Updated Third Impressions: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
The Cornerstone: RvR
One of the game’s key design tenets is “war is everywhere,” and that is certainly the case.
It is entirely possible for you to log in with a brand new character, completely ignore the NPC standing in front of you offering a quest to kill rats, press the button on your minimap to queue for a scenario—instanced battlegrounds that tend to have objectives such as capture the flag or take and hold—and then, from levels 1 to 40, do nothing but kill people, all day long.
If instances aren’t your style, within every zone in the game you can find contested areas with objectives to seize, and indeed the zones themselves can be taken control of by either of the game’s two factions through the capture of those objectives, victories in combat, and, to a somewhat lesser extent by people completing PvE content.
In the later areas, large swathes of the map are given over to massive battlefields running north and south in a straight line between a pairing of the game’s six capital cities (though, I should note that only two capital cities are going to be available at the game’s launch).
Once you’ve locked down one of these battlefields under your faction’s control, it opens up the opportunity to lock down the next one, and the one after that, and so on.
The taking and holding of these zones is all part of the larger overriding objective of the game, known as the campaign, whose ultimate goal is the capture and destruction of an enemy’s capital city itself, culminating with battles that promise to be truly massive in scale. Don’t quote me on this, but the last information I had was that capital city sieges would top out at 75 vs. 75 before a new instance opened up.
Open-world battles tend to be fast-paced, fun, and engaging, with plenty of chokepoints, bridgeheads, and strategic objectives to generate action. A quick check of the map shows War Icons where battles are taking place, with various sizes and colors indicating how long the fighting has lasted, and how many people are taking part.
The combat itself can at times feel a bit rushed, and there is occasionally a feedback gap between what you think your character should be doing and what it actually is on the screen. But, those are minor quibbles, and they still have a few weeks to go before release to try and iron them out.
WAR’s vision of RvR is what I would call “PvP-Lite.” The only death penalty at all for those killed in battle is the few moments of their time it takes to get back into the action, along with a bit of pride. Indeed, you can even be rewarded for dying, in the form of titles earned through the Tome of Knowledge… for instance, “The Singed” for receiving a killing blow from a Bright Wizard’s fireball.
There is no experience, money, or item loss involved when you’re on the receiving end of death. Players doing the killing themselves receive experience (both “standard” which levels up your character, and “renown” which is only earned through PvP and earns you points to spend not unlike talents in other games), coin, and occasionally items from fallen enemy players, but those are generated out of thin air, no one is actually losing anything.
You can’t even gank anyone, because a player’s level scales appropriately upward upon entering a higher-level battlefield.
These facts are likely to grate against the sensibilities of more hardcore PvP fans, and I would expect an uproar demanding a “free for all” server with harsher rules be released along the lines of Andred and Mordred from DAoC. But, considering the fact that Andred and Mordred ended up getting merged due to low playerbase (and, as of this writing, there are currently 12 people logged in to Mordred in total), perhaps this time around those cries will go unheeded.
[...] was published in January, 2008. Nearly all of the information in it is currently out of date. Please click here to read our updated impressions published August 28, [...]
[...] The interview actually took place a few weeks back at E3, but I’ve been sitting on it until now to allow it to become a companion piece to my updated impressions article, which you can read right over here. [...]
Pretty much dead on, though I would point out that AoC was already at 415k by the end of June, so they are probably a heck of a lot lower now. I know a lot of the more committed people quit in mid-July, you can see it on all the forums.
As for the feeling of PVE shallowness in WAR: I think a lot of things contribute to it. The slower combat (good for PVP, makes it easy to run from mobs though), marked map, tooltip quest directions, instant scenario queues, unlimited hearth, shallow crafting, linear zone design, lack of gear (used to be too much gear, actually), bland graphics (sliders set to med-low settings for beta) and bad mob AI (was good in the past, broken for PW, said to be fixed). The writing is good, but hidden in the ToK, not something I’m going to bother with during a beta.
I found myself mostly alternating PQ’s and scenario play, doing maybe 2/3 of the quests along the way if convenient. It was a heck of a lot more mixed up and social then the average WoW solo leveling treadmill, where you might see a new dungeon every 3-4 nights. I have heard reasonably good things about the open dungeons at higher levels, and although there are only a few of them I hope they add another significant wrinkle to the content.
I have never enjoyed MMO PVP, though I have enjoyed competition in online shooters and fighting games. I really enjoyed the PVP in WAR; it seemed that every situation was different and gave you a lot to think about. So anyone who thinks they might like PVP should give the open beta a shake.
Nice Preview/Review, I am actually an old DaoC player and no other MMORPG has ever got my adrenaline pumping and heart beating like the first Large scale RvR battle I experienced.So I am eagerly anticipating WAR.
On a side note,I find it odd how Negative the reviewer was 6 months ago,granted you should be negative if its needed,but in this review your totally unbiased.
Obviously that’s a good thing but your also allowed to show your impressed or excited if the experience merits that.
What’s so special about the PQ’s. It just sounds to me (from this review) like a normal quest chain like you get in any other mmo. i.e. it starts of feasy and gets harder as you get to the ‘boss’ in the final quest.
What’s special is that you don’t actually get it from anyone - you just see a huge crowd and some text on your screen and realize something crazy is about to happen. It’s actually the best part of the PvE game so far - though it seems like it forces players to co-operate more than actually encouraging it. I know people tend to try and grab kills and objectives for selfish reasons because they want a better chance at the loot.
If you’re in it for a cool boss spawn or world event, it’s great. Waiting 5 times to get the loot you want is about the same as every other mmo I’ve ever played.
You know, I think that if someone is really excited about pvp in other games (like wow) and is getting bored - this is a good one. I don’t see it grabbing many roleplayers though. Maybe it’s just the beta rush, but only two people have even answered my hello since starting. (well, I’m sure it’s the beta rush) I haven’t found an emote that works yet either.
Still, more fun than the average grind - I do like that I can get experience from players.
Pretty spot on review. Now with release Id like to add a few more things. Apparently theres a pretty major memory leak. I use a 64 bit OS and have 8G of RAM. After running war for about 3 hours Im using over 85% of my memory. Its easily corrected by restarting the client but who wants to stop and reload every few hours.
IMO the PVP is where it is at. Ive done a mix of PVP, PVE, and PQ up to level 7 and then went pure PVP/RVR for for the next 7.
I think this is a very “good” and fun game but I honestly believe, if you wernt a fan of the genre already this is not going to be the one that brings you in. Its very much more of the same with a few improvements and additions.
[...] That’s the gist of my first week in WAR. So far, I’ve found the PvP side of the game to be fast-paced, fun, and exciting, with the PvE side being exactly the opposite–dull, repetitive, the sort of things we’ve all seen before. Not much changed from my third impressions piece prior to launch. [...]
[...] http://www.mmogamer.com/08/27/2008/warhammer-online-third-impressions [...]
Is the “living guild” really a new idea? I haven’t played EQ2 for several years, but I’d swear that guilds leveled up in that game back in 2004 or 2005
Living guild isn’t really a new idea but I havn’t seen a lot of MMO’s use it. I played Ragnarok Online a lot a few years ago, and they had a leveling system for the guild that allowed for guild skills (depending on a Tax % of your leveling experience your guild leader chose for you =P) But it consisted mostly of allowing more players into the guild, or bonus stats for the war of emperium fights. (Guild Vs Guild fighting over a castle, by destroying/defending the emperium in the deepest part of the castle) Although in a normal basis the guild level didn’t help unless it was for the WoE fights (or more people) .