Three years of their lives has been spent creating this thing, working on it every day, overtime, obsessively ranting to your wife about it, your kids don't see you because you're making this damn game. And suddenly it's like, 'This is an awful lot of people rating us on Metacritic', which is refreshing. Universal acclaim. I want that to be frozen exactly where it is for posterity, so people can see it and go 'Ahh, very clever'. Anyone giving it a lower score should be ashamed of themselves.
This Is One of the first, if not the first, MMOs to truly sit down and make sure that players work together from the start, shedding the ironic selfishness of a genre that's meant to get people playing together in the first place. It's weird to say it, but until you play Warhammer Online and take part in the war itself - taking battlefield objectives, winning scenarios, and fighting in glorious public quests -you'll look back on how much time you spent soloing in WOW and sob.
The backstory is that the Age of Reckoning has finally been reached, and the armies of Destruction have decided to lay waste to everything. The forces of Order are trying to hold back the vnpce. Mythic have absolutely taken the Warhammer mythos by the horns, embracing every part of the grim fantasy without pulling any punches.
While the mollycoddling is there in the sense of players being eased into the game through a selection of easy quests and hand-holding throughout the first few levels, you will be at war with other players well before level 10, and depending on what side you're on, you're going to do something uniquely Warhammer.
Ores kick dwarves off of the side of buildings, the Empire has the warhost on its doorstep and watch as its crops burn and people are slaughtered, and the Dark Elves release gigantic dinosaurs to eat people laying flowers at graves.
The atmosphere is one of having no safe haven, one that draws you right into the conflict and gives you the drive necessary to slaughter your way through lines of your enemies.
And the real beauty of war is that this isn't all fluff - you're at war, from the off, constantly, and it's fun. PvP or realm vs realm as it's known in WAR, and the rest of this review is an integrated, fun-packed and addictive part of the game.
You control one of 20 careers classes , split reasonably evenly between the two realms sides of Order and Destruction. Choosing a side locks whichever server you join to that side, to stop people from playing cross-realm spy games with each other.
The realm of Order is made up of the Empire, high elf and dwarf armies, and the realm of Destruction holds the Chaos Warhost, dark elf House and the Greenskin aaagh!. The latter is the only non-racial army - it's made up of pres and goblins -and will probably end up being flooded by roleplaying types who insist on typing everything like the bower boy ores they're playing as. Careers are army specific see 'Career progression' , split between the archetypes of tanking, healing, ranged damage and up-close melee damage.
There's some that overlap, such as the Bright Wizard and the Sorcerer, to keep the lore-monkeys happy without blocking players from their favourite role. The careers fit reasonably comfortably into the usual class roles, with a few notable differences. Careers are fess dependent on the hpool of mana or energy, and each has a special mechanic they depend on to do most damage. While abilities use action points, they generally depend on some other source to do the most damage.
For exampfe, the Black Ore, as he uses different attacks, moves towards 'Da Best Plan,' a state that lets him unleash his most damaging attacks. The Bright Wizard builds combustion with each attack, doing more powerful and frequent critical hits, but also damaging himself in the process.
There's a degree of micromanagement that requires you to be a little more alert than the average thumping of keys. It's not rocket science, neither is it really doing much to advance the basic mechanics of MMO combat, but it's satisfying, playable, and most importantly it works.
If you've read any of Mythic's press releases, you'll know they've built WAR with the idea of a gigantic battle held firmly in their mind. From the outset, you're introduced to the other side as a marauding force of evil or as your upstart prey. You'll be flung in the case of the Greenskins, literally, from a catapult into direct combat with the other side's PvE forces. Everything has a "point" to it, and thankfully, you'll always find the items you need on the monster you kill.
If you're getting dwarf skulls, you can bet that each dwarf you kill will drop one, and there's a welcome lack of quests involving the butchery of random wildlife. They're there, and yes, there's a butchery trade skill, but at least there's something approaching a storyline behind them.
There was a danger that Mythic could have made anything PvE-related effectively foreplay for the player vs player environments, as they did with Dark Age of Camelot. But there's a strong marriage between both. RvR and PvE content. The most obvious - and arguably the most enjoyable - is the public quest system. These are essentially walk-in quests that rely on groups of people to complete.
