Originally posted by streea

Originally posted by gatheris
 

reread the posts you are commenting on

haven't seen a post just stating "that game suxxors!" - though i'm sure they exist somewhere on this site

i see explanations and reasons for their opinions

 

A "reason" for their opinions is not "I got burned in DAoC and won't play Warhammer because it's from the same company." They judge the game before they've even touched it.

Also, perhaps you missed this lovely bit of hate...

Originally posted by goemoe

PvE is nothing more as grind. You feel its only purpose is to reach level, not to have fun. RvR is just a bunch of ideas, nothing ready to enjoy. WAR will have another unfinished buggy release which seems to be state of the art for current MMOs. I am not even sure the game will survive the first year but perhaps hype alone carries the game to a somehow finished state. Quality an fun will certainly not do the trick.

There is no explination, no "why I think this is a grind" or "why I don't think the RvR will work"... it's just uneducated hate by a troll.

First off, you have to love posters who call others haters when they have a differing opinion.  That pretty much puts them in the clueless category to start.

Secondly, Mythic as a company, has a very less than stellar track record with the previous game DAoC.   Game companies, as a norm, don't change their spots.   Until Mythic demonstrats to the playerbase that they have changed, the right to be skeptical of them is a no brainer.

The game could be a great one, who knows, playing a few weeks in beta is not a very good indicator either.  Look at all the glowing reports we recieved from AoC.  That game was flawed from the start, just that many of you could not see it yet.

Personally, I hope that Mythic has learned from their mistakes and comes out with a great game, the genre needs a distinct success with all the less than stellar games released this year.

Most comments here seriously dent my faith in WAR, but than again, I'll have to play it to make up my mind :)

I'll definitely be buying it, as I did with AoC and might regret it, as I did with AoC.. but with AoC that was no surprise.. I expected better criticism for WAR, because of the energy that seemed to have gone into it.

If WAR fails, all that's left is Chronicles of Spellborn.. which I at least played for a bit and enjoyed.

Jon,

While I agree with most of your article I found it complexing that you call a flaw in the PQ system the looting system.  It wouldn't be fair to the 5 people running the PQ through all the stages to have a 6th member join them at the last fight and walk away with #1 loot rights.  The PQ system also allows for influence rewards which you did not touch on, so there is a need to run the PQs a few times so that you can maximize your influence in that region.

Steve - Melwe

I am  CB tester, and I have already buy the game.

I like the scenarios, the lore, the rewards to exploration and the pq.

I don't like the UI, some visual glichs that the game have,

Once the game start, I will be a dude in a raid, steamrolling da hummies on nordland :D

Originally posted by Brynn

You are analytical, that isn't my criteria for a game. I'm having fun in War and enjoying the differences in starting areas between races. The differences between classes in a category such as ranged, are minor, but the special effects are different. Anyway, my criteria is: Am I having fun? You betcha! Do I see a long run for that fun? I think so, but it remains to be experienced. There is a lot of content to explore.
 

Youre totaly correct. I'm not saying you can't have fun. I hope I have fun. However all the haters seem to have against any game is how diffrent it is. I am excited to see if I will have fun in WAR. I am happy that you do. Maybe we will cross paths ingame...good or bad.

Originally posted by Finbar

Well if thats not about the most blanket generalized conservative zero-feedback review I have ever read then I dont know what is. I guess he did say he hardly played it... but the question begs: why write a review (even a first impressions) review if your not going to put at least a little effort into it?

I'll just count this as though it didnt actually happen and not hold it against WAR or Mr. Wood.

Agreed.  I hope they make up for it soon with an in-depth review before launch. 

Seems like what would help the most with these user reviews is if there was some kind of official poll asking questions that help us understand the reviewer.  Maybe results could be applied to their sig. Questions like age, gaming history/favorite games, how much time in said game, what elements are most important to them in games, things they enjoy the most about their favorite games, what do they wish for in future games.  It would help to know the person reviewing and in comparing them to yourself you might better predict how much you'd enjoy or not enjoy the game being discussed.

The thing that's disappointing so far without having tried the game myself is people who say they've been in beta awhile and aren't buying it and list detailed complaints.  Doesn't bode well.

