WAR (Warhammer Online)

This is one of the things that irks me the most about many off-hand "reviews" on this site - it is almost taken as a given that WAR somehow has a "gimped" PvE that is somehow an "afterthought".

Personally I find this ridiculous. For me in this regard WAR's PvE is so incredibly ahead of other games that I played (though I admit I am more of a PvP man) that it is almost insane. Are those people playing some other game?

Anyway, in order not to clog the thread I will simply list the features of WAR PvE that I find truly amazing, if not revolutionary.

1. Vast amounts of solo quests. Three pairings, each being a campaign on its own. While xp gain from soloing does taper off in the beginning of tier 3, you actually can play WAR 6 times without ever seeing the same quest or scenery again. In essence this is like 6 "normal" single player RPGs in one.

2. Solo quests can get amazingly varied. Yes, that is true. For those who played a few tutorial quests in T1 and decided that kill 10 of x is all you'll ever get then I have to say you are missing a lot. I won't give examples of some great solo quests here because it would take too long but they are there.

2b. Quest item drops from mobs are all 100%. This is such a small thing but it is amazing how much grief and frustration it takes away from solo questing.

3. Public Quests. Yes, public quests are PvE. You can solo them for influence, you can pug them, you can do them with a leet band of friends, you can zerg them in succession with a warband, you can hunt down the rare "epic" ones with amazing loot... In fact if the game was only about the PQs it would be well worth the money.

While (most) of them do have 3 stages it doesn't mean they're all the same by far... I personally love the one in elven tier 2 where you advance with 20+ mob allies against wave after wave of enemy monsters... or the dwarf/greenskin ones where it is a race which side will complete the stage the fastest with all the attendant RvR and sneaky sabotage... or "mob race" PQ stages where you have to prevent bands of roaming champion mobs from accomplishing their tasks - totally hectic .

4. Exploration and lairs. Whoever isn't aware of those must have been grinding scenarios from rank 1 and is now pissed off because the game has no "freedom". Well take your freedom man! Get out of that scenario and head out into the hills! You might get really surprised by what you'll find there... a desecrated abandoned shrine with an ancient book carelessly tossed into a corner - open it and you might find yourself on an epic quest chain leading you to exclusive rewards and better knowledge of the lore.

5. Dungeons. Many people are completely unaware that there are dungeons in Altdorf starting at rank 10 that you can do to improve the city's ranking.. While they start simplistic (hey, they are starter dungeons) they do get progressively more complex and challenging. While the boss drops are really pathetic, those dungeons are quite sufficient to assuage your instanced PvE hunger pangs. When Mythic gets down to looking into those boss item drops they'll be a viable way to advance your character.

6. Dungeons again. Have you been to mt Gunbad yet? All I can say is that it beats any old WoW dungeon hands down. It is open and setup similar to open world PvE chapters. You get PQs, influence and all but the catch is that the top bosses themselves are instanced and you can get to them only in 6-mans. Simply marvelous - both casual and hardcore at the same time, seamlessly.

7. Policy towards grouping. No, in most cases you are not forced to group in order to access content. Is it a bad thing? NO! You're not forced to group with random people you don't like just in order to see content. You can start on your own and then gradually gather a band that works together to tackle some of the more demanding stuff. No standing in a quest hub and screaming LFG for 2 hours... Now you spend those 2 hours actually playing while the group forms around you.

8. Lore. A lot of lore. Vast amounts of lore. Log in and start reading your TOK. The amount of text and information contained in it is truly stupendous. To those complaining that it is enough just to read the quest summary I'm replying "Do you really need to be forced to do the things you enjoy? Just read the fluff text if you like it." And besides the "fluff" text sometimes holds valuable clues for exploration part of the game.

9. Quest marks on the map. Amazing. Sorry but browsing through my quest log trying to deduce where the heck am I supposed to be doing this quest is not my idea of fun, by far. Sometimes when I'm bored I just open my map and look where's the nearest quest I can do.. and sometimes I travel to other parts of the map because I want to do this particular quest. Freedom and choice. As for those saying that it is "easy mode" or "lore breaking" then just say your character has a real map with him and whenever he is asked to perform some task he asks the quest giver to mark where it is on the said map. It is more immersion breaking for me that my character would be that stupid to go adventuring in the wilderness and NOT ask "please could you mark it for me on this handy map?"

So all in all I find PvE in WAR awesome. Not "ok" not "well there are better games out there for that" but simply awesome. In fact I wish Mythic implemented some of those very advanced ideas and mechanics into the open RvR part of the game. Patch 1.1 gives some hope that they do plan to do so with introduction of RvR influence.. whether this entails PQs in RvR lakes as well as keeps as quest hubs we'll see.

/addendum from a later post, but it should be here

Ok, now that I've gotten it off my chest how awesome WAR PvE is, to be fair I have to list the complaints (yes, even a fanboi can have some).

1. Buggines. Fair is fair, there are some bugs and lack of polish. Nothing game-breaking for me though and they are quite rare considering how fresh the game is. However I must say I haven't seen a game-breaking bug yet.

2. Visible lack of polish on some later tier open PvE content... I'm talking about quest sites where mobs are just standing there - no patrols, no interesting animations or npc chatter... even the aggro radius is so pitiably small that the whole encounter looks like a placeholder "to be fleshed out later". However other quests in the very same region/tier, usually just a minutes' walk away, are amazingly well polished and interestingly scripted. I guess time will polish those "orphan" quests as well and there isn't many of them tbh... maybe like 5% of later encounters (I did pull that one out of my behind).

