Warhammer Online: New Group!

Because you know you need something to do until November 13th.

That was one of the best comic strips ever.

i actually bought the Luminous Vestments hoodie with the words from I Hope You Like Text on it.

as far as Warhammer goes... yeah, i'm gonna keep leveling my alts instead.

That's cool. Let us know if you finally get that drop you need from Kara on the fifteenth run so you can finally do BT a hundred times so you can finally make it to Sunwell. Better hurry and level, the real game doesn't start till 70. Oh shit, I meant 80. I'll just be over here fighting other players and leveling and getting gear while doing so in one of thirty PvP battlegrounds from Level 1 onward. How many more Dailys till you hit Exalted?

Don't forget that you've got to do Arena at least twice this week so you can keep getting points. Remember you only need to lose 2,000 times before you can get the gear you need to win. Unless of course you have the wrong combination of classes. Shit, better reroll.



Better get busy!

...unless of course you've already done all that. Don't worry, though, I'm sure the epics you got from Mount Hyjal won't be replaced by level 72 greens when WotLK drops. Blizzard wouldn't do that to you, right? Right?

you seem to be confusing me with a hardcore raider, and confusing a game with an obligation

i have no doubt that Warhammer has its own awesome experience to offer, but i'd rather stick with WoW. you should try playing casually -- it's a lot less stressful (and you don't have to worry about the expansion gear cycle).

That's cool. I was just being snarky about WoW because you were being snarky about WAR (e.g. "I'd rather level more alts than try a new game.."). Anybody who knew me on WoW knows I was the definition of casual. It took me a year to get to 70, and I quit two weeks later after realizing there was no point if you didn't want to grind Arena, reputation, or gear, or all three, or level more alts (for what?) if you didn't enjoy those. What I like about WAR is that the actual game itself is fun. There's little of the feeling I had constantly in WoW of doing something unfun 75% of the time so I could do something fun 25% of the time.

And nobody in WAR is told that the "real game" doesn't start until level cap. The real game starts after the first loading screen.

Hopefully that continues. Mythic doesn't have a very good history with that principle.

the game's new. give it several years and some expansions and then we'll see how interesting it is before the end game.

i'm still having plenty enough enjoyment with WoW, personally, because just leveling up is a new experience to me. i've been an alt whore for too long, so i've just now been getting a character up in levels. my highest is only 43, so it's ALL new from that point on with ANY character i'll play.

I think they learned their lesson. Here's their CEO and Lead Designer:

I don't know what the fuck but all the stuff that was here got deleted when I edited. Fuck.

Being condescending is a great way to entice people to play a new game.

Sarcastic? Yes. Condescending? No? But which part of what I said wasn't true?

Anyway, my goal wasn't to mock d20 specifically, but just to remind ex- and burned-out WoW players of all the things that make them want to fellate a 12-gauge when they think about all that time they'll never get back.

I didn't want this to be a WoW vs WAR thing. I started this thread with a (true) joke about how many people are only playing this until WotLK drops. But then my only mention of the WAR group in the WoW group -- a group I've been a member of for four years, where I know lots of people who've played with me for hours and hours -- was completely deleted (what, nobody plays WoW and WAR? You can only play one? You can only be a member of one group or the other? The WAR group threatens the WoW group somehow?), and d20's comment was just an excuse for me to nerdrage.

I'm not going to be one of those jackasses that links to an online dictionary to prove you wrong, but you definitely came off as condescending.

The part where you're wrong about what you said is where you assume that every WoW player treats it like a job and consequently hates it. I like how the WoW endgame is set up, even though I never saw any of the later raids in vanilla WoW or BC, and I probably won't see Arthas in WotLK. I like that after getting to 70 there's still tons of stuff to do. I really enjoy leveling alts too, probably more than I enjoy the end game because every class is different. I've leveled enough characters that I have all the quests memorized and I still enjoy it. and as for greens replacing epics after expansions? I think it'd defeat the point of releasing an expansion if it didn't make the previous content obsolete.

I'm not trying to tell you that I'm not interested in WAR though, it really just boils down to me being more interested in WotLK and not having the money to pay for two subscriptions nor the time to invest in playing two MMOs at once. Plus I really hate PVP.

Leveling is doing BGs. In WAR, doing Scenarios is just as good a method to level and get gear as doing quests and dungeons. You don't have to do anything else but scenarios to get to level cap and gear yourself out.

