How many of you guys are going to give WAR a test run?

[TheBigBB]

I read that they have some anti-boxing stuff in the user agreement. I wouldn't even consider playing a MMO at this point if I couldn't box with it. Definitely not anytime soon, either, with my 5-man WoW team just coming into its own in time for the expansion.

[aurelieshagwell]

War's character graphics are apalling. The movement is simply hideous and spell casting is so so incredibly out of date. Even compared to wow. The buildings and props look totally stunning but they are set in a landscape filled by monotextured ground, angular surfaces and bits which again are far less appealing than wow. The collision detection on props is totally dreadful and I got constantly stuck on pretty much everything.

The PvE stuff is totally irrelevant. Most of the end game gear comes from the pvp, the instances and world group mobs are pretty much there just as tick boxes. PvE solo quests are awful. "go here kill x of these come back" and "walk there and talk to them" nothing else. What's worse is that the PvE quests involve killing the mobs. Now even in the beta on mostly empty servers these mobswould constantly without fail port to you. When you got to see some of the pathing and mob interactions, like aggro, it was laughable. Again, 5+ years out of date.

The public quests are totally genius, granted. However, after the initial runthrough, there simply wont be any people at the public quest spots. As a feature, i love it, as a game buying feature it's not enough.

So to be honest, the game does NOT have any pve. The rewards from it whilst levelling do help but the exp mainly comes from pvp, pvp gives far more exp and there really is very little to do any pve bar a few public quests for progression gear. there is zero end game pve. it's an afterthought and a tickbox, like it was in guild wars. the devs clearly state this.

Onto the pvp... erm... where wow dumbed down rpgs as far as character customisation goes, war dumbs down wow. The gear, as mentioned above, will be very samey as it comes from the pvp. The builds will be even worse. Each class gets 3 trees, 1 of those is usually terrible, and EVERY player will max one of their chosen trees and then allocate the spare points into another. There won't be many mixed builds as in war you allocate 15 points to a tree which makes your 5 base, granted spells, more powerful. So basically you max your tree every time, there is no variety or choice, you just do it. so 2 builds per class max. The selection of powerups "buffs" and special powers etc will make for some customisation but yea, at their core you will have characters with the same skill trees and gear running around. Coupled with the fact a lot of the classes plain old suck on damage/utility and because there are so many classes most are samey, it wont make for much fun.

My main issue with the pvp there was that the classes in general lacked fun stuff. Like blink, iceblock, daze... all the crowd control and survivability stuff you see in wow simply isn't there. The combat is also significantly slower and it didn't do much for me. it felt disjointed and sluggish and the awful graphics didnt help.

What gets to me is when people say "oh but there's a lot of point in the pvp its so meaningful"... erm... did anybody in planetside care about the bases? No. Just like in war the bases and capture points are all largely irrelevant, the sieges too. It's basically a series of BGs, there is no real point in the pvp thus it's a grind. Now in games like planetside where the fighting was hugely varied and you could change your playstyle this worked just fine, war doesn't have this variety, it lacks class and character variety, it has no pve of significance and the combat just isn't that much fun.

Playing war is basically like playing a bunch of different bgs, to level and at end game pretty much constantly using blander characters than wow does. It's a lot like guild wars in the group v group aspect and i do respect that, even though i didnt like the lack of character variety, but this just isn't a complete rpg. As a guild wars follow up its ok, I might have played it had it either had some satisfying combat animation or spec variety or something which would make me not think "meh, why don't I just go do some av".

I genuinely believe if you rate this as an mmorpg it's about 75%. Eurogamer's review is pretty spot on. Not broken, just bland. And it made me want to go play wow instead, so I did.

[Sanctume]

War's character graphics are apalling. The movement is simply hideous and spell casting is so so incredibly out of date. Even compared to wow. The buildings and props look totally stunning but they are set in a landscape filled by monotextured ground, angular surfaces and bits which again are far less appealing than wow. The collision detection on props is totally dreadful and I got constantly stuck on pretty much everything.

Yeah graphics is not totally hot. But even back in Doom 1, fragging someone felt great despite the crappy graphics.

The PvE stuff is totally irrelevant. Most of the end game gear comes from the pvp, the instances and world group mobs are pretty much there just as tick boxes. PvE solo quests are awful. "go here kill x of these come back" and "walk there and talk to them" nothing else. What's worse is that the PvE quests involve killing the mobs. Now even in the beta on mostly empty servers these mobswould constantly without fail port to you. When you got to see some of the pathing and mob interactions, like aggro, it was laughable. Again, 5+ years out of date.

