Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning Review

BY Mohammed Al-Balushi | POSTED: 13 October 2008

WAR is upon us, and in the best way possible.



Since the days of EverQuest, many MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) have been released to appease the player who is looking for an alternate universe to delve and bond with. Few years later, World of Warcraft was released and has since become the leading MMORPG game, thanks to the amazing world that is Azeroth, the fluid mechanics implemented and the behemoth support Blizzard provides. Though when WoW was released, it mainly focused on PvE (Player versus Environment) experience which made the player go through a nice set of quests and instances and reach up to raid instances, while PvP (Player versus Player) where the player can go toe to toe against other players from the opposite faction, or the same faction, and demonstrate superiority in both gear and skill was more of an afterthought and was focused on during later stages of the game's life. So if you prefer PvP more over PvE, then there is every reason to be interested in Mythic's latest foray into MMORPG world with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, where WAR is everywhere.

Warhammer Online, WAR, has been in development for about three years and after this long time, Mythic have finally been able to release the game to the public. No MMO has had a smoother launch than WAR which is an achievement on its own. With many improved elements from existing MMOs and new features plus an exciting RvR system, there is a lot to be excited about WAR than many recently released MMOs could offer.

The world of WAR has two opposing factions: Order and Destruction. Each faction has three races. Order has Dwarves, Empire (Humans) and High Elves while Destruction has Greenskins (Goblins and Orcs), Chaos (Humans) and Dark Elves. At start, it might seem that WAR is copying from WoW's fantasy setting and races. In reality and truth, it is actually quite the opposite. Warhammer started such a theme and Blizzard copied it for their Warcraft universe. It is a long story but bottom line is, WAR has a deep and interesting lore in its core and that each faction regardless of alignment has some sort of worthy goal that they are trying to achieve.

There are a total of 21 careers (Classes) split between the two faction’s races. Generally, they fall down to four classes: Tanks, Melee damage dealers, caster damage dealers and healers. Even though there might be similarities between careers when looked at from a general perspective, they do have some distinct characteristics that make them different. What is great is how Mythic was able to make all these classes attractable especially when you consider the number you have at hand.

After creating your character, you spawn in your designated starting area for your race. Everything is laid out for you so that you don't have to wander aimlessly. Quests are close by and many of the things you will need to know are either close by or pop up as question marks which contain mini tutorials about what you have interacted with. You can also start checking out the public quests near by or join a queue to enter a scenario from level one. No need to reach a certain level to enjoy these features.

Quests in WAR shy away from the mindless grinding and make it simpler and faster. You still have to kill this number of mob or collect that item quests but now they are closer to each other and hardly will you need to stray far from the quests hub. Gone is the need to figure out the quest locations since everything is shown on the map as red clouds which indicate the area for that certain quest to be completed. This makes completing quests both fun and fast which will please a lot of players. Lots of these quests take you to the new Public Quest areas which give you the chance to join a group that might be doing such a public quest and receive great rewards for that.

You might be already wondering what is Public Quests that I keep mentioning. Public Quests is more of an evolution than a revolution in MMOs and WAR is the first to introduce such a mechanic. Simply put, you will venture into a PQ area in which the HUD will seamlessly indicate that you are in such an area and will show what is required to accomplish. After a certain goal has been achieved, the next stage is opened up which is harder than the previous. It continues until you reach the final goal which generally requires facing off against a tough boss character that needs multiple players to bring down. Keep in mind that anyone can join in PQs, so no need to ask around if you can join or get invited to a group. Simply open up the open group window and will show what groups are available that you can join. Of course it is not necessary for PQs to be in any group, just jump in and start hacking through. When finishing any of these PQs' final stages, the game will determine loot distribution on both participation and a random roll number. This will most of the time will reward those who have been more involved in the PQ stages but still give those who joined later a good chance of winning something.

If you are more eager to go face off against other players, you can queue up for the many scenarios available to you. After being able to enter a scenario, you get to go toe to toe with the opposite faction members in various modes of play. Scenarios are split to four tiers, three for each tier. Tiers are determined by character level so you move up a tier every ten levels. For those fearing of being slaughtered in scenarios due to them being low level should fear not, since the game will automatically buff you up a few levels which will give players a better level of play. The scenarios are varied and quite a lot of fun, you go from normal point captures to some cool modes such as using items to complete objectives and gain points.

No matter what you do in WAR, eventually you will have to join one of those epic keep sieges and enter the fray of RvR. RvR stands for Realm vs Realm, Good vs Evil and Army vs Army. Do not confuse this with PvP (Player vs Player), since RvR is bigger in scope when compared to PvP. While PvP focuses on player against player be it in one on one or small group, RvR focuses on huge number of players against many from the other faction. You can go one on one in WAR, but it really isn’t designed for that and it doesn't feel balanced. When joining a siege, you will have the chance to attack or defend a keep. You will have access to siege weapons such as battling rams, catapults and even get to use hot oil if you are defending. These kinds of battles can usually consist of as many as a hundred players from both sides at once. Being in the middle of all of that is really awesome and feels truly epic. Lots of things going on and if you are on the offensive side and managed to break through the keep gate, you will get to face of against the keep lord which is a very strong NPC that fights on the defender's side and killing him earns considerable rewards.

