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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Review: Warhammer Online Review - Edit
8.4
Great
| Pros |
 
|
 Familiar, easy to get into Focus on RvR is refreshing Multiple leveling tracks Tome of Knowledge rocks! |
| Cons |
  
|
 Inconsistent/poor performance Many lingering bugs and imbalances RvR isn’t quite “there” yet |
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has been out for almost 7 months now, and for whatever reason we haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet! Alas, it was probably for the better. The launch of Warhammer Online was marred by myriad issues that you've likely heard about by now. In the past few months, we've watched Warhammer Online go from a hotly anticipated launch to a hemorrhaging of the player base that would most closely resemble rats fleeing a sinking ship. Is the ship still sinking, or is WAR now the game everyone expected it to be?
Overview:
Warhammer Online is an MMORPG that focuses heavily on Player vs. Player combat, or more specifically, on Mythic Entertainment's brand of PvP referred to as Realm vs. Realm combat or RvR. A key feature of the game is the inclusion of multiple leveling tracks. In addition to your typical PvE grind, you can shake things up by gaining levels through RvR as well. Also unique to WAR is the RvR Campaign. The entire game follows a linear path spread across four tiers, with the campaign finally ending in sacking the enemy's capital city.
Public Quests:
While the PvE aspect of Warhammer Online doesn't really hold a candle to say, World of WarCraft, WAR does spice up the PvE gameplay with the addition of a new system called Public Quests. Public Quests are quests that anyone can take part in by simply walking into the area of the game world in which they are located. Once a player steps into the public quest area, the objectives for the current stage are shown on the UI and the player need only assist in completing them to contribute.
;)
Public Quests are typically broken up into several stages, and often culminate in a Hero fight which will require a party to tackle. As you participate, the system tracks your contribution, and at the quest's completion, several loot bags of various rarity (epic, rare, uncommon, etc) will drop. These loot bags are rolled on by those who participated, with each participant receiving a bonus to their roll based on their contribution. The bags contain gear dependent on their rarity, handy crafting materials, and even money. A player who wins a bag can choose whichever reward they wish. In addition, participation in public quests net you influence (think of it as Public Quest XP) for that particular quest's chapter. As you fill the influence bar, you can select from additional rewards at the chapter's corresponding Rally Master.
The public quest system is used in many areas of the game, including several dungeons and in keep captures. Mythic has updated its Open RvR lakes to make use of an influence system similar to those in Public Quests as well.
Public quests also come in various levels of difficulty so that small parties or even solo players can partake in them if no one else is around to assist. Of course, there are also harder public quests that require more people; these public quests often drop more bags and bags of higher rarity more frequently.
Many public quests are quite interesting, even funny, and often include a bit of voice work. The public quest system is easily one of my favorite features of Warhammer Online, and while grinding Influence out to get all the goodies can be repetitive, doing each one once is often a fun affair.
The Tome of Knowledge:
The Tome of Knowledge is a unique feature of Warhammer Online, and is basically a book that keeps track of your exploits. The interface is slick and easy to use; you simply flip through the many tabs to find all sorts of information on your character. The Tome also contains a bestiary which tracks all the creatures you've killed, how many of them you've killed, and even contains neat art and background information on them. Along with the bestiary, the Tome also tracks your RvR kills, your PvE kills, how many quests you've completed, all of your Public Quest information, including the story that each chapter follows, as well as all the goodies you've earned through them along the way. I could probably go on about the Tome all day, but suffice it to say it is an incredible compendium of your character's journey, and watching it fill in as your character progresses gives you some real perspective on your achievements within the game.
The Campaign / RvR:
What really sets Warhammer Online apart from most MMOGs is the focus on PvP. Many games offer various flavors of PvP but few embrace throwing down with your fellow player as much as WAR does. No, that does not mean WAR is a hardcore PvP game of yore, full of griefing, and full player looting, but to me that isn't a disqualifier for a good PvP game.
;)
Realm vs. Realm combat in Warhammer Online is organized around an overall campaign that eventually leads to your opponent's capital city. Each race is paired off with another that is its sworn enemy: Dwarfs vs. Greenskins, Chaos vs. Empire, and High Elves vs. Dark Elves. These pairings share opposite sides of the same zones instead of having zones entirely to themselves.
Each of these zones contains what is known as an RvR Lake (which gets its name from the colored outline that denotes their location on the map, often in the shape of a lake.) On Core servers, this is basically where most of the PvP goes down. When you step into these RvR Lakes you are flagged for PvP, and this is where you compete for Battlefield Objectives, and later, Keeps, as you vie for control of the zone.
In addition to zones being split up into racial pairings, the campaign is also split into tiers. There are four tiers, each with anywhere from one to two zones representing a racial pairing within that tier. These zones must be fought over to control that pairing's tier in the campaign. Control of a zone confers various zone-wide benefits to the controlling side ranging from discounts at merchants, to Renown (we'll get into what that is in a bit) buffs, and even buffs to incoming healing and armor rating.
Im sorry guys I enjoy aspects of WAR but the the god damn bait and switch Mythic pulls in the game at tier 4 is truly epic.
I dont mind Pve in WAR, the personal quests, PQs, Tok Unlocks and Pve influence are all well done. But why did Mythic have to f**k up a good thing by half assing Crafting and dungeons? Why even have that shit in the game? And having to run Pve dungeons at tier 4 is so messed up I can't put it into words how pure fail it is. It's so bad the person who decided to pull this terrible bait and switch on the playerbase needs to get fired from Mythic and never work in the industry ever again.
WAR is amazing when you first start, your grouping in PQs, ORvR and SC's. The quests are good and the classes are fun. If the game continued like this I swear so many more people would be playing it.
Then mythic Tosses in dungeons......... Why the hell would I want to run dungeon content for my Armor sets so I can participate in City siege?????
And I thought WoWs bait and switch was Epic.
Recently Mythic added in the token system so getting these sets arent as bad anymore but damnit its a grind and a half.
Imo I would delete both crafting and dungeons from the game. Add in more Pvp options like dueling, more SC's, Flesh out Pvp quests, hell even toss in a 6v6 arena option. Get rid of the half assed shit please!!!!!!
I'm just glad Im a casual player and only dedicated 5+ hours a week to the game. If i was hardcore this semi rant would be 10 pages long followed by a ./unsub.
TLDR version? WAR would be epic if mythic dropped the Dungeons and crafting.
So im reading this review, and for the most part, the reviewer nailed the problems, and got the good aspects of the game down. So how in the hell is it a 8.4 or whatever? Honestly over 50-60% of the review is going over most of the real problems the game has, yet it got such a high score?
I'd give WAR a 6 or maybe a 6.5 at best even with the current version.
You call the fact that Tier 4 is the same as tier 2 refreshing but that is exactly what makes it boring. Nothing changes. They might as well have stopped at tier 2 and pushed the game live 6 months earlier and the game would have probably been funner. The RvR zones are un-fleshed out and really need to include PvE areas with quests to do in them to get people out into the zones all the time...not just when there is a zerg to surf. The career mastery system is far to simplistic as is the renown ability system. RvR gear should be gained solely from renown and keep/fort/cities sieges should offer other loot/gear/trophies. The City sieges are just awful(I'll assume you haven't done them but they are). You mention PQ's being a cool part of the game and they are until about tier 3+ where generally no one does them and in Tier 4 where no one does them because the gear is pretty much crap.
You also mention the 2 "new" classes but you forget to mention that ALL of the classes should have been in at launch. You also fail to mention Mythic ignoring major issues to develop new content. Instead of fixing current T4 boringness and the dung heap that is city sieges. They are adding an RvEvR dungeon. Granted the dungeon will take the spotlight off major problems for a little while(two weeks->Month) but it just sidesteps the games major issues. Those "class fix" patches you mention were only needed due to Mythics incompetence and apparent lack of planning.
I'm somewhat in agreement with the previous poster. WAR needs to cut out what doesn't work for this game.
Crafting could go away completely and I don't think anyone would mind. It doesn't even fit within the original genre. Does anyone really think a Choppa is going to be knitting talismans together?! Talismans would be fine as drops and potions would be fine as in-game purchaseable items.
Dungeons are not nearly as enjoyable as they could be. And when they're so big you can't complete them in a weekend gaming session, and then you're locked out from participating with anyone that didn't leave the dungeon at the same point you are, it's much more hassle than it's worth. Maybe if dungeons were the PvE equivelant of PvP and control contributed to Tier control, then maybe it'd be worth the hassle, but the personal locks need to go away.
PvE xp is also borked. You have no problem hitting lvl 11 right at the end of tier 1, but you'll never make lvl 21 at the end of tier 2 without serious grinding, cross-realm questing, or RvR. Tier 3 is even worse. The xp rewards don't scale appropriately between the 4 tiers.
And why can't the prefomance issues be resolved for fortress and city siege? I used to play RFOnline, and they had this working much smoother with far more detailed graphics 5 years ago. If the original concept and intent is massive scale PvP, then why does the engine have so many issues with the very game element it was supposed to have been created for in the first place?
I still greatly enjoy scenario RvR, and with a coordinated, voice-connected team, it's a lot of fun. In-game voice-chat would be a welcome addition, and is painful in it's absence. Public quests are also extremely well done. For those reasons alone, I still enjoy playing and staying a subscriber, but holy cow, I wish Mythic would just focus on what their target player base really wants out of this game and blow us away with how good it could be.
