Warhammer Online: Re-Reviewing WAR

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With so many MMOs currently available, it's easy for us, as gamers, to shun a title due to a few minor flaws. Being spoiled for choice has made us scathing critics, so it is a rare occasion in a gamers' career where you find yourself truly immersed in an online world.

The first time I experienced this 'feel-good' sensation was in October of 2001. Mythic Entertainment released Dark Age of Camelot, which boasted an amazing world enthralling thousands of gamers. With a 25 year old thriving Warhammer franchise fan base, it was expected that developer Mythic Entertainment, which had a demonstrated ability to develop an excellent MMO, would deliver an experience with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to shake the very foundation of the MMO genre.

MMORPG's Michael Bitton first reviewed Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in April of 2009, several months after the initial release. Today we take a look at the past year, and determine whether it's still worth joining the WAR .

In the beginning...

In September of 2008, Warhammer Online graced our computer screens sporting many of the features that made Dark Age of Camelot a success, as well as introducing a few new features that grabbed the interest of many gamers. These features included Realm vs Realm (PvP); Instanced PvP Scenarios, which can be queued and accessed from anywhere in-game; Public Quests, involving multiple players who would receive different grades of loot depending on a dice roll and level of contribution; Community building through rewards and experience bonuses for conquering and holding zones; And the Tome of Knowledge, a complete journal of your character's journey including a bestiary, and titles gained from completing certain tasks (some quite silly, such as 'AHHHHH' for falling to your death 25 times). The Tome was such a great addition; the idea was even borrowed by MMO mammoth World of Warcraft.

Release day came, and initially servers were so frequently overloaded, additional servers were required to meet the demand. Opponents were plentiful and the community was brimming. This was short lived though, and unfortunately many people jumped ship early due to unbalanced game play, among other things. Today, over 60 North American servers have been 'consolidated', merging all remaining players into four non-restricted public servers- Badlands, Gorfang, Iron Rock and Volkmar.

While this may sound like a bad thing (it's certainly not great), Warhammer Online is primarily a PvP (player-vs-player) title, and in order to operate needs a decently sized player base. Consolidating the servers quite possibly may have been Warhammer Online's saving grace. The good news is free character transfers have been made available for all players whose characters were on closed servers. For those of you playing on Oceanic servers, you may also find that although the Oceanic servers have closed, the North American servers always seem to have a moderate active player base throughout the day, which is a refreshing change from other titles.

Where did everybody go?

One of the main reasons people fled from Warhammer Online was due to the lack of substance to solo and PvE content- and if you've had your fingers crossed for additional content, look elsewhere. Initially, all races started in zones unique to their player class/ race; these zones were shared with opposing races and included race-specific quests and storylines. But, due to lacking player base and the vastness of the world, all new characters now start in the same location. There is an option to return to your home area, but from personal experience, I would strongly suggest against this. These areas are now desolate ghost towns, leaving you feeling lonely in a world already lacking in solo PvE content.

There are some worthwhile PvE experiences, although many still require multiple players. These are in the form of Public Quests (PQs). Several PQs are available in each zone, and are available by simply walking into the area. These quests are made up of several stages, which may include settings ships on fire, destroying houses, or simply fighting off waves of NPCs, all of which finally culminate in a boss battle. After completing a PQ, a dice roll is given and, based on your contribution, you may be awarded loot. These PQs reset every few minutes, so even if you miss out on loot, you can participate in the next round and receive a bonus roll, giving you a higher overall score.

So, you may ask "If so many factors of WAR are player dependent, what's being done to increase the population?" Well, a fair bit actually. In October 2009, a Macintosh version of Warhammer Online was released, bridging the gap between platforms and opening the world to a whole new audience. In November 2008, the marketing team over at Mythic also developed a new method for customer trials.

Abandoning the classic '10 Day Trial' period, a new 'Endless Free Trial' has been adopted, which is exactly as it sounds. There is no time limit for the trial, instead a cap at level 10- restricting you to the first Realm Tier, disallowing access to Capital Cities, and sending mail.

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In the board room, this must have appeared to be an excellent approach, appealing to casual gamers and ensuring all were able to experience what WAR has to offer in their own time. Unfortunately, the trial appears to have segmented the game, and bred a new style of gamer in the form of a ‘Twink’. ‘Twinks’ are over-specced ‘Endless Free Trial’ characters, who are capped at level 10, but have continued playing with beefed up characters. Sadly, this can ruin the game for newcomers, who are constantly maimed and mauled in RvR- scaring off potential subscribers.

All is not lost though- in February this year, Carrie Gouskos took to the plate as Franchise Producer, and released a statement with some promising comments, breathing new life into the title. This was good news for many players, as concern was growing about the future of WAR with frequent updates removing scenario maps, and the fear that the game was going into maintenance mode. The community is now being embraced, and players are being encouraged to put forward their ideas for improvements to the game, the first of which being player comments and tips shown on loading screens. In-game updates are also being promised, with full credit towards individuals whose suggestions are implemented. Community building is also being encouraged, through the utilization of social forums for communication such as twitter (http://twitter.com/cgouskos). While this may all seem minor in comparison to what has been lost, the correct steps are being taken to keep the WAR alive.

The current version of WAR (1.3.4) has delivered some promising additions, such as the Scenario Rewards System, which included the subset of greatly anticipated RvR weapons, and several exciting additions may be in the works for coming updates.

According to Carrie Gouskos, patch 1.3.5 will see cities being revamped moving away from PvE towards an RvR style, creating a siege experience that isn’t population dependent and appealing to all player types, whether casual or hardcore. How is this going to be done? We’ll surely find out soon enough!

This is excellent news though, as not only will it restrict ‘Twinks’ from participating (due to the Capital City restriction) but addresses one of the main gripes many players have with the current difficulty of sieges. The current Tier 4 End-Game events rarely occur, as they literally require hundreds of players to ‘lock in’ the four racial parings in order to conquer the opposing realm’s Capital City. Keeps are also commonly viewed as being too hard to attack, and too easy to defend- making the whole RvR scene counterproductive. Each racial tier contains an RvR ‘Lake’ (named so for it’s shape on the map). These areas are quite large, meaning that the few players contributing are required to run over large areas to defend a Battle Object or Keep, and often arrive too late to fight off the opposing realm and end up fighting NPC guards.

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Some other exciting (yet unconfirmed) prospects are the redesign of armor to be released in 1.3.6., and the fan forumites speculated inclusion of two new player races. On a personal note, I would love to see the inclusion of the Vampire Counts and Empire, for the sake of variety.

From a visual standpoint, WAR looks far from dated, and can still be compared to some of the newer titles being released. The performance issues that initially riddled even high performance rigs seems to have subsided, and can be run on most moderate systems with few performance issues.

From day one, WAR has often been over promised, and under delivered. With 2010 being dubbed Warhammer Online’s year for “commitment to quality” in MMORPG’s interview with Josh Drescher last year, I look forward in anticipation to see how the year will unfold. It’s still far from the game it should have been at launch, and it’s unfortunate to think it will ever reach that point. It has to be said though, that if there is one thing that Mythic Entertainment does, and does well, it’s RvR. Warhammer Online is a title that has a very short learning curve, and with the ‘Endless Free Trial’ I would encourage everyone to jump in and experience a PvP experience which is unrivalled by any other title currently on the market.

Source: mmorpg.com