Warhammer: Age of Reckoning: The Official Review

The Age of Reckoning has come, and WarCry Editor John "Can't Fake the" Funk sits down with the game to see how it's turned out.

Permalink

Hmmm...I'm surprised. I had hoped the game would be a good one and it seems as though it is. Most of the games downfalls seem to be the type that can be fixed with patch releases over the next month or so. As opposed to the actual game mechanics being broken at the git-go.

One thing I did note in the review, was that technically the game seems to be pretty much glitch/crash free. Is that the case? Age of Crap made me gun-shy of this title, due mainly to the fact that Funcom( = EA) was involved and now it is dieing a much deserved death.

I have played the table top version(albeit the 40k) for years and had very high hopes for Warhammer. I was going to wait a month or so to see what happened and if all was well try it out. But after this seemingly unbiased review, I am probably going to go ahead and get it this weekend.

Is there anyone playing the game for a significant amount of time, that has anything to say good or bad that would make my decision for me?

There are some glitches, but that's to be expected in a MMO launch. The stability of the servers, though, is remarkable. I talked to Mark Jacobs yesterday (will be writing up the interview for early next week), and they have had absolutely no server crashes since launch - certainly an impressive feat.

Wow, that truly is impressive. Which again, gives me the feeling that the goal in the end was to release a solid foundation with which to build upon. Even though some races had to be cut, I would not be surprised to see them in-game within the first year.

I think I will give this one a shot. The pvp was a big factor in deciding, I have played L2 since retail launch and have not found a game(except EVE, which is the TRUE god of mmo's right now)that has satisfied this aspect.

Great Review, I was thinking I might try some tabletop Warhammer before I did this

Spartan Bannana:
Great Review, I was thinking I might try some tabletop Warhammer before I did this

It's complex, but fun if you can get the hang of it.

So... these are the Warcry forums... odd i have never been here before...

And now i'm definitely getting WAR, screw you internet, i had just beaten my MMO addiction!

Hmmm...just uninstalled it. I thought I had installed WoW by mistake. The game is so visually identical, I don't see how there is not a pending lawsuit. Almost every single thing about the interface and graphics is exacttly like WoW....problem is, I don't like World of Warcraft. I mean even the way the quest completion screen is laid out, to the way you "pick" your quest rewards. It is almost laughable the way they copied it.

So for all the kiddies that think the mmo genre started with WoW, this game will be what you are used to. I had hoped for something different. Oh well, back to Lineage 2 I guess.

Cheers for the review FunkyCakes! one of the better and more objective ones i've seen !
Doesnt sway me into trying it or staying well clear of it! But to stay in the "lets compare everything to wow trend" It sounds nice to have a more pvp oriented version of wow!

But to say this would be boring to level because you'd still be beating the same things (like humans/greenskins) from lvl 1 till the end.... Well, isnt that the same in wow too? At level one it might be rats, but at lvl 65 you were still killing boars and whatnot ;) Killing other players sounds more fun because they have a different approach of their own which will force you to vary your tactics every now and then (unlike versus the boar)

Still not sure if I'll get this game or not. I think I'm put off by those constant adds... you know the ones.

I'd play if only the PvP wasn't so bland, and... tasteless.

Hemi, to an extent I agree - the Warhammer and Warcraft universes *are* visually similar to one another, there's no getting around that. I think Mythic would have been doing the universe a disservice by doing anything else.

The interface... well, the action bar reminded me more of DAoC than anything else :P There's actually a built-in way to customize your interface in the game itself.

Obviously not for everybody, but the visual similarities didn't really bug me all that much all things considered.

Funk, yea you're right. If I was a fan of WoW, I would probably love what Mythic has done with the game. But, I'm not.

I was hoping for a more "dark" and bloodthirsty sort of take on it.
Basicly what Age of C(onan)rap promised, but failed to deliver. At the very least I was hoping for different...and this is definatly NOT.

Maybe I am being too picky, but when are we going to get a decent mmo? EQ, EVE, L2, WoW these games are ageing bigtime, but still retain a huge following because just about everything that has come out in the last 3-4 years has been at best lame and at worst a complete pile of sh!t.

I had hoped for Warhammer to be "the one", but still had my doubts. I hope people like it, it seems to be what anyone who wished WoW was little more hardcore, wanted.

It's too bad Blizzard made off with the game that the Warhammer guys had originaly wanted them to develop and came out with Warcraft. Because now, it has all been done and the Warhammer guys look like they are copying WoW, when it is actually the other way around.

When is Lineage 3 coming out.....lol.

