Hilaribad

This is really not just a review of Warhammer Online but a comparison of it and the other big MMO -- World of Warcraft. I'm just joining the comparison bandwagon, since a lot of gamers can't really decide which one to play. To start, I will say that Warhammer is brand new and has not had the time to mature like WoW has, which is over four years old now. So some comparison will have to be made with prediction as well as hindsight in mind.

Lore

First, let's start with lore. I'm not a huge lore follower of either game, but probably should be as the creation of mythical worlds is really interesting. It's just that I never played the original games, read any related books, or played any tabletop miniatures or pen and paper scenarios. I have, however, read bits and pieces of lore for each game, and both games have a rich and deep background, probably not something I'd care to compare, only to say that Warhammer's goes back further and indeed was inspirational to the creation of WoW. Warhammer's roots go back to about 25 years ago, whereas Warcraft's go back to about 1994.

To do any comparison at all, it would have to be the application of lore to each game. Both games integrate lore very complexly, and for each game, it seems to be done quite nicely.

A variation in official "canonical" lore is inevitable, because adapting story to a new genre always is. I do think it went a little far in WoW. WoW has always deviated from pure lore with its pop-culture reference is NPC names, quest titles, town names, and so on. I loved it the first time I saw a sign entering Deadwind Pass, which read "Abandon hope, all ye enter here," as a reference to Dante's gates of hell. WoW is full of these types of references, but I feel by the time the more superficial Burning Crusade expansion came out, Blizzard just went a little too far with it, including the blood elf dance inspired by Britney Spears. Those are just examples.

The lore in Warhammer is similar to that of WoW's, a world tens of thousands years old and begun by the oldest creatures, which evolved through high-fantasy motifs and typical DnD gods and heroes, wars, races, and character types -- much inspired also by J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, and other fantasy writers.

Warhammer also was created by a British company, Games Workshop (later the rights for the online game were bought by Mythic Entertainment), and this may explain the darker British comedy of the present day Warhammer Online, compared to the more American style pop reference culture found in World of Warcraft.

Verdict: I enjoy both games' lore, and cannot accurately compare whether one is better or worse. The only complaint I have is that in WoW, the Burning Crusade expansion seemed to fall a little too far from the more traditional lore and feel of the first release. I think that the second expansion will get back to that original atmosphere that most people really loved.

Game Look and Feel: the Engine and Graphics

I was absolutely stunned the first time I played World of Warcraft. I was brand new to MMOs, having only dabbled some in Diablo and Diablo 2, which I am not sure were considered real MMOs. But the world was vast and full of interesting things to discover. My husband and I played WoW on and off for four years. This feeling of being really impressed by the scenery continued, each time we'd enter a new zone (playing horde side later too), that the world was just beautiful: Winterspring for its snow-covered mountains and valleys; Thunder Bluff for its stunning green, rolling hills and red mesas; Stranglethorn Vale for its tropical jungle atmosphere; and even Tanaris for its vast, sandy dunes and blue beaches. The cities in Warcraft were great; especially Iron Forge, home to the dwarves, a great big trade area circled around a giant forge in the middle. Really amazing.

Warhammer also wowed me, but probably not to the degree that WoW did -- and to be fair, I have to admit that by the time I saw Warhammer's graphics, I was already really familiar with the look and feel of next-generation MMOs, including Age of Conan (which turned out to be a lovely world but a terrible game) and the world in Lord of the Rings Online, which had areas that really made me pause. I could not possibly give a great overview of all the zones in Warhammer, as I have only played so far up to tier 3, but the world indeed is very ambient and moody. It doesn't have the vibrant, colorful look of WoW (which by now is "old hat" and appears too cartoony and less pretty than it used to).

Warhammer's graphics are higher-end than WoW's and overall better. The dark war-torn lands are not sugar-coated; they are realistically downtrodden, though some areas are quite nice and pleasant. The simple way that ocean waves creep up to shore is very realistic and awesome. I have run across a few breathtaking scenes, but for the most part, the feel of war is omnipresent and the environment reflects this.

Since WoW's graphics are dated, some people hope for upgrades, but WoW does market more toward the mass market, many of which are not big gamers but grandmas, children, and others who like the world of WoW just for casual exploration and leveling. Blizzard seems to keep the graphical engine requirements lower than some of the more recent MMOs in order to attract a larger crowd. There is nothing wrong with that, but after a four-year period of playing WoW I got really tired of the inorganic character models and can't in my right mind look at them much more.

