WAR Unleashed

Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war, that this thrice delayed title shall sell around the earth to man-children, groaning for a new game!

Anthonypwns, Volkmar Server

STFU and go center noob!  Your all idiots!!!

Mordun, Volkmar Server

And so the deed is done, the product has shipped and gone live.  There is no turning back now.  Some of us have product boxes in our hot little hands, more still (such as myself) will have them by the end of the day.

And, made up quotes aside, it seemed to go smoothly enough.  There were no super, major glitches, at least not on my server.  WAR was truly unleashed.

The only good elf...

Compared to the launch of EverQuest nearly ten years ago, if was smooth indeed.  It was on par with the LOTRO launch of last year.

Still, there were some issues.

There was enough lag that I was getting some deja vu mob problems.  I would see a mob spawn and run past me, only to see it right back where it started and have it run past me again.  And again.  And again.

Also, RvR scenarios seemed to be impossible to join.  Up until Wednesday night on Averheim, I waited no more than five minutes before being able to join an RvR scenario.  Last night there was no action over a two hour period of time.  I don’t know if Order now vastly out numbers Destruction or if the scenarios were bugged, but it just wasn’t happening.

And, of course, no night would be complete without a crash to desktop.  New players will get some of that open beta experience.

I also got to see my first bit of RvR griefing.

Over in the dwarf area, some Greenskins showed up, flagged RvR, and then ran around Public Quest areas.  Since a flagged enemy player’s name is the same red as an aggro NPC, you might not notice that the Greenskin you just took a shot at is actually a player, especially if you are in a scramble at the first stage of a PQ that requires you to kill 100 greenskins.

Of course the griefers were levels 9-11 while the people in the PQ were levels 4-6, so the results were predictable.  If you hit one, you were suddenly flagged RvR and they jumped on you and killed you.  And since they looked like the targets in the PQ and since they did theusual routine of shadowing the big guys you needed to kill, a few people got whacked.

And so it goes in war… and in WAR as well I guess.

Fortunately, RvR deaths have no sting at all.  At one point last night I was at the far end of a very empty open RvR area with some quests to turn in.  It was easier just to find some red names and have them kill me than to walk back.  Death is as light as a feather.

So not a bad first night.

I am going to guess that the real pressure on the servers will start today, with the weekend at hand and the extra dose of free time that allows.