Warhammer online, a new major actor in the MMORPG's history?

Several massive online role playing games, have in my point of view, hit the top of the video games' history for ten years :

The 4th Coming, one of the first ever MMORPG in isometric 3D, developped by Vircom in 1999, it has opened the path to other MMOs at a time where there was not a lot of fast Internet connections in France. People like to think about it as the precursor of the persistant gaming worlds (server's life never stopped at logoff)... Remember what it looked like at the beginning...

What it brought to the MMORPG World : being one of the first MMORPG to be developped into a persistant world.

EverQuest : an Heroic fantasy MMORPG in real 3D this time, brought by Sony Online Entertainment and which allowed players to incarnate several races beside T4C (only humans). Arrived in the business in March 1999, it has seduced a lot of folks because of its beautiful 3D graphics at this era and its nice PvE raids (lots of drakes).

What it brought to the MMORPG World : massive PvE content and awesome realistic 3D graphics.

Dark Age of Camelot : a MMORPG created by the everlasting Mythic Entertainment and released in october 2001 : it allowed thousands of players around the world to kick asses in RvR combats (Realm vs Realm) in a great world melting Arthur's legends, celtic and nordic mythologies. It has successfully marked imho, a large online player generation by its concepts : fights between 3 realms, implying the relic attacks, the keep fightings and the combats in RvR dungeons (e.g. Darkness Falls)...

What it brought to the MMORPG World : a huge PvP/RvR content for masses. It is still an unforgetable game which has provided lots of sensations and adrenaline.

World of Warcraft (WoW) : this MMORPG from Blizzard Entertainment has not to be introduced anymore... Released in November 2004, it has waved all over the world : its success remains on the easy and fast gameplay and its huge PvE content (and less with a little PvP content)...

What it brought to the MMORPG World : it has democratized the MMORPG world to the public with its nice dungeons.

Are there any other rooms for new challengers ? Warhammer Online seems to have a lot of claims for getting a room between those legendary games...

EA Mythic throws its jokers :

• RvR content ? Please have a read to my article (in French) « La campagne RvR, mode d'emploi ». To resume, massive RvR / PvP events regroup the scenarios (instances) and the open world objectives (battlefields with obelisks, Keeps, Capital Cities),
• Public Quests ? Theses are places into open world, implying some objectives to fulfill and non organized player raids in PvE and RvR environments. They are present from rank 1 to rank 40 everywhere in the realms and they allow people to earn guild/character experiences (instead of bashing mobs without aims), to win gears and to interact with other players (they call that the socialization).
• Tome of Knowledge ? It keeps tracks of all the players' actions. This is a genuine encyclopedia which unlocks items everytime you are advancing in levels in the Warhammer world.

Are there any other items on which Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning could remain in order to climb onto the MMO's reknown?

• A rich IP which lives for 25 years,
• A nice customization of your character (at the creation screen ; the dyes ; the class gears ; the trophies ; the guild banners ; the guild heraldry...),
• 24 available classes (however with miroring effect, 12 per factions),
• A simple User Interface and a gameplay which would allow people to masterize the game very easily,
• The extreme Living Guilds (simplified management with a lot of tools, customization and getting ranks like players, unlocking of guilde bonuses, banners etc).
• A simple Crafting system, which doesn't force for massive « grinds »,
• Graphics which don't require heavy PC machine,
• Etc...

Before :

• Brand new Effect : the MMORPGs are taking off for ten years.
• PvE Effect : massive PvE content and awesome 3D graphics.
• RvR / PvP Effect : a huge PvP/RvR content for masses.
• Democratization Effect for MMOs : Wow!

After : Take your shaker and mix everything very hard...

• Kiss-cool Effect : take the best of before and mix it with new from after.

Resultat : you get a new MMO which is ambitious.

This is really seducing on the paper. Nonetheless, the release date is far from now and there is a lot of things to do to have it clean (see the lastest Massively.com articles). Personnaly, I am still optimistic for its future because it has the means of doing it.

EA Mythic has a great card to play and its motherhouse should do the necessary to get a winning hit. Let's hope that our waiting is worth the pain.

06/18/2008 - Article written by Romeo Knight, WAR-JOL staff.