I've been playing Warhammer Online for practically the whole day now. I haven't even gotten to the Inevitable City yet. Maybe that's the Tier 4 area, who knows.
I feel a disconnect to my character. Perhaps it's because it's made as a throwaway, and I was trying out a melee dps class for the heck of it. Perhaps it's the lore of the Chaos side that is more or less faithful, yet warped. Perhaps it's the way the quest text is written - there's a nice lore bit at the top...and then a nice clearly written explanation below... which you normally just look at, and run with it.
One thing about open groups and public quests, they make for very brief touches of socialization, which you can leave at will. So you see the same people in your periphery for a bit, and then you depart. In a sense it becomes a bit lonely.
But then the alternative of getting a group together is also just as much of a pain. I joined my AoC guild group (vacationing in WAR) for a bit, and well, awkward. Seriously. Two guys are level 15, some other guy is level 11, and I'm level 12, and the two guys are running off to do their own thing, the level 11 is tearing off to do his own quests as well, and I'm left with the choice of following either party or doing my own quests as a third group.
I much rather the brief touches of people, and poof.
The only problem is then that there's nothing else to distract me from how I'm not super-thrilled with the running, the scenery and the combat.
My Chaos Marauder runs really awkwardly. With a THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD footfall. Sometimes I feel like I'm an inch away from Tzeentch's clutches because of the sound. It's almost as aggravating as Bloodymare: Requiem's. But just a touch less. By a hair.
Scenery-wise: Ok, it's not shabby. But it does feel WoW-ish ordinary and tight and confined after AoC's high-realism wide-vista textures. It also feels a touch artificial. At least in LOTRO, things felt placed naturally. Here in WAR as in WoW, you have the very clear demarcations between the next tier town and the next tier, and the next, etc.
It's seamless loading, except when switching to the next tier maps, but it also feels small and closed in as a result. I am having a serious immersion problem. Which bugs me. The graphics don't help me feel like I'm living in a world. I feel like I'm running a little avatar around on a Blizzard-style map, thinking strategically about the next guy coming over the hill. Kinda like playing DOTA in third-person view, rather than isometric.
Combat. *sighs* Maybe it's a month of "if you press the button, you're going to get an attack" habit. I've developed a tendency to spam push the 1, 2, 3 buttons. The wait times between skills are throwing me off. Not to mention the pathing has apparently fubared itself this patch (according to a guildie who has beta tested a while).
So my typical PvE combat involves me aggroing a mob by running up to it and pressing '4' for a melee skill. The mob proceeds to slide around a little, circumventing my next few button pushes, which either go through the combat animation and miss, or come up with a SKILL NOT RECHARGED error message in big capital complaint letters in the center of my screen.
I reposition by a step or two, hoping the mob can find me and will not get stuck. I push and wait, push and wait a couple of my debuff/damage and damage/DoT skills. Then once I'm sure the mob is not going shift around again, I hit my damage-channel skill to go into a axe-swing-hop animation which knocks down 3/4 of the mob's hp. And if it's still alive, and it usually is, I push and wait, push and wait, one or two of my basic damage attacks.
That's if combat goes well. I haven't covered all my failed attempts to pull - since the ranged attack has a casting progress bar and an animation flight time, and the mob has a tendency to either run away screaming, or not react until hit about 5 more times with that slow ranged attack, or try to run towards me for 3 steps before getting stuck, and deciding to go into evade mode. And of course, a 10% chance that they might come after you as desired.
I'm starting to miss AoC's pathing. At least there the mobs just fall through the floor or run through the wall, but they do find you and hit you if you give 'em a couple seconds.
I spent a while mucking around the first zone's RvR area. It had 3 battlefield objectives to capture. Which wasn't too bad. It being the first lowbie zone, there was a tendency for a zerg of either Order or Destruction to build up, and then sweep back and forth.
A nice touch was the inclusion of cannons at the entrance/exits of the RvR zone. So people who didn't want to be flagged RvR, or even go in and risk getting mauled, could contribute to the war effort by firing those cannons. Sorta like sniper play. And of course, there was a strategic element of "if the other side is charging towards your base", get out of there and run to the cannons to even the odds, sort of situation.
I'm having serious second thoughts about this sort of FPS play in an MMO though. A gear-based MMO. With potential class imbalances. Or at least, second thoughts about whether I find it enjoyable.
Helped along by a couple Order priests and bright wizards who seemed at the very top of the level tier, and practically invincible in their goodness-knows-what armor, and skill builds. This warrior priest gave about 4-5 of us a run for our money, just self-tanking/healing, and decimating 2-3 of us by himself. I'm not even sure how much use my supposed spell interrupt skill was - as the warrior priest's heal is apparently instant cast or something.
Yeah, well, I feel practically naked at the moment too. Which is odd, because the contribution ranking for public quests appear well skewed in damage class's favor. I have been doing extremely well for myself by joining public quests, and making use of all the plentiful tank classes to hold aggro (looks like they can't help but hold it) and going around to backstab mobs with ludicrous damage with my location-based skill. With a lucky roll or two, I've been making off with lots and lots of loot bags.
Alas, the loot bags only seem to cover areas like rings (accessories), the chest body armor, a belt, boots and gloves. Ditto quest rewards.
I didn't find a pair of shoulder guards until getting to the next zone's quests. I'm still missing helmet and necklace, I think. And each level I gain is obsoleting more and more of the equipment.
Heck, I can't even find a vendor that sells armor. Let alone someone selling anything decent.
By killing a few umpteen boars and beasts, random green armor drops occassionally, broken, which must be repaired by a vendor before wearing. It's not too bad, but it's competing on the same slots as the other reward armors.
Meanwhile, I see all these other people decked out to the gills in RvR, and I get grumpy. According to said guildie mentioned above, the best armor for the level comes from the pvp (er, RvR) area, sold in a keep (which must be taken by your side), at level 14, and renown rank 8.
Ok. That's all very well. My foray into the first area got me to renown rank 8, but I'm only level 12. It sorta depresses me that I have to meanwhile run around half naked doing MORE systematic kill quests, clink clonging, wondering if I had a better weapon, whether it would take this long.
It's either that or try and level via RvR against uber-buffed knowledgeable old beta players who are out to gank clueness preview weekend n00bs.
I'm not sure how far my pain tolerance stretches either way.
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