A WoW Player's Guide To Warhammer

With Warhammer Online just around the corner, Zonk wrote up a guide which compares it to the current top dog of the MMO market, World of Warcraft. He highlights the fact that despite the appearance of "War" in both names, Warhammer is much more focused on the struggle between factions, in gameplay and artistic style. Warhammer's open beta started on Sunday, doing well in the US but stumbling in Europe. The full version launches on Sept. 18th, but people who pre-order the game will be able to access live servers up to four days before, thanks to Mythic's head-start program. Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs recently launched a blog to answer questions about the game.

Re:Attention developers;

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they'll mourn the loss of all five of you Linux gamers.

And all the tens of dollars you bring with you.

Re:Attention developers;

[RichMan]

WoW works on Linux fine.

Although I have given up WoW for Guild Wars now.

Thoughts

[abigsmurf]

I'm in the EU beta.

The beta launch was handled horribly by GOA, the account activation was opened just a few hours before the servers went live and it completely collapsed. It wasn't just the numbers it seemed to be thoroughly broken. There's a reason you allow a few days before launching to let people sort out their accounts and keys.

However now that I'm in I'm enjoying it. The public quests are brilliant fun, the scenarios (think WoW BGs) are easy to get into and the classes are varied and have creative play mechanics.

remains to be seen if I'll still think it's great at level 30 when grind sets in but it's incredibly promising at this stage.

Re:My experience in beta

[flitty]

Me too. Playing in vista, my game would crash every half hour. In XP, it crashes once every 3-4 hours. Pq's are great, and the "chickening" of higher level players in lowbie zones is the best Idea i've seen (turning them into easily killable chickens). I think that will even add some "replayability" to the game (playing zones you enjoyed a lot but leveld out of), which isn't common for an MMO.

Re:Attention developers;

[Awptimus Prime]

don't worry, they don't run much better with a GMA950 under Windows, either. Blame it being a Mac, since Mac picked a sucky video chipset for your system.

Owning both, I can safely say, for the same money you could have given up a little case polish and OSX for much more powerful hardware.

Re:Another game that doesn't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Final Fantasy XI has to be just about the most casual-hostile game I've ever played. For five full years after the game came out if you wanted to do anything in this game you had spend the time looking for a group, which could take up to an hour or more if your build wasn't exactly right or you had some kind of unacceptable job/subjob combination, or if your support job wasn't properly leveled, or any number of reasons. Once you lucked into a party, you proceeded to one of the overcrowding hunting areas and stood around while the main tank went to find a monster and pulled it back to the group, where you'd have an exciting couple of minutes to kill it off and get a couple hundred XP (if the monster was particularly tough, and your party didn't manage to get itself wiped out), then the tank would be off again to find the next creature while the rest of the group waited around for him to get back.

Try to grind experience after about level 10? It's doable, but only just. After 20? Just not feasible without at least a three person party, and six is better.

And just now, over five years later, a patch arrives to allow the high-level folks to cap their levels so that they can help out the lowbies in the starting areas. This isn't to make the game more casual-friendly, it's because the starting areas are almost all completely deserted. Most of the players in the game have gotten their characters up to high-levels with all the jobs and there just hasn't been an influx of newbies to keep the starting areas occupied. This results in any new folks trying to get into the game with virtually nobody to group with, and then they're likely to leave pretty quickly as a result.

Re:Mythic has broken some old MMORPG rules..

[Liquidrage]

I really haven't noticed much in terms of EXP. In most cases though the Open Groups are not traditional MMO things. For example, the Public Quests are repeatable and start again very quickly after they finish. The game also keep track of something they call influence which is raised for an area by doing public quests in that area. So really, even if the exp is split, it doesn't hurt since more people means they go faster. The other place open groups works very well is in Open-World RvR which is VERY well done in WAR. Which again, even if the exp is split the more you have the more you kill so the split exp evens out.

For the RvR example, imagine there's a 40 on 40 battle going on. Very common in WAR. If you're solo you only get exp and kill counts for the ones you literally had a part in killing. But in the open groups, you get kills for your buddy next to you, both in exp and in terms of your kill count (which is used in some quests and for in-game achievements).

Impressions from the closed and open betas

[Fross]

I was in the WAR closed beta for a couple of months, and now in the open beta. Much about the game has already been covered so I'll skip it, but I have a few things to say.

First of all, I do love the game.

WoW did well with a (relatively) unknown lore and translated it into something sophisticated that touched the whole game. WAR does the same with its great lore set. Architecture, monsters, speech text, the ways the classes play, it all fits very well.

The graphics in the closed beta were bad, texture wise at least. In the open beta, they're significantly better. Hardly any graphic settings are changeable in game currently, so I figure they had a crappy default on the closed beta, a slightly better one now, and when you can tweak it to use your full system, it will be able to rival AoC.

The main point about WAR is, it is two games. It is a PvE game - you can do quests, public quests, instances, raids and never even go RvR enabled, if you so choose. It also has a full RvR game - scenarios, RvR enabled areas, RvR quests (from doing PvE activities within RvR areas, so actually killing players as an objective), a beautifully designed tiered RvR hierarchy, the lot. You can sign up for a scenario at Rank 1 and go right into PvP if you so choose, never looking back. Of course, the strength is when you do a little of both and have a lot of fun.

So far my impression is the RvR stuff is stronger, but the PvE is pretty damn good too.

Crafting, I've had a play with. I'll need more of a look. It feels a bit limited compared to WoW's "become the best blacksmith and make a fortune" ideal, but both innovative and with a fair element of chance that things won't come out as planned.