You complete f objectives to advance the quest through : stages See 'The anatomy of a public quest' , gaining influence and experience as you go, with the biggest contributors those who do the most damage, buff people the most, heal the most rolling dice for the biggest rewards from the quest.
The influence you gain is specific to the chapter of the game's story you're on, and as you gain more you get access to Basic, Advanced and Elite rewards. The idea of grouping with strangers usually sends chills down people's spines, but WAR introduces open groups that you can choose to join automatically.
As everybody receives the experience and 9 influence from the public quest, and you can't really advance them on your own, PQ's grow a spirit of teamwork within even ardent soloists. WAR opens up grouping to those who would not group, and gives them pause to consider doing it in the future. While there's a lot of good, run-of-the-mill questing to be had, these public quests pervade the entire game, and are rewarding and fun on a scale that trumps almost anything we've seen in WOW.
The later ones even have raid-style content, and making a warband a raid party is as simple as right-clicking and selecting "form warband. Public quests also help tie together the PvE content with RvR.
There're some such as the Kron Komar Gap where both realms actively complete a public quest in front of each other, with real players killing both each other and AI soldiers to advance their separate quest.
The reward for doing so is not only influence, but control of the surrounding area and access to extra facilities and quests. It's a lovely surprise how well integrated and commonplace they become, too. It's so common for MMOs to talk about new hot features, and then fail to integrate them meaningfully into the game, that we were ready for public quests to be a let-down. They aren't.
What's shocking is how thoroughly enjoyable RvR is, even for people who're reluctant to face up to PvP combat.
It's introduced very early on, with a selection of quests from a war camp where you're given quests, much like NPC-related ones but relating to real, live players. You descend into specific RvR areas to capture objectives, which can provide tactical advantages healing boons and NPC guards and fight your fellow man. Killing him nets you both your normal experience and "renown," which levels a completely separate pool of 80 Renown Levels, with their own rewards, tactics and morale see Tactics and morale'.
As you advance, these objectives become bigger and harder to conquer, ranging from a gun emplacement to a gigantic keep surrounded with soldiers, with rewards to match the scale of the effort. Each time you complete one of these smaller objectives, you bring the current area closer to being under your control. This keeps the war constantly fresh, as arriving in a zone to find you're not netting those gains gets you fired up to rip somebody's guts out.
That, and you get experience and renown for killing them, so the risk versus reward of going after a skilled opponent makes it genuinely tempting. There's a real synergy between renown and experience. As you gain renown levels, you can buy new equipment that's useful for both questing and RvR.
The same goes for quest rewards, which are less rewarding but less time-consuming than your average man-barney, and still manage to gear you up reasonably well. In fact, WAR caters very convincingly to the PvE-aholic, but also leaves a tasty-looking trail of breadcrumbs to the RvR dark side, with experience rewarding quests for getting involved.
It's also far less time-intensive than anything in WOWs PvP-circuit, as in a minute game you can run into an RvR battlefield, chop a few heads off, and then bugger off to Tesco.
It's a simple, well-designed and brilliantly executed system that oozes with well-realised lore and the necessary atmosphere to draw you into the conflict. Mythic have used the Warhammer licence well, and created a structurally sound MMO that's actually multiplayer game, with enticing elements for both the lower and higher end players.
An issue, however, is how much high-end content will be available that caters to large-scale PvE grinders. There isn't, however, any question of the quality. Mythic have done exceedingly well in creating interesting, story driven quests, and have created the first major advance in the genre - public qnests - since content was instanced to avoid players cramming together. Ironically, that's actually what makes' WAR such a joy.
Mythic have taken this idea and put it on its head, making it a good thing when an area is crammed with people trying to do the same thing by rewarding everybody for taking part.
Even when you're not a top contributor in a public quest, you still receive a bounty of influence and experience. In RvR battlefields, defending Keeps and other areas from assaults still rewards everybody for being in the area. The land even changes as realms take control of different areas, taking away the classic MMO-stodge of static, immovable content. By giving players so many options and making everything so cohesive and interesting, Mythic will score many disenfranchised Battleground-lovers, along with a slew of bored PvErs from a multitude of games with broken promises.
