INTRODUCTION:
Have you ever wanted to do something productive but you're to lazy to actually work on an active task? Try miniature painting! You get to sit around and be constructive.
But seriously folks, miniatures are pretty cool. Sure their sole purpose in life is to stand around while you either look or roll dice near them. But man they look cool.
What am I talking about? Have you dear reader, ever heard of Warhammer? No?
Warhammer is a strategy game, wherein you must build, paint, and command miniatures, it's actually a lot of fun and I implore anyone with willing to do a lot of painting and model construction (they aren't actually that big so...) to try it out.
Anyway
Warhammer Online was a noble idea. After all, almost all of video gaming history is based around the idea of combat with either another person or the CPU so I would be natural that there would be a game, upon the creation of the MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) it would be natural that an MMMORPG would tackle war into itself. This lead to the creation of World of Warcraft (WOW)a really fun game that I really liked a lot until I quit. WOW has become one of most popular games in existence with it's great writing, solid game play, and truly strong art has lead to it being one of the better games around. Warhammer Online? (WO) Well it hasn't done to well. With mere thousands to WOW's 11 million (although the actual number of players is much smaller compared to the number of accounts) WO is not in a very good state especially with the economy gone to crap. The reason for this is why I have decided to write this review, so lets dive into WO and find out why it blows.
(Note that I will compare WO to WOW but it is not because I am a WOW fanboy that detests all other MMORPG's, it's just that I am comparing WO to what I consider a superior game)
One last thing. I acknowledge that this review is a bit long (If you people read more books and watched fewer videos than this wouldn't be a problem!) so I've added shortcuts to my main points. Simply press ctrl then f, then type in the word in the search box and you'll get to the point of interest. The main of the points are on the left, the words you'll type in to find them are on the right. The sections I note are below the actual words and I don't think they go beyond the paragraph. Don't type in the lines of course they're just used so you don't go right to where you started.
Characters: M-o-l-a-g-e
Circle Dance: Q-u-e-e-n
The Problem with WO combat: M-o-l-l-y
Order: G-r-o-g-n-a-r-d
Destruction: G-o-t-h
The chief problem with Warhammer Online: G-a-f-f-e-r
Conclusion: G-r-o-n
However I still feel that you should read my review in it's entirety. Why? Because I feel I have missed a lot of important points with the ctrl-f thing to avoid clutter. Plus it took me days to type this all out so I would appreciate if you would take the time to read my review and discuss it
INTERFACE: A DALLIANCE IN POINTLESSNESS
WO's interface is my favorite part of the whole game incidentally. It does however use the same interface that ever other MMORPG has ever used, but you know what? I think that is a good thing. The current MMORPG move arrangement is to have all you moves listed at the bottom of the screen. Like so.
The moves are the cool looking icons in the center of the bottom of the screen. Putting moves at the bottom of the screen means that players can access a variety of moves while keeping them in a clear to see position close to where ones keyboard would be for easy recognition. Not only that but WO gives you the option to move your move set into different positions and locations with different numbers of bars (and thus moves). It's good that developers have realized that not all of us want to download mods in order to move our move set around.
This, combined with the beautiful graphics, means that the game has this nice look to it. Although to avoid lag I had to turn the graphics all the way down. Funnily enough I've heard of a guy who tried getting a better computer to keep the lag down but the results were the same. Doesn't really add anything to the review but it makes the whole thing about bad computers causing the lag less clear cut.
However any praise that I give mythic on the move set/environment is immediately disregarded thanks to some obnoxious design. Lets look at another image to find out why.
See that line with all the hexagonal symbols? It's above the chat box.
That my friends is the tactics, erm, line. Tactics are basically like passive talents. You know you select them and they give you a passive benefit on something. They are one of more, interesting additions by WO. While they sound nice in theory any usefulness is swiftly countered by there pointlessness. Most of them are based around minuscule percentages that may have a chance of either shielding you are shooting a pizza at the enemy when damaged. Oh I had one that gave me like 5% more experience in SC's (scenarios) because 5% is a lot with the large experience bars. Others gave me resistances to certain attacks. Basically in the WO game there are resistances for corporal (physical) spiritual (erm divine spells) elemental (most spells) and something else.
The problem is that these resistances add nothing to combat they are not present in large enough amounts in enough items to make them a genuine advantage over the class that uses the attacks that the resistance corresponds to. Plus the resistances mean that few items actually have genuine stats such as strength or weaponskill, meaning that they are basically pointless for soloing because the enemy only uses physical attacks except once in a blue moon. Why the hell would anyone want resists in pvp anyone? Do we really need a reduction on attacks can't we just roll a tank class if we wanted to have high resistance to every thing? Wouldn't it be better if we had stats that increase damage instead of miniscule benefits that will rarely ever function.
