By RPS on August 22nd, 2008 at 6:10 pm.
This is not a review. It also isn’t a verdict, or a judgement, or a rating, or anything of the sort. WAR isn’t released yet, there’ll likely be a fair few changes in the final game, elements of it won’t be up and running properly until the servers are jam-packed, and without a doubt none of us have played enough of it to make a really definite judgement. Apart from Jim, who knows full well he won’t be playing it until they put some spaceships in.
What it is a discussion. We’ve been on the WAR closed beta for a few weeks now, and it’s certainly a game we’ve desperately wanted to talk about here. And not simply because we’re British, hence playing Warhammer is fairly synonymous with puberty for us. Also because, well, it’s potentially the most interesting MMO this year. Despite… ah, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what we’ve got to say…
Edit – a little context. The European closed beta differed significantly to the US closed beta in that players were split onto different servers dependent on their language. The net result was four fairly quiet servers instead of one busy one, and that mean the PvP/RvR elements of the game were barely operable. That’s why we don’t discuss ‘em as much as we do the PvE and Public Quests. If you think we shouldn’t be talking about the game at all given that, well, that’s your prerogative, but we disagree. We’re writing about what the game’s European publisher presented us with. Additionally, WAR is far from being just a PvP game – the PvE is substantial and omnipresent, and the reason many people want to play the game. And again – this is not a review. It’s just a cheerful, informal discussion of our experiences on the closed beta.
Jim: Come one, come all, back from your tea and masturbation, to discuss Warhammer: Rage Of Eckoning! First, let’s talk about how much we’ve played. I have created three characters, and played nothing
John: I’ve played a High Elf to 10, a Chaos to 8 and an Orc to 15.
Alec: I’ve made a few characters to poke about with, mostly on the Destruction side
Kieron: I’ve played my Witch Elf up to Level 14 or so. A couple of other really low alts. And some messing around with the level 31 stuff. I haven’t done much of the PvP or RvR stuff yet. Those areas have been quiet when I’ve been playing, it seems.
Jim: John, how do you feel about playing another MMO? Your first since City Of Heroes?
John: I’ve played a bunch of WoW between the two. But it’s an interesting thing. It’s a comfortable place to be, but sometimes I feel like WAR was a bit too comfortable.
John: WAR is good. It’s really, really good. I think they’ve done a stunning job. But it’s also the same as another game.
Jim: What game?
John: WoW.
Jim: Goodness, how dare you.
John: I know! Who’d have thought this would come up?
Alec: They are genuinely trying to take that model further, though
Jim: I’m sure it’s completely different.
Alec: It tries quite hard to make its classes distinct, and your every action is that much more tied into the ongoing struggle
John: That’s true. And the endgame is very different. And the Public Quests, and the instanced Scenarios, and the whole RvR thing – that’s all different. But it feels like a different topping on the same ice cream.
Jim: Alec, how is this making you want to play MMOs again? Aren’t you burned out after months of WoW?
Alec: I took a while to click with WAR precisely because of the initial crushing familiarity, but after a while you pick up on how it’s more focused on giving you what’s fun, not what’s a pain in the arse
Jim: The familiarity is a good thing though, right? In the same way that MMO’s ease of play and comparative lack of skill demands are a good thing? Get people playing…
Alec: I’ve yet to decide entirely about this. There are times when I want to throttle everyone involved for being so cynical, but other times when I entirely appreciate that yes, it’s bringing people in, and is an entry point to hopefully experimenting with stuff outside of their WoW comfort-grind zone. But at the same time, it turns some people off, and it paints them into a corner. Plus it’s depressing that what’s likely to be the biggest MMO of the year – and the biggest step-forward MMO of the year – is hanging on to someone else’s coat-tails
Jim: =But does the game offer enough new shit to keep time-hungry beasts like me interested?
John: I think its physical similarity has an astounding effect on you. A housemate walked in and said, “How come you’re playing WoW again?”
Alec: No, it’s not going to appeal to anyone who’s completely done with the WoW model. It goes beyond it in many ways, but you don’t ever think you’re playing a different sort of game
Jim: Let’s get away from that for a bit, and assume everyone knows what they’re getting themselves in for on that count. John, can you explain those public quests for me.
John: Right, well, you’re toddling along, probably killing ten of something, and then you’re alerted to a quest that’s happening in the area. You can join in without joining a group (although there’s a very smart system that lets you join an impromptu group with others taking part, should you wish to), and what you contribute to the push defines the XP and rewards you receive. They’re generally three stages, and often end in killing a powerful boss, and they’re really rather a lot of fun. They are, without question, WAR’s best feature.
Jim: Alec – public quests?
Alec: The public quests do make a big difference
John: They really do. Every MMO from now on is going to do them.
Alec: It terms of it’s what you want to play a fantasy MMO for – big fight, nice reward, grouping, but without any of the hassle. It’s just there, and instant, no talking required. You get your big monster in about 10 minutes
Jim: That sounds like a great way of getting away from the “massively single-player ” trap
Alec: My concern is it’s overwhelming the game a little. That’s what everyone piles into, and the best rewards only come from doing them multiple times.
Jim: That’s something for patch/tweaks though, right?
John: It really is getting away from that. Mucking in to a general effort – that’s a great feeling.
Alec: But at the same time it’s organically bringing about group play, in the very clever way of dangling a personal carrot in front of you
John: It pushes you into teamplay in other ways too. You’re given quests that are simply to take part in a Scenario.
Alec: That may be at the expense of the standard quests, though. Possibly the RvR stuff too, though it was hard to get a good sense of that from the stuff we were playing a couple of weeks back
[Kieron returns from his tea and masturbation]
Kieron: Hullo!
Jim: Kieron Gillen, we’re talking public quests
John: The standard quests, that I’ve played across all races, are pretty poor. Kill 10 of this, gather 5 of those, and then go tell that guy.
Jim: Girren: public quests?
Kieron: That’s the thing – I agree entirely with the guys that the public quests are the really nifty PvE component.
Kieron: I mean, I’m a level four Witch-elf and I’m already involved in a mass brawl with a bloody dragon.
John: When I spoke to Mythic and asked them what would be the thing that stood out, they said PQs.
Kieron: Yes, but the game is being hyped as a RvR thing. We haven’t done much of that, man.
Kieron: Something Tim E said to me seems relevant – with Warhammer, to have the most fun with it, you have to kind of go with the flow.
Jim: Do you think RvR will matter to the majority of gamers?
Kieron: I suspect it may actually.
John: I think it will have to. The game passionately funnels you into taking part in it. And with a level cap at 40, it’s what the game becomes about.
Kieron: Which is what I mean – rather than in WoW where at a similar part of the game I generally stuck my head down and carried on doing my own thing
Alec: I think the PQs are pushing you into it to a significant extent
John: They very quickly set PQs in RvR zones.
Kieron: In Warhammer, you see what’s happening. Is there a big RvR scrap going down? I’ll go get involved. passing a PQ on the way to something else? Well, why not muck in.
Alec: Yeah, that “well I’m here anyway, and I don’t have to anything other than start hitting things” sentiment pervades
Jim: Will making the MMO *more* multiplayer, be the lesson of Warhammer?
Kieron: The ONLY WAR thing
Alec: It’s the reason it’s important, and not simply A WoW Clone
John: Yeah, it really means that. You CAN skin animals, but really you’re meant to be hitting stuff.
Kieron: (Hell, I was amazed there was crafting in it at all. And I’m also disappointed that Witch Elves can’t skin elves to make clothes out of it)
John: I think it’s going to be a huge success primarily because it apes familiar MMOs enough that people instinctively know what they’re doing, but it also is a game that’s deliberately built around that endgame world of epic battle. Rather than sticking it on the end so the hardcore have something to do.
Alec: My concern with the PQs and the RvR both is that it really messes up the game’s geography. It’s not a world filled with events – it’s more like wandering around a science museum, and stopping off at the exhibits that have pushy-buttons and flickering lights. It’s really unconvincing as a place – it’s these pockets of activities within their own weird, insular bubbles, but far too close too each other. There’s really no sense that you can explore.
John: I didn’t find that at all. I found the PQs occuring naturally between towns, or in contested zones.
Kieron: I disagree too actually, though I know what Alec gets at. Thing is, for me, it’s not meant to be a world. It’s meant to be a warzone. Those pockets of areas on the maps are individual skirmishes going on, and in terms of giving character to individual conflicts – at least for the Dark Elf stuff – it does it well.
John: There’s these old ruins at the bottom of a hill, near a town in the Greenskin area, and on the border of a RvR zone. It has an epic PvE PQ going on, occasionally with enemy players getting mixed up in. It’s an awesome site, and feels like it makes sense to be there.
Alec: That’s the thing – you can’t wander anywhere without some message popping up on screen. It feels artificial to that extent. I want to feel like I’ve found this stuff, not that it’s dropped in my lap.
Kieron: Like – say – this whole forest area off the main path where the elves are counterattacking via these traps, and there’s a low level skirmish going on between the two. perpetually, as it’s a standard PvE MMO, but decently enough.
Alec: It’s not a critical failing, but it’s made it hard for me to get a sense of place.
Kieron: I’ll give you that those messages can be intrusive. But I think the alternative is worse. “Where’s the public quest again?”
Alec: I’d make them further apart and shown on the map, or shown on a map once you speak to an obvious NPC in town
Kieron: Wow – lots more walking. That’s the thing – I like its tightness. I like things like not having to kneel and eat food to recover health.
John: All praise the super-fast healing!
Alec: No, not lots more walking, just a bit more breathing space
Kieron: Stuff like that absolutely stopped me playing WoW. I have a very low threshold for boredom.
Alec: Yes, it’s identified a shedload of WoW annoyances to get rid of – whilst retaining plenty of others
John: What about the Tome of Knowledge? That was the other Big New Thing, and was the thing I was most looking forward to.
Kieron: The Tome’s neat, but I honestly haven’t used it much.
Alec: I’ve used the Tome to check quest details, and that’s it
John: I’m really let down by the Tome. For me it’s become one of those irritating things that flashes on the screen that I just click on to clear it.
Kieron: What’s it actually *meant* to do?
John: And it makes getting at quest details a real fiddle. I assume a hotkey for going straight to quests will be added eventually. It was meant to be this alternative to RvR.
Alec: It’s an awful lot of text for a game that’s about cartoon characters stabbing each other
John: It was there for the person who wanted to SP the game.
Kieron: Right.
John: It would provide a coherent narrative, and offer its own quests.
Kieron: It’s a step on from Middle-Earth’s similar thing, I think, in that way
John: But I’ve not had a single tome quest offered. There are 10,000 Tome Unlocks in the game, and they’re fun to get, but then a confusion mess to understand. I think that’s what will happen – the Tome will become a fiddly quest journal, with an achievements page.
Kieron: It’s a very big achievement page. Anyone got a favourite character class? I like my Witch Elf a lot. Which surprises me, as I despise elves.
John: Okay, I have one other worry, and it’s that question.
Jim: Has anyone got to the squig tank? that sounds amazing
Alec: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed my Chaos Magus, though the floaty disc isn’t floaty enough. I get stumped by small hills and puddles.
John: I played as a High Elf first, and it was just so dull. I thought the game was doomed. I played as a Chaos, and I thought: meh. Very standard MMO. I then played as an Orc, and I thought: Woo! Best MMO ever!
Jim: Tell me a bit more about the classes – is there anything specifically unusual?
Alec: Most of the classes are a bit more hybrid than you’d have expected. Still fit into the standard boxes, but generally feel a lot less like you’re just Tank or DPS or whatever.
Kieron: Yeah. The thing with the classes is *there is a lot of them*. And they’re not just the same with the names filed off.
Jim: Why are orcs so good John?
John: It seems like a squillion times more passion went into that zone. You’re immediately firing yourself off Orcapults to reach distant castle roofs. You’re having these really funny quest givers talk in grunts. You’re a real character.
Kieron: I haven’t played the Dwarves, but I’ve heard similar things
John: Whereas a High Elf is like being a bloody librarian. “Go and find 8 of this plant, for no reason.”
Alec: The comedy races were always going to be easier to achieve that with. Which WoW sort of failed at by lumping Gnomes in with Dwarves and Trolls with Orcs in its starting zones
Kieron: And I really enjoyed the DE. Even the “Kill X” quests were often turned into something a little more interesting. Like – say – the one where I collected heads and stuck them on spikes in front of an enemy base to try and lure a hero out to fight.
John: There’s an Orc quest similar to that. It makes a big difference.
Alec: There’s a lot of head-pole action. I’ve done that almost half a dozen times
Kieron: Yeah – I used it as an example. there’s certainly been mroe pole-head sticking.
John: But even if it’s just an aesthetic on the end of a kill quest, it makes it feel like narrative.
Kieron: Yes – exactly.
Alec: It was funny the first time, etc. I just hope they can sustain that kind of thinking without running out of ideas. Having seen some of the l30 stuff, I’m not convinced yet, but there’s much I’ve not done yet.
Kieron: You know, I’m going to go and roll a new High Elf alt after this and see what I make of it
Jim: Speaking of aesthetics – how good looking is it?
Kieron: It’s acceptable.
John: It looks like a polished WoW. There’s no escaping that comparison.
Alec: you stop noticing what it looks like – it’s like a genetic memory of playing an MMO. Though the Inevitable City looks incredible, if horribly confusing to navigate
John: The Inevitable City is utterly brilliant.
Kieron: I haven’t been yet. I may go there instead of forming a HE.
John: It’s a stunning piece of design. Visually wonderful.
[Alec leaves on a secret mission. It may or may not involve milk.]
Jim: Anyone got something else to add? We can conclude otherwise
John: One thing. I want to make it clear that this is one of those occasions where you’re deducting marks from 10, rather than adding them on from 0. They’ve managed it – they’re the first to create an MMO that compares to, and goes beyond, WoW. And that’s an absolutely massive deal that shouldn’t get lost in the (very valid) nitpicking.
Kieron: Yeah. God knows how it’s going to do long term, but given a choice between the two, I’d play this.
John: I think it’s best summed up as: they’ve created the WoW that Kieron wants to play.
Kieron: And I do wonder how much I’ll play it – after all, I’m the one of us who *didn’t* burn out on WoW. I didn’t like it enough to burn out on it.
John: Kieron I use as an example of someone’s who entirely immune to grind hypnosis.
Kieron: Heh. of course, it’s also the one MMO I’ll never review due to conflict of interest stuff (He’s writing a comic set in Warhammer at the moment. Out September, Comics peeps – Ed). To conclude: What’s your favourite chaos god?
John: God.
Kieron: Slanesh.
John: What’s a funny answer to attribute to Alec?
Kieron: The Horned Rat
[Fin.]
Oh god, I want this game… I’m just coming off of a 3 year non stop wow session though, so maybe I shouldnt…
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Uh that looks like a World of Warcraft shot at the end there.
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Horace the Endless Chaos-bear?
It does sound interesting that there is a solid competitor to WoW (at least on paper).
People saying nice things about it and the lovely cinematics were weakening my defenses, then I saw the third screenshot down and remembered everything I dislike about MMOs.
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I hereby nominate this site’s name be changed to Tea and Masturbation.
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A quick question about minutae that interests me:
Do players block other players’ pathing? Or do players clip through each other WoW style?
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“from Jim, who knows full well he won’t be playing it until they put some spaceships in…”
Agreed. No blasters..well im still going to play anyways even though there is a lack of Xwings
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@Noc
Word is that it has full player clipping, to allow tanks and such to prevent people charging through them to hit the weaker classes, and other similar tactical gameplay.
I still haven’t heard of the Australian subscription price. For me, it’s kinda essential information.
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Hey, nice article, guys.
Whilst there is no way I am getting Warhammer Online, as a WOW player, I’m certainly gonna feel the effects, both good and bad. I know a few friends that are leaving to play WoAoR, so that’s a kick in the balls and makes me curse any coverage of it, but at the same time, these new innovations might end up in some form in WOW, and also Blizzard will probably be working harder to maintain their playerbase. And that’s going to be strange, as Blizzard has never been in that predicament before. For all the talk that WAR won’t surpass the subscriber numbers… Warhammer Online has a very popular franchise behind it. I mean, it’s what Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was gonna be before Games Workshop ditched Blizzard.
It does look pretty and fun, but ONLY WAR doesn’t appeal to me as much as WOW’s startingly mature and developed (these days, anyhow) world. That, and I trust Blizzard more than any other developer in the industry to deliver solid, great content.
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@MisterBritish: yes, the third screenshot got me as well.
That said, this sounds more awesome every time I hear of it.
@The Hammer: Warhammer has an incredibly developed world. Not quite as awesome as 40K in my humble opinion, but I’d be willing to bet there’s hundreds of thousands more words published by GW about the Warhammer “story” than pretty much any other computer-game-basis world out there.
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Interesting stuff. Thanks chaps.
It sounds better than I had feared – and as a horribly obsessive Warhammerer, I desperately want this to be good. I really can’t see it having anything like the mass market success of WoW though.
Then again. Did we expect WoW to be as big as Everquest?
Actually, thinking back, yes…
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To hell with being “comfortable” with it. A WoW by any other name, eh?
Show me something new, something revolutionary, then you can have my $15 a month.
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I don’t play WoW, and I generally had good feelings towards this, but apart from occasionally spotting familiar characters I can’t tell it’s not WoW from those screenshots. I mean, did they have to use the exact same font?
Still, it’s about time I gave up smoking again and Eve didn’t do the job last time. If this looks like I won’t have to socialise too much to get engrossed in it I might give it a month or two…
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I think this is one of the best reviews I’ve read of it. It captures all the points – that the game is simply fun, but yeah of course it follows in WoW’s footsteps. Really nice work, and very much appreciated, all!
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Two Trolls decide they want Smoked Gnome for dinner in the last picture!
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@Walsh: Yes, because it is a WoW shot. :)
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@ZENO: As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I agree with you. However — these are MMOs we’re talking about. This isn’t Norm Koger creating a nifty new wargame engine where he could be “okay” with selling 2500 copies.
They’re games that need to sell millions of copies, and retain at least a few hundred thousand subscriptions over a lengthy period of time, to even in part recoup their development costs, provide server maintenance, and develop expected future updates. I think you’ll see developers choosing “accessible” over “innovative” pretty much every time they’re headed down that road.
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I know the warhammer/warcraft connection has been done to death but I do love how ironic it is WAR copying WOW.
Blizzard cant really complain heh.
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thank Grod that someone has finally discussed the mechanics of gameplay, as opposed to wossname’s endless rambling about orcs farting and so forth.
I’m disappointed it’s WoW +, because I’m not a WoW player, but I’ll manage.
Great revie- uh, impressions article.
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Why are MMO players so determined to create an entirely new language? I worked out what PvE and DPS means, but I’m still not quite sure about RvR. Now PQ is the latest to get added to the lexicon – at least I’m in on the ground floor with that one. I’m “in the know.”
EDIT: Also, when you guys do give your final judgment on the game, I hope you rate it on a scale of Monkees to Led Zeppelin.
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Damn, but this sounds enticing.
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Bleh.. it’s still a mildly more interesting WoW… just counting the days till Champions, APB and World of Darkness.
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Warhammer comic?
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@Abe: RvR is Realm vs. Realm, first done in Dark Age of Camelot (also by Mythic).
