Anyone playing Warhammer online?

It’s usually used in communities for system clarification. On the Age of Conan forums, for instance, it was popular to draw distinctions between WoW and AoC for people by pointing out RvR vs FFA, oftentimes by people saying “yeah, but if some guy that just so happens to be the same race as me is being a tard I want to kill him, you can’t do that in RvR.”

It’s useful because there is a crowd that wants to be able to kill anyone, and not be bound by seemingly arbitrary restraints as to who would make a good ally and who would make a good enemy. But there are also people who want to be part of “something greater” beyond the control of “mere players” and be part of an army to kill the other faction (they like Us vs Them). WAR wasn’t using RvR to separate itself from WoW, WoW is undeniably RvR, it was using it to call people who liked the PvP in DAoC and WoW, as opposed to saying “a PvP MMO” and having the people who more like Ultima Online and Age of Conan flock to spread crap about how its not a “real” PvP MMO, because it’s not a PvP MMO it’s an RvR PvP MMO. (And FFA isn’t “real” either, it’s just an FFA PvP MMO, and RvR fans have called, on occasion, these types not “real” PvP MMOs because of it. Though it may be ever so slightly more appropriate to simply call it PvP because it is every player vs every player)

Note that I’m not bashing RvR, they’re two different systems and I like them both, I was just showing the “logic” of the distinction. Anything putting one side down is simply meant to show the interests of that system’s fanbase.

Edit: I should also mention companies haven’t used RvR to advertise because I believe Mythic trademarked the descriptor for DAoC.

Thanks, Jragon; I appreciate the info.

FWIW, I also prefer a game that lets me choose my allies, and bonk anyone who is being a tard.

I played EQ on Rallos Zek, a FFA PvP server, and loved it. When I started playing WoW I was disappointed that there was no way to punish dickish behaviour by a group member.

Anyway, I’m trying to get WHOAR set up on my new Mac now, but the damn thing wont run, and I’m too tired to try and sort it out now. I’m thinking that if i can achieve a higher framerate, that would improve playability, thus enhancing my enjoyment of the game. I’ll try again tomorrow, eh.

You should play Age of Conan then, to be sure.

I’m playing in Warhammer Online…got to get in the headstart since I bought the CE version (which is pretty cool btw…some nice books and things came with the game). I’ve been playing a Dwarf Engineer…though it seems a tad underpowered in PvP/RvR so far, it LOOKS really cool. Sort of a WoW hunter without the mobile pet.

My first impression is that this is a pretty cool game, but not really ground breaking. I like the way PvP and RvR are integrated in the game right from the start. Some of the most fun I’ve had so far is doing Pubic Quests in contested zones when some red flagged enemy players wander in and spark a huge battle…all while trying to beat the other side in the contested quest as well. I’ve only been involved in 2 keep sieges/captures in the tier 2 zones but both were pretty fun (as an Engineer I set up boiling oil over the gate and a cannon on one of the towers…which I have to say were a hell of a lot of fun to use against enemy players :)).

The downside I’d say: Still some stability issues with the client. The first day the game came out for the head start I spent half the day having my computer blue screen due to the client and Vent. This seems mostly to have been resolved, with only the occasional blue screen these days. Another issue seems to be that my hardware is thrashing a bit with all the players, especially in the bigger battles. The chop is pretty distracting and frustrating. Also, my particular server seems to be very imbalanced in Destruction folks…and it’s also over populated (I seem to always pick the popular servers).

Other than that I’ve been impressed and am into the game like I haven’t been in an MMO in years…not since the Alpha/Beta of WoW in fact. I still haven’t joined a guild, though I think to get the most out of this game you really need to do so. The later PQ’s and certainly the contested keeps and such really require a large group of players to get the most out of them…and pick up groups generally suck.

For anyone interested, GameSpy has a review on Warhammer…5 stars. Myself, I’d say a solid 4 stars (maybe 4.5) is warranted…MHO FWIW.