Verdict: Wow's graphics are very vivid and colorful, and continued along a line of other MMOs in establishing some very beautiful scenery. Warhammer presents higher-resolution graphics and therefore is more realistic feeling, but darker due to the type of world it is. The comparison has no verdict, as I think the way people like their game to look is highly subjective. Some people really prefer the cartoonier look, and others prefer the more realistic. I tend to like the latter a little better but also find myself missing the stark contrasts of sky and land and water presented in WoW. On the other hand, the tone of sky, water, and land in Warhammer is very detailed and immersive.

A last note about animation and frame rates per second, however: Warhammer still needs to make performance smoother. Some animations are clunky and not completely in synch with combat. To me, this is a typical release problem since beta cannot test super large populations. Mythic has already addressed changes to be coming in its next patch. Compared to WoW, where at release, I couldn't get around in Iron Forge without lagging into the outer pit, Warhammer's release is hands-down probably the smoothest release in all of MMO history. WoW still has its periods of lag and ping problems, but overall the combat animations are way more seamless than War's.

Character Creation and Development

In WoW are two factions, Horde and Alliance, each with five races and an assortment of classes, all being race-dependent. On the Alliance side are human, dwarf, gnome, night elf, and draenei. On the Horde side are orc, troll, tauren, undead, and blood elf.  Each faction has the following classes: paladin, priest, warrior, shaman, druid, hunter, rogue, warlock, and mage. Expansion will introduce a death knight. Over the past four years, WoW has built up many characters, and given hybrids much more desirable traits and skills -- but in the beginning, a few classes were just not very good, including some of the hybrids like paladins and druids. The hunter class, probably the easiest to play, is still over-powered and has been for quite some time. Character balance in WoW continues to be an issue, but I'll get into that in the PvP section later.

Character creation now appears very bland in WoW. The models are old and no longer that exciting looking. After four years, you can start to really tell a big difference in models, compared to games like AoC, LotRO, and Warhammer.

Character development, on the other hand, is quite nice as far as gaining new skills and new gear. WoW is very gear-oriented, even though it took WoW a very long time, almost all the years it's been around, to start getting gear itemization right and introducing tokens instead of specific class gear in some of the higher dungeons.

Crafting and collection skills also add an element of depth to characters, and WoW's focus on trade skills, the economy, the market, and how a character interacts with the market is pretty complex. Primary skills like leatherworking, tailoring, alchemy, engineering, blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, enchanting, and (in the expansion) scrollmaking add to a character's place in the guild or world, as people normally have to work together to create and trade or sell their goods.

In Warhammer are also two factions: Order and Destruction. On the Order side are high elves, humans (empire), and dwarves. Destruction has greenskins (goblins), dark elves, and barbaric type humans called chaos. For each race are three classes, each somewhat unique but also slightly mirroring a similar race on the other faction. That leaves a much larger choice of what to play for Warhammer fans: 18 classes in all, compared to WoW's 10 (including death knight). Warhammer has also announced that its next patch will bring back two classes that were not ready for release, bringing the total type of characters to 20. This patch is not a paid expansion, making me love Warhammer's customer outlook even more.

Because of the higher graphics detail in Warhammer, it really has the edge to better character creation, with simply more options in developing the character as well as a more detailed look and feel.

While gear is less important in Warhammer, and itemization is also in need of improvement, I've noticed that even at low-levels, the different characters I've made can look pretty decent, my highest beginning to look very nice, even at the mid-game range. I was commenting the other day how the shoulders on my level 13 zealot are ones I would have loved at 70 on my WoW priest. My level 20 shaman has a very cool staff as well, one that I didn't see the likes of (appearance wise) until Burning Crusade in WoW.

I think Warhammer wants to focus on the fun factor rather than the big-boss loot factor and gear factor, and wants players to do well and not be gear-dependent, and I like that concept despite the fact "looking cool" is just fun. I'll explain more in the section on PvP. But the simple fact is that characters can develop a very neat and unique look at an early level in Warhammer, whereas in WoW the gear and weapons are mostly pretty bland unless you spend a lot of time toward end game grinding in arenas, battlegrounds, or raid instances. In Warhammer, you can also dye your armor, which is something really basic a lot of people have wanted in WoW forever.

