So I have been trying to track the reviews as they come in because many people spend a good bit of time and effort into writing reviews just to have their work disappear off the first page in a few minutes.  I have been trying to compile a list and here it is.  These are ALL the reviews I could find that were legitimate whether they were good, bad, or neutral.  Please read their reviews and give them some feedback they worked hard.  Most of these are in response to the preview weekend but one or two are from CE closed beta as well.  Please let me know in the thread if I missed your review and I will add it. 

NOTE:  Guild Reviews reside at the bottom of the post, but should definitely be read if you are planning on being an active member of a guild.

Review from Jon Wood:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2240

Player reviews and responses:

http://www.theburialgrounds.com/Articles/Article16.shtml

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202906

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202788

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202807

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202590

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202798

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202871

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202803

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/202741

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/200659

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/200632

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/200189

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/200627

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197105

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197097

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/200684

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197264

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197052

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197039

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197030

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197005

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197002

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196776

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197004

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196985

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196979

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196986

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196978

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196885

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196892

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196796

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196789

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196732

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196558

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196605

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196716

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196739

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196588

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/196222

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/195544

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197028

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197041

Guild Reviews:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197223

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/197283

thanks for posting. i went through some of these reviews, they are fair. i hope you didnt put none of the troll reviews in here, lol, j/k. there are people talking smack about the game and they still said there gonna buy it, so watch out for them haters. the game is nothing more than incredible to me. i loved WOW and LOTRO, so WAR is just perfect. cant wait till head start. i dont know which class im gonna be.

Don't like sticky:ing threads that only have links, but nice collection so sticky for now.

Haha I thought the post disappeared for a while there.  I have added a couple reviews and if I have time later I will more info for each one for easier browsing.

Edit:  To make sure this is read:

Originally posted by Ender4

http://vnboards.ign.com/Message.aspx?topic=108341444&brd=22997&start=108342776

---

Okay, it was a wild and crazy weekend in WAR and while some of you might be tempted to go all Samurai on us for a couple of the bugs, overall things went very, very well. As long-time readers of my notes now, I won’t do a Nick Winters and we are anything but pathological liars so we’ll always own up when we make a mistake and we made a couple here. So, let’s talk amongst ourselves and have a little chat about the top nine list of the biggest issues and where we stand in regards to them.

(1) Client Crashes – I’ve talked about this as one of the reasons why we didn’t release the NDA until recently. Here’s the current status.
- Just a little too many currently. While we are better off than we were in beta, we must do better still before release.
- A number of players will lower spec machines had more CTDs than higher spec machines.
- Number of fixes already in pipeline. They are working their way through our testing servers and will be pushed to the players once they have been vetted internally.
- Engineering time for CTD issue has remained heavily committed; our top engineers are working on the various issues.

(2) Monster Pathing and AI – Well, what can I say other than not even all of King Tut’s wealth could have made us feel better for messing up on this one. Well, maybe all his wealth.
- “Yes, that monster seems to be behaving a little oddly”. Monster responsiveness was very sketchy, odd pauses and tethering issues.
- “Oh, was I supposed to go in that direction?” Pathing sometimes wonky - mobs get stuck or go in wrong direction.
- Utter confusion at times as both monsters and pets will engage and disengage seemingly at random
- Internal server optimizations last week broke the pathing/AI. And I mean really, really broke it. This truly was a “Opps, we broke this code” moment for us and we don’t have many of them.
- Going to ensure that this problem is fixed this week. As I said in my first Preview Weekend, this is a major concern for us. Fortunately we have no underwater combat in this game or some of the NPCs may have been appropriately dubbed land sharks.

(3) Pet Responsiveness – With similar issues to Monster Pathing and AI, this was not our finest hour.
- Need to transfer "combat responsiveness" fixes to pets - have pet move immediately on button press.
- “Oh no, Mr. Bill!” Pets suffer from same pathing and lack of response as general monsters. Pets hopping around like they were headed to Del Staters.

(4) Global Cooldown Timers –This seems to be a hot topic for players to talk about. However, things aren’t always as they seem.
- Reality and perception are two different things, Warhammer has a GCD of 1.4s, WoW has 1.5s
- “Ability not ready” messaging needs to be improve, a sound effect if Global Cooldown in effect, maybe more cowbell?
- Need to improve on the feeling of sluggishness of the GCD and UI. Bug with display where our timer shows 2s when it is really 1.4
- The next best thing to a queue is? We will add in better "slop timer" to allow players 0.3s extra to pre-queue a second ability followup.

(5) Better animations
- So much more coming in the next two versions of the client. We are currently incorporating serious amounts of new animations into the game. Hopefully nobody will sneak a coneheads model into the game.
- Look at what my XXXX does now? Over the next month we will address many class-attack specific issues across all 20 careers.
- “U think you can dance?” Nope, but we have added new racial animations for movement, fidgets and redid some emotes.

(6) Texture Blurring
- Textures are currently cached in a manner that results in blurriness on entering a region.
- We will look at adding a client scalar.

(7) Client Performance – This is one of those issues
- Need better scalers on effects, sounds, graphics, etc to help lower end machines (already lots of additions to coders)
- This thing loves memory like Dan Aykroyd loves bass. We have already improved the memory consumption of the client and taken 100M out of current test best.

