Topic: Anyone interested in Warhammer: AOR?

[ScaryTooth]

I'm really tempted to check it out. But I don't want to get sucked into another MMO. It looks, and sounds pretty dope though.

[idolminds]

I am. Kinda. I just don't want to pay to play right now.

[Quemaqua]

Not I.  I've heard it's basically just the same MMO you've been playing for years with a new coat of paint.  Which is totally fine, and that wouldn't even be a huge issue for me since I haven't played a ton of MMOs, but it means there isn't anywhere near enough potential for it to be worth me paying EA money.  Not even close.

[W7RE]

I have the collector's edition preordered, which comes with a 4 day head start. That starts sunday morning at 7 am. I have snacks, microwavable foods,a nd drinks set aside so I don't have to leave my pc for a few days except to shit and (maybe) piss. This game is part of the reason I've been upgrading my pc lately. New video card, more ram, new monitor, I'm even headed out in a minute to buy a new comfy chair. I may get some new headphones too, mine are flimsy little behind the head ones.

The PvE leveling process plays a lot like WoW. The PvP has scenarios (like WoW battlegrounds), but the PvP focus is the RvR and keep sieges, which plays out more like Alterac Valley, except much better designed and on a much more epic scale. Each leveling zone (or tier) has 2 zones 2 opposing races. You can't attack eachother in PvE areas unless you manually flag yourselves, but there's a big area in the middle that is specifically for PvP. There's battleground objectives where you kill one semi-tough npc and any players nearby, then capture the location. At tier 2 and above, there's keeps that you need siege equipment to break into and then you have to fight through the door, which usually becomes a choke point. Tanks in this game can actually block that door too, since there's collision detection in PvP.

I was in a tier 2 keep fight in beta the other day. Our side had around 30-40 people and the enemy had 50-60. When we would manage to push them back closer tot he keep, they would go inside and stand up on the walls throwing fireballs and shit down on us, so we would setup siege equipment and blast them all. Eventually we fought our way in and took the keep, where we gained access to the PvP gear vendors.



What I like about this game is it's not afraid to be violent and dark. After playing the WAR beta, then logging back into WoW, it seems overly bright and colorful. I guess you could say WoW is normal and WAR is dull, but WoW just looks pastel to me now. And it's nice to finally have some good PvP, which WoW has been lacking since level 60. I never did like arena, and only did it because I wnted to get the mount and because friends kept bugging me about it. WAR is much more casual in nature. You log in, check the map to see where there's fighting going on, and wander over looking for a fight. If that's not going on, queue up for a scenario while looking for people to fight. When you get out of the scenario, you get put right back where you left off, so you don't have to run back again.

[ScaryTooth]

Are there single player quests though? Like WoW?

I heard there are puzzles in the game too, which sounds pretty sweet.

[W7RE]

Yea, there are single player quests. When you start off there's a couple quests in your immediate viscinity. "go kill X number of this monster or that" The area where the monsters are will have a red highlight around it on your map. You go kill them, come back, etc. Just like WoW. You can, at level 1, queue for the battleground for your starting area through an icon on the minimap. When you enter the battleground (which is for levels 1-11), you will get a "bolster" buff that raises your stats to that of a level 8 player. You don't get your new spells or armor, but you get higher base stats to allow you to at least compete. You could go through the whole game and never PvP probably, you'd just have to be careful you who interact with, because for example, healing someone who's flagged for pvp will make you flag as well.

Puzzles? I'm not sure. I did find an area where I had to run through a bunch of higher level mobs to get to a series of floating rock to jump across. It eventually led to a portal that would transport you to random cool looking places for a few seconds. You could call the floating rocks a jumping puzzle. Oh, there's also a series of runes on the ground in the tier 1 pvp zone, one rune for each class in the game (both order and destruction). Supposedly if you get someone from each class to stand on the proper runes, it will open a lair nearby. Lairs are hidden dungeons (possibly instances, I'm not sure) that I think contain bosses.

There's also Public Quests. You'll wander into an area and get a message across your screen telling you the name of the PQ and you'll get an objective tracker near your minimap. Usually it's kill 50 of some type of monster or another. Kills from anyone in the area count, so it doesn't take too long if there's a decent number of people. Then phase 2, which usually has some objective involving either killing Champion monters (like elites in WoW), or grabbing items that Champion level monsters will attack you for touching. Then the last stage usually has a Hero type monster (one step above Champion) to kill. After all that's done, a loot chest appears and people get a random 1-999 roll, which gets up to 500 added to it depending on how much they contributed during the quest. Then a 2 minute timer counts down to when it starts again.

