So I didn't uninstall WAR today a response to Aethios

I just read a review from the post "So I uninstaled WAR today" A few people posted about how it was good to have an objective view so I wanted to point out my own experiences.

Firstly I wanted to mention however I started WAR with a 3.2g PCU, 6600GT, 1g of RAM. In a nutshell those are the basics you need. It ran like a pig. Scenario's were okay but open field RvR of the type found in Tier 2 simply was a pita to play. I lagged very often and was completely ineffective in playing my class (Zealot). Birthday was a few weeks ago and the wife was kind enough to get me a nice new shiny 9800 GTX plus, 3gig of Ram and a new 650w PSU. I'm in Oz this cost me about 500 bucks all up. Rest of the PC is over 3 years old. It was built when PCI express first was coming out (hence the 6600GT). So if you want to play open field RvR then you will need a few new bits. Wife has a 7800GTS and 4gig of ram and she runs open field fine. I simply wouldn't advise anyone to play WAR with the minimum specs listed. You'll be able to PvE fine in small groups but no real RvR. And let's face it that's what the game's about.

I want to respond to Aethios's post.

RvR and PvP

RvR is a bit of a mess. Nobody has a clue what they are supposed to be doing. Good luck finding people to group with, everyone (including people who rolled healers) just run into the fray head first and start spraying spells. On the realm I played on, Destruction won every time hands down, but it was still like walking into a meat grinder. The Order players would all bunch up at a bottleneck and toast anyone who came too close. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's far flung from the dynamic, PvE/PvP mixed battlefields I was expecting. I also felt the RvR areas were a bit small, but that's probably because they were in the early game and the zones were focused more on PvE questing. I'm sure they get bigger towards the upper tiers.

I played WAR in Closed Beta. it did take some time to work out the subtleties of some of the scenario's but they really weren't that hard. My quests in open field RvR drove me right intot he heart of the RvR sections and major points of interest and showed me around the battle field. What I did do which I didn't bother with much in other MMO's was to actually read my quests.

Coming from DAoC I also found I had a headstart on how RvR worked. I found on Darklands that we had some scenarios that order got rolled and others were destruction got rolled. I played an archmage for the PW to see how things went Order side and it was much the same. Came down to individual players deciding to play their classes or not. When we had tanks charge into the fray leading with DPS following and healers healing we won scenarios. Or at the very least performed better. But in some scenario's I saw tanks hanging back, casters charging, healers only DPSing, some didn't even realise they could have both an ally and enemy targeted at the same time so you didn't need to change targets for healing or offense. Some spells are designed to work solely using this mechanic.

Zones were big enough. I was actually surprised at how much was crammed into each zone. Through clever use of road layouts and 'screening' with rivers and forests small zones and areas seemed much larger then they really were. We did some keep takes which were all I remembered from DAoC and more. Lot of fun and the new siege equipment added to that.

Community

The community is not bad so far, but it's very very quiet. I've seen the usual "it's still in beta so your opinion doesn't matter" trolls, people who steal kills, people who get upset because they can't solo PQs or whatever. I've also had random strangers save my life, random strangers answer cryptic questions with detailed answers, random strangers offer to give away loot that's not for their class. Overall I'd say it's pretty balanced, and a little better than you'd expect from any MMO.

I found the community over the public weekend wasn't as friendly as that during closed beta. A lot more people had closed groups for their PQ's and RvR and fewer people really wanted to talk much. Communities are something built over time though so to comment on anything in a meaningful or lasting way would be simply unfair and biased of me. So I'll leave it.

PvE and Questing

The PvE element is, to be totally honest, a complete joke IMO. I would frequently have to turn off my auras (Chosen are like reverse Paladins) to avoid aggroing every mob in the area, including non-hostile mobs and even level 1 critters. Even if I did aggro them all, I had no problems soloing 5-6 mobs at a time, as long as they weren't Champions (WAR equivalent of 'Elite'). NPC damage is a joke.

Yep PvE is kind of easy. Up until you're fighting a champion and he's nearly dead and all of a sudden dies and spawns into a hero that wipes the unprepared group who was winding the fight down. I played many classes and I'm glad that they can all solo 'easy' mobs and quests or they can group to do the harder things that can't be done solo. Options are always aplus for me and there are specific quests that were not a simple joke. In Chjaso I'd point to the Bell PQ's in Ostland for one. I saw no one solo a Hero (boss) from any of the PQ's and in fact watched a group wipe repeatedly in the final stage of a PQ. Public quests are set in timed stages that allow you to play at the level you can. First stage is easy to solo. Second stage you want a few people to help or a good place to set up. Final stages you want a good balanced group.

I would often have mobs run away for no reason, even before I had done any damage. At first I thought maybe this was part of the AI, but as I played on it became obvious that even mobs who shouldn't run away (such as Champion mobs) were still tucking tail and running. I can only assume it's a bug.

yeah AI went really weird. I didn't have too many troubles in Closed Beta but this last weekend was strange stuff happening with ranged combat.

I think people are expecting to be able to level from RvR alone, and I can tell you now that doing so would be painful. It would take easily 3-4 times as long to do it that way. The quests give HUGE amounts of experience, and you simply can't compete with that in RvR. Also, the gear that you can buy once you've reached a certain Renown Rank also requires a PvE Rank, usually higher than the Renown Rank. This means you'll have to do a lot of PvE questing/grinding to get where you need to be.

