On the Subject of Warhammer

Keeley Hazell

I wondered what the box was that was awaiting my return home from the front today. In fact it was only seconds before opening it that it suddenly dawned on me what it might be. Yes, it's the Warhammer: Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition!

First things first, the most important question to answer is, "how does it measure up to Age of Conan?".


They're definitely in the same ballpark. Which is to say, they're both rather large.


The boxes are exactly the same thickness.


AoC is about 2/3 of an inch wider. It's going to be a photo-finish.



WAR manages to pull itself back from the brink of defeat by being about an inch taller than AoC. I don't have a tape measure to hand, but I suspect WAR just clinches victory by being a fraction more voluminous than AoC, although it's almost too close to call. What you can't see, however, is that WAR is much heavier than AoC, tipping the scales firmly in WAR's favour.

So that's the exterior. What about the contents? Well, to be honest I haven't decided whether to open WAR or keep it sealed. You know, for best. Not because I have any thoughts of ebay'ing it (unlike the twat who admitted to buying a load of AoC CEs because original WoW CEs sell for big money now. Little did he know no one would give a toss about AoC and so he reckons he lost around $2k. Oh, how I laughed). Rather the thought of not even opening it amuses me. Because in any case I won't be installing it.

So you'll have to make do with the descriptions on the back of the box. Apparently there's some miniature in there, which is nice. And a graphic novel and the obligatory art book, just like AoC. No mention of a soundtrack CD, although in this day and age I'd assume there's one in there.

On the Subject of Warhammer

Doutzen Kroes

I happened to get into the latter stages of the closed beta, and the preview weekend or whatever it's being called is currently under way, and so far I have mixed feelings about Warhammer. Mostly a mixture of different negative feelings, it has to be said.

Firstly, I loath the art style. The cartoony WoW thing leaves me absolutely cold. It's even more pronounced, and therefore bad, in Warhammer than it was in LotRO. I will say that it at least seems to be consistent, but overall it's not a world in which I wish to spend time. Personally I'm much more for a realistic style like AoC, although I'd prefer a proper, seamless Vanguard-style world. I'm not even sure if Warhammer's world is seamless, I haven't spent enough time in it to reach any sort of zone junction.
At least in Warhammer they've attempted to "sex up" the female characters. Well, the evil ones anyway. Although it's difficult to be titillated by a sexed-up cartoon character. But it leads to perhaps the most impressive aspect of WAR's design philosophy, which is that there's a big emphasis on making the player characters look cool. That is something AoC could really learn from since at level 56 (yes, still), my Priestess looks little different to how she looked at level 5, which is to say scruffy and poor. It's a well-known fact that the NPCs in Conan have the best-looking armour.

Technically WAR falls squarely into the "simple graphics to run on as many computers as possible" camp. While a strong art direction (even if it's one I don't like) can overcome a lot of technical limitations, the WAR world still looks like a 5-year-old toy town. And while the zealots might claim the graphical options are currently limited prior to release, a shitty model with high-res textures is still a shitty model. None of the screens I've seen, even those which are supposed to represent the full-on splendour of the release game, look even remotely impressive. They're certainly a long way behind AoC, irrespective of game play differences.

Speaking of game play, well WAR is unashamedly a PvP game so it's a bit pointless to criticise it for that. However, some self-confessed PvP fans still attempt to claim that the game also has compelling PvE, and that's where I disagree. From what I've seen of it, the PvE is unutterably tedious and repetitive. It's not really surprising, because it's not the focus of the game. One exception is the inclusion of "public quests" which are just little, global scenarios that you can take part in, or not, as you wish. You don't even have to group, although it was quite common for ad-hoc groups to form during the quests just to making healing and focus a bit easier. I will say that the public quests were definitely the highlight of my time in WAR. Although after 2 or 3 repetitions of a given quest it starts to feel a little meaningless.
As an interesting aside, from what I know of Guild Wars 2 it sounds like that will feature similar "shared" world-event scenarios, and I look forward to seeing how that works out because I'm much more likely to want to play GW2 than I currently am WAR.

I did do a PvP "mission", and it was predictably chaotic and dull. Like a PvP version of public quests, only less fun. The thing is, while AoC gets a lot of (deserved) criticism for lack of content, WAR will probably get away with it because, as I've said before, in a PvP game the players are the content. As long as there's somewhere you can go and take part in a battle, who cares if there aren't enough quests to make PvE self-sufficient?

