[alexvorn2]

I haven't played it yet, but it's by the same guys that created DAoC; in other words there will be tons of PVP, and realm PVP goals look to be pretty sweet. If your focus is on PVP it's worth checking out.
What is your impressions of this game?

[DaPoets]

Start reading here:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=574946

I'm sure you won't get many people posting in this thread since they have all already posted their thoughts in this main one.

[UnrealAlex]

Might as well post here, so the reviews are all organized.

I give it 4/5
The pvp is always a lot of fun but other areas of the game are severely lacking. I'll spare you the good stuff and give you the bad stuff.

1. Item/economy
All items look exactly the same. Your lvl 10 armor will only differ your 20 armor by color.
Every character looks largely identical with the rest of their class, except for coloring.
The economy is terribly sluggish, there is nothing to buy with your money after you get your mount. All items are class/race specific. There are no classes fighting over an item. Chaos can only have certain weapons, Black Orcs can only have certain weapons. If you found a nice staff with the stats you need, and its for another race, you cant use it. The epic items are horrendous, they give your class stats he doesn't need and omit the ones he does. If it actually gives your class the stats he needs, chances are you'll find a better green item within a few levels. The professions seem useless and boring. You can only craft potions and talismans.

2. Little annoyances
The game is full of little annoyances that add up. Whether its terrible level design, bugs, glitches, crashes... Ill give you some examples. One scenario has indestructible ballista siege weapons which lets someone 10 level lower than you get on them and shoot you non stop and you cant even touch them. Another scenario has thin paths and lava all around you, anytime you get near an enemy tank he uses his knockback technique and you go into the lava. Game crashes often at the worst times. There are huge areas without flight paths so you have to walk for 10 minutes just to get to a flight master.

If you're willing to put up with an unfinished game, get it. Otherwise, I'd say wait a few months so they can fix some stuff and polish the game.

[Qlix]

certainly not the WoW killer it was dubbed to be =/

[UnrealAlex]

Yea its too watered down and simplistic to be a WoW killer.

[deathman20]

Originally Posted by rugscrubber

certainly not the WoW killer it was dubbed to be =/

Nothing will ever beat WoW in comparison unless its been out for the same amount of time as WoW has. Its a simple fact that at least in MMO's there is so much that can be tested in a closed environment, you have to release it to get the real bugs worked out.

Im personally looking forward to more updates to the game, hopefully they will get the quircky bugs ironed out here in the next few months.


I'd give it a 7.5/10 myself.

Its good, I enjoy it. I've been fortunate not to have a crashing bug at all. Lvling seems fairly paced, so no extreme power lvling. I like the PQ's the RvR area's and Scenario's. Some classes seem over powered compared to others but hopefully they will balance things out a little better as time goes on.

My 1 beef as its with most MMO's is the quest system only haveing room for a small amount of quests. Why not have double that at least, where if you travel between 2 area's you can get all the quests for said area's go out and have fun then come back and collect the rewards.

Graphic wise, it is kinda tame. Wish there was more veriaty of items for people to actually see. Other than that it runs smooth, it utilizes dual cores very well which im happy. Finally a MMO that uses nearly 90% of the power of my computers CPU!

Other little minor things but overall I could play this casually which is what I was aiming for in the first place as time goes on.

[Msi.]

I have been playing it for about three days now and I can say that I personally like it. It may be simple but those simple changes are what make me happy that I chose this game. One of those simple changes is mana, this game does not have mana, or age or anything like that it has action points which regenerate at a fairly fast rate so caster's aren't always sitting down drinking.

It gives you more time to enjoy the game and doesnt screw you over completely in longer fights or raids.

Collision detection adds a neat aspect which I find many people have not yet taken advantage of though they probably will a little farther down the line when we <exceed> start to talkbout taking keeps / holds.

The public quests offer a simple solution to obtaining some loot and leveling, the quest are easily marked on the map and not hard to find. I personally was one of those wow players that spend a fair amount of time lost wondering where the quest way. Things seem pretty well balanced so far.

