Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a wondrous-looking world that will feature strong gameplay elements
By Michael Lafferty

Mythic, Games Workshop capture essence of the Warhammer license.

In many ways the value and potential of a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) can be tied to its intellectual property (IP, or in some cases, the license). In that regard, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has its bases well covered.

The IP is 23 years old, has fostered novels and other books, a plethora of board-wargaming fans, a long history of toy soldiers, even a couple of video games based on the 40k universe, and now – at long last – its own MMORPG. The latter is courtesy of both the owner of the license, Games Workshop, and the creative genius at Mythic Entertainment.

In the closing days of March, Mythic invited some journalists to its offices in Virginia to take a gander at the game, which is in pre-alpha form. GameZone was invited along and was able to get in some face time with the creators and a little hands-on time as well.

Ok, let’s clear something up really fast. Warhammer predates Blizzard’s Warcraft series. In fact, there was a book called World of Warhammer published before Blizzard’s highly successful MMO (the book was originally published in October 1998). Yes, there are ideas that have been borrowed, but Warhammer is a unique world with unique races, and as the online title will show, some elements that will distinguish it as a strong MMO featuring sound concepts, strong visuals and the potential for some of the best player-versus-player combat (under the touted Realm-versus-Realm – RvR – system that Mythic is known for) in the MMO space.

Mythic knows how to make MMOs, that much is certain. The company has been in the industry for 10 years, has built 15 online games under a variety of titles for various companies, but really made its mark with the Dark Age of Camelot game, which will be celebrating its fifth anniversary later this year. DAoC has 1 million players worldwide, has had six expansions and continues to offer what Steve Perkins (the director of marketing) termed the “definitive PvP experience.”

Steve stated that there is “nothing hotter in the PC market than MMOs.” After offering a tip of the hat to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for what it has brought to the playground, Steve said that “we hope to develop that in a big way with what we are doing with Warhammer.”

“When you hop into Warhammer Online, you are going to realize there is a war going on out there and you are caught up in it.”

Everything in the game is predicated on the fact that this is a world at war. There are six playable races introduced with the initial launch of the game – orcs vying against dwarves, high elves at odds with dark elves, and Chaos versus the Empire (humans).

At that point in the presentation, Steve gave over the stage to … well, Noel Coward once coined the phrase about “mad dogs and Englishmen” (the poem is entitled precisely that) – in the case of Paul Barnett (who bears the title of design manager) you can skip the “dogs and” bit and go straight to “mad Englishmen.” Paul is the one that is charged by Games Workshop to make certain that Mythic does not stray from the Warhammer concepts and universe. He is quite “mad,” but in that fun-to-listen-to way simply because he is passionate about the game and designs he is bringing to it. He began by trying to explain to the room full of North American journalists what Warhammer is at its core.

“It’s very, very English,” he said. “It is so English that when you try to explain it no one understands it.”

“Warhammer is not a thing, it is an idea,” he said. “There is something in America that is the same – it is Batman. It is an idea. Batman is a bloke in a cape, with a butler, that fights crime in Gotham City. The point is Batman is changed to meet the media it is in (films, toys, comic books) but it is always the same – a bloke in a cape, with a butler, who fights crime in Gotham City.”

“MMOs are not computer games – they are very close to toy soldiers,” he said.

Oh, how?

“”An MMO is about skill, commitment and imagination. In an MMO you live the experience all the time – a computer game is a packaged experience; an MMO is a hobby experience. We are making an MMO/Warhammer hobby. It costs money to play our game; it costs time to play our game. Commitment is everything. The more you commit the more you will get out of it. We are not asking for your money, we are asking for your soul.” 

Ok, perhaps a little over the top, but the point Paul was making is that “skill, commitment (on the parts of players and the developers) and imagination equals hobby and that is what we are making.” 

He said that, in three words, Warhammer is “epic,” “heroic,” and “struggle” in a perpetual world with a perpetual war occurring. Players are part of the story and can make a difference. In the RvR portion, players can work through the preceding levels to get to the point where they can command a huge army, march to the gates of an enemy capital, “blow the doors off, burn the city, capture the king and throw him into a cage, and gloat.”

