First and Second Impressions: Warhammer Online
A note from the author: This article is currently out of date.
Please click here to read our updated impressions of Warhammer Online published August 28, 2008.
It was August of last year when I got my first good look at Warhammer Online, after being dispatched to cover it during Games Day LA… which was actually not in LA at all, but in Ontario, a city about as far away from LA as you can get before you start running into the guys from Deliverance.
In the interest of full disclosure, I had perhaps not been following the game’s development as closely as I should have, considering the fact that I was about to conduct a twenty minute interview on the subject.
Aside from a brief stopover at the official site to sign up for beta, I had, in fact, purposefully tried to not look at any screenshots, watch any videos, or read so much as a single article regarding the game, anywhere.
This was not for any lack of interest in my part. WAR was, and continues to be, one of my most eagerly anticipated games. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, launch day will undoubtedly find me logging in the moment the live servers come up for the first time.
Rather, it was due to a policy I’d been forced to adopt after a number of… incidents… in which my high hopes for certain games—which shall remain nameless—were subsequently dashed by the cold truths of harsh reality.
As a result, I now make it a point to not believe a single shred of hype surrounding a game until I’ve logged in to see it in action for myself.
This policy has served me well as a gamer; I can never be disappointed if I have no preconceived expectations to be broken. But, I now found it was not serving me particularly well as I walked into an interview blind, with only a list of generalist questions in my head and the hope that more specifics would come to me once I’d gotten some game time under my belt.
Still, I decided that I could turn this situation to my advantage. How many opportunities does one have to offer up a truly genuine, unsullied first impression on a title of Warhammer’s caliber?
So, after making acquaintances with the staff manning the booth, and positioning myself in front of a vacant demo unit, I found myself logging in to WAR for the very first time, on an Empire Bright Wizard by the name of Glowir.
And, as a result of my willful ignorance regarding the game, the following represents the very first impression that came into my mind, from the moment the loading screen had passed, as near as I can recall it:
This looks a hell of a lot like WoW.
And it did. There was no denying it. From the low-poly engine, to the cartoony models, even the UI layout—everything had an immediate sense of… familiarity. It was nearly déjà vu… as if suddenly it were 2004, all over again.
Well, I told myself, appearances can be deceiving. Don’t judge a book by its cover, and all of that. Let’s see how it plays.
Unfortunately, this thought was very shortly thereafter followed by another: This plays a hell of a lot like WoW, too.
Once again, there was the immediate sense of familiarity. Similar skills, similar casting times, similar mana requirements… tab to target, press 1 for Blaze, repeat until dead… Replace “Blaze” with “Frostbolt” and I was already having horrid flashbacks of nearly wearing out the 1 on my keyboard through two years of heavy raiding.
Even the universal cooldown seemed to be on nearly the exact same timer.
But, of course, first impressions are very often misleading.
The more I played, the more I saw that while there were many similarities to WoW, there were just as many differences. The graphics, while admittedly drawn from the same vein, are darker, the textures having a certain grit to them, lending the game a more somber atmosphere. I didn’t see one purple tree or pink striped tiger the entire time.
And, as everyone from Mythic I spoke to was very quick to point out, it was Warcraft that ripped off Warhammer, not the other way around.
Alright… so maybe the game wasn’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel. That’s fine. As long as it’s fun and entertaining to the point of justifying $14.95 a month, it doesn’t need to.
Unfortunately, what I saw that day of the early game was not particularly fun, or entertaining.
I made it a point to log in to each available newbie area in turn, and note the very first quest the NPC standing nearest the character’s starting position offered. I’ve always been of the opinion that the first quest is the most important of the entire game. This is where you get your hook into a potential player. Nothing less than your absolute best will do.
MMO Gamer Takes Another Look At Warhammer…
MMO Gamer takes a second look at Warhammer, and compares it to the current state of gameplay you can find in WoW….
[...] Crews offers up his first and second impressions of Warhammer Online beta. According to Stevent, RvR = thumbs up but PvE = mediocre. Head on over to read the entire article [...]
To be honest I registered with MMO Gamer specifically because of this article.
Overall I would have to say that this is an excellent POV on your first and second impression of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I do disagree with some parts, such as the low-poly comment, but “overall” a well thought out article.
However this does raise a question or two in my mind. Did you take part in any of the Public Quests? I recall there was one pretty early on in the Greenskin starting area. I think it is a pretty clever way of trying to add something new to the same old PvE. Honestly I think WoW has, again overall, the best PvE currently available and I think it will be tough for anyone to beat it.
The ToK seems to have real potential and I can also see myself spending “a lot” of time browsing through it.
With the Witch Hunter were you playing it as a ranged or melee class? It’s the melee dps class/career for the Empire so if you were trying to handle it like a ranged class that could explain some of your troubles with it. I recall there were a number of issues, including balance, with the early builds so that could have explained some of your PvE troubles as well.
Honestly, for a game still in development, I was pretty impressed that it was as far along as it was. Balance issues still plague even the giants like WoW and I have taken some comfort in the interview, one with PaulB IIRC, where Mythic wants to make sure its worked out before retail. Though it’s going to be tough with twenty-four classes/careers I imagine.
