Originally posted by Solude

I said it when AoC was in beta and approaching a fixed release date and I'll say it again... WAR will need a good 6 months after release to iron out the bugs, imbalances.  I'm still having fun in elder beta and plan to join several weeks after release but anyone expecting WoW/LotRO/EQ2 stability and polish is going to be disappointed.

And so they should be, these games have been live for quite sometime.

What we have here though is a content ready game with a few minor bugs to be ironed out.  Not game breaking features like conan.

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Originally posted by Solude
I said it when AoC was in beta and approaching a fixed release date and I'll say it again... WAR will need a good 6 months after release to iron out the bugs, imbalances.  I'm still having fun in elder beta and plan to join several weeks after release but anyone expecting WoW/LotRO/EQ2 stability and polish is going to be disappointed.

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I don't think you're going to have to worry about the more rational people realizing its not going to be a polished game upon release and those are the people that will give a more objective review of the game.

Originally posted by BuzWeaver

 

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Originally posted by Solude
I said it when AoC was in beta and approaching a fixed release date and I'll say it again... WAR will need a good 6 months after release to iron out the bugs, imbalances.  I'm still having fun in elder beta and plan to join several weeks after release but anyone expecting WoW/LotRO/EQ2 stability and polish is going to be disappointed.

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I don't think you're going to have to worry about the more rational people realizing its not going to be a polished game upon release and those are the people that will give a more objective review of the game.

Well thats the thing about MMO's now adays and WoW.

People are used to polish and ease.

They will judge it by that and wether its REALLY fun not if they have to work at it to have fun.

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Originally posted by Aethios

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.

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I played the same game and didn't experience a lot of what you did. Infact at just 15 level, 15 RR I had 10gp and I bought every single bit of armor and had 10 siege weapons on my person (20sp a pop).

Not sure why you had money issues but I had plenty.

My only suggestion is not to play WAR.  On my side, I totally loved it and thought it was a blast.  My sons and I used some solid tactics like holding the door of an inn against an army of people and blind siding  casters from behind after we flanked them.  Sure, a lot of people just weren't using tactics, but many of us did and soon had armies following us to reap the glory of WAR.

they droped the cost of the skills and its not that hard to get money by the time i hit 10/6 i had enough money to buy all my skills and the full set of RvR armor. personally i think the games coming along nicely i was only in the beta bouta month and the entire time i only crashed to desktop 4 or 5 times and which really isnt that bad for a beta.

Originally posted by Aethios

 

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Originally posted by LordBANG
you are able to get the kill 5 players from each pairing and finish them in the empire/chaos area for 19s silver total(all repeatable). It takes a bit of extra time but I found it to be worth it. This should put you well on your way to affording all you need.

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Yeah, of course it would be, if the game actually counted your kills. The problem now is their "kill 5 people" system works like WoW's kill credit, where you only "get the kill" if you dealt the killing blow. For some classes, this might not be a problem, but for others... heh, good luck.

At any rate, the point I was trying to make earlier is how dumb it was for them to make gear a reward that needs to be bought. If they want players to PAY for it, they should put in some kind of system like the Influence used in PQs, but for PvP only.

Did you even played the game?  If you do damage on the players and any of your teammates/ warband kill him you get the kill.
 

Again , learn to use open groups if you are too anti-social to start one. This is not a solo PVP game.

Not paying for gear? You seem to be the only one having problem paying for it. This game have no money sink. You don't even need to repair armors and weapons.  How easy do you need the game to be?

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Originally posted by Solude
I said it when AoC was in beta and approaching a fixed release date and I'll say it again... WAR will need a good 6 months after release to iron out the bugs, imbalances.  I'm still having fun in elder beta and plan to join several weeks after release but anyone expecting WoW/LotRO/EQ2 stability and polish is going to be disappointed.
As for when a product is finished... I think MMOs should be held to the same level as single player games.  I wouldn't accept this level of 'done' in Diablo III or Fallout 3 so why do publishers think its ok in the MMO market?