The mob pathing was not bad when I played the past week during Open Beta. The PvE contents were playable. There are still bugs, but I won't be playing too much PvE when PvP get me levels and renown ranks.

The public quests are totally genius, granted. However, after the initial runthrough, there simply wont be any people at the public quest spots. As a feature, i love it, as a game buying feature it's not enough.

I think the "public" part of public quest fails when the server population of a beta server is not there. On a theoretical live server, there should be plenty of people wanting to group and do PQs, or even guildies.

In my 2-box setup, I kept my group as Open and it was easy to add people in. I notice a lot of people "solo" in PQ and after soloing one, you will realize you benefit more by joining a group. I just initiate group invites and do them.

So to be honest, the game does NOT have any pve. The rewards from it whilst levelling do help but the exp mainly comes from pvp, pvp gives far more exp and there really is very little to do any pve bar a few public quests for progression gear. there is zero end game pve. it's an afterthought and a tickbox, like it was in guild wars. the devs clearly state this.

That's the game. Just like WoW is about content with PvP as an after thought. It seems that any game doing after thought design fails. EQ/EQ2 were made for PvE so their PvP aspects fail. Same in WoW but better than EQ.

Onto the pvp... erm... where wow dumbed down rpgs as far as character customisation goes, war dumbs down wow. The gear, as mentioned above, will be very samey as it comes from the pvp. The builds will be even worse. Each class gets 3 trees, 1 of those is usually terrible, and EVERY player will max one of their chosen trees and then allocate the spare points into another. There won't be many mixed builds as in war you allocate 15 points to a tree which makes your 5 base, granted spells, more powerful. So basically you max your tree every time, there is no variety or choice, you just do it. so 2 builds per class max. The selection of powerups "buffs" and special powers etc will make for some customisation but yea, at their core you will have characters with the same skill trees and gear running around. Coupled with the fact a lot of the classes plain old suck on damage/utility and because there are so many classes most are samey, it wont make for much fun.

Is WoW talent building any different? Trees are just there to help every player choose for themselves. Often times, players aren't independent enough to think for themselves and just copy builds/templates. Where's the fun in owning your own creation when you just copy from the flavor of the month.

My main issue with the pvp there was that the classes in general lacked fun stuff. Like blink, iceblock, daze... all the crowd control and survivability stuff you see in wow simply isn't there. The combat is also significantly slower and it didn't do much for me. it felt disjointed and sluggish and the awful graphics didnt help.

I did not have any problems with lag, but I set mine to highest framerate rather than quality. As for Mage bullshit blink, what fun is that to the melee hopelessly trying to catch a mage? and even if they catch them, the freezing slow armor slows the swing times. In WAR, at least if the mage is dumb enough to let the melee get to his face, then he's going to pay. That caster better be able to dump his nukes to kill the melee.

What gets to me is when people say "oh but there's a lot of point in the pvp its so meaningful"... erm... did anybody in planetside care about the bases? No. Just like in war the bases and capture points are all largely irrelevant, the sieges too. It's basically a series of BGs, there is no real point in the pvp thus it's a grind. Now in games like planetside where the fighting was hugely varied and you could change your playstyle this worked just fine, war doesn't have this variety, it lacks class and character variety, it has no pve of significance and the combat just isn't that much fun.

The only point that matters is I kill the enemy players. There's no ambiguous wtf Alliance and Horde co-exisiting in a city called Shattrath. Rank, Renown Rank, Levels in WoW are all grind. Anything that puts quantifiable measurements to progress is a grind no matter what flavor text you put it. That's one property of a MMO character, it is part of character advancement.

Playing war is basically like playing a bunch of different bgs, to level and at end game pretty much constantly using blander characters than wow does. It's a lot like guild wars in the group v group aspect and i do respect that, even though i didnt like the lack of character variety, but this just isn't a complete rpg. As a guild wars follow up its ok, I might have played it had it either had some satisfying combat animation or spec variety or something which would make me not think "meh, why don't I just go do some av".

I played first person shooters and it is fun once in a while. But it lacks the "hook" of caring for the character building or character advancement found in MMOs. That is one of the addictive qualities of an MMO, how each player put some care to their character. When in FPS games, there's little care for character building, and so there's little care for time investment in building one. Just enter the fray.

