Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

[Jarnis]

Warhammer Online is the first serious attempt to take a bite out of the MMO market dominated Blizzard's juggernaut in a while. As we already noted in our first impressions, there is a real game in the box, and the initial verdict was mostly positive. Now YouGamers digs deeper and gives you some gory details after the first two weeks - does Warhammer Online deliver the goods? Read on to find out.

Full story: http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/207..._of_reckoning/

[Jarnis]

Update (27th September): We've added couple of additional sentences explaining Mastery trees (page 2), Temporary PvP level boost (page 2), Tactics (page 4) and some words about the shadows in the game (page 6). When finishing this massive review, some less important details just ended up left out in the rush to get the story out before the weekend. None of these additions change the conclusions or scoring in any way - they are just a bit of extra information to explain details for someone who hasn't played the game. We also added a clarification to the item loss chapter (page 8) specifying that the support problems relate to EU (GOA) servers. As far as I know, on the US servers Mythic has resolved any item loss issues much better.

Literally the best written, most complete review of a game I've read in two months. I will be returning to this site often because of it. Thank you.

[Hexus_Tech]

A fair assesment, I think the best way to sum it up is "Shows great promise".

So far I'm enjoying it, and I think if it's developed well it'll make a good 2nd place to WoW.

Anyone got sales numbers yet? I know 3-4 people IRL that have bought WAR and are former WoW players. I know another half dozen online who're waiting for WoTLK instead and then deciding if they want to switch.

[zed1138]

Good review Jarnis. It appears not much has changed since I played the beta, as all the flaws you point out were also there then.

An honest and fair review. The only tidbit I can really argue with is the RAM issue. I am running a 9600gt and C2D E6850 with 2GB of RAM under Vista (32-bit). Additionally I have all the settings (all what, 4?) maxxed as well as forced AA and AF and I do not experience that shuttering and such that the review describes. I do experience occasionally, typically one or two times for 5 seconds during an hour or two long gaming session, but not anywhere remotely near what is stated in the review, so as always, your milage may vary.

[Jarnis]

I guess it may depend on your exact system configuration, but in my tests on Vista, 2GB caused swapping. Only when the system had 3GB+ the game ran smoothly.

And in any case - the game executable does have a footprint smaller than 2GB, so it's down to the rest of the system if it gets all the RAM it needs without swapping. I still recommend more than 2GB RAM as the game is a memory hog.

Only one thing i'd like to point out regarding the option to do burst dps and panic buttons:
- there are classes in WAR that can for a moment break out high amount of burst dmg, they are the assassins Witch Elves and their counterparts, i do think that this is a very thing, because this is what makes their class unique
- as a healer i do have a panic button, and it's a morale talent, as i can see morale can influence a high dps burst aswell if you play a dps class.
I do not agree that the use of skills in pvp can fit a rotation, you need to use the skills depending on the situation in hand, and the game offers each class quite a few unique skills with some that can be combined as well.

Downside regarding the system requirements, it's a lot more costlier than WoW, i couldn't run it on the same box i usually play so i had to upgrade to a better Video Card as well as put up 4gb RAM so there would be no swapping.

Excellent in-depth review and, unfortunately, very much in-line with my thoughts. I would say that the killer for me were the animations. Damage numbers not matching the animations, pets and mobs teleporting, etc.

To add to my last post, I'd like to say that another thing that bothered me to no end was the bland and seemingly identical effects and damage many of the abilities seem to have. As a Magus, a lot of my spells so no use, whatsoever, simply because there was no trade-off between casting time, damage, secondary effects, or cost. Some spells were simply useless.