Warhammer Online Thread!

[chineseman]

By world pvp i mean running around randomly ganking people or looking to stir up trouble in non-objective areas which do not include keeps, outposts, cities.

Yes, NPCs are dumb which I stated in my previous post but it's still a better solution than implementing a 1:1 faction cap. If they simply spawn NPC guards in the form of tanks that stupidly chase after the first thing that gets in range, that's still pretty good as most people are afraid of charging into the fray in the first place. People can just rally behind the dumb wall of npc tanks that charge forward.

Like Vorret said, things have a tendency to balance themselves out. The only way I see a gross imbalance happening like you suggested is if that Hordes of Goonheim or whatever guild migrates over to WAR to occupy that one unlucky server.

 

[azuros]

Actually current numbers are suggesting almost a 1:1 ration with 46% order and 54% distruction so i dont think it will be even close to being as skewed as 10:1

 

[Heyday]

I think everyone is misunderstanding this server cap thing, or maybe I am misunderstanding it. If a server has a cap of 2000, then 1000 is the cap for order, and 1000 is the cap for destruction. This is a very good thing, this way, there can't be 1500 destruction, and only 500 order can log on. You can still have some side imbalance, you can have 1000 destruction vs 500 order, but then more order can come, but more destruction can't.

The argument of not being able to play with a friend could still happen with this rule in place or this rule not in place, there is still a server cap. It is just that this way each side has an equal opportunity to get proper numbers for a battle.

 

[Vorret]

That's how we understand it...
Well that's how I understand it and think it's crap !

 

[Heyday]

so, I guess you like to have twice as many as the other side?

 

[Vorret]

so, I guess you like to have twice as many as the other side?

Nah
I like freedom to choose which side I want to play and when I want to play.
It won't be as bad as people make it sound like it'll be.

Oh and... if I had to choose, I'd pick the side that's 1 vs 2 for the challenge... I have it when it's too easy anyway

 

[Heyday]

Yeah, I don't think this system will be as bad as people think. If it gets to the point where you can't log in because the server is full, then that will be the problem, not the fact that one side can and one side can't.

In any case, I have never had to wait long for a full server to open up some spots in any game.

 

[chineseman]

Wait...I thought we were just speculating about what methods they could use to control the poulations, they're not actually going ahead with the faction caps are they?

 

[veterator]

Well I can say this about pop caps. It was really annoying in wow if you crashed or got booted for some reason and couldn't get back on for 30 minutes due to the server being locked over population caps.

So hopefully they've got some other bonuses up their sleeves to encourage balanced servers, and that also encourage people to play during certain periods of time. Nothing more annoying then having no problems during the week at all, then come the weekend and your server starts getting pop-locked a couple weeks in a row and you have to decide if you want to switch to the new server or hope enough people leave (without stealing your guild bank of course).

 

[Shlomo]

Well I can say this about pop caps. It was really annoying in wow if you crashed or got booted for some reason and couldn't get back on for 30 minutes due to the server being locked over population caps.

So hopefully they've got some other bonuses up their sleeves to encourage balanced servers, and that also encourage people to play during certain periods of time. Nothing more annoying then having no problems during the week at all, then come the weekend and your server starts getting pop-locked a couple weeks in a row and you have to decide if you want to switch to the new server or hope enough people leave (without stealing your guild bank of course).

extra renown and xp by up to 20% depending on how severe the imbalance is

 

[veterator]

extra renown and xp by up to 20% depending on how severe the imbalance is

Still wondering what they have in mind for the weekend surges. I had planned (if I buy it) on having one server for Order chars and one for Destruction chars because Im an alt-aholic and wanted to give myself enough slots to make one of everything or close enough that it doesn't matter. (I am hoping they don't server lock people like other MMOs do, the beta would indicate that they aren't planning on it but other companies have changed it before open beta/head start).

So, while I agree it probably won't be a problem people have MOST of the time. I think that weekend surges can and will happen because MOST people favor the higher population servers for their economies, guild choices, and better chance of finding like-minded players.

I know it happened about every 2 months on Mug'thol in Warcraft. Was irritating as hell having to queue up, and especially irritating if you crashed or needed to reboot to fix something. Can remember 20+ minute queue times this past winter on Mug.

And Im not slamming their idea, it is something they have to do in some fashion but the weekend surges will come eventually if the game is at all successful.

 

[Archer75]

I'm sure the balance will work itself out in time. But again, I have no problems with hard limits that prevent gross imbalances. You might want to get on to play but if the population balance is way off you won't have anything to do. If this was primarily a PvE game i'd agree with you, but it's not no matter how many PvE elements they put in it. It's focus is RvR and as such it requires population balance. Don't agree with me? Just ask the devs.


So yes, population will work itself out over the first few months. But the hard limits are needed to ensure that it does so and quickly.

WoW didn't do a good job of this and servers became overloaded and went through a period of queues and character transfers to balance things out and make sure the servers weren't overloaded.

 

[RESTfulADI]

I could be wrong but I think I read somewhere that they are aiming for on a couple thousand people per server (it could be per side)? Can anyone I beta confirm this? It seems very low compared so WoW which has up to 20k per side and 30k total on some servers. I guess RvR would be slideshow with that many players.

 

[Archer75]

I could be wrong but I think I read somewhere that they are aiming for on a couple thousand people per server (it could be per side)? Can anyone I beta confirm this? It seems very low compared so WoW which has up to 20k per side and 30k total on some servers. I guess RvR would be slideshow with that many players.

They are talking about the number of people online playing at once. WoW's servers are capped at around 3000(give or take) at any given time. While you may have 10 characters on that server on that account you can only play one of them at a time. So yes, there may be 20k or more total characters created but only 3000 people total, both sides, can play at once.
Most MMO servers are capped somewhere around 2k-4k. EVE Online holds the record for the most people online at once in a single game world. I haven't seen numbers recently but I think it's around 40k.

