1 post tagged “warhammer online”
Yeah, yeah, WAR is upon us. The juggernaut of EAMythic has been
stirring for how long and soon we'll see if the hype was warranted.
With North American closed beta NDA lifted (read: take the following
with a grain of salt as the game is still changing), one can now scream
from the highest mountain tops the following:
- Crafting in WAR,
while initially full of win and delicious cake (I was excited, at
least), has been nothing but a let down in-game. While not as
completely useless, full of nonsense or broken like Age of Conan,
crafting in WAR does absolutely nothing to bolster your game experience.
Now,
what's the point of crafting? Time tested tradition dictates that
crafting is a great way to make money at end game, while proving to be
sometimes a money sink while leveling. For crafting to actually make
you money, you need to be able to make things that people need.
Sometimes games go crazy and have a bazillion gathering professions and
only a few creation professions, making them dependent on one another.
This causes a complicated web of crafting economy that can either fail
completely on small servers or win on large ones. The thing about WAR's
crafting is that it is not important nor does the economy rely on it.
After
watching the developers' podcast, one couldn't help but get stoked at
the idea of passive renown gain by helping aid the war-effort via
crafting. I saw none of this in closed beta. A lot of people were just
taking up crafting to sell stuff to the vendor for their mount. The
majority found that at level 20, they were making potions for level 35.
I was making level 20 potions when I was still level 10ish. Healing
potions are underpowered and almost everything is completely useless. I
found some use in the area-slow potions, but it was too much effort to
use them during PvP or I'd forget most of the time.
What can
improve crafting in WAR? We don't need some sort of complicated system
like mentioned above, but simply an improvement in items, an
intelligent placement of the mats needed, and actual RvR quests that
ask for certain items in lieu of renown like we were first told.
Another thing that needs to change is make Cultivation its own major
profession (currently only Apothecary is, with Butchering, Salvaging,
and Cultivation as singular lower professions) and either get rid of
entirely Butchering or buff it because currently everyone is rocking
Salvaging as firstly, you can skin PvP players (awesome, amirite?) and
there's a higher percentage of humanoid mobs in WAR than nonhumanoid.
People who take up Cultivation currently cannot get the materials
needed to level as they already filled their single gathering
profession. A lot of the mats they need are gathered through
Butchering/Salvaging. Essentially this is one big mess but it's still
early in the game so this problem can be solved through patching and
further testing.
- RvR in WAR,
the big attraction and rightly so. If you've hit end-game in WoW, tired
of raiding, and all you do is play Arena, head over to WAR. RvR andScenarios are so interesting in themselves, that self-imposed EXP halts are the norm between Tiers.
The
first time I finished a scenario, it was like a light bulb went off. I
seldom PvP in other games because I have issues with balance and
credit. I usually don't like the rep/honor/reward systems because
either they're confusing, poorly conceived, or completely broken. By
the time I had reached the highest level for Tier 1, I was raking in
high healing credits and receiving great renown for it. Yes healers,
you receive full credit for healing! This adds something different to
Warhammer, as now full teams can better attempt PvP without the fear of
no heals. How many times have you, maybe as a melee class, rushed past
a crowd of friendly ranged to pick off a running enemy only to get
killed by the runner themselves? That's less of an issue in WAR because
people actually heal you (given they're paying attention.)
If
no one is holding back because they have no fear, PvP experiences
become better, last longer, and are more fulfilling. This is how RvR
and Scenarios feel like in WAR. Everyone does their job, battlefield
objectives get taken, and keeps go down. Forming warbands with complete strangers isn't as horrible as it sounds as the curse-of-the-PUG becomes a slight non-issue.
Mythic
has continuously strived to balance classes through closed beta and are
doing a great job so far. Naturally one-on-one will always follow the
same logical rules, but warbands are dynamic. Comparing all the other
healing classes in Warbands, you get a good feel that each class is
really unique.
- Classes in WAR,
conceived safe but also it's the little differences that make a huge
impression. While you might have a rogue-like class on both faction
sides, they aren't completely the same so you have no idea what to
expect.
During closed beta, I played three Destruction
healing classes, focusing mainly on Disciple of Khaine. The idea of
being a melee-based healer stroked my epeen so I was looking forward to
it. While I felt I couldn't adequately heal MTs far away from the
chaos of RvR (therefore forcing me to get into the battle), I had great
survivability so more than half the time, I had nothing to worry about
running into a large group of enemies (unless someone noticed me and I
got focus fired, ocourse.) Other Destruction healing classes were
ranged healers with their own unique class mechanics. Greenskin shamans
need to balance their offensive and healing spells to incur buffs to
either. So for every offensive spell you cast, you get one credit buff
for healing (and vice versa), and as you continue to throw offensive
spells, your credit gets higher. It's a see-saw battle but done right,
you get incredible healing and dps results.
A lot of people
moaned when they cut a few classes from the release but really, it was
the best idea possible. With the current classes in a mixed atmosphere,
everyone has something to contribute and everyone has their weaknesses.
