Mythic Entertainment has announced that the open beta for the long anticipated Warhammer Online will begin on September 7th, eleven days before the finished game goes live on September 18th. We've previously discussed WAR's delays and the content cuts involved in reaching this deadline. In the meantime, Mythic's Road to WAR website (which we talked about earlier this month) is still available. The press release notes, "Players can get into the North American open beta by pre-ordering Warhammer Online from select retail partners."
Two four cities removed is hardly "half the content". In fact the amount of content in the game is staggering. Personally I am looking forward to the game going live with great enthusiasm.
As an "Elder" Beta Tester, I personally don't see the big deal about their removing 4 classes, there are still 20 classes available. Though I admit I come from the side of the fence that is interested in WAR more because of Mythic Entertainment than the Warhammer Fantasy franchise.
The content I've seen so far in the closed beta ranks among the more complete I've seen in an MMORPG launch so far.
I was expecting the Open beta to last for at least a month, but many people who entered preorder codes were invited
An eleven day open beta. Come on kids, just call it a fucking demo and be done with it. Worse, it's going to be a demo that grossly oversells the population as everyone crams in at the word 'open' and vacates when it's time to buy the box at retail and start forking over subscription fees.
Yeah, that's not an open beta IMO. People who pre-ordered should have been in the closed beta. The open beta should be just that, no caveats. I ALMOST pre-ordered a few months back but managed to restrain myself. Glad I did as this is shaping up to be an absolute disaster. Cities ripped out, classes ripped out etc... Fairly certain they'll be included in the first expansion, which of course means those who pre-ordered before that happened will essentially be paying for the same content twice.
And since they just lifted the NDA I can openly talk about this.
Yes, the game has some rough edges, but damn its got a lot of content.
Way too much content so I ended up skipping a lot of it just to explore areas.
Anyways, coming from the background of a GW fan, I will say that Mythic has captured the atmosphere quite well. There is always something to do and I never found myself saying to myself "Hey... I'm just grinding."
Yeah some of it was, but it wasn't a boring grinding.
There isn't an economy to speak of, but I believe maybe that was the best design decision ever to make a game without an economy rather than a broken economy that inspires gold farmers and imbalances the game.
can i ask how is the gameplay? All I've seen have been the videos ea mythic have occasionally released, and I have to tell you it looks decidedly unexciting. Activate Power, wait, monster activates, wait, you activate, etc.
Is the combat system a lot like WoW? From the gameplay trailers I've seen, it sure seems like it. I'm really curious, despite the content cuts. But I am not thrilled at the idea of buying the game if, despite the cool extras, at the core it's got the WoW keypress/timer-style control.
I never played WoW but its a lot faster paced than EQ in my opinion. They use AP (Action Points) instead of mana which everyone has for special skills (melee included).
It also seems that you quickly regenerate HP as well quickly between battles so there isn't any down time which I found very nice. Of course the same applies to mobs so if you wail on a mob and then run away long enough to get you HP back up the mob will have his HP back full as well.
Yes, I find myself pounding the keyboard in certain orders
The WoW European open beta was exactly the same thing - it began about 10 days before the release of the game (and ended with the release). Served as a demo to me (and I imagine everyone else).
Except with WoW you did not have to buy the game just to get into the open beta! Having an "open" beta where only pre-orders can play is absolute crap. The Warhammer people must think we are all idiots that will fall in line for their idea of open. I hope they go down in flames with every other designer who thinks they can redefine words to promote their game.
For the haters, why not play the game before you trash on it, you know, don't judge a book by its cover.
So they removed some content, guess what. The other 95% of the game is still there.
Inevitable city and the Order version of Inevitable are pretty damn big, especially with the ranked content that is available to a ranked city (3-5 stars).
The game itself is very fun, and from the getgo (level 3) your into scenario pvps, with regular rvr by level 8. It is not meant to be a standard pve mmo. It is
Having played in closed beta, I can say that the game (from a PvPers point of view) is in a much more completed state than any MMO I've seen, including WoW.