WAR reminds you of WoW? True, I think with Warcraft itself originally going to be a Warhammer game there will be some fundamental similarities though from an MMORPG standpoint not much beyond “some” artistic and naturally the nechanical ones that just about all successful post-EQ ones share. Both have dwarves, orcs, elves, sort of thing and both have PvE. Yet I think there are going to be far fewer similarities than many WoW’sers will actually want.
So overall I think this was an excellent article and look forward to you reviewing WAR when it hits retail.
1)From the low-poly engine,
Are you sure this was Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning you were referring to about a low poly engine?
2) Why are you just now posting something from so long ago?
3) To say the game brings nothing new to the table in terms of PVE would be false due to the Tome of Knowledge and doing Public Quests.
4) I do not believe the claims of you being an MMO connoisseur and then letting a Mage type character melee you to death.
5)Having established that the character did, indeed, have all of its skills trained, she offered a noncommittal shrug that seemed to say, “I guess you just suck,” before returning to her duties.
Unless you can post the name of the person and confirm that she did say this, I highly doubt that is how an employee from Mythic would act. Period.
6)I’ll just come out and say this as plainly as I can: If you’ve played an MMO in the past ten years, you’ve probably already seen everything the early PvE game in WAR has to offer.
Show me all of the MMOs out there that do Public Quests and reward you loot based on contribution.
7) I would hope that for your integrity as a writer and being a connoisseur of the MMORPG genre that you wrote the same exact thing about World of Warcraft, when talking about ripping everything they did right from previous MMORPGs.
Sir Robin: Thanks for registering and leaving your thoughtful comments.
I did indeed try and take part in the early Greenskin quest you mentioned… but it seems that the giant’s heart just wasn’t into it. He bugged out and wouldn’t finish the event both times I attempted it.
And the Witch Hunter.. I was trying to play that any way I could take it. Using only the gun… that didn’t work… using only the sword… that didn’t work… using the gun and the sword in close combat… Well, let’s just say I got a real good look at the “You have died!” screen.
I was relatively impressed with the polish on the early areas myself… aside from a very few glaring bugs, the game wasn’t locking up, ran fine, none of the NPCs answered a hail with [PLACEHOLDER TEXT HERE], etc. I didn’t mention that in the preview because, honestly, it’s pretty easy to dress up a newbie area with some polish. For all I knew, you took two steps into the next zone and the textures were missing.
Arkane: Thanks for registering and leaving your comments, as well… even if we obviously agree to disagree.
1: You might want to go right here, http://www.mmo-gamer.com/?p=242 and read where Adam Gershowitz, who was one of the lead artists on the project, acknowledges the engine is low-poly and indicates that it’s for performance issues in large-scale battles.
2: We took a hard look at where we were in the development cycle of this article and decided to push back the launch date back from November of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008. Here at The MMO Gamer we believe strongly in the mantra of “When it’s done.”
3: The Tome of Knowledge is part of the game at large, not its PvE system. You don’t open the Tome of Knowledge and start clicking on entries to kill mobs.
4: That’s what you call “injecting humor and levity into the piece.”
5: See above. She didn’t say that *out loud*, that’s what I took out of her shrug. And I didn’t get her name, though she was a young woman, relatively short, with glasses and a ponytail, if that helps.
6: The opening of Ahn’Qiraj (which, granted, was only a one-off), which rewarded the people who put in the most time with legendary mounts.
7: WoW’s release was a bit before this site’s time (we were officially online around this time last year). Had I reviewed it back then, I would have said what I do now: WoW takes the best of EverQuest, which in turn took the best from Diku, distilled it down into its purest essence, and left off all the frills. That (and name recognition) are the roots of its success.
I can agree with most of your rebuttals but you can not ignore that WAR is bringing a lot to the PVE table with Public Quests, and there won’t be just one per server, there will be many, and they will be happening all the time.
You call yourself a unbiased journalist but you say and I quote “This looks a hell of a lot like WoW” and “This plays a hell of a lot like WoW, too.” now you might have had the best intentions but those are loaded statements.
I was able to play the game at gamsday and I would also like to state I have no idea how you could say that. I found this picture from the Penny Arcade forums its a excellent comparison between the two. http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/727/wowvswarhammercopyuq9.jpg
If you notice the art direction is very difrrent. If you look at the detail in the Warrior Priests armor you can see a ton of detail in it, detail that is not present anywhere in WoW. As for the low polygon count well man I guess if your helmet casting complex shadows on your face is signs of a low polygon count that I am cool with that cause it looks great. Granted the graphics don’t go for that photo realism like AoC but I am more then ok with that they look amazing and there is a ton of deatil in the game.
The interface only has very slight similarites and the cooldown timer is pretty much standered with all mmos.
The PQs are amazing and comparing them to AQ is a gross misunderstanding of both the AQ event and of PQs. When I first heard about them I thought they would just be a glorified version of grinding however after giving them a try I was amazed and I loved the scripted events. The PQs bring alot to the PVE game.
You did play a very early build if you played it in august, from what I have heard they have made a lot of changes and improvments but I am very sceptical about anything I haven’t played myself. Oh and you died as a Witch Hunter??? How did you do that? when I played them I thought they where a bit overpowered. Also where in the hell did you find rats in the game? I went all around the maps and never saw anything close to a rat.
