Warhammer - Live Impressions
So After the confusion over the grace period for using the beta keys was resolved, I decided that it was a launch hiccup that I could forgive EA/Mythic for and continued to play Warhammer. Here are some of my brief thoughts with two characters (one which is finally going to get to see tier two content, yay!):
- Marauders are a ton of fun. It’s a heavy melee DPS class where you can juggle between different arm mutations. The mutations basically behave like a warrior’s different stances in WoW and give you different benefits and abilities. I can go into a PQ as Monstrosity and come in first place on the contribution each time.
- Scenarios are a lot of fun if you have the right group. Much like in WoW, you can get stuck with a group of people who are inexperienced and totally suffer. Also, while players levels are boosted to be able to keep up with the higher-level characters, the lack of gear and new abilities still make them easy kills. So you want a group consisting of people high for the bracket, just like in WoW.
- Getting most of your gear based on Renown and Influence is such a wonderful thing compared to grinding honor or on raid dungeons (and maybe even dealing with DKP). You can get the hottest gear without having to spend months on it, but it still feels like a reward.
- Adam Sessler put it best when he said that PvP feels more like PvE. It’s not so one-sided as other games.
- The open RvR areas are even more fun than scenarios. You actually feel like you are accomplishing something by pushing back the enemy and unlocking areas for your own race.
- NO ONE TALKS. This is a big drawback for people who like to play socially. I’ve had a few people send me tells without shilling gold, but on the most part the main chat channels are empty. Why bother when groups are open by default and you can join without begging? Of course, I haven’t said much myself outside of /g chat, except “OMG STAY ON FORT U GET MOAR POINTS, NUBS!” (just kidding, but its true)
- Public Quests are the best thing to happen to MMO’s since they became graphical. Seriously.
- The Inevitable City is expansive, dark, and beautiful. And more content is unlocked as the city “levels up”. What a fun concept.
- Even on my fairly-recent phat gaming system in public quests or RvR situations where a lot is going on, my framerates drop. The game needs some polish.
- Clipping bugs, lag-induced mob teleporting, and other visual bugs are annoying.
- We need a “Target of Target” and clickable item links. I’m so used to those in WoW that it is freaking annoying.
- Healing is awkward compared to healing in WoW. There, I said it.
- Items, while having different names and way different stats, tend to have the same visual model and skins. That is NOT cool. If I max out my rewown at level 40 and get a baddass staff of ass-kicking, I want it to look like it will kill anything in sight. I don’t want it to look like the staff I started the game with.
- If I roll a male sorceress, make the robes look less feminine and let him be called a sorcerer. Please?
- The guild tools and controls are a lot more thought out than Blizzard has ever done with WoW. They could learn a thing or two from Mythic’s design team in this regard. Plus, having the guild itself level up encourages unity and can help keep guilds together in tough times as there is a common goal.
That’s all I have for now. I think I’ll keep playing both WoW and WAR for a bit, but eventually one will win out and the other will be a relic on my shelf and good memories in my head.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:34 am
Sadly target of target will never exist, as that information isn’t even supported by the client and has been specifically denounced by mark jacobs. Apparently this was done for the same reason that macros cannot actually do any specific skills. It would create much larger inequities between those who utilize addons and those who don’t.
So the most you’ll be able to do is assist friendly targets. Since I never played WoW I suppose I don’t see how it could be advantageous, only how it could be exploited. Guard juggling, auto healing. ToT might make amazing sense in a cluster of a PVE raid when you’re trying to keep a tank up and target selection ends up being limited to your warband since a huge mob + a tight cluster of characters means it’s impossible to get the right target if they’re not in your warband, but I can’t see how it would be the least bit advantageous in PVP.
The issue is that they will probably never balance for PVE. It’s possible for me to outheal any aggro, and pull aggro from any tank. Healers are far too powerful for PVE because they need to be to be viable PVP healers.
The chatting issue isn’t a big deal to me, but they’ve essentially eliminated all the reasons to chat. (LFG, downtime etc) There will be more chat in world RVR in Tier 4, much more, guaranteed. In end game RVR in DAoC we would have soloers and roaming groups scouting and reporting enemy positions constantly. Constant war chatter. You won’t see it in tier one, you’ll see it a bit in tier 2, and as groups and guilds get more coordinated you see a ton of it. Also there’s a vent server for our guild. I’ll e-mail the details unless thund already gave them to you.
As far as Lag is concerned, yeah they need to address it but I don’t know how. And it’s not purely a gaming rig power issue. I was in a tier 2 keep raid the other day that quickly slowed to less than 15fps. That being said there were at least 60 destruction and 30-40 order at the keep raid, and I hade full spell animations turned on. I’m also running 1920 x 1080 with forced aa and af. I’ll probably turn my settings down a bit when PVP raids become more regular for me.
As far as graphics variety are concerned. Dunno yet. I’ll have to see more stuff from higher tiers, but again there’s the rub. Too much variety and you’ll tax the ram and system performance necessary to run the game. End game PVP raiding will be monstrous. 200+ people within view at the same time. A single zone with more than 400 people in it… etc. It’s a problem for mythic to figure out.
All male elves are fruity.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the biggest issue with the game. Animations and setback. You can’t rely on animations to convey anything whatsoever in the game. Basically to be most effective you just watch a bunch of bars, cooldown timers, and cast bars. Trying to rely on animations to convey anything is a lesson in irritation as inevitably just because an animation is finished doesn’t mean a spell has been cast. It can give the combat a disjointed feel, and is the system in the game I think needs the most work.