Warhammer - Yay or Nay

Well, I have spent the last few weeks playing the new MMOG Warhammer Online, Age of Reckoning. I have played alone, I have played with others, I have joined a guild and played with them. I have quested, done battlegrounds, and open RVR. (pvp) I have even done a bit of their crafting system. And the verdict is......(drumroll please)

Thumbs DOWN ! I am sorry to say, as much as I have tried I just cannot like Warhammer. Now I know what some of you are going to say....I am too wrapped up in WoW to give another game a chance, but that just isn't true. I play Perfect World and love it; look at all the Squidoo lenses I have on it. I have played Warhammer with a totally open mind. Through the fact that all the characters look like the bride of Frankenstein, I still played. Through the first week of hideous lag, I still played. Through the battlegrounds that are almost a carbon copy of the BG's in WoW (that I don't care for either) I still played. I played and played, trying to find the fun and value that some of my friends do. Unfortunately, playing more, instead of making me like it more, made me like it less. I just don't care for it....that's all.

It's hard to describe exactly what it is about it that I don't really care for. I think it is a mix of things. Without taking into account the 2 hours I spent on the phone, calling back 4 times, simply to be able to get into my account to put in billing information, which they insisted on having one week after starting to play the game, not 30 days. They locked me out until they got their credit card number. Their tech support people are ninnies that gave me the wrong information and caused me to have to call back again and again, languishing on hold for ages each time, listening to hold music that sounded like five 10 year olds with their feet caught in a meat grinder.

As for the game itself, my first complaint was the character creation. All the characters are ugly. Even the Elves and human women have faces that only a mother could love. The hair styles are pretty sad as well, but it's the faces that are just horrible.....they would look more at home on an animal with hooves and a mane and tail. You would think in three years, they could have done better. Another thing about the characters I didnt care for was the fact that some of them only come in male.....like the orcs, goblins and a few others. No women ? Are their children delivered by the stork ? I find it offensive they would make characters that are only available in the male sex. I also didn't care for the classes they chose. They are mixed up and not clear cut as to what exactly they are. Like the healer that has to beat on someone to get up the energy he needs to heal. ??? Does this make sense to you ? or the White Lion, that has a pet, but has no ranged attacks that do decent damage. They are expected to beat up mobs manually, right along side their pet. The Magus is another strange one. He spends all of his time riding around on a circular disc like some strange version of the Silver Surfer. The only difference is, he cannot get off the disc. Ever. I admit I may be guilty of comparing their classes to WoWs, but even if I didn't do that, I think I would find their classes to be poorly thought out and many of them difficult and not very fun to play. The only classes I found that were pretty fun to play are the Destruction's Sorceress and the Squig Herder. (male squig herder)

One of the overriding factors that I really didn't like about Warhammer was the character movement. At first I blamed it on the lag, but as the weeks went by, I noticed that while the freeze ups were growing less, the jerky character movement was not getting any better. The movement of the toons is not fluid. When they run, the leg movement is stilted and not realistic looking. This is the best they could do in a brand new, latest technology online game ? Perfect World is better and it is free to play, and made in Malaysia. WoW is better and it is almost 4 years old. Another really annoying thing I found is that you cannot run through most objects, like low hanging tree limbs, and the like, so you are constantly getting hung up on things and fighting to free yourself and go around them. It really is a pain.

I have to admit, the quests are pretty fun and imaginative. I had no complaint there, and I really liked how the area you need to go to for quests was outlined in read with a tooltip mouseover, on the big map. A method WoW would do well to adopt. I can't really say too much about the RVR (PVP) aspect of the game, as that is not really something that I enjoy too much. However, I was disappointed with the crafting system. They only have two crafting professions, Apothecary and Tailsman Making. No way to make armor or weapons. The gathering professions are scavenging, salvaging, butchering and cultivating. From what I understand you will need items from all gathering professions if you want to make things with the two crafting professions, so you better have alts in all professions or be prepared to buy what you need at the auction house.

All in all, Warhammer is not horrible.....I have certainly played worse (visions of Mabinogi dancing in my head) but it was not nearly as good as I expected it to be. From what I understand it is also going through some pretty serious faction imbalance problems on most servers, which I can understand because the Order classes are rather lame, and even uglier (if possible) than the Destruction Classes. It kind of surprised me though, because the Destruction faction is really evil, and do things like torturing Order's war lions and such. I would not think that would be so appealing, but I guess it must be, as the Destruction outnumbers the Order 3 to 1 on most servers. They have also already taken the Order Capital city of Altdorf and killed their King on at least one server, an event that Mystic did not expect to happen for a month or two. With this happening, a level cap of only 40, and no end game content to speak of, other than the taking of the other faction's keeps and capital city......I feel it will not be long before many people will find themselves bored with Warhammer Online.

The above statments about Warhammer are my opinion only, and one that I will say my friend Syrenidus, does not share. He loves Warhammer and has left WoW to play it. I just don't see what the appeal is, personally. *shrugs*

Ciao for Now,

Jade