[Unknown Soldier]

War is everywhere in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR), the new MMORPG from the creators of Dark Age of Camelot. Based on Games Workshop's popular Warhammer fantasy war game, WAR features next generation Realm vs. Realm (RvR) game play that will immerse players in a world of perpetual conflict.

Upon entering WAR, players must determine their allegiance and join an Army. Those inclined towards the side of good may fight for the Armies of Order as an obstinate Dwarf, noble High Elf, or loyal human soldier of the Empire. Those inclined towards darker deeds may side with the sinister Armies of Destruction as a savage Greenskin (Orc or Goblin), corrupt Dark Elf, or marauding human worshipper of Chaos.

RvR combat takes place on three fronts where ancient foes wage an unending war – Dwarfs vs. Greenskins, High Elf vs. Dark Elf, and Empire vs. Chaos. Players begin the game fighting their ancestral enemy, but are free to journey to other fronts to help their allies in their ongoing struggles.

The ultimate goal in RvR combat is the sacking of an enemy's capital city. To do this, an army must invade and take control of the opposition's homeland. Deciding battles take place on objective-based battlefields and in instanced scenarios - point-balanced battles that make use of NPC mercenaries known as Dogs of War.

For the first time, WAR's RvR system integrates both Player vs. Player (PvP) combat and Player vs. Environment (PvE) quests on the same map. Every aspect of the game, including PvE missions, is geared towards the greater war in some important way. However, players are not required to participate in PvP combat, and may aid in the RvR war effort and enjoy the game in its entirety via PvE content.

Drawing from a quarter century of highly detailed source material, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will bring Games Workshop's fantasy world to life in a way that will allow players to create characters destined for great deeds and glory on the field of battle.

Features:
Based on Games Workshop's popular Warhammer fantasy world. Dominated by force of arms and magic, this world provides a rich setting for hundreds of thousands of players to experience the epic nature of war and the glory of battle.
Join one of six Armies and fight for the Armies of Order (Dwarf, High Elf and Empire) or the Armies of Destruction (Greenskin, Dark Elf, or Chaos). Wage war across three unique battlefronts.
Next generation Realm vs. Realm game system integrating both PvP combat and PvE quests on the same map in support of the greater war.
Engage in four levels of RvR combat:
Skirmishes: Incidental PvP combat
Battlefields: Objective-based battles in the game world
Scenarios: Instanced, point-based battles balanced with NPC Dogs of War
Campaigns: The invasion of enemy lands culminating in the assault on their capital city
Undertake a wide variety of PvE quest types related to an army's war efforts, including:
Public quests that benefit from the participation of the entire army
Conflict quests that pit players against an enemy with opposing goals
Branching quests that let you choose the outcome of the quest and your reward
Xmas quests that reward exploration with high value loot
A robust combat system introduces Player Tactics (earned powers you equip prior to battle) and Morale Skills (combat options that increase in power when the momentum of battle is in your favor).
Player models that change to reflect the relative power of a character (i.e., Orcs grow in size and Dwarfs' beards get longer). Customizable armor and a visual guild system allow a player to make their character truly unique.
Embark on an epic quest to complete the Tome of Knowledge and unlock Warhammer lore, detailed monster information, and major story plotlines.
Online play requires a subscription and Internet connection.

Anyone been playing the beta? Apparently it's very good.

US

[epicstruggle]

Didnt get in the beta, have place my order for the CE. Cant wait to play it next month.

[Unknown Soldier]

Apparently the beta is Awesome. I don't really play MMO's but i've been reading from people I know who used to play DAOC and WOW, that WHO beta is awesome.

A lot of information flying around at the moment too(hear the NDA has dropped).

US

[oi]

I've been in the Euro beta since May, and if I were to do a quick review I'd call the PvE game sub-par (including the much vaunted City Siege) and the RvR ranging from ok to great depending on what you're doing. The scenarios are essentially Guild Wars Lite, while the open field RvR is generally fun albeit plagued by some jarring issues such as the Lord randomly running out of the keep, lack of incentives for defending, keep walls that are too high to be used since they obstruct line of sight, etc.

Try before buy.

[Cheezdoodles]

DAoC was a lot of fun on the pvp servers with the right char and a buff bot, this may be very fun aswell

[BrynS]

Some of the footage released since the NDA expired recently looks very enticing, particularly the RvR scenarios and general world PvP.