Maybe it got a 8.4 because the good stuff like Orvr, SCs, PQs and ToK heavily out wiegh the bad stuff?
I have a problem with the Dungeon focus of the game at endgame level but other then that I think WAR is rather good.
The stability of the game is improved, I'll actually disagree with the reviewer and say the game is more then bareable.
my two negatives are dungeons and crafting and imo both of those features shouldnt be in the game considering not one god damn person picked WAR up with the intentions of actually using those features lol. Crafting is mostly ignored and dungeons are forced on people.
8.4 is way to high for me considering the text that the reviewer wrote there. The game is more like a steady 7 atm but needs quite abit of work to be considered something "fresh" in the MMO market.
Like often happens in reviews - when one reviewer is playing - some parts of the content isn't played and therefor not reviewed. I will try to point out few of those features and make my own verdict.
PVE content
This aspect of the game was talked about quite alot by the designers in the 2-3 months before the game launched. After that tho - everything has gone very quiet on the PVE fronts. I personally find that kinda sad cause I consider WAR to have all the aspects of creating smashing PVE content - if only they would improve the AI and rethink abilites and pulling mecanics in the game.
I have often said that Mythic is lying on a goldmine when it comes to the game craphical engine. The sad part of it all is... they are not using the stong points of that engine at all. PVE content in the game is UNIQE cause unlike most MMOs out there atm - Mythic engine is creating diffrent looking mobs and enemies. Even if a mob has the same name of another standing next to him he can look wastly diffrent. Diffrent dress - diffrent head - even diffrent weapons. Perfect for PVE content. How much WOW would pay for this now when you look at the same looking mobs in WOTLK as were in lvl 10 content in orginal game. But again - Mythic does not realise this at all. And are certainly not playing to their strength.
The obsession that Mythic has about RVR is costing other aspects of the game alot. PVE is hit the worst and personally I think thats the main reason why WAR has been loosing subs for the past 6 months. Personally I think Mythic needs to take a step back from their game and start to listen to other players than those that play siege combat - cause quite frankly - the RVR content simply is not strong enough - not massive enough and defently not stable enough (and will not be for long time) to be worth doing long term. Why not use the other aspects of the game to create more variety and offer more than just pointless PVP killing ?
Public quests
Public quests are a good concept in many ways. The main problem with PQs in WAR is that they somehow dont add up. And they become repetitive cause they are all build on the same basics. It doesn't matter how many varieties of 3 stage Public quests you create - Its still 3 stages. Its pretty much like RVR sieges. Its always the same. Ok - Tier 4 combat has 2 doors to break down compared to one - but the rest is the same small room with alot of ppl fighting in endless lag and performance issues. Just not worth it in the long term.
Classes.
I like alot of the ideas behind WAR classes. Balancing issues were obviously a big problem in early days of the game and sadly it seems like the testing from Mythic side is not strong enough yet cause alot of annoying "bugs" have been going on - something that players have been using to exploid content - specially in PVP. And thats probably another reason why ppl give up on the game. Noone wants to be on the end of exploids that are not fixed for weeks and months.
Final verdict.
I consider WAR to be a good game atm. Raiting tho will not go beyond 7 at this point and will probably stay there since Mythic is to focused on fixing RVR content. For me tho.. RVR is not - and will not be the game strong points considering the teqnology that Mythic has available. They can do alot better than spend their entire power on 100 ppl fighting out in lagfested finalbattle siege room. But like with so many other factors of this game. It simply wont happen...
I like the dungeons myself. Im not sure what you guys are talking about you have to do them in order to compete or play rvr?
You get rvr gear from players and gold and massive bags off keeps, fortress and city sieges. I have a full set of annihlator on one tune minus shoulders, 3 pieces of conqueror, 1 invader. I have done sigmar crypts only 3 times could have done it more, but bagged 3 pieces of sentinel. You dont have to go the dungeons. But I find them a nice get away if you are bored of pvp or what not. Its not like we have a ton of dungeons compared to every other MMO out there.
WAR is a really good game, that could be super if they keep on fixing it. They are trying. And to be honest were is someone like me supposed to go to play rvr like WAR? Four areas if the improve WAR will be great.
1. Meaningful pvp, they need to make the end game better, RvR needs to branch out from BO, Keep, Fortress, City... They are some good ideas floating around.
2. LAG>. Big time need to fix this in raids, it has gotten better though.
3. Class balance - They are working on it, I give them that.
4. Crafting, simply put they need more crafting skills. Like to see Jeweler as an option myself.
I dont know why this review suprises anyone, if you look at all the Reviews of WAR on the major game sites, it gets Great Reviews. Players are the ones who give bomb reviews. A game site cant do that an be legit. MMORPG.com couldn't put a review out like players or do or they would be dismissed as immature.
Before everyone comes crashing down on MMORPG for their review, lets see how the rest of the game review sites reviewed Warhammer?
IGN 9 / 10 Oct 9, 2008
Thunderbolt 8 / 10 Jan 22, 2009
Worth Playing 8.9 / 10 Dec 25, 2008
Game Chronicles 9 / 10 Oct 26, 2008
GameZone 8.8 / 10 Oct 20, 2008
Gamervision 8 / 10 Oct 13, 2008
1UP B Oct 1, 2008
Eurogamer 8 / 10 Sep 11, 2008
GamePlasma 7.2 / 10 Jan 1, 2009
GamersHell 8.5 / 10 Dec 7, 2008
Fragland 80 / 100 Nov 22, 2008
GamingTrend 89 / 100 Nov 2, 2008
Computer Games RO 85 / 100 Nov 1, 2008
Gamers Temple 92 / 100 Oct 31, 2008
PALGN 8 / 10 Oct 30, 2008
Gaming Target 8.8 / 10 Oct 30, 2008
GamerNode 8 / 10 Oct 24, 2008
AceGamez 9 / 10 Oct 16, 2008
UGO A Oct 16, 2008
AtomicGamer 88 / 100 Oct 14, 2008
Armchair Empire 8 / 10 Oct 13, 2008
Game Revolution A- Oct 10, 2008
Gameplayer 8.5 / 10 Oct 3, 2008
GameShark A- Sep 30, 2008
G4 - X-Play 5 / 5 Sep 27, 2008
GameSpy 5 / 5 Sep 26, 2008
Cheat Code Central 4.7 / 5 Sep 23, 2008
Gameplanet 8 / 10 Sep 21, 2008
PC Gamer 86 / 100 Dec 25, 2008
Game Informer 8 / 10 Dec 1, 2008
PC Gamer UK 88 / 100 Sep 19, 2008
Edge Magazine UK 7 / 10 Dec 25, 2008
PC Format UK 87 / 100 Dec 1, 2008
PC Zone UK 92 / 100 Dec 1, 2008
gamesTM 8 / 10 Nov 1, 2008
PC Power Play 7 / 10 Dec 1, 2008
Total PC Gaming 8 / 10 Nov 1, 2008
Average Critics Score 8.6
MMORPG Review Score 8.4
In my opinion I think it deserves a 70 out of 100. I dont think it should be up there with the high ranking games. Its a good game don't get me wront. But I don't think its great.
The game needs some polish, but it has come a long way since launch.
One thing to note in regards to your review. They just added in a token system for the RvR gear, so the gold bags in keeps are not the only way to get the gear now.
So people who don't like the game disagree with a reviewer who does like the game? Alert the media!
The game has definitely come a long way since launch and I gave it another fair try but I gave up for almost the same reason as I gave up at launch, it got boring. The PVP is tedious and repetetive and as has already been pointed out, the game feels the same at T4 as it does at T2.
I play the trial, and i dont get this critic about the graphics, give me a list of games that have better graphics, and show me how outdated WAR is, WoW has hideous graphics but no one seems to notice it here. Show me the graphic standard for games.
The single issue that ruined the game for me & led to my quitting it was game performance, it was noticebly choppy & stuttery even as a single player doing PvE quests in a barely occupied zone, even though my system wasn't cutting edge it was way above minimum specs (which are wrong imho, dual core cpu & nvidia 8xxx + level gfx card is a requirement).
Any kind of RvR with more than 2 wbs would induce chronic performance problems & in large keep fights (which became a bigger problem than forts after the fort caps were introduced) the servers regularly crashed after having catastrophic lag, framerate, & general performance issues, you could be dead minutes before you realised you were even getting hit.
Considering the game was focus on Large-Scale RvR battles the engine performance is frankly disgusting at doing what it set out to offer.
There is a lot to love in the game but the performance kills that.
You forgot to mention that there is virtually no solo / small group PvP / RvR. It's all aobut raid sized mobs of people. The lack of vrariety is very obvious and quite irritating. It get old really fast having to run around in mobs all the time in order to get anything done in PvP. Let alone trying to get any rewards when constantly competing against 24 to 48 other people for loot. Leveling outside of scenarios for PvP is even more irritating. Also, the fact that more than half the classes are nothing more than fodder for classes like Sorceror / Bright Wizard / Choppa / Slayer / Witch Elves is also a huge negative. There is nothing fun or rewarding about being pure support in a PvP centric game and yet that is exactly what they've done with too many of the classes.
I will withdraw the comment about the hideous WoW graphics, i did play the game long time ago, and now checking some screenshots there are in here, i remember that the art style is cartoonish, and that they look like improved somewhat, but that doesnt make a difference about the judgement on the graphical quality of WAR.