Trade skill development is, as of this writing, pretty moot in Warhammer. I am not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing. For people who really want to immerse their characters into the commercial aspects of the game economy and don't mind hours upon hours of collecting goods that will enable them spend more hours crafting things, well, WoW is the game for you. For people who would rather spend their game time getting right into battle, and want to keep crafting on the side and have it not time-consuming, then Warhammer is for you.

Verdict:

Playing WoW for four years, I grew to sort of identify with the characters I made. My level 70 resto shaman was two years in the making, and was T5-geared before I took a break in late spring of 2008. She was almost to max fishing, and was at max levels in cooking, jewelcrafting, and mining. If I ever go back to WoW, I'd most certainly pick up where I left off with the shaman, because I liked the character and invested the most time in that character. I never really tired of healing with her; I just tired of some grindy aspects of WoW, which I'll get into later.

In Warhammer, I resurrected my healy type love and made a zealot and a shaman, and I really like both characters -- but the little shaman is my favorite so far. Part of it is that of all the races, the greenskins really got such a humorous personality in Warhammer, and there isn't anyone I know who doesn't like them. I can safely say that having only played this character for a month now, I identify with it as much as I ever did my WoW shaman.

Because Warhammer is so in-depth with character creation, cool-looking gear at low levels, personality types for each races and classes, I think Warhammer wins hands down in this department. Not to mention that when leveling up, the skills are very nice, and while WoW offered a tree of three specializations, Warhammer does that and adds traits, morale abilities, renown abilities, lore unlocks, tactics, and achievement titles to its characters. (WoW is now adding in many more titles and achievements too, but Warhammer caught on early.)

Verdict: Character creation and development in Warhammer is much better due to the larger variety of appearance customization at creation, gear, racial personality, and skills. I didn't really care for crafting in WoW, as it took too much time, so I don't mind it that in Warhammer, crafting is not a focus. Not to mention that some of the itemization in leatherworking and tailoring were just so terrible while leveling up but then mandatory when starting to raid (such as the primal mooncloth stuff). The bigger number of races and classes in Warhammer and the updated graphics engine makes creating a character more fun; the larger number of types of abilities, the cool-looking gear, and racial personalities definitely top those in WoW.

Player vs. Player

WoW has sort of had a rocky road in trying to get a strong PvP presence in the last four years. When I first started playing the game, world PvP was where it was at until you got to level 51 and started playing in Alterac Valley, a battleground that was also fun back then. Later, arenas were created, but only for level 70. Low-level instanced PvP was mostly a bunch of low-level twinks owning Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch, or just dead.

World PvP: there was really nothing better than entire cities being invaded. I'm talking about hundreds of horde descending upon Iron Forge and getting in and just shredding things apart. We stupidly rolled alliance on Malganis, because even though we were avid readers of the Something Awful Forums, we didn't do enough research to know that Goon Squad rolled on the horde side. Well, we ended up playing horde much later, but in our naive early days, we were the underdogs and the goons absolutely owned that server, to the point that I am pretty sure Blizzard still has problems keeping alliance on Malganis. Leveling up on that sever as a holy priest was quite painful. There was not much fair game out in contested zones. I'd get one-shot all the time by gangs of much higher goons roaming around. But those big world battles were so much fun, even though we'd lose every time. Then world pvp like that died out; the fun factor was lost when people started getting serious and wanted honor/rewards for PvP, and battlegrounds offered more honor for killing people than just riding around town would do.

The main problem with WoW's PvP, even to this day, is sort of two-fold. First, WoW has been described as a game teasing you along, a "carrot on the stick" syndrome, where with a lot of time spent in game, and only with time (note, not necessarily skill) can you continue to upgrade your gear. Gear is more important in both PvE and PvP zones, so the better the gear, the better you'll perform. The only way to GET continually better gear is to spend hours either a) raiding for that rare elusive gear upgrade, which could takes minimally three nights of raids a week, at times for weeks, to get and b) participating in PvP arenas or battlegrounds for points and honor, which when saved up will earn you better gear. Most self-appointed elite in the game who have spent hours on end just to get some purple good gear would probably argue with me, saying skill is more important than gear, but it's just not true. The stat bonuses on time-consuming gear upgrades makes a difference, a big difference. Granted, a very bad player could probably have better gear and still not do well in the game -- but, let's take the more logical point: the outcome of two equally skilled players, of the same class, dueling would be that the one with the better gear would win. Too, gear earned in doing a lot of arenas has great PvP stats; anyone new into arenas has to eat the dust for a long time before earning equivalent gear. Many players just don't have that kind of time, especially players with jobs, relationships, and other responsibilities.

