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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: A WAR Review
infofront
Member UncommonPosts: 160
I'll try to keep this short but sweet, as you probably know what the game is about already, for the most part. Instead of the typical review style, I'm going to list some of my thoughts about the game, focusing mostly on things you haven't heard often in other reviews.
A little on my background: I've been playing WAR since the end of closed beta, and I've purchased the game and leveled up to 40 (max level). I was really looking for a good change from WoW, as I got really sick of WoW and ended my subscription 8 months ago. I knew WAR had some problems before release, but I really tried to remain optimistic. Mythic gave a valiant effort at repairing the game before release, and they were semi-successful, as the game was just a total mess before open beta. It has taken me only a few weeks into release to get sick of this game though. I think it needs another solid year (at least) in development to infuse the game with more variety, content, and polish. Moreso than that, I seriously wonder about some of the design decisions. Without further ado, here is my list of the top 13 things that suck about WAR:
1. The combat system tries to be like World of Warcraft's, but fails. Whereas WoW's combat system is the tightest seen in any MMO to date, WAR's combat system has many glitches and bugs, and feels very sloppy. For example, when you press your skill key when the global cooldown is still in effect, you will see a character animation for that ability, but it won't actually do anything. The animation will continue past the point where you're global cooldown expired, but you have to wait til it finishes before you can activate your ability. This is just one of many problems. A lot of us have been reporting these problems since beta, but they haven't been fixed. This is largely because WAR fanboys have drowned us out, having said "It's perfect!", or "This is not WoW and the combat shouldn't be like WoW's" (somehow implying that the numerous combat bugs are features).
The buggy combat is by far the worst of the problems, as the feeling of combat is really the nucleus around which the rest of the game coalesces. This also shows a serious lack of polish and indicated that Mythic were overly anxious to get this product out the door. These problems are particularly unacceptable in a game being billed as the ultimate PvP MMO. No competitive PvP gamers are taking this game seriously for this reason.
2. Many of the character animations are too long. They don't sync well with the combat, and some of them extend well into the global cooldown period, which often can exacerbate some of the combat bugs, and gives it an even more unpolished feel.
3. There are almost no dungeons in the game. Those dungeons that do exist are still pretty buggy, not at all fun, and don't even offer great rewards. Public quests were largely implemented to replace dungeons. Public quests can be fun, and give decent loot, but they get old really quickly. There is essentially only one public quest in the game. It goes like so: Phase 1-Kill a lot of easy monsters, Phase 2-Kill a dozen champion monsters (these are like WoW elites), Phase 3-Tank and spank a boss. There are lots of public quests, but they all follow this formula, occasionally adding an extra phase or some kind of minor twist for variety. These are something like poor-man's dungeons. Dungeons typically give you an intense, epic, unpredictable experience. Public quests are short, completely predictable (as they're all essentially the same), boring, and easy.
4. In addition to the PQs (public quests), there is a severe lack of variety and fun anywhere in the PvE game. The mobs are all incredibly easy, and die quickly. With few exceptions, you'll be fighting one at a time, as it's impossible to pull more than one unless they're linked together, which only happens for named quest mobs and such. There are also very few patrols. The patrols that are in the game, follow very linear, straight line, predictable routes, so you'll never be surprised by them. We all remember some of the intense moments soloing in WoW, where we've pulled one too many mobs, then on top of that a patrol comes after us and it becomes a fight for survival. You'll never have any of these moments in WAR. One good thing about WAR's PvE is that you have virtually no downtime, as you'll never see your health dip below 50%, since the mobs are all easy-mode - even in the late game. On the other hand, since there is no challenge whatsoever, it makes the grind even more boring.
There is also little variety in the mobs you fight. You won't see them using unique abilities, heals, etc. very often. Mostly they just run up to you and keep hitting you. That's fine for the first 8 levels or so, but I'd like a little bit of variety after that.
You may be saying, "But wait a minute, this is a PvP game!" Yes, but it's still an MMORPG, and one that is trying to compete with WoW in every facet. Mark Jacobs of Mythic even said that the reason for all of the delays is so that Mythic could get the PvE up to a level found in WoW: TBC. WAR has better PvP, if you can get past the combat issues, but the PvE is nowhere even close to WoW - not even Pre-BC. When WoTLK comes out in a month, WAR's PvE will look downright ancient.