-XT

[Emphasis Added]
:eek:

I knew the game wasn’t for kids, but…

:wink:

lol…well, wouldn’t be surprised if there WERE Pubic quests at that. There is certainly a lot of rape and pillaging stuff going on…to be sure.

I won’t even let my younger kids watch me play…they would definitely have some bad dreams over this one.

-XT

ok, I got this working better today and I have to say that after another 3 hours with it, I have changed my opinion slightly: this game is a disaster.

The color palette appears limited to “dark” and “flat”. If there is a gamma setting, I am unable to find it. This means that when it is night-time, I cannot see at all, really. In the daytime, everything is brown, black, grey or a colored shade of brown, black or grey. Its ugly as hell. One of the things I love about WoW is that much of the time it’s bright enough to see the mobs and places and toons that so many people spent so much time creating. I can barely see my own toon in WHOAR, let alone the landscape and the mobs.

The graphics also aren’t very detailed, and the motions (running, walking, etc.) are terrible. Has Mythic never heard of motion-capture? Faces have no expressions, time spent between melee attacks are spent with characters just standing there looking at each other, and everyone pretty much looks alike within classes.

The game tries hard to be unique by replacing terminology, but IMO its just annoying. I know the RvR term was explained, but its a terrible term. The type of PvP might be RvR as opposed to FFA, but it’s still PvP. I don’t log on looking for some RvR; I log on looking for some PvP.

I also don’t care for my toon going up in “rank” as opposed to going up in level, and having 2 or 3 (i still haven’t quite gotten a handle on this yet) ways to go up in different ranks is just overly complicated. I am rank 8 but my Renown rank is 5… wtf? Also, I seem to only get 1 new skill per level, er, rank, instead of a bunch of new abilities every couple of levels… i mean ranks.

The PvP Scenarios are terrible imitations of WoW BGs, from what I have seen so far.

The ToK still seems to be an incomprehensible and unnecessary thing. Its certainly not needed to keep track of quests, since those are at the right hand side of the screen. I really don’t care that I’ve killed 3294 vampires, or that I have had attacks crit 429 times, etc. It’s a cheap way to give people “accomplishments”. Grats, Mythic; you found out that computers can track things in a database. Woop de doo.

I do plan on playing more, as I have a free month to see if the game gets better as you progress, but right now it’s a dreary, boring, poorly executed attempt to capitalize on a franchise with middling popularity, IMO. I didn’t play DAoC, as I mentioned above, and now I think I can see why so many others didn’t play as well.

I agree the palette isn’t bright and cheerful, but it is supposed to represent a war torn landscape not a happy cheerful landscape. I’ve not had any problems with it being as dark as you mention even at night, you might want to play around with tweaking some of the options, they are buried a bit further down in the graphics options menu, but they are there.

As long as you don’t compare the graphics to WoW I don’t mind the complaint, afterall Bliz’s character animations are hardly stunning. The old human “runs with a stick implanted in his backside” springs to mind as a “what were they thinking?” The combat has been slowed down deliberately from what I understand, but it’s not everyone’s thing and there are a few bugs if you are getting knocked back, the spell animation shows it as being finished but it still has some time left to run. As for everyone looking alike, how different to characters look in earlier levels of the other MMORPG’s? Have you been to the auction houses yet? When you start seeing higher leveled players around you see the differences in the looks. And of course there is the physical changes as you progress in levels too, which is a nice idea.

There are distinctions between RvR and PvP, but I think complaining at a game because of what they chose to call it is a little bit daft.

So WAR only gives you one ability per level instead of WoW that gives you three or so every two levels, what’s the problem? The is a different game afterall. You seem to be picking at threads to find a problem with WAR, so what if they are called ranks, does everything have to copy WoW terminology to be acceptable?

Or more accurately, WoW BG’s are terrible imitations of PvP :wink:
The RvR scenarios are a good laugh and, at least so far, promote a much bigger feeling of “let’s get out there and get our x, y, z back”. There’s no “queue, wait until you are in a matched game, play” option (well, there IS, but that’s the scenario’s)…it’s enter the area and fight! I joined up with four other people the other evening to go and play in one of the RvR areas…we got steamrollered by a huge Order group that was out in the area. That’s war, not waiting until you are nicely matched up before you start to fight.