The other problem with PvP in WoW is that WoW has always been a top-notch game for PvE content, whose gear drops do not fare well in PvP circumstances, but do fare well in raids, instances, and other script-based, player vs. environment situations. That means that PvP is almost like a different game. Some class roles, like tanks, which are absolutely needed in raids and instances, have really no place in PvP. Players are not tauntable, though computer-generated mobs are. A tank going into an arena is just pretty useless unless they spec dps for a little while. The problem in the past four years is that to respec would costs a lot of gold -- to offset that sort of thing came daily quests, just repetitive quests that got very tedious and boring after a week. Anyway, WoW is finally changing it so that you can freely have two specs on your character, but didn't this come a little late?

Warhammer focuses on not just player-vs-player combat, but realm-vs-realm, otherwise known as RvR. To be fair, I can't possibly report on how it will fan out in the end, because the majority of players have not leveled to 40 yet and are still generally in the T2/T3 zones leveling up. Right now, the general attitude is that RvR is great. Each zone has three scenarios, which, if you were smart and joined a somewhat populated server, pop up often enough to keep you busy for hours. Or if you can't play hours, you can just log in and find a scenario and get a sense of accomplishment after a game or two (each one maxing at 15 or 20 minutes). In my experience, the three scenarios are very different from each other and can attract different types of players.

A couple things about Warhammer: roles like tanks are needed not just in PvE but in PvP. Mythic gave tanks some skills useable and desired in player-vs-player content. Yay, right? Also, since scenarios can have an 11-level difference in players who join, lower levels are bolstered as far as at least armor and some skills, though the higher levels are still going to have a wider variety of skills and play better. It's okay. Even as a level 1 rune priest once, as I tried the Order side, I was number one healer in a scenario. I'm not trying to say I'm particularly skillful, only that my gear didn't make me better, I just had to pay attention and heal people fast.

Verdict: Warhammer's focus is RvR (PvP) and wins this contest. World PvP needs some work, but Mythic knows this and plans to fix some things in a couple months. Release-wise, I have no complaints. World RvR and taking keeps is still more popular in War than in WoW, but also Warhammer needs a little time to mature in the sense that more players reach higher levels and can participate in keeps and finish out the love of scenarios (which give leveling experience too). The number of scenarios alone already far outnumber WoW's instanced PvP arenas and battlegrounds.

Player vs. Environment

This is also a tough comparison because of the approach each game takes toward PvE. WoW's focus has always been PvE, while War's is PvP. At release, WoW had a lot of gorgeous content to roam around and level in via questing and instances, but its end-game dungeons were not fixed for a while. WoW has plenty more five-man instances and larger raid dungeons that Warhammer, though War will be getting more in the future.

Quests: Most quests in both games are completely soloable, but this was not true for WoW's release. WoW had several elite quests that required group play -- though has gotten ridden of many of those from levels 1-60 to help alts level faster and get to end-game.

As far as soloing, both games provide adequate content for soloing in PvE, though Warhammer's is a little friendlier in regards to open parties in public quests as opposed to trying to find a specific party composition to go to instances. I've had prolonged periods in WoW, even in a big guild, where it was hard to get a group together to complete instances. I haven't seen this problem in public quests (see below) in Warhammer. I usually play with my husband and a couple friends, but when soloing, find that I can still accomplish stuff.

Instances: World of Warcraft definitely has more PvE instanced content, which can be started at low levels, with Rage Fire Chasm in Orgimmar starting at about level 12 on horde side and Deadmines starting at about level 18 on alliance side. Instancing is fun, but also niche-like, as a tank, healer, and three dps are always needed to complete an instance. Tanks and healers have traditionally been at a shortage, and at release, warrior tanks and holy priests were usually the only options for taking along to challenging instances. These changes, especially after Burning Crusade, when paladins and druids were given great tanking abilities, and when paladins, druids, and shamans were given nice healing trees.