I don't think the reviewer had his game graphic settings turned up. That and he compared WAR to AoC, which is like compairing apples to oranges. Some folks don't understand the difference between "realistic" and "cartoonish" graphics.
BO's and Keeps no longer give out the exp/renown/influence that they once did. This last patch took care of that. You now get more for killing other players than you do for playing RvE (Realm vs. Enviornment) or Keep trading. So over the last week, I've seen a TON more open field RvR.
Either I missed it or the OP/Reviewer fails to talk about LE's (Live Events). This is one of the reasons you have seen a TON more open field RvR recently. The LE forces people from both sides out into the same area's of an RvR lake to complete quests/PQ's in order to gain the influence needed to obtain the LE items. BTW, LE's are one of my favorite things in WAR, just like arcs in DAoC.
You will not find another gaming company out there that listens to it's playerbase as much as Mythic does. They have made great improvements to the game since launch and most of those changes have come from player input. For those of you questioning why Mythic puts out new content when they haven't addressed older problems... you do realize that Mythic has more than one department working on the game dont you? And no, putting more people to work on the same issue is NOT a smart idea. It creates larger problems and makes it even more difficult to troubleshoot issues.
I will admit, I get frustrated at times with WAR, I am a Mythic fanboi, and I am one of the Elder Beta Testers. I've watched all of the changes made from Aug 2007 till now and I although WAR has many issues (Mostly with T4) I still think over the next year we will see it's population go up again.
My list of complaints:
*Too much CC... Mythic didn't learn from DAoC in the area obviously.
*T4 is still too laggy in zones with large (Epic) battles going on.
*Incentives for ORvR still isn't good enough. Personally I would fight other people even if we got nothing for it, but most people will only fight if there is something to be gotten. Kinda sad really.
*Crafting? I craft, but it isn't as usefull as the crafting in DAoC was.
*Seige warfare. This is suppsoed to be getting better in comming patches I think. Currently it's very dissapointing.
*CC... oops, already mentioned that. :p
A quick note on the article.
Just to be clear, the reviewer scores the game. So, that is what he felt.
Also, it was reviewed based on how it is today not how it was at launch. So keep that in mind.
You know posters don't work that way, they always work on the principle the game is stuck in the first week of release =) it makes for far better drama to point out a games failings but not how those failings have been fixed, no matter what MMO it is.
Anyway good read and your score is very very close to the user score on this website that we the members have submitted.
Despite all WAR's problems, I see the biggest mistake that has occurred was when they opened all the servers for fear of a few complaints about queue's.
WAR is designed to be fun on an at-capacity server. Since most of them are nearly empty, it's hard to accept its flaws because it just isn't fun. If they hadn't messed this one up, everyone would still have had fun doing mass PQ's and RvR'ing after launch instead of quitting angrily. Then they woulda had more money and more confidence, a larger player base, and they could've focussed on tweaking the game.
You should edit that second to last sentence, because the very fact that I expected some good PvE dungeons along with good RvR stuff, proves that sentence wrong. I've always enjoyed a mix of pvp and pve. I found DAoC to be a rather fun PvE game, as did many at the time. I do believe you don't HAVE to do dungeons to get that gear, because I could have sworn that you can get that gear from PvPing too.
You know posters don't work that way, they always work on the principle the game is stuck in the first week of release =) it makes for far better drama to point out a games failings but not how those failings have been fixed, no matter what MMO it is.
Anyway good read and your score is very very close to the user score on this website that we the members have submitted.
Except all of the major issues that were in the game at release are pretty much still the same and haven't been fixed. People say they added a token system for RvR loot to make getting it easier but fail to mention the drop rates can be quite bad and in a zerg you still have the problem of rolling against everyone. The problem is still the same yet they missed the easy fix of just making it RR based like it was in BETA.
Sure some people bring up the some of the launch issues since they didn't get passed them but in reality even if they did get passed them they would have hit a slew of issues that are currently still in the game. A lot of people quit in T3 back then. Do you think T4 would have made them stay? T4 only opens a whole new realm of bad design.
Sadly I would have to agree with this. I 'd probably give WAR a 7.0 at best. Think about it for a second the review say PRO: refreshing focus on RVR then in the same breath says CON: RVR is not there yet.
So if you want to be consistent you basically have to take out all the "PRO" points you awarded for that since you basically admited its not all that hot to begin with.
Basically the reviewer couldn't bring himself to admit the game basically screws itself up. Yet implicitly admits that is the case.
Sadly this is WAR and many of the people who play it in a nutshell. It is simply a matter of time. Some people take a month some people take 6 months but in the end they all realize on some level the game basically screws itself up.
The screwup is that PvP, in whatever form you want to take it, doesn't work.
Call it RvR or whatever, what MOST people actually want to play and PAY for is deep immersive PvE content with dynamic consequential storylines.
Kill me Kill you Kill me Kill you ad nauseum = mmo recipe for mediocrity.
Not true at all. To say that it's PVP focus was it's downfall is just plain wrong. It just wasn't implemented well. Look how mahy copies they sold at release. If it delivered on it's promises, it could have had mega numbers.
The boring part of PVP is if it is not meaningful in some way.
A great point. Though to me, the thing that is just painful and unforgiveable is how stiff and unresponsive the animations are. It just feels so awkward. The othere issues are all there, but man, you can't even get the animations right?
Agree to disagree I guess....
Remy's Warhammer score: 4.8
Normally I wouldn't have time to read and comment but since I'm doing other stuff and can't really play I'll just add that I enjoyed reading the review and I enjoy playing the game even more, provided Mythic avoids another ToA and manages to consistently improve RvR (especially high end) I'll be playing for a few more years to be sure :)
The difference being, those scores were not given from a full gameplay experience. They consist mainly of first impressions. MMORPG is reviewing a game after they have had time, unlike the other reviews, to see and experience the game in its entirely. Just like reviewing AoC off the first 20 levels...which is completely different from the rest of the damn game. Basically, there is no excuse to give the same average score when you have had more time to see the entire product from beginning to end, and let the problems show themselves. Personally i think the 8.4 rating was given out of sympathy, nothing more, especially if you read the review. Also notice how it says that one of the pros is balanced pvp, but then one of the cons is un-balanced pvp (mouse over the icons). Kind of strange no?
Just a variation on what others have said already: Tier 4 is just the same you've been doing ever since Tier 2, but bigger. A lot bigger. With the only problem that you're basically playing with the same old 70 people you've been playing along with for the last 20 levels, because everyone in T4 is getting bored that there's not nearly enough players to really make this game a fun RvR experience instead of the RvE raiding that happens most of the time. I spent a good deal playing and all I got in the end as a reward was boredom and frustration. Sure, I had a blast of the kind I hadn't had since I first played DAoC or even City of Heroes, but unlike those games, WAR just made everything boring with its over-scaling.
They made end zones for WoW populations it will never have; couple that with the fact that they're just more of the same (a goddamn lot) and it gets quite boring after a while. I don't know what made DAoC magical, maybe it was the three realms, maybe it was the newness of the whole RvR thing, or whatever, but it's missing from WAR altogether.
On a more serious note for the MMORPG staff: have you guys considered doing team reviews for MMORPGs? I mean, they are made mostly for group play, after all, so maybe that would be a good way to approach the genre, since a single reviewer against a huge world is a titanic task. I think group reviews would be more in-depth, maybe.
The difference being, those scores were not given from a full gameplay experience. They consist mainly of first impressions. MMORPG is reviewing a game after they have had time, unlike the other reviews, to see and experience the game in its entirely. Just like reviewing AoC off the first 20 levels...which is completely different from the rest of the damn game. Basically, there is no excuse to give the same average score when you have had more time to see the entire product from beginning to end, and let the problems show themselves. Personally i think the 8.4 rating was given out of sympathy, nothing more, especially if you read the review. Also notice how it says that one of the pros is balanced pvp, but then one of the cons is un-balanced pvp (mouse over the icons). Kind of strange no?
Ehh the reviewer stumbles all over himself time and time again.
WAR is basically in line with every other AAA MMO title that's been released in the last four years.
The guy gives it a 8.4 since its much improved over its released client.
It still has problems though, but whats there atm is pretty good. Hopefully over the next year Mythic will rite some wrongs and improve on what Works (SC's,PQs and Orvr).
WAR was supposed to be an RvR game and seeing as how it fails in every regard in that aspect, this score should be significantly lowered. There are still core issues that haven't even been touched since launch, and RvR still remains a "pass the keep" loot grinding affair with no faction pride or motivation besides "hey, if I run 900 more scenarios, I can get more loot!".
What are you talking about?! WAR is basically ToA: The Game! I'm just going to assume this is a joke to save my sanity.
You can tell which reviewers dont know how to properly rate an mmorpg based on when they released their review. Warhammer was released on September 18, 2008 simultaneously in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. You really think somebody can accurately review an mmorpg in 10 days? I say it takes atleast 2 months, and even then you have to have reached max level and experienced all aspects of the game in some degree to write a review that is comprehensive.
Also, while I dont think warhammer has earned an 8.4, I do think the review from mmorpg was accurate.
Pros: the PvP in this game is entertaining and well balanced.
Cons: the PvP in this game was unblanaced.
So which is it? It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if reviewers even play they games they review anymore.
<----Reviewer.