Reasons to try WAR:

1) If you like the Games Workshop / Warhammer Fantasy lore, you must see this game. It's one huge love letter to the GW fluff. From the character classes to the environments to the quests to the ability names to the gameplay itself, it all comes straight from Warhammer Fantasy.

2) If you like online PVP games like Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2, and want to try one with an RPG component.

3) If you could care less about MMOs in general, but just want a good 60-hour Oblivion / Fallout 3 PC RPG experience.

4) If you've "been there, done that" with WoW, or never played it but don't want to jump in so late in the game, but you still like the genre in general, or just want a fantasy MMO that fixes some of the more irritating aspects of WoW.

5) You like the idea of being truly evil, not just "misunderstood". The Greenskins have absolutely no concept of morality and war is just a sport to them, the Dark Elves want to literally enslave the world, and Chaos wants to rip the world's head off, shit down its neck, and then rape the hole that's left.

6) You liked Dark Age of Camelot and its RVR system and want to play a huge graphical update of that with modern MMO refinements.

Reasons NOT to try it

1) You like the light-humor / silliness and social aspects of WoW or LOTRO. I honestly miss that in this game sometimes. There will be no baking cookies for Greatfather Winter in WAR. It's all Grim, all the time. They've also done such a good job of giving you something to do all the time and making groups so easy to find that there's surprisingly very little chatting or just standing around being silly. I really do miss that sometimes. WAR sometimes feels kind of lonely even when there are hundreds of players around you on your screen.

2) You really like the PVE / dungeon progression in WoW. There's nothing like that in WAR, yet anyway.

3) You wait for an MMO to be perfect before you jump in. WAR is pretty solid, but it's not perfect yet. FUCKING MAIL SYSTEM, HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO LOAD ONE FUCKING MAIL??!

4) You like crafting. Holy fuck does the crafting system suck in WAR.

5) The only thing you like about Open-World PvP is griefing and one-shotting lowbies. This is literally impossible in WAR. The level brackets are divided into "Tiers" in WAR. If you go into a Tier lower than you and flag yourself for PVP in WAR, you get turned into a chicken with 1 hit point. And even if you're near the top of your tier, lower level players will be "bolstered" when they're in RVR areas in order to make it more competitive.

6) Your PC can barely handle WoW. The system requirements for this game are not Crysis level, but Mythic does not have Blizzard's incredible skill at making games run smoothly and look good on improbably low-end systems.

Level 3, Dark Elf starting area, you meet your first Hero level mob in the Ch 1 PQ. Notice I'm already wearing a full set of the early renown gear:


Anyway, sorry I sounded like an asshole. It's easy to get carried away on the internet, especially when you're a fanboy of one specific thing.

Let me just say that I am a PvE player. Before WAR I never even touched PvP in MMOs, and even in WAR I don't do that much of it. But WAR makes it really easy to get into, really painless to play, and yeah, actually kind of fun *if* you are playing with people who know how to play. Which is to say, you want a guild if you want to PvP. Doesn't hurt if you're going to PvE, either.

Let me also say that I am almost Rank 23 (out of 40) with my main, and I have been digging every step of the way, gained primarily through PvE questing and the Public Quest system, with some time spent in the first major dungeon, Mount Gunbad. So while it is definitely a PvP-oriented game, it's not that way to the detriment of PvE enjoyment. I think it's probably not going to satisfy (at this stage) if the thing you play WoW or other MMOs for is endgame raiding. But me, I've never seen endgame. For me, it's the journey. And WAR's journey in PvE is all there. No content gaps, no sudden hikes in time to level, no forced PvP of any kind.

I typically ignore MMOs "made for the PvP enthusiast" because they cater to the sort of PvP enthusiast that's in it for making other human beings suffer. WAR is not that game. It's for PvP people who find humans a more interesting tactical challenge and a more worthy adversary.

It's definitely not for people who are really into crafting, though. It's there, but it's a sideline.

This goblin thought that stealing and wearing a dwarf's beard would be a good enough disguise to infiltrate their camp.



Open world RVR


Keep Siege




Misc.


Dark Elf architecture and the latest in human skin fashion:

Warhammer cinematic trailers:

One

The funny thing is the Orkapult in the beginning of this is an actual element of gameplay. You'll use one in an early Greenskin quest and in some of the scenarios, and even I think in later Keep Sieges.