Warhammer has a limited number of instances, not until the third tier, so falls behind in that category. But for a game not focusing on PvE I hope they stay that way. In place of the traditional five-man instance where a party must fight waves of regular mobs, then more elite bosses, Warhammer introduced public quests, which, while not instances, are about the closest you can get to getting a group together to complete some objectives and get some nice loot. The nice thing is that you don't need to limit yourself to a five-man group to complete these instances, and while tanks/healers/dps are usually all necessary for killing elite bosses like heroes and lords, groups can be more than five people if converting to a war group. If you can't find someone to go do a public quest, rest assured there are other public quests in the same zone and that the most popular are generally those PQs located near a camp or spawn point. If you are not invited to join a group, you can invite yourself to an open party. You can also just participate and still receive influence points (which, when reaching certain levels have some nice gear rewards), and be eligible to roll on the treasure chest loot after the public quest is completed. The roll is computer-generated, giving extra points to those who contributed the most as well as who have been doing the quest and have not won loot yet. The roll is still random, giving everyone a chance, which would prevent higher-level people from just getting all the loot all the time. This is unlike in WoW, where good drops off mobs are just rolled on, regardless of contribution. PQ loot too is catered to any class, whereas WoW's instance boss drops are class-specific (except for higher dungeons at end-game, which now sometimes drop tokens instead of specific loot).

Raids: As far as I know, Warhammer does not have big 25/40 man raid dungeons, as the raid groups are all specifically formed for PvP content or public quests. So WoW wins the raiding scene. Having been a WoW raider in the past, I can say that there was nothing more exciting than the first time our pre-BC raid killed Ragnaros or more fun than the time our rather casual raiding guild downed Vashj and Kael. But the time spent in getting to those mobs was so time-consuming, the organization so bureaucratic, the personalities of otherwise pretty cool guild members going downhill to rude, insultive, and temperamental did not make the raiding game a fun game.

Just to throw in a bit of perspective. The guild I last played in was Ol Dirty Blunderbuss, horde side of Duskwood -- still a great guild with a good bunch of people. We formed from the Something Awful forums out of a bunch of nerdy game types but were also somewhat fortunate that we all tried to balance the game with real life. Our guild leader was working on (or had already gotten) a Ph.D. in some kind of physics, many of us were married, I think a couple people had kids, most of us were college-educated and liked to have a gaming outlet to pass our time. One of our real-life friends who played with us was an older-than-average college student working toward a biology degree. The majority of the guild, at least the core of it, were professionals who didn't always have a lot of time to spend gaming.

Because I was one of the first people to join the guild back in early spring of 2006, I was made an officer by default. I took a break pre-BC and went back later with my husband and friends, and raided up to the end of T5, when we then began working on Hyjal and Black Temple. By this time, let me describe to you the kinds of time-consuming efforts I am talking about.

One, WoW (unlike Warhammer) makes you pay for repair bills to your equipment. Equipment takes damage from normal day battles and more damage from dying. In raid instances where you are learning everything, you die a lot. There has to be some way to offset those expenses, not to mention crafting expenses, respec expenses for switching to PvP arenas, potions-buying, mounts and flying mounts and epic flying mounts, and all sort of fees accumulating in WoW. Raiding requires having the best consumables, gems, and enchants. All these things require either a lot of gold for buying them or the materials to make them, or require LOTS of time if you have the craft yourself but must go out and collect the materials. And each time you get an upgraded piece of gear, it's time to enchant/gem it all over.

The offset was a new type of gold-earning: daily quests. If you did several daily quests every single day, you could easily save up money for an epic flying mount as well as more easily afford the requirements for raiding: all the gems, enchants, potions, and other consumables.

A typical week was this: My husband and I ran the lower instance Kara every weekend, usually Saturday, not only to earn the badges dropped in it to upgrade our own equipment, but to help the guild gear up to start raiding. For old pros, Kara was an easy 2.5/3-hour run. For new people learning it, the run could take 5 hours or more. On days off from raiding, we did dailies to earn gold and reputation for faction as well as ran the occasional instance to help out guildies. Some weeks we also ran Zulaman on Friday night, until our guild started getting divisional and 10 people decided to get bear mounts rather than diversifying the run to help others gear up. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night were spent raiding. We started in T5, did that for a couple months, and then moved up to T6. Many people still needed T5 gear and had to sit the nights we killed Vashj and Kael, but we never went back. We didn't go back because the handful of raid leaders who started making all the raid decisions didn't want to. The veterans in the guild seemed a little too laid back to commit to this faster progression, nor had the time. People started dropping off the raid scene, including us. It was hard enough that the minute my husband got home from work, three nights a week he'd sit down to raid for 3-4 hours.

