I’m in quite a rush which is why I haven’t updated my other post, but I’ll do that later. Here are some links to some of the best WAR-articles and tidbits.

• WARDB is launched, and is amazing
• Syp gives an amazing overview at Waaagh!
• Snafzg has his Post-NDA writeup too
• Snafzg also gave his Greenskin impressions
• More greater depth, check out the class guides at Warhammer Vault

I’ve definitely not been in the closed beta as long as others have been so my experience is fairly limited having only limited to leveling a Shaman to Level 10, but nevertheless I thought I’d share my own opinions and impressions of the class so far.

Leveling

Support classes are generally known for leveling slower than other classes for the simple reason that they deal less damage in general. Standing around and killing level 1 dwarves is definitely not the most exhilarating process but obviously that doesn’t last too long.

Going from level 1-10 for me took a bit of time but simply because I was concerned more with exploring Tier 1 instead of leveling up incredibly fast (that can wait till launch), but even as a Shaman I don’t see any reason why an effective player could get a Shaman to level 10-15 within just a few hours with a good combination of Public Quests, regular quests and scenarios. You’ll definitely need to be apart of some good groups to do that, but with the open grouping system that’s not really an issue.

Public Quests

Not only are Public Quests an awesome innovation, but Shaman’s absolutely dominate them!…well at least the ones I’ve done. The mechanic of building Waaagh! to effectively deal out damage and heal your allies allows building up contribution not too difficult. Unless I show up to a quest late it’s unlikely that I’m not in to the top 3 contributors (although that doesn’t guarantee a reward). It just takes joining a group with tanks, targeting whoever they target, deal damage to that enemy and then once Waaagh! has built up heal the tanks. It almost feels too easy, or maybe I’m just an amazing MMORPG player? (unlikely)

Realm vs Realm

This is the part I’ve had least experience with, although I feel I have enough experience to at least give some general impressions. Now, the most prevalent concern is that Shaman’s are too “squishy”, and sure there is definitely a degree of squishiness to my beloved career but throughout my time in scenario’s I’ve never felt that I’ve been dying significantly more than any other career its just that you have to be more careful.

One-to-one combat is pretty much a no-go against a range of classes such as Witch Elves and Bright Wizards (my biggest enemies *evil stare*) but through the amazing power of running away death can generally be avoided after you’ve thrown off some DoT (damage over time) spells, and bang out some HoT (heal over time) spells for yourself.

Any good enemy team will target Shaman’s fairly quickly as through action point stealing spells, DoT’s and just general damage dealing they can definitely cause problems in the opposing team. The trick is to remember you’re a support class so you need to expect to spend some time at back, still close to your allies and never get caught in the middle of the enemy team.

Overall?

Without a doubt I’ll be rolling a Shaman as soon as I get into the head start within the next month. Whilst it is important to remember that a Shaman is a support class, and therefore is designed to stay back and heal the majority of the time it’s definitely possible to do some significant damage you just can’t got running in trying to tank (duh).

Digg This Article.

Wow. An amazing trailer. Nice work Mythic (EDIT: My mistake, Blur Studios actually created the trailer, so bloody good job guys). Just watch it.

Source

Edit: A Warhammer Alliance poster pointed out that this may just be a preview? Apparently the full trailer is meant to be 5 minutes long. Still, it’s a damn good preview if that’s the case.

Edit Again: For a rough translation of the French check out this post from Warhammer Alliance. The video is definitely only a preview, but an amazing preview. The full trailer will be shown at Leipzig.

In case you haven’t got it yet (or if you won’t get it), here’s a copy:

Greetings!

It is our pleasure to invite you to the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Preview Weekend taking place this Friday, August 22nd thru Monday, August 25th. Join thousands of your fellow players and experience the Age of Reckoning for the first time as you adventure through two tiers of content across three campaigns.

This is an invite-only event, so don’t delay in preparing for WAR and be one of the first to engage in the thrill and glory of RvR combat before the rest of the world!

Below are instructions on how and where to download the game:

Closed Beta Participants

- If you are currently in the WAR closed beta, you will automatically be granted access to the Preview Weekend. Simply continue to patch your client and you’ll be ready to play.

Pre-Order Customers

- Download the open beta client from Fileplanet.com (http://www.fileplanet.com/betas/who_key_auth.aspx). You will be required to create a free FilePlanet account and input your open beta pre-order code to access the file.

- In addition we also provide the client via bit torrent as an alternative means to download. You will find the link to the Torrent file here: http://torrent2.eamythic.com/WarBeta.torrent

Welcome to WAR. See you on the battlefield…WAAAGH!!!

Within the Open Beta download there is the Warhammer Online Players Guide. This decently sized PDF file contains a run down of pretty much the entire game in terms of the various classes and mechanics. Granted, it is in need of an update but it’s still a useful resource and a good read as you’re waiting for the game download the finish.

You can get this download separately @ Warhammer Alliance.

So, I bought my SE over the weekend, and I was pumped about downloading the Open Beta client today. I get home from work to be uhm…greeted, with a Fileplanet.com download. Now I’ve never used Fileplanet, so me being the optimist I am, was like “ok, this might not be so bad”. I load the first page, which took forever, and I’m still doing pretty good. I create my Fileplanet account, and then after reloading the next page for probably near 45 minutes, I am finally able to put in my Open Beta key.

This is probably just the start of an onslaught of WAR coverage in anticipation for September 18th. Sit back and enjoy.

This is weird writing that the NDA will lift tomorrow when in fact down here in Kangaroo land it already is the 19th of August…but yeah, “tomorrow” on the 19th of August the NDA will finally be lifted, if all goes according to plan. This hasn’t been an official announcement or anything but Mark Jacobs posted on Warhammer Alliance saying:

As to the NDA, we expect to lift it tomorrow morning. I was hoping it was going to be today but I wanted to wait till I got the beta reports from the weekend and we just didn’t have enough time to get everything coordinated with our partners in order for the press release to go out today. This is not the fault of GOA at all, we just had a lot of data to go through and by the time we did that, it would have been too late to put out the release today.

Waking up tomorrow and opening Google Reader is going to be like getting hit with a ton of bricks - going to be painful to sift through all the content and weed out the good stuff and post it up here.