Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

So the 24th is wrapped up, or is being wrapped up with a Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning presentation. We shall refer to it as WAR from now on.

It's not like WOW, honest!

Are we looking at another game for total addicts? (Like me.)

Though the demo room was packed with people, literally packed with sweaty, hairy news people, I did still get to see the game and figure out more or less what the Mythic guys are doing.

I already saw a ton of screenshots from the game, so getting to finally see the latest build in action was nice. The animation is top-notch. Naturally, it reminded me a lot of World of Warcraft, but then, the Mythic guys would tell you that this would be delving into the chicken and the egg argument. Did Blizzard copy off of the Warhammer license or did Mythic copy off of WOW?

Stupid arguments aside, the game engine looked pretty nice. The presentation started during nighttime in game and it was all right, but the colors seemed a little bland. This all changed when they switched to daylight in game time. The dynamic lighting kicked into play and the game world transformed into a nice blend of sharp textures and great colors. In other words, WAR is successful at striking the right tone for their game, accurately bringing to life the Warhammer universe.

Moving on with the presentation, I saw a bit of the PVE stuff. The Orc warrior that the Mythic lady was leading was tasked with killing a bunch of low level creatures for a nearby lumbering giant. The point of this was to show how the public quests will work in zones. Basically, anyone who is in your zone can jump in and help you on the quest. Once the first part of the quest is done, all of the players that were in the area get buffs for the second phase. Should they decide to participate they will win rep points with the giant. At the end of the quest though, the game will calculate who did most on the public quest, and those who put in the most work would get special rewards from the giant. While everyone that was in the area would get some public reward if they happen to be there when the quest is finished.

But the real thing about Warhammer Online is definitely the PVP segment. The game world is divided into zones - green, yellow, and red. Going into a PVP zone, you will get a message before you become flagged for at least 10 minutes. Once you're flagged the fun begins. Each zone will include quests that will help the war effort.

Then, people will be able to capture neutral zones, so that they could move on to the enemy's homeland. Once the homeland is captured, you will be able to attack the enemy capital city. This is truly the best thing about WAR. You can raid the capital's bank and loot it, or you can decide to drag the dead Dwarven king by the beard all across the city... if you happen to be an Orc of course.

The dynamics of the PVP combat will be such that, after a while, the defenders will start getting buffs, so that eventually, they can chase the invader out of their capital before the battle resets. The dynamics sound very interesting, as they give the losers a chance to do a few public quests and turn the tide of the battle. The idea is obvious - make sure that everyone has fun in the game.

As far as the leveling is concerned, characters will be able to level up to 40, and these levels will be divided into tiers. The basic classes will include pretty standard archetypes: tanks, melee DPS, ranged DPS and Healers. Of course, the real character development starts when you begin to specialize and customize the characters in the talent tree menu.

The latest word is that the press beta for the game is supposed to kick off in springtime next year, while the public will likely get their chance to play the game in the summertime.

My overall impression is that the mechanics are still being worked out. Obviously, Mythic is waiting for the beta before they start fine-tuning the game. I was being shown an alpha build.

-- Uros '2Lions' Jojic