WAR: played other MMOs? What do you like the most about WAR?

muttonchop wrote:

A lot of stuff I like has already been mentioned, but I thought I'd chime in with a couple more:
Tome of Knowledge: I smile every time I encounter something new and hear the little "ching!" tome unlock sound. I love that if you find a bat wing and give it to the right NPC you'll unlock a new title and gain some xp. I haven't even read any of the tome's lore entries yet but it excites me to know that I have such a wealth of information right at my fingertips, and that more information is continually becoming available as I explore the world.

Atmosphere: I don't have an extensive MMO background, having only played CoH, WoW, AoC and now WAR. However, out of those four I think WAR has done the best job of making every zone feel like it has its own unique and interesting story, and that it is an important part of the overall conflict between Order and Destruction. A lot of WoW's zones had a pretty rich back story, but didn't really feel like they contributed anything to the overall story. Most of AoC's zones had a pretty solid theme, unfortunately for most of those zones the theme was "Vanir/Picts/Hyperboreans are attacking." Admittedly, I have only seen a small fraction of WAR's world at this point, but I like what I've seen so far.

Wait - so all this junk I'm getting I should be giving to someone? Who?

Your best bet is to check a site like wardb.com. Do this for gray/white items that say 'Bound to Player' The other gray items that seem important but are not bound, seem to all just be trash.

Shoal07 wrote:

Wait - so all this junk I'm getting I should be giving to someone? Who?

I think the important items usually contain some sort of hint in their description. The bat wing I found had "this might be useful to an alchemist" written in the tooltip text, and in the same zone there was an NPC named so-and-so the Alchemist. I also looted some dwarf slayer beards with a note that you should give them to a rally master.

I just picked up WAR yesterday. It was a very positive first impression.

MMOs I've played: Ultima Online, Guild Wars, Age of Conan, trials of a bunch of others (City of Villains, Lineage 2, other crap...)

What I like: The controls and camera are smooth. Very smooth. Movement is easy and fluid. I haven't gotten stuck on any invisible objects. This is a very big deal, but it's something I didn't notice right away. It's more of an "absence of problems" than something truly notable, but if you've played a lot of games it's a common problem. This is a good sign in my eyes, and the sign of a good craftwork masking the difficulty of the task.

Hop-In and Hop-Out: My first session lasted many hours - I did some very simple quests, some PvP, and a handful of public quests. If I really liked something, I could stick around the area, or I could move on and try something new. Obviously this is all still in the newbie zone, so it is chock-full of different activities. I have no idea if there is a gaping hole in content when you hit level 30, for example. (E.g. Level 50+ in Age of Conan.)
I really liked being able to jump into a public quest. I don't like pinging strangers to get invited, but I like the feeling that comes from playing with a group of people that work together. Of course that doesn't happen every time you group up, but the potential is there.
And even if you don't beat the quest, you still get rewards.

Last: Fairly stable. I probably played for about 5 hours yesterday. I ran into one isue that I'm pretty sure was caused by not updating my video drivers since AoC. Besides that I haven't had any crashes or notable problems. No serious hangups or performance drops. Again, these are more noteworthy because of their absence, but they're still quite welcome.

I'm looking forward to getting home so I can check out one of the other classes.

And then another class and another class... the altiness of this game is very strong!

I now have 6 characters over level 10, none over 17

polypusher wrote:

And then another class and another class... the altiness of this game is very strong!

I now have 6 characters over level 10, none over 17

Yeah, I have severe alt-itis that seems to carry over from game to game.

I'd also like to add variety to the list of positives. As soon as I started I had ~4 quests available at all times. As soon as I turn one in, another appears. It left me feeling like there was always something to do, but never overwhelmed me with the sense that "oh god, I'm not getting anywhere!" or "So much do to! How do I choose!?" I'll see how that bears out, but the first session was a success.

polypusher wrote:

Your best bet is to check a site like wardb.com. Do this for gray/white items that say 'Bound to Player' The other gray items that seem important but are not bound, seem to all just be trash.