“1: You might want to go right here, http://www.mmo-gamer.com/?p=242 and read where Adam Gershowitz, who was one of the lead artists on the project, acknowledges the engine is low-poly and indicates that it’s for performance issues in large-scale battles.”
Ah, that explains it. First impression is you are writing “low-poly” like something along WoW lines or less, not low-poly compared to Vanguard.
I do think WAR’s PvE will have some nice additions with the Public Quest and Kill Tracking but honestly it’s “still” PvE. Having a much more in depth and enjoyable PvP/RvR will be it’s defining feature in my mind.
Considering your only complaint in regard to the PVE content was that your level 1 quest wasn’t epic enough I’m going to assume that you pretty much had no real gripes with the PVE content. You stated that WOW will only be toppled by another Blizzard MMO as though Blizzard has contributed something to the genre that others before had not. The ONLY thing that Blizzard did was make it easy for casuals to feel a sense of reward by getting rid of xp loss through death and making it incredibly easy to level, that’s it! NOTHING else … they borrowed EVERYTHING else and boy do I mean everything! They are great developers of course but you make it sounds as if they redefined the genre, they did not.
Asuming everthing that we have seen is factually correct, and please excuse me for only playing one mmorpg so far (WoW), but what would, in your opinion blow the WoW PvE system out of the water? (which i think is INCREDIBLY boring anyway since it doesnt even make sense looting an item that is SUPPOSED to have blood/ichor/brains/teeth… or even clothed.. but still on has a .0001% -or whatevers less than realistic- chance of dropping that particular item thus leaving the poor buggers to be slaughtered in mass for the next few hours just to turn in a quest bloody usless quest that does nothing but gain xp…. probably like every RPG-yes you can go back even further than 10 years and find diablo if you want and see that it too has pretty much just same xp and loot we see in WoW.. or any other rpg for that matter.
You also forgot to mention anything on how PvEing will affect the entire world RvR wise which is a major part of the game as well as the detailed various affects of unlocking bits and pieces of the ToK, which apperently if you could kill some rats with your witchhunter… you would eventually become more apt at doing so, as well as the benefits of just plain exploring which WoW doesnt have anything close to other than the miniscule xp that you gain from entering a new area. Please explain, why these have been overlooked..and maybe it might be time to start taking a third look at the game…. in its entirety before you truely condem it to less than the level of a stolen idea, i.e. WoW.
It’s hilarious to see how much debate and fire this piece sparks on other websites. I’m definitely Steven’s fan. He hasnt traded in his testicles for cotton balls and speaks it like he sees it, right or wrong. Such a lack of that in gaming journalism. You’d think he wrote for 1up or something.
WoW’s PVE is only going to be blown out of the water by a game that offers similar or superior levels of polish and attention to the player experience, but advances beyond the Whak-a-Mole autotargetted combat system into something more immediate and visceral. Transpose God of War into a Massive setting or something.
Like many others I to registered to the site solely because of your outrageous review. You basically came into the game expecting something huge and don’t deny because from the way you reviewed it and the way the employee re-acted to you I can already tell why she was frustrated with you. The game is in a very early beta stage. We are lucky to even get the chance of trying it in such a weak stage.
I’m a closed beta player. I’ve been through the thick and thin of the bugs and errors. The game is first of all and never will be like WoW. They are literally killing themselves over the fact that they wanna bring something different. If you we’re a intelligent and a ACTUAL mmo gamer you would have realized from the start that this game was a newly reborn DAoC or even Everquest, but no you like every other person have a very bad sense of reviewing you immediately compared the game to WoW.
Everything in your review is incorrect I have no idea why you are saying you had all those bugs and problems I have never in my whole WAR playing career have experienced those issues except for the early stages in early 2007 when the guild phase just BARELY came out and it was in beta.
You are basically reporting false information that isn’t even relative to where the game is now. You don’t give any positive reviews about the game. Like for example the tome, Public quests, keeps, sieges, raids, the various skill trees and various classes with each unique skills and all very powerful and useful unlike WoW. Which has a huge problem and you know it over classes being to powerful in PvP.
If people don’t believe me about the bugs. LOOK around is all I have to say hopefully it’ll weed out the bad players who have no sense of real gameplay…. much like yourself from WAR.
My final note is that you are a bad journalist. If you were a true journalist you would have done your homework like every journalist does and you would maybe had a better experience and something more intelligent to say. If this site tends to get more views and hits I suggest you get your information in gear and get rid of your not read/view or listen to anything about the game and then blindly try it because obviously it’s not helping you and it never will.
Thank you all for taking the time to register and leave your thoughts on my piece. I appreciate it, even if you only did it to tell me what a horrible writer I am.
Sorry for my belated reply. I’ll try to get to everyone, and hope the earlier commentators are still reading:
bobdole1979:
I played two builds of the game, one in August (my first impressions), one in late October (my second impressions) during the beta shutdown. This article is a bit on the late side… the reason for which is a long story, but it won’t happen again.
