Flaws of WAR

[JoeThePlumber]

Hey all I read this review of WoW and it was showing a pretty good view of the game. so I copy/pass the content from Warhammer Online: the Review "A Strong Game with Several Weaknesses" here

Like many keep questing is this the game to quit WoW for is this the better of the two... well it kinda is and its not when you like to play in off hours like there is not much RvR going on

Flaws of WAR

Deja Vu

No MMO is perfect. Every MMO has something to improve upon, WAR is no exception. There is no “OMG THAT’S SO COOL” moment at all. In fact, I found myself moving from race to race, class to class, zone to zone and in the end I had a “Yea, been there, done that’ feeling. There just isn’t anything unique about WAR that says “BoYah!”. The look and user interface is like WoW, The RvR scenarios are like WoW PvP minigames, the RvR zones are like DAOC, the elves are freakishly like LOTRO (minus the numerous players with names like Legolas816).

Is this a big deal? It depends on who you ask. The fact is that there are millions of burnt out WoW players. They desperately want a change away from WoW. WAR is a great alternative to WoW ...but it may be so similar that people may ask “Which game am I playing again? Did I click the right Icon?”

Plenty of “MMO veterans” who frequent the discussion boards are already flaming away. They complain that WAR is not a revolutionary MMO, that it’s not the next generation of MMO. No, its not. But some news to those ‘MMO veterans’, they never claimed it to be. Following the Blizzard (succesful) business model, WAR takes the best aspects of recent MMOs and improves or streamlines them.

Goodness Sucks!
Like DAOC, WAR will be very population dependent. The fairness and enjoyment will matter less on class balance and more on population balance. From both preview weekends, open beta and countless polls, it seems pretty obvious that Destruction will outnumber Order when the game is released. My guess is destruction will be up 3:2 in player population ..perhaps even 2:1. This will be disastrous on servers where this occurs.

This is a big deal for both scenario RvR and for open RvR zones. The RvR zones can often come down to a zerg pissing contest. The under populated side, no matter now coordinated and practiced will often be overrun. Soon both sides will tire of the imbalance. For scenarios the under populated side will enjoy easy and quick entry into the fight. The overpopulated side will curse and bemoan their queue times.

To be honest, order races are just less appealing to the masses. Most destruction classes have looks and plays better than it's order counterpart. Although I must give kudos to the character designers of the bright Wizard and Witch Hunter, the remainder of Order is just 'blah'. The entire High Elf zone is a big snore fest. Destruction just has that 'It' factor that draws players to it.

However , I've seen this in many MMOs. Eventually things even out. I'm guessing it may take 4-5 months.

Hellllooooo…echo…echo….echo
The PVE aspect of this game is surprisingly…lonely. I see players, they are all around me moving, jumping, etc. But the channels are silent. The chat system is not very good. There is no /HELP channel or OOC channel. As such there is no ‘Barren’s Chat”. Hey, I didn’t like Barren’s chat either ...but at least you know people were around. Perhaps this is how MMO players act now …its like I joined ‘mimes online’. I understand the need to restrict channels...the gold sellers are already salivating (DON’T BUY!!). Still, I hope future patches will improve this area.

Character Customization
Character customization is lacking. Although there is a lot of face changing features in character creation everyone still ends up looking the same. Even with dyes there isn’t a lot of variation in the actual armor/weapons. When you see 5 high elves charging towards you the first thing you’ll think is “Cool, quintuplets!”

This is mainly due to the fact that everyone will be wearing the same armor (renown armor). Mythic will need to add some more models. I expect end game players will have a mixture of renown, public quest and other gear this may allow for some differences in appearance.

Crafting
By far crafting is the weakest part of this game. All I can say is ‘GAAGHHHH!!’. Understand, I never liked crafting in any MMO but WAR’s system makes me want to start fishing again in WoW. You can only chose one gathering skill and one profession. This is great since it means the crafters will need other players to help them produce the items. However the gathering is slow and uninspiring and the usefulness of the professions (there are only 2, talisman making and apothecary) is still unclear. I wont go into more specifics here on their crafting because I know its not finished and it will change …it has to.

Minor Annoyances
Every new MMO has its bugs. WAR is no exception (did I say that already?). Lots of pathing bugs, attacking and animation bugs. Pet classes have it rougher than most (White lions I feel your pain!). Several geometry bugs in RvR zones with objects sticking up through the floors etc. Surprisingly, I haven’t had a lot of /stuck moments. These things are to be expected. They will be dealt with in time and upcoming patches. Recent patches have made huge improvements ..I expect that trend to continue.

