I know most of us wanted this to be our "PvP WoW killer" and for a fortunate few who have somehow found a magical way to enjoy the game it is. But given the glaring design flaws, population imbalances and poor net coding WAR is far short of being anything close to a DECENT game.

Pros
-new game
-some nice ideas
-funny at times with the tome unlocks
-unlike most people I like the quest-system showing you the area where you have to go
-interesting classes. Not the usual tank/caster etc.
-collector's box package is fantastic, very classy

Cons
-mob AI is a JOKE
-old time gfx engine, from the times of DAOC, feels outdated even with AA and AS on
-old warping method used by no-lifers in DAOC still present here, VERY SAD and DISAPPOINTING
-combat animation is half a joke, seeing some sort of flash when you use an ability, there is no normal movement of your arm when you actually want to hit something in melee... just a flash and an occasional (bad or dull) kind of sound effect
-the game feels really heavy, probably because of bad optimization. It looks like a 3 year old game that could run on 500MB of RAM , yet it consumes 1.1 - 1.3 GHz on my rig. Playing with 30 fps on a 40vs40 might be defined "FINE" by many. Not by me, sorry
-bad interaction with environment items/walls/fences, I always seem to get stuck very easily on rocks, climb walls like if there is a hidden ladder or something
-huge amount of roots/snares/knockbacks/knockdowns, in a game that claimed that CC (crowd control) will not be that important, huge let-down
-REQUIRES Duo core or better to run efficient (My 2 GHz duo core laptop runs the game better than my 3 GHz P4 desktop)

All in all, WAR at the moment is a very nice idea that many people, including me, want to play and love it, but implementation is really, really bad.
This product is obviously not ready, not anywhere near what they call "polished" in the industry. Saddest thing is it carries two things that killed another great game, DAOC
1. Crappy gfx engine
2. Warping, making the game frustrating, especially for melee classes.

Realm balance issues: Nearly every single realm has Destruction DOMINATING Order in numbers of players.
Actual RvR: MDPS (melee damage per second) feels out of place, tanks protect the ranged and the healers MDPS. It just doesn't feel like it has a solid role on either offense or defense.

Class balance issues:
-classes that are supposed to mirror eachother is now a joke
-WE (Witch Elf) is much better than WH (Witch Hunter)
-WL (White Lion) isn't even playable with pet-pathing AI
-BW (Bright Wizard) is much stronger than the Sorcerer counterpart
-both Engineer and Magus feels useless
-Archmage is inferior to Shaman
-and the list could go on...

I feel like we are all experiencing symptoms of the problem but are failing to directly acknowledge the source of the problem itself.
What we feel: Leveling is disjointed. We have to go to the other pairings to get XP (experience points) and it doesn't feel right to do so.
Reality of MMOs: We've all played games in which we've had to travel to different zones to to level-appropriate questing.

Reality of WAR: Besides the unwelcome and arbitrary "travel quest" there is nothing that links a chapter in one pairing to a chapter in another pairing. One has to literally drop everything, including a great story system and join another in mid-read. It feels like you have a bunch of books about one fictional world (say, Discworld or perhaps D&D), and you cannot read one straight through. You have to read one from the beginning to chapter 11, then have to switch to the 2nd book to do chapters 11 to 12, then the third to do chapters 12 to 13, then back to the original book to do 12 and onward.

The action of switching zones to continue to use level-appropriate quests and monsters is FINE and accustomed to. However, WAR does not make this act feel natural and it creates discomfort.

When I run out quests in the Barrens (World of Warcraft) and now have to move to Ashenvale, it is because all my quests now points to Ashenvale. Everything I have that I've been putting off now points to this zone. This is in direct contrast to: I've run out of quests (aside from the arbitrary Rally master in the next chapter quest) and now have to pick another pairing at random just to continue.

This game was just released way to early for what the industry standard is now at.


Article Source: Neowin.net