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Gaming: Warhammer Online Beta after 2 hours
Tue, 09 Sep 2008

Used to be gamers meant PC gamers. And PC games had Boss Keys, since a lot of people didn't have computers at home and played games at work, and needed to hit a key that would pretend to be Excel^h^h^h^h^hVisicalc real fast. Then later games had a Boss Key just for fun. And now they don't at all (sniff), and now people play games on PCs and consoles. But apparently mostly consoles, unless its Civilization, a FPS shooter, or .. MMORPGs. And with 10-odd million or more World of Warcraft players PC gaming will never die. So instead the question becomes - with each new MMORPG fantasy game, will it take over, or be another roadbump for the almighty WoW?

Will this be Failhammer Online? or Winhammer? Can Warhammer Online, Age of Reckoning ("WAR") survive?

I was going to write up a one para summary for some friends, but then it turned into this monstrosity and so I'm posting it. Sorry :)

NOTE: : My play was very low level, and in beta; the higher level PVP with city-capturing and so on sounds really great, but I didn't touch any of that. The lower levels are more mundane.. so read on.

The next WoW expansion is due in just a month or two, and simply nothing will be displacing that game anytime soon; its just too big. Well, until the next Blizzard game comes out, right? So with them showing no mercy on the marketplace, any new games had better stand on their own at launch -- a tough feet against something thats been around and under constant development for half a decade. (Witness Age of Conan, which simply seemed like a beta they wanted to charge monthly for. These games are hard to make.)

Now, before I get started, let me just say .. as an old timer table top gamer, I know that Warcraft rips off Warhammer in feel and art, and I know that Warcraft was even going to be a Warhammer game way back in the day. So yes to those fanboys, I get it, WAR looks like WoW, but its really the other way around. So I won't talk about that. And Blizzard better not, since they stole their gameplay from Everquest, and their art from Warhammer. What they did do, was evolve the gameplay, and refine it down to be the best and most addicting parts of that gameplay.

Anyway, I played the open beta WAR for a couple hours last night, and thought I'd lay down some impressions.

It will beg comparison to WoW at every opportunity, since it feels and plays like WoW. WoW adopted much of Everquests gameplay, and WAR adopts much of WoWs; economicly it can't be a bad thing, but it is a tired old convention. Auto-attack and 1-2-3-win. But fine, it certainly makes it easy on new players, and makes it very eay for WoW players to move to WAR -- you're 'at home' pretty quickly.

So let me say right off -- WAR, after 2 hours, seems to be about 80% WoW, with innovation at the end of each thread. ie: You can look at world PVE, mission PVE, world PVP, PVP minigames, and so on.. in each area they've done similar to WoW, but then improved on the formula; tried to involve the players more, and make it more about the ongoing war, and tie things together more. I think this is not a half bad strategy.

For an about-to-launch MMORPG, this looks pretty pollished. Most every other game in this field has launched terribly with crashes, people unable to log in and bugsbugsbugs.. and we'll see with WAR - but if the Beta is anything to go by, it looks pretty solid; they're building a foundation using proven ideas, and adding some really good stuff, and throwing it out there. Better than starting on some really rickety buggy mess (I'm looking at you Conan.)

But you better like auto-attack, and 1-2-3-win gameplay!

Population

As a PVP-interested player, I naturally went to Horde in WoW. I love Lord of the Rings of _course_, and even sine good old high fantasy novel tripe. But theres just no way I can take anything seriosuly as a goofy floppy eared elf. This isn't Civilization or Sim city; when I go into a game with "war" in the title, I want to tear. it. up. and wreck some opponents. So when you start in on World of Warcraft, and you firts mission is to murder 10 ducks, it rather scrubs the brunt off. Anyway, I just wanted to note that in WoW the servers as I understand it are 60-70% Alliance (humans/elves/dwarves/etc) and 30-40% Horde (orcs, tauren, trolls, undead, that sort.) At least my server was. (And for the high and mighty, in WoW lore the alliance is not all good, and the horde is generally fighting the good fight, not a bunch of evil mugs.)

So I found it a little odd that in WAR Beta (note the BETA), the populations seemed skewed to Destruction; the Chaos side was really heavy and the elves and so on were much fewer. Perhaps this will flip when it goes fully public and LEgolas37 can sign up, but we'll see.

