So far I’ve been simply grinding PQ’s, questing and doing a lot of scenarios, however when I hit level 20 and got my wolf mount I decided I wanted to delve into the keep siege mechanics and see what it was all about. Basically (and bear with me if I make mistakes here) Every tier 2 zone has within it a keep, and some battle objectives. The keep is of course a big fortress that can be captured and provides a buff to the capturing army zone wide, and also moves the zone domination bar in favor of the conquerors.

Zone domination as far as I can tell helps to unlock the enemy city for sacking, and buffs the faction with dominance in that zone, it’s also tied into scenarios, and the battle objectives, or BO”s.

BO’s are static points on the zone map that can be captured periodically. The are basically landmarks with some tough NPC guards, and capturing them gets you the world rvr influence for epic rewards, as does defending them.

Keeps are much the same, but also have a keep lord, and gates that need to be battered down.

I made some inquiries in guild and happily found a roving group of two war bands to join that were rampaging all over the world map capturing keeps and BO’s last night. Joining up via the open party menu (a wonder full feature for grouping) I was immediately informed we were in the process of smashing down the gates of a keep in black fire pass. I ran along up, and came around the corner to see a battering ram and a small platoon of destruction seconds away from taking out the door. There was no order defending, and wouldn’t be until the last keep we attacked out of a total of 7 keeps. I asked if this was normal and everyone told me not to jinx it..so I’m happy to report that not only does order defend keeps, but also there was an order warband doing what we were that we ran into much later and had a great dust up with.

Taking keeps was smooth, the healers healed, the tanks help aggro and took the hits and the dps removed anything that got in the way efficiently. I found it took more time to break down the door than it did to kill the keep lord. After the Keep lord was dead much like in a PQ a loot chest dropped and I was introduced to my first set piece. I was lucky enough to roll highest on the second keep and got a level 27 orange helmet. The sets other pieces were acquired much in the same manner, with some pieces through PVE dungeons and others in scenarios, something to look forward to.

My earlier complaints on the variety in gear were erased as well as the few level 40′s we had with us were wearing some really cool looking gear, and even between similar classes there were differences in sets and dyes. Overall the experience was quick and enjoyable, especially when we began to run into order resistance. Some people complained about there being to many level 40 Order on the server, and I personally was happy to hear it. When i left warhammer the population was so overwhelmingly destruction that the only place you could find order were in scenarios, making open world RVR impossible.

There are some downsides however to last night’s adventures, and unfortunately they are persistent issues WAR has had since launch. At it’s current state, with all the content they are cramming in and adding, it’s a little disappointing to see that lag and hitching was very apparent in the chaos/empire zones, with 1 to 2 second delays in spell casting and movement, other zones were fairly decent, the odd hitch or freeze, but nothing worse than any other MMO, and nothing comparable to the door lag of wintergrasp in WOW.  As the new car smell is fading the little buggy things with the client are becoming less forgivable as well, the roaming chat window is very irritating, can some one please make a bloody add on for this as the developers seem completely oblivious?

All things taken into account however the Keep sieges were fun, rewarding and a nice break from the routine. hopefully with the new added content coming the large influx of players won’t bog these down too much and revert them back to what I can remember at launch.

I’m finding some things about warhammer are really growing on me, probably my number one is the exploration factor. This game is crammed full of interesting things to find and interact with, often I’ll find myself running into a cave and clearing it just to see if there is a rare spawn, a tome unlock or some little item to click to unlock a quest, and most of the time there is. I’ve purposely avoided posts explaining  hidden easter eggs and spoilers, as finding these myself has been a good way to pass the time when soloing and waiting for scenarios to pop.

Scenarios have slowed a small amount form every 2 minutes to about every five to ten, however at peak times 5 minutes and under seem to be the norm. The nice thing though is that I seem to have so many other things to do the small breaks work out for me. I am by no means a power level type person, but I’ve been finding leveling fairly easy as long as I am always queued for scenarios. I’d say  they roughly give about 50% of my level while questing, and are a great way to kill the grind. RVR has basically remained the same, fairly balanced but with the addition of some character classes having punt abilities. Punting is when you launch another character away from you, either as a defensive measure or offensive. I’ve enjoyed sneaking behind the enemy front line and punting their healer into my sides offense, tossing a stuntie Runepriest into a pit of piranhas makes for good laughs.

Open world RVR still seems strong on my server, I can find a keep battle or skirmish in an rvr lake if I go searching for it, and this brings me to another fun point about Warhammer. The outdoor terrain just begs to be used for PVP. there are so many little side passages, caves, cliffs and crannies everywhere to hide in for ambushes. Foliage from trees and grass actually hides your name, as does rocks and stumps, and it’s very enjoyable running around in the enemy territory and using these to your advantage. the other day I used a shortcut through a tomb, complete with wrought iron gates and moaning ghosts sound effects to circle behind an enemy push on an rvr objective, the same shortcut ended up becoming more contested than the objective, creating almost an fps type battle over a camped hallway. Just looking out over a Scenario before jumping into the fray can help you pick some nice sniping spots.

I do have a few Gripes however, the crafting in warhammer is pretty boring, talisman making so far is a chore of inventory management, and feels tacked on. There is no armor or weapon creation,  and even though each class has a set type of armor, it would be nice to have some variation on appearance and stats through crafting. Armor in Warhammer is fairly generic, it changes as you level and find new drops, but the amount of models are few, much like guild wars. The dye system adds some variety, so maybe as I level I’ll see some more interesting stuff.