And I agree with you, the art style is different, I say that in the article. That it looked like WoW was *my first impression*. First impressions very often change later.
People keep asking me why I didn’t mention Public Quests in the writeup… the reason is simple: I couldn’t finish one that worked. I only saw one in the starting areas while exploring, in the Greenskin area, and both times I attempted it (once in August, once in October), it didn’t work. Maybe they were having an off day.
And, incidentaly, I found rats in the Empire starting town, on the hill behind the bar.
elfwithmirrorshadeeyes:
Thanks… I guess it’s nice to know that my testicles are still intact. I was worried there, for awhile.
ThorAlmighty and C.Chosen:
Both of your posts pertain to WoW, so I’ll answer you at the same time.
People seem to be making far too much out of my comparisons in the article. You want to know why those comparisons are there? It’s not because I’m in love with WoW, or it’s the only MMO I’ve ever played (far from it), it’s because it is *the number one online game in the world* by a factor of ten, when counting traditional MMOs.
In general, people always want to compare every title that comes out to whatever is in the lead. When DAoC came out, people compared it to EQ. And, I’m sure there were DAoC fans back then just as vociferous yelling at some other writer, saying “DAoC is nothing like that game!”
Such comparisons are not entirely unavoidable, but, when you don’t make them they stand out simply by their absence.
C.Chosen: It wouldn’t really take much to blow WoW’s PvE system out of the water, at least, in terms of substance.
It seems to me that when designing WoW, they really took to heart the old adage, “A designer knows he has reached perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Blizzard, essentially, took everything addictive about the three generations of online games prior to WoW (all the way back to MUD 1), and distilled it down to its purest essence, leaving off everything else:
You want a house? Forget it.
Two dozen races? Just enough to set up two opposing factions.
Fifty different specialized classes? Nothing but the bare archetypes with a couple crossovers.
A thousand spells? Basic abilities we keep giving you a higher grade of.
All a game has to do to beat that is to offer more, but *with the same level of quality you can achieve by leaving off the fluff and polishing only the core game*. No easy task, but it could be done.
And Thor: If you read my earlier comment to Arkane, you’d see that I mostly agreed with your statement… but, I also think that WoW stopped being a game somewhere around 2006, and has now transformed into some kind of once-in-a-decade cultural phenomenon the likes of which I haven’t seen since DOOM set the stage for all other FPS titles to follow into the present day.
I have a friend whose seventy year old mother had never played a video game before in her life until she picked up a copy of WoW, and is now a member of a high-end raiding guild.
She’s not even aware that she’s playing an MMO. Wouldn’t know what one was if you told her. All she knows is she’s having fun.
That goes beyond a game… it’s nearly into the realm of supernatural mind control powers.
I’d almost go so far as to say that it was some sort of deliberate plot on Blizzard’s part, but anyone who played during the early days can tell you that this came out of left field to them as much as to the rest of us. The servers were absolutely crushed under the load for months, two hour wait times were the norm the first week and a half after the game went live on almost every server. Back when I quit, two years ago, they were only just starting to get a real handle on it.
Rollen:
This article was not a “review” it was not even a *pre*view, because that would have required me to have access to the full game. It was an impression.
An impression is not a critique of everything the game has to offer, or an unbiased appraisal of it. It is a collection of thoughts and opinions that *you personally, the writer,* felt while seeing the game for whatever amount of time you had with it.
Much “better” journalists than I write impression pieces after viewing nothing more than either a prerendered video or a hands-off walkthrough of a game showing exactly what the developers wanted them to see. Based on this they then go on to predict, resoundingly, that the game will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Is their glowing praise more valid than my “I am only going to report what I experienced for myself” approach, even if you may not agree with it?
But, your reaction isn’t particularly surprising to me. It falls into about 1/3 of the responses I’ve read so far:
I have seen hardcore WAR fans saying I was being too harsh on the game (and/or that I’m a WoW fanboy idiot with no idea what I’m talking about) and should have talked up its good points more.
Then, there were more moderate players, interested in WAR but not following its every move, saying I gave a fairly even-handed overview.
And finally, if you can believe this one, I’ve seen Conan fans saying I was too lax on the game, and shouldn’t have been talking smack about their title of choice in the ending.
You know what that indicates to me? When the middle is agreeing with me? That I was probably doing my job.
And for my final note, if you’re going to call me a bad journalist, I will take the liberty of calling you a bad beta tester. Betraying the trust placed in you by violating the NDA to come here and bicker at me? If you could see me right now in real life, I would be waggling my finger at you.
Rollen.. a newly reborn DAOC? God forbid that. That game’s PVE content was as substandard as it gets, and who doesn’t remember mez/assist trains ruling RVR? Puh-lease. The more WAR can derive from WoW the better in that regard, even if you don’t like WoW.
[...] Nifty(“div#wrapper”, “tl tr normal”); 0+shareThe mmo gamers impressions of warhammer onlineSteve Crews of The MMO Gamer takes a hard look at the upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning [...]