I selected the icons based on their main title, not their description as I didn't have their description to look at. I'll have this sorted out as it's obviously contradictory. ;) The games PvP is overall still excellent in my opinion, but it is held back by several issues including some balance ones.
WAR could have gone one of two ways to reasonable success, but instead chose a third path between the two and failed.
They could have developed a full world with class options and crafting skills and a market and set it in the Warhammer background, or they could have made it Star Wars Battlefront with Elves and swords. Instead, we got the illegitimate offspring thereof. Not enough meat to make a MMORPG, and no real reason to fight for "Conquest" in RvR.
It doesn't know what it's supposed to be, and likely most of us don't care to find out anymore.
@reviewer:
I think it is a bit harsh to say that it was THAT bad at launch. You make it sound like it was a disaster like AOC. Compared to that game, WAR's launch was as smooth as butter. The most annoying bugs were quickly resolved post launch and never really had a chance to become serious issues.
The REAL issues with this game had nothing to do with the launch whatsoever. In my mind they are; repetition in RVR and restriction + handholding in game mechanics and world design. Two downsides which are nestled in the very heart of the game and tone down the potential it has for RPG but also PVP minded people.
It is very hard to get that pvp thrill when death is such a short lived nuisance that happens so often and always fully expected and in mutual consent.
The game is pretty pollished, though and devs are keen on updating and improving it. It did become a theme park RVR game for casual players, however and long term gameplay fun just isn't there for me.
Are the other 4 capitals in, yet?
I've no interest in defending Altorf as an Asur or the Inevitable City as a Druchii. Not a chance.
I found this in an interview regarding the dropped cities.
Previously each of the current races would feature their own Capital City. However, Mythic did not want to spread its resources thin in attempting to do justice for a larger number of cities in time for Warhammer Online's launch. Instead, Mythic would rather redirect their efforts to polish two major cities to better realize their promises to players, which include cities gaining or losing status from the "Realm vs. Realm" (RvR) conflict. The additional cities will come later and should hopefully benefit from the experience earned from which Mythic hopefully earned the first time around.
Now we know that the dropped classes have already made it back into the game, so thats proof already for those that considered the cut classes where never going to appear, that the dropped cities should also at some stage make an appearance aswell.
However I worry that if they do implement the dropped cities what kind of impact will that have on the game, if numbers are down it will make defending even harder or mustering armies to attack harder as there are more targets, will it be a good addition or a bad one, who knows until something happens, but I have faith that something will happen as they have already proved that they haven't forgotten what they dropped.
Game sucks get over it
i just back after 4 months break
and i have alot of fun
game isnt perfect but mythic make much larger progress in few months than let say funcom in a year
if they keep up good work WAR should be soon good mmo product
I'v played WAR since lauch and I think it's a OK game, it has some issues...but I haven't found a game to replace it with. Beeing in a great guild also make it alot more fun.
it think what is killing warhammer is that players gain experiance from the scenarios . its essentially led to people grinding them from level one so you can do pve and find that your all but alone in an area . or you can form a group and a lot of them will leave for a scenario . this has led to warhammer not having any atmosphere . its essentially a team fortress type scenario . i think warhammer can be saved but it needs a radical overhall . i m not certain i would have given it such a high mark in a review .
You should take your own advice, if the game sucks, it should be a complete waste of your time to even read the review, much less comment on it.
Is that what your doing? or are you speaking about players you know?
As a player I have been given a choice of various means of advancement, I can enter a scenario and earn Renown and normal exp.
I can enter the ORvR lakes and earn Renown aswell as normal exp and also Inf towards the tiered RvR lakes.
I can earn normal exp by completing quests or killing mobs.
I can earn Inf from the PQ's and normal exp towards the chapter rewards
I can earn tokens from competing in ORvR and capping all of the BO's in that region.
However it's upto me as a player if I just want to stick with one area, it's not down to the developers how I use their system, they just provided me with a whole heap of different options to advance.
Some players will happily grind away in one area, thats what makes them happy, I like to mix it up, a little ORvR with some scenario's. perhaps take part in a keep take if one is going on or help when ppl ask for a hand with a PQ.
The choice is down to us to make, make of it what you will.
You should take your own advice, if the game sucks, it should be a complete waste of your time to even read the review, much less comment on it.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and this is an open board.
Wether we agree or disagree with what is said here, we have a duty to let everyone air their views, both negative and positive.
This review does not surprise me at all. As to the rating it got, that is because all of you rate these games too high to start with. A 8+ rating means darn good to me and most of these games with such a rating fall beneath that.
I played the beta and found it the typical Mythic game. I grew very disillusioned with Mythic after their inability to correct problems with DAoC. So I knew not to bother purchasing it. The review just reconfirms my decision.
It might one day be a decent game, but it has too many issues at present to be one.
I played WAR and even if not perfect it's a fun game. However wen I read the above statement I /facepalm myself.
I'm just fed up with the random loot distribution system and the idea of doing a raid/instance for maybe having something at the end.
My point is: either make it so nobody gets something or everybody does, be it tokens or whatever stuff.
If the gameplay is to do an instance to get some item then everybody should get one.
I don't see how it's FUN to do an instance and get out empty handed while others get fully loaded.
Anyway good review, thanks for the ride
Yeah this is a good game. I can understand people not liking that game but saying it sucks or was an epic fail is just being silly. It has it's share of problems but with a few more months or a year it could be fleshed out really nicely. Anyway I don't see this game going anywhere regardless of how bad or good it is doing right now.
Weird that the reviewer missed that...
As of the latest patch you get tokens from killing players and partaking in a successful fortress defense/capture. Gather enough of these tokens and you can use them to buy the rvr-items from special NPCs (you still have to be high enough realm rank to use them)
You can tell which reviewers dont know how to properly rate an mmorpg based on when they released their review. Warhammer was released on September 18, 2008 simultaneously in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. You really think somebody can accurately review an mmorpg in 10 days? I say it takes atleast 2 months, and even then you have to have reached max level and experienced all aspects of the game in some degree to write a review that is comprehensive.
Also, while I dont think warhammer has earned an 8.4, I do think the review from mmorpg was accurate.
While we all know that, the public, and the higher ups at any review site won't wait that long because that just isn't how that industry works. Not really fair to say they don't know what they are doing.
Thats about where I would score it also, in the 70-75 range......It has a high fun factor but it is short term fun, not a long term fun type of game.......Like many I enjoyed it up until it was time to pay for my sub lol........Once I reached tier 3 it startes losing alot of its luster and I heard the issues in tier 4 were much worse so I had no incentive to go any further......The lack of solid tradeskills and character development are major downsides to the game.
Agreed.
I quote: "The performance has markedly improved over the last few months, but improving from horrendous to bearable is still unjustified given the visuals. The game is easily bogged down even on excellent rigs. When I looked at screenshots of the game before I got into it, I remember reassuring myself that even though it looks like it was bleeding edge in 2003, at least it would run blazing fast. I was dead wrong."
How could ANY game be referred to as a great PvP game when responsiveness and performance is "...bearable... and still unjustified given the visuals..."
The game lost a lot of players because of these issues.
Your worst oppononent is not the PvP enemy but the lack of responsiveness in spells and controls. You do the spell, but did it hit, Y? N? and when?
MMORPG's based on PvP MUST have the best responsive controls and combat animations or else it is NOT a PvP skill based game.
I am quite convinced this is the issue why most of those 600.000 players left War in 5 months time. And I don't understand that a score of .... 8.4 could be given at a "horrendous to bearable" performance.
Even at this very moment Xfire stats show a downward trend (even with or perhaps even because of the 10 day free trial).
Some justification in order here for the reviewer !!!
+1
And then some –
This game isn’t AoC for graphics, so how the holy hell does it have such insurmountable performance problems SEVEN MONTHS after release?
That’s just baffling to me. I won’t even get into the design choices I don’t like, but w/ design, you take the good w/ the bad. But faulty performance and hardware … in this market, with what this genre has been through in 2007 & 2008… I just can not wrap my mind around it.
We’re not talking about a little lag or a small rubberband. We’re talking EVERY. SINGLE. CITY SEIGE. Every one of them having lag and unresponsiveness. From a P4 rig, to a new i7, it is NOT a client side problem.
Yet, this studio has the time to create new mounts, pets, and trials, and an event every month?
It’s gregarious, disingenuous, and downright ignorant to treat your community w/ such reckless regard.
This game was built around large scale PvP encounters. Where does their tech fall short every single time?…. Large scale pvp encounters. Seriously? WTF?
If I start reading about how the game performs flawlessly in Forts and City Sieges, I could very well return. But no amount of new content, classes, revamps or even class balance changes will ever supersede the fact that game is just barely playable.
5/10 at best. As is.
I'm amazed none of you ever tell us where all the hundreds of thousands of players went to, it's as obvious as the nose on my face.
WoW releases Lich King expansion, hey presto a crap load of MMO's lose hundreds of thousands of ex-WoW players who tried something different becuase they where all bored, now they have a whole new expansion to play with.
I played WAR when it released in September, WoW's expansion released and guess what I went back to WoW to play the expac in November.
The writing was already on the wall for WAR releasing so soon before WoWs expansion was to come out, no matter how good the game was it could never compete against a long awaited expansion.
I see none of the current MMO's being able to keep or grow a large subscriber base other than Aion, which seems to be bucking that trend, and please to all that is holy in the MMO world please let them burst the WoW bubble and give Blizzard some serious competition for a change, we so desperately need it.
