Last night in Warhammer Online felt like a waste of time. Being in a limited head start really kind of sucks. There is not enough people playing. I ran around to 5 or 6 public quests and it was like a ghost town. Nobody around, at all.
I rolled up a Warrior Priest (check out them boots!) and decided to level up some before I join a scenario or enter the RvR areas. I pushed him up to rank 6 by doing quests and I have to say the class bored the heck out of me. Assuming I now know all about this class (kidding), I will be abandoning him as my main. I really enjoyed playing the Bright Wizard with my wife on Sunday so I think I am going to switch the Warrior Priest over to our duo and use the Bright Wizard as my new main character.
I’m hoping the second group of head start folks playing will make the public quests useful and I still have yet to do any RvR stuff. Long overdue for that.
– Ethic
I guess it depends on the time you played, but rather than no one playing, I think the issue was that everyone had moved out of the starting area. Last night the tier 2 Empire area (chap 5) was crawling with people, while just earlier the Chap 4 PQs were empty.
As for the warrior priest, they do indeed kinda suck solo, in terms of fun. They are a beast in terms of balance, being the only class Order side that can really solo champion mobs thanks to infinite healing.
In RvR, they are a blast to play (imo of course), as you run a fine balance of not getting focus fired and killed, yet having to get in to melee in order to continue healing. Standing back and healing you quickly run out of power (or whatever it’s called)
As of Rank 12, they are somewhat basic in terms of PvE combat though, as I only have 4 different attacks, and all of them are ‘swing hammer, do damage, get buff/debuff’. Hopefully that changes later on.
All that said, it’s not a terrible class when you mix in PQs and RvR with others, but pure solo I would not recommend them. Actually I would not recommend WAR for anyone going pure solo, but that’s another blog post altogether.
I’m still in Tier 1 and the Chapt 2 High Elf PQs were empty both Sunday night and Monday night. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like trying to to them next spring or something.
Grinding influence 100 pts per mob (in phase 1 of a PQ) is a drag.
I notied that during the day time, the Tier 1 zones were rather dead (with a lot in Tier 2 as Syncaine said), but when I logged in around 8pm EST it was business as usual and crowded as heck in Tier 1.
Ran a buttload of scenarios, crashed (my only major complaint is the random black screen crashes), and called it a night. Nothing beats a guild group for RvR or Scenarios, and like Syncaine I wouldn’t recommend WAR for pure solo-ists.
Oddly though, that’s what I used to be. WAR has changed that in me.
I had to finish up Chapter 3 influence by killing PQ mobs, was rough. The only thing I can suggest is finding open groups and joining the most full open group in that area. You can see how many people are in each OG by hovering the mouse over the leader of the open group.
I finally finished Chapt 3 influence by joining a public group and we all went around and slaughtered orcs by the beach and advanced to stage 3 but we were unable to protect the bolt throwers.
Also keep your Renown Rank up there dont level “too” far ahead of it. Some good gear to be had. I like to keep my PVP rank about 1-2 levels below my actual level
Oddly enough in many MMOS waking up early on a weekend to play can create a better experience since there are less people around. Less competition for nodes, and less grief and smacktalk in WoW battlegrounds, and fewer players named tastynips hopping around you.
But oddly enough in WAR I found the times few people were around to be boring. There’s no real farming of nodes to do, since all gathering comes from mobs. And with no rvr going on, no one in the public quests, there is nothing to do until more people log in. And somehow, though I got used to soloing in WoW and LOTRO, I find it incredibly boring to solo in WAR.
So I guess I’ll actually get some errands done on weekend mornings now.
Also keep in mind that all servers are held at very low populations for a reason. Once the actual game goes live, the server caps will be raised to near-max, and at that point everything will fill up as planned.
I know I know. Still I had to complain about something right? Regardless of those issues I am having a blast.
I’ve found the classes in WAR to be much more hit or miss than I’m used to in modern MMOs. Some of the classes I really dig, and some bore me to tears. I experience that to some extent in any MMO, but in WAR the peaks and valleys seem more disparate (to my personal tastes).
Of course this is also from a nearly strict solo PvE standpoint so far. I’ll need to play more of the game before I can really see things clearly.
I found the WP great for solo PVE and lots of fun in PQs. Like any melee class his tactics are narrower for handling many socially aggro’d mobs. If I thought I’d be good as melee RVR, it would have been my main.
I agree some classes and zones are great while others are boring as dirt. I’m also noticing other races playing in Empire zones. If yours is empty when you’re playing check out the other zones. I do think there might be too many PQs for a game where people can level as easily doing RVR. Then again, they provide farming spots for people who like a bit-o-grinding.
Aye… its not so much that solo grinding is any more boring than any other game… its that once you go RvR, be it scenario or open-field, its hard to go back. ;)
It’s that much fun.
Most fun I’ve had since 11/23/2004. And thats saying a lot because that didnt get old for years…