Impressions from a WOW addict

I like the graphics, they are not mind blowing but they are generally of a very high quality. They have a down to earth grittiness that makes WOW look a bit fluffy bunny.

The UI? Reskinned WOW UI hehe, really. It has a lot more flexibility built in, like you can rejig and move everything around, the kind of stuff you can only do in WOW with addons.

On the social side, people have commented that there isn't much chat. To be fair this is difficult to comment on as the game has only just released, i.e. if the social scene is kicking in Teldrassil then show me where it's at! On a side note I am part of a guild and the guild is very chatty.

Questing is fun, I haven't come across anything ground breakingly different although there are certainly a lot, lot less kill-collector quests than WOW (there is a "Kill Collector" NPC so you know the deal here, they are not the norm). The quests are also heavily geared toward the war for whichever race you are playing. For example I am playing Chaos whose mortal enemy are the Empire, so a lot of quests relate to raiding an Empire village or killing some Empire dude, etc. Rather than being boring it works really well and sucks you into the whole war thing.

Public quests... hmmm, public quests *are* fun, the problem with them is that you rank according to how much you contribute. For example if you have to kill 50 of mob x then each mob you kill will increase your ranking, oh and killing a mob just means tagging it, you don't actually have to be the one to deliver the killing blow. This means that if you want to be no.1 (or even in the top 5?) it pays to be a selfish bastard and tag every damned mob / steal every damned objective you can. I tried being nice and helping people out, suprisingly a lot of people still do this, but don't cry when you rank 15 and get nothing from the chest at the end.

Open groups, good idea and it works quite well for big quests, difficult quests or public quests. For normal questing there isn't much need, I'm not sure what the xp bonus is for being in a group but I'm not sure it's worth the downtime of dealing with some 14 year old Danish kid (Euro servers, get used to it lol) who doesn't speak great English when I can cope quite well on my own.

RvR, well so far I am only level 12 and I haven't done any of the siege type stuff, so bear that in mind. Really? Very impressed. At the earliest levels you are encouraged to take part in scenarios (battleground equivalent), for fairness your level is boosted to +8, i.e. if you are level 2 you will get boosted to level 8, if you are level 12 you will get boosted to 18. Scenarios are generally fun and fast paced. You know that WSG you were in that ran for 45 mins, hide the flag, you got 50 honour? That doesn't exist in WAR, if the worst comes to the worst the scenario has a timer (15 mins for entry scenario), I've never had a scenario time out yet. Again at an early level you are given world PVP, sorry RvR quests that tie in really well with the the story and are good fun to play. PVP combat is good fun, RvR gets a big thumbs up from me.

Combat isn't *that* different from WOW, let's put this in perspective. AoC combat is different, Tabula Rasa combat is different, WAR isn't. As people have pointed out combat is generally slower but it doesn't make it any less fun, it gives you more time to think about how you want to play the fight and what abilities you want to use. A lot of the abilities are also team orientated, you have limited action points so there are always choices to be made, do I chop this dude on the head or do I buff my mates.... hmmm lol. I like the combat.

Abilities and gear, so far are working out good for me. There are 3 sources of abilities and gear, 1) regular xp/levels and quest rewards, solo PVE; 2) influence, you get this by contributing to (competing in?) public quests, group PVE; 3) reknown, you get this for competing in RvR, PVP. All of these run concurrently, they all give abilities and gear to greater or lesser degrees. I think it works well, it encourages you to have a balanced play style. The gear works green, blue, purple like WOW, so far I have seen no uber-gear, but I'm only level 12.

So far I am really, really enjoying the game. Will it make me cancel my WOW account? I'll give it to release of WOTLK and make a decision then.

Problems? I find the framerate a bit more stuttery than WOW, I don't mean low, just not as smooth. I have a fairly kick ass rig btw. There are various bugs, none of them gambreaking (for me at least) and I'm sure they will get fixed in time, afterall the servers are down now for maintenance There may be more public quests than people to play them? You can't complete a PQ on your own.

If you're a WOW player and you're on the fence, try it. What are you doing between now and WOTLK anyway? If you think you don't like PVP, think again, TRY IT!