“Come on. Do I look like the mother of the future?” - Sarah Connor

by John Zakour

When I first learned that Wrath of the Lich King would include siege stage battlegrounds I wasn’t all that thrilled.  My initial thoughts were along the lines, “Well that’s kind of nice I guess but not for me.”  I like my BGs the way BGs are meant to be man versus man or elf or dwarf or troll or undead or you get the point.  We didn’t need no stinking machines mucking up the battlegrounds.

No. After a couple of weeks at being at level 80 and experiencing Wintergrasp and Strands of the Ancients battlegrounds I must say Sieges are a blast.  Now I see why Attila the Hunn enjoyed them so much, they do give you a nice feeling of power.  My first couple of time in Wintergrasp I was just getting my feet wet.  I basically ran around trying to either destroy the incoming siege machines if we were on defense or support the machines if I was on offense.  I really had very little idea of what was going on (I am old you know) so I just wanted to get my feet wet and the lay of the land.

The thing is, when you got these big bad machine rolling all over the place, sooner or later you gotta try em.  Once I got into one of the machines, I realized there was no going back.  Maybe it’s because I am a little 13K hit point mage and get easily squished going one on one with most people, but there’s something about rolling over other players and knocking down buildings that’s a rush.  Sure, I still don’t know my way all that well around Wintergrasp.  I know the general direction of the fort and where you get the catapults and other war machines and where you can man the defensive guns but that’s all I need to know.  With that little bit of knowledge I am able to knock down walls and grind up the bad guys doesn’t quite matter if I know exactly why I am doing it.

A few hints to make your siege experience more enjoyable.  First off in Wintersgrasp make sure you get invited to the raid group.  If you want to get credits for your nearby assists in kills you need  to be part of the raid group.  Usually somebody will be say,”whisper me for invite”.  If nobody does,  ask for a general invite.  It helps when you are groups.  Second, you can’t man a machine unless you have a rank and as far as I can tell you have to have a kill or be near the action of the kill to get that first rank.  So as soon as you can run to where all the other blue dots are on the screen and get into the action.  Once you see you have a rank head to the nearest machine shop and get yourself on a machine.

At first your only choice is catapult but as you grow in rank you get more choices though I like to stick with the catapult because I am familiar with it.  The catapult as pretty good speed and lets you either toss destructive plague barrels through the air or fire flames out the front.  Both can be quite a joy.

Final hint, I play these battlegrounds a bit differently when I am not in a machine I don’t mind at all if I “die”.  The moment I one of my machines gets knocked off I find the largest mob of horde I can and go kamikaze into them, blasting away with all my area of effect spells as well as my mirror image and water elemental.  Sure they cut me down fast, but I do a lot of damage and the faster I get cut down the faster I can res and get back into a catapult.  Ah, the joys of the siege.

John Zakour is a humor / sf/ fantasy writer with an online Master’s degree in Human Behavior. He has written zillions (well, thousands) of gags for syndicated comics and comedians (including: Rugrats, Grimmy, Bound and Gagged, Dennis the Menace, The tonight show and, Joan River’s old TV show.) John also writes his own syndicated comic, Working Daze for United Media. John has been the weekly cartoonist for Geek.com and has sold cartoons or gags to hundreds of journals, magazines and web sites. John also has been a regular contributor to Nickelodeon magazine writing Fairly Odd Parents, Rugrats and Jimmy Neutron comic books. Recently John has started writing Simpsons comics for Bongo comics. John’s has written seven SF novels for Daw books the latest The Flaxen Femme Fatale hit bookstores on December 4th.