It's all live, and ready to go day one. You won't have to wait a year for battlegrounds, pvp ranks, or pvp gear. There are already more than 15 battlegrounds in the game with variations on objectives and scoring. There are realm ranks (pvp ranks), which not only allow you to purchase pvp gear, but also give you access to something like a pvp talent
I'm in the closed beta too, and while I've not played as extensively as I could have (got in the day before going on holiday, how cruel...) I've had a hell of a lot of fun.
It does lack some polish in some areas, but given it's competing with a title that's been out what, nearly 4 years, it seems very complete. The various ways RvR takes place are all good. My particular favourite aspect is the lack of one-shotting in PVP, you'll never get close to that, so battles are more strategic, and a go
I have a good number of friends in the beta for this, and they do not seem to be complaining in the LEAST about the amount of content. I seem to actually hear nothing but good things about the amount of possibilities.
The bean counters with their MBA's came in and removed 4 of the 6 major cities citing to move this project out by christmas rather than doing it right.
I think I will be sticking with Wow for awhile after hearing this.
Yeah, WoW really did a good job when it was released with all of its end-game content complete and in place... and now back to reality-land where WoW didn't have most of its end-game content at release either.
Partially implemented? My ass. The Death Knight is, in no way, partially implemented (unless in the sense of not being firmly balanced yet). A hero class is whatever Blizzard defines it to be, and they say that the Death Knight is a hero class. Thus, hero classes are implemented in WotLK. Should there be more than one? Possibly, but to say it's partially implemented is quite untrue.
Of course, WoW never tried to put out 24 classes either. SO when they implement another 10, that's a good comparison. At their rate, if they add it to the next expansion, it will have taken them 5 years. I bet WAR does it faster.
As for the capital cities- it may actually come out for the best. With 3 cities it was going to be very much 3 separate wars with no effect on each other. Now it will be a series of interconnected battles- someone fighting on Empire/Chaos cares about Dwarf/Greenskin and Elf/Dark Elf, because if any 2 of the 3 are captures the city can be sieged.
The bean counters with their MBA's came in and removed 4 of the 6 major cities citing to move this project out by christmas rather than doing it right.
When you play the game and realize that those cities are not just static cities like WoW, with NPCs that stand there and don't do anything, you'll understand why.
Each one of those cities is a full raid type environment designed for end-game players to capture, defeat several bosses within the city, and finally defeat the king of the city himself.
What happens is this: If one side, order or destruction, controls the keeps in all 3 pairings (dwarves v. greenskins, empire vs. chaos, high elves vs. dark elves), they have the ability to challenge the opposing side's capital city. This involves completing massive public quests within the city such as burning down buildings, killing champions (elite mobs), ransacking libraries, overtaking the sewer system, etc. The entire time, you're not only trying to complete these public quests in the opposing capital city, it's being defended by the opposing faction.
So, they chose to leave out 4 of 6 of the capital cities because it was just too much content to balance, especially because the content is not just PvE raid level bosses and the King himself, but also PvP content, essentially trying to kill the bosses and King while you're tackling PvP at the same time. It's just a lot to balance and tune effectively, and they decided it would push the release off too much.
They may release the cities later. I applaud them for wanting to make sure that the parts of the game they do release are of high quality, and not completely full of bugs.
I'm in closed beta, and the NDA was just lifted: The scale of the cities and the depth of tier 4 (highest RvR tier) is huge. Far, FAR bigger than the endgame content released with WoW (Western Plaguelands and MC, still took most guilds many many months to even attempt MC).
I'm having a blast playing. My biggest problem right now is that I'm spending too much time in it. Seriously though, play the game before you make any judgments (but I suspect you are just looking for reasons to dump on it regardless).
I played WoW at release, and it always amazes me how many people either forgot how crappy it was or pretend they know how it was, even though they joined a year after the game was out. 1) The servers were unstable and it was often impossible to summon pets, access the bank or the auction house. 2) At peak hours, the servers would crash about once an hour. 3) Somethings were incomplete, for example, getting your mount as a paladin involved talking to an NPC in IF instead of the quest line it was supposed to be.
