It’s Been A Lovely WAR

Posted by Stropp on August 29, 2008

First off, my apologies in taking so long to get to this Warhammer Preview Weekend write-up. I was completely thrashed after the weekend. I didn’t time it, but I think I spent close to 36 hours playing the various classes on offer. Consequently, the next couple of days were veggie mode.

Funny thing. I used to be able to do really stupid hours without paying the piper. I must be getting older!

For me, the weekend started at 10pm on Friday night Australian central time. I was expecting it to be a later start, but decided to login to get any patches that might have been available. At that point the servers were up with already a few hundred players on each. I ended up playing to around 3am before finally going to bed. It was pretty much that way until the end of the weekend, which for me was Monday evening.

The only real break, apart from sleep was a birthday celebration on Saturday evening.

I posted on Monday afternoon that I had enough and was quitting. Well, after a couple of hours the itch got to me and I logged back on to create a Witch Elf. I finally logged off around 10:30pm Monday night. I fully expected to be kicked off well before then, but was surprised when the servers just kept on going.

Anyway. Let’s meet the gang.

I ended up creating twelve characters over the weekend. Since each server only has place for ten player characters, I deleted a couple of them later on. Those were ones I couldn’t really get into anyway, they were the Archmage and the White Lion.

I took three PCs all the way to the grand total of rank 7. The remainder I got to level 5 or 6 with one or two at level 3.

That was my intention. I originally wanted to concentrate on seeing what the Destruction classes were like since I was intending to play Order. So I aimed to see as many as possible without leveling too much. However, I changed tack on Sunday and decided to look at some Order classes as well.

Big mistake. If I originally intended to go Order, well, sampling the Destruction has changed all that. Destruction has some of the best starting areas in the game, especially the Greenskins. The Greenskin area was totally chaotic. New players running around. Dwarves in barrels. And two big Orcs banging on drums. The area had a lot of atmosphere. And that’s not mentioning the Orkapult.

Anyway. Let’s talk about the big three issues. Stability, Polish, and Gameplay.

Stability

This is one of the issues that came out of the weekend.

While I had one of the most stable beta experiences since LotRO, which still holds the title for stable betas as far as I’m concerned, a number of players didn’t. Casualties of WAR provided a vent server allowing our guild to chat. Over the course of the weekend, there were quite a few cries of anguish as guildies crashed to desktop (CTD) some far more often than others.

It turns out a lot of these CTDs occurred on laptops. I believe this is a result of incompatible drivers and laptop graphics chips. Mythic have already responded to a number of player concerns about this problem, and this is what they have at the top of their fix list.

I ended up with a single crash to desktop right at the end of the weekend around 10pm Monday night. Since I hadn’t experienced this at all before hand, I first of all thought that the PW was over and Mythic had turned off the servers. Logging back in proved this notion false.

I also didn’t experience any appreciable lag, even at the start on Friday night when there seemed to be 15 million people in the Dark Elf starting area. The fact that I was playing on a US server, not an Oceanic server (not sure if they were up) meant that the lack of lag was a good sign.

The PW certainly wasn’t bug free either. There were a number of issues that came to light. The worst of these was the NPC pathing issues. It seemed to be more a problem for ranged classes. I found if I hit a NPC from range, it wouldn’t behave properly. It would sit there and take a few hits, or run off and then back, or both. It was a little unpredictable to say the least.

Pets, the White Lion and Squig, behaved similarly. This was likely the reason I didn’t end up liking these classes.

Mythic also acknowledged the pathing issues, saying that they had broken something just prior to the weekend. Fixing this was their second priority.

Polish

There is a definite need for more polish.

Actually I think the game is in a pretty good state, aside from the issues I mentioned above, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made better.

1. The User Interface. The UI could be a little better. While it does everything it needs to do, I personally feel that it could be a little better. Having said that, it’s a lot more flexible than the AoC UI which I thought was pretty bad.
2. Sluggish Controls. Also on Mythic’s hit list, the controls at times felt a little sluggish. I’d hit an attack and it wouldn’t happen, or a command seemed to take too long to execute. Often I’d hit an attack and get a message stating it wasn’t ready yet. That was often because it wasn’t ready, but sometimes I’d hit the attack the moment it cooled down just to get that message. It was a little frustrating, especially in RvR.
3. Slight Graphical Anomalies. Some icons were missing. Some graphics were a tad glitchy. Nothing too serious. The missing icons all had placeholders too, so it’s not a bug, the actual graphics hadn’t been implemented.
4. Spelling. Only one or two occasions did I see misspelled words. Okay, am I being too picky here?

