Reviews

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning: The Official Review

In general, the slow, sticky pace of combat makes the first few levels of play rather boring (though it picks up as characters learn more abilities), and players coming from games with faster-paced combat like World of Warcraft or City of Heroes may find it difficult to adjust at first. That said, bugs can be fixed and slower combat does not necessarily mean worse combat. The pace of combat is certainly deliberate on Mythic's part, for where it might falter in early PvE, it shines in the PvP that is at Warhammer's core.

Almost anybody who's spent some time PvPing in WoW will agree that fights can sometimes be over in the blink of an eye, with one character dead before they even realize it. In WAR, fighting another player feels less like getting insta-gibbed and more like, well, a knockdown, grueling brawl. Though one-on-one fights can be entertaining, the game's crown jewel is its group PvP. Since healers have more time to react before a comrade is turned into a bloody pulp, coordination and focus fire are key in killing foes. A particularly nice touch is that - unlike many modern MMORPGs - characters flagged for RvR combat will have full collision detection with allies and adversaries alike. This allows tank classes to actually tank in PvP, holding a line of battle and throttling chokepoints. As frustrating as the slow combat can be while soloing, it works wonderfully in RvR, making it feel like more of a contest of skill and less like a contest of whoever can click buttons the fastest or whoever gets the most mace-stun procs.

The PvE content in WAR is really nothing out of the ordinary, with the archetypal MMO "Kill X number of Y enemy" quests being the rule rather than the exception. An admittedly nice touch is the decision to have every enemy always drop quest items - there are no eyeless wolves or declawed bears in the world of Warhammer. The game will also display the general area where quest objectives can be found on your map, which makes the questing process very streamlined and natural.

The one idea that makes WAR's PvE content unique is the Public Quest (PQ), where everybody in an area can make a contribution towards achieving a goal. An early High Elf PQ tasks characters to hold the line in front of a Dark Elf stronghold. After killing a number of the guards in the area, the next phase throws waves of Dark Elves at the players, requiring them to hold out long enough for NPCs to set up artillery behind them. Finally, the Dark Elves unleash a Hydra against their High Elf foes as a "final boss."

Although the idea and the concept behind PQs is absolutely phenomenal, and it's very cool to see players who are otherwise complete strangers come together in pursuit of this goal, they suffer from less-than-perfect execution. At the end of the PQ, loot is distributed based on a random roll. While contributing more to the completion of the quest will grant you a bonus to the roll, it's still entirely possible to spend upwards of twenty minutes participating, contribute the most and yet leave empty-handed, a very frustrating feeling. Furthermore, many of the PQs follow the exact same three-stage pattern: kill lots of weaker enemies, kill fewer stronger enemies, and kill one really powerful enemy. Some more variation would have been very welcomed to avoid a growing feeling of repetition.