I had a chance to play Atlantica Online earlier this week in-between being sick and playing Warhammer: Online. For a game that is in beta, it seems to want to be treated as a game that has been already released, claiming in its advertisements: “Love it, or we’ll give cash for your character!” This caught my eye specifically and made me want to try the game, not because I wanted to love it; I figured I’d hate it, since I’m a bitter shell of a man, and could get some cash out of it. However, if you take a look at the details of the ‘offer’ it sounds more like they’re trying to get cheap power-leveling out of their players than actually convince you to play. Offers aside, we’re here to discuss my first impressions, so let’s get on with it!

Graphics/UI: 5/10 – ‘Meh’

The graphics are nothing innovative. They’re similar to most eastern games on the market. This game is particularly similar to Sword of the New World, a MMORTSRPG(?) I had the chance to try last year. I don’t normally review games at the login screen, but this one wants to be. I had never in all my years seen a login screen with so many, many random colors. I think it was depicting a large-scale battle, but to me it seemed like an orgy of fairies and daemons on a rainbow chessboard. Once I survived the seizure-inducing login screen, it was time to create my character. Character customization is very limited, not only at the character screen but in-game as well. I only had about five hairstyles to choose from, two outfit types, and a…weapon? Well, anyway, once in-game the graphics didn’t get that much better. After playing to about level 10(I think), I had gotten quite a few pieces of armor. Instead of evenly distributing them between myself and my mercenaries I figured I’d put them all on my “visible” character to upgrade his appearance. Where’s my helmet? Where are the new pants I got? The character looked exactly the same as it did before I equipped anything on him.

Now, let’s make something very clear. The game needs to have low system requirements in order to function properly, as battles will eventually become very, very large. This is not why the game’s graphics are ‘meh’.  World of Warcraft and Warhammer: Online both had relatively low system requirements when released as compared to the available technology at the time. However, the way they depicted their characters, the landscapes, the spell effects, was very original, and relevant to the world they were basing the game on. Atlantica Online just seems to have copied and pasted a combination of Lineage 2 graphics, with Sword of the New World graphics, and other eastern games. That’s harsh, perhaps, but it seems to be the way the game wants to be treated. “Old MMOs not ‘WOW’ing you?” it proudly boasts in its advertisements, suggesting that they have something new and refreshing to offer. It certainly isn’t in the graphics department.

Gameplay/Chat/Community: 5/10 – ‘Who’s my special little boy?’

This section of my first impressions review will not focus on the combat aspect of the game. That’s a separate aspect altogether as they seem to want it to be. As soon as you start playing, the game will assume that you don’t know how to use your mouse or keyboard and will simply ‘lock’ you to the tutorial NPC. It will explain the world to you a little bit, and how to get started on completing your first quest. This is where the game also makes another assumption: it seems to believe that you’re too dumb to find battles on your own, so it will go find them for you. That’s right, there’s an ‘auto-move’ option that will automatically move you to your active quest’s objective. From there, all you have to do is either talk to NPC X or kill monster Y.

Perhaps an aspect that the tutorial should have expanded on was how to use the chat interface. I kept seeing only one person in my chat log, and they seemed to be talking to themselves. Not in the sense that there was no one else for them to talk to, but in the sense that they seemed to be answering questions and holding a conversation while there was no one else in the chatroom talking. Maybe I didn’t know how to use the chat, or maybe the game packs an auto-ignore feature that will ignore people it knows you won’t like automatically.

Now, one feature I sort of liked is the player’s ability to post in-game advertisements that are displayed at the top of your screen for goods and services players are interested in trading or selling(some services which I didn’t understand, such as ‘teaching pants’). This automatically made me think that goldsellers would be filling these advertising spaces with goldselling links. At the same time, though, it’s much less intrusive than those long whispers we get on other games, or the huge chunks of text in public chatrooms. If the feature were to be moderated, goldselling advertisements could be removed almost immediately.

Battle system/leveling system: 6/10

At last we come to Atlantica Online’s innovative feature. Okay, now that we’ve had a good laugh, it’s serious time. Let’s talk about how the battle system works:

• When you right click a mob to attack, a Final Fantasy-esque transition will take you to a battle sequence.
• You select the character you want to ‘move.’
• You then choose what you want your character to do. There’s attack, use item, use magic, all the standards.
• You will have a time limit, after which the enemy will make their move.
• You are now taking turns hitting each other with random things until one group is dead.