Hi, I thought the article was well-written and pretty funny. I’m a late bloomer into the MMO genre, although I’ve been playing games since the days of Wizardry. In 2001 I got sidetracked by an RTS game called Sacrifice and played it hard core until just a few months ago when I finally decided, somewhat sadly, that it was time to move on. So … about 3 months ago I decided to try WoW, my only MMO aside from a very brief dabble into City of Villains which I didn’t really take to. At any rate, I didn’t think you slammed Warhammer and you certainly didn’t discourage me from desiring to try it. Too bad Sacrifice didn’t reach the level of fame in which they could have created an MMO. Twould have been glorious. Cheers.
I would like to commend you on your review. You took what most other game reviewers do, ramble on about the positive points in the game, turned it around and conveyed the negative points; because no one goes to read a review looking to reread what they had already absorbed countless time on the promotion site for the game itself. However what did not sit well with me was that you had conveyed Mythic as a corporation of rip off artists, and furthermore said they had taken from World of Warcraft, the immense mmo aspect funnel that we have today. When a game such as, oh lets call this variable “Warhammer Online :Age of Reckoning” precedes a game that had taken ideas from nearly every game prior to it, which I will dub “World of Warcraft”, it becomes nearly impossible not to “steal” ideas from said MMO monster. Apart from that I have no real gripes with your review, I understand it was made quite a while ago and perhaps the game was uglier back then, but if it had looked like it does today, then I don’t give a damn what anyone says, for an MMO focusing on massive raiding groups, its beautiful.
This game will be fail. All the people who cry about balance in wow pvp and say there is no skill in it are the ones that are 1) fail 2) too lazy to roll another class. Everyone can stop crying about unbalanced classes. If you feel that a class is so OP then roll one. The argument all these “war” nerds try to push saying that the pvp is going to take more skill is also the fail statement of somebody that just sucks at wow’s pvp. Saying that focusing your skills down to a few in a grouping like war is going to be, rather than using a wide array of spells, and it taking more skill is bullshit. I can give countless examples backing that statement. And yes, this game is a carbon copy of wow and as much as you basement dwelling table top nerds want something to call your own, its not going to happen. This game will be trash. And stfu with wow copied warhammer. Its orcs and goblins. So i guess warhammer copied d & d if this is the case. warhammer came about when people needed more than paper and pencil, and warcraft when people needed more than figurines on a table top map, so hardy fuckin har. Thats how it goes. Wow is not a copy b/c warhammer did not invent wizards and dragons. However warhammer will be a simplified copy of wow and will fail.
Nice piece, I have to say, a little late perhaps. I play wow, but am interested in this title.
I’d have to say there are similarities. However, why try to fix something thats broke, i mean, look at beat ‘em ups, they all have roughly similar UI’s, and racing games too for that matter.
Perhaps we have found the perfect UI/graphic formula for MMO’s I’m still interested in this game. Good review tho, won’t be trying out the which hunter.
Andy: First off, I think it’s pretty hilarious that you think WoW PvP takes skill, when it’s mainly about resilience and class composition now. It USED to take skill…but that time has passed. Now success in PvP relies on 2 things: 1) Spare time to grind resilience gear and 2) If you and your arena buddy are complimentary classes.
However, I’m not worried about whether WAR PvP takes skill or not, I want PvP to be FUN. I want PvP that isn’t monotonous and frustrating. I want to see the “PvE” specs be useful. Want to tank in PvP? You can in WAR. I want to see massive battles, not 10 on 10 special olympics slap fests or canned PvP games with the same team compositions over and over.
When I played WoW pre-BC, I would roll classes just to try them in level 60 battlegrounds (2 day AVs FTW). Now I roll classes to jump around Shat waiting for a raid invite. PvP in WoW has turned into a 90% gear based, 10% skill based snorefest. And this is from a guy that refused to raid pre-BC because I found it boring.
I’m ready to give WAR a chance and /delete WoW. I miss real PvP. I miss FUN PvP. And I’m fairly certain WAR can fill the void.
This is an amazing article! Although I must say that it’s not amazing in it of itself, but combined with comments and subsequent feedback, it’s an exciting read.
I thought it would be a good idea to list my MMO background, but lets just assume that I played text based MMO’s and graduated through MMO college to end up tasting all the different flavors each company had to offer.
What I really needed to say was that I have read countless articles from one website to the next only to find the same, horridly bland ideas shuffled and reshuffled until you have no idea who’s head it orginated from. Then you have this guy write something from his mind, his own experience, something not tainted by all of your beliefs in what constitutes a “decent journalistic endeavor”.
I for one, commend him for standing up and telling his story. I don’t want to be lured, I don’t want to be tricked, I don’t need an advertisement or an overstated “awesome” “fanboi” experience. Just basic comparisons.
All comments aside, I don’t think many people on here have really used their critical thinking skills to dicern why it’s necessary to compare WAR to WoW. The obvious most blatant aspects are kicking me in the face!
1) Game controls
2) Maps
3) Level Gaining
4) Classes w/ Hybrids
5) Itemized loot
6) Add infinitum
What if someone created a new MMO? Something where there were no levels? I’m thinking Shadow of the Collosus meets MMO universe. Just you and a world, and other people, the rest is a mystery for you to uncover. These ideas are unlikely to mature to fruition soley because they haven’t been tested, and the current MMO populace is now way too accustomed to having their system setup a specific way. The rise of WoW was really the death of truly original work.
