First Impressions

georgeslater

Im not writing this as a comprehensive review but perhaps a write-up of what some of my first impressions of the game are after playing for just a week. I consider this important because if you can capture the gamers interest in the first week then chances are you will keep them for more than just the initial month.

Installation and Updates:

I decided to purchase this game from a local retailer rather than downloading because of its size(2 DVDs). The installer was nothing to fancy or flashy, but I suppose all it has to do is put the files in the right spot (roughly speaking), which it seemed to do just fine.

Some of you who have played World of Warcraft know how annoying it can be to install a fresh copy. Not only do you have to download/install the main client but then you have about 6-24hours of updates depending on your connection speed. Warhammer currently doesn't have to much updats to do after installation (about 250Mb). This will probably increase as time goes on but for now is managable.

I did experience a couple of bugs during the updates. I will say that I currently do not like the update splash screen. It pops up with the "Play" button active. This means that you can click play before the game has patched, which results in unpredictable behavior. Also I found that if the servers are down for update and you try to log on, there is no error message, it simply just doesn't work. This happened to me once and left me confused until they updated the news page of the splash screen to say "servers down".

Intro Cinematic:

The introduction cinematic is really cool. The best ever, probably not. But it was definitly fun to watch.

Server Selection:

I will preface this with saying that the developers are actively working out some issues with this right now. That said, Selecting a server isn't hard and works just fine. BUT... It is really hard to find a server that has enough players. The first server I chose was practically empty (I didn't know better). This comes in to play later in quests where you absolutely need multiple people and can't find anybody to quest with. I believe they are going to start allowing character transfers to more populated servers though. The other big problem is that almost everybody is playing as "Destruction". This makes the game really uneven and not much fun for both sides.

Character Creation:

There are two factions in WAR, Order and Destruction. Each faction has three races, each with three or more classes. This is cool because you get a pretty good variety of characters. This said, I was then disappointed by the fact that although their are a large number of classes you really only get four choices: Healer, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, or Tank. I was also bummed to find out that you cannot have characters from both factions on the same server. Im sure there are good reasons for this though.

The character appearance is only moderatly configurable. To be honest I expected much more. In fact I would say that the character appearance is on par with Star Wars Galaxies (Much Older MMO). 

One really positive aspect about the classes is that I haven't found any one class that was clearly overpowering the others (i.e. Good Balancing)

UI:

The UI is about the same as most. Some of the feedback isn't the best. For example, when you click on logout or exit, the button doesn't depress or do anything. The only feedback you get is countdown text in the chat box. Another example is when you spam an ability, rather than queue up your actions, you get really annoying text across the screen saying the ability is not ready yet. The UI was relatively intuative and easy to navigate. I would rate the interface as average, with a few bugs.

World Experience:

When I first entered the world I didn't have too much problems. I would say this is because I have a lot of experience with several MMOs in the past. Warhammer does not really have an intro tutorial. Instead you are bombarded by pop-up question marks that try to give you little hints about aspects of the game. I suspect that somebody who does not have experience with an MMO would not like this style. The intro style found in the Guild Wars series is definitely much more helpful (Walks through controls and leads you through a couple of quests).

Although it may just be bad luck, my first time playing was rather frustrating because I kept getting stuck and had to /stuck several times. It seems that you can get stuck on seemingly flat surfaces in this game. Secondly, the clipping was driving me nuts. There were many camera positions that I could see through walls. Collision detection is equally poor. Sometimes you can walk straight trough another character others you cannot. I've stood inside of walls too.

Quests: The lower level quests are quite fun and until you get up to about level 8-10 a usefull source of experience. Once you get into the higher levels it is much more efficient to play RvR or PvP because the XP reward is significantly more. Public quests are a good Idea. The implementation is a little flawed in that if you are not on a highly populated server they are impossible (See Server Selection). This is due to the fact that you need multiple players to defeat the really strong bosses. So you have to rely on getting lucky and having other players logged on and playing the same quest as you. This is harder when you are new to the game and haven't made many in-game friends yet to help.

RvR and PVP: Realm Vs. Realm and Player Vs. Player is the main point of this game. I would say the implementation is descent. There are fortresses all throughout that players can fight over against the other faction. This actually reminds me somewhat of the battlegrounds in Star Wars Galaxies from long ago, only you are actually fighting for something not just against each other. There is also a "WoW" like battle ground feature where you can join a queue to fight PvP in a smaller map area. The nice thing about this is that it gives you more options for PvP/RvR and you can get experience and items for your accomplishments. The only flaw with this that I can currently think of is that the experience for the "Battlegrounds" seems to overshadow what you can get for the quests at higher levels, so you end up ditching the PvE portion of the game after the first several levels.

Crafting: Not to in depth in the early part of the game. It looks like you can create potions, trinkets, and collect raw goods. So far nothing to useful yet. I would say read a review of somebody whose been playing longer

Overall: I would say this is a pretty average MMO. It will definitly appeal to those who want much less in depth PvE and like PvP much more. The game has many more bugs and mechanic problems than what I would consider acceptable for release (In my opinion as a CpE). I feel very strongly that the user rating of 8.71 (At time of writing) is way to high, which was an influencing factor for me in purchasing the game. I would say closer to 7.0-7.5 is more accurate.

Anyhow, I was planning on making this short...

If you really really like PvP and don't care much about Quest, PvE, or Fancy Graphics then this is for you. If you are more of a solo player, want the best graphics, or really like questing then I would stick with something else.