Ultimately, their ongoing support and the amount of people that play WAR will be what makes or breaks the game, mostly because it gets more fun when more people get involved. For now, it's up to the players. This is such a strongly community-driven game that it guarantees that there will be some bitter, angry struggles in the Age of Reckoning, and we hope that Mythic and European publishers and server-runners GOA are prepared to support it The license is strong, the game is great, and the quality of the content is second-to-none.
If servers are stable, players are listened to, and expansion content is as well tweaked, inventive and superbly written as its launch material, this could be the game that savages WOWs subscription numbers.
The general aim of WAR'S careers is to get players into the fray - so there isn't one that can't make themselves useful in a scrap, no matter what play style they have. The Disciple of Khaine and Warrior Priests' healing abilities are rooted in their offensive abilities, and are good enough to hold their own even against the tougher melee opponents.
Even basic melee careers, like the Black Ore and the Stabbin' Squig Herder, are kept lively by their adaptability. Squig Herders have three types of squig that adapt to any solo or group situation, and Black Ores are equal parts damage-dealer and super-tank. The Tome of Knowledge, rather than being a simple place to read your quests from, catalogues your escapades over the various chapters of the WAR storyline, as well as rewarding you for completing certain tasks.
Kill squigs, and you get a experience reward. Click yourself times and receive the title 'Ow My Eye'. More complex Tome Unlocks, as they're known, will require you going across the entirety of the Warhammer World, but reward you with Tome Tactics specific to the achievement.
The TOK also keeps track of where you've been, how many things you've killed, and just how much experience fulfilling its dark desires has netted you. The upcoming launch of Age of Reckoning has lit a cold fire in many guts. Suddenly, unexpected people are popping up and showing a surprising knowledge of words like Tzeentch, Khaine and Sigmar. Who knew, when we were reading those rulebooks and manuals all those years ago, that Games Workshop were laying their dirty lore eggs in our fertile teenage brains, set to hatch as adults?
If you're a fan of any comparable MMO, we definitely can tell you how you'll feel after spending your first 20 hours in WAR: you'll be awestruck and overwhelmed.
You'll have about five characters on the go, and you'll be trying to decide which one you'll take into the higher levels first. You'll be considering a graphics card upgrade.
Having spoken to a number of people who've played the opening zones of Warhammer Online, there's a surprising consensus: it beats the living shit out of World of Warcraft, and no-one wants to go back. We'll have our full review next issue, but we simply couldn't resist spending an issue telling you exactly what you'll discover should you choose to drink down a free trial draught of Mythic's canny poison. The first decision you'll face is which faction you want to join - Order or Destruction.
These are actually called realms, and aren't to be confused with WOWs realms, which are fancily named servers. You then decide which army to join: the Order have High Elves, Dwarfs or the human's Empire, or if you prefer Destruction, you can choose from Dark Elves, Greenskins Ores, Goblins, Giants and the like and Chaos humans corrupted by demonic forces. These choices decide which opening storylines you'll encounter.
For instance, choose to be a human from the Empire and you'll find yourself in the battlefields of Nordland, with almost no time to get used to your class before you're attacking the hordes of Chaos. Choose to be the fungal Greenskins, and you'll be thrown into a siege of a dwarven fortress, and onto the stunties1 ramparts using catapults. Join the pious High Elves in their battle against the Khaine-worshipping Dark Elves, and you'll find yourselves defending a continent that's had a ruddy great ship full of the bastards driven into the side.
So the opening areas Enemies are always close by, and the rate at which defeated enemies reappear leaves you little time to hang around. You'll be safe from PvP for the first few levels, if you want to be - and you can play a fully PvE game and still benefit your Realm. But it's quickly very obvious that the WAR effort is really about killing other players. Death is so much a part of the WAR experience, when you're killed you're told "don't worry, it's a part of the game! You're instantly resurrected, with no penalty beyond the XP and renown you just gave to the opposing army.
