Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC)

http://www.hifigeek.com/2008/12/14/some-inbound-secrets-of-halo-4/ wtz that

Lets just start it off with what 90% of you are gonna ask. How does this game compare to WoW. So lets break it down piece by piece. Firstly, the core fundamental differences in the game. WoW is built towards Raiding/Dungeon crawling and Warhammer is towards RVR/Raiding. So we will start there. Warhammer does raiding, but its focus is in raiding RVR aka PVP. Your raiding the other factions castles/objectives etc. In WoW your raiding an AI objective for your loot and items. Because your getting your best gear via RVR fighting of other real people. Its not as simple and that makes strategy different. With WoW you know what your gonna get as far as a boss mob. X+Y=Z. But in Warhammer just a few straglers in the keep can cause a mess of problems for a raiding warband. It can be more complicated and as stated your dealing with other humans who are generally intelligent. The draw backs to the set up in Warhammer is that, your keeps change hands randomly so you can't really gameplan a day to get on and go attack so and so. Ive been playing a month or so now and basically theres many a time where there just isnt a castle that isnt controlled. The plus though is that when there is a castle/keep open. You can just call out everyone in the zone/guild whatever and say warband forming, join us. The loot is all done totally random so the need to having a guild leader say, im better than you because ive raided this keep 20 more times in my life even though you were here on this raid just as much as me blah blah blah doesnt happen. Its all set up by the game and the game does a random dice roll based on who contributed the most overall to the encounter. So basically the more you healed/damaged the mob/s the higher your base number will be. Than to make it random for everyone there is a bonus number thrown in that means that someone who didnt do a whole lot still has a chance, just not as good a chance to get some nice loot. Thus far this system has been quite fair apart from the fact that the whole fight up to the boss that person could be missing and arrive just in time for the boss mob and get the best loot. In this aspect it kinda stinks, but only a little bit. Ive raided plenty enough in WoW where people were summoned in for 20 mins of fighting because they were a priority player yada yada who got loot so its really no different. Still though Warhammer needs in the future to develope more raid/dungeon content for players for when keeps are in controll or just for the player that can only get on for set times a night for a guild. They need to expand that and im sure they will because this is the only ONLY thing that Warhammer lacks WoW in as far as depth.

  Lets move onto your basic pvp maps scenerios etc. Basically its pretty similar to WoW as far as this is concerned. There are FAR more scenerios in Warhammer to play so you dont just grind it out in one WoW map getting honor to turn in for rewards over months. Warhammer has it set up in a scaling system that scales along with your level called Renown. Basically thats what gets you better gears and items. Each scenerio or Raid of a keep etc gets you renown. Each PVP kill you get also gets you renown. Did I mention all of those get you base experiance as well? Ya so if you kill others or do other maps etc, you get renown exp as well as base exp for your character.  Edge tp Warhammer there.

As far as content, there is a lot Warhammer held back to make things as balanced and smooth upon release as to keep customers happy. There is a lot that will be coming out in the future rest assured. Obviously Warcraft has had 5 years or whatnot of content and patching to make it as large as it is so I guess you could give the nod to Warcraft here but its not THAT much and to be honest theres a lot in Warhammer that Warcraft just doesnt have. None the less WoW has been doing this for a while and you can give them the nod I suppose.

Maybe the best addition to the game is Public Questing. Something that WoW will for sure take and add to their game in the near future. This is basically a quest that you just walk up to and your in it. There are 3 stages to the quest and in the end yields loot. Its all timed and renews upon completion or once the time has elapsed. So how it works would be you walk into a part of the zone and the screen says something to the effect of Public Quest blah blah kill so and so. You do that and stage 2 comes up, kill so and so or protect so and so. Stage 3 is usually kill a Hero Mob and get loot. Just like your keep raiding your loot system is the same. Another cool thing about this is the ability to click a tab and it will tell you how many groups are formed, what kind of group, (PVP, PVE, PQ) and how far away that group is. You dont have to beg for a group or anything and you can pick and choose as you like, not just have a system assign you to something random. I definately like this more than any other games systems for finding/joining a group/raid.

Guilds actually MEAN something more than just a place to say hi to friends. Guilds actually accumulate points that allow your guild to buy and do more things. having a guild also opens you up to certain areas of the world that only guilds are allowed to enter. Nothing vital about that, but just fun and useful stuff. This is more similar to conan than any game really. WoW doesn't do anything for guilds as of yet. You do pay taxes to your guild for everything which isnt a huge deal. just something worth noting.