5. The UI in this game is sub-par. It is a lot better now than it was at beta, but it still leaves much to be desired. One problem is that your health and action bars routinely disappear. This is really wonderful when you're in the middle of an intense PvP fight and your health bar disappears. Should I heal? Run away? Hell if I know. There is a lack of keymapping and control customization also. The biggest problem is that there's absolutely no way to tell what value your action bar is at. You get a skill that uses 50 action points. Is that half your action bar? 5% of your action bar? There's no way to know because there's no way of knowing how many action points you have, or even how many action points you have when you're at 100%. You can look at your action point bar, but there's no way to equate this visual reference with any actual numbers, even though all of the skills you use relate to the action bar using set numerical values. This is utterly unbelievable. Imagine playing a Mage in WoW and having no idea how much mana you have at any given moment, how much you have at 100%, etc. Totally unacceptable.
6. There is a severe lack of good skills, and of skill variety at all. Look at a skill list for any character. For a dps character, for example, you will see many damage skills, most of which have no differentiation between them. Many skills have a very minor debuff effect, which is really the only difference you'll find. You'll have tons and tons of skills by level 40, yet it feels like you have few because there is lack of any real variety between many of them. Also sorely lacking are the kinds of class-defining abilities that WoW had. The mage in WoW had blink, polymorph, frost nova, ice block, several different kinds of magic (ice, fire, arcane), and you could change your spec and you'd have almost a completely different class. The closest thing to a mage in WAR is probably the Bright Wizard (or the BW's mirror class on destruction, the sorceress). The BW, in comparison, has a few minor snares and knockdowns, and only one real crowd control ability, fire cage, which is a root that has a 50% chance of breaking when receiving damage. The only other spells the BW has are fireballs, and variations of different fire damage attacks. That is it - one root, a few snares, and a bunch of pure damage attacks. In WoW, you receive some major abilities at many points throughout the game, and these seem to keep refreshing your class, so it never feels too boring. Also the sheer variety of skills keep WoW fun and exciting. In WAR though it is ALWAYS - *Ding* - "Great, another generic direct damage ability..." There's little to look forward to - no "Sweet, I get to wear plate in two more levels, and get uber skills X,Y, and Z!"
7. There is a severe lack of character customization. The character creation screen is incredibly lacking. I'd say it's on par with WoW's. Even WoW's character customization level was pretty empty, but that was in 2004. This level of character customization is just unacceptable in 2008. It's as if Mythic tried to include exactly the same amount of customization as WoW - they did just enough for it to be passable. As with every aspect of the game, Mythic went just barely far enough, but didn't go the extra mile in making this feature truly good.
WAR implemented something similar to WoW's talent point trees. These are called mastery trees, and are just a half-assed (more like quarter-assed) attempt at mimicking WoW's character skill customization/focus system. In WAR, these aren't really trees, just bars. There are three such bars, and none of them contain any choices at all. In WoW's talent point system, you'd often have to make tough choices within a talent tree. In WAR, the only decision is which bar to stick your points into. For example, if you're a tank, you might get a defensive mastery bar, a single-target dps mastery bar, and an aoe dps bar. Each bar just has 4 active abilities and 3 passive abilities called tactics. The more points you put into a bar, the more abilities you unlock. Like I said, it's just a really lazily-implemented, poorly done, half-assed clone of WoW's talent system.
8. There is a lack of variety in PvP. There are a bunch of keeps to raid, but once you've raided a keep in one Tier, you've raided them all. Keeps are really supposed to be the bread and butter of WAR's much-hyped PvP. Keep battles end up being all about who can bring the biggest zerg. Right now, on most servers, that is destruction, because they outnumber order by 2:1 or 3+:1. This is due largely to the developers hyping up the destruction characters as being very cool, and the order characters being lame, before the game was released. Good job there Mythic. In other games (like WoW), an outnumbered party can still win in combat because they have so many skills and CC abilities at their disposal, that when timed right, can dramatically alter the battle. WAR generally required much less skill to be good in PvP. There is very little CC, so it comes down to a battle of who's the best at spamming their damage skills (and at fighting the terribly buggy and unpolished combat system).
Each side only has one castle. Yep, each side spends all of it's time, at end game, defending its own castle and attacking the enemy's only castle. The only other end-game content consists of scenarios (like WoW's battleground), and a couple of really bad PvE dungeons. The main focus is on the castle sieges though. How many times can you seige the same castle over and over again without getting bored?
