Originally posted by Yunbei
Ok as everyone else, I want to write my entirely personal experience here. I know I know, opinions are like assholes - everyone has it and they all stink. Nevertheless, here comes my first impression.
When I first entered I was tbh very underwhelmed. I cant say if there will be more faces and haircuts at launch, and sure no one expected WAR to be tailored for the Vogue reader, but after Age of Conan I didnt expect any MMO display even MORE ugly characters. All male faces look grim, scarred and of old men beyond 50. Worn faces of drunkards and gangsters, High Elfs included. Maybe expecting some kinda good looking alter ego is expected too much, but for me it was quite a let down that basically all were just variations of uglyness. Sorry big malus here for me.
Ok, so as the usual Elf-player I rolled a Shadow Warrior - the Archer guy. Its one of those things which drives me up the wall in MMOs. Why does every frigging MMO dev name common things anew? Why can an Archer not simply be CALLED Archer for christsake? No it has to be called Shadow Warrior, so everyone mixes the names and Shadow Warrior and Sworddancer are mingled into Shadow Dancer and whatnot. Anyhow, I misfortunately entered the Elven region at night, but even later at day I was shocked how extremley short the line of sight was. Its kinda the way the world looks when I wake up and not yet wear my glasses. Everything in the distance is gone, and no sliders to raise the sight - yet I hope. Generally the graphics are ok, but you WILL feel like in WOW 2.0, no matter if Blizzard stole from Warhammer tabletop first, but it feels VERY familiar in terms of style. I was a bit dissapointed by the animations, both the very stiff walking and the rather simple combat animation. Sure, later the magic classes looked better, the fire of the Bright Wizard especially, but every bow and melee attack looked quite mediocre. Not bad, but kinda behind the status quo.
Personally I was very dissapointed by the entire High Elf area, not really a design highlight in the first 8 levels to motivy me, which as I said was surprising me, since I was sure to roll Elf as usual.
My next stop was Dwarven Ironbreaker. The first 8 levels showed me that the ironbreaker indeed is the most robust tank, likely in the entire game. I never liked to play Dwarfs, but this stout fellow was surprisingly good to play. Sure, it takes a while to kill someone, but you stand your ground very well, and with the lack of tanks in the Empire and the not so good Elven tank you will be welcome everywhere. And so was I, so I am tempted to roll one, maybe as 2nd char. The questlines were better laid out, but you can expect in any games that Dwarf players are a kind of people who value camraderie more than players of other races, so you will get good help - unlike Elven players who tend to be individualists. Anyhow by design Dwarf is just not my cup of tea, and my experience there as tank was again nice but not stunning.
Finally I rolled Bright Wizard for the humans. I usually NEVER play human, but in this case it may be the class I will have my main with. First, playing the first 8 levels I cant confirm the uberness of the BW. Sure, he does good dmg, but not in such a scope as people reported weeks ago. I guess there was a nerf already. And yes you die very quick, but it was the best fun I had. Fortunately the aggro radius of the mobs is not so big and they dont follow you too long, so you can maneuver somewhat. One BIG BAD thing I must mention is the hilarious repop rate in EVERY low level area. (Cant say for the high level.) Its always 2-3 seconds after you killed the mob that he repops, and that is my biggest critique atm. I know its supposed to be a fast paced game, but I found the repop rate of LOTRO already too high for exploration, and WAR easily tops it. Its was very disturbing, especially with classes which kill slow, like the Ironbreaker to have mobs repop faster than I could kill my way through. It makes exploring, looking at details and just admiring landscape and ongoings impossible when you run run run. Besides it totally kills any feeling of progress, of having any impact on the world, when the Chaos Barbarian who torches the house is back 2 seconds after you killed him. They really need to adress this or my patience will be gone VERY VERY quick. The last thing I want in a MMO is hunting totally breathless through the game world.
One nice encounter was a Public Quest in the human starter area, which we succeeded to finish after the 3rd try. Unfortunately while I even won the 1st place in the lottery my item vanished into oblivion, apparently due to a bug.
Bugs. Yes there are a lot, I must say. I do have seen worse, but at least in these levels it almost reaches Vanguard proportions. Mobs attacking you, which you can not target. Mobs jumping back and forth, characters suddenly stuck; I had the feeling it was just as Conan not really ready for launch yet, as it is now. But bugs never bugged me so much than others, it were more other things, like the said bad repop rate.
Another thing which itches me is, I looked at several servers in several starter zones, and EVERYWHERE Destruction had clearly the upper had. Everywhere. As someone who will play Order it was disheartning to see Destruction was not just a bit stronger, but massively. It was clear from Day one from the way the devs talked about WAR that they love Destruction more than Order. (See the many Paul Barnett movies), and while Destruction looks appealing to those who like these things, Order looks kinda bland. Not the shining, goodies you would expect, and this may indeed cause a great problem for WAR in the long run. I really wonder how Mythic will handle this, other than the population cap. I recall to have read the side which is too weak would get NPC help, but that was just a thought. The same goes for another prominent feature, which Paul Barnett once highlighted VERY passionately. Its the Bear paws thing. Ya remember. He said the journal would note when you already killed 20 bears and if you got a quest, you would not have to kill them again. I can NOT confirm this in the lower levels. Was it cut out, or just one of the usual lies MMO developers make? I dont know.
A thing which really seems like an ill move to me at this moment is the cut of the classes. Playing Humans who now just dont have a tank class, it shows how weak the humans are against hero and champion encounters early off. In those public quests, it was VERY difficult to succeed with a moderate amount of people with the lack of a tank class, and Dwarves are usually played only by some people, I fear a shortage of tanks will further weaken Order in the RvR part of the game. It strikes me as a highly weird and illogical move to cut those tanks away from the Humans.
One of the things which came to my mind was that WAR felt like a crossover of LOTRO and Tabula Rasa. It had the same nose-hooking , leading you like LOTRO. You are always led to things, which isnt so bad, but it does create a feeling of more playing along a line than actually living in a world, at least it did for me in LOTRO, where in the end I felt like on a tour through Disney World than in an open world. And boy, there was WAR, I mean really war everywhere. I had this feeling of hectic last time in Tabula Rasa, and thats another thing which made me sceptical. I mean its ok to have war in many places, but every game needs a counter-balance, places of serenity to stay and wander, to meet and picnic - and THEN go back to war. So far WAR is filled with war everywhere, and I dont know if someone who is not a Hyper Hyper kid anymore can stand this for a longer time. That must be seen.
Finally, since I played on a German server so far about 30-40% of the game was NOT translated, neither was there ANY kind of voiceover. I had to READ all the quest text, and I am spoilt by EQ2 where practically everything is read in lip synch voiceovers. I just hate to have to read all those quests. Yeah, call me lazy.
While it wasnt a total letdown and I sure had my fun, it clearly is NOT the WOW killer. The focus of war and keeping people with high adrenaline levels everywhere just will prevent a lot of people from playing it for years as people played WOW or other games. Its more than a mere Planetside 2, but it sure is much less than a world to make an alternative second life in. For that it is just too limited and hectic as I see it atm. So far I am somewhat dissapointed. Its a nice game indeed I will play for a few months, but as it is now and if the higher levels will not bring radically new things, this is more another piece of Fast Food, a game like AoC you will play through once or twice in a few months or half a year and then put aside. I just dont see myself playing that the many years like the other MMos I played. But I remain open minded to see what is in the bag further along.