Surely after the game's release and solid numbers are put on the table,
class imbalances might come to light but Mythic has shown a great
dedication to balance (I mean, it's a game built on PvP) so tweaking
will be always.
- Public Quests in WAR,
take out the pressure of having to advertise for an instance/dungeon
group. You're running down the road and see a bunch of people
attempting a multi-stage public quest, jump right in. Depending on your
contribution, you may even get loot.
The purpose of PQs
in WAR is to gather reputation with that PQ's associated chapter
(camps/towns in WAR are numbered chapters), at which that rep can be
handed in at certain levels for set rewards. You can also win an end
roll at the PQs themselves and receive a loot bag of a certain quality.
Remember skipping certain quests in games because the loot was nothing
you could use? All the reward tables in WAR are dynamic to your class,
so there's always something you can use.
There has never been
a time during PQs where the people already there have spurred me away
or generally been unhelpful. Tanks will kindly tank, healers will heal,
and everyone gets along. This could be possibly because the stress of
PUG'ing is gone, or maybe the CB testers are nice or something. But
everyone does their share in a PQ because they all want the rep. And
just like in RvR/Scenarios, healers get credit for healing in PQs.
PQs
consist of normally three stages (though I've come across some with
even more stages), each stage progressing in difficulty. While you
could probably solo a first stage yourself, you would probably need
help on stage two, and a decent number of people for stage three which
prevents the uneven solo farming of PQs. The developers were smart
enough to insert quests that overlap with the area of the PQ, so while
you're there doing your quest, you'll be more likely to be sucked into
helping the PQ if there are already people there.
PQs are
quick and fun, and definitely repeatable. And because they're in open
space, you can walk away at any time and go do something else. Try to
do that on a dungeon run or a regular grouped quest and people will
yell at you and maybe blacklist you from the server, heh.
- Other things in WAR, yes there are closed dungeons, gear customization, capital city RvR, siege weapons, guilds, and mounts.
Siege weapons
can be used at special pads littered around keeps and inside them to
aid in taking the objective. Defensive teams can use oil to protect
their keep door, offensive teams can use battering rams and catapults
to take down the door and enemies. Siege weapons are working as
intended currently and I haven't ran into any issues with them.
Mounts
are attainable at level 20. As of this writing, the price was steep but
not impossible. I had my mount at 21 even though I was spending money
on dying my gear and etc. The speed increase is noticeable but not as
much as you would probably like considering how large RvR lakes
sometimes are. After you purchase your mount, basically all your income
thereafter is free to be used however you like.
Gear customization is not yet totally awesome in WAR but it's getting there. You can dye your gear at any non-warcamp merchant
and usually each piece of gear has two dyable sections so you can mix
and match colours. Also a part of WAR is the trophies. Trophies are
little doo-dads you get from various quests, Tome unlocks, and other
such things that can be placed on your person with placement options
built right in.There are a few other things in the works, but I don't know enough details about them to share.
Guilds!
Guilds are awesome! WAR, being RvR based, really isn't the game to be
guildless in (power in numbers, you know.) But being in a guild has so
many perks that even if you hate your guildmates, you won't care
because the guild standards, guild lounge, and other things are so
crazy helpful that it doesn't matter. Guild standards can be used even
outside of your guild in regular PUG Warbands, so later on when guilds
make alliances (which they can in WAR), everyone can arrange their
standards in advance to achieve maximum effect. Having a guild lounge
is like having a hearthstone/recall spell that's never on cooldown.
From the guild lounge, there's a merchant that sells all the things
you'd need for crafting or whatnot and a flight path that can take you
where you need to be. The guild pit recall scrolls are cheap enough
that you can stock up on them and never get stuck in the middle of
nowhere. They also provide a quick route to wherever the RvR action is
occurring.
What to gather from all of this?
Warhammer
is on its way to launch soon (Sept. 18). My overwhelming feeling is
that the RvR and PQ experiences will temporarily make up for the
short-comings of the crafting system which hopefully get fixed as soon
as possible. There's nothing incredibly wrong with the crafting system
(it works at least), but there's no incentive. Classes are looking good
currently, scenarios are being balanced and the RvR lakes are perfect
as is. There are no gaping holes in the PvE experience, the code for
WAR has been improving greatly over closed beta and a lot of the
technical things that were going on (getting stuck on things, floating
NPCs, client crashing to desktop, etc) have been solved at least on my
end.
One cannot help but compare this upcoming release to Age
of Conan and gloat. We won't know until head start and then the
official release how stable things are, how people react to game
mechanics, and if people feel like this is a decently completed game
that has successfully finished beta. If you put a hundred monkeys in a
room, surely something is bound to break so a few thousand players all
at once is unpredictable. Mythic has been stress testing the servers
for a while now and are generally concerned about lag, especially in
large scale RvR.
If Funcom is that insensitive boyfriend who never listens and hangs out late with his friends without calling, Mythic is your emotional tampon feeding you bonbons, absorbing as many suggestions and input as humanly possible. We will see.
