The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning NDA has been lifted

Those of you who have anticipated the release of this game has most likely already read about this and you may also have read some of the comments from the beta testers around the world. If you have then you will have noticed that there is a huge difference between what the US beta testers and the EU beta testers have experienced. But in case you have not read anything or if you want to read yet an other view of an EU beta tester then here is my take on WAR, a game produced by Mythic by the way.

For starters I must say that I am a bit of the old school when it comes to MMORPGs to begin with, I did play WoW for a few months but I did not last long as I do not enjoy the new generation of games in this genre that is released. To me they are far to 'casual gamer' friendly and even though I no longer have the time nor have an inclination to spend the time needed to be in the 'hardcore gamer' camp I still believe that the past years of released games in the MMORPG genre has become watered down. Much because of the great success of WoW most likely.

Anyway, I started playing WAR in early May this year as a beta tester and while I recognised many things from other games such as the simplistic crafting style (even though it is marketed as a recipe free system it still has a lot of similarities with crafting in games such as WoW when it comes to complexity), the character development, the fighting and the total lack of anything else to do in game than either quest or fight other players I still did realize that this was a game totally focused on RvR (or Realm versus Realm). RvR was a concept that was developed by Mythic when they created Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) and essentially it means that the servers are devided into "factions" and these are pitted against each other in large scale Player versus Player (PvP) fights. This is also where WAR differs from all other MMORPGs I've ever played. But lets take it from the top.

The General Frame of the Game
Might not be the best title but I just want to put down some points so we all know what we are talking about here before I start off describing details of the game. So, first off the game is divided into two factions called Order and Destruction. The Order side consists of Empire (humans), Dwarfs and High Elves and the Destruction side consists of Chaos, Greenskins and Dark Elves. Each race belongs to a racial pairing together with an other race from the opposing faction. The pairings are Empire vs Chaos, Dwarf vs Greenskin and High Elf vs Dark Elf. Each of these racial pairings are divided into four tiers each with a different level range, so tier one (T1) goes from level 1 up to about 12 and T2 from 12 - 21 and so on. Just prior to release Mythic changed T4 into a large castle at the end. When a realm holds two out of the three castles from the other side the unofficial T5 is opened up and the city siege begin. Just a few months ago each pairing was going to have a capital city for each of the races that you could fight over but now that has changed into just two capitols for the whole game. So the unoffical T5 consists of the capitol siege and the capitols themselves.

Except for all of this RvR content there are also a lot of PvE content spread out through the tiers. Unfortuantely it has a lot of gaps and, at least to me, it feels a bit detached from the rest of the game and more importantly it seems pointless when compared to the RvR aspect of the game. One thing that Mythic has succeeded in though is to create a new mechanic that they use both in their PvE content and their PvP content and that is the Public Quests. The Public Quest is a quest that you get from just entering an area of the game world. It is not instanced or anything like that and everybody in the area can work on the same quest and most of these PQs you need to be at least one group and sometimes a full raid group to be able to complete. When the quest is completed you take part in a random roll for loot from a chest. The roll is modified by how much you contributed towards the completion of the quest even though if my experience is that you can very often be the highest contributor but end up with nothing. This has however been adressed in a patch recently and hopefully that will not be the case in the current release of the game client.

Character Development
As usually this is done by earning XP to gain levels or ranks as it is called in WAR. When you gain a rank you can talk to a NPC trainer and buy one or more abilities. However, in WAR you also gain renown points which will eventually lead to you gaining renown ranks (or rr for short). You also gain points for each of your rr that you can use to buy abilities from a renown trainer. Your rr also enables you to buy equipment from certain NPCs and this equipment is specifially tailored to be useful to you in RvR.

When you reach rank 11 you will also gain access to the mastery paths, these paths are used to let you specialize in one of your characters areas of expertise. This is how Mythic hopes to give their players a chance to create unique characters. Of course we all know that that is only right to a certain extent as within a month or so there will be cookie cutter builds out on the internet that explains what abilities you should choose to be the most efficient in the game. And yes, that is the kind of sarcastic remarks you can expect while reading this post.

So bottom line when it comes to character development. There really is nothing new under the sun here, we have seen the same kind of character development in several other games and WAR does not really bring anything new to the table in that department.

Crafting
Crafting in WAR has been marketed as being recipe free and yes it is, it is also something I have pretty much avoided testing as as long as I have been beta testing it has not really functioned well or there has at least not been any game mechanic around to explain how it is supposed to function. Thus it has so far for me been an utter disapointment.

Mark Jacobs did an extensive explination through videos a while back on how crafting in WAR was supposed to work. He spoke about how there would be no grinding and how wonderful it was that the whole thing is not based on recipes but as we all know there is again just a matter of time until the recipes is posted online, something I believe (if memory serves right) Jacobs also has stated that he realize. Also the whole thing about crafting not involving grinding is of course just nonsense. The only reason to not grind would be to create items that are not top of the line and the only reason to do that would be see how they look ... or gain the next level in crafting which will of course lead to grinding out massive amounts of items that just get trashed and we have exactly what Jacobs claims the system does not include.

