First and Second Impressions: Warhammer Online
You only get one chance to make a first impression…
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.
Comments
To be honest I registered with MMO Gamer specifically because of this article.
Overall I would have to say that this is an excellent POV on your first and second impression of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I do disagree with some parts, such as the low-poly comment, but “overall” a well thought out article.
However this does raise a question or two in my mind. Did you take part in any of the Public Quests? I recall there was one pretty early on in the Greenskin starting area. I think it is a pretty clever way of trying to add something new to the same old PvE. Honestly I think WoW has, again overall, the best PvE currently available and I think it will be tough for anyone to beat it.
The ToK seems to have real potential and I can also see myself spending “a lot” of time browsing through it.
With the Witch Hunter were you playing it as a ranged or melee class? It’s the melee dps class/career for the Empire so if you were trying to handle it like a ranged class that could explain some of your troubles with it. I recall there were a number of issues, including balance, with the early builds so that could have explained some of your PvE troubles as well.
Honestly, for a game still in development, I was pretty impressed that it was as far along as it was. Balance issues still plague even the giants like WoW and I have taken some comfort in the interview, one with PaulB IIRC, where Mythic wants to make sure its worked out before retail. Though it’s going to be tough with twenty-four classes/careers I imagine.
WAR reminds you of WoW? True, I think with Warcraft itself originally going to be a Warhammer game there will be some fundamental similarities though from an MMORPG standpoint not much beyond “some” artistic and naturally the nechanical ones that just about all successful post-EQ ones share. Both have dwarves, orcs, elves, sort of thing and both have PvE. Yet I think there are going to be far fewer similarities than many WoW’sers will actually want.
So overall I think this was an excellent article and look forward to you reviewing WAR when it hits retail.
Reply to Sir Robin1)From the low-poly engine,
Are you sure this was Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning you were referring to about a low poly engine?
2) Why are you just now posting something from so long ago?
3) To say the game brings nothing new to the table in terms of PVE would be false due to the Tome of Knowledge and doing Public Quests.
4) I do not believe the claims of you being an MMO connoisseur and then letting a Mage type character melee you to death.
5)Having established that the character did, indeed, have all of its skills trained, she offered a noncommittal shrug that seemed to say, “I guess you just suck,” before returning to her duties.
Unless you can post the name of the person and confirm that she did say this, I highly doubt that is how an employee from Mythic would act. Period.
6)I’ll just come out and say this as plainly as I can: If you’ve played an MMO in the past ten years, you’ve probably already seen everything the early PvE game in WAR has to offer.
Show me all of the MMOs out there that do Public Quests and reward you loot based on contribution.
7) I would hope that for your integrity as a writer and being a connoisseur of the MMORPG genre that you wrote the same exact thing about World of Warcraft, when talking about ripping everything they did right from previous MMORPGs.
Reply to ArkaneSir Robin: Thanks for registering and leaving your thoughtful comments.
I did indeed try and take part in the early Greenskin quest you mentioned… but it seems that the giant’s heart just wasn’t into it. He bugged out and wouldn’t finish the event both times I attempted it.
And the Witch Hunter.. I was trying to play that any way I could take it. Using only the gun… that didn’t work… using only the sword… that didn’t work… using the gun and the sword in close combat… Well, let’s just say I got a real good look at the “You have died!” screen.
I was relatively impressed with the polish on the early areas myself… aside from a very few glaring bugs, the game wasn’t locking up, ran fine, none of the NPCs answered a hail with [PLACEHOLDER TEXT HERE], etc. I didn’t mention that in the preview because, honestly, it’s pretty easy to dress up a newbie area with some polish. For all I knew, you took two steps into the next zone and the textures were missing.
Arkane: Thanks for registering and leaving your comments, as well… even if we obviously agree to disagree.
1: You might want to go right here, http://www.mmo-gamer.com/?p=242 and read where Adam Gershowitz, who was one of the lead artists on the project, acknowledges the engine is low-poly and indicates that it’s for performance issues in large-scale battles.
2: We took a hard look at where we were in the development cycle of this article and decided to push back the launch date back from November of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008. Here at The MMO Gamer we believe strongly in the mantra of “When it’s done.”
3: The Tome of Knowledge is part of the game at large, not its PvE system. You don’t open the Tome of Knowledge and start clicking on entries to kill mobs.
