Please note I'm playing Warhammer Online on max settings and I'm a level 23 Witch Elf.
This is a personal review, i will rant and swear.
As well i won't go into classes as you know what the dam classes are and the only unique class is Squid Herder which is basically a Hunter with a pet.
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Character Creation: The character creation is pretty basic, it follows all other MMO's, It does look abit nicer as it shows what you're character will be wearing when it reaches the max level cap, or what you should be wearing at that level.
There isn't much character look customization at all, a few scars, hair styles and color is what you can expect. Nothing crappy or bad about this at all it's you're normal character creation thingy.
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Order & Destruction: This is where the game really starts to slow down, naturally everyone is tired of the common "Humans" "Dwarves" and "Elves" so everyone has made Destruction characters because well, there's no "Chaos"in other games at all and the other Destruction races look far cooler and more intimidating than the others, besides it's WAR it's all about destroying stuff and Destruction is just so much more evil.
The main problem is the unbalance for capturing Keeps, you can capture Keeps anytime you want and siege them with siege equipment, you will need a large group etc. Order just doesn't have enough players to defend these keeps at all and right now i play as destruction and well we have every Keep possible except the capital city... so go figure. Another problem is the keeps just switch, it seems like one Order Guild will just go through all 20 keeps in a day then the next day a Destruction will just do the same thing back, really it's mostly you fighting NPC's in sieges.
In all Destruction outnumbers order like crazy, they are offering EXP and RP extra points for Order players at least.
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Realm vs Realm: Realm vs Realm is Order vs Destruction on OPEN RVR servers you can attack the opposite Realm anywhere some have certain locations. Warhammer is built on RVR it is pure RVR. So the loving problem here is that there is practically no RVR going on! Everyone is to busy leveling to the max by just jumping into scenarios (Will get to scenarios after, oh boy). No one cares if a Keep is under attack it's all about themselves, I've seen people sit in there Cities or Camp areas while we where attacking they didn't even bother defending at all just kept waiting for scenarios ugh.
So the problem is quite solvable, well you just gotta wait about a year before everyone is max level and has all there crazy gear. Maybe then you'll see more RVR, so it's a waiting game till then which i probably wont stay for.
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Scenarios: Ok this is the biggest loving bullstuff ever in a MMO, well that I've played. Scenarios are basically maps that you join and fight other players for Renown Points and EXP, yes you get exp and a lot. The games last about 5-10 minutes you get about 500 RP points and I'd say 5k+ EXP points each round, at least i do. So whats the problem?
Wellllll! The entire questing is ignored, no one does the public quest, no one goes anywhere they all sit in the cities waiting to join the next scenario. Now later when you hit about level 10 it's gonna take you about 10+ minutes of actual moving around killing stuff running back etc. So who wants to do that when you can just idle there alt tab and wait for the Scenario that;'ll give you RENOWN Points and a lot of EXP, you get more in scenarios than you do doing quest.
This my people is the main thing wrong with WAR, everyone sits in scenarios and scenarios are a mess everyone runs around etc, my boyfriend and i use teamspeak just so we have a chance together somewhat even they it's a clusterforget. This needs super fixing of god right now.
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PVP: War is all about killing other players what could possible be wrong? Nothing at all when you're fighting 1 vs 1.
War was men't for fighting other huge clans/groups. Anytime a group of about 30+ people meet against each other everyone stands facing each other shooting spells back and forth, if anyone moves outta the line you're getting picked off making Melee classes kinda useless for this. The second one group actually attacks the other group the other group runs and scatters, I'm loving serious watch a few Youtube videos you're see people mocking this. Groups just scatter and its over like that, people are so dumb that they run the second anyone moves in.
I don't know how to fix this but i guess this whole RVR thing is kinda new to most people so i guess they haven't learnt the tactics yet.
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PVE: The PVE is actually really well done, they have these things called public quest that anyone can join in on at anytime and help out, you get a score at the end and win some fineee loot depending on what place you finished you get a better bag of stuff.
That's great and all but uh, you actually need other people to do these Public Quest, no one is around doing any of these quest, 90% of the time you'll be doing a lower-end Public Quest by yourself.
In all PVE is what you expect it's done fine and the addition of Public Quest is nice, to bad it isn't being used at all though.
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Community: Ya when one of you guys find a community outside of a Guild please uh contact me, honestly there is none. Theres not even a huge gathering area where everyone just hangs out really. Everyone is off somewhere else doing who knows what, or they are idle doing!! Just guess, seriously if you said Scenario's good job.
(^ forget scenarios)
Bottom line there is no community yet, probably because of these stupid scenarios and everyone is just trying to level.
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Visuals/Bugs: Ok the game looks fine, it isn't amazing but it's a MMO so they couldnt go insane with the visuals. The only way i can explain the visuals are... take WoW's graphics, but make the visuals look more mean and serious and realistic and darker colors and you have WAR it looks a lot better than WoW by many standards i find. (Google Warhammer Online and check photos if you're still curious duh)
Bugs are uh... plentiful... They aren't harmful at all, many of them are just basic annoying stuff. There's a lot of getting stuck on logs mainly logs that are down and or getting stuck on random stuff. The worse thing that i've had happen was my spells not working. The worse some people have are crashes but they patches that crap like 5 times now so i think it's fixed.
Many people say War is super buggy when it really isn't true, most of the bugs are getting stuck bugs which you can just /stuck yourself out.
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Conclusion!:
War is really fun, you'll find it refreshing, you're going to question the dev team sometimes especially with these scenarios where you don't even have to leave the starting area and you could possibly get max level. (You can recover some good loot in scenarios as well).
Nothing is really weighing WAR down, this is in fact the best time to join just because everyone is near level 20-40ish and is still leveling, this way you can join a open RVR Server and not get killed 24/7. Where as in the future you'll be missing out on all the cool stuff while you level ----> alone <---- (Cough Age of Conan cough).
In the end I'd say if you want to play WAR for what it's truly supposed to be wait about 8 months to a year. WAR will be at it's full potential then.
On the other hand if you start now you will have people to do PVE with and you wont be missing out on all the awesome Capital City Sieges.
For 50$ and a free 30days it's a fair deal i'd say and a good break.
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If you read all this give yourself a pat on the back. If you can't read how did you even get here, and if you don't like the f word and it hurt you, go cry (Chaseyqurt).
