Well, I was still away from home most of today, even though I was off from work. Sitting around with my laptop, AoC was still out of the question. So, I fired up WAR. I had been struggling with a decision over what server and faction I wanted to go with but I finally decided on the Badlands server. I further decided upon rolling a Knight of the Blazing Sun. Feel free to look me up if you play on Badlands, my character is, amusingly enough, named Brannagar.
I hooked up with a healer in the very first PQ on Empire side and we leveled and did scenarios together for much of the evening.
Time to shatter those glasses!
He was a new player, who had never played WAR at all. Apparently, he had played WoW for about a year on an account that was borrowed from his cousin. His cousin had decided to sell both of his accounts, so the poor guy was stuck with nothing. Originally he was going to buy WoW and get his own account but after seeing the cost of the original, TBC and WotLK, he decided to give WAR a shot.
During the course of the evening he said something that really amused me and really got me to thinking. What he said was:
“I think I am going to buy WoW anyway. It is way better than this.”
Okay. Full stop.
No. No it is not. If you think that WoW is way better than WAR after only 10 or so levels, then you are doing one of two things. You are either comparing WAR’s first few levels to WoW’s endgame or you are looking at WoW’s starting levels with rose-colored glasses. One or the other, or maybe both. Because there is absolutely no way that WoW’s early game is anywhere as engaging as WAR’s. None. Period.
You can make a very convincing argument that WoW has a better end-game. There is no doubt about that. But there is no way, even the most fervent WoW fanboy, can make a convincing argument that WoW’s first 10-20 levels are better than WAR’s. No way. If you are sitting there reading this and saying to yourself that WoW does, in fact, have a better early game, then you are also wrong. This is not a question of taste or preference. This is a simple statement of fact.
Let’s look at both games and their early levels, shall we?
In both games you are deposited at your races starting area, though this has changed in WAR and all races start in the Empire/Chaos pairing. Regardless, both games start you off similarly. But the journey in each game through the first levels is totally different. First of all, you can PvP in WAR from level one and level from it. Both open world PvP and Scenarios (battlegrounds) can be partaken of from level one. It is not only fun but it is a viable way to level and you don’t gimp your character from it. While in WoW I have to grind quest after quest to level, in WAR I can hop in a scenario and massacre the other side. All the while my character levels and gets better equipment. Hell, you even make money PvP’ing!
But throw out PvP for the moment. Even if you do not enjoy PvP, WAR has a much better early level quest game. In WoW you are tasked with beating back an excursion of boars. Boars. Or you are tasked with hitting Orcs over the head to wake them up, or killing a kobold camp that has, for no apparent reason, placed itself right outside the castle walls. Again, I want to impress upon you…boars.
In WAR it could not be more different. In WAR you are tasked with beating back an excursion of Chaos warriors that is intent on raping, pillaging and burning your homeland. Chaos warriors. Or if you prefer, you are tasked with being a part of that exact same excursion and pillaging to your hearts content. You are placed in a war-zone in either case. You feel like a part of something.
While you are slaughtering boars in WoW, I am fighting huge chaos warriors. While you are rapping Orcs on the head, I am splitting them with my sword. Hell, you fight a Chaos Giant. in the first five levels of WAR. A Giant that knocks down four trees before you face him. In WoW your most impressive feat in the first fifteen or so levels is Hogger. Hogger.
Yeah, I know you can make the argument that Chaos Warriors are, for all intents and purposes, just boars reskinned. I totally get that but the perception is what matters here. WAR feels so much more epic in the first levels than WoW and than most any other MMO I can think of. You feel like you are a part of something and it is fun. A whole hell of a lot of fun.
Hopefully, one day, Mythic can make the rest of the game as fun as the first twenty levels. I don’t know, they may have already reached that point. I haven’t gotten that far since I picked it back up. If they ever do, they will have one of the best MMOs ever. They already have the best MMO starting experience out there.
And, if you don’t think so, if you think WoW had a better starting experience, then you are looking through those rose-colored glasses.
Corpse Run 
The hatred is strong in this one 😉
I think its entirely down to the player and or what they like. Personally I think AoC has the best starting zone out of every MMO I’ve played but I dont think its the best MMO.
Also the fact he has played WoW will of course taint his opinion, if he has played for x amount of time he will understand the game and make comparisons some unfair.
WAR starting zones as you say are better (Although I would say the bloodelf and death knight zones push it close) however bear in mind most of WoWs starting zones are over 5 years old and to an extent still work well. Also with Worgen and goblin zones to come I feel blizzard will make starting zones more story orientated than anything else which will be great and indeed push the bar up once again. I’ll wait and see I guess.
Its not a hate thing. It really is not. To the contrary, I loved WoW, including the starting zones. But, there is really no comparison. WAR does everything WoW does in the early levels and does it better. To top it off, they add PQs and PvP to the mix.
WoW may indeed fix this in Catacalysms, that is to be decided, but right now there is no comparison. The death knight zones were good but is still not a totally fair comparison. You still started at level 50, so it was not a true “starting zone”. I am not sure about the Blood Elf because, simply put, I refused to play the emo, girly bastards. 🙂 I do know the Dranei zone was okay but still not as good as WAR.
You are right that AoC has an excellent starting zone. Tortage is a joy to play. But, unlike WAR, it has been done before albeit in single-player games. AoC feels like a single-player game, for the most part, in its first 20 levels. That is not a bad thing because it is done very well. WAR, however, is totally unique, in my opinion. There is not another MMO that I can think of, that starts as action-packed as WAR does. Most start out slow and slowly ramp up. WAR, on the other hand, starts out full-speed ahead, almost from the very beginning.
