Semi-WAR Hiatus

So.. because of problems that are awaiting us in T3 / T4 in WAR.. (Fort crashes, keep swaping, Renown rewards not working, itemization, PvE Dungeon lockouts, CTD issues... to name a few).. I decided, that since WoW has 12 Million subs now.. and a new class I've never played... why not, I'll give it a shot... there's a 10 day free trial.. get to try out the new Death Knight, take the epic'd druid out for a spin in the lvl80 content... see what its all about. 

Holy Crap. 

1) Northrend is amazing, visually. I

t's still the WoW art style (cartoony).. but thats their thing. For a WoW zone(s) its very nice. It's got depth, a lot of different hubs... and a *lot* of players running around in it. 

2) It's all PvP Contested territory... all of the new content is. I got the crap ganked out of me on the druid by a couple of drive-by lvl80's... but I did manage a 7 minute fight vs. an even level pally and raped a level 68 Warlock... poor guy =(

3) Death Knight is.... 2 parts PWN, 1 Part OWN.  Man these things are amazing... I mean, they're BEGGING for the nerf bat tho (Blizzard isn't, typically, very heavy-handed with it tho). A Plate-wearing tank, with a pet, with AoE attacks, 2 passive DD procs, DoT's, Dual Weilding, Self Healing, Aura-wearing, Self buffing piece of ooey-gooey goodness. It's also a completely different mechanic than WoW has (rune system) and makes combat extremely fast. 

4) Leveling - they've increase again the speed of leveling for the 30-50 bracket, 60-70 and adjusted the 70-80 to be in line with the previous changes... so you can solo quest, or group instances and feel like you're actually accomplishing something  in just an hour or two (59-60 took me right at 1.5hrs). 

Differences between WAR and WoW... after playing both:

• WoW's art style... while I don't really care for it, they carry it throughout the entire game nicely. WAR's graphics still, to me, are 'nicer'.  
  
• WAR's humor... I think WAR pokes a little more fun @ the entire genre + grim Warhammer humor; WoW's taken a more.. poke fun @ the gamer culture aspect (jar of epic tears dropping off PVP kills = I lol'd). 
  
• Combat Pace - this was odd, but WoW's combat is much more fluid, responsive and fast. WAR's in comparison seems extremely slowed down and less responsive... almost like WAR's GCD doesn't work quite right
• Abilties - They're pretty close here; WoW has now added Knockbacks and 'pulls'.. which is funny. WoW's abilities have a little more utility and more group-synergy... WAR's seem more DPS straighforward. 
• Active / Responsive fights - Man, there's a lot of !@#$ going on in a WoW fight. It's hard to keep up with all the various debuffs, buffs, temp abilities and pops (reactionaries). This makes combat feel even faster
• XP for RvR - Really, after 4years you'd think WoW would've learned by now. 
• Dyes - Again...  4 years? Come on Blizzard, get with the program.

Something else WoW has changed.. is they're revamping (or have already) their talent trees so that each line isn't pidegeon holed into a specific role. While a Protection Paladin may be better prepared than a Retribution (DPS) pally to tank... that doesn't mean that the Prot Pally can't DPS (somewhat).. which is a big change from their previous Tallent system. 

All in all I actually had fun.... I've leveled my Death Knight from 55 to 61 in 'roughly' 2 days, but pretty much just 1... doing 57-61 tonight. I've gotta lot of experience playing WoW (I use to flip accounts for extra $$$$ for those that didn't know).. and really it was a lot of fun tonight. 

Have I *really* PvP'd, like running an arena (not 80!) or goofing off in AV or WSG? Not yet

Have I ran a 10-man or 25-man Heroic in Northrend? Nope

Have I ran a regular instance in Northrend? Nope

Have I ran a instance with my DK? lol yeah, 4 DK's and a Priest tore Hellfire ramps up, lmao. 

I mean, I haven't really done a lot of what Northrend has to offer, and the DK doesn't really take off until.. 65-70 (I've got a mob-TTK atm of about 4-5sec tho, lmao). But really... WotLK seems like it's kind of force to be Reckoned with. It hasn't sold 4.5million copies already for no reason I guess *shrug*

EDIT:  Think of that revenue stream that Blizzard has... $14month per account. 12 Million subs... then 4 Million WotLK Boxes in 3 months @ 40 a piece.  Thats..  168 Million per month in Subscriptions, with an additional 160 Million in box Sales... so since the November WotLK roll out... 2 months @ 168mil / month + 160Mil retail = $496 mil... take out operating costs, but still... man, what a revenue stream.