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This pretty well confirms my expectations:
1) WAR reduces the amount of time I waste trying to join a group or soloing by my lonesome. Good.
2) Greenskins got more development love than the other races, sometimes embarassingly so, with the general tilt being towards the Destruction armies. Good to know.
3) Other than that, it’s like WoW — except without a lot of the “organic development” blunders that Blizzard inflicted over the duration on players who were there since Day 1 and eventually caused me to give up and sell my WoW accounts and buy a Wii instead. Mythic might get to the bolted-on expansion-pack-pushing eventually (and I’ve far less tolerance for it now), but I’m willing to give ‘em a chance…
Need a name for a goblin healer… hrm…
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wow (!), that was a lot more positive than I thought it was going to be. Initially excited, then meh-ed out, I shall now move to “mild excitement” and await reviews with a modicum of anticipation
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It’s kinda odd, but I disagree with every “bad” point they made. I didn’t find it ghastly similar to WoW. I love my High Elf character, I’ve already gotten him to level 20. I tried making a character with all the Greenskin classes, and just couldn’t get into it. The Tome of Knowledge is a blast to mess with (although I’m a collection junkie, so maybe that’s why I like the Tome). Also, I think WoW has more of a cartoonier look to it than WAR. Even with the graphics stuck at minimum I can put a keen difference between the two graphic-wise.
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Thanks for the impressions. This one enjoyed this read. How could you let Alec leave at the end hes so dreamy in text? Usually ends up masturbation then tea with cream.
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I’m in the preview weekend and so I’m fairly impressed. Is it better than WoW? Well the PvP certainly is but beyond that, it’s a toss-up.
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I’ve never played WoW, so that won’t effect me I guess. I was initially totally uninterested in this game till I saw screens and concept art for Witch Hunters 2 years (?) ago. That and this article may just be what sways me.
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I was glad of the descriptions of the public quest stuff, but it would have been nice to have a similar description of this Tome feature – I got completely lost when you started talking about that.
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Darn, I may have to set aside some of this uni years beer money. Also I love how the destruction seems so much better than the poncy good side (how it should be!). And PvP focus = win, fighting AI gets boring and stale imo.
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@Noc & Spludge: To my understanding clipping only affects enemy players. Players on your *side* can move through you and vice versa, but enemies cannot (so casters can hide behind a wall of tanks, etc.). I may be wrong though, that information is several months old…
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Personally I was glad to hear the dwarves got some dev love too, between orks and dwarves there’s really not anything else I’m all that keen on playing. Well maybe a witchhunter, because they get guns, and somehow I’m always intrigued by getting a f**king gun in a fantasy game. :) (Oops, almost left it spelling ‘ork’ as ‘orc’; these aren’t the empathic noble savage wussbags we’re familiar with, these are ORKS! I far favor them)
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@Stromco; *dons hat of geekiness* it’s actually Orcs in Fantasy, and Orks in 40K *remove hat*
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After playing the beta for 9 months, my opinion about WAR is a glorious .. meh.
The PvE is dull and boring. The PvP is slightly better, but really not that good either.
Public quests are a gimmick. It’s fun the first time, but then you realize that if you want the really cool reward, you’re going to grind the fuck out of the PQ, which is never has much fun as it could be.
The loot ? It’s boring. To get good loot you have on choice : PvP a lot (and i mean, a lot) to be able to buy the PvP gear from 2 or 3 levels under you, which vastly outperforms the PvE gear of your level you’ll get from completing PQs.
The only part of the game i really enjoyed was Altdorf. Glorious, glorious city. Here you’ll see some of the finest use of PQs, like the bar brawl one near the docks.
All in all, i’m not really dissapointed because my hopes were never that high, but it’s still far from what you’ll hear from the fanbois everywhere. Blame the funny guy who did all the PR videos, he’s ten times more entertaining than his game :(
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I understand that this isn’t a conversion of the tabletop game – which I haven’t played in a decade or so – but one of the most appealing elements of the tabletop game was the strong narrative. It wasn’t always about winning, it was about a puny goblin with a massive iron ball-and-chain, off his face on mushrooms, killing half of his own army before a mutually fatal collision with the enemy general. The stuff of legends. Sure, some people take it too seriously and build armies for the sole purpose of winning – but those games were always dull (and not because I usually lost to them – I usually lost regardless – under my leadership my army couldn’t win a fight against a unit of halfling grannies with pointy knitting needles). I really hope there’s some scope for ripping yarns hidden away in this game.
I still buy White Dwarf from time to time, but I keep copies well hidden, along with the few miniatures I kept – if any of the rugby lads saw them I’d get a good ribbing for it, I shouldn’t have to feel shame for enjoying painting tiny rat figures! Though that’s a topic for a different comment box…
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Expect to see variations of their Public Quest and Open Group systems in most future MMO’s (including a WoW update). They’re that good.
I’m really happy with how well leveling through PvP works, at least in the initial levels since that’s as far as I’ve gotten in the beta. Instanced PvP can be joined from anywhere in the world, and puts you back where you joined, so it doesn’t interrupt questing. The game also buffs you to a competitive level for the level range of the instanced PvP you’re doing.
Things like that make WAR worth playing for me. It’s an evolutionary step from WoW, as the developers themselves have admitted. But the leveling feels a lot different than WoW’s, a lot less grindy. If you like PvP in MMO’s I’d say give this a try, even if you’re sick of WoW.
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A beetle just landed on my keyboard and crawed down in between the keys … idont want to sqash it and have beetlemash insid my keyb forevermore(using on screen keyb just now) what should i do??
oh yeah war looks like wow!
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Beetle problem resolved. I had to remove most of the keys. Oh well.
It actually sounds like WAR has addressed most of my main gripes with WoW. The level playing field PVP & not having to visit a battlemaster to enter PVP & and also the simplified ‘drop-in’ style grouping would have been a godsend a year ago. I’m not sure they will be enough to get me back into MMOs now though. I’m intending to skip a generation or two.
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This read was ridiculous. You guys sound like fanboys and quite simply talk like the average casual gamer that never really enjoyed anything that WoW had to offer but still played anyways.. just because. I’ve played both Eq2/WoW to the endgame and enjoyed both quite a bit for varying reasons. I’m currently in both WotLK and Warhammer betas and really Mythic is lucky that Blizzard takes their sweet time to make games. It’ll afford them maybe a few months of subs from people before they all leave for WotLK..
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Frankly, “WoW, but less stupid” sounds like the perfect way to sell me on an MMO. Or, at least, on an MMO without spaceships.
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DAoC popped my MMO cherry. I played the hell out of that game. I have fond memories of screwin around in the old frontier of midgard, defending against a numerically superior foe. I also have less than fond memories of all that Mythic did to destroy that game.
I piss on the mythic developers that killed daoc. But this trailer is relevant to my interests none the less. We shall see.
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I’m sorry Paul Barnett, you won’t get my money to buy that ‘food stuff’ you were talking about at the LIFT conference. I would love to though. I know developers want to make money with their games, and apparently WoWs visuals are the way to go. I’m not going to talk about game mechanics, or storyline or content, but the visuals, because they are very important. MMOs consume a ridiculous amount of time, and if I’m willing to invest that ridiculous amount of time, I want the visuals to be appealing, at least to my taste, because I will be staring at them for an awful lot of time. Now here’s the thing: Call me narrow minded, but I honestly don’t believe that the majority of potential customers want visuals like WoW in another MMO. The ones that like that particular style are probably all playing WoW anyways, but WAR looks so familiar that I can’t shake off the feeling that Mythic are actually trying to lure customers away from WoW. But I can’t understand how anyone who claims to be a Warhammer fan or someone interested in the franchise can agree with the looks of WAR. It’s Warhammer for christs sake, have Mythic ever flipped through a rule book and looked at the illustrations? I don’t think so.
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Gurrah, we all know that you won’t be spending much of that time looking at the visuals when you’re playing. Whenever anything’s going on you’re looking at progress bars and cooldown timers; when you’re traveling you’re watching the minimap.
Visuals do serve a non-trivial role in an MMO but that role, I think, is one of vanity; of looking at the awesome loot your character is wearing. We haven’t seen many close-ups of the character models themselves, but what we’ve seen doesn’t look very WoWlike. The WoW aesthetic only looks like it takes over when you zoom out, which is the point where you’re not paying attention to the graphics anyways.
This might be a marketing problem, and contribute to the “WAR has nothing new to offer” school of thought, but I’m not sure how much affect it will have on playing the game itself.
Also:
I’m all for dissenting positions, but the internal irony of this statement is a little too much.
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I’m with Noc here. If they made a game with awful visuals (like Everquest 1 would be now) but had endless options we’d all play it because who cares about visuals when you can have an undead army?
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Needs less KILL X OF Y thx.
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The reason WAR appeals to me is because, fundamentally, I enjoyed the mechanics of WoW. Everything up until the content they added after I started playing (basically everything after the first couple battlegrounds, which were meh) was quite fun.
But MMOs need content infusions to survive, and I’ve either been ambivalent to or hated everything they’ve added since then. It doesn’t go anywhere near the direction I’m interested in.
WAR has the same basic mechanics, so I enjoy it. Only time will tell with the content infusions, but because of the philosophy of WAR (RvR not PvE), I have hopes.
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Maybe that’s the way you play your games Noc, but I do care an awful lot about visuals, hell I zoom in and out of battles at least 10 times a minute in EVE because I like to be as close as possible to my ship. But that’s just a sidenote. Seriously, why make a game in a very similar setting, with very similar game mechanics and on top of that very similar visuals when the base material is so much different. I couldn’t care less basically, I just won’t play it, but I don’t understand how they could pass on an opportunity to make the game stand out visually at least, apart from the public quests and focus on RvR. But I do have to remephasize, I haven’t played the game yet and my opinion is based on screenshots, videos and the information I get from blog posts like these but the fact that WARs biggest contestant is mentioned in the first paragraph, and not ‘WoW is done for’, but saying how similar WAR is to WoW, speaks volumes.
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“John: It seems like a squillion times more passion went into that zone. You’re immediately firing yourself off Orcapults to reach distant castle roofs. You’re having these really funny quest givers talk in grunts. You’re a real character.”
This is one of the many things I disliked about the Warcraft and WoW world in general. Even when Warhammer did what I call “dumb races” it felt earnest because GW would build a whole world around it. In WoW it always felt way too tongue-in-cheek and they really would make the races feel sort of like a Disney-fied version of what they took from Warhammer.
Which is ironic since Blizzard puts so much energy into their cinematics to really sell the Warcraft world as this “dark” and very “epic” sort of story-telling world. But I never got that from WoW at all. Even with it’s sheer size.
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I’m still waiting for the day we get an RPG with more “Role Playing Game” and less “Rarely-Productive-Grind.”
Still, I’d be happy if they’re was the number “40,000″ tacked to the end of this MMO…
Also, if TF2 has taught us anything, every Tank class needs a Sandvich as optional equipment.
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I’m really liking the game, except for one aspect of public quests. Almost no one gets loot, and the choosing of who gets it is too random. Out of the 30 or so times I’ve done PQs I’ve gotten loot twice, even though I’ve been the top ranked person a bunch of times. Everyone rolls a random number between 1 and 1000, and higher scoring people get bonuses. The highest you can get is +400 for getting first place. That seems a bit low to me. Maybe a +600, and higher bonuses for everyone else as well.
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I suspect the PQ’s will sort themselves out in actual play – it’s okay when there’s “relatively” small numbers of people doing them. When you go into the mass melees, that’s where it falls apart.
Alec’s suggestion was that everyone who does anything at all significant in a PQ should get something, even if it’s just a healing potion. While abstractly you’re earning the reputation points, going through a fight and getting nothing in the treasure chest is a big of a bummer.
KG
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No one seems to have commented on the long term issues relating to PQs – especially if they play such a large role in minute to minute play.
Time goes on, two years down the line for instance, character base matures (most people are high level), new subscriptions slow… who do you PQ with?
Take a look through the lower areas of WoW even on med/high population servers and you’ll struggle to meet 1/2 people in your level bracket.
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What Zeno said, really. I wish PC devs would stop trying to top WoW and do something different. You can do accessible and innovative, so long as you abandon the idea that an MMO involves going around doing kill/fetch quests, levelling and loot. Consequently I’m really looking forward to the first real generation of console MMOs (I know, I know) – not the DC Universe type ones, but things like APB. Make the game about the interaction between the players and between the players and the environment, not about bloody quests and raids. Or, hell, do something like Europe in Ruins for CoH, where familiar action takes place in a larger universe that you and your allies affect. Eve’s the closest I’ve encountered so far, but I don’t have the time or energy to dedicate to it.
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The thing that makes me think I’m not going to play WAR is this comment from Alec:
It’s not a world filled with events – it’s more like wandering around a science museum, and stopping off at the exhibits that have pushy-buttons and flickering lights. It’s really unconvincing as a place – it’s these pockets of activities within their own weird, insular bubbles, but far too close too each other. There’s really no sense that you can explore.
Whatever you think about WoW as an MMORPG, one of its biggest attractions for me (and I’ve been playing WoW pretty consistently for three years now) is that it’s a diverse, yet coherent game world. It has a sense of place, and you can derive a lot of enjoyment simply from wandering around and taking in the sites and the ambience. If that’s missing from WAR, there’s no way I’m going to play it.
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Warhammer for the win!
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Great review.
Interesting because is saying thing, no one say, that will be interesting in 8 months. Very honest and deep review of the game.
See you ingame.
–Tei
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You guys did not get the first thing about the ToK.
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paul, communicate more with GOA. To use the words of Starsky “Do it”…”Do it”…”Do it” …now!
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Regarding acronyms, I’ve been playing WoW for 3 years and still don’t know what RvR is. Yes, Realm vs Realm. So what the hell does that mean?
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@Dean
think PvP only with the addition that stuff you do also has an effect on the status of your entire side in the war. To translate to WoW: if you win a battleground match you get honor for yourself, in an RvR setting your entire side would also accumulate points thanks to victories of its players to help unlock the enemies capital for Siege warfare. Which is where all the best stuff is available. (and it’s cool to sack your enemies main city)
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And the fact that there’s no real RvR mechanic in WoW is sort of why it’s a big deal in WAR.
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Cheers Azhrarn.
I knew it wasn’t in WoW and so it was one of the big selling points but very few people seem to bother to explain what it is. Maybe I’ve just entirely missed it
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If that’s the real Paul Barnett above and not a doppleganger, don’t let him post again unless he explains the real reasons for why Mythic went back to GOA. No one is going to buy that ‘lessons were learned’ bollocks anymore.
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Sadly the WoW fanboys will stick with it because they have invested too much time with it. WoW has shown the world that MMOs CAN be very popular, but the popularity could be the death of other, superior fantasy MMOs.
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WAAAGH!
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Meh, if only mechanics were the only reason to judge an MMO. I’m not concerned about the bits that were copied from WoW, after all, Warcraft is a Warhammer ripoff itself… I’m concerned about the bits that were not properly copied from WoW:
Client Prediction Smoothness: Whatever Blizzard touches simply feels smooth. This is absolutely not the case with the Warhammer client. Texture Streaming, asynchronous player animations, slow reactions, interface lag, etc.
Server Smoothness: NPC integration into the world is very very poor. Although the do the same things that WoW NPCs do, they just don’t seem to be working nearly as well as those. Attack ranges seem to be completely unpredictable, animations for NPCs are entirely asynchronous with their actions, etc.
There is something wrong at the very base of WAR: It seems based on inadequate technology which unfortunately completely kills my game experience. I love the license, I love the idea of the game, but the quality of execution simply can’t hold up to my expectations.
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Public quests, or something like them, might be a way to solve the problem in WoW of finding a group as and when you need to. I dunno whether the Looking for Group/Looking for More function is broken or whether people find it a bit finicky, but either way it doesn’t work. I have more success when trying to find a group because nobody I know is on just asking people in general chat.
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Great to read your views on Warhammer, i really hope its a great game and sells well. But to be fair it does sound like you have just been playing in the start zones.
Two questions i have would be:
Is it gonna be a good sustainable game for the many potential casual gamers that will end up bankrolling the game?
And how will the end game content stretch out for the “Hardcore gamers”(as they like to call themselves) Who although they dont bankroll the game will be the minority that really shape the public’s perception of weather the game stands up to scratch or not?
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As far as your endgame question, Keegan, I like to use Rob Pardo’s (Blizzard lead designer) idea of a feature set of different activities. WoW has crafting/dailies/5-man/10-man/25-man/arena/4 BGs. That’s enough diversity to keep a lot of people playing.
For casual leveling/alting, WoW has two factions with three starter areas; each faction pretty much has a single path to the top starting about 1/3 of the way through, though since the leveling changes you can skip a few areas.
For endgame AoC had, um, a couple five-mans, two buggy 25-mans and eventually the garbage siege system. All of which were in only a couple of zones. There is still no basic honor system for PVP if I understand correctly. For leveling, there is exactly one frickin’ path, and even that runs out of quests at times.
WAR at endgame is going to have crafting (limited)/tome completion/6-man/guild progression/18 Tier 4 BGs/open RVR with warfronts. The grind for HC players is renown ranks, which are going to take an insane amount of PVP at the high end. I’d bet they’ll introduce a new dungeon and set of PVE gear every 3-6 months too. It also sounds like actually capturing a capital city is going to take a few months to happen anywhere. That’s the design goal anyway.
For casual leveling, they have two factions with 3 unique areas that seem to have enough content to extend all the way to the cap. It actually seems to be a bit of a problem relative to WoW’s eventual faction merging; only EVC RVR was going in earnest on the preview servers.
It’s pretty obvious that WAR’s feature set is going to put a lot of stress on Open RVR to carry the game in the medium-term. I like the odds that it will work, but anyone who plays enough to cap quickly, finds they don’t like open RVR, and doesn’t have a good guild is going to burn out right quick at endgame. I would like to see them mix in a few 12-mans or at least 12-man bosses in an open dungeon to give the PVE a little boost. I think they can and should compete for the semi-casual WoW crowd who do some BG’s and run Kara all the time, and you can just do a lot more on the PVE end with that many people.
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Having been playing the beta for a loooong while, I can agree with most of your comments, pretty much. I actually won’t be playing after beta ends, purely because I don’t think it’s different enough to be a better game (for me) and because I don’t want to PVP – and let’s face it, that’s what the game is about.
However, the single race I have enjoyed the most is the Dwarf. Their initial areas are, in my opinion, the best in a fantasy MMO yet. It’s full of atmosphere and attention to detail, from the cheers when the cannon roars to the constant struggle against the greenskin incursion.
The only thing that will draw me into the game once beta ends will be if a lot of people I know take the plunge. And so far it doesn’t look likely.
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An important point to make. WAR is not copying WoWs art style. WoW has always copied Warhammer imagery. There is a good reason for this. Warcraft was originally meant to be a Warhammer game when blizz made that first RTS. Games Workshop pulled the plug though. So blizz tinkered with the story and kept the art of Warhammer. If you dont believe me look at a old Warhammer game miniature and any image from WoW. They look remarkably similer. WAR had a good reason to go with this art style; because this stylized style is Warhammer. Also truly Warhammer lore puts Warcraft lore to shame, just by sheer amount and detail.
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Actually, Warcrafts looks and Warhammers looks have never been alike; its the one thing thats been the MOST different between the two games. Warcrafts visuals have always been more light-hearted, cartoony and colorful, whereas Warhammer has always had extremely detailed miniatures and a more GRIMDARK feel, not to say they lacked color, but the two styles are really nearly opposite ends of the fantasy art spectrum.