Damnit. I might have trashed a couple of those. Like this one weird grey doll, it said it was useless. And I did trash those beards, I thought it was bugged. I wonder how much else I've turfed

dp

This game adopted some superior designs from City of Heroes:

a) Skills that grow in strength with you. There's no such thing as purchasing a "level 5 Fireball".
b) This allows WAR to do City of Heroes "sidekick" trick, bumping you up to the level of the current battleground you're in.

Among other things mentioned, it gets atmosphere a lot better than WoW. WoW tried something there with Burning Crusade, but it was lackluster effort.

And, I too appreciate lack of stupid dance animations and Goblins asking me "Whazzup".

shihonage wrote:

And, I too appreciate lack of stupid dance animations and Goblins asking me "Whazzup".

I was amused to discover that they included a /dance emote, but it just states that your character refuses to dance. Cheeky bastards.

I am, however, a big fan of the /special emotes. Especially the goblin one.

shihonage wrote:

And, I too appreciate lack of stupid dance animations and Goblins asking me "Whazzup".

No matter the level of sophistication of a player it all boils down to fart jokes. GW has plenty!

Nothing to do with sophistication, everything to do with trying to maintain a semblance of immersion. Hearing "Wazzzzyaaaaap ?!" just wasn't it. Elves doing striptease dancing wasn't it, either.

shihonage wrote:

Nothing to do with sophistication, everything to do with trying to maintain a semblance of immersion. Hearing "Wazzzzyaaaaap ?!" just wasn't it. Elves doing striptease dancing wasn't it, either.

So hearing a goblin or orc fart works? that's what i was talking about.

Besides the wazzzyaaap had been around from the rts games. As far as WoW goes it fit. Now the dancing elves.... that's going above and beyond.

As far as WoW goes it does fit... which only reinforces the fact that the Warcraft universe was never particularly suited for a believable MMO world. It's too wacky.

I have 10 classes over 10 with none higher than 14 (my WL)

Shammy and Squig are 10 on destruction. Everything but the BW and RP on order. (I don't have a RP alt and my BW I got bored with after level 3)

My DoK and Magus could be 10 in a heart beat but Volkmar left a bad taste in my mouth for several reasons.

Scaph, you will get overwhelmed with quests soon enough. But it basically just boils down to hunting for the nearest red ringed area on your map.

I think they fixed some of the pet issues. My pet didn't disappear at all today in 3 hours. I finally got into my first tier 2 match with mourkain. It was a total blast. In one of the many rounds I played, we had a really well organized group and were fighting a tough opponent. They had the artifact first but we stole it early on and kept it. I got fourth place in damage at level 13 with almost 19k. I got 11 killing blows too. We won 500-320. Even the match where we never had the artifact yet managed to score 250 was fun.

Tier 2 scenarios are definitely less random. People tend to know what they are doing and healers are under control and generally run the show. Its just amazing to be a part of when people are using their classes well with coordinated roots, knockdowns and punting. (totally hilarious that I have killed a few mid air as melee dps)

It does do some things Different/well.
Some of the good
PQ's are enjoyable for the most part
Influence is a cool short-term goal
Map is decent yes
XP in PvP is well what is the best. this game is def PvP centric.
World PvP/keep taking.
Tome of knowledge and achivements is fantastic

Some of the bad.
-PQ's at higher levels are barren, which make them impossible to complete. It might as well be a dungeon.
-Influence is just another grind, along with renown, regular xp
-XP for PvP is really the /best/ way [almost only way] to level up at a reasonable pace.
-Quest XP is VERY poor compared to other games, and also compared to the XP you get from doing the SAME PvP Scen over and over again.
-Lot of the same type of quests, aka Kill such and such and mount their head. Or talk to bob
-Not enough space for quests in your quest book.
-leveling is pretty slow paced after level 20 imo.
-To much gear. Most of it is just randomized stats and is junk. This is annoying when you have to go through 20 pieces of gear to determine what you think will be best for you. To much useless crap.
Potions are super annoying. They are to diversified. Maybe it gets better at 40, but its obnoxious having 7-10 /different/ types of healing pots. It eats up way to much inventory

blah blah blah

grambo wrote:

blah blah blah

The amount of quests you can have active is just as much if not more than WoW.

