Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - 15656

This is basically just a bad, PvP-centric WoW clone. In every aspect of this game, the developers went just far enough to make this game passable, no better. There is basically no crafting system, the PvE is terrible, the interface is clunky, to say the least, the graphics are bad, the PvP is flawed, and the skill trees are abysmal.
 
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I'll try to keep this short but sweet, as you probably know what the game is about already, for the most part. Instead of the typical review style, I'm going to list some of my thoughts about the game, focusing mostly on things you haven't heard often in other reviews. A little on my background: I've been playing WAR since the end of closed beta, and I've purchased the game and leveled up to 40 (max level). I was really looking for a good change from WoW, as I got really sick of WoW and ended my subscription 8 months ago. I knew WAR had some problems before release, but I really tried to remain optimistic. Mythic gave a valiant effort at repairing the game before release, and they were semi-successful, as the game was just a total mess before open beta. It has taken me only a few weeks into release to get sick of this game though. I think it needs another solid year (at least) in development to infuse the game with more variety, content, and polish. Moreso than that, I seriously wonder about some of the design decisions. Without further ado, here is my list of the top 13 things that suck about WAR: 1. The combat system tries to be like World of Warcraft's, but fails. Whereas WoW's combat system is the tightest seen in any MMO to date, WAR's combat system has many glitches and bugs, and feels very sloppy. For example, when you press your skill key when the global cooldown is still in effect, you will see a character animation for that ability, but it won't actually do anything. The animation will continue past the point where you're global cooldown expired, but you have to wait til it finishes before you can activate your ability. This is just one of many problems. A lot of us have been reporting these problems since beta, but they haven't been fixed. This is largely because WAR fanboys have drowned us out, having said "It's perfect!", or "This is not WoW and the combat shouldn't be like WoW's" (somehow implying that the numerous combat bugs are features). The buggy combat is by far the worst of the problems, as the feeling of combat is really the nucleus around which the rest of the game coalesces. This also shows a serious lack of polish and indicated that Mythic were overly anxious to get this product out the door. These problems are particularly unacceptable in a game being billed as the ultimate PvP MMO. No competitive PvP gamers are taking this game seriously for this reason. 2. Many of the character animations are too long. They don't sync well with the combat, and some of them extend well into the global cooldown period, which often can exacerbate some of the combat bugs, and gives it an even more unpolished feel. 3. There are almost no dungeons in the game. Those dungeons that do exist are still pretty buggy, not at all fun, and don't even offer great rewards. Public quests were largely implemented to replace dungeons. Public quests can be fun, and give decent loot, but they get old really quickly. There is essentially only one public quest in the game. It goes like so: Phase 1-Kill a lot of easy monsters, Phase 2-Kill a dozen champion monsters (these are like WoW elites), Phase 3-Tank and spank a boss. There are lots of public quests, but they all follow this formula, occasionally adding an extra phase or some kind of minor twist for variety. These are something like poor-man's dungeons. Dungeons typically give you an intense, epic, unpredictable experience. Public quests are short, completely predictable (as they're all essentially the same), boring, and easy. 4. In addition to the PQs (public quests), there is a severe lack of variety and fun anywhere in the PvE game. The mobs are all incredibly easy, and die quickly. With few exceptions, you'll be fighting one at a time, as it's impossible to pull more than one unless they're linked together, which only happens for named quest mobs and such. There are also very few patrols. The patrols that are in the game, follow very linear, straight line, predictable routes, so you'll never be surprised by them. We all remember some of the intense moments soloing in WoW, where we've pulled one too many mobs, then on top of that a patrol comes after us and it becomes a fight for survival. You'll never have any of these moments in WAR. One good thing about WAR's PvE is that you have virtually no downtime, as you'll never see your health dip below 50%, since the mobs are all easy-mode - even in the late game. On the other hand, since there is no challenge whatsoever, it makes the grind even more boring. There is also little variety in the mobs you fight. You won't see them using unique abilities, heals, etc. very often. Mostly they just run up to you and keep hitting you. That's fine for the first 8 levels or so, but I'd like a little bit of variety after that. You may be saying, "But wait a minute, this is a PvP game!" Yes, but it's still an MMORPG, and one that is trying to compete with WoW in every facet. Mark Jacobs of Mythic even said that the reason for all of the delays is so that Mythic could get the PvE up to a level found in WoW: TBC. WAR has better PvP, if you can get past the combat issues, but the PvE is nowhere even close to WoW - not even Pre-BC. When WoTLK comes out in a month, WAR's PvE will look downright ancient. 5. The UI in this game is sub-par. It is a lot better now than it was at beta, but it still leaves much to be desired. One problem is that your health and action bars routinely disappear. This is really wonderful when you're in the middle of an intense PvP fight and your health bar disappears. Should I heal? Run away? Hell if I know. There is a lack of keymapping and control customization also. The biggest problem is that there's absolutely no way to tell what value your action bar is at. You get a skill that uses 50 action points. Is that half your action bar? 5% of your action bar? There's no way to know because there's no way of knowing how many action points you have, or even how many action points you have when you're at 100%. You can look at your action point bar, but there's no way to equate this visual reference with any actual numbers, even though all of the skills you use relate to the action bar using set numerical values. This is utterly unbelievable. Imagine playing a Mage in WoW and having no idea how much mana you have at any given moment, how much you have at 100%, etc. Totally unacceptable. 6. There is a severe lack of good skills, and of skill variety at all. Look at a skill list for any character. For a dps character, for example, you will see many damage skills, most of which have no differentiation between them. Many skills have a very minor debuff effect, which is really the only difference you'll find. You'll have tons and tons of skills by level 40, yet it feels like you have few because there is lack of any real variety between many of them. Also sorely lacking are the kinds of class-defining abilities that WoW had. The mage in WoW had blink, polymorph, frost nova, ice block, several different kinds of magic (ice, fire, arcane), and you could change your spec and you'd have almost a completely different class. The closest thing to a mage in WAR is probably the Bright Wizard (or the BW's mirror class on destruction, the sorceress). The BW, in comparison, has a few minor snares and knockdowns, and only one real crowd control ability, fire cage, which is a root that has a 50% chance of breaking when receiving damage. The only other spells the BW has are fireballs, and variations of different fire damage attacks. That is it - one root, a few snares, and a bunch of pure damage attacks. In WoW, you receive some major abilities at many points throughout the game, and these seem to keep refreshing your class, so it never feels too boring. Also the sheer variety of skills keep WoW fun and exciting. In WAR though it is ALWAYS - *Ding* - "Great, another generic direct damage ability..." There's
 
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