Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Review

Touted as being the pretender to the throne of MMO games, expectations for Warhammer Online were running high. Whilst brilliant in a lot of ways, the lack of polish and a fundamental flaw in the game dynamic does not bode well for its longevity. It is certainly worth playing, but it will leave you wondering why it was not finished before release.


WAR!!
Mythic picked the abbreviation with the same single-minded sense of purpose with which it has crafted this impressive new entry in the field of massively multiplayer RPGs. Those three angry letters send a message just as clear and pointed as Blizzard's three-letter exclamation of wonder. For all its tremendous debt to World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online is not about losing yourself in the scale and grandeur of an extravagant fantasy world. It's about the hard and gritty business of battle. WAR is all about war.

The push and counter-push of the battlefront is everywhere you look: from the bar in the top right of the screen that indicates whether Order or Destruction controls the zone you're in, to the grand Realm-versus-Realm endgame of capital city sieges; from the dynamic NPC battles littered throughout questing zones, to the way even small-scale player-versus-player battles naturally coalesce around a single, see-sawing frontline. At its best, WAR is less about standing toe-to-toe with your enemies than shoulder-to-shoulder with your allies.

There are two opposing factions: Order and Destruction, each consisting of three races. It's High Elves, Dwarves and the Human Empire for the former, and Dark Elves, Greenskins and Chaos for the latter. Each race has three to four of its own 'careers' (classes), amounting to 20 in all. Though there are definite analogues, no two races have the same classes. Each of the two sides has one city to its name - purdy, Germanic Altdorf for Order, and the epic, otherwordly Inevitable City for Destruction. These aren't social or shopping hubs so much as enormous trophies and goals, the ultimate battleground for the RvR meta-game. Once one side has a decisive upper hand on the server, they get to raid the enemy capital. The zones eventually reset so war can begin anew, but in the meantime there's glorious pillage to be had.

This has its problems of course, as although some effort has been made to differentiate each class, some do have a level sameness about them. That is to say they have different abilities, but the same effects.


Once you have made your selection you are off to your character's starting point. First impressions of the graphics at this point are pretty good. Warhammer Online has a more realistic and gritty feel than some of its counterparts. The Green Skins' area has the muddied feel of a war camp, while the Elven area has that ethereal, tree-hugger feel to it. The environments are well thought out, and have themed music that manages to capture the underlying story well.



Early quests are pretty much what you would expect (go there, kill this and gather that) but what we particularly liked is how intuitive the quest tracking is. On the larger map, quest areas are surrounded in red so you have a fair idea of where you need to go to complete your quests, and the quest tracker on the right hand side of the UI gives you immediate access to what you need to do when you get there. There is a helpful sound when you have completed the quest as well.

In addition to the quests there are events called Public Quests. These are events that take place in the open world. Often these are in stages, and usually you can stumble into them when questing. Basically they require a whole bunch of people to complete them, but in effect every player is competing against each other to earn the loot.

How it works is that every player's contribution to the quest is assessed and they are ranked according to this contribution. A random multiplier is then introduced, and the top few players are then awarded a loot sack. In the loot sack are bunch of items that you can then choose from. The rest disappear once you have made your choice, and if you miss out in the loot roll you are awarded a bonus multiplier for the next public quest when it resets (usually in minutes), which means persistence will win a reward eventually.
Enlarge this image

This is fine in theory, but these Public Quests just don't work when there is a lack of population. The Green Skin and Chaos areas in the servers we tried were easy with heaps of people, but the Elven area had a small population in comparison, and it was largely impossible to complete these quests. Given these Public Quests result in experience points, it makes levelling in these areas all the more harder. Even in the higher population servers some PQ's were hard to complete as players had either levelled past them, or the chapter simply didn't have enough players to complete them. As the servers mature this problem will only get bigger for late-comers to the game.

Warhammer Online's PvP elements are a definite ray of Elven sunshine. Mythic has divided its PvP priorities into two forms: Scenarios and Open-world RvR. Scenarios are played like instanced team vs. team matches between Order and Destruction. Players can join scenarios as easily as clicking a button on the HUD. Groups of players that have banded together also have the option of joining and playing scenarios together.

Once inside the scenarios, players can expect standard modes of gameplay. Capture the flag and capturing and defending control points are just a few of the game modes. There are some additional ones that add a twist here and there, but it isn't anything veteran gamers haven't seen or played before. When players select to join a scenario, they are placed in a queue, so while the game is preparing a scenario, players can continue to go about their business. Once the scenario is ready, players can join and are instantly loaded into it. Once the scenario is finished, the game places the players back where they were within the game world, allowing them to pick up where they left off. For once, these out-of-world zones aren't tedious or pointless to play, and those who would normally find them to be a waste will catch themselves actually having fun.

