Subject To Change

Or to give it its full name “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning”, the new pretender to WoW’s MMO crown.And I’ve been playing for a week or two now in open beta and pre-order early access.So, how does it rate, compared to the current crop of MMOs out there? Well, it’s a lot like WoW in certain ways. As soon as I loaded it the UI looked very familiar from my time playing Blizzard’s world conquering offering. The skill bars look the same, the menus are similar, in fact the resemblance is spooky. But once you get into the game itself the resemblance pales slightly (in some aspects, at least.) Sure, you could grind through “Kill x rats” quests if you wanted to, and doubtless doing so would give you a pretty similar experience to most PvE-centric MMOs. But you can grind your way to Rank 40 (the highest level in WAR) purely through PvP. In theory you can get to R40 without doing much more in PvE than running to the first warcamp and entering scenarios and Realm vs Realm combat. You gain experience and Renown Rank (another type of experience used to unlock extra talents and weapons only available through PvP) just by playing PvP.And from the little I’ve seen, the PvP is good. Not quite as tactical on the face of it as Guild Wars, but more tactical than WoW. Fast paced, very well balanced for a launch title. Most classes have counters, none seem obviously overpowered so far (though that will doubt come with time and people learning to exploit mechanics…)All in all, WAR looks good, only time will tell if it’s going to be another WoW or an Age of Conan/Tabula Rasa/Hellgate London (the list goes on…)

…in the browser wars.

Chrome is available  here if you fancy trying it out.