WAR (Warhammer Online)

Originally posted by Aethios

 

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Originally posted by Ender4
However if you kind of like the game but are frustrated by little things I'd try it again when it hits open beta. They most likely will have the full graphics turned on and the debugging software turned off and things will look and feel better.

 

As for the confused T1 RvR zerg, there are three T1 zones and only CvE really has this issue in my experience. If you don't like the big zerg on zerg then try one of the other ones.

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I will wait for the real Open Beta to start and see what people have to say about fixes, and if it sounds promising I will likely try it again. Like you said, I enjoyed a good chunk of the game and I thought it was very clever and full of life, but small issues cropped up every step of the way and it was just too much.

You may be right about the T1 RvR, I don't know. I tried some of the other factions but only enough to find out whether I liked the class or not, and I think the highest I made it aside from my Chosen guy was level 3.

I think a lot of what you ran into is mainly because this is a preview weekend which means that the game is still very much in closed beta.

Things like people just running into combat with no planning or strats will certainly not happen once people are forming premades and actually are figuring out the classes.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that this is a new game with a different way of doing things.  I would take a look at all your skills and see if you can form strats and such.  Also I would try finding a group of people through the open grouping system, or maybe finding a group of people that you can run around with.

The game is definitely more fun in a group especially doing RvR, because you know the healer has your back, you have the MDPS' back,etc.

With PvE there are known pathing issues on mobs, and I would suggest reading and enjoying the quest dialog.  It's very well thought out.  I understand this was just your first impression which is always important, but I don't think you understood a lot of the aspects of the game, mainly due to the lack of tutorial of any kind.

I would give the game a more thorough look and really play the game as if you were paying for it, so that you're not just finding things that you're missing but you're accepting what you have and making the best out of it.  The game is very immersive and enjoyable once you get into it and find that group of people you like playing with.

To Antarius:  If you haven't played the game in months, it's a completely different game. Hell the game seems to make leaps and bounds of improvement every phase.  I would suggest giving it a shot in Open Beta, as I'm sure it'll be different then than it is now by far as well.

I am not in beta, so I dunno, but I want to see it for myself, still. I am quite over the fence what to think. But since some points are said regularly, there must be something in them.

For instance I hear often that money drop is too little to afford the new spells, if I understand it right, and thats of course a pity, but I hope they work it out.

The rest sounds like the typical beta problems, people play much less coordinated in betas, so it remains to be seen how it is when it starts. I am always willing to give them some time. Not endless, but I dont expect a perfect game right away.

Originally posted by Yunbei

I am not in beta, so I dunno, but I want to see it for myself, still. I am quite over the fence what to think. But since some points are said regularly, there must be something in them.

For instance I hear often that money drop is too little to afford the new spells, if I understand it right, and thats of course a pity, but I hope they work it out.

The rest sounds like the typical beta problems, people play much less coordinated in betas, so it remains to be seen how it is when it starts. I am always willing to give them some time. Not endless, but I dont expect a perfect game right away.

There is no auction house at the moment.  I've been getting a lot of drops and scavenge a lot of things that can not be sold to a vendor, but would likely bring a nice price from a player driven economy.  I do not believe that this will be an issue on release.  I'm much more concerned about the AI, at this point.  I've seen AIs that were worse, but not by much.

Originally posted by medafor

Originally posted by sigurd57

I just think it's sad everybody will embrace and love WAR, not because it's a good game (because it's sub-par at best) but simply because there is a lack of options.   Call it a hatred for undeserved success.

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are you serious? because there are a lack of options? so now it's the video game industries fault that there are a lack of solid MMOs out there? and WAR is a worse game because these MMO's that don't exist could be better? well when you and your company makes  that uber mmo that you are imagining please let me beta test it.

 

ALSO this is bothering me:

"Also, I totally agree with your disappointment on some of the WoW cookie-cutter stuff. In particular, I was very disappointed with the combat. It's straight EQ, WoW, pretty-much-every-other fantasy MMORPG click-and-wait styled combat. "

please tell me about this "innovative" combat system you imagine? i dont get you people. your complaining about the combat and all, but dont mention what they could have done to make the combat better? please tell us about this revolutionary combat system?

Well, I'm not getting paid to design any aspect of the game, but since you have taken my comment so personally, as if I just ran over your dog and laughed about it, I will throw out a couple of options just for the sake of trying something different. Now, neither of these are examples of stellar successes, but at least the effort was put in to try something different:
 

Tabula Rasa - A mix between an FPS style targeting system and dice-roll combat calculations. This might have been interesting to use something like this for ranged classes in WAR.

