Warhammer Online Goes Open Beta September 7 for Pre-order Customers

It will be a good and popular game, but not a WoW killer.

I've gotten to lvl 21, and it is a lot of fun. They've improved on a lot of things from WoW, added new ideas, and got rid of a lot of time sinks that have given MMORPGs a bad name. The tradeskill system and the RVR is great, especially in the T2/T3 battlegrounds.

The game does have some downfalls that are disappointing. Graphically, the game is not impressive at all. Some of the zones look alright, but a lot are dark and ugly. WoW actually has some better looking environments, while some in WHO are decent looking as well. Overall, I think it's just a tad better than WoW's, but that is unacceptable when that game was released in 2004.

The one thing that I think is a must in this genre is for the game to be immersive, especially if I'm going to play it for a long time. Right now, the immersion really isn't there. The zones are not immersive, not very believable, and I think the whole world is too disjointed. WoW did a great job of making the whole world seem seamless, while in WHA you truly do feel alone in your zone, you can't see the big picture (world map is plain terrible), and i hate the fact you have to ZONE between the different tiers. The game is nowhere as polished as WoW was during stress tests/open beta, and like people have said, quests are 75%-80% kill quest orientated. If you think about it, so was WoW, but WoW also had a wider variation and very creative and original quests as well.

Some may like this, some may not, but the game practically holds your hand through EVERYTHING. While this makes it very user friendly and easy for new players, it does mean there is practically zero sense of accomplishment or pride in anything you get done. This means very little exploration and no individuality, because everyone else will be following in practically the exact footsteps as you.

Another thing that bothers me is that they throw too much content at the players. Most zones are not well laid out... you can go 1 min before you run into another camp or enemy settlement, or public quest area. Also, some zones have like three towns/mini camps in them, which is I think is ridiculous. I think they tried to make up for lackluster zones by just jam packing it with content, where a lot of it is redundant.

There is a lot of good stuff about the game, but it has a lot of flaws as well. One can only hope that Blizzard will take all the good from WHA and put it into their next mmorpg! That will be quite the treat.

If the open beta last for only a week, I'm getting the Early Access will be 1 day. Not only that, but if it's anything like the AoC early access it's going to be 18 out of 24 hrs of down time.

Still waiting 30-60days after release before I tried another MMO like this thanks to Age of Craptacular.

Should've been Warhammer 40k Online. Just a fresher setting.

After waiting years for Age of Conan I had a very open mind waiting for Warhammer Online. Waiting on and off. Thinking the graphics look very plain few other blah thoughts.

Anyway playing the game is a nice suprise.

It's weird first impressions of playing AoC was awesome but first impressions playing WAR was meh. After playing WAR for more than 30 mins few things happen like Public Quests and RvR. Makes you want to play more. That kind of addictive feeling comes to you. Wanting you to advance to next tier see the new RvR scenerio.

Playing WoW from the start it's a grind. WAR is still a grind but they have broken it up quite nicely so it doesn't feel as much as a grind.

Just my personal thoughts. I'm no where near a fanboy of any franchise and I'm going to be still buying WOTLK and buying WAR. See how things pan out I guess.

Good timing for this. Let's see if it makes a permanent dent in WoW subscriptions.

Wasn't the open beta supposed to start this week?

Stupid move by EA...gonna be a lot of preorder cancels after playing this. At least I was smart enough to cancel my preorder of the collectors editon after I got the free handout code for early beta. I'm still pissed that I wasted 4 days while downloading the torrent @60 K....(9 gb!!!)

Worst part is I was excited about playing this during the download.

Here's a crazy idea for MMOs: How about we get rid of the stupid leveling systems? No one likes "the grind" and yet MMOs continue to put them in. Leveling systems are bad because they segment the player population and prevent them from cooperating with or competing with people whose sole claim to fame is having played the game more than them. Rewards should allow players to forfill a new role in the world, but no one should be completely useless to vetern players.

I'd love to see a PvP system where classes and abilities are not permanently earned, but won or lost in combat. This kind of system would mean you wouldn't have to ALWAYS be the priest, or the tank, or whatever. You could be any class you wanted provided you had "stolen" it from another player. You could also trade/sell abilities/classes. Abilities/classes would be randomly assigned (besides a base class that is "free") when an account is created. Certain percentages of classes would be maintained to make some classes rarer than others to maintain balance (and allow for more powerful classes). Classes/Abilities would expire after a certain period and be used as a reward for certain PvP/PvE challenges to prevent people from hording classes for too long.

That at least would be something fresh rather than the boring cookie-cutter MMOs we have now.

What is the general word on this game? I would love to dive into another fun WoW-esque diversion, but it seems like I've heard mostly that the game isn't ready. This accurate?

I can't believe the amount of mudslinging that goes on when it comes to MMOs. It's like a miniversion of the console wars. I've heard everything about this game from its utter garbage to its the second coming for MMOs, I'll just have to wait to try it myself I guess.

* H E L L G A T E L O N D O N ' D *

almost

Open beta for people who preordered the game damn how are we suppose to know if its good or not before we buy it...

fucking fileplanet. lol

heh an open beta for preorder subscribers. if these companies were smart theyd have a month open beta before release. an open beta that is truly open to give people a trial of the game.

I'm not in the beta, but I wouldn't trust any of the trolls on here.
Checkout the Youtube videos.
It is a bit worrying the NDA hasn't lifted yet, but when it is we will find out.

open beta for a week? what

Good, you will all have a chance to see how bad this game is and have a chance to cancel your pre-order.

How nice of them.