On the subject of criticism, it turns out Mythic won't be running official forums. I wonder why. Well, I don't really, it's obviously because they've seen what a shower of shit the forums became for both AoC and Vanguard before it. It can't be nice for the developers to see their own forums full of bitching and complaints and often just plain insults. It does, however, mean that there will be no concentrated focus point for all the inevitable whining about class balance and exploits and bugs and hacks that will undoubtedly plague WAR. That might dilute the vitriol to the point where it appears as if WAR is simply a better game than those which allow the unwashed masses to have their say on an official forum. It doesn't mean those issues won't exist. The downside to a PvP game is really the people it attracts. Hacks and exploits are always more common in a game that promotes competition between players, even if they're not exactly unheard of in PvE either. But more than that, the PvP population includes some of the whiniest, most clueless, self-obsessed little bitches in all of MMO-dom. Just have a look at the AoC forums, and check out how many of the loudest complainers, the most self-righteous quitters, the most aggressive and nasty and illiterate posters come from PvP servers. It's the vast majority.

And that is the single reason I hope WAR turns out to be a big success, because it will suck up all those worthless, wretched, vacuous little shits and give games like AoC some room to breathe.

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.

On the Subject of 2008

Sophie Howard

I was reading an article on technology predictions for 2008 when coincidentally I had the completely original idea of writing some of my own predictions, mainly for games, for the coming year. When it turns out I'm right on all counts I will quote myself at great length. In the unlikely event that I turn out to be less than right I will edit this post 1984-style to make it look like I was correct all along.

MMOs

2008 is supposed to be the year when both Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Age of Conan are released. Of course so was 2007, but that didn't happen.
AoC, which looks like the slightly less PvP-orientated of the two, is currently name-checked by anyone and everyone who writes a tedious, self-important, wanky "leaving" post on the forums of current MMOs. "waaaah this game sucks, Age of Conan will be so much better". I confidently predict that it won't. In fact I confidently predict both games will be shit, and will see plenty of their own leaving posts shortly after release.
As a PvP game, WAR will undoubtedly see continuous class balancing/nerfing until there's nothing left to differentiate between classes and the players condemn it as bland. Of course if they don't balance it, the same players will condemn the game as unfair.
AoC, which will also be released on the 360 (a huge flashing red warning sign if ever there was one for MMOs) will be dumbed down to the point of idiocy, with nice big chunky menus and easy-peasy mechanics for the console kiddies. It's also worrying that the screen shots that are being released are getting gradually worse and worse, no doubt as they struggle to make the game remotely playable.
AoC has "disappointment" written all over it in permanent marker pen. I'm really looking forward to it because of the told-you-so satisfaction I'll get as the deluded fanboys discover it's not the beacon of MMO perfection they claimed. It'll be like watching a kid who has told all his mates that he's getting the best christmas present ever, only to discover on the day that it's a pair of shit-stained pants.
As for WAR, well I don't really give a toss about that anyway because it's just PvP which is of course worthless.

Far Cry 2
Following in the wake of Crysis' narrative mediocrity, Far Cry 2 could turn out to be the game Crysis ought to have been. It might not be as jaw-droppingly pretty, but it looks more open, with some interesting features like dynamic weather and NPC sidekicks and the ever-popular dynamic fire. As a PC-only title this already deserves the Field Marshal's seal of approval. It's hard to make a prediction about it because relatively little is known, but I suspect it will be good fun and will address some of Crysis' shortcomings, although I also suspect it will come bundled with a lot of bugs and other issues. Still, I'm quietly hopeful and it's probably the game I'm most looking forward to next year. And maybe there'll be a limited edition!

Alan Wake
This will undoubtedly be the Crysis of 2008 as far as hype is concerned omgwtf it looks teh amazing!!!!111 And then it hits the shelves and suddenly everyone will be distinctly underwhelmed by the gameplay, and probably by the poor performance and bugs and other contentious issues like the widescreen implementation etc etc. At least it will give me something to write about. Oh, how I look forward to legions of clueless mongs claiming it's badly coded just because their piece of shit PC can't handle it. Yeah? Have you seen the game code? Can you show me something that looks as good but runs faster? And no, CoD4 doesn't look as good you FUCKING MORON.
Another potential limited edition for my collection, though.

Spore
Back in the day I was sucked in by all the hype surrounding Black and White. Oooh, the graphics. Oooh, the funny animal avatars. Oooh, zooming in and out and using a godlike hand to drag yourself around the terrain. Unfortunately I found the game boring as hell and only ever played 2 or 3 battles or levels or whatever they were.
That's what I imagine happening when I think of Spore. Yes, it makes for very impressive tech demos. Oooh, you can design your own arrangement of legs. Oooh, it goes from single cells to space battles. Unfortunately I can only imagine it being incredibly dull to "play". Maybe if you're into all that Civilisation/Sim City sort of stuff it'll be ok. However, I predict that a lot of people who aren't will buy into the hype and then shelve the game soon after they've installed it. But the fact is they'll have bought it, so it'll be hailed as a massive success by the games industry and probably lead to a resurgence of god games.
I won't be buying it, limited edition or not.