Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Beta Hands-on

Aug 28, 2008

The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Beta has been going on for quite some time now, but we haven't been able to talk about it much until very recently. Overall, we think the delay between our first unrestricted play session and the green light to write about it has worked in the game's favor. It's not that Warhammer Online doesn't make a good first impression; the game's unique strengths are readily apparent within the first few hours of play. The real benefit of getting a chance to run through several levels of content with a variety of characters is that we have a much better sense of the overall big picture of the game and have come away impressed that the things that are fun at level 1 are still fun at level 20. There are obviously still some issues to address, but the overall appeal is undeniable.

In keeping with our open animosity towards the chaotic, destructive and, let's face it, openly despicable nature of the GameSpy editors, we've approached this game purely from the side of Order. Running through several levels as a High Elf Sword Master and an Empire Witch Hunter, we've found that the game reveals a wide range of content early on. There's no waiting around to get to the realm-versus-realm or player-versus-player action. After a mere handful of quests to get you used to the interface and combat system, the game leads you directly into public quest areas, instanced PVP scenarios for groups, and RVR areas out in the open world.

Simply by following your regular quests, you'll find yourself passing through public quest areas. A small notice appears on your screen telling you that you're in a public quest, what stage you're at and what you and the other players in that area need to accomplish in order to progress. The first stage is relatively easy and is bound to trigger through the natural course of play. Just kill enough monsters and you'll launch the second stage. Here's where things get a bit tricky. The obstacles and objectives in latter stages are usually fewer in number but quite a bit more challenging. The final stage often culminates in a boss-style battle that's sure path to suicide for players who aren't a few levels ahead of the area they happen to be in.

If you try to tackle the first public quests like a traditional MMO encounter, you'll quickly begin to wonder why the designers have made them so hard. Clearing the first stage is a no-brainer but the tougher challenges of subsequent stages (and their frequent time limits) mean that you have to leverage the strength and numbers of all the players in the public quest in order to win. The great thing about this system is that it encourages players to work together without actually requiring any official grouping. You can be tremendously effective as a solo player but you benefit from the efforts of other players.

The same is true of the instanced scenarios, which, like the public quests, are introduced within the first few levels of play and are readily accessible in most parts of the world. There's a simple scenario queue in each area and all you have to do is declare your intention to join the scenario. Once enough players have opted in, you're transported to the scenario where you can group up with any other players on your side. Though there are some competitive public quests, the scenarios are really where you first begin to get a taste of combat against other players and the more complicated tactics required to capture and hold objectives. Again, these instanced scenarios reward players for coordinated efforts without requiring that they form into discrete groups. Fortunately, the grouping system is incredibly easy so you can jump into and out of groups pretty much at will, which helps smooth out the obstacles to getting players connected with each other.

As you get more and more comfortable with that and progress further into the world, you'll eventually come across a distinct RVR area. You may be directed there through a quest, or you may simply wonder about that red area on your minimap. However you come to it, the RVR section of the game is a more intense, persistent version of a scenario. There are objectives to be captured and held, and substantial rewards for gaining control of the area for your side. To compensate for the more fluid nature of the RVR content, you'll definitely want to make sure you're in a group that puts a priority on cooperation... or if you're lucky enough to be in the beta, that you solo it during the middle of the morning when there aren't really any other players around.

The greatest thing about these competitive game areas is that they become available very early on. Where many games reserve RVR combat purely for the highest and most advanced segment of their player community, Warhammer Online puts it right up front and gets players involved in cooperating and competing with each other right from the get go. It's even more impressive that you never really feel like you're being thrown to the sharks before you're ready to swim.

Of course, if you don't want to take part in this type of gameplay, you're missing out on a lot what makes this game unique. Still, there's a lot of good PVE content and compelling story elements around every corner. Sure, a lot of it follows the same predictable MMO conventions: go deliver a package to a distant outpost, rescue a lost traveler and escort him home, recover a stolen crate of booze, and of course, go out into the countryside and kill the crap out of dozens of wolves, raiders, fairies, skeletons, dinosaurs, et al. Fortunately, though, Warhammer Online keeps the quest story short and to the point and injects a sizable dose of humor into the mix. It's true that there aren't a lot of story elements that play out beyond the confines of the quest giver's text box, and the few that do bring up some distracting quest options during particularly dangerous moments, but the overall effect of the quest story has an immediate and direct sort of relevance to the overall war between the various races and that helps to set the stage for the bigger rewards of PVP and RVR gameplay.

Mythic has always promoted their Tome of Knowledge as a truly revolutionary feature that uses information about the world and data about your performance as a major component of gameplay. We freely admit that years of listening to developers overemphasize the importance of peripheral features left us feeling a bit cynical about these claims for the Tome of Knowledge, but a few week's play has convinced us that the Tome is every bit as compelling and unique as Mythic has claimed.

The Tome of Knowledge is basically what it says it is -- a large compendium of information about the game world and your activities. At the most basic level, it tells you where you've been and what you've accomplished. That's huge enough by itself, not simply for the way it feeds your vanity over the number of beastmen you've killed, but also for the way it points you towards specific objectives that you haven't yet obtained. And since completing objectives gives you real, practical rewards, in the form of extra experience or cash, there's a strong draw to seek them out. It's particularly useful that it tracks your influence rewards for each area, so you know where to go to reap the most rewards.

Even when cruising through familiar lands and fighting old fights, we still found that the Tome had more to offer us, from new titles based on the quality and quantity of our trades with merchants, to new experience rewards based on the number of times we've killed or been killed by particular monsters, to the entertaining bits of lore and story found by venturing off the beaten path and finding new NPCs.

The Tome is always available at the very top of your screen, and you'll be alerted when you've unlocked new entries. Better still, when you open the Tome, you can flip right to a page that lists all your latest achievements. From there you can dial down to specific pages to see how you're doing against certain monsters, or track your progress in key public quests, or read up on the history and current events of the areas you've visited. As a framework for the content and an incentive to discover more about the world, the Tome does an amazing job.

Yes, we are, like most players, a little tired of fantasy MMOs but the setting in Warhammer Online is skewed just enough to seem fresh. The real appeal here, though, is the interesting intersection of PVE, PVP, and RVR gameplay and the way that the Tome of Knowledge rewards players for their accomplishments. There are still plenty of unknowns here, particularly with regard to class balance and the lack of differentiation among characters of the same class, but only time will tell how those issues affect the overall experience. In the meantime, the appeal of the beta is as strong as ever.