This is supposed to be the best part about Atlantica Online. Strategic turn-based combat that makes you think carefully about what you’re going to use on your opponent for maximum efficiency. The timer was so short, however, that I found myself frantically clicking enemy monsters while hitting “q” over and over so that every now and then a magical ability would go off. I had 4 characters to move on a 15 second timer. It completely removed the ‘strategic’ part out of combat. Not to mention, it took me ten levels to figure out how to remove that annoying camera thing in battles where characters would take a ‘solo.’ A ‘solo’ is when your character decides he’s better than every other mercenary there and will take up the whole screen to show off his magical abilities in greater detail. Problem is: the timer is still running during this sequence, so if your guy decides to summon Knights of the Round or whatever, then by the time the sequence is over, so is your turn.

The combat system ended with me hitting two buttons over and over. I felt if I hooked up a Rock Band drum peripheral to my computer I could get through the battle easily by dropping some freestyle beats. My characters seemed to be a lot stronger than anything they encountered, so there was no need to think on anything. It’s a race to see how fast you can click enemy targets with a 15 second limit. Last thing, what’s up with the looting? When the mobs are dead, I have to loot them to claim my prize, but there’s usually 4-6 mobs to loot, and it uses up a character turn to loot a mob. So if all 4 of your mercenaries can move in a given turn you can loot 4 mobs, then you have to wait until the enemy corpses make a move before you can loot the remaining ones. What the hell?! Why even given corpses a turn?

The leveling system also had me a bit confused. I know each mercenary gains levels and they’re all displayed in the UI outside of combat. A lot of things required “level 20″ and it made me wonder what exactly that meant, though. An average of the levels of all your mercenaries? The level of your main character? Another thing was the random number in brackets next to my name. I saw it on every new player I ran into. I figured it wasn’t my level since it said “18″ and my character’s level at the bottom clearly said “Lv.1″. In the end, I decided it was my character’s age. A strapping young lad with a cannon on his back and a pocket full of dreams.

Overall: 5.5/10 – Nothing further, your honor.

Even though the game is still in beta, it seems to be advertising proudly things that it can’t really offer. If you hated the game, and want to take them up on their offer for cash, you have to get to level 50 first. “Old MMOs not ‘WOW’ing you” I see what you did there. Thanks, but I’d rather go back to World of Warcraft and endure the tedious scripted instances with several  people who didn’t know a giant beam or orb was coming right at them, and that it wasn’t a good thing.

In the end, if you like these types of games, you know, the free, eastern, copy-paste-insert-item-mall-instant-cash games, then you might have some fun with this one. It’s a little bit different than other released MMOs, even if it’s not innovative in  any way whatsoever.

In a recent post at Worldofwar.net, they mentioned something about “Paid Character Customization” which frankly I’m surprised more people haven’t been talking about.

Jay Allen Brack was asked about the Paid Character Customisation that has been found in the game files. At first, he dismissed the question, and would not comment on it, then a few minutes later, he brought up the subject and said that there is going to be paid character customisation. No details yet though.

Now the big question is what exactly does this mean?  For me the first thing that came to mind is that I would be able to literarily buy a customized character directly from Blizzard.  Lev 70 Warlock with full epic gear and 50 Gold, baaam done!  Could this possibly be what Blizzard is planning?  I mean after all the powerleveling, account and gold selling services are big business and if Blizzard can’t beat them, then why not join them.

In essence Blizzard would be doing more positive then harm.  For one, there would be no more gold farmers and in-game spam.  Blizzard can just click a button and add 100 gold to whoever pays for it.  Same goes for powerleveling.  If you want your lev 32 toon boosted to the max, pay a bit and two seconds later you have a lev 70 character.  Not only would it make in-game experience more pleasant by elimitation gold farmers and spam, but it would be safer for players that decided to participate in these types of transactions.  The’re going to do it anyway, so why not do it with Blizzard where you know you’re safe.  The only gap that would be left open would be users that want to sell WoW accounts.  Perhaps Blizzard will eventually open a service where users can sell and trade accounts to each other.

If this is what Blizzard is planning it would be interesting to see how the community reacts as up until now most people seem to despise they types of services.  Or I could be way off base and what Jay Allen Brack really meant was that you customize your character with new clothes, items, etc, in a purely cosmetic way that would not effect gameplay at all.