To me population balancing would have to be the biggess problem with this game. When asked what mythic would do to make this game fare a simple: we have people that know what they are dooing here at mythic was the anser, this comapny gave us.
At launch everyone was out trying the Open RvR. Just as intended. The underdog soon figuered out that being grossly outnumbered sucked and nothing rewarded there Effort of keeping the Open RvR game working.
(that what they failed to put into the game) Xp RP bonus for being outnumbered.
Example: group of 6 Destruction fighting a group of 20 order. For every kill order gets base xp.
Destruction only manage to kill one Order player but since Order outnumber 3 to 1 Destruction gets Base xp times 3 for that one kill.
With that meckanic in the game at launch, players would have continued OrVr. Instead The underdog all Qu'ed up for Senario's.
Whats the pointe of playing a game to get your butt handed to you 24/7 simply because your always outnumbed? With a reward bonus to the few and rare kill you got, it might have got a chance at success.
But i dont think this idea is any good. cause they have people in mythic that know exacly what they are doing that are on top of this problem, apparently.
"Performance:
Performance is where WAR receives its lowest marks from me. The performance has markedly improved over the last few months, but improving from horrendous to bearable is still unjustified given the visuals. The game is easily bogged down even on excellent rigs. When I looked at screenshots of the game before I got into it, I remember reassuring myself that even though it looks like it was bleeding edge in 2003, at least it would run blazing fast. I was dead wrong."
I don't think I could quote this enough. My god this game runs horrible. I can run AoC smooth as butter on high settings but I'll be damned if my computer doesn't choke on WAR. What the hell kind of computers they use at Mythic to make this laggy stuttery sluggish client run smooth. I've searched for hours and done every tweak imagineable trying to get this game to run better. This long after release there is no excuse to not have gotten performance up to par.
Lotro/AoC maxed out=OK; Warhammer Online=NO
LOL! have any of you actually played the game since release?
Sorry guys but the "WAR is ruined due to scenarios" topic is long dead.
Once you pass into tier 3 noone runs the damn SCs, ORvR is booming Due to Keeps, Orvr Influence and Tokens.
Ill even go as far as saying just straight up keep defense with a handful of players is more rewarding XP and renown wise then SCs.
Get with the times guys if your going to bitch about a game.
"This leads to players outright avoiding each other and participating in what is known as "Musical Keeps." Since players will always go toward the path of least resistance, and as of this writing the most efficient way to earn RvR Influence, XP, and Renown is to simply trade battlefield objectives and keeps while ignoring the enemy, RvR can end up being quite boring. If an enemy force is defending a keep, players will often just skip zones and try an unguarded one somewhere else."
-no words are more truly spoken. This is what ultimatly caused me to quit WAR after 7 months and give AOC a try.
It could also be said that every memeber of a class tends to look like every other memeber of that class and although I understand to desire to have the classes to easily recognizable it is frustrating not to be able to individualize your style and appearance.
"Ill even go as far as saying just straight up keep defense with a handful of players is more rewarding XP and renown wise then SCs"
Thats what War needed at launch when Mythic did this , it took a step in the right direction.
They need to add more of this meckanic to reward players when there is no way of them having much success.
Im not saying to give them free xp. but reward small success with xp bonus.
The longer they wait the more they lose and will never get back.
Oddly this just doesn't mesh with my current in game experience...
Perhaps you could make me a map with screen shots so I can find this booming action... I am fairly certain PT is supposed to be one of the more populated servers...
Yet I just can't find this booming ORvR...
I don't know what server you are currently playing on but when my Realm sees a Keep sparked in our tier we rush out because keep defense is easy and gives major XP and renown points.
Last week we had an asshole try to make us Avoid order and try to capture a non-defended Keep we basically booted his ass from the warband.
Hell even in tier 1 we arent playing tag on my alts, We take all the BOs and hold the god damn entire zone for the bonus.
I even tell the guys/gals to accept the BO repeatable quests so they could turn them in over and over as order is trying to take back the BO.
Oddly this just doesn't mesh with my current in game experience...
Perhaps you could make me a map with screen shots so I can find this booming action... I am fairly certain PT is supposed to be one of the more populated servers...
Yet I just can't find this booming ORvR...
Come on Over to Ironfist man our pop is like 50/50 Order/destro.
ORvR is all we do lol. We can't even attempt to take a keep without Order swooping in within minutes and trying to mess us up.
It also helps that our server was one of the four avaialble to trial accounts so Tier1 and 2 are very active. Great for me since i like using alts to help guildies.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and this is an open board.
Wether we agree or disagree with what is said here, we have a duty to let everyone air their views, both negative and positive.
Perhaps if his post was constructive to the thread, you would have a point.
I'm sorry but that's a high score for War, I put a lot of anticipation into this game, I ended up being very dissapointed both times round. It's far too repetative, it has some seriously bad graphics imo. Especially for an mmo of these days. It doesn't deserve such a high score, at all. Age of Conan has much better game play than this by miles, (and I'm no fan boy, for all you haters I've un-subbed) it's just repetative, boring and has a very linear approuch to it. It's as if they sat down and thought purely on the PvP, which sucks badly.
Seriously though, knock back skills send you FLYING! Like literally FLYING. Animations suck so bad.
Guess I'll be called a troll or something of such because it's all been hate comment on this game, but that's my view on it. Certainly doesn't deserve that high rating.
That was true 3-4 months ago. SCs are rarely played like they used to be because Mythic made Open RVR much more rewarding. We only do Scenarios if we are trying to lock a zone or nothing is going on and we have a premade group. Screw that, going into a scenario with 10 noobs.
Oddly this just doesn't mesh with my current in game experience...
Perhaps you could make me a map with screen shots so I can find this booming action... I am fairly certain PT is supposed to be one of the more populated servers...
Yet I just can't find this booming ORvR...
Both servers I play on (Monolith and Dark Crag) have oRVR going on all the time. Even more so with the live events going on. Since there has been a RVR based Live event every month for the past few months ORVR has been very active on the servers I have characters on. Everyone is doing the Live event right now which means even more open rvr.
Knock back skills send you flying? well duh, if your standing next to a drop your going to go flying, you get knock back when your against a small incline you don't go far at all, you get knock back when your back is against an obstacle you go nowhere.
As for the trolls remark, this isn't a DFO thread, everyone has an opinion to make and I don't think anyone has been called a troll in this thread, yet.
Is that what your doing? or are you speaking about players you know?
As a player I have been given a choice of various means of advancement, I can enter a scenario and earn Renown and normal exp.
I can enter the ORvR lakes and earn Renown aswell as normal exp and also Inf towards the tiered RvR lakes.
I can earn normal exp by completing quests or killing mobs.
I can earn Inf from the PQ's and normal exp towards the chapter rewards
I can earn tokens from competing in ORvR and capping all of the BO's in that region.
However it's upto me as a player if I just want to stick with one area, it's not down to the developers how I use their system, they just provided me with a whole heap of different options to advance.
Some players will happily grind away in one area, thats what makes them happy, I like to mix it up, a little ORvR with some scenario's. perhaps take part in a keep take if one is going on or help when ppl ask for a hand with a PQ.
The choice is down to us to make, make of it what you will.
I enjoy WAR a lot. But I don't do scenarios anymore (I have some issues with the scenario generator, which I hope Mythic will improve). But we need people doing--and winning--scenarios as they contribute to Zone Control (or capping a Tier, as it's called in game). So if people want just do scenarios all the time, that is their choice. And in the overall scheme of things they do contribute to the war effort.
To be honest the reviewer did a good job here, much better than some I have read. Having played WAR for a good while now I agree that the dungeons are quite frankly awful and need a major rethink. In this vein though I feel that Mythic are now relying too much on the pq's and perhaps the reason for this is that 99.9% of reviews state that they are one of the games best features, but too much of a good thing is bad.
The new land of the dead dungeon is supposedly based along the lines of DF in DAoC but only so far as only one realm at a time has access to it. From everything else mythic have released it will just be a much larger version of the dungeons we have at present which are pretty much indoor pq centric romps for the zerg in your life and bloody boring. Even around the actual dungeon there are, count them, 18 new pq's. The whole damn game is becomming PQonline.
The dungeons need to be redesigned completely with pq's left out, or failing that removed from the game altogether. There also needs to be more severe consequences for losing your capital city and greater rewards for taking one. The RvR lakes should be designed to facilitate tactical combat instead of the simple zerg outings they create at the moment, and the classes need a severe rebalance.
Sounds like I hate the game doesn't it? So it's a testiment to Mythic that despite all it's flaws I still login on a daily basis, to be honest however if I never see another fucking pq it will be too soon.
I had recently thought about playing WAR again, but when I started thinking about which class to play and visiting the boards, everything I read made the balance issues look worse. The classes I was interested in playing were all the bottom of the barrel.
What's the fun in playing a tank class when I know that 4 other tank classes are better. It was very discouraging.
Normally I don't whine about balance in MMOs(believe it or not) because in a 1v1 situation I find the better player generally wins. WAR is all about RVR and serving your role though.
So am I wrong about this? Has the game gotten better in terms of balancing the classes or worse?
The game was never intended to be balanced for 1v1 combat, a squig herder is never going to get the better of a slayer up close and personal no matter how good the player is. The balance issues come in the various skills that the classes have, way overpowered AoE & healing spells for example. It's possible to get a couple of classes working together in a way that makes them almost unbeatable and this should never be the case.