By the way, as far as I can tell the crafting system is pretty much of the same complexity and usefulness as in WoW. That is the top of the line items might be a bit useful but thus far the items you build up to that point will just be scrapped. This might of course change and for all I know it may already have as I have not tried out crafting in the last few patches.

Fighting
As mentioned earlier the focus of the game is RvR, which means you are meant to be fighting against other players pretty much all of the time you are logged in. If you do not do that you will miss out on the essential part of renown ranks which will hamper your ability to fight other players later on in the game.

But if we start with the mechanics then there really is no visual difference between the mechanics of WAR and WoW. The 'global cool down' is apparently longer in WAR than in WoW and the auto attack damage in WAR is much less than in WoW (so gear is less important in WAR than in WoW). Otherwise it is essentially the same mechanics behind the fighting.

An other thing with WAR is that while there are 20 different classes (or careers as they are called in WAR) in WAR they are all mirrors, which means that it actually is only 10 which then are mirrored once to produce a career in the other faction with exactly the same game mechanic. Some of these mechanics we recognize from WoW, the most similar one would be the Iron Breakers Grudge points that he builds which are very similar to the Warriors Rage points from WoW.

Realm vs. Realm
I really have to make a sub section for this as this is the essential part of the game. This is where this game shines. I have to give it to Mythic for succeeding in creating a world where "war is everywhere" (something that they have chanted for a long time now). The RvR combat is easy to get into and most importantly it is fun. I have played MMOGs for about almost 10 years now on and off and while I have not played DAoC where RvR was created I have played other games with PvP in and I have always felt that PvP in other games has been absolutely pointless. In WAR it is quite the opposite though, I happily through myself into a PvP fight even though I personally have no chance of winning the fight but I know that I can help the players on the same side as me and while my rewards might not be great I will at least get something out of it.

The RvR fights are held in specific zones of each tier. These zones include Battle Objectives (or BOs) and from T2 also Keeps. The Keeps get larger for each tier and the fights to take them and defend them can turn into epic fights where several raid groups fight on each side of the battle. Both the attackers and the defenders can use siege equipment such as catapults and other things. The attackers also has to use a ram to get through the keep gate and the defenders can then use oil to fend off rammers.

The majority of the renown points you gain are gained through taking a keep or BO in one of these RvR areas of a tier. There are however also instanced scenarios that you can queue for and join. They usually take about 15 minutes or so to play through and there is a room for around 10 - 15 players per side in them. The scenarios are played on a very limited map usually with a few flags on that you try to take and hold on to. The longer you hold on to them the more points you gain and the first side to 500 points win the scenario.

Well that should cover the basis of RvR in WAR, you really have to try the game yourself to get a feeling for it though as it is impossible to describe how it is to run together with 40 other players up towards a keep on a hill and fight your way in through the gate and eventually kill the keep lord.

Player vs. Environment
PvE is as I have alluded towards earlier in this post a big waste of time, in my own humble opinion, in this game. For starters it is way to easy to finish quests by yourself so there is not much insentitive to group up while questing and the awards you get from the quests are not really worth spending the time on getting. Compared to other games on the market the PvE of WAR is not really that different except that it does not have much in the form of instanced dungeons. That however is something that might very well come and there is a few already in the game it is just that I have not tried them and they are very few compared to many other games.

Hopefully PvE is something that Mythic intends to spend a lot of time on after release as in my opinion it will prevent those players that just want to run about with a Warhammer character and do something in the Warhammer environment from playing the game.

End Game
End game is of course RvR and more RvR and capitol city sieges. There really is not much to say about this other than if you get WAR with the intention to not partake in the large war then you will not have anything to do once you reach level cap as the whole game is built to allow players a nice experience filled with RvR on their way to level cap and once there they are supposed to take part in the epic and constant struggle to reach the point where their side can siege the other sides capitol.

Graphics
Not much to say about the graphics. Partly because my system is at the low end of the requirments but also because the game has been built with low end systems in mind so they do not differ much from an other well known game ... yes, I mean WoW now too.

Conclusion
If you believe that you will enjoy fighting against other players constantly and your only interest in a MMORPG is PvP but you have think that other games has lacked purpose in that department then WAR is definitely the game for you.

However if you want to enjoy some interesting PvE, crafting or just plainly goof around with other things then WAR is not the game for you. In that case I'd recommend a game like LotRO instead as that has set the focus on PvE. On the other hand, LotRO is also a casual gamer friendly game so I would not really recommend that either to be honest.

Lastly, I posted an article about my experience of MMORPGs earlier on this blog. You can find that article here.