I have seen 2k people online at a time on warhammer servers. I don't know if it will be capped at that though. I hope it will be higher. But that's what open beta will show after some stress testing.

 

[excellsior]

How many servers are they going to be running?

 

[Cobalt35]

I'm sure this has been mentioned already but why why why did they have to go with Fileplanet? The downloader sucks. I'm stuck using 1/20th of my available bandwidth

Very much looking forward to the game though

 

[Voiceofid]

How many servers are they going to be running?

i read that they will open servers as needed

when i first got into the ce closed beta there was 3 servers, then they opened to 5

 

[Frostex]

What sort of pop caps are actually in place then? Does anyone know any hard numbers?

It'd be nice to see a good few thousand active players allowed, so that each zone can potentially be fleshed out with 100's of players.

 

[Archer75]

What sort of pop caps are actually in place then? Does anyone know any hard numbers?

It'd be nice to see a good few thousand active players allowed, so that each zone can potentially be fleshed out with 100's of players.

I don't think there are hard numbers in place yet. Open beta is for stress testing and that hasen't started yet. I have seen 2000 people online so far on any given server. If open beta shows the servers can handle more then the number goes up.

 

[Darthbeevah]

How many servers are they going to be running?

the preview weekend had about 6 live servers the first morning. by day 3 they had over a dozen running.

they seem to be rather rapid to respond to changing needs, but that was a fraction of the total expected player base.

as far as live goes, who knows. /shakes magic 8ball

 

[GoldenTiger]

What sort of pop caps are actually in place then? Does anyone know any hard numbers?

It'd be nice to see a good few thousand active players allowed, so that each zone can potentially be fleshed out with 100's of players.

Camelot's server cap was around 3500 players each, so I'd expect around that at launch give or take. WAR during beta has had caps all over the place from a few hundred through 2500+ at times.

i read that they will open servers as needed

when i first got into the ce closed beta there was 3 servers, then they opened to 5

They will indeed open servers as needed so that they have each one well-populated as it goes... they have a stack of them ready and waiting for once the game launches as each one fills up to open more. Beta has had from one to several servers, and the preview weekend had more than a dozen by the end of it.

 

[Climber]

This is a friends review of the beta so far. He goes into some detail about the mechanics of the game and his thoughts on them, sometimes he just gives the details and doesn't say ya or nay on them. Anyways here it is is, its long, so heads up. But thought it might be a good read for those who aren't in the beta and were wondering about some more specific details.

It’s the little things that count, and there’s oh-so-many of them that really make Warhammer more enjoyable than your average WoW-romp. Despite this being primarily an RvR game, I found the PvE actually very enjoyable. I wanted to touch on the PvE a bit first, before I forget about it, because let’s be honest here, I’m not here for the PvE. I was dreading it to be honest. Ever since leveling multiple characters, then raiding in WoW, I’ve had absolutely zero interest in PvE content…



It Feels Right

It does. The first thing I was tasked to do after creating my Sorceress was to go kill some High Elves. Sure they’re NPCs, but at least I’m killing NPCs that are relavent to my interests. None of this ‘bring me 8 rat tails’ crap. The trend continued as I progressed through the ranks. There are different quests than just killing Elves though, but they don’t stray too far away from the main point of the game: War. Everything you do after first setting foot in Warhammer Online is to bolster the war effort. It really gives you the feeling that no place is safe, that there’s actually a war going on.



Public Quests

Public Quests are a God-send. I had read about this before trying the game, and wasn’t particularily excited, but it turned out to be something completely new. They way PQ’s work, is that certain areas have quest events constantly going on. When you enter the area, the quest automatically pops up tell you what to do. You don’t have to join any groups, or wait until the quest restarts, you just get in there and start killing. As soon as you start contributing you gain influence points, which pop up over kills just like experience would. In addition to the influence, you gain experience noramlly, and an experience bonus after each stage of the PQ is completed, like you would with any normal quest (all PQ’s have at least 3 stages). Influence does two things; first, determines what kind of bonus you get on the PQ loot roll (more contribution means a better chance at loot) and second, it accumulates in the zone’s influence bar, and is later redeemable at the zone Rally Masters for rewards. The Rally Master rewards are divided into three levels; The first is just potions of various kinds, the second is a piece of armor, and the third is usually a chestpiece or weapon.

Even though my luck rolling on PQ loot was horrible, I was having a blast just contributing. Public Quests works perfectly with the RvR Scenarios; I would Queue up for a scenario with my group, and the just participate in a PQ until the queue popped. Once it did, I would take it, finish the scenario, and then be thrown out right back to the PQ I was doing earlier. There are usually three PQ’s per zone, with the very first one being a little ways from the starting zone. The synergy remains the same with normal quests…

Solo/Group Quests



I hate questing. I’ve done enough MMO questing for a lifetime. Yet, the way Warhammer does questing, is refreshingly easy. One of the few things I enjoyed about Age of Conan, the quests in WAR automatically show you the quests ‘hot-zone’ on your mini-map. These sections of your map are circled in red, and tell you where your quest objectives are. Once the quest it complete, the map circles where to turn the quest in. Why is this not the standard for every MMO? No more thotbott bullshit. No more addons to get coordinates to find a specific mob.

Loot

Loot works the way most MMO’s have it set up these days; loot drops, you pick up, end of story. This is first MMO I’ve played where I didn’t have problems with my bag-space right off the bat. Never did I see a ‘inventory is full’ messege when handing in a quest or looting a corpse. Quest-specific items, both ones that you pick up and ones that are given to you for quest use, are stored in a seperate tab on your inventory screen, and don’t take up space in your bag at all.