The biggest difference between leveling from PvE vs PvP is from the frequency that the pvp queues pop. If they were capped around 10min or so you'd find it works out about the same.

With quests, I like that I can open my -map- and see what quests might be too old for me to go back and do. There's a clear path through the game, thanks to the chapters, and if there's a quest or three that are back a couple of chapters, they're sitting there right on the map, giving me a very easy way to just click on the red splotch and hit 'abandon'. Very nice design.

I'd agree that a bigger log would still be nice. The limits all seem pretty arbitrary, in every game.

With quest xp and PVP xp it is hard to call it balanced when a 10 minute pvp match will net me 7-12k xp and 10 minutes of questing will be able 1-3k xp per quest, usually 2 or 3 turn-ins at a time, and 10 minutes is stingy there. It will usually take longer. That makes it hard to choose delving into a fairly interesting story branch rather than queueueueing up for the next scenario.

With the exception for the quests at the end of a chain or at other end of the zone most quests give 3k-10k in the T3 zones and at least for a DoK extremely easy/quick to complete. Average xp from scenarios is 5k-8k.

regardless, the quest limit is way to small. maybe i was just spoiled by AoC hehe. (wow that sounded weird to say that)

Also what do you all think of using the Auction house / guild only stuff more? Specifically for tradeskill crafts. Might be easier than going to the guild vault every time.

ranalin wrote:

With the exception for the quests at the end of a chain or at other end of the zone most quests give 3k-10k in the T3 zones and at least for a DoK extremely easy/quick to complete. Average xp from scenarios is 5k-8k.

Which zone are you doing this in? My quest don't give any where near that. i've seen one Party quest that was a 10k quest, but its been more like 3-5k for me. I'm also a blorc... killing one thing is 10 minutes alone hehehe

And @level 23 i've been getting about 6k xp from a loosing scenario, and about 11-15k for a winning one (Plus renown)

grambo wrote:
ranalin wrote:

With the exception for the quests at the end of a chain or at other end of the zone most quests give 3k-10k in the T3 zones and at least for a DoK extremely easy/quick to complete. Average xp from scenarios is 5k-8k.

ranalin wrote:

With the exception for the quests at the end of a chain or at other end of the zone most quests give 3k-10k in the T3 zones and at least for a DoK extremely easy/quick to complete. Average xp from scenarios is 5k-8k.

Which zone are you doing this in? My quest don't give any where near that. i've seen one Party quest that was a 10k quest, but its been more like 2-4k for me. I'm also a blorc... killing one thing is 10 minutes alone hehehe

And @level 23 i've been getting about 6k xp from a loosing scenario, and about 11-15k for a winning one (Plus renown)

Chapter 12 in all 3 areas. I do admit that as a DoK i have an advantage in PvE.

I enjoy the content I'm doing at the time. If I want to quest, I quest. I don't worry that I am getting an average of 157.983xp per minute less than grinding PVP scenarios. I know there's min/maxers out there, but most of us aren't. It may sound weird, but playing this game to have fun is just, fun. That's why people are having so much fun with alts. It's just a fun game to play. If you feel like you're grinding, well, I think that's kinda on you. Sure, there have been times I have felt like I was grinding a PQ - so I stopped and did something else. Easy fix.

