Okay- Hi everyone its time for a dork moment.
I played World of warcraft from a month after release, for a whole year or so, then quit for nine months.
I got several characters pretty damn far, spent hours... days... perfecting builds and equipping my toon perfectly.
I was also fairly active in the community, I tried to influence the players and developers to unbreak shamans :P and stop fucking over paladins, but that's besides the point (please notice that they continue to nerfadin even after both sides get paladins... gay.)
What I was PROMISED from the freaking BOX and early development press was REAL PVP, as in I would go to someone's town, start some shit, and screw up their livlihood.
... It never happened. Eventually PvP became more than optional- it became a waste of time. Making quest givers invulnerable... "dishonorable kills" and even systems to completely castrate you and your buddies therefore making them completely ball less and giving them no reason to get together and fuck shit up in a major stronghold. Instead of making it worth your time to kill a king, they give you... rankings... tournaments... fruity ass arenas.
Now, I'm looking at Warhammer Online.
It not only promises all the coolness, asskickery and community that Warcraft seemed to offer but it also delivers what was PROMISED
OPEN WARFARE WITH ACTUAL REWARDS.
As in after a long campaign of resource wars, quest related objectives, terrain grabbing, and just crazy incidental warfare
You go into your enemy's capital- jack shit up, pillage the town, rob the kingdom's coffers, and brutalize the royalty.
FUCK YEAH!
There was NO point to killing Thrall or the King in WoW the fuckers used to drop a paltry sum of money and .. . SILK CLOTH!
At one point (before the rep and honor system was implemented) there was TALK of making those guys worth an extortionate amount- but it never came through. Instead they make the buggers invulnerable... you can't even emote at some of the major characters in the game.
Lame.
... so... all the kickassery of warfare... mmo tactics... and all the promise of sensible rewarding conquest- with tweaked graphics and a similar interface/combat with optional PVE elements or optional PVP ... I mean jesus, its Warcraft DONE RIGHT with less cartoony models.
Now, some of the drawbacks- its unknown how expansive the crafting, leveling, armor customization, character customization, inventory, trait modding, and world crafting there is in Warhammer.
In fact I heard the term "tier" instead of level- which could mean that your armor appearance and stuff is based squarely on your level and not anything actually tangible in the game.
I don't THINK that's the case, but it was the case for character appearance in Rising Forces.
Another PVP intensive MMO that had stunning graphics. Now, I don't actually believe this to be the case as there is mention of varying builds within classes (offensive or defensive specialization for certain casters, melee capability for some of the "hunter" classes, etc and "customizeable armor and guild characters")
There's always the chance that you'll get landed in a server with SHITTY people on your side of the war, which could mean you NEVER get to experience victory (like my server on FFXI where my country owned... nothing.. ever) It's unclear how many abilities you'll get and how they'll work though there seems to be promise of a button slamming and involving combat system which is what many games have FAILED at or strived for (WoW supposedly wants frantic fighting). Some of the character classes are a little cookie cutter... but what MMO works without a cleric, mage, damage melee and tank melee? It DOES sound like some aspects of your abilities are customizeable (see above in parantheses).
There IS a jump function, the animations in general are very smooth, the textures and models are gorgeous, the environments are cool.
The battle looks busy, frantic and as I mentioned the hotbars look diverse and populated (lots of abilities) the combat/buff systems sound interesting and require some level of intellegence instead of auto healing/attacking :P
In otherwords- strategy, thinking on your feet.
You're fighting other people a lot of the time after all.
More bad news- the game is still in development, earliest I heard was 3rd quarter of this year.
I also think this game won't be the type folks play with their girlfriend.. it doesn't seem to have that level of cuteness that games like WoW Everquest and FFXI have- but that's just my first impression. I mean hell, there's flagged areas, pvp flag on/off and it sounds like you can even contribute to the war effort just by PVE'ing. So... *shrug* maybe its less intensely competitive and blood thirsty than I'm anticipating, either way it takes nothing from my excitement to play something that delivers what was promised.
Now... some of you might say "LOLZ! IZ RIP OFF OF WARCRAFT!!!".
... You're a little misguided. Warhammer has been around for 25 years. Yeah... warhammer is 11 years older, course, WoW is really just a rip off of DnD and most Wizards of the coast folk will acknowledge that they just ripped off LoTR (the novel not the movie) and LoTR was inspired by norse mythology. That's right... fantasy has a lot of crossover thematic staples. Its not a big deal if good guys are fighting green guys, or if there are dark elves and light elves.
Play the game. It looks good, it looks fun, and the concepts are very
VERY
Promising.