War would be a transistion from an FPS to MMO with PvP as the main motivation.

WoW would be a transistion from a RPG game like Oblivion or Baldur's Gate and into the more massive MMO world population.

I genuinely believe if you rate this as an mmorpg it's about 75%. Eurogamer's review is pretty spot on. Not broken, just bland. And it made me want to go play wow instead, so I did.

Ratings are just one gamer's judgement. It's only good if my play taste similarly matches the one who judges it. Obviously, your play taste differs from mine.

I think WAR has a certain game niche that Blizzard can't provide--but there are also a lot of gray areas where WAR and WoW touches as part of their game world. I prefer more Game Company competition as each company needs to prove they have a better game than any other, so that's some good for me as a game and consumer.

If WAR did not come out, will WoW come up with all the fanciful "fun" titles as in the Tome Of Knowledge? or a BG in WotLK that is more world persistence similar to WAR's RvR zones?

[daddyd302]

I like WAR, but I kinda concern about the performance. I don't really know if WAR will support SLI or even bother with it, but on my machine with everything at max, I'm getting from 24-90 fps. I'm playing on a low server too. I'm surprise that my 2 8800GTX are struggling at times to run WAR. I know there's alot of vegatation from time to time and that brings down the fps. I had this issue in DAoC too, sometimes I couldn't even get past 50 fps, I get much better fps in WoW. PVE is ok, PVP is so much fun, except for the stupid collision thing. I don't mind it against the enemy but not being able to run through your own realm mates, is very annoying when you're trying to run for cover or chase someone down. There was so many times where I died because my own realm mates were in my way as I was trying to run away from the casters. Besides the performance issue, and the collision thing, I like the game alot. I love being rewarded for PVP, and getting XP for it as well. The rewards are ok, but I'm still low level and from what my brother told me, they made the rewards better then in close beta. I'm sure the rewards will get better as you level up. I'm not too sure on dual boxing in WAR if you like to PVP, with that collision thing it might get frustrating.

[aurelieshagwell]

With regards to the PQs, what I'm saying is that on your first run through, there will be lots and lots of people for PQs. However, because of how scattered other character levelling will be, PQs will suffer a lot as you move away from launch. It's in their very nature, the pop will be much more spread out through the world.

Yes the PVP is an afterthought in WoW but that's not all that relevant. Just because it's an afterthought in one game and not in another doesn't mean it isn't actually better. Wow's pvp is easily more entertaining than war from the perspective of the classes. Wow classes have variety spells and gameplay, war classes dont. Where war claims to have something is in the "aim" of the pvp and the battles for the keeps. Again, I don't see how this works at all because winning those give you little more than just exp. It's not a truly meaningful victory in any way other than "oh we won a bg". As such I see it as a pvp grind ala wow with classes i found really bleak.

Re character creation: come on dude. war: 3 trees and 15 points MUST be allocated into the main tree (in order to max your base powers) with a few points to select 2-3 additional powers on that tree you might want and like another few to slot into your second tree to power it up. Wow has far FAR less mandatory trees with 51 points into them with those points enabling you to power up traits. There is an infinite amount more variety in wow skill trees possible compared to war. War skill trees are literally like "pick 2 from 5 boxes from 3 trees and add something little on the side". War does have some additional powers you can select but on a whole the character skill system is woefully linear. Who remembers rpg mmos where you could allocate stat points?

As to persistent world pvp, it doesn't work unless there is a point in it. For example capture of cities to gear up, destruction of property, sole control of levelling zones etc. But of course those are hardcore gamer options which war shirked from. This is really my ultimate criticism and it is justified, war provided yet another mainstream solution which does PvE poorly and PvP half better than wow and half worse. It doesn't actually offer anything to those of us who want to be involved in meaningful game determining, varied and character customised pvp. The whining in wow right now is that it provides homogenised classes in WotK, war provides far more homogenisation than wow and that's not a good thing. (yes, I want Shadowbane, I know this that game spoilt all of us who played it)

My rating was obviously my rating, that's just erm... not up for debate or comment really. I'm happy you enjoy it and hope you keep enjoying it, I would have loved to have played it instead of cancelling my preorder, I don't wanna be playing wow. Sadly, as Conan, it does not provide progression from wow and it is the progression that's needed. Developers need to get off the fence and start building real character variety back into mmos. All this "i desgined all these trees so no moron can gimp themselves and of course you can't allocate stat points people might chose SPI as melee" is the true crime wow perpetrated on the community, however at least they filled their game with content.

