So I’m hearing that the NDA has been dropped. Don’t look here for a lengthy review, and please don’t base your decision on the game upon this post. My disclaimer is that this post is my first two hours of first impressions of Warhammer Online. My highest character? Level 3. So, take it or leave it and expect more as I play more.
I got into the beta a couple days ago and downloaded the Open Beta client from Fileplanet and logged in with my Closed Beta account. The FP download was smooth, fast (about 2 1/2 hours for 10 gigs) and the installation was virtually ZERO because you are basically downloading the entire uncompressed folder. After a really quick patch, I was up and running.
The character creation screen was hitchy for me. There was some stuttering and it scared me, because my computer is new and more than decent. Luckily, after creating my first character and logging in, I found that performance was excellent. It was just weirdness with the creation screen.
Character Creation:
One of my disappointments in WAR. It was hard to make an attractive female of any race (aka Vanguarditis) with the exception of Chaos which are half dead looking. The choices for hair were the same among a lot of the female races, which seemed lacking. I just wasn’t happy with the variation between my choices for faces and hair, but I’m really picky about that sort of thing.
Graphics:
They look nice. They’re much more realistic than other games (See? No WoW comparison there!) and they run great on my computer. Some environments were more interesting than others. The Chaos starting area is great, they really get the creepy feel down. The High Elf starting area was very LoTR like. The Dwarf area felt like a cooler Ironforge.
Sound:
Mythic did well with the music. It fits the mood, it makes things seem epic and sets the mood nicely. However, spell sounds = not as good. The Archmage starts out with one damage spell, and since combat is repetitive (more about that later) you hear that sound 50 times before you get another spell. I was almost to the point of wanting to shut it off. Same with the Magus and their first damage spell. Ambient sounds were all fine.
UI:
Here is where Mythic gets a big win IMO. The UI is clean, easy to use, and feels really good to interact with for the most part. The Tome is rad, character screen is awesome, the map is great. There are some things were I think Mythic could have tried a *little* harder to distance themselves from WoW comparisons – for example, the Pet hotbars look and feel identical, and the screen after you finish a scenario is exactly the same as the screen when you finish a battleground (with the red and blue). Yes, these things will probably become standard in MMOs nowadays, but skin them a little differently so you don’t ask for those comparisons!
Combat:
Okay, like I said earlier – I made it to LEVEL 3. That’s hardly enough to comment on combat AT ALL but I’ll do it because I feel so inclined. Here goes though. It’s lacking a bit. First of all – if you are going to have hotbars that look like WoW’s, they should feel at least half as good as WoW’s. When I click a button, I want to feel like that ability is happening – even if there is a cast bar. EQ2 did this poorly. WoW does it well. I need that feedback to make it feel like I’m engaged in the combat. It’s hard to put into words, but it does *feel* weird. Secondly, something is a bit off with tuning, at least at low levels. At level 1 versus a level 1 mob, it takes so many nukes to kill something. Lack of response when I click the button followed by a 2+ second cast time combined with a weird global cooldown, combined with a little spell effect and then a delayed reaction of the HP going down. It leaves some to be desired and I expect it will be polished up as I’ve seen these complaints in many places.
Tome of Knowledge:
This really is as awesome as people say it is. It wasn’t just putting in achievements and titles ala LotRO style – it really is perfected and done WELL. If there is one thing making me eager for more of the game, it’s the tome. I love lore, I love exploration and discovery, and this is purely sexy. One of the most rad things that Luke and I liked was when you walk up to a quest person and you get a tome entry telling you that you have met your first “High Elf” and then you can open your journal and read about them. But you don’t HAVE TO. For players like Luke who don’t care about quest stories or lore, it’s not all up in their face. They can disregard it. For those of us who love the story, it’s awesome to read it in a real book like UI window, and see it being so prevalent. Getting killed in my first scenario gave me a title because I’d been killed by a Dark Elf. It was rad.
Confusion:
I am someone who hasn’t followed WAR. I haven’t read up on the mechanics and the classes. I didn’t know how ANYTHING works. There is a complete lack of a tutorial that I really think Mythic could benefit by. I stumbled across a trainer and saw there are two options for things I can train. One seems to be my new abilities and the other seems to be talent points. It’s not easy to understand though. There’s also a LOT of UI going on. You have the weird slots in the lower left for putting in some special abilities that I must not have yet, you have something in the lower right that I don’t understand. There is a meter in the top right that I assume has to do with large scale RvR objectives but I don’t know what it is. When I did a scenario I earned something called Renown but I don’t know what that is or what to do with it. There is a learning curve here that I think a bit more handholding could help ease.
