Yesterday i managed to get my hands on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (from here on refered to as WAR), the latest in a long list that threatens to de-throne World of Warcraft (WoW) from the top of the pile of currently existing MMORPG (Massivley Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games).
So far it's only an Open Beta view of the game, offical release doesn't begin until the 17th of September, never the less i got a good insight into the game mechanics as well as the look and feel of the game.
Upon logging in the graphics seemed awful at first, but after some investigating i was able to use my Nvidia control panel to actually force the likes of Anti-Aliasing etc. on, which improved things greatly. It's not as pretty as say Age of Conan, but let's be honest, Graphics keep you interested for about twenty minutes.
I decided to make a Dark Elf Character, a Sorcerer to be precise, and set about customising him, nothing out of the ordinary there, select the sex, hair type/colour, skin colour etc, how many ear rings you want, blah blah.
Upon entering the game you immediatley get the sense that your stood right in the middle of some fantasy warzone where all hell has broken lose. Not least because of the high pitched screams and chunking of metal, the awesome visuals of buildings and fleets on fire. It was an unsual introduction as opposed to WoW's daisy fields of boars and sheep.
The usual format of run up to someone and ask for quest prevails initially in WAR. Until you hit a point where you are suddenly told that your in something called a 'Public Quest', which is essentially a three staged story being played out by people in the nearby vicinity. I got told that i had to slay a certain number of High Elf defenders, i had noticed several people around me doing it, so began to zap away. After some time a message appeared informing me that some temple dudes were trying to perform a ritual to kill us, and sure enough they came running along and we began killing them. Some time later, (there's constant waves of npc's comming at this point, really great fun), all the temple guys are killed and then out of the sky comes a huge dragon, sort of like an end game boss you'd find in a dungeon somewhere in WoW.
There was initially three of us in the area at the time and had no chance of killing him, as we found out after several foolish attempts. Finally though our numbers swelled and we were able to take him. Upon killing him a slot machine type screen appeared. It listed the people whom were involved in the Public Quest, and the amount of influence they had (presumably the amount of damage or healing you had done) on it. This was then added to a randomized number, given you a final score. Those with the highest scores (top 5 or something) get a nice bag of loot that is extremly useful to your character (i've not once got something that i can't already use).
Public Quests are a nice touch, and sort of bring about the grouping expereince that is had in WoW without much effort, or any 'omg newb you don't know what your doing' sort of deal.
Next was PvP. Refered more so in WAR as RvR (realm versus Realm), because the idea is two realms facing off against each other (Order versus Destruction, good versus bad). I'll save that for my next article as there was a fair lot to talk about.
So far though the game is a lot of fun compared to the other MMORPG's i've played, not least because theres so much to do and at no point are you thinking 'Ok where i go or what should i do now?'.
Cheers for reading.