Why WAR will never beat WOW...

...but has some really neat ideas

I recently got drawn back into the world of MMOs with the temptation of a free trial of WAR (Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning). I even liked it enough to buy the full game but I couldn't shake the feeling...it's just not WOW.

The player-base in general was hugely friendly and not at all like the many elitists you find in World of Warcraft and there were really good features that WOW could learn a lot from. For example the Public Quest system which allows players to "team up" without actually going to the effort of grouping and work towards an overall goal. And I really liked the Cultivation gathering profession where you grow plants in your pockets. The class-mechanics were also pretty interesting with Warriors (Black Orc) only able to use certain skills at certain stages of a combo and Healers (Goblin Shaman) building up healing power combo points when using damaging spells and vice versa.

But you might have noticed something from that last part. Yep, I couldn't stand playing as the good guys. My initial character was a Human Witch Hunter (Rogue with a far-too limited Invisibility) but after a while I just couldn't stand how depressing the setting was. I started a new Goblin Character and enjoyed the cheery greetings from all the Greenskin NPCs - "No shinies, no shinies at all Boss" - but soon the setting got me down again. I finally put my finger on it. Whereas every new zone in World of Warcraft is different and exciting with a unique look and feel this simply wasn't the case in WAR, every zone felt pretty much the same as the last. They are also hugely linear. While WOWs zones and cities feel organic, promote travel, exploration and player interaction of all levels WARs zones continually push you onwards, never wanting or needing to return to previous areas.

Another really annoying aspect was the way Mythic (WARs developers) we're obviously forced to release the game early, leaving no time to finish 4 out of 6 capital cities. Instead each faction (Humans, Dwarves & Elves - Chaos, Greenskins & Dark Elves) gets a single capital to share between them. One of the reasons I bought the game was to explore the rest of the Warhammer world not available in the Trial version but this simply wasn't possible. Instead I could explore the single (though admittedly large) capital city of my faction and nothing else. Mythic seemingly deciding that Games Workshop hadn't created anything else worthwhile to put in the world and filled it instead with trees, rocks and the occasional random group of useful NPCs (Trader, Skill Trainer, Profession Trainer). It completely destroys any feeling of a coherent, functioning world when you happen across a group of NPCs standing around a Windmill just waiting for the next adventurer to come stumbling through the bushes and sell the all the useless crap they've managed to gather from the local inhabitants.

Which brings me to my other problem with the game. While the Cultivating system seems perfectly charming and the recipeless crafting professions are an interesting concept it just doesn't sit right with me. For a start there are two, yes two, crafting professions allowing you to create Potions or Talismans. That's it! What about Armor, or Weapons? And while the four gathering professions sounds like more, when you analyse it there's really not. Butchering and Scavenging are just getting a few more bits of crap from either beasts or humanoids respectively, Salvaging is extracting magical essence from items (or Enchanting in WOW basically) and Cultivation is the only unique, interesting idea. But my main bugbear with the gathering skills is that their's just too much crap! Whereas with WOW if you're a leatherworker you can skin and get leather (light/medium/heavy) and occasionally hides or scales (depending on what you skin) with WAR because Crafting requires four seperate ingredients per item you find you fill up your (limited by level) bags very quickly.

Now, although I'm not crazy about PvP (Player vs Player) and prefer to stick to questing and PvE (Player vs Environment) I did like WARs answer to this conundrum. While in WOW you choose a server depending on your preference and must either put up with nasty types interrupting your questing on a PvP server or limiting your enemy player interaction to deathmatches on a PvE server WAR has come up with a clever, happy medium. PvP zones within maps allow PvE players to avoid any trouble while questing and then jump straight into the action should they feel like it. To be honest the PvP side of the game is lightyears ahead of WOW but unfortunately the number of players on the servers doesn't appear to be enough to sustain a meaningful battle in these large, open PvP areas. But there is also a perfectly decent deathmatching system at the touch of a button that drops you into an instanced zone and then back to the exact spot you were in when you joined, much better than having to travel to a capital city or the battleground itself in WOW. Again the server populations let this system down as it can sometimes take hours to find a game but then this was a problem with WOW when they first started their PvP Battlegrounds.

But in the end none of this matters to me. If I'm going to be spending a hours upon hours in a game world I only care about one thing - is it a nice place to be? The answer for WAR is, unfortunately, no! While WOW gives me a lovely warm feeling like I'm exploring a violent version of Disneyland, WAR is just barren, featureless and leaves me feeling cold. If the developer had integrated more of the tongue-in-cheek atmosphere and Monty Python-esque humour from the Pen & Paper and tabletop games I might have enjoyed the world more but Mythic seem to have focused more on the bleak aspect and taken the source material a little too seriously.

On a more positive note I can't help feel there's so much more to the Warhammer world that didn't make it into the game that Mythic could really improve the game world if given the support and enough time. With the original Warhammer Online being canned midway through development it's no wonder this one was rushed out ahead of schedule. Will it improve with age, very possibly - 2 more classes were added after launch - but it's certainly not a WOW beater just yet...even if it does have some really neat ideas.