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Mythic Launches Warhammer Online
After four days of "head-start" players getting the run of the servers, Warhammer Online launched today to the rest of the public. Mythic took the opportunity to explain why they think World of Warcraft players should give them a chance, highlighting their focus on PvP (or Realm-vs-Realm in this case), and their desire to keep time-intensive activities to a minimum. Creative director Paul Barnett says it's "a bit like Batman." 1.5 million copies of the game have already been sent to retailers, so they're clearly expecting a solid launch. The folks over at Massively have developed an excellent series of guides for players looking to get into the game. They explain and contrast general career choices and look at individual classes as well. They also have a variety of interviews and descriptions of gameplay.
...best idea if they're trying to dethrone WoW.
Someone should have told them that 20 years ago when they came up with the name!
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
You do realize it is not WoW right? PvP in WoW sucked since it was a majorly overlooked portion of the game where WAR is built around the combination of PvE and PvP. You wont have to kill another player if you don't want to. However you can also level by only doing PvP. Warhammer will not just fade away like many other games have in the past.
WAR has no ganking, and an extensive PvE game.
To WoW's fault, WoW PvP was as after thought crammed into a PvE game.
To War's defense, War RvR was the fundamental of the game, PvE seems more like it is there to give you a story and 'down time' progression and another option of game play.
War is NOT a WoW PvP server. On the core servers, you can voluntarily flag for PvP at any time. You are only involuntarily flagged if you enter a RvR area. When you enter an RvR area, if you are below rank ?8 you will be bolstered to rank ?8 (for instance, a rank 12 person in the T2 content will get stats like a rank 18 person) to even the playing field. If you enter an RvR area that is a tier of content lower then you (say a rank 15 person, should be in T2, heads to T1 thinking they'll gank some newbies), you are immediately turned into a chicken. You have 0 armor and 1 hit point. All you can do it run around squawking at people until they kill you, or you leave the RvR area.
So you can still level in peace, and it goes pretty fast. I think at 4 hours played I was rank 8. And the faction grinds are a breeze. Gone are the 4 week grind fests of WoW where you had to grind instances and the same 2 camps of mobs for butt feathers or toad nards to get to exalted. For the most part, if you complete 2 public quests in a chapter, you'll be exalted. And since there is great gear to be had doing PQ's, it's totally worth it to run 'em once or twice, and there are usually 1-4 PQs per chapter.
The game still needs some polish. Crafting is a bit of a pita, talismans are so-so, the mail box functionality needs improvement, no loot linking over chat... but its all just polish stuff. RvR and PvE are both solid in performance and entertainment.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Think more 'Dark Ages of Camelot' v2.0 than WoW, given that it's Mythic. From my experience in the beta, the PVE game exists only to teach you how to fight, and to lead you around to collect loot and XPs. The public quests in particular are very much 'Repeat these until you max your local faction out, collect a few greens, and hop in the local RvR queue.'
I would have preferred to see a WH40K setting
Amen to that. Instead of trying to compete with WoW in yet another fantasy setting, why not compete in a sci-fi setting? 40K has a lot of background material, they're constantly updating it with new races and new storylines, and it's just overall a lot more fun as a setting. It feels like they went with the fantasy setting because that's what every other game has done, and that's just dumb.
EA does do Mac games. Spore and several of the sports games, for example. Furthermore, while they have declined to comment on whether or not they are going to do a Mac version of Warhammer, Mark Jacob's has strongly hinted. E.g., he's said no comment, and then added that the other computer next to him is not a PC.
Mark Jacobs, Lead Designer for Warhammer Online, said the following on his blog: "Any plans for Mac support?" Nothing to announce yet but the computer in the bag next to my desk isn't a PC.
Mythic has extensive experience with PvP and has put controls in to remove the griefing of lower level players as much as possible.
The game is divided up into four "tiers." The level ranges for the tiers are (roughly, I'm not positive) 1 through 11, 12 through 21, 22 through 31, and 32 to 40. If a Level 12 players enters a Tier 1 zone and goes looking for some Level 2 warrior to gank, he won't succeed. The level 12 player will be "chickened." He will literally be transformed into a chicken with 1 hit point and an attack that does 1 damage.
Even on the open PvP servers where you are always "flagged" for RvR (there are no safe PvE zones like on the Core ruleset servers) they have kept a reduced form of the "chickening" mechanic. It's just been extended down a tier, so a level 15 character can go into the tier 1 zone without being chickened, but a level 23 character WILL be turned into a chicken in the tier 1 zone (but not in tier 2).
There is also the "starter" area, which is a subset of the tier 1 area, where anyone from a higher tier will be turned into a chicken regardless, to allow the newest players time to level up to 2 or 3 before going out and fighting.
Because THQ owns the license to WH40K and not Mythic. =/