WAR thoughts on it.. from BETA

[geoffdavison]

So far i'm enjoying the game...

seems pretty easy to figure out quickly.. public quests are fun and a peice of cake to get involved in..

gear is easy to get.. just via quests and doing the public quests and obtaining "influence"

anyone else have thoughts or impressions?

[Dor]

Ive played for a good while now... seems a lot like wow but missing something somehow, cant really put my finger on what tho.

[daddyd302]

Are you guys in close beta? It's after midnight here, and I still can't get into open beta. I didn't order the game, but as a Fileplanet subscriber I got into the open beta. I guess it's really more like Sept 7 afternoon, and not after midnight for open beta....

[Dor]

yeh Im in closed.. dont think the server is back up for open yet least a lot of ppl crying about it on the WoW forums (go figure)

[daddyd302]

yeh Im in closed.. dont think the server is back up for open yet least a lot of ppl crying about it on the WoW forums (go figure)That's just too funny, people on the WoW forum talking about Warhammer. Anyways as of 10 AM this morning, the beta is downloading the patch so it's good to go for all those open beta people. Downloading right now, won't get a chance to play til later today.

[geoffdavison]

If you prebought you could do the "weekend preview" the open beta is today on..

I do like how easy it is to get involved in RvR

[Dor]

yeh there are some things I really like in War.. the PQs are a nice add. the rvr areas (not lvl dependent) that kind of stuff is fun.

[Jaly]

The public quests sound nifty. I think the way the loot is distroed is anyone who meets some very low minimum threat level on the PQ will get a roll of 1-1000 at the end, the UI will automatically roll for you at the end of the quest.

The more you contribute, the more chance you have to score loot. Just being involved will net you a roll however, and my buddy on the preview weekend got #1 rank from tanking (threat level helped we beleive) and ended up getting some where of an 800 point bonus to his roll, so he rolls 14 and his total is 814, and some guy that was essentially watching the whole thing rolled 9xx, which ended up being the top roll.

I forgot to ask my buddy if the loot was BoE or BoP, but if the PQ loots are BoE, then I could see a very distinct advantage to boxing the PQ's, especially if you have an ok chance at loot.

[BobGnarly]

I'm really trying to give this game a fair shake, but while I'm playing it, all I can think of is "this is the [latest] wow killer?"

There is some cool stuff there, and I know you got to look at it as its own thing, but I just can't shake that it looks and acts just like DOAC to me, and while I liked DAOC, wow raised the bar quite a bit since its release.

I really had high hopes, too. I want to see something give Blizzard a run for their money, even though I know I'm not leaving wow any time soon. Unfortunately, I just don't think this is going to do it. I'm sure it'll do alright, but I just don't see it pulling subs away.

[DrZ]

I gave this a go this weekend as a Chosen Marauder. For whatever reason, it sunk it's hooks in me deep. The RvR combat (I never played DoAC so I just assumed it's like Battlegrounds) availible right from level 1 is awsome. It took me a bit to understand how to play, and I still don't get the whole crafting aspect side (not that I tried to get into it mind you). But soon, I was plunging myself into the enemy ranks, sowing discord with my axe and sword arm on any that stood before me. I wasn't good enough to take on 1v2, but in any 1v1 match I generally got the better of my opponent. Especially casters who think they can run :).

Mabye it's because I always liked the aspect of PVP more than I do PvE. You can join the queue to the PVP scenario whenever you like when your in the respective zones that it represents. When your called to battle, you are ported there. When your done, you respawn exactly where you accepted to enter, letting you go right back to questing. There is also two repeatable quests for the scenario that I was doing. One involves killing 10 players, which is easy since in scenarios your in a group. Second is just to play the scenario. Might as well just keep doing these since it added an extra 1.3K experiance on top of whatever you got from the battle. Granted, the battles themselves were lending me around 6K exp when we won.

One thing to note about the RvR, it raises your level to (what I believe) the minimum required for that zone. For the 2 areas I was in, that level was 8, so if you came in any lower, while in the zone you were given a buff that leveled you and all your abilites to 8. (unlike WoW, your spells/abilites don't have ranks from what I can see. Instead, every level you gain increases thier power.) Once I hit lv 8, the buff no longer appeared, and lv 9 I didn't see any debuffs to mark me down. That said, the highest I have come accross is lv 10.

One more thing, Killing players is definitly the way to go leveling wise. Sure, you can do quests and whatnot and it works very well in itself, but if you can kill a player in single combat outside of scenarios, you are going to net yourself some serious XP and gear. Twice I have killed players solo, and each time it netted me over 1K exp and usually green level gear (same type of tiers in WoW, white is basic, green is uncommon, don't know what's higher).

In short, I think I will suspend my 5boxing and reseve me a copy of WAR.

[mlwhitt]

Well back a week or so ago I said that I didn't care about the game, but over the weekend I played "A LOT" in beta and now I am hooked. I am going to try to dual-box as there are macros, assist and follow commands. Right now I am going for a Black Orc and Goblin Shaman.

[Dor]

this is from a post on wow forums, but is pretty much the same way I felt about warhammer

gotten up to about 16 several times on different characters and so far war pvp is ridiculous right now. it'll get better when you hit 40 and are with premades but even still there are bizarre things about PvP.


pvp consists of:

AOE CC that lasts for 10 seconds with no diminishing returns and no way to escape the snare (until later levels for most people and even then immunity only lasts for 10 sec)

massive aoe damage zerg fests (bright wizards lol)

seeing 2 ranged dps from a mile away, running away immediately, but being chased down by 2 ranged dps with instant attacks that hit from the other side of the moon (with snares to boot) and that, depending on the bugged ability in question, will go through walls, stone, trees, etc.

general zerging (pugs are not going to remotely work. ever. and forget trying to pvp with 2 or 3 people when you're getting zerged by 8 that suddenly come around the corner and snare you)

collision detection which is AWESOME when the only way to the top of a keep is one tiny staircase blocked by 10 billion people with ranged aoe in the back unloading non-stop.



plus some odd UI design choices:

the camera snaps back facing your toon's direction when you start moving, meaning it's impossible to really click or mouseover things while moving unless its right in front of you. infuriating. this also limits your maneuverability a great deal.

you can't bind mousewheel up or mousewheel down to anything but zoom in and out




and to top it off the PvE mob pathing is still completely !#!@ed ("Target Not Attackable" = an evaded mob that is immune but can still attack you... about, oh, every 5th mob... better run away, reset, hope you don't aggro other mobs, and that said mob isn't still bugged!)

the UI responds a bit sluggishly

and of course balance is a long way off


good things:

questing is fun and painless as far as "uh where do i go, wtf? guess i open up wowhead. again" moments go as well as "ok, cmon just one more quest drop" moments (quest drops are awarded automatically when you kill something, they are not looted or RND affected)

public questing is fun and refreshing way to get gear but... some public quests will suffer from not enough people there at the time to complete all the stages or you'll be in an area that has like 1 tank if that and you can't complete the later stages without a tank or 4 so... so much for that gear!

you can queue for pvp from anywhere and when you enter the pvp zone and it finishes you are teleported back to where you accepted the queue

leveling is not a grind in any real sense

great graphics


in sum:

war will be great but uh.... expect it to take many months for things to get sorted out so it's actually as fun as it can be. right now it is very unpolished and the Head Start is only a week away or so. frankly things will be a bit stupid for awhile.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=576B21C51BA07A397D8FC77C919 945FA.app11_05?topicId=9679751605&sid=1

[Ðeceased]

Ive played for a good while now... seems a lot like wow but missing something somehow, cant really put my finger on what tho.

I'm not in Beta sadly :S but whenever i see a vid i get that feeling too. But i think i may know where that feeling comes from :S

the first thing is movement..

