Warhammer is not World of Warcraft...
By snide 15 Comments
I will, as in the videos, use WoW as a reference point. I believe this to be fair since the game not only shares a similar playstyle and world, but was directly marketed as a Warcraft killer. Anyone who thinks it's not a fair fight is correct, it's not, but that doesn't mean it's not a directly relevant centerpiece for comparison. I'll also make note that the opinions I have are coming from a person with a fairly unhealthy MMO addiction. Your enjoyment of Warhammer is likely far higher if it is your first serious forray into the genre, or if you havin't experienced what WoW became in a post Burning Crusade world. Warhammer is a perfectly capable MMO and still has the trappings of what makes the genre in general great. Now on to my points...
- WoW is inherently a better game due to its 4 year existence. This has allowed it to amass an insane amount of polish that Warhammer can not compete with in its current state and likely never will. Yes, Warhammer has some great new ideas and is being patched regularly and COULD potentitally become a better game. For the moment though, it isn't and is playing a game of catch-up with a much larger development team. It's an uphill battle against a stronger, faster foe.
- The combat animations in Warhammer are unpolished and distracting. Put simply, the fighting animations, be it casting a spell or swinging a sword do not match the timed actions a user initiates. This is turn throws off combat tremedously and is not tolerable to hardcore MMO players who are used to polished, quick-response controls in PvP settings. This is something that can be fixed and is a trait far less noticable to people who haven't gotten into high level MMO content. For the moment, this is my current major gripe with the game and the reason I gave up on it so quickly.
- Wait times for scenarios are too long. In a game that touts its pvp system and pick up and play ability, having to wait 15-30 minutes for a scenario just isn't very fun. I can pop a BG in WoW pretty much immediately for any of the BGs I choose. Has that always existed? No. It used to be like Warhammer. Does that make me feel any better about Warhammer? No, because at the heart of it, these games are already time sinks and the last thing I want to do is wait around till I can fight. While this might vary server by server, it's just a major turnoff given the alternative of WoW.
- Scenarios, and PvP combat in general, seems pretty erratic and boring atm. This one could be due to the fact that players don't have a full grasp of the abilities of other classes yet, but most of the pvp I've experienced in Warhammer scenarios seems all over the place. The maps are almost always semetrical affairs with two groups jousting over a single center position. This means that you have people essentially dying, spawning and running to the middle of the map. To put in WoW terms, scenarios in Warhammer essentially force the incorrect and boring middle ground fights of WSG. By placing your control points on the center of the map, you essentially reward this playstyle. WoW for the most part puts it's capture points at the edges of the map, with spawn points existing on top of the areas you want to control (WSG, AB, AV and EotS all have this) which forces more strategic gameplay. You essentially don't rush to the center of the map, but have to choose to spread out and inherently can't overtake those points unless you are organized because the enemy spawns there. When people just rush to the center on semetrical battlefields you do nothing but force people to the same point EVERY game.
- Warhammer has too many classes and it clutters the battlefield. Mythic had this same problem with DAoC. The reality is that a smaller amount of classes lowers the barrier for people to learn how to react in group pvp settings and provides a shared understanding of roles when fighting with strangers. This is something that can obviously be counteracted with time, but I found the sheer amount of classes, looks and styles of the toons I was looking at daunting. Add some unpolished spell effects and it was very hard to tell what characters were doing what. More isn't always better, sometimes more is just noisey. Give me a game like TF2 with a small amount of balanced classes vs. Warhammers variety of unpolished ones.
- I personally prefer WoW's art direction and lore. Warhammer looks great. WoW looks great. Both use the same mythology because hey, let's be honest, Blizzard ripped it off a dozen years ago. That doesn't change the fact that Blizzard out Warhammer's Warhammer. The Warcraft world is colorful, bright and filled with variety. The Warhammer world is way more serious. Me, I'll take the laugh-at-itself world of WoW with it's goofyness and cartoon-like atmosphere. I think it's very hard to pull off serious in high fantasy worlds without a very detailed story, which is inherently a weakness of the genre in general.
- The mod community is not as mature as it is in WoW. Is this a fair criticism? Well, look at it this way, I play games on PCs whenever I have the oppurtunity over their console counterparts mostly so that I can enjoy post-launch, fan-made content. WoW mods have become a very big part of my effectiveness in that game. Specifically, I would not play WoW if certian mods did not exist and in fact take breaks from the game when major patches break said mods. While Warhammer has a bugeoning community of mod authors, there are modifications that I've grown so used to that not having them in Warhammer severely limit my fun with the game. This obviously has nothing to do with either development company, but I still feel relevant in my own play experience.
- WotLK looks to be amazing, Patch 3.0 already is. Whatever good original ideas Warhammer had were quickly shadowed by the 3.0 patch and will in turn be over-shadowed by the full Wrath launch. Fanboyism? Possibly, but that was one hell of a patch. The achievement system alone that was added is possibly the best implementation we've seen in a video game.