First and Second Impressions: Warhammer Online

By Steven Crews | January 21, 2008 | | Filed under: Features, Impressions

A note from the author: This article is currently out of date.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.

Still, I was glad that I’d spoken with her. The Tome of Knowledge, so far, was to me one of WAR’s most interesting features, and the most dreaded. I’m the type of person who goes to Wikipedia with the intention of doing a quick look up on something, and suddenly I glance at the clock, it’s six hours later, and I’m reading the entry for Alpaca domestication in Peru with no memory of how I’d got there.

Following our brief interview I found myself hearing the call of the open road, and got my things together to leave.

I remembered all of the years I went to E3 with an Exhibits Only badge (which, for those of you who have never been, marked me as the lowest form of human life on Earth, below even child molesters and used car salesmen, unworthy of so much as eye contact from the ubermensch who roamed the halls), cursing “those media bastards” who cut in front of me in line and proceeded to be showered with swag and personalized demos for hours on end.

I didn’t want to be that guy.

So, although this was my first opportunity to get hands-on with the game, and being an MMO connoisseur I could have played like the day is long, I exercised restraint, and limited myself to four fifteen minute play sessions before saying goodbye and being on my merry way.

…Until you get a second one

As someone who often worries myself that I give other people the wrong first impression, I was in no mood for any rush to judgment after playing what was, admittedly, a very short amount of time in a relatively early build.

So, I held off on writing anything, one way or the other, until I had the opportunity to experience more of the game had to offer, in order to craft a somewhat more well-rounded opinion of it.

As they have yet to let me into beta, that opportunity would come some two months after Games Day, at E for All.

I’ve already gone into what a horrible, horrible convention E for All was in a prior article, so I’ll spare you the sordid details here. Suffice it to say, I estimate that I spent somewhere between nine and ten hours over the course of three days playing WAR, just to try and distract myself from the fact that I was there.

In that respect, the game succeeded. And, more importantly, I now feel better equipped to answer my earlier question: Is the game worth paying $14.95 a month for?

Since there are, as we are frequently reminded, two halves to the game, both of equal import, I will answer that question twice.

First off, is RvR worth it?

From what I saw, absolutely. There are few things in this world more entertaining than getting together with a group of people, working in harmony like a well-oiled killing machine, and dishing out complete and utter annihilation to all comers.

WAR accomplishes that very well.

And let me tell you something: Bright Wizard is a very satisfying class to play. Your basic objective on the character is to light your opponent on fire as much as you possibly can, and then make them explode. I think I’ve got which class I’m going to be playing come release all nailed down.

I would have liked to have experienced some world PvP, but, as beta was shut down at the time, that would have been a bit difficult to pull off. I did try to do a bit of exploring into contested areas, looking to see if they’d added places you could take and hold, chokepoints, things like that… but, mostly just wound up being turned into a chicken for my troubles due to their anti-griefing mechanism.

Assuming they can get some semblance of balance going between the factions (no easy task, considering the amount of classes they have to work with), I could easily see RvR being able to hold even the most hardcore of player’s attentions for months on end.

But, you know how that old saying goes about assumptions. Take the Witch Hunter, for instance…

I made the mistake of selecting it for a round of RvR, which was admittedly based solely off appearances. Its stylish hat and large blunderbuss drew me in.

I must not have run into too many witches on the character, because I was soundly defeated by just about everyone I faced. From seven foot tall orks choppa’ing me to bits, to miniscule goblins melting my skin off, I was on the ground eating dirt for the better part of the entire round.

Finally, at what was then the lowest point of my gaming life, I was meleed to death… by a mage.

Surely, I thought, should I live for another thousand years nothing could ever possibly top that one.

How very wrong I was.