Even from the very earliest level, players are more than welcome to try
their hand against other RvR combatants. The faction that controls a
particular area in the game is awarded bonus XP generation along with
the bragging rights that come with a captured RvR area.



And for those of you that haven’t tried RvR warfare in
Mythic’s previous title, href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/39"
target="_blank">Dark Age of Camelot, realm versus
realm combat is straight up fun. This is especially true when there are
more than 20 combatants on the battlefield at the same time. Like a
game of frenetic chess, realm versus realm combat was one of the most
dynamic mechanics ever to be created for an online game and still
carries that same designation years since its initial unveiling.



During my experience in the WAR beta test, I was lucky enough to have
the opportunity to test out some very high level RvR mechanics ( href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/41060" target="_blank">the
brief video of this can be seen here) as well as some low
level combat with a few different races and classes. Frankly every time
I entered the RvR arena, it was a thrilling experience. While it took
me a little while to figure out the mechanics and strategies that I
should incorporate with my particular class – you can see a
bit of my initial confusion in the RvR video – but once I
figured out the mechanics and how to lay down the law, it was lights
out for my opposition. My Witch Hunter was a ganking machine, and few
of those pathetic Squig Herders could stand up to a blast from my
muzzle loader.

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/36418"> src="/image/view/36418/preview" width="200">

Public
Quests make up a large part of the "new" pieces of WAR.

Surprisingly, the low level RvR encounters were equally exciting.
Despite having only a few abilities by level 6-7, I opted to try my
hand out in some open world RvR. Since I typically play tanks, my main
goal was to simply go after any casters I could lay my hands on, and
this strategy seemed to work with relative success. However,
it’s important to note that WARs RvR spread is broken into
tiers, and at level 1-10 you’ll be at Tier 1. At this level
you really can’t compete with anyone at a higher tier than
you, but if you’re up for a quick shellacking, you can
certainly try.



That Thanksgiving Day
Smell



So what in Warhammer Online is actually new to MMO gamers? Besides the
new setting, classes, and upgraded RvR experience, the most profound
element that’s been added to Warhammer Online is the Public
Quest system. While we’ve had a number of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/28283" target="_blank">previews
and features
about this system, there’s really no amount of journalistic
posturing that can really give an example of the
“feel” of this system. That said, I’ll
try to draw my comparisons to something that everyone – even
non-MMOG players – can understand.



Food.



Public Quests are indeed like food, but more specifically like a
several course meal that only arrives in pre-set portion sizes.
Let’s say there’s a restaurant down the street that
you’ve heard has the best tasting cheesecake you’ll
ever put into your mouth. However, the cheesecake only comes at the end
of this five course meal, which includes 15 baskets of French fries, 24
pickled ham hocks, 60 hamburgers, 84 plates of salad, and a monstrous
half rack of ribs. This restaurant is heralded for having the above
average food in all of these different courses, but apparently the meal
is only supposed to get better as the courses progress. However, the
servers at the restaurant will not give you the next course of the meal
unless you finish the previous course, meaning that you can’t
get that cheesecake unless you eat all that food!



Now you could order that entire meal yourself and attempt to gobble
down all of that food, but that would leave you sick, morbidly obese,
and probably dying of some sort of clogged artery. Instead, you decide
to invite anyone that you see to help you take care of the meal.
Friends, neighbors, and strangers on the street are all munching on the
food with you. But the restaurant knows better than to simply split
their delicious cheesecake amongst everyone that you’ve
invited inside. They’ve been watching everyone that
participates, and they’re going to give the biggest, nicest,
most wholesome piece of cheesecake to the individual that has done the
most work on this enormous meal.



You.



Really, this is how the Public Quest system in Warhammer Online works.
Like the five course meal that I described earlier, players must
complete all of the “courses” of the Public Quest
before they can get their final reward. Although it may sound like a
grind to get through each portion of the quest, the task becomes much
easier when you have ten of your friends (or random strangers) there to
help you. And the Public Quest rewards are nothing to sneeze at.
Everyone that contributes to the PQ has the chance of getting a piece
of loot from the whole scenario (along with anything that dropped off
of the mobs that you were fighting) but the individual that contributed
the most to the PQ has the best chance of getting the largest reward.

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/36416"> src="/image/view/36416/preview" width="200">

WAR
should be a very popular game at launch.

In the beta, I had an opportunity to jump into a Public Quest with
around 10 other 30ish level Elves that had been working in an area
close to the Elvish quest hub in that region. While we really
didn’t communicate a lot, the bunch of us all merged together
with our single goal in mind: Plow through this Public Quest as many
times as we can in order to get the loot waiting for us at the end of
the tunnel.



Remarkably, it was fun. I had been a doubter of the Public Quest system
for quite awhile, noting that it not only sounded
“grindy” but wouldn’t have any sort of
player participation to actually complete the giant tasks set before
the players. But that wasn’t the case at all. While each
section of the PQ did take a little while to complete, I was always
eager to see what the next set of monsters would be that would emerge
from the surrounding area to take us on. Each monster was bigger,
tougher, and nastier than the last, so by the end it felt like we were
taking on a major boss at the end of a dungeon. Once we had downed him,
I was energized when I found out that I had actually helped with enough
of the PQ to earn myself a reward! How I managed that, I’ll
never know, but all in all, it was a truly enjoyable experience.



Parting Thoughts



Even though the final product for Warhammer Online has yet to be
released, I can safely say that the game will find at least some
measure of success. Every time I jump into the game, I know that there
will be some element of the gameplay that I will enjoy, whether
it’s PvE, RvR, or the Public Quest system. Over the course of
the next few weeks, the Ten Ton Hammer staff will be exposing every
element of the game we can find, especially those bits that we know
players will be interested in (Public Quests, Realm versus Realm, and
Character Classes).



On top of that, we have a whole crew of reporters stationed in Leipzig,
Germany, checking out the Games Convention, and we know that
they’ll be coming back with a barrel full of answers. So stay
tuned folks, Ten Ton Hammer is primed to give you href="http://warhammer.tentonhammer.com/" target="_blank">the
best WAR coverage
on the ‘net.