WAR (Warhammer Online)

Pros

Public Quests - Finally we see  some trickle of creative thinking outside the box in terms of MMO gameplay with PQ's.   Everyone that participates in the event gets a fair chance at rolling for loot.  This encourages players to work together for a common goal. 

Variety of classes - The classes aren't anything super unique, and isn't going to blow away a veteran MMO gamer but you do have a variety of choices here.  I wish they had taken more creative risk here to give us something more unique.  The classes for the most part represent  the fluff of the Warhammer Universe well.  I haven't ran into every class in PVP yet, but they seem to be more or less balanced. 

Smooth Launch - Unlike VG:Saga of Crap, this game is more or less released in a completed state and polished state.  There's a few issues that need to be worked on, but it is by far nothing like the unfinished mess VG was where you would run into 15 bugs before you were level 5. 

Smooth Performance - A lot of people are comparing the graphics to WoW, but consider that Blizzard ripped off from the Warhammer Universe, not the other way around.  It was a smart move to keep the graphics managable tor mid to lower end computers.  Yes its nice to be able to have extremely high graphic quality, but if you alienate players by doing so its not so good for the health of the game.  Overall the grahic quality is good, not anything totally amazing, but good.  Plus if the game had been released with high graphics and not optimized properly, you will have hitching and other slow down issues.  For a PVP centric game this isn't acceptable.  The character models represent the Warhammer Universe very well.

Tome of Knowlege - This book keeps track of all your achievements and records. 

Cons

Generic Quests -  With the exception of PQ's, quests are generic kill 'xxx' of these, go visit this person, or collect 'xxx' clickables on the ground.  This is all been done before nothing to see here if you are a veteran MMO gamer.  For someone that brought in the idea of PQ's I had hoped that there would be much more creativity here.  There is a ton you could do with the Warhammer Universe.

Only 6 races - Where is the Skaven!  Where's the Brettionians? Lizardmen? Giants? Vampire Counts? Beastmen? Also you have many different factions in the Warhammer Universe within Humans and Chaos.  Would be nice to bring in some of these choices into the game. 

Queue - What the fark?  You have to wait in line to join a server if its full?  Excuse me?  I am not going to pay 15 dollars a month for  a subscription fee if I have to wait in a line to be able to play with my favorite character.  No other MMORPG I've seen does this.

Poor crafing/gathering - Only two crafting professions is a huge dissapointment.  The gathering skills are a bit more varied.  I took Cultivating and I'm not liking it.  I do not like how you abstractly grow plants in a window opened from your ability menu.  Why not be able to interact with the world and grow the plant in the actual game?  Not a window?  This is 2008 folks.  In VG you are able to actually chop down trees in the game, and they fall down and crash.  

No player housing - I enjoy collecting things and putting them in my home, inviting friends over.  It would also be nice to be able to own your own business, such as an Inn or a shop.  There needs to be some activities to do besides combat all the time which goes into my next complaint.

Not enough "non-combat" activities - this is 2008.  MMO's need a bit more variety in things you can do outside of combat.  Player run cities, deep crafting, housing, fun mini games, diplomacy, ect ect ect.  SWG did this well before SOE screwed it up.  VG was supposed to have a full diplomacy system, but it flopped and ended up being a boring grindy card game battle, and was never finished or fully realized.  You've got to have game immersion and something for the roleplayers.  People will get tired of combat 24/7. 

I agree with most of those, even though some are random. (Player housing?  That's not expected in every MMO).  But I would have to say that the "Variety of Classes" and "PQs" should be Cons.  The classes, like you said, are very dull cookie cutter classes with no uniqueness to them.  Most of the PQs are just "Kill X amount of this, then Kill X amount of this, then Kill Boss."  It's repetitive and boring.  They put no thought into these at all.

Some more Cons though.

Cons

PvP System:  Non-breakable non-stop AoE roots?  Stacking 4 of the same dot on you from Bright Wizards?  Tanks + Healers destroy everything else?  I noticed a pattern.  Whoever has more tanks and has 1 or 2 decent healers, wins the scenario.  If destruction gets 4-5 Black Orcs/ Chosen and Order gets 1-2 Dwarven tanks, and both sides get a couple of healers, destruction wins.  The oposite also works.  I feel that the system is pretty broken, but it did just release, so we can give it some time.

Animations:  The animations in this game are absolutely horrible.  You never know what the hell is hitting you in PvP and what kind of dots or anything you have on.  I don't even see when Bright Wizards throw 3 dots on me.  I just see a little DoT icon appear under my name and damage flying over my head.  Also, spell interruptions are hard to pull off because it's hard to see when the casters are casting longer spells.  Plus, the massive lag in PvP doesn't help either.

Scenarios:  Levelling up through PvP only is a pretty cool concept, but they really blew it here.  Doing the same scenario over and over again makes it feel like killing a mob over and over again.  It just turns into a grind after awhile and is extremely boring.  I really have to force myself to play WAR at the moment because scenarios are the fastest way to level and the T3 Elf/DE scenario is so boring.