The ToK is a fantastic thing, quest tracking, achievements, lore and many other things in one place. The achievements are fun, I was walking around with “Pin Cushion” as my title for a while, but have since traded it for “AHHHHHHH!”…although I prefer to go for the silly titles rather than the more boastworthy ones. It’s a fun piece of distraction, try reading some of the lore in it. Afterall, where do you think Blizzard got 90% of their ideas for their fantasy world? :wink:

You should play it more, I won’t say it’s perfect although I do think it’s a hell of a lot better than most MMORPG type games that get released (and that includes WoW if you remember back to what a mess that was when it was released, I’ve been playing that since April 05…a few months after release and it was still a mess then!).

Try and play it with an open mind however, if you are expecting it to be WoW2 then you will be sadly dissapointed. Things are different, it’s a different game! Just remember, as I said above, that Warhammer is where Warcraft got most of it’s ideas from :smiley:

Yeah, I don’t have a problem with the color palette (or with most of the other complaints either). It’s SUPPOSED to be a dark and dreary world. Personally I like the graphics and mood better in WAR than in WoW, but it’s going to be a personal thing…different strokes for different orcs and all that.

I really think the way they have integrated the PvP/RvR aspects into the game right off, so that everyone, even level 1’s, feel they can jump right into it…well, I think this was done VERY well. I haven’t been involved in a capital city siege yet, but in order to get to that point all the earlier levels need to be captured by your realm…which means that those early characters are important if you want to get to the big stuff. I also think it’s pretty funny that once you’ve leveled out of a war camp zone you can’t go back and try and fight…doing so turns you into a chicken! First time this happened to me (when I was level 12 trying to help a friend in the Chapter 3 PQ…I attacked a red flagged player there and POOF! I was a chicken!) I was rolling on the floor laughing.

There are still some issues with this game, but they seem to be patching it fairly regularly. I haven’t blue screened in over a week now, and while my system is still chugging during some of the bigger battles or scenarios, the game seems to be getting more stable all the time…and is still a blast to play. I want to join a guild at some point and see how that aspect works out, crawl through some dungeons and raids, and definitely do some bigger open world RvR assaults…and one day participate in the burning, looting and rape of the enemies capital city (I can’t wait to slake my dwarvish lusts on the bodies of those damn dark elf chicks who run around in a thong and bra with the two knives…grrr, I hates them, yes precious I HATES them!)…

-XT

I poked briefly at the official website, and I can already say that the class selection intrigues me. I’m bloody tired of the old Warrior/Thief/Mage/Cleric archetypes, with hybrids for variety. Occasionally I go to look at WoW to see if there’s anything that interests me, but I get filled with a crushing depression when I look over the classes. It’s the same old, same old that’s been in RPGs since AD&D. Warhammer looks like it’s made an effort to shake that up, and I commend them for that. I doubt I’ll play it, but if I were to leave City of Heroes for another game, this would probably be it.

Some of the classes are pretty classic…but others are VERY different, especially on the Destruction side. Definitely not the cookie cutter types in WoW though, and they just play differently. Takes a bit of getting used to. Magic users and healers get their action points (like mana) back really fast…but they don’t have the big kuhuna type heals or spells in other games. Everything is really fast paced and you have to stay on your toes, at least in PvP/RvR type combat (as a caster type).

If you really liked stealth chars though you probably won’t like this game. There are a few that can stealth, but only for very brief periods. Not that the Destruction chick that CAN stealth needs it…she is like a friggin buzz saw, though fragile if it to attack someone else while you sit back and shoot her full of holes…

-XT

I have and am continuing to look, but so far I cannot find anything for screen gamma or screen brightness. It’s not my monitor, since everything else I do (CAD, WoW, EQ, youtube, etc.) looks fine.