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The game’s obviously heavily focused on PVP/RVR, so what do you do? Spend your entire review talking about quests and World of Warcraft.
Nice one.
By the way, the graphics seem to be an attempt to copy the tabletop design (in terms of character/npc models) and the various amounts of artwork that surround the Warhammer world (in terms of environment).
But no, that makes it “WoW clone”. Sigh.
p.s. let’s not pass judgement on how a game looks till it’s out and you can actually change graphical options hey!
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Once you see a windmill in the distance burning, and on fire, you’ll know that its not just a WoW Clone. When you participate and stumble in on your first PQ, you’ll be blown away.
And when you run along and enter an RVR zone, throwing you into a battle, you’ll love it.
RVR was something DAOC did, and it did it well, these are the same guys. I played through the horrible TOA days, until Mythic eventually redeemed itself.
THESE guys know how to do PVP. They’re the best in the industry.
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the most annoying things i found were.
1. no real avatars its skulls or birds
2. 1 second global cooldown on all spells starts after a long cast and not at the start so you cant go 3 second cast instant cast.
3. AI on the mobs was really bad and needs fixing (mobs run away from you when you attack)
4. rvr instances need to cross server the que times are hours long at times
5. lag in keeps and siges ( lots of people taking a town=lag) in the beta it did atleast and i ahve a nice computer (3gig ram 2.8 duel core 512mb radion vid card)
6.the quest helper needs a revamp its not bad it can just be annoying when it tells you that you have a quest to turn in and you dont.. because the quest turn in is on the other side of a flight path
7. the public quest roll system needs to be a little more baced on contribution points and not the roll.
8. i played a sorceress and they are a crap class if you want to deal any real damage you need to be at 100% dark magic and your going to kill yourself not only that but any melee class will rape you
Now for what i liked because i hate to be 100% negative
1. public quests- the idea is awsome and its well done with a slight exception to the rolls
2. siges- although lagis an issue if you get a smaller group of 5-8 vs 5-8 it can be a lot of fun
3. you cant walk through a player. i think this is more real and does help tanks block for healers and casters
4.every zone seems to have a pvp area so you never have to go far to change from pve to pvp
5. EXP is gained in pvp and its not small amounts so if you hate to quest you never have to you can gain just as much exp in pvp
6. no twinks due to exp gains in pvp
7.you can change or dye all of your gear so you have your own look not like WOW where everyone looks the same
8. when you die you just run back allive from town
i hope i answered a question or 2 for somone its a good game but it comes off as choppy and simple, i dont see its current form keeping anyone interested for more than a month it needs a lot of work still, i hope the real release is better
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I personally believe WAR is going to be great for the mature players, which I could barely ever find in WoW, I mean cmon if you look at it, WoW is just a big mash up of previous fantasy table games, books, and games. I cancelled my WoW subscription for WAR, never going back to WoW I have had enough of it, blizzard has failed to give the players what they want.
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I think its amazing that the comparison between WAR and WoW is continuing who cares all you graphics whores are like it looks like WoW but I guess its a matter of personal opinion Ive played WoW, DAoC and Galaxies and RF-online and god knows how many other MMORPGs in the past and Ultima busted my cherry so as the evolution of MMO gaming has changed how we communicate with the world around us maybe we should just shut up and play the game and stop sucking on Blizzard’s teet. This game is made for those who want to get to the bashin as quickly as possible its not for the 13 yr old kids who spew chuck norris jokes every 20 secs that is what in fact turned me off to WoW in the first place it wasnt that the original gamers in warcraft were mature because not the case its only now after several years of gaming and the fact that most of the older players of wow just grew up with the game and WAR makes them step out of that comfort zone and scares them a little. The game is not for MMO players its gather Tabletop players and shift them from the lore of the tabletop game and make them share that lore and knowledge of the IP with other tabletop geeks because like these ole boys said up top depending on where you are from Warhammer and adolesence go hand in hand for some of us this whole idea of an Warhammer MMo has been around longer than Blizzards idea for Wow but like before GW pulled the plug on that one as well warcraft was a major rip of warhammer and hell even D&D didnt say orcws were green until after GW said so so for those of you who dont like the game great for you. Those of you who liked playing the Beta and have a love of the Big Uns and Da Bosses let us raise our sharp bitz and charge da gatez
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The wow debate will rage on but when i played the game for 3days i never thought to myself comparing wow just thought well it reminds me of wow but im having fun
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Im curious… how do you do a beta review of the game where in many situations not everyone even bothered to explore the content at all. In many situations I read that so – and – so didnt do it much etc… isnt that the point of a review?
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Dear visiting WAR fans:
This is not a review, as is stated at the start of the piece. It’s just a freeform discussion of our personal impressions of the beta. Moreover, if you read the article, you’ll see we’re mostly very, very positive about WAR.
Please try not to let your annoyance about ‘WAR’ and ‘WOW’ appearing in the same sentence blind you to that. We think WAR is great, regardless of any similarities it might have to other games.
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well i think it more of a PvP game than ever.. which is awsome!!! i cant think negative by this game.. only the classes i feel is going to be nerfed in some way over another when it starts.. and ive never played WoW.. i think i know why… Every1 comparing WoW to WAR because they need something to talk about…
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@ Korbinn My rig is 2.4 dual core, 4 gigs ram, win xp pro 64 bit edition, and a 320 eVga 8800gts and it runs flawlessly. Is your OS 32 bit? That could be hindering you quite a bit. And most of the issues that you posted about are the main ones they are looking into before the final release. Mythic has planned a patch before launch.
Also.. @ the WoW Comments… I played wow for 5 years since closed beta, I find this game hardly similar to WoW, maybe that is just me =/
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Decent review but I think they missed a couple of points, or they just weren’t implemented when they were playing.
1) PQ’s are marked on the map. Once you discover a PQ its added to your map. Even battles occurring, and their scale, show up on the map.
2) The graphics are the way they are so you don’t need dual 9800GX’s to play it. That said, the graphics have been set on low. If you’ve seen pictures at full rez its very impressive.
3) Quest tracking: there is a quest tracker right on the screen, you never need to open the Tome of Knowledge for that if you don’t want to.
4) Tome of Knowledge : I found the ToK to be fantastic. If all you are interested in is purely hitting things then it won’t be overly useful for you. A great deal of the games narrative comes through the ToK so if you like the Warhammer IP I think you’ll enjoy the ToK. It needs a little reorganization.
The latest patch notes that were “accidentally” released showed that a lot of the concerns are already being addressed. It’s not going to be a WoW killer but should Blizzard be worried? Yes, a little bit. In the end we’re the ones going to benefit regardless, competition is a good thing.
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I actualy dont think it looks like Wow at all and thats a bad thing…. it just looked ugly to me. When you look down the road at other characters it looks really choppy as if there sliding on the ground. I was bumped into the air by walking over things on the ground. Pve was horrible. NPC ai horrible… good ideas bad graphics imo
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Anyone care to say what link the influx of war fans are following, btw? We can’t find the bally thing on our records.
KG
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I played DAoC from the day it came out and loved it right up to the point where ToA happened and I got the beta invatation from Blizz to come to WoW. The best thing for me was the open field PvP (RvR in DAoC) that DAoC had in abundance and WoW had pre-BGs, although WoW never did seem capable of really fostering a community like DAoC could. I did get to play in the preview weekend and rolled a Chaos Chosen and a Witch Elf. Right from the start WAR throws you into the middle of “us vs them” and gives you a feel that what you do matters in the larger scheme of things.
Concerning WAR looking like WoW; it can hardly be helped since both MMOs came from the same game although only one was actually licensed to do so and WAR has the less “cartoony” look and feel. I found WAR’s landscapes much more convincing and immersive than WoW’s.
In game play WAR felt to me a LOT less grindy with the mixture of regular quests, PQs and RvR. The Tome helped break it up imho, it gave you a chance to sit back and get a good feel for your character and a deeper look into where you were. The BGs are much more balanced with the absence of anything aproaching a twink; skill really matters in WAR as it did in DAoC, not how much gold you can throw on a character to the point where for a normal leveling character it was impossable to have a fair fight. I’m really looking forward to the 7th when I can wipe WoW off my HD and have fun again in an MMO instead grinding.
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I followed the link from warhammeronline.com home page, NEWS section about middle of the page.
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Bjork: Thanks!
KG
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I played the beta and it was BETA. Good lord, what do you think a beta is for? all the bugs you guys are crying about are getting fixed. Thats why we beta test…
Warhammer is and has been the deffinition of fantasy roleplay for over 25 years. over half of WoWs player base doesnt even know what DAoC or EQ1 means. WoW was not the first MMO and i find that many old gamers had to get used to WoW to play it. I never enjoyed WoW candy-ass graphics and WAR looks nothing like WoW. The smurfs look better than WoW. WAR in the preview weekend looked unreal. It had its bugs but as i said they are being addressed. WoW will retain many of its gamers only because they measure any game though the WoW, pink tinted lense. WAR will deliver that hardcore gaming experience alot of us have been missing for years. I loved the preview and cant wait for the open beta to start back up.
WAAGH bitches!!!
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ya Mythic’s front page
http://www.warhammeronline.com/
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everthing i have read about war says it look the same as wow but then when u play it it like wow this game powns wow in the face. i played the pw and i loved it and cant go back to my t5 pally i mean dude wow has had a good run but it is time for a better mmo to take over all the wow fans sound like the ever quest fans when wow was coming out so ya cant wait for war and toski said it man all the little kids can still play wow as the older gamers go to a real game.
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For me its all about dynamic game-play and not about the level of grass rendered. I never cared about how realistically unrealistic Wow’s graphics were as long as they were consistent and didn’t cause my computer to have a seizure. The fact that WAR’s graphics are a notch higher is great, so what if it looks similar to WoW as long as the game doesn’t turn into Warhammer: Age of Faction Grinding like WoW did and i’ll be happy. Its a fantasy game and I don’t want it to be a carbon copy of my back yard, with some Elves thrown in for flavor. This was one of my biggest issues with Age Of Conan there was so very little “Fantasy” thrown in that I really didn’t even care to smell the roses.
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Sup all ! Great post by the way you drinking tea No brushing teethed Brits :) jk … Of course it’s like WoW , WoW is prob one of the best games ever lol why would you not want to copy the BEST GAME EVER , they copy what makes WoW fun and leave out the stuff that makes me want to quit. I don’t understand people that hate on WoW.. play It then play any other MMO , it spoils you , only one out there atm worth paying $15 a month. There on the right path with War and glad to see a PVP oriented game and in a year probly gonna be WoW and War the big DAWGS of the MMO’s world ……. WoW has had it’s time and has made huge adavancements in MMO’s but have stopped and thats where War will pick up. Gode bless!
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If you’ve made it this far, bear with me.
I thought WoW was fun, for awhile. I got tired of it, and have been awaiting WAR. So, when I logged on to play for the first time, my instinct was to immediately shut off my computer. Damn, if it wasn’t just like WoW! I couldn’t believe all that anticipation, for this! Oh yes, that familiar pain of completing a quest, only to turn around and hike the damn Appalachian Trail back to an NPC just to say, “I did it.” was there. Until I realized I was hopping from town to town like a 10 y.o. that just ate a bag of sugar. The towns were so close that it wasn’t the nuisance I had originally dreaded.
The PQ’s were only mildly fun. For me this is defintetely a nice sidenote, but standing around with 30 guys trying to kill 15 enemies was somewhat annoying at first. It wasn’t until later PQ’s that the crowds thinned out and it became more interesting.
The scenario concept was originally a nuisance to me as well. I’ve seen battles arena’s before, and couldn’t help but think, why? They had no real point to the game. Not to mention they take massive out of MMO. So, I was initially annoyed when I received a quest requiring me to take place in a scenario.
I loved it. Hell, the scenario has the same objective as the remainder of the game. Run around the battlefield kicking the other guys butt and claim the territory.
The Scenario’s had an added effect as well. I noticed everybody was running into the tower on the west side, but not the east side. I immediately thought, why the hell aren’t we more coordinated in this. As I ran up the east side of the tower I found an enemy flag undefended and immediately began to lay claim to the area. Now, if only I’d had back up I could have kept control of the area. Realizing the inate flaw in playing these scenarios solo caused me to join a guild. Using Ventrilo we can enter scenarios as a group and actually work as a team towards the ultimate objective! Hell, the entire time I was playing WoW I couldn’t see any reason to join a guild. It had no real purpose, atleast from my perspective. WAR has caused me to rethink the entire concept of a guild!
Don’t get me wrong, there were flaws to the game. The biggest problem I had was targeting. It was nearly impossible at times to target an enemy if he was being engaged by another player. In PQ’s and scenario’s this is a common occurence, where your working towards a common goal so you try and help out a friendly player. There were times when you just stood there and looked stupid though. As if helping may have crossed your mind at some point, before you began dreaming about apple pies in the middle of a battle. It was easy for your target to get lost behind players, or nearby objects, and then it was like trying to shoot fly’s off a rhincerous horn from 100 yards away. My mouse skills really don’t need to be that good to play an RPG do they? Of course, if you didn’t target an enemy you couldn’t fight him. Even after being targeted and attacked my character would just stand there and continue to think about those damn apple pies! Come on, I should just have to hit an ability at this point. It should be obvious who I’m attacking. Unless I’m being mobbed, in which case I’d like it to be the weakest person in the mob. Let me take one of the jerks out before having my skull completely caved in!
Anyway, the jury is still out on this one. while I think the game is a definite improvement over WoW, it remains to be seen how long this game can hold my attention.
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I agree Toski, everyone seems to want to compare this to WoW, but as you said when I went from DAOC to WoW I couldn’t really get into it. The graphics were more kiddish, as was the gameplay and users that were playing. DAOC and EQ were more in depth games and attracted a more mature user base. Mythic also made the platform for most of the so called “innovations” that WoW apparently has. I believe war will be a great game and wether they think so or not even the critics will be drawn to it in the end.
Can’t wait till release, I look forward to seeing all of you and the WAR field!
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You guys have it backward. Wow copied this game. This game captures the Warhammer world that WoW stole. This game is Warhammer in it’s true essense. WoW is a ripoff of Warhammer. Mythic never copied or tried to emulate WoW, which you will learn when you play RvR.
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The game looks great, I can see the similarities between this and WoW, but with that said its not the same. WAR’s graphics seem to be more toned and detailed. There are alot of classes to choose from, so that will be appealing to alt-aholics like myself.
I did play WoW for close to 3 years (hit HWL and in BC had 2k rating arena team) and from what ive seen, the pvp looks like alot more fun. This is mainly because the amount of focus Mythic has put in the pvp aspect.
As for bugs….Alot of MMO’s come out very very buggy, but give WAR a couple months and all the bugs should be worked out. Once the bugs are gone, the true WAR will shine through.
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I’m confused… Didn’t (blizzard)WoW copy off Daoc and Warhammer(tabletop)???
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yea they did dyi
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Get over yourselves, If you like wow some much stay there.Finally theres a mmo that looks like it can take wow and all you lot do is bitch about the smallest little things and blow them to seem like massive flaws.Stick to wow and keep out of the faces of the people who want to give Warhammer a fair go.
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Hard to talk about the next big thing and not acknowledge the elephant in the corner. That being said…
My biggest issues with WoW are:
1. having to solo so much when leveling
2. a lack of any goals for open world PvP besides “don’t get continuously griefed by the level 70s in your nub zone”
3. and an endgame consisting primarily of instanced combat in a massively multiplayer game
WAR addresses all of these:
1. Public quests, PvP areas in every zone, and an easy group finding system make soloing less appealing and grouping easier and more purposeful
2. KEEPS!!!! Oh, and turning potential griefers into chickens with 1hp
3. An endgame consisting of loads of open world PvP and two unique city siege instances that lead to epic dungeons and uber bosses, as well as glory for the realm.
Combine that with the wonderful lore of Warhammer and I really can’t find anything to dislike. Just gotta wait for Mythic to work some kinks out before it goes live later this month.
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For those that argue WOW clone etc you have to remember that WOW copied EQ, EQ copied UO. It happens because it works and is popular. Compare it to the automobile, it started with 4 wheels how many years ago? Has it changed much other than slight inside and outside differences? No because it works and delivers with 4 wheels better than 3 or 5 or more wheels. This is exactly why the UI in WAR looks alot like WOW and why the next game 3 years from now will probably look the same.
Also as an afterthought change can become failure as we see in AoC. Reinventing the wheel backfires more often than succeeds and with the risk of MMO’s these days it’s not worth risking for many companies.
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Hey,
Just want to say I played DAoC for six years. (12 if you consider for most of that time I played two chars on two PC’s simulatenously).
Only reason I left DAoC was it got too lonely – and that was earlier this year.
So, my hope for WAR is that Mythic is able to recate what DAoC had created and is reflected in some of the posts here. The game encouraged interaction and discussion and teamwork with people. It was fun to widely explore. And, the grind did suck at times.
I never jumped to WoW, not sure why, maybe “vendor loyalty”?
Now… wouldn’ t it be cool if my 50′s from DAoC could port over to WAR? LOL
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RVR is the main thing with War, alot of people who play WOW have no clue as to what it feels like to have your toon for long enough to kill well and know your toon well, to work with a team and use your toons to the max, rely on your group to play at the best of there abilities and to kill others without being killed first. RVR!!
Mythics Daoc ive played for many a year and nothing has even remotely come close to match the greatness they brought to life with there trade marked> “RVR”, that I wish the millions who’s first MMO that was WOW could experience! With War they will get the chance if they just give it that chance.
You will defenitly get killed alot in the game at first and if you arnt used to the whole complex thing that rvr becomes, the thing that gets you hooked is becoming better and improving… as with anything.
Honestly I think alot of people from WOW who try the game and get smacked down repeatedly (which I don’t think can happen with the ease they have made to group) might get discouraged and quit because they don’t like the feeling of dieing… WHO DOES!?
Thats what makes it so good when you are the one standing over that guy/gals body and the thought that they perhaps are at home cussing saying “that was Bullshat!” just as I do!
Rvr can really be intense and definatly gets the blood and nerves flowing knowing that your game play may determine who is the victor, and that one stupid decision might be one you talk about with your friends later as a topic to improve on because you all got wiped.
Get up and go again, learn your enemies and most importantly…
Whhhaaaaaaaaaaag!
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MMO rivalry is the new Q3 vs UT in terms of angry internet mens.
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lol people are funny. I would have to say that I have played the beta and it does feel similar to wow. But oh wait when I played wow for the first time I felt “oh this is like daoc”. The only time I felt like I was making a complete transition in a generation of mmos was from ultima to daoc. Ok is this familiar feeling a bad thing? I don’t think so. Playing the beta felt like putting on your favorite pair of sneakers that you thought you had lost, Comfortable and just freaking awesome. Please war fans don’t take this as an affront to our beloved game. Does this game feel a little like wow yes. But so does every mmo since at least for me since daoc(I never played everquest). For the gentlemen who wrote this article and complained about things being to close together. Did you explore all of the zone or just where the game sent you? Because to be honest I left that part for when I got to play my main and he wont get trashed with the rest of the server. So I can see where you are coming from. On that note in every zone I was in I had over half of the map to explore yet.