4: That’s what you call “injecting humor and levity into the piece.”
5: See above. She didn’t say that *out loud*, that’s what I took out of her shrug. And I didn’t get her name, though she was a young woman, relatively short, with glasses and a ponytail, if that helps.
6: The opening of Ahn’Qiraj (which, granted, was only a one-off), which rewarded the people who put in the most time with legendary mounts.
7: WoW’s release was a bit before this site’s time (we were officially online around this time last year). Had I reviewed it back then, I would have said what I do now: WoW takes the best of EverQuest, which in turn took the best from Diku, distilled it down into its purest essence, and left off all the frills. That (and name recognition) are the roots of its success.
Reply to Steven CrewsI can agree with most of your rebuttals but you can not ignore that WAR is bringing a lot to the PVE table with Public Quests, and there won’t be just one per server, there will be many, and they will be happening all the time.
Reply to ArkaneYou call yourself a unbiased journalist but you say and I quote “This looks a hell of a lot like WoW” and “This plays a hell of a lot like WoW, too.” now you might have had the best intentions but those are loaded statements.
I was able to play the game at gamsday and I would also like to state I have no idea how you could say that. I found this picture from the Penny Arcade forums its a excellent comparison between the two. http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/727/wowvswarhammercopyuq9.jpg
If you notice the art direction is very difrrent. If you look at the detail in the Warrior Priests armor you can see a ton of detail in it, detail that is not present anywhere in WoW. As for the low polygon count well man I guess if your helmet casting complex shadows on your face is signs of a low polygon count that I am cool with that cause it looks great. Granted the graphics don’t go for that photo realism like AoC but I am more then ok with that they look amazing and there is a ton of deatil in the game.
The interface only has very slight similarites and the cooldown timer is pretty much standered with all mmos.
The PQs are amazing and comparing them to AQ is a gross misunderstanding of both the AQ event and of PQs. When I first heard about them I thought they would just be a glorified version of grinding however after giving them a try I was amazed and I loved the scripted events. The PQs bring alot to the PVE game.
You did play a very early build if you played it in august, from what I have heard they have made a lot of changes and improvments but I am very sceptical about anything I haven’t played myself. Oh and you died as a Witch Hunter??? How did you do that? when I played them I thought they where a bit overpowered. Also where in the hell did you find rats in the game? I went all around the maps and never saw anything close to a rat.
Reply to bobdole1979“1: You might want to go right here, http://www.mmo-gamer.com/?p=242 and read where Adam Gershowitz, who was one of the lead artists on the project, acknowledges the engine is low-poly and indicates that it’s for performance issues in large-scale battles.”
Ah, that explains it. First impression is you are writing “low-poly” like something along WoW lines or less, not low-poly compared to Vanguard.
I do think WAR’s PvE will have some nice additions with the Public Quest and Kill Tracking but honestly it’s “still” PvE. Having a much more in depth and enjoyable PvP/RvR will be it’s defining feature in my mind.
Reply to Sir RobinConsidering your only complaint in regard to the PVE content was that your level 1 quest wasn’t epic enough I’m going to assume that you pretty much had no real gripes with the PVE content. You stated that WOW will only be toppled by another Blizzard MMO as though Blizzard has contributed something to the genre that others before had not. The ONLY thing that Blizzard did was make it easy for casuals to feel a sense of reward by getting rid of xp loss through death and making it incredibly easy to level, that’s it! NOTHING else … they borrowed EVERYTHING else and boy do I mean everything! They are great developers of course but you make it sounds as if they redefined the genre, they did not.
Reply to ThorAlmightyAsuming everthing that we have seen is factually correct, and please excuse me for only playing one mmorpg so far (WoW), but what would, in your opinion blow the WoW PvE system out of the water? (which i think is INCREDIBLY boring anyway since it doesnt even make sense looting an item that is SUPPOSED to have blood/ichor/brains/teeth… or even clothed.. but still on has a .0001% -or whatevers less than realistic- chance of dropping that particular item thus leaving the poor buggers to be slaughtered in mass for the next few hours just to turn in a quest bloody usless quest that does nothing but gain xp…. probably like every RPG-yes you can go back even further than 10 years and find diablo if you want and see that it too has pretty much just same xp and loot we see in WoW.. or any other rpg for that matter.