When in a group, if anything worth rolling for pops up, each player is prompted to rolled Need, Greed, or Pass. The rolls and loot distribution is done automatically, pretty standard. The loot value is color coded and seems to follow WoW’s pattern of vendor-trash to epic.

Quest rewards and RvR loot (yes you get loot in RvR, off player corpses, not their gear though) are a bit innovative though. The items change depending on what class you are. If you complete a quest, the rewards will automatically cater to you, though still giving you the option to choose between a couple different items. When rolling for RvR loot, each group member sees a different piece of loot when prompted to roll; say you are playing a Witch Elf and your friend is a Shaman; the WE sees a dagger for the roll, while the shaman sees a staff. It took me a while to figure this out, and it seemed that all the people in my group were rolling ‘need’ for items they couldn’t even use.

The UI Customization

I hadn’t heard much about this, so I really didn’t know what to expect. I had switched up some hotkeys, but other than that I was fairly happy with how the default UI looked and functioned. In later levels when you gain morale abilities, you’ll notice the morale bar is in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, this was a little too out of my way to keep an eye on mid-combat. I opened the main menu and found a button that read something along the lines of ‘Edit UI Layout.’ To my pleasant surprise, I went into a full-on editing mode for the UI; I could change everything. Every object on the screen was movable, snapped nicely to other objects for easy handling, and changed color to warn you that it was under another object and may not be accessable. It all reminded me a lot of Perl Unitframes from my WoW days, but no pesky downloads/updates and version incompatibilities.

The one thing that I found missing in the UI, was a target-of-target option. I hadn’t really noticed it’s absence until I started RvR’ing with my Chosen. Seeing a melee character running towards my group, I’d really love to have the option of selecting them to see which of my groupmates they have targetted so as to know who to swtich my Guard to. I’m sure it’s very much the same for healers.



Instances and Raids

I havn’t done any. I’ve been told the group instances are saved for later tiers/ranks, which is fine by me. There was plenty to do in terms of PvE in these lower zones, and personally I feel that Public Quests largely eliminate the need for said instances. One thing I can tell you is that the raiding is focused on a one-man team. The ‘raid instances’ are supposed to be longer, more oriented on boss-fights, and generally harder than normal instances, but are there none the less. I’d prefer getting a group of 6 great players to attempt harder content then search for 40 people who just have lots and lots of time.



I was pleasantly surprised with the PvE content, I wasn’t planning on doing any of it, but it fits in so nicely with the rest of the game that it’s really not a big deal. The fact that you can queue for RvR scenarios anywhere is a huge bonus in my opinion; it lets you just be out in the world, doing whatever you need to do, and not be restricted to towns/keeps.

After playing Closed Beta for awhile, I definitely got a feel for how this game is going to play out. Needless to say, it has solidified my decision to buy the game and play it when it goes live on September the 18th.

The obvious comparison here is to that of World of Warcraft, it's leading the MMO genre, it's well known and easy to put side-by-side with WAR. While most Warhammer Online fans tend to hate it when anyone even tries to draw comparisons between the two games, it's clear that there are similarities, but I feel that the reason Warhammer Online is so much fun to play is because of the glaring differences. While most of the people I know defending WoW as the ultimate PvP game, they seem to know nothing about how RvR works in WAR. Let me break down the reasons I think make WAR an all around better PvP (RvR) game than World of Warcraft.

1. PvP (RvR) From the Start

As soon as you load into the game, you're given the option to queue up for a Scenario (battleground, essentially). You don't even have to do your first PvE quest, read anything, or go anywhere. There's an icon in the top-right-hand corner of your UI that you can click to queue you, or your group, for the tier1 scenario. Why would you want to just sit in a scenario and PvP (RvR) when everyone else is busy leveling? Nobody wants to get left behind right? Right. You gain experience from killing players, winning scenarios, capturing open world objectives, everything. You wouldn't think it'd be enough to level you up, but I've got roughly 90% of my characters experience just from PvP (RvR). There's also a lot of repeatable PvP (RvR)-oriented quests you can pick up to further boost the experience you gain, such as 'Kill 5 enemy players,' or 'Win a Nordenwatch Scenario.'

How do you deal with the level discrepancy though? If I'm rank 1, and there's rank 10 players in the same Scenario/RvR battle, I won't stand a chance right? Wrong. Anytime you enter a PvP scenario, you're automatically boosted to a higher rank so that you can be competitive. Now, this boost affects your base stats and health, but not your gear. It also boosts your abilities to the corresponding rank so they do more, but it doesn't grant you the extra abilities you would have learned had you gotten to that rank without the boost. As soon as you leave/deflag, you are returned to your normal rank.

2. Renown > Honor

My first point leads me right into my second. While you're off PvPing (RvRing), gaining experience for your character ranks, you also get a special kind of PvP (RvR)-only experience know as 'Renown.' The similarities between renown and honor are hard to ignore, but again, the subtle differences make it a much better system. Renown works just like experience stored in a separate pool, you rank up and increase your renown rank, which grants you special abilities, tactics, trophies, character titles, and most importantly: Gear. The first set of renown gear becomes available at Rank 10/Renown Rank 6, once these two ranks are achieved, you can head to the closest keep and purchase a full set of Renown Gear for your class. This set of gear (including all accessory slots, rings, cloak, weapons, and armor pieces) is tailored specifically for RvR. There are over 40 armor sets ingame currently for every class, most of which come from Renown Rank. You unlock a new set of gear every few renown ranks, as well as other goodies such as extra armor-dye colors. There are a total of 40 player ranks, and 80 Renown Ranks.