Two

So fucking cool. Very funny how many nerds complained on the forums about things like Shadow Warriors not being able to dual wield in-game like they can in this video.

The thing about the Bright Wizard completely annihilating everyone instantly, though? Totally true. Fuck Bright Wizards

I wouldn't mind trying this game out... issue being that it's only for windows... and while i could install that to my mac on another partition... that's a bit of work, just for one game.

It's a cool fun game and it feels more fresh compared to WoW. Bright Wizards are fucking sick

This is true. However - a really good MMO that hooks you isn't just a game, it's the game. Lately my PC (I have a rather ancient Mac as well, which I use mostly for internet stuff like SG) has been pretty much my Warhammer machine.

And you'd potentially open yourself up for a whole lot of other games in the future.

On the other other hand, if you don't want to deal with Windows's BS, I surely do not blame you.

Yeah, the PVE system in WAR is fine, but I would warn people who only like PVE that they will never be able to compete with people who do both PVP and PVE, in terms of gear and abilities. Even if you're not a min/maxer, your character is going to be gimped in comparison in endgame, because of Renown, which you can't get from PVE. Renown is not just for gear, though the gear is good. You've also got to factor in the Renown trainers and Renown abilities you buy from them. If you never PVP, you're basically denying yourself a whole other Mastery system with which to enhance your character. For example, even by level 15 my zealot has 18 willpower just from Renown trainers, and that's at RR12. Expand that to RR80 and you get a vast difference in potential between someone who PVPs and someone who never does. That being said...

This. Because of in-built mechanics, there is no ganking (bolstering and the chicken debuff) and there are no twinks (you can't NOT get XP from PVP). Combine that with the sheer variety of the PVP and the difference in how it works from what most MMO players are used to*, and you get a PVP system that's suddenly fun for far more people. Even my wife who's a bit of a "carebear" likes PVPing in this game.

* WAR PVP is different in these ways (and I'm sure some others that I'm forgetting).

- Players are solid when they're in combat. You can't run through people on your team or the other team. This means a few tanks can block a hallway and force the enemy team to go through them. This means healers can literally hide behind a tank. And tanks in this game are tough as shit, able to withstand being focus fired by practically the entire enemy team for minutes at a time if they have even a half-competent healer backing them up. Combine that with abilities like Guard that allow a tank to take half of a designated player's damage for them and suddenly being a tank is viable in PVP.

- When you target someone and don't actively move another way, you will always automatically turn to face them. So in combination with the above, this means that the old Counterstrike thing of bunny-hopping and circle-strafing does NOTHING. So with no one bunny hopping and players being solid, it suddenly makes a PVP battle look like a real Warhammer battle, with more or less solid battle lines colliding against each other.

- Every class uses WoW-Rogue style Action Points instead of mana, and it regenerates very quickly if you stop casting, even in combat, so there's no sitting around drinking or hiding for minutes at a time until you mana back up.

- In general the pace of PVP doesn't seem as "twitch" based as WoW. Very rarely has someone of equal level killed me in two hits, and I usually have time to at least try to escape even against a class that's "rock" to my "scissors". There were LOTS of times in level 70 battlegrounds and Arena in WoW where I died so fast that I didn't even know what just happened to me. That hasn't happened to me yet in this game. We'll see when I get to T4 and have to square off against poopsockers who are not only higher rank but also dozens of RR levels higher than me.

- Every PVP scenario is point based and timed. If the time runs out before a team reaches a certain number of points, the team with the most points wins. So far all the ones I've played are set at 15 minutes maximum. No more three-hour Alterac Valley.

- All the classes and all their talent trees (called Masteries in WAR) were designed with PVP balance in mind from the very beginning. There's none of the idea that certain classes just suck if you want to PVP.

- Certain players in a guild can use Standards which give everyone in a certain radius bonuses. The higher the guild's rank (yeah, your guild levels too), the better the Standards.

- In open-world RVR, there are actually player deployable siege engines, both for defenders and attackers -- battering rams, cannons, ballistas, burning oil..

- When you win or lose a Scenario it actually has a small effect on the zone control of the pairing you're in. Win a Nordenwatch for Destruction, Destruction gains a little more control of the T1 RVR area.

The XP from PVP can really add up really quick just make sure you take the 5% increased xp buff in PVP otherwise you end up being behind your team and not sure why I'm a noob