So what of the Realm vs Realm itself? It's definitely the game's heart even if it's not as much its majority as you might think. It's fairly evident that's where the developers' love lies, as it feels much grander than the shallow PvE. This is the aspect that we're most reticent to pass judgment on just yet, as it likely won't be until a couple of months into the full release that the whole picture becomes clear. The high-level keep and city sieges could well be the most spectacular fights any fantasy MMO has ever offered, but it'll take a large, experienced population to make them work. The earlier, lower-key PvP definitely makes it an exciting prospect, however. There's a sense of intertwining to it, everything working towards a single purpose rather than being a collection of smaller, standalone tasks. Whatever your PvP activity, be it ganking RvR-flagged enemy players, seizing objectives in the open Battlefields or piling into all-out war in the closed Scenarios, it's all adding to your Renown points and your side's power.

Open-world RvR plays out in predetermined areas of each map and there are no multiple instances of the same thing. Battlefield objectives are scattered throughout these contested areas. Each tier has two maps in it, each with its own set of objectives. When one realm captures and holds all those objectives, bonuses are given to the players of that realm and the game acknowledges their dominance. Eventually, Mythic's idea leads to one realm being able to capture and hold all the objectives of each tier until the end, which results in the siege of the other realm's capital city.

Players will earn points for two different ranks, one is their overall rank and the other is their Renown Rank. Earning renown is a matter of participating in PvP, whether it's scenarios or open-world RvR. As players earn renown points and ranks, they get access to renown abilities, which can be used to help their characters become more powerful. Of course, the issue of low-level player populations cannot be ignored. How will the balance be impacted when there aren't any players left in the early tiers of the game?

Player balance in the game seems to be surprisingly good at this early stage of evolution, although we did find some of the healer classes were harder to level up than the melee classes. The combat is already attracting some debate, specifically surrounding the lack of skill or variety. We certainly found it entertaining enough, although the lack of combat options for some classes did make it seem repetitive at times.

The UI will be familiar to a lot of MMO players, and this can be readily adjusted without too much effort. Bags can be viewed as icons or in list format, and the casting bars give you a good description of the ability and a cool down time once used.

The visuals in Warhammer Online are a mixed bag. On one hand, the style should be applauded as being unique and interesting. City architecture and creature design are top-notch. Conversely, character models seem to lack the detail and finesse that was put into the other areas of the game. Weather effects and the day-night cycle will help keep the environment from becoming stale, but some areas of the world appear to suffer from "no-sun syndrome," making those areas less pleasing to the players who enjoy the scenery changes. Overall, Warhammer Online falls short without next-generation graphics, but when attempting to create large-scale combat between countless players, Mythic had to make some sacrifices. This isn't to say that the graphics are terrible or hard to stomach because they aren't dated for an MMO, but they aren't going to turn heads either.

Music and ambient sounds are good, and have a lot of variety. There are distant battle sounds, yells, animal noises etc. to all add life to the world, although these don't seem to change when you are underground. Exploring a crypt while hearing the chirping sounds of birds, although uplifting, does not fit well with the circumstances.

As we have said, there are plenty of high points in this game, however our biggest concern is how well it will build and retain the community it so desperately needs to make it playable. Early indications are concerning, with almost no in-game chatter, but the wide variety of PvP opportunities could well attract a lot of the jaded PvP players from other MMO's.

There are a lot of features that make up Warhammer Online. Most of those features aren't anything veterans of the genre don't already know and understand. And, there are a complement of bugs and glitches that accompany this giant, but the core gameplay is solid. Warhammer Online isn't trying to reach a specific audience either, regardless of Mythic's original intention. Instead, it seems to be creating a whole new audience, turning and redefining players' expectations and behaviors. If MMOs are what you enjoy, Warhammer Online is one of the best on the market. It may not have a new combat system built from the ground up, or flashy next-generation graphics, but its success without those two elements is a feat in its own right.

Its similarities to and improvements on WoW - most especially in PvP - make it the natural next home for anyone either dispossessed by Blizzard's effort or who has held out from all MMOs in the hope of something a bit meatier. Playing Warhammer Online, it's easy to forget that this game stems from a hobby so often accused of nerdiness. It shares design values, fiction and certain concepts with the Warhammer tabletop game, but really it's only the name that binds them. Conan was supposed to be the so-macho MMO, but against this it seems a bit Sealed Knot. WAR is war. The associated intensity of this means it probably won't pick up anything like the audience WoW has, but it will get a large one. And a very, very satisfied one at that.


Ups:

Warhammer fans will love the faithful creation of the Warhammer world. One of the best player versus player games currently on the market. Some great new MMO concepts.
Downs:

This game deserved more time in the testing phase. Poor installation mechanics and glitches make this very much a diamond in the rough. More concerning is the reliance on server population to make much of the game playable.


GEEK SCORE: 8.2/10