If the spawn point is close to the RvR battlefield, you'll be back in the fray in under 30 seconds, hunting the bastard that killed you. Progress is quick. Killing AI mobs gives you experience, but killing other players gives you experience and renown. Experience levels you up, with every level bringing you new abilities, tactics and morale powers. Meanwhile, renown levels give you points to spend on a separate, RvR-focused tree, giving you a chance to personalise you character with stat boosts and tactics.
From level 11 onwards, you get mastery points too, which give you the chance to specialise in one of your career's three paths. These are unique to every class of every race - although there's some thematic overlap. This is all far from simple.
From the early levels, you'll notice that most of your attacks have a side-effect, or a dual purpose that needs to be factored in. Learn quickly as it won't be long before you've got another one. If you've played any traditional MMO, you'll have learned to hate fetch quests.
Because WAR shifts the focus onto group activities, the solo fetching quests are kept simple. Better than that, the drop rate - the bane of WOW players - has been removed.
If you -need black wolf paws, they'll always be found on the ends of dead black wolves' legs. This is a basic distinction, but one that is important: WOW feels like it's making you play. Throughout the earl levels, WAR cheerfully lets you play. You do what you're do because you're having a good time. As well as experience and renown, your influence in an area can be traded for rewards. As you progress through your race's storyline, you'll stumble across the public quests PQs.
These are how you earn influence and are Mythic's moment of genius. Taking place over a number of stages, as you enter a PQ area, you'll be notified what the objectives are and what stage everyone's at. Regular PvE guests take you into these areas too, giving you the chance to join in with some Realm-boosting missions at nearly any time, and without having to join a party or enter an instance.
The group's best performers will get a loot bag, too. An early Greenskin guest, this is the one that Mythic have been touting for ages - certainly before they were snapped up by EA. In tabletop Warhammer, Giants are solo units that are roughly equivalant to a platoon of goblins, which is why they're not a playable race. This Giant is having trouble with a host of Sguiggly Beasts. As you enter the PQ area, you'll see him running around, surrounded by the bouncing creatures.
Your first part of the guest is to kill them all, but by then the Giant is exhausted; and won't move until you fetched him 25 barrels of beer - unfortunately, Sguigs like beer too. Once you've got him pissed, he'll finally grab the spiked ball and attack the dwarf fortress, leaving you to face the finale: waves of superior Champion dwarfs, headed up by a hugely superior Hero dwarf. This requires a balanced team of five - or two idiots and a charitable level 12 Black Ore, which is what we had.
Over in the Chaos starting zones, the first PQ you'll find involves a group of your witches performing a summoning ceremony. They're under attack by a crowd of easily despatched Empire soldiers.
In the early levels, you can handle about three or four mobs at once before you start feeling prone, giving you a chance to try out all your moves. Once you've killed these guys, stage two begins, and you have to defile their graves. However, Empire Champion units have been alerted. You can't take these guys out alone but a couple of you should be able to manage it, if you're careful. With all the graves disrespected, the summoning process finally begins - only to have Wizard Lord Mathus arse it all up, producing Kar'Thok The Bloodhowler.
Essentially a massive red spiny demon dog, Kar'Thok dishes plenty of damage out - and once he's taken a certain amount back, he just starts running around the summoning circle. People naturally chase him, and this is how I was introduced to Public Quests - running past a scene that looked like a drug-fuelled finale to an episode of Benny Hill.
That's the brilliance of WAR'S public quests - you just want to join in. You'd think after this kind of intense scrutiny I'd grow tired of WAR, but as I got embroiled in the storyline, the atmosphere of the Warhammer World, and the bliss of sheer playability WAR provides, I couldn't help but enjoy the game more as I advance.
While we're all used to a playing curve that begins to gnaw at us past the first 20 levels, WAR rewards the time invested with rich lore, constant rewards, and some of the most actual 'multiplayer' action in an MMO. In RvR the armies of Destruction and Order do battle across a varied and incredibly packed landscape. In other MMOs the areas in which you battle other players are either sectioned off or made completely free-for-all, which leads to lower-level players getting mashed into pulp.
