On the Subject of Warhammer

Doutzen Kroes

I happened to get into the latter stages of the closed beta, and the preview weekend or whatever it's being called is currently under way, and so far I have mixed feelings about Warhammer. Mostly a mixture of different negative feelings, it has to be said.

Firstly, I loath the art style. The cartoony WoW thing leaves me absolutely cold. It's even more pronounced, and therefore bad, in Warhammer than it was in LotRO. I will say that it at least seems to be consistent, but overall it's not a world in which I wish to spend time. Personally I'm much more for a realistic style like AoC, although I'd prefer a proper, seamless Vanguard-style world. I'm not even sure if Warhammer's world is seamless, I haven't spent enough time in it to reach any sort of zone junction.
At least in Warhammer they've attempted to "sex up" the female characters. Well, the evil ones anyway. Although it's difficult to be titillated by a sexed-up cartoon character. But it leads to perhaps the most impressive aspect of WAR's design philosophy, which is that there's a big emphasis on making the player characters look cool. That is something AoC could really learn from since at level 56 (yes, still), my Priestess looks little different to how she looked at level 5, which is to say scruffy and poor. It's a well-known fact that the NPCs in Conan have the best-looking armour.

Technically WAR falls squarely into the "simple graphics to run on as many computers as possible" camp. While a strong art direction (even if it's one I don't like) can overcome a lot of technical limitations, the WAR world still looks like a 5-year-old toy town. And while the zealots might claim the graphical options are currently limited prior to release, a shitty model with high-res textures is still a shitty model. None of the screens I've seen, even those which are supposed to represent the full-on splendour of the release game, look even remotely impressive. They're certainly a long way behind AoC, irrespective of game play differences.

Speaking of game play, well WAR is unashamedly a PvP game so it's a bit pointless to criticise it for that. However, some self-confessed PvP fans still attempt to claim that the game also has compelling PvE, and that's where I disagree. From what I've seen of it, the PvE is unutterably tedious and repetitive. It's not really surprising, because it's not the focus of the game. One exception is the inclusion of "public quests" which are just little, global scenarios that you can take part in, or not, as you wish. You don't even have to group, although it was quite common for ad-hoc groups to form during the quests just to making healing and focus a bit easier. I will say that the public quests were definitely the highlight of my time in WAR. Although after 2 or 3 repetitions of a given quest it starts to feel a little meaningless.
As an interesting aside, from what I know of Guild Wars 2 it sounds like that will feature similar "shared" world-event scenarios, and I look forward to seeing how that works out because I'm much more likely to want to play GW2 than I currently am WAR.

I did do a PvP "mission", and it was predictably chaotic and dull. Like a PvP version of public quests, only less fun. The thing is, while AoC gets a lot of (deserved) criticism for lack of content, WAR will probably get away with it because, as I've said before, in a PvP game the players are the content. As long as there's somewhere you can go and take part in a battle, who cares if there aren't enough quests to make PvE self-sufficient?

On the subject of criticism, it turns out Mythic won't be running official forums. I wonder why. Well, I don't really, it's obviously because they've seen what a shower of shit the forums became for both AoC and Vanguard before it. It can't be nice for the developers to see their own forums full of bitching and complaints and often just plain insults. It does, however, mean that there will be no concentrated focus point for all the inevitable whining about class balance and exploits and bugs and hacks that will undoubtedly plague WAR. That might dilute the vitriol to the point where it appears as if WAR is simply a better game than those which allow the unwashed masses to have their say on an official forum. It doesn't mean those issues won't exist. The downside to a PvP game is really the people it attracts. Hacks and exploits are always more common in a game that promotes competition between players, even if they're not exactly unheard of in PvE either. But more than that, the PvP population includes some of the whiniest, most clueless, self-obsessed little bitches in all of MMO-dom. Just have a look at the AoC forums, and check out how many of the loudest complainers, the most self-righteous quitters, the most aggressive and nasty and illiterate posters come from PvP servers. It's the vast majority.

And that is the single reason I hope WAR turns out to be a big success, because it will suck up all those worthless, wretched, vacuous little shits and give games like AoC some room to breathe.

Thought for the Day - Gemma Atkinson

An extended Thought for the Day, straight from the "where are they now?" file. And by "they", I mean her lovely jubblies, naturally.

Conan Watch #5

Nadine Velazquez

Still hanging in there, maintaining my traditionally slow and steady advance through the mid levels of the game. Pinged a whopping 56 today, but I'm starting to hit the content gaps that people have been whining about for months already.

Level 50 basically means advancing to the Eiglophian Mountains, but while arriving in previous hubs has meant a quest log chock-full of XP-tastic quests, they've turned out to be a bit thin on the ground here. In the lower valley you get the usual run-of-the-mill kill quests, fighting cannibals in the 51-52 range. So far so good. There are "Wanted Posters", essentially repeatable bounty hunts which are the same as Vanguard's "Missives", but which give a pitiful XP reward. It's not long until you run out of quests in the lower valley, and head up the hill. The odd thing is, the mobs suddenly jump to the 54-57 range, and then further up still they're 58-60+. It would be nice if there was more to do in the lower valley, to at least get you up to speed with the next section. Having to beat mobs and especially bosses with their associated adds 5+ levels above you gets old fast. And then when you're done with those mobs, you're still several levels short of the next destiny quest (60), and the subsequent hubs.

Adding new zones to provide extra content is, of course, a substantial undertaking. What's odd about the mountains is that while an alternative 50+ zone would be nice it wouldn't hurt to simply add a few more quest lines within the existing zone.

So now I'm at 56, the next quest in my log is to beat a 60 boss within a camp of level 60 Vanir, which is just slightly beyond what my poor Priestess is capable of. At least solo. But then if I coasted through it in a group, what next? I'd still be a few levels down on where I need to be to progress to the next zone.

Even before I hit the mountains, and after the relatively good Field of the Dead, I made a new Guardian to pass the time. She had a pretty fun time in Tortage, although it wasn't particularly exciting the second time round. I miss the multiple, varied starting zones Vanguard offers. Unfortunately I'm not that keen on the Guardian class itself, at least not so far. It seems strange that the primary tank class in the game has absolutely no self-heals or buffs so far. Naturally they can take a lot more punishment than a clothy healer, but it's all a bit one-way. No heals, not great DPS, it's all about getting and holding aggro which is fair enough, but in a game which is fairly solo-oriented before end-game it doesn't feel like a particularly rounded class. While I wish the Priest of Mitra was a better healer, the fact is it works pretty well as a solo class.

Anyway if I can't be bothered to push through the final stages of the mountains, I might head back to Conall's with the Guardian and see how it develops.