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 Post subject: Warhammer Online Preview Weekend review
PostPosted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 1:24 am 
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Graycode wrote:
I'm sure many of you were as sad as I was Monday morning when the message popped up across the servers: "The server is being taken down in 5 minutes for maintenance. Please find a safe place to log off!". Finally all of the slackers at Mythic had rolled back into the office and decided it was time to finish their game. The Warhammer Online (WAR) preview weekend had come to a close.

This was my first experience with WAR, and though there appear to still be a couple of wrinkles to iron out before release I can say I'm very encouraged. During the preview I sampled about a half-dozen of the twenty classes expected at release, and for those of you who didn't have a chance to join us I thought I would take a moment to offer some observations on what Mythic is doing right, where they could use some fine tuning, and the annoyances I hope are fixed prior to launch in a few weeks (Interns are you listening?!?).

First, the things they are doing right:

Stability: The beta software downloaded perfectly and installed without a hitch. The game never froze, the servers never crashed, and there were no lag spikes. This is exceptionally rare, and it is certainly the one area in which the games prior to WAR have tragically failed. I don't care if your rendering engine was hand-written by Carmack, the second your servers fail the entertainment value becomes zero and I move on. Personally, I believe this accomplishment far surpasses anything they could have displayed on my screen this weekend.

Hybrids that are... Hybrids: The Warrior Priest is a good example of a supportive healing class. However, to finance the cost of his heals, the priest must earn healing points by dealing melee damage. The Archmage, another support class, is also encouraged to find a balance between healing and damage dealing, since her damaging spells become more powerful after long periods of healing and her healing spells become linearly more potent after every consecutive damage spell she casts. Though I have not yet seen the endgame, I imagine this will prevent the hybrid classes from stumbling down the inevitable "heal-bot road" we often see in other MMOs.

Diverse Class Mechanics: Regarding gameplay, what I found very refreshing across all of these classes was how they each naturally enforced a unique playstyle. Rather than simply giving every character a mana pool and assigning costs to their various abilities, the cost mechanic for spells are usually managed through some aspect of the player's behavior. Other games have ventured into this as well via combo points or rage for example, but not to the extent that it appears WAR has. Shaman Waaagh!, Chosen aura weaving, Maurader stances, Ironbreaker grudges, Swordmaster balances, Sorcerer backlash, and all the other mechanics I have yet to deeply investigate provide a lot of promise for interesting battles and high replayability.

No Downtime: Out-of-combat regeneration is very fast, and between fights there is little need to rest before jumping back into the fray or starting the next pull. In fact, there is no concept of eating or drinking at all in WAR.

Leveling Through PvP: Tired of killing giant rats? Then don't and gain experience points by killing your friends or annoying prepubescent SCREAMS-INTO-THE-MIC players.

Collision Detection: While I must admit I didn't like the sound of it at first, I have already seen instances where it has made combat very interesting. I once encountered a Black Orc chasing one of my Bright Wizard allies down a hallway, just a few smacks from finishing him. As a Warrior Priest I threw some heals on the wizard and was able to jump in front of the orc just in time. Since we were at a choke point the orc couldn't get past me and was eventually forced to switch targets. With some stubborn footwork (don't call me fat, ok?) and heals, I was able to withstand enough damage to allow the wizard to nuke down our enemy.

Double Targeting: As it was when Blizzard finally implemented target-of-target, this is one gameplay mechanic that we will someday look back on and wonder how we ever played a game without it. Everyone can select both an offensive target and a defensive target and maintain them simultaneously in the UI. All damaging/debuff skills will be automatically applied toward the player's offensive target, and likewise all healing/buff spells will be applied to the defensive target, without ever having to switch. I know that some games try to implement this via a "focus", but the system afforded in WAR makes it much more manageable. Further, it allows for more creativity in combat design, as some skills will have an effect on both of your targets at once.

Public Quests and Looting: No more LFG sadness. See a quest going on and join it - even jump in the middle of a boss fight. Once it's finished it will begin again, and each time you will be rewarded based on your contribution. Loot is handled in a fair and somewhat novel way. After the encounter is over, your personal contribution to the fight will factor in a bonus to your automatic random roll value. If you score highly enough, you will be eligible for a loot reward in the form of a pouch. Opening the pouch later then will present eight "random" rewards from which you may choose one. This greatly raises the chances of getting a drop that will be useful to you - rather than having a boss drop two blue items that must be distributed across a raid, they essentially drop twenty-six items of which three may be chosen.

Next, the things that still need work:


PvE: Still quite buggy at this point. Mobs sometimes path in the wrong direction, or fail to attack you at all. Once we had a public quest boss that would reset back to full health every few seconds during the encounter - it didn't end well.

Polish: There is a reason that Blizzard ends up the best-in-show time and time again, and polish is their key. It can be seen in every aspect of their games; from graphics to gameplay, World of Warcraft (WoW) is as solid as they come. The things that they cannot get perfect they opt to dumb down to a more common denominator. For example, while I don't believe anyone could speak ill of WoW's artistic style, it's truly a testament to their creativity to do so much with so few polygons. Likewise, when dynamic shadows proved to be ahead of their time, Blizzard chose to go with very simple gray ovals. WAR has made some improvements, and with that taken some risks. While I would say in reference to the other WoW challengers that Mythic is near the top of their league, I'm interested in seeing them tightening things down a bit. To be fair, WoW has added polish and fine-tuning with each patch over the past three years -- something WAR should emulate.

And finally, a handful of annoyances: Understandably, every piece of software will have some design decisions that do not gel. Here are my first issues with WAR, which I hope are addressed pre-launch:

Camera Issues: "Follow on movement" cannot be turned off, so if you're running on auto-run and try to pan the camera behind you (via left-click & drag) to see that Black Orc gaining on you, the camera will automatically pivot back around to face forward when you let go of the mouse button. It's eternally frustrating, and almost game-breaking in PvP for my playstyle.

Interface Disabled on Death: When you die in Realm vs. Realm (RvR) combat, a respawn timer comes up that disables all mouse interface. No panning the camera around to see if your friends have avenged you. No referencing the Tome of Knowledge. No double-checking cooldowns. Nothing. This means that for about 15 seconds out of every 2 minutes, I am bored.

No cross-faction scenarios?: I never made it to Tier 2, but from what I could see of Tier 1 scenarios, you were pretty much limited to a given scenario depending on your race/class. As an Archmage it appeared my only scenario option was Khaine's Embrace, where I never saw an Ironbreaker. As an Ironbreaker my only option seemed to be Gates of Ekrund, where I never saw an Archmage (though other elven classes were there). This means that even though we're the same faction, I won't be able to team up on my Archmage with my friends who roll Ironbreakers?

And please, please stop making my character yelp every time I jump. If Ironforge has proven anything, the space bar is the most critical interaction in an MMO. Don't make it annoying.

In the end, this weekend preview has only increased my anticipation for the upcoming beta on Sept. 7th (final release is scheduled for Sept. 18th), where I will hopefully be able to dig a little deeper into the game. Until then, I guess I'll just have to keep killing murlocs... MRAURRUGRAR!

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