First and Second Impressions: Warhammer Online
A note from the author: This article is currently out of date.
Please click here to read our updated impressions of Warhammer Online published August 28, 2008.
It was August of last year when I got my first good look at Warhammer Online, after being dispatched to cover it during Games Day LA… which was actually not in LA at all, but in Ontario, a city about as far away from LA as you can get before you start running into the guys from Deliverance.
In the interest of full disclosure, I had perhaps not been following the game’s development as closely as I should have, considering the fact that I was about to conduct a twenty minute interview on the subject.
Aside from a brief stopover at the official site to sign up for beta, I had, in fact, purposefully tried to not look at any screenshots, watch any videos, or read so much as a single article regarding the game, anywhere.
This was not for any lack of interest in my part. WAR was, and continues to be, one of my most eagerly anticipated games. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, launch day will undoubtedly find me logging in the moment the live servers come up for the first time.
Rather, it was due to a policy I’d been forced to adopt after a number of… incidents… in which my high hopes for certain games—which shall remain nameless—were subsequently dashed by the cold truths of harsh reality.
As a result, I now make it a point to not believe a single shred of hype surrounding a game until I’ve logged in to see it in action for myself.
This policy has served me well as a gamer; I can never be disappointed if I have no preconceived expectations to be broken. But, I now found it was not serving me particularly well as I walked into an interview blind, with only a list of generalist questions in my head and the hope that more specifics would come to me once I’d gotten some game time under my belt.
Still, I decided that I could turn this situation to my advantage. How many opportunities does one have to offer up a truly genuine, unsullied first impression on a title of Warhammer’s caliber?
So, after making acquaintances with the staff manning the booth, and positioning myself in front of a vacant demo unit, I found myself logging in to WAR for the very first time, on an Empire Bright Wizard by the name of Glowir.
And, as a result of my willful ignorance regarding the game, the following represents the very first impression that came into my mind, from the moment the loading screen had passed, as near as I can recall it:
This looks a hell of a lot like WoW.
And it did. There was no denying it. From the low-poly engine, to the cartoony models, even the UI layout—everything had an immediate sense of… familiarity. It was nearly déjà vu… as if suddenly it were 2004, all over again.
Well, I told myself, appearances can be deceiving. Don’t judge a book by its cover, and all of that. Let’s see how it plays.
Unfortunately, this thought was very shortly thereafter followed by another: This plays a hell of a lot like WoW, too.
Once again, there was the immediate sense of familiarity. Similar skills, similar casting times, similar mana requirements… tab to target, press 1 for Blaze, repeat until dead… Replace “Blaze” with “Frostbolt” and I was already having horrid flashbacks of nearly wearing out the 1 on my keyboard through two years of heavy raiding.
Even the universal cooldown seemed to be on nearly the exact same timer.
But, of course, first impressions are very often misleading.
The more I played, the more I saw that while there were many similarities to WoW, there were just as many differences. The graphics, while admittedly drawn from the same vein, are darker, the textures having a certain grit to them, lending the game a more somber atmosphere. I didn’t see one purple tree or pink striped tiger the entire time.
And, as everyone from Mythic I spoke to was very quick to point out, it was Warcraft that ripped off Warhammer, not the other way around.
Alright… so maybe the game wasn’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel. That’s fine. As long as it’s fun and entertaining to the point of justifying $14.95 a month, it doesn’t need to.
Unfortunately, what I saw that day of the early game was not particularly fun, or entertaining.
I made it a point to log in to each available newbie area in turn, and note the very first quest the NPC standing nearest the character’s starting position offered. I’ve always been of the opinion that the first quest is the most important of the entire game. This is where you get your hook into a potential player. Nothing less than your absolute best will do.
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