At WoW release my server went down for a week with no ETA of coming back up. After a day my guild rerolled on a new server. Ended up being a great move, turns out the Goons were on our server, I'm happy not to play with them. If you're on their side they up the moron count by 50%, if you're on the other side you need to deal with their zergs.
Having played beta- the content in this game is PvP, pure and simple. If you like PvP, there is no competition. Wow is a sorry, sorry joke at it. If you like raiding- keep playing WoW. *Please* keep playing WoW, I don't want your everquest wannabe ass ruining another MMO.
The bean counters with their MBA's came in and removed 4 of the 6 major cities citing to move this project out by christmas rather than doing it right.
And the know-it-all geeks pout because they don't realize more doesn't equal better. "But you said you were going to start with 6 so your game can only be 33% as good!"
Well it is amount 100.000 players world wide. So it might not be "open" as such, but it is a significant increase to the amount of testers they have had in the beta up to this point.
There hasn't been a decent MMO since that didn't make you buy the game to get into beta (or at least have a decent shot). I think most of these developers realize their game has no chance so they try to grab as much money as they can before the playerbase realizes what a pile of shit it actually is (Age of Conan/Hellgate London/Tabula Rasa).
Bottom line: The demand for those beta slots is significant enough that they can 'restrict supply' to the level needed for a full on stress test, set the price of entry
I hope Warhammer is a little careful about the bug levels at release. The level of adoption of say, Vanguard, was deeply crippled, despite the high resolution landscape and graphics, by too many incidents of falling through the world or waking up inside a rock. If people get browned by frustrating play dynamics, simply moving around, there will never be enough revenue in subscriptions to allow it to grow past that point. Sometimes it's worth waiting to get it right.
As of now, the Non Disclosure portions of our North American Beta Testing Agreement are now officially lifted. From this point on players may now freely talk about their experiences in the game as well as post screenshots, videos, etc. We will be sending an email out to all our current players with full details about the lift over the next 24 hours. Players with access to our forums can also see the letter there. Players may not talk about nor reprint posts from our forums and our Test Servers (currently Deathsword) are still fully covered by the confidentiality portions of our Beta Testing Agreement. So, other than that, free feel to talk about and share your experiences in WAR.
My thanks go out to everyone who has beta tested and continues to beta test WAR. It has been with your help and feedback that WAR is where it is today. We really appreciate your effort.
WAR is almost upon us!
Mark Jacobs VP, GM Mythic Entertainment
I'm an elder beta tester, and here is my review:
The poor graphics gave me a really bad first impression, but the graphics are honestly better than WoW (not saying much), and we all know that graphics aren't everything, gameplay is king.
So, I decided to give it another shot with the 3.2 patch and jump into RvR.
So far I'm having a blast. You can level and XP in this game through either PvP or questing; you don't have to quest or grind at all. For me this is a major plus because I love levelling through PvP.
I wanted to talk for a second about some of the unique mechanics I noticed, which you might have already heard about before. The archmage I'm playing has a mechanic known as high magic, which the shaman also has, but it's called Waagh!. Basically, how it works is like this: If you cast damage spells, your healing counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each damage spell you cast. If you cast healing spells, your damage counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each healing spell you cast. This counter is like a charge that can be saved, but if you stop casting spells for 10 or 15 seconds you lose all the charges you have. If you cast a bunch of damage spells and build your counter up to 5, your next healing spell that normally would take 3 seconds to cast will be instant, and will heal for more. Likewise, if you build your healing counter up to 5, your next damage spell will hit harder. This unique dynamic encourages people to not just be healbots, but to be in the fray of battle, dishing out damage, and tossing out heals constantly. Every class has a similar unique mechanic, which will be refreshing for those of you used to filling a simple role (like healbot).
The RvR minigames are really well done and I jumped right into a queue with a level 3 archmage (healer, DoT archetype) and was able to contribute to battle right away. Think of instanced battlegrounds, but more fun because there are events that happen during the battle. For example, the RvR I was playing had 2 control points. If Empire or Chaos captured both of those points and held them for 10 seconds, a fireball would shoot out of the points, engulfing everything within about 100 feet and insta-killing everyone that was in it's path. It made things very dynamic because you could capture both points, and everyone would have to run out, resetting the points and allowing them to be captured again by you or the opposing team.