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I played Wow for 2 years and after playing in the preview weekend for WAR, it is a totally different game. yes, the screen shots may look alike, and yes the graphics are very similar, that is a good thing; but the game play is entirely different. This whole idea of RVR is pure genious. You start playing WAR and right off you are in battle. That is what people want, action, or else you lose interest. I would take PVP and RVR over PVE anyday :)
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I hate the fact that everyone seems to think All of WoW was completly thought up by blizzard. They seem to forget that there were many mmo’t out before WoW and WoW is simarliar in way to All of them. Yes I admit that WoW did take all these ideas from other games and Put them together really well but, That is the History of gameing.
In my opinion, 1 of the main reasons WoW is the Powerhouse of MMO’s is because of the Fanbase Blizzard already had, that play it just because it is Blizzard. I always wondered out of the millions that played WoW for how many of them was WoW their first MMO and their Only.
I played War during Preview Weekend and the only thing i disliked about it was the absents of the stick key or autofollow. I know it may sound lazy but playing a melee i don’t like having to chase enemy casters and healer around in rvr, gives them way to much power when random lag spike makes me lose visiual and it takes 5 to 10 seconds to find them again and get to them.
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Well, I have been waiting for this game for years, ever since the first time I heard it was going to be made the first time.
The main reason I want to play it is because it is based on Warhammer, although I would rather it was on 40k, I do love the fantasy theme.
Now, hearing that it is similar to WoW is actually a plus for me. I played Wow for about a month and quit. While I did think it was a good game, personally I hate the Warcraft universe. I have never been impressed with it and even playing a good game based on it was more than enough to turn me off. So finding out that this takes off from WoW rather than EQ2 or other is nice.
Reading about the ease of getting into a group is also a plus to me. Having limited times where I can play, whenever I tried other MMO’s, spending 15-30mins trying to find a group and then traveling to the zone to kill in, then waiting for everything to respawn, kills a majority of the time I have to play at any given time. Being able to join an open group instantly really makes things much better then sitting there shouting lvl whatever LFG over and over till somebody bites.
The big question will be, will my limited amount of time to play at any given time going to be enough to have fun and enjoy myself and not miss out on too much, or is this going to be another game where you must have 5+ hours at a time to play or you are going to be left in the dust.
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WAR kicks the crap out of WoW. I’ve played some of the WAR closed beta and preview weekend.
What I think is going to happen is those who play WoW who have been wanting much better PvP action will come over to WAR, those who prefer to PvE will probably remain with WoW.
Speaking for myself I’m more of a PvP person so WAR is perfect for me.
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Let me start by saying i have been playing WoW and running a end game guild for over 3years. WoW was alot of fun but there are certain unforgivable offenses blizzard has commited that i cannot ignore.
1. making a new game and stacking it on top of the old and labeling it an expansion.
2. Releasing so called expansions that make it possible to lvl past the previous content virtually making it trash.
3. Allowing people who started a week ago to pvp grind and become more powefull than a 3yr veteran player.
4. Making the “new” quest rewards more powerfull than the epics it took 40 people 3-4nights a week over the course of a year to aquire.
5. Claiming PvP is at the heart of thier game when it only takes place in instanced scenarios. One of which gives more honor win or lose than the other 3 >.>
6. Rewarding the 10hour a week player who does a couple BGs and 10 arena games a week with more powerfull equipment than someone who organizes and leads a 40/25man raid 3-4 nights a week.
7. not allowing enough time for thier players/servers to fully explore the content before releasing more, effectively killing the desire to raid the already established content.
8. You get nothing for killing a “boss” of the opposing faction other than a few cool screen shots and a “yeah we did that” story.
I am eagerly awaiting WAR if not because it doesnt have these elements (yet? god i hope never) but because the raid drive is dead on my server because people think wotlk is coming out and it will make everything we have done for the past year meaningless. There is no lasting greatness in WoW. When i have dedicated years to something i want to look back on my charactrer/s and see the fruits of my labors. Now im not saying everyone who starts a mmo should have to go through everything that there is to get to the end game but blizzard may as well delete Azeroth and just put a AH in northrend and call it good.
I sincerely hope WAR does not make these fundemantal mistakes and ruin its fan base by doing so.
For those solo players that dont like pvp perhaps you should buy a console? for those who dont like PvP but love fighting AI controlled bosses and waiting around for the other 20 people to “get it” or simply stop sucking stay with WoW.
The 20 or so of my comrades that are coming with me will be destroying the order in the name of chaos very soon and i hope its everything i have researched it to be.
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Just a few random opinions on the article:
Most of the time, you guys (especially Alec) seem to not want to like this game. You seem stuck in the idea that “it’s a WoW ripoff and I can’t like it because of that” but that’s simply not true.
There are two aspects to the whole “WoW 2.0″ idea: Visuals, and gameplay mechanics.
Visually, this game looks no more similar to WoW than it does to the Warhammer fantasy art and models. Maybe it should be said that WoW looks like Warhammer, considering that ther Warhammer concept art and models have been around for 20+ years longer than WoW.
Concerning mechanics, I’d say WAR is no more similar to WoW than it is to City of Heros/Villains or EQ2. Think about how much innovation (in terms of actual gameplay mechanics) there was in moving from EQ1 to WoW.
I can without a doubt say that there is much much much more innovation and many more new features going from WoW to WAR than there was going from EQ1 or DAoC to WoW.
Also, your opinion of the Tome of Knowledge gave me the feeling that you guys all like to min/max every aspect of your given game, which really conflicts with your complaints about the world feeling too small. The Tome provides back-story (which for me, makes it easier to get into a game) and interesting little tidbits to the play constantly. Of course if you just treat it as an annoyance and close all of the popups, you can dismiss it as an overhyped peice of garbage and then at the same time, have another reason to complain about the world that you didn’t bother taking the time to get familiar with.
The Tome has many rewards for exploration, ranging from simple back-story and narratives about an area you stumble across, to titles, tactics, et cetera. It’s something that will keep completists like myself searching long and hard all over the world for unlocks, and min-maxers and powerlevelers will ignore it and then complain about a lack of content.
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I’d like to ammend mine with this:
Considering that WAR is all about RvR, I find it ghastly and unforgivable that you wrote this much about the game without playing any significant amount of RvR. That’s just unprofessional.
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It is a PvP game. IF you like the WoW Pve thing please don’t play Warhammer because no one wants to hear the btching. The graphics in Warhammer are ALOT better and it has a more realistic look to it. As far as gameplay goes you could say WoW built off of EQ and other games before it. Every game does it so don’t come here and say Warhammer is just a re-done rip off of WoW because it is far from it. If your gonna say that then one could say you are just stubborn and afraid to see another game contend with WoW. It is called competition … accept it… it is part of life.
And like stompa said Warhammer has been around a hell of alot longer then Warcraft. You could say Warcraft got there concepts from the board game Warhammer??
And the “REVIEW?” above just goes to show any retard can play a game, THAT IS IN BETA, for a couple days and talk like they have played the finished game for months. How the hell do you compare a game that is still in closed beta to a game that has been going for a few years now????????
You guys were better off not writing anything at all until the finished product was out.
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I’m not sure what all the WAR fans are finding to complain about with these beta impressions.
The WAR team themselves seem to like it (given the front-page link from WAR’s main site and Paul’s comment far, far above mine).
Overall it’s a glowing conversation (not a review), and the ONLY reason I looked twice at this game (and now eagerly awaiting the open beta on the 7th).
Perhaps WAR stories are the new “piracy” articles here on RPS…
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The great thing about WAR and WOW being around at the same time is that its going to push one another to make even better content. I have always wanted to see a game beat WOW, but i realize that i would rather have a game compete neck and neck with it so it is no longer a monopoly. WOW was and is and always will be a great game, and blizzard certainly has a great reputation which i think mythic will have to contend with, but i believe that there should not be animosity towards the two games. Instead we should all just appreciate each games innovative designs and aspects.
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I have been part of the closed beta and have these points.
It is like WoW with slightly slower combat. WoW Graghics are like a cartoon- WAR are slightly more “real” for lack of a better word. WAR have taken PVP content and overlapped it into the PVE world giving more meaning to go and kik other players buts. Eg. I was questing, ended up questing in an RvR area and spent the next 3 hours killing ppl with mates, firing off cannons and then realised why i was there in the first place,to collect some flowers or something. Great fun. Instead of WOW- Stormwind is under attack spamming on my screen and every1 in the city just not caring cos no one is flagged or no raids being formed to take out the enemy cities coz there aint no reward. PVP in WOW=Battlegrounds or the occasional gank, camp or raid on some low lvl town. I am hoping that character customization will be improved. Choosing out of six faces and 2 haircuts and so on isnt exactly my idea of looking unique. I am not sure y they even bothered with scenarios, they are just RvR zones that you magically get teleported to after waiting in a queue. Should have just stuck them in the PVE world like the other RVR zones. Capturing keeps=Awsome! Pissed off coz if you wanna be a tank on the order you gotta be some feminime looking elf wuss or a fat shrimp dwarf. Was really hoping to be some big mad human warrior of order, so i had to go chaos chosen instead. I like bein the good guys but not if i gotta look like i was just on an episode of queer eye for the straight guy or the biggest loser. Orders cool factor is really low where chaos is kool. I dont understand why the argument has to be which game is better WoW or WAR? They both have easy to remember abbreviations of their titles. I love WoW a lot and i love playing WAR a lot. I wont be giving up one for the other and i think that both of the games developement teams should take the great ideas both games have and incorporate them into their titles. Creating 2 awsome games that continue to try and outdo each other. Forcing new fresh ideas and “keep up with the jones’s” mentality. The argument that warcraft copied warhammer is really stupid! Warcraft started as a strategy game that had humans vs orcs, pretty standard setting for fantasy based game. The story of warcraft has slowly evolved from then on from each new game release. Wow uses pretty standard fantasy creatures, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls etc yet the back ground stories of these races are actually quite unique when you compare to other fantasy settings in books movies or games. Eg. Orcs are not a race of evil creatures, they are much like humans who were at one point corrupted by demonic forces but have since broke away from this and become shamanistic. Night elves are not evil and the high elves ended up being junkies. Both warcraft and warhammer have used standard fantasy creatures and ideas and have made their own lore for the races, world and backstory. All in all, i think WAR is an awsome game with unique features that a lot of future mmo’s should take notes on and WoW is an awsome game and will always be an awsome game. I can finally have 2 great mmo’s that i can switch between when i get tired of playing the other!
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You didn’t even read the first line? Thanks for your input!
No! But no!
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Lol. yeah sorry. i just got a bit carried away.
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WoW is a PVE tunnel that you are never meant to see the end of. I would rather tie my shoelaces a thousand times over, than do another PVE instance.
After 3 years, and switching from PVE to PVP WoW, I have had enough. Blizzards’ idea of PVP is so poorly implemented that I am sure PVP players will eventually make the transition to WAR.
If Mythic can recreate the PVP/RVR I enjoyed in DAoC then WAR will be a hit.
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All I have to say is I tried playing WoW again a little while ago and tried playing a new class and race. I hated it… I couldn’t be bothered to spend more then a generous hour trying WoW again.
I picked up WAR and was part of the preview weekend and I could not put the game down… it was that good! From the very start I was drawn in from the story line, combat abilities, and the over all minor differences that WoW doesn’t have that makes WAR more then just a WoW clone.
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The game has yet to come out, so I find all this arguing a bit of an annoyance. On a similar note it seems as if most of the fanboys on this page have payed little attention to the statement that this is NOT a review. It is an opinion from a few seemingly intelligent individuals on several aspects of a game they haven’t played all that much of anyway. The game is, after all, in the beta, so save your “WoW beats everything” and “WAR ftw” until it has been released, and even then perhaps you should actually experience it prior to announcing said remarks.
Furthermore, to those of my fellows from the “good ol’ US of A”, try to keep your Brit bashing to a minimum. It makes the quasi-intelligent citizens of our “great nation” look as stupid an uninformed as you are. Keep in mind that if it weren’t for them our country would not exist. I think I could deal with a few what have you’s and I say’s if it meant living in a country of open minded generally knowledgeable people, with a damn good sense of humor to boot.
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I wonder….nobody has commented on class balance since WAR is virtually all about RvR/PvP.
is one class equally able to kill another one on one based on the skill and/or pc/internet connection of the other? is there pvp gear that makes you more powefull pvp wise or is it all the same pve or pvp? Personally i think the items should have the least impact on the overall power of a character and skill should be at the forefront. I have no illusions that it will be completely balanced and polished at launch but i would like to know exactly how the classes perform and what plans if any they have to continuely strive for balance.
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WAR and WoW look “Nothing” alike. Please refer to those ridiculous looking hampsters they call “humans” in WoW, and then look at the definitely better job of “humans” in WAR. Big difference there.
Only gripe I have, and it’s not even an issue cause it will for sure be fixed and I believe already is, is the rebellious little War Lion I had. Bad War Lion…BAD! And the occasional mob runnin away from a great White Lion ass whoopin!! (should be obvious what my main is gonna be…Order FTW!) I won’t get into all the other crap about who started what where, whose mama has those cookies and how blue can they make the sky. Truth is, WAR is lookin pretty good, and I just hope it doesn’t turn out like AoC did…*sniffs, still hurting from the hurt*
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I think most people are simply too focused on comparing WAR and WoW to one another, and it’s a simple minded train of thought. First off, I can compare Star Wars Galaxies to WoW if I wanted to and call simularities, whoopty-do. There are simularities of course, you don’t want to break a working formula. The developers clearly stated several times over they don’t want to be totally different, they aren’t out to revolutionize the fantasy MMO industry, but rather to build on it with some evolutionary instead. That said, if it makes some people see it as “WoW 2.0″ what in hell is wrong with that? I’ve played WoW for over 3 years and delved deep into the end game and guess what? WoW’s end game may looks pretty, but it’s actually dull as hell, simple repitition and grind over and over for shinier tidbits that offer very slight improvements overall. Then, wearing your new t5 and t6 gear, you go do the same thing again on Thursday night because once you have so many shiny bits of armor on, that’s all you can really do is repeat. WotLK? Pahleeeze! Read up on that expansion, its a total rip of game play balance, not really anything all that great or new, just more repitition and some ideas carefully stolen from WAR before its release. After the release of WotLK I fully expect to see a good years worth of constant gameplay tweaks and balances yet again. WAR doesn’t totally look like the sourcebook when talking graphics, okay, thats true. Of course, if it did almost nobody could play it due to the system reqs needed to play, and RvR (soon to be a new staple in the genre) would be all but impossible on the best systems. Also touching on that is the inevitability of many of WAR’s core features becoming staples with the fantasy MMO (and indeed MMO in general) genre; more in-depth background info, achievement and quest tracking (aka. the Tome of Knowledge by other names), Public Quests, Open Grouping, and instanced pvp scenarios that are more balanced and more accessable.
All said, WAR in my experience thus far is far superior than WoW- far more engrossing, far more enjoyable and by far more fair minded(WoW caps servers by the total number of players per sever rather than the total number per faction, meaning PvP in WoW gets really shitty when your Horde and the alliance on that server outnumber you more than 4 to 1 -thus they have better gear progression and such) And let us face the truth, WAR developers did 2 really important things that solidly sold me on the game, they cut out the vast majority of the crappy repetitive grinding and they added collision detection to PvP! All that without mentioning how amzing the open world RvR in the game is!
So those of you with your uppity “WoW clone” opinions, go try to develope a successful fantasy MMO that doesn’t have any simularities to WoW… good luck on that pumpkin, you’re gonna need it.
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come on people you make like WoW started the hole mmo thing but it was just an advancement on the frist greay mmo EQ!! but that game got old , how really wants to lvl 70+ and now wow is going thur the same process and ithere will have to be a new better game, the market damands itm it will all ways be this way, there will always be one top mmo while the others linger in the past.
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WoW did little to nothing revolutionary to the MMO genre except for coming in and throwing its weight around, bringing more people into the genre and expanding the market; Other than that, most of what was in that game was taken from MMO games that came before it. You’d be surprised how many people seem to think WoW was the first MMO. It’s almost sad.
WAR isn’t doing anything WoW didn’t do when it was being developed; You use the industry standards and improve upon their implementation, and sometimes you make your own systems to add. WAR has a lot of things in it that other MMO’s haven’t done, or have tried to do but failed to implement correctly. Having played it, it’s all extremely well done, particularly for a beta.
No game can kill WoW, no matter how boring and fuzzy PvE it may ever get, but WAR is definitely going to rival it, in time. WAR is no AoC. It’s definitely going places – It only takes a person one time in large-scale RvR combat to realize that.
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While World of Warcraft has [other] developers such as Jeff Kaplan, and a lore-backstabber named Chris Metzen (who, except for that, is a decent guy), Warhammer has the utterly brilliant developers like Paul Barnett, Josh Drescher and so on.
Sure, WoW has been polished during it’s 4 years. But I have to say, with the funds that Blizzard have, and so much time for improvements, they’ve not achieved perticularly much. Personally I’ve been a Warcraft fan until the point when Lore became nothing more than a resource to be butchered to keep addicts playing. This is far more obvious in Wrath of the Lich King (I could refer to pages were Blizzard contradicts themselves about their own lore, added/changed in WotLK).
While Games Workshop will keep an eye on Mythic so they don’t go far in that sense, Blizzard already crossed the line too many times. Personally, I refuse to be around when Arthas gets brought to the slaughter just like Illidan was. (The person who has raided Illidan and now see him as a alive character, not a lootsource, please step up).
Warhammer will give us something new, when all Blizzard is doing is filling up the same portion of shite we’ve been playing for 4 years. Simply adding something minor every now and then (which, in WotLK’s case, they stole from mainly Warhammer).
Wrath of the Lich King is more of a Warhammer wannabe expansion than Warhammer is a Warcraft wannabe game.
Ciao mates.
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I disagree about the “too similar to wow, so burnt out people won’t play” idea presented here. I was severely burnt out on wow, to the point where i would log in, jump around Stormwind a couple of times, and log off 10 minutes later. This game though has kept me playing for hours on end, it’s not grindy, you are involved in something fun from the very start. No more waiting until level 70 before being able to do anything significant. Everything you do in WAR is significant, no matter what.
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Man, this has been a trashfest of a comment thread . . .
This was a great discussion about the game. Every game has its good and bad points. It was nice of them to point it out. I have played in the closed beta and pretty much agree with what everybody said.
As far as WoW vs. WAR:
I played WoW for a while and liked it. It’s a good game. It opened MMOs to the masses. It has a user-friendly interface. WAR did copy some of those things from it because they worked. Mythic would be stupid not to. Mythic isn’t stupid, and they know most of their player base is going to come from that game. I loved hopping in the game for the first time and having the controls feel so familiar. The game world is quite different, but familiar enough so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
There are a lot of things that make WAR stand out, and those are what should be celebrated, not its similarities to WoW because those aspects are common among most MMOs.
I have a CE pre-ordered and can’t wait until the head-start finally opens and I can start owning face!
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In passing – as I haven’t had a chance to read through the comments thread – one thing we should have perhaps been clearer about is that due to playing in the EU beta, there’s rarely been the chance for us to play RvR. Since there’s multiple servers for each language, it seems that each server rarely reaches the population threshold where RvR really kicks off.
I think that we liked it as much as we did from the PvE side alone is a sign of how neat we think it is.
