.I just wanted to share my story here about what I remember from what happened 10 years ago, back in 2012 when I first played Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning when it was live. Although I started World of Warcraft vanilla in 2005 as my first mmorpg and quit in late 2008 on like the first day wotlk came out, I didn't touch another mmorpg for years after that. Until, I remember giving that genre another chance when I first stumbled upon the 2 CGI cinematics for this game on Youtube in the early 2010's, after that I knew I HAD to play this game. I remember buying the original 2-disc physical copy of the game at my local, in-person EB Games for like $40 and I remember talking to one of the customer service agents on the telephone from Mythic Entertainment to subscribe to the game, it was $15 I think a month before it went free in November 2013 so I bought a 6-month sub for around $65.94. I played a Zealot on a NA server, but I forgot her name?
, whatever. I remember leveling my toon to 40 and doing rvr keeps in T3 and an Altdorf city siege, but I also loved the PVE questing which I spent alot of time doing alot of heavy questing in Tiers1-3 for Chaos. One thing I will always remember, is when I was stuck on a particular quest in Tier 2 about some creepy graveyard crypt and I contacted an in-game GM from Mythic Entertainment who kindly helped me with the quest, they were always really nice to me and treated me as a valued customer. Something that Blizzard didn't care about for me, I remember thinking about joining cata in 2010 and their customer support was so rude and nasty to me that it killed my interest in that game. Anyway, I remember going on the W:AOR forums and noticing the small skeleton crew that EA reduced it too when it was live, they were mostly just relegated to fixing bugs and doing balance I think. I remember later playing in Land of the Dead and doing some questing there and engaging in this HUGE rvr battle near a big pyramid that had over 70?-120? people in front of it, ton of fun. One thing though, is that I remember buying this strange Warhammer Online game-time dvd at a local Goodwill shop in the summer of 2012 and it had a free gift code for an account entitlement, and it gave any of my characters the ability to make a small campfire. I noticed in this private server though that the entire Account Entitlements feature doesn't work at all, but I hope they will bring it back someday to unlock. **I remember on live creating a campfire this one time right in front of a destruction Marauder who was charging right at me before their monstrous zerg train proceeded in response by steamrolling me and the small warband I was in 
, I think I was a SM. I also remember making a goblin Shaman and doing alot of rvr too in T2-T3.**This is my second time coming back to ROR though. I originally kept an eye on this private server as a lurker ever since I heard the news about WarEMU in 2014, but I remember when the game was REALLY alpha back then like when it was really unstable, tier2-4 werent unlocked yet, the game was heavily infested with software bugs that caused the client game and the servers to crash all the time and so I just decided to wait until the future for the game to really be playable at a beta-level before I jumped in the water. **I joined around early/summer 2018 before BFA launched and I and made a WL. I even remember talking with one of the dev's named "Azarael" in worldchat when I was in a dungeon group doing altdorf sewers before he got removed over some drama or something, this was at a time when I heard the news that the ROR team got hacked and someone stole some code and tried making a competing ROR server but I'm not surprised 4 years later that they inevitably failed because the amazing quality of ROR and it's productive staff has obviously stood the test of time.**
After quitting Wow-Shadowlands to save money on it's overpriced sub for low-quality content, and because I don't take the game seriously anymore, only as something to play as a casual soloer for pve because the pvp in that game is so unbalanced with PVE gear creep it's not even funny, it's REALLY bad. Even all pvp tanks in Wow have a 40% increased damage debuff since WOD which makes them more useless in pvp while tanks in ror pvp are useful with guard and other stuff. I may come back to wow someday honestly to take a burnout break from this game, but I won't be buying any more expansions since I don't plan to raid, dungeon, or pvp in it which is required to engage in it's current xpac-story so I will just pve old content to do the questing alone.
In a nutshell, the main characters in World of Warcraft are the horde who are deemed strong/smart/feared while the alliance are looked down upon by Blizzard as the losers who are considered weak/dumb/pathetic. **Meanwhile, in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, both factions are depicted as tough/clever/and zealous in the quests and their design/balance was both taken seriously by Mythic Entertainment during development from 2005-2008.** I remember watching Paul Barnett and the other dev diaries on Youtube in 2011/2012 and it really helped me make the original decision back then when I was on the fence to join the game when it was live, they really had a fiery passion for the game which Blizzard completely lacks for World of Warcraft, the difference is day and night compared to how Blizzard is today. I recently heard Blizzard even removed faction barriers already in 9.2 for Shadowlands and it allows horde/alliance to play with each other in pvp/arena/m+ dungeons/raids. If that doesn't remove the "War" in warcraft then I don't know what does.
**With this game though, I feel a sense of fierce faction pride for Order though that still has the "WAR" in WARHAMMER! and everyone can feel it when they pvp.** I feel that pvp as a main focus of the game is more interesting than wow's main focus on pve, which is interacting with the same scripted bot content over and over again, while with pvp in this game it's never the same because people are unpredictable to play with or fight against. Even though ROR will have permanent content drought after whenever Land of the Dead finally comes out, the existence of ROR's general cyclical/seasonal content and the varied nature of T4 content is diverse enough to keep me constantly engaged and take this game seriously in the long term. **I'm very happy that the dev's here were somehow able to implement the Dwarf capital Karaz-a-Karak!, I was shocked when I heard the news on Youtube about it because I really thought that they were never made/existed. I just feel sad that the High elf capital: Lothern was never touched or made though by EA, I would have LOVED to see what it was like though, especially the lore-important area of the Great Vortex. Anyway, I'm happy to be here as a future, upcoming new Swordmaster to help make Order more stronger when I get to 40 in T4 eventually, and thank you for letting me play!
.**