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If you think WAR needs 6 months to be polished then AOC must still need 12 months to get there. Noobody expects a new MMO to be perfect, being like AOC is much different and WAR isn't like that.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by Aethios

Something else I forgot to mention were the Public Quests. They were a disappointment as well. I (and many others, likely) were expecting a huge effort that you can jump into, solo a bit, get some loot or whatever and feel like you are a part of something larger that contributes to the game. Instead, it's obvious that the PQs were designed for like 5 people, instead of the 30-40 that play them. The population between PQs is imbalanced as well, leaving probably 3/4 of them to be totally empty. The few that are completable have so many people working on them, you can't possibly have any hope of getting loot. Only the top 3 or so contributors actually get gear, unless you count the Influence Rewards which is usually only 1 usable item per zone.

They should have done it like the Battlegrounds in WoW, let people participate on a solo or small-group basis, earn Influence, exchange the Influence for gear and let them come back for more. Add the purple and blue items as Influence rewards and make them very, very expensive. As it stands now, 99% of the game's population has no hope of ever seeing a purple item before Rank 40, which gives those few who do get them a big lead in RvR.

Also, the bosses in PQs are too weak. With 30-40 people doing the PQ, the boss dies in 4-5 seconds. They should have anticipated that so many people would want to participate, or at least design the PQs to be dynamic and scale up with the number of people. It's very underwhelming.

 

This really worries me. As I really thought PQ's would scale up :(

The way you subscibe it just means the PQ's are seriously flawed and we all end up being extremely dissapointed not getting anything and a few lucky people dominating in RvR.

It's busy now in Preview weekend, but when the game launches you can expect even more people zerging these PQ's with a lot more then 30-40 players.

A real shame. I hope they are able to adress this before release. But my guts tell me it's too late now.

This is only the very beginning PQs right when everyone is starting.  Shouldn't focus on early pqs anyway.  Level faster and make better money doing regular quests and RvR.  PQs should be your focus after you get the RR8 gear to fill in good gear until RR10 gear.  PQs are very fun when you are running with 5-8 people as is the norm later on.  Also nice that you can just click the open groups tag and see what PQs are currently being attempted and join the group.

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Originally posted by Whiskeyjack1

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Originally posted by Aethios

 

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Originally posted by LordBANG
you are able to get the kill 5 players from each pairing and finish them in the empire/chaos area for 19s silver total(all repeatable). It takes a bit of extra time but I found it to be worth it. This should put you well on your way to affording all you need.

---

 

Yeah, of course it would be, if the game actually counted your kills. The problem now is their "kill 5 people" system works like WoW's kill credit, where you only "get the kill" if you dealt the killing blow. For some classes, this might not be a problem, but for others... heh, good luck.
At any rate, the point I was trying to make earlier is how dumb it was for them to make gear a reward that needs to be bought. If they want players to PAY for it, they should put in some kind of system like the Influence used in PQs, but for PvP only.

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Did you even played the game?  If you do damage on the players and any of your teammates/ warband kill him you get the kill.
 
Again , learn to use open groups if you are too anti-social to start one. This is not a solo PVP game.
Not paying for gear? You seem to be the only one having problem paying for it. This game have no money sink. You don't even need to repair armors and weapons.  How easy do you need the game to be?

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Assuming what you say is even true (did YOU play the game?) that means I *HAVE* to join a group in order to get anything done. Yeah, so much for it being "casual friendly." Why are people so hell-bent on FORCING players to group to get anything done? I play games to play with other people, but not to tie myself to a specific group. If I want to jump in without finding a group first and contribute what I can, I should be able to do that.

And no, I'm not the only one having a problem paying for gear. Next to complaints about CTD and PQs, money is one of the largest complaints about the game.

If you want to point fingers and accuse people of being bad gamers because they don't play the way YOU say we should, or, even better, because we say things about the game that YOU don't agree with, that's too bad. I have a right to play solo, and I don't have to listen to people like you whine about how "solo players are ruining the game" etc etc.