The game will feature competitive PvE (Player-versus-environment), as well as capture the flavor of the IP. For example, you will see carrion picking at dead bodies, and the distant landscape may hold a tower that beckons for exploration. Character customization is not about “the minutia of manipulating nostrils,” stated Producer Lance Roberston, “it is about being able to identify characters from 20 feet away” by what they are wearing. 

Orcs may wear dwarf beards on their belts, or decorate a back rack with skulls. The idea is if you see a player character, you should know about what class they are and what level.

Content Director Destin Bates spoke about the three racial pairings in the game (orcs/dwarves, et cetera with the overview in RvR being orcs/Chaos/dark elves versus Empire/dwarves/high elves), with 1,800 quests in place at launch. Do not expect the quests to be different versions of the same ‘kill 10 rats’ quest, but rather will be dramatically different for each race while encompassing the ‘flavor’ of each race. The categories of quests will lead players into PvE areas, PvP areas (RvR) without having to participate in PvP and finally quests that are in PvP areas and require PvP. However, the total game design will not mean that players are required to participate in one element or the other. Players can quest and level playing solely in RvR or solely in PvE, or a combination of the two.

PvE quest types include public quests, conflict (takes place in art-concentrated areas known to the developers as epicenters), branching quests (in which players can help determine their own ending) and quests off the beaten path that can be discovered through exploration (known as “Christmas” quests) that generally offer a large monetary reward for low effort.

There are also four levels of PvP – skirmish (incidental zone-based combat), battlefields (objective-based in the static world), scenarios (instanced, point-based/objective-based battles that may feature NPC allies to reduce wait times) and campaigns (in which you might be able to storm that capital city).

Paul popped back up to address some of the game systems and said that Warhammer will feature an asymmetrical career system, though there will be some flexibility involved. Each race will have approximately four archetypes, but everything is tailored within the spirit of the IP. The combat is broken down into three parts, as well. First there is the strategic part in which players can select from a tactics menu, slot the tactics in the hotbar (the tactics are akin to self buffs and may include +5 to fire spells, or +5 to range) prior to going adventuring. Stage two is the hotbar slotting attacks and other skills, and stage three is the morale system. As players fight, they can gain morale, which grows and can lead to unleashing moral-based skills. Work the meter all the way up to the top, and you get an ‘Armageddon’ type skill.

“As you progress through the career system, you will get new morale skills,” Paul said.

Greg Grimsby, the art director, talked a little about the look of Warhammer. His first point was that facial animation is coming to MMOs, giving the avatars personality and allowing them to emote. There is a face cam in the UI so you can see the state of your character’s mood. If your dwarf dies, don’t be surprised to see that face become a skull, albeit still wearing a beard.

Greg said that the guiding principles behind the look of the game were to ‘accentuate the Warhammer IP, create detail-rich artwork, exaggerate and go for personality over realism, and induce the awe factor (with no boring artwork).’

As mentioned previously, tack-ons are the customization tool, helping players define the look of their avatars, but there are other race-specific attributes. Orcs, for example, will grow in size and muscle mass as they gain power; dwarves will get longer and more elaborate beards.

It all goes back to the IP. “We are pulling from 24 years of rich visuals,” Greg said.

“Players don’t want to play the mundane,” Greg said. “Exaggeration is a way to shock them in a ‘woah! I haven’t seen that before’ way.”

Once the presentations were done, it was time for a little hands-on with the game. Bearing in mind that Mythic acquired the license in May of 2005 and the work began a couple of months later, the game was in amazing form. The controls were intuitive, the world was wondrous and the limited gameplay was a lot of fun.

Because the dev team is creating the game in pairing phases (first is the orcs and dwarves, followed by Chaos and Empire, and the high elves and dark elves last), beta may be up in late summer. The game is currently on track to release in 2007.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is about war. Crafting is focused on warfare; there will be transportation for each race (orcs may travel by catapult – fun, entertaining and keeping within the IP); and at the core of this all is a rich sense of fun.

Share | Digg This | Glink It

---