Warhammer Online Beta Questions and Answers

Thanks for submitting all your questions! You’ve definitely kept me busy these past weeks! This has been filed under “Game Speculation” because we’re technically still in beta and things could change! Let’s get right down to it!  Here are your questions about Warhammer Online beta:

Guilds

1. How many spaces can you put in a guild name?
   • Not completely sure, but at least 2.
     
2. How many people are required to start a guild?
   • You can form a guild by creating a party of 6 people and visiting the guild merchant
     
3. Are there any startup costs for creating a guild?
   • There is a startup fee of 50 silver, which is actually a fair sum of money at the very beginning of the game. At level 5, even a group of 6 friends who bought all their class skills would have trouble scraping together this kind of cash unless they spent some time dedicated to farming.
     
4. What do you think about the built-in guild management tools?
   • Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to play around with them much in game but they look awesome on paper. I think it will be the best guild toolbox any MMO has ever seen.
5. Do guilds gain experience (GXP) when a level 40 player kills a mob? Or in other words, do players still get XP credit even though they are level capped?
   • Unfortunately, I have no idea and there wasn’t really a way for me to test this since I was never able to get in a guild at level 40. I would imagine your PvE XP does not contribute to your GXP at level 40 since you don’t actually earn anything from the kills but that is pure speculation.
     

Races and Careers

1. Can you tell us about Shaman casting times and how well the “two god” mechanic works?
   • The shaman has a variety of spells that cast at different times; anywhere from instant to 3 seconds. Using stored up Mork and Gork Waaagh! points reduces the casting times of all your casting time second spells and increases the potency of your instant/channeled cast spells (5% per point). I think it works extremely well. If you play very offensively, it gives you an incentive to cast a very quick or powerful defensive spell and likewise the other way around. Getting off your huge 3-second heal or rezzing instantly (nullifying any knockback) is extremely powerful.
     
2. How did the Engineer class look and what was your opinion of how they performed?
   • The class looks pretty cool, kind of frontiersman-cross-with-steampunk.  You start out with a giant (almost cartoonish) spanner at your side and a hunting rifle slung across your back.  Don’t expect rapid gunfire at first — it’s more like you open with a shotgun blast, then finish combat with some hand-to-hand moves. Quickly enough you add grenades and turrets to the mix.  Turrents are stationary pets that look like a wooden wheel on a tripod, that rotates and blasts enemies that come near.  Very useful to defend a certain position or to get your back.  I’ve only seen the initial few levels of the class, but I can tell you I want to play them more! (Syp)
     
3. What do you think of Black Orcs? Are they too linear or boring?
   • Please see my Black Orc impression thread. They are pretty linear in combat since they use combination moves (hotbar 1,2,3), however, give then dynamic nature of PvP, a single combination chain won’t even remotely serve you well (1,2,4 or 5,2,6, etc.). Maybe you want to fire off a snare, bleed, knockback, disarm, etc. Early level Black Orc in PvE is extremely linear, but as you gain more abilities, you have more opportunities to branch out.
     
4. Can the White Lion name his or her pet?
   
   • I haven’t tested this myself, but according to Mythic, they want to include this feature. No idea if it will make it in to release.
     
5. What were your impressions of the classes that got nixed?
   • Unfortunately, I have none because closed beta testers hadn’t seen these classes in action since summer 2007 and I wasn’t in beta until late winter 2008.
6. Did you play the Choppa before it was removed? What were your thoughts?
   • See previous answer.
     
7. How is the character customization so far?
   • See below…
     
8. How are the opportunities for character uniqueness in WAR? Are the faces/hair/etc enough to make players distinguishable from each other, and is there enough variety in armor sets and dyes to make sure that we don’t all look like clones?
   • There are quite a few options for your character’s face, but you can’t adjust his height or weight, which is a bit boring. Then again, I think that will probably allow us to play the game at a much better frame rate. I don’t think your facial features will distinguish you that much on the battlefield because most people zoom their camera so far back that all those details are lost. Fortunately, there are more than enough dyes and guild emblem/banner options to give you some individuality on the battlefield. It will be much like DAOC was.
     
9. Which class do you think is the most complete/incomplete?
   • I feel as though the Warrior-Priest and Witch Hunter are the most complete classes (and possibly overpowered), while the Witch Elf is the least. Then again, this is beta, so things are constantly being rebalanced and improved upon.
10. Will tanks have a viable role in PvP or be pigeon holed to PvE?
    • Tanks will be extremely viable in PvP due to their ability to soak up tons of damage, taunt enemies, and guard allies. Guarding splits the amount of damage done to your ally in half, so he takes 50% and you take 50% damage. Taunting reduces the amount of damage done by the enemy to all allies except to you for a period of time. Due to collision detection, tanks will be very powerful in close-quarters combat as well.
11. Can Bright wizards really blow themselves up?
    • Not in the sense that charred hunks of flesh litter the area, but they have a mechanic that increases the chances that their spell will backfire if they nuke in a rapid fashion. If you were at low enough health, the explosion could actually kill you and damage those enemies around you.
      