It's really not hard to pay for gear as long as you do quests and RvR.  PQs won't make you good money unless you are winning the loot at the end and even then probably not. 

Originally posted by Cotillion99

It's really not hard to pay for gear as long as you do quests and RvR.  PQs won't make you good money unless you are winning the loot at the end and even then probably not. 

Oh man yeah, I was floored by how much money I was getting in RvR.

I had been doing quests and PQ's for the most part and barely getting my skills, suddenly I decided to start killing other players and... cash started falling from the sky.

heh....

I wonder if this was a way to stop gold farming: Make the best source of money be enemy players :)

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Sorry about the full quote (I couldn't break out the money bullet-point) . 
 

As far as making money goes; as a Lvl 11 Shadow Warrior I had 2.75 gold already and I bought full Renown 2 and 4 sets.  So I'm a little confused as to why you were having a hard time getting coin?

Originally posted by Aethios

 

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Originally posted by Whiskeyjack1

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Originally posted by Aethios

 

 
 

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Originally posted by LordBANG
you are able to get the kill 5 players from each pairing and finish them in the empire/chaos area for 19s silver total(all repeatable). It takes a bit of extra time but I found it to be worth it. This should put you well on your way to affording all you need.

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Yeah, of course it would be, if the game actually counted your kills. The problem now is their "kill 5 people" system works like WoW's kill credit, where you only "get the kill" if you dealt the killing blow. For some classes, this might not be a problem, but for others... heh, good luck.
At any rate, the point I was trying to make earlier is how dumb it was for them to make gear a reward that needs to be bought. If they want players to PAY for it, they should put in some kind of system like the Influence used in PQs, but for PvP only.

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Did you even played the game?  If you do damage on the players and any of your teammates/ warband kill him you get the kill.
 
Again , learn to use open groups if you are too anti-social to start one. This is not a solo PVP game.
Not paying for gear? You seem to be the only one having problem paying for it. This game have no money sink. You don't even need to repair armors and weapons.  How easy do you need the game to be?

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Assuming what you say is even true (did YOU play the game?) that means I *HAVE* to join a group in order to get anything done. Yeah, so much for it being "casual friendly." Why are people so hell-bent on FORCING players to group to get anything done? I play games to play with other people, but not to tie myself to a specific group. If I want to jump in without finding a group first and contribute what I can, I should be able to do that.

And no, I'm not the only one having a problem paying for gear. Next to complaints about CTD and PQs, money is one of the largest complaints about the game.

If you want to point fingers and accuse people of being bad gamers because they don't play the way YOU say we should, or, even better, because we say things about the game that YOU don't agree with, that's too bad. I have a right to play solo, and I don't have to listen to people like you whine about how "solo players are ruining the game" etc etc.

I dunno, I havn't heard anyone complain about money once you informed them about thre repeatable RVR quests.

Also you don't have to join a group in order to do anything in RVR. You are biased towards this game, or so it seems. You are trying to find things that are wrong with it, and state that it is so, when in reality some of the things you are finding "wrong" with it arn't. Such as your assumption about having to have a group in RVR to do these quests. You simply don't. Sure War encourages grouping... which is great because its a MMORPG and unlike another particular game that encourages solo play, this game realizes that alot of us feel that grouping is an important aspect of MMO's. But in no way does War force anyone to group in order to get things done. I went both solo and in groups for RVR, and I completed all the quests both ways. Solo took slightly longer, but it was still done. In a group it was quicker, but then if you go to turn in... you are leaving your group.... so it means you are just leaving them in the dust. So if doing those repeatable Quests are all you are wanting to do then solo them... its not hard. If youy are wanting to do those as side quests and have fun in RVR killing lotsa people, it is encouraged to join a group to be able to RVR to your, and its ( the RVR in general) fullest potential.

Overall, I thought the game has a lot of promise and am very interested to see what it will be like at higher levels.  Yeah, the RVR was zerg-like this preview weekend, but still fun nonetheless.  I'm sure it will only get better with guilds. 