Personalities in our guild suffered, one of the newer guys leading raids sat around on vent most of the day and night in his own channel with a few buddies, complaining about people who weren't top raiders, and ultimately making up things about our guild leader to get others to leave (there finally was a splinter). To me it just seemed like a hen party, complete with gossip and rumors. It was really a sad state of affairs, but he and most of his friends had transferred over in search of purps and weren't really happy with the fact those of us already in guild had already established having fun as more important than fast progression. We were experienced players: our guild leader was one of our main tanks until BC and then rolled a paladin healer to heal from heroics up through T6, our long-term tank really the number one tank all throughout raiding, myself being one of the longest time healers in guild and scoring high on the healing meters, my husband being one of the few tanks that had even bothered getting T5 resists and who had geared to do good druid dps when tanking wasn't needed, and our friend the biologist being one of the consistent highest dps'ers in our raids, two of our healing druids who consistently raided stayed in, as well as others. But we were happier not having to spend a million hours in a game each week, and dropped out after personalities in guild declined. The nice thing is that after the splinter, the guild never fell apart but is still over 300 strong, with the more laid back, more long-term core raiders and players still in the guild, and yet also the people who like most to dick around and have fun. But the content offering of WoW was also at a standstill, with no expansion or patch for months, and most of us just took a break.

Probably the biggest fault I found in serious raiders was that raiding is always just a numbers game. I started taking a break now and then from raiding when I couldn't deal with the declining personalities of people in guild. Then my dad entered his final stages of Parkinsons, which meant I left my home to spend his last weeks with him. This was a pretty legitimate reason to quit playing a video game that was increasingly time-consuming, but I instead got a lot of flack from the new raid leaders for not being there to heal all the time. That's just how lame it got. They wouldn't personally say to me: you suck for not raiding with us; it was a more implied sentiment in behind-the-backs venting, general complaints, and so on. My lack of presence to heal them, after a straight year of raiding, meant new content couldn't be accomplished. I thought I might have been imagining this, but other healers confirmed my statements. The remaining people who did not splinter out from Ol Dirty Blunderbuss, were NOT this way, and were very caring and understanding, including the guild leader, who I still keep in touch with on occasion.

So, my perspective of raiding is pretty biased. We had gone through a similar guild splinter in our first raiding guild pre-BC. After two raid-focused guilds, we were permanently burned out on the game of raiding. Though, to be fair, WotLK will have larger raids doable in smaller 10-man sizes. But I think it's just too late to attract people who can't spend a fortune of time in the game and have already tired of the repetitive nature of script-based end game raiding, dailies, and so forth. Maybe it's also just that in the past four years, many gamers have grown up a little and have too many responsibilities to make a video game a full-time job.

Verdict: WoW definitely wins as far as PvE content if you are looking at amount of instances and raids available. But Warhammer wins in that its PvE content, much like its PvP content, is doable with more flexible groupings, less organization and less time commitment. For people who want a little of PvE mixed with PvP and who have less time on their hands to really get wholly involved in a game that takes 40 or more hours a week, War wins. If you are a gamer with no or little outside responsibility, and can raid 3-4 nights a week and spend extra time above that doing dailies and farming consumable, and you don't mind that much time allotment to a raid, then WoW is for you.

I haven't mentioned that both WoW and Warhammer are completely viable games if you just want to quest and do the occasional pvp or instance, but eventually you will get to the end-game, and it stops there unless you want to raid or grind arenas. But if you avoid end game grinds (and Warhammer evidently has them too with T4 taking a long time to level in; something, also that Mythic is looking at), either game is okay as far as playing however you'd like. A game is much what you put in to it or take from. There is no rule to say you have to be max level in two weeks, though many gamers do just that. If they have loads of time on their hands.

Community

This is the last comparison of the two games that I'll do until I have more time to sit down and write.