If you are someone that likes to pvp then you will be happy to know that you can que up for a scenario and continue questing, this is great compared to wow which gave you the choice, either you quest or you pvp, no doing both. in War when you que up for a scenario (bg) and are called upon you will respawn after the right where you where previously. so if you where in front of a boss and get called chances are you will be in front of the boss when the scenario is over allowing you to complete your quest and que back in.

I saw the comment on haveing gold and not knowing what to do with it. There are things that you can spend your gold on. You can buy seige weapons from vendors if I recal and you can attack keeps / holds. you can also dye your armor so if you want purple armor then its not much of an issue. Most players are still fairly low level so there may be things available at higher levels though I cant confirm that.

There is a lot of achievements, titles, exploreing, lore, to play around with and I am sure that more will be added as time goes on.

An other important thing that I want to point out is that stats do not work the same as in wow or most other games some people may believe that stats are useless but down the line they arent that useless example

staff with +wound +toughtness +intellect. some people would say what the hell is toughness doing in there since its a damage migance type of skill. Wound is health and intel is spell damage.

Thing is if your a caster haveing more toughness is not a bad thing. it does help though some other stats could be better it doesnt mean much

[UnrealAlex]

No Msi, the stats are useless. You misunderstood me.
I'm a sorcerer and I need intelligence to increase my damage, for rewards I'm getting loot with Willpower(increases healing), lvl 40 sets for some reason have Weapon Skilll...for sorcerers...I've seen 2 lvl 20 sorcerer epics that had 0 intelligence.

[Shiggity]

The Good :

1) The way PvP is entangled into every aspect of the game so well.

2) No mana pools (everyone has action points similiar to rogues energy in WoW). This will make it much easier to balance things out down the road.

3) Public quests are a very cool new mechanic that I hope to see in future MMO's as well.

4) Tanks are viable in pvp

The Bad :

1) Somewhat choppy and jagged gameplay. It's not nearly as fluid as other games.

2) UI Problems - Will be fixed later with mods / updates

3) Higher comp requirements for graphics and gameplay that really don't support it imo. (WoW plays much better for less graphics usage imo).

4) Melee classes need more movement support. A good sorc / hunter will CC you forever or until you die.

5) There needs to be way more flight paths, getting around long distances has to be made much easier.

6) The map is somewhat overloaded with information, could be simplified or reworked. It is customizable, but not enough. Mods will most likely fix this later.

7) Scenario queue times are pretty bad most of the time. You have to wait 30+ minutes sometimes to enter a scenario (think WoW battleground).

8) Seige weapons in scenarios are grossly OP. Getting nailed every 3 seconds by auto casting balistas in phoenix gate is lame.

9) Spell pushback is rearing its ugly head again. My shaman healer doesn't even have a flash type heal, it's either a heal over time, a regrowth type spell with the majority of the healing coming from the heal over time (not much front end direct healing), and my main heal spell is 3 seconds and if I get hit once it goes all the way back to start. So it's almost impossible to get off if anyone is attacking me.

There is no way or itemization to prevent it yet to my knowledge.

10) The PvE content is very poor. I know this is an all PvP game, but their attempts to put in PvE content through dungeons and outdoor raid mobs was just poor.


All in all this is a very good game and one of the better MMO's to come out in a while. They really nailed the core PvP aspects, they need to get on polishing the gameplay and work really hard on keeping everything balanced now.

Considering this is an all PvP game, I expect them to be bringing out balance tweaks every 2 weeks at least once more people are hitting 40 and pvping at their max levels.

4 / 5 Stars from me!

[DaPoets]

I think you are kind of off Alex. Now that I'm at 20, my gear does look different, and actually I look very unique and my swords are kinda bad ass. My stats on my gear correctly reflect my play style, and I actually have 2 sets of gear, one for healing and one for DPS. My aoe heal w/ my dps gear is like 280 or something, but w/ my healing gear it's 510. Stats make a huge difference for me. And yes there is all kinds of random gear out there, that's what makes great usable gear all that more important. You just have not seen enough/right type of gear for your class. It's also great and WONDERFUL that items are class specific... If I saw one more warlock wearing a druid staff I was going to puke.

It's extremely unfair to even comment on the economy right now as you have no base line yet. The highest level character on the server is lvl 29 (Destruction side) so with a brand new game, new territory for everyone, the economy will take time to develop. That is just life...