Actually you can. I levlled a few characters to 10 solely in RvR scenarios. There are quests for each scenario as well as quests to kill players plus their are quests to complete in RvR areas. Using all 3 of those as well as xp from RvR I had no trouble reaching rank 12 renown 10 in about 7 hours. Had a lot of laughs along the way too.

Money

That brings us to the money issue. Even playing as far as I did, saving every bit of money I could, gathering skills and all included, not to mention all the extra grinding I did just to farm money, I was still able to buy only 4 of the 12 pieces of the Dominion set. There were times where I struggled to be able to afford even my basic class spells. Needless to say, prices on gear and spells are too high, or money drops are too low.

My first closed beta character I was always broke until lvl 8ish when coin increased. Once I learnyt a little about how everything worked though if you want to make coin at low level go run some rvr. My archmage bought full sets of RvR gear at rank 2/renown 2, rank 4/renown 4 and rank 10/renown 8. No twinks no nothing. Simply coin from scenarios and doing the quests corresponding to the scenario I was running. I also had no trouble running from starting area to tier 1 warcamps with all races. Allowed me to change lands to play different scenarios.

Crashes

As was mentioned several times before, I believe, crashing is a serious issue right now with the game. My own client crashed roughly every 30 mins, and it seemed to get much much worse when I tried to do RvR. Often after a crash I would lose levels or quest credit, and I'd have to do it again. I thought maybe it was my system causing it to crash, but after doing a little research I found hundreds of posts and dozens of comments in game from all kinds of people who were having the same issue. It seems to be totally random, and a problem with the client rather than with our systems.

I had about 4 all weekend and they occured zoning into scenarios. Alt tabbing and coming back to a black screen was more of an issue for me. Sometimes the black screen would eventually jump back to the correct graphics sometimes I'd have to close WAR and restart.

Collision Detection

In my experience, the collision detection didn't work properly either. Sometimes I would get hung up on small objects (like a brick in the road) and other times my character would teleport on top of objects that he clearly couldn't climb (like trees or lamp posts). Player collision was sketchy at best, and worked roughly half the time. It was also frustrating being a tank and getting blocked in by my own team mates. I think collision detection would have worked better if it didn't apply to people of your own faction.

I was involved in a Keep battle where our keep door got kicked in. I watched 3 Chosen leap into the breach and jam the doorway. The next 15 minutes fighting around the area was insane. Healers, myself included trying our hardest to keep them up while a horde of order were at the door belting on these guys. Oil being poured from above onto Order forces, order siege attacking our Oil. I was privelaged enough to see collision detection operating in exactly the way my friends and myself were hoping it would. Sure I get annoyed sometimes jumping over people who are blocking my way or I get hung up on a teammate trying to run away (healer remember ) but I have to say I like collision much more then I dislike it. It allowed those tactics mentioned earlier to be used.

Conclusion

I won't tell you not to play this game, because I do have a sincere respect for what they were trying to do. I think, though, that they shaved it a little too close to the WoW cookie-cutter and focused a little too much on the aesthetic decoration. Maybe the game will be better closer to release, but I doubt it. With about 3 weeks to go, "it's only beta" doesn't really hold water anymore. All we can do is wait and see.

See this is where things fall down for me. Specifically the term WoW cookie cutter. I see very little of WoW in WAR. Or more to the point I see as much WoW in WAR as I do DAoC in Alterac Valley, or CoD3 in Arathi Basin, or EQ in any WoW boss fight. No game is ever going to be completely unique but to say that WAR is too close to WoW is doing both games a dis-service. Their mechanics are different, the targetting in WAR ads a new dimension to abilities and the way they can operate. Someone with an extensive MMO experience would see greater similarities between DAoC and WAR then WoW and WAR. Although I like the fact that all levels I don't get upgrades to abilities I get new abilities. My upgrades happen automatically. I level so do my spells/attacks. No need to buy the same spell multiple times. This feature I liked and something they did change from DAoC.

In my conclusion I found that the ease at which I can alter my gfx settings allowing me to keep it all prettied up for PvE then go to max frame rates for rvr handy. I found the new concept of open public quests to be a sound idea that works well in principle but lacks a little in application. I like my games to look pretty as long as they play pretty and being a DAoC player WAR is exactly what I've been hoping it would be. I loved siege in WAR. My main complaint if any is I would want to interact with the world more. I'd want an environment that I could interact with like WoW. Seats I can sit in. I still think WoW had a great opportunity to really put some roleplay into MMORPG instead of turning it to MMOCG but that's the way things went...

I like having long fights. One or two shotting isn't PVP it's tedium. Having been both sides of that equation in the past it's not something I enjoy.  WAR is far from perfect but having beta'd over 25 games over 10 years (And yes City of Heroes had the best release of any MMO I've ever seen) WAR is well placed to see release. it's as well placed as WoW and for those fanbois who jump up and down about content being removed I got two words. Hero Classes. It's not always prudent to release something that's in no way ready for release ad will do your game more harm then good.

WAR is well positioned for a good release. My one concern is exactly the same I had with WoW. Not enough servers at release causing issues due to population and stability.

Based on my time in Closed beta WAR is my next MMO. Will it be my last, not likely but it'll do me for a fair while.