Basically all tactics are pointless and I have to question why they were implemented in the first place. Actually I do know but that will come later.
Anyway do you see that yellow speech bubble above the move set? That is one of the most irritating things in Wo. Well not that speech bubble (SB from now on) but well lets me explain.
Molage
I played a warrior priest (WP), Magus (Mag), Sorcerer (sorc), and a Black Orc (BO) during my play time. The second most irritating thing about being a WP was what made up my character, righteous fury (which looks kinda like a speech bubble). What righteous fury is meant to do was to basically provide an energy source for my WP's powers as a WP uses his own righteousness to fuel his abilities. In reality it serves as a cruel reminder that you're doing only what Mythic wants you to do. Righteous fury (RF) adds nothing to your advantage and fucks you over in pvp along with it's buddy the energy bar (it's the yellow bar below the green bar in the character portrait, you can see it in one of the screen shots it's in the upper left corner). What happens is that you have to alternate using both attacks and heals to keep your energy and RF full and happy. However what this means is that if you do not wish to plunge deep into melee to hit the opponent with your hammer in slightly different but mostly the same ways. The problem is that melee combat is so hopelessly muddled that your probably going to die. OH their is a way to get more RF outside of hitting people but it's so boring that you're not going to remember it in a fight. The reason you wont remember it in a fight is because you will probably never, EVER, run out of RF while soloing. Not only does this make it really hard to remember but it also makes the whole idea of RF and energy completely pointless on account of the fact that you wont really do a lot of pvp with low number in WO nowadays.
DPS classes don't have it any better. My Magus had no identifying features aside from the fact that she rides on a blue Frisbee, she was literally a faceless spell caster with no traits aside from the fact that she can summon demons but that's a whole other issue I intend to discuss later. My Sorcerer fared better in this regard (if you can call it that) since she got a speech bubble that gave me additional chances to crit and more crit damage the more I use spells and abilities. The downside is that is my speech bubble is to full then I have a chance of suffering damage. This means that you HAVE to use a certain ability to avoid being damaged. WHO THOUGHT THAT THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA! While this gives the class a characterization in the developers mind all this meant to me that I would be damaged if I didn't press a certain button. I am okay with having to press a button to avoid damage but this happens every time your speech bubble becomes full, which is constantly. I don't want to use this ability when all I need to do an effective amount of damage is one single move (i'll elaborate on this later). I admit that at the cost of being damaged do get a lot of crit, and with a healer I could effectively obliterate the damage, but it still just irritates me. The game basically forces you to do what it wants instead of you want.
I think that tank classes have it worst of all. On my BO I had to use lesser moves in order to gain access "bigger" moves. Meaning that if you need a certain ability at a certain moment and you aren't high enough level then you're hosed. Although I doubt that you will find a move that actually does something worthwhile enough to use in place of the spammable move you get at the beginning of the game.
Call these complaints petty but as a wise man once said "Llittle things lead to big problems" which of course means that when you play as a class in WO you aren't playing something you want to be, you're doing what this game forces you to do. And with that lets dive into the combat system.
COMBAT: A WHIRLWIND OF CHAOS, UP TO IT'S ARMS IN GLUE
To call WO's combat sticky is an insult to all games with sticky game play. WO is sticker than concrete except way less useful. Worse is terrifyingly boring and dull and cries out for something, anything! Before we do this I will tell you about the common MMORPG pvp method: the Circle Dance.
For every genre there is a fighting method. For FPS's it's the jump over opponent then head shot him, For SS's (shoulder shooters, like Gears of War) it's the clever walk up to opponent while regenerating then hit the cinematic death button, for horror it's the run away maneuver, for Puzzle games it's the Gamefaqs strategy, and for MMORPG's it's the circle dance.
Queen
The circle dance is basically running around the enemy in a circle while hitting them with everything you've got. Some classes do this differently like, lets say Rogue's will run around the opponent at close range while Mage's will favor a more distant method of circling. This strategy works really well due to the rather "distant" look of it's core viewpoint. The fact that players have to turn to attack you means that if you can dart around them then you can screw them up and prevent them from attacking. The enemy (if he/she is somewhat smart) will generally reply by further leaping around trying to catch you on the wrong footing. A main reason why this strategy succeeds is due to the ability of the player to move through another player regardless of their sides on the map. While I can't put the blame on WO's developers from completely missing this key strategy I can blame then for some bad pvp.
Instead of the Circle Dance WO uses what I call OTBP, or online table top. Working much like DND (Dungeons and Dragons) WO (keeping track of all these acronyms? Good) gives you the ability to block off enemies movements through your area while letting your allies through, plus you tend to be more routed in place. . The problem with WO is that you can't block or parry, you can't even move around effectively in combat, hell you can't do much in combat except hit buttons and chase people around (if you're melee).
