Select My Adventure: Frustrations in Warhammer Return of Reckoning

Memory is a fun old thing. It can lie to you directly and convince you of something that probably wasn’t there. Or it remembers something from the past without considering that something has changed between the memory and reality. I’m not sure if that’s the case in my current case Warhammer Online: Return of Reckoning Go back or I’m just being stupid, but I’m starting to think maybe I’ve misremembered how this game plays.

Or maybe it’s just because melee classes are completely useless in anything but PvE. I don’t know.

First of all, I should go through my experiences on the Order side, where I have created a warrior-priest according to the survey results. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of Warhammer Empire of Man, either fantasy or sci-fi, but I was at least intrigued by the idea because it seemed like the Order-side analogue of the Disciple of Khaine course, the I had I remember liking it before.

In fact, the assumption proved correct as I slowly progressed through character levels, except that instead of dual swords and creepiness, this class uses a hammer and a paladin-style holy light to perform its aggressive heal. At first it was pretty meager for a few levels as I was draining the resource that powers my attack and direct heals, but over time I’d brought in a few resource builders to make up for the resource wasters that were keeping me in a state of eternal invincibility. With the right rotation, I even managed to defeat a creature five times my height.

Of course, that was all in PvE. All of that vanished out of nowhere as I queued for the battlefield, as game after game, fight after fight, I was slaughtered over and over again with almost no retaliation or concern. I was made a footnote in someone else’s KDA sheet. It definitely didn’t help that it seemed like I was going to find the exact same damn battlefield every damn time, but the location wasn’t that important, it was the helplessness and uselessness I had to endure over and over again.

At first I thought it might have been the bad gear. After all, I was just getting started and figured I had to make it in order to get the renown rank, experience points, and currency I needed to gear up. That didn’t seem to matter though, because after upgrading to better gear and being sent back to the same battlefield, I got rolled over again. I may have slightly delayed the inevitable, but it didn’t change the inevitable.

I’m honestly not sure where I’m going wrong here or what to do about it at this point. The one thing I do all the time is get knocked down, and that’s hardly an incentive to do things, even for a casual activity like the PvP battlegrounds queue. It’s not because I’m losing – I’m used to losing in both video games and meatspace – but because of the absolute speed and ferocity with which I’m losing. I don’t just get beaten; I’ll be turned into a puddle.

This has led me to believe that maybe melee characters just aren’t for me, which is frustrating since healing by attack is one of the most interesting MMORPG archetypes out there. I enjoyed something like that TSWI enjoyed shooting friends with heals Wild Starand I also remember liking that kind of mechanic in a class CRACK. This is such a cool teaching style, but in WAR RORIt feels like you’re just a punching bag.

As I said, maybe it’s more mental than actually mechanical. Finally, there are a lot of melee characters on more than a few of the battlegrounds I was wiped out on. Maybe it was just numbers. Maybe it was a lack of concentration. Maybe I’m just terrible and should stop.

Unfortunately I can’t quite. My stubbornness won’t allow me. The deadline of this article format does not allow me. I’ve got a week of this frustration to overcome and then I can live the rest of my life and y’all can stop reading the annoyed grumblings of someone who sucks at PvP. So that means there’s still a few polls to do, and after that I’ll be taking Bree’s advice and pinning this column for about a month while I focus on a new series about gaming , which I really enjoy.

The first survey will again be about focus, although this time it will be a little different. I’m wondering if I should switch to a PvE focus for a while, try a ranged class in PvP instead to see if maybe that’s the issue that makes it more bearable, or if I should stick with the first character that I created should look again and see if maybe that’s the missing link. The way I feel I don’t think either answer is a solution. This game’s PvE is your standard theme park MMORPG, albeit this one with player developers trying to improve on the original game; Being around doesn’t guarantee I won’t be turned to paste; and I have strayed so far from my disciple that it will probably only cripple me further. But I want to at least try. Just once more.

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The second poll is about the ranged class above, assuming that option wins. Of course, there’s a chance that those choices won’t make it into the next article, but if the voices shift towards PvE play or ranged character PvP play, I’ll do a ranged game or two.

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Voting closes Friday, July 21 at 1:00pm EDT!

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the weekly column where you can join Chris on fantastical adventures as he journeys through mystical lands – and choose his fate. That’s a good thing, because he can often be quite an indecisive person, unless he’s ordering a burger.

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