Mythic will eventually fix the balance issues but until they do just be cleverer than the other guy :P
I think this review is a tad bit high. I would give WAR a 7.0/10 tops really.
You can tell which reviewers dont know how to properly rate an mmorpg based on when they released their review. Warhammer was released on September 18, 2008 simultaneously in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. You really think somebody can accurately review an mmorpg in 10 days? I say it takes atleast 2 months, and even then you have to have reached max level and experienced all aspects of the game in some degree to write a review that is comprehensive.
Also, while I dont think warhammer has earned an 8.4, I do think the review from mmorpg was accurate.
You guys are nitpicking. I count 5 reviews who reviewed the game in less than 2 weeks. There are a bunch more that waited till November and December to release there reviews. I have read many of the reviews on the sites I posted and a lot are very detailed an points out the goods and bads of WAR. One site expecially X-play, I feel the word is better than most and they gave WAR the MMO of the year ever over WOTLK.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/48566/x-play-x-play-best-of-2008-best-mmo
My point is that players rate the games to harshly or to high. Its like 10/10 or 3/10... Its just like that, if you go an look at all the reviews on all the games in the player review list on MMORPG its either "I LOVE IT BEST GAME EVER" or "WORST CRAP EVER MADE STAY AWAY".... Theres very few middle ground posts, in which its nice to have game sites review the games to get a better feel of what you are getting. Not to mention a lot of people quit a game and for some reason or the other hold a serious grudge against the game, and troll the forums denouncing it at every opportunity. These people also put reviews up :P
I think WAR has the potential of being a great game. WOW? Nope EVE? maybe, or at least I hope it has that lasting power. They are constantly adding new content an if you read the review it even says they are working harder than most companies to fix there game. As I said WAR is the only game that allows me to jump in and play from level 1-MAX without even hitting an NPC if I dont want to. That in itself is cool for some of us who are tired of the same o kill 10 of these and return for your bronze shield. And you can even do that if you want hehe.
I really hope they can fix it up nicely because like the reviewer I think its a great game with extreme potential if they can hammer out the bugs, increase the end game, add more crafting and anything else that needs work. For people who skipped it, give it a shot.
Peace :)
No, they aren't in. The system is still pretty much like that.
It would make no sense to add four cities that the small population would have to defend as well. Adding two classes (which were already mostly complete during beta, btw) into the game was easy. Trying to add four cities with all the nuances that they would bring isn't. More ground and points that people have to defend. If the game had the opening day population still, it might seem feasible.
But with under 300k playing now, you add four more cities it justs spreads the already thin oRvR... thinner. If you think it's tough finding people to fight currently, what do you think will happen when their attention is spread out even more?
Anyway, watch the video podcast and see Mythic's explanation on why the system you have now in Warhammer is actually better than putting in four more cities and realize that given money, populations and time that this is it.
That scenario given above is not even as bad as it sounds. It is based on your odds being horrible vs 300 people per side.
There is no evidence that there was ever anytime in the history of Warhammer Online that you were rolling vs 300 other players after a successful push. The game has crashed at every attempt of anything near a 300 vs 300 battle. So right away the premise is extremely faulty and based on conjecture and Mythic saying that's the type of battles that are possible. Kinda of like when they say a car gets 31 miles/gallon, but that's only on highway driving, in perfect optimal conditions. The real mileage actually ends up being 18 miles/gallon.
We all know this to be an untruth by now, which makes me wonder why that was even put in there. Unless the reviewer actually knows of a 300 vs 300 battle, he should have used the latter number for more accuracy.
You may have 300 people in an area (if the server doesn't go poof), but you're only going to be rolling vs 100ish per side, and that's only on a few of the remaining good servers. On most of the LOW/LOW servers, your chances of getting a gold bag is GREATLY enchanced due to the low population and far less people to roll against.
The game was never intended to be balanced for 1v1 combat, a squig herder is never going to get the better of a slayer up close and personal no matter how good the player is. The balance issues come in the various skills that the classes have, way overpowered AoE & healing spells for example. It's possible to get a couple of classes working together in a way that makes them almost unbeatable and this should never be the case.
Mythic will eventually fix the balance issues but until they do just be cleverer than the other guy :P
I consider the rock / paper / sissors design to be one of the biggest flaws of the game. It's not a very popular style for a PvP game, because there are very few people who enjoy being nothing more than fodder for another class. Any normal sane person would want at least a fighting chance and preferably an equal chance of winning. Why would you design a game where a few classes are very good at 1v1 while the rest are not?
This may be a RvR game, but unless you are being focus fired, most of the battles are 1v1, so that really showcases the ineqaulity of the class and combat design flaws. So many of the classes are very squishy, but they have nothing to show for it, hell, most of them can't even kill another player without help. Only the sorceror / bright wizard get any killing ability to make up for their squishiness.
My Archmage, Rune Priest, Shadow Warrior, Engineer and Magus were extremely irritating to play. All of them are considered support classes and yet they have little to no survivability nor did they have the ability to kill people without help. My Engineer was the strongest of the bunch, yet despite all of his area effect damage, I couldn't solo people and rarely got killing blows in groups. Where exactly is the fun in that? With all of the classes I played, I spent more time respawning or being rezzed than I ever did in battle.
Don't even get me started with healers. Mythic outright lied about their roles in combat. "Spellcasting gone bananas" "No backline healing bots in this game" Why exactly is it fun for the player to be pure support in a PvP game? Why is it okay for classes like Choppa / Slayer, Witch Elf / Witch Hunter, Disciple of Khane / Warrior Priest and Sorceror / Bright Wizard to be over powered and killing machines while the rest just slog through the bullshit?
Why did they do the balance thing so much better with DAoC and such a terrible job with WAR? In fact, other than the interface and some mechanics, DAoC is the superior game.
bascially when i read about how people are pissed about class balancing in this game and how they get owned constantly by another class i get a little aggravated. i look at choosing a class like this. you got classes for fighting, defending and healing. some of those classes are going to survive some of those classes are going to die. you need to decide what you want to do in battle. if you want to survive, pick something that can kill. if you dont care and want to assist then pick a healer. everyone needs to know their roll in a battle and quit crying about their outcome. some people are made for fighting and some people are made for dying.
There is only 1 class my Archmage has trouble killing, and that is the Witch Elf, every other class can't stand toe to toe with my healer, well the way I play it they can't, however if I come up against a Shaman it's a stalement, ofc with them being my opposite that is to be expected.
I find this game no different to say WoW's PvP, use the right skills and know your enemy and you can win, go in blind and hope for the best then your probably going to die, go in with a defeatist attitude and your definately going to lose.
Rock/Paper/Scissors, so thats 99% of PvP games then.
I consider the rock / paper / sissors design to be one of the biggest flaws of the game. It's not a very popular style for a PvP game, because there are very few people who enjoy being nothing more than fodder for another class. Any normal sane person would want at least a fighting chance and preferably an equal chance of winning. Why would you design a game where a few classes are very good at 1v1 while the rest are not?
This may be a RvR game, but unless you are being focus fired, most of the battles are 1v1, so that really showcases the ineqaulity of the class and combat design flaws. So many of the classes are very squishy, but they have nothing to show for it, hell, most of them can't even kill another player without help. Only the sorceror / bright wizard get any killing ability to make up for their squishiness.
My Archmage, Rune Priest, Shadow Warrior, Engineer and Magus were extremely irritating to play. All of them are considered support classes and yet they have little to no survivability nor did they have the ability to kill people without help. My Engineer was the strongest of the bunch, yet despite all of his area effect damage, I couldn't solo people and rarely got killing blows in groups. Where exactly is the fun in that? With all of the classes I played, I spent more time respawning or being rezzed than I ever did in battle.
Don't even get me started with healers. Mythic outright lied about their roles in combat. "Spellcasting gone bananas" "No backline healing bots in this game" Why exactly is it fun for the player to be pure support in a PvP game? Why is it okay for classes like Choppa / Slayer, Witch Elf / Witch Hunter, Disciple of Khane / Warrior Priest and Sorceror / Bright Wizard to be over powered and killing machines while the rest just slog through the bullshit?
Why did they do the balance thing so much better with DAoC and such a terrible job with WAR? In fact, other than the interface and some mechanics, DAoC is the superior game.
I'm not sure I agree with you. Heck, Lineage 2 added a rock, paper, scissors system (and it can be argued elsewhere how successful people think it is I'm sure) in order to make every class viable but every class have some vulnerabilities.
In a game that is focused on large groups or even small skirmishes, it makes sense. I actually have had few 1v1's and have mostly experienced small or large group. I think what people "want" is to be viable 1vs1 but it is very clearto me that this is not a 1vs 1 game.
That's actually a great question that sites like MMORPG.com should ask of ALL studios in a review / overview / interview.
And don't let the studio wimp out by saying "oh we have a range of systems we use", no, get them to tell you the exact specs of the machines used by the Lead and Senior Programmers, the Project Producer (the producer responsible for this game, not the Studio Producer), and the senior QA testers.
It may surprise you that studios usually do NOT have bleeding edge, or even cutting edge, rigs for their developers.
One reason devs may not notice latency is that they don't play the game via the internet, they use their internal LAN.