3.Balanced for PvP (RvR) from the Start



I think this is one of the biggest advantages Warhammer Online RvR has over WoW PvP. PvP (RvR) is what this game was designed for. WoW PvP was an afterthought, and it's very apparent when you look at late-added stats such as spellpower/spellhealing and resilience, which are just quick-fixes desguised as 'game mechanic changes' to tone down the incredibly uneven scaling of damage and healing. WAR PvP (RvR) has all these things factored into the base stats that each class starts out with. There are stats that reduce all incoming damage, Armor reduces melee damage, and Resists reduce magic damage (a % of magic damage taken, like armor, not a chance to resist a spell). Crit reduction, spelldamage, and healing are all factored in and balanced from the very start. I expect all damage and healing from rank 1 to rank 40 to scale VERY equally, it has so far, and there's no reason for it not to.

Another thing is the abilities. You gain a new ability at every rank, however, these abilities rank up with you. I started the game with 'Doombolt,' a rank 1 nuke. This is still my main nuke at rank 11, and I have not upgraded it manually at all. Spells, heals, buffs, nukes, melee abilities... they all rank up with you and increase in potency relative to your character rank. There are no useless abilities that you'll outgrow. Everything you learn on your way to rank 40, will still be effective AT rank 40.

4. Virtually No Crowd Control

I have never felt like I could not do anything to survive. The most powerful crowd control abilities in this game only last a few seconds, with long cooldowns, and diminishing returns to boot. Tanks are really the only exception in this case, since their job in a group PvP encounter is to.. well.. control the crowds. Even then, tanks just get a variety of crowd control abilities rather than a few with long durations or effects. 5 seconds is pretty standard for any roots/snares, I have not seen a stun over 3 seconds.

5. Collision Detection

No more running through players. Collision Detection really adds another level to thinking to the game; blocking chokepoints, blocking a player from reaching your healer, or losing someone that's chasing you by getting them to run into your groupmates. I've managed to escape a many players by running dangerously close to an ongoing battle and positioning myself on the opposite of side of it. It's sort of a pseudo-pillar-humping strategy, except it only works against melee classes, and you use players instead of pillars... but I'd prefer not calling it player-humping. Collision Detection is a very strong tool for tanks, they literally block enemies from getting to the squishies in the back or stop a low-health player from running away.

6. Tanking in PvP (RvR)

Keeping in the tradition of segwaying nicely from one point to the next, collision detection brings us to Tanking in PvP (RvR). That's right tanks, you don't have to drop your shield and respec to be effective in PvP (RvR), in fact, keeping your shield on makes you one of the most effective tools on the battlefield. The amount of damage a tank class can soak up in this game is ridiculous; they have so much more armor/resist/health than anyone else. The high survivability is only the beginning; tanks are here to protect you. With the amazing 'Guard' ability making you take 50% of your defensive targets incoming damage, lots of ways to disable attacking players (read: snares), the ability to taunt players (if you taunt a player, your damage is increased 20% vs them until they hit you 3 times), and being the guild standard bearer (carry a guild standard to give area-wide buffs until you are killed), there's plenty for you do. In my honest opinion, the single most important class archetype on the battlefield at any time, along with your healers.

7. TTK (Time to Kill)

You may never have heard of this term before, don't worry, I just recently found about it too. TTK is a term the WAR development team uses to gauge the average survivability of a player in a group PvP (RvR) situation. The very fact they have a term for something like this is immensely encouraging. This exists to ensure that nobody is going down to quickly, or staying up too long. Nobody likes getting insta-gibbed.

8. World PvP (RvR) Happens, Very Beneficial

At rank 10 I was already seeing massive battles for World PvP Objectives, Keeps, and just skirmishes in completely arbitrary zones. Capturing a World Objective not only gets your renown, but also experience. Winning Scenarios, capturing world objects, and owning keeps also gives your a zone-wide buff to encourage World PvP (RvR), much like WoW. The difference here is that WoW's buff give you a measly 5% damage increase, while the WAR buffs gives you a whopping 20% increase in Renown Gain! That's huge. An organized group in World PvP (RvR) can clean house and definitely gain more renown than you would in a scenario. No Mercy.

9. Player Input > Auto Attack

If you play a melee class, you will notice that your auto-attack is very slow. If you play a caster, you will notice that you have no auto-attack. There's a very apparent focus on what the player does, rather than just being in range of your enemy for the auto-attack damage to build up. This is never a bad thing.

10. Action Points Keep PvP (RvR) Going

Casters don't run out of mana, melee don't need to build rage. Every class works off the ever-restoring Action Point system. You gain action points very quickly, even quicker when you're out of combat. There is no food and water, because there's no reason to eat and drink. There will be no 'outlasting' of your opponent; kill or be killed. Sure if you spam your abilities you will run out of said AP, and yes there are abilities that drain it, but rest assured; it will come back soon. Action Points loves you. This is a great mechanic. I've mostly played casters and I hate only being useful in a fight until my mana runs out. Not a problem here. This also takes me back to my point about TTK; not creating a limit on how long certain classes can be effective in a fight also increases how long everyone can stay in said fight.

11. RNG Can Go to Hell

RNG. Random Number Generation. RNG refers to anything that has a % chance of happening, and is essentially a roll of the dice rather than a player causing effect. This is possibly the single worst thing about WoW PvP, and the competitive players are fairly vocal about it. Blizzard is slowly trying to fix this, but it's hard to do when your entire game is based on it. Don't get me wrong, RNG does exist in Warhammer Online; there are crits, and resists, and CC has a chance to break on damage. However, the PvP (RvR) is not designed around it. If a class is meant to crit (Sorceress/Bright Wizard) it's very apparent (50% crit chance at full dark magic), if something is meant to be risky, it is (snares/roots 50% chance to break on damage), and since magic resists give a set damage mitigation % like Armor does for melee, spell resists are less common and rarely determine the outcome of a battle.

