I leveled a variety of classes to level 10 during open beta:
DE Witch Elf – too much like a WoW rogue for my tastes. My main toon in WoW for the last 3 years was a rogue, and I was really hoping for something significantly different. It’s a good/fun class for sure, but not what I was looking for. Perhaps it branches off more past level 10; I didn’t really have enough time to sample it further.
DE Disciple of Khaine – possibly my favorite class of all the ones I tried. Dual-wielding melee dps plus significant healing ability. Unfortunately, melee dps threat + high healing threat meant that I ended up tanking most heroic encounters – either my tanks didn’t know what they were doing, or they just couldn’t keep up with my threat generation. On the plus side, that meant double the contribution during PQs (healing + dmg), meaning I scored #1-#2 consistently and was subsequently able to win LOTS of final loot rolls. Incredibly powerful soloer, as long as I stayed away from Champs/Heroes. For RvR, being up on the front lines meleeing for my healing power meant a swift death, so I’m glad they included a way to regenerate healing power without the melee, though this does slow down the healing significantly (and exposes me to attack, as it’s channeled).
Chaos Chosen – fun, simple, bash stuff. Aura management was a challenge – I frequently ended up fighting lots of things I didn’t intend to, which got annoying really fast. A good, sturdy tank though, I’ll probably play one for the group I run with, and play a DoK as my soloing alt.
Chaos Magus – you float on a disk! How cool is that? Turret-style pet with lots of different abilities to choose from, plus AE DoTs. I frequently scored #1 in the PQs on this character, too – the overall damage over time, especially with lots of monsters around to AE DoT, meant lots of contribution points. For RvR, I found the Magus to be incredibly fragile, with sub-par burst abilities (actually, no burst damage to speak of at level 10); I felt like an annoyance that could safely be ignored, or dispatched of quickly, depending on the mood of the adversary. Over time, the damage is significant, but in a fast-paced RvR battle, burst wins every time. The order’s Bright Wizards were tripling my damage with each fireball, and was much more difficult to be healed through.
Dwarven Engineer – lots of fun, and very cartoony. Building turrets and luring people/monsters into range, and a 100-yard range on the rifle – good times. For a lot of PQs we lacked a solid tank/healer, so we just set up a maze of turrets and took turns kiting the heroic boss through them all. Mayhem at its finest. The grenades were cool, too.
Empire Witch Hunter – very interesting – this is more like what I was looking for in Warhammer’s rogue archetype. You don’t get the dual wield damage that the Witch Elf gets (which is significant), but you get to fire your pistol on the move. As far as actual combat mechanics, it’s not all that different, but the difference in style is what makes this class enjoyable (for me, at least). Rapier in one hand, pistol in the other, switching between the two during combat for point-blank executions. Throw in some gun violence in my fantasy steam punk, and I’m a happy guy (they even threw in some pistol-whipping).
Overall – comparisons to WoW are unavoidable, so I’ll just get it out of the way. It’s a WoW clone on the surface, and in the middle, and perhaps even down to its deepest layer – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. WoW succeeded for many reasons, and Warhammer takes a lot of these reasons for its own game. The core questing system is the same (and is really what made WoW stand out initially); Public Quests (they really need to throw tanks a bone and give them more contribution points somehow) and the “open-group” system are two really good enhancements. Thinking back to DAoC, they continue to reward players for RvR with experience, gold, gear, and extra skills – this was a great concept then, and it still is now. Class imbalances aren’t as glaring in massive RvR battles, at least not yet. Certainly, Shadow Warriors and Engineers are incredibly annoying and are my #1 target when I’m manning the artillery, but I don’t get the feeling that any one class is overpowered. This will likely change in the higher tiers as specific class powers become more defined and specialized – we’ll see.
Crafting. Yuck. That’s all I have to say. Obviously, it will develop as the game progresses, but right now I just don’t have the patience for it. I pick up scavenging or butcher for the extra cash, but cultivation, talismans, and potions? No thanks. They went with the DAoC crafting dependency model – meaning you were forced to trade to make things, no one could be wholly self-reliant when making items, as you almost always needed some items that was made by some other traders. A good idea in theory, but the open beta auction house wasn’t really working, and the items you created never seemed really worth the effort.
Graphics. Passable. It doesn’t help that WoW appropriated the Warhammer art style for its own, but on a technical level, they both accomplish what they set out for – stylized, cartoonish, and not demanding of lower-end systems while still looking immersive and decent. Warhammer certainly has a darker, grittier feel to it, which I find more pleasing, personally. The textures and models of both games are as good as one can expect, given their low requirements. AoC’s graphics were absolutely stunning, but you needed a NASA-sponsored supercomputer to enjoy them. My only critique is the actual animation, itself. To date, no other MMOG I’ve played comes anywhere close to the fluid and organic animation of the character models in WoW. Everything else seems stilted, mechanical, and unnatural in comparison. They did give the player’s character dynamic shadows (and only the one player), which is a nice change from the black dot beneath the feet syndrome found in other games (AoC excluded, but AoC had a slew of other issues).
Lore. 20 years of Warhammer. So much lore, in fact, that every piece of lore you discover in game is recorded into a book. And it’s quite a book. Clicking on any one NPC or monster dumps an entire novel into your player journal. Usually when I play a new game, I spend time reading each and every word presented to me so that I can immerse myself into the universe that the devs so painstakingly developed. It took me only until my 2nd NPC conversation to decide that Warhammer is desperately in need of editors, and I fell into the habit of clicking through everything and referencing the waypoints to figure out what the quests required. This is unfortunate, as it’s a rich and detailed world. It just needs to be more concise in its presentation. MUCH more concise. On the upside, it gives you a LOT of reading material for when you’re cultivating herbs. Har Har.
Favorite moment: from the Dark Elf starting area. There are a bunch of High Elven herbalists sulking around a ruined garden, sobbing incoherently about the death of their flowers and the costs of war. I noticed it as I was running by, hearing a bunch of wailing and crying to my left, so I turned to investigate. Gleefully, I waded through the crowd of mourners destroying as many flowers as I could find, when I realized I had a quest to deal with these whiny hippies! Walking over to the nearby beastmaster, I unlocked the beastiary cage and unleashed a pack of hungry raptors into the garden. Cackling insanely as the ravenous, starved beasts tore through the defenseless (and still sobbing) herbalists as they futilely tried to shield their precious flowers from being trampled, even as they themselves became “dinner,” I quickly came to the conclusion that the incessant crying blaring from my speakers was driving me into a homicidal rage, and so I hurriedly left the area and went on about my business, albeit with a sinister smile plastered to my face. (I understand the greenskin area is just as twisted and entertaining, but unfortunately I didn’t get around to creating one)
Anyway, I’ve rambled on about this long enough. In a nutshell, lots of good things taken from WoW, and quite a few improvements thrown in by Mythic. Suffice to say, I am eagerly looking forward to release this week!
). I usually only use the Brutality tree because I seem to be able to do the most damage with that one. I also really enjoy the RvR aspect of it. Once we get into the huge freakin RvR battles that is going to be a lot of fun.