First and foremost, I find WAR to be really really really sensitive to any network latency. If you’ve got something downloading in the background or something eating up your network resources somehow, you’ll really notice it with this game. Ability progress bars will start to empty with the effects lagging behind by seconds, enemies will be able to hit you while standing behind you, etc. I know lag is an issue with all MMOs, but even when any steady network use is happening this game can lose its mind, to your detriment.

There’s the odd glitch I’ve seen where I’ll chuck my axe at something to pull it, and the axe throw progress bar will sit at 100%. If I walk up to the enemy and start attacking it won’t react, sometimes for minutes. Giving up, I’ll wander off and then well away from that NPC, I’ll suddenly start taking damage from the invisible beast, eventually dying no matter how far I run.

I’m a Marauder, so my arm changes shape. For some reason after I dye my armor, any armor, I end up with two normal arms even though my arm is insisting it’s been morphed to a different shape. It’s just a visual glitch of course, but a strange one. Not sure if other classes have similar issues with stance changes and such.

The End User License Agreement. All games have them, all games have you agree to it in some way shape or form before you can play. WAR makes you do this. Every. Time. You. Play. Please Mythic, end that. I agreed, I clicked the button. I don’t need to re-agree every time I launch the game.

Gold sellers, yeah, most games have some variant of this. I’ve had tons of gold seller /tells since launch, it’s just ridiculous. I will say though that Mythic’s got a very aggressive stance on gold farming, and it’s hilarious when they ban one from the game. You’ll see the announcement on the screen in a popup window, in a RP form. Clever, not too obtrusive, and something everyone can chuckle at. Well, except for the farmers.

My first character was a High Elf, and to be honest I found their starter area to be rather boring. Visually it was extremely plain, and from what I’ve seen it just seems overall that the Destruction side got a lot more attention. Or maybe being bad is just a more visually compelling concept. :)

For the most part there’s not a lot to gripe about with Warhammer.  Yet?  The game’s still new, and still going through growing pains.  I wasn’t hit with the issues of folks all being on the really popular servers which got cloned to alleviate lag, I know that would suck having to be forced to play on servers your friends weren’t on.  So far the game’s client is pretty stable, though it eats 1.2 gigs of RAM on my system.  The players are still settling in and discovering things together, which is nice to see.

Mythic’s not a bunch of noobs to the genre, and that’s shown with the Warhammer launch.  It’s disappointing when you hear that whole cities and classes aren’t there, but it’s nice to know they’ll be adding that content back in for free later.  So far I’m enjoying Warhammer a lot, and hope that people give this a try and aren’t scared off by the prospect of the RvR component.

That ends my initial impressions of the game for now, but I’m sure I’ll be blogging every so often with updates from the front lines.  Hope to see you out there!

Anyone who’s played DAOC will know most of what they’re in for with this, and in a lot of ways WAR is DAOC 2.0 in terms of the RvR approach.  Back in the day, DAOC was king for this kind of thing.  You wandered (or rode) to a RVR keep, payed someone for a special signet, and waited for a ring of wizards to whisk your group off to one of several tiered battlegrounds.  Or, you made your way to the single massive battleground itself, largely meant for the higher-end players, where capturing keeps and relics afforded various bonuses to your realm.

For those who are new to this concept, and there surely are many, this meant that you always had your entire realm’s PVPers (one third of the game’s three realms) to team up with and roll into battle.  The concept of battlegrounds and team play is something WoW borrowed liberally from, and with much success.

Now with WAR, things are a bit different.  In your initial forays into the game, you’ll be presented with the option of going on a Scenario Quest.  WoW players will be most familiar with these, as they require you to queue up for the match which will start when enough players toss their names in.  These quests are usually pretty short, and involve a series of objectives to accomplish with your thrown-together party.  Typically involving zone control and variations on capture-the-flag, you’ll be rolling with your party vs another group of players, and coordination is definitely key to success.

Regardless of success or failure, you can still claim quest rewards for taking part, and the experience is a lot of fun.  It’s easy to jump into while doing your normal questing, and you’re brought right back to where you were.  There’s no travel involved in having to select a queue either, you just do it right out of the main interface with a couple of mouse clicks.

