New career has been published by Mythic and rumours are, that is also available in WAR beta. To summon it up, it’s Dark Elf healing / life-tap / mana-tap / DoT class, that has some basic anytime heals, however to use his major healing power, he needs to gain points by causing damage to the enemy. And he does that close-up, using his dual-wielding blades. It’s a cousin of DAoC’s Warden / WoW’s Shaman, but he is forced to fight in order to effectively heal.

Disciple of Khaine (podcast #19, 21st of December 2007)

Disciple of Khaine presentation on official site

Just when we started to believe, that beta tests are no more than a demo version of an incoming game, existing purely to boost title’s publicity, Mythic surprised us all for Christmas!

They actually listened to beta players and changed a few core concepts, starting with – open RvR (realm vs realm) combat! It’s no secret, Mythic wants to steal part of WoW’s huge player-base with superior PvP content, which WoW seriously lacks. So W.A.R. is based around – war! Constant battle between Order and Destruction, with players helping their side in 3 different ways:

• PvE (quests, tasks, …)
• instanced RvR (very much like WoW battlegrounds)
• open field RvR (very much like DAoC frontiers)

Each way accumulates different amount of Victory points to your realm (and to your character). Mythic’s old plan was, that instanced RvR will gain most points (because teams inside instances are balanced, therefore battle is somehow fair for all participants), however – after going through beta players feedback (old DAoC players *cough*), they decided MMORPG players don’t really want FPS-like pew-pew, but massive large scale WAR! Therefore, the main Victory points will be accumulated by conquering open world RvR objectives. Yay!

So, nothing new, you’ll say… we had that in TBC, and it was boring – running here and there, taking pillars and running to the next one… So, Mythic reinvented something we all loved in DAoC – they brought back keeps! They start with simple traps in Tier 1, NF like towers in Tier 2, up to big keeps with main tower, outside wall, lots of space and – no ladders (thank god!) in Tier 4. In order to prevent fast sneaky tagging of those crucial points, keeps will have doors, which will need to be destroyed and they will also have NPC guards. It will be possible to take the keep with a group of an unknown size, afterwards one of the participating players will be able to claim the keep for his guild, meaning his guild banners will start to pup up all over the place and they will be responsible for defence of that keep. It was not confirmed yet, but since more or less all keep mechanics was taken over from DAoC, it is very much likely, that guilds will earn some kind of reward points for holding the keep and will likely be able to upgrade the keep with better walls, NPC guards and alike. Hell yeah!

It will be possible to breach doors and other obstacles on your way to capture the keep with normal attacks you have in the game, however in order to help you with massive upgraded doors, you will be able to use – siege weapons! Battering ram on offensive and boiling oil on defensive side were confirmed sofar, and judging on DAoC’s siege weapons, the more players will swing the ram, the more damage they’ll do.

So… as it looks at the moment, Mythic is moving away from WoW concept towards DAoC concept, which is – good! There are rumours, that keep siege mechanic will be tested very soon in WAR beta, between the armies of Order and Chaos. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

RvR Sieges and Keeps (podcast #18, 21st of December 2007)