Yesterday i managed to get my hands on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (from here on refered to as WAR), the latest in a long list that threatens to de-throne World of Warcraft (WoW) from the top of the pile of currently existing MMORPG (Massivley Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games).
So far it's only an Open Beta view of the game, offical release doesn't begin until the 17th of September, never the less i got a good insight into the game mechanics as well as the look and feel of the game.
Upon logging in the graphics seemed awful at first, but after some investigating i was able to use my Nvidia control panel to actually force the likes of Anti-Aliasing etc. on, which improved things greatly. It's not as pretty as say Age of Conan, but let's be honest, Graphics keep you interested for about twenty minutes.
I decided to make a Dark Elf Character, a Sorcerer to be precise, and set about customising him, nothing out of the ordinary there, select the sex, hair type/colour, skin colour etc, how many ear rings you want, blah blah.
Upon entering the game you immediatley get the sense that your stood right in the middle of some fantasy warzone where all hell has broken lose. Not least because of the high pitched screams and chunking of metal, the awesome visuals of buildings and fleets on fire. It was an unsual introduction as opposed to WoW's daisy fields of boars and sheep.
The usual format of run up to someone and ask for quest prevails initially in WAR. Until you hit a point where you are suddenly told that your in something called a 'Public Quest', which is essentially a three staged story being played out by people in the nearby vicinity. I got told that i had to slay a certain number of High Elf defenders, i had noticed several people around me doing it, so began to zap away. After some time a message appeared informing me that some temple dudes were trying to perform a ritual to kill us, and sure enough they came running along and we began killing them. Some time later, (there's constant waves of npc's comming at this point, really great fun), all the temple guys are killed and then out of the sky comes a huge dragon, sort of like an end game boss you'd find in a dungeon somewhere in WoW.
There was initially three of us in the area at the time and had no chance of killing him, as we found out after several foolish attempts. Finally though our numbers swelled and we were able to take him. Upon killing him a slot machine type screen appeared. It listed the people whom were involved in the Public Quest, and the amount of influence they had (presumably the amount of damage or healing you had done) on it. This was then added to a randomized number, given you a final score. Those with the highest scores (top 5 or something) get a nice bag of loot that is extremly useful to your character (i've not once got something that i can't already use).
Public Quests are a nice touch, and sort of bring about the grouping expereince that is had in WoW without much effort, or any 'omg newb you don't know what your doing' sort of deal.
Next was PvP. Refered more so in WAR as RvR (realm versus Realm), because the idea is two realms facing off against each other (Order versus Destruction, good versus bad). I'll save that for my next article as there was a fair lot to talk about.
So far though the game is a lot of fun compared to the other MMORPG's i've played, not least because theres so much to do and at no point are you thinking 'Ok where i go or what should i do now?'.
Cheers for reading.
Nice post!
I've been trying the beta for a few days now and am happily impressed by it myself. The animations could use some work sure, but the game has a great environment and the scaling of the environment does wonders for the 'feel' of the game (by the I mean, buildings are actually quite large compared to your character, immersing you in the world)
The UI is a huge step-up from the default that other games provide you with, and it supports modding such as World of Warcraft has, so the possibility of improving the UI exists
The public quest was a big surprise for me, never encountering one before, but it was a blast and the way they designed it to share the loot based on contribution during the fight, despite whether or not you're partied, is awesome.
Definitely looking forward to what they do next with the game!
Thanks for the preview. I was a little worried about WAR but this gives me hope. Playing the Demigod beta has gotten me to thinking about what it would be like introduce some kind of creep mechanic in to and MMO, rather than just spawns, to keep battle raging all over the map, and to give it a bigger scale and story than you just going around and adventuring.
Sounds like some compelling aspects were added to the game. It's too bad because I have no time (and little interest) in mmo's.
Yeah, it sounds less bad than I was prepared for it to be. Alas, I think WoW and my (admittedly short) venture into AoC pretty much used up all my desire to play medieval fantasy MMOs.
Is it just me or does this sound like paid advertising for war?
Anyway, this game wont dethrone WoW, at least not at launch. People hate Wow, but they love it even more. Either people that love the fantasy MMORPG concept will dislike War because it does not bring anything new, or they will hate it because it will not have the same polish as WoW.
People expect a WoW 1.5, some even expect a WoW 2.0.
What they'll get is a WoW 1.0, but with a different sugar coating.
Until developers start taking chances again, and start thinking outside the (WoW) box, we will not see another "big" MMORPG that will dethrone WoW.
Agreed.
Its ok, and I can see it being a good MMO RPG , just not my cup of tea, I gave the BETA 3 full days, and I have concluded I hate most MMO's , except for EVE.
Oh when will a really awesome 40K mmo come out?
Playing again?
I hate all MMOs including eve.
I love the idea of massively multiplayer online.
Why do those 3 words translate into tedium, boring watered down lowest-common-denominator gameplay, grind, and too high of cost?
WHy can't there just be a fun game with big servers instead of an unfun game with big servers?
The problem with MMO's is that they're treated as a game type, not a connectivity model.. They are all WoW or L2 clones.
I think EVE is pretty bad. I played WoW, got to level 40 and got bored.
I like MMOs but fantasy isn't my thing, and EVE, although SciFi, is kinda bad. I'm looking forward the Star Trek, Warhammer 40k, and KOTOR though. My friend said Warhammer online was pretty bad
I might go back to EvE once the weather turns crappy outside, when I was last there I had just gotten a Drake Battle Cruiser.
WAR will likely be a decent/solid MMORG, but nothing will match WoW's success.
Any decent/solid MMORPG is going to seem extra fun at first - because everything is new and fresh, even if a lot of it is basically the same as ever.