You can't always be a male/female version of some class'. Basically meaning that a few class' are only female characters or male characters. This has to do with story line basically and might be something they change if people dislike it enough.

There are less class' than originally planned. They had to scrap some class' for the time being to keep balance in the game. Im sure they will get them back at some point. As of right now some stuff that people are amazed at is a Bright Wizards being over powered. Disciple of Khaine as well, once again 1 on each side keeping it balanced in a way. Also Squig hearder pets can keep agro better than just about any tank and the pet can also take damage equal to a tank. Matter of fact my pet on my squig has been a main tank vs many a hero keep boss and objective boss now which I love doing and having people tell me im an idiot as my pets out taunting the tanks and holding his own. Than the other people being amazed after all said and done. Once a squig pet is taunted he never loses his agro that I can see until he dies. You can't heal your squig in the game yourself but if your in a group with a healer and all DPS your fine cause the squig will take the beating no problem. Me and a shaman together actually took down a Hero Tier 3 mob just me and him. Pet tanking, me dps and Shaman healing. Took about 5-7 mins and the pet died 1 time but I was able to kite the mob just long enough to get him up again and finish it out. Anyways, All those things will, I feel, be nerfed at some point. For the time being though if your one of those class' live it up.

Seige Weapons and warfare. Obviously attacking a keep you would like the ability to have seige weapons to do so. These are fun and very imoportant to the raids of keeps etc. you can also have defensive ones as well as offensive. You just set them up in designated spots and go to town. They are interactive as well, not just set up and automated. You actually control them and shoot them etc. The ram for instance can have 4 people on it at once and as it reloads you have to click in a certain area for power and the closer you are to the area the more damage the hit does. The siege stuff is being implemented to WoW soon so hard to say how they will compare at the moment but right now the mechanics for Warhammers siege stuff is flawless. If anything I wish some of the weapons did a little more damage. I really think a huge javalin chucking mechanical weapon should be doing at least a quarter to double the max damage of any equal leveled player characters best shot. From whats ive seen its pretty close to even or a bit behind in damage. Thats really the only problem as far as the weapons damage vs players. The rams do on average about 20k damage per swing to a gate and the gate usually takes a good 10 mins with a ram and everyone attacking it.

Ok so I think thats definately enough to direct a person to decide if its worth playing. Basically my opinion is that the game is on par in fun with WoW right now and its a brand new game. If your looking for a game that you can jump into anything at any given moment or PVP based than Warhammer is the game you want. If you want something that is a little more focused on Boss mobs and Dungeon crawling or faction building for loot all day long. Than WoW is your game. WoW like I said is better in the Raid Boss mob time sensitive type game. Where Warhammer is definately im in the game and just wanna do stuff whenever cause at any moment you could be in a keep raid or a dungeon or a public quest or whatever. Give warhammer a year and they will have a better more solid system than WoW I believe especially if they add more dungeons and Raid Mob/zone type content. Even if they added just 2-3 places where a raid encounter that was non pvp could be forged, they would be the hands down better game.

Oh with that being said one other thing I forgot to mention. Warhammers crafting system is very basic in comparison to WoW. Personally I like WoW's system because it makes getting that rare item and crafting it yourself fun and rewarding. Warhammer doesnt have anything like that really. Warhammer has basic stuff that just adds to your characters gear/stats. There are rare items for crafting. But your crafting something like a gem for a piece of gear. Not the gear itself ya know? I definately would give the nod to WoW here as well. That being said, I dunno that this is an area that Warhammer is going to change because they dont want a big system of things to deal with and make. They just want to have basic little easy to access and make stuff available to add onto the stuff you already got basically. Id like to see something added to this area at some point but I get the vibe that its something that will not be tweaked much.

..its not pulling me away from WoW. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble. And while on the topic, does everyone have to bash WoW when new MMO's come out. Is it really necessary? Make an actual attempt to argue, compare and contrast, don't just bash. If you don't like WoW, don't play it! Simple. If you like MMOs, then Warhammer and WoW are your best bets hands down imo.

You a big pvp guy? Like world pvp, domination, town control? Pick Warhammer. Loads of fun.

Are you a guy who enjoys strategic teamwork? Big bosses? Long awaited kills? Pick WoW, raids are your bread and butter then. Now, if I ever do quit WoW, you'll see me in Warhammer since AoC failed miserably in my eