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.
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