I have now played the European beta for some days and feel ready to make a first review of the game.
Warhammer Online is a long awaited MMO based on the Warhammer Fantasy universe. The game copies many things from World of Warcraft, but also has many new innovations which make the game very interesting.
Stop dis blabla an? start killin? -- The Story
The Warhammer world is comparable to the world from Warcraft. And before you complain that Warhammer stole so much from Warcraft, its actually Blizzard who has stolen heavily from Warhammer when they created their Warcraft and Starcraft settings.
The world is inhabited by the standard array of fantasy creatures and features a epic war between Chaos and its followers and the races who want to protect the world from it. The world is very dark and violent. The Chaos Gods transform their followers into monsters and regularly launch attacks against the rest of the world.
In this game there are two factions, the forces of Destruction, including the mentioned Chaos, the Dark Elves and Orcs. They fight against the forces of Order which consists of the human Empire (having a very renaissance Germany feel), the Elves of Ulthuan and the Dwarves.
A new ladz. Kill ?im. -- Character Generation
You can choose any of the above mentioned races. And depending on your race choice you will have access to a different set of classes. Unlike other MMOs there is no universal set of classes which everyone has access to. Instead every race has its own classes with its own mechanic (some classes overlap, but normally not more than two). That adds a lot of replayability as, for example, the dwarven tank class plays very different from the orcish tank. Originally every race should have access to four classes, but because of time constraints some classes got scrapped. That means a few races have only access to three classes and lack a role. For example humans don't have tanks. But you can play together with the other races so this isn't a huge problem.
After selecting your class you can customize your character. And here is one of the bad points of Warhammer. The customization options are very limited. You can only select between a few different beard, hair, face and jewellery combinations which means most characters look nearly the same. Fortunately you can dye your equipment right from the start at merchants.
Charge! Kill da ?umies an? da uvva ?umies, too. -- Combat
As I said above, nearly each class has a unique combat mechanic for using its special abilities. For example the Witch Hunter has to build up accusations against his target and then he unleashes his finishing attack which deals more damage the more accusations he gathered. The elven Swordmaster performs a sword dance and depending on his balance can use different attacks so you constantly have to switch them. And the Ironbreaker simply can use more powerful attacks the longer he stays in combat. With that system even healers have to do combat to build up their special power.
The general combat system is of course the same for everyone. Most damage is done by special abilities which mostly don't have a cooldown at all. But that means that when your action points, the games mana, run out you have a problem. Luckily it regenerates very fast, even in combat. And outside combat you are healed within a minute, which means there is nearly no downtime. Every class gets a ranged attack which is more effective when you shoot someone in the back and an ability to slow enemies down. That means running away from PvP combat is a bit harder than in other games.
Also, each character has three tactics slots. Tactics are passive, always on, bonuses you can select. Tactics can decrease the aggro range of some mobs, give a special effect when you kill someone or increase your XP and money gain in RvR combat.
When you do damage you build up morale which you can use to unleash a very damaging attack. The more morale you have, the more powerful attacks you can use. But once you use such a morale attack all of your morale is gone, so its always a decision between using the attack now and loosing all morale or saving it for a more powerful attack.
Your abilities have to be bought from a trainer when you reach the required level. Later you get master points which you can spend on one of three different paths which enhance some of your abilities or give you new ones.
Drow da gobbo in first. -- Quests
The quests is one of the innovative parts of Warhammer. It still has the common fetch&kill quests, but they are much shorter than in other MMOs and the general area of the quest is shown on the minimap. But don't think that you are safe from other players when doing PvE quests. Some quests require you to play on a battlefield or lead you in an open Realm vs. Realm area. And some quests require you to operate siege weapons, although that is not really a challenge and only serves as training for RvR combat where you can use them when your base is attacked.
