Posts with tag Keyboard Turner

I was looking through some of the career (class) descriptions over at Warhammer Online, EA Mythic's much-anticipated MMORPG which touts a rich PvP experience as one of its selling points, and happened to go over their description of the combat system. Listening to one of their amusing podcasts, I got the impression that some careers (classes) move faster than others. This struck me as odd, if only because I've grown accustomed to something we take for granted in World of Warcraft. In WoW, all classes and races move at the same speed. With the exception of enchants, spells, or talents, all characters move at exactly the same pace. Size changes that perception somewhat, with Tauren seeming to move at a plodding step and Gnomes waltzing around like Oompa-loompas hopped up on too much caffeine.

The martial arts is all about speed, about movement where there needs to be movement. More importantly, it is about freedom of movement. Speed is essential, but it can also be arbitrary because there are so many factors that affect it. Latency, computer power... all these things contribute to one's speed or reaction time -- or more accurately, how that reaction time translates into action within the game. That's another matter altogether. What we're going to look at today is movement. How we move, how fast we move, and how we can move better. When fighting a computer-controlled mob, with the exception of scripted events or certain boss phases, there is very little urgency to move. It's easy to kill most mobs by standing still and just attacking or casting spells. PvP, on the other hand, is all about movement. Standing still is tantamount to certain death.