I decided to give Warhammer a try, and see what it was all about. I’ve played a good portion of the afternoon and while I’m by no means an expert in the game (whatsoever) my first impressions are pretty straight forward. The first thing I do in any game (after creating a character at least, or as soon as I can) is re-bind all of the keys to what I’m used to. Creature of habit for sure. I like the UI a great deal. I like that it has bits and pieces from all the other UI’s out there mushed into one. I like that the entire thing scales, that each piece moves, and that it’s pretty clutter-free. I dislike the huge map (even though you can see behind it slightly) and I don’t really like the icons on the map either (I know you can filter them off) what I mean is I don’t like the size of them, they’re huge.
The graphics, I will admit were a huge dissapointment to me. By default it bumped me to the max setting and I’ve been playing with very little issue. I had some slight lag coming up to some stairs of a building that lead underground but it wasn’t unexpected especially due to the population of the server I’m playing on. I find them very pixelated, I can count the squares in my characters hair. Sleeves, same thing. I have an older computer (well, not old but certainly not top notch) with 2gigs of ram and a 7600 GeForce, dual core something something. I think that’s not necessairly a bad thing, means people without uber computers can play. Why alienate your customers right off the bat.
I created a healer (named Stargrace go figure) on the same server a bunch of other bloggers I know are playing. Order for that one. Then created (to get the name) another healer on another server, as destruction. So that I could play both sides. I know I’m sticking to my ‘norms’ as far as character selections go. I can’t help it, I’ve played healers in pretty much every game and I just enjoy the classes.
I feel sort of like I’ve had a mental onslaught of information and I’m still taking it all in. One huge portion in me playing this will have to be finding friends and playing with them. This is (as has been said) VERY much a PvP / RvR get-a-group-of-people to play type game. Hopefully I’ll settle in some where and fast. I did four scenarios or so as well as working on chapter one. My little healer managed to get Rank 5 (almost 6) and .. renown 5 (I probably spelled that wrong) before I had to take a break.
I enjoyed the scenarios a great deal. It was a capture the flag type game, and Order won the first round and then lost the ones I played in afterwards. Of course I’m a very low level and while it does bump me to level 8 I get no other skills besides those I come with. Ever try to heal someone for 50 points when they have 1,000+ hp? It doesn’t work out so well. Fun though. I’d like a few more heals and not so much dps.
I also did my first ever public quest which was quite interesting. Had to save some folks and help out with onslaughts of baddies and then a massive heroic beast came out — and of course I tossed a nuke at it and got clobbered. Made my way back to the quest location though and managed to hit 2nd place in it. I got to choose a nice pretty out of a chest, which is always fun.
Lots of titles to chose from. I don’t know when / where / how crafting works or if there is any but I’m sure it’ll come with time. I don’t know a million other details about the game (yet) but I’ll hopefully learn them. The knowledge book is a nice feature, a little confusing to flip through all those pages though. Ardwulf said hello to me in game, so that was nice, I’m hoping that it won’t take me too long to hit a level where I can be helpful / play with folks.
The que for the scenarios sucked tonight as a side note. In the afternoon I was getting in maybe two an hour, in the evening it had been over an hour and no luck. I think maybe I’ll play destruction for a bit and explore that side, hopefully all this mish mash of information I’ve taken in will settle some.
stargrace 