If they increased everyone's walking speed by say ~10-15% it would make a huge difference and greatly speed up combat. currently movement seems somewhat sluggish :S

then it's all about numbers.. WoW actually hit the nail on the head in the way they have the damage displayed on opponents (especially the crits).. watch those movies where ppl use SCT exclusively scrolling slowly at the side of the screen.. to me it just seems a little boring :S now i know, it shouldn't be about numbers.. but it definitely has it's appeal.

there's also the fact that every vid i've seen from WAR has ppl keyboardturning which makes my brain hurt :P (that's ofc different for Mboxers)

then there is an issue with spells to my mind.. whilst I've been reading though them intently and love the balance they have been given, there is a slight discrepancy between the visual effects and the damage done. I sometimes got the feeling that half the group should have been wiped out by a huge explosion (by one of those crazy pyros >.<) and yet everyone took just a little bit of damage. Whilst I'd hate for them to mess with the damage, as the balance seems quite good, I would even go as far as tone down the graphics on some spells (the lesser ones) and increase it on others.

I dunno, I just can't wait to try it out :)

[kadaan]

I got a Disciple of Khaine to rank 8 before the server I was on (Forest of Shadows I think) crashed Friday night and never came back up before the open beta ended. I played a few other classes to 3 or 4. My impressions from about 12h of playing:

- Don't use Octopus. Any time I click either mouse button with Octopus running it snaps the camera into top-down view. After closing Octopus it worked fine.
- Classes seem very generic. Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priest were exact clones with different ability names. The ranged 15dmg ability, the melee 25dmg 25AP ability, the same 250pt 'heal' pool (one was blood, one was spirit,) the same buff that gives you a 20% 22heal proc, etc.
- Public quests are fun, but I hope they add a bunch of instances eventually. Also being #1 in contribution and rolling a 1 making you last for loot sucks.
- The RvR instances are nice and quick. I played the one where you get points for capturing both nodes then it resets, and the one like AB with three nodes you fight for constantly.
- Crafting is... lame and feels like a late addition. Only three gathering professions and two production ones. Cultivating (plant seeds to grow weeds/fungi,) scavenging (all npcs drop 'broken' gear you can salvage/repair, kinda like disenchanting I guess,) and scavenging/butchering (getting meat from animals and random pick-pocket like items from humanoids,) Apothecary (like an Alchemy,) and Talisman Making (like enchanting/jewelcrafting.) There's no world-node gathering, and no way to craft armor/weapons.
- The interface feels bloated. The on-screen messages are irritating, the chat window feels klunky, every now and then I'd have messages overlap (a lot of stuff by the minimap would overlap, even after I lowered the UI scale.)
- Movement just feels... off. It doesn't feel smooth, but when I think about it and watch it the animations _are_ smooth, so I'm not sure what about it bugs me exactly.
- 'Evade' bugs. I've had a lot of npcs give me an out of range error when I attack with melee, even though they're right next to me beating on me. You just have to run away till they reset and try again. This happened a LOT on one of the public quests in the Dark Elf area, the one where you kill 75 little tree guys, then 8 dryads, then the boss. I did the PQ 4 times and all 4 times the final boss had this bug.
- There's no official forum. No one-spot to go for tech support issues and to read about known issues. I'm not too excited about searching through a dozen different forums to research problems I'm having.

On a scale of 1-10 I'd give it a 7. It's fun and I'll probably play it till Wrath when I'm not raiding, but I haven't seen a single thing that would make me want to switch over from WoW.

[daddyd302]

Does anyone know if open beta is closed or the servers are down or something? I can't seem to log on. I'm liking this game and mostly likely gonna buy it. I'm not too sure on dual boxing as pvp is not good when your own realm mates can block you as you try to chase someone down. I don't mind not being able to run through the enemy, but not being able to run through your own realm mates is kinda dumb in my book. That will make it hard for me to dual box.


Edit, nevermine open beta is done, I'm in the game as a pre-order now.