All my gripes and clapping now completed, I will say this: WAR is something you should atleast try for yourself. Don’t worry about a preview or impression that was made, worry about how you feel when you play the game. If you like it, nothing you read will hold leverage over your emotions.
Also, try not to respond by attacking someone’s writing. Criticism is good, but if I came to your place of work and told you that you sucked at your job and you are completely misinformed I would only come off as an ass. Instead, if you wish to adjust someones perspective, do it with constructive comments and positive feedback.
Thanks again!
-Green
So far my experiences in the open beta have been similar. I’m having fun as a chaos marauder and as an old school gamer seeing things like the Skaven in an open world make me smile – but it doesn’t seem like anything special. I’ll play it for a week and then not buy it or pay.
Do you know why? Frankly, because of WOW. I never cared overtly for that either, as in it’s nothing horribly special, (I’ve been betaing games since Everquest-age) but I do care for something else – my girlfriend. We signed up at the same time for the Request a Friend promotion, and have been doing everything together, and talking about what we’re doing the entire time. Trash talking, planning strategies, etc. It’s fun because we’re in the same room and for the first time ever, it’s an online game she’s heard enough about to give it a chance and it’s cute (and also violent and quick) enough for her to enjoy it. She spent ten minutes jumping around and laughing about how her night elf flipped in the air.
People look for different things in games, and what I enjoy now is playing with the people close to me. Before this we’d only been able to play the odd ps2 co-op game.
So we’ll probably stick with WoW simply because it’s the one we started playing together. When we’re both level 70 and bored, we might quit (I plan to play some co-op rpgs over the network, like NWN 2) – but we’re probably not going to jump to another. The gameplay is close enough that it’s not really worth the jump, and losing the fun emotional investment in our wow characters.
As a games enthusiast I don’t think WoW is anything special – but as a cultural force, I have to admit it’s amazing how such a variety of people seem to get into it so quick. The only other game I’ve seen her take such a shine to was roller coaster tycoon 2.
That being said – I’m going to try every trial I can get my hands on with her, and if there’s another she likes more I’ll make the jump in a minute. But I don’t think minor gameplay changes are going to do the trick, and I feel that without the knowledge of the warhammer universe I have (and the nostalgia I get when thinking about my old Bloodbowl Chaos team) this isn’t going to be the one.
Oh Oh, sorry about the third comment, but I remembered something:
You know what will really really do the trick? More games with total customization for your character. At least with size, color, hair, etc. Our other greatest latest past time has been playing with the spore creature creator. The game itself is ok, and I like the space stage, but she doesn’t seem to care for anything but the creator and I tend to agree – actually creating something is the most fun part. If was exactly like WoW but offered more customization in your character, I bet that would win us over. In fact, I’m kind of hoping the upcoming haircuts etc will be a step towards that kind of thing in WoW.
Has anyone mentioned that AoC (Age of Camelot), was out before WoW? So when I see in your review you mentioned wearing out of one your buttons only reminded you of WoW, sounded a little biased towards WoW did it not? And you can call say that any have a low-poly engine in comparison to another, but War does not necessarily have a low-poly engine if you continue to read Adam’s explanation he even says so, “The engine is low-poly—now, admittedly it’s significantly higher than you would think, and there’s a lot of detail there, but it allows us by not using some things like normal maps, etc., it allows us to make more work, make more artwork in the game, it allows us to do more with what we’ve got, and it allows us to show a lot more on the screen.” -Adam Gershowitz , One question………..
If WaR has a low poly engine what kind of graphics engine would WoW then have?
I have to say I have been waiting in anticipation ever since the massive battles of Dark Ages of Camelot for a new game to slap the PVP or RVR hammer on WOW. I used to play DAOC for years as a dwarf berzerker and ran with one of the best guilds on the Iseult server. I left DAOC because the nerfed the berzerker class far too harshly and I never recovered from it so I left the game. Years later all this talk about World of Warcraft I thought the game MUST have been better than DAOC in terms of PVP for it to be so popular. My first experience in PVP in WOW was a sad one from the massive disappointment it was. I definitely do not like the limited amounts of battle grounds where there are 10 vs 10 or 15 vs 15 or even 40 vs 40. In DAOC there were immense battles (that eventually lead to some serious server lag) but to witness 100 vs 100 at the gates leading out of ones territory is incredible. That has never, and never will so far, happen in WOW. There is nothing to fight for or defend in wow but for the battlegrounds. There is no territory to covet or power rune to defend. WoW has reached a repetitive cycle of arenas and raids that only leave one hopping to find the right combination of players to MAYBE get a drop in an instance. I will be trying out Warhammer because I feel Mythic learned a few lessons from DAOC and hopefully tweak it to make it better.
Okay, way back in the day DAoC (from beta) and it was fun then the nerf bat got pulled out, and it became more important to mythic to add hat vendors than fix game dynamics. I have been playing WoW but decided to try WAR. So far the game has no improved graphics over DAoC, and just slightly better than the orig DAoC leveling treadmill. Sad that in what 5-7 years worth of tech advancement this is the best they could do? Honestly im sick of WoW but WAR is just plain sad.
