Beta impressions of Warhammer MMORPG fairly positive

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning entered its open beta period over last weekend, with everyone who pre-ordered the collector's edition of the game being able to jump into the game for the first time.

For those of you who somehow have not heard of WAR, it's a YAMFRIES MMORPG (YAMFRIES is an acronym I just made up; it stands for Yet Another MMORPG Featuring Rangers, Imps, Elves or Sorcerers.)

A bunch of information has been turning up all on corners of the Internet, such as from the stimulating website BetaLeaks.

Overall, most people have had a good time with the game; a rough estimate might be that 75% of people had positive enough impressions that they seemed very likely to play the game out of Beta, while the rest may (or may not) have liked the game, but did not seem very enthralled with it.

Here are some excerpts from various unconfirmed sources:

Veteran gamer 'Perp' said he liked the game, but wasn't ready to commit: "There are many things WAR does right and some things they've improved and polished to make the game very appealing. Character movement is solid and you actually feel in control of your character. The UI was terrible at one point, but the final design is quite nice. The graphics have been turned up and the game looks really good and the recent animation changes helped quite a bit. Player quests are a nice evolution to the quest grind game, but your mileage will vary." Then he goes on to diss the game's crafting, how the balance of the zones have been thrown off because of the cutting out of two of the game's cities, and the long cool-downs for skills in combat. 

'Jason81789' was pretty thrilled with the game: "this past weekend, was imho, the best experience i have ever had in an MMO. I went with a HE shadow warrior, and loved it. The terrain, in tandem with the quests that were given, seemed to fit perfectly. And the PQ's that I encountered early on were very fun. I really didn't care about leveling throughout my time (which is awesome), and [it] feel[s] like it does break the status-quo 'grind' of mmo's."

Summary-liking 'visavis' compared WAR to WOW like so: "Hard to say really. This game is definitely more casual friendly than WoW, at least on the surface. However keeps are an entirely different matter.  And, inspite of what you've read, this game is very different from WoW. They look similar on the surface, but once you start playing them the differences become more and more clear.  You have multiple more layers of customization in this game, which I'm sure will keep many people interested, as well as more complex combat (though it may not seem like it on a 1v1 basis). As much as WoW keeps trying to lessen the gab between WAR and WoW, they are still very much different games, and WoW is ultimately for the gear grind loving PVE players. Whereas WAR is primarily for the strategic pvp players / casuals."

dpollack is another fan of the game: "WAR is terrific and very well polished at this stage. I played debacle that was Age of Conan and I will say that WAR blows that game out of the war with class balance, PVP, and ease of play. I think mythic achieved everything they aimed for and I look forward to its release on sept. 18th. See you all in game."