The real innovation are the Public Quests. Those quests are area bound and always active. Everyone in the area can contribute to the quest (and automatically does so). All Public Quests I have seen have three parts and most of them start with killing a lot of trash mobs. The second part can involve nearly anything, from saving NPCs, collecting while under a time limit or more killing. The last part is always killing a boss. After the quest is finished every player who contributed is assigned a point value depending on how big his contribution was. This number is modified by a random die roll and the resulting number determines if the character gets a reward or not. Each public quest normally gives around 4 to 6 rewards and the top players can select one. All reward is class based so you will never get something you can't use. After that the quest starts again in one or two minutes.
Public Quests are very fun to play and a great way to get into groups. The main advantage is that the reward is great and that they are always active and don't require all group members to first have a prerequisite.
The game is chapter based. Each area of the map contains several chapters of your races storyline. Each story has a camp for you to rest/respawn, a continuous, interesting storyline and usually three public quests. Also in every chapter you can gather fame, by doing public quests, and exchange this fame for a reward. But you can only do this three times in a chapter. After that you move on by simply going to the next town.
Put dat flag dere an? get on da battlefield. -- Realms vs. Realms combat
RvR combat is the major part of Warhammer Online and consists out three parts. The first part are battlefields, which you might already know from WoW. Battlefield are instances where the same number of people from both sides fight against each other. There are also several captureable flags on the battlefield and when one side controls all flags something good, or bad when you are the enemy, happens. The battle either has a time or kill limit. To also give low level players a chance, they are virtually levelled up to level 8 while inside the battlefield.
The second part of the the RvR combat is Open RvR. Each area has a Open RvR area where players from different realms can freely attack each others. Each field also has captureable flags (with NPC defenders). Both sides try to gain control of the area they are in which is gained when one side killed enough enemy players or captured points. The side which controls the area gets more reputation when fighting enemy players which can be exchanged for, very good, PvP gear. In order to find enemy players to fight each recent combat is shown on the minimap which makes it easy to see where the action is.
The third part of RvR are keeps which are reserved for guilds. A guild can try to capture and hold a keep. I haven't seen this in game yet, so I can't give any more information about it.
Wot?z dis? It ain?t fightin?, -- Crafting
The crafting in Warhammer Online is very different from other games and looks rather limited at first. But you will quickly recognize that crafting here is much more streamlined and most importantly, doesn't become a endless, repetitive grind.
There are only four gatherer and two crafting profession and each character can have one crafter and one gatherer profession at the same time.
The only thing you can craft are consumable items. Potions & dyes and talismans which work like gems and runes in Diablo 2. They can be build into equipment and increase its stats for some hours. The game is not formula based. Instead you select the components you want to use and depending on the components the crafted item will have a different effect. That way the player has a much better control over what they get from crafting and people can actually experiment instead of grinding the same formula over and over again.
The gathering professions can be divided in three categories. Agriculture, used for potion making, Magical Gathering which gives only Talisman components and Butchering or Scavenging which gives materials for both.
Agriculture means that you plant seeds you can buy or find as drop to grow them into plants. And unlike Lord of the Rings Online you don't have to stand on a specific spot to do that. The plant is grown in virtual place which your character can access from anywhere. That means you can adventure while growing plants without the fear that someone will steal your plant. At first you only have one farming slot. Later you can get up to four slots for growing plants. To grow a plant you simply put the seed into the slot. Now your seed grows into a single specimen of the plant over two minutes if you do nothing. You can add special earth, soil and fertilizer to the plant which makes the yield bigger or gives the seed back so you can grow the plant again.
Magical Gathering works like disenchanting in other games. You take a magical item and either make it into general magical essence or pull a specific bonus out of it which you can add to talismans you create. The magical item is of course destroyed by this.
Butchering and Scavenging work the same way, just on different targets. With butchering you can collect additional items from dead beasts while scavenging works on dead humanoids. The items you get this way range from potion material, to talisman fragments or even agricultural items like better water/soil.
Each crafting skill has a rank which determines which materials you can use, but this doesn't work like levels where you have to gather XP. Instead after each successful use of the crafting or gathering skill the rank increases. That means that you can increase the rank rather fast making grinding for crafting unnecessary.