Reply to C.ChosenYou also forgot to mention anything on how PvEing will affect the entire world RvR wise which is a major part of the game as well as the detailed various affects of unlocking bits and pieces of the ToK, which apperently if you could kill some rats with your witchhunter… you would eventually become more apt at doing so, as well as the benefits of just plain exploring which WoW doesnt have anything close to other than the miniscule xp that you gain from entering a new area. Please explain, why these have been overlooked..and maybe it might be time to start taking a third look at the game…. in its entirety before you truely condem it to less than the level of a stolen idea, i.e. WoW.
It’s hilarious to see how much debate and fire this piece sparks on other websites. I’m definitely Steven’s fan. He hasnt traded in his testicles for cotton balls and speaks it like he sees it, right or wrong. Such a lack of that in gaming journalism. You’d think he wrote for 1up or something.
Reply to elfwithmirrorshadeeyesWoW’s PVE is only going to be blown out of the water by a game that offers similar or superior levels of polish and attention to the player experience, but advances beyond the Whak-a-Mole autotargetted combat system into something more immediate and visceral. Transpose God of War into a Massive setting or something.
Reply to elfwithmirrorshadeeyesLike many others I to registered to the site solely because of your outrageous review. You basically came into the game expecting something huge and don’t deny because from the way you reviewed it and the way the employee re-acted to you I can already tell why she was frustrated with you. The game is in a very early beta stage. We are lucky to even get the chance of trying it in such a weak stage.
I’m a closed beta player. I’ve been through the thick and thin of the bugs and errors. The game is first of all and never will be like WoW. They are literally killing themselves over the fact that they wanna bring something different. If you we’re a intelligent and a ACTUAL mmo gamer you would have realized from the start that this game was a newly reborn DAoC or even Everquest, but no you like every other person have a very bad sense of reviewing you immediately compared the game to WoW.
Everything in your review is incorrect I have no idea why you are saying you had all those bugs and problems I have never in my whole WAR playing career have experienced those issues except for the early stages in early 2007 when the guild phase just BARELY came out and it was in beta.
You are basically reporting false information that isn’t even relative to where the game is now. You don’t give any positive reviews about the game. Like for example the tome, Public quests, keeps, sieges, raids, the various skill trees and various classes with each unique skills and all very powerful and useful unlike WoW. Which has a huge problem and you know it over classes being to powerful in PvP.
If people don’t believe me about the bugs. LOOK around is all I have to say hopefully it’ll weed out the bad players who have no sense of real gameplay…. much like yourself from WAR.
My final note is that you are a bad journalist. If you were a true journalist you would have done your homework like every journalist does and you would maybe had a better experience and something more intelligent to say. If this site tends to get more views and hits I suggest you get your information in gear and get rid of your not read/view or listen to anything about the game and then blindly try it because obviously it’s not helping you and it never will.
Reply to RolIenThank you all for taking the time to register and leave your thoughts on my piece. I appreciate it, even if you only did it to tell me what a horrible writer I am.
Sorry for my belated reply. I’ll try to get to everyone, and hope the earlier commentators are still reading:
bobdole1979:
I played two builds of the game, one in August (my first impressions), one in late October (my second impressions) during the beta shutdown. This article is a bit on the late side… the reason for which is a long story, but it won’t happen again.
And I agree with you, the art style is different, I say that in the article. That it looked like WoW was *my first impression*. First impressions very often change later.
People keep asking me why I didn’t mention Public Quests in the writeup… the reason is simple: I couldn’t finish one that worked. I only saw one in the starting areas while exploring, in the Greenskin area, and both times I attempted it (once in August, once in October), it didn’t work. Maybe they were having an off day.
And, incidentaly, I found rats in the Empire starting town, on the hill behind the bar.
elfwithmirrorshadeeyes:
Thanks… I guess it’s nice to know that my testicles are still intact. I was worried there, for awhile.
ThorAlmighty and C.Chosen:
Both of your posts pertain to WoW, so I’ll answer you at the same time.
People seem to be making far too much out of my comparisons in the article. You want to know why those comparisons are there? It’s not because I’m in love with WoW, or it’s the only MMO I’ve ever played (far from it), it’s because it is *the number one online game in the world* by a factor of ten, when counting traditional MMOs.
In general, people always want to compare every title that comes out to whatever is in the lead. When DAoC came out, people compared it to EQ. And, I’m sure there were DAoC fans back then just as vociferous yelling at some other writer, saying “DAoC is nothing like that game!”
Such comparisons are not entirely unavoidable, but, when you don’t make them they stand out simply by their absence.
C.Chosen: It wouldn’t really take much to blow WoW’s PvE system out of the water, at least, in terms of substance.
It seems to me that when designing WoW, they really took to heart the old adage, “A designer knows he has reached perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Blizzard, essentially, took everything addictive about the three generations of online games prior to WoW (all the way back to MUD 1), and distilled it down to its purest essence, leaving off everything else:
You want a house? Forget it.
Two dozen races? Just enough to set up two opposing factions.
Fifty different specialized classes? Nothing but the bare archetypes with a couple crossovers.
A thousand spells? Basic abilities we keep giving you a higher grade of.
All a game has to do to beat that is to offer more, but *with the same level of quality you can achieve by leaving off the fluff and polishing only the core game*. No easy task, but it could be done.
And Thor: If you read my earlier comment to Arkane, you’d see that I mostly agreed with your statement… but, I also think that WoW stopped being a game somewhere around 2006, and has now transformed into some kind of once-in-a-decade cultural phenomenon the likes of which I haven’t seen since DOOM set the stage for all other FPS titles to follow into the present day.
I have a friend whose seventy year old mother had never played a video game before in her life until she picked up a copy of WoW, and is now a member of a high-end raiding guild.
She’s not even aware that she’s playing an MMO. Wouldn’t know what one was if you told her. All she knows is she’s having fun.
That goes beyond a game… it’s nearly into the realm of supernatural mind control powers.
I’d almost go so far as to say that it was some sort of deliberate plot on Blizzard’s part, but anyone who played during the early days can tell you that this came out of left field to them as much as to the rest of us. The servers were absolutely crushed under the load for months, two hour wait times were the norm the first week and a half after the game went live on almost every server. Back when I quit, two years ago, they were only just starting to get a real handle on it.
Rollen:
This article was not a “review” it was not even a *pre*view, because that would have required me to have access to the full game. It was an impression.
An impression is not a critique of everything the game has to offer, or an unbiased appraisal of it. It is a collection of thoughts and opinions that *you personally, the writer,* felt while seeing the game for whatever amount of time you had with it.
Much “better” journalists than I write impression pieces after viewing nothing more than either a prerendered video or a hands-off walkthrough of a game showing exactly what the developers wanted them to see. Based on this they then go on to predict, resoundingly, that the game will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Is their glowing praise more valid than my “I am only going to report what I experienced for myself” approach, even if you may not agree with it?
But, your reaction isn’t particularly surprising to me. It falls into about 1/3 of the responses I’ve read so far:
I have seen hardcore WAR fans saying I was being too harsh on the game (and/or that I’m a WoW fanboy idiot with no idea what I’m talking about) and should have talked up its good points more.
Then, there were more moderate players, interested in WAR but not following its every move, saying I gave a fairly even-handed overview.
And finally, if you can believe this one, I’ve seen Conan fans saying I was too lax on the game, and shouldn’t have been talking smack about their title of choice in the ending.
You know what that indicates to me? When the middle is agreeing with me? That I was probably doing my job.
And for my final note, if you’re going to call me a bad journalist, I will take the liberty of calling you a bad beta tester. Betraying the trust placed in you by violating the NDA to come here and bicker at me? If you could see me right now in real life, I would be waggling my finger at you.
Reply to Steven CrewsRollen.. a newly reborn DAOC? God forbid that. That game’s PVE content was as substandard as it gets, and who doesn’t remember mez/assist trains ruling RVR? Puh-lease. The more WAR can derive from WoW the better in that regard, even if you don’t like WoW.
Reply to elfwithmirrorshadeeyesHi, I thought the article was well-written and pretty funny. I’m a late bloomer into the MMO genre, although I’ve been playing games since the days of Wizardry. In 2001 I got sidetracked by an RTS game called Sacrifice and played it hard core until just a few months ago when I finally decided, somewhat sadly, that it was time to move on. So … about 3 months ago I decided to try WoW, my only MMO aside from a very brief dabble into City of Villains which I didn’t really take to. At any rate, I didn’t think you slammed Warhammer and you certainly didn’t discourage me from desiring to try it. Too bad Sacrifice didn’t reach the level of fame in which they could have created an MMO. Twould have been glorious. Cheers.
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