Well, let me begin by saying, overall Warhammer Online was very enjoyable. Most of the issues I have I’m going to present here to be addressed perhaps in hopes of being fixed in the future. Let me start off by saying I’ve played FFXI (2 sad years), WoW (3? or 4? lost years),  some Age of Conan and a tad of Lord of the Rings Online.

Lets start with the little technical things that are quite easily fixed. My fiancee, Meghan, and I have the same computer. Serious. The specifications are:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
EVGA 750i FTW motherboard
Corsair 4gb (2g x 2) Duel Channel PC2 8500
BFG 8800 GT 512mb

The only difference is that I run Vista Business and she runs Windows XP. I would periodically crash randomly in scenarios, load screens, or even walking down the road. It happened after at least 2-3 hours of game play. Not a big deal at all, just saying it happened. Also, one time during a Public Quest in the Shadowlands all of a sudden the graphics started tearing, the NPC models disappeared and all I saw was the shields and weapons. Meghan never experienced a single issue. She also loads 3-4 seconds faster then me in all cases.

The level of graphics seemed to be throttled down, imo. I kept looking for a setting to make it a little better, but never found it. It is totally playable though. I think the engine is intentionally built like this to support a large number of people on the same screen, which I totally understand. Then again, I am just coming off from playing Crysis so… I might just be spoiled.

Game play thoughts after the break.

I rather enjoyed the option to PvP up through the levels or to PvE through them. To the trained eye you could tell the difference between the people who PvE’d or PvP’d. The color the the clothes were slightly different. This makes them easier targets. Of course, you can counter this philosophy with dyeing your clothes a different color. This is a cool feature if you want to look different.

A complaint of mine if you want to PvE while waiting for your scenario queue and you have the quest for that scenario, you have to run ALL the way to the War Camp or to the place in front of that scenario. Without flight paths sometimes this can be a long way away. I suggest having a person available in each little quest hub with the ability to give and turn in the scenario quest.

Speaking of scenarios, you really need to be able to choose between all scenarios available to you no matter what section you are in. Maybe have it where you have to discover it once first, then it will be available to you anywhere. As it stands right now, if I’m a dark elf and want to play in the battle of Ekrand, I have to run all the way to the war camp, fly somewhere and then queue. I want to quest while I wait too. Going to a war camp to queue locks you into that area.

Allowing people to queue up for other scenarios might also solve the problem of racial pairings being stacked too much of one type of class. For instance, there was one time I was playing my sorceress and the other side had 5-6 Shadow Warriors. If you can queue up with multiple scenarios in one spot this would allow a lot more diversity in gameplay.

I like the fact that this game really can’t have twinks. As it currently stands, for two levels someone could run ahead and buy the Teir2 PvP gear. However, their dominance will be short lived. PvP gives XP. Wins and Losses both give bonus XP. They won’t be in that Tier game forever pimped. Soon they will be back on the bottom with the rest of us. Which brings me to my next point.

When I turned level 12, I couldn’t do that scenario again. I queued for the next one after flying somewhere and finding I was never be able to do it. Either they disabled it for the preview weekend or the queue was so long it was ridiculous. This promoted me to get several characters to level 12 and then to never advance. I meddled with some RvR after I couldn’t do the scenarios, but if no one else is out there with you… it is kinda lonely. Good thing I had Meghan with me! We solo capped some Destruction fort in dwarf land and it was fun! Then we spent the rest of the time running to each node to discover the fight was done already or lost. So that was a time waster. I have a feeling RvR is going to rock at peek hours and suck during off hours. Hope you can play at the cool times.

I played an Engineer, Shadow Warrior and a Sorceress (ranged YAY). My fiancee played a Rune Priest, Magus and an Archmage. Of these characters we only encountered a problem with the pets. Through observation it appears as though when put on aggressive, the pet/turret will lock onto a player and start firing. However, if this target runs out of range… the pet/turret WILL NOT SWITCH TARGETS. This makes aggressive totally useless. I can switch targets and click the pet attack button, if I was totally aware of everytime this happened. RAWR!! or rather WAAAGH!!

Last but not least, SURVEYS. OMG. I hope this is just for beta/preview weekend. It will automatically pop up when you are in the middle of doing anything even if you filled it out previously. You can’t just close out of it if you see it up top either. You have to open it then close it.

Overall I can’t wait for this to be released, I think it will be great quick fun if you don’t have much time to play and awesome fun time if you have large blocks of time to actually see an RvR campaign through to win the zone. Hopefully, the open RvR never really comes down to who has twice as many people on the field or which server has more destruction then order on it. Also, you can have both Order and Destruction characters on the same server. You get to undo all the things you fought for.. YAY! *AHEM* WAAAAAGH!!