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WAR has been delayed to add polish. Will it shape up?"They asked me if I wanted some open beta keys for our staff," says the Games Workshop representative as the mass of European games journalists, GOA T-shirt-wearing helpers and hangers-on mill into the main hall of a Paris museum. "But I told them that I didn't want them. I didn't want any of them. Can you imagine the damage they would do? Our staff wouldn't do any work!"
He's right, I think, as I wait for EA Mythic to hit the stage and deliver a presentation on the hotly anticipated Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. MMOs are like that. They're life-draining, relationship-destroying, health-sapping games. And no doubt when WAR is finally released, some time in Fall 2008, for many thousands of people - there have been over 600,000 open beta applications - it will be the be all and end all of their gaming lives. Hell, for some, it will be the be all and end all of their lives.
AdvertisementBut I also find myself thinking something else - the same thing I think whenever I sit down to try out a new MMO: why should I stop playing World of Warcraft and start playing this, another class-based fantasy role-playing MMO with orks, elves, and humans at war? As senior producer Jeff Hickman and associate producer Josh Dresher take to the stage, I whisper to them: "Go on, convince me. I want you to."
I do strongly believe that there is a desire from millions of lapsed WoW subscribers - the ones who keep paying Blizzard but don't actually play the game - for a viable alternative. Plenty of publishers have chucked cash at developers to try and come up with that viable alternative since WoW "opened up the market" three years ago. The harsh reality is most of them have failed.
Perhaps most appealing is the Tome of Knowledge, which feels a bit like Mass Effect's codex on steroids.
And so I beg EA Mythic to convince me to stop playing WoW and start playing WAR. Over the course of the presentation I'm told things, and I see things, that go a long way to satisfying my desire. Perhaps most appealing is the Tome of Knowledge, which feels a bit like Mass Effect's codex on steroids. It acts as a record of your past achievements in the game, gives you background on the present and teases on your future. You have the ability to track current quests and work out why, exactly, you need to kill 30 Squigs, but you can also have a look at quests you've completed. More interestingly, the Tome provides an evolving, in-depth background to the lore of Warhammer. Click on an orc for the first time, or a noteworthy individual, and a small pop-up will appear in the top-middle of the screen indicating a Tome unlock. Click through and the Tome will open, turning to the page with a short essay on the green-skinned race or the VIP.
Nice enough so far, but the Tome has one final trick up its sleeve which could make it a game breaker - it's a meta game in of itself, with its own set of Tome quests, unlockable achievements and character-enhancing Tome tactics. For example, you'll unlock an achievement for looting corpses, or killing tonnes of a certain type of enemy, or even for completely random things like climbing to the top of a mountain in some obscure area of the map, or for using the Tell command 50 times, or for killing a chicken as a chicken. Really.
EA Mythic has incorporated lessons learned from Dark Age of CamelotWe're shown a Tome quest in action - an NPC appears, one which only pops up between the hours of 12 and 1pm every other day. You follow him into a tent and overhear a conversation revealing him as an Empire traitor. He intends to meet a traitor Wizard in the Wizard's Tower, a building you would never normally be able to access. You kill the man and loot the Wizard Tower key, transporting you inside. There you kill the traitorous magic-wielder and complete the Tome quest.
The idea behind Tome unlocks isn't that they should encourage a grind-fest. The idea is that they should be a cool surprise, an unexpected reward for simply being observant and curious. They grant titles that help differentiate you from other players - where WoW players inspect gear, in WAR the intention is that players will inspect your gear as well as your Tome unlocks. And that's the key. But don't expect all the achievements to be desirable - die 100,000 times and you'll get a title that will mock you (don't worry, you can turn the titles off).
The Tome will no doubt be of great interest to WAR junkies, those who play the table-top game and love it. But it should also be of great interest to fantasy role-playing fans of all descriptions. The Tome could help players engage with the world of WAR on a much deeper level than any MMO so far released. As it's described to me by Carrie Gouskos, associate producer in charge of the Tome, "it's designed to ruin your social life".