Combat

1. Is RvR fast paced or does it seem slow (reference-I think WoW has a fast paced PvP casting/dps-heal= death and rez a lot)?
   • Let’s just say this — you’re never standing around picking your nose, if that’s what you’re worried about.  Tons of people running, jumping, hiding, fighting, coordinating and dying.  I’ve heard that WAR has more survivability across all classes, and I guess that’s true — I wasn’t insta-gibbed at any point during my bouts of PvP. (Syp)
   • One big difference between WoW and WAR is the time-to-kill (TTK). Recently, the TTK has been adjusted upwards, so it takes longer to kill someone and die in RvR. The actual combat is a bit slower than WoW as well, which makes it feel as though the fights take longer to complete.
     
2. How do larger RvR battles feel — mostly stand-offs, or a good mix? Are melee classes pretty much left out? Same for sieges — what do melee classes do during these periods — just man the siege weapons until the gates are down?
   • To me, the large RvR standoff battles are lame unless you’re a ranged DPS/healer. I have come across MANY zergy standoffs in beta but that’s not really WAR’s problem per say. It seems to come down to player mentality. It’s the “school of fish syndrome” where people clump together to avoid being singled out, which is actually pretty safe because anyone who does get into casting range, even momentarily, is usually nuked to pieces within seconds by enemy casters. It isn’t always this way, but it seems as though that’s the playstyle many people naturally gravitate toward. Keeps are a bit better for melee because they can work the siege weapons and use the terrain to their advantage once inside the keeps (walls, stairs, doorways, etc.). They can also prevent reinforcements from getting inside the keep by guarding the perimeter. Scenarios are usually pretty good too because they are on timers, so you only have a finite amount of time to win the battle. You also respawn fairly close to the action, so people are a bit more willing to mix it up.
     

Mechanics

1. How long until the Waaagh! completely takes over, covering the land in its green tide?
   • Not too long! Greenskins poll as one of the most popular races in WAR, so I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of green (even though we lack a melee DPS… grumble).
     
2. Are you able to resurrect in combat, other than the morale abilities we’ve seen?
   • Yes, and in some cases, you can rezz instantly too!
     
3. How quick do realm ranks accumulate — similar to DAoC, faster, slower?
   • I’m not sure if they’ve nailed down their forumulae yet, but I find renown comes in a lot slower than DAOC from player kills, however, keeps and battlefield objectives reward nice sums of renown, so there’s a lot of incentive to attack and defend them. Still, I think it will take a LOOOOOOOONG time to reach RR80. Then again, it took forever to reach RR10 in DAOC too. On an RR35 template character, I RvR’d for about an hour in a PuG and earned 1000 renown. Unfortunately, I needed ~440,000 to reach RR36.  That roughly translates to 440 hours of PuG RvR to get from RR35-36… Yowch.
4. What do you think about the chaos chicken mechanic?
   • If you mean the RvR chicken mechanic, I think it’s a great way to prevent ganking and griefing. The only drawback would be if you wanted to go back and fill out your ToK in the earlier levels… you’d probably have to do that as a chicken in any RvR zone.
5. Leveling time — I’ve seen references to leveling being “quick” because they want people to enjoy the end-game, but also that they want people to enjoy the “journey.” Can you give us more concrete numbers — about how long does it actually take to level? Do you feel bogged down at any point in the leveling process? How quick is leveling through PvP/RvR?
   • Huge question! I find the leveling time at the early levels to be quite fast, but it gets quite slow as you progress. It takes me about 2 hours to hit level 5, 1-2 hours from 5 to 10, and then about 2-3 hours per level after that depending on how focused I am on XP advancement. I don’t have any concrete numbers on anything beyond level 13 because that’s the farthest I’ve ever gone before having my character wiped! I was given access to several level 21/31 characters for focus tests but I never played long enough to actually get to level 22 or 32. I think you definitely want to mix up your progression methods in WAR because it will feel like much less of a grind. XPing via quests, public quests, and RvR at a ratio of 33/33/34 is probably the best way imho. RvR gives really great XP (2-3 solo kills = 1 normal quest). PQs are nice because you’re mostly looking at your influence bar to gauge your progression and you’re quite surprised to see how far your XP bar has risen along with it!
6. How will the game be instanced? More wow like or more AoC like? When will there be load screens?
   • The only instances I’m aware of are RvR scenarios and city siege. Some dungeons are realm-instanced, meaning that both factions can enter each dungeon, but they’ll never see each other inside (e.g., Gunbad). It will probably be closer to WoW instancing than AoC. There are load screens each time you enter an instance and travel from one tier to another. I am not sure if there are loading screens between cities because we have never been able to access them from the open world, but I would assume so given that the phases of city siege are instances.
7. Does collision make a difference in PvP?
   • Yes, just as you’d expect it would. Obviously, it becomes less impactful in fights that are spread out, but it does become a factor in choke points like bridges, tunnels, keep walls, stairs, doorways, etc.
8. Is there stealth in the game?
   • Both the Witch Hunter and Witch Elf have stealth, but it doesn’t work like it did in DAOC. You can only remain stealthed for up to 30 seconds, and your AP drains while you are stealthed (once your AP drops to zero, you pop visible). Stealth detection is also much greater in WAR than it was in DAOC and I believe your chance to see a stealthed player is affected by your initiative stat. Mythic’s argument for stealth is that they wanted to give these melee DPS classes a unique way of closing the distance aside from the normal speed burst that the Marauder and White Lion get. I don’t find it too overpowered on the WE, but the WH is a much more well-rounded and powerful MDPS class, so I do find it overpowered on them.
     