Not comparing them just to WoW, but to any game with humanoids running. Call Of Duty, Medal Of Honor, Halo… virtually any game has better looking animations. Again, motion capture isn’t something new, and Mythic should have availed themselves of the process. I agree that the toon look isn’t the most important thing, as it will eventually be covered up completely by armor and stuff. But initially, it does help to forge a connection with your character if you have a mental image of what they look like, and it’s something you created, not just an off-the-shelf avatar.

It isn’t just WoW terminology. RPG terminology has been around for over 30 years now, and is an integral part of the games. Reinventing terms is unnecessary. What is the point? WHOAR seems to do it just for the sake of doing it, or in a vain attempt to set themselves apart. If they don’t want to be an RPG, they shouldn’t make an RPG, IMO. YMMV.

If you’ve played WoW, you know that this isn’t quite the case. Only at 70 can you face off against only other 70s, and not in all of the BGs available. At all others there is a 10 level block of eligible participants, so there are a variety of different abilities in play for each team. WoW also does not wait until teams are even for # of participants before a BG starts. EQ, depending on the server, had a slight level restriction to PvP in FFA PvP or had hard-coded teams with no level restriction on PvP. (Although the Zeks are now all FFA PvP, since they merged them.)

As I have said before, I like PvP. I like the idea that they are trying to integrate the PvP so that it is not just an aside, but an integral part of the game. But by making adjustments to character level, errr, rank, and such, I think they are blurring their objective. I don’t want everyone to be equalized, like WHOAR does. At least in WoW when a 39 fights a 30, he fights a 30, not a 30 with an extra 1000 hp.

I still think the ToK is ridiculous, and I think Blizzard, like Warhammer, got most of their ideas from Tolkien, just like every other fantasy game, book, painting, comic, etc.

You should play it more, I won’t say it’s perfect although I do think it’s a hell of a lot better than most MMORPG type games that get released (and that includes WoW if you remember back to what a mess that was when it was released, I’ve been playing that since April 05…a few months after release and it was still a mess then!).
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I’ve been playing WoW since 22 Nov 2004, and never saw a mess. It worked great on release day, and has always run smoothly. Have game mechanics been tweaked? Sure. But IMO, the game has always been fun and functioned well. I have never had WHOAR crash on me, either. I contrast this with EQ, which is glitchy and full of godawful coding. CoH has always been fine, as has Guild Wars. Most games are well vetted and tested, since there is a lot of money riding on them.

I don’t want it to be WoW2, or EQ2 (cause that game sukt big time) or anything else squared. But I also don’t want to have to relearn a new set of terms for every damn thing in the game. A fireball is a fireball. An orc is an orc. A warrior is a warrior. Let it be.

I still find the game fairly boring, and the actual combat to be pretty simplistic. Hopefully that will change as I level up… er, “rank up”. Whatever.

*lol afterthought… ask yourself this: when you ding, do you say to yourself “I leveled up” or “I ranked up”? I’ll bet the former, which proves my point: the terms are already here; just use them.

Well, I had to call the customer support line for help on the screen gamma issue, and the guy I talked to said that I was not the only call he had taken about the issue, but that NO the game does not have any way to adjust it. :mad:

I played for another couple of hours, and saw these bugs (among others that I can’t remember 'cause I’m sleepy):

A) New buffs or debuffs on a party member appear over the Social window, or any other window that is open.

B) Settings for camera distance, minimap zoom, and a host of other things do not save when you log. Each time you log in, you have to redo them. Hopefully that is an easy fix. I know that they are aware of it, because I reported most every bug I came across.
I also noticed that mobs respawn FAST, sometimes before they are even dead. This makes it impossible to “clear” an area.

NPCs say their 1 line of dialogue over and over, sometimes as fast as every 10 seconds.

You can gain XP just from PLAYING Scenarios, even if your team doesn’t win. Even if you don’t contribute. You can just go AFK and make out like a bandit with XP, Renown, even rolling on loots. I gained 3 levels, I mean ranks, and 2 [del]levels[/del] ranks of Renown in losing Scenarios tonight, plus got a new axe, chest piece and boots.

Mobs seems to retain agro forever, a la EQ. I ran away from a pack of mobs for more than 60 seconds tonight, and they chased me all the way back to the quest givers/merchants/trainers, where some other guy killed them.