9. The WAR engine sucks. It is based on Mythic's outdated DaoC engine. The game's looks are about on par with WoW's, but slightly nicer. Yet while it's graphics are only slightly better, it will bring any system to a crawl during a large scale PvP battle. I'm not flaunting my epeen, but I have a system with a Q6600 processor, vista ultimate, 4 GB of Corsair Dominator, ATI 4850, and cable internet. If I get more than 30 characters in one area, is slows down immensely, becoming almost unplayable in the truly large battles. WoW can handle large battles much, much better than WAR, which is kind of odd, seeing as how WoW is supposed to be PvE-centric and WAR is supposed to be large-scale PvP-centric. Also, you better have a whole lot of RAM. If you're running Vista, you better have at least 4 gigs while running WAR, because it's very resource hungry. 3.5 gigs out of my 4 are used up while running WAR on my fresh Vista install with no other programs running. So again, the graphics would be okay if they were released in 2005, but they're very subpar for the end of 2008. It would be understandable if the the engine could handle tons and tons of players really well, but it's only slightly better at this than Age of Conan, while AoC's graphics are vastly better. Also noticeably absent in WAR are most graphics settings we're all used to. Want to enable AA and AF? Better figure out how to force AA and AF in your drivers...
10. Last, but not least...itemization - a huge part of what makes these games so fun. The color coding system is the same as WoW's (green=uncommon, blue=rare, purple=epic, etc.). The difference is that you'll be decked out in blues by the time you're level 15.Most people are totally decked out in epics before they even hit level 40. This kind of devalues the whole meaning of epic loot. This game just hands it out like candy, and doesn't make you work for it. You get new loot so often that it takes the fun out of getting new loot. Remember getting that sick purple sword in WoW, and in a single instance you've increased your dps by 30%? Well you'll never get this from WAR. First of all, there are no epic PvE encounters that I know of, so no great gear there. There is the renown system, but renown gear is typically not all that impressive. Second, you cannot craft any equipment. Third, and most importantly, you will completely change out every piece of gear at least once every 3 levels. The result is that you're always bettering yourself incrementally. Every level you'll increase your dps by 5% or so. It is much more exciting to get a new weapon every 8 levels and increase your dps by a whopping amount, like 40%
11. As I touched on above, there is a severe lack of crafting in this game. You get to make potions, or talismans - which are something you put into an item socket. Every one I've seen has a time limit, so the quality of your talisman decides whether it disappears in two hours or two days. Since you can't make any real equipment, and it would be pointless to anyway, since WAR is always throwing new equipment at you, there is basically no player economy. There is an auction house, but even on a good day, you might only find 5 or 6 items for your class. There is extreme specialization in WAR's items. Every single item in the game is class specific, which ends up hurting the item selection at the AH. Again though, there's no real reason to use the AH, as quest, PQ rewards, and renown rewards give you more than enough loot anyway. Sometimes it's nice to take a break from combat and take some time crafting and selling stuff at the auction house in WoW. You'll never have that pleasure in WAR. This is another part of WAR that is totally unacceptable to me. A 2008 MMORPG, which is openly challenging WoW, which is backed by EA with almost infinite funds, is released with virtually no crafting whatsoever, and uses an economic model that excludes a player economy!? Are you kidding me?
12. There is a lack of immersion in WAR. The only way to get to other zones is to talk to a flight master. After you talk to the flight master, you're given a loading screen, then you magically appear in the place you want to go. The only zones that are connected are your racial pairing's zones. This all results in a disjointed game world and a feeling of disconnect. Also, if you're a high elf, dark elf, dwarf, or greenskin you won't even be able to defend your capital city in a siege. Nope, Mythic took your capital out (along with several classes) so they could rush WAR out the door ASAP.
Another gripe I have is that there is only one flight master per zone, so if you want to travel, you might be in for a really long run to the nearest flight master.
Finally, and this effects tiers 1 and 2 the most, since they only have one scenario per racial pairing, if you want to play more than just your own racial pairing's scenario, you have to fly to another race's zone. You will get sick of your own scenario, but then it's a total pain to try to join another one.
13. There is a surprising lack of PvP for a PvP game. I played on an open server, and surprisingly, WoW PvP server's are more open than WAR's. I thought WAR was gonna be everywhere, and that WAR was to be the king of all PvP MMORPGs? I can't go into tiers below my own, unless I want to be turned into a chicken that has 1 HP. This also sucks because I can't go into lower zones to help guildmates level, and I can't go back to unlock tome entries that I missed. It amazed me the WAR, the supposed king of PvP, has such a carebear ruleset compared to WoW, the supposed PvE-centric game.
