Greetings everyone! I've been anxious to try WAR for a while now, but not anxious enough to plop down $50 dollars for it. On steam, however, it was on-sale for ~$30 dollars so I decided to give it ago. First, a little about me; I'm a 20 year old virgin who has been playing MMOs since middle school, my first and favorite being DAoC. (Go Midgard!) I know nothing of the Warhammer universe, and my only experience with it was playing the Dawn of War RTS once. I been playing for about a week now and have racked up roughly 20 hours of /play time. With that out of the way, lets get started!

Character creation was very basic. Chose from Order or Destruction then chose a race and class. Being the virgin I am, I went with the female with the least amount of clothes, in this case, a Dark Elf sorceress. (I like making things go boom.) Not much options, chose a face style, hair style and color. I went with the Phoneix Throne RP server. Finally, I can now enter the game.

Loading screen with some text, blah blah blah and bam into the game. The graphics blew me away, they were so spectactulary underwhelming. Really, Mythic, you need to have a chat with Bethsada; I know what the Gamebryo engine can do, I've played Oblivion and Fallout 3! Oh allright fine, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and we'll say it makes the game accessible. Least they aint cartoony like that joke of a game called WoW.

The game lacks a tutorial, but like almost all MMOs, you play as a camera floating behind character and click on a bad guy and press a button in a bar to throw particle effects at them until the red bar above their head disappears. Alright alright, it's got some quirks in it like morale abilities and this Dark Magic thingy that filled up to a max of 100 causing me to have a 35% crit chance but also 35% chance to hurt myself. Actually, I've killed my self a number of times because I forget that's there..... I am my own worst enemy.

Quests are plentiful and there is enough text in the game to make Stephen King look like an amateur. This game is badly in need of some voice acting. There are also these things called Public Quests... I didn't know what they were, I was just killing stuff that my log said to do until this Dragon drops down from the sky and eats me. Public quests are a neat feature and a great way to get good, basic gear, but I found myself finding even better loot quicker than the time it took to farm the points needed to acquire the aforementioned gear.

I finally got around to rank 8 and decided to try out a scenario, which is basically RvR training. These are loads of fun and I found myself neglecting my Tome of Knowledge in search of High Elf blood. One thing that surprised me was that you get sometimes actual loot off the bad guys you kill... GOOD loot. In fact all the gera my rank 14 character is wearing now was found from the scenarios. You also get a metric butt load of exp just by being there and actually.. participating, equal to 3 or 4 quests worth.

I can't comment much on the open rvr (aka big boy rvr) section because I capped out of the Tier 1 area and have yet to try the Tier 2 stuff, rank to low, ect.

Crafting. Or lack there of. From what I understand, you can make potions or you can make jewels to attach to armor and most of the time are temporary. It feels like an after thought, a bone thrown to the player. I would of taken the endless days and weeks of grinding out by the forge in Jordheim whilst doing my stand up comedy routine and tutoring the younger players on the ways of Odin and Thor.

Finally the community. I have just one question that maybe one of you kind and informative readers can answer: why do people click on the server that has an (RP) next to it and are then warned that it is a ROLE-PLAYING server and that they should try to role play then don't AND THEN insult the ones that did join the role-playing server to.... you know... roleplay? I swear DAoC is the only game that people actually took the time to use their imagination. Ahh........ *flashback* "Call to arms! Call to arms! The realm is under attack! Thor's hammer is in grave danger by those tree loving Hibs!"

Summary: All in all, this game is interesting and I find myself having fun at times and being bored to tears at others. Questing, which seem to be pentiful thus far, seems to be something you do while waiting to join a scenario. The public quests are a nice feature but the rewards are pathetic. Open RVR seems to be quite active as ownership of various outposts are constantly changing but my lack of experience in the matter doesn't give me a enough knowledge to form an opinion. Crafting is a joke. The community exists; I see players running around everywhere and some actually try to roleplay (What the heck is a 'git'?) but most seem to be out for themselves. The game world is massive, and I, as one who likes to explore, is having a field day. The graphics are acceptable and ensures the game could be played on almost any rig. All in all, I foresee myself playing for maybe a month or two until I move on to Darkfall if/when it's released.

it gets way better the deeper you get, i can imagine the starter zones are empty/lonely. i wish i was in your shoes and bought it recently. unfortunately i got it at launch. i was a guinea pig until they got the game to a nice state. now im bored with it. hopefully they will get more people to join. a public trial would be good start. enjoy.

Originally posted by medafor

it gets way better the deeper you get, i can imagine the starter zones are empty/lonely. i wish i was in your shoes and bought it recently. unfortunately i got it at launch. i was a guinea pig until they got the game to a nice state. now im bored with it. hopefully they will get more people to join. a public trial would be good start. enjoy.

