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Warhammer Online Beta Impressions Part 1
Part of Keen's adventure in MMORPG, Reviews, WAR
The NDA is down and it's time to give you all my impressions of Warhammer Online. Over the course of the next few days I will be releasing, in parts, my thoughts on WAR. I'm going to share with you the positives AND the negatives as I have experienced them firsthand. The purpose of these beta impressions is to continue doing what Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog has been all about from the beginning: Sharing our thoughts on the games we play so that our readers can be truly informed.
It's time to dive right into it! I'm going to begin by giving my general first impressions of the game then I will take certain features, mechanics, systems, and parts of the game one by one and give my quick thoughts. As the day unfolds and perhaps even into tomorrow and throughout this week I'll continue expanding upon my thoughts, share videos, and provide you all with any information I can.
NOTE: I will be taking questions and answering them in a Q/A blog post today if necessary. Feel free to ask questions.
First Impressions
Warhammr Online: Age of Reckoning is exactly what I hoped it would be when I learned that Mythic was creating another MMORPG. The design direction and scope are true to what was promised. This is a game all about RvR and it illustrates that point almost every minute of gameplay. Many developers set out with the goal of creating a game with PvP and PvE but few succeed; most will have one or the other or have one be nothing more than an afterthought. WAR is designed to include both PvE and PvP from the beginning and does so in a way that the player can contribute to the realm war, and thus be considered as RvRing, by doing both. That's one thing I find so great about WAR, no matter what you do it contributes to the realm war.
More specifically now, the game has a lot of polish. I feel like I have been playing a finished product. Aside from some problems, which I'll go into later, there have been very few times that I say to myself "This game needs more time in beta".
Look and Feel of the world: is it a real world? Does it look cool?
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High Elf Lands: Beautiful
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The artwork and the scope of details put into this game are amazing. I'm constantly stopping and admiring the landscapes and the architecture. From beautiful vistas to desolate battlefield wastelands to something as simple as a bell tower, this game has details layered upon details. It has the perfect 'Warhammer' feel that fans of the tabletop and pen/paper games will pick up on and be familiar with from the first minute.
The world is a true world, unlike recent games like AoC which instance and redundantly instance themselves. If you've been following the game you'll know that there are tiers for each racial pairing (Example: Greenskins vs. Dwarves) and these tiers (1-4) are enormous zones/regions. They are not redundantly instances and you will spend 10+ levels in them without zoning even once. The ONLY time you zone is when you cross over into another tier whether it be running to it or taking a flight master and of course entering a Scenario. Open-world RvR areas are seamlessly connected and not only feel like, but ARE, a part of the actual world. HUGE kudos to the Mythic teams that put this together.
Combat: RvR and PvE
Combat in WAR is what I consider to be 'traditional' pacing. Generally speaking, it's not much different from EQ, WoW, LOTRO, DAOC, etc. It feels like the time spent in combat however is a little more sometimes. Killing level 1 NPC's on my Shaman can take several spell casts and melee hits whereas in a game like WoW most level 1 things are dead with a few attacks. Mythic has spent a lot of time increasing the time RvR fights take. They don't want anyone to be 1 shot, 2 shot, or for combat to be so quick that players lose the tactical opportunities to think about what move they should use next (although really this time is not more than a few seconds, it came seem like a long time for someone who is a veteran mmo gamer).
I don't want people to misunderstand what I'm saying and start spreading the word that "omg WAR combat is so slow and boring!" because it's anything but boring and 'slow'. Let me clarify further by saying combat is fast pace but the fights are drawn out longer.
More details on page 2.
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