WAR (Warhammer Online)

 

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?

Mount and Blade?

Originally posted by Blodpls

 

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?

Mount and Blade?

Mount and Blade is incredible yes, however its combat isn't really revolutionary at all except for the mount combat. Lol. However that doesn't go to say it implements the mount combat VERY well, especially for a husband and wife team.

Tested it now and I can say the following about it,

WAR is reasonably polished, not as polished as WoW was on release but not far from it. However it's drastically smaller in size in terms of content. That's not to say that the game won't keep you busy for quite some time ahead. The game is fairly stable and even handles tabbing quite well, although not during loading screens. But yes, you will encounter a few strange bugs, glitches and get momentarily stuck in terrain objects at times.

The classes don't have alot of depth but they're still rather well designed, although much character balancing needs to be done. I didn't find the Warrior Priests to be that bad, however the Burning Wizards pretty much burns the whole place to a crisp if allowed a moment of peace.

The PvP was fun for me, although much more slow paced than WoW. People generally don't die as quick and healing will spoil anyones day. You need to focus your damage on a single player in order to be effective, either that or be a Bright Wizard. I can see the stacking, combination and synergy of certain abilities to become very powerful and I expect to see much of these to be used in higher tier PvP, once guilds and groups start to be more serious about RvR (which is just another lame word for normal PvP, there's really nothing more RvR about WAR than WoW). The open areas seemed pretty dead with few people in them, often being scarcely populated by mobs or none at all. The dwarven starting grounds were mostly just raided by the far more popular orcs 'n goblins, which made much of the place inaccessible to the dwarf players.

- The fact that it takes longer to die is an advantage in large scale PvP, but hurt the small scale PvP engagements. WAR's system wouldn't work in WoW's arena very well, but proves to be alot more entertaining in the battlegrounds.

The public quests are like AoC's special attack system, overhyped and not that effective. Sure, the public quests are entertaining to do at least once because they're fairly cinematic. It's like Assassin's creed, cool once but then it kinda gets old. It also completely fails to create any sense of companionship and co-up, people just do the stuff or happened to stumble upon the quest and then hope that they get lucky with the roll for the rewards.. most often winning nothing and having to do it all over again or grow fed up with it and go somewhere different.

The graphics are adequate, despite not having access to high quality textures (probably due to bandwith limitations). The characters look fairly good, especially the Orcs, goblins and dwarfs and they're all a step up from the graphics of WoW. However the world in WAR can look rather sloppily put together at times and I'd say that WoW makes a better job there instead. It also seems to run quite fine on an above average system and I believe that it will run on low quality settings even on poor machines.

As for the PvE it was rather mweh, didn't come across a single instance but I hear that some are s'posed to be in the game. Mobs are fairly stupid, have slow reaction times and the aggro range is so short that it makes the mobs seem really retarded.

The community on the test servers was fairly dead, very quiet. Too quiet in fact, people only talked when adressed and not even that at times. However, it was damn nice to see people use more roleplay names again instead of the usual "SHaodwdeath" "DEadlyassasin" yatta yatta that you see in other games. Hopefully though the game will become more cheerful on launch.

As a conclusion, WAR can be a fun game and for anyone who likes PvP, is tired of WoW but who wants another fantasy MMO. My only real gripe with the game is how they screwed the warhammer lore and feel of the Orc 'n Goblins by teaming them up with Chaos and the Dark Elves. I'd also liked to have see three factions in this game instead of just two, in order to make it stand out and be a real option to WoW.

Ah well, I think that most people who try it, will enjoy it. This isn't the pile of shit that AoC was, rest assured.

- Sajt

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Originally posted by augustgrace
our complaining that nobody knows what to do in a game that many of them just started playing yesterday?  Okay...