That's encouraging; thanks.  I'd like to get into a guild, but I think I'm cursed.  Every guild I've gotten accepted in has gone horribly wrong.  Heck, my first guild in DAoC turned out to be a PL guild that sold their services on ebay and wanted me to join them on their endeavour, in exchange for phat lewts of course.  Anyhow, a guild would likely greatly improve my gameplay experience, at the very least, give me people to converse with.

A good read, I like it when ppl write interesting. A bit early however, the crux of WAR for me was, when I found that at a certain point all content of the game is copy-pasted. Seen one part seen it all. Kinda. SO the REAL test come around lv 20-something, and thats were I always drowned in boredom in WAR.

Oh and YES, coming from EQ2 where most stuff is voice acted it pissed me off to no end having to READ all that stuff. Thats really a MUST HAVE for a MMO. It can add so much of atmopshere.

Originally posted by Elikal

A good read, I like it when ppl write interesting. A bit early however, the crux of WAR for me was, when I found that at a certain point all content of the game is copy-pasted. Seen one part seen it all. Kinda. SO the REAL test come around lv 20-something, and thats were I always drowned in boredom in WAR.

Oh and YES, coming from EQ2 where most stuff is voice acted it pissed me off to no end having to READ all that stuff. Thats really a MUST HAVE for a MMO. It can add so much of atmopshere.

Thank you for the kind compliments; I'm glad you enjoyed my work.

I think almost all MMOs suffer from that midway grind: the point in which the appeal of being in a new game and learning all you can wears off and the point to getting to the exciting end game content. DAoC had it big time but at least it had Darkness Falls to keep you on your toes from levels 20 to 50.  As did EQ2, my poor Dark Elf Paladin got bored at around level 25.  In EVE it starts that way and never ends.

Anyhow perhaps it is a bit premature; my last GF said that too.  I'll do a follow up or at least come back and say, "Meh, bored."

I think this game was marketed wrong.  There is no MMORPG in it.  You don't ever identify with your characters.  It's more of a MMO, simular to a FPS.  Call it a fantasy shooter maybe? 

And as for MMO the chat interface was totally awkward to use.  Communication gave you a feeling of playing a solo game.  Other players might as well been assisting NPCs.

Starting out the response times to actions were pathetic.  For most people there was almost a quarter second of nothing after you pressed a button.

Thirdly I am going to say something that very few people will agree with.  There was too much RVR.  Simply put, if you were in the Greenskin area, you had no idea there was a major battle in the Dark Elf area.  The beta was a blast because it forced the testers in a limited area.  There was always something going on.  I was shocked when I started playing the real game.

Finally Character development is backwards.  It seems you get the majority of your abilities early on.  Even to the point where no abilities were given at level 20.

Originally posted by Elikal

A good read, I like it when ppl write interesting. A bit early however, the crux of WAR for me was, when I found that at a certain point all content of the game is copy-pasted. Seen one part seen it all. Kinda. SO the REAL test come around lv 20-something, and thats were I always drowned in boredom in WAR.

Oh and YES, coming from EQ2 where most stuff is voice acted it pissed me off to no end having to READ all that stuff. Thats really a MUST HAVE for a MMO. It can add so much of atmopshere.

I agree, very good read.

I never got the MMO feeling in that game. Not many people talking. No real community. I think one major problem is that crafting is so limited. OK. some people say, it is PVP focused and does not need crafting, but I wanted a world I can dive into, and crafting is part of a complete world for me. Crafting adds a lot in an MMO, people advertising their stuff, asking where to get mats...and so on. In addition, I love economics, thats the reason I still have my Eve account.

And if I want to play a PVP only game, I start up my PS3 and play warhawk or something else.

PQ were nice at start, but as you said, everything is copy pasted, so are the PQ's. You done one, you done more or less all.

Biggest problem for me before quitting was that I am a very casual gamer. Only two weeks after start, everyone was much higher in level and the areas were abandoned. I am playing in EU, therefore that might be an EU problem only.

Eventually I decided that it was not worth the money to spend every month.

And even if people deny it, it is just too similar to Wow, I'd rather start playing wow than War again.

Conclusion, I will wait for Darkfall, but due to all the recent dissapointments (AOC, WAR) I am not very optimistic.

I liked it under beta and was excited at release + about two months. There was not the "deep" world and  lots of interesting people to meet.

But there was PVP/ORVR!  Unfortunately that becamed boring after a while though;(

WAAAGGGGHHHH !!!