[Game Complainers]

As you all know, the highly anticipated Warhammer Online has finally arrived!, and we have had the chance to test out this new MMO. Keep in mind that this is only an "at a glance" preview of the actual upcoming review for WAR. Well, without further ado'! presents--SCREENSHOTS! :O

























So! Pretty impressive,eh?... now, guess what kinda hardware we have this running on??
It's an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.5ghz cpu, 160gb 5400rpm hdd, 2gb ram, and.....wait for it........
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GMA X3100!!! =O

Yeah. That's what I thought too. This game, when configured correctly runs very similairy to WoW on the exact same system. To be honest, I never expected the game to even run on the dinky X3100... I was pretty surprised. So, upgrading your old system for WAR, might not rob the piggy bank as much as most people expected. Granted, this current config was only playable at the absolute lowest settings. So, in the coding and hardware compatibility department, I think WAR did a fine job. The only complaint I have, is the crazy amounts of RAM it eats (note: Vista may be the culprit in this issue though) With the test machine's two gigs of RAM, nearly 70% was used entirely by WAR (note: Aero was disabled in all tests).

Now, on to the actual game itself.. As you can tell from the screens, the UI is a little different than most similar MMOs I have played. By default, there is a dock-like thing that contains your main menu and bag functions. I personally don't like this at all. I find it a pain to get to my bag. This is something I really hope gets changed in a future patch or update of some sort. The UI does have a very nice and welcomed customize feature that basically allows you to completely change the interface to your preferences. I tried countering my above issue by putting the dock in the general area where the bag "should" be, and found it much better but still a bit of a nuisance. That is my only real main issue with the UI, of course the occasional moving of a spell from the action bar by accident in mid combat isn't always a fun experience. To counter this common issue 99% of MMOs have, Mythic made a easier to locate "Lock Action Bar" and "Unlock Action Bar" button. This button is located on the action bar on the far left.

As you start up WAR, you automatically end up watching the cinematic trailer... which gets rather annoying. Especially since the game has some pretty long load times. (You can Esc out of the video after a few seconds of it. Then you have to agree to thr Terms of Use... every...single...time.... Gets rather annoying. :\ Then you are at the Char Create, Play,, Server Select, Options, etc. menu. You do whatever there, then hit play and wait again for the interface and world to load. This part seems to take quite a while at times. But after all of this loading, you are seemingly good to go for hours on end without a loading interuption of any kind.

Once you enter the world, things get down right cool. For example, at the High Elf Starting area, as you stand there, you hear the amazing sounds of war, then see huge flaming balls of fire collide with massive landsides. The view is truly spectactular. I must say, this game had by far the most action at any rank (level) of any MMO I have played. Then you see tons of quests waiting to be gotten... You accept them all, look at the map that makes no sense at first, and start to explore. You walk up a dirt road to a big brick courtyard with seemingly endless ally ( no WoW reference lol) soldiers fighting off monsters. Then a huge dragon spawns and is eventually shot down with the help of soldiers and other players.. then you realize you just did a public quest! and get a renown rank! So, you're all excited. You don't have any clue what you should do now. You feel like hot stuff, you just got 1st in that public quest! You get a cool item(s)! Then you run around killing stuff! Sounds great, huh? Yeah that's what I thought too.

Then you start to try to find the next sprawling battlefield to get some blood on your weapons with, and end up seeing more and more and more rank 2 monsters. So, finally you find the next town, It turns out you were just stupid and kept going in circles. You jump down off a big rock to join a bunch of people you see. O wow, they are rank 4... and rank 5.. and wtf? Rank 9? whoa. So you're like, uhh they must be helping a friend. You ignore it. Then you all kill this dragon and finish a public quest. You arrived late and weren't able to keep up with the rest, so you don't get any rewards or anything. Kinda sucks, but hey, that guy was rank 9! =O So then everyone just kinda runs around killing stuff, so you mimic them and find some monsters of your own. You find some monsters a couple levels higher than you, but it says they're injured and only have 1/2 their normal hp, you say what the heck, as you're walking you notice the hp bar on the monster kinda bouncing up and down.. You attack it. It takes the damage. It attacks you. You take damage, it;s hp is magically back. You think, maybe a spell? You attack, it's hp goes back up. Well maybe I should clarify the levels here... You are rank 3. The monster is rank 5. Shouldn't be a huge deal imo. So then you attack....



... To be Continued