12. PvP (RvR) Gear

Like I mentioned earlier, you get your gear upgrades at certain renown ranks. And I can tell you that it helps. Gear does affect your survivability and damage/healing output, but it's not enough of an advantage to decide a fight. I've still been killed by player in terrible gear, and I was killing renown gear players before I had my set. While playing in the Closed Beta, players with max rank characters with full renown gear seem to echo this: Gear plays a role in PvP, but it doesn't decide fights. Sorry rogues, you can't be #1 just because you picked up some Twin Blades of Azzinoth.



There's a lot more then just this. These are the big things that stand out in my mind. Bottom line: This game is fun, this game is balanced, it does not feel like a grind. For the first time in a long time, I'm having fun in an MMO. I remember back when World of Warcraft first came out and what my hopes for that game were, it only took me a couple days of playing Warhammer Online that the PvP (RvR) here is everything I wanted from WoW.

 

[Stiler]

damn you, reading that makes me want to play even more now .

Come on the 7th, just a week away.

 

[Kangg]

This is a friends review of the beta so far. He goes into some detail about the mechanics of the game and his thoughts on them, sometimes he just gives the details and doesn't say ya or nay on them. Anyways here it is is, its long, so heads up. But thought it might be a good read for those who aren't in the beta and were wondering about some more specific details.

It’s the little things that count, and there’s oh-so-many of them that really make Warhammer more enjoyable than your average WoW-romp. Despite this being primarily an RvR game, I found the PvE actually very enjoyable. I wanted to touch on the PvE a bit first, before I forget about it, because let’s be honest here, I’m not here for the PvE. I was dreading it to be honest. Ever since leveling multiple characters, then raiding in WoW, I’ve had absolutely zero interest in PvE content…



It Feels Right

It does. The first thing I was tasked to do after creating my Sorceress was to go kill some High Elves. Sure they’re NPCs, but at least I’m killing NPCs that are relavent to my interests. None of this ‘bring me 8 rat tails’ crap. The trend continued as I progressed through the ranks. There are different quests than just killing Elves though, but they don’t stray too far away from the main point of the game: War. Everything you do after first setting foot in Warhammer Online is to bolster the war effort. It really gives you the feeling that no place is safe, that there’s actually a war going on.



Public Quests

Public Quests are a God-send. I had read about this before trying the game, and wasn’t particularily excited, but it turned out to be something completely new. They way PQ’s work, is that certain areas have quest events constantly going on. When you enter the area, the quest automatically pops up tell you what to do. You don’t have to join any groups, or wait until the quest restarts, you just get in there and start killing. As soon as you start contributing you gain influence points, which pop up over kills just like experience would. In addition to the influence, you gain experience noramlly, and an experience bonus after each stage of the PQ is completed, like you would with any normal quest (all PQ’s have at least 3 stages). Influence does two things; first, determines what kind of bonus you get on the PQ loot roll (more contribution means a better chance at loot) and second, it accumulates in the zone’s influence bar, and is later redeemable at the zone Rally Masters for rewards. The Rally Master rewards are divided into three levels; The first is just potions of various kinds, the second is a piece of armor, and the third is usually a chestpiece or weapon.

Even though my luck rolling on PQ loot was horrible, I was having a blast just contributing. Public Quests works perfectly with the RvR Scenarios; I would Queue up for a scenario with my group, and the just participate in a PQ until the queue popped. Once it did, I would take it, finish the scenario, and then be thrown out right back to the PQ I was doing earlier. There are usually three PQ’s per zone, with the very first one being a little ways from the starting zone. The synergy remains the same with normal quests…

Solo/Group Quests



I hate questing. I’ve done enough MMO questing for a lifetime. Yet, the way Warhammer does questing, is refreshingly easy. One of the few things I enjoyed about Age of Conan, the quests in WAR automatically show you the quests ‘hot-zone’ on your mini-map. These sections of your map are circled in red, and tell you where your quest objectives are. Once the quest it complete, the map circles where to turn the quest in. Why is this not the standard for every MMO? No more thotbott bullshit. No more addons to get coordinates to find a specific mob.

Loot

Loot works the way most MMO’s have it set up these days; loot drops, you pick up, end of story. This is first MMO I’ve played where I didn’t have problems with my bag-space right off the bat. Never did I see a ‘inventory is full’ messege when handing in a quest or looting a corpse. Quest-specific items, both ones that you pick up and ones that are given to you for quest use, are stored in a seperate tab on your inventory screen, and don’t take up space in your bag at all.

When in a group, if anything worth rolling for pops up, each player is prompted to rolled Need, Greed, or Pass. The rolls and loot distribution is done automatically, pretty standard. The loot value is color coded and seems to follow WoW’s pattern of vendor-trash to epic.

Quest rewards and RvR loot (yes you get loot in RvR, off player corpses, not their gear though) are a bit innovative though. The items change depending on what class you are. If you complete a quest, the rewards will automatically cater to you, though still giving you the option to choose between a couple different items. When rolling for RvR loot, each group member sees a different piece of loot when prompted to roll; say you are playing a Witch Elf and your friend is a Shaman; the WE sees a dagger for the roll, while the shaman sees a staff. It took me a while to figure this out, and it seemed that all the people in my group were rolling ‘need’ for items they couldn’t even use.