That’s all I can remember now… too tired… will play again tomorrow and hopefully see something that I can talk positively about. I know those of you who are enjoying the game would prolly appreciate that, eh. :stuck_out_tongue:

Another strike against WHOAR: no swimming. Oh sure, if you enter the water your toon will “swim” on the surface, but you cannot dive below.

Also, I am now playing on dual quad core 3.0G chips with 10M RAM, and a 512M NVidia 8800 GTX video card… and I still lag. :frowning:

The molasses pace of all motion, and the lack of movement by animals and NPCs, lend a strange, mannequin-like feel to the game.

Why are there chapters? Am I just acting out a book? Certainly feels that way, since PvE quests seemed designed solely to lead you from one are to another, culminating in the Big City Seige. Yawn.

If I wanted to be directed, I would play a scroller. Or a Lego game. Or Mario. I want freedom of choice and a sense that I am in control of my destiny when I play an RPG. That’s the whole point, is to be able to play a role that I choose, not be shoehorned into doing everything the game devs want me to do.

Which leads back to hard-coded teams. Worst. Idea. Ever. For an RPG. Totally stupid. It’s as if the devs think that humans wont create conflict without one being spelled out for them. Look around, devs. This world has no rules, and conflict is rampant.

I’ll keep trying until my month is up, tho. Maybe at level 20 there’s a new graphics engine, and I’ll get space lasers to use, or sharks, or sharks with frikkin’ lasers on their heads pewww pewww or bees or dogs or dogs that shoot bees out of their mouths. Something.

10M of RAM…I ain’t surprised you’re lagging :wink:

Turn off grass in the graphics menu, there is a glitch that causes the grass effect to graphics lag you…I had the same thing (2.66 dual core, SLI’d 2 x 8800 GTX 768MB and 4GB RAM…and I still graphics lagged!) but once I got rid of the grass effect it pretty much stopped.

lmao I can’t believe I didn’t notice that I typed 10M instead of 10G :smack:

nah, the grass isn’t the problem.

I’m talking about everything-on-the-screen-freezes-and-then-starts-again-2-miles-away type lag.

I did turn down the effects to “None” and the Terrain to lowest, but it doesn’t make a difference. I’m on a Low/Low population server, too (Sea of Malice; it should prolly be called Sea of Molasses).

I’m just not impressed with the mythos, the gameplay, the graphics, the graphics engine, the physics engine, or anything at all really.

It’s shaping up to be a diversion until the next WoW expansion comes out, is all.

Well, my server is a VERY high population one, and my rig is not nearly as beefy as yours…and I’m not having the problems you are. It’s moot anyway, since you don’t seem to enjoy the game much. If you were going to keep playing I’d make sure I had the latest drivers and/or check my ISP connection…the only time my system chugs is when there are really big battles. In normal PvE or even scenario PvP I don’t have a problem at all…and I have my settings turned up about half way to the max.

Nope, you can’t dive below the surface. For my part this is not a big deal, though I admit it was always cool in WoW that they had underwater cities and such you could explore. Maybe they will change this in a future expansion.

shrug I like the chapters, especially the PQ’s in each chapter. Different strokes I guess but it helps introduce new players to the world and show them where important things are. You don’t HAVE to play the game in a linear fashion if you don’t want to, you know? With some of my alts I skipped a lot of the linear pathing (and even jumped out of the realm I started in and when right to one I liked better).

Well, I don’t know what MMORPG you think doesn’t direct you upward. WoW certainly does. If you follow the quests they will lead you from one zone to the next in a progression all the way up to max level…if you choose to follow the quests and where they take you. Like with WoW though you don’t HAVE to follow any path at all. You don’t have to even do the quests…there are several ways to level in WAR that doesn’t have you following the various quest lines.

Seriously, you are complaining about something in WAR that is in every MMORPG I know of (well, there are a few exceptions, but not of any of the major MMORPGs that are out today).