Releasing a game which is even more simplified from the rpg character perspective and pretty much void of pve and claiming it's pvp orientated with really bugger all point in the pvp but exp grinding doesn't really convince me. They can market the game as they want but they can't get away from the fact they didn't hit the sweet spot with the pvp. There just isn't the variety to keep people pvp grinding but of course that's not a point we will agree on so let's see what the future shows us.

[aurelieshagwell]

I'd also like to point out that i did grind pvp in pre-tbc and as such, to a large degree, i really DO enjoy pvp. It does however need to have sufficient variety. Wow is kind of lacking in specs but then depending on the build players throw wildcards into the fight at any given moment. You might get sheeped, feared, have to trinket, get a long cooldown ability come up for you or the other player. All I had in war was "it's a caster, it will either dot, dd or aoe me... oh there was a surprise". Same for the melee, tanks and healers. Once in a while, like clockwork, they'd do one of their special abilities which usually did dd... or aoe. All a bit sterile, pointless and grindy.

[Sanctume]

I'd also like to point out that i did grind pvp in pre-tbc and as such, to a large degree, i really DO enjoy pvp. It does however need to have sufficient variety. Wow is kind of lacking in specs but then depending on the build players throw wildcards into the fight at any given moment. You might get sheeped, feared, have to trinket, get a long cooldown ability come up for you or the other player. All I had in war was "it's a caster, it will either dot, dd or aoe me... oh there was a surprise". Same for the melee, tanks and healers. Once in a while, like clockwork, they'd do one of their special abilities which usually did dd... or aoe. All a bit sterile, pointless and grindy.

The problem in WoW is how they tied Personal Ratings with Honor Gear in S4. It's dumb. Players who want the best gear is stuck grinding arena in a piss poor implementation. Queue dodging. Win Trading can still happen when rated teams schedule to fight in some obscure time like 2 am maybe so they see each other still. People can still be carried into high ratings.

WAR removes that bullshit and makes it a grind. Bu at least everyone who put in the time to PvP via Renown Rank has access to gear. Granted, their side needs to capture the keep to access the vendor--so there's that reason to PvP to capture a persistent world objective.

They are still 2 differnent games. And I'm sure WAR will be as stale as WoW in the months/years to come.

My take is WAR does not seem to suck as other MMOs that's been released since WoW: Guild Wars, LOTR, Conan, etc... WAR seems to find a nice chunk of niche from the 10 million WoW player base.

[Nixi]

I still don't get all the negative posts about the graphics. Sure on my gaming laptop (2.0 ghz core duo, 4 gig ram, 512 meg 8600M GT) it looks like and plays like shit, but on my desktop PC (2.4 ghz q6600, 8 gig ram, 8800 GT) it plays like a dream. When I first started looking at WAR a few years ago, I also didn't like the dark medieval feel, nor the bland textures in the game, but after looking at the WOW /WAR side by side screen shot comparisons, I'm convinced Warhammer's graphics are right where they need to be for a new MMO. Then after immersing myself in the universe for much of the open beta (and not logging into WOW), when I fired up Wow again I just realized how dated the World of Warcraft's graphics are.

I agree with many of the criticisms people have with WAR, but I truely believe it's a solid game with lots of potential. Playing the OB has done something to me over the past couple weeks; I'm just not interested in playing WOW at all, and WAR feels a bit, unfinished to me. I'm just not that interested in playing another game besides WAR, but I'm having problems with finding a class I truely love on the Order side. I would like to just play destruction, but in WOW I was on a PVP server with a vastly outnumbered alliance side (me being horde) and it just wasn't fun at all. Destruction is by far the most populated faction on all servers, so I feel like I shouldn't play them, even though the Marauder is the class that seems to hit home with my playstyle (duel-wielding fury warrior).

I think Aure hit the nail on the head and made me realize why I have so much hope for WAR, and why it's kind of put me in a gaming purgatory; i just want that same kind of pvp mmorpg experience i had with shadowbane for the short stint I had playing that game. There is just something about WAR right now that keeps me thinking about it, but puts me off everytime I go to make my character. I played 7 classes to levels 6-9 in OB, but settling on that one main char is so hard.

