Warhammer Online:

First Impressions

by Jeff Woleslagle & Phil Comeau

Jeremy Dale, Lead Animator for Mythic’s Warhammer Online, was kind enough to let us join the war in Empire lands. “We definitely wanted to create a sense that war is everywhere,” Dale stated, and lucky for us. Warhammer Online, after only a year in production, the Mythic team has created a playable demo.

The game boasts 6 playable races at present, and we were treated to see goblins, orcs, and dwarves in action. In keeping with the war theme, the player races are set in competitive pairings of orc vs. dwarf, high elf vs. dark elf, and Empire vs. Chaos. Races vie for control of opposing capital cities in RvR (Race vs. Race combat), but the consequences of war on a large scale are a little beyond the scope of today’s playable demo. The amped-up quest system, however, supports the overarching themes quite nicely, offering personal quests, RvR quests, and “public” quests – which have solo and group-based paths to completion and are tied to geographical location (it’s your chance to help the locals).

Group ganking in Bloodhorn

The combat system is standard MMO, with at least two nice twists. The morale system, pervasive in the tabletop version of Warhammer, is represented in-game in similar fashion to World of Warcraft’s rage mechanic for Warriors; it builds in relation to time spent in combat, then diminishes when out of combat. Points accumulate as morale crosses certain thresholds, allowing for powerful combat moves and spells, such as a dwarven engineer’s cannonball barrage. Another combat innovation, “tactics” are something like stackable offensive or defensive passive abilities, making for easily customizable player combat builds.

The graphics are unlike World of Warcraft, or anything else on their market for that matter. Assets will soon be available to enable us to truly see for ourselves, but Warhammer Online’s graphics fit the classic tabletop miniatures to a ”T”. The game world lacks the angular, eye-fooling sloping perspectives of World of Warcraft, something I always hated in WoW, and instead has all the schadenfreude tenor of a world long at war.

In short, we had favorable first impressions of Warhammer Online. Stay tuned for a more in-depth interview from our Warhammer Online Community Manager Thurston “Ratboy” Hillman.

Editor's Note: And here is that article we promised you - Warhammer Online vs. Ten Ton Hammer!