Well the Closed Beta is happening and this seems to be the MMORPG on everybody's lips.

Will this game overshadow World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion?

Because I am already a hardcore WoW fan, and have preordered the next instalment, I will be playing that first.

But I am definitely going to give Warhammer a try, as it looks delicious and apparantly plays much like an MMO should.

What are your thoughts?




Official site: www.warhammeronline.com

I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but a lot of the PvP concepts from Dark Age of Camelot seem to have carried over, and that's not a bad thing. Bryan raves about it, so it's pretty much a given that I'll get pressured into trying it.

The Warhammer universe is about as dark and violent as high fantasy gets so I pretty much stopped paying attention to this when I found out it was going to be teen rated. Also, no Khorne. That being said I have no real desire to play a MMORPG anyway, so my level of disinterest is only have been very slightly lower had it been M.

Still, the 13 year old in me who loved the tabletop game did squeel with joy when I watched that FMV trailer.

The Warhammer universe is about as dark and violent as high fantasy gets so I pretty much stopped paying attention to this when I found out it was going to be teen rated. Also, no Khorne. That being said I have no real desire to play a MMORPG anyway, so my level of disinterest is only have been very slightly lower had it been M.

Still, the 13 year old in me who loved the tabletop game did squeel with joy when I watched that FMV trailer.

I have to agree, I'm rather disapointed with the lack of visual violence. Maybe a parental lock could help fix this? On the other hand, by doing this, the game will be accessable for a far wider public and parents won't go like: OMG VIOLENCE NOT GOOD.

I doubt this will overshadow WotLK. Thing is, it's very close to release, and people are really psyched about it. Yours truly included. The game offers tasty new goodies, a very interesting achievement system, new content etc etc.

Everyone currently playing WoW + TBC won't just drop the game prior to WotLK to start playing WAR.

Enough about that.

WAR looks very promissing, but the thing is, there already are similar games. While ofcourse, the game setting is a huge plus. The fact that it takes place in the Warhammer 40k universe, is something I am extremely excited about. The PvP system seems very nice, but it's not enturely original. But then again, that's a weak arguement because it's hard to do something extremely and drastically new.

I'm not going to stop playing WoW, simple as that. I might pick up this game, I might not. Thing is, I'm too excited about WoW at the moment. That said, this game has potential.

I just fear it can't compete with WoW. As far as a fanbase and total number of players go. WoW has the advantage that it has been around for a long while already and people are playing the WotLK beta as we speak.

Warhammer 40k also has a huge fanbase, because of the Dawn of War series and the table top players, but I think it's smaller then WoW's.

We'll see when retail hits the shelfs.

This takes place in the Warhammer Fantasy universe, not the Warhammer 40K universe.

You guys are missing something - Warhammer is not a PVP game. It is an RVR game. And yes - there IS a difference. Battlegrounds and Arena in WoW is PVP. You do it - or you don't. It doesn't matter. It is a very "me" centered experience. "Me" being yourself in a pug or victory for your team. That is as far as PVP goes. RVR (Realm vs Realm) is about fighting for you FACTION. Anyone who has played Dark Ages of Camelot knows what I am talking about.

When you win a battle in Warhammer you gain benefits for not only yourself but your faction. When your faction starts to lose more than the other guys ~ you'll start to feel the hurt. What happens when you lose a PVP match in WoW? Nothing - you lose. Nothing changes. Its the same if you lose a match of Halo on X-Box Live. That is PVP. Warhammer is promoting RVR.

Someone mentioned there are other games like Warhammer that are already out "doing the same thing." What games? Aside from Dark Ages of Camelot (made by the same people who made Warhammer) there is no game out like Warhammer. For anyone whose MMO experience in encompassed by WoW with some FFXI / CoH on the side - Warhammer will be an experience you have NEVER seen before.

Will it hurt WoW? Hell no. The main $ to be drawn from the MMO market is from PVE care bears. The niche for PVP / RVR is small by comparison.

The developers don't even want to compete with WoW. They don't want to compete with a grind 'till you're bored to tears and then do a raid for a few hours to maybe advance in loot, or perhaps just grind pvp arenas. That's not what they're going for at all.

The market is disenfranchised WoWers who have fallen out of its spell and anyone who likes a little PvP interaction that both means something and is fun.

Pre-honor system, WoW had awesome PvP. People would raid towns and shit constantly and it was a lot of fun. Now look at the game... everyone who PvPs is either grinding out the same FOUR battlegrounds or arenas. Sounds like fun right? Not to me.

WAR, however, is not without its problems. On a low population server it is atrociously boring (at least it was in Open Beta) because scenarios never pop up and nobody is around to do Public Quests or open world RvR. The only thing left is PvE quest grinding which is just as boring as any other MMORPG out there. There is some cool content in PvE soloing, but it's mostly boring as hell. The world also isn't set up in the best way and feels too much like a grid, and raiding the other sides' towns outside of RvR areas is pretty much impossible which kills world immersion. This is the most stripped down MMORPG I've seen to date.
If the population imbalance continues as bad as it supposedly is (possibly 70% destruction/30% order from what I've heard), the game will be horrible and fail. If they fix that and get the rest of their kinks worked out, it has the potential to be a very successful game. Not WoW successful, but possibly good enough to take 2nd place in the market.

Personally I'm waiting until they release a major content patch or something to see how they're going to adress the isues before I buy it. Open Beta was a hell of a lot of fun though.

The issue is - they not only gave Destruction the cool looking classes - but also the good looking female classes. That so far has been their only short coming - otherwise the launch has been pretty solid.