I generaly like when there is an overall high population, and I'm on the low population side of it; it gives you the common underdog-wants-to-win feel, but it also means when you go hunting there will be lots of opponents (and usually clumps of them that outnumber your hunting party); it also means for PVP minigames you queue up and get into a game fast; the larger side sometimes has to wait, since there are fewer opponents to get into a match.

I still can't play the Order side, its just not me; so I can only hope all those LEgolases will fill in, so I have someone to beat up.

Orcapult

So I created a Greenskin Shaman (damage and healing combination) and ran around for a minute; it is obvious that even for the PVE (player versus environment.. the AI computer monsters) they are trying to keep the "at war" feal of it all; your missions are usually things that, although the same structure as WoW, at least are war oriented. Fetch the weapons, take them to buddyboy. Theres also PVP missions, right off, and thats huge. Anyway, I ran around for a few minutes to see what things looked like, and found catapults.. always a good sign; when I activated one, I found out it was an Orcapult, and it fired my character way up and over and onto an 'enemy' wall where the Stuff was Going On. It was PVE stuff mind you, but thats a great way to start a game, as a level 1 newbie. Running round, shot through the air, and into the action. Nice. Of course I was confused now, didn't know where I was or barely how to play, and surrounded by enemies... but the UI is like WoW, so I was able to take them down pretty easily.

A note on zones; you start, as in WoW, in a zone where you can turn on or off that you can be attacked by other real (enemy) players. ie: By default you cannot be PVP killed (ganked!). Naturally I turned the "please gank me" flag on right away. Bring it! So the newbie area is optional PVP, and some areas are always PVP. And some quests will take you from optional PVP to always PVP and require you to nail the enemy, if you take those quests. Slick. But if you're not a PVP person, you'll be fine I think.

Questing, leveling, experience.. PVE, or PVP? Achievements?

In WoW, you will do your levelling in PVE -- either world quests, or dungeon quests and romps. Classic, refined and addicive.. but tired and nolonger new. Thats fine, classic makes it always good.. but you can burn out on this stuff. And for me, I like to PVP (player versus player) a lot more than hunt down squirrels to kill. It is important to have choices, and in WAR they've done a great job of it.

You have the usual PVE world quests; you also have Tome quests, which are like achievements (the Tome itself is like a help guide, with details about everything you've seen or done or have to do, and logging things you've completed and so on.) You have hybrid quests where you do world quest things, but also have to engage the PVP enemy; you have PVE "public quests" which are like scripted events that repeat in certain areas of the map, so as you stumble across them you get swept up in a mini-boss event with everyone else (and NPCs) in the area. And you have PVP ("RVR", realm versus realm) quests and achievements.

Its rather a lot to take in when you first sign it, but after walking around it sinks in. What they've managed is to offer a PVE levelling system, a PVP levelling system, and a hybrid; you can mix and match. From what I've read, you can level up from start to finish all the way on PVP if you like, or you can PVE it, or whatever. Nice.

From my limited experience, it seems to have potential. Note than my character is very low level so I've only just barely scratched the surface, and I know things get bigger as you level up. The PVP at low level is essentially capture several flags and hold them material, but later it gets bigger and better. Thats okay.

I mean, I did a couple PVE quests right off, since those quest-givers were obvious and right there; go kill 2 of this, collect 2 of that, and go meet this other fella; okay, but I'm sort of bored of that.. did that a few years ago with WoW. But as I wandered around I got some small experience from opening up new areas.. cool; I got some experience for doing a few quests and actions - achievements; cool; wandered into an area and it turned out to be a public quest, and got to do a multi-wave mini-boss event, with experience all along the way. Cool! And lastly, I stumbled across the battle-master who signed me up to the PVP minigame for newbies; and there too was experience, when you kill players, or support others doing so; achievements came up as I got a series of critical hits in a row or did this or thats. And big big experience form the PVP minigame. I mean, it was by far the most experience that my character picked up, and I got a couple levels there. From a few 'battlegrounds' in WoW speak.

Nice. Thats what I'm talking about.

Naturally I didn't try crafting or auctioning on the market or anything else; was only a couple hours. But from what I can see..

It's a lot like WoW; thats a let down on the one hand, but it does make it 'easy' to start into

They've added a lot that makes the EQ/WoW formula better. Theres more action faster, you can get into the 'war' easily, and the PVP minigames are right there. Theres a little world PVP if you dig for it right away, but that comes a bit later.

Overall I think they really have a chance with this one. I'm just not sure if I'm ready for another auto-attack game, but I'm definately going to give it a shot.

n008 - forgive me ;)

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