TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

By Jay "Medeor" Johnson, News Reporter

In my quest to find the ultimate video game, I have been the equivalent of Indiana Jones' unnamed sidekicks.  I've been squashed by the boulder of Auto Assault and fallen through the trapdoors of many others.  Now my steps are more timid and I don't burn all of my bridges as I leave whichever game I happen to be playing at the time with forum messages lamenting the suckage of the game and extolling the virtues of some new game I just bought.  No, I've been bitten enough times to know better.  So when Warhammer Online launched (way back a few days ago), I entered with caution.  After playing in the later stages of the beta and then the Head Start, I feel pretty confident that I can start making preliminary judgments on my five favorite things about Warhammer Online plus one bonus item.

There are thousands of entries to unlock in WAR's Tome of Knowledge.

1. Where do you want to go today?

The first thing that struck me was the depth of this game.  If Age of Conan is a pool that's five feet deep, I'd say World of Warcraft is about ten feet deep, and WAR is about 15.  There is so much to do, but only if you really want to do it.  From the moment a character steps into WAR, there are Tome of Knowledge unlocks, quest givers and public quests start popping up on your screen like instant messages from a micromanaging boss with ADD.  And while there is a bevy of things you can do, you don't have to do them, and better yet there is no pressure to do them.  The quests and Tome unlocks and RvR are available if you want to take part, but you could just as easily ignore them and still have a full and rich experience in the game.  Even with the three different XP type bars I'm trying to fill up (Experience bar, Renown (RvR) bar, and Influence (public quests) bar) I get this feeling that is more of a marathon mentality than a sprint.

2. WAR is the aspirin for some of today's MMO headaches.

It takes the pain away.  While WoW took the pain out of the first generation of MMOs and made the genre attractive to a broader audience, it brought its own type of fun-hurdles.  Without casting stones, I'll just drop in the little breaths of fresh air I've noticed so far.  In WAR, there are skill trainers and mailboxes everywhere.  Bag space grows.  There are no corpse runs.  Gear does not deteriorate or require repairs.  My favorite is that all of the server maintenance is done on East Coast Time and I live on the West Coast. Go me!  Everything in WAR has a purpose, and sometimes the purpose is comedy, and sometimes laughter is the best medicine.  If World of Warcraft really brought MMOs to the masses, then WAR is taking it back to the hearts and souls of gamers.  I don't doubt the team at Blizzard's passion for their game, but it seems like clinical passion in those brief times it  peeks its head out.  The guys at Mythic though, those are guys I would like to have a beer with and their passion is infectious.

3. What was someone on when they came up with this?

Squig Herder, it's all about the meatball with teeth.  One of the most unique player controlled characters I've ever seen, the squig herder in a word, rocks.  

RvR in WAR is fun. Lots of fun.

4. Why yes, yes it is.

RvR really is that cool.  I have a hard time explaining to my WoW friends how PvP can be easily accessed (you click a button and queue up and then when you're done you are put back where you were, not some city half a world away), it is meaningful (you get bonuses for holding nodes, and earn all kinds of experience  - my characters get more ranks from PvP than questing), and last but not least, PvP/RvR provides some awesome gear rewards to get you started.  Yes started, I start RvR scenarios at rank 2 and then I quest and RvR and it is fun.  In addition to all of the advantages mentioned, RvR scenarios are fast, usually 10-12 minutes, sometimes they go to the time limit of 15 minutes, but that is rare.  That means that you aren't getting your head handed to you so long that you resent the event.  At lower ranks it is common to get a quarter to a third of a rank of experience in one RvR scenario.  Oh yeah, and I got a blue drop from an RvR kill in a scenario where I was rank four, yes rank four.

5. It's not WoW.

And before you start blasting me, realize that I have two WoW accounts and six level 70s, I'm attending Blizzcon AND I have the Wrath of the Lich King Collectors Edition on pre-order.  I like WoW, hell I love it.  And WAR is different, it's not trying to be WoW.  WAR is unapologetic in its brutishness.  WAR is not fair and don't go screaming to the forums because whining is kicked out by a special filter they have.

BONUS: Collision is Cilantro.

The bonus track (or Plus One) on this story is my undecided issue:  Collision.  In RvR, Mythic uses collision so players can't just run through other characters.  I'm not used to having collision and it is taking me a while to determine if it is great or a complete pain in the rump.  I am calling collision the cilantro of the game (people seem to love or hate cilantro, so it seems appropriate).  Collision definitely adds spice, and I can understand the reasoning, but I'm not sure I enjoy it.  Collision feels natural in a first person shooter like Call of Duty 4, but it's new to me in an MMO.  One aspect that collision really accentuates is the need for a tank in RvR.  The tanks have real girth (dwarf and black orcs are like walking garage doors) so if you want to get past them you have to get around them and they will be hitting you with axes as you do so.  My friend and I stood shoulder to shoulder as Ironbreakers in a corridor of the Ekrund RvR scenario and the other players could not get by and we were both lower than rank 5!  So far I think I like it, but I'm not certain.  Maybe it's an acquired taste.

So there you have it, the five things I like and one spicy unknown about WAR.  I'm not wanting to sound all fanboyish, but I believe the bar has actually been raised for Lich King (something I never thought I'd write).  There will be winners and losers in the MMO developer world, but right now the players are all winning.