Warhammer Online: Open Beta not so Open After All...

Well Today Sunday the 7th Open Beta starts for WAR.

I have been looking forward to it for a long while, and went to Target to pre-order just so I could be in the open beta (plans to use it as a "demo" of the game to see if I want to buy it or not).

Now I am not a game developer but I have to really question why they did what they did. The problem is (for U.S. Players, Over seas has it even worse) is that while you could download the game client for weeks from a torrent or fileplanet, the refused to let anybody download the final patch that must be applied to start the game until TODAY. Its just a "small" 189mb patch.

Well guess what this patch is downloading at less than 56k speed... Many people have been downloading for 6+ or 8+ hours and are not even at 80% and whats worse is people getting near the end and the patcher crashes from time out.

So many things I see wrong with this:

1.) They could have and should have allowed the downloading of the patches early with just a very very small unlock download to get before start, or let us have all of the files and just did not bring up the servers until game time.

2.) With a patch that is going to be in ultra high demand why not make it available as a stand alone download so it could be rehosted on a site with some bandwidth or placed into a torrent file?

3.) Other games like WoW use the P2P patcher now and they could have used that too, with this patch P2P would be done in minutes.

so much for 20mb/s down 3mb/s up internet being worth anything.

I seriously wont get to play today at all at this rate before I go to work.

Now I am not upset, I am too old for that and it is "Beta" but do the points above not stand out as common sense?

I just have to be a skeptic if something is so easy to fix and what stands out as common sense to me at the main one week before release BETA launch happens, what can we expect from them when the game goes LIVE?

 

Umm... I'm actually not sure what to say... I haven't downloaded a patch from WAR that has taken more than 1-2 minutes yet... There were a few patches yesterday, but they were small... like the others... no 6 hour long patches here.

BTW I'm a High Elf on the Darklands server.

 

Im almost there, 95% and its almost 4PM and I started near 11AM.

If you were in preview weekend/closed beta/preview weekend + you got the patches already, only those with open beta only had to wait until today.

Lets hope that I can just xfer over the folder to my laptop and skip downloading it again for the laptop at work tonight and get some game time in.

 

oh I see. BTW I also have an Empire character on Barak Varr. Darklands server is down right now.

 

I'm definitely interested in this game. Maybe this was a small mechanic they are employing to give them a slow start into the OB. They know everyone is home on Sunday, they didn't want to get their arse kicked so quickly. Maybe they are hoping to buy some time until Monday after work.

 

Hmm well a friend of mine just got into the beta today and he says his patch only took a couple of minutes as well. He wasn't in the preview weekend.

EDIT: ah, another one of my friends has been downloading it since 11am this morning.

 

I have a rank 5 dark elf witch and she is doing ok. Game seems sort of unpolished and I really need to find a way to reverse the y-axis on the mouse.

I'll keep playing as its some fresh air, but overall I have to say so far my impression of the game is that its not as well made as WoW or FFXI.

 

somethings in the game were very nice (tome of knowledge), but i found it to be just as repetitive as WoW.

I didn't get a real chance to test out pvp as the scenarios took to long to be formed and the RVR was a game of turtle. whoever had less players, stood by there town with guards..yea, real fun.

i am going back to eq2 for now.

 

For me, PvP/PQ is really what makes me like it more than WoW and FFXI. I'm hoping that the out-of-scenario PvP will be a lot better once people become strong enough to actually take on the guards in the towns, and not just skirmish for those outposts.

As for polish, there was actually a rather large improvement between the first preview weekend and now.... so that's still up in the air for the final release.

 

in my experience with PQs.. i found it to be a great idea. i thought some were fun, but after awhile...it gets boring. it is the same quest that you need to do repeatedly for the rewards. granted there are multiple PQs for the same area, but you still need to do them a lot for the rewards.

and believe me, im aware of the many improvements. i was in beta since the choppa was in the game, and when spell effects for mages werent there.

WAR just doesnt do it for me.

 

the title of very misleading because the problem has nothing to do with it being open at all. anyway so i guess everyone's saying the game is not what it was hyped up to be? wow killer?

 

it was never meant to be a WOW killer even the developers stated that

 

the public can claim anything. the devs said WAR isnt meant to be a WoW killer, yet every new MMO that comes out with any shred of hope is dubbed the WoW killer.