Molly
The problem with WO's pvp is that nothing happens. Or at least nothing you haven't seen before. The OTBP doesn't mesh very well with MMORPG combat when their aren't more effective ways to avoid attacks then Circle Dancing, meaning that the player will try to manually revert to just running circle's around his opponent. The problem is that you can't use WO's unique combat style while moving with the exception of some rather weak moves. This means that you have to constantly stand still while fighting and opponent leading you getting pummeled as the enemy will get to take shots at you while you jump around, and you will be jumping around the enemy a lot if you wont to Circle Dance because you can't move through their enemy. Leaving you at a criminal disadvantage.
The system in WO seems to be geared toward just standing still and fighting it out with the opponent. Some may wonder why anyone would Circle Dance in WO, well that because of two reasons.
1. Standing toe to toe leaves you terribly vulnerable to the opponent's friend. Tactically I don't know why OTBP was implemented because it's turns all large battles into zerg fests with class composition rarely mattering as much as just rolling over the opposition in great numbers. Admittedly this is common in all MMORPG's, but only in WO is it so prevalent, nor so frustrating.
2. Going toe to toe in a game is very, very boring in a protracted fight. And since the whole game is basically the same thing it is very protracted. Seriously, for a pvp game the pvp feels exactly the same as the pve (player verses the environment, I.E. the critters). The one crucial difference is that the pve is tolerable because the enemies you face all die quickly, but in pvp the enemies are tough buggers. Making all toe to toe battles long and ultimately disappointing since most of the time the enemy will be somewhat superior to you in some fashion, meaning you die.
The other problem is that you abilities don't do anything. I'm dead serious and this is what crushed my hopes for this game. Sure you have moves where stuff happens, but they don't do anything. The reason for this is;
The effect your move does is pathetic. Each and every one of them is so small and muted that when combined with the fact that almost all of them go off instantaneously makes them just plain boring to look at. Worse almost all the moves your character will get at the beginning of the game will look something like the first move you receive. My warrior priest started out with an ability to "bludgeon" my foes and almost all of the other moves resolved around hitting stuff with my hammer with the others all revolving around weak healing moves that while they healed a lot of hp, they just seemed weak and rather useless.
Plus the moves are just hard to read since they all have a huge amount of numbers and big words that make all interest in them broken since why would anyone want to mess with something they don't understand?
The one thing I liked about pvp is the ability to queue for scenarios (SC) anywhere. It's a button by your mini map so you just push it and you queue. Since your are deposited after the SC is over at the place where you accepted the SC ivnite you can complete quests while you wait. Which is very good because it takes forever for SC to pop since the servers are almost dead.
The SC themselves however suck. Despite the huge number of SC all of them fall into two basic types. One is where you roam around capturing places. Second you have to go somewhere and get something then bring it somewhere else. I admit though that their are a lot of details that distinguish each SC but if I had played longer then I would probably get tired of playing them. While they look nice and they are paths to every node you will fight over the maps are to small and the objectives are to close together. This means that the pvp goes zerg again as strategy falls apart leaving the only way to win is to zerg which is very effective. Hell I wonder why anyone would defend his/her teams conquests.
So what I am trying to say here is that WO combat blow. It's sticky, confusing, and pointless with no real strategy needed. All the pvp can do is have you kill indiscriminately everytime you step in a SC. Oh and don't bother with world pvp. While there are special parts of a zone where you can capture objectives they are guarded by elite npc's meaning that your attempts at soloing them are crushed which sort of makes sense to me. But the fact is that their is barely anyone on. I played server's with the highest number of people and they were at the low spectrum of medium. Making an MMORPG a pvp type of game is alright until you realize that you going to have to find someone to keep the population up or your game is fucked since no one wants to wait for long hours due to that lack of people.
STORY: QUESTS? MORE LIKE KILLING THE SAME BLOODY BEASTMEN!
lets start with something positive. I really like the Tome of Knowledge idea. Basically it's this book that you can read and you can fill it with your own exploits after achieving... Achievements. It's pretty cool since you get to have titles after certain achievements.
The problem is that if you press the back up on the tomb of knowledge to much then the screen becomes cluttered with dialogue from quests that just fill up the screen. Speaking as someone who likes to backtrack and then start reading my achievements anew this screwed up my Tome of Knowledge frequently for long amounts of time. The others problems have to do with the whole point. The only two things you can get out of the Tome of Knowledge that you will care about are the titles and the quests. That's it. You probably wont read the beastiary or any of the other features which in fact make the Tome kinda odd. What? Do I talk to every monster expert to know all about the monsters I kill. I don't recall doing that. Plus the story is filled in as you go along so there is no incentive to look for anything else, and it is uninteresting that all of the unlock all deal with going somewhere and killing something. Making the Tome of Knowledge seem kind pointless.