Every epic that I have seen drop was a very nice item. I am still using my lvl 13 purple belt and I'm 20 and just not about to replace it. Yes there are odd ones out there too, but that's the flavor of the game.

I heard you complain about knockback w/ it being "cheap" but I respect knockback and am looking forward to getting it in later levels. I even have to be aware of what players have it and when they would use it so I sometimes put my back to a wall when fighting them so they have no reason to use it.

Oh and nothing is a 10 minute walk to a flight path. And even if it is a long walk, you have your porting book anyway and then you are like 30 seconds from a flight path if you keep yourself bound next to one like I do.

[UnrealAlex]

Originally Posted by DaPoets

I think you are kind of off Alex. Now that I'm at 20, my gear does look different, and actually I look very unique and my swords are kinda bad ass. My stats on my gear correctly reflect my play style, and I actually have 2 sets of gear, one for healing and one for DPS. My aoe heal w/ my dps gear is like 280 or something, but w/ my healing gear it's 510. Stats make a huge difference for me. And yes there is all kinds of random gear out there, that's what makes great usable gear all that more important. You just have not seen enough/right type of gear for your class. It's also great and WONDERFUL that items are class specific... If I saw one more warlock wearing a druid staff I was going to puke.

It's extremely unfair to even comment on the economy right now as you have no base line yet. The highest level character on the server is lvl 29 (Destruction side) so with a brand new game, new territory for everyone, the economy will take time to develop. That is just life...

Every epic that I have seen drop was a very nice item. I am still using my lvl 13 purple belt and I'm 20 and just not about to replace it. Yes there are odd ones out there too, but that's the flavor of the game.

I heard you complain about knockback w/ it being "cheap" but I respect knockback and am looking forward to getting it in later levels. I even have to be aware of what players have it and when they would use it so I sometimes put my back to a wall when fighting them so they have no reason to use it.

Oh and nothing is a 10 minute walk to a flight path. And even if it is a long walk, you have your porting book anyway and then you are like 30 seconds from a flight path if you keep yourself bound next to one like I do.

All the tier 2 2nd zones have no flight paths, so you have to walk far if you're in the middle of questing. This should be a non-issue, even though we have BoB to teleport.

You haven't even played the Tier 3 scenario where knockback is cheap as hell.

I've had the same looking shoulders/staff/robe since lvl 1.
All the icons up to lvl 30 look exactly the same, which leads me to believe they look the same worn. Practically every new item you got in WoW would look different...

You completly didn't read what I wrote about gear stats and how useless stats are given to classes.
Items being class specific may be wonderful for you, but when I find a staff with 89 intelligence, and its for magus only, I'm not happy about it.

And even at lvl 40, there will be nothing to buy. What will you spend your money on? Talismans? Potions?

Shiggity, melee classes do not need more movement support, especially Order. Everytime I get jumped by a melee class, I'm dead. They have snare/root/stun, as well as long range abilities like lions, axe throws that crit for 500, guns, etc...not to mention the annoyingly long distance of melee attacks. I play a sorcerer btw. Roots and disarm are the only defense we have against melee, and they're on like 30 s cooldowns so there's no way we can CC you to death.

[pak]

Originally Posted by UnrealAlex

Practically every new item you got in WoW would look different...

I have not played WAR yet, but that is why I am reading this post. If you are saying there are more item models in WAR used over and over than WOW did, that is pretty lame.


--pak

[OkydOky]

I was not happy with WAR before it came out.
They took away my Black Guard.

I did try the Black Orc mostly during beta. It was neat.. but I simply not an Elf...
I will probably pick up the game once the Black guard is available.

Overall I found the game rather neat. Killing players actually takes effort, which is nice. here are some balancing issues at the moment though. Iron breakers are quite unbeatable once a few people start attacking them...

[ChronosKill]

I only played in beta till like 12 or something but I disliked the quest system. The whole built in quest helper makes it more of a "Run here, kill anything you see near the mark till you find the quest one, run back" without even having to read the quests or anything. I also just ended up spamming specials because action regened so fast. That might change later, but it was like instead of having an auto attack, I had to spam a special to do any damage.