Hello, all! Long time, no post, I know...

After looking over all of the excellent Toronto Games Day material I felt recommitted to telling my WoW friends about WAR. I knew they were going to ask me about game details and mechanics, so I decided to have an internal conversation with myself before talking to them to get into the right mindset. I thought it might be helpful to other people who are thinking of talking to WoW players, so here are a few of the thoughts I had in my head:

On action points and morale...

"You've been telling me about WAR for a while now but you haven't told me how it actually works. How do you do stuff in WAR: cast spells, special attacks, and all that?"

So, you're going to probably panic when I say this, but imagine for a minute that all of the careers play like a rogue does.

"WHAT!?!? OMG, I *hate* rogues!!!"

Okay, now that we've got that out of your system, let's take a look at what I actually meant by this. In WoW you've got three basic systems for how to perform actions: rage, energy, and mana. Rogues use energy, and when you think about how energy works in WoW then you've got a very good idea about how action points work in WAR.

"But energy sucks in WoW; why would I want energy?"

But why does it suck? The main drawback of energy in WoW is that you can use two Rogue actions, go from full energy to no energy, and now you're playing a waiting game to get your energy back. Boooooring, indeed. However, in WAR they've fixed that by changing the ratio of maximum action points to average action points per action.

"Math-speak overload..."

In WoW you have a maximum of 100 energy and most actions use 40-60 energy, meaning that after two actions you're out of energy. In WAR you have 500 action points and most actions take 60-140 action points, meaning that you can easily perform five or six actions before you run out of action points. And after those five or six you've probably regenerated enough action points for another one or two actions.

"Five or six actions? That's nothing! With full mana in WoW I can do a lot more than that."

Yeah, but at what cost? What happens when you're in the middle of a fight and you run out of mana? And most much time have you wasted with drinking after combat? Mana is nice because it allows you to 'burst' your actions all at once, but it has its own significant drawbacks. Action points take the best of both worlds: you can burst your actions at the beginning of a fight while also having staying power during a fight and low downtime between fights.

"Action points don't sound too bad, but I hope that there aren't any other similarities to Rogues."

Well, now that you mention it...

"Oh noes!"

It's actually a good thing. In addition to using energy Rogues build up combo points and have certain abilities that require combo points. Along these lines every career in WAR has something called morale. Morale builds up during a fight similarly to combo points and you can use morale to perform special actions that are more powerful than your normal actions.

"Yeah, but combo points suck because they only apply to one enemy at a time. If you kill that enemy or switch targets or whatever then you lose all of your combo points."

Not in WAR. Your morale stays with you, not your target. You can switch targets without worrying about losing morale. You can even save up your morale in one battle and take it along with you to the next. It's a lot more flexible in WAR than it ever was in WoW and every career gets it.

On tactics and talents...

"WoW's cool because you can really personalize your character through talents. Does WAR have talents at all?"

Yes. In fact, it has two different types of talents.

"Two types of talents?"

The first kind of talent is like you have in WoW: different talent trees, different tiers in the trees, some talents have others as prerequisites, etc. very similarly to WoW. In addition to these types of talents there's something else called tactics.

"How do tactics work?"

Tactics are pretty much exactly like talents in their effects: extra damage, special abilities, added effect to an action, etc. What makes tactics different is that you can change them at any time. Similarly to talent points limiting the number of talents you can have, there are tactics points which limit the number of tactics you can have. However, unlike talents you can unspend and respend your tactics points whenever you want.

"Whoa."

Whoa, indeed. This means you have the flexibility to customize your character to a particular situation. It also means that you and your friend can be playing the same career, have the same talent build, and still be playing significantly different characters because you're using different tactics.

On healing...

"One of the things I don't like about WoW is that healing is boring: wait, look at health bars, heal, repeat. Is WAR doing anything to change that?"

It will, indeed. In fact, there's going to be six different types of healers.

"Yeah, well, WoW has lots of different types of healers, too, and they all heal the same way."

Yeah, they do, and that's not really having different types of healers because they all just stand around and cast healing spells. WAR will have solid, real differences in how healing works between different careers.

"Like what?"

Say you're playing a Paladin in WoW. Now imagine that every time you bashed someone's head in with your hammer you got a bonus to healing. Add to this special abilities which bash people's heads in harder and give you an even bigger bonus to healing. The Paladin who deals the most damage is also the one who will get the most healing bonuses. That's a taste of what playing a Warrior-Priest might be like.

"That's one way to heal. Any others?"

Sure thing. Say you're playing a Warlock in WoW. You know how they have a spell called Siphon Life which drains life from a target and gives it to you? Imagine a version of Siphon Life which is stronger and heals not just you but your party members as well. Also imagine you have a spell which you can use to drain life from everyone you've put a debuff on and gives it to your party. The warlock who deals the most damage is also a warlock who can possibly provide the most healing. This is a taste of what playing a Zealot might be like.

"But now healing is going to be harder because you have more to worry about!"

You say harder, I say more challenging. With the added challenge comes excitement and fun, which is what healing in WoW seemed to lack.