The interface was great in the closed beta, but not much handholding. They've added that in now and it's easy to get around and the early quests seem as graceful a learning curve as WoWs, but perhaps even more fun - more dark humour and some cool ones (shooting ballistas at NPCs etc)

It's worth mentioning again the classes and the beautiful way some of them work. Bright Wizards and Disciples of Khaine are my favourites. The first is a caster who the more spells they unleash, the more damage and crit they get, but the more chance to blow themselves up (and their teammates) too. The Disciple of Khaine is a healer, but their mana is generated through doing melee damage combos. No more standing at the back spamming Renew. It encourages, nay, requires, strategy rather than tactics.

Speaking of strategy, tanks intercepting attacks make formation hunting *very* powerful. The healer is hiding behind the tank? You can't hit him, target him, lob a fireball, chances are the tank intercepts it. And you can't just run through him. Finally! :)

In my second ever scenario, while a large skirmish was going on, a few of us outflanked the enemy and *ripped them apart*. The way it should be.

Overall the beta launch has been smooth. Even in Europe, where I play. I was in the WoW open beta as well, and it was nowhere near as smooth as this. People do forget that, a couple of years on. It's been playable almost all the time, which hey, is pretty good for a beta.

Speaking of beta, one thing I was impressed with was during closed beta, the level of interaction required from players. Lots of surveys on performing actions (how was that last quest, last scenario, etc) and looks like the developers have been very good at picking things up.

Overall, I think it's great. May not be for everyone, but I'm having a lot of fun.

Re:Another game that doesn't get it...

[Liquidrage]

Hopefully you read this because I'll expand.

The scenarios that are WAR's versions of battlegrounds are more like a mini game. A way to level if you want. Etc..

However, the real focus of WAR is open-world-RvR. Very large scale battles. Now, the amazing thing, is these do exist in game. Huge battles. Where you spend hours and hours with 40 people on yuor side killing 40 people on the other side. The front lines shift and change.

The reason this works is there are goals in open-world RvR. If you're familar with WoW you might recall old RvR like Tarren Mills style or the Xroads in the barrens. In WAR there are lots of places like this. And you want to control them. You need to control them. Merchants that have items you want are in them. To open certain content your side needs to control certain ones. Not to mention your guilds can control and take over and defends keeps.

So yes, the scenarios are just like WoW's battlegrounds. A little better integrated into the game, but similar enough. However the true RvR is the open-world battles and they've managed to pull it off.

Re:Attention developers;

[snuf23]

There are a surprising amount of Mac native games now. Sure they don't come out first on Mac. Also if you are a Mac owner and you really want access to PC games without hoping or waiting for a port, you can install Windows via bootcamp. Of course Linux users on x86 have the same option.
If you don't want to dual boot then you have to make do with what's available.

Re:Attention developers;

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

The Penny Arcade game came out for PC, Mac, and Linux at the same time. I don't know if they released stats for purchases by OS, though.

Re:Thoughts

[Admiral Ag]

It would have been a lot cooler if it had been based off of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which is the best RPG I ever played. They kept some of the things from that, like the careers, but from what I can see, none of the subtlety.

Re:PvP, RvR, PvE...

[WallyDrinkBeer]

RvR (Realm vs Realm) is just PvP.

Each "side" (Order v Chaos) is called a realm. The idea is that one half of the server is fighting the other, not just player v player.

To accomplish this they have big server wide objectives, like capturing a Keep or destroying a city.

Having said that, it's more of a marketing line, it's really just PvP.

My observations...

[huddles]

I was in the closed beta briefly, and have been playing the open beta since it started. So far, my observations are:

• The game feels very linear. Actually, it doesn't feel linear, it *is* linear. There is a well-defined path from where you start to where you need to go next. Sure, you can travel to the other starting zones, but that's just one more direct path to the last tier.
• For a given career, all the gear looks basically the same. This is especially true for the two careers I've played the most--Zealot and Witch Elf. Upgrades look exactly like your old armor.
• Regarding variety, some careers are very limited in what kind of gear they use. For instance, Witch Elves dual wield daggers, period. Zealots uses daggers, period. Etc.
• There's nothing that really sets one [DPS|tank|healer] career apart from the others. In Wow, shamans have totems, priests have shackles, mages have polymorph, etc. Nothing like that, really, in WAR.
• Somewhat related to the above point, Rune Priest (dwarf healing career) and Zealot (Chaos healing career) are functionally equivalent--just the names of spells are different. There are other pairings, too, for instance in the tank careers.
• Cultivation is pretty cool, or at least pretty novel. However, it should have been a crafting profession instead of a gathering profession.
• Crafting is pretty much non-existent. You have Apothecary and Talisman-making, and that's it. And your characters can't take two gathering professions--you're limited to one crafting and one gathering.
• The game seems to be very much *not* dependent on gear, which I suppose is a good thing. But it also takes away the joy of coming across a good find.

Overall I like the game, but it's really only for PvP. If you're not into the PvP in other games, there's really nothing for you in WAR. Being so heavily PvP-based, though, Mythic has made sure all of the classes have a decent survivability.

The pace of the game is very fast--on my healer, just a few seconds of not casting is enough to fully replenish my action points (WAR's version of mana/rage/energy). The fast pace makes the RvR scenarios very chaotic at times. I suppose you could say that WAR is to MMOs what Diablo was to RPGs.

There are a few other things about the game I don't care for, but I think these they will eventually end up tweaking. For instance, the mail system is a pain to use, and there's no auto-loot feature.

Re:PvP, RvR, PvE...

[ZzzzSleep]

Realm vs Realm. I think it's meant to be PvP on a much larger scale.