So you hate it?!??!?!11111
No! Actually, after my extensive two hours of playing it and trying the Magus, Archmage, Squig Herder, Marauder and Engineer – I REALLY want to play it right when I get home. I hate betas, I never enjoy playing them. I’m really excited to play this game. There are some intriguing things about WAR that make me glad I preordered and looking forward to giving it a shot with my rad guild Casualties of War. I haven’t tried the public quests yet, but the feel is awesome. The different classes are interesting and I don’t know what I want to be yet. The environment is really nice, it feels deep enough to play for awhile. The Tome of Knowledge is so freaking badass that I hope every game copies it. Like Darren said, it’s not revolutionary. It’s another grindy time MMO that happened to add some really kickass bells and whistles. I think it is a game for a different target audience than FreeRealms, DCU, and the Agency so I don’t know why the comparison. I don’t know much about it’s content or longevity. It will be successful, it will do just fine. I’ll give it a shot and we’ll see how it goes.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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I have gotten my Dwarf Engineer up to level 11, and I can say the responsiveness of the combat does need to be improved, as well as NPC agro radius(it seems way too easy to sneak past things), but those are about my only complaints so far. The public quests are awesome, it is such an easy way to get people in the same place, and to get them to work together. It was very easy to get groups together when the objective turned into something that was too much for one person. RvR is a lot of fun, though I’ve just made it into tier 2, and getting my ass whooped at nearly every turn, but still a lot of fun. The Engineer is a really fun class to play, but I won’t be playing it at release. I tried to play something I knew I would not play at release as to not spoil anything.
Spiffy, thanks for the update. I’m looking forward to giving it a spin at the preview weekend.
Just poking my head in to say that our Order Beta Guild is up, Cuppy.
Not sure for how long (as servers may get wiped soon), but it’s up.
Oh, and I pretty much fully agree with you. It’s not reinventing the wheel… it’s just making it work BETTER.
PQs = The Awesome-sauce that all games must steal.
As Bildo said, I think WAR’s basically an improvement on WoW in a lot of ways, though definitely a step back in some others (like variety of gear).
Don’t worry about the combat lag. It wasn’t like that a couple days ago (before more people joined beta), though the inventory UI has been unresponsive. The skill timers seem like any other MMO… some are longer than others.
I agree with you on the need for a tutorial, though I suppose EQ managed alright without one. Those empty slots on the left are Tactics (PvP skills, which you’ll acquire later) and on the right are Morale skills (which you gain later, and have to be charged up during combat before they can be used). The main thing is to choose your mastery path early (which you can look at through a Career Trainer) and purchase only the skills of that path and core skills. Don’t worry. The guild will get you through it.
Like in all MMOs (sadly), the fun increases the further into the game you go. By level 15, my Marauder has a good variety of options for gameplay (open RvR, PQs, Scenarios, PvE, sieges, etc). And as everyone’s said, PQs are a blast as long as you have more than a few people involved. Some of them have already become some of my more memorable MMO experiences.
Hi Cuppy,
I’m not really posting re: WAR – although I enjoyed reading your first impressions! (One attack spell – no other options for combat with archmage early on? Can you hand-to-hand viably?)
But was posting more to say thanks for your “Want To Be A Blogger” page. Really informative and goes beyond the usual technical advice people give.
Nice one!
@Aaron EQ had a tutorial! Don’t you remember the island with the hole at the end? I played it nearly every time the server was down, it was incredibly lame, and in a separate exe, so new players probably would never even see it, unless they were messing around in the applications directory.
Oh gods, the original EQ tutorial… when Verant broke the internet in the Bay area on opening day, I actually booted that thing up.
Almost uninstalled EQ right then and there.
Game is really well done. I’m glad you are enjoying it!
I guess my question is (as I am asking myself this same thing thanks to the preview weekend) is, do you like it because it really is that fun…or do you like it because its not somehting you’ve seen before? Personally i’ve seen nothing different from WoW, Scenarios=Battlegrounds and at least all he ones in the beginning are all variations of King of the Hill (Arathi Basin) Open RvR is pathetic as a melee, by the time you get close to anybody you’ve been raped by the 9 million ranged (Bright Wizards seem to be OP atm).
The game is not bad by any means (still buggy but technically it IS still in beta) and is fun, but I think part of that “fun” comes from the fact that while I am doing the exact same kind of quests as I did in WoW I am not doing them in Barrens or Elwynn Forest. Maybe it changes after level 20 (thats the limit right now) so we shall see, but as it stands if things remain the same it will be a side game to my main WoW when WoTLK comes out.