Whose more insane, me or the rest of society? Read the following blog of bollocks and decide for yourself.
First Impressions
Published on September 10, 2008 By Scotteh In PC Gaming

Yesterday i managed to get my hands on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (from here on refered to as WAR), the latest in a long list that threatens to de-throne World of Warcraft (WoW) from the top of the pile of currently existing MMORPG (Massivley Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games).

So far it's only an Open Beta view of the game, offical release doesn't begin until the 17th of September, never the less i got a good insight into the game mechanics as well as the look and feel of the game.

Upon logging in the graphics seemed awful at first, but after some investigating i was able to use my Nvidia control panel to actually force the likes of Anti-Aliasing etc. on, which improved things greatly. It's not as pretty as say Age of Conan, but let's be honest, Graphics keep you interested for about twenty minutes.

I decided to make a Dark Elf Character, a Sorcerer to be precise, and set about customising him, nothing out of the ordinary there, select the sex, hair type/colour, skin colour etc, how many ear rings you want, blah blah.

Upon entering the game you immediatley get the sense that your stood right in the middle of some fantasy warzone where all hell has broken lose. Not least because of the high pitched screams and chunking of metal, the awesome visuals of buildings and fleets on fire. It was an unsual introduction as opposed to WoW's daisy fields of boars and sheep.

The usual format of run up to someone and ask for quest prevails initially in WAR. Until you hit a point where you are suddenly told that your in something called a 'Public Quest', which is essentially a three staged story being played out by people in the nearby vicinity. I got told that i had to slay a certain number of High Elf defenders, i had noticed several people around me doing it, so began to zap away. After some time a message appeared informing me that some temple dudes were trying to perform a ritual to kill us, and sure enough they came running along and we began killing them. Some time later, (there's constant waves of npc's comming at this point, really great fun), all the temple guys are killed and then out of the sky comes a huge dragon, sort of like an end game boss you'd find in a dungeon somewhere in WoW.

There was initially three of us in the area at the time and had no chance of killing him, as we found out after several foolish attempts. Finally though our numbers swelled and we were able to take him. Upon killing him a slot machine type screen appeared. It listed the people whom were involved in the Public Quest, and the amount of influence they had (presumably the amount of damage or healing you had done) on it. This was then added to a randomized number, given you a final score. Those with the highest scores (top 5 or something) get a nice bag of loot that is extremly useful to your character (i've not once got something that i can't already use).

Public Quests are a nice touch, and sort of bring about the grouping expereince that is had in WoW without much effort, or any 'omg newb you don't know what your doing' sort of deal.

Next was PvP. Refered more so in WAR as RvR (realm versus Realm), because the idea is two realms facing off against each other (Order versus Destruction, good versus bad). I'll save that for my next article as there was a fair lot to talk about.

So far though the game is a lot of fun compared to the other MMORPG's i've played, not least because theres so much to do and at no point are you thinking 'Ok where i go or what should i do now?'.

Cheers for reading.

 


Comments (Page 2)
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on Sep 12, 2008

the latest in a long list that threatens to de-throne World of Warcraft

Yet that list doesn't manage to budge WoW. I'll believe it when I see it.

And I don't know how to say this nicely, but: AoC screenshots don't impress me in the least. The lighting looks sub-par and I can't find the shadows in most of the screenshots. I don't understand why people like its graphics; they look so flawed technically. High resolution textures alone don't make good graphics.

From most descriptions of EVE I've heard, it's just an anarchy in there, and there are very few quests. No thanks. I prefer to play PvE in most MMORPGs I play.

on Sep 12, 2008

From most descriptions of EVE I've heard, it's just an anarchy in there, and there are very few quests. No thanks. I prefer to play PvE in most MMORPGs I play.

EVE is one giant sandbox, that's why there are no quests. There's a tutorial that introduces you to the game, and then you go off finding your own way, there's no central story (though there are story related elements), noboby holding your hand

on Sep 12, 2008

I luagh at the fools who blindly follow the grind path in an MMO, I play how I want to play. Right now I want to play a squad based tactical 40k MMO with a great lore and background storys.

 

Quality in MMOs is hard to find but it IS possible, unless you like guns and chainsaws.

on Sep 12, 2008

Shadowbane remains the best currently-playable MMO (although it's less massive than it once was). It comes with the added benefit of being free, so long as you don't mind seeing ads when you start/close the game.

Where else can you get powerleveled to the cap in under a day (if you don't get rolled off the good high-level spawns)? Where else do you spend basically all of your time doing something with a very good chance of ending in some kind of PvP encounter?

It's the good life with respect to MMOs.

on Sep 12, 2008

Powerleveled to the cap in less than a day? Makes the game sound like utter rubbish to me.

I've been playing the Warhammer beta on and off for a while... but the longer I play it, the less I play it. It's not that it's a bad game, it's just not really my cup of tea unfortunately.

It ought to do okay for itself but all the people saying WoW is or should be scared of WAR are frankly dreaming. WAR will barely be a blip next to it. So long as the investors remember that profitability is what they should be hoping for, not toppling WoW, it should be fine. If they consider mere profitability to be a failure and will only accept WoW level sub rates, the game is doomed.

on Sep 25, 2008

The beta was really dumbed down for some reason. I played it for a few minutes, got my "go kill zombies" quest and stopped.  Then my friends grabbed thier preorders, got thier head start characters going, and wouldn't stop raving about how awesome it was.  I broke down and bought a copy - any MMO is better with friends - and I'm blown away now too. I can't quite put my finger on it but Mythic apparently dug deep and found that bit of Blizzard-style polish.

One thing about Warhammer is that there are no barriers to being awesome - in most MMOs I feel like the grind is something I have to do in order to "earn" my fun - which is why I don't play MMOs. In Warhammer you can get into PvP from level one. You can do Public Quests and fight dragons at level one.  The quality of writing is stellar - instead of "collect 5 bears for "arbitrary reason here". it's written in such a way that doing those random quests feels awesome.  You later find out, for example, you're collecting the zombie bits to load them into a giant cannon that fires cannonballs made of corpses and rot at the Order, which is substantially cooler.  Also, your PvE quests have an effect on the RvR progress.

This game is epic because it allows YOU the chance to be epic, instead of making you thrall's errand boy.  The story revolves around you and the player characters taking the fight to the enemies, not desperately collecting linen to make into band-aids for the real soldiers.  I highly recommend this MMO.

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