To sum it up, the biggest problems with this game, on a macro level, are lack of polish, lack of fun in pve, lack of any innovation, and a very severe lack of variety in all aspects of the game. That said, the RvR combat is fun at first, but it gets boring quickly. Also, the buggy and unpolished combat, along with the poorly optimized engine detract from RvR.
An MMORPG released 4 years after WoW should be able to improve on WoW in every way, or most ways, at the very least. It has improved on WoW only in its PvP, while being humbled by WoW in every single other aspect of the game. And with all of its problems, not even the often-touted PvP is as good as it should be. In one month, WoTLK will be released, and will raise the bar even further above WAR's head, while closing the PvP gap. That being said, I really can't recommend WAR to even the most diehard PvP fan.
Comments
** Wall of Text crits you for 10,000 (Crushing). **
*reserved for posting when i finished reading*
Hi. Thanks for your review.
I don't know why you posted it. You used "WoW " 37 times and WAR less than that.... So I can assume WoW was the last game you played, or it was your first game. Sorry, but I feel your post failed to do anything aside from address the reasons you don't like WAR. A review usually shows two sides and lets things stand out on their own. Your post just went through.. and pretty much wasted 3 minutes of my life.. thinking that it would actually be a review.. not a compare and contrast. Well.. have a nice day.. and WotLK will be out soon.. so.. I hope you enjoy that!! Again.. thanks for stopping by!!
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QFT. Pretty much everything that needed to be said about that poor troll attempt at a "review".
Yet another Johnny one-post review. Go take your Bliz propaganda elsewhere. No one is buying this BS any longer.
Everyone has a right to state their opinion. He does make some good points. Others are a matter of personal preference.
When you review something you really need something to compare it with, and nothing wrong with using an 800 pound gorilla as a reference point. It is hard when you have to compare it with a 4 year old game that has far more content, which is itself somewhat unfair.
War has issues, just like any other newly released game. I am sure that Mythic will clean up many of them, At present it just lacks a lot of content, which unfortunately won't continue to hold the interest of some of the players.
We will just have to sit back and see how much content Mythic cranks out to keep the game popular.
Oh and can the troll comments, the only trolls here are those calling the reviewer such.
Great review. So true in all aspects mentioned. Why anyone would play this game when they got a better more polished version out 4 years ago.
I stopped reading after your crap talk about RvR you obviously have no idea about the entire center point of the game and why those keeps are necessary. You have no idea about what Warhammer is about or even simple Game design mechanics & Networking and why sometimes you have to 'cut the fat' to keep her running smooth.
Your entire Opinion peice is just that opinion not one bit of it is a real review. Its just good ol opinionated drivel.
Everything you have said here is a subjective opinion. And seriously if you don't know that I'll destroy you with your own post. Man I thought the majority of Trolls in WAR were in Troll country, but they appear to be in the WAR forums instead.
Originally posted by GTwander:
How are you an MMO? Or any of us for that matter?
I say we strike all users from the site for not being MMOs.
Galdeous,
This game is NOT vanguard. Sorry. Vanguard has a HORRID release.. and was unplayable for a good 3 months. It is NOW a good game... seeing from your post history, y ou are just a Troll and a Thorn in the side of the WAR forums.. as you've done nothing but bash this game..
The Vanguard boards are here..
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/category/188
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I read through about half of this before I realized it's just more of the same whining and complaining we've all come to love on the mmorpg.com forums.
Seriously, buggy combat? Boring NPC's? Are you still stuck in town?
I'm really starting to think some of you aren't even trying to play the game, waiting for someone to spoon feed you challenges or something.
And dungeons? I'm only level 13 and i've come across a whole bunch of dungeons that I had to quickly run away from due to not having a group.
Seriously, this isn't wow, if you're level 10, doesn't mean you have to fight level 10 monsters. I ventured way out of my "area" and fought stuff 5 levels above me for a challenge. You actually get a cool title from throwing yourself in the face of danger like this and surviving, in your TOK it will say something like "survived X battles while under 5% health" or something.
So take your complaints and shove em.
Try playing the game before making judgements, I can't believe you got to 40 and had such a bland experience.
PLAY WURM ONLINE!! www.wurmonline.com
As I just said to the other person, yes - reviews are necessarily subjective. That's not to say there is not much truth in my post, however. Which points are fact, and which are opinion? That's a subjective matter, largely.
I played the game, but I really didn't enjoy it very much, aside from RvR. I think it ultimately comes down to a lack of variety in nearly every aspect of the game, and a persistent feeling of "been there, done that".