Warhammer: Top 5 Issues

Well here we are about a month after the release of Warhammer Online, and I wanted to take some time to talk about some of the top issues in the game at the present time. I have previously written about two of the early issues already which no longer seem to be glaring problems to me, Server Queues and Goldspammers. I want to preface this article by saying that I do enjoy the game so far, but for the purposes of this I will be zeroing in on what I see as the top issues that I feel have the potential to derail the success of the game. If you read my early review of the game, which has been published on a variety of sites, then you should know that my goal is to be as objective as possible. Let’s start the constructive criticism.

1) Overworld Rewards

This is issue one for me and a lot of the community at the moment. The entire premise of Warhammer Online is the war in the overworld. I don’t think anyone bought this game to do instanced battlegrounds, but at the present time they seem to be the most rewarding option in regards of using RvR to advance your character.

Scenarios are by far way too beneficial and the overworld is far less rewarding at the present time. Scenarios require no effort to get into, you simply sign up and wait for it to let you know when to zone you in. The longest any given scenario can run is 15 minutes, and can yield large amounts of experience and renown. Overworld RvR requires you to physically travel to the front in hopes of serious combat going on. Overworld doesn’t lay a finger on scenarios in terms of experience points, and unless you are in a major bloodbath you won’t be coming close to the same amount of renown, especially when compared to what can be earned in a 15 minute scenario.

The good news is that Mythic seems to have been reading the feedback. They recently announced a 50% increase in leveling experience in the overworld RvR areas, and they are promising to announce some changes in the next week about renown. This issue is critical because most people will opt to take the fastest route to advancement, and if the overworld becomes empty this game will fail.

2) Class Balance

Since release we have seen a variety of bug fixes go in, but we have seen little in regards to class balance. Now I understand where they are coming from in this regard, but there are some balancing problems that need to be addressed or people will get turned off from RvR. If people are finding themselves saddled into a class that is extremely weak, it may lead them to cancel out of frustration with their class if they don’t have the strength to tough it out or reroll. These are my observations as someone who plays Order in Tier 4, so take it with a grain of salt as I will try to be fair.

Shadow Warriors and Squid Herders are in desperate need of a boost. Both of these classes are one of the rarest played from my experiences, and for good reason. These ranged DPS classes as they are marketed need a bit more DPS or a bit more range. I play a Shadow Warrior in Tier 4, and it is a hard life compared to some of the other classes that are capable of far more damage and have much better survivability. A Shadow Warrior wears the same level of armor as a Bright Wizard and does far less damage. If I am at my maximum range and shoot at someone running towards me, they will be in melee range by the time the move is finished executing. Kiting is not even close to being a viable option in RvR. My root barely works and is a melee attack, so by the time someone is close enough that I need it, I’m dead anyways.

Magus and Engineers need to be looked at as well. These are also uncommon classes because they suffer from similar problems. Both of these classes have an ability that is going to ruin this game if it is not fixed. Electromagnet on the Engineer and the Magus version is an ability that sucks in all plays from 65 feet away, has no casting time, only has a 20 second cooldown, has no line of sight check (can pull people through keep doors in sieges), and snares!  I wasn’t surprised when I found out that the addition of this spell was something that happened right near the end of beta, so probably has not undergone the proper testing. The sad thing is that this is one of the few good tools these classes have at end game, so they need to be brought up a little while this ability gets fixed.

Witch Elves strike me as a bit out of control. I often find myself unable to fight back almost every single time they attack me, even with all of my counter-measures up. They can kill me in about 4 seconds flat while incapacitating me. Now as someone who wears light armor I guess that might be feasible, but Ironbreaker guildmates of mine have been destroyed almost as fast.  The ability that damages you for moving has no limit to how much it can do, and when factored with how easy they can kill when you aren’t moving there is little anyone can do in most cases.  There is nothing fun about not being able to fight back, something DAOC was notorious for.

3) Performance

This is another major issue that needs to be worked on as soon as possible. The end game envisioned by Mythic and its customers is large scale overworld fights. If your computer crashes you to desktop, or reduces you to watching a slide show, then people will eventually quit. My computer is an absolute beast, and even I have found it being brought to its knees in some of the battles we are seeing in Tier 4 at this point. These battles will only get worse as more people level up, so they need to continue to tweak the code. Nothing sucks worse then crashing to desktop during a city raid, then logging back in 1 zone back and unable to rejoin because all of the guards have respawned blocking your way.