As far as crashes go, I'm running a 5 year old system and did not experience one crash.  Frankly, it was quite smooth.  At times there were some lag spikes with the 40+ RVR battles, but that is a given.

You can do w/e you want, but grouping will always be more effective because a healer is more likely to heal a group member then the guy charging into battle, thinking he will somehow outlast the zerg waiting for him.

PQs are fine, and actually encourage teamwork, ive seen, many times, the top 3 players on the contribution list end up last on the loot list. I actually love the PQ loot system, I do hate it when I end up being a high contributer and losing with a low roll.

It stops high levels from farming them, and its pretty fair, contributors get a set bonus to their roll, but the roll will still be random.

And no you dont HAVE to join a group, but it makes it more effective. Thats like you lifting a couch by yourself complaining about how heavy it is. Of course you can do it by yourself but it would be much easier if you got some help.

They are not forcing you to group, and open parties make grouping much easier to do.

And no where in that guys post did he call you a bad gamer or say you were ruining group MMOs.

Direct to OP:
 

I'm a WAR fanboy (yes, I admit it, that's what I am) but I thank the OP for a honest negative review. I'm still a fanboy and I'm going to buy it because I feel most of those issues are either easily fixed bugs or do not pertain to me since I'll be joining with a bunch of friends.

Thanks for the review though. It'll lessen the inevitable disappointment I always feel whenever a game that I've been eagerly following releases. Now I know what the flaws are and so I can prepare - nasty surprises loose a lot of their sting when they cease to be surprises.

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

...

PvE and Questing
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.

...

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.

...

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.

...

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,

Just a few comments about these statements:

It's not surprising that the RvR seemed chaotic as all the servers had a lot of new people.  The open world combat is probably different from what a lot of people are used to.  You are right that no one (not even a tank) cannot assume they can run into a large group of the opposing force.  You have to be a lot smarter about the large combat, look for people out of position, use knockback to put someone in a bad position, protect your healers, etc.   I don't think it's fair to give people 3 days to level and figure out how to assault a keep, it's not enough time.

I believe the mob AI is a bug, though I thought the aggro radius of low-level mobs always felt a bit low, that seemed to be a fairly recent issue.

I usually level from 1-4 doing the PvE quests and from level 4 on I mostly PvP.  This actually goes really fast.  What you possibly missed was that in chapter 1 there is a repeatable quest for running a scenario and in the warcamps there are a variety of quests for exploring the RvR region and a repeatable quest for killing a certain number of enemies.  Doing these quests while running scenarios and taking over battlefield objectives lets you level pretty quickly.  Actually I wish I didn't level from 10-12 as quickly as I do since those levels are insanely fun.

Similar to the XP issue, an easy repeatable quest to pick up is the Kill 5 enemies quest.  You get xp and 6 silver for this quest and you can pick it up from multiple warcamps.  Basically every time you kill 5 enemies you get 13 silver.  I do agree that the money is still pretty tight and submitted feedback saying so.

I realize crashing is an issue for some people.  I had an older machine and felt lag in RvR and crashed 1 or 2 times a night.  A couple weeks ago I got a new machine with 4 gig of memory and only had 1 crash the entire preview weekend and I get very little lag even in heavy RvR.   The thing is it's only been a few months since I stopped playing WoW, but I can still remember getting the occasional BSOD, server disconnects, 1 frame every 10 seconds whenever a large force tries to enter a capital city, watching half of my guildmates get dropped because someone managed to reliably crash an entire WoW continent.  The big difference here is we haven't even seen the final warhammer client, this client likely has debugging/feedback code in it that won't even be there come release.

In general I can understand your points, but I don't think it's fair to just play for a couple nights with a bunch of newbies and assume that that is how the game will play after launch. 

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Originally posted by Njai15
And no where in that guys post did he call you a bad gamer or say you were ruining group MMOs.

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I point you to the following quotes from the post I was referring to:

"Did you even play the game?"

"... learn to use groups if you are too anti-social to start one."

"This is not a solo PvP game."

