Anyway, after having reached my goals of all important items for my level 70 priest (healer) I got interested for a while in my old character, a hunter. After some "twink runs" and other instances he got decent equip. My raid invited him once as we had too many healers and I reached top spots in the damage meter. So he isn't quite as bad as twinks used to be.
So its natural that I needed some small distraction from WoW. One weekend my girlfriend and I got bored from playing WoW (yes she plays MMO's, what a woman! And yes she looks good :). So I rushed to a local game store before it closed and bought two copies or Warhammer Online (WAR for short) just to test the 30 day free trial.
Yes, WAR is good, but it is very different from WoW. The first thing you'll notice is that its not as deep as WoW. Less details, a lot of shortcuts. For example when you accept a quest your map will show you exactly where to go. You can even click on the quest marking of the map and a tome will open explaining you the quest. Its questing for noobs. In WoW there is always a lot of talk in the chat about "where can I find XYZ" or "Anyone want to help with quest ABC?". The intelligent map in WAR got rid of that.
Result: Silence. Utter silence. No one talks. Its strange.
Yes, if you group or raid there is talk but even then less than in WoW. As many things got "noobyfied" in WAR there isn't a lot to talk about, not even boss tactics. Tank and spank, thats it most of the time. No special talents needed, strategies etc.
Silence. Thats strange for a MMO isn't it. Don't get me wrong, WAR is a good game but appeals to a different crowd. If you like a complex MMO with deep story, tons of stuff and tactics to discover and lots of things to do go for WoW. If you love PvP, large scale castle sieges and tons of stuff to kill go for WAR. Its hard to compare these two but luckily WAR isn't competing with WoW.
The major concern I havewith WAR is questing. Its boring as hell, all quests are identical: go A, kill B, collect C. Yes, in WoW many quests are like that but looking into the expansion Wrath of the Lich King the quality of questing has risen tenfold. Even compared to questing in Burning Crusade the WAR experience is lacking.
Additionally my major concern is that questing isn't necessary at ALL in WAR. You don't need to. Go PvP instead, you get more experience for loosing battlefields than for 3 quests! "But the drops and equipment ..." you say. Well, more PvP means more faction level which grants you access to equipment far superior to all quest items or drops. Believe me, don't quest, go PvP, its faster in levelling too.
So WAR is a PvP levelling experience and it does it well. Go for it if you love PvP and specially open PvP or castle sieges. They rock.
Want an experience like a single player RPG but the added social component and end game raids? Go for WoW.