The world of WAR does include a few instances but they are short and few in numbers. You can group and try them out but it can be difficult to find groups regularly going into them when they have other fun things to do such as PQs and scenarios. It just shows how RvR oriented is the game is and hence Mythic gave lesser attention to instances. Not saying you shouldn't go into them, since they are worth checking out, especially if you are the PvE sort of player.

Dying in WAR is quite forgiving. When you are killed, by someone or by self through free falling, your character gets resurrected at the nearest camp with a debuff that reduces your stats by a certain percentage depending on how many times you die. You can easily pay the healer a tiny fee to remove the debuff allowing you to continue your adventure with only the need to continue where you died. It really is a forgiving system and at the same time well implemented. The only problem it might cause is that it can be a means to reach to certain destinations simply by dying and then being resurrected at that location.

Mythic tried hard to design an exciting crafting system but sadly it has come short of expectation. First of all, the drop rate for profession items are not balanced, while cultivating seeds are abundant and drop a lot, Scavenging items hardly drop and rare. It is also hard to know when you will level while practicing your profession. There really are some good ideas in many of the crafting professions but were not properly implemented and could have made use of more time working on them.

WAR's interface is pretty much an enhanced version of WoW's interface, which is a good thing, since many MMOs already use a similar interface and will give players coming from these MMOs an easy time adjusting to WAR, with various elements that have been improved and tweaked. There are lots of customization options right off the bat. You can download add-ons to enrich your experience but what comes in the package is sure enough to give you a good start. There are also some various streamlining going on such as automatic looting of quest items and giving them a separate bag space. Also, you get addition bag space every time you reach a new tier, so no need to worry about getting that heavy duty magical bag when things get crowded. Small touches that really make you focus on what WAR is all about.

The world map makes things easier for the player. It doesn't shy from telling the player where to go since it is split into different tiers. You got three areas which each are split between Greenskins and Dwarves in the south east, Dark Elves and High Elves in the west and Empire vs Chaos in the north. The map also show what zones are under which factions control. Gain enough control over the map and the opposite's faction capital city is open for siege.

The Tome of Knowledge is one feature that many will love and appreciate. It is a center of all the information you want and require. Every detail about quests and lore are included. It also tracks many interesting stats such as hours played and new achievements unlocked. All of this is available for the user to read whenever he chooses to, rather than forced to go through every time a new piece of information is unlocked when it comes to many other MMOs. It is just well designed and easy to navigate that you can spend a nice deal of time exploring it whenever you please.

It seems there is a huge amount of players rolling as Destruction which results in unbalance across the servers. Don't be surprised to see that Destruction numbers are higher than Order in magnitudes of two or higher. Though the tides are changing as of writing this review and a noticeable increase of Order players is observed which can be expected since that will mean less queue times on logging in and waiting for scenarios. A patch has already addressed this by giving bonus experience to the lower populated faction, another way that will help balance the server population.

There is a notorious issue that will face players when logging in which is the queues. There are many times when queues go as long as 30 minutes which begs the question of population size being small or whether this is an effect of a new MMO game with lots of new players joining in. Hopefully Mythic will get around to resolving this problem but on the plus side, if the game crashes while in queue, you will still retain your position in that queue.

WAR isn’t without bugs though, as with many MMOs, but nothing that can be show stopping. Mythic have done a good job to release the game in a very stable and playable manner with bugs that, even though evident, are nothing to spoil the experience.

Any MMO can’t survive with adequate updating and patching but large and continuous patches can really cripple the experience. Luckily, WAR is far from that. Current patches are small in size and Mythic constantly add hot fixes which download before you load the game and are almost invisible. So every time you log on, you can be assured that the game is better than before, which is nice to have rather than waiting for weeks or months for the developer to patch up a small bug.

WAR looks grim and dark where it should while safe and bright in other areas, fitting the Good vs Evil theme of a fantasy world. You will have a little bit of a cartoony touch but it is very subtle. The landscapes are varied generally and contain lots of interesting location and there is some reasonable use of vegetation. You also have your lakes and shores which you can only swim on the surface and hence no underwater content. The animation is smooth though you will notice a reduction in animation frames for characters far away for the purpose of maintaining performance, though for a game being in development for three years, such a cut really is not necessary for today's hardware. Another quirk with the animation is transitions between them during combat and how in sync are they with the commands executed; they really need some work in that area though nothing that can put you off. So as you would expect, the game should perform reasonably well given the development time and age, in which mostly it does except that it requires quite a hefty amount of RAM, 2 GB is really the recommend minimum for a moderately smooth experience with the occasional hiccups when new areas are loaded especially when you pan the camera around a lot.

Both the sounds and music don't have anything really outstanding about them. They simply accompany the game's fantasy setting and are really all what you expect from a world which is about war between good and evil hacking and slashing at each other. Mythic have managed to make each race talk in an accent and voice that fits it very well, so goblins talk like goblins and elves talk like elves in almost the same way you find them in such a fantasy world.

No matter how you will want to play it, WAR is really all about RvR and not getting involved in such events makes you miss the real point of it. It can't be the best MMO overall, but it beats the best one in many areas, especially when it comes to going against other players.