Yeh RvR was fun except for the servers crashing during every relic raid over 100 people.
I doubt I will be paying for this after the first month is up.
Lets be honest…. All mmo’s are made in the shadow of the World of warcraft, granted it is a great game, and it gives a player a whole new, role in a game, but with that said, lets keep in mind that Blizzard has been the one setting some of the standards of what we expect of a mmo based game?…..
NO ! Not by a long shot….. There were MMO before WOW, and they also very fun and great to play… why? It was new to everybody ! So the whole thing about wow being the greatest of them all… Not at all…. Its just the easiest to start with… It demands no skill really…. And i have been playing it for a long time… I just stopped playing… Didnt have the time anymore…. But i will grant you that WoW has brought new ideas to the surface…. And it is a solid game, but not the greatest ever… And even if it rules the market ATM, it is getting more and more critisme by the players and the media… So the timing for Warhammer Online, is great… And RvR is a great concept, meaning you really make a differnce and PVP will become a core part of the game, and will give the game a fighting chance to survive “Wrath of the lich king” And the only reason blizzard has been putting off the realese date, is becouse it is playing it safe, it will be realesed when all the other mmo’s newly made mmo have been put on the market…. So they can use it as a back-up….
But to put a number on the games and keeping in mind that WAR has’nt been online for more that 2 days….. From a scale from 1-10
WoW: 9.2 (Great game, have had a great run)
AOC: 5 (O.K. game, but has to many errors)
WAR: 8.0 (First experience is good, but it needs a bit more time to grow)
Eve: 7.8 (Good game but lacks social aspects and you often give up, to many ways to go)
thats what i think about the mmo market….
Thx for reading….
That was a great review but im dissapointed aswell, i as many other people have been waiting for that one game that would kick wow in the so called nuts by bringing something new and fresh ive played wow, eve, vanguard, everquest, and even Pirates of the burning sea ( only for like 4 days ) and i stuck with wow just because it was easy to pickup you had an in depth story in almost every corner from Van Cleef and the defias brotherhood till sunwell plateauit had the perfect balance but after a while as with all things it gets repetetive, so i was hoping WAR would be different but i guess ill wait till star trek online ever comes out :p.
oops accidently submitted last article withoiut finsihing.
anyway cant rem where i was, but suffice to say that i love pvp. reading your review which many have commented as entirely negative have actually made me want to go play warhammer online..and im a wow addict…. so seems to be a fair preview to me… anway hope to see you nice people on WAR.. i hope theres not too many rat killer open box delivery crap.. oh wait you said u can level 1 – 40 with rvr… woop here we go!!!
thanks again
LOTRO is the best MMO out today. The end.
Ok sure the 1st part of the game is very simpular to wow WHAT MMORPG ISN’T?… and WAR is pvp based not pve based.
btw: if they put the best part of a game in the first 5 lvls which are done in like 20 mins, then the other LONGER lvl’ing stages will be a drag because we expected everything to be ‘perfect” as the start… So sorry get past lvl 20 do some pvp then tell us if you changed your mind about it
thanks
Hi Zac,
These impressions are from early this year and could be somewhat outdated. To read Steve’s more recent impressions of the game, check out his updated third impressions from August: http://www.mmogamer.com/08/27/2008/warhammer-online-third-impressions and some thoughts about his first week in the game: http://www.mmogamer.com/09/22/2008/thoughts-on-warhammer-online-the-first-week.
Also keep your eyes open for our review of the final game.
Cheers,
Siam
Editor-in-chief
[...] provide feedback for the game itself, but I’m sure you could find sources that provide that. Warhammer Online First Impression (Review) [...]
Well to start off, in comparison to WOW, I can’t give a full on comparison, so I won’t. I personally did not like WOW, so I can’t give a comparison without some major bias toward hating its guts. But I digress. This is my experience and my opinion about the game
I have enjoyed my experience with Warhammer. It has a few bugs here and there, but that is to be expected out of any MMO. No game is perfect. I love the PQ’s, the concept of jumping in and helping a group finish is fun. And one of the PQ’s I recently did with a very good group had a big horde of orcs attacking as we protected three siege weapons. I was a healing class, so I did my job and kept everyone ticking. However, in the PQ’s a majority of the time; you can do the first two stages by yourself or with a few people. The third stage is where you need a group a lot of times with tanks, healing and dps. And finding a group isn’t always possible.
The PvE outside of the PQ’s is what you would expect from and MMO, fetch this, kill that, Kill so many of these to fetch that, etc etc. They do get repetitive, but they are good ways to finding the PQ’s without running around. They aren’t the best ways to get xp and gear, but they do give you enough gear to survive better then you did before, and the xp is always good in-between pvp. When you hit mid tier 2 early tier 3, you start to notice that it gets harder and harder to do stuff alone. Which is what mythic was going for when they created the game.
The PvP has its ups and downs. Scenarios have gotten better with wait time as of recently. The drawback is you never know what you’re going to get and you could get a group of all tank no dps or all dps and no healing. Which is not how the games classes should play, but victory can be brought about with skill. The raids on keeps and objective point’s area a quick get away from pve. Go take an objective get some free renown and go back to what you were doing. Keeps however, are much more difficult. You need a well balanced team, and some strategy to take down the lord and claim the keep, and the prize you may or may not have received. I have not done a city raid, so I can not tell you how I feel about those.