WAR probably runs GREAT from inside the studio.
edit: and WAR's performance problems aren't Client side anyway, it's the Server side that can't process large battles efficiently, so it wouldn't matter what rig you ran.
i've been playing since early access and its just dying a slow death. they're making fixes/adding new stuff that makes you think things are finally gonna be fun and yet its just not. im still sub'd to the game but sometimes i play for like 30min. and just log for the night meh.
I just dont agree that such a broken and incomplete game can have such a high score. AoC Had a seven and Now look at it.
Putting WaR over AoC is a pure fail and undeserving.
PvE in AoC dominates WaR in every aspect, and with the combat, fatalities and visceral graphics AoC PvP dominates WaR. People just dont understand the feeling of cutting off your oponents head.
Im nto siding with one game here because I dont like both of them for there unfinished, unbalanced, broken gameplay. Darkfall is my game forever. Darkfall is where I found my game.
...... It back to pool and beer for me.
Lol man i have a hangover today.
Was WAR good when it came out?
Yes
Is WAR even better then when it first started.
There has really only been slight changes in the game to me. Most of it is just bonuses. Its still the fantasy best game out there.
you guys love to go off on random tangents and talk about balance don't you.
Why write up three pages trying to explain why WAR sucks when you can do it in one word..."shallow."
The whole game is shallow in every shape or form.
Plus, WoW>WAR competely.....Workshop Games might as well scrape WAR40 being made by Virgil because I don't think they can take the embarrassment of seeing a posslbe Starcraft MMO wiping the floor with it....lol
OK 1ST to every class thier is a stong and weak point if your a clothie every thing will kill you quick , but you can nuke the hell out of everything for high damage, your a tank you take the beating for the most part and laugh at the 5 ppl trying to kill you, but you dont really do much back if you expect to pick one class and own every one dont play mmos go back to console games and get a game shark or pro action replay and cheat your way to god mode
ive been playing games since asherons call came out , i loved that game , then when my friends moved on so did i , i played wow at release i remeber alot more crashes and down times then ive had with war, sure war has its bugs , what game doest to this day end up with bugs , just how many varries on how long they had to fix them, as for the new tokens thier is one thing i havent seen mentioned , or might have missed.
is the zone lock down rewards now, the rr and inf has been reduces as of 1.2.1 but if your thier from start to end of locking that zone you will receive 2x the rr and inf you gaind from eact tick , ive gotten over 6k rr and 4k inf in T3 orvr for locking a zone not to mention the 5 tokens given . keeps def ticks are much better then before , i was getting a 400-700xp ticks for med def now i get up to 1100-1400xp 300+/- rr and 150+/- inf so they have made keep def more inticeing to me .
the onlything i disslike has nothing to do with mythic it has to do with the player base ,, path of least resistance is what sheep do , im sorry but im a wolf i like the hunt and the fight and 1 v 1 can get you 3k xp a kill you bet ill risk going out thier and meybe dieng a few times gut if i get 2 kills in per death taht 6k xp takes the sting our of the wallet.
only thing i do have a complaint about with mythic is the siege engines , while yes they beefed them up a bit , and i do mean a bit .the balistas should do more damage per hit then a sorc/bw can its a freaking balista , and the catapaults should hit keep walls and aoe damage all around them not just whtas on the ground and where is our ability to launch orcs into keeps , sure they said it was a 50/50 shot but hell get a couple choppas and shammys and to hell with orders losing the oil so they cant get nuked , ya we do it too, but id rather see a team effort on keep def then a one man army manning the oil. and the repair feature is to op , now way in hell you should be able to repair it that fast with that much damage being done to it,
with that said i still enjoy this game and i belive its not mythics job to hand you every thing with out it being earned ,we all have jobs we go to , and earn our money , so why should that be any different with anything else in this world in rl or other
Warhammer gets boring and repetitive faster than WoW. In fact, WoW's PVP is probably better when you get right down to it.
People are morons in the game. Try playing a PVP scenario and you'll lose because half of your team just decides to rush against the enemy despite your appeals for them to stay together and work together.
Instanced PVP fails, and it fails in Warhammer big time. Why was it even necessary? In the meantime, Mythic wonders why their world PVP is so static.
Most of us ought to know by now that you just can't trust the major game reviewers to provide a real review of a single player PC title, much less an MMO. It's sad that almost every new MMO on MMORPG.com gets a high ranking by default unless the community is virtually united in outrage against the game.
If you're going to rank games from 1 to 10, don't be afraid to give out 4's and 5's for mediocre titles like Warhammer. Lets save 6 through 10 for games that actually try to break the mold and run well without horrendous, unforgivable lag.
thats funny i know ppl who buaght the new ex pack for wow and have already quit complaining " all it is is more of the same" wow blows for pvp , in fact by far does it blow . cant level with it , takes far longer to get the pvp gear , and as for bugs n lag man you ppl must have just found wow or something it was by far the worst launched game next to AoC , server crashes , world crashes instance crashes , crashes just cuz it was bored , so dont give us this mediocer crap.
its funny i dont even think you guys know what realy was born first the warcraft lore or warhammer lore, last i checked warhammer was around inthe mid 80's while warcraft wasnt till the 90's , while yes warcraft was comp based they got thier ideas from warhammer's models ,
WoW has a few years on war when it comes to mmo for the first year WoW was horrible ( while yes i played it) i enojyed my self till cap then relized how dead end game is , running molten core ungodly amounts of time, and finding that for somereason no mage stuff ever dropped while i was thier but i miss a day and like 7 things drop , i hated that , i hate pve i hate haveing to wait a week or two for things to reset , so i can have another chance at a itme that has a .0000001% chance to drop , oh then thier bright idea here pay us for the exspanpack, and oh guess what all that gear it took months to get well here are some greens that blow them away, and oh 10 more levels to grind just to get to the hurry up and wait months to get your gear, then the new pack wash and repete .
and wow pvp better i really think your taking the bad drugs. lets see a bunch of afkers standing around with the hurry up and let them win its faster renown and marks , wow that is so much fun to be the only guy actuaily wanting to fight, wow = kid mode for pvp totaly lame arena lame , on my server we had a pack of resto druids as a team how the hell you expect to fight resto druids and win no dps but you cant kill the bastards.
i think thats why most complain about war , is the fact that they think wow is the only game that has ever been made, and think all games should follow thier standard, wow's standard sucks, i was blackmailed ( well they tried any way) on that game and when i reported the guy i was banned for three days for telling the dude to piss off when he said give me gold or ill report you , thier gms act like robots , while i have not had a chance or a reason to talk to in game csr yet im sure it will be slow as it was when WoW came out , i posted tickets in wow and most of the time i never heard from a gm .
also wow is a major time sink MAJOR time sink and gold waste , for 5k you can have this mount for 1k you can have this mouont wtf 5k 5k gold when you barely gave us over 4 silver a drop , major gold farmers and buying problems are still rampent in that game , do you see a post on thier site saying look how many spammers we have blocked sure some still get in thier but hey WaR has a report gold sellers function wow dosent , why , cuz blizzard is getting akick back from the sellers so why stop a good thing for them even tho it screwed up the AH not every one can afford to spend 100 bucks on buying gold all the time.
cuz form a new player prospective if i walked into a AH looking for lvl 19 gear i wouldnt have 100's of gold but thats what the cost of the gear would be , since all the twinks in the game. but maybe thats it you cant have a ** level twink to grief new players or those who cant afford the gear, or is it due to the fact on core servers you get turned into a chicken if you try to fight ppl way to low for you , or is it the pvp here makes you earn your rewards
as for the lag , i lag somtimes but thats only when im in a area of like ohh a keep with 4 wbs in it and then its not that bad i can still fight and function with out to much problems, L2 had a major memmory leak that would lag the game very very badly or you would find yourself looking at your desktop all of the sudden , even wow did that the first year, i would still rank this game a 8 out of 10 , while i think SC's should jsut be removed or the xp drop to almost nothing so ppl wont grind it to level , i blame the sc syndrome on wow and thier epic failed Bg's
I found this in an interview regarding the dropped cities.
Previously each of the current races would feature their own Capital City. However, Mythic did not want to spread its resources thin in attempting to do justice for a larger number of cities in time for Warhammer Online's launch. Instead, Mythic would rather redirect their efforts to polish two major cities to better realize their promises to players, which include cities gaining or losing status from the "Realm vs. Realm" (RvR) conflict. The additional cities will come later and should hopefully benefit from the experience earned from which Mythic hopefully earned the first time around.
Now we know that the dropped classes have already made it back into the game, so thats proof already for those that considered the cut classes where never going to appear, that the dropped cities should also at some stage make an appearance aswell.
However I worry that if they do implement the dropped cities what kind of impact will that have on the game, if numbers are down it will make defending even harder or mustering armies to attack harder as there are more targets, will it be a good addition or a bad one, who knows until something happens, but I have faith that something will happen as they have already proved that they haven't forgotten what they dropped.
Oh, I'm aware of why they cut them, that the classes have returned and that the cities are planned to return as well. I'm just waiting somewhat impatiently.
Why do WAR players tell people this as though anyone cares? Ideas don't arise in a vacuum. WAR got their ideas from someone else, who got his ideas from somewhere else, stretching back a long, long way. A lot of fantasy books use the same basic races and concepts that you find in WAR. By this logic, WAR stole from the Lord of the Rings which predates both it and the WoW franchise.
Of course, we're talking about a game, not a creative franchise.
