Warhammer Online recruitment bonuses to include in-game items

An in-game mount, don't forget level grants, and yes it is still going.

Ah yeah, I meant mount not pet =S And those granted levels came in very useful in the trial. Shame (or not) that even with the grind removed I couldn't get into the game, although it was after 60 and back into the real grind that I quit...

that model isn't appropriate for Warhammer Online

The reason they let you skip past most of WoW's old level 1-60 content is because there's even more content waiting for you from 60-80

Warhammer Online is a newer game, so if you skip past most of the 1-40 content you're skipping most of the game

It also doesn't help that Blizzard outright made the 1-60 content obsolete. The items, quests, dungeons, etc are completely gimped by Burning Crusade gear. Main reason I quit, they effectively told everyone to forget about the core content and crowd into the BC expansion stuff.

As for Warhammer, the only reason there'd be a grind is if you actually felt pressured to just beat on random world spawns. Leveling goes fast in WAR just doing public quests and RvR stuff. It's the first MMO that I'll actually hit the level cap in and I've been on MMOs since, well, they were called MUDs and didn't have pretty pictures.

I suppose not right off the bat. They did however make it so each race has pretty much a class for any type of player because each race starts out in their own are in chapter 1. My Chosen is strictly a tank with area/self buffs/debuffs. I love the game. The RvR battles are just as fun as playing a multiplayer shooter on the 360 and public quests keep the persistant worlds from being boring.

their own area*

It's also one of those few MMO's I can stand to play alone.

WoW is pretty much doing the same thing, though it's just driving players around to specific classes. I hear the Druid is the Jack of All Trades Master of Everything class this time around.

Though as Anticrawl said, as you get higher up, you really do have to start picking your role. I'm running a Knight of the Blazing Sun and decided to go down a more damage oriented path. I get cut down a bit faster in RvR than other tanks, mainly no shield and weak defense buffs, but I cut a large swath and have a bit more survivability than a pure damage class.

Unlike WoW, your path impacts the level your skills operate at. At level 40, if you don't go down any other paths, the skills in the other two builds are limited to level 25. A level 25 skill against a level 40 opponent is mostly worthless. Basically, once you start getting mastery points, you're not going to ever be able to do everything.

I noticed this with my brother's Warrior Priest since we've played these two characters in lock step with each other. In level 1-11, he was unstoppable but by Tier 4, the level 31-40 stuff, he's pretty much lost that edge. He went down a purely healer path to supplement my KotBS high damage output and weakened defenses and, while you can't kill him 1 on 1, he can't kill you either because his attack abilities are completely worthless.

This same dynamic works with every class in the game. Some feel unbalanced up front but once you get into the meat of the game, the T4 RvR struggle, everything is remarkably well balanced.