Age of Conan - rotating shield positioning and directional attacks. it's not everyone's cup o' joe, but it is different and a lot of people seem to at least like that aspect of AoC, including me. Might have been interesting if the WAR team used some kind of guard stances that players can rotate and attackers could counter against.

D&D online - Real-time attacks using positioning and some cooldowns. This is actually very fun to use and works well, imo. The only thing missing from this system in DDO is better player feedback for hits and misses, otherwise it is very actiony and fun.

There you go. Some examples of trying something different other than sticking to the classic and dated standard click-and-watch MMORPG combat fare.

Peace home key.  Hope you find something to have fun with man.  When you come back let us know.

Originally posted by Aethios

RvR and PvP
RvR is a bit of a mess. Nobody has a clue what they are supposed to be doing. Good luck finding people to group with, everyone (including people who rolled healers) just run into the fray head first and start spraying spells. On the realm I played on, Destruction won every time hands down, but it was still like walking into a meat grinder. The Order players would all bunch up at a bottleneck and toast anyone who came too close. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's far flung from the dynamic, PvE/PvP mixed battlefields I was expecting. I also felt the RvR areas were a bit small, but that's probably because they were in the early game and the zones were focused more on PvE questing. I'm sure they get bigger towards the upper tiers.

[italics and underline added]

"Nobody has a clue what they are supposed to be doing."

Honestly, I stopped reading there because the preview weekend has been out for less than 3 days.  Most people have played the game for less thatn 3 days, do you really expect a fully developed meta-game?

Buggy is sort of suprising for Mythic.  Because I played DAoC during the last week of beta and a few months after release.  It was a pretty solid game, it had a few bugs here and there but they are good about correcting the issues.  I'm so used to MMOs getting released early that I pretty much take a 3 month wait period before i try anything anymore.  because most of their major bugs can be fixed within 3 months after release it seems.  if not, then it's definately not worth it.  of course you could lose out on some really interesting and sometimes humorous bugs. 

but thanks for the honest and un-biased review. 

Originally posted by Puuk

Well, I'm not getting paid to design any aspect of the game, but since you have taken my comment so personally, as if I just ran over your dog and laughed about it, I will throw out a couple of options just for the sake of trying something different. Now, neither of these are examples of stellar successes, but at least the effort was put in to try something different:
 

Tabula Rasa - A mix between an FPS style targeting system and dice-roll combat calculations. This might have been interesting to use something like this for ranged classes in WAR.

Age of Conan - rotating shield positioning and directional attacks. it's not everyone's cup o' joe, but it is different and a lot of people seem to at least like that aspect of AoC, including me. Might have been interesting if the WAR team used some kind of guard stances that players can rotate and attackers could counter against.

D&D online - Real-time attacks using positioning and some cooldowns. This is actually very fun to use and works well, imo. The only thing missing from this system in DDO is better player feedback for hits and misses, otherwise it is very actiony and fun.

There you go. Some examples of trying something different other than sticking to the classic and dated standard click-and-watch MMORPG combat fare.

Just wanted to point out that there are stances and such that you have to react to, and also from the attacker's perspective you have to decide what to use.  Several classes have them.

For instance: 

The Chosen has auras that do a lot of different things, and by level 10 you have a few of them and you have to decide which to use based on who you're fighting against.  From the person being attacked's point of view, it's important to recognize which one is active since you can tell by the particle effect being displayed.  i.e. if the Chosen is using the aura that lowers your defense, it's important if you have a buff, or if a person close by has a buff for defense to recognize this and put that up.

The Marauder has 3 different styles of mutation that do different things from dps to debuffs, and it's important to know which to use in certain situations.  From the opposite perspective since you can tell by his arm which one he's using, it's important to know what to expect from each different mutation.

The Shadow Warrior has 3 stances depending on the range that have cooldowns.  If you learn the shadow warriors skills, you can tell if he's in skirmish stance (running while shooting/midrange attacks) and you could either try to keep your distance or close the distance using a snare.

The Squig Herder's pets do different things as well, and like above, you have to know what does what from both perspectives.

The Magus and Engineer have pets that do different things as well, from Single Target DPS to AoE, to Debuffs, and if you know what to use when, like above you can react accordingly both playing as the class and against it.

I think there are plenty of very subtle things that aren't being taken into account.  The game isn't just nuke/spam attack abilities.  There's a lot of skills that have secondary effects, and debuffs that are just as important to know how to use, and how to defend against.

I know this was a wall of text, but I thought it might give some perspective on the nuances associated with the classes, and also show that while not super duper uber innovative, it's a step up from previous games, and you really have to know your opponent, and know the class you're playing to know the strengths and weaknesses to take advantage of.