When you defend a keep, or when your realm takes control of an area everybody on your side receives a burst of renown and experience, which keeps the process of defending and invading both fun and rewarding. It's also varied and treacherous work, taking the simple stages of early public quests to much more advanced FVP levels - like having you break down the keep's door using a siege engine and kill the NPC keep lord, whilst fighting off the defending realm's player and AI forces.
Fighting doesn't feel as repetitive as in WOW, simply because you rarely fight alone. Everybody's rewarded for being a team player and everyone has fun. The spoils of the larger battles go to those who contribute, so sitting at the side and hoping to leech off other people's hard work won't get you much. Healers, buffers and fighters all get rewarded for being part of the fight, and the reward system is fair in its dealing out of loot and renown.
This is for both offensive and defensive battles - defensive battles being a counterpoint to the opposing realm's attacks. It's rewarding, even if you're literally standing in front of a keep and shooting down attackers; and if the sides are unbalanced, AI dogs of war will even out the forces. Tactics are passive abilities that you earn through earning renown in RvR, levelling up, and getting masteries the WAR equivalent of talents , or unlocking entries in the Tome of Knowledge.
You can equip five of them - three from levelling and masteries, one from renown, and one from your Tome - and they usually give boring yet functional upgrades to your critical hits, armour or the duration of effects. Morale moves are more interesting. You equip up to four of them and as K you continue fighting you build up a gauge that unlocks different Wr ability levels. Some of these are awesome - for example, the Black Ore can fix his target and himself in place, forcing his foe into one-on-one combat a huge help when drawing attacks off healers.
Command five wholly different races: Bretonnia, the Empire, the Dwarfs, the Vampire Counts and the Greenskins, each with their own unique characters, battlefield units and play style. Lead your forces to war with powerful Legendary Lords from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles World, arming them with fabled weapons, armour and deadly battle magic; hard-won in individual quest chains. For the first time in a Total War game, harness storms of magical power to aid you in battle and take to the skies with flying creatures, from ferocious dragons and wyverns to gigantic griffons.
Since then, a wealth of free content has been added, including the recent addition of Bretonnia as the fifth playable race in the Old World. The very first Total War game to feature a fantasy setting. In the Old World Campaign, experience incredible depth and the freedom to conquer as you see fit across a gigantic sand-box map. Crafted from a twisted magical landscape and populated with an incredible array of awesome and deadly creatures, this is your chance to experience fantasy strategy on a scale as yet unimagined.
The Chivalrous knights of Bretonnia, the valiant men of the Empire, the vengeful Dwarfs, the murderous Vampire Counts and the brutal Orcs and Goblins of the Greenskin tribes. Total War Warhammer 2. Each Race is wholly different with their own unique characters, campaign mechanics, battlefield units and play style.
March your forces to war as one of 12 Legendary Lords from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles World, arming them with fabled weapons, armour, mounts and deadly battle magic as you uncover their tales through a series of unique narrative quest chains. Harass your enemies with Dwarfen Gyrocopters, plunge into their front-lines with terrifying Wyverns and achieve air superiority with a stunning array of flying units for the first time in a Total War game.
Towering beasts of both earthly and supernatural origin wade into the melee of battle, bringing death to hundreds of lesser creatures at a time. Smite your enemies with magical storms, melt their armour, sap their fighting spirit or bolster your own forces with devastating spells that split the sky and consume the battlefield.
Rally wizards, shamans and necromancers to your armies and bend titanic and unpredictable energies to your whim. You can create and play any of the available characters and careers, but if you want to move about level 10, a paid account is necessary. Still, there's plenty to see and do on the journey to level The six species you can play are divided into two factions: Empire and Chaos.
Players will always see which faction controls the area they are in, and although there's lots of solo play, fighting together with your faction is where the greatest action is. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning suffers from being sometimes underpopulated, but it's different enough to be worth playing.
It is very hard to look original in the world of Orcs and Elves, but Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning doesn't feel particularly inspired. Have you tried Warhammer Online? Be the first to leave your opinion! Own a gaming PC? Then this version of Total War was built for you!
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