I have found, all at the same level, equal quality (but differnet) gear as PVP random drops, PQ gold bags, and Quest rewards (3x 2-stage quests) at ~lvl 15. All three were giving out pieces to sets of armor. Obviously, the PVP was random, so your odds are low that you'll get a full set, even if you PVP constantly. With the gold PQ bags you had to go to three different PQs, all were "difficult" (one is the Troll lord PQ - those that know, avoid) and get a gold bag. While more "possible", still an insane task. The Quest was 3 different quest mobs (around chapt 6/7) in the three different zones. Each gave you a "kill 20 of this type of player in PVP" then a follow-up of "go kill this hero right over there".

So, there were 3 distinct ways to get a "set" of armor at ~lvl15. That's variety at it's finest. I bet there's even a 4th, but I just don't know about it (keep lords? Beat tokens?)

Shoal07 wrote:

I enjoy the content I'm doing at the time. If I want to quest, I quest. I don't worry that I am getting an average of 157.983xp per minute less than grinding PVP scenarios. I know there's min/maxers out there, but most of us aren't. It may sound weird, but playing this game to have fun is just, fun. That's why people are having so much fun with alts. It's just a fun game to play. If you feel like you're grinding, well, I think that's kinda on you. Sure, there have been times I have felt like I was grinding a PQ - so I stopped and did something else. Easy fix.

I power leveled a Warrior Priest to level 11 in about 6 hours over two nights just by questing while I was queued to every scenario. It wasn't that bad, actually.

Made me happy to hit T2 and actually run stuff with the rest of my guild.

cube wrote:
Shoal07 wrote:

I enjoy the content I'm doing at the time. If I want to quest, I quest. I don't worry that I am getting an average of 157.983xp per minute less than grinding PVP scenarios. I know there's min/maxers out there, but most of us aren't. It may sound weird, but playing this game to have fun is just, fun. That's why people are having so much fun with alts. It's just a fun game to play. If you feel like you're grinding, well, I think that's kinda on you. Sure, there have been times I have felt like I was grinding a PQ - so I stopped and did something else. Easy fix.

I power leveled a Warrior Priest to level 11 in about 6 hours over two nights just by questing while I was queued to every scenario. It wasn't that bad, actually.

Made me happy to hit T2 and actually run stuff with the rest of my guild.

But why skip all that content? Were there no guildies in Tier 1 (retorical question).

Shoal07 wrote:

But why skip all that content? Were there no guildies in Tier 1 (retorical question).

I have a level 17 Witch hunter, so I've seen basically all of the Empire T1 content. Plus, I had basically a full WarPriest set from farming influence with the early T2 PQ's, so there wasn't really any need to actually quest for gear.

This was also after complaining for about 2 days about how there were 0 healers in any scenario I was in on the WH, so... yeah. And I've found that I really enjoy the "heal while beating the crap out of people" thing that the WP does. It's way too much fun.

My Swordmaster is 35 though I haven't played much the last few days as I am just getting back to work and trying to catch up on things. I think I will give the short short version of my Warhammer similarities thus far as I dun wanna type a novel.

Questing - If you like questing in WoW you will like questing in Warhammer. If like me you hate it you will hate it here too.
Public Quests - Neat idea if you are in a populated zone. Boring grinding otherwise.
Scenarios - If you like WoW battlegrounds you will like scenarios. If like me they get old really quick for you...yeah.
RVR - If you keep taking in DAoC or bases in Planetside you will like it. Not much new here either.
Public Groups - Neat concept. Every MMO should have this. Not really going to make or break the game.
Characters - Nearly as good as WoW, EQ2, or Vanguard characters. Chars on each side are extremely similar though.
Soloing - Everyone but the more pure healers solos fairly well. Pure healers can solo it's just slower.
Grouping - Same as any modern MMO.
UI - Better than WoW's base UI imo if only for the fact that you can move everything and remove useless things. Customizable through UI mods same as WoW.
Dungeons/Instances - Similar concept to WoW instances except some include Public Quests. Mob rating is different in instances as a Champion mob in an instance would be more comparable to a Hero mob outside of one.
Guilds - More complex guild setup than other games. Guild raises in levels to earn extra benefits some of which are standard in guilds in other games such as guild cloaks.

