WAR open beta - first impressions

Yes, I am finally in. Which means I've had a few hours to give the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning open beta a test run. Remember, everything I write under the header first impressions is nothing more than my initial reaction to a game. No flaming, please. And even though everyone and their grandmothers were in the closed beta, I wasn't. I'm not angry or bitter about it at all. No, no.

Right. Anyway. I rolled a witch hunter, mostly since there's no way I will be playing Empire when the game goes retail. I've never been fond of humans in fantasy games and I'd rather play a dwarf than a human. And since I never play dwarves ever you can imagine how much I dislike humans. So a female witch hunter I became, armed to the teeth and ready to kick som disorder ass.

First impression? Warhammer Online is still an ugly game. I became painfully aware of that last year, begged to whatever Chaos god would listen that they would fix that, but it still looks like crap. Seriously. I got everything maxed out, but the drawing distance and the textures are way below what we should be expecting these days. Fixed for retail? Maybe. Hopefully. Don't bet on it. The textures I can deal with, but the drawing distance I can't - nor the bad anti-aliasing.

Anyway, graphics aren't everything and even though I feel like I am stuck inside even though I am running through the countryside because of the drawing distance I am actually enjoying myself. A bit, at least. The ordinary quests are kind of meh, even though it was nice to see everyone in a group get the quest drop when killing a certain mob for it. The highlight of my session was walking into a public quest area and straight into an ongoing battle and facing of against a giant together with 15 other players. That was fun and I hope that they all PQ's are that well implemented and that they'll be as great come retail.

I did try out a RvR scenario, but that was the first thing I did so I hardly stood a chance in there. It is nice to see a time limit on those things, though - that way you know you can always log in for 15 minutes, sign up for a scenario, help your side with the war effort and log out again.

I am currently wondering if I should play on a full RvR realm or on an ordinary one. After all, there is a war going on. I was secretly hoping that destruction was going to invade our peaceful starting village, but they never came. I will have to try to get together my own raiding party instead. Hopefully I will end up on a server with enough roleplaying greenskins that it will never be hard to gather a warband to go stomping through the dwarven lands.

Warhammer Online does have potential, it always did. I am very much looking forward to spending this fall in the Old World. I will keep playing the beta until the live game head start begins on Sunday, then it is really time for war. I just hope Mythic, and their incompetent lackeys Group Of Amateurs, are ready for it. Waaaaarrrrgh!