KG
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i’ve preordered this game and im defiitly going to give it a shot,but being a wow fan i don’t think war will deliver a better or competing experience to wow and in the long run i don’t see myself sticking with war online.
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In the end who really cares if it seems a bit like wow, aspects of wow seem ( and in fact are) like alot like other games; its the nature of the market if it works here why change whats not broken. AoC tried it and look a 5 wheel dosn’t make the car anymore fun to drive it just adds a whole layer of extra shit to screw up on. Not saying that in the confines of “what works” there isn’t alot of room to be innovative though. and that’s where this game (hopefully) shines.
And anyone who looks at Beta and nitpics needs to have there head checked especially when comparing to wow did any of you actualy play wow when it was first released ? complaing about class imbalances and waiting ques …. hello your playing a beta did you really think you where playing a FINISHED games i hope to hell not. Im sure its gonna be a couple of months before all the classes are acceptably balanced and kinks in the never before stress tested system are ironed out its a fact of life. What matters is did they get the ground work right? The most impressive building can go to S*** if you dont have the foundation of a great thing worked out its not gonna improve its just gonna snowball.
So spend the 50 bucks and try it out if your interested who cares what a beta tester said/ didn’t say you might find them spot on or decide they are full of crap don’t let the fan boys or nay sayer’s ruin it for you (/rantoff )
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Why do people keep getting angry about things we haven’t written?
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Why do you say such hurtful things about my mother?
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That’s ludicrous, Meat. Anarchistic syndicalism is a viable response to certain social events.
KG
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@Clayton
On the whole “WoW copied WAR fantasy setting”
WoW DID copy WAR. Expecially if you look at the older games.
Now of course most games have some *universals* (elves are old and smart and arrogent and dead sexy), however, I would like to point out that untill WAR3, orcs WERE monsterous evil crazy killing machines. Then in 3 they finally decided to make a real major background to the game and have been fleshing it out (and F*#$King it up) since.
You pointed out “Warcraft started as a strategy game”….im curious if you really know anything about Warhammer?
Night elves, do seem to be mildly unique to WoW, however you could likely point out MANY similarities between them and wood elves of warhammer (bloody treehuggers the lot!)
Ok, my train of thought is quickly disentigrating, so feel free to stop now as I’m about to embark on a WoW lore rant.
I can understand having to make changes over time to really add lore (expecially from stuff b4 WAR 3, since that is where they really actually started creating a real backstory), however it seems every time they add new story it breaks the old.
Also, QUIT RUINING EPIC CHARACTERS! Illiden, while always a bit on the insane side, still used to be pretty cool, and while things didn’t exactly work out as he had expected, he really did have the best intentions for his people at heart. Kael….what the hell did they do to him ><
I was already disappointed that he went completly maniac obsessive after the frozen throne…but the first time I saw him in Magisters terrace my respect for the storyline people at blizz diminished….why!?!?!
Now of course, they are takeing the blue dragonflight and screwing them up as well. Malygos IS a bit of a nut since almost all of his flight was destroyed 10k years ago, but he knows magic better then anything alive (on azeroth), I severaly doubt he is addled enough to do something to save the world (deprive every1 else of magic) in an attempt to save it.
Bah, enough ranting.
In short, I LOVE the warcraft lore, while so far im only moderatly into warhammer (though 40k is EPIC), but they continuoulsly drive me away and honestly, my obsessivness with the series since the original (which I played when I was 4) is the only thing really keeping me going…
Ok, stopping now before I really crash.
And I do realize that this post for a WAR topic was mostly on WoW…Ill try to make another about the actual game once I collect myself.
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@Meat Circus
1.The game is about KILLING. It’s like asking for less shooting in a shooter.
2.Kill quests are more fun than “Go spend 15 minutes walking to X and pick up Y and then turn around and come back to me” quests.
3. Warhammer kill quests are not nearly as much of a grind as WoW kill quests are. You can finish them 2-3x faster and there is less travel time.
4. You aren’t supposed to do nothing but solo quests, do PQ’s, dungeons, scenarios, and Open-World RvR.
WAAAAAGH!!!!!
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Ok After reading asll the posts I want to say the following.
1) its still in beta and some smoothing etc is still to be done.
2) I have played every Warhammer Genre game their is and can tell you it does feel like warhammer.
3) I played wow for years and while their are some similarities, playing it past lev 20 will show you just how different it is.
4) WoW has sold out to the easy quick fix brigade and is constantly making the game easier and easier to where now if you can click a mouse you can Heal or use a shot rotation etc.
This game is different enough to stand alone but similar enough (was wow really that different from DAOC, or EQ or EQ2?) to be easily picked up.
Also remember how the other games were at release??? It takes a bit of time to polish the stone and get it to the place its going to be.
Wow sucked at release….now having years of time to work on it, it feels polished. Warhammer will too.
Even if you played in Beta, Even if you got to play at high level, you haven’t seen the game that its going to be.
Patients…..
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Order sux cuz if dey says “WAAAGH” da orcs will kik der asses. and da odder destuck…..destruct….destruction….ya dats it, dey will help us. Dey n00bz dey have to says order ftw.
XD
WAAAAAGH!!!!!>
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Ok then.
Public quests – I, personally, loved deeply, however I will admit that when you have 40+ people all doing them at once they lose some of their fun, yet there are MANY PQs in less traveled areas that I never saw any1 doing, and yo really cant do them w/o at least a small group.
Scenarios – To all the people ocmplaining about insanced combat in MMOs, a big part of it is to keep the place balanced. If you are in World RvR its very common for one side to start completly rolling the other because they simply have more population/people in that particular area. With scenarios, stratagy is, if anything, more importent, and the sides are useually much more balanced. I saw one person talk about not likeing getting teleported into it….well that is just for conviniance. And I must say, I played WoW back when you had to run to ashenvale/Arathi basin/Hillsbrad to get in BG, and thats just annoying, and it reduces the number of people queing drasticly since many dont want to spend that much time going out there.
ToK – I can understand if you doint like it, if you have no intrest in lore/obsessing over random, comparativly meaningless (compared to stats) numbers, then I doubt you will place muhc intrest in the ToK. Personally, I loved reading many of the entries (from the very 1st one which has a maurader clawing his eyes out), and being one of the few chaos with the 25 “killed by sorcerer” thing. I will admit, it could use some better organization, Whenever I was looking for soemthing specific (list of all quests I currently have going/how much influence I have for this PQ) it could often take a bit to find it.
Graphics – Honestly I am a big (brace yourself) fan (please dont kill me) of WoWs. Like everyone else has said, WARs are a bit less cartoony then WoWs, though honestly aside from that I personally dont see much difference (ok, a bit more detail in certain areas but, hey I admited that I like WoWs). Though yes, humans look considerablly better in WAR.
Class balance – This, naturally, is something Im sure will take time to get right, and even when it is right no one will be happy (“A good compromise leaves everyone angry”). Personally, I think it seemed pretty decend during PW, I was only in the lowbie scenarios but I never really saw one class always dominate. BWs do inflict much pain with AoE, however, even on a tank once I got within melee range they useually didnt have any choice but to run in circles untill 3 other BWs killed me (that match I beleive my team mates were running around in circles in the general vicinity of one of the capture nodes). Wish BGs had a bit more coordination, but theres the benifit to a guild.
Other Quests – Pretty strait forward generally, but the text was VERY intresting (for destruction), and they seemed to go much faster then in WoW (then again I didnt have to run quite as far generally, bu the longer I played the more time I spent running. On the other hand, Kill collecters seem to make it mildly worth your while to kill copious amounts of pretty much anything you happen to run across in your travels. And who dosn’t love setting buildings on fire?
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I love the smell of Angry Internet Men in the afternoon, they have a rather nice cinnamon bouquet.
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Well, I didnt read every single response, dont have THAT much time, so if Im reiterating something which has already been said/addressed, forgive me.
To those who have said the artwork isnt WAR-ish enough: I played WAR rpg and tabletop for many, many years. I think the graphics are actually very faithful to WAR flavor. Many of the character renders look like they were pulled directly from WAR minatures.
To those comparing WoW to WAR: Well, Im tempted to ignore this one, I mean, just as in RL, people who are fans of one will think its better than the other, and the majority of them will think that the lesser (in their opinion) copied the better. Its human nature. But, for my 2 cents, WoW copied all of the good points of the games that came before it, and attempted to leave out the bad. This is what WAR did as well, copied the good points of games that came before it, and attempted to leave out the bad. This is how things are developed. You dont get rid of what works well and is popular, you adopt it and add to it, which is EXACTLY the same thing WoW did when they created THIER game.
Bugs and flaws in the BETA and Preview: Are you kidding me? Thats what beta’s are for, finding bugs, testing the game… of COURSE your going to find bugs in the beta, your SUPPOSED to. BETA isnt a just a chance to play the game before everyone else, your also supposed to be LOOKING for bugs, and reporting them so they can be fixed. Every beta agreement/contract Ive ever read explained this, so, those of you complaining about such things are just foolios that didnt read said agreement, and didnt understand what you were SUPPOSED to be doing in the beta in the first place. And to all the WoW fanbois, WoW was EXTREMELY buggy when it first came out. Sh*t, I remember it being about 8 months before the game really smoothed out and became enjoyable.
Well, thats it i guess. I enjoy posting my thoughts and flaming others anonymously as much as the next geek, but If I were to post every though I have on the matter, this post would be an hour long read.
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@ Warghoul
Dont know much about WAR art, as I have only got into it rather recently
/agree
agree with the first part, but I dont really remember WoW being that buggy….then again I did quit for 3months right after it came out so I was a little behind the lemin rush (ciaphias cain ftw) that found the bugs.
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@Drak: Well, I suppose its possible that I am misremembering how long it was buggy, 8 months seems about right, but it was like what, 4 or more years ago now? I am certain however that I recall it BEING buggy. I, like many other players spent much time on the forums complaining about said bugs. Also, you can go to the WoW homepage and view patch notes for all the major patches. The small, hotfix patches arent listed there but… anyhow, just reading those patch notes you see quite a few bugs which were identified and fixed, dating all the way back, and interestingly enough, all the way forward as well. The last blizz patch identified and corrected several bugs. So, even know, when they are so “polished” (Im not actually disputing that they are, dont get me wrong) they are finding and fixing bugs.
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Unfortunately my time at Warhammer Alliance told me that a large minority of people waiting for the game can not bare it to be criticised(another thing it has in common with WoW). All criticism is immediately and automatically interpreted as an attack on the game and it must mean that you don’t want the game to be great.
PCG’s last preview of WAR was slightly critical about one of the starting areas. On Warhammer Alliance, they threw a tantrum over it. No matter how gently some matters are approached, they’re not satisfied. They don’t understand that criticism exists only because people care about what happens to the game and no amount of effort in explaining this to them on my part has got them to see sense.
Now some of them are here throwing a wobbly over this ‘review’.
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Im an elder beta tester still in the test servers for WAR and yeah, that is a WoW shot at the end… only thing I have to say is this, and it’s my sig in the closed beta forums for WAR: Having played WAR Beta, I can say,
Once upon a time I loved WoW and wow, am I over it!
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As a Warhammer tabletop gamer it can be said that i have been waiting on this game for a VERY long time, and from everything that i have read it is all that i could hope for (except for the removal of Black Guard… i wanted one of those bad!) I feel that the Tome of Knowledge really wasn’t given the respect it deserves in this article, as a fan of history and detail the tome is nothing short of a god send, i for one will spend many hours simply reading through the tome, let alone playing the game itself. As far as the familiarities to WoW go, it’s not really a fair judgement. All MMO’s have to play in a certain way, just as most RTS, and FPS games do, to say it’s plays similar to WoW would be to say that WoW plays similar to it’s predecessors. It has to fit a certain model and THEN add it’s own mark on the genre, which it has clearly done, to be too radical would be to invite failure because people wouldn’t feel at all comfortable playing the game. Also the graphics are nothing similar to WoW’s in my opinion, they are completely fitting to any Warhammer artwork you would see in the tabletop game. Blizzard has long taken ideas from the Warhammer world and made them into their own. Graphics are never a massive thing to be looked at in MMO’s though, they have to run a minimum of sorts so that their game is accessible to as many people as possible.
Also for those that want their space ships, THQ is working on a Warhammer 40,000 MMO as we speak. it is still years away, but it is coming ;)
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I’ve been playing WoW since the beginning but now I can’t help feeling that Blizzard have really killed the game for good in TBC expansion. For me WoW has become just silly self-repeating gear grind that has resulted in killing the last bits of fighting spirit and fun in the PvP side of the game.
What I’ve read and seen – WHO seems like a fun game for a change with proper lore behind it. While in WoW, gods cried everytime I saw another D&D rip in it.
See you in The Old World:D!
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See how this game really looks:
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/35739-war-nda-officially-lifted-post-pics-info-4.html
AND http://www.flickr.com/photos/abriael/
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Nice, you remove my post bashing gorgeras, who was bashing everyone else, but not his post. I wont be frequenting this site anymore. And, removing the offending parts of his psot, either the admins, or perhaps gorg himself, i dont know, doesnt change the fact that he is an idiot with no valid points. and if it WAS in fact an admin, or someone other than Gorg who edited his post, you shouldnt change peoples posts to make them seem more intelligent than they are
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Hmm having done the closed beta on this I can not say the author is entirely correct by calling it a wow clone as wow is in itself nothing more then a clone of the games that came before it with a slight twist, that said the interface is similar there ends the similarities what wow said they would accomplish in the first year with pvp and still have yet to deliver Warhammer has done it with no problems. Pvp in warhammer means something more then a victory notch in the BG’s it can affect a whole realm in many ways from lowering XP earned to not being able to get PVP items if your forts are taken and the fact that quests add to the victory total for that side it makes even strict pve’rs apart of the over all effort. Graphics are much better then wow’s cartoons but no where near AOC but the story lines brought in for alot of the quests makes them all more intresting the running around for x number of items hoping for a drop which when it comes is always 10 levels lower then what your using. Each race has it’s own starting are with it’s own feel and the classes are for the most part well balance with a few changes to be made. ANother note before people start calling this a wow clone, blizzard made warcraft because games workshop would’nt give them a liscense to warhammer way back when so most of the concepts are taken for warhammer it’s self. Get this game if you like PVP done right in a true warhammer environment, how ever if you like expansions that tend to make old content obsolete and a very misbalanced game then stick with warcraft and enjoy playing your warlock
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I played an HE shadow warrior during the preview weekend, I LOVED the class, but the character looked like a very feminine man with unoptional long hair, skinny arms and legs, and constant Link (Zelda) outfits. I then tried an Empire Witch Hunter and was pleased with the varied skills and combos. He also looked wicked with his 5AM shadow and leather tunic. I just hope most good players dont end up on destruction side and few opportunities arrive for the Order to pillage the destruction city.
Witch Hunter FTW
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Jabin submitted that the game looks like this: yeah it’s close to what I experience – very close but it still doesn’t seem as good as what I getta play with my system (highend quad core CPU, 4 gigs of fastass DDR2 RAM, a 1333Mhz FSB and a sweetass GTX OC viddy card) I wonder if the shadows aren’t on full? dunno but yeah – Perhaps folks with midrange systems are getting less quality than this and that’s why we have to read the annoying people/reviewers/critics/wow fanboys spout how it looks like wow… It certainly DOES NOT. WoW looks like a 3 yr old cartoon game compared to the stylistic graphically beautiful achievment that is WAR. Thanks for posting this Jabin. –> http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/35739-war-nda-officially-lifted-post-pics-info-4.html
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Okay one more post: this time my images – scaled down but you should see what the game should look like if your system isn’t as old as my grandma’s.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30279362@N08/
PS I’m concerned about the addition of the crappy wow image at the end by the website and they make no reference to it not being WAR as if they want folks to think WAR looks a lot like wow? I dun understand that… it isn’t honest.
what kinda system do you guys pull your screenies from cuz those images are crap… please look at mine if you wanna see what you can realize with my quad core cpu and GTX OC vid card (or at least w/hardware that’s newish) – I can also get this result with my other system that has an 8800 gt card and duo core cpu fyi… just have to expect some graphics lag with that setup if you’re keeping all settings at highest like I do with my quad and gtx oc. Hope it gives folks a good idea what to expect anyway.
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Another prob i have is that theres to many “human” like classes couldnt they have thrown in somthing other then elves,chaos humans(no deamons?),humans and dwarfs. Skaven or undead would have been a good start im sure they will eventually put them in but for now i feel like all i have to choose from is anerexic elves and, and, and well thats all there is to choose from. Also its not as pretty as you all keep saying it has good texture art but the animation is just not right theres something missing. All in all i was very let down by the looks of the game the ideas like rvr an pq are great but where is the quality that warcraft would deliver? What was leaving me confused is how you all come here saying the game is way beter looking then wow when its just not. But enough bashing the game because i must say that i had fun playing it while blindfolded. Its very very fast paced compaired to wow no more playing all day long to lvl(betting the later lvls of War will be long though). It doesnt take long to have a hole pile of alts in War but i notice alot of the quests are the same but at leas there very short.
That said i will be playing since i preordered it but if they dont work out the bugs im gone. Ive said it since i first started following warhammer online the ideas are great but can they make a game out of them?
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And here I was hoping WAR would have a more mature community than WoW. Oh well.
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I want PVP, so Im off to WAR BABY! WoW’s pvp sucks balls, seriously their class balance in arenas is a joke, and I am done laughing.
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Just to note, my earlier post was edited by RPS for reasons I don’t know but I’m fairly sure are reasonable. I’m guessing that they thought it would attract further flaming after Warghoul’s now-deleted post.
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Well, you all do realize that Warhammer came first, right? WoW ripped WAR off is what it boils down to, Mythic was just slow to come up with transitioning WAR from pen and paper to MMO.
After playing the preview weekend, WAR is significantly different than WoW (which I played for 2 years). SIGNIFICANTLY. I can’t stress that enough. Those of you who claim it is very similar are way wrong. The art is different, the mechanics… I could go on. The only similarities I see are in the UI. And, well, bearing curse-gaming’s UI accessibility, that won’t be a problem for long.
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Warhammer is a great game, it may not stand up to World of Warcraft’s content in the beginning months (i think it does) but give it time, how many of you can recall the content World of Warcraft had in the first few months of its release.. i mean it didn’t even have Battlegrounds so there was basically no PvP at all. I played in Preview Weekend and Closed Beta, i enjoyed the RvR, Tome of Knowledge (Which Blizzard stole through their “Achievements” expansion content even though its not even close to the ToK” and many other things this game had to offer
And i saw a couple of people say one thing they didn’t like was that it didn’t have an “Autofollow” in the game because you were lazy. I am lazy too and it does have Auto follow, its just not an option by right clicking someone’s portrait, you just have to actually type /follow.
Other than that the PvP vastly surpasses World of Warcraft’s, but all in all the game is on the same page as World of Wacraft is and soon to be many pages ahead of it!
Can’t wait to see you all in the game on release day!
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Dark Age of Camelot (Mythic) has the best RvR ever made imo. Mix DaoC with WoW and we have the best game ever. Strange that not many people compare DaoC (2001) with WAR.