I have mixed feelings about WAR also... I do love DAoC, but I am a guy who loves also immersion... Althought the concepts of WAR sounds terrific (I havent played beta, so I am assuming that the features that Mythic is telling us is working fine, in other words, they are not pulling a ´funcom´ on us), the char classes also are making me droll of antecipation, the major problem what I have with WAR is... the graphics... Please, no one try to insult my intelligence telling me that the graphics are not cartoony.. They are, look at the weapons and armours, out of proportion (on purppose, thats what cartoon is....). Its a WoW made by Tim Burton, but neverthless I can feel the cartoonish... And this is a total let down for me, since I look mostly for immersion and cartoon do not immerse me ...

Anyway, I am going to wait a bit more before trying it...

Originally posted by Domenicus

I have mixed feelings about WAR also... I do love DAoC, but I am a guy who loves also immersion... Althought the concepts of WAR sounds terrific (I havent played beta, so I am assuming that the features that Mythic is telling us is working fine, in other words, they are not pulling a ´funcom´ on us), the char classes also are making me droll of antecipation, the major problem what I have with WAR is... the graphics... Please, no one try to insult my intelligence telling me that the graphics are not cartoony.. They are, look at the weapons and armours, out of proportion (on purppose, thats what cartoon is....). Its a WoW made by Tim Burton, but neverthless I can feel the cartoonish... And this is a total let down for me, since I look mostly for immersion and cartoon do not immerse me ...

Anyway, I am going to wait a bit more before trying it...

 

 

I disagree.  I think cartoony art if done professionally with fun in mind can be very immersive.  Animation and art can be dramatic and provide good gameplay and action.  It's an imaginary world and it's not hard to activate the imagination with exaggerated cartoony art.  Give me an example of an rpg that was done right with true to life characters.  It's very hard to accomplish good true to life anatomy and animation in a game because if it's not done perfectly it's simply not believable and ruins the whole thing.  Assassin's creed may have succeeded in this but it's not any more immersive a game world than wow in my opinion and most developers just don't have that kind of talent.

IMHO, all depends on intention... Of course its not possible to have a very realistic graphics, natural (specially on a fantasy genre) on a MMO game. However, it all depends on the intention, as I said.. When you have a graphic ON PURPOSE thats lacks any kind of realistic  proportions , in fact, goes more for a humurous kind of proportion, then its safe to say that the dev teams choosed humour instead realism...

I can get as example LOTRO... Some graphics look cartoonish (some) but you can feel that the game as whole avoid it ... Its considered a mistake the lack of realism (in the direction of cartoon) on LOTRO. however, when you see WoW or WAR you can say that the colorful armour, gigantics swords are there on purpose, to incite you the humour behind the graphics. And I dont see it as immersive, but its for MY taste, I would not find Smurfs Online immersive, sorry... It would be fun, but not immersive. And thats so truth that the only big gun cartoon MMO around (WoW) do not have any kind of RP, EVEN having RP servers its just kind of ridiculous RP on WoW...

seen quite a few of beta tester reviews (new ones) and they moan about the graphics, i might have missed a post or something but i was under the impression that the graphics were still on the low setting.

i had a go on my sons account and i was impressed and if the graphics are turned down at the moment when it has the high rez stuff and bells and whistles turned on it will look nice.

as always i will try it when it launches and make my own mind up learned a long time ago to not listen to player reviews as we all have differant tastes :)

I enjoyed the article, but I have developed my own opinion by playing the game. I like it.

Good game and a Good company

They work at it, they want it be good, so they have put as much effort into it as possible...

Worth the money to see it, test it, and decide for yourself.

Don't go just by the reviews.

Why can't the reviewer talk more about the game? Instead of what they think about it.

I want to know whats actually in the thing so i can decide whether I want to buy it.

Would it kill for some screen shots? Or aren't you allowed to post any? How about a low res movie of some combat.

Looking forward to the future reviews.

To be honest, it sounds like this early review only covers the first 10 levels.  This game continues to grow after that.  Those 10 levels are just a warmup session - the public quests, scenarios, and open rvr get more complex as the game progresses.  I am repeatedly and consistently blown away by this game.  I was not looking forward to it, as I am typically not much for pvp (I applied for the beta, because, hey, it's what I do), but this game - wow - I don't even know where to begin.  It is not without flaws or bugs, but for this long-time veteran from the days of muds, this is the best massive yet.  If I can pull myself away, I'll write a more formal opinion and review so those of you who want to know more about the actual mechanics will have something to read.

