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