Warhammer Online: A Partial Review

Note: Right now, I'm intending this to be the first of a series, with a final post once I've spent some time at endgame, and perhaps one or two in between.

I've already written two articles on WAR, so for this review I'll try not to duplicate anything and stick to topics that I haven't covered.

First off, the good. WAR has done a solid job of delivering a fun, approachable, PvP-oriented game. The game is very easy to pick up; no tutorial or instruction manual is needed, you can learn all the essentials just by playing the first few levels. The combat pacing is very Guild Wars-esque: you will be doing things very rapidly, but the actual course of a fight will take a long time to unfold. The game manages to capture the slogging feel of a giant medieval battle even with only 20 total participants. In fact, the entire atmosphere is one of constant war. Zones have a soundtrack of cannon fire and the distant cries of battle, and from the second you enter the world, there are soldiers trying to fight off the enemy. The world feels dynamic and alive, and it sets aside moral complexities and uneasy truces- it's genocide or bust for the game's three racial pairings.

The classes are also pretty well done. Balance is still pretty rough (more on that later), but each class has some sort of unique mechanic that, while mirrored on the opposing faction, is quite different from any other class you will find on your side. My experience thus far has been mainly with three classes: The swordmaster, the archmage, and the disciple of khaine. I've already talked about the swordmaster's and the disciple's mechanics. The archmage delivers another interesting, albeit less gameplay-defining, mechanic: high magic. High magic is essentially a way to boost healing spells by casting damage spells, and vice-versa. In some cases, it can deliver a similar level of fun and satisfaction as soul essence and blade dancing, rewarding you for switching roles often. But frequently, it falls flat, and that brings me to the bad.

High magic is one example of the many "almost"s in WAR. On the surface, it seems like a great idea: buff damage through healing, so that healers aren't forced to healbot. But when the chips are down, it just isn't worth the time and AP investment to stop healing, no matter how powerful that nuke might get.

Another example is the open RvR. This is sold as being the meat of the game, but it is not nearly as active as you expect. Two factors contribute to this: lag and rewards. WAR's code is just not up to the task of having 50+ people involved in a keep siege, and even on top-of-the line machines, these battles can slow to a crawl. The result is that people rarely attack a defended keep in force, and most keep sieges I've done have involved a total of 10-20 people tops. Fun, perhaps, but hardly the epic battles we were sold. The rewards are also an issue; scenerios give much more reward per time invested. However, as more people realize that the gameplay itself is the reward, this issue should dissappear as gearheads go back to WoW or some other upgrade treadmil.

Class balance, while good enough for a launch game, is still not where it needs to be in the long term. Many mirrored versions of the same class are clearly superior to their counterparts, and within archetypes, there are a few classes that stand out as being much better overall. Also, the squig herder, magus, shadow warrior, and engineer, are noticeably weaker than all the others, and this has resulted in an almost nonexistent population of these classes. They aren't so horribly gimped that they can't be effective, but the power differences are still significant enough to be problematic.

The last big "almost" is the world itself. As I mentioned, it certainly feels dynamic, but so far it is actually quite static. Zones change control on a daily basis, and yet nothing else seems to change in the world. No new territory is gained, no new NPCs or the like appear, and there is not even some sort of recruiter asking players for their assistance in claiming another zone still in the grips of the enemy. I was really hoping for more, but perhaps the higher tiers will deliver.

Mythic is promising a solution (or at least progress on one) to these issues and many more, along with two of the four cut classes, with their 1.1 update. But there is one problem that no patch will be able to fix, and that is the community. Already, there is a noticeable population of whiners and other sorts of people that are impossible to satisfy. But game companies try to anyway, and the results of addressing their often dubious concerns or implementing their greedy desires can be disastrous, and even if they are ignored, they still create a pervasive negativeness that can drive away newcomers and current players alike.

At the time of writing, people's free months are starting to end. This is WAR's first test, but it could be a blessing in disguise if the whiners jump ship. And the next trial is just around the corner: Wrath of the Lich King drops November 13th. Age of Conan established that companies have 1-2 months tops to fix major problems in their games, and that's without an impending WoW expansion. While WAR was released in much better shape, it is still in dire need of polish. Hopefully Mythic can deliver, because I think there is a very solid game here, just waiting to be released from the bonds of "almost".