You've probably noticed by this point that I've said that most of WO features being pointless with the rest being so boring you'll fall asleep if you try them for a signifficant amount of time. The worst offender for this is the soloing which turned me off this game.
Grognard
There are two factions in WO. There is order which consists of (High) Elves, Dwarves, and the Empire ('good' humans). The distinction from other 'good' fantasy alliances is that the Order consists of a bunch of wimps. Seriously every different group is falling apart due to a mixture war and more war. While this may be interesting for a table top strategist, in MMORPG terms this means that every different town I visited was on the verge of falling apart or harbored refugees. I've visited so many indistinguishable refugee camps that I feel like I've done nothing this entire play through. Saving towns that are falling apart can be a good thing, when you actually feel like you've saved them. All I've really done the entire game is travel from place to place trying to help the inhabitants, but despite my help the situation was too bad for the town to be saved.
Sure this would have been interesting once, if this were another genre. You see Mythic, this is an MMORPG, and in an MMORPG's you kill a lot of guys. And when you kill so many people and do a lot of other stuff you would like to be acknowledged for you deeds. When you tell the player that he/she has spent a chunk a lot time hiking far distances, only for him/her to find out that he/she was done effectively squat then the person has the right to become pissed off.
You may be why I played Order then, in place of Destruction the evil side. Well in a desire to reduce paragraph space I'll list the characteristics of Destruction
Goth
Chaos: Servants of the Bird god Tzeentch, They rampage across the land to wage war against all who oppose him.
Greenskins: Crazy, war-minded creatures, their only goal in life is to fight and they are a plague on peaceful lands.
Dark Elves: After being cast out by their high elf kin the Dark Elves wage war against all life, primarily to gather slaves for brute labour while they live out their Hedonistic lifestyles.
Those sound good don't they? Well that's with the Warhammer back story, lets see how a new player unaware of their actual back story would think of them.
Chaos: Insane morons who worship ravens
Greenskins: extremely dumb green dudes who have terribly written quests that are done in leetspeak.
Dark Elves: Smug fuckers who will never, EVER, congradulate you.
Yeah Mythic aren't exactly the best writes (although they didn't exactly have a lot to build on). How the hell are we supposed to take these villains seriously? They do look scary if you start out as an Order player, but if you cross over you find out that you are fighting some of the dumbest creatures around.
I have decided to put off writing the big flaw in Warhammer so lets talk about Public quests.
Public quests (PQ) are group quests located outside of instances and they all involve separate waves which you have to complete in order to progress and complete the PQ so you can get your loot. The problem is that PQ are not well created. They all involve tons of grinding and there are a lot of them which makes it really hard to really feel like you're actually accomplishing anything. They are really a lot of them, the lowest I've ever seen were two, which is odd considering they feel more like the centerpieces of zones. The biggest problem is that instead of quests, a lot of the time you'll be sent to a PQ to get you interested in them. The game forgets however that you've fought these enemies before.
Gaffer
This is the single most annoying problem in Warhammer online and all your problems revolve around it. You're not doing anything unique. I know all MMORPG have grinds where you murder a bunch of guys and collect their stuff. But it is worst in WO since all the enemies are basically the same. At level 3 I fought Chaos raiders and Beastmen. At level 17 I fought Chaos Raiders and Beastmen, hell I fought the exact same types. They weren't even palette swapped and they fought in exatcly the same way. Hell all the creatures in Warhammer online rely soley on melee attacks, even the casters! The lack of ANYTHING interesting with the creatures I fought turned me completely since there was no way I would be willing to keep chopping through virtually identical creatures for days on end.
CONCLUSION:
Gron
There is nothing creative or excitting about playing WO. The lack of spark and variety in the abilities and the monsters makes one feel like they're playing some dude instead of a noble hero. I know the characters in WO are meant to feel like soldiers, but that just shows off the problem of WO since we play MMORPG to escape reality. And we can't escape to another world if that world is so boring it feels like work in the real world.
To be fair despite ranting and raving this entire review about all the problems in Warhammer it is still playable. If you really want to play WO then you could do well. But you would be the minority because Warhammer is still bad. It's not as good as WOW and it doesn't look as horrendous as Everquest (how was that game meant to be played?) it's just bad. WO is mediocre, average, uncreative and innovative. It isn't the worst MMORPG on the market, but I doubt that you will find it fun to play for an extended amount of time.
Verdict: rent it before deciding
Ps. Longest review on the Escapist ever! Do I get a prize?