Environment

1. What is your favorite “battleground,” (scenario) and why?
   • That’s a hard one. Just to pick ONE, I’ll say Khaine’s Embrace (HE/DE pairing). There are two flags to capture and defend, each near the Order and Destruction camps. There are also three distinct paths you can take to reach each other’s flags (a narrow path around a cliff, a main open area near the statue, and tunnels through a mountain), so you’re not always bottlenecking towards each other. Once a realm captures and holds both flags simultaneously for 30 seconds, you have 10 seconds to run to a safe spot before the statue at the centre of the map explodes, doing massive AOE damage (killing anyone in its shockwave).
     
2. What are your impressions of the dungeons you were able to see? Did the “intelligent” loot system seem to work? How were the difficulties of different instances?
   • I haven’t had a chance to participate in a dungeon yet, but I’ve heard a lot about Gunbad. Basically, there are three wings to the dungeon and you need to be grouped or following a group to fight any of the mobs because they’re champion/hero level (think Elite from WoW). Each wing has massive public quests that give you renown for Gundbad and once you have enough renown you can enter the final wing that hosts a massive boss named ‘Ard ta Feed (a massive, deformed squig). The dungeon is not instanced, so the more you have, the merrier, which is good because it is apparently quite difficult.
3. How’s the “soul” of the game? Does the world feel like it’s real, living and breathing? When you take a quest, does it feel contrived or do you feel a genuine urgency to go get it done? How are the quest story arcs?
   • I think this game has soul if you allow yourself to use your imagination. The graphics are stylized, which may ruin the sense of immersion for some (the people who prefer AoC’s graphics) but it definitely feels as though you’re part of an epic fantasy setting. One of my favorite parts of this game is the feeling that you are truly at war while you’re playing because they even bring the NPCs into the fray. Many times you’ll encounter allied mobs fighting enemy mobs and many of the quests have you helping to push them back. The urgency isn’t reallly there because these normal quests and public quests are never-ending. I think the urgency will come from within yourself, wanting to churn through so you can keep experiencing new things. Some of the quests range from extremely simple to multi-staged, longer ones. To be honest, I never read the quest text, so I couldn’t tell you how cool the story arcs are. I simply right-click, accept, check my map, autorun in that direction, and peruse the objectives…
4. Do PvE quests link well or do I have to go hunting for the next area to level in?
   • The PvE quests link very well, and naurally direct you to the far corners of each of the maps. Many of them actually lead you to PQ areas that you might not have found unless you were randomly exploring, which is very nice. Some of the PvE quests actually take you into RvR areas too, so it gives you a chance to get your feet wet.
5. According to an article on Games Radar, dungeons are going to be open world. Does this mean not instanced? How do they handle boss mobs and quest mobs inside? Please tell me that I won’t have to stand around for hours and hours mashing buttons every so often just to watch some other group kill a mob I want.
   • I believe all the PvE dungeons will be realm instanced, which means they are open world and any realm can enter them, however, each realm gets their own instance. Everyone from that realm will share the dungeon, so they won’t be instanced in the same way that they are in WoW (group instanced). It will be very similar to the dungeons of DAOC. My only advice is to not worry. It worked out perfectly fine in DAOC and just because WoW went a different route, it doesn’t mean WoW’s route is the only viable route. I haven’t been in many dungeons in beta, but of the ones I did, they were primarily Public Quest based, which means you should get credit even if you don’t get the killing blow. What you say could be an issue, but they appear to have designed around it.