Alas, the open beta which went live today is off to a piss poor start for European players apparently, with GOA engineering a cock-up of epic proportions by leaving the account creation and authentication process right until the last minute and then stonewalling while their servers choked on the deluge. Waaagh! has more here, while GOA comes in for some well earned bashing.

[Skrying]

The Beta must have improved rapidly. When I gave up WoW the consensus for the WAR beta was it was extremely bad, worse than AoC.

[MfA]

The European beta is a complete clusterfuck, their account database can't handle the load of sign up (I don't think it can handle the load of logins very well either, cause it takes ages to get to the server list).

First impressions : keymapping is idiotic (all mappables sorted alphabetically instead of grouped by function) The interface feels rather unresponsive (my melee attack key only responds when I click it at the edges, not the center) and I just had a CTD after 10 minutes.

[Spaceman-Spiff]

Haven't been able to install the game...

I pre-ordered last week, but Amazon didn't provide the key before Sunday. On Sunday, Fileplanet's queue was so long (10+ hours), and this morning I woke up to find the queue was dropped and had to requeue.

The good thing about WoW is that it's using Blizzard's downloader (hybrid torrent program), and the client patches are always available in multiple download websites. In the case of Warhammer Online, EA or Mythic made an exclusive deal with Fileplanet. More money for them, but more annoyance for us.

[MfA]

You can still try the torrent ...

http://www.mininova.org/tracker/30749

I got the EU client relatively fast from their torrent, but that had a lot more seeds.

[MfA]

I liked the PvP in open beta, but I'm pretty sure that once everyone gets the hang of assist training it just won't be for me anymore ... an organized warband with assist trained ranged DPS and organized snaring can probably almost do without real tanks, pugs are just going to get rolled ad nauseum in RvR even with large numerical advantages.

I think I'd like this game more if there simply was no ranged DPS.

[epicstruggle]

Damn it, I think Im going to have to pass on this game. It sounds really good, but I just dont have time. May be I'll be able to get in when they put the remaining content that they shelved.

[eastmen]

Game is really weak on the pve . Also its a real dog to look at IMO. I'm passing on it.

[epicstruggle]

Anyone playing it? I believe its out.

[Rodéric]

At least the cities I've seen on videos do look like cities, and not small outposts like in WoW and other MMOG...

It's out for sure, no clue how dull it is. (No MMOG can be anything else but dull )

[Unknown Soldier]

Mark Jacobs brandishes Warhammer

In the first of two interviews, Mythic's boss talks about going toe-to-toe with WOW and Age of Conan, as well as how to keep a game from being a joke in the face of delays.

Yesterday, EA Games and Mythic Entertainment officially flipped the switch on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, a massively multiplayer online fantasy role-playing game based on Games Workshop's superbly violent tabletop RPG. Though only a day old, the game already has a nearly decade-long history.

Read More: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6197690...90&tag=nl.e513

[Scott_Arm]

If the combat is still point, click and press hotkeys, then I'm still not interested. I'm actually a huge fan of social gaming, and massive multiplayer gaming as a general concept, but the execution is very poor on the gameplay side.

[ShaidarHaran]

Originally Posted by Scott_Arm

If the combat is still point, click and press hotkeys, then I'm still not interested.

What, you don't like Blizzard games ala Diablo 2 and WoW?

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by ShaidarHaran

What, you don't like Blizzard games ala Diablo 2 and WoW?

Well, it's weird. I thought I'd hate Diablo2, but I had a lot of fun playing it with my friend. But I felt the rewards were more satisfying and your character progressed in a reasonable amount of time. The mmorpg grind is too much for me, and the action is always really lame. At least Diablo is frantic.

I played DAOC when it came out, and I really liked the PvP for a time, but the PvE was boring boring boring from day 1, and the only reason I was able to level was because I got taken in by a guild called Dark Omen, on the Morgan La Fey server, and they pretty much power leveled me. It was still way to slow for my liking. That was the first two months of release and I had one of the top mercanaries on the server and I was in a dominant PvP guild, so that helped a lot. After two or three months, I just couldn't take it anymore, and I quit at level 48.

Later on I was in the Guild Wars alpha. I had a lot of fun testing that. There was no grind. I could jump in, build a max level char and equip him with awesome stuff. Plus the interaction with the devs was cool. The PvP was short, fast and strategic, which made up for the limited control. Once they started dumping in more and more PvE, I had a hard time with it. Once the game was released, I just couldn't bring myself to level up a character and grind for gear.

I kept my eye on Warhammer because of the DAOC connection, but looking at it, it just seems to be the same old mmorpg grind and whatnot. Somebody needs to reinvent the genre in a big way. I'd love to see something where low level or low playtime characters were far more useful, where unique rewards came quicker, and there was more to play for than gear and levels. Oh, and free to play like Guild Wars is also a huge huge step in the right direction for my liking.

[Rodéric]

Originally Posted by Scott_Arm

I kept my eye on Warhammer because of the DAOC connection, but looking at it, it just seems to be the same old mmorpg grind and whatnot. Somebody needs to reinvent the genre in a big way. I'd love to see something where low level or low playtime characters were far more useful, where unique rewards came quicker, and there was more to play for than gear and levels. Oh, and free to play like Guild Wars is also a huge huge step in the right direction for my liking.

Well, I think that's the business model around the genre that makes it like that. The longer it takes for the player to hit his goal (within reasonable limit), the longer you get his subscription fee...
In that regard, Guild Wars is something really different, you can create a PvP character at max level since day 1, you have a story, and you hit your character limit (level 20) long before finishing the game...
But Guild Wars has a story and a different environment you only get access too while unfolding the story somewhat. (ie A reason to keep playing at max level, not even mentioning PvP)

But it's going off topic.

[L233]

Also, Guild Wars isn't a MMORPG, since there's essentially no shared virtual world.

[CJ]

Originally Posted by L233

Also, Guild Wars isn't a MMORPG, since there's essentially no shared virtual world.

That's why the developers call it a CORPG themselves. Competitive Online Role Playing Game. Although with the addition of all the new chapters and expansion, the cities do feel a lot more alive.

Guild Wars 2 will have a persistent world though (and still be without monthlty subscription fees!).

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by Rodéric

Well, I think that's the business model around the genre that makes it like that. The longer it takes for the player to hit his goal (within reasonable limit), the longer you get his subscription fee...

Yep. It didn't take me long to figure out the scam. If it weren't for PvP in Daoc, I probably wouldn't have lasted a month.

[Spaceman-Spiff]

Originally Posted by Scott_Arm

If the combat is still point, click and press hotkeys, then I'm still not interested. I'm actually a huge fan of social gaming, and massive multiplayer gaming as a general concept, but the execution is very poor on the gameplay side.

Perhaps you should try Second Life, or if they ever make an MMO for The Sims...

Originally Posted by Scott_Arm

Yep. It didn't take me long to figure out the scam. If it weren't for PvP in Daoc, I probably wouldn't have lasted a month.

It's not a scam, it's "the way it meant to be played" (TM) .

Try creating an MMORPG game where players can go IDKFA at any time in the game and see how it sells...

If you don't want to play an RPG game without leveling up, collecting loots, etc, perhaps you should play a different genre of game. That, or Guild Wars .

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by Spaceman-Spiff

Perhaps you should try Second Life, or if they ever make an MMO for The Sims...

It's not a scam, it's "the way it meant to be played" (TM) .

Try creating an MMORPG game where players can go IDKFA at any time in the game and see how it sells...

If you don't want to play an RPG game without leveling up, collecting loots, etc, perhaps you should play a different genre of game. That, or Guild Wars .

Social gaming as in cooperative gaming. Doesn't mean I want to play shit games like the Sims, or play non-games like Second Life.

And I like rpgs. I like levels, loot, bonuses, powerups, skills, spells, races, classes, customization and all of that stuff. What I don't like is killing 20,000 swamp rats over a period of 10 hours to level once, with the risk of losing all of that experience by dieing. To me, Guild Wars was a step in the right direction, but the PvE gameplay was still terribly boring.

I don't want to stray this thread any further off topic.

Edit: In my younger days, I was a big fan of the Warhammer frp pen and paper game. I liked it because you had all of the elements of a traditional rpg, but you could die extremely easy, or get lucky and kill someone/something way tougher than you. A new character was very useful, except for maybe a magic user. Give me a mmorpg with better controls and a more useful/interesting character to start, and I'd be much happier to play. That was the Warhammer Online fantasy in my head, but I knew it wouldn't happen.