Comic Con 07: Warhammer Online
Despite not showing at E3, EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning makes a strong showing here at Comic-Con. This once-canceled, now-resurrected MMORPG based on the 25+ year pedigree of Games Workshop's Warhammer fantasy franchise.
Differentiation is key for any of the new crop of MMOs, both to fight the ever-rising tide of WarCrack and to separate themselves from one another. In the past few weeks I've seen online games that have greater or lesser success in this goal, but one of the recurring themes is RvR, or Realm vs Realm combat - often incorporating realm-, faction-, guild-, and player-based rewards to encourage player cooperation on every level. From a developer standpoint, the days of the misanthropic solo ninja seem to be numbered - at least in theory.
Warhammer Online makes a massive bid for RvR combat by designing virtually every single area of the game to be a battlefield for the Armies of Order and Destruction. While a three-pronged faction system pits each of the six races against one another (High Elf and Dark Elf, Greenskins and Dwarves, and human citizen of the Empire against human worshiper of Chaos), their over-arching allegiance to one of the two Armies places the fiercest PvP and RvR combat in the one place that MMORPGs traditionally maintain as bastions of safety: capital cities. The best loot and most rapacious, rampaging fun in-game will be won as your enemy's stronghold, increasingly depopulated, yields up its treasures to you and your marauding hordes.
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In addition to incidental PvP combat, objective-based battles in the world environment and the ultimate invasion of enemy lands to sack their captial cities, Warhammer Online will include instances, but only to balance out certain point-based battles so that one side cannot win through sheer force of numbers.
These instances, or Scenarios, also include NPCs called Dogs of War, who will join the battle at your side and further help even the score; this recalled to mind the Heroes of Guild Wars.
PvE questing is a definite presence in the game, don't think Warhammer Online is only about PvP. It is all about war, however - so rather than questing to clean rats from a cellar or bring Farmer McGreedy back his stolen houseboy, nearly every quest is about the war. The war between greenskins and dwarves and the other racial enemies, as well as the more grand war between the Army of Order and the Army of Destruction.
Will Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning stand out from the pack when it hits shelves early next year, or will it fall to the rampaging hordes of new MMO releases? You decide, my darling.
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 27 July 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: age of reckoning, ea, ea mythic, mmorpg, pc, warhammer online
This is something I've been waiting for, for a while now...
I'd like to find a guild to join on the release of this game -- any GLBT establishments out there? I may end up making my own.