Dis book is useless. You can?t kill people wiv it. -- Tome of Knowledge
Another interesting thing in the game is the Tome of Knowledge which serves as a huge journal normally only found in single player RPGs like The Witcher. This book tracks all knowledge you have gathered on your journey about areas, races, enemies or organizations. You can also reread the story of all chapters you have unlocked so far and the story of all quests you encountered. Many entries in the book have to be unlocked by killing specific enemies (or be killed by them) or by finding certain places, which makes exploring the map more exciting than normally. And this information is not just for show. When you unlocked specific topics you can get special tactics which increases your fighting powers against a special race or group of monsters. The book also allows you to compile your personal "greatest achievements" list.
Speaking of achievements, Warhammer Online has a an achievement for basically everything so people who like to collect them will be very happy.
Da eyes. Go for da eyes. -- Graphics
The Graphics of the game are functional and the style fits the theme. But don't expect an Age of Conan. The graphical quality can be compared to World of Warcraft, just without comic feeling. The advantage of this is that the game runs reasonably fast for most people and you are not prevented from playing this game when having a older PC.
This is fun. More! MORE! -- Fazit
Warhammer Online is a very fun game. I tested many MMO trials over the past few months and this game is the only one which I would really buy. I actually like the game more and more the longer I play. The combat is fast and fun, the story is interesting and I haven't encountered much grind. The biggest focus of the game is the Realms vs. Realms combat which is really well done. I normally don't like PvP combat but in this game PvP combat is so fast and easy that even I can't resist. Also they have an anti-ganking mechanic (high level players will be turned into a chicken when entering low level RvR areas) so its not frustrating either.
Warhammer likely won't be able to topple WoW as biggest MMO, but not because the game lacks quality. The game is very well done and will likely become one of the big players in the business and has good chance to become the second best MMO on the market. Especially PvP players will prefer Warhammer Online over WoW and everyone else should also check this game out. Its a definite Buy It
PS: The beta is still going, so if you have questions post them here and I will try to answer them. Also if you are curious about my spelling of the headlines. Those are in Warhammer Orcish and when you play as Orc in the game you will see plenty of it.
Warhammer Online is a long awaited MMO based on the Warhammer Fantasy universe. The game copies many things from World of Warcraft, but also has many new innovations which make the game very interesting.
Stop dis blabla an? start killin? -- The Story
The Warhammer world is comparable to the world from Warcraft. And before you complain that Warhammer stole so much from Warcraft, its actually Blizzard who has stolen heavily from Warhammer when they created their Warcraft and Starcraft settings.
The world is inhabited by the standard array of fantasy creatures and features a epic war between Chaos and its followers and the races who want to protect the world from it. The world is very dark and violent. The Chaos Gods transform their followers into monsters and regularly launch attacks against the rest of the world.
In this game there are two factions, the forces of Destruction, including the mentioned Chaos, the Dark Elves and Orcs. They fight against the forces of Order which consists of the human Empire (having a very renaissance Germany feel), the Elves of Ulthuan and the Dwarves.
A new ladz. Kill ?im. -- Character Generation
You can choose any of the above mentioned races. And depending on your race choice you will have access to a different set of classes. Unlike other MMOs there is no universal set of classes which everyone has access to. Instead every race has its own classes with its own mechanic (some classes overlap, but normally not more than two). That adds a lot of replayability as, for example, the dwarven tank class plays very different from the orcish tank. Originally every race should have access to four classes, but because of time constraints some classes got scrapped. That means a few races have only access to three classes and lack a role. For example humans don't have tanks. But you can play together with the other races so this isn't a huge problem.
After selecting your class you can customize your character. And here is one of the bad points of Warhammer. The customization options are very limited. You can only select between a few different beard, hair, face and jewellery combinations which means most characters look nearly the same. Fortunately you can dye your equipment right from the start at merchants.
Charge! Kill da ?umies an? da uvva ?umies, too. -- Combat
As I said above, nearly each class has a unique combat mechanic for using its special abilities. For example the Witch Hunter has to build up accusations against his target and then he unleashes his finishing attack which deals more damage the more accusations he gathered. The elven Swordmaster performs a sword dance and depending on his balance can use different attacks so you constantly have to switch them. And the Ironbreaker simply can use more powerful attacks the longer he stays in combat. With that system even healers have to do combat to build up their special power.