Just my thoughts.

my con applies to world pvp meaning nothing and all the objectives are in a rvr zone that has no real effect on the world i was told it gets better at higher levels but since level 13  (17 now) it has just felt like a grind and trying to level in the world in pvp would take forever (keeping in mine i do not consider scenarios or the rvr areas as world pvp). world is static no settlement or camp take overs till tier 4 i guess and doubt i'll drag myself though the agony of leveling to it .pq's are fun the first couple of times till you realize they are just a grind for gear and i even see people afk through them yes they get a weak roll for  the chest gear but they get the inf and xp in the end. pve is lacking and a grind. i do enjoy exploring the world and the tome unlocks are nice and some are humorous. have played for the last week and it is now more fun trolling the forums then playing the game.(kinda sad) have a base for a decent game but they dropped the ball as far as world pvp goes

then you should stop playing and find something else to do, there seems to be alot of people  that are playing who feel different then you.

I also agree with most of what you said (both of you in fact)... the queue timers are by far the most annoying thing for me... I absolutely get enraged if I log in and have to wait 15 minutes to get on my char... there is no need, but its also something I feel will be fixed. Keep in mind, it is still just a week old.

I think the player classes are fantastic, but I do agree with the above it does "seem" like whoever has the most tanks/healers win the scenario. That said I have noticed other patterns... such as I was playing yesterday and the first game we steamrolled the Order. Just tore them apart because they were so unorganized... one would rush in, get smashed, have a second rush in, rinse repeat. The second game was a totally different story.... They were focused, I got snared and the next thing you know I was dead... They would set up around their flag with engineer turrets and Shadow Warriors all around picking off the first person who tried to make a move... they were very well planned and totally raped us.

Point is, I think its more to do with the group compared to the actual class choices. I'm not saying your argument is wrong, just not the whole story IMO.  I personally think they did a great job at the class structure. All the classes seem to be so much fun and although you do get the occassional "IB/WE are OP nerfz plz" posts its few and far between (Go to the WoW Rogue forum and notice every second post) .

Overall I love the game, but I can see why some people won't/don't.

Originally posted by Milky

Queue - What the fark?  You have to wait in line to join a server if its full?  Excuse me?  I am not going to pay 15 dollars a month for  a subscription fee if I have to wait in a line to be able to play with my favorite character.  No other MMORPG I've seen does this.

Welcome to Realm vs Realm done correctly.  It is not fun for most people to play a PvP game without challenge.  It is also not fun for most people to fight against impossible odds.  The solution right now is a Queue System.

An alternative System would be dynamic adjusting of stats based of local population so that despite numbers, both sides are equal, and that in itself is a huge can of worms (and not the route I would go).

There is a balance between your rights to play your class whenever you want, and everyone's right to enjoy their time in game and participate in a fair fight.  Your position on the Queue system is very egocentric (not saying you are egocentric).  Give a little consideration to the game as a whole and not just your place in it.  If you want to pay $15/month for a game that lets you zerg the other side every day, or maybe you like being zergged every day. . .  Then this may not be the place for you.

Originally posted by maddbomber83

Originally posted by Milky

Queue - What the fark?  You have to wait in line to join a server if its full?  Excuse me?  I am not going to pay 15 dollars a month for  a subscription fee if I have to wait in a line to be able to play with my favorite character.  No other MMORPG I've seen does this.

 

Welcome to Realm vs Realm done correctly.  It is not fun for most people to play a PvP game without challenge.  It is also not fun for most people to fight against impossible odds.  The solution right now is a Queue System.

An alternative System would be dynamic adjusting of stats based of local population so that despite numbers, both sides are equal, and that in itself is a huge can of worms (and not the route I would go).

There is a balance between your rights to play your class whenever you want, and everyone's right to enjoy their time in game and participate in a fair fight.  Your position on the Queue system is very egocentric (not saying you are egocentric).  Give a little consideration to the game as a whole and not just your place in it.  If you want to pay $15/month for a game that lets you zerg the other side every day, or maybe you like being zergged every day. . .  Then this may not be the place for you.

Also, I'd rather wait in a queue to get into the game, and then have scenarios pop very very often, then not wait at all to get in the game and only be able to join a scenario every 30 minutes.
 

The only Con I see to this game is that it is very very population dependent. 

I play on a typically full server, and I have a blast playing.  I was just in Tier 1 RvR lake and saw a battle shift momentum between two fighting sides at least 4 times.  There was a sort of ad hoc strategy involved, and there were several flanks, several pushes, several retreats, etc.

Once more people are in the higher tiers, this will be the same there as well.  But without a lot of population the game is a bit slow.  I think being able to queue for every scenario at once would be an addition that would make the rvr more frequent and seem a lot faster.

I think the PQ's are wicked.  Actually gets you in a group vs. soloing, I have met so many nice people while PQing.

I don't agree with your con for player housing.  Some games such as Ultima Online nad Asherons Call it fits perfectly into the world, i'm not sure it would fit into this game correctly.