I have heard rumors that the game is sending too much data as a reason for some of the performance issues. Some have said that buff refresh data is being updated too frequently, or that chat being logged too often could be possible causes. There are some mods out there trying to experiment with these issues, but I have yet to try any to see if they work. The good news is that the game is running noticeably better after the last patch when I am in large scale battles, so I look forward to seeing if there are more changes coming that will help streamline with before everyone else gets to Tier 4.

4) Itemization

This is a minor annoyance at the present time, but could be a big problem as we move on into the coming months. If you go to the merchants in your capital city who sell the high end RvR gear, you can take a look at some of the rewards and stats on the gear we get to look forward to earning.

The problem is a lot of those high end armors have stats that don’t make a lot of sense. Many of my guildmates report to me that they are seeing the epic RvR gear with very odd stats such as willpower and intelligence on melee class armors and weapon skill for casters. Some of the items are not only lacking in the primary areas for their respective classes, but they have stats on them that are of little value to their class. If these items are deemed as junk by the player base, it will diminish the reward from RvR, and make people less motivated to try to earn them. Now I understand that a lot of these items are sets and have set bonuses, but a lot of these just flat out suck without the rest of them. Maybe they rushed them because the game was close to release and they knew nobody would get them for a long time, but they definitely need to be gone over again.

5) Bugs

These most likely won’t make people quit, but they will test the nerves of the players. The guild interface is absolutely amazing, but it has bugs that need fixing. Some players in my guild have to be manually promoted by typing out the command because the interface hates them. The alliance tab has some glitches making it hard to read at times. The guild heraldry shows to other players, but on my screen I don’t see it unless I toggle it off and on every time I zone. Altdorf still causes me crash almost every time I go there for no real reason.  I still can’t join a scenario from some zones randomly. I could go on but you get the drift.

By far one of the most annoying things is the current state of the mail system. It literally took me 5 minutes to open 3 mails and remove the items attached to them. As someone who is in a guild where people are always sending each other stuff, this can make going to the mailbox a dreadful experience. Every time you buy an item at the auction house you have to go get it from the mailbox, so if you buy some material for crafting or a set of new armor, you might as well go to the bathroom and drop a duece while you wait for your mail to get sorted out.

Conclusion

Overall the game remains solid for what it is. The overworld RvR is enjoyable when it happens, and the gameplay is overall good. When you compare this game in its present state after 1 month to games like WoW and Age of Conan, it definitely has a lot going for it. These issues however summarize what I believe are the top concerns of the community, as you can find on most forums and in game whining.

The good news is Mythic is definitely listening to the player feedback. Recently they made a change in a patch that has reduced the number of gold spammers noticeably. People were upset about the leveling curve in certain tiers of the game and Mythic reacted by increasing the quest experience in these areas of the game. They are keeping a sharp eye on the community and reacting to their needs. If they continue to maintain this level of communication and honesty with the players, this game will be around for a long time.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

It seems with the success of Warhammer Online and it’s impressive RvR (PvP) system that PvP is back in a big way.  So big that the almighty juggernaut Blizzard is considering changing the way their current PvP system works.  In a recent post on the Blizzard forums, it was stated “we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world”. 

This is one of the best features that Warhammer introduced, being able to join a PvP battle from anywhere at anytime.  Not only will Blizzard be adding this to WoW, but I’m sure this will become a must have feature for all future MMOs that have PvP.

Apart from adding this feature, it seems Blizzard is reconsidering its entire PvP system.  After all if PvP is back they don’t want World of Warcraft to be left in the dust.

You can give some credit to Age of Conan for being the first big title to reintroduce PvP back into a stale MMO world, however considering the absolute debacle that followed, that’s all the credit that can be given.  Warhammer Online not only brought back PvP, but did it right straight out of the gate.  Having been there since launch on a open RvR server I have to say I’m having a blast.  While there was some skepticism that doing regular quests would turn into a ganking party, I can say this is not so.  While you do run into the enemy once in a while it’s not frequent enough to get you all riled up, in fact I enjoy it.  Finally PvP is back!