Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Played Lately: Warhammer Online

  • Just like most of the MMO blog community, I have jumped into the bright, shining city on the hill that is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I was hesitant at first, avoiding most of hype. But I could not help but follow when many bloggers gave their impressions of the beta test and how much everyone (almost) seemed to enjoy it. With so much discussion about how great the game was, it was hard not to get caught up in the fervor.
  • I made the decision to try the game at about the very last minute. I bought the preorder box and ran home to start downloading the beta client, both from Fileplanet and via BitTorrent, hoping that I could get into the head start. With my luck being what it is, the Fileplanet download was half filled with junk files. However the other half was good enough to drop into the torrent folder where I concentrated my effort on just those remaining parts. It took over three days to get the client down and installed, so I only had one evening to play before the official launch. But that one evening was enough to hook me.
  • To date, I have rolled a Witch Elf and a Witch Hunter based on how cool the characters looked. This was my plan since I first read about the game. (I know I said I tried to avoid the hype, but it just gets under your skin!) What I didn't know is that these classes are actually one of the mirrors pairs between the Order and Destruction sides. They play just differently enough to make them unique. Also the questing experience is really different, storywise, for each. But they are similar enough that I won't be able to keep from rolling one or two alts, probably an Archmage and a Sorceress.
  • I've spent a lot of time on each character questing as I'm a carebear at heart, even in an explicitly PvP game. I'm especially curious about the epic quest lines available early in each zone. Both my characters are moving into the Tier 2 content and it looks as though those quests have no end in sight. It's been interesting seeing at least one MMO quest that's more than just a simple "Kill ten rats and you're done" story.
  • I've also been spending plenty of time in the public quests and RvR scenarios, though I'll be talking about those more later. For now though, I've been enjoying my time in WAR a lot more than I anticipated. With the impending release of Wrath of the Lich King, I will have some hard choices to make about where to spend my time.

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