The real test is to see if the game still feels enjoyable after a good month or so of playing, which for a live MMORPG, is usually when the free month runs out. When your sub money is on the line and you have to pay or stop - that's when you really decide if a MMORPG good.
I'd say that more MMORPGs are bad than they are good, so finding one worth playing for more than the few hours it takes to realize it blows chunks is always nice.
I only tried WAR earlier in beta and found it to look like crap, play like crap, and it was utterly boring and very dumbed down (this coming from a WoW player who has to constantly read how dumbed down WoW is). Also having played DAoC for about 2 years, I have little faith in Mythic's ability to ever balance classes (especially for PvP). They have interesting ideas for PvP but often fail to comletely deliver.
So, maybe it seems great at first, most decent new MMORPGs do feel that way for a while, but only time will tell if it's truly a title worth paying a subscription for.
I think there are a few of good MMORPGs that are worth trying but when it comes to paying a sub, why pay for anything less than WoW? (unless you're cool with paying multiple subs and flitting between MMORPGs - but I think most MMORPG players tend to stick with one game - heavily.) And no matter how good other MMORPGs are, they're still noticeably below WoW in every measurable category. That's the bottom line.
Edit refuses to function, so, let me add that, I'd love to see another MMORPG as good and as worth playing (subbing to) as WoW, but it hasn't happened yet, and I don't see it happening anytime soon. Just like a lot of PC devs/pubs in general just don't "get it" when it comes to a lot of things, most MMORPG devs just don't get it when it comes to designing a feature-filled and fun MMORPG. Blizzard does "get it" - and they're games are generally a ton of fun, run on most PCs, are high quality, well designed, everything - and this is extra tough to compete with in the highly expensive and development-instensive MMORPG genre.
Your right Voqar in that the real acid test of any MMO is whether or not you are still gripped by it a month or two down the road.
As for the dumbing down aspect, i initially felt this was the case, and certainly the game does have an idiot proof feel to it at times, but ultimatley the RvR, which is something i've yet to talk about properly, is where the game shines.
I'll go into more detail regarding this in my next article, but people saying it's WoW 1.*, really need to understand that WoW's PvP's offering where extremley limited and there was never any real objectives behind it (unless you refer to the dreaded PvP ladder system where you litterally had to play non-stop to achieve the highest rank).
For the record also, i played Eve since Beta 4, i loved the game, but they could never resolve the lag issue, that coupled with the introduction of POS warfare (which ultimatley resulted in more lag), was the final nail in the coffin for me. It's still the only game that has genuinley given me an adrenaline rush, had me shaking before a fight etc. Yet after 4 years, that feeling slowly goes.
Maybe they'll resolve the lag in eve, i certainly hope so and if they do i'll be the first to re-subscribe.
Yet that list doesn't manage to budge WoW. I'll believe it when I see it.
And I don't know how to say this nicely, but: AoC screenshots don't impress me in the least. The lighting looks sub-par and I can't find the shadows in most of the screenshots. I don't understand why people like its graphics; they look so flawed technically. High resolution textures alone don't make good graphics.
From most descriptions of EVE I've heard, it's just an anarchy in there, and there are very few quests. No thanks. I prefer to play PvE in most MMORPGs I play.
EVE is one giant sandbox, that's why there are no quests. There's a tutorial that introduces you to the game, and then you go off finding your own way, there's no central story (though there are story related elements), noboby holding your hand
I luagh at the fools who blindly follow the grind path in an MMO, I play how I want to play. Right now I want to play a squad based tactical 40k MMO with a great lore and background storys.
Quality in MMOs is hard to find but it IS possible, unless you like guns and chainsaws.
Shadowbane remains the best currently-playable MMO (although it's less massive than it once was). It comes with the added benefit of being free, so long as you don't mind seeing ads when you start/close the game.
Where else can you get powerleveled to the cap in under a day (if you don't get rolled off the good high-level spawns)? Where else do you spend basically all of your time doing something with a very good chance of ending in some kind of PvP encounter?
It's the good life with respect to MMOs.
Powerleveled to the cap in less than a day? Makes the game sound like utter rubbish to me.
I've been playing the Warhammer beta on and off for a while... but the longer I play it, the less I play it. It's not that it's a bad game, it's just not really my cup of tea unfortunately.
It ought to do okay for itself but all the people saying WoW is or should be scared of WAR are frankly dreaming. WAR will barely be a blip next to it. So long as the investors remember that profitability is what they should be hoping for, not toppling WoW, it should be fine. If they consider mere profitability to be a failure and will only accept WoW level sub rates, the game is doomed.
The beta was really dumbed down for some reason. I played it for a few minutes, got my "go kill zombies" quest and stopped. Then my friends grabbed thier preorders, got thier head start characters going, and wouldn't stop raving about how awesome it was. I broke down and bought a copy - any MMO is better with friends - and I'm blown away now too. I can't quite put my finger on it but Mythic apparently dug deep and found that bit of Blizzard-style polish.
One thing about Warhammer is that there are no barriers to being awesome - in most MMOs I feel like the grind is something I have to do in order to "earn" my fun - which is why I don't play MMOs. In Warhammer you can get into PvP from level one. You can do Public Quests and fight dragons at level one. The quality of writing is stellar - instead of "collect 5 bears for "arbitrary reason here". it's written in such a way that doing those random quests feels awesome. You later find out, for example, you're collecting the zombie bits to load them into a giant cannon that fires cannonballs made of corpses and rot at the Order, which is substantially cooler. Also, your PvE quests have an effect on the RvR progress.
This game is epic because it allows YOU the chance to be epic, instead of making you thrall's errand boy. The story revolves around you and the player characters taking the fight to the enemies, not desperately collecting linen to make into band-aids for the real soldiers. I highly recommend this MMO.
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