The UI Customization

I hadn’t heard much about this, so I really didn’t know what to expect. I had switched up some hotkeys, but other than that I was fairly happy with how the default UI looked and functioned. In later levels when you gain morale abilities, you’ll notice the morale bar is in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, this was a little too out of my way to keep an eye on mid-combat. I opened the main menu and found a button that read something along the lines of ‘Edit UI Layout.’ To my pleasant surprise, I went into a full-on editing mode for the UI; I could change everything. Every object on the screen was movable, snapped nicely to other objects for easy handling, and changed color to warn you that it was under another object and may not be accessable. It all reminded me a lot of Perl Unitframes from my WoW days, but no pesky downloads/updates and version incompatibilities.

The one thing that I found missing in the UI, was a target-of-target option. I hadn’t really noticed it’s absence until I started RvR’ing with my Chosen. Seeing a melee character running towards my group, I’d really love to have the option of selecting them to see which of my groupmates they have targetted so as to know who to swtich my Guard to. I’m sure it’s very much the same for healers.



Instances and Raids

I havn’t done any. I’ve been told the group instances are saved for later tiers/ranks, which is fine by me. There was plenty to do in terms of PvE in these lower zones, and personally I feel that Public Quests largely eliminate the need for said instances. One thing I can tell you is that the raiding is focused on a one-man team. The ‘raid instances’ are supposed to be longer, more oriented on boss-fights, and generally harder than normal instances, but are there none the less. I’d prefer getting a group of 6 great players to attempt harder content then search for 40 people who just have lots and lots of time.



I was pleasantly surprised with the PvE content, I wasn’t planning on doing any of it, but it fits in so nicely with the rest of the game that it’s really not a big deal. The fact that you can queue for RvR scenarios anywhere is a huge bonus in my opinion; it lets you just be out in the world, doing whatever you need to do, and not be restricted to towns/keeps.

After playing Closed Beta for awhile, I definitely got a feel for how this game is going to play out. Needless to say, it has solidified my decision to buy the game and play it when it goes live on September the 18th.

The obvious comparison here is to that of World of Warcraft, it's leading the MMO genre, it's well known and easy to put side-by-side with WAR. While most Warhammer Online fans tend to hate it when anyone even tries to draw comparisons between the two games, it's clear that there are similarities, but I feel that the reason Warhammer Online is so much fun to play is because of the glaring differences. While most of the people I know defending WoW as the ultimate PvP game, they seem to know nothing about how RvR works in WAR. Let me break down the reasons I think make WAR an all around better PvP (RvR) game than World of Warcraft.

1. PvP (RvR) From the Start

As soon as you load into the game, you're given the option to queue up for a Scenario (battleground, essentially). You don't even have to do your first PvE quest, read anything, or go anywhere. There's an icon in the top-right-hand corner of your UI that you can click to queue you, or your group, for the tier1 scenario. Why would you want to just sit in a scenario and PvP (RvR) when everyone else is busy leveling? Nobody wants to get left behind right? Right. You gain experience from killing players, winning scenarios, capturing open world objectives, everything. You wouldn't think it'd be enough to level you up, but I've got roughly 90% of my characters experience just from PvP (RvR). There's also a lot of repeatable PvP (RvR)-oriented quests you can pick up to further boost the experience you gain, such as 'Kill 5 enemy players,' or 'Win a Nordenwatch Scenario.'

How do you deal with the level discrepancy though? If I'm rank 1, and there's rank 10 players in the same Scenario/RvR battle, I won't stand a chance right? Wrong. Anytime you enter a PvP scenario, you're automatically boosted to a higher rank so that you can be competitive. Now, this boost affects your base stats and health, but not your gear. It also boosts your abilities to the corresponding rank so they do more, but it doesn't grant you the extra abilities you would have learned had you gotten to that rank without the boost. As soon as you leave/deflag, you are returned to your normal rank.

2. Renown > Honor

My first point leads me right into my second. While you're off PvPing (RvRing), gaining experience for your character ranks, you also get a special kind of PvP (RvR)-only experience know as 'Renown.' The similarities between renown and honor are hard to ignore, but again, the subtle differences make it a much better system. Renown works just like experience stored in a separate pool, you rank up and increase your renown rank, which grants you special abilities, tactics, trophies, character titles, and most importantly: Gear. The first set of renown gear becomes available at Rank 10/Renown Rank 6, once these two ranks are achieved, you can head to the closest keep and purchase a full set of Renown Gear for your class. This set of gear (including all accessory slots, rings, cloak, weapons, and armor pieces) is tailored specifically for RvR. There are over 40 armor sets ingame currently for every class, most of which come from Renown Rank. You unlock a new set of gear every few renown ranks, as well as other goodies such as extra armor-dye colors. There are a total of 40 player ranks, and 80 Renown Ranks.

3.Balanced for PvP (RvR) from the Start



I think this is one of the biggest advantages Warhammer Online RvR has over WoW PvP. PvP (RvR) is what this game was designed for. WoW PvP was an afterthought, and it's very apparent when you look at late-added stats such as spellpower/spellhealing and resilience, which are just quick-fixes desguised as 'game mechanic changes' to tone down the incredibly uneven scaling of damage and healing. WAR PvP (RvR) has all these things factored into the base stats that each class starts out with. There are stats that reduce all incoming damage, Armor reduces melee damage, and Resists reduce magic damage (a % of magic damage taken, like armor, not a chance to resist a spell). Crit reduction, spelldamage, and healing are all factored in and balanced from the very start. I expect all damage and healing from rank 1 to rank 40 to scale VERY equally, it has so far, and there's no reason for it not to.

Another thing is the abilities. You gain a new ability at every rank, however, these abilities rank up with you. I started the game with 'Doombolt,' a rank 1 nuke. This is still my main nuke at rank 11, and I have not upgraded it manually at all. Spells, heals, buffs, nukes, melee abilities... they all rank up with you and increase in potency relative to your character rank. There are no useless abilities that you'll outgrow. Everything you learn on your way to rank 40, will still be effective AT rank 40.