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I've already addressed this earlier in the thread, but I'll address it again. My issue is not with people who don't know what they're doing on the first day, you're absolutely right about that being understandable. My issue is that in a game so focused on RvR, Mythic didn't even take the time to put in tooltips or instructions or little popup help menus explaining what's going on in the scenarios or RvR areas. I played through and past the area for level 8-10 and I still couldn't tell you what its purpose was. Kill or be killed, that was all that mattered, and stand near the flag to cap it, which I worked out based on intuition and past experience with other games. There was no direction, zero, NONE. In a game like EVE, where PvP is a way of life, you PvP because you have to, to defend your base/resources/territory. In a game like WAR, that's far more "theme park"-ish, why are we fighting? At least WoW had quests and descriptions to ease you into the Battlegrounds, and explain their purpose within the lore of the game (sort of). WAR's quests consisted of "kill 5 people" and "collect miscellaneous trade goods hidden within the city".

Maybe you can expect people to "figure it out on their own" but I have no such hopes. If they make it to the first RvR area and aren't being taught the basics, they will zerg eternally until someone tells them otherwise. That's what people do.

Originally posted by Aethios

NO YOU CAN'T HAVE MY ACCOUNT. I only got in for the Preview Weekend, which ends tomorrow. Target is selling the pre-order box for $1. Go buy one and you can play on the 7th.
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Maybe my expectations were too high. I don't know. All I can say is that WAR was too much like WoW, and with all the bugs and crashing and stupid quirky things that just weren't right, I'd rather be playing WoW (which is to say not at all). To give a little background, I played a Chosen and made it to Rank 10, Renown 7 within a few hours. My issues are not with the Chosen class, I liked it very much, but with the game as a whole.

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.

I agree with the point about people not using their brains when in RvR. I also take into account the fact that its a new game so most of us are trying to figure things out. That said, this aspect of the game is fairly decent, its fun and you enjoy it in small portions at a time. The point about it being a one sided war is just not true. I played 3 servers and they all had the same dynamic shift in territorial control. At times we're winning, at some we are losing.

Community
The community is not bad so far, but it's very very quiet. I've seen the usual "it's still in beta so your opinion doesn't matter" trolls, people who steal kills, people who get upset because they can't solo PQs or whatever. I've also had random strangers save my life, random strangers answer cryptic questions with detailed answers, random strangers offer to give away loot that's not for their class. Overall I'd say it's pretty balanced, and a little better than you'd expect from any MMO.

Nothing to say about the community. I mostly went on my own exploring and testing, checking to see if I was going to become a paying customer.

PvE and Questing
The PvE element is, to be totally honest, a complete joke IMO. I would frequently have to turn off my auras (Chosen are like reverse Paladins) to avoid aggroing every mob in the area, including non-hostile mobs and even level 1 critters. Even if I did aggro them all, I had no problems soloing 5-6 mobs at a time, as long as they weren't Champions (WAR equivalent of 'Elite'). NPC damage is a joke.

This I find silly at most, ignorant at best, then again it is your opinion. I like the fact that I have  NO downtime while fighting mobs and questing. On the Chosen Aura point you made I have nothing to say because it was annoying for me too. Although it makes some sense, its still annoying. Point is it makes sense, even if it is stupid.

I would often have mobs run away for no reason, even before I had done any damage. At first I thought maybe this was part of the AI, but as I played on it became obvious that even mobs who shouldn't run away (such as Champion mobs) were still tucking tail and running. I can only assume it's a bug.

Yeah, bug. Nothing left to say.

I think people are expecting to be able to level from RvR alone, and I can tell you now that doing so would be painful. It would take easily 3-4 times as long to do it that way. The quests give HUGE amounts of experience, and you simply can't compete with that in RvR. Also, the gear that you can buy once you've reached a certain Renown Rank also requires a PvE Rank, usually higher than the Renown Rank. This means you'll have to do a lot of PvE questing/grinding to get where you need to be.

Leveling from RvR IS a viable option and NOT painful. I leveled my marauder from 7 to 12 on the first tier open world RvR. There are quests that give good experience below level 10 for killing 5 enemy PLAYERS in the RvR zone. Not to mention RR9, which I got in just a few hours, ALL TODAY. On this point you are MISTAKEN. Had to put it on caps because its a big, BIG mistake on your part. What I do have to add is, it is a lot easier if you mix it in with quests and PQ's its just less tedious than all out RvR grindage.