There are also keeps to capture in open RvR (world PvP), and with siege weapons such as catapults, burning oil, doors to break down, etc, it can be very epic. I've been in battles with over a hundred people on each side and the performance is pretty amazing considering how many people are participating.
Not only do you get XP for fighting in RvR, you also get RP, which are like PvP XP. You have two different levels, your Rank which is like your PvE level, and your Renown Rank, which is like your PvP level. When you get to certain Renown Ranks, you get access to buy
I agree with what is written above. Warhammer is great fun, and the Public Quest and Group system is a mechanic I have no doubt will be replicated by others soon.
Also Shaman is fantastic class to play, for me, the Waaagh! system combined with the fact that you have an Offensive and Defensive target makes it easy to go between DPS and healing in a group/warband.
Having played Shaman, Black Orc and Marauder mostly I would say that they all feel unique, challenging, yet fairly easy to get into. The fact tha
I wanted to talk for a second about some of the unique mechanics I noticed, which you might have already heard about before. The archmage I'm playing has a mechanic known as high magic, which the shaman also has, but it's called Waagh!. Basically, how it works is like this: If you cast damage spells, your healing counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each damage spell you cast. If you cast healing spells, your damage counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each healing spell you cast. This counter
Sounds an awful lot like the way rogues (combo points)/warriors (rage) work in WoW.
And I'm sure WoW borrowed those mechanics from another game as well. There's an awful lot of "borrowing" in the MMO industry.
Not exactly, because combo points are just ways to do more damage. High Magic/Waaagh! is different because you can only increase the potency of your damage spells by healing, and you can only increase the potency of your healing spells by damage. They reward you for playing both roles equally, and bel
Not really. The Action Point system (their replacement for mana) is similar to rogue energy. Waagh isn't really like rage though- its not relative to damage/healing done, its constant per spell cast. Nor is it like combo points- its not bound to a given target, and there's no finishers.
Witch elfs and witch hunters do have a more rogue like system- combo points with finishers, although they have a few other twists and stealth is nowhere near as powerful.
I just saw this game at Gen Con over the weekend. I was really, really unimpressed by it.
When I first saw it I was really confused, I turned to my friend and said, "Why are these people playing WoW underneath a Warhammer Online banner? That just doesn't make any... ooooooh."
If you're currently a WoW player, you might as well just stick with that, if you're not then this game probably won't interest you either. (Champions Online on the other hand...)
After the Bonedancer debacle, followed by the castable endurance buff + left axe or quad hit fuckup, can we really trust mythic to have the judgement to balance the game properly? Early results suggest that destruction is OP and order is underpopulated, will mythic figure out how to fix this? And when will an MMO developer realize that tf2 style red vs blue factions is the only way to have true balance?
In answer to question 3, I would say that I really can't keep playing the same game non-stop. It's nice to have two going and flip between them, especially if the way they play differs radically. For example, I couldn't play WoW and DnD Online at the same time because they feel like the same game, but WoW and City of Heroes is fine.
ADD? What's that? Some kind of OH MY GOD THERE'S A KITTEN OVER THERE.
Because this game offers something different from the others- gameplay based around PvP. SOmething Blizzard claimed it would do, then totally fucked over with raiding, killed with instanced battlegrounds while making world pvp valueless, and desecrated its corpse with Arena. WoW isn't even an option for people wanting real PvP, and the only other options (DAoC, SB, UO) are a decade old and some are dead (SB dead due to being buggy as hell, UO to age, DAoC to age).
You might not get bored with your current MMO, you might just be looking for an alternative play stile. I've been end game raiding in EQ for six years, and still enjoy it. But for the casual gaming experience I level Wow toons. Having a true uber character in a game (to me) makes playing alts kind of useless; no challenging play if you know you can plow all this in 10 min if you really want to. Having a second MMO for the real newb feeling makes that much easier.