This is something that will get Mythic into trouble if they don’t address it. Players like their games to be responsive, the graphics to be crisp (and all there). If it’s not polished, the complaint levels rise, rightly or wrongly.

Gameplay

The gameplay that Warhammer Online offers is good solid MMORPG gameplay. That means that it is the same MMORPG that we have all come to know and love. There are some differences though. New or improved features that add value to the genre.

The first of these is the RvR. At first glance, RvR in Warhammer is similar to the Battlegrounds in Warcraft. At the low levels you get to participate in scenarios which involve capturing and holding objectives in a BG-like instance. When you get a little higher in rank, there are open world contested areas where you can fight players of the opposite faction. In fact, there is the opportunity to attack or defend keeps and use siege weapons doing so. I didn’t get the chance to do the World RvR, but I did find the scenarios a lot of fun.

Public Quests are something new that Warhammer Online offers. My first character was a Dark Elf Sorcerer, and at level 3 I entered the first public quest area. This PQ and the others that I tried had three phases. Kill a number of NPCs that spawn in phase 1. Phase 2 is similar. Kill another set of NPCs, and then phase 3 is to kill a hero (elite++) boss.

In the DE starting area the hero boss is a stinkin’ dragon. Yep. At level three I got to nuke, or help nuke, a dragon.

Of course the second PC I created in the DE area late in the weekend had only five other PCs to help in this quest and could barely scratch a dragon scale. I guess that’s why the Public Quests are… public.

You’ve probably heard about the Tome of Knowledge by now. The Tome stores all your quests, and also keeps track of what you’ve done, who you’ve met, and how many you’ve killed. It also reveals a story as you progress into new areas and complete quests. That’s a real plus for someone like me who likes story in his games.

Like I said before, WAR is your standard EQ/WoW style MMO in many ways. You’ll have the usual quests to kill ten rats, and you’ll get quest chains to complete. Personally, I don’t mind the quest grind. In fact I kinda like it.

However, you don’t have to do that to level. Doing scenarios or open RvR will allow you to level as well. Maybe not as quickly as doing quests, but RvR is a viable option to leveling. I added a couple of levels myself just killing enemy players in scenarios. Some players do all their leveling doing RvR. It’s nice to have that option.

I should also say that I found leveling a little slower than other games. It took me a good three hours to get to level 6, and close to four hours to get to level 7. In WoW, I can generally get to level 6 in under an hour, and ten within three hours.

I think this is a good thing. There’s been a tendency lately to allow players to power-level their way to the level cap. WoW has recently accelerated leveling, and Age of Conan was designed to reduce the time to the cap. That’s all well and good if all you want is players raiding, but I’ve always considered the journey as the game, and exploration the goal, not just racing to 60 or 70.

What Now?

On a scale of one to ten, I’d rank this preview weekend a seven.

It’s clear that Mythic have a good game on their hands. If they can fix up some of the problems that showed up during the preview, and apply more polish, they’ll have a great game on their hands.

And that sounds a little pessimistic. If they can fix it. There’s nothing I’ve seen to suggest that there are any insurmountable problems in the game. This is not Age of Conan two months after release when the devs still haven’t fixed the memory leak. This is a game still a month away from release that is almost ready for primetime.

While Warhammer Online is not a mythical step ahead in the evolution of the MMORPG, it is a good solid example of the genre that throws a few new neat ideas into the mix.

I had a thoroughly good time playing over the preview weekend. You sometimes go into these things wondering if you’ll come out wanting to cancel the preorder. I had no such inclination. Rather, I’m now hanging out for the game to go live. When that happens, I reckon there’s a list of at least ten classes I want to play.

These are, in no particular order.

• Iron Breaker
• Witch Elf
• Bright Mage
• Sorcerer
• Warrior Priest (still got to try out in OB)
• Witch Hunter
• Black Orc
• Chosen
• Sword Master (still to try out in OB)
• Shaman

Let the Altitis go mad!

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