Subscriber numbers can describe how the game is faring overall, and Blizzard has over 10 million subscribers since its beginnings four years ago. Warhammer saw 750,000 subscribers since its first month.

I personally think that WoW will win in the numbers game for a long time, over any MMO, simply because it set a precedent of an easy game to play and continues to appeal to the mass market. There is a lowest common denominator feel to WoW, and you can tell by reading its member forums as well as paying any attention at all to the global chat in game.

Warhammer appeals somewhat to the overall market, but is a little more niche-like in that it focuses on a realm vs. realm environment, and player vs player events are not so predictable or static as script-based events in a more heavy player vs. environment game like WoW. Many people trying out Warhammer do not like the fact that the PvE is not as in-depth as in WoW, and move back to WoW. That's fine, but Warhammer is not really a PvE game. There is no need for another high-fantasy heavily based PvE game on the market today. Unless it's in space, right? And then it's not high fantasy.

The community in WoW is something I tried to hide from. Reading the WoW forums is like stabbing myself in the brain with a razor-sharp tool of some sort. The AOL speak in global chat in game is awful. The attitudes of raiders who are too serious about the game is mind-numbingly terrible. I joined a small and laid-back goon guild from the SA forums so that I could game with experienced gamers who also had a similar sense of humor as me. Typing in complete sentences helps too. Sue me for liking to communicate in real words when hanging out in some online community for hours, but if I'm going to do anything for hours, I'd go crazy listening to u newb speak constantly. I think without finding a good guild, and playing with my husband and a couple real-life friends, I'd have not played WoW at all. The global community just bugs me that much. I also had too many bad experiences grouping with the average WoW player, out of just wanting to finish an instance, only to be severely disappointed that the person could not spell nor play the game correctly.

I think of WoW these days as hanging a sign over itself "10 million cheeseburgers sold," and automatically you know that quantity does not equal quality, and in some cases the cow killed symbolizes the soul drained by spending so much time in a video game.

I can't say whether Warhammer will be any different, only the first impressions are that even though I am in a super large goon squad alliance (large enough to get lost in), I have found "pubbies" more of a delight than a hindrance. I do still group up with friends, but we are inevitably joining larger forces, not necessarily from our own guild, and have had some great times. The elitist feeling I had in WoW does not exist in Warhammer. We're on par with everyone else. There are exceptions, but aren't there always?

Verdict: For me, the Warhammer community is just fine, with few exceptions (so far) to AOL speak and mass retardation. I am a person who avoids communal type of stuff. I try to avoid global or regional chats, official forums, and so on. I just play the game, and talk with my friends who are playing it. That's it. Still, the mass community of WoW players is about the dumbest mass community of any group of people I've ever come across, and it was impossible to avoid it completely when playing the game. At the same time, I was able to find a small niche of really cool people in game, and those people are why I would ever go back and continue to play at all.

Overall Comparison

It's probably pretty obvious that I prefer Warhammer over WoW at the moment -- but it War is fresh and I did play WoW for over four years, and got to max level, and found the repetitive grind at end-game just boring and not challenging at all.

Both games have advantages and disadvantes, and both appeal to different players. I never liked much PvP in WoW but enjoyed it in Warhammer. I miss the solid and seamless animation and the bigger world feel of WoW but want to give War a chance to mature too. WoW wins on the nostalgia front, but War wins on the "have a life and also game some" front. Also, right now my real-life friends, also busy in their lives, can't afford two games, so we are giving War a chance.

I still do plan to check out WoW expansion at some point though, just to gain the last 10 levels (leveling has always been fun in WoW), and hang out with the guys I loved playing with in Ol Dirty Blunderbuss. The music and look/feel alone in the newest patch is already promising, and with the downsizing of raid sizes in WotLK, it may be that WoW is fixing itself and making end game a potential joy instead of an endless grind. But we'll see. And with the new armor sets that Warhammer has just promised, that game may also be introducing a loot grind, which I hope it doesn't.

It is possible to play both games and be a happy clam, if you have the time!

Future games?

There is only one game I am looking forward to in the MMO genre, though there are several upcoming ones. Check this game out; it's called LOVE: http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/

***Review has been updated to include WoW patch look/feel and Warhammer's new armor set, but will stand as "one month in" for now***