Obviously, you're the one best suited to making these choices for yourself, Hemi. :P But when I only had 30 minutes to spend with the game, I didn't much care for it either (with many of the same concerns you did). Once you get a bit into the meat of things and get to what makes WAR the game it is and not a WoW clone, I liked it much better. If you pick it up again, you should at least give the RvR a try.

Well, I have the day off. Of course its pouring down rain here in Seattle, so I will try to push a little deeper into the game and see if I can find something about the game to hold my interest.

If anybody else has an opinion I would love to hear it, maybe it will help me to see the game differently.

Hey Funk thanks for a good review. It's nice to see an honest review.

I beta tested War and did not know about the "Ow, my eye" title. Man I love that!

I think a lot of people went around toting War as a WoW killer simply because they hate WoW, but don't have anything else to play (weird huh?). Personally I love both games and will use one as a break from the other rather than in direct competition to each other. Both games have really good points and really bad points (i.e. I prefer RvR over Arenas).

One thing I did notice during Beta though was the need for a fairly good PC which is why I haven't subscribed to WAR yet.

I am having fun playing WAR for an hour or two every night. It helps that a real life friend rolled on the same server but I have fun even when I am out soloing or doing Public Quests. I look forward to Tier 3 and 4 PVP. I have done some scenarios and they were fun. I haven't really PVPed in MMOs that much besides 1 on 1 duels and such and I found myself liking it in WAR. Anyone on Mordheim server? I was formally on badlands but too populated, I took advantage of the free server clone.

Couple of points.

You mentioned armor not looking that different as you level. While that may be true within a tier, there is quite a big difference in the appearance of armor between tiers.

Dyes ... there are only a few available at the vendors, but I believe there are actually 90 or so in the game which can be crafted by apothecaries or from drops and quest rewards. I believe every color in Games Workshops paint palette is available.

Kudos on the review, I think it was well written and you covered every point that I would have, and drew almost exactly the same conclusions I have so far. (Yes, I like the review more because you concur with me ... Waaagh!)

I liked the look of the game - it looked exactly as if the Warmhammer miniatures had come to life. It does remind me of WoW, (due to Warcraft borrowing from the look of the original Warhammer) but I see as many distinctions as I see similarities. There's the overall detail, and the lighting, for starters. And the architecture and details differ wildly across both - the strongest similarities are in the greenskin areas. I grant that you could be tired of the look of Warcraft, but they were the knock off of the older franchise in the first place. I am glad that Mythic stayed true to the Warhammer look and didn't redesign the look of the characters to avoid comparisons (but I'd have recognized why, if they had).

I think more is made of the similarity than is warranted, when all of the pieces are put in view of each other, so to speak. The High Elves look more like LotRO than WoW. Put a High Elf beside a Blood Elf and I think you could tell them apart. Some of the game screenshots look similar to me, but when I play the games they don't. And I'd have been pretty pissed off if the MMO looked different from the miniatures GW has been selling for 25 years.

Overall, for good or ill, (I say good) Mythic has pulled many of the best bits of the other games and added their own spin. The Tome seemed right out of LotRO, for example. My only disappointment with the Tome is that when I discover a recipe it doesn't go into my Tome. A minor peeve. But if you're sick of the look and feel of WoW you may already be sick of WAR - there's no denying that theirs a lot of similarty across MMO's, and fantasy themed ones in particular.

The wife and I love the slower pace of combat, both PvE and RvR. We love the PQ's too, but as mentioned the formula is a little repetitive. It's amazing watching a group reset and try new tactics after a wipe, without a single shout or tell. We've always rolled for loot in raids, and we like the way a PQ does it - even though we've lost several times where we both were on top of the list, we've walked away from every PG with at least two top Loot Bags by the time we're done with it. Besides, you also get a bonus on your next roll if you DON'T win, as well as rewards at each of three stages of each chapter. Even if you never win a loot bag, you still get a couple nice pieces of kit - and you don't need to complete the PQ - if you work the first stage a couple of times you can rack up a lot of points towards the Influence rewards. Right now, our favourite area is the greenskins, for the humour. We've also played the Warhammer RPG, and we like the universe there.

We also enjoy the breadth of the classes, and how each class has synergistic abilities - shaman getting more powerful offensively by casting healing spells, for example, or the caster's "backfire" written about in the review. My favourite classes (so far) are the Black Orc (Greenskin), the Marauder (Chaos),and Engineer (Dwarf).

Its got to be said that the trailer was better than the game.

Surreysmith:
Its got to be said that the trailer was better than the game.

Damn you CGI trailers!