The idea of an MMOG is nothing new by any standards, and many that rise up to the challenge tend to pale at the sight of World of Warcraft. The latest game to take up that challenge is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, or WAR, which seems to roles of the tongue with a little less effort. WAR is a MMORPG developed by EA Mythic, with the usual array of Dwarves, Orcs, Elves, Humans and the rest. WAR also boasts “next generation Realm vs. Realm (RvR)” which combines Player vs. Player and Player vs. Environment combat into one seamless experience, scenarios, sacking cities and a whole lot more to be unveiled. The player can select from 6 races and 20 different classes.
The quests available number in the thousands and with them being the meat and bones of the game and 80% of the story, they are a big deal and they do not disappoint. The storyline in WAR is incredible, but that should be expected after 25 years of story development, so this is a great asset to the game as long as you don’t mind a bit of reading. The quests themselves are split into two groups, Public and Personal. In a public quest the player, and a limitless number of other players, work together to secure various objectives, kill hordes of monsters and collect some nice loot. In a Personal Quest however, a player must complete much more specific and excellent story driven tasks alone.
For an MMOG the graphics are stunning, full of gritty realism. This isn’t a frolic in the meadows; this is a war torn world full of destruction, corpses hanging from trees and the shattered remains of siege engines and weaponry. This is how a war is meant to look.
Overall this game has some major pros, especially if you like some good PvP and as long as you’ve got some decent competition you’ll be set for quite a while, not to mention the game’s pretty easy on the eyes. On the down side some of the armour and weapons can be kind of dull and uninspired, often copies of other weapons but with different statistics. This is understandable since it would be hard to create thousands of unique weapons, and once you get to higher levels the good stuff starts rolling in.
There are some very minor gripes about lag, server population caps, summoning and other matters, but the game is in its couple of weeks and will no doubt be fixed in future patches along with some extra content.
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