WAR (Warhammer Online)

So I read a lot of reviews that seem to say this game isn't what it should be and it made me feel a little uneasy about getting it after experiencing other releases the past two years. Still I decided to give it a go and see what it had to offer.

On logging in to a server, you get to pick between Order or Destruction. Once you choose a side, you're locked in on that side. Similar to how WoW used to be and how DAoC was. You can see how balanced the sides are when you choose a server.

Character customization was alright, nothing huge. Similar choices as in WoW, though you get a few added features like eye color and some scaring or tatoo's. Guess it depends on your class.

Logged in, standing there looking around. The graphics are definately much better than WoW. I can't even believe these people that complain about the graphics being like wow are playing the same game I am. Maybe they didn't turn them up or they have crappy graphics cards, but what I was seeing was definately much much better than WoW.

Movement is just as smooth as I would have imagined. Only problem I had there was sometimes when you target something, like a quest giver and chat with them, your toon gets stuck attempting to look at them while running. Figured out that dropping target fixed that pretty quick. Either way, everything was nice and smooth running.

Right away, you get experience from information being added to your tome of knowledge, which is on of the coolest ideas ever. It keeps track of everything. If you saw it, its in there, if you killed it, its in there, if you had it, its in there. It keeps track of titles and and any awards you may have. EVERYTHING. This is where all the Lore is stored away for you to browse over, and there's more Lore in this game than any I've played before. You get experience from anything added to your tome, so even exploring is rewarding.

So I go out and do a few quests, right away I'm immersed. Feeling as though I'm a part of whats going on with the story line. Anyone who thinks there's not enough PvE in this game is nuts as I spent most of my first few hours doing only PvE. There's plenty of quests and mobs to keep you busy.

I finally run across a quest asking me to join a battleground. I decided to wait for it till I was a little higher level and complete my other quests. Around level 5 or so, I decided to jump in. This was similar to WoW in that there's a timer before you can run out and start accomplishing things. The idea was you had to capture 3 points on the map and try and defend them. You'd respawn back at the starting point if you died. I'll admit it was very hard, but right off I noticed there seemed to be real balance between all classes. All in all, the battles are very very fun. First time in the battleground, I died a lot, but had a blast and came away feeling excited about trying again.

After doing that a few times I decided to move on and do more quests. The quests are very creative. While playing WoW, I enjoyed how creative those quests were, but I had no idea how creative these quests could be. PUBLIC quests are just a blast. You're running along and you get a message on the screen saying you're in an area public quest. You look around and see a bunch of people doing whatever is required of the quest, which I noticed next to my minimap. There's several stages to a public quest, first stage is like easy mode, second gets a little harder, and the final stage is where something epic pops up and you have to put everything into killing it. You can participate as much or as little as you like, though the more you put in, the bigger your bonus to your roll is in the end. Which brings me to the looting. After everything is said and done, you click on the public quest and it brings up a list of people involved and their bonuses, then it starts a random roll from 1-1000 or something like that. It adds your bonus, and then determines based off that who gets loot. If you scored high, like in the top 1-5, you might get a rare bag, 6-8 might only get a normal bag, the rest dont get anything, but if you stay and try again, you get a persistance bonus as well, so I kept trying. When you open your bag, you get a choice between several items for crafting or adventuring. There's tons of these types of quests, just have to look around.

While that was a lot of fun, I finally ended up making my way to a battleground camp. These camps are located on the fronts of open battle areas. They have quests just like any other areas for pve, but they also have RvR quests. Once you pass into the open RvR area, a countdown starts and eventually flags you PvP. The idea is to attempt to take and keep control over several areas. Similar to frontier lands in DAoC, except this was happening at level 8 for me. Apparently tier 1 area is 1-11. If a higher level player tries to pvp there, he's turned into a chicken and stripped of his abilities. Keeps the gankers out. Thats a FUNNY sight to see.

So just I decided to check out one of the capital cities. Every battleground camp has a flight master who will take you to any capitol city. Can I say wow, these capital cities have been designed with love and care, well at least the one I went to. There's so much detail and the size is just amazing. I decided to head to where everyone likes to go, the Auction house. Sure enough, found the guy and checked out the auction system. Can I say very intuitive. I loved the way it was layed out and it functioned perfectly unlike some other game I've played. Bought a few items and ran off to find the mailbox. Mailbox has 3 tabs, one for recieving mail, another for sending and the last for auction items. Grabbed my stuff and headed back to the flight master. Though the flight doesn't show you landscape, like in WoW. Travel is pretty much, you see yourself take off and fly away, screen fades, you land where you decided to go. Nothing awesome, but effecient. I like that since I had better things to do than look at the landscape for 20 mins.

Anyway, this is all from a days look at Warhammer. Leveling is a bit slower than WoW, but I'm happy about that. There's 40 levels and I dont want to just fly to the top and miss things along the way. There's PLENTY to do and if anyone says they got bored playing, they're not actually playing the game.

Some things I missed: Crafting is so so, but whats there is very interesting and different. My wife, who is an avid crafter actually enjoyed it. You have 3 experience bars, your main experience, your influence (which you get from RvR), and public xp. All 3 end up giving you items or abilities. After making it to the battleground camp, I found a trainer who worked with influence. With him, you could add abilities or points to your character, like Intelligence or a boost of 5% to your RvR experience. At level 11 you get your first mastery point. These points are similar to spec points like in any other game. I haven't reached 11 yet to play with them, but I got the idea.

All in all, there's a LOT to this game, and you have to get at least past 6-7th level in order to even get a vague idea of what it's all about. It's been just about the smoothest launch I've seen in any mmo and I've played most of them. Hardly any bugs, and any bugs that are there are minor cosmetic bugs. Anyone who bashes on the game after playing for only 10 mins has NO REAL idea what they're talking about. I've seen a lot of posts attempting to say bad things with no basis at all, which leads me to believe it's just people trying to retain the player base of their own game. Got news for you, if they're interested in playing another game at all, it means the one they play now is boring enough for them to wander to begin with. No complaining will help your cause.

This game is DEFINATELY worth a look at. Give it a go to at least level 10, try a little of everything and then see what you think. It might not be for everyone, but what game is. For the first time in litterally years, there's a game thats definately going to keep my attention for longer than a couple of weeks. I'm off to go do some open RvR. 

Sorry this was so lengthy, its just that there's So much to this game and it seems there's a lot of people who are not sure if they'd like it. I was one of those people and most of the reviews I saw weren't giving the game it's justice. I decided to give it a go even though I've tried so many other games the past few years that I just got bored with in a few days or weeks. Hope this helps you decide if you want to try it.

If you must contest anything I've said, please be as constructive as possible.

Kind of a long read but glad you like it. Fun game, VERY fun game.

OP gave the game a chance and turned out to like it. This is how I believe you need to walk into this game. You cannot jump into WAR expecting it to be WoW 2.

As a "fan" myself I will say, great post! Sums up my thoughts nicely

Thanks for this. I enjoyed reading it.

Yeah, again sorry its so so long. Its just that there's so much to the game that people seem to miss and spending only an hour in the game doesn't give it justice. There's a lot of posts that go back and forth, but not a lot that seem to cover WHY its fun.

This is the first game in years thats actually got me excited to play.

 great post thats exactly how i felt playing it :p

Very good read....it pretty much covered everything I wanted to know from what seems to be a very honest prespective.

Great review. I was unsure abou