XTraFries

@The_Laughing_Man: It's really the huge PvP aspect. Once you hit Tier 2, it's pretty much leveling exclusively from the big open world PvP areas. You can do standard questing and load into separate battleground-esque scenarios, but the heart of the game is build around the taking of Keeps and having massive warbands running around.

@Gizmo: Yeah, that's definitely a possibility...

I really wish that this game got some more love, though. I've only been at it for a couple weeks and this plays the way I wish other MMOs did, in regards to the focus on PvP and the classes being interesting to play and having a lot of variation.

I guess that's what I'm hoping to do with these write ups, get some people interested who might have otherwise just written it off as irrelevant. It's by no means perfect, but it's infinitely more interesting and fun than WoW ever was to me.

It's been two weeks since I started my journey back to my most-enjoyed MMO, so I feel another update is due.

A problem I have with pretty much any game which allows you to dictate the class you play as is that I want to try them all. Warhammer Online has proved to be no different. At the moment I'm playing three characters each of a different MMO archetype. A Black Orc (which is a defensive tanking class), a Choppa (melee DPS), and a Shaman (healer).

At this moment I've just realized that all three of these are Orc classes....

I say they are "Orc classes" because each race has it's own set of classes, which is nice when compared to something like WoW, which has the same small handful spread amongst all it's races. There ends up being 24 classes total, although that number is basically cut in half due to each class having a mirror class on the other faction. Either way, they all feel distinct, even the ones that are basically the same.

I've gotten these three characters into Tier 2, which is when the open world RvR really takes off and introduces the taking of Keeps. However, a lot has changed in my time away from the game. There used to be boss encounters within the Keeps themselves, a Keep Lord and a few other NPCs that you'd have to kill to take the Keep, in addition to holding off the enemy players. Sadly, Keep Lords are a thing of the past and now after the initial struggle of ramming down the door, once you're in you're in.

This leaves it up to the players themselves to defend their Keep, and this occasionally leads to massive battles and pushes with what feels like hundreds of players all fighting for control of this building. When you're victorious, it feels great. When you get denied or if they take your Keep, you feel you've let your faction down. It's something I haven't experienced in many games and I'm surprised the sense of accomplishment these massive fights can bring.

I'm also surprised at how much the community for this game is still so alive. Before I came back I had thought, like many of you probably do, that this game was pretty much dead. Even in the middle Tiers there are plenty of players all getting together and taking down Keep after Keep, which is good news to me since I'm almost out of T2 with one of my characters.

TL,DR: I'm still really enjoying this game, and the community is very much alive.

@Kombat:

Yeah, I remember hearing about that when it happened. That's why I was so surprised when my mid-level Orc at level 18 was surrounded by others in their low 20s playing the RvR in that tier.

When I was fucking around with a new character, getting into scenarios happened almost instantly because of the free forever trial. Not the case in tier 2, but that might also be because everyone is doing the RvR stuff.

Granted, I'm sure it won't always be that way, but when I played today there seemed to be plenty of people doing the RvR and having a hell of a time.

I decided to return to Warhammer Online after a significant absence to see how things were holding up. I haven't had this game on my computer in almost 2 years, so I've forgotten pretty much everything about it, other than I really liked it.

After a few hours I'm remembering why I was so into it when it came out.

I recovered my account and was surprised to find 6 characters waiting for me, making me feel bad that I left them to collect virtual dust for so long. The top leveled characters were a Dwarf engineer by the name of Dougar, and an axe-wielding Orc, Gra. Both were level 18, which meant nothing to me because I have no idea what the level cap for this game is/was. I loaded up the Dwarf to find.....a lot of shit I didn't know. I'm assuming the game has had some kind of massive changes, because 3 popups came up to tell me that my various stats/abilities/UI had been reset.

I figured it'd be a bit less overwhelming to start up a new character so I could remember what everything was.

I made a Zealot, which is the healer of the Chaos...race? They're corrupted humans, I'm guessing, since they have a lot of blue and purple fire and crazy ravens everywhere. I start busting around in the starter area and it all starts coming back to me.

Turns out, you right click on things to kill them, then click them again to get money.

Once I got that down I loaded up my higher level Orc character and found myself in a mass of other players, all running together and communicating, organizing, and taking down objectives. I had also forgotten about the whole RvR thing, which is basically standard territory capture on a massive scale. Hundreds of players communicating which objective to go to next, where reinforcements were coming from, and all seeming to have a really fun time.

It was an experience I had almost completely forgotten about, and it's not something I've seen in any other game (especially an MMO).

I'll make another post once I've gotten a bit more comfortable with the controls and mechanics of everything.

If any of you Giant Bomb folks play or feel like dusting off Warhammer and joining me on this MMO rediscovery, feel free.

It is currently Tuesday, June 7th, 3:45 am on the east cost, I am listening to the first bombcast of E3 2011, and I am downloading the Warhammer Online client for the second time.

WAR is one of the few games I've followed extensively throughout it's development. I was in the beta, I played on launch day, and I had a hell of a lot of fun with it. It was an MMO I really enjoyed, which was a first for me. But life continued to happen and a few months later I didn't play it enough to justify spending the money, so I let the account go silent and did other things such as going to college, satisfying women sexually, and building my career with internships and all that fun shit.

Classes are out for summer and I find myself with some downtime on my hands. I still get Warhammer online news letters periodically and I figure while I have the time I'll pay my old MMO friend a visit and see how things are going almost 3 years after launch.

If any of you find folks still play WAR, or have some fond memories and feel like taking the plunge one more time, let me know. I'll be chronicling my return in this series of blogs.

Fuck....I stayed up late for this E3 Bombcast.....

it's not over yet....Jeff and Brad can still come....it'll just be a really really long show.....right?

you should probably just get better at the game.

I play a decent amount of Ermac and usually what happens is that the better player wins. Either I get the better of my opponent and win, or the other guy knows how to deal with my shit and he wins. Ermac can control only if you allow it, and those throws are really easy to counter on reaction for a lot of characters (pretty much any with a teleport)

Learn your character, learn how to play against Ermac, and deal with it or quit playing.

I can't stand when people confuse their own lack of skill with something being broken.

yeah, i cant even get into the store =/

i just want the free games before PSN goes down again due to some new hacker threat....

I can't even get to the store.....

fucking...ugh...

I played this game with a friend of mine a bunch last semester.  
 So many Devils vs Rangers games..... 
 

Couldn't support this more