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To the uninitiated/WoWfans: I really don’t understand what people are expecting WAR to be that doesn’t at least bear some resemblance to WoW. Of course there’s going to be “kill x of y” quests. Of course there’s going to be stylized weapons/armor. Of course there’s going to be some kind of a grind. It’s a fantasy MMO for pete’s sake. Those things are practically in the definition of MMOs. On the flip side, how much different can WoW and WAR be on… let’s see… EVERYTHING ELSE? The art is different: WAR is more muted, darker, and less… cartoony? RvR doesn’t even exist in WoW, and it’s a major component of WAR (I’m not sure how you can do a review/commentary without playing the major/flagship content…). WoW doesn’t have PQs. WoW doesn’t have interesting mechanics to smooth out PvP gameplay, while WAR has the “chicken polymorph” and the instance PvP buffing of lower levels so there’s some point of going in before the level range cap (do you hear me, Blizz?). WAR has classes that stretch the standard Tank-DPS-Caster-Healer molds. Still think it’s JUST like WoW?
To the people that don’t play tabletop: The WAR MMO is (for better AND worse) dictated by the pre-existing Warhammer universe. Many of the thematic things that people don’t like about WAR are in there because they’re actually supposed to be. The Inevitable City has lots of twisty streets and is hard to find your way around in? Could that be because it’s… chaotic? I’m surprised that it doesn’t teleport you around randomly or spontaneously rearrange. There are too many humanoid races? High Elves are not the same as Empire are not the same as Dwarfs are not the same as Dark Elves. Please. And if you were more familiar with the IP, you would know why other races couldn’t be in the game without major rethinking. Let’s see… Skaven: whose side would they be on and why? Same thing with Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings (which someone ungraciously lumped together into “undead”: this isn’t WoW guys) Lizardmen: homeland isn’t anywhere nearby… maybe an expansion later on? All my fellow tabletop players know what I’m talking about… the rest of you, start reading before you bash decades-old IP.
And for those people that are caught up on glitches (e.g. pathing, LOS, animations…): I will reiterate what others have said: IT’S A BETA. If you would read the beta boards, you would know that these things are well-known to the developers, are going to be fixed, and in the end, have no bearing on the underlying quality of the game.
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There is blocking.
My problem with the game: its too much for my laptop to handle! lol
Otherwise fantastic. If you want breathing room, just walk off the main road? Maybe they can add on some ‘turn-off’ auto “announce open groups” and “announce journal acomplishments”.
Oh and I was actually reading the Tome. I like fluff, which is seriously lacking in WoW (and most other MMOs).
And I’d much rather have something intuitive to play, than something like EVE (which is really easy after the first few minutes, but one gets tired of hearing on noob chat “how do I move?!?”)
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Actually I think the AI was fixed before preview week end even ended.
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why did you include a WoW screensot? the last one is clearly NOT WAR.
is that some subtle misinformation?
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WoW is to WAR as Naruto is to Jet Li.
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Sup all cool!
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WOW == PVE endgame, losely tied to Warhammer, 3 years of refinement, A Grind (have 5 70s all pvp epiced out)
WAR == RVR endgame (the only succesful model for PVP so far), first release, tied to warhammer lore, leveling pvp or pve without the stupid hours wasted running around.
Flaws? Yes its brand new. Experience dev team? Yes they will fix and listen. Love PVE? Don’t play WAR.
Did I hit the main points? Yes.
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Well, I played the Beta for both WAR and WOW I will tell you that WAR seems a bit more polished then WOW was in this stage. Few bugs that are known and being worked on AKA:pathfinding. I really don’t know why people gripe about the graphics there better then WOW’s period and this is still in Beta. When WOW was released they released it with dated graphics but, it worked. Same for WAR it will work. Both games have goods and bads. It’s just what works for you. Heres and idea don’t buy it if you don’t want it. I am sure alot of us WAR players don’t want the crying and complaints all over WAR servers.
Also Quit comparing the 2 there different not copies. Warhammer was around a very log time before Blizzard was even formed. Ideas are borrowed all the time. AKA: Warcraft borrowed from Warhammer. AD&D from Lord Of The Rings and they all borrowed from Real myths and legends such as Greek, Roman etc.
Enough of it already please get over it.
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“John: I’ve played a High Elf to 10, a Chaos to 8 and an Orc to 15.”
“Kieron: I’ve played my Witch Elf up to Level 14 or so. A couple of other really low alts. And some messing around with the level 31 stuff. I haven’t done much of the PvP or RvR stuff yet.”
I really wish you guys had played more of the game before posting “impressions.” Your observations on WAR are really pretty weak and NOTHING like what everyone else I spoke with throughout closed beta has to say about the game. I totally understand the loose comparisons, after all, it’s a fantasy MMO and you can’t really re-define that.
For anyone who actually makes it down this far into the comments, I would advise you to try this game and see what your impressions of it are after more than the half a day (if that) a few of them have put into it.
I’m kind of amazed that Mythic linked to this page from their website. I’m not saying you guys trashed the game, far from it. But posting impressions of a game when you obviously experienced very little content in it is pointless.
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The game really doesn’t look like WoW…unless your looking at screenshots. Login to the game, and you’ll see the world is much more detailed and beautiful looking.
The folks in this interview obviously didn’t get very far into the game, and their opinions/views seemed to be based on a distate for WoW. More than once I was wondering if they had more MMO experience than WoW/CoH…I think the preview sums up the answer “No.”
I disagree with the comment that ToK is for SP. It is very heavily tied into RVR, not SP. Its a great addition to an already countless amount of things to do in-game.
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I have been looking forward to the release to WAR for a long time due to many reasons. I’ve checked their websites daily, seen every cinematic, sat through every interview, read every monthly “issue”, as they described what they were trying to acheive.
I, like many others, feel Blizzard has done an inadequate job providing for gamers whom are looking for lasting acheivement in their online world. With every expansion of WoW, everything previous has become meaningless; new characters right now are often rightfully told there’s not much point looking for gear in any of the level 60 instances, because what you get as green items in the outland outshine the best things from any old world dungeon. And good luck getting one of those old school 40 mans together! The exact same thing is happening with WotLK.
This seems most especially inadequate when you consider how many resources the company now has because of their consumers.. it seems unfair how little they’re doing to appease their large masses.
The classes are still extremely imbalanced. There is little to no actual customization; one has a list of maybe 3 or 4 more powerful combinations that make other options unrealistic. In arena, there are undenyably overpowered combinations, that simply beat more other class combinations by default than they should. And while battlegrounds are finally on a large enough scale for every class to have its need, their rewards pale in comparison to the smaller scale combat.
In the end, for all the people whom have grinned and beared it, our characters are just as well off being naked and starting at level 70 on our journey to 80. We are no better off for our efforts, no matter what we were doing at the old cap for the days and months of played time, than somebody who finally finds the ease of Blizzard’s gaming and falls under their spell 2 weeks ago.
I am pointing this all out because WAR is offering an entirely different experience than that. Admittedly, you -must- enjoy pvp for this game to work for you. It is centered around war, and if you don’t want to kill and be killed by other players it’s simply not gonna work. I’m sorry Carebears. We’ll miss you. If your worried that the game has poopy pve to guide you along the way to being a more team oriented, tactic using killing force with your allies for when you get to end game pvp, you’re abso-frigginlutely wrong. For collectors and characters wishing to max out unique customizations alike, there will be plenty to monsters with purpose to kill. And while in a future expansion these may lose stat value, what’s important is the renown rank. A seperate leveling system in addition to your xp, based on killing enemies and completing pvp objectives. The only way somebody’s going to catch up and gain that sometimes significant advantage back is to do as much slaughter as their opponent has. Lasting achievement.
When I was directed to this site by warhammeronline.com, at first it sort of bothered me. I didn’t understand why they had sent me to a bickering match like this; the original discussion is solely designed to get us comparing it to WoW in the first place. The gamers even admitted it was not a review, and that they had not experienced any of what the game was about. Just threw us the bone and are laughing their asses off watching us fight over it. Then I realized…
WAR already has enough of a gathering to actually fight back forum trollers. Enough (previous?) WoWers and gamers from all genres have experienced just enough of a taste of the game to already love it and provide you with reasons why we do. When you look at the responses even on this forum, for the most part anybody nay-saying is simply uneducated about the history of fantasy mmo’s, and are pointing out facts that end up furthering our claims. Calling anything a WoW clone to begin with is incorrect, as it was just a dumbed down clone of previous mmos (which started as text games…which started as D&D..etc) so that it was a more accessible game to more people. Blizzard is brilliant and deserves every success they have gotten, but there are people looking for a different experience than they are willing to offer.
WAR is coming. Anybody who’s into fantasy pvp who tries this game will more than likely never turn back. It’s up to us to spread the word, and up to you WoW’rs to keep making fools of yourselves and to keep reminding us why WoW is through. (Or hey, a thought out response in WoW’s favor would be cool too.)
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It might look alot like WoW but it’s completely different. And again, what mmo doesn’t look like WoW?.. Mostly because WoW has the best features and such which makes it fun.
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@ Gorgeras
The Warhammer Alliance forums are a joke. Nothing but a bunch of coddled children who think any argument should be locked, any debate silenced, and any poster who speaks out banned.
If you go there, be sure to only post what the mods want to hear.
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eaisly said this is WOW with a diffrent core and soon wow will have PQs becuase ive been hearing about it in wow for a long time and wow also now has a place for achivments in the upcomming expansion honestly this game may make it may not because its very simmalar the only thing that will decide it is what people want do they want a more medevil time or a more modern medevil time and people have already put many years into WoW that they have workd hard for so warhammer will need to pull something outa there asses, basicly if i join the game itll be a hit becuase ill prob be the last person to join ^.^ gl warhammer make me proud and do the impossible cuz wow is adicting now make urself a better drug then WoW
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If BLizzard takes the PQ’s from WAR and put it in WoW, it just shows how stupid and which copy cats they are that can’t make there own things.
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Noc says:
A quick question about minutae that interests me:
Do players block other players’ pathing? Or do players clip through each other WoW style?
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Yes you get Blocked in RvR,but in PvE you don’t.
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Zombi, would you have said the same if RPS had been completely and overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the game? Seeing as your objection is that they have played only a small part of the game, this point would equally apply if they gave no criticism at all.
But they are mostly positive about it, which just goes to show that some people simply will not tolerate any criticism of the game no matter how mild it is. If the game tanks, it will be because of such people not allowing it to be criticised.
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Just a few FYI’s:
1. I saw someone earlier asking about it, and some one later responding to it, incorrectly- All players block other players, whether they’re on your side or not. Pets also block players.
2. There is no ‘Good’ side in Warhammer. While the game casts the side of Order as ‘Good’, they are not . They’re just less evil than destruction.
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@ Gorgeras
“But they are mostly positive about it, which just goes to show that some people simply will not tolerate any criticism of the game no matter how mild it is. If the game tanks, it will be because of such people not allowing it to be criticised.”
I do agree with you on one major point: There are people that will back this just because they don’t want their time to feel wasted. Obviously this is a pretty stupid reason for supporting anything, including WAR. However, I don’t think your comment has nothing to do with what I posted. I cannot be any more crystal clear than I was before. Don’t put words into my post that aren’t there. I don’t believe that, having seen so little of what there was out there, we should be reading RPS’s impressions of this.
You wouldn’t put much stock into a movie review if the critic watched the first half hour, right?
I already said they’re not bashing the game. They seem to enjoy it a lot! Not sure what else I can say to reinforce that. Their response to the game (I thought) was still very, very positive.
Is that clear enough? I’m not saying RPS hates WAR. You could think of it like this: I disagree with when they posted it, not what was posted.
Edit for spelling ><
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Not a valid comparison in this case. Games are not movies – and that’s especially true of MMOs. This is a discussion based on what we’ve played, and the fact alone that we explicitly said how much we had played should qualify that.
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Zombi I think you’re probably taking their impressions a bit out of context. Remember that it isn’t a review at *all* but an impression of the game. Even if it’s an early impression of the game, that’s still what it is.
The comparison though, despite what Jim says, is valid still I think in a way. I know I wouldn’t put much into what someone said about any medium even a game if it weren’t finished. *BUT* remember this: it’s not a review. So I don’t think it’s bad that they haven’t played more, as you put it.
grrrr my post keeps failing and i didn’t get it all in..
On a different note I don’t think it’s bad to say that WAR is looking really similar to WOW right now. I Haven’t played WAR at all but it kinda does look the same.
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I think people forget that graphics don’t make a game work sometimes like in Lineage 2, game looked great but never really picked up. Also as far as pvp goes, looks like most people have never played one of the best pvp games ever, Shadow-bane. That game had real reasons to fight and that was to protect your city’s empires and neighbors otherwise you would find your home taken or burned. Nothing like working a year on a town filling npc guards vendors and walls to have another group come and wreck the place. They also had pvp available the moment you leave the starting zone. That meant if someone in your group was being a jerk you could leave just turn and kill them. Let alone when someone died everything except there armor was left on there dead body for looting. The game also had very good GM interaction where they could if they were feeling fun place monster outside your door or correct things that you messed up. Needed to say I’m looking forward to going back to basics of killing people to level and would love to know how this RvR will be. On an extra note anybody able to compare this game to some of the non talked about games?
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BLah Blah Blah BLah Blah
Everything seems to have been said twice. Just want to get my input in…
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I always find it funny on these forums whenever a new game comes out and compares it to wow, like war is a wow duplicate with warhammer IP. WoW is the biggest functionally coppied game… ever, it deffinately wasn’t the first and has provided little of any variation from its predicessors.
I’m looking forward to WAR potentially doing the mmo genre justice – most games, and wow being its biggest culprit, turn into huge single player games with a major city where everyone gathers and then ports off to play single player games. None, or little of the game content actually being massively multiplayer.
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Nice review guys, but… you didn’t try PvP? RvR? Seriously? You’re reviewing – no, sorry, giving impressions of – Warhammer Online and you HAVEN’T TRIED RVR?
Get with the program.
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I completely agree Josus. Shadowbane was a great game, and so was DAOC. Since those days, though, there has been a gap in the games developed for PvP and RvR, maybe due to WoW’s popularity and success. Nevertheless, I do believe WAR will live up to the expectations of PvP gamers, and it’ll fill a necessary niche in the MMO community. WoW is a PvE game with a touch of PvP, WAR is a PvP game with a touch of PvE. No game will have everything to everyone.
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I just noticed people randomly falling off the grammar bandwagon when getting excited over their opinion/standpoint. Nothing is better than having an argument with someone so worked up their (!) spelling cracks up. Cracks me up ;)
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I hated WoW, and id agree that whilst WAR has many simularitys, i am very much enjoying playing it.
Nice to read your opinions RPS, i just hope a few more people look past the simularitys and give it a try.
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I’m just wondering how many of you got into closed beta and blocked others from getting in that would have been there to really test the game and help find flaws and report bugs to help better the game for release.This happens alot with all beta tests since only a certain number of peeps are let in to each beta and that is sad to see so many get in that are only there to play earlier then others and not really there to help the outcome of the release.Anyway thats my 2 cents and i cant wait for open beta got my key and waiting for the 7th ;p cya all in game!
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WoW is now (actually has been for the past 1.5 years) a joke and Blizzard is clearly throwing in “new” things into WotLK because they now know isolated PvP is boring. For example, siegeing the enemy’s capital city in open world mass pvp is one of the main innovative ideas in WAR. Now, WotLK has its own “siege weaponry” to try competing against this system. Its pathetic. Blizzard sat on its ass hoarding subscription money and making useless, pointless, and usually upsetting patches just to keep us satisfied. Now that a great-looking MMO has come and challenged the lolchampion, they are working overtime to keep up with these new systems by making identical if not closely similar ones. Just pathetic. I’m glad I’m stealing their game by playing on private servers.
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I really enjoy reading about this game. Everything that the people are saying about it just makes me want to dance uncontrollably. I never liked WoW, even though this game is similar, I still can’t wait to play it. I have never anticipated a game more than this one. I hope it does not let me down.
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“I’m just wondering how many of you got into closed beta and blocked others from getting in that would have been there to really test the game and help find flaws and report bugs to help better the game for release.”
No company doing a beta like this has ever, ever used the public beta people as QA. that would be commercial suicide. What they’re using people for is server stress testing, and very vague, massively general ‘impressions.’ I.E. if a few thousand people are all saying that one race is absolute garbage, they’ll look at it.
I’m with you, though, Klendathu. Chilton in particular is a complete idiot when it comes to PvP. Blizzard seems to think that a majority of their players raid, when the reality is it’s a vast minority. Their only reply to that was to (attempt to) force the Arena on everyone, which is one of the worst attempts at PvP organization I’ve ever seen.
I miss BRM and Tarren Mill/South Shore battles :(
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I think the comments thread is enough to put me off WAR.
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Bottom line, This game is not WoW. The only reason people compare any MMOS to WoW is because it was the first very seccesfull game that was 3d. People Prob went on the forums about WoW and said things like “this is an everquest copy but better”. Let me tell you folks that this game has nothing to do with WoW. This is WAR. Simply put WoW = I want the best equipment grind grind grind and repeat
WAR = get some good equipment join a massive massive group and or guild, take over stuff until hearts concent.
see there are two very diffrent strats to these games funny thing is once WoW heard about this game and got the inside on how the basis of the game was going to run, they announced the release of thier third exansion. witch if you have not heard included distructable building and warzones just like in WAR. Not that anyone made it this far down or took the time to read this. i would also like to add that all MMOS will be copyes of each other in one way or another for the simple fact is you all connect to a game to get away from real life, where is is very hard to gain exp and lots of kool stuff like a Hammer of justice ( those things are expensive in RL) so no matter what all games are a copy of somthing.
P.S. WAR kicks WoW in the nuts Hard
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Most of the guys posting are scared WoW people in fear that WAR will make them lose alot of their population.
They’ve neither tried the game or liked it form the beginning.
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Excuse me, have you read the comments thread?
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Played Beta for a while and found i liked it more than WoW… these guys didn’t try to get their first tier of pvp gear by the sounds of it which is to bad cause it was a hoot! A 24 hour battle for control of a castle so you could buy your stuff!
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“Excuse me, have you read the comments thread?”
I don’t think reading is something 90% of the posters in this thread have any interest in..be it the post they are supposedly commenting on or other posts in the thread =)
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I’m as skeptical about this whole warhammer gig as much as the next person. I play wow, raid endgame content, arena blah blah. It’s entertaining(and the only reason I still play)…and yet, WoW still seems like all it ever will be is a chat room, with raiding/arena breaks. If Warhammer can get rid of the “chat” time that WoW is so full of in between raiding and whatever else, I’ll give it a whirl. All the WoW players know how entertaining running around the bank talking in trade is -_-
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i believe comparing WoW and WAR is like comparing anime to live action. they are two completely different genres portraying the same concept. both have value, it just depends on your personal taste or mood.
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Since this article is comparing WOW to WAR, the change of concept regarding world pvp is perhaps what has captured my interest in WAR the most. MMO’s have the potential for epic pvp battles which really is something that WOW has not captured – and is where WAR is focusing. I hope it meets or exceeds expectations.
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The most obvious difference I’ve read on the posts in these forums, aside from the few people that have mentioned technical difficulties, is the difference between people that truly want to engage against other players and those who thrive on content, no matter how inane.
