Who am I?

My name is Patrick. In games I usually go by the name Gerbil, for reasons lost in the mists of time. I've been playing computer games since the early 90s, and my MMO experience includes a lot of WoW and a bit of Guild Wars, LOTRO, Age of Conan and now Warhammer Online.

I played in a part of the beta about six months ago, and I was not very impressed. At that point you had to play level 31 template characters, and part of the reason I was not impressed was that the options were overwhelming and without context. I played it a bit, and quit disappointed.

About 2 months ago I began to hear very positive things around messageboards and gaming blogs that I frequent. People were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the new beta push, and a lot of the aspects of the game they were enthusiastic sounded exciting. This coincided with a time when my interest in WoW was beginning to wane, so I began to check it out. Eventually I decided that the weight of positive opinions and descriptions of great improvements made it worth checking out, so I placed a preorder and got into the open beta.

Now the servers have launched for real, and I am playing on the Anlec Open RvR Oceanic server (as an Australian, and with bloodthirsty friends, this option made the most sense).

During the open beta i tried out a number of classes. Initially I thought that the magus would be my main class, as I have enjoyed playing a warlock in WoW and this sounded similar (I also enjoy casters when I have played Warhammer Fantasy tabletop in the past). Unfortunately I didn't enjoy my magus character, so I tried out a number of other character classes.

I was quite surprised to find that the Disciple of Khaine is probably the class I most enjoy. I find this surprising because while I definitely enjoy healing classes (resto druid main in WoW), I don't usually enjoy melee dps (I know DoK is not super dps, but it's still definitely part of the class mechanic). Still, i enjoyed the combination of DPS and healing, and i found the soul essence mechanic very fun, although i find myself dying in scenarios far too often from being undisciplined.

The Disciple of Khaine class will probably be the major focus of this blog, but I will also include other stuff. I intend to have at least a few alts. One will definitely be a Chaos Chosen, as I tried this class in beta and also enjoyed it immensely. The role of tank in WAR is going to be enormously fun i think - professional bastard.

I will try and to some analysis down the road about the DoK class. I've never been a hardcore theorycrafter in any game (I simply lack the aptitude for maths), but I've always wanted to make sure that any character I've played is as effective as possible. I will also try and collect and link to useful information resources as I come across them.