My wife and I have been enjoying our new life in Warhammer Online. I have to say when I first tried it on the preview weekend I was less than impressed, with my opinions falling in line with those of Brent of VirginWorlds. I didn’t care for the combat, character movement/graphics, and just overall feel of the game. I played two melee classes, did some Public Quests, RvR, and standard PVE quests, and it just didn’t grab at me. I was actually disappointed in the fact that 3-5 years of work, 40 million dollars, and this was what they came up with ?
Of course there were a good bit of folks loving the game, so when Open Beta kicked in I decided to give it a try again, and I decided to try out several classes, see if maybe it would be better. For some reason, this time it grabbed me. I rolled up about 7 characters of mostly casting/ranged dps classes and had an absolute blast playing it. My wife did the same, and it hooked her this time as well. We got on Amazon and re-ordered the game (that we had previously canceled), and couldn’t wait until the headstart began.
We’ve been playing it pretty much non-stop with the exception we’ve made in the evenings for watching Heroes Season 1/2 on DVD (which we’ve now finished). I rolled up an Archmage, and my wife rolled a Witch Hunter, and we have been enjoying our time with the Casualties of WAR guild on the order side of things. I know playing Order we are a bit of an underdog since it seems that everyone and their brother has rolled Chaos, but I just didn’t fine a class (didn’t try any of the Dark Elf classes) that fit well with me. For some reason, the Archmage just clicked with me. I’m really really squishy, but I like being able to keep folks alive and have them finish the quest/instance. I always got tired of having to look for a healer in every other MMO, and in some of my more recent MMO’s I’ve played I’ve tended to roll some type of caster/healer hybrid (Druid in WOW, Mystic in EQ2, Shaman in Vanguard). Its nice to be able to DPS to some extent like a mage, and then switch it up and heal like a healer. Playing a healer is no longer the snore-fest I’ve heard it would be.
If you haven’t giving Warhammer a try, its a blast. Even the PVE carebear content is fun. Its nice to have an alternative to WOW that is fun to play, isn’t too buggy, and has a great community to boot.
