Warhammer Online - Bottomline

on Friday 5 December 2008
WAR is fun to many of its players, yet WAR is also boring to quite a few. Some guesses about what kind of players who may not like WAR:
  • Players who don't like playing alone. Certain servers or periods of time have less players around, so for a large part of the PvE experience, you'll might be doing it alone. This applies to players who don't like to join strangers as well. The party search, public quests, scenarios, etc. are designed to make it easy to group with strangers. Even if you're in a guild, play times are different; sooner or later you'll run out of guildies of the same level to play together (when you're still far from max level 40). If you can't bear to level alone and prefer to only play with people you know, especially if you don't enjoy discovering and reading lore or hunting for Tome of Knowledge unlocks, you definitely won't like this game.
  • Players who get frustrated by randomness. In Open RvR or scenarios, the warband composition on both sides are entirely random. Due to the careers not being played equally, you'll sometimes find yourself in a situation where there's a distinct lack of healers or tanks. If you don't like losing because you're in an unbalanced or disorganized group, then you might not like WAR's style of PvP. Also, the measure of contributions for public quests and keep sieges appears, for now, to be quite random as well. If you go in expecting an appropriate reward for your contributions, you're just gonna disappoint yourself. Play for the sake of playing, and not for better loot and you'll do fine.
  • Players who love non-combat skills. In many MMOs, like World of Warcraft, there's a separate set of skills and an "economy" for training "crafting" skills and for acquiring materials for those skills. In WAR, the crafting skills are very simplistic and somewhat unpolished. There's really no depth to it. Don't expect any sophistication with crafting and you'll be happy.
  • Players who don't want to pay for an unfinished game. As of right now, even with version 1.0.6 and, I suspect, 1.1, this game is far from polished. Graphics clipping, graphical delays, activation delays, crashes to desktop, login timeout issues, scenario queueing issues, population balance issues, promised content, etc. are significant negatives. The key thing to bear in mind is that MMOs are always under development; just that some are released with more polish. Even World of Warcraft had their own issues when it was released. If you're very picky about such things as bugs and minor glitches, you might want to wait a little. The more people who decide to wait though, may indirectly affect how well the game gets polished.
  • Players who rush to the end-game. Personally, I think I play at a moderate pace. Not too fast and not too slow. Just enjoying it as it comes and trying to see and unlock everything there is in one place before moving on. Some players simply love rushing through the game, as if not levelling up at least once per play session is a blasphemy. For these people, they'll probably run out of things to do rather quickly. Because for them, it's all about maxing levels and getting loot. These "hardcore" or "powergamers" tend to get bored the earliest. I'm not there yet (halfway at level 21 on my main character), but I've been reading complaints from level 40s that there's not much left for them to do. Don't agree with their complaints but then again, I can't relate to their play style, so this is certainly something to consider.
Anything else? I donno. If you don't fall into any of the above, I think you'll love the game... if you like RPGs, online games, and can bear the subscription cost :P personally, you won't really feel the pinch. Just skip one expensive meal a month and you'll be fine, well.. if you're in the working class that is. Even if you do fall into one of the above groups, try it, you might still like it. I guarantee it'll at least be a distraction for at least a few months as you level up. See in the game!

WAAAGH!!!

More RvR Keep Sieges:

2 responses:

lolipoops said...
5/12/08 16:36

allo, can you hear me boy? allo allo..wake up boy, wake uuuup..wake uuuuppp :P

lili said...
9/12/08 14:44

Those are not me! I wish I got time to play!
RAWR! I'm so outdate with MMO liao!
#$%Q@%$

But I think if I start laying my hands on it, it gives me a damn good reason to procrastinate liao. Then I'm sure doomed for my coursework edi.