Warhammer Online has been out for a full week now if we count the Collectors Edition head start date, and generally the response has been overly positive. There is little doubt that WAR is indeed the next ‘it’ game in MMO land, and if momentum continues, it could indeed provide a challenge to WoW. It will be interesting to see what happens when the Wrath expansion is released; will WAR players be too deep into the game to care, or will the now common ‘cap and done’ syndrome effect WAR and have players jumping back to WoW?

WAR has its share of issues of course, from imbalanced scenarios to server population concerns, and more will crop up as players visit the higher tiers. Some are frustrating, like waiting 30+ minutes in a scenario queue, while others could potentially spell disaster, such as Destruction dominating most servers in terms of population. It’s far too early to hit the panic button, but it will be something to keep an eye out for.

On a more personal level, Aria and I are a quest or two away from Rank 11 with our Dark Elves, and I got my Warrior Priest to Rank 14 as well. CoW did some keep raids over the weekend. We took down four (I think), but had little resistance from other players, despite it being peak time on Saturday. Perhaps the other side just did not want to step in front of a swarm of players, who knows… I also got a taste of some early level dungeons, and they play as one might expect a typical WoW instance to play. Nothing amazing, but a solid experience as long as you have a capable group. The simplified class selection of WAR works well here, as it’s fairly easy to come up with tank/healer/dps, and you don’t need to tinker as much with having the exact combo of classes for an encounter. We will see if this holds true at higher levels.