I’m still enjoying the game, a few friends have joined me and as with any mmo, the people you play with up the level of interest considerably. I haven’t really got into guilds, or a dungeon yet and this brings me to another gripe. Warhammer does an awful job of letting players know it even has dungeons,  I have yet to see any information in game pointing me to an instance, or find a group looking for anyone to run one. While I realize the focus of the game is RVR,  pve instancing is a cornerstone of making friendships in mmo’s, many people join thier first guilds or make their friends list by joining instances with people they haven’t met. PVP is alright for this but also much to hectic to concentrate on the chat window for any but the briefest moments. Unless you actively seek out players and guilds to socialize with don’t expect a social hub type environment or to be invited to an instance.

Overall though I’m still enjoying the game very much, the world is very rich in detail and atmospheric, has a decent amount of variety and the terrain is great.

Mythic announced an Egyptian type area as an expansion, and I really think it will bring in the numbers if they make it large enough. After seeing how well they use scale in the game I can’t wait to climb some ancient dusty pyramid, or cross the sand dunes,  I don’t think anyone can argue that Warhammer has one of the best landscapes in mmo history.

Other Issues popped up as I progressed,  scenarios were all anyone wanted to do, as the open world RVR was too one sided, the population imbalance was so skewed that Destruction players were waiting forever even to RVR in scenarios..and the Order side lacked a big mean looking warrior type to lure away the multitude of players that wanted to make a Chosen.

So how is Warhammer Online Now?

Well after a relatively quick re-install and patch I logged on to find that not only had my guild disappeared, but I was allowed to take my characters above level 5 from the graveyard server to a more balanced higher population server named Pragg….free of charge!

(spelled Praag as I was later informed by a helpful little troll on the warhammer alliance forums )

I also noticed the blackguard and knight of the blazing sun had been added, and a live event had gone down that I’d missed. However after a bit of reading on the web I was happy to see that a free expansion was on the way with the chopper and slayer classes coming in soon, good stuff.

I logged in, and decided to really do it right I’d start a brand new character on Pragg, and see how the game was with a fresh start. I decided on Squig herder, as goblins are my favourite race, great animations, hilarious vocals and perfect little buggers for RVR.

So Bloodcrow was born, a pesky little Goblin squid herder hellbent on killing stunites!

Red eyed devil!

Initially when i logged in I was confronted with the standard user interface, and still to this point it’s pretty much a bucket of vomit. My chat tab still floats all over the screen when i log in..I hate moving it back to it’s little corner every time I play, however I logged back out and headed over to curse, (http://www.curse.com/) to see if the add-on situation for WAR has improved, and thankfully it has tenfold.

I downloaded pure, a unit frame replacement and dufftimer, a great little mod that makes bars for your debuffs, making combat much easier to follow. The greatest addition however was WSCT, the scrolling combat text mod.

After setting everything up, gutting my UI and making it more functional I also noticed loot link, and all of a sudden things began to take a different perspective. These Addons were mirrors of the ones I began to use when WOW first launched, and if you can mentally put yourself back to that place and time before Blizzard implemented much of the current features we all take for granted, WAR isn’t in such bad shape after all.

After about twenty minutes of UI farting around I had a reasonable interface that allowed me to really start enjoying the game.

The first thing I noticed was that the frame rate was much smoother, animations looked less chunky and the stutter was non existent. I queued for the scenarios immediately and like the new que for everything button.

Khaine’s embrace popped in seconds, and thus began a six hour to the wee hours of the morning scenario leveling session that completely absorbed me. One of the wonderful things about warhammer is the variety in scenarios, and the strangely well balanced pvp. I love how using teamwork and collision detection players can tactically dominate the opposing side, and if you are on the receiving end of that, there are always ways to get behind enemy lines. The scenarios just seem well thought out, they are open, with choke points and naturally flowing objectives. The fact that you can earn xp, loot, cash and renown just by fighting other players completely opens up the fun factor.

Of course there is the oft mentioned public quests, and i found myself grinding these out in between scenario pops to get the influence gear and PQ rewards. My only complaints at this stage of the game is that some public quests are difficult to impossible to solo, and since much of the players are either in scenarios leveling or higher levels, once you get past the initial ten level starting point groups are tough to find. A 14 day free trial would go a long way to helping the game out in this regard, and probably increase the subscriber base considerably.

WAR also has a great community, I found most players helpfull on day one and simply used to the open party system (players can simply search for a party in thier vicinity and join to tackle public quests.) the cooperation aspect really comes out as you run smack into another great new addition the RVR influence rewards.

World PVP is always much funner than an instanced battleground for me, and the fact that fighting a constant back and forth battle near the warcamps now builds you influence to get some amazing rewards is awesome. I did find however that I leveled past the rewards before i could even get them a bit annoying, hopefully the required amount of influence might go down in the lower level areas.

Combat seemed way less laggy now, and I was told in game that it was due to a problem with the way buffs and debuffs were refreshed in large scale pvp, so thankfully things were smooth and I was not distracted or pissed off as I smashed stunties from afar. The feel of the game was just what I remembered and when a friend re subbed to level with me and we snuck back into the empire starter area looking for trouble I was happy to see the difference playing on a populated server was making. Players were everywhere, and battles erupted constantly, with order seeming to have an even number of players as destro it never became dull.

All in all for day one of my return I am pleased, there are still a few irritants (chat window!) I hoped were fixed but overall the game has improved leaps and bounds performance wise. With a good dose of Addons and some great world RVR incentives i found myself staying up late just to get that next level, always a good sign. Combat seems more fun as well, maybe I’m just sick of the ten on one instagib WOW pvp, or it’s lack of any real world pvp to speak of. Collision detection is great, I love jumping behind a black orc or two when I have a witch hunter pillaging my green ass, and seeing my teammate move to block for me, then seeing the zealot or shaman in the distance throw a hot on me and start keeping my meat shield up, players seem more able to grasp these mechanics now than at launch, and it makes for some excellent pvp moments.