Updated Third Impressions: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
With less than a month to go prior to its scheduled release date, I have taken up the mantle once again of giving my impressions on what Warhammer Online will have to offer.
For those of you unacquainted with the saga up to this point, the prior installment of this article, without question, received the most violently negative reaction of any piece I have ever written.
As a result, to clear up any possible misconceptions this time around, I’m going to state something very clearly here right up front:
This article in no way represents a “review” of Warhammer Online. A review will not be forthcoming until after the game has been released. It’s an impressions piece.
An impressions piece is a collection of thoughts and, yes, even opinions, that myself, the author, personally felt and experienced while playing the game.
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, it is not the job of the gaming press (and this site, in particular) to distribute puff pieces stating that every title that comes across our desk is the Second Coming of Christ, destined to lead us to the Promised Land.
If you aren’t interested in seeing someone take a good, hard look at WAR from a veteran MMO player’s perspective, I’m sure that there are many fansites available which could much better accommodate you.
The Third Time’s a Charm
As those who read my prior impressions piece may recall, I did have some rather unkind words to say about the game.
While I admit now that I could have offered up a more even-handed appraisal, I stand by everything I said as being accurate at that time. Keep in mind, when I wrote those words the game’s release date was not September 18th, but the first quarter of this year—six months ago.
If anyone back then seriously thought that WAR was in anywhere near a state ready for release, somebody had to try and put the fear of God into them, and it might as well have been me.
But, that was then.
I do not hesitate to say that the game has come a very long way since that article was published. Nine months is a lifetime in game development, and they’ve put their delays to good use, polishing what needed to be polished, and cutting what they knew wouldn’t make the grade in time.
That action alone, cutting four classes and end-game cities out of the game, shows just how deadly serious the team is about delivering a quality product.
As they should be. Age of Conan demonstrated all too well the very real dangers of pushing out an unpolished product for the sake of meeting an arbitrary release date.
WAR isn’t going to be anywhere near perfect at launch. No game ever is (though, Civilization 4 came pretty close), and anyone expecting it to be—Warhammer Alliance—are going to find themselves to be sorely disappointed.
But, WAR is also not going to be a repeat performance of Conan. While there are the usual pre-release bugs a-plenty, and some classes are still more balanced than others, there is nothing inherently flawed in either its design or production. The game itself is for the most part fun, entertaining, and solid enough to hold all but the most hardcore of players over until post-release content is forthcoming.
Another thing the game is not going to be, in something of a reversal of my first impressions of it, is a WoW clone.
Much of the game, from the UI, to the graphics engine, to the character models and combat has been heavily reworked since I first saw it, and now, in many places it bears only the most remote passing resemblance to WoW in terms of style and art direction.
Now, I’d say that there is a much greater comparison to another game… one likely much more familiar to long-term Mythic fans: If BioShock is the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, Warhammer Online is the spiritual successor to Dark Age of Camelot.
The game is at its core DAoC 2.0, with a change in setting, updated classes, and a much larger focus on PvP from the outset.
Comments