True enough, my viewpoint is from a lot of time in end game RvR on a high pop server. I hear it's a totally different experience on both counts.

WAR has seen a lot of changes recently so I thought I'd drop an update out there for people curious about it.
If you haven't played in awhile the most drastic change is the zone domination system.

In months past, a zone was controlled by a faction based on victory points. These were racked up by owning PvP objectives and keeps in the RvR section of the zone, your faction controlling the prior tier of that zone, the win/loss ratio of related battlegrounds, and how active the faction is in PvE in that zone through questing or killing mobs. While it is still possible (and not that difficult) to take over a zone in this manner, zone domination is a bit easier to coordinate as well as disrupt. How domination works is the zone will be posessed by the faction that manages to control all the RvR objectives for a certain amount of time until it ticks over. This results in a lot more fortress flips and city sieges than there were previously.

Also a token system has been implimented to earn RvR based gear. Tokens are earned off of capping zones/forts/keeps/city sieges as well as drops off players. You can save up your tokens to purchase the corresponding set pieces, or break them down to purchase lower rank set pieces if you prefer.
Players that you kill have loot tables customized to their renown rank. Higher ranked players have a chance to drop higher level set pieces and tokens, as well as a higher droprate of lower level gear and tokens.

Dungeons have gotten a lot of fixes as well. Loot tables for Lost Vale were totally redone about a month ago. Items had their stats changed and certain items were retired. Quest rewards were totally revisited in Gunbad dungeon, as well as more loot being implimented. Bug fixes were very big. Also the bile lord's adds have been re-implimented and his difficulty is increased.

Class balances have taken a major focus. Bright wizards and sorcerers have seen some major adjustments with how their tactics effect their AoE abilities, also resists have been capped. Some classes have been buffed, and others have been nerfed. You would be well advised to look into how these changes effect your selected class.

Game interface has gotten a major facelift with new party search functions, and guild search functions, as well as guild interface (I was extremely happy about this.) Guilds can now set up a guild profile complete with contact information, and a provided hyperlink to advertise your guild with it's complete info. You no longer need to spam in game or look up online forums to find a guild.

If you haven't looked at the game since it launched, it bears mentioning that all classes have been implimented into the game, and every set of RvR zones have rare and epic influence rewards(that's rep to all you wowers) that are earned by killing players and capturing battle objectives in the area. (And it's easily some of the best gear in game, or at least on par with the dungeon gear in many ways.)

WAR has also seen the addition of player referal rewards, including a non combat pet, and a mount, as well as free gametime for every month you get someone to start, or restart the game if they've been away for a min of 3 months. As I am very interested in aquiring these, please PM me or something if you decide to pick up the game :D (I haz many free trials!)

Upcoming updates: More class balancing, an "art patch" that promises to redo all the placeholder armor art and the first free expansion with tomb kings theme and an "RvR Dungeon" that supposedly you DAoC vets would understand the concept of.

In bad news:
Class balance has been a nightmare until the most recent patch. Bright Wizards were, for about a month and a half capable of AoEing down entire enemy warbands without breaking a sweat due to poor planning on tactic sets. This was also true of sorcerers to a lesser degree. Some classes are reguarded as next to useless, but that's not really unique to Warhammer as I gather from my friends that still play WoW.

Servers have been going through some restructuring as Mythic adjusts to a projected permanent subscription average. There have been a lot of free transfers from low pop servers to medium. WAR is now down to 1 roleplay server from it's original 4. If you plan on returning to the game or rolling a new character I recomend going with one of the highest pop servers with the ruleset you want. More people = better RvR


CSR's are terrible. If you think WoW GM's don't know anything and never help you, you're going to find yourself missing them in WAR. CSR's don't have the power or authority to do anything more than suspend people for horrific language, and file "official" bug reports. You can't get items, characters, or quests fixed in any way because EA simply does not grant them the authority to do so. The upside is, the dev team is really good at listening to feedback and implimenting fixes quickly.


End game RvR is hit or miss. "Good" PvP is dependent on numbers, either yours or the enemy. While you can get some truly massive and epic wars going (I've defended a keep with 20 men from 140 enemies, and experienced a 600 person battle) If numbers are skewed in the favor of either side in a great way, it becomes less fun.
A problem my own server has been having is that Order is not defending zones, but letting us push into their city fully unopposed simply so they can fight just enough in the city to keep us from taking it, and farm the defense PQs for gear.


Bottom Line:
Warhammer is here to stay as "the" PvP centered mmo. The gameworld is competetive with WoW in many ways. Quests are quests. They're not much different from the quests you'd be doing in any other mmo. Progressing through PvP and only PvP is now completely viable. Dungeons are also entertaining, and I would say "on par" with any of WoW's high end heroic content. It's also viable to level and gear up completely from PvE if you chose (seems like you'd be missing the point, but it is an option if you think you 'hate' PvP.)
The main difference I would still say between WoW and WAR is the time investment to "experience" the game. WAR is a lot more forgiving to a 'casual' schedual. One or two hours of playtime generally is a lot more productive to your character's actual progression through the game compared to WoW where you don't really have that many options for activities in that amount of time. Alternatively, if you HAVE a lot of time to fill and you need a game that will give you more concrete reward for the hours you do have to invest, you will probably burn out and become dissapointed with WAR pretty quickly.

I linked some videos on my guild forum but they all like to start playing at once, creating quite the cacophany. Any suggestions to silence the noise a little?

Oh sweet Khaine on a crutch, my EYES!

It has original content, but I'm sure you're heard by now that the orig. Warcraft was designed to be a Gamesworkshop rts, and gamesworkshop got cold feet. The story diverges plenty from the warhammer Orcs/elves/humans/dwarves archetype storyline, but stuff like the world tree, the world dragons etc are just TOO similar to dismiss. I mean, they nearly have the same names.

The formulae of grinding levels was done successfully before WoW launched, and the emphasis of scripted bosses done by large raid groups didn't exactly originate there either. I'm really hard pressed to think of a way that Blizzard did something new and unique that changed the face of MMOs forever in the ways that Ultima and EQ did.

That said, Blizzard makes quality games, and Warcraft is good, just not in the ways I would need it to be to continue playing it.

So I was browsing the electronics section of my local wal-mart and they had the collectors edition tabula Rasa STILL out on the shelf and priced at 30$ O_o we called an employee over to let him know the game was no longer in existence, and he didn't seem to understand us.
"I just wanted to let you know that the game is shutting down and you should probably take it off the shelf or you might get some really unhappy customers"
-scans- "29.99."
"NO! I don't want to buy it, I'm letting you know that it's discontinued, shut down, unplayable."
"I'm sorry but it's still $29.99....." (the look on his face made it clear that he thought I was trying to scam it for free.)
-sigh- "Would you let a manager know so he can take it off the shelf? If anyone buys it they're going to be really unhappy."
"No, the head office sent it."

-Urge to frag... rising.- -_-

No, it's one of the first hard bosses in the first tier of end game dungeons to put it in WoW terms. I want to say it's like Nightbane when BC was new.
I'm working on clearing the final boss in the game right now and she's so far a little bit achimonde and a little bit felmyst. It's challenging in a fun kind of way I think instead of a pull your hair out kind of way where you have to teach an entire raid group to dance.

Keep in mind, WoW copied everything it has from pre-existing games, and it's lore is lifted directly from the Warhammer world.

When I was raiding in WoW I hated how boss homework was "watch the video, read the strat." It was sometimes pretty hard to put the two together in my mind until I had already seen the fight itself.

So I decided to combine the strat and the kill video in an easy to understand way. If you play WAR, I hope you can get something out of it. Either way I hope folks enjoy it!