(8) Targeting, Camera, etc
- Currently our targeting system differs from many MMOs in terms of our features and how we go about things. We will identify and make a more standard initial setup but allow flexibility.
- Will add additional keybinding selections to allow flexibility

(9) Renown rank gear
- Unfortunately, a new bug (well an old bug we fixed and then managed to break again) which allowed Rank 10 RR 6 players can go to Tier 2 to get better gear and then come back to Tier 1 and own scenarios. We are currently working on a fix.

I hope you enjoyed the Preview Weekend and we thank you for your interest and we hope, patronage of our game.

Guess what folks, that’s the news and I am outta here!

Mark

---

Whether or not they can fix all of this is one thing but it makes me happy that they have their finger on exactly what people didn't like about the game so far. The 0.3 second soft queue on the 1.4 sec GCD should go a LONG way towards fixing the combat complaints.

An IMHO overview of WAR as is (9/8/08).

The game is ok 6/10.

Nothing to write home about mind you. It is very much the care-bear RvR/PvP game of the year. With no Stealth/Invisibility/SpeedBuffs/Utility Classes and no death penalty of any sort the sense of tension is very limited in scope. A world without consequences is a world without excitement. Ultimately everyone is a DPS class of some sort. The variety is either; you are a range DPS or a melee DPS (despite the in game descriptions of the classes). WAR takes the usual MMORPG class arrangement and simply removes key classes (Stealth and Utility) leaving a weak framework with little variety. Characters almost all look and play essentially the same, now this is fine if you are accustomed to games of limited scope such as WoW but for hardcore MMORPGers I think you will get more bang for your buck should you hold on to your coin for some other game (or even pre-existing already released games).

On the up-shot the game runs well on very low end systems, if you can run WoW on max settings than you can run WAR on max settings (with mild frame rate loss ~which we all know is not really a real issue in non reflex based games such as MMORPG's~ with a few exceptions).

Comparing WAR to WOW is VERY valid as the games are similar in many ways. They look the same graphically (stylized colour palate, very limited poly count, simplistic light mapping and shaders), they have the same interface, the worlds are seamless (and small), the over-all number of NPC models and world textures are very limited, and both games have a friendly level curve.

Ultimately this game will give casual gamers the feeling that they are hardcore PvPers much the way that WoW made casual gamers feel that they were hardcore raiders. I’m not going to extrapolate on my meanings of hardcore VS casual as I know it is a subjective definition but none the less they are definitions that members of our community use to describe specific factions of our communities (they are not value judgments they are simply game play styles based on the limiting factors of everyday life).

If you like Wow you will like WAR. WAR could potentially give WoW a run for its money but it will be hard pressed to drag gamers away from the time investment they have already committed to WoW. The accomplishment/acquisition of max level and "high end" raiding gear is significant to a WoW player (as casual gamers have less time to dedicate), and convincing them to start again is unlikely.
 

Now keep in mind that WAR is still in it's final Beta stage (and the servers are performing as expected ~ which is good news with regards to a stress test AKA: Open Beta); that said it's a bit to late (in the short term) to change many of the (very general) factors that I have hit on above.
 

I wrote an in depth review which I worked hard to make fun to read.

I titled my Warhammer Online Review ...

Warhammer Online: the Review "A Strong Game with Several Weaknesses"

This far it has been well received.

Originally posted by Czzarre

I wrote an in depth review which I worked hard to make fun to read.

I titled my Warhammer Online Review ...

Warhammer Online: the Review "A Strong Game with Several Weaknesses"

This far it has been well received.

Yeah this is a very well done review.  I linked your other one also if it still exists.

Originally posted by Czzarre

I wrote an in depth review which I worked hard to make fun to read.

I titled my Warhammer Online Review ...

Warhammer Online: the Review "A Strong Game with Several Weaknesses"

This far it has been well received.

i strongly agree. it has its flaws but then very enjoyable game. one of my personal faves.

I think the game needs alot of work, but it has potential

Mythic pretty much always does a good job.  Hopefully they can avoid the mistakes that they made in DAOC;  either way WAR will be a great game for several years.  RvR alone is one of the smartest design elements in MMOG history.  I think the formula could be improved upon but it's lightyears ahead of most MMOGs.

All new games have their flaws from the start, and so did WAR. I've been in since the open beta and got to say that it is still getting better by the day. Last patch 1.1 was a real improvement!

Some classes still need some attention but there's nothing broken in a really big way.

Only problem with WAR is that it demands a fair critical mass before a server gets any real ORvR going. GOA had way to many servers in Europe from the start and they are trying to fix this now by giving free chars transfers to more populated servers.

If  Mythic keeps up the good work this game will turn out to be reallt execellent!

wow blows to many gold spamers and kids. since i have started playing war i have only met mature adults.  so that is the only review i need to keep playing.  and that is mine lol.

thanks for the list i will def check  these out

btw anyone heard of http://www.warheap.com/ its got a wealth of info on server specific details

Originally posted by epaph

btw anyone heard of http://www.warheap.com/ its got a wealth of info on server specific details

Warheap is next to useless it hasn't really been updated since April + a few weeks ago they said they'll no longer be updateing the site.