I've seen plenty of places where skill overcame numbers. In the open field just last week my group beat a bunch of order who outnumbered us 2:1- by flanking them and hitting them from behind in their casters, while they engaged a small group of destruction running from them.
We won a keep battle the other day by skipping the lord and running through to the roof. When the order stupidly followed us up, we had everyone with a knockback use it to get them off the roof, and killed the remainder. WIth half the forces they couldn't stop us from taking the keep.
I won a scenario for Destruction yesterday pretty much by myself. In a capture the flag scenario, we were 12 minutes (out of 15) in and down by 20 points, neither team had captured yet. I saw their flag carrier slightly apart from the group on the right, with their group concentrating on the left side of the battle. I got 100 DM, ran in and gibbed him, expecting it to be a suicide mission. They ran at me with 5 melee dps/tanks. I hit them all with the AoE root spell, hit sprint, and got out of their safely. I then helped guide our carrier to the cap zone for the only cap and win (having to kill a few DPS who were attacking him).
Plenty of room for the good to beat numbers in open world and scenario based combat. Perhaps you aren't actually as good as you think you are?
Not to mention you can pre-order, get your beta key, then ask for your money back. Probably all during the same trip to the store. You may have to stop off at the local wifi hotspot and sign up your account before you head back to the store to get your 5 bucks back.
Oh yes... (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't going to be a disastrous release at all is it! 11 day open beta? With half the content now removed.
Earlier this year I was really excited for this game but the release looks like it has epic fail written all over it.
Hope I'm wrong, as the game truly has some innovation going on, but man...
Re:Oh yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
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As an "Elder" Beta Tester, I personally don't see the big deal about their removing 4 classes, there are still 20 classes available. Though I admit I come from the side of the fence that is interested in WAR more because of Mythic Entertainment than the Warhammer Fantasy franchise.
The content I've seen so far in the closed beta ranks among the more complete I've seen in an MMORPG launch so far.
I was expecting the Open beta to last for at least a month, but many people who entered preorder codes were invited
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Yeah, that's not an open beta IMO. People who pre-ordered should have been in the closed beta. The open beta should be just that, no caveats. I ALMOST pre-ordered a few months back but managed to restrain myself. Glad I did as this is shaping up to be an absolute disaster. Cities ripped out, classes ripped out etc... Fairly certain they'll be included in the first expansion, which of course means those who pre-ordered before that happened will essentially be paying for the same content twice.
Really disappoi
Re:I'm in CE Closed Beta (Score:5, Informative)
And since they just lifted the NDA I can openly talk about this.
Yes, the game has some rough edges, but damn its got a lot of content.
Way too much content so I ended up skipping a lot of it just to explore areas.
Anyways, coming from the background of a GW fan, I will say that Mythic has captured the atmosphere quite well. There is always something to do and I never found myself saying to myself "Hey... I'm just grinding."
Yeah some of it was, but it wasn't a boring grinding.
There isn't an economy to speak of, but I believe maybe that was the best design decision ever to make a game without an economy rather than a broken economy that inspires gold farmers and imbalances the game.
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Is the combat system a lot like WoW? From the gameplay trailers I've seen, it sure seems like it. I'm really curious, despite the content cuts. But I am not thrilled at the idea of buying the game if, despite the cool extras, at the core it's got the WoW keypress/timer-style control.
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I never played WoW but its a lot faster paced than EQ in my opinion. They use AP (Action Points) instead of mana which everyone has for special skills (melee included).
It also seems that you quickly regenerate HP as well quickly between battles so there isn't any down time which I found very nice. Of course the same applies to mobs so if you wail on a mob and then run away long enough to get you HP back up the mob will have his HP back full as well.
Yes, I find myself pounding the keyboard in certain orders
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What do you mean there isn't an economy? PLease explain.
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Auction houses were/are not in game yet, and there is not much of a crafting system to speak of (yet?)
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The WoW European open beta was exactly the same thing - it began about 10 days before the release of the game (and ended with the release). Served as a demo to me (and I imagine everyone else).