WAR is repetitive, boring, featureless, uninspired, and underpopulated. It has no crafting to speak of, the PVP is meaningless, there is no player housing, guild cities, or any sort of content that lets players take a break from the fighting and be social or creative.
Everyone looks the same, everyone plays the same, PVP is the same zerg rush after zerg rush, and the game looks like it was designed over a weekend by a bunch of DnD nerds.
Why do WAR players tell people this as though anyone cares? Ideas don't arise in a vacuum. WAR got their ideas from someone else, who got his ideas from somewhere else, stretching back a long, long way. A lot of fantasy books use the same basic races and concepts that you find in WAR. By this logic, WAR stole from the Lord of the Rings which predates both it and the WoW franchise.
Of course, we're talking about a game, not a creative franchise.
WAR is repetitive, boring, featureless, uninspired, and underpopulated. It has no crafting to speak of, the PVP is meaningless, there is no player housing, guild cities, or any sort of content that lets players take a break from the fighting and be social or creative.
Everyone looks the same, everyone plays the same, PVP is the same zerg rush after zerg rush, and the game looks like it was designed over a weekend by a bunch of DnD nerds.
You just described nearly all MMO's out there.
Yep and this is why I'm disappointed with the genre. We've been conditioned to think that excessively repetitive game play is suppose to be fun. That shallow content with zero player impact is entertaining. That forced social structures are in the player's best interest. That wanting your character to be central in a massively online story is celf-centered and wrong. That playing support classes automatically means you are second class citizens and your only purpose is to make the game fun for everyone else. That FedEx quests should somehow advance your character on their spiritual journey to enlightenment. That game mechanics put in expressly to slow down your progression are necessary for you to appreciate the grind. And last but not least, these companies think they deserve more than $14.99 a month for their crappy, shallow content and therefore are hellbent on implementing cash shops to further rip-off their addicted, but sadly loyal customers.
You just described nearly all MMO's out there.
word.
Mirror class system ultimately killed Warhammer, it made it from a game where there was actually some difference between the two factions to a game where everything is the same...There are obviously differences lore-wise, why not implement these into the game?
Warhammer tries too hard to be WoW. Craft system? I didn't even know it was there when I was playing. All I did know was scenarios, which they should have gotten rid of completely to start and maybe added in once Public Quests were running out of people in earlier levels.
The whole rolling for bags is terrible, if I am 2nd or 1st or 3rd in a keep siege then I should be guaranteed loot. I have gone too many times where epic gear would go to someone else who did way worse than me. There was terrible customer service, I tried for weeks to complain about a bug with one of the pieces of armor. There should have been more keeps so that guilds could actually keep them, and have territory the way they are doing it in All Points Bulletin.
If a game wants to be good, don't just copy the best, because people are going to go to WoW if you are just another clone. We need some new ideas, and take advantage of the fact that there is six years worth of technological progression compared to when WoW first came out....seriously.
Yes. Sad, isn't it?
I agree that you agree to disagree and my score is 4/10. If a game released in 2008 can't get the animations right after 7 months is either the animators are lame or the game director(s) must have been fired from day one + yes WAR has a dated graphics.
Simply another wasted IP.
I've played a lot of MMO's at launch WAR seemed to be about the same as other games at release as far as bug's and glitches are related. As far as the progress made in the last seven months Gameplay they are at the top of the pile as far as improvement speed. Smoothness of play including graphics, glitches and bugs ive seen a lot better and i've seen a lot worse. Graphics seem to be about average its a cartoony system like WoW but kinda leans towards a realistic system like AoC. Are they state of the art no they are about 2005ish graphics that yes should run better than they do under high pressure strain(not enough gerbils running the wheels).
As far as what the MMORPG guy rated the game I think he's about right he does mention problems with PvE and Crafting but this game was never billed as leaning towards either. It was designed around huge RvR fights designed for it, which it does pretty well minus the graphic problems and a few other things that Mythic seems to be adressing. I would say 70% of what you rate this game would have to be based on RvR.
If you think this game is a 4/10 because PvE and crafting are terrible then in that perspective a game like FFX would be a 1/10 if you wanted to play a FPS. Also on a side note ratings are always going to be personal opinions. I have played several games that played well, looked good, ran excellent, and had almost everything a gamer could want and the game just didn't have something i couldn't put my finger on but caused me to not want to play. Maybe the reviewer just liked the game.
1.I don`t think you would have given the game more than 4 if you were playing on Karak Norn(thank you Mythic & GOA) .Each time things get serious the server crashes.
2. Or may be the reviewer is just hyping the game before the new expansion goes live.
Why do WAR players tell people this as though anyone cares? Ideas don't arise in a vacuum. WAR got their ideas from someone else, who got his ideas from somewhere else, stretching back a long, long way. A lot of fantasy books use the same basic races and concepts that you find in WAR. By this logic, WAR stole from the Lord of the Rings which predates both it and the WoW franchise.
Of course, we're talking about a game, not a creative franchise.
WAR is repetitive, boring, featureless, uninspired, and underpopulated. It has no crafting to speak of, the PVP is meaningless, there is no player housing, guild cities, or any sort of content that lets players take a break from the fighting and be social or creative.
Everyone looks the same, everyone plays the same, PVP is the same zerg rush after zerg rush, and the game looks like it was designed over a weekend by a bunch of DnD nerds.
A Pulitzer for this man!
Brilliant review. Well written and accurate.
1.I don`t think you would have given the game more than 4 if you were playing on Karak Norn(thank you Mythic & GOA) .Each time things get serious the server crashes.
2. Or may be the reviewer is just hyping the game before the new expansion goes live.
No, I just like the game. ;) Thanks for implying I'm a corporate shill though!
Stay classy!
No, I just like the game. ;) Thanks for implying I'm a corporate shill though!
Stay classy!
When I said Reviewer I was referring to OP....peace
No, I just like the game. ;) Thanks for implying I'm a corporate shill though!
Stay classy!
When I said Reviewer I was referring to OP....peace
I am the reviewer ;)
That's actually a great question that sites like MMORPG.com should ask of ALL studios in a review / overview / interview.
And don't let the studio wimp out by saying "oh we have a range of systems we use", no, get them to tell you the exact specs of the machines used by the Lead and Senior Programmers, the Project Producer (the producer responsible for this game, not the Studio Producer), and the senior QA testers.
That would be great if the review sites were actually the ones in control of the interview, but sadly they're not. The developer being interviewed has all the power. MMORPG.com, Massively, TTH, and whoever else might write a game article are not allowed to ask pointed questions. If they stray off the scripted/allowed path, the interview is either terminated or bullshit non-answers are given. You'll never see poignant, relevant questions, let alone answers to them. Its all about access and controlling the message, and certainly not communicating the truth to the reader.
can someone find out what game this guy is playing? he aint playing War.
The game was supposed to be all about 'open world PvP/RvR'. Without a nice sized population, it just isn't there. Even if the servers were packed (and they aren't, even after 2-3 rounds of migrations/mergers), the RvR 'lakes' can't handle the loads.
Key issues for me (from BETA through 2 weeks ago):
Player population was too low. This meant that I couldn't find the open world RVR experience I was looking for, and it also meant that queue times for scenario's were far too long.
Player movement was very buggy, stiff, and 'lacking'. It has gotten better, to an extent, but the way players move, turn, and animate... still not what I would've expected from a game that launched in 2008.
Classes, character customization, etc.,... As far as character classes go, I wanted a few more options. Examples: Male version of 'Witch Elf' (rogue class) and an Order version of Squig Herder (ranged + moving pet class). As far as character customization goes, I'd like options to create an elf that doesn't look like they are strung out on smack, coked up, or have serious issues with Pink Eye.
WAR, for all of the faults, does actually do quite a bit right. There is a lot in WAR that games like WoW could learn from (and have, to some degree ... see: achievements, queue'ing for BG's from anywhere, siege-warfare, etc.,...).
Mythic and EA kind of shot themselves in the foot with this game. Their biggest problem is that mid to low range rigs play this game horribly. Hell, even my high end rig struggles at times. This leaves a lot of potential customers feeling out in the cold. For instance, I personally know many people that were devoted DAoC players that abandoned WAR because it was nearly unplaybable. Video settings are very limited, which seems silly, considering being able to turn down specific settings might save so of these mid range rig people. It's also a horrible resource hog. If your running Vista with 2 GB's of RAM, expect WAR to push memory usage to 80 to 100%. This is probably the result of WAR being more of a client side game as DAoC was, which puts a heavier load on users. This also invites lag problems and eventual hacking problems that were present in DAoC. Considering how much of a stress this game puts on your PC, you would think the world would be seemless as it is in WoW, but it's not.
Don't get me wrong though, I'd chose to play WAR over WoW anyday of the week. You can level entirely through RvR (PvP) if you want too, never needing to PvE at all. That was the main reason I quit playing WoW, I got sick of the constant grinds for loot. In WAR you can earn excellent gear, and fill in the gaps by purchasing them through the auction house or the occasional PQ.
Honestly, I believe EA forced Mythic to push this game out half baked, and they're still paying for it. Three months more of beta would have worked out the problems that will take a year to sort out post release. I played since the first closed beta, and as the release gate got closer and closer, more and more of what would have made this game epic was cut and trimmed away. Only a third of the promised classes remained. In the end, I think they alienated many customers early after release, making the longevity of this game questionable.