Miscellaneous

1. What are your computer specs (new and old)?
   • Old system: P4 3.0GHz w/HT CPU, 1GB DDR400 RAM, XFX GeForce 6800XT Xtreme 256MB - PvE was a breeze (20fps), scenario RvR was pretty good (15fps), but city/keep/open-world RvR was horrible (anywhere from frozen to 3fps max). The main drawback is that to get the performance I did get, my game quality settings had to be reduced to the minimums.
     
   • New system: Intel E8400 dual-core 3.0GHz, 2GB DDR800 RAM, XFX GeForce 9800GTX 512MB - Everything is smooth as silk with high in-game graphics settings!
     
2. Can you just name a few of the cool things you’ve seen/done? Whether it be something with the tome, something you found? Things that are unique.
   • Probably my favorite beta experience so far has been open-world RvR in Praag, which is located in the cener zone of the Empire/Chaos T4 pairing. The town has multiple tiers, so you can attack from above and below and it labrynth-like in it’s layout, so it’s really fun to surprise people (or get surprised). It also houses two keeps and several battlefield objectives to fight over. Absolutely epic!
     
3. What has dampened your enthusiasm for the game?
   • The main enthusiasm killers for me lately have been the four cut classes, cities, and realization that the main RvR component of this game is set up at a very large scale, which will probably promote zerging. I’m also not a fan of how their set up city siege with the new “take two fortresses” mechanic. I don’t think city siege should happen every day, but I think this new system will make it take much longer.
     
4. What do you think about the CE items and their recovery times? Will they be worth it?
   • I haven’t actually had a chance to test these out in beta! They definitely seem interesting and I like the idea of Rittenbach’s Camp because it will probably let you gain rest XP even when logging off in the open world rather than a city.
     
5. How does the Beer Copter look?
   • I actually think it looks sweet; a very unique take on the mount concept for dwarves.
6. In WoW, some military friends of mine got to level 70 and were raiding Kara. They got deployed and came back to find their guild going after Illidan, with no time to help them get geared up enough to help. Will something similar happen in WAR?
   • It likely will, however, not nearly to the same degree. I haven’t played any of the extreme endgame stuff, so this is based on speculation, but I don’t think the PvE or RvR endgame in WAR is designed like WoW’s gear treadmill. Gear will be important, to be sure, and you will lag behind people who put in more time than you, which is to be expected, but I don’t think the gap between gear sets will be nearly as big as it was in WoW. That said, I could be completely wrong because I haven’t had a chance to experience this for myself yet.
7. Are you having fun in beta?
   • Some days are better than others. I have a really hard time investing anything in a character that will be wiped within a week or two, so I’ve never really immersed myself in beta. If I had to guess, I’d say I might have 25 hours total logged in to beta since February/March 2008. Some of my favorite experiences were running around Praag and certain RvR scenarios and some of my least favorite were crashing to desktop, getting killed due to lag/imbalance, and participating in any of the horribly laggy, zergy keep/city sieges. I don’t think I’ll ever sign up for another closed beta again because the NDA is really annoying and the game goes through so many shifts in balance/content that it takes a lot of control not to get frustrated. And to be honest, I have a lot better things to do with my time than test other people’s software for free. The only thing I really gained was some foreknowledge about the game and its mechanics and the ability to create some guides that will drive traffic to my site once the NDA drops. Maybe I’ll be able to turn a buck off that and it will have been worth it, otherwise, meh.
8. What is the naming format for characters? What characters are allowed, disallowed? Spaces for first/last names?
   • No special characters, numbers or spaces as far as I could tell! That kinda sucks for greenskins, who won’t be able to have names like Grom the Paunch or Grimgor Ironhide, but it seems like a mechanical thing they couldn’t get working (/send Grom the Paunch <message…> = Grom seeing: “the Paunch <message…>).
9. How do bags/inventory work?
   • I’m not completely sure how this works. When you open your backpack at level one, you are shown three three pouches in the UI with 16+16+8 slots. You are also given a quest backpack with at least 6 slots to hold quest related items. Items stack like they do in most MMORPGs, which helps with bag strain, but I’m not sure how much more you can carry. I never saw any other pouches for sale or drop during beta, or even a UI element that would allow me to swap out differently sized pouches.

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