I'm so excited right now! Mythic has now officially released a date for when WAR will launch! The Age of Reckoning will start on the 18th of September, a date not so far away and a lot sooner than I thought a few weeks ago!

With the headstart and OB, I might be playing WAR in just 3-4 weeks. That's nothing after more than 2 years of waiting and I'm more hyped than ever!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

The year is 1372, DR, and much has happened since the truce became real in the year of 1360. Cormyr's armor- and weaponsmiths have returned to their former glory they basked in before the last war with the Pirate Lords of the Dragon Coast in the south and the Merchants' Guild that rules the country of Sembia in the southeast.

Tales of their skills with the hammer and iron have spread swiftly to almost every country north and west of the Sea of Fallen Stars, in just a bit more than a decade. This was made possible by the stout dwarfs of the Stormhorn clan who've returned to the Storm Horns mountain range in west Cormyr, from where they supply the blacksmiths of Cormyr with the high-quality iron the Storm Horns are renowned for.

The Dales of the Dalelands, Cormyr's trusted allies, have risen to their former glory as well. The friendly and ambitious people that inhabit the Dales have produced more adventurers than any other country, who when they retire, bring wealth and riches back home to the Dales, helping it prosper. The Elder Court which rules the Dales, interfere with the Dales' local governments only when it's really needed. The mere fact that it exists still brings a feeling of belonging to something bigger than just the local Dale to the people, who have a grim history of fighting among themselves behind them.

Since the end of the war, the woods of Cormanthor, Semberholme and the Border Forest have been safe for merchants and travelers alike to travel through. This was the case until a few months ago when bandits appeared, making traveling difficult if you can't afford a few guards and even then you're not completely safe.

The Stormhorn clan are also reporting about an increasing amount of orcs who attack the mines and caravans in the mountains. They've sent a messenger to King Aelthas and he has sent them the soldiers he can spare, but most of his men are occupied with guarding the borders to Sembia who've started to send out raiding parties over the border. These raiders burn and plunder villages in their way, while taking the men and women who inhabit them back to Sembia as slaves.

There are also rumours, originating from the Dragon Coast, about a new Pirate Lord trying to unite the feuding lords who make up the most of the country. Normally this wouldn't be threat. There's always would-be pirate lords trying their luck and reports about them come in at a consistent speed, but this one is different. They say he has managed to bring Lord Tom Darkblade, the rogue who was a leader of an assassin's guild called the Dark Blades (hence the name) before he seized control over Ilipur, under his cause. With the support of the Dragon Coast's second largest state, this newcomer shouldn't be underestimated and King Aelthas immediately sent spies to see if the rumours are true and, if so, collect more information.

Will summarize the adventures that I'm a DM for here in this section. These summarizes could be all from basic "what have the PC's done" to some more elaborate posts depending on which mood I'm in. If, for some reason, someone not familiar with D&D would want to read this I'll make an explanation of all the abbreviations that I use in this section so check back here if there's an abbreviation that you don't understand.

D&D - Dungeons and Dragons - one of the nerdiest things on the planet, you basically sit with a group of friends and imagine that you're great heroes fighting evil villains and viscious monsters while doing epic deeds = great fun. ;)

DM - Dungeon Master - The one who runs the adventures/campaigns.

PC - Player Character - Human controlled character, one of the "heroes".

DR - Dalereckoning - Fearûn's most common calendar.

I've added categories to organize stuff a bit better. Did this for several reasons:

1. I want to summarize my D&D adventures, this could be quite lengthy posts which none but I and the people I play with might read.

2. I want to get stuff more organized (duh), with gaming related stuff in WAR/Gaming, general ramblings about life in General a.k.a "Allmänt", etc...

3. I still haven't picked up those Deamonettes yet, but thought I'd post pictures and stuff like that during the dreaded assembling/painting process and ofc battle reports when it'll come to that (will create a Warhammer section when time is due). Those could also be quite lengthy with even less interest. :P

The press are now allowed into closed beta and GameSpy are writing about their experience here. I advise you to check it out, it's a great read.

