Marching Orders

The Pace of Warhammer Online

A 1500 point game of Warhammer Fantasy Battles can take anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours depending on various different factors, so how will this translate into the online world?  There are various different thoughts on the idea of bringing a miniature game into an Online MMORPG environment and one of the biggest questions is how the pace of the game will be played out.  Based off the information that has been released to the public about Warhammer Online it seems like it will be a quick paced PvP based game, but in this article I’ll take a further look into the actual pacing that has been made visible from released content thus far.

Since Warhammer Online will be based highly on the Player Versus Player aspect set forth in Mythic’s Realm VS. Realm style of play there should still be a heavily player based time investment.  The more players that are involved in a Realm VS. Realm battle, the longer it can take, and the same can also be said if there are more experienced/tactical players involved in the match.  If any of you readers are WoW players then you can likely relate horror stories of all day long battles of Alterac Valley that never get won until players start to fall asleep or leave.  The pace of Realm VS. Realm battles will also be highly dependant on the size of battle zones and the number of players that can be involved in any given battle.  The larger the battle, the more epic the feel that the players will be getting, but then there will be the negatives of possible lag and sheer length of one engagement.

Another appealing facet of Warhammer Online will be the introduction of smaller scale PvP zones that should be similar in scale to a World of Warcraft battleground or a game of Counter-Strike.  There is a large base of players that appreciate or need the small investments of time that battleground/skirmish levels of PvP offer, and these zones should offer a happy medium for players who are unable to invest large amounts of time into the epic battles raging across the Old World.  Since these zones will be smaller scale then the majority of the Realm VS. Realm action going on in the world, these battles should be quicker pace and more “bang for your buck” depending on your outlook of the online world.

Obviously to get anywhere in the Realm VS. Realm portion of Warhammer Online, players are going to need to spend time milling through the solo content of the game.  As has been said by Mythic there is a system in place for death in PvP situations where if you die and don’t have any Fate Points you will gain insanity points and be forced to go through solo content to remove these points from your character.  The idea behind Fate and Insanity points has stirred a few heads, and begs to ask if the PvE content of Warhammer Online will just be a “grind” to acquire Fate Points and drop Insanity Points for use in the PvP system.  If there is a points grind style of PvE, it will be fascinating to see how players will team up to overcome PvE content and what kind of players will be involved in the PvE content.  Zones in Warhammer Online are marked as Green, Yellow, and Red, with Green being PvE and player safe, yellow being PvP with PvE bosses, and red being PvP with what are known only as “death traps” laying about.

On the topic of pacing, something that should be discussed is the investment between an online game as opposed to a miniatures game.  With Fantasy Battles, players need to find the time to go somewhere to game (unless they have a table at their home), paint and assemble the models, make an army list, and then actually spend the time playing the game.  When it comes to an online game there is very little essential investment of time and a player is basically committed to as much as they want to invest at that specific time with no actually needed time.  The prime example that a lot of miniature players complain about is the required investment of time to make and paint an army, a project that quite literally takes dozens of hours to do, however when contrasted to an online game where there is maybe ten minutes of setup before playing, there is no contest as to which has a quicker pace.

As it can be played for any amount of time the player wants to put in, and with various different styles of play each according to specific time allotments, Warhammer Online has a lot of different attractions to the standard PC and miniature gamer.  For those gamers who love the Warhammer world, but utterly despise having to assemble and paint hundreds of miniatures for their army of choice, Warhammer Online offers a good alternative or a good companion to the existing Warhammer Fantasy Battles game.  As the game gets more and more press, we should be seeing a clearer image on its pace and how time friendly it really is.  Until then, here’s to hoping for an all accommodating game!

-Ratboy