On the Subject of Warhammer

Odette Yustman

I have always been quite dismissive of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (or "WAR", do you see what they've done there?). I've never been into P'n'P or tabletop gaming so the franchise itself means nothing to me, in the same way that I wasn't bothered about the LotR films since I've never read the books. Secondly, WAR has always traded on it's PvP credentials, and as a resolute PvE gamer I have no interest in "pwning" other players. Unlike some PvP whores I suspect, I don't have a tiny penis to compensate for.
In one of the regular "what games are you looking forward to" forum threads that always pop up in dry periods of gaming, there was post after post of predictable Conan and WAR name-checks. However, while the Conan references seem to be almost automatic now, the WAR posts appeared to be motivated by some genuine enthusiasm and excitement. I thought to myself, "Maybe I've got it wrong, perhaps there's going to be something to this after all, even for a PvE player". Which reminds me of the quote, "the only time I've made a mistake was when I thought I was wrong, which of course I wasn't".
One of the posts linked to a series of developer podcasts, which I started watching. They're entertaining enough, but sadly they ultimately reinforced my preconceived ideas about this game. There's one in particular which features an over-enthusiastic British creative director trying to explain how revolutionary the WAR quests are. Except they aren't. He bangs on and on about having to kill bears to get to a quest-giving npc who then gives you a quest to kill bears in traditional MMOs, while in WAR the bears you've already killed count. Wow, that's really revolutionary stuff. What they're missing is the fact that having any sort of quest that requires you to kill X number of species Y is fundamentally tiresome and old-fashioned, no matter how you dress it up. You could essentially achieve the same affect as WAR's amazing system by simply requiring you to kill less of the creatures. And not having to collect "proof" of kills is all very well and will reduce the frustration of having an inventory full of quest items rather than phat lootz, but is hardly a revolutionary development and in the context of an immersive world experience makes little sense. How are you proving your kill-count to the quest-giver?
On the other hand I will admit that public quests are an interesting addition. Large, narrative-driven quests that multiple unconnected players can get stuck into at any stage could be good fun. They could allow some nice big "events" to occur in the world in contrast to the necessarily limited scope of individual quests which can never really have any broad influence on the world because any number of people might be doing the same quest in parallel.
The only let down will be the repetition. This is an issue which affects every aspect of every MMO in existence, so it doesn't really count as a WAR flaw. Nothing is ever really world-changing because you have to allow for all the people who come through the region tomorrow, or next week, or next year. So your big public quest will be completed, whether successfully or not, and then it'll reset and start all over again. It's the same as having mobs respawn, which is something I frankly detest about persistent-world MMOs. For all the criticism of Guild Wars, at least you can go into an instance and clear it. You can work your way through a dungeon or region and kill every goddamn thing and have them stay dead (at least until you leave the instance). Not like non-instanced games where as soon as you've cleared one room the previous room is full of mobs again. Where you can't stop for a break because you'll get the mobs you just carefully carved your way through respawning on top of your head. Or worse, when you're wondering through a region and a dozen creatures spawn on top of you because unbeknown to you they were killed by another party 10 minutes ago. Then, when you reach the end of the dungeon you're forced to teleport out because the only alternative is killing everything you already killed, again.
I don't have the solution to that problem, and neither does anyone else it seems. It's by no means specific to WAR, just a pet hate of mine.
The other let-down was something I was already aware of, namely the style of the game. It's another vaguely cartoony-looking game in the style of WoW or LotRO. Looking at the concept art they've been producing WAR would have been a good contender for a much darker, nastier look, rather than the primary colours and hil-ar-ious jokey characters and animations they've implemented. Perhaps that's something AoC will get right, although I doubt it. I'd love to get stuck into a game that's gritty and realistic rather than some toy-town WoW clone, or the highly stylised and interchangeable Eastern MMOs. Vanguard almost got that right except the characters themselves, while not exactly cartoony, are decidedly odd-looking and distorted, in the style of Oblivion. Bennet Cross^tm-winner The Witcher did a much better job of character design, and an MMO developed in that style would be much more to my taste.
Then of course there's all WAR's PvP stuff. Bla bla bla boring old wank. Tiers, Realm-vs-Realm, capital cities you can ultimately sack, except the game will automatically and forceably reset the conflict after a sacking (see my complaints about respawning, above). And of course with PvP comes the ever-popular hacking and exploits and non-stop whining about class, or in this case Realm, balance. Have fun with that.
In conclusion, it does seem like WAR will be the PvP gamer's wet dream come true. But even the city capture elements don't exactly appear revolutionary so much as evolutionary. I was prepared to revise my opinion of the game but that has turned out to be unnecessary.
Unless, you know, there's a nice Limited Edition.