complain, and then Mythic will have to find a way to balance it out a bit without destroying the skill completely. Rinse and repeat.

Finally, the news about the cities being gone is… confusing. So what now… four races won’t even have a place to call home? Or will there be cities, they just won’t be “living” cities? What about lag issues, or imbalance issues between the two sides (at least before, the side differences would be a little more spread out)? And… what about lore?

On the other side, it should mean that there won’t be any more delays for the game. Everyone can stop playing whatever they are playing “just to kill time until WAR.” And even though it won’t be a full game with such major things missing, hopefully the stuff that is there is great and solid and a lot of fun. Hopefully they show everyone that they cut these things out for a reason, and that the quality of the game will speak for itself.

And hopefully people won’t be waiting a year or two to get back what was lost.

But is having the game now, not completely the way it’s meant to be, better than waiting even longer for these things?

I’m not sure. While it’s wonderful that a company is finally being honest and open about these things, which, might I add, was done BEFORE the announcement of a more solid release date, I wonder if it would’ve been better to delay the game a bit more. On the other hand, no game will never be fully polished. No MMO is. There are always changes, fixes, strange bugs that pop out of nowhere, class imbalance, and so much more that if we waited until everything was perfect, we’d be waiting for a VERY long time.

For now though, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if this decision was for the best. 

 -Rebecca Bundy