 

I was very disapointd when i started playing. The combat is horribly boring and doesn't flow very well as long as the animations are extremely lack luster. I couldn't play for more then 20 minutes until I tried another class. The game was overhyped regardless of what people defend it say. It truly is hard to compare mmo's with WoW since it has been out for 4 years but thats what developers need to aim for.

As far as the graphics..... they're aweful.

 

Disappointment happens when you set your expectations too high. I kept myself away from the "this game will be awesome and perfect" crowd and guess what, I love this game currently.

Graphics.. maybe... but as far as I know there still isn't a "high" setting yet. My computer can't run high/medium anything so I'm fine with them as they are now ^^. Check the game during release then see if they've improved on the graphics.

 

I actually reduced the shadows to "Balanced" mode... I actually prefer it since it doesn't cast them on the body and stuff.... they looked god aweful and pixelated. Graphics are fine for an MMO IMO, wasn't expecting much from them.

 

I didn't really set my expectations high.. learned my lesson from AoC lol. I just thought it would offer something different. It still needs a lot of polishing as far as combat goes. I have seen some good screenshots but I think that is only in the Empire region which was better looking than any others.

 

how does this game compare to AoC? I was thinking of leaving conan for this, but maybe not

 

My first char the witch elf seemed to do ok in her server. When I logged back on later tho I had a 40min que... so made a shadow warrior on another server and dunno whats up but there is massive lag between my attacks and when it actually hits the mob.

This added with the delay in the Shadow Warriors attack style in the first place made leveling so messed up and pvp worse.

I just rolled a Sorc on the same server and its the same deal I get 3 spells off before the first one registers and the mob comes at me. I do like the Sorc some the Shadow Warrior really sucked and was not the awesome new ranger I had hoped for... really ridiculous when a guy is 10 feet infront of you and you shoot an arrow 500 feet straight up in the air and wait 5 seconds for it to come down and hit him.

Public quest are cool, have only done the first one in the Dark Elf area and got 2nd place my first time thru. I thought the loot was good, then soon as I ran to the next area after earning my influence rewards the vendor had better grey items lol.

 

I did not play AoC but I say its a game with a lot of potential.

Its BETA still, its probably overloaded at the moment and the game is designed to shine more near the mid/end of the game when the big pvp stuff happens. So while I have bad things to say about the game I can acknowledge the good and will probably end up buying it.

 

alright well i may pre-order it tonight at D2D, does that mean i can get beta access tonight then? I hope the game turns out good, im looking for a wizard/nuke type class to play with

 

Target has the preorder box for $1 with a code in it, thats what I would do. That way you do not have to buy the actual game to try it.

 

Don't know how your sticking with AoC halo . Everyone keeps saying its "BETA" but how long can you say that for. The game is going live next week. I can see the little stuff being fixed but the overall feel of the game will remain the same. I didn't encounter many bugs when I played just the slow combat.

I guess to answer your quest about aoc/war comparison.

AoC has better graphics which is a given and the combat is much more immersive.

WAR actually has classes that don't need 25 changes but has terribly slow and boring combat.

Also the animations are poorly done, melee and casters.

 

Really Vic? I love Shadow Warrior. And that 1 attack has a pretty large range, so it's actually really good. Their other attacks are a lot faster.

 

Im rank 9/5 now with my sorceress things are getting better. The masive lag is gone and my skills are getting better (finally aoe cast) the biggest most annoying problem right now is the unable to attack target bug.

Its especially bad with some public quests with a lot of mob pop. My only defense as a caster is my offense and when champion level mobs pop on me and are invincible its GG fast... then I get the death debuff and it makes me die even faster next time

But yeah I can not use shadow warrior, I understand the long charge time for a spell and it feels more natural but the charge time for a bow shot going straight up in the air when the mob is 3 feet away irks me.

Plus there is no minimum range for casting but there is for bow (of course you have meele skills to offset that)

 

I'm a 10/6 swordmaster on darkland. Having a blast! Not sure in what way the combat is slow? Most of the RvR I was in were pretty exciting with both sides going at it.

Experiences in RvR depends a lot on the people you're playing with. I managed to travel to chapter 6 on the elven map. I have to say that the scenes are amazing!

 

I just got into Chapter 4, not sure if I should stay there or go do more in chapter 3 first. Cant wait for a mount travel is slow on foot.

Too bad there is no variety to the mounts at all, lets hope the add alternate models in at a later time.