I am slowly becoming more sure about my decision of making AoC my PvE game and WAR my PvP game. Both games do what they do pretty well and I can see myself playing them for awhile. I just hope neither mess it all up at the endgame! 🙂
True true, I like with WAR that you can jump into PvP straight away but being a PvP orientated game I think they had to have that. Other games like WoW, LoTRO, Conan are kind on focused on PvE more and tend to phase PvP in at later levels.
Oh and what AoC toon have you decided to settle on? Im hoping it was a Ranger 😉
Wow…just wow is all I can say.
Now, take this from a hater of LOTRO, but even LOTRO has a better starting zone than WoW.
But, WAR offers such a variety of gameplay styles right off the bat, and quickly mind you. It is mind numbing to think anyone could play both games side by side from start and like WoW more.
I am with Pitrelli, and something really helped this person enjoy WOW more…either people they played with, the guided gameplay (WAR does leave you to figure out a lot of things, which for me, is the fun part), somehow, WOW being first helped them enjoy it more.
I hope you booted him and told him to go back to Candy Land!! (hehe)
Great post, I couldn’t agree with you more. During the prime time of WAR when everyone was trying out new classes and doing PQs in T1 it was porbably one of the best experiences in an MMO. In WoW you just level so fast and never feel attached to anything.
I really liked WAR when it first came out and thought the idea of the public quests an awesome one. I even enjoyed the PvP scenarios. Unfortunately, the Pve quickly fell by the wayside once everyone figured out that you could level very quickly just by doing the scenarios. Like I said, I enjoyed it, but there were only so many scenarios that I could do before I got bored with it and finding groups to do the PvE content was next to impossible, and even if you did find a group, it would quickly fall apart as soon as one or more of your group mates spots in scenario queue’s would come up and they would just disappear.
agree with Moj I viewed WAR as a great PvP game but the PvE game? I would say it was a bit slap dash. The PQs were great and a new concept but rerunning them over and over was a tad boring. So whilst it is good to give the gamers options of things to do you need to take into consideration what impact it will have on the other elements of the game.
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Has anyone here actually played WAR? I mean, loaded up the game and created a character? I know I did. It was a steaming pile of crap. One of the worst MMOs I have played in years, and I’ve tried a lot.
I’m not a fan of Warcraft either, but your friend’s opinion seems totally sensible to me.
Somehow, then, I doubt you played. The first 10-20 levels were superb. Lots of action, good graphics, fast-paced PvP with no worries about massive amounts of CC and even the PvE was pretty good at low level.
Post-20 is where the problems began to show their ugly heads. I am hoping that they have fixed a few of these problems though.
I agree with brannagar. If that is your opinion of low level WAR, then you can’t possibly have actually played the game. Maybe you had technical difficulties (as many did when the game first came out) and that biased your opinion it? In any case, for me WAR lvl 1-20 was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in an MMO – and I too have tried a lot.
Click to access OtherPlayers.pdf
Richard Bartle’s paper that discusses that newbie players can’t help but like poor design features from their first virtual world (MMO) because that’s what they ~think~ is a virtual world.
It goes so far to say that newbie players will actually dislike better design features for the simple fact that those features don’t exist in their first virtual world.
I can see that. I still find myself saying “well, DAoC did this differently” or “WoW did this better”. Your first extensive MMO experience, the MMO that hooked you, will color your opinion of almost any MMO from then on.
One small example is the name of my blog. The corpse run. Yes, I know not having to do a corpse run when you die is probably easier and makes more sense. But, damn it, I still miss the WoW corpse run. I still find myself thinking that this game or that game should add it in. It really adds nothing to the game, it even makes it more a chore to play, but it was a major part of one of my most loved MMOs, so I miss it. For the only reason that it was in WoW.
You seem to be focused on the content of the early levels and ignoring the gameplay.
To a newer player, both WAR and WoW have excellent content in their early levels.
So it comes down to which has smoother, more responsive, and just plain better feeling gameplay. And that would be WoW by a country mile.
Nope. I would have said that upon release but not anymore. Both are on par with each other. I find WAR to be just as smooth and responsive as WoW now, though I do have a nice PC and good internet connection, so your mileage may very.
And, no, WoW does not have good content in the first 20 levels. It did when it released but it is really showing its age. Both WAR and AoC have more interesting starting areas than WoW. In WoW you kill boars or some other inconsequential mob and there is not much of a story line between the quests, certainly nothing as epic as AoC’s Tortage story or WAR’s all-out war.
I am sure they will fix a lot of this in Catacalysm but, at the moment, WoW has an extremely boring starting experience. I look forward to what they do in Catacalysm to change it up. Let’s face it, they really revolutionized the MMO leveling experience when WoW was first released. It was the first MMO that relied almost entirely on questing to level. Before that, quests were a sideshow and not the main event. WoW changed that. They did it great 5 years ago but WAR and AoC have both improved upon it.
I enjoyed both wow and war but i have to say that the beginner experience in wow is far superior to that of war.
it’s just something soft and fluffy about starting out in wow, i can’t put my finger on it. war felt like i was walking on knives before i got used to it, and even then it was like transcending into a cushy cloud world when you go back to wow.
i don’t think it’s one particular thing that causes me to feel this way, but many of them combined. sure, the rose colored glasses reminiscing of first starting out in wow are there too. but there’s so much more.