Sanctume,

I've really enjoyed your input so far in this and the other threads about Warhammer. Are you still on that server and is your guild multiboxer only? I'd like to single box warhammer, and it might be nice to join up with people in this community. What classes do you guys need?

[Sanctume]

Sanctume,

I've really enjoyed your input so far in this and the other threads about Warhammer. Are you still on that server and is your guild multiboxer only? I'd like to single box warhammer, and it might be nice to join up with people in this community. What classes do you guys need?

I'm one of the last batch of people who stopped playing WoW (at least before WotLK) in my guild. The guild had about 6 Closed Beta players and a couple of them were posting with "fan boi'ish" enthusiasm.

Me, being cynical ever since I got burned in the hype of Anarchy Online. I scrutinize detailed posts, and question them, and also try to compare them in terms of what game I know which was WoW at the time.

One of the "sell" they try keep telling me, it's not WoW--that leveling is "easy," and no "grind." It's true that you can level up by just doing RvR scenarios. The false for the most part, is "level" is renamed to "rank." It's not "honor" grind, but "renown rank" grind--it's still a grind. It's the same crap/concept--just different text flavor. Either way, I'm going to be spending my time on it. So I tend to be more of a realist and point out the hyped stuff.

As far as the graphics. WAR made some more "detailed" customization with small trinket/trophy that the player can control. These small pixels add up in processing, but they are probably not visible when it's zerg vs zerg. But in a lag free area, you can zoom in on a player and see the detailed trophies they put on their character.

My newer laptop also is slower than my desktop. I think it's the SLI, but even when I disabled it, it still loads slow. But I think there's still a huge difference. Laptop is 17" @ 1920 x 1200. While Desktop is 20" @ 1680 x 1050.

My guild is not multi-box only. Rather, I'm the only one who exceeded 2-box. There were a few 2-boxers in WoW and in past games. But I think everyone else just plan to 1-box WAR. The guild is PvP oriented with PvE to flavor statel times.

I don't see any advantage to 2-box, but my son who is 8 shows interest in the game, so I got 2 accounts and he plays with me sometimes.

The Skull Throne server 's queue last night at 7PM PST prime time was around 360 of 360, estimated 40 minutes wait queue.
But my actual wait time was around 25 minutes only. I guess some players just did not want to wait any longer.

I am playing Ironbreaker with a Rune Priest. As far as my guild, you can play whatever you want.
The only thing that matters is how you mesh with most members.
It is also understood that some personalities do not mix well, but maturity should be enough to handle things respectfully.

PM me so I can forward you the link to the guild page.

[Tehtsuo]

Sanctume,

I did end up getting on late last night, and saw you were on, but you were afk I think. The game seems smoother than it was in the OB, which I believe was choppy because of data collection/debugging code Mythic had running. That's acceptable in my opinion. I still think it's going to be a fun "other game to play" rather than a WoW replacement. While the graphics are smoother (No more 2-4 fps when more than 6 people are in close proximity) I still find the gameplay somewhat unresponsive. When I cast spells in WoW, I get a crisp response time that seems very natural to me. In WAR, sometimes I have to press the button a few times to make it cast. Also, nothing is more infuriating than running from a Sorcerer and knowing without a doubt that they are far out of spell casting distance, but still getting nailed by spells. I've been on both sides of this, it seems like I can use Eagle Eye Shot on enemy players even if they run out of range unless they go FAR out of range.

Overall, I believe the data communication system in WAR is not up to par with WoW, and even the very minor latency I have on my connection causes inconsistent gameplay. As much as people argue that the graphics in WAR are better than WoW, I counter that I'm far less concerned with that than I am concerned about interface response times, reliability, and fluidity of animations. WAR animations seem like paper doll animations pretending to hit or shoot the enemy, where WoW animations give much more a feeling of controlling your character. It might be because WAR is unfamiliar to me, but I still get this impression that WAR is "sloppy" somehow when it comes to responsiveness.

Aside from the criticism, I do enjoy playing so far. I like how I don't have to grind quests, and how I was able to get into an RvR scenario within 15 minutes of creating my character, and not be 190 pounds of dead weight. I like seeing new places, and learning new mechanics. I don't like seeing the same useless whining and aggression in PVP when your team doesn't win, but I guess there's no getting around that. For some reason MMOs make the average player completely forget the fact that someone always has to lose a battleground, and decide that losing means something is wrong and there's a need to assign blame and abuse fellow players. Oh well, maybe someday a company will find a way to remove that from the game. LOL! 8o