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Warhammer is a so called next gen MMORPG thus everyones expectations are very high. Warhammer is a huge name and therefore people have a lot expectations has a great license and Mythic already created another good PvP/RVR game. In addition Paul and Hickman hype this game so much they the expectations grow and grow and keep on growing. In general I think your marketing for this game is great. I was hyped, almost everyone is hyped, Paul and the Hickman just do a fantastic job. But this is where it ends, I was so excited when I got into the beta and to sum this whole text up I am really disappointed. There are so many things in which WAR fails horrible but read on I will list all the points one by one.
General feeling:
In general this game feels like you want to attract the people around the age 13 to 18. This game will be great for every WoW kiddie that failed to achieve anything in WoW or other games.
Warhammer is so easy it takes no skill at all. The combat system is a joke, the few abilities you get are not innovative neither are they cool. Almost everything you see is a mix of all stuff that is already out there on the market. You don't get a fantasy MMORPG feeling its more like an action game.
It feels like you are taken by your hand to play this game. Other games give you the feeling of freedom to do whatever you want. In Warhammer you go from chapter to chapter from tier to tier. Every chapter every tier feels copypasted. You come into a camp, you get your few quest of NPC´s that almost stand next to each other. Once you are done with them the only thing left to do is farm PQ. Rince and repea thatt until you are level 40.
There is close to no interaction between the 3 different races. You get no motivation at all to travel to the areas of the other races.
Another big thing that is missing is "a place to stay", a place where people come together, a place where people can communicate, a place where people can trade, a place where people can just idle and hang around, a place where people feel save, a place to rest, a place to inspect higher level player and see cool items so you have a goal, a place which binds you to your fraction, in other words a place where a great community develops.
"The feelings of a young adventurer, a dwarf with a small beard who came the first time into Ironforge was impressed. He run through the big halls, saw the huge forge, he saw the extremely cool looking guards and hopes to be as strong as them in the future to defend his fraction. He explored a busy place where living is taking place and was proud to be a dwarf."
In my eyes it is a very huge mistake that you don't make your capital city the center of life from the scratch.
Public Quests:
The idea of PQ is great the problem is that it is just very poorly implanted. You might as well call them farm quests because thats it what you do. You grind and grind and grind and grind. Kill 20/50/100/1000. Instead of adding 450 PQ you should have concentrated on 100 cool epic ones. The influence required to obtain the items for your rewards is just getting insane the more you progress. You farm for items that you basically just get for the looks because items don't matter in this game anyways but I will get to this point later.
Loot system:
You already saw more innovation for loot systems in EQ1. Lets take this scenario: You do your PQ you farm and farm and farm and you are bored but you have to level somehow. You do most of the work in this PQ that you have done already 6 times and finally you get to the last stage. Phew lots of grinding but hey at least I contributed a lot and I have the chance to get a good reward in this chest! The boss drops dead and you open the box excited just to see that yet again something dropped you have no use for... in fact stuff drops that no one in the whole PQ area has no use for all sigh and wait for the PQ to reset to do it yet again.
Seriously get a pattern system, quest piece system, token system or a system that checks for classes in the area so that someone can actually use the items. Being in the orc starting area and you get yet again another drop for the witch hunter is just dull. WoW made the same mistake (see Molten core loot system and they soon switched to a proper system because it just frustrates your player base)
Combat system:
Your combat system is crap, it is boring, it is not innovative sorry but that is the truth. The lack of abilities is frightening and the few that are in are nothing special. You can play this game with 5-6 basic abilities which are not interactive and boring as hell. You wanted an innovative healing system but where is it? The waaagh system completely fails and you reduce the healer classes to DPS or heal. There is nothing else they can do. You reduce the abilities of a healer back to the stage of EQ1: run, heal throw a dot every now and then. The dps difference of healers compared to proper dps classes is so huge that dps is no option for healers.. Even thought to get mana effective heals as a shm you have to build up waaagh. In most group situations there is no healing required and when it is needed you have to chain heal. In other words you have no time to build up waaagh in order to get action point effective heals because if you try to do it your mates are dead. You should add more group supportive options for the healers which build waaagh or whatever as well. Other typical situations are that you get out of combat and you lose all of your waaagh points. Waaagh should decay like morale.
The healing of classes without an attempt of a system that makes healing more fun is even worse.
The interactive buffs are a great idea but its just to few and to little.
Lets take the class out of WoW that most people complained about, the paladin. It is known to be a boring class due to lack of interactive abilities and to few abilities in general. Even as per blizzard the paladin is the easiest class to play but compared to the classes of Warhammer it would probably the most interactive class.
Melee combat:
Your weapons have no influence at all they are just for the look. Your dps increases with stats and levels only (hi druid in wow and when you d see the responses from the community there you´d know that they don't like such a system) When you spam your special abilities you don't get autoattacks and the dps of your weapons only matters for the auto attacks.
Crowd Control:
By removing almost every cc from your game you took away a lot of typical tasks for the int/wis casters. Getting rid of cc or keeping cc active is a great task for these classes beside the basic heal/ nuke. To much cc takes fun out of the game, to little takes away the skill, the interactive gameplay (in other words the fun!). You have to find a good balance and to be honest right now this balance is not given.
But if you want to follow this policy of no cc in the game then give those classes at least other things to do than just heal and nuke. Because that is boring and one sided.
Character development:
You don't really get attached to your character. You do not feel unique and everyone is 98% exactly the same. It is just the toon that jumps around on the screen of your monitor. You want to know why? Because people don't have to make decisions that have a huge impact on the playstyle of your character. It feels like a premade character which you cannot form. You have the tactics and morale abilities to alter your playstyle but it is not enough. You can kill two birds with one stone when you take the renown ranks and you add every xx rank several abilities that are really different, that offer you an alternative way to play your class. That way you have the chance to add more abilities that make the gameplay interesting and more interactive. And you give the people the chance to develop their own character.
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