Warhammer Beta Review

So the NDA finally dropped and articles are popping up all over with info from beta, so I might as well jump on board =)

I was rather lucky to get into beta quite early, around may 2007; and way back then it was still quite fun, especially the low level PVP zones, and that was what made me think this game will be a huge success.  Since then, Warhammer has received an incredible amount of polish and new features.  Despite the recent cuts there is still a huge amount of content in the game, and it is very fun to play through.

Personally, I am not much of a PVE person, so I am mostly interested in the PVP aspect of WAR.  But, even though I normally detest leveling in PVE, in Warhammer I often found it quite fun.  The public quest system is genius and will definitely be copied in all future MMORPGs; having a quest activate for you just by joining the area, allowing you to participate with others and have a short storyline unfold in front of you is wicked.

My favorite Public Quest so far is in the Greenskin Tier 2 zones.  It starts off when you enter this dark cave that has all these spectyres in it.  The first stage of the quest requires you to kill 50 spectyres, which i began doing alone; once I had killed around 40 or so i noticed some were being killed not by me, and found another person in the cave who also started doing it; we teamed up and after the 50th spectyre died, we had to collect 20 items in the cave, to lure out the boss spectyre.  That part went quite quickly between the two of us.

Finishing stage 2 of the quest, the boss spectyre appeared, which was quite cool to fight and a little challenging with just the 2 of us; but partway through the first a third person showed up (did i mention public quests rock); we stomped the spectyre boss, and then a wall in the back cave fell away to reveal a tunnel; inside it were 7 dwarven barricades we had to get through (little sandbag walls with 4 dwarves each behind em), with a short 10 minute deadline to complete it; so we charged through the tunnel wiping out each of the barricades just before the time would expire.  The next stage of the public quest had us come out of the tunnel and into a large underground cavern with a tower inside it, and 3 dwarf heros below; we had to kill the 3 dwarf heros to gain access to the tower.  After we killed them the tower door opened up and inside was the dwarf lord, the final boss of the PQ, which we got to slay and finally get access to the treasure for the PQ.

The concept of moving through the real world, as a tiered quest that others can join along the way just makes the game very enjoyable to play, even for cynics to PVE like me =)

Of course, the main feature for Warhammer for a lot of people will be the PVP/RVR, and that is where the game really shines.  There is 3 main types of PVP available in Warhammer that i’ve found: Scenarios, Open RVR, and Keep battles.

Scenarios are instanced, limited fights; very similar in concept to World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds.  Originally I was quite skeptical of scenarios, I do not like the idea of instanced PVP; but I found it to work quite well in Warhammer for a few situations.  One is that it is a great way to break up PVE leveling; you can queue for a scenario from anywhere, and when its ready you can hop into it, participate in some nice PVP fights, and then when you’re done it dumps you back to where you were, allowing you to continue leveling.  Another use of scenarios is to avoid the sometimes zergy standoffs that can occur, if world RVR is not as exciting as it should be at the moment, you can hop into a scenario for some different type of fighting; and unlike WoW which only offers 3 different battlegrounds, Warhammer will have 40 different ones at launch, and likely be adding more in the future.

Next up is Open World RVR, and this is really my favorite type of fighting.  It can be unfair sometimes, but the unpredictability of it and the on-edge nature of it makes it very fun to me.  Open RVR is excellent in Warhammer because the game is designed from the ground up to support it.  Along with 3 different fronts for you to explore for fighting, each front is broken up into zones and you can take control of, moving the fight forward as you gain ground on your enemy.  Each zone is also setup intelligently to support Open RVR, with several objectives you want to take in each zone, such as Keeps and Battlefield Objectives.

I’ve had some amazingly fun fights in beta in Open RVR, especially as there is quite a few knockback type skills and the terrain in WAR is really incredible to fight in; lots of rocks, cliffs, ledges, trees etc to try and use to your advantage; my favorite fight so far in Open RVR was in a Tier 4 Dark elf vs High elf zone called Dragonwake, which has these steep cliffs leading up to high ground where the keeps are, and large lakes of water down below them.  We were losing as destruction and about 5 of us were coming up a side of the cliff while another 10 order were coming down, and we would have got stomped but I managed to push 5 of them off the cliff with “Gedoff!”, an offensive shaman skill you can get that knocks enemies back; 5 went flying down into the water below and we were able to win our fight on the ledge, then swoop down and finish off the ones trying to swim out of the water.

And finally there is Keep RVR, which I unfortunately did not find as much fun in beta as I was hoping, but I really think Keep battles need guilds to be fun; attempting to take or defend a keep with no organization or communication is not much fun; and I think at release once some real guilds get in this type of fighting will be much more enjoyable; especially if your guild owns the keep, as protecting it means that much more to you then.  Still, Keep fighting is quite interesting, you have 4 different type of seige weapons available, and there is lots of nice tricks and tactics available to you; and keeps are a quite recent addition to the game, so I expect them to be improved and more polished at release or shortly following.

To sum up my experiences I would say this game is a blast.  The PVE aspect of it is great, much better than I anticipated.  The PVP is of course awesome.  PVP is so dynamic in nature that it can keep you entertained for a long while, and warhammer has so many PVP options and such variety in where and how you can fight I think this game will be a huge success.

Congrats Mythic, and thanks for the enjoyable year of beta testing =)