4. Virtually No Crowd Control

I have never felt like I could not do anything to survive. The most powerful crowd control abilities in this game only last a few seconds, with long cooldowns, and diminishing returns to boot. Tanks are really the only exception in this case, since their job in a group PvP encounter is to.. well.. control the crowds. Even then, tanks just get a variety of crowd control abilities rather than a few with long durations or effects. 5 seconds is pretty standard for any roots/snares, I have not seen a stun over 3 seconds.

5. Collision Detection

No more running through players. Collision Detection really adds another level to thinking to the game; blocking chokepoints, blocking a player from reaching your healer, or losing someone that's chasing you by getting them to run into your groupmates. I've managed to escape a many players by running dangerously close to an ongoing battle and positioning myself on the opposite of side of it. It's sort of a pseudo-pillar-humping strategy, except it only works against melee classes, and you use players instead of pillars... but I'd prefer not calling it player-humping. Collision Detection is a very strong tool for tanks, they literally block enemies from getting to the squishies in the back or stop a low-health player from running away.

6. Tanking in PvP (RvR)

Keeping in the tradition of segwaying nicely from one point to the next, collision detection brings us to Tanking in PvP (RvR). That's right tanks, you don't have to drop your shield and respec to be effective in PvP (RvR), in fact, keeping your shield on makes you one of the most effective tools on the battlefield. The amount of damage a tank class can soak up in this game is ridiculous; they have so much more armor/resist/health than anyone else. The high survivability is only the beginning; tanks are here to protect you. With the amazing 'Guard' ability making you take 50% of your defensive targets incoming damage, lots of ways to disable attacking players (read: snares), the ability to taunt players (if you taunt a player, your damage is increased 20% vs them until they hit you 3 times), and being the guild standard bearer (carry a guild standard to give area-wide buffs until you are killed), there's plenty for you do. In my honest opinion, the single most important class archetype on the battlefield at any time, along with your healers.

7. TTK (Time to Kill)

You may never have heard of this term before, don't worry, I just recently found about it too. TTK is a term the WAR development team uses to gauge the average survivability of a player in a group PvP (RvR) situation. The very fact they have a term for something like this is immensely encouraging. This exists to ensure that nobody is going down to quickly, or staying up too long. Nobody likes getting insta-gibbed.

8. World PvP (RvR) Happens, Very Beneficial

At rank 10 I was already seeing massive battles for World PvP Objectives, Keeps, and just skirmishes in completely arbitrary zones. Capturing a World Objective not only gets your renown, but also experience. Winning Scenarios, capturing world objects, and owning keeps also gives your a zone-wide buff to encourage World PvP (RvR), much like WoW. The difference here is that WoW's buff give you a measly 5% damage increase, while the WAR buffs gives you a whopping 20% increase in Renown Gain! That's huge. An organized group in World PvP (RvR) can clean house and definitely gain more renown than you would in a scenario. No Mercy.

9. Player Input > Auto Attack

If you play a melee class, you will notice that your auto-attack is very slow. If you play a caster, you will notice that you have no auto-attack. There's a very apparent focus on what the player does, rather than just being in range of your enemy for the auto-attack damage to build up. This is never a bad thing.

10. Action Points Keep PvP (RvR) Going

Casters don't run out of mana, melee don't need to build rage. Every class works off the ever-restoring Action Point system. You gain action points very quickly, even quicker when you're out of combat. There is no food and water, because there's no reason to eat and drink. There will be no 'outlasting' of your opponent; kill or be killed. Sure if you spam your abilities you will run out of said AP, and yes there are abilities that drain it, but rest assured; it will come back soon. Action Points loves you. This is a great mechanic. I've mostly played casters and I hate only being useful in a fight until my mana runs out. Not a problem here. This also takes me back to my point about TTK; not creating a limit on how long certain classes can be effective in a fight also increases how long everyone can stay in said fight.

11. RNG Can Go to Hell

RNG. Random Number Generation. RNG refers to anything that has a % chance of happening, and is essentially a roll of the dice rather than a player causing effect. This is possibly the single worst thing about WoW PvP, and the competitive players are fairly vocal about it. Blizzard is slowly trying to fix this, but it's hard to do when your entire game is based on it. Don't get me wrong, RNG does exist in Warhammer Online; there are crits, and resists, and CC has a chance to break on damage. However, the PvP (RvR) is not designed around it. If a class is meant to crit (Sorceress/Bright Wizard) it's very apparent (50% crit chance at full dark magic), if something is meant to be risky, it is (snares/roots 50% chance to break on damage), and since magic resists give a set damage mitigation % like Armor does for melee, spell resists are less common and rarely determine the outcome of a battle.

12. PvP (RvR) Gear

Like I mentioned earlier, you get your gear upgrades at certain renown ranks. And I can tell you that it helps. Gear does affect your survivability and damage/healing output, but it's not enough of an advantage to decide a fight. I've still been killed by player in terrible gear, and I was killing renown gear players before I had my set. While playing in the Closed Beta, players with max rank characters with full renown gear seem to echo this: Gear plays a role in PvP, but it doesn't decide fights. Sorry rogues, you can't be #1 just because you picked up some Twin Blades of Azzinoth.



There's a lot more then just this. These are the big things that stand out in my mind. Bottom line: This game is fun, this game is balanced, it does not feel like a grind. For the first time in a long time, I'm having fun in an MMO. I remember back when World of Warcraft first came out and what my hopes for that game were, it only took me a couple days of playing Warhammer Online that the PvP (RvR) here is everything I wanted from WoW.

Thanks for the review. Frankly best one I've read to date. I too miss DAoC's RvR. WoW's PvP can suck my big toe. I finally broke down and pre ordered Warhammer and after reading your review it looks like I will be damn glad I did.