Sorry, I disagree. What you would have is basically chaos if you simply put people in the world and let them attack each other at will. I’ve BEEN in those kinds of worlds, and while its fun for a while in the end it comes down to the strongest group of thugs simply running about ganking everyone they can.

Again though you are complaining about something that is a feature in the other game you mentioned liking…WoW.

You should quit now IMHO…this game is obviously not for you.

-XT

My system is brand new, and has all the latest drivers. It seems to be a WHOAR server thing; customer service confirmed that they have had numerous calls about intermittent lag. I’m sure they will get this worked out fairly quickly. They seem to be very committed and competent about fixing bugs quickly.

Yeah, it’s a minor issue. Just seemed strange to me to not be able to swim, is all. I know they have Z-axis in game; I just can’t figure out why they wouldn’t have zero-Z be way below the typical surface so you can swim.

So far, WHOAR just feels more directed than other games. They very definitely have a story that they are trying to tell, and only one story. “Epic Conflict Between Races” or somesuch. You are there solely to be a player in that drama, not to seek your own glory however you see fit. It’s a bit limiting, IMO.

Yep, it drives me crazy in WoW, too. Many many many times I’ve wanted to gank some asshat in my group or guild or raid, just to shut them up (or down), but I can’t because they are on my team. Fratricide can serve a noble purpose in MMOs, IMO. :wink:

Sure doesn’t seem to be, but again, I’ve paid for the game and a month of server time, so I’ll keep playing. I’d rather be able to say that I’ve put the time in, seen a fair amount of the game, and still didn’t like it, than just walk away after a bad first impression, and then not have anything to say when someone asks what I didn’t like about it.

I’m apologize if my talking about negative reactions to the game bothers you, but my intent isn’t to shit on “your” game (ya know what I mean?). I’m just putting out my thoughts on the game.

FWIW, I recognize that MMOs are the most complicated, difficult thing in the world to create. I’ve even had a hand in creating a couple, none of which made the big time. Long hours go into making these, and I’m very interested in playing and evaluating and trying to appreciate the results. I love the genre, and eagerly await each new entry, in the hopes that I will find a new game that excites me even more than whatever my current fav is.

Always hopeful, never expecting. That’s just me. :slight_smile:

-XT
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No worries…one of the things I’ve found is that if you don’t like an MMORPG right off, for whatever reason, it’s best to just quit early than to cause yourself more pain by trying to grind on in the hopes it will get better. I’ve been there and done that…and it never ends well.

For my part, much of what you don’t like I actually DO like. The color palette. The graphics. The game play, chapters, RvR/PvP, etc. There are still some issues of course, and some things I hope they improve over time…but at this point it’s still early days before even the first major patch, let alone an expansion. So…I’ll be continuing on at any rate until the game gets old or boring…or until Mythic does what they did in DaoC and starts yo-yo-ing back and forth with the character tweaks and nerfs. If they do THAT then I’ll be looking for something else to play…Fallout 3 is coming soon and there is always Empire: Total War early next year. :slight_smile:

-XT

I gots a 8800-series NVidia graphics card.

When I downloaded the latest drives (178.13), City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online both had problems (crash to desktop, or application freeze) with them.

I had to roll back to 169 (I think). YMMV

Right now I have a level 27 black orc. I was having tons of fun the first two weeks. I think yesterday was the first time where I had zero desire to log in… I dunno, I’ll probably give it another month, then I think I’m done.

The scenarios have been getting really fucking aggravating. I’ve had quite a few matches where the score was 500 to 0. As in for the entire match, you get ZERO experience. The thing is since this game gives everyone five million hit points, you’ll never even get a lucky kill here or there. When you take luck out of a game, it makes it so an organized guild can completely control the battlefield. While this may be “fun” for them, it’s can go well beyond frustrating if you’re on the losing team.

Yes I’m in a guild. Yes, sometimes I like steamrolling pugs. But sometimes I just want to dick around without having to be super organized, with everyone in Vent and everyone playing one specific role. Honestly, I wish they would develop “pug only” queue type system. You would only be able to queue up solo, and it would try to prevent whole guilds or sets of friends from being on the same team.