The MMO's to challenge Warcraft

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

What’s the concept? Everyone knows Wahammer - the funny shops decorate British high streets with their painted characters, Blue Peter style landscapes and long haired sun-starved players frantically roling dice and doing battle.

The Warhammer RTS videogames that have been released in recent years have done well too, receiving critical acclaim. And so it makes perfect sense for the series that helped inspire World of Warcraft, to make the transition into the MMORPG domain.

The game will revolve around realm versus realm warfare, with there being two sides to choose from. Upon starting the game there will be 6 races: Greenskins (Orcs and the like), Dark Elves and Chaos on the one side, and on the other Dwarves, High Elves and Empire Humans. It's a traditional good versus evil affair.

Interesting features?Fans of the series have been dreaming about a conversion of their table top game into an MMORPG. This game looks like it will certainly go some way towards achieving that, with emphasis on the character customisation options. Developers Mythic want players to customise the overall look and feel of their characters, rather than the size of their nostrils. A rather charming quote from Paul Barnett sums up their philosophy:


“What matters is the size of your choppa, not the shade of your eyebrows.”

Most interestingly will be Mythic's use of RvR (realm versus realm) within the game. The technique, which was used within their previous MMORPG Dark Ages of Camelot, has been refined somewhat in an attempt to keep gameplay balanced. The PvP will remain fundamentally the same as DAoC, an easy to learn system that was extremely popular. What certainly looks interesting is the use of morale in the game, the bonus you get from running away and hiding for instance will have a very minor impact on your character when compared to those who are in the midst of the battle.

When is it coming out? Don't expect this game for at least another year and most likely this game will reach your PC's hard drive at the end of 2007.

Will it be better than WoW? Essentially, Warhammer and World of Warcraft will be very similar games, especially to the casual observer, and so to start with Warhammer Online may struggle. The developers will need to find a way of selling the game to an audience already taken up with WoW which will be no easy task.

Warhammer does have a few things in its favour though; for one, the game should be far grittier than Warcraft, aimed at a more adult audience. The focus on the game will be more towards fighting and PvP which may attract a more hardcore audience. However, the fact that the franchise already enjoys massive popularity may actually work against the game, people who are not involved in the series feeling intimidated by the huge back story and complicated character classes. If any game is going to challenge Warcraft though, this is it - there is a mass of background literature going back a couple of decades for the series to draw inspiration from.

Check out the official Warhammer Online website here.