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Except with WoW you did not have to buy the game just to get into the open beta! Having an "open" beta where only pre-orders can play is absolute crap. The Warhammer people must think we are all idiots that will fall in line for their idea of open. I hope they go down in flames with every other designer who thinks they can redefine words to promote their game.
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So they removed some content, guess what. The other 95% of the game is still there.
Inevitable city and the Order version of Inevitable are pretty damn big, especially with the ranked content that is available to a ranked city (3-5 stars).
The game itself is very fun, and from the getgo (level 3) your into scenario pvps, with regular rvr by level 8. It is not meant to be a standard pve mmo. It is
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It's all live, and ready to go day one. You won't have to wait a year for battlegrounds, pvp ranks, or pvp gear. There are already more than 15 battlegrounds in the game with variations on objectives and scoring. There are realm ranks (pvp ranks), which not only allow you to purchase pvp gear, but also give you access to something like a pvp talent
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What he said.
I'm in the closed beta too, and while I've not played as extensively as I could have (got in the day before going on holiday, how cruel...) I've had a hell of a lot of fun.
It does lack some polish in some areas, but given it's competing with a title that's been out what, nearly 4 years, it seems very complete. The various ways RvR takes place are all good. My particular favourite aspect is the lack of one-shotting in PVP, you'll never get close to that, so battles are more strategic, and a go
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The capital cities have been removed (Score:2, Troll)
The bean counters with their MBA's came in and removed 4 of the 6 major cities citing to move this project out by christmas rather than doing it right.
I think I will be sticking with Wow for awhile after hearing this.
Re:The capital cities have been removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The capital cities have been removed (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, WoW never tried to put out 24 classes either. SO when they implement another 10, that's a good comparison. At their rate, if they add it to the next expansion, it will have taken them 5 years. I bet WAR does it faster.
As for the capital cities- it may actually come out for the best. With 3 cities it was going to be very much 3 separate wars with no effect on each other. Now it will be a series of interconnected battles- someone fighting on Empire/Chaos cares about Dwarf/Greenskin and Elf/Dark Elf, because if any 2 of the 3 are captures the city can be sieged.
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Re:The capital cities have been removed (Score:5, Informative)
When you play the game and realize that those cities are not just static cities like WoW, with NPCs that stand there and don't do anything, you'll understand why.
Each one of those cities is a full raid type environment designed for end-game players to capture, defeat several bosses within the city, and finally defeat the king of the city himself.
What happens is this: If one side, order or destruction, controls the keeps in all 3 pairings (dwarves v. greenskins, empire vs. chaos, high elves vs. dark elves), they have the ability to challenge the opposing side's capital city. This involves completing massive public quests within the city such as burning down buildings, killing champions (elite mobs), ransacking libraries, overtaking the sewer system, etc. The entire time, you're not only trying to complete these public quests in the opposing capital city, it's being defended by the opposing faction.
So, they chose to leave out 4 of 6 of the capital cities because it was just too much content to balance, especially because the content is not just PvE raid level bosses and the King himself, but also PvP content, essentially trying to kill the bosses and King while you're tackling PvP at the same time. It's just a lot to balance and tune effectively, and they decided it would push the release off too much.
They may release the cities later. I applaud them for wanting to make sure that the parts of the game they do release are of high quality, and not completely full of bugs.
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Re:The capital cities have been removed (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm having a blast playing. My biggest problem right now is that I'm spending too much time in it. Seriously though, play the game before you make any judgments (but I suspect you are just looking for reasons to dump on it regardless).
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I played WoW at release, and it always amazes me how many people either forgot how crappy it was or pretend they know how it was, even though they joined a year after the game was out.
1) The servers were unstable and it was often impossible to summon pets, access the bank or the auction house.
2) At peak hours, the servers would crash about once an hour.
3) Somethings were incomplete, for example, getting your mount as a paladin involved talking to an NPC in IF instead of the quest line it was supposed to be.
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At WoW release my server went down for a week with no ETA of coming back up. After a day my guild rerolled on a new server. Ended up being a great move, turns out the Goons were on our server, I'm happy not to play with them. If you're on their side they up the moron count by 50%, if you're on the other side you need to deal with their zergs.