Also, participating in a PQ gives you Influence as you kill stuff and heal people, etc. Influence is like WoW's reputation system, except that it takes 3-4 times through a public quest to max it out, and there's a different rep for each PvE quest hub. You get rewards at 33%, 66%, and 100% Influence levels. The low ones are potions for a while, then at higher levels they start becoming talismans (they work like gems in WoW do). The 66% and 100% rewards are armor and weapons usually, sometimes of blue and purple quality at higher levels (the item coloring system is the same as WoW's).

[W7RE]

I posted some screenshots in this new thread to avoid giving this one a 56K warning.

The first batch are from a keep siege, and then another keep that wasn't being attacked.

Also, I posted some screenshots of me messing with the dye system. Copied from that thread: In retail there's supposed to be like 100 different dye colors, the best of which will require high renown rank (pvp rank), or have to be crafted by players. When you dye an item, you can apply the dye to the "first area" or "second area", which usually means the base area, and the border/detal. So if you get a new piece of armor and don't like the color (god this happens so much in WoW while leveling), you can just go change it.

[ScaryTooth]

Thats pretty sweet. I'm interested in it, and I'd at least like to check it out.

[PyroMenace]

Well like most new MMOs that come out there's tons of talk about it and then POOF! it vanishes, just like this did. Is this another WoW vacation or are people still sticking with it? My friends that were playing it are now back to playing WoW and he kept egging me on to buy it but I decided to wait and see what would happen, as far as I can tell there's no reason to anymore.

[Dragonlor]

The only mmo that i have been able to fully leave wow for is EvE.  Mainly because it's a totally different type of game.

[PyroMenace]

Oh yea? It is extremely different. I tried it out... well sort of, it was so different from your traditional MMO I couldnt even understand it. I had little comprehension of how I was supposed to create my character or what all the attributes and factions meant or worked toward so I quit shortly after I had gotten to the actual game.

[idolminds]

Well like most new MMOs that come out there's tons of talk about it and then POOF! it vanishes, just like this did. Is this another WoW vacation or are people still sticking with it? My friends that were playing it are now back to playing WoW and he kept egging me on to buy it but I decided to wait and see what would happen, as far as I can tell there's no reason to anymore.

The problem is WoW has so much momentum that its nearly impossible to break people from it. The WoW players have to relearn everything and start from scratch in WAR. They have no attachment to their characters because they haven't played them nearly as long as their WoW ones. So they are more likely to go back to WoW because they already have the knowledge of it, the characters, the time invested, etc.

Not saying its impossible, but its a huge hurdle.

[iPPi]

I have invested so much time and money into WoW that I have no desire to stop the game and start a new one.  Just too grounded into WoW.

[Quemaqua]

I think that's what it comes down to for most people.  I never invested as much, so even though I really do love the setting and art style and everything else, other MMOs can seem equally if not a great deal more exciting.  My problem is it's hard to find the time for MMOs, or to play them consistently over a long period of time.  I just have way too much other shit to play, and I am not at all the type of person to pigeonhole myself and suddenly think there isn't anything worth experiencing outside of that.  On the contrary, I get most of my inspiration from moving between games and settings and having my imagination constantly stimulated.

That said, it's really tempting to go back to WoW.  There's so much I haven't seen now, so much that's changed... I'm thinking that at some point it's going to become necessary for idol and I to just say fuck it and go get the expansions, go back, and just play the hell out of it for maybe a month or two.  I don't think I'll be able to hold off forever.

And I must admit... I do miss my character.  How long do they keep those around, anyway?

[iPPi]

Forever.  WotLK midnight release Wednesday.  I'm going to that.

[W7RE]

I hate to admit it but despite my enthusiasm for Warhammer, I went back to WoW. I'm about a month through my 2 month prepaid time card and haven't touched it in 3-4 weeks. Of course a big part of that is due to not knowing anyone willing to give Warhammer a try, and the fact that they all still play WoW. I also got to try the WoW beta and fell in love with the Ddeath Knight, so I'm rolling one at midnight this wednesday when the game comes out.

[angrykeebler]

None of my guildmates or other WoW friends went to WAR so neither did I.

[Dragonlor]

It's going to be really hard for another company to create a game that will pull the attention from WoW.  Blizzard is a genius company when it comes to advertising and keeping its players playing their games.  Take starcraft and Diablo for example, even today lots of rpg and rts games are still compared to the two of them.  In fact a lot of rpgs imitate the style of Diablo.  It will have to take one awesome game to pull people from WoW.  In fact it will probably have to take another game from Blizzard entertainment themselves to pull players from that game.