In terms of balance, I do not think the game is unbalance, but too balanced for people to get use to. From what I have heard from my friends that have played WoW, they say that at some point or another there is one class that seems to dominate other classes. (This is excluding skill and numbers mind you). In Warhammer, there are three areas of class just like most MMOs. There are healers, tanks, melee dps, and ranged dps. It is people learning how to use your area of class that makes the game fun, and makes whatever your doing successful. When people start to catch on to not tank as a ranged dps, and as a tank too not run in last, the game will hit its peak, and I believe more and more will enjoy it.
Order vs destruction, I have both order characters and destruction characters I have to say ,of the classes I’ve played, I do not see an imbalance between the two sides. Each side, after the December update, will have something on the opposing side that is very similer to the other. Destruction sorcerer/sorceress vs Order Bright wizard, Destruction witch elf vs order witch hunter etc etc. A well rounded group is the best way to survive and bring victory to your side. I have played both the most powerful takes, as of now, on each side. Destruction’s black Orc and order’s swordmaster. Of what I can tell in a one on one fight, it comes down to skill even though they are relatively the exactly same class, except the black orc has a healing ability that raises his max health, but the swordmaster has blocking that could make the orc’s healing harder to activate. It just comes down to skill in the end.
The down side I have noticed is population in tiers. I tier one and three I see very few people, but in tier two and four there are lots of people roaming around and fighting. It is aggravating when you can’t find a group to do a PQ or raid the keep.
Another down side is, people either fall into you know what your class is for, or you have no clue and you just try to kill. I have run into a lot of people who don’t know how to play their class. (not saying the writer of the article doesn’t mind you) and it is noticeable because they are the first to be taken out. When casters are your first ones in battle, or tanks are the last that might be an indication. No one is perfect and I’m not saying anyone who picks up the game knows exactly how to play it, but people who unfamiliar with classes are easily noticed.
In conclution, the game has its good and its bad. Though it appears that I significantly acknowledged the good, some of the bad things to me do not seem as bad as other, but that’s just me. And I know some of the WOW fanatics are saying I don’t like it cause I suck at it, that’s a possibility, but I picked up warhammer and enjoyed it almost immediately.
In short, the WAR team have done right everything that’s so completely wrong about WoW, AoC and the slew of other popular MMOs out there today. It should’ve been clear to everyone that it’s designed PvP in mind, and it shows. The amount of variety, versatility and depth in classes alone is enough to make it a solid game.
I have powerleveled and I have been casual in several games of this type, and usually being casual means missing out on most of the fun/action, but not this time around. Lobotomized no-life grinders will probably enjoy the other aforementioned games more as they “offer” (read: force) a multitude of evenings/weeks/months wasted in order to feel the false sensation of accomplishment or the slightest improvement in character development, whereas WAR is enjoyable from moment one and only keeps getting better as the game grows on you and you start fathoming out the mechanics a little better.
Some old school purist nerds might feel like MMORPGs are meant to consume your whole life because you should be sucked into your character’s life anyway, but quite frankly it’s plain retarded. WoW has gone downhill ever since the betas and turned from an enjoyable game into a swamp of diarrhea in world record time, the PvE element is about hitting one key repeatedly for several hours in a row five days a week while watching TV and the PvP… well, with those mechanics it’s hardly PvP at all – it’s a lottery of both latency and luck, and this is coming from a fairly successful ex-WoWer of over 4 years (and the last 3½ years was spent sitting on a barrel in Orgrimmar/Assrath). What comes to Conan, I had hard time coming up with excuses to arse myself online after level 10. There’s simply nothing in it and that PvP is a free-for-all gankfest, even though you can’t really even tell if the guy next to you is whacking your ass or trying to help you with the mob you’re fighting.
So, I’m quite used to hearing downright moronic arguments like “go play CS/WC3 if you want PvP”. I’m sorry, but I never liked shooters, so what’s there for me? WAR… now… after idling in WoW for years, chatting with buddies.
Well, at least my guitar playing skills developed immensely during the few PvE raids I attended to over the years and not having anything to do in a game is a good way to get the house cleaned up and important tasks done, but I still rather close my computer while I’m doing something else, log in the game, have a good time in there and log out without being massively pissed off at both the time wasted and the jerkoff people playing it.
Lastly, I’ve never had anything to do with the Warhammer series, still don’t know how much the game was marketed or hyped and I wasn’t overly excited about it (apart from getting something to replace WoW for good as means to relax and kill some spare time), so this is quite an unbiased view from a person who enjoys a FAIR fight against other human players and loves goblins and trolls and other nasty little buggers.
WAR seems great but personally I doubt it’s going to be able to amass as large of a following as WOW. In my own opinion I rather hope it doesn’t…. as a WOW player i think a large amount of the MMO experience is based on population. The games no fun if it’s just you. Personally i wouldn’t want to start at 1 all over again after I’ve put so much time and effort into leveling a character to 80……
Alex.