 

Yes! What would be cool is customizable mount armour, and a selection of mounts to choose from for each class! (You listening, Square Enix? No a colour swap does not count... although I loved my slow, fat, blue chocobo.)

 

Did you play WoW at release? I did and it was very bad for the first 6 months. Things still need addressed and they are continually updating but so far I'm really liking this game. I've been waiting for an mmorpg with real PvP and Realm v Real for awhile now.

The game also addressed the 2 main points that I hate in mmorpg's when I only had a short amount of time, say and hour to play by adding Public Quests and Open Groups. Sure I had rather group with people I know but often that meant taking 20 minutes for everyone to meet up and then get where they were going, buff up and by the time playing started I was down to a half hour of gaming tops.

 

I'm very upset I've been able to do nothing since the beta opened. My internet is on the fritz, and atm I don't have a way to tranfer the hulking 9gig file onto my laptop to carry it somewhere else. I shall live vicariously through your postings however. lol

 

Looks like mostly fixed the unattackable mob issue, im up to rank 11/6 now.

The game is feeling like a grind, and my quest are everywhere find myself running all the way back two towns to turn something in for a quest I got at a new town in a different chapter so thats a big time sink and annoying when you run so slow.

I have done a few good scenario fights but they dont seem too fun, I think the real fun is to be had once I hit the RVR scene. Now that I am in Tier 2 area once I get some new gear and get a few levels it should be good combat and a good basis to determine if I like the game and want to buy it.

Public quest are cool but man it sucks when no tank is around and you spend all your time on the first two stages only to run out of time and fail the 3rd one because nobody is around to help. Some of the PQ's are just unmanned, I would have definitely had #1 contribution on the last one I did but by the time we got to stage 2 it was just me and a Witch Elf and we got owned by the champion mobs the one with the 4 stones to place on all sides... and if you die no town was close to respawn so thats why nobody came back that died.

One strong point is that since scenarios exsist and the open RVR, this is a good casual gamers MMO, if you have an hour to play no worries about getting stuck half way in a dungeon or wasting an hour looking for a raid group, just run near the closest contested area and have at it. You wont be top dog with the highest level/rank or gear but you can still do your part and so far the game does not look nearly as gear dependant as WoW (and apparently they nerfed RVR gear pretty bad so right now the way to go is public quest rewards and influence rewards)

 

is this game even worth getting? I use to play diablo 2 and that was the only online multiplayer rpg game ive liked. How does this game compare to that experience.

 

Not even close its a different kind of game, Diablo was all about random dungeons and loot hunting in my opinion, this game is just all about PVP & Lore.

 

Yeah, I'm really happy about that. FFXI would take like 4 hours to do anything productive, and now with school and work I won't have any time to really play this game half the day... Casual ftw. I'm level 8 right now... haha.

 

After tier one the open beta is rather sparse when it comes to finding people to do pq's and level, it's more the nature of open beta than the game. Everyone seems to play a character to 10 or so and then re roll something else to see what they like. On another forum I hear people talking about being on there 5 to 7th level 10. I gave up on tier 2 for open beta, the player base isn't there yet.

Personally I love the scenario's, I run them probably half of my play time but they do suck when you end up with a bunch of people that won't stick together and accomplish the goal. As far as RvR the tier 1 RvR is a lil slow but the skirmish grounds outside the Nordland war camp is fun and usually packed while the Dwarf starting zone area has been dead.

 

Somebody said the main pvp is at the order/chaos pvp areas in the OB. Im lvl 11 so may slide over that way and check it out

Just got my head/shoulder armor too.

 

Looks like they fixed the graphics. Looks a lot better now. And there's a little narrated intro thing.

 

Question about Public Quests:

How is your contribution determined?

Is it another system that discourages tanks and healers and rewards reckless DPS'ers?

 

It probably takes into account damage taken, and health healed, but I'm not too sure. Haven't done it as a tank or healer. I have seen Priests score 1st place though...

 

If youre Rank 11, you have one levels worth of experience to enjoy Tier 1 RvR before you get booted to Tier 2.

 

Contribution is determined by how much you do during each stage, healing and tanking is taken into consideration. During beta phase 3, I played an Archmage to 25, and I got first in contribution on PQs only by healing many many times.

HOWEVER

Contribution ONLY increases your loot roll, loot rolling is still 100% random. You are not guarenteed loot if you place 1st, 2nd or 3rd.