Men, elves, and dwarfs unite to battle against the dark forces of destruction in this first persistent world role-playing game based on the Warhammer fantasy universe. One of the title's distinguishing features is its realm versus realm combat, where faction members engage rival armies to conquer control points, keeps, and even capital cities. Your side's performance in these battles will determine the prosperity of your realm, influencing the types of items, dungeons, and quests available. While player versus player combat is Age of Reckoning's primary focus, more traditional means of earning experience and leveling up are also available. This includes an assortment of solo and public quests, with the latter offering cooperative play in a series or chain of events.
Six playable races are divided evenly across the game's two opposing factions: the Realm of Order and the Realm of Destruction. Realm of Order lets you create a dwarf, high elf, or human, while Realm of Destruction is comprised of greenskin, dark elf, and human races. Each race offers three to four careers, the game's equivalent of classes, which vary based on gender and faction. As you battle creatures and players, you will gradually fill a "Tome of Knowledge" and unlock new abilities, rewards, storylines, and other surprises. All of your in-game accomplishments will also be documented for posterity, allowing you to bask in the glory of your heroic exploits with friends and fellow guild members.
I was an avid player of World of Warcraft (...We hear this mentioned so much in conjunction...) for 3+ years. I did not leave the game for any negative reason it was just time. After a year of not playing MMOs I decided to give Warhammer Online a chance. I no longer had the time for mandatory raiding and the ability to keep up with tons of players who had far more time to get things I could never hope to achieve without it.
Warhammer is very balanced and enjoyable right out of the box. It has issues, people forget that every MMO has issues on release, and it takes time to solve these. I've not seen them turn their head on any problems mention to them. The game itself doesn't give me the impress that I need to drop out of school, or in my case a career, to keep up with the community. I'm always anxiously awaiting the next level. Overall I think it does a great job of bringing people together while playing. I like that it is hard to get things done alone... after all it is an online game. There are many more things I can say about this game but if I gave it all away... why would you need to try it? =)
For 20 dollars, which you can find it for most anywhere, and a free month, you really lose nothing in giving it a chance.
Interesting classes, 25+ years of background lore ta...ken from the tabletop Warhammer Fantasy Battles game, the literally hundreds of novels, and the tabletop roleplaying system, all come together to make WAR a unique MMO experience.
The best thing I have seen about WAR so far, is the Public Quests and Open Party system. Simply find a Public Quest, which pops up on your screen when you do, and start killing mobs. As mobs are defeated by you, and your party, you gain experience and, somewhat more importantly, Influence. You can use your influence to buy special gear from the local Rally Master. When you finish a PQ, a roll is made, with a bonus added to your roll depending on how much you contributed, and a special chest is dropped. Everyone in the PQ then gets to use the chest for a loot bag, which contains five or so random items, from class specific gear, to cash.
Everyone gets something!
Open Parties are a blast, too. You simply click the icon under your character portrait, and a list of Open Parties appears, with the distance (in time) you are from them, and whether they are involved in PvE, PQ or PvP. Click on one to join, instant group.
No more waiting around for 30 minutes to complete a quest because the leader feels he needs a certain class, or because none of your friends are online.
Just to note, this game is not WoW, or LotRO, or AoC, EQ, DDO or Vanguard. If you're expecting it to be one of these, you're going to be sadly mistaken. WAR does somethings better than the above games (like the Tome of Knowledge and Public Quests) and somethings worse, like failure to balance population caps on each server, they are working on it though.
After playing for a week, it looks like I'll be at WAR for a while.
Pros - Tons of different skill types, such ...as Tactics, Mastery abilities, career abilities, and morale abilites.
Living guilds meaning even guilds themselves gain rank (level) and rank determine how strong and what abilities your guild get access to.
Tons of Pvp. With a Keep in every zone, it leaves room for lots of PvP battles.
Siege weapons which will help take the Keeps. Taking a keep will improve certain things to your realm in that zone.
Many more....
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Cons - The way the World Map/Zone maps are setup, I don't get the feeling that I am traveling within a world, but more like I am traveling between instances. Also, depending on which species area you are in. The mobs get harder the further right you go (Chaos and Greenskin for Destruction) and the further south you go (Dark elves).
Community, Mythic opened up too many servers and therefore lots of server are lacking in population. Do not get me wrong, lots of people play, especially for a 2 month old game.
Graphic, I know graphics aren't everything, but the graphics could still have been slightly better.
To start off, I am not a Warhammer tabletop fan. Thi...s is strictly from the point of view of a mmo gammer.
I truly enjoyed the pvp-centric aspect of the game. It was quite refreshing in the era of WoW clones.
The pvp was dynamic, which kept me entertained. Being someone who loathes the normal "quest to leve" scheme, I absolutely loved the fact I could gain levels by pvping. By the time I hit level 20 I felt burnt out.
World pvp felt extremely one sided when I was taking part in it. Overall, I like the many different concepts in the game. But the game seems rather unpolished. For example, there are many models in the game that look quite atrocious. In addition, mythic may want to find a way to optimize sieges so that they do not cause framing. My computer is not a top of the line gaming rig, but it is more than capable of playing the game in terms of specs.
That is my take on the game. I do not see myself re-subscribing, but I do not regret my time playing.
i used to play WoW and was a true hardcore player. At least 8hrs a d...ay. I quit over a 1 1/2 ago and decided to give WAR a try. WAR has proven to be way more fun. It requires a lot less time of play (which is nice b/c thats why i stopped playing WoW). Casual players can lev fast and get great items. I had epic items at lev 8. drops are very good to you. The games PvP (they call it RvR) starts at lev 1 and there are so many different RvR games. Freaking love this game!
