Arathrael's First Impressions of Warhammer Online

[Arathrael]

Yeah, I know Paul has a similar thread, but I'm not posting there, I don't know where it's been.

Soooo.

Overall: I like it so far.

Things I don't like:

The graphics aren't exactly impressive and for some reason it runs like a dog on my system. And not like a greyhound type dog, like a three legged dog. A fat three legged dog. With a limp. And asthma.

That might be my system of course, need to do the usual graphics driver updating, etc., but still, I was expecting better.

The PvP scenarios. Only tried one, but it's the usual unbalanced crap. We tried the first Empire one on the side of Order, only problem was, the highest level person on our side was L8 or so (we were L5 and got adjusted to L8), and the Destruction side had a bunch of L11s. I think there is potential in the scenarios, but if the highest level in a zone is L11 for example, really, everyone should be adjusted to L11. There's just no point if the other side can kill you just by sneezing in your general direction.

And character customization. It's pretty basic. City of Heroes is the standard for this, and nothing else comes close. But WAR is on a par with most other MMORPGS.

Things I do like:

WoW really annoyed me when I first played it with the sheer amount of pointless wombling. "Go and kill these lobsters on a beach miles away", so I wombled over, killed the lobsters, went back, and what's next? "Go all the way back and kill these slightly different lobsters". Why the frick didn't you tell me to kill those other lobsters in the first place? Damn you! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

WAR has similar quests, but the map design seems better/less evil, in that you don't have to womble for miles to get to them. There are gazillions of quests as well. Yeah, they follow the basic 'go here, smack that, click on that corpse' pattern, but they're pretty well written in story terms for the most part.

Elf Quest


On that note, the Tome of Knowledge is nifty. There's vast quantities of material in there, about your quests, about what's going on in the area, about the creatures you meet. If you just want to smack stuff you can ignore it, but if you're interested, it's there.

The Tome of Knowledge (High Elf)


The Tome's page on Imps


There's a nice teaming interface. You can have your party open or closed, and you can search for open parties and just join them. So there's no 'LFG! LFG!' spam. In fact, there's no chat spam at all. No-one talks. I'd prefer it if people spoke occasionally, but if it's a choice between that and the constant spammage you get in other MMORPGs, I'll take the quiet, thanks.

The thing I really like is Public Quests. There's hundreds of these (I've taken part in four in the opening area of the Empire alone). You join these automatically just by entering the appropriate area of the map and joining in on the quest goals. Typically there's a few stages to each one, for example, if you head to the beaches in the Empire starting area, there's a norse invasion. In the first stage you beat up some norse raiders and set fire to their tents. In the second stage you beat up some tougher norse raiders and set fire to their boats. Next, you head up the hill and defend the NPC watchmen against a few waves of norsemen (who're none too happy with the whole setting-fire-to-their-boats thing), and finally, the norsemen's leader and his elite guard show up and, er, smack the crap out of you repeatedly because there were only three of you doing it.

That's the downside with the public quests. You can do the first few phases on your own or with a small group, but the last bit might need a few more people around. But on balance, they get a big thumbs up from me.

As well as XP from doing them, you also get influence which you can trade in for goodies, and you get a roll on the loot. When the public quest is completed, everyone gets a roll (with bonuses for greater contribution), and if you're in the top few you loot a chest which pops up when the quest is done, you get a bag, and then you can pick a reward from a selection when you open the bag.

The classes are pretty cool. Witch-hunters for example. They have pistols and swords, and their basic approach is to smack the crap out of stuff which builds up 'accusations', and then use their pistol in an 'execution' move which does extra damage depending on how many accusations they've built up. So: witch-hunter, pistol, executions. What's not to like?

I haven't tried the other classes in depth yet (my only other character so far is an elf shadow warrior), but it looks like there's a good amount of variety.

So that's my first impressions. I may add more later. In the meantime, here's some more screenshots:

Rodstewart (=Paul), Bright Wizard of the Empire, firing a cannon


Rodstewart hates sheep


And cows


Col's in the game already! Hello Col! 

[Col]

 

[Rik_S]

Looks good, might give it a spin

However I gave up on WoW as I couldn`t afford to spend hours completing a quest...so I play CoD for hours on end instead

[Arathrael]

Sorry Col. Had to be done.

Rik, yeah, I can't play for hours either usually. That's why I like City of Heroes, you can just drop in and do a quick mission.

So far WAR looks pretty good in that regard. The missions are all pretty short so far, public quests don't take that long and there's no faffing about organising it, you just show up and get stuck in. You can join in half-way through, and they reset a few minutes after the final stage finishes, so you never have to wait long, if at all.

No idea how long the missions are later in the game though.