Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning Review - PC

7.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 7
Audio: 7
Multiplayer: 8
Innovation: 8

World of Warcraft is the pinnacle of MMORPG’s; it’s the game that everyone plays, has played, or hates (or a combination of any two, or all three). It has the largest online subscriber base, and nobody can say that it didn’t change the face of gaming permanently. MMORPGs have come and gone since the launch of WoW, and finally a Warhammer game looks to rival the Warcraft universe. Warhammer Online boasts all new gameplay with exciting new ideas not seen in World of Warcraft or other MMO’s. Can it claim any of the 38% market share unoccupied by WoW? Or will it actually steal some gamers from WoW? Read on to see if it gets our approval.

Gameplay

As you begin your journey in Age of Reckoning you choose to play one of six races in three zones. There’s the High Elf/Dark Elf zone, the Greenskin/Dwarf zone, and finally the Chaos/Empire zone. Each zone is split up in to four tiers that you move through as you level up to the maximum level of 40. The tiers are split in to different styles of gameplay, with PvE (Player vs Environment) being predominant in leveling up, and RvR (Realm vs Realm) for players that want to kill other players. As you get to the higher levels, more emphasis is placed on RvR, as Mythic has chosen to go for more of a war game than most MMORPG’s that like to keep most of the battles inside battlegrounds.

Each race has four different class types, which makes for a whopping 24 different classes in the game. A lot of the classes are very similar, and they all generally fall under the four archetypes of healer, tank, ranged DPS, and melee DPS. We played a few different class types and quickly learnt that some classes aren’t as fun as others, and it really depends on the individual to find a race/class combination that best suits them. Once you have picked a class that you enjoy, time spent leveling up will fly by. With only 40 levels, Warhammer Online’s PvE grind is fairly short and you’ll be conquering cities in no time.

Quests in Warhammer Online follow the standard procedure of MMO’s, but Mythic have put in a function very similar to the WoW add-on known as Quest Helper. This basically means that when you accept a quest, the mini-map and the regular map will display where to go for the quest and what to do when you get there. This makes questing a lot faster and easier, and also means that the quests don’t need to provide as much accurate information on where to go in the details. Warhammer Online also has a nice little feature known as the Tome of Knowledge. This little bundle of joy works like an encyclopedia and keeps basically all of your ventures on file. It tracks every creature you’ve come across and gives detailed information about quests you’ve completed and are currently on. The quest helping features can be turned off ...