I’m a die-hard MMO player. I’ve played for nigh on 12 years now and I’m not even old (is 26 old?). Despite the comparisons to WoW, the difference between the RvR system and 18-man/24-man/blahblahblah is Gear Grind vs. Player Interaction. Arden made this point succinctly. If you want to constantly Gear Max grind instances/dungeons/high-end mobs for loot, play WoW. End of story. If looking cool or having the newest set of Tier14 armor (which I DARE any true WoW fan to tell me isn’t the only realistic endgame goal), don’t count of WAR to relieve your need. Granted, I expect Mythic to add these elements into the game, but Blizzard has a very poignant history of releasing expansions that take absolutely no time at all to complete and then constantly adding in minutiae to keep their fan base happy. I will give them this…they do it well.
However, as games such as Shadowbane, or hell, for that matter, every FPS ever created have proven, there is a strong, nearly fanatical player-base that finds their true love in video games killing other players. People used to complain endlessly about PK’s (from my perspective, that acronym started here) in Ultima Online. But really, the actual palpable fear, anxiety, adrenaline rush that came from player encounters is what drove me love MMO’s in the first place. I soloed a Frost Mage in WoW to level 70 with decent (non-instanced) gear. I got murdered more times than I can count in Ultima Online and I still love that game more. Why? The rush.
Players will divide, WAR/WoW comparisons or not, on whether or not their love of a game is based upon their perceived skill or their perceived achievements. Congratulations all WoW players, you’ve got the next set of armor until Blizzard releases another large patch and then you get to start all over. I’ll take my pride, and happily spend my $15/month, knowing that I just single-handedly ganked a group of players attempting to take over my courtyard.
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I have played 4 yrs of daoc , 2 yrs of wow left wow to play doac again . I know i dont have alot of peoples experiance but when i did get in to see warhammer i must say they did an outstanding job . The reason i left doac is they pretty much much trashed it with all the expansions , the reason left wow is becouse is a mindless grind to get anywhere in the game . Mindless meaning a few things . 1 being its based off total class and gear 2 being pvp is so boring people bot it so they can stay at pace with the game while watching Jerry Springer. 3 when you do get into a good guild to get pve gear you have to fight over it with 20+ other people and last #4 (I left the best for last) when you do finally get a pimped out charector all that is lost in 6 months when new gear is released and in that 6 months all that gear you fought to get is lost and you get to do it all over again . In daoc there was no fighting to get gear. Hell most of you gear was player crafted and was the best at the time . You got lvl 50 , you got your crafted gear and after that is was nuthing but killing people and being killed , Total rvr consept and i loved it . Now stating what i said and putting it into warhammer , The game basics have alot of WoW gameplay in it but not the repetative boring and mindnumbing grind . There are kill quests like wow but check this out . It doesnt require a griffin ride , a horse ride and a mile long walk to get it done , Remember in wow when you wanted to go to a dif zone you took a 15 min bird path to get there . Well get this in warhammer you go to the flight master you see your charector get on the bird and BAM you are already loading into the zone you wanted to go to. It simple stuff like that ,that really make me want to play . Not every one has 8 hrs to play a day and simple tweeks like that makes the gamplay more enjoyable . To touch abit on the pvp side of warhammer . All that comes to mind is simply amazing . Unlike wow yet alot like doac , warhammer has made pvp simply exciting to be in . You will never be in the same fight ever (atleast in open world ) Its always a intense fight , The fights last forever (Not like wow where you are dead more than alive) and of coarse there are instanced style pvp for you people that feel the need not to let go of WoW . Overall the class bases in warhammer i feel are for the most part really balanced , There are no squishy classes that i have seen in the game (except for sorceresses becouse most the time they like blowing themselves up) I myself give mythic a huge thumbs up on this game , It smokes wow in everyway and i just hope they will not mess it up like they did with daoc .
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This is awesome! will play whole day N night!
“And the Public Quests, and the instanced Scenarios, and the whole RvR thing – that’s all different. But it feels like a different topping on the same ice cream.” ha!ha!ha!ha!
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Way to go the original and off the beaten path route of saying it looks and plays a lot like wow.
I’ve been Beta testing this game for the last 1.5years and suggest people do not go by this “not a review” review, and avoid it thinking it’s just wow 2.0.
You comment how you haven’t really pvp’d at all (regardless of the reason) you are basically making a WoW comparison without playing what amounts to around 80% of the game and most importantly the end game.
But sure let’s just say it looks and feels like wow without actually experiencing what the game was designed around.
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I see that everyone wants to push a game in a direction to get rid of the piece of that, a part of that, to make it different because some people get burnt out on it. But how long will it take before the game changes so much that its not even a roll playing game? I started on everquest and that game had alot of good qualities.. the quests were hard and might take months to do. And when you did a quest the reward meant somthing. This to me seems like a hybrid midevil shooter with no character depth. Just brand a number on my arse and put me in with all the other sheep!
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warhammer will be far beyond world of warcraft but hope they won’T have the same problems with rvr as wow with the pvp… what i wanted to say that in my eyes this is an absolute rvr game with great pve includings but if the ballance between the order and destruction won’t fit… then it won’t be so succesfull as it could be
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the 7th screenshot is tanaris in wow isn’t it
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Lets talk about content.. Warhammer has much, much more in every area then any MMO to date.. PvP. RvR (Which Mythic Invented), and PVE content. All these areas are larger, more complex and more interesting than anything anyone has ever played.
Charactor Classes.. Well, I been playing alot of MMO’s and even after playing the same one for over 3 years now I can still argue about Character classes. Everyone’s always gonna have a different view on these. There new, there awesome, of course ! Your gonna like some, your gonna hate some, your gonna love some !
Fact is, if your gonna wanna be playing the best of the best, it s time to move on into Warhammer and play a game that is simply better then anything else to date. Mythic have the experience, they have had the time to prepare, they brought a can of whoop ass with them.
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I couldn’t have said it better :
Magus says:
Bottom line, This game is not WoW. The only reason people compare any MMOS to WoW is because it was the first very seccesfull game that was 3d. People Prob went on the forums about WoW and said things like “this is an everquest copy but better”. Let me tell you folks that this game has nothing to do with WoW. This is WAR. Simply put WoW = I want the best equipment grind grind grind and repeat
WAR = get some good equipment join a massive massive group and or guild, take over stuff until hearts concent.
see there are two very diffrent strats to these games funny thing is once WoW heard about this game and got the inside on how the basis of the game was going to run, they announced the release of thier third exansion. witch if you have not heard included distructable building and warzones just like in WAR. Not that anyone made it this far down or took the time to read this. i would also like to add that all MMOS will be copyes of each other in one way or another for the simple fact is you all connect to a game to get away from real life, where is is very hard to gain exp and lots of kool stuff like a Hammer of justice ( those things are expensive in RL) so no matter what all games are a copy of somthing.
P.S. WAR kicks WoW in the nuts Hard
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You could have said it better if you’d left out the blatant untruth that WoW was the first very successful 3D MMO.
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No one has come close to WoW’s population and honestly its population was the first thing that grabbed me and kept me there. That many customers says Success.
I would still be playing Dark Age of Camelot if it had its servers filled. Mythics first big MMO, and I honestly believe WoW will never be what that game was. I honestly don’t know how WoW was so successful. I think everyone will realize very soon, what a real MMO is suppose to look like, and good on Mythic for taking what people like in WoW and putting it in there game. Thats game evolution done right.
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i guess thta’s because wow is so simple structered so even older people could play and enjoy it. so you had moments like “hey i’m sorry i got to get my son from school then he will help us” it became for many people a family game (what is freaky)
and the fact that it has 10 (was it millions) of players
now that will be rather hard or impossible to beat for war even if it’s ways better and will kick ass
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Just wanna throw in my two cents. I think Mythic has tossed out another great game and builds upon their legacy.
I don’t know where people come up with this being anything like WoW. Most of the concepts in the game were originally thought up by Mythic in Dark Age of Camelot. The graphics in my humble opinion are much better in WAR.
Mythic has always been a very solid and very good company, I can’t wait until launch! Currently playing the preview before OB tomorrow.
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“wow is so simple structered so even older people could play and enjoy it” LOL, that really made me laugh. Its all us “older people” who are making games for you, who were playing games long before you started, and yes for the most part they were all more difficult and took more skill than WoW.
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yes i’m sorry… but i just don’t got used to this…
normally when i talk about gamers i have someone between 12 and 26 in mind… that’s my subjective point of view
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Really guys reading those posts made me fall off my chair. How can you say WAR is some copy of WoW, lets not forget blizzard copied all great ideas/game contents from other games and don’t get me wrong .. it did work and it is a good game however it’s boring if you grind the same instance for like 2 years. Mytics is trying to put another twist to the MMO world by choosing for RVR (PVP) where blizzard failed massively. So how you dare to say it’s some other copy of WoW :S
And come with facts instead of saying “it just feels like WoW”
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yes you’re terribly.. right ^^
that’s why i quit playing wow (it’s just got boring and exhausting) and involve myself into a real comflict in a real WAR
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….Why do you have a WOW screenshot in a WAR article?
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/august08/waram4.jpg is clearly a WOW gnome.
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To be bluntly honest, i do not respect any player who is a WoW freak and never tried the harsh world that is Eve.
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Well it’s time to see for yourselves….open beta starts TODAY!!!!!! It’s a freaking huge download though so the earlier you start the better. Enjoy!
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great changes must be made if im ganna pay per month for this …
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I use to be a wow player (70 hunter), now been playing warhammer pre-order beta. Games are sort of alike (both MMORPG) but seems as if warhammer put more time in the game making. I love the public quests best idea I think ever, also the pvp is MUCH better then WOW, not to mention the graphics.. oh boy. But, I must give them a round of aplause for setting the new bar in internet games. Wow players (like myself) give it a try (hopfully they come out with free trial) but you’ll love it.
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i played wow from the release got to lvl 60 befor expansion got extremly bored and quit due to boring long instances. since then i have played about 6 MMOs looking for something more fun than wow. lotr did good but had no end game content and bad pvp. second best so far has been age of conan which i played over summer and quit because of the horrific grinding from 60-80 but it was fun for its pvp system and was very diffrent from wow but bad for its unbalanced classes. i have been playing this since closed beta and is the best since wow and in my opinion a whole lot better. graffics may only a little better but after 2 weeks of playing this i looked at some wow and it looks terrible. i see this game going more into pvp and wow continuing with huge 10 hour long in game instances.
also dont know if someone has answered this yet but you cant walk through other players (i hope they add an ability like age of conan did that allows to pass through others but greatly reduces attributes so people who like making alts to screw with other people cant block doorways) this makes some abilities more realistic like a tank gets one where he holds his shield up and everyone behind him will take much less damage.
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Well for all the thousands of people who only ever played WoW as there first MMO style game, any game will be compared to it.
For me, it is not a copy of WoW. Being an old DAoC player, where RvR actually started at, and well before WoW existed. This game is a progression from many ideas that first began in DAoC and chopped up, smoothed out and taken on board all the things MMOs have come out with since.
No MMO can exist now without a list of basic grouping and looting and guilding and so on and so stuff. As a result all MMOs will have the same famillier feel about them, if they didnt, they would be cursed for seemingly not providing.
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You really, really, really should have just left this one alone RPS.
Ah well. Sod it… WoW’s a boring grind. WAR looks interesting…
I suspect in the time it took me to write that somewhere in the world; someone got pregnant, some one “came”, some one went, etc
WAR or WoW?! When the two acronyms are that close I always laugh.
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I’ve been playing in the Closed Beta of WAR for a couple of weeks myself, and am now playing through Preview Weekend Plus in advance of Open Beta starting. I agree with much of what the guys had to say, but overall I have been EXTREMELY pleased with this game; on the whole, the entire feel of it is geared more toward making you feel that your purpose is to go forth and make war, in a land of perpetual war, rather than making more of a “life” in WoW. I do still somewhat like WoW, but this game seems to have more of a specific purpose; “kill the men, and hear the lamentations of the women”-hehe, in the words of the Governator. Just a humble opinion here, so don’t flame too hard-hehe. Happy gaming to you all!
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i cant wait until this game releses it will be sooo cool well ive played WOW for alittle while well i know thad this game will be better and the graphics are awsome in warhammer
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I find it odd that the people involved with this article would even go ahead with it since they didn’t experience a major part of the game-RvR. They didn’t get to see the RvR armor sets, experience keep sieges, take over flags, or any of that. That’s like talking about WoW without mentioning any instances or raids.
Statements like ‘They (PQs) are, without question, WAR’s best feature’ have absolutely no meaning if you didn’t experience RvR.
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How are we expected to take this article seriously when the participants didn’t even engage in RvR?
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Heh thats what I said.
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You guys must understand. If this game is copying any game out there. It definitely is NOT WoW. WoW has been done before many times at that. Everquest is a big example. So i wouldn’t be quick to judge WAR of taking bits and pieces from WoW. I love the hype and I am very excited to see how this all turns out. This article is a good thing to look at to see some of the few criticism this game has had since its first beta.
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Hey, interesting stuff, ive played CoH for a year then switched to WoW for the last 4 months, and im dropping it all for warhammer. though i am a little disappointed that when i preordered that they were out of pre order bonus boxes and that im out of luck, and whn i emailed mythic still havent heard anything, i guess im waiting for the 18th which sux means im stuck with wow for longer. I think warhammer from all ive read is a lot more creative then wow, the classes especially. Also that there wont already be 10,000 lvl 70′s running around, and from articles i hear gear will only be 40 percent of the game not 90percent like Wow. I mean the other day i did a bg with my lvl 29 warrior and the whole alliance group against us were rolling epic gear and were sending brags about it. They wiped the mat with us. We couldnt even dent them. I hope that is never the case in warhammer, that someone can go out and buy gear that makes them unbeatable to someone their same level. Anyways, heres to hopin that i somehow get me pre order bonus package and can start playin otherwise ill see yas on the 18th
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wow went and got my preorder bos game crazy called to let me know they got one so got home started downloading but if you dont have a paid account at fileplanet then you got to wait 10 hours to even start download, that kinda sux, then however long it will take for teh download itself. Wow. So maybe tomorrow sometime I’ll be able to play. Oh well, here’s to looking forwward to getting there
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I really wouldn’t compare it to WoW for one simple reason. WAR lacks the depth of PvE that makes WoW a dungeon crawler, while WoW lacks the phenomenal PvP that makes WAR supreme. WoW requires you to PvE just to PvP. WAR has this strange concept that doing more RvR should earn you loot for RvR. What a profound idea.
Honestly, if you love raiding, if you love instances, if you love tanking and heal rotations and endless hours spent devouring endlessly expanding content, WoW is STILL the game for you. But if you love player combat, if you felt Alterac Valley lacking, if you are sick and tired of epic clad noobs owning you, Warhammer is your salvation.
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As far as WoW goes i’ve done all the end game content, done the GM grind, Kill KJ, Etc. All this time i have been spouting on and on about how im ready to leave WoW finally and move on…..
Than a month before WAR comes out i realize the bumblefuck dev’s didnt make it compatible for mac (Say what you want and bash macs if you like but they are excellent computers, i havent crashed at all playing wow and it runs better than most pc’s…sorry to make this seem like a mac plug but i know how people get)
I’d like to think that a large amount of gamers these days have macs, most notably macbook pro’s because of there power and its a laptop. With that said is there anyone who’s playing on a mac (Via bootcamp) and can tell me how the game runs for them or anything like that. Thanks.
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This game is exciting, and certainly quite different from WoW – anyone with something between their ears can see it. I’m leaving Failcom’s AoC for this awesome game, so see ya in Altdorf!
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i wouldnt say it was a polished wow (but i havnt played the beta at all) from what i remember from the ordervschaos warhammer games is that its about the violence. if we gonna compare WAR to WoW, i would say that it is WoWs more undisplayed PvP side. Lately WoW pvp sucks imo. altho with woltk coming out and destructible buildings, will have to see how far that will go.
anyways back on topic! WAR looks great! smells great! feels great! therefore it must be great! looking forward to the release!
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man if i ever get to it, ive been in que for download to start for 7 hours and i ve gone from 1800 tto 887 in place to start download, 7 hours, and only half, and thats not even counting how ever long the download itself takes. damn, so myabe in 2 days i will have started playing game.
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I think that WAR is going to take off and WoW ill lose alot of its players to it, which i believe is deserving considering that the Zerg from Starcraft were rip off’s from the Tyranids from warhammer 40k. So time for revenge games workshop.
Disciple of Khaine here i come!
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Well i’ve read almost all the posts on this and i find alot of repetition. What i’m excited about more then anything is the fact that this game is going to revolve around going up againsts another oponent who is ( or can be,) quick thinking, adapting and different every time you play. No A.I will ever beat the depth that an actual person can bring to the table. By implementing blocking( which i hear need a bit of work but in due time.. ) and the knockback and knockdown features are going to create huge twists and force the implementation of tactics. Choke points, high ground and many other aspects of combat are what is going to make this game unreal. Being able to knock a player off the bridge and send him to his doom for example is something i can’t wait for.(and i’m eager to see if a player will be able break through the front line by knocking a player on their ass and moving on to the casters etc.). The meaning of a front line will actually make a difference and will be enhanced by everyones different creativity. There are so many aspects that we all cannot even begin to comprehend until its full release and i can’t wait to dip my fingers into it!!! The forces of order will prevail!
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oh and people better not bring the mentality that order is for newbs and destruction is for pros blah blah wow mentatily. Those who do will meet my swordmasters blade for only a split second before they realize their heads gone bahaha
Only in thy darkest hour, will you overcome true evil
and its looking pretty dark for the order.
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Oh this is lovely! I can’t believe I missed the good stuff though!
Incidentally: I heard WoW was sleeping with yo mom. Just saying.
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Let the Disciple’s of Khaine sacrfice millions to Khaine! Quick and strong with the ability to drain your strength for buffs and dots, woohoo!!
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I’ve played the open beta! in the US and we have lots of people to make the RVR fun.
I hear a lot of people talking about WOW, but no mention of DAOC, (Dark Age of Camlot) witch was created years before WOW came out and is still being played. That game had three sides in balance always fighting each other and much more content then Wow will ever have. Mythic did a good job on it and has taken that experance and put it into this game. The things mention that make this game feel simular to Wow were in DAOC befoe that Wow was around.
When I started playing Wow after years of playing DAOC, I said, “this is a lot like DAOC, but less complicated, kind of like MOO’s lite” WAR has taken all the experance from DAOC and made it better, the grafics, interfaces, quest and new type of quest, (group quest), just to name a few, to create a game I am already addicted to after 8hr in open beta.
Don’t be telling people that WAR is like WOW when I know that WOW stole most of its ideas from DAOC!! WAR is like DAOC improved.
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Qproject – macs suck…there I said it. So do ipods and Iphone. Comparing a mac to another pc is like comparing apples with oranges (pun intended)- it’s not like the makers of windows make the hardware which it can run on. Unlike WOW which can run on pretty much any old PC, WAR takes some fairly decent hardware to run – sadly if you want to run WAR on a mac you will need to run windows on it. I can’t be completely sure but I think it has more to do with making WAR DirectX10 compliant which eliminates most available Operating systems bar Vista (and XP if you use hacked version of DX10), not to mention a Nvidia or ATI graphics card.
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I read about 3/4 of the posts, and no one addressed the “how is the PVP in this game?” question, so I figured I’d help out. Having played during preview weekend on a full pop server and now during OB on a low-med pop server, I feel I can offer some insight.
