”Can computers make you cry?”

A look at the rollercoaster of Ratboy’s Warhammer Online experiences

So as usual it seems that whoever thinks up our Common Content articles once again neglected to realize that Warhammer Online isn’t out yet. It’s pretty hard to write about the “biggest emotional experience” I’ve had with a game that isn’t even released yet… of course that’s not going to stop me. So I’ve decided to write about my current thoughts and feelings about Warhammer Online, the game, the hype, and even the developers and my interactions with them.

Now would be a good time to point out (in bitterness of course) that I was NOT the first TenTonHammer staff member to check out the Warhammer Online booth at E3, instead Ethec and Ralph’ hit the Mythic booth first. During the writing of our first batch of articles, Ralph’ eagerly came up to me and spilled all the beans on what they had seen at the Mythic booth, but more importantly he said that Mythic was ‘disappointed’ that they didn’t get to see me right away and something to the effect of “where’s Ratboy!?”. Sufficed to say this was very pleasing for me, because it shows that they actually know who I am and that there’s some sort of “community” forming out here. That made me feel Happy.

Allow me to talk about the person who is the “online gatekeeper” of Warhammer Online; Sanya Thomas. I started emailing Sanya back in the early days when the TenTonHammer WAR site first opened up, and we had a good exchange of information. At that time I didn’t know Sanya aside from a few quaint emails we had back and forth, but that would change about the time of E3 2006. Despite a nearly disastrous first meeting with Sanya, where my colleague Messiah referred to WAR as “World of Warhammer”, there was quite a good interview to be had between Sanya and myself. Even at the Mythic Tavern party it seemed like everyone was getting along and despite being in bright yellow T-Shirts the TenTonHammer staff were all well received. As of right now Sanya and I have been back/forthing emails and I’ve even got some awesome ‘schwag’ to give away as prizes in an upcoming contest. Up to now my interactions with Sanya and Mythic have been Good.

Post E3 the biggest source of community emotion that I’ve seen come up was the result of my Warhammer is not WoW article that I wrote for the site. Apparently I was able to stir up quite a bit of anger and gratitude from both sides of the gaming fence, based on the number and detail of the emails I received on the subject. Unlike my time back in WoW this article was able to gain quite a direct reaction and I gathered it from the twenty-some emails I received in the first day of the article being online. It seems that unlike other MMO’s I’ve been involved in, WAR has a very passionate following of dedicated players who don’t have any problems saying what they’re thinking and letting everyone be aware of it. Vocal players make my life even more Fun.

Next up I’ll mention my time in the Warhammer Alliance IRC channel, mainly because it’s one of the few places aside from IM where I can see real-time reaction from players on WAR issues. The most recent thing that comes to mind in the IRC channel is the uproar when the War Herald held their screenshot scavenger hunt contest. Everyone in the room was going about finding screenshots and giving each other hints on possible places to find them, all the while everyone was still discussing WAR related stuff and even arranging online Bloodbowl games against one another. It was a good thing to see players who were so interested in a simple contest (even though there was a beta involved) and even some of the site leads who were exempt from the contest started to give it a go. For the record I stand proudly by my thirty-two discovered screenshots… really I am quite Proud.

Given the WAR community thus far, I can say they’ve already brought up some good emotional reactions and I can only see more in the future. First person to make me cry in laughter gets a free WAR pin (just making sure you’re reading). All I hope is that the ‘pre-game’ community will be as good to interact with as opposed to when the game itself goes live and we get a whole new influx of players. I would hate to see the WAR community turn into ‘certain other’ games where it’s impossible to talk about something intelligent, or arrange fun things in public without cries of “St00pid” or “ZOMG!11! n00b!”. If there’s one thing I feel about WAR however, it’s Hopeful.

I’ve pretty much summed up my emotional experiences with WAR thus far. As I’ve stated, there are a lot of good community members out there that make this game great and enjoyable even though it isn’t even released yet. If things keep up as they are you can be assured that WAR will have an awesome and enjoyable community to be a member of. If you skimmed over everything up to this point I pretty much summed up my thoughts with the bolded words at the end of every paragraph. I am after all a big Jerk.

-Ratboy done...

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