Taking gaming seriously

The problems with WAR PvE are:

a) Every fight is completely the same. There are no real wrinkles or complications to mobs, no need to think out any fight. Even a champion fight, if you're in one you can win, is just a matter of time. This is *most* but not all routine PvE in other games, including WoW. At least in some environments in WoW, I need to think out my pathway. Or I need to pick mobs carefully, or use an appropriate pull. I may need to consider target order. Clothies will go down quickly, but I want to get on any mob that can heal quickly, and use an interrupt if I have one. Etc. In WAR, every single PvE fight is the same and virtually every single fight takes the same amount of time.

b) The visual environments actually get less interesting as the game goes on, not more so. Avelorn is a totally "elf-land", Talabecaland dull as dirt, Greenskin Tier 3 is "Barrens With Mountains". The mobs are also visually monotonous, and sometimes stupidly so. By Tier 3, I'm supposed to be pretty capable in terms of the surrounding mythos, but there are peasants with no armor on who take as much time to kill as supposedly highly skilled enemies and who do as much damage to me. The PvE has no narrative coherence in that sense, including in the PQs. Think of the first Chaos PQ you see, the one where the giant comes out in Stage 3. It has a snappiness to it as an experience, and the giant is an enjoyable visual reward at the end. Try to think of a Tier 3 PQ that feels anything like that. There aren't any. So there is nothing visual and nothing narrative to make you go 'that's cool' once you're past Chapter Four or so.

c) There aren't really any variant quest types or unusual twists in PvE beyond the difference between PQs and not-PQs. No bombing runs, no scripted bits, etc., nothing to relieve the "kill X shit" and "get X drops" monotony.

d) The itemization sucks in multiple ways, and this means you don't have that vague sense in the back of your head that maybe this fight some really cool or valuable thing will drop. The greens in a given Tier and level range are all identical in their stat bonuses (unless they are one of the genuine variants that has wackily stupid stats on it). Plus crafting is so utterly shit that you also don't have any real gathering "hook" to PvE, where you're trying to accumulate something for crafting. Plus the economy doesn't matter at all anyway, so there's never really any wealth-accumulating implications to PvE.

e) The time-to-kill for many mobs, especially if you're a tank, is just fucking mind-numbing. I'd estimate it is three to four times time-to-kill on even con mobs that WoW offers, even for a protection-spec warrior. As a tank, I virtually never have any sense that I'm going to die even in a crowd of even con mobs, so it's just "set my timer, yawn, and read a book while I click on the button". PLUS the repop time on PvE mobs is exceptionally rapid, so this adds extra tedium when I'm trying to kill a particular mob or make my way through a spawn to get to a target. PLUS you dismount very easily AND most "shortcuts" are blocked by nuisance mob spawns, forcing me often to have to clear through a spawn in order to get anywhere far away from a quest hub. (Like those champion wyvern things in Talabecland, or those spawns of lions.)

f) Many many quest sequences consist of a back-and-forth between a hub and the same location multiple times. This is hateful in any game, but especially so given the particular montony of WAR's PvE.

g) The Chosen auras aggro mobs at ridiculous distances and they aggro all mobs, including orange ones. Meaning as a Chosen I sometimes get dismounted by level 2 rats and suchlike.

h) Mob following distances are goddamn insane, especially champs and heroes. Again, not threatening, but annoying as all fuck to be followed halfway across the zone by three mobs whacking on you periodically, in part because that keeps you from mounting and it sometimes keeps you from dealing with the quest you've travelled to do until you get rid of following mobs that you had no interest in fighting.

i) In the only major instance I've been in, Gunbad, the clumping of mobs really works against conventional grouping strategies common in PvE MMOGs. This would be ok if some alternative tactics were rewarding and it took a while to think them out. But instead from what I can see the model is "zergfest with appropriate level players and you get loot pinata; zergfest with under optimal level or without some healers and you die". At first I thought it was us, but I've been in two parts now with a careful, skilled group and it still turns into pure chaos zergathon for the most part.

Seriously, it's the little things that make PvE in this game about eighty times more annoying than any comparable product. In CoH/CoV, I can avoid most fights with travel powers, I can call my contacts to turn in quests and get new ones, the mobs have more visual variety and a variety of tactics, etc. In LoTRO, the environments and narrative are more interesting and varied even without their connection to the books, many zones give you a way to maneuver through them to get to desired targets, and you can usually load up on quests and complete a bunch right in one area rather than doing a lot of back-and-forth. Etc.

There is no way to fix any of this: WAR just has bad PvE. End of story. Anybody who preferentially does WAR PvE or who finds it ok, kind of fun, is someone with depraved tastes.