If I didn't already know how important a game's community is and how it can make or break a game, spoiled as I am by having an awesome guild to play with, I definitely realized it yesterday when I encountered one of the worst ones out there - the community in Warcraft III DoTA. I recalled why I had decided to only play DoTA at LANs a few years ago - it's filled with elitist, rascist jerks throwing hatred at anyone not as "skilled" as them, using programs to determine which country everyone are from and kicking russians and everyone else who doesn't meet their standards.

Even though they didn't flame me personally, I've played my fair share of DoTA after all ;), it got to the point where the game just didn't feel fun anymore. Not everyone are like this of course but there's certainly enough of them.

When they banned my mate, who is a real newbie on DoTA and whom I was trying to learn, I decided that I'd had enough of this and told them to fuck off before I left the game. I'm probably banned now but I couldn't care less.

Now on to some more positive things: GamesRadar had a hands-on preview featuring the PvE dungeons in WAR. Well, PvE and PvE, in WAR rules the line "WAR is everywhere" and it holds true even in (most of) their dungeons which are so called "open-world dungeons" where you possibly could encounter groups of the opposite realm. I don't know how many dungeons are located in the RvR area of the zones but I bet there's quite a few, especially in the higher tiers. That the dungeons are divided into several wings, just like SM, Naxx and the BC dungeons are in WoW, are great news as well.

Often, in other MMOs, the company will spend a lot of time making sure the beginning of the game is wonderful, but the rest of it can sort of peter off. But we haven’t done that with Warhammer. From start to finish, all the way through, we’ve spent the time and resources necessary to make the entire game compelling.

Hmm, AoC anyone? Hope they mean it as well and not just trying to pick on AoC for their own benefit, which they obiously are but I don't mind as long as they do it right themselves. :P

Everything seems to come together now and hopefully we will see a NDA-lift later this week or next which really would show that a release is drawing near.

Mythic has created some sort of mini-game to produce hype and up their beta sign-ups. Seems to be pretty fun, you collect gold and battle with and against other fans for your realm. Something to do while waiting for open beta to start I thought, made me really happy tbh and as I was eager to try it out I began typing my beta info in the login fields but stopped as I saw the text below.

Start the Realm War now. Join Order or Destruction, Earn Gold to win battles in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The Winning Realm will be rewarded with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in-game prizes.

Woot! You can earn in-game prizes as well! But wait now just a second...

...North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

There ain't any EU version!!! WTF!? Alright, calm down now. There has to be a EU site as well somewhere, right? Apparantly, no, there are no EU version to be found. After realizing this, some more nerd-rage arouse and I have to leave the computer to grab something to eat and calm down.

I really, really, hope that this doesn't show how things will be done in the future. With that I mean that customers from NA will be the privileged ones and that the EU will be considered as second-grade customers. Sort of how I've heard it was in DAoC. Since it has something to do with beta maybe it's just GOA that are slow as usual, they haven't even fixed their site yet. Let's just hope their new one doesn't use the ridiculous amount of flash their current one does and that it gets updated at a reasonable speed. Flash is evil and it shouldn't be several days between the NA site and GOA's, imo.

/rant off

Alright, it got delivered today and after I've played it a few hours I have to say that it's definitely an ok game. Though you have to play it on delta (hardest) if you don't want to rush through the entire game in a few hours, at least from what I've seen so far. Maybe it gets harder later. That the koreans actually speak korean and not english is a big plus as well. Why they don't do that below delta is beyond me, really.

The best part is without a doubt the explosions. We all know explosions are fun, but this game with its graphics makes them more enjoyable than ever. It's a shame my computer can't manage more than medium graphics with a few high settings. It still looks amazing though. The biggest problems with games like this (singleplayer games) are, and has always been, their longevity. Especially singleplayer fps games. Crysis may have some more replayability than most of them though, because of the fact that you can destroy most things and that the explosions are awesome. Two things that are gold for people like me who enjoys bashing stuff beyond recognition. :P