Warhammer Online: Early Impressions

The new kid on the block, WAR has been taking up a bit of my time lately. I spent a little bit of time in the Open Beta, and I've been playing a few characters in the game's pre-order bonus Live Head Start. And now, the game is out for all to consume. So what's the deal? Is this the real WoW Killer? Or is it another Age of Conan? Allow me to provide you with a beginner's insight on this new massive multiplayer game.

First of all, I haven't made a ton of progress into the game yet. I've gotten about 5 different races to level 5 at least, and my highest character right now is a level 7 Sorceress. I've played two Order characters, and have pretty much tried out just about every Destruction class a tiny bit. With that said, here's what I think of the game so far.

For starters, the game is very similar to WoW. This can either be considered good, or bad depending. For me it's a good thing. I like WoW quite a bit, and the last time I tried a new MMO it strayed too far from WoW's established formula, and I just didn't feel comfortable with the game. With that said, there are quite a few differences between the two games too.

For instance, WAR tends to lean more towards the PVP side of the fence. This really shows when you take into consideration that you can level up and gear your character out solely from PVP. This is all well and good, but the problems I've encountered with PVP - or the RvR Scenarios as they're called - so far leave me wanting.

As it stands right now, the server I'm on isn't terribly populated, like many of the servers seeing as how this has only been the Live Head Start. I suspect that will change when the game goes live for everyone. Hopefully this also fixes another problem I've been faced with, and that is there are way too many high level Order characters, and not enough high level Destruction characters. Out of the three games we managed to play tonight, there were 4-6 level 10 orders, vs. 0 level 10 Destructions. While it's true that when you enter an RvR scenario, your stats get bumped up to that of a level 8 character if you're lower than 8, but that still leaves us at a pretty unfair disadvantage.

Lastly, it could just be because we haven't had the best of luck in RvR, but the Order classes seem to be a lot more powerful than many of their Destruction counterparts. One example would be that my friend, a level 7 Goblin Shaman, was outhealed by a level 1 Warrior Priest, by like a lot. That doesn't really seem right considering he was healing a whole helluva lot.

Aside from the RvR setbacks, the rest of the game has been pretty smooth. The majority of the PVE experience is identical to that of WoW's, and you can easily solo many of these quest smoothly regardless of class. If that weren't enough, you've got WAR's exclusive Public Quest system which allows a large number of players to work together to complete one big quest. The beauty of this system is that you don't have to group up with anyone, everyone in the Public Quest zone can take part in the quest as a group, or by themselves, and it contributes to the overall progression of the Quest. This allows just about every player in the game to experience an epic feeling quest, and pick up some pretty sweet loot, without all the raid drama.

That's about all I've been able to experience so far, there are still many aspects of the game I have yet to see. Such as the crafting system, the living Guilds, higher end PVE and PVP content, and many other little things like the Tome of Knowledge, and exploring the world. So far I'd say I'm pretty satisfied though, and if the actual launch of the game, and Mythic can work out some of the kinks, I can only see it getting better. Who can say how much time I'll end up investing into the game? Will it just tide me over for another two months until WoTLK comes out? Hard to say. But I'm certainly feeling this game a lot more than any other MMO I've played since WoW came out, so things are looking bright for Warhammer.