For the most part there is nothing really new or innovative about Warhammer Online. Then again the exact same thing can be said about WoW. Of course both games are quite fun to play and while I can theorycraft for hours upon hours about how they could have done this that and the other thing better or find endless things wrong with certain concepts or systems within either game... In the end I have easily over a hundred days played between WoW characters and while I don't expect Warhammer to get as much love I'm sure I'll put in 20+. This is not to say Warhammer is a terrible game compared to WoW so much as they are so similar in various aspects that WoW has already worn me out on (i.e. quest grinding).

As mentioned by several people the EXP and gear through PvP is Warhammer's one true saving grace. The fact that while grinding a PQ for Influence for a piece of gear I need/want I can just queue up for scenarios and get a bit of time in killing people while still making some exp, picking up some loot and advancing my character. Keep sieges and such can be quite fun given a fairly balanced matchup and as these work like PQs taking over a keep can also net you some loot.

On the PvE side of things the one thing keeping me hooked I think is simply that I like my Swordmaster a lot. As I am still fairly near the top of the levelling curve for my server I end up soloing quite a bit and while I hate soloing vs grouping the class handles it quite well. Earlier someone mentioned that they kill slow with their Black Orc which I find odd as it is so similar to the Swordmaster. I find that if I were to compare the speed I kill a single mob to other classes I would probably kill fairly slow. However I can easily take on groups of 5-9 even con mobs and kill all of them as fast as say a Witchhunter could kill 9 individual mobs. I just get them all nice and piled up and alternate my low damage AE's until I have enough morale to drop a Raze and they go down pretty fast. Soloing higher level mobs (I could easily solo level 40 mobs at 33) I have to do in smaller numbers but the key there is that morale abilities do the same damage regardless of the mob's level so you can just wear them down with Raze.

In PvP I only have problems with healers and black orcs. I can kill any other class 1v1. All of my gear is wounds/toughness/armor based so I am not really trying to do much damage so much as wear people down which is why healers are such a problem. I think even the DPS based tanks have issues with healers though.

The one major Female Doggo I have with gear is that as someone mentioned earlier a lot of it seems like it was designed by WoW devs or something where some of the stats just don't make sense. It's really hard to find gear with the stats I care about as a tank as most PvP gear is DPS based or on the PvP sets has small stat numbers for a ton of stats. I find that I typically have one realm worth of influence gear that provides tanking stats (in this case elven) and the others either have DPS stats or stats that make me go "what?!?!". At 35 the only remaining chapter I will bother grinding influence for is elf Ch 22. So I am not really sure where to go from there for gear. I guess instancing and higher level renown gear or something.

All said I give the game a thumbs up or maybe even a double thumbs up if you never played too much WoW.

Question: Do you think your experience with the game is a result from playing so much, so quickly to get near max level? It's not directed at you personally, I just know whenever I've powered through WoW, I became quickly jaded, but when I stepped back and moved at a slower pace and just soaked it all in, I had a more positive experience.

That's what I'm doing this time around, so no matter what the task, everything is still fresh and fun. If I get a bit too worked up over Scenarios I blow off some steam in Crysis or on the Xbox or something

To me, it's all about the endgame. If they deliver interesting, open world RvR then I will be a subscriber for a long long time. Honestly the leveling experience could have been an exact duplicate of WoW's and I wouldn't complain, so long as the endgame is good (read: nothing like WoW, lots like DAoC).

mven wrote:

I could easily solo level 40 mobs at 33.

I had access to the open beta and the head start and I'm level 17. The highest rank I've come across is 27.

I imagine you've been grinding hard to be there after (is it) two weeks?

That'll bore the crap out of anyone.

I'm having a blast. It corrected everything I couldn't endure about WoW and I feel powerful at lvl 17. The fact that they raise your level for PvP scenarios really makes it fun.

Now I can't wait to have two of the most useful tanking skills: Juggernaut and Challenge.