Many of these quotes don't even make sense in the context of the reply, it's pretty obvious to me he was just trolling and being inflammatory. I find it incredible how somebody makes a realistic list of all the stuff that's broken in a game and suddenly all the trolls and fanboys swarm the thread and start pointing fingers and calling names.

I never said the game was bad, and I never said I didn't like it. I love the Warhammer lore and I thought they captured that incredibly well. I just don't think the game is worth playing with all the broken stuff still in it. If they can fix those things by the open beta (and hence by release) then I will likely be playing it myself. Everybody is so busy putting words in my mouth, they're totally missing the point of the thread.

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

Yea I also got slaughtered too, mainly because the destruction were more and groups weren't really playing together as such, but in the group I was in we were able to take a few posts and gained a morale boost for the realm. But after that we started getting slaughtered. Did you play in Gorfang?

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.

I'm preety sure everyone was trying to get to higher levels before the end of the preview weekend that's why it was so quiet and i'm also one of those strangers who goes around saving people's arses from inevitable death.

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.

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.

HUGE BUG.

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.

Scenarioing and questing is the best way to climb up that steep slope. Rank 12 and Renown rank 10 was what i reached before they booted me out and turned me into a chicken for beating them up too badly.

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.

If you learnt the Scavenger and Apothecracy skills you would be so rich you could buy a realm and then some. I've been doing this since i got into beta and I've not run out of money yet.

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 updated my card and played the game for 3 straight hours without crashing, maybe it was my lucky day but I'd say it helped.

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.

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.

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!

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by Aethios

Something else I forgot to mention were the Public Quests. They were a disappointment as well. I (and many others, likely) were expecting a huge effort that you can jump into, solo a bit, get some loot or whatever and feel like you are a part of something larger that contributes to the game. Instead, it's obvious that the PQs were designed for like 5 people, instead of the 30-40 that play them. The population between PQs is imbalanced as well, leaving probably 3/4 of them to be totally empty. The few that are completable have so many people working on them, you can't possibly have any hope of getting loot. Only the top 3 or so contributors actually get gear, unless you count the Influence Rewards which is usually only 1 usable item per zone.

They should have done it like the Battlegrounds in WoW, let people participate on a solo or small-group basis, earn Influence, exchange the Influence for gear and let them come back for more. Add the purple and blue items as Influence rewards and make them very, very expensive. As it stands now, 99% of the game's population has no hope of ever seeing a purple item before Rank 40, which gives those few who do get them a big lead in RvR.

Also, the bosses in PQs are too weak. With 30-40 people doing the PQ, the boss dies in 4-5 seconds. They should have anticipated that so many people would want to participate, or at least design the PQs to be dynamic and scale up with the number of people. It's very underwhelming.

 

This really worries me. As I really thought PQ's would scale up :(

The way you subscibe it just means the PQ's are seriously flawed and we all end up being extremely dissapointed not getting anything and a few lucky people dominating in RvR.

It's busy now in Preview weekend, but when the game launches you can expect even more people zerging these PQ's with a lot more then 30-40 players.

A real shame. I hope they are able to adress this before release. But my guts tell me it's too late now.

All of these worries you have from the other poster are simply due to the fact that preview weekeend opened with 100,000 people trying to all play at once.  Give me a break, of course it's going to be hard and try to win something from a public quest when 71 people are doing it.  that won't stay that way forever you konw, people do level up.

as for the facts...

tier 1  public quests really are almost unnecessary, and dont give that great of rewards unless you win. 
tier 2 publi quests is where things start getting good, they are harder, and the rewards are much greater, and just give it time... stop basing so much off a beta test and one persons review.

Overall the OP has given some points to think about.  Not everyone had the same experience. I think it is safe to say this though:

The RvR gaming experience seems to outwiegh the PvE experiences. You gain levels, money and can buy gear which makes you more competitive than those who experienced the PvE aspect of WAR.

Public Quests may be barren wastelands within a month because of the poor rewards.  While it seems like an innovative idea, public quests may only serve to get people to work together instead of force grouping.

