Take a look at these animations...

www.warhammeronline.com/m...videos.asp (http://www.warhammeronline.com/main.asp?go_where=videos.asp)

Dwarf kill is cool.

So glad this game is finally going to be put to rest.

Warhammer is a fun game...... but they don t even have the table top balanced right lol ;)

Whiney wood elfs...

Long live the Empire, and death to the flirty elves.

It won't blow EQ II out of the water.

And why the hell are you comparing it to EQ? EQ is old and hardly relevant; it's not a next-gen MMORPG. Of course the mocapped animations of next-gen games beat what EQ has (keyframed), but that's obvious since you're comparing the future with the past.

Actually I am much more concerned with the *game* than I am the presentation. I would prefer a game look like EQ but be FUN (something EQ tends to be missing at the higher levels) and playable rather than look real spiffy, but be designed something like PoP.

We are all more concerned with the gameplay than with the presentation, but the original post was about the animations.

The Warhammer animations look good, sure.

I'll take WoW over warhammer ;)

WoW is just...wow.

Oh yeah, those animations and graphics will put EQ to rest.

What the sam heck??

You are missing the only things that are going to put EQ to rest:

1) More content

2) A much better character/class/race game system with a lot less staticness.


2 is really not hard to do, but they seem to have trouble doing it. Maybe they just don't take the time. 1 is the hard part. EQ is WAYYYY out in front of the pack in terms of content. This is why SOE keeps adding additions and new sellable content instead of upgrading West Karana, one of the worst zones in the game. If they just upgrade West Karana, its just a tiny patch message. If they add an addition instead, even a small one like LOY, its a bunch of hoopla and new webpages.

So you can't tell a damn thing from screenshots or animated files. What you are doing is looking at a toilet paper site of the next toilet paper to be "much better than white cloud!" and saying that it will be because it has a pretty cool flowerly pattern on it. That is nice and all, but how does it feel when wiping your butt?

I'm still betting on the WoW horse. Blizzard doesn't do much half-assed.

Whilst EQ might initially have more content, much of that content is now stale – at least for me. I would argue that EQ will not have better QUALITY content than Warhammer On-Line. Games Workshop have dedicated the last 20 years to developing their games universes. EQ has only had the last 4’ish. There is absolutely no comparison between the richness of content that Warhammer On-Line can draw upon compared to EQ.

I agree with your second point about gameplay being crucially important but before you criticise what Warhammer are doing I suggest you read some of the developers posts. I have, and I like what I have read. There is a great deal of thought going into gameplay. The developers include hardened EQ players who are passionate about producing a better game and they probably will because Games Workshop is passionate about putting quality above all else.

This is the first computer game that has been funded by Games Workshop. Publishers who simply paid a royalty to use the Warhamnmer franchise have done all the other Warhammer PC games you have seen before. This time it is their own money and reputation that is on the line. They have formed a joint venture company with the UK’s largest independent computer games developer to create the game (who have apparently developed some cutting edge technology) and the team has been supplemented with Games Workshops own highly talented and experienced games developers and artists. I think it highly unlikely that they will produce a crap game.

I personally have become very frustrated with how EQ’s gameplay and balance has developed. EQ has IMHO become too cluttered, too onerous with its ridiculous time sinks and too raid orientated. Casual gamers are now squeezed out, relegated to a few zones, having to buy all their spells and equipment from the ‘ubers’. It didn't happen like that in the early days.

Perhaps the biggest failing in EQ has been the lack of improvement in the AI. The focus has just been on loads more zones and loads more items but still mobs do the same predictable things they did at the time of release - except then it was new.

Sorry I am looking for something else, and having read the developers posts at WH-OL it seems they are going to do their very best to make a better less predictable game. I will look at EQ2 but I am so not interested if it is just EQ1 with pretty graphics. I have no idea whether Warhammer On-Line will be a commercial success but it looks to me to be a very promising title.

Great developer interview here....

www.gamespy.com/e32003/in...c/1001573/ (http://www.gamespy.com/e32003/interview/pc/1001573/)

agic system sounds really cool. Weapons that become increasingly soulbound and spawn demons if passed to twinks, haha, how cool is that. This game is so going to blow away the oppo. Err, Verant you can keep your faeries I will be heading for this world.

Will it blow EQ out of the water? No. However they will have a player base ready to go due to the popularity of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, which will help them quite a bit.

Actually I am sure EQ2 will be a huge success. Sony will throw a ton of money at it, and produce a high quality product. Lets face it with 450,000 subscribers in EQ, a lot of those will move over. I think it will be a rehash though with very little improvement in AI or changes in gameplay.

I think WoW will be worth a go as a stop gap but I am not such a big fan of Blizzard as some peeps on this board. It seems to me that they can be depended upon to produce highly polished games but innovation has been fairly lacking (Westwood even worse). I think the whole RTS genre has been really disappointing over the last few years - improvements in graphics and great cut-scenes but gameplay really has not evolved much since Dune 2. Nobody has yet bought out an RTS to match Total Annihilation in gameplay with its 3D terrain, realistic physics engine and huge variety of units - and that is 4 years plus old. I accept that Starcraft sold more and was more popular but TA was by far a better more innovative and deep game. I am hoping that Chris Taylor (TA's designer) at Gas Powered Games breathes new life into the genre with his RTS game that is in development now he is done with Dungeon Siege.