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James wrote at 16:57 on 31 March 2008
Sounds like you have never played any other games except for WoW. As a veteran of over 20 MMOs(beta &/or retail) I can tell you that with very rare exceptions, all MMOs have that same type of beginning... where you wrote "This played out in an extremely similar fashion to WoW, with quests obtained from NPCs to kill a certain number of monsters, return, gain experience and items. My character class - the Shadow Warrior, played similarly to WoW's hunter, with the emphasis on ranged attacks with a bow. I found myself "kiteing" (stunning your opponent so you can damage from a distance) and spamming special abilities with hot keys in much the same way as I have done for more hours than I care to admit in WoW."
Guess what. Legend of Mir had that, Earth and beyond had that, everquest had that, Every text based or 2d mmo had that, shadowbane had that... even the korean ones had it(i.e. fung wan online, etc...) If you really want I will give you a complete list of the games I've played that had that(which is pretty much every one of them, except Risk Your Life, which was just a grind-fest, although the gameplay was fun... or maybe I just didn't find it). WAR has taken what has become very formulaic and distilled the best parts of it... WoW did some distillation also, but mostly they distilled out the parts that were most addictive, and left out most of the parts that were just cool...
Mike wrote at 17:17 on 31 March 2008
The author of this article is definately a WoW fanboy if i've ever seen one... War is awesome. WoW is fun for a couple months when you first lvl up but horrible end game.
balls055 wrote at 17:40 on 31 March 2008
now i do appreciate the way you have come out with the highlights of warhammer online.....it does disturb me to see how pve factor is affecting your views on other games.
i started playing warcraft from beta till the first expansion.first we were told we could seige cities...hero classes...and there was alwyas the excitement of sneaking into lil towns and lay waste to the players there.....
then slowly...they sidelined pvp ....until there was a point where world pvp was non-existent and it was alla bout repetitive unsurprisingly boring raids and gear.
now you should try to understand that warhammer online and wow are 2 completely different games which carters to two different populations and i can guarantee you that all the pvpers in wow will switch to warhammer the first chance they get.
as someone before me pointed out....end game in wow is dead and gruesomely painful...but in war endgame is when the real game starts =) .all the basic classes and gameplay style [archer] has been there for quite some time....hell even from lineage 1 ....i used to hate rangers because they kited my paladin all the time .
oh and one more thing....there are a total of 6 capital cities that can be seiged....not 2
wyp100 wrote at 18:28 on 31 March 2008
For the record - I've played plenty of MMOs in the past, including Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Caribbean and Tabula Rasa. I'll admit I'm no where near coming close to 20 though, like James.
The comparisons with WoW are inevitable I'm afraid - by a country mile it's the biggest MMO out there. And, if you take a step back, both WoW and WAR are fantasy MMORPGs with similar playable races and classes. As the preview states, there's lots to be excited about in WAR, unfortunately what makes it stand out, the city sieges etc, wasn't playable during the event.
SuperDyu wrote at 18:50 on 31 March 2008
Sorry Wyp, but having played all the ones listed post WoW release doesn't really qualify you to compare. You could just as easily have said that the classes play out like they normally did in DAOC (which would make more sense) than WoW.
The problem is that you compare components that are in practically ALL MMO's with the connotation that they are like WoW. If you compared something like instanced PvP vs World PvP (ie: Blizzard Vs Mythic) or anything that WoW did uniquely then you would have made much better arguments.
IF you did any research as well, you would have easily found that Warcraft originally was going to be a Warhammer IP, but the deal fell through the cracks and Blizzard created their own IP and tweaked the images a bit.
I mean... any plot with green orcs in the story is obviously based of Warcraft universe since there were no green orcs prior to that right?
I do agree that there is a lot of good in Warhammer, but just do your research, and be familiar with the history of the genre.
Bloodstorm wrote at 00:06 on 01 April 2008
PLEASE be kidding me......for the love of god nooby please.
Death trap dungeon? Green orcs. Elder Scrolls? Green orcs. Hell, ANY Ian Livingstone book GREEN FECKING ORCS.
Orcs are like vampires, lore galore, everyone of them is differently potrayed so just do your research, and be familiar with the history of the races in other games? k?
