September 5, 2008

Five Minutes with Preview Weekend +

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) has opened the floodgates once again for another Preview Weekend. This time around Mythic has gotten creative and chosen a catchy title: Preview Weekend +.

I had the chance to log in for a few minutes before heading into work and I have to admit I was absolutely stunned by the progress that Mythic has made on WAR. The game was already good to begin with, but Mythic has gone and kicked it up a notch.

First and foremost, the NPC AI and pathing issues are fixed. Everything worked great and only once did I run into an NPC that seemed a bit flaky. Even then, it was not the "deer in headlights" look of the past Preview Weekend.

Again, the starter areas were flooded with hundreds of players and once again, I had absolutely no latency or graphical lag.

Next on the hit list was combat responsiveness. Mythic did not disappoint. The cast bar is fixed. The UI responsiveness is fixed. The 0.3 second slop timer that was added works perfectly. Overall, combat in WAR is where it needs to be.

So far, no crash to desktops and no one stating that they were having any.

Overall, every single Con from my original Preview Weekend Pro/Con list has been tackled. The only one not tackled was the Shadow Warrior hotbar reset, which was just a misunderstanding on my part on how the Shadow Warrior stances worked.

For informational purposes, the Preview Weekend + is running on WAR Patch 4.1 . I am playing on Chrace as Heartless the Bright Wizard.