3. Itemization on boss mobs outside of PQs and big dungeons is really lame. You kill the boss mob at the end of the first Altdorf sewer dungeon and get a few random greens.. if you're very lucky, otherwise its some gray vendor trash. They should seriously look into this. Imo all rare / boss mobs should have some particular / exclusive reward attached, if only a title unlock or a weird "pocket" item.

4. Solo PvE mob difficulty is not really well scaled to particular quests. For example, a "kill x" quest may involve killing a mob at a time... or those mobs may be patrolling around with 2 of their buddies looking after them. So.. obviously mobs that are solo should be much tougher than those that are grouped. At the moment those solo mobs are too easy to tackle.

That's all I could think of atm. Hmm. I'll add to this If I remember something that I missed.

.. oh, here's one:

5. A lot of players havent yet grasped the grouping mechanics in WAR which are considerably different from what is the norm. For example, there are still people out there who refuse to group in PQs.. probably because they are still playing WoW where kill-stealing is a recurring problem. Well guess what? If you group in a PQ you'll get your influence faster and you'll have much more item drops from mobs to choose from! In addition WAR grouping rewards flexibility - don't go to a particular PQ and then gripe because there is no one around. A much better strategy is to join someone already doing a PQ - that's 2 of you doing it which is quite enough for passers-by to start trickling in.

OP is spot-on.

The new argument is its not hardcore... I reply well have you even got to end game? And It is really hardcore see many things in war do not take 5-8 hours of free time. However, becuase everyone can access most things with 1-2 hours the real masurement of hardcore is the players ability to play and no long not having a real job.

REguardless, the only thing that i dislike is some of the graphixs (it scales down models at to high of a rate , my computer can handle it give me the option to show detial zoomed out... this is done for playablity and lower to mid end computers i understand.)

I wholeheartedly agree with you on all accounts. This game is far suited for any PvE or PvP oriented players, whether they are just starting or a veteran players, they'll definately enjoy the contents.

I think most of the complaints for WAR PvE were that it was too easy/simple/buggy? None of which is negated by what you said up there ^^ 

(easy) as in follow the marker on the map to point x to (simple) as in kill 100 of x kill 50 of y to kill stronger z to (buggy) as in mobs x run all over the place for no reason or run off and reset etc.

 Another complaint I've seen regularly is there there seem to be hardly any group mechanics to mobs and that even if you see a group of mobs you can just solo pull them all. These are the kind of things that detract from PvE experience, no matter how well laid out a dungeon might be.

I see nothing wrong with what you posted mind you, it all seems correct and true, *but* it doesn't cover what people complain about on the PvE.

Edit: Well one thing wrong maybe looking at below, lol

ANY source which state on WAR dungeons something like this ....... 

 "...All I can say is that it beats any old WoW dungeon hands down..."

is a good joke.

It made the complete thread a real laugh.

And it shows the poster is nothing but a paid viral publisher of hype.

Just HOW many more people believe this hype OP??? And let them have a waste on their money with false assumptions?

Originally posted by Pheace

I think most of the complaints for WAR PvE were that it was too easy/simple/buggy? None of which is negated by what you said up there ^^ 

 

(easy) as in follow the marker on the map to point x to (simple) as in kill 100 of x kill 50 of y to kill stronger z to (buggy) as in mobs x run all over the place for no reason or run off and reset etc.

 

I see nothing wrong with what you posted mind you, it all seems correct and true, *but* it doesn't cover what people complain about on the PvE.

 

 

Well, PvE in Warhammer is seamlessly scalable in difficulty as well as general attitude, which is one of the things I failed to mention in my OP.

It is not "only casual" nor is it "hardcore only". Amazingly it is both... but casual is how you start - the default option. If you want hardcore then you have to look for it - which is actually what hardcores tend to like (see the "map markings are not hardcore").

Three examples:

Map markings - normal quests are marked on the map, in that respect they are "casual". On the other hand tome unlocks and hidden quests are not even given to you as quests in the hubs... so in that respect they are more "hardcore" than any WoW solo quest. The problem is that new players see only those marks on the maps and deduce that this is the only solo PvE this game has to offer - well guess what? If you want to be hardcore solo explorer then you actually have to do it yourself without the game holding your hand.

Mount Gunbad (this one goes to above poster as well). You can pug it, you can zerg it, you can play it almost as casual as open world PQs.. However killing those instanced bosses is hardcore - yes, WoW-style hardcore. So, it's your choice: casual or hardcore... and here is exactly what confuses many new players - WAR actually gives you enormous freedom in the way you can play, and what's marvelous is that you can switch from "casual" to "hardcore" at almost a moments notice. You can start Gunbad casually with a pug or even just enter solo and see who's inside open grouping... then you see some guys you know and you decide to 6 man a boss. When you're done you go back to being casual and doing PQs with your merry zerg.

PQs - While most of the "roadside PQs" are pretty easy with a full group there are elite ones tucked away in weird corners that are a huge pain to complete even with a full warband. There is absoultely nothing casual or easy mode about being attacked by mob groups containing 3 unique heroes with attendant champions that respawn according to a brutal relentless timer... Whole warbands do get wiped regularly on those PQs.

war pve is to me taking my shaman and killing mobs 4-5 levels higher then me and getting a quest reward i can't use for the next 3 levels

pulling named quest mobs from in front of 20 other mobs and never pulling an add Keep in mind i am 4-5 levels lower then the mobs

if i get an add i am able to kill 2 mobs 4-5 levels over me (3 mobs will kill me unless they aggro at seperate times)