Video game reviews aren't "What one game did better than the other".. reviewing a game with the lense of another will never work.
Take what a game does well.
Take what a game sucks at.
And work from there. Your "review" is more like a "WoW does this, and this.. and WAR does this and this". You should edit it to read "WAR does this Well, and WAR sucks at this".. Read ANY review.. there are always positive points and negative points. You won't read a REAL game review that compares one game to the other.. and uses those points to discredit the first game. You FAIL in your "Review".. You succeed in WALL of TEXT of your opinion.
So.. to summarize..
A REVIEW is one object with good and bad points listed.
A compare and Contrast is AT LEAST 2 objects compared to one another while pointing out flaws and successes.
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For all your stalking needs..
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Galdeous,
This game is NOT vanguard. Sorry. Vanguard has a HORRID release.. and was unplayable for a good 3 months. It is NOW a good game... seeing from your post history, y ou are just a Troll and a Thorn in the side of the WAR forums.. as you've done nothing but bash this game..
The Vanguard boards are here..
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/category/188
WAR fanbois to the rescue!! dah dah dah DAH! Sorry, regardless of what games I play now, it still doesn't make all the games failings to go away. This is just another AoC (VG as well) in terms of crash and burn. Already talking about merging servers...how long has it been out? Lol.
you can use this phrase on every part of the game. And not even a WaR fanboi can say different.
the game is decent, it doesnt do anything great....just alot of things decent.
thing is regardless of what you hear on the forums from Trolls and fanbois is that WaR numbers are down.
The game is not huge hit because its so average. It will settle right around LOTR numbers. which aint bad, but not what Paul hyped it up to be
I disagree. It's a review - infofront style. I compared it to WoW so much because it's a game nearly every gamer can identify with, and it is commercially the "gold standard" for games of the genre. Also, WAR clearly borrowed many ideas and gaming conventions from WoW, but WAR doesn't implement them as well as a 4 year old game, most of the time.
I have to agree with most of the other posters. The OP makes a big deal comparing WAR with WoW and yet they are two completely different games and not even meant to be the same.
I did play WoW for a month or so a couple of years ago before getting bored at about level thirty something. I subsequently played LotRO for over a year and if you want to compare something similar to WoW, that is the one and is a much better game in my opinion.
WAR is a completely different game and I'm enjoying it a lot for that reason. most of the Op's points are either wrong, or irrelevant as far as I can see. The only thing I do agree with is that the crafting/economy has much to be desired but even there he overstates the problem, as I have managed to make 20 gold with my lvl 24 character so far this week selling crafted items in the auction. Yeah, I did find a niche item to manage that I admit.
There are some very valid points, especially in terms of character customization. Itemization (class-specific everything... WHY?!?!!?) is also an issue.
However, a good review should balance the pros and cons against the merit of the game itself. It is fine to make an overall comparison to other games, but I think the OPs focus on WoW does the review a disservice (and guarrantees most of his board's readers will flame them to peices).
Finally, consider that you are comparing WAR to WoW after WoW has been in post-release development for four years. People forget all the crap WoW put us through in the early years, glossed over by the polished product they have now. A lot can change over time, and I see WAR moving in the right direction.
Fair, but a review would also give a wholistic view of the game and in theory should not appear subjective (though we know that's the ideal. This however was just an entirely negative view giving no omission to what is/could be good. That's why this post is trash.
Originally posted by GTwander:
How are you an MMO? Or any of us for that matter?
I say we strike all users from the site for not being MMOs.
The OP just wants attention, why else would you craft such a long post unless you were hoping to farm some responses from it.
We're all paying attention to you now, maybe we can feed and burp you later too.
PLAY WURM ONLINE!! www.wurmonline.com
Good writing. And now you will get your PvP - because real PvP (I even can say RvR) happens on forums. The game will be fiercely protected by fanboys. You better beging to form a warband
You've posted 250 times. You must need A LOT of attention then, since clearly that's the only reason anyone would post anything...
Good review. Too bad Gamespot and IGN are both bribed by Mythic to give grossly inflated scores. Gamespot gave both WAR and AoC 8.5s. I didn't know that 8.5-rated MMOs were supposed to die out in six months.
I may be back once WAR becomes free-to-play in the near future... Just maybe?
On second thought, naah. Unless they paid me to grind scenarios for real cash. Crash to desktop (on 3ghz dual-core, 8800GT) anyone?
no need for a warband as the amount of fanbois keeps dropping just the ones left are trying to yell louder as the forces fall off