 

[excellsior]

I'm just concerned about choosing a server where the population will be close to max as I don't want to play on one of the "crappier" servers that no one wants to play on.

 

[jonneymendoza]

haha WAR ownes WOW

 

[4saken]

So, if i preorder this, when do i get in the 'open' beta? Im just so ont he fence right now on the game, i really want to try it right now, but I also want to wait on more player impressions.

 

[Deleted member 143938]

I'm just concerned about choosing a server where the population will be close to max as I don't want to play on one of the "crappier" servers that no one wants to play on.

It's because of people like you that servers like that exist in the first place.

 

[4saken]

sorry to keep the off topic on vista 64...
it rocks BUT

and it's one big BUT.

Give me some god damn flash support.

yeah firefox only way to go.

 

[Stiler]

So, if i preorder this, when do i get in the 'open' beta? Im just so ont he fence right now on the game, i really want to try it right now, but I also want to wait on more player impressions.

Open beta starts the 7th, a week from monday. You can pre order it and get in from gogamer, amazon, best buy, gamestop/eb, etc.

 

[ob1]

I love the review and its spot on. I am a predominately PvE player in EQ2, so I was apprehensive about the PvP aspects of this game, but it rocks on so many levels. My only concern with the game is longevity. What I think will make/break this game is content updates in the long run.

 

[Oomps]

I'm just concerned about choosing a server where the population will be close to max as I don't want to play on one of the "crappier" servers that no one wants to play on.

I'm guessing that all of the launch servers will fill quickly, and then they will bring extras online. So, I would say that any of the launch servers would be a good bet.

 

[ob1]

Agreed. Just during the PW they opened a few new servers due to load.

 

[GoldenTiger]

sorry to keep the off topic on vista 64...
it rocks BUT

and it's one big BUT.

Give me some god damn flash support.

Uh, what? Vista 64's flash has always worked for me under IE7.

 

[GoldenTiger]

I love the review and its spot on. I am a predominately PvE player in EQ2, so I was apprehensive about the PvP aspects of this game, but it rocks on so many levels. My only concern with the game is longevity. What I think will make/break this game is content updates in the long run.

They did well with DAOC (Camelot) in that regard, so I'd imagine they'll do just fine with WAR too. They had a free expansion such as housing etc. once a year, six months apart from a paid expansion that was released every year, with lots of little updates such as new questlines and whatnot throughout.

 

[RESTfulADI]

It's because of people like you that servers like that exist in the first place.

what does that mean lol? highly populated servers are always more fun, its a pvp game.

I love the review and its spot on. I am a predominately PvE player in EQ2, so I was apprehensive about the PvP aspects of this game, but it rocks on so many levels. My only concern with the game is longevity. What I think will make/break this game is content updates in the long run.

I'm thinking the cut capital cities will be finished over time and released in patches/expansions.

 

[Ragenrok]

Uh, what? Vista 64's flash has always worked for me under IE7.

it doesnt work with the 64bit browser, you have to use the 32 bit browsers for flash.

 

[Dallamar]

I’ve been in closed beta for over 2 months now. (+ preview, etc)

Running the game at 1920x1200 and 1920 x 1080 on a Evga 8800 GS 384 mb card OC to 650mhz, AMD x2 4400 (see Sig, second comp)

The client is using between 900 megs and 1.4 gigs of system memory, devs have said they shaved about 100 megs off in the last two weeks for load, under XP pro

I have “decient” frame rates, due to them having the game hardlocked to low/medium settings… if you want to really stress your system, try these setting during OB, in the Nvidia control panel. (barring Graphic sliders or some other “game options settings” being put in for OB)

-Resolution: 1920x1200
-AA: Turned from OFF to 16x (or 8x)
-AF: Turned from OFF to 16x (or 8x)
-Sampling: Turned from Multi to Super Sampling
-Textures: Turned from High to Highest Quality
-Triple buff: On turned to Off
-Multi Thread: Auto turned On
These changes were made using the same 175.19 drivers.

We are currently down in closed.. waiting on a patch.. I’ll post more when I see version 4.1. (having said that, I and about 10k others are still under a specific NDA. I’ll post what I can)

SLI is currently borked due to both Mythic and Nvidia (issues with Warhammer mark of chaos VS Warhammer Age of reckoning in the drivers). The above settings actually fixed this issue for some people

Devs have posted that the game is optimized to run on duel cores, not quads. So minimal performance gains going to quads specify related to WAR.

Mobil graphics:

I have had this running on the following mobils. (first two were on a intel t2.0 ghz 1gig memory system, XP media center, second was on a far better machine with 2 gigs and Vista home 32bit) YMMV
Go 7800
Go 7900 GS
Go 8600GT.

Worse “desktop” card I have this running on was a PoS AGP nvidia 7600, P4 single core, 1gig DDR 400. She had no issues in pve/senerios.. but the game got PISSED in open field rvr. (she also blew her PSU rvring with me, couldn’t handle the stress )

PM me if you got more questions, I'll try and keep an eye on this thread this week. I'll post about the patch if I can, otherwise, wait till the 7th

 

[Stiler]

Keys are up on fileplanet (for subscribers) if you want to try it out and don't wanna pre order it yet.

 

[GoldenTiger]

what does that mean lol? highly populated servers are always more fun, its a pvp game.


I'm thinking the cut capital cities will be finished over time and released in patches/expansions.

He means if people spread out a bit more instead of having the JOIN THE MOST POPULATED SERVER mindset like you do, there wouldn't be underpopulated ones, just a lot of them with a lot of people. Highly-populated being more fun is also an opinion, I for one don't like it being so crowded I can't move an inch.

The capitals and classes (or replacements) they have said will be in free expansions/patches, NOT paid.