Money
That brings us to the money issue. Even playing as far as I did, saving every bit of money I could, gathering skills and all included, not to mention all the extra grinding I did just to farm money, I was still able to buy only 4 of the 12 pieces of the Dominion set. There were times where I struggled to be able to afford even my basic class spells. Needless to say, prices on gear and spells are too high, or money drops are too low.

Again, mistaken, I played for 7 hours today and I made 6 gold in quests, drops and RvR. You just didn't micromanage well enough or kept all the loot instead of selling it. I don't know what to say on this point. I made a lot of money, especially with the RvR kill player quest that gives 6 silver at completion.

Crashes
As was mentioned several times before, I believe, crashing is a serious issue right now with the game. My own client crashed roughly every 30 mins, and it seemed to get much much worse when I tried to do RvR. Often after a crash I would lose levels or quest credit, and I'd have to do it again. I thought maybe it was my system causing it to crash, but after doing a little research I found hundreds of posts and dozens of comments in game from all kinds of people who were having the same issue. It seems to be totally random, and a problem with the client rather than with our systems.

I had some random crashes, nothing too bad. Is it annoying? Should it happen?.... no. Can I live with it?... I've played a LOT worse. It is also still in testing. Close to release? Maybe so. BUT STILL IN TESTING. Hopefully it gets fixed before then, if not THEN you earned the right to complain.

Collision Detection
In my experience, the collision detection didn't work properly either. Sometimes I would get hung up on small objects (like a brick in the road) and other times my character would teleport on top of objects that he clearly couldn't climb (like trees or lamp posts). Player collision was sketchy at best, and worked roughly half the time. It was also frustrating being a tank and getting blocked in by my own team mates. I think collision detection would have worked better if it didn't apply to people of your own faction.

COMPLETELY AGREE. I hate the collision bugs or otherwise "features". Too many problems with it on my side as well. I can handle it though I found a few workarounds like surveying the area, staying away from BIG groups ( not groups in general, just the really big groups ).

Conclusion
I won't tell you not to play this game, because I do have a sincere respect for what they were trying to do. I think, though, that they shaved it a little too close to the WoW cookie-cutter and focused a little too much on the aesthetic decoration. Maybe the game will be better closer to release, but I doubt it. With about 3 weeks to go, "it's only beta" doesn't really hold water anymore. All we can do is wait and see.

It's only a beta. You know why it holds water? because IT'S STILL A BETA. When it gets released and these issues still come up ( which probabilities lie on that they will arise ) then you can complain. Not flaming or showing aggression of any sort, just stating out the facts.

EDIT: I tried to break it up a bit so it's not such a wall-o'-text. I hope it helped.

EDIT 2: Added a few points that I forgot, and a notice at the top. Please stop sending me PMs to beg for my account!

I've never posted before and I usually only read. I just had to correct some of the points the OP made that were bugging me a little while I read ( bugged me enough to write this reply ).

I'm not a fan or a blinded customer. I'm just a player who played the game and found it enjoyable in small portions. Truth be told, I would play this for around 4 months, not even a year. GREAT GAME, just not one that would hold an individual's attention for more than that.

my 2 cents, enjoy.

Originally posted by Aethios

 

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Originally posted by Seaka
GUYS AN MMO PLAYS LIKE THE OTHER MMOS OF THE GENRE.

 

I feel the same way, i'm bored of FPS, i want a different system besides point and click with weapons. We should make an FPS and call it an MMO and have it play like an RPG right?

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If that's the case, why make more than one game at all? Why not just have one MMO and make all the other MMOs shut down, since they will always be exactly the same game?

What a silly, pointless post.

It was an epiphany for me, personally... I've already set to work on the world's first ever MMORPG-FPS-RTS-Flight Sim-PvP-Badminton game...

It's gonna be AMAZING!!!

So... Who wants in for beta?