But the full RvR experience is to be had with the contested areas of the game.  Each map zone has some areas which are actually conquerable by either Order or Destruction.  You can make your way to these areas, and if it’s uncontested you can claim it.  If the other side owns it, you have to destroy the guards keeping watch over the area, and defend the spot for a few minutes before it flips side to your realm’s.  This isn’t always as easy as it sounds, as there will inevitably be players from the other side trying to claim your areas and thwart your ability to take theirs.

Conquering areas and working to kill off members of the opposing realm gains you Renown points, basically another type of experience points but dealing primarily with the RvR content.  Renown Levels give you access to progressively better Renown gear from specific vendors in war camps located near contested zones.

There are other tangible benefits for conquering areas, as the more contested areas your realm holds, the more bonuses are afforded to the players of your realm.  These can include bonuses to Renown collected from player kills, for instance.

The open party system is present here as it is everywhere in WAR, and you can easily find RvR parties to join up and work together with.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of all of this is how well integrated it all is with the PVE portion, as you’ll occasionally get quests which bring you near to or inside these contested zones in order to complete them.  You don’t have to take part, but if you want to it’s almost instantly accessible.  If you ever get tired of doing normal questing, you can just hop right into a RvR party and go nuts.

I know I’ve only scratched the surface of the RvR experience here. Continuing to play, I keep finding more conquerable zones, all strewn throughout the regular questing areas. It’s almost a challenge to quest, when there’s that constant distraction of RvR, drawing you over to help recapture a spot.

Very addictive. :)

Age of Conan (AoC) is one that I got on day one, and was largely disappointed with the result. The lore of Conan is deep, but while playing the game I just didn’t feel the connection to it, and the gameplay didn’t seem to have the depth to keep me hooked.

Now with Warhammer Online (WAR) out, we have a game which is based on the ridiculously successful Warhammer table-top game, which I admittedly never got into (my wallet is thankful for that).  Early media previews dubbed it a World of Warcraft (WoW) killer, and that always freaks me out because it usually means “WoW clone”.  But click onward, and read about my first impressions of this hotly anticipated MMO.

You could say it’s inspired by WoW, but WoW itself was inspired by the Warhammer table-top game, so really getting into the discussion of who inspired who is moot here.  But in general, if you’ve played any MMOs in the last few years, the general design and interface of WAR will not confuse you.

Initially I rolled a Shadow Warrior on the side of Order (the good guys), but I was surprisingly disappointed with it, and tossed the character today in favor of a Marauder on the side of Destruction (the evil guys, mwa-hah-ha).  It’s a good thing to mention here that one of the coolest aspects of WAR is the fact that you don’t typically find your conventional classes here.  They’re almost all hybrid classes, like a tank that can also DPS, buffing mages, etc.  This is a good thing, since it really does give your selection a lot more longevity.

My Marauder for instance, can actually morph his arm into different shapes, which in turn allows me to use specialized skills.  Use the Savagery morph, and the arm turns into a claw with skills activating with an emphasis on damage-over-time (DoT).  Morph with Brutality and suddenly you’re wielding a demonic blade arm, with heavy slash attacks with flanking skills.  It’s very neat, and lets you reconfigure you character on the fly.  As far as I know, all classes exhibit the same dynamic of modifying what you can do.

The regular quests are as streamlined a PVE experience as you’ve seen in other more recent games, like WoW and LOTRO.  There’s really not much to say here about it really.  You find NPCs, they give you quests, you come back with the goal complete, and you get your reward.

The really cool thing you’ll find is in your travels for these quests, you’ll encounter Public Quests.  These are larger-scale encounters that you can walk into and leave at any point, and have their own series of objectives to complete, and you work with other players in order to do so.  For instance in one early PQ, you have to protect some mages summoning something, by killing militiamen trying to stop them.  The next stage is harvesting their dead souls to help with the summoning, while tougher guards try to stop you.  Finally, an uncontrollable demon is unleashed, and you have to help take it down.   Based on your contribution to the whole quest, you roll for the final loot rewards.

But it doesn’t stop there.  As you do PQs, you gain Influence.  Basically another kind of XP, but it’s put towards your completion of chaptered story elements, which are related to the area you’re in.  At each point as you max out your Influence for each chapter, you can talk to a Rally Master NPC at a settlement in that area and get some nice rewards for your time.

It’s a ton of fun to work with your fellow players doing these, and you can start an open party in the area for others to join freely and help you out with completing the quest.  And in a really impressive bit of thought by the developers, your regular quests will often overlap these PQ areas, so they’re tough to miss and easy to get yourself into the fun.