James? 20 mmos??? God you must have no life what so ever........
sgpigeon wrote at 01:59 on 01 April 2008
Good preview wyp100. Dont mind most of these other posters. I have played quite a few mmo's, and sure the beginning game in all of them is mostly the same. But the insight you provided us about public quests and tome of knowledge, etc. was well written. Anyone who has played a couple of MMO's can relate to your initial playtest of WAR, but as you pointed out..all of the "unique" stuff is not in yet. Good work.
And like Balls said, its all about pvp. Many wow people remember the "honor" system in wow was not in the game until like update 5 or so, WAR seems like it wont require u to raid many hours a week so you can one shot people in pvp, because it is designed around pvp.
jinthin wrote at 02:07 on 01 April 2008
what a pve noob
go back to carebearcraft
James wrote at 14:43 on 01 April 2008
Bloodstorm, it wasn't 20 at one time... heh. I jumped from beta to beta. For example, after WoW beta, I went to The Matrix Online beta(still one of the most fun combat systems of an mmo, I think), and after that I believe it was CoH.
There are certain games which stick out to me... DAOC(which I wound up playing till trials of atlantis came out), Legend of Mir.... Shadowbane... Who doesn't love Flying Valks with GTAoE, hehehe...
A lot of them were mediocre at best. I am currently playing requiem(closed beta, although it will be f2p). I kind of felt like the offer at first "geeze, nothing new here. lvl 1, get quest, kill mobs, return...) But around lvl 16 or 17 I hit up this dungeon called chaste sanctum... This is the first MMO I've seen where they made proper use of running jumping and other mechanics. It played like a cross between a classic MMO dungeon and a platform game. Was incredibly fun, not too long, good loot. The only thing which could improve it would be more loot, as there are only 3 bosses in there right now.
James wrote at 14:45 on 01 April 2008
Just realised my last post made it sound like I had never played any into retail, which again isn't true... games I played retail(most of them after beta testing) which stand out in my experience...
EQ (Xegony server)
DAOC
Shadowbane (briefly)
CoH
WoW
There were also some others which I signed up for a month or two, but then jumped ship on.
Zach wrote at 21:29 on 01 April 2008
There are 6 capital cities. 6, not 2. And Altdorf and The Inevitable City aren't the 2 "Major" ones. All 6 will have the same aspects of each other.
Just had to add this so that people don't read your article and think there are only 2 capital cities in the game.
wyp100 wrote at 22:10 on 01 April 2008
Thanks for the heads up - mistake corrected :)
dinowii wrote at 09:54 on 05 April 2008
anybetter i love things like that every day i play on wow
Dave wrote at 23:24 on 05 April 2008
Sure, you can go to battlegrounds in WoW, but did you really mention the significance of each of the tiers? Scenarios, as well as general PvP (even at low levels) contribute points to the next tier (Win Tier 1, get bonus points in Tier 2, etc). Battlegrounds in WoW really lack any major significance until you get to a much higher level anyways, as honor points you earn are exchanged for high level gear. I've played a lot of WoW, and honestly, this more PvP focused aspect sounds fantastic compared to WoW's system. The ability to contribute, even at a low level, seems to add to the overall system in War. WoW lacked any significant PvP at all, honestly, so to have a game built from the ground up with PvP in mind seems like a wonderful idea. It just seems like you downplayed the significance of lower level Scenarios and PvP, as they are much more integrated into the story and RvR gameplay that you indicate in your article. Higher level PvP will be better, and I believe the game will absolutely shine there, but could you give it a little more props? You sounded a tad harsh. :P
Jeremy wrote at 21:39 on 25 April 2008
How about this, WAR>WoW, end of story.
Jeremy wrote at 21:40 on 25 April 2008
WoW = Waiting on Warhammer
Taldrezam wrote at 00:20 on 26 April 2008
I think it fair to say that from the point of view of the educated MMO community WAR will definitely shine as WoW conqueror, and if not it will support a large enough community to expand and evolve in the future. I no longer play wow and those others I know who do are bored of it, but still play for lack of alternatives of any real interest. PvP is of central import to all MMOs and the only worthwhile portion of the games in the end game. Ultima gave us visual, EQ gave us another dimension, WoW gave us a story to fight for, now I believe WAR will bring the sense of pride that will drive the passion of PvP that has been lacking in other MMOs. The idea of actually unlocking and supporting your cause/nation by your participation will be that motivator that an MMO needs, truly.