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Having played beta- the content in this game is PvP, pure and simple. If you like PvP, there is no competition. Wow is a sorry, sorry joke at it. If you like raiding- keep playing WoW. *Please* keep playing WoW, I don't want your everquest wannabe ass ruining another MMO.
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And the know-it-all geeks pout because they don't realize more doesn't equal better.
"But you said you were going to start with 6 so your game can only be 33% as good!"
Open Beta? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Players can get into the North American open beta by pre-ordering Warhammer Online from select retail partners."
How can it be called an "open beta" when you have to basically purchase the game?
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Re:Open Beta? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because everyone can join, whereas a "closed beta" means that only selected testers can join.
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"Players can get into the North American open beta by pre-ordering Warhammer Online from select retail partners."
How can it be called an "open beta" when you have to basically purchase the game?
When over 700,000 people apply for all stages of your beta?
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There hasn't been a decent MMO since that didn't make you buy the game to get into beta (or at least have a decent shot). I think most of these developers realize their game has no chance so they try to grab as much money as they can before the playerbase realizes what a pile of shit it actually is (Age of Conan/Hellgate London/Tabula Rasa).
Bottom line: The demand for those beta slots is significant enough that they can 'restrict supply' to the level needed for a full on stress test, set the price of entry
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I hope Warhammer is a little careful about the bug levels at release. The level of adoption of say, Vanguard, was deeply crippled, despite the high resolution landscape and graphics, by too many incidents of falling through the world or waking up inside a rock. If people get browned by frustrating play dynamics, simply moving around, there will never be enough revenue in subscriptions to allow it to grow past that point. Sometimes it's worth waiting to get it right.
Of co
The NDA is lifted, as well (Score:5, Informative)
I'm an elder beta tester, and here is my review:
The poor graphics gave me a really bad first impression, but the graphics are honestly better than WoW (not saying much), and we all know that graphics aren't everything, gameplay is king.
So, I decided to give it another shot with the 3.2 patch and jump into RvR.
So far I'm having a blast. You can level and XP in this game through either PvP or questing; you don't have to quest or grind at all. For me this is a major plus because I love levelling through PvP.
I wanted to talk for a second about some of the unique mechanics I noticed, which you might have already heard about before. The archmage I'm playing has a mechanic known as high magic, which the shaman also has, but it's called Waagh!. Basically, how it works is like this: If you cast damage spells, your healing counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each damage spell you cast. If you cast healing spells, your damage counter goes up from 1 to 5, by a point for each healing spell you cast. This counter is like a charge that can be saved, but if you stop casting spells for 10 or 15 seconds you lose all the charges you have. If you cast a bunch of damage spells and build your counter up to 5, your next healing spell that normally would take 3 seconds to cast will be instant, and will heal for more. Likewise, if you build your healing counter up to 5, your next damage spell will hit harder. This unique dynamic encourages people to not just be healbots, but to be in the fray of battle, dishing out damage, and tossing out heals constantly. Every class has a similar unique mechanic, which will be refreshing for those of you used to filling a simple role (like healbot).
The RvR minigames are really well done and I jumped right into a queue with a level 3 archmage (healer, DoT archetype) and was able to contribute to battle right away. Think of instanced battlegrounds, but more fun because there are events that happen during the battle. For example, the RvR I was playing had 2 control points. If Empire or Chaos captured both of those points and held them for 10 seconds, a fireball would shoot out of the points, engulfing everything within about 100 feet and insta-killing everyone that was in it's path. It made things very dynamic because you could capture both points, and everyone would have to run out, resetting the points and allowing them to be captured again by you or the opposing team.
There are also keeps to capture in open RvR (world PvP), and with siege weapons such as catapults, burning oil, doors to break down, etc, it can be very epic. I've been in battles with over a hundred people on each side and the performance is pretty amazing considering how many people are participating.