[Licks666]

review this game in a couple of months!

[mdg19]

That review is horrible.

[luciferc]

Please Include Facts and not Bullcockery

[Quty]

I must say, that's really a bad review.
Should we go back to when WoW first released and review that? Oh wait, that's right. Their servers were down for a week and we couldn't play!

From the start, he didn't give a race, class, side a chance. You can't get a feel for the game when you don't go past lvl 5. You don't see keep sieges until tier 2 (holy shit those are fun!).

Is he really only going to compare stuff to WoW? There are other MMOs out there.

No one around? Has this R-tard played WoW recently? There's barely anyone in the old world these days. Just because this fruit cake doesn't wanna group with people, wahtever. Open groups and Public Quests are so awesome.

Don't get me started on character customization...
This guy needs to be shot in the face. Obviously he hasn't played WoW recently in the lower levels. So I would assume he's played in the end game. Everyone looks the same! Even worse than WAR. At least in WAR I can make myself stand out as a giant purple barney! WAAAGH !!! Black Orcs > alll!

This care bear needs to go back to WoW and stay there. WAR doesn't want you, thank you.

[TheFreak]

That was harsh..

How can you give a half ass review when the game hasn't even been released a week yet? If you're going to review something you need all the knowledge about every little bit in the game.

Open Realm vs Realm is bad ass
Public Quest are fun
Scenarios are fun

Hell.. Just tonight I killed about 12 people with the big weapons. Now that was fun.

[Iraq]

I must say, that's really a bad review.
Should we go back to when WoW first released and review that? Oh wait, that's right. Their servers were down for a week and we couldn't play!

From the start, he didn't give a race, class, side a chance. You can't get a feel for the game when you don't go past lvl 5. You don't see keep sieges until tier 2 (holy shit those are fun!).

Is he really only going to compare stuff to WoW? There are other MMOs out there.

No one around? Has this R-tard played WoW recently? There's barely anyone in the old world these days. Just because this fruit cake doesn't wanna group with people, wahtever. Open groups and Public Quests are so awesome.

Don't get me started on character customization...
This guy needs to be shot in the face. Obviously he hasn't played WoW recently in the lower levels. So I would assume he's played in the end game. Everyone looks the same! Even worse than WAR. At least in WAR I can make myself stand out as a giant purple barney! WAAAGH !!! Black Orcs > alll!

This care bear needs to go back to WoW and stay there. WAR doesn't want you, thank you.

+1 to that. well put sir.

[lundish]

i must say, that's really a bad review.
Should we go back to when wow first released and review that? Oh wait, that's right. Their servers were down for a week and we couldn't play!

From the start, he didn't give a race, class, side a chance. You can't get a feel for the game when you don't go past lvl 5. You don't see keep sieges until tier 2 (holy shit those are fun!).

Is he really only going to compare stuff to wow? There are other mmos out there.

No one around? Has this r-tard played wow recently? There's barely anyone in the old world these days. Just because this fruit cake doesn't wanna group with people, wahtever. Open groups and public quests are so awesome.

Don't get me started on character customization...
This guy needs to be shot in the face. Obviously he hasn't played wow recently in the lower levels. So i would assume he's played in the end game. Everyone looks the same! Even worse than war. At least in war i can make myself stand out as a giant purple barney! Waaagh !!! Black orcs > alll!

This care bear needs to go back to wow and stay there. War doesn't want you, thank you.

agreed!!!!!!

[Vexid]

MMO's shouldn't be review right after the release. Unlike the other types of games, mmo's need time to become "complete".

Imho WAR is way much better than WoW.

[shazarn]

Hell.. Just tonight I killed about 12 people with the big weapons. Now that was fun.

Yeh damn right it is
In the beta, the ORder was attacking T2 Ostland RvR Camp (well camping it really to keep the keep)
got the siege weps and got about 30 of em in 10-15 mins
Excellent fuN!

[Yemmiz]

This review stinks, I'm betting this guy went straight back to wow after noticing it's not a piece-of-cake to level.

Have fun getting spammed by goldsellers that blizzard won't do anything about .

[aeroxx]

a bit short on a review. although i think this is just your first impression :P