When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Final

I have actually rolled over into live by this point, so really I am wrapping up my feelings on the game as I continue to level.

WAR really captures the essence of PvP and has succeeded in making it fun, meaningful, and rewarding. And fun. They went even further and found ways to eliminate or minimize the unfun elements. For example, ganking.

Ganking as we know it from WoW does not exist in WAR. There are no pure stealth classes who can pop out of nowhere and eliminate you in 1-2 hits. It almost impossible to fight someone who is far below your level thanks to the chicken mechanic. It is even viable to pick a fight if you run across someone a level or two higher than you. Combat is slow enough that you have time to make some choices. Even healing classes have a damage component to allow them to save themselves, and pure healing classes like the dwarven rune priest are almost indestructible on 1 on 1 combat.

Questing is tied in nicely into the PK aspect of the game. You can get repeatable quests to kill a certain number of enemy players, play a certain scenario (Battleground), or even visit a specific objective inside of an RvR zone (where you are automatically flagged for combat). When you are in the RvR zone, you are automatically buffed to have base stats equivalent to a level x8, which gives you at least a fighting chance against another level. Sure, you can still run across multiple adversaries, but you're pretty much screwed whenever that happens, anyway. Even more importantly, 2 lower level guys stand in very good chances (at least 3:2) of beating a higher level opponent of equal skill. Unless that opponent is a Warrior Priest, because those guys are friggin' OP.

Dead players drop XP, cash, and the occasional random green. Taking control of a keep opens up key vendors in the zone.

If you can find a good group of friends to play with, then WAR is fun. A huge difference is that the solo experience to max level seems hardly worth the trip.

So in summary, WAR has enough fun, and enough depth, to keep me coming back for many more nights to come. I hope to see you all there.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 2

PvP Synergies

Last night we had our first 500-0 scenario victory, and it was really incredible. We had the ideal situation of a well-balanced group against a fairly disorganized opposition. We weren't a full 15 person warband, but there were enough of us on vent that it made a difference, and we held all 3 objectives with zero deaths. The synergies between tanks and healers, in particular, is amazing. Healers can be very durable in 1-on-1 or 2-on-1, and if you have a tank guarding the healer you can really do some amazing things.

For example, in another scenario, Nordenwatch, one of the objectives is to control a flag by the fortress. It works on proximity, like the flags in Eye of the Storm. We had pushed to the next objective but were repulsed, and the only people alive were Snotspigot the goblin shaman (healer/DPS hybrid, ably played by the dwarf formerly known as Daigan) and myself (Chosen, tank class). We managed to stay alive for what felt like forever, but was probably only about a minute and a half, against 5 on 2 odds until our reinforcements rezzed and made it back into the fight. Between taking 50% of his damage, boosting his avoidance and mine with Hold the Line, and snaring all of the melee on Snotspigot (tab, Dizzying Blow)^3, he was able to kite and HoT and keep us both alive. Because we were defending an objective we controlled and were still alive, we kept control. After the fight we were amazed that we had survived, and I think that is going to be one of my definitive Warhammer memories.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 1

The quests are really well done, at least for the starting areas (only level 6 or so on a couple of characters, and I am not trying to go too far just because I'm going to have to redo it at launch). One nice thing is that if you have to kill something for a drop it's a 100% drop rate. Quest hubs are obvious, and there are highlighted areas on the mini-map that indicate what regions you need to look in to see stuff. The starting zones seem a little more compact, as well, so I feel like there is less time spent running through empty space. You might have heard about the Public Quest feature, which is really great, as well.

The way a PQ works is you wander into a zone and a little alert pops up on your screen indicating that there is a public quest going on and you have the option of participating. When the quest is over, you get a standing based on how much you contributed to the completion, whether it's damage or healing done. The server then does a roll /1000, and you get a bonus based on your preliminary standing (my best finish was 4th, and I got +200 or something). Your final score determines if you're eligible for loot, and there are loot bags down to 9 or 10, with better quality rewards the better you finish. Another nice thing is that the loot bags contain a bunch of different stuff, and you get to pick one- so if you get a piece of armor that's not an upgrade, you can always take cash or a pot. The PQs restart every 2 minutes, so you can do them as often as you like.

The graphics and spell effects are more indicative of a newer game; but the downside is that you might want more beefy hardware to play. The races and careers (classes) are all very flavorful and pretty true to the Warhammer IP. For example, the Dark Elves are the merciless, haughty, backstabbing branch of the elf family. They were banished from the main High Elf homeland, but have come back to lay siege. The 3rd quest hub is right on the front lines of what looks like a successful siege, and the Dark Elves are mostly just mopping up some resistance. One of your quests is to go open up a cage where the NPCs keep their giant lizard mounts so they can go and eat some of the defenders. So you open the cage, the lizard plods over and eats a very whiny High Elf, and all of the NPCs laugh.