More on the Public Quests:

Benefits - 1) Easy to get involved with. Bring up that litle community window and voila you can usually find at least a pair of players involved in the quest.  2) Influence rewards, apparently are average in comparision, I call this a benefit because you can always repeat a PQ in the area and receive a reward. You do not have to devote hours of grinding.  3) At least in early levels, many PvE quests given to you by NPCs bring you in PQ areas. So you may be completing your assigned tasks and gaining influence as well. 

Negatives - 1) as others reported, the rewards for really good loot are not always directly related to the time you put into it. Granted, your chances of getting loot are better, but one lucky roller who strolled in and spam healed a few tanks while the Boss falls may walk off with the 1st prize just doesn't sit well. This needs to be addressed. 2) the loot in general SHOULD be comparable to Reknown gear. If Mythic wants this "new" feature to shine, they have to make the rewards tempting.  OR perhaps scale more levarage of realm victory points by Public Quests completed.

The Tome of Knowledge. I assume the OP could care less about this meta game.  No worries, I have high hopes for it,  I am one of those who clicks on anything, scour corners, etc. I don't always want to grind scenarios and RvR just to get to 40.

Anyways, see you all in game!

Since this has became a failry popular thread with some great responses, both positve and negative, I would like to give my review on the RvR only.

I have been in Beta for three weeks now and here are my thoughts on the RvR aspect of the game.

RvR - This Is The Main Part of this game. Do not kid yourself with thinking that you will run dungeons daily for loot or go fishing in lakes for fun! If you do not like PvP, then this game will not be for you. It appears to me that all end-game content (for the first year at least) will be strictly based on PvP.

I thought the idea was great and Mythic has done a good job implementing it. I played order and we had a 50 minute fight against destrcution trying to take one of their keeps in Tier 2. I had an absolute blast, the fighting was pretty fast paced and I think the fact that it was a larger fight (25 on 25 or so) made it that much more enjoyable. As a warrior priest I was very grateful that I received credit for healing people and I did not feel the urge to run in there and bash heads in the whole time so I could receive credit. If you have the chance to play with friends or close guildies, I would expect most people to have a very positive report on RvR. The PvP in this game reminds me very much of open world WoW PvP before the PvP system was implemented at all (which is some of my favorite memories in that game of people just picking a fight for the fun of it and braggin rights) of course in WAR, the rewards for fighting in open world or scenarios is to great to pass up.

My main concern is this.The PvP will only find its full potential if people are willing to do there part for the greater good and work as a team.  I encourage anyone who will play this game to go help out at keeps and in scenarios. The PvP will completly depend on the community of this game. If people do not want to take the time to defend keeps or join a group to help take objectives, then the PvP will lose its appeal.

I found it easy to find groups that wanted to help in RvR and providing Order vs Destruction is balanced( which Mythic has stated many times that they are working very hard on this) then I think this game has a lot of potential.

P.S - please take the time also to try several classes on both sides. Each class has its own quirks and abilities that make them unique from the rest and the best groups and guilds will be ones with the ability to use each class to its full potential.

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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. 

That is not true at all i was playing as a swordmaster on order and as peeps know that a tank requires a healer to be really affective in RVR. But i didnt have to ask for heals if there was a healer they would just heal me melee dps would keep the oposing team  of my healer was great team work...not always but for alot this is how it went down

 

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.

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.

They have acknolwdged pathing porblems and they have said they know how to fix it.... As for the easy of mobs i cant say really as a caster i could easily die with two to 3 mobs as a tank i coul take 5-6 .

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.

 

I dont know what your problem is here i had 1g at lvl 7 bought my rvr gear had 1g again by lvl 10

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.

 

Ya crashing did happen but not frequently for me

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.

 

Yes geting blocked by my own team is annoying but for what i saw collision works fine

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.

Im not gonna say its only beta but I had a load a fun over the PW and so did all the people i know that played so perhaps you went into the game with an already slanted view or you just dont like this style of game

"So I uninstalled WAR today... "

Damn you didn't give us your stuff before you left?  What a turd!