The general combat system is of course the same for everyone. Most damage is done by special abilities which mostly don't have a cooldown at all. But that means that when your action points, the games mana, run out you have a problem. Luckily it regenerates very fast, even in combat. And outside combat you are healed within a minute, which means there is nearly no downtime. Every class gets a ranged attack which is more effective when you shoot someone in the back and an ability to slow enemies down. That means running away from PvP combat is a bit harder than in other games.
Also, each character has three tactics slots. Tactics are passive, always on, bonuses you can select. Tactics can decrease the aggro range of some mobs, give a special effect when you kill someone or increase your XP and money gain in RvR combat.
When you do damage you build up morale which you can use to unleash a very damaging attack. The more morale you have, the more powerful attacks you can use. But once you use such a morale attack all of your morale is gone, so its always a decision between using the attack now and loosing all morale or saving it for a more powerful attack.
Your abilities have to be bought from a trainer when you reach the required level. Later you get master points which you can spend on one of three different paths which enhance some of your abilities or give you new ones.
Drow da gobbo in first. -- Quests
The quests is one of the innovative parts of Warhammer. It still has the common fetch&kill quests, but they are much shorter than in other MMOs and the general area of the quest is shown on the minimap. But don't think that you are safe from other players when doing PvE quests. Some quests require you to play on a battlefield or lead you in an open Realm vs. Realm area. And some quests require you to operate siege weapons, although that is not really a challenge and only serves as training for RvR combat where you can use them when your base is attacked.
The real innovation are the Public Quests. Those quests are area bound and always active. Everyone in the area can contribute to the quest (and automatically does so). All Public Quests I have seen have three parts and most of them start with killing a lot of trash mobs. The second part can involve nearly anything, from saving NPCs, collecting while under a time limit or more killing. The last part is always killing a boss. After the quest is finished every player who contributed is assigned a point value depending on how big his contribution was. This number is modified by a random die roll and the resulting number determines if the character gets a reward or not. Each public quest normally gives around 4 to 6 rewards and the top players can select one. All reward is class based so you will never get something you can't use. After that the quest starts again in one or two minutes.
Public Quests are very fun to play and a great way to get into groups. The main advantage is that the reward is great and that they are always active and don't require all group members to first have a prerequisite.
The game is chapter based. Each area of the map contains several chapters of your races storyline. Each story has a camp for you to rest/respawn, a continuous, interesting storyline and usually three public quests. Also in every chapter you can gather fame, by doing public quests, and exchange this fame for a reward. But you can only do this three times in a chapter. After that you move on by simply going to the next town.
Put dat flag dere an? get on da battlefield. -- Realms vs. Realms combat
RvR combat is the major part of Warhammer Online and consists out three parts. The first part are battlefields, which you might already know from WoW. Battlefield are instances where the same number of people from both sides fight against each other. There are also several captureable flags on the battlefield and when one side controls all flags something good, or bad when you are the enemy, happens. The battle either has a time or kill limit. To also give low level players a chance, they are virtually levelled up to level 8 while inside the battlefield.
The second part of the the RvR combat is Open RvR. Each area has a Open RvR area where players from different realms can freely attack each others. Each field also has captureable flags (with NPC defenders). Both sides try to gain control of the area they are in which is gained when one side killed enough enemy players or captured points. The side which controls the area gets more reputation when fighting enemy players which can be exchanged for, very good, PvP gear. In order to find enemy players to fight each recent combat is shown on the minimap which makes it easy to see where the action is.
The third part of RvR are keeps which are reserved for guilds. A guild can try to capture and hold a keep. I haven't seen this in game yet, so I can't give any more information about it.
Wot?z dis? It ain?t fightin?, -- Crafting
The crafting in Warhammer Online is very different from other games and looks rather limited at first. But you will quickly recognize that crafting here is much more streamlined and most importantly, doesn't become a endless, repetitive grind.