You could conceivably PvE your way through the game, at least to the end, but PvP is actually very well executed. Most standard servers are not open RvR- you have to be in a contested area to be automatically flagged. Starting at level 1, you can queue for a scenario, which is a lot like a battleground. When you join the scenario you are given the stats of a level 8, but no abilities. However because you can get experience in scenarios you could level doing nothing but that (although it would be slower than questing). I actually did that when I first got started, and it was entertaining. Then you can take a break, level and train some more, and then queue up for a scenario. You can queue from anywhere, so you can go quest, pop into a scenario, and then it drops you right back to where you were so you can finish questing. You also earn Renown, which is more like PvP experience more than honor, so you are leveling up on 2 fronts. As you gain renown you can buy renown gear, but is usable for questing and so forth.

Another big difference is that there is no mana or rage, everything uses action points (AP). The closest analogy is the Rogue energy bar; it continually refreshes and is drained by doing stuff. Health and AP regenerate quickly when you're out of combat, so there is no sitting and drinking (which is disconcerting for about 5 minutes, and then you're sold).

PvP is balanced around 4 archetypes: Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged (or caster) DPS, and healers.

Tanks are effectively PvP crowd control. As you level up you get a bunch of snares and knock backs. Plus, the game has limited collision (3 seconds and then someone can push through you), so you can literally be a meat shield. You also get a PvP taunt (which debuffs an opposing player until they attack you), as well a a guard ability that lets you eat some damage taken by a buddy. Sword and Board is very strong, because you can block ranged attacks and spells. If you queue for a scenario at level 1, that's going to be your biggest contribution is just trying to get in front of squishier people and take some of the heat.

Melee DPS tend to be squishier but can absolutely shred people under the right circumstances. I haven't tried a straight mDPS class yet, but I can tell you that I had a caster get repeatedly shredded by one. :-)

Healers have some interesting implementations. There really aren't a lot of what we would recognize as pure healers. The Dark Elves have a melee healer who heals by doing DPS, the Orks have a shaman that builds up healing power by doing damage, and builds up damage by doing healing, and the Chaos (humans) have another melee Healer. Healers in general seem to be extremely durable, even against a pure DPS class, and well-played melee healers (especially when guarded by a tank) are really, really tough to deal with.

Ranged DPS comes in some interesting varieties. The Orks have a hunter-type class called a Squig Herder that summons these little mouths with legs. They were recently buffed and people are calling this the new cheese class. I tried one for a bit and while levelling my squig had at one time 6 mobs on him and shrugged it off while I plinked them down. The Chaos folks have a guy who floats on a permanent disc called the Magus. He drops demons in a little summoning circle who function a lot like stationary gun turrents. It's a neat kind of mechanic as it gives you some versatility for offense or defense. The Dark Elves have a Sorceress who has a combo-point spell system. As you cast spells you build up dark energy, which increases the chance that you'll take some backlash damage, but also allows you to nuke someone when you have the points built up. This is probably the closest to a pure mage class. And the Ork's caster DPS is also their healer, the Shaman.

The cons: the solo experience is probably not going to be as viable as it is in WoW. While there is nothing that prevents you from soloing quests and scenarios, the game strongly encourages you to guild. With the PvP focus communication and teamwork are even more important, and you're not going to get that from a PUG. The only other question mark I have is what is the end game going to feel like. The pinnacle of the WAR experience is supposed to be capital city sieges. I have no idea how well this is going to work. It was well tested, and people who played it said it was extremely fun, but it's supposed to be a major accomplishment, so it happens infrequently. Level cap is a long way off, but it's something to definitely think about.

The other thing I don't like is that you get a lot of the same annoyances from WoW BGs in these scenarios. These all tend to be a consequence of the people involved, unfortunately, which is all the more reason to guild up. PUGs in scenarios tend to get absolutely demolished, so even if you're under levelled you can still be a lot more successful if you're organized. In this way I think the game actually succeeds more than WoW because the rewards for teamwork and skillful play are more evident.

Right now I'm rolling with the Axis guild (Destruction) on Tyrion server (www.axis-guild.com), which for former Watchmen has Petunia as the GM, with Daigan, Pzar, and Trian also playing. I will definitely play the game at least through November, at which point I will have to decide if Lich King is going to pull me back. I actually enjoy PvE raiding, so I'm going to have to see if organized RvR is going to be enjoyable enough to keep me coming back.

Overall the game is pretty well polished, and remarkably stable. Not WoW levels of stability yet, so there are some occasional crashes to desktop, but overall it's quite playable. I imagine you would want a reasonably new computer to really enjoy the game, as 5 FPS is probably fatal in RvR, but I would ask around in that case. It feels similar enough to WoW that you can comfortably jump in and start doing stuff without reading any documentation, and a lot of the conventions are the same. The atmosphere and storyline/quest execution is all top notch, and the PvP has some noticeable improvements. It feels like a solid addition to the MMO field, but it's not going to kill WoW by any stretch.