Trust me, you are totally evil.

I'm not one to go all squeamish in a game. There are good guys, bad guys, and those in between. And in the end, it's just a game and, as far as I know, no orphan souls are being used to power the servers.

But, the "Evil Elves" in Warhammer Online are pretty evil. And I'm not talking about concerted evil as a crusade against the other side which is good. I'm also not talking about "take over the world" evil. I mean "the script says really really really REALLY evil, so I'm going over the top" evil. We're talking about total chaos. To the point that after I was in the second zone, I seriously wondered how these guys manage to stay together in an organized group. It's rampant chaos and random acts of violence. Does the extra step of sticking heads on pikes really help our side? Or is it just busy work? If I were an evil elf starting up the chain of command, I would think that after a while I would look around and say, "Maybe the good elves are right, I don't need every single commanding officer telling me I'm worthless and I'm a jerk. Especially after I just helped them out and saved their ass or whatever." The defection rate has got to be really high.

I spent time on a low level quest poisoning someone, then covering up the attempt, then taking credit for killing some random dude who is being blamed for the covering up of the attempt. Even the Klingons figured out it was easier to just kill people and say, "He sucked and I have some better ideas" than to try and write plots for a CSI show. Evil for the sake of evil just isn't a good system of governing.

I bring all this up because during my time playing the totally evil elves, I actually thought to myself, "this seems a little too evil for me." I know that these naughty elves, as I like to call them, are supposed to be hedonistic, selfish, jerks. And, at some level I can barely make out the semblance of some desire to reclaim their homeland. I think those can go a long way for motivation as a person playing as a dark elf.

Hooooogan!

I pre-ordered Warhammer Online. This act of signing up in advance to purchase the game entitled me to a "Preview Weekend", "Open Beta", and a "Head Start". I think there's also some trinkets in the game, but I don't care much about those gimmicks.

The "Head Start" let me get in the game a couple days before the boxes were on the shelf. This was kinda nice. I figured that since I had pre-ordered, I could wait for the box to show up, put the key into the accounting system and keep playing. I didn't realize that a day or so after the grand opening, I would find myself locked out and waiting for my retail box to show up in the mail. I guess that if I had known that in advance, I might have made some different decisions.

Overall, regardless of the quality of the game itself, the entire pre-order, beta, head start deal was a difficult to understand system. I ended up, by pre-ordered, with four keys and no real idea when and where to use them. Most of the times and dates for events to start or end were unknown and unpublished on Mythic's web site. Would it have been so hard to have a calendar with start and stop dates for these events? Or was the game being shoved out the door too fast?

Nugget of Wisdom

If there's one thing being a guild leader has taught me, it's that doing your best will be rewarded by the constant reminder that everyone else cares more than you and does less than you. So don't bother.