Husky
Local Lurker
- Reaction score
- 120
Warhammer Online
First Impressions
First Impressions
So just over a week ago I got my invite to Beta. I was excited until I had to download the 9.3GB then 800MB's of patches. But hey with that all out of the way, I finally got to playing about 4 days after the e-mail.
I will not go into huge amounts of detail, but sort of just give a general overview of everything I experienced.
My First Character:
Warhammer Online (WAR) is separated into two factions Order ("good") and Destruction ("evil"). I chose to go a Greenskin, Black Orc, which is pretty much your a Orc Warrior. Unlike other MMO's, each faction has unique classes which are not available to the other faction. That is, each of the 6 races has 3-4 classes associated with it, and you can only be that class by going that race. So unlike WoW, you dont choose your Race and then the same classes each other race is, whatever race you chose has its own classes.
Anyway, as mentioned I chose to go Destruction, Greeskins, Black Orc.
Also a note, instead of "levels" your character has "ranks". The top rank/level is 40. It is essentially the same thing, just a different name.
Starting Out - The Basics:
Graphics:
Jumping in the first thing you notice is, of course the UI and Graphics. My computer isn't all that good (for reference I run WoW at medium settings at like 40-60fps), but for the graphical quality, the game looks pretty good and ran fairly well hanging around 30fps most of the time. Unfortunately whenever a effect was placed on me (like a spell of some sort) my fps (frames per second) dropped significantly, into low single figures. Effects on enemies were okay, but when someone healed me or something of the like, I dropped. Fortunately this didnt occur all to often. The only other time I noticed significant drops was when there was a large group of players beating on a single target.
User Interface (UI):
The UI is similar to that of WoW's so it was relatively easy to grasp. Unfortunately, there isn't a latency/ping bar yet (or I haven't discovered it). I am fairly certain it has not been implemented yet because other players were asking, and I asked other players.
The action bars have a scrolling/page feature so you can flick between multiple bars, and you can also adjust how many bars you would like to have appear in one of the options menus (up to 4 on screen at one time).
Above the minimap in the top right hand corner is what is essentially "zone control". Sadly, I cant really go much into it at this time as I haven't really gotten into it (my starting zone was always in Destruction control significantly).
Screenshot:
The starting area for Greenskins and a general overview of the user interface (image at 80% quality of original to keep size down).
Environment:
When you first start playing, one things I noticed straight away was: There's a lot going on around you. Unlike WoW where it is just NPC's doing nothing in particular in the starting zones, in WAR there is the feeling that a real huge War is going on around you (<3). In the Greenskins area at least, there are bowmen and troops everywhere shooting at whatever. It is a bit daunting at first - trying to make your way through everything, but once you make sense of it all it really creates an amazing atmosphere.
Questing:
The game starts out with the basic go and kill them, do this and that sort of quests. So far I haven't found any quest particularly boring which is a plus.
The kill quests are good for the reason that, instead of go kill 20 of these, it's more like go kill 3 of these (like pictured above). Mobs do take a bit longer to kill than they do in WoW though (it may take up to 30 seconds to kill a single starting mob).
Quest tracking has been implemented (pictured above) which is great. Quests are also tracked on your map, but instead of telling you exactly where to go it gives you a "general idea", or "within this radius".
Some quests were unique, the one that most comes to mind was an early one where I had to dig up some mud then throw it at a statue. There were many others like this which I won't list.
Public Quests:
Public Quests are great. They can get old fairly fast (just like repeating any quest would) but they are still quite fun, even after the third or forth attempt. Public Quests are quest where anyone in the near vicinity can participate in, completing one "wave" or "event" of the quest to unlock the next and finally leading to a boss of some sort.
Once the public quest is completed a chest is dropped and a roll is automatically generated, where the top 3 will get some form of loot (I think, I got fourth twice, never got top 3). This is good and bad. Good because it allows everyone an equal shot at the loot but bad because often one person will put in a lot more effort than another and not get rewarded... well sort of.
Sort of? Well, doing public quests creates "influence" with the town associated with that public quest. There are 3 stages to influence, where the higher the level of influence, the greater the reward. Completing the public quest 3-5 times will generally get you to the top rank, and that way, even if you don't win chest loot you still eventually get rewarded through influence. I great concept by Mythic, executed well. Public quests can take anywhere from 5 or so minutes to 30 minutes (and possibly more, I'm not sure yet as I haven't got that far).
Combat and Animation:
Combat is new but old at the same time. Pushing button X will do combat move X. This formula has remained the same. Fortunately there are "tiers" to combat. That is, you must use a lower tier ability first to use a middle tier one, then a middle tier one to unlock a higher tier one and so and so forth. I can't really judge how effective it really is later on, as at this time I only use about 5 abilities or so.
Big combat! Also shows party screen which maxes at 6 people.
Animations are good, but not great. They are smooth but not very... dynamic. This was probably just from playing a big hulky orc most of the time (although I did try other classes/races) but nothing really jumped out at me as being great. The "dance" animation (called /special) was pretty boring and average, for the Black Orc at least. Dispite this, there really isn't anything to complain about, there just isn't anything to rave about either.
Although the Black Orc's battle cry sounds amazing! They really do sound ferocious and ready for battle, and it was fun to "spam" after a wave of public questing...
Scenario's:
Scenario's are essentially "battlegrounds" from WoW. I have only participated in one so far (the one in my area from Rank 1-10ish) and it was quite fun. Unfortunately if you're a low rank you generally get steamrolled by higher rank players but that's what you get for joining as a lowbie I suppose.
Titles under your name are obtained through scenario's. The more you participate in scenario's the higher your rank will go.
Scenario's are available from the second you start the game which is great. It really gives you the feel that WAR is a PvP game, which is something I love.
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That is all for now! I have been EXTREMELY busy lately with school and I have only played War for one night, but that is my summary of it.
I will add more as I continue to play it.
Seems like there is alot of cool features, especially since you're only beginning, in particular
