I finally managed to play the whole evening yesterday ! I used the closed beta account of a friend of mine and it worked like a charm. I received the email saying my own account key was registered but could not try it yet.
Just a few words about the game and my impressions:
Technical Aspect:
- I though the animations were not as bad as most of the people are saying.
- About the GFX, well i activated the AA and Anisotropic from Nvidia panel and it worked nice, just a few stutter when joining a scenario when a lot of player are on the screen. Only real issue is with the distant textures sometimes looking quite rough, i guess this can be easily improved.
- Only experienced two crashes during the whole evening, and it was always during scenarios, Mythic already stated that they were working on that issue.
- Other than that the only thing i noticed is that sometimes i get a bug while casting a spell with my shaman and my guy stayed blocked in an animation but it would go away the next time i casted a spell. I guess this is worked upon.
Game Aspect:
- The world has really got a nice touch to it, i started with a goblin shaman and i must say the Greenskin starting zone is really funny. The voices of the NPC are really well done and the quest always got a little funny touch as well. I also tried Chaos, Dark Elf and Empire, overall all the starting areas were really nicely designed, always with a comic touch somewhere. I really dig Chaos these guys are tough
- I really like the Tome of Knowledge, always a nice touch about the story. Sometimes you go and speak to an npc and it unlocks a little story inside the book. You have some achievements, like 25 crits and you get a title etc.. I liked that as well.
- Solo quest were enjoyable and i always could solo them till now, i'm only Rank 5 tho but i did quite a few already. Sometimes when exploring you stumble upon random quests that are not in the warcamps, it is nice as well.
- PQ, that was really a blast, i did only the first two of the greenskin. The first involved a Giant being chased by annoying squigs, you had to kill plenty of them then he would rest and ask for beer so we had to collect beer barrels, then he took a huge ass bomb and threw it at the dwarf fort, we then proceeded to kill them and get loot wouhou
I really liked that, you don't need to be grouped and you are still participating on the final roll. If you are lucky you can get a nice item. The PQ also gives Influence, it is like a xp bar you have 3 steps and each one gives you a reward you can get from the guy. You get influence just by participating in the PQ. The second PQ was a litte less well designed imo but still fun.
- Almost each level you get a new ability so it is quite nice having something new to test.
- I played the first Greenskin / Dwarf scenario, i liked it but i did not really understand why we always got hammered by Order but anyway i could play my healer job for a moment and i must say it was fun. Tanks might be a little overpowered tho, they do reasonable damage and are REALLY hard to kill. I hate Bright Wizards
Conclusion:
After a really terrible launch by GOA, i must say at least Mythic really did its job and they are delivering a game that is really worth it in my opinion, i might be a litte biased
but i really liked every aspect of what i tested. I really like the Warhammer world ,lore and races, and if you get over GOA mess then the game is worth it! I only played to rank 5 but i'm going to keep going with this char to try the open RvR zone and a few other things.