You’re partly wrong and partly right.

Right in the fact that much of the stuff is being copied from Warcraft. The UI, the lower-than-Vanguard system requirements, etc. Keep in mind, though, Warcraft copied from pretty much every other MMO when it was in production too. Everyone in this industry does it, keeping safe elements and implementing a few new ones. Radical new games that pay no heed to past MMOs are often not safe business ventures.

I think you are dead wrong about some of your assumptions though.

The new elements of WAR are the skill mechanics of AP, Morale, and Tactics. The huge new element of WAR is the campaign mode where sides capture zones and march to sack and plunder the opposing side’s capital cities. And then the Tome of Knowledge, which actually rewards you for exploring the world for a change instead of simply grinding away on mobs. There are some incredible new and *different* things about the game – you just have to look.

You also seem to assume that because there are healers the game is healing dependent? I invite you to do some more research. Compared to past MMOs, especially DAOC and Warcraft, characters are ROCKS in WAR. DPS is much lower and HP and defense is higher. 1v1 fights can stretch on for several minutes. As a result, healing is quite a bit weaker too. Standard heals restore about 10% of a player’s HP. That value in DAOC or WoW would be laughably useless. On top of this, heavy tanks actually provide defensive roles. They are damage mitigation experts – which is a role they often do not have the tools to fill in other games.

These shallow justifications for wedging the Warhammer IP into the same boring 4-class model we’ve all been playing since 1999. It’s Mythic and it’s EA, I guess I shouldnt have expected them to TRY SOMETHING DIFFERRENT. When will these companies stop selling the same games with a new coat of paint every few years.

I’m so SICK of being on global broadcast typing / group LFM, need Priest

The graphics too. They could have just outright admitted they wanted to co-opt WoW’s style so they could make that transition work for all the people with wal-mart PCs using onboard video could complain about how they lag in castle sieges even on low settings. Just like in that game. Time to wake up mister artist, there’s only so much bottom feeding to be done! Tell your boss.

Heh, normal mapping and parallax maping require not all that many more instructions per rendering cycle than normal lighting… saying that they ‘re sacrificing visual quality for performance is just such a cop out.

I have problems with this whole article.. didnt I spend some years already playing a very low-poly game that didnt have enough healers and looked like this does? They even cribbed the WAR ui from WoW’s stock..

Meh..

I could be wrong about all of this, but I don’t think so.