First off, PVP is PVP. There isn’t going to be some magical or new innovative way of killing people. That being said, I greatly enjoy WAR’s PVP.
The RVR lakes (basically outside non-instanced PVP zones) start off very small, and then expand to bigger areas and more capture points as you progress. The RVR areas are avoidable, but since WAR is billed as a more PVP focused game, why would you avoid them?
In RVR, there are banners/check points placed in the area. They are guarded by NPCs of the faction that claimed the area last. You capture the area by eliminating all the NPCs, clicking on the banner, and defending the area for 2 minutes. If at any time an enemy player comes into the area, the countdown stops. When the enemy leaves the area, the countdown resumes. (For you diehard WoW fans – it’s basically a non-instanced version of Arathi Basin).
The second PVP aspect is the scenario, which ARE instanced battlegrounds. Similiar to the non-instanced form, there are banners placed in the map. Your job is to claim those flags. However, there are no NPCs guarding it. It is a “king of the hill” battle, where the more people of one faction you have standing there, the faster the flag turns. (Again for the die-hard WoW fans… It’s like The Overlook, Stadium Broken Hill in Hellfire Peninsula, except in WAR it’s instanced).
Unlike in WoW, PVP here does make a difference, as a win or a loss affects the whole zone, not just you personally. A win/loss increases/decreases your faction’s control of the zone. Control of the zone grants a zone wide XP bonus, as well as some other bonuses I can’t remember right now.
It initially feels like a zerg rush, as everyone just tabs and attacks the first enemy on their list, which is what war is about. Yes, there are some tactics involved, but if you go and play paintball or lasertag, you’re going to shoot the first enemy, not wait and focus fire with the leader.
However, there is some cooperative team play involved. If someone sends a pet on your healers, you don’t sit there and assist the tank. Healers buff and heal the tank. Heals can also have multiple targets (ex. WoW shaman’s chain heal). Also, the dual target system makes it easier to heal and attack, without resorting to macro all your heals to use the /target lasttarget() script.
After playing a holy priest on WoW, I can tell you that PVP on WAR is significantly better. Aside from the dual target system, most classes are hybrids (like someone mentioned before). If you’re caught on a 1v1 situation, you do not have to try and spam heal yourself while hoping someone else comes along to kill them for you. You will have sufficient damage dealing spells.
There -IS- sticky targetting, AND auto-turning. There will be no more strafing rogues jumping around spinning and backstabbing you unless you don’t have them targetted (sorry rogues). Nor will running through the caster to get out of LOS to interrupt their spells work.
There is still LOS, and it’s greatly improved compared to WoW’s. Walls are actually walls. You cannot get fireballed or shot through a wall because a pixel of your robe or armor sticks through. You cannot tab and shoot at me through the tank(s). Healers can actually heal, and tanks can actually tank!
In short, PVP in WAR is fun and easily accessible, but also easily avoidable if you don’t want to be a part of it. I have not noticed any classes that seem to be overpowered, but have developed a natural hatred for the Dwarven Engineer (against my Goblin Squig Herder). There doesn’t seem to be a faction that dominates in the RVR (instanced or non-instanced versions) either.
The biggest concern is the queue times. On the full preview weekend server, queue times were rather short, and at times, I barely had enough time to turn in the quest before I was notified that another one was opening. On the low-med pop server, the wait times are annoyingly bad, with up times of over an hour. The bright side is that you do not have to wait in the city, as you can queue from anywhere in the world, and you will be returned to that same spot after the battle is done.
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I’ve played EQ, and WoW both to endgame… and now I’ve played WAR for 10 ranks (levels). It may just be that the game is very bottom heavy at the moment, but it almost feels like those first 10 levels matter more than the first 50 of the other games. I’ve got cool looking gear, I’ve met cool people through the open group/PQ mechanic… I’ve even got a stunty nemesis or two.
What impresses me the most is that I can play a tank archetype and they’ve manage to make it so the same mechanics that allow me to protect my group mates in PvE transfer over to RvR. Same with the healers… as it’s been stated before you don’t spam heal until someone comes and saves you, you actually fight back. Taunt/Detaunt, Collision, and defensive/offensive targets all make RvR so much more strategic… and the fact that your rank is adjusted when you zone into the instanced scenarios means that someone as low as rank 2 can actually make a difference on the battlefield.
Am I going to cancel my WoW sub forever? Prolly not, but it’s going on the back burner for a long while.
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well DAoC had just harder times… it wasn’t the age for online gaming…
it was just the boom… and world of warcraft was the first who was mentioned this times… and warcraft is just so simillar because it’s strategy games and everyone knows that blizzard did also a great job on diabolo 2 and warcraft 3… so it was in my opinion just the right game at the right time… since than many things have changed… the gameindustries payed more and more attention to online gaming… until today many years have passed and the comunity of wow had grown a lot… because they were only a litle of compatition for wow… just think of matrix or hdro (which i couldn’T like at all.. where is the sense to play an online game were you play all alone?) but know war is coming… and the creators have much more experience with mmorpg’s than blizzard and i gues that the fan community of warhammer is nearly as big as the truly community of warcraft… it will be hard for war but this gonna rawk… even by the fact that many wow players are always talking about that wow gone boring and change sides, you can imagine that war will be the game of the year
and that wolk won’t be the competition for WAR… so let us prepare for real WAR!!!!
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I am in the open beta, and I have played WoW for years. In WoW, I thought of PvE content as simply preparation for PvP. With the number of players with high level characters, PvP is no longer competitive for “casuals” until level 70, and even then until after a painful ‘honor’ grind of being killed over and over in AV. Therefore, 200 hours of playtime just to try out even-handed PvP.
I played WAR two days so far and I am very enthusiastic about it. The scenario queuing mechanic is a wonderful thing. Anywhere, anytime, you can queue yourself. When your spot opens, you teleport to the instance. When the battle ends, you get returned exactly where you left off.
Also, with the level normalization, PvP is meaningful even at level 1. Sure, higher level characters have better gear and new spells/abilities you haven’t learned yet, but you can contribute. You get xp and rp (renown points – still no idea what for) so you can level in the “scenarios.” On all three characters I have rolled, I have dinged level 2 in a scenario.
For the BG oriented Warcraft player, imagine if this were possible (written from undead perspective):
You are in DeathKnell, killing skeletons and zombies for the first quests. You figured out the basic mechanic of the class you are playing and decide you’d like to PvP. You click a PvP button next to your minimap that lets you queue for a battleground. You pass the time waiting by killing skeletons and zombies. Then, when you are one skeleton away from finishing your quest, the queue pops. What to do? You go ahead and join the fray. You enjoy the battleground and level once in the process. Ding two. When it ends, you reappear with full health back where you were, amidst the skeletons. Kill the last skeleton, join the queue again, turn in your quest and visit your trainer for your level 2 spells/abilities. By the time you get the new ability on your taskbar/binding, the queue pops again…
Welcome to WAR.
Lovely.
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okay, i dont think WoW is going to blow anything away, because we pick what games we want to play, just a fact that people need to say something to look better in thie rposts. any wayz, PvP is a huge roll in this i mean its one of the only things so far in the beta besides some quests and yes quests are fun in this game so far. but i rather pvp my brainz out. and billy i found out kinda a nerf with the dwarves to, the ironbreaker can take 2 other tanks at once.. but he has to do the best he can. and the engineer, wit the gun its amazing how much damage you can do. overall i hate when people say stuff about WoW, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT Warhammer Online HERE!!!!- just some advice.
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ok thisd is annoying.. how can i stop getting emails when any1 responds to this i didnt even click the box to recieve an email… JEEZZ!!! any1 know how to turn it off because i have 155 new emails all from rock paperscissors.com…. -_-..
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Nissl says:
As far as your endgame question, Keegan, I like to use Rob Pardo’s (Blizzard lead designer) idea of a feature set of different activities. WoW has crafting/dailies/5-man/10-man/25-man/arena/4 BGs. That’s enough diversity to keep a lot of people playing.
This was a while ago but I’d like to touch on it. MY REAL PROBLEM with wow is the fact that everything has been completely funneled into arenas. That and I stand by the fact that I believe resilience killed wow for many of us. Resilience and it’s effects on the direction of the game.
Arenas: Almost completely rely on your class combo and RNG to win. (RNG is random number generations to get lucky procs/crits/etc)(Skill helps, but all the skill in the world won’t make dual warriors last in the high 2k ratings)
Bg’s: Used to be somewhat fun but are now completely a chore and a stepping stone into arenas to rack up your resilience.
World PVP: MIA.
What I’m looking forward to in war is the fact that my avatar’s life won’t revolve around what my damn ratings are.
Maybe I want to kill for the sake of killing? Maybe I want to kill things cause it’s fun.
I can only pray that skill > luck/class choice in this game.
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What I thought I would ad from playing in open beta so far is that the biggest overall change I think warhammer brings is it is much more of a dynamic living world than WoW. The difference between PvP and Realm vs. Realm is that with the RvR combat when you are fighting someone it matter to what is going on with the server and what you will be able to unlock and do. Same thing with guilds and cities they will grow with the more you do. You do not have the static environment that you do in WoW where one side may own a PvP area but in the end it doesn’t matter a whole lot.
Also some notes on the tomb of knowledge. It is a great feature but it is daunting at the same time. It is a like a giant encyclopedia for the game. Being as such though it can be daunting to look at for the first few times and takes a while to get used to how to use and everything it can do for you. I will admit I had a bit of the same reaction at first of some annoying text messages popping up on my screen. But then I took some time and started to explore it some and have loved it since that point.
BT
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What I thought I would ad from playing in open beta so far is that the biggest overall change I think warhammer brings is it is much more of a dynamic living world than WoW. The difference between PvP and Realm vs. Realm is that with the RvR combat when you are fighting someone it matter to what is going on with the server and what you will be able to unlock and do. Same thing with guilds and cities they will grow with the more you do. You do not have the static environment that you do in WoW where one side may own a PvP area but in the end it doesn’t matter a whole lot.
Also some notes on the tomb of knowledge. It is a great feature but it is daunting at the same time. It is a like a giant encyclopedia for the game. Being as such though it can be daunting to look at for the first few times and takes a while to get used to how to use and everything it can do for you. I will admit I had a bit of the same reaction at first of some annoying text messages popping up on my screen. But then I took some time and started to explore it some and have loved it since that point.
BT
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i was wondering if it was possible to have a biger range of dye color for equipment lol ….. 12 colors to choose from is way to low … would be nice to have my chosen a dark gray or something like that not purple like or a ugly something that came out of you’re butt green !!!!
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double post sorry.
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man what is up, ive looked at system requirements i meet them, and the game plays fine im rolling along and then all of a sudden it flips to a blue screen, the game freezes and i cant even cntrol/alt/delete out of it i have to turn my comp off and reboot…..ive sent bug reports and no response, ive never had an issue with CoH or WoW, i dont get it am i nto gonna be able to play game.
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i have played WoW and DAoC and i hate WoW it is cartoony and really geared towards PvE settings even there PvP is so forced you have teams and you cant go in to just solo one on one against other people. WAR lets you solo just like DAoc did not to mention you will see huge epic battles in all the Rvr war fronts just like in DAoC. and for all of you that know what i am talking about remember the realm gate battles in the old frontiers. or even artie raids in new frontiers.
yes did they use some pages from blizzards book heck yeah they did but WoW is the number one game so if you are going to get people to leave them and come to you you need something that makes them feel at home. just like RvR and realm warfare is straight out of DAoC. and for all you whiny bitches out there who piss and moan about developer mistakes go make your own game, lets see you try and make a game that has to appeal to thousands and than try to make them all happy all the time. i doubt you can do it to many people not and way to much to try to focus on.
i believe they nailed it on the head with this game i have played all the classes in this game and found them all to really kick ass. maybe it is me but i dont believe people really learn how to play a class the right way and they whine when they lose. i will give an example while playing my bright wizard i can nuke with the best of them all day long, i found that a combination of insta DoTs and debuffs followed up by afireball than release your combustion can drop most players life to almost nothing in less than 6 seconds. but i doubt most people will play it long enough to figure out what they are doing.
i think this game is the face of MMO for the next decade sorry WoW mythic has your number.
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I totally agree. I think this game is better then wow, the classes are more extensive, the game is more stensive, i just hope my comp will be able to run it as im starting a new job in a week and would be a bit till i can upgrade. Ive been playing the beta and it runs great for a while then all of sudden keeps dcing me, hopefully its just beta, but as ive designed and rts game i am currently shopping, I understand the level of difficulty that goes into it. So far ive only tried maybe 5 classes. I really love the zealot, but im trying other toons to make sure. Here’s to the hoping my comp will run this game without an upgrade. Best. JD
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Well all great MMOS come to an end. Ultima, and now WoW.
But hey, Hello… Warhammer.
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And also WoW is now about 4 years old. And will become 5 this new year. It’s graphics are LARGELY outdated too.
I just really dislike how Blizzard gets lazy on the graphics of WoW. Specially with the gear.
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Dis is the WOW for bored Wow players…di next evolutionary step…i forsee a large amount of Wow vets, moving over,and some epic strategic pvp battles and ambushes being planned and executed.
this game has great scope for huge fights that are not genking battles…GOTTALORVE IT!! :)…
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would be nice if the aura of the CHOSEN wouldnt Agro so much monsters that are NOT in target … people wont play that class that much if they die all the time frome stupid agro !!
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I am liking the game so far, animations and mob AI aside, but what I’m curious about is WAR’s long term appeal.
Sure, scenarios are fun. For a while. But sooner or later, they’re going to be just as much of a bore as WoW’s battlegrounds, because they essentially are battlegrounds. Getting exp, loot and cash from them is a novel twist on them and a step above WoW, but this doesn’t detract from the fact that they are fixed scenarios and not dynamic situations. You’ll have capture the flag(s) and all that jazz, but how long is it fun for?
WAR is not a particular threat to WoW just yet. It becomes a real challenger if it can keep subs and increase them over time. This means that RvR must have inherent risk and reward, as opposed to killing other players just because you should. Do you get to take a leader’s head and stick it on a spike somewhere? Do you get to sack a city and carry off gear a la public quest loot style? Can you get awesome trophies, mount armours, and most importantly does beating the other side in RvR hurt them badly enough to make them fight you until they get it back? A lot of WAR’s success will depend on how addictive the RvR is. For real veterans, on kills alone, give extra spell animations, there’s an idea. Stuff like that. So you know you’re fighting a real badass from the extra flourish his fireballs are packin’, for instance.
By the way, fire GOA. They are useless, incompetent, and I don’t think Europe has committed enough sins to warrant them overseeing the complete and utter shambles of the Open Beta. God only knows the complete frak up they are going to pull off on launch day, and early access before that, but if bookies were taking bets I’d bet the last few quid I’m not spending on the CE version of this game that the downtime for each will be at least six hours on each respective day.
I can see the future, and it’s another GOA screw-up. Don’t say you weren’t warned. :) If you want to get more subs in Europe, send those amateurs packing, ‘cos we are not at all pleased with the piss poor second rate service we are getting here. Even the EU website looks like I threw rabbit droppings at it and smeared them into recognizable shapes compared to the US site.
Failing that, if you insist on keeping them, I can communicate in non-broken English in a timelier fashion to update the customer base, and I accept coffee and ham and tomato sandwiches as payment. Yanno, for that missing Community Rep job that’s not listed as a vacancy, but sodding well ought to be….
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Ok, you are all going to hate me and flame me by the mighty torch of death, but i dont care. This needs to be said or at least re-amphasized if it has already been done:
I stopped reading the comments about a quarter of the way through because by then War had been compared to Wow at least 20 times. This pisses me off to no small extent! If you friggin want to stay with wow then by all means keep masterbating over gnome-titties til your cock falls off, but keep IT TO YOUR SELF! The game is not called Warhammer online: The new wow. Its like we’re supposed to have this huge ball and chain with wow chiseled onto it attached to our feet at a checkpoint before we’re allowed to even consider having fun in new ways. “Is War a cool game? Yes, but wow…” “Is War inovative? Yes, but wow…” “Is war trying its little heart out to bring satisfaction to the huge percentage of mmo players who are losing interest? Yes, but wow…”
Im friggin sick of it, and that goes to the discussion authors too. Tabula Rasa tried to wrench away from the wow chain, but you know what killed it for me? I couldnt read general chat for 5 seconds without seeing those hated 3 letters WOW pop up again and again and again. For the sake of pink lobsters! Age of Conan even went so far as to throw in nipples and crotch to try and get our minds off wow!
Blizzard, pls take your titles and profits and get back to making the games we love you for. Finish that Diablo3 and SC2… go on, we will end up loving you for it. And finally, to every MMo gamer out there who feels a pitance for the genre: Pls, let us help make war great. Let us for get the joys of the past and help make the future more fun.
pant…pant…pant… end rant
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First and formost – ITS NOT WOW. And it is for all those who hate the “Capture the Flag” PvP that WoW has. And I love the fact that I could cap level and not have to run stupid quests. I mean, just go kick some player butts, get into it with someone on the other end, not some mob that I have memorized his every move. And oh yes, thank you Lord, no more running the same end game instance over and over and over for some stupid piece of loot just so others can outroll me on it!!.
GO WAR!!!
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If mythic had wanted to they could have made the graphics Epic and revolutionary so that you couldn’t take your eyes off it. Unfortunately, not everyone would have the top of the line pc to run the thing. They have to make the game for the masses. Looking at it from a marketing perspective, would you rather be able to sell your game to almost all gamers, or would you rather be able to sell it to those select few that have a high performance pc. Devs got to eat to ya know.
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Why does everyone always say it’s on the coat tails of WoW? All these games are crazy same. This reminded me more of an EQ/GW type. OPen beta was a nightmare for a lot of us but Mythic has seemed to be fixing things and fixing things. My lag and crashing has almost stopped. I’d rec this one to atleast try. It’s funny, when your quest is to get gnoll claws….shocking as it is every gnoll you kill has a ‘claw’. Try getting that in WoW.
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I liked the ‘discussion’, but it’s too bad you guys couldn’t play too much of the RvR, seeing as that’s what Mythic seems to be focusing on with WAR.
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Other than the RvR what elements of Dark Age of Camelot did Mythic throw into WAR? I myself haven’t gotten around to looking into the beta and with release tomorrow. Its safe to say I wont be making it in :P
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The 7th screenshot isnt Tanaris, its Dun Morogh, the gnome starting area. With that out of the way you might be able to tell im a Wow player. Its my first ever MMO. I’m a college student. Am i enough stereotypes yet? And wait for it; im not gonna compare them! People have asked me whether im going to keep playing wow or whether WAR looks better etc. I keep answering, i havent played WAR after release yet. Screenies and ppls reports from beta arent going to do it. Stop comparing, stop whining. Buy it, give it a go. If, standing on its own two feet, WAR makes you want to keep playing, then do it.
Chaos Chosen on the way here.
Enjoy it all guys :)
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WAR pwns WoW. Play it yourself to find out and stop talking about it. Everyone has their little opinions but the fact remains one must see for themself.
Only brainless minions will listen to simple words and make a decision. PLAY IT TO KNOW.
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DAOC came out way before WoW, and if anything WoW copied DAOC first. Warhammer is just another game to follow in DAOC’s footsteps. Why are you guys comparing this game to a crappy game like WoW?
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Why are people still commenting here!?
/hypocrisy
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