There's been a lot of Warhammer chat in our guild IRC channel over the past couple of weeks, and we've been getting inquiries about what we think of the game thus far, so we thought we'd share what we know and some of our first impressions with those of you who are curious. We’ve also included a few links to interesting articles at the end of this post.

Leveling Up

First let us just say there are several ways to level up: PvE quests, PvP quests, PvE public quests (like a short raid with quest objectives and a boss at the end), PvP scenarios (similar to BGs in WoW), RvR and RvR quests (world PvP). As you earn experience you also contribute to the guild's experience level; more on that later.

Graphics & Playability

The Warhammer graphics are similar to WoW graphics and other than some occasional server lag we haven’t heard of any guildies having difficulty playing. On the contrary the game play has been quite smooth even at high settings.

One thing to note is that we did select a server with strong Order and Destruction guilds. The population is high which makes for great PvP and short queues (many times instant), but around 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM there may be a short waiting period to login to your character. Mythic has actually taken several measures to eliminate this queue time altogether including cloning our server, and it’s gotten much better in just the last few days. It’s expected to level out in the next week or two on its own, but Mythic has indicated they’ll offer free character transfers if it does not.

Grouping Together

One of our favorite features of Warhammer is how easy they've made it to group up with your guildies or even PUGs of different levels. Content, including PvP content, is divided up into 4 tiers made up of 10 levels each. For example, Tier 1 includes levels 1-11; Tier 2 includes 12-21 and so on. That means at level 1 you can join guildies up to level 11 in a scenario (similar to a WoW Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch). You'll automatically be buffed up to level 8 upon entering the scenario, so you can contribute to the cause.

Open Groups is another interesting feature. By default when you form a group it's an "open group" unless you close it in the party options. If your group is open it means that other people questing in the same area can join your group without an invitation. The same is true if you're out soloing. When you enter an area with open parties you'll receive a message and you can join up if you'd like. No more LFG!

The Roster

We've got a roll call on the forums, but that list has since become outdated. You can view our current in-game roster by visiting our guild page on the Warhammer site. This will give you a better idea of the careers and levels in the guild so far.

PvP

Collision detection in PvP adds a new dynamic and means Tanks and positioning, among other things, become important to securing a victory. As an example, in our scenarios many times we'll have the tanks form a barrier between our opponents and the healers and other squishies. Teamwork, organization and skill, the qualities Verity players are known for, seem to be valued and rewarded in Warhammer thus far.

PvP scenarios are not only lots of fun, especially in guild groups, but it's another way to level by earning experience, renown, cash and loot. You can queue up from anywhere (you don’t need a battle master) and once your scenario is over you’re put back in the exact spot you left.

PvE Content

Just like WoW, Warhammer has a questing system you can use to level up. Instead of an exclamation point over an NPC's head you'll see a different icon. You have a quest log and the ability to track the quests just like you've seen before only this quest log is part of a larger journal that contains a history of your completed quests, discovered bestiary, achievements, etc. It's very easy to use and puts everything in one place.

Public Quests
A new concept and feature for PvE is the public quest system. Public quests are areas where certain objectives must be completed to progress to the next stage. Anyone can participate in a public quest and you don't have to be in a group, but you can be in a group or even a war party (think raid party).

An example of a public quest might be like this:

• Stage 1 Kill 150 Orcs.
• Stage 2 Extinguish 8 fires in 5 minutes. (There may be elite MOBs to clear first.)
• Final Stage Kill Boss.

Upon completing a public quest you can view a list of participants and their level of contribution to the quest. The higher your contribution the more points you will earn which will be added to your automatic dice roll. The players with the top numbers win a loot bag from which they can choose a number of rewards including gear, tradeskill items and money. Just like regular loot, loot bags come in various colors of quality such as green, blue, purple and gold. The neat thing about public quests is while you're completing them you're also earning influence (rep) which earns you additional rewards above and beyond what you can get from completing the public quests. Read a more detailed explanation of public quests here.

The big question is whether or not there's any PvE endgame in Warhammer. There is! From an interview with Producer Jeff Skalski:

"Well, I can't speak about some of our more epic dungeons like Lost Vale, high-level dungeons, which is plenty of high-level dungeon content. Really the last PvE encounters, the highest level in the game, are the King encounters. That's gated by very epic RvR encounters all the way up; that said, once those encounters are unlocked there's nothing stopping a player who prefers PvE from queuing up, entering a contested city (because he'll be safe in the contested city) and taking on the King encounter with his buddies."

Read the full article here.

Rewards, Banking, Mounts at 20

Speaking of achievements, you can earn titles to display over your head beneath your name, for example, Eclair Sweetbrew, The Fashionable. Yep, that's a real title and EC really has it! Other title examples include "The Pirate" for looting a certain number of items, or "The Snob" for putting people on your ignore list. Other titles aren't as silly and highlight real achievements such as 1,000 critical hits for The Pivotal Force.

Warhammer has other features you'd expect like a bank, guild vault, auction house and mail system. As you level you automatically gain new bag space. Mounts are available at level 20 and you should have more than enough gold to purchase your mount and surname when you ding. Gold seems to be pretty easy to come by in this game which is a relief to many that don't have the time to farm for it.

Tradeskills

Tradeskills include 4 gathering skills and 2 crafting skills. You can have 1 of each. Here's an excerpt from a good article on crafting from Massively regarding the cultivation gathering skill:

"Essentially most of the seeds you grow give you ingredients that you're going to use to make something. We are reducing the amount of types that you can immediately get, and make them happen as a result of say a supercritical in cultivation. So you might say "oh, let's grow a respiration plant" and then grow ten of them, and one's a supercritical and suddenly it gives you a healing seed. You haven't been able to make healing potions before, and you can't find them anywhere.

You've created the healing seed as a hybridization byproduct of the respiration seeds."

Guild System

Mythic seems to have put a lot of thought into the guild system. If you played EQ2 with us you might remember how we used to schedule certain times to grind guild experience to level the guild. In Warhammer just about anything you do will contribute to the guild's experience and each time the guild dings a level we unlock a new feature. Ways to contribute to guild experience include killing NPCs and Destruction players, acquiring tome unlocks, completing PvE and public quests and participating in scenarios. At the time of this writing we're level 8 and we've unlocked our guild vault, battle standard, the ability to form guild alliances, access to the communal guild tavern, a guild crafting components store and several tactics. We're looking forward to level 10 when we can reserve our heraldry and level 15 when we get our guild cloaks.

More Yummy Info

A World of Warcraft player’s guide to Warhammer Online

Exclusive WAR Post Launch Interview with Mark Jacobs

Post release review of Warhammer Online

Joining Us on Volkmar

Guildies are invited to join us in Warhammer for fun and adventure. Create an Order character and contact an officer in-game for your invitation. If you haven't joined us yet we hope to see you soon!