I don't consider myself a fanboi but I had the most fun I've had in ever in a mmo for the past 2 weeks in war - blows wow out of the water imho - I cant even play the 3 other mmo's I had subscriptions to (even deleted them from my harddrive) just cannot get into them after the fast paced constant action of war -

That said  I did some PQ (love them) but from lv 2 - 21 prior to preview weekend and then again to 20 in pw i did most of my time in war in pvp of some sort, be it scenario or the world objectives and was not bored once

There are some minor bugs but I've played Every mmo in that list on the left except for like 5 or 6 and it is in way better state than many of them even this much later.

Will my other half, my 2 best friends and their spouses buy it? yep we all did ce-preorder and do not regret it at all. I have a beefy system and during the cb I had a crash every few hours but I did not crash once during the pw weekend. I'd like the graphics slider options to increase the detail of character models but other than that and pathing (which has been addressed) I have not much bad to say.

I was too busy to take screenshots but the healer classes are all great to play - each actually contributes to pve AND rvr in a good way and have some forms of damage - cc is almost non existant which is great and the longest someone can "stealth" is 20 seconds once every minute or 2 so stealth zergs are not an issue.  Once you are past lv 10 gear really isnt that big of an issue either because the steps in gear are like 2.5% better per incriment which is not bad and unlike wow, everyone can get the gear fairly regularly so its not like you will always have someone with omg leet gear giving you no chance whatsoever - unless you are lazy and dumb (you can be casual though)

The world is in tiers (1-4 basically with the "cities" being tier 5)

each racial pairing has its own areas and each tier's area is 2 zones or so with tier 4 being 3 or 4 (cant remember the actual zone numbers)

Elf/dark elf

chaos/order

greenskin/dwarf

and they all have their own feel the chaos/order ones were the most popular in pw beta.

they are fairly big and they all contain a central "pvp" region ie, you walk across an invisible line and get the message "you are entering a pvp area blah blah" these are well defined but not in an "immersion breaking" way once you are in there you are "boosted" to the average level for that regeion, for example, if you are lv 12 and go to a tier 2 rvr area you get boosted to lv 18 stats.

There are more and more rvr objectives as you go up in tier as well. And PQ's get better.

Scenarios are cool (my favorite lowby one is kain's wrath - you run around capturing 2 "flag posts" and once you own both it blows them up killing everyone that doesnt get out of range fast enough (even the people that set it off) but not the game determining "fun" for me - they are a nice interlude and good for quick action when you want it.

I played both order and destruction (will be a runepriest in release and have a sorc and brightwizard alts) and both were fun and their areas convincing. The chaos/order tier 1 zone seemed like the best for action due to the fact that it is set up around a town and you have great battles there.

Well I got wordy unintentionally and I'ms ure its a mess to read but if you did, hope it was useful:P

Why write up a review of a game you have hardly played. No information here.

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Originally posted by Synjyn
Why write up a review of a game you have hardly played. No information here.

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Ummm.... Because these are "first impressions" and not a review maybe?

Anyway, I enjoy reading first impressions because it is those first few days in-game that can make or break a game for me. Many of the trial periods for MMOs I have tried have won me over totally or turned me off from a particular game forever.

Trial periods won me over completely to Guild Wars and LOTRO -- and yet showed me that certain other games (Tabula Rasa, CoH, etc.) were just not worth it.

So, thanks for posting these first impressions!

As it happens, while I am interested in reading *about* Warhammer Online, it is a game, like Age of Conan before it, that just does not interest me personally. I like story-centered games, and Warhammer sounds very much like WoW in that regard: a killing-, leveling-, gear-based game spread out over a paper-thin "story" backdrop. No real objective or substance to it beyond that. Thus, Warhammer Online, from what I have read thus far, sounds like something I'd get bored of pretty quickly. It seems to be technically very good but to have no real heart to it.

I'll be interested to see whether future reviews give me any incentive to actually try this game, but so far ... yawn. Maybe, at some point down the road once WAR is offering free trials, I might give it a go. But with Mines of Moria coming out this fall, Warhammer is barely a blip on my radar screen.

Set your expectations low, very low and wait at least 6 months and maybe you won't freak out about the quality of the game.

But honestly aren't we all a bit tired of paying for unfinished games.  Not in the, "oh it just needs some time to polish out the bugs" but in the missing 4 classes and 4 capital cities kind of way.  

I guess I'm a little disappointed. They couldn't find somebody who actually had time to play the game?  The five qualifier sentences at the beginning basically said "I didn't really play all that much, but it was one of my assignments, so here goes..."