There are only four gatherer and two crafting profession and each character can have one crafter and one gatherer profession at the same time.
The only thing you can craft are consumable items. Potions & dyes and talismans which work like gems and runes in Diablo 2. They can be build into equipment and increase its stats for some hours. The game is not formula based. Instead you select the components you want to use and depending on the components the crafted item will have a different effect. That way the player has a much better control over what they get from crafting and people can actually experiment instead of grinding the same formula over and over again.
The gathering professions can be divided in three categories. Agriculture, used for potion making, Magical Gathering which gives only Talisman components and Butchering or Scavenging which gives materials for both.
Agriculture means that you plant seeds you can buy or find as drop to grow them into plants. And unlike Lord of the Rings Online you don't have to stand on a specific spot to do that. The plant is grown in virtual place which your character can access from anywhere. That means you can adventure while growing plants without the fear that someone will steal your plant. At first you only have one farming slot. Later you can get up to four slots for growing plants. To grow a plant you simply put the seed into the slot. Now your seed grows into a single specimen of the plant over two minutes if you do nothing. You can add special earth, soil and fertilizer to the plant which makes the yield bigger or gives the seed back so you can grow the plant again.
Magical Gathering works like disenchanting in other games. You take a magical item and either make it into general magical essence or pull a specific bonus out of it which you can add to talismans you create. The magical item is of course destroyed by this.
Butchering and Scavenging work the same way, just on different targets. With butchering you can collect additional items from dead beasts while scavenging works on dead humanoids. The items you get this way range from potion material, to talisman fragments or even agricultural items like better water/soil.
Each crafting skill has a rank which determines which materials you can use, but this doesn't work like levels where you have to gather XP. Instead after each successful use of the crafting or gathering skill the rank increases. That means that you can increase the rank rather fast making grinding for crafting unnecessary.
Dis book is useless. You can?t kill people wiv it. -- Tome of Knowledge
Another interesting thing in the game is the Tome of Knowledge which serves as a huge journal normally only found in single player RPGs like The Witcher. This book tracks all knowledge you have gathered on your journey about areas, races, enemies or organizations. You can also reread the story of all chapters you have unlocked so far and the story of all quests you encountered. Many entries in the book have to be unlocked by killing specific enemies (or be killed by them) or by finding certain places, which makes exploring the map more exciting than normally. And this information is not just for show. When you unlocked specific topics you can get special tactics which increases your fighting powers against a special race or group of monsters. The book also allows you to compile your personal "greatest achievements" list.
Speaking of achievements, Warhammer Online has a an achievement for basically everything so people who like to collect them will be very happy.
Da eyes. Go for da eyes. -- Graphics
The Graphics of the game are functional and the style fits the theme. But don't expect an Age of Conan. The graphical quality can be compared to World of Warcraft, just without comic feeling. The advantage of this is that the game runs reasonably fast for most people and you are not prevented from playing this game when having a older PC.
This is fun. More! MORE! -- Fazit
Warhammer Online is a very fun game. I tested many MMO trials over the past few months and this game is the only one which I would really buy. I actually like the game more and more the longer I play. The combat is fast and fun, the story is interesting and I haven't encountered much grind. The biggest focus of the game is the Realms vs. Realms combat which is really well done. I normally don't like PvP combat but in this game PvP combat is so fast and easy that even I can't resist. Also they have an anti-ganking mechanic (high level players will be turned into a chicken when entering low level RvR areas) so its not frustrating either.
Warhammer likely won't be able to topple WoW as biggest MMO, but not because the game lacks quality. The game is very well done and will likely become one of the big players in the business and has good chance to become the second best MMO on the market. Especially PvP players will prefer Warhammer Online over WoW and everyone else should also check this game out. Its a definite Buy It
PS: The beta is still going, so if you have questions post them here and I will try to answer them. Also if you are curious about my spelling of the headlines. Those are in Warhammer Orcish and when you play as Orc in the game you will see plenty of it.