Not only do you get XP for fighting in RvR, you also get RP, which are like PvP XP. You have two different levels, your Rank which is like your PvE level, and your Renown Rank, which is like your PvP level. When you get to certain Renown Ranks, you get access to buy
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Also Shaman is fantastic class to play, for me, the Waaagh! system combined with the fact that you have an Offensive and Defensive target makes it easy to go between DPS and healing in a group/warband.
Having played Shaman, Black Orc and Marauder mostly I would say that they all feel unique, challenging, yet fairly easy to get into. The fact tha
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Not exactly, because combo points are just ways to do more damage. High Magic/Waaagh! is different because you can only increase the potency of your damage spells by healing, and you can only increase the potency of your healing spells by damage. They reward you for playing both roles equally, and bel
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Not really. The Action Point system (their replacement for mana) is similar to rogue energy. Waagh isn't really like rage though- its not relative to damage/healing done, its constant per spell cast. Nor is it like combo points- its not bound to a given target, and there's no finishers.
Witch elfs and witch hunters do have a more rogue like system- combo points with finishers, although they have a few other twists and stealth is nowhere near as powerful.
There were supposed to be two tanks with a rage-
WARDB (Score:2, Informative)
This coming weekend is Preview Weekend. I gather the idea is to stress-test the servers, not actually start the beta early.
More like WoW-hammer (Score:2)
I just saw this game at Gen Con over the weekend. I was really, really unimpressed by it.
When I first saw it I was really confused, I turned to my friend and said, "Why are these people playing WoW underneath a Warhammer Online banner? That just doesn't make any... ooooooh."
If you're currently a WoW player, you might as well just stick with that, if you're not then this game probably won't interest you either. (Champions Online on the other hand...)
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You're seriously putting forth a review based on briefly watching someone else play?
But can we trust Mythic? (Score:2)
After the Bonedancer debacle, followed by the castable endurance buff + left axe or quad hit fuckup, can we really trust mythic to have the judgement to balance the game properly? Early results suggest that destruction is OP and order is underpopulated, will mythic figure out how to fix this? And when will an MMO developer realize that tf2 style red vs blue factions is the only way to have true balance?
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In answer to question 3, I would say that I really can't keep playing the same game non-stop. It's nice to have two going and flip between them, especially if the way they play differs radically. For example, I couldn't play WoW and DnD Online at the same time because they feel like the same game, but WoW and City of Heroes is fine.
ADD? What's that? Some kind of OH MY GOD THERE'S A KITTEN OVER THERE.
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Because this game offers something different from the others- gameplay based around PvP. SOmething Blizzard claimed it would do, then totally fucked over with raiding, killed with instanced battlegrounds while making world pvp valueless, and desecrated its corpse with Arena. WoW isn't even an option for people wanting real PvP, and the only other options (DAoC, SB, UO) are a decade old and some are dead (SB dead due to being buggy as hell, UO to age, DAoC to age).
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Re:I too have been in beta. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen plenty of places where skill overcame numbers. In the open field just last week my group beat a bunch of order who outnumbered us 2:1- by flanking them and hitting them from behind in their casters, while they engaged a small group of destruction running from them.
We won a keep battle the other day by skipping the lord and running through to the roof. When the order stupidly followed us up, we had everyone with a knockback use it to get them off the roof, and killed the remainder. WIth half the forces they couldn't stop us from taking the keep.
I won a scenario for Destruction yesterday pretty much by myself. In a capture the flag scenario, we were 12 minutes (out of 15) in and down by 20 points, neither team had captured yet. I saw their flag carrier slightly apart from the group on the right, with their group concentrating on the left side of the battle. I got 100 DM, ran in and gibbed him, expecting it to be a suicide mission. They ran at me with 5 melee dps/tanks. I hit them all with the AoE root spell, hit sprint, and got out of their safely. I then helped guide our carrier to the cap zone for the only cap and win (having to kill a few DPS who were attacking him).
Plenty of room for the good to beat numbers in open world and scenario based combat. Perhaps you aren't actually as good as you think you are?
Parent
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Not to mention you can pre-order, get your beta key, then ask for your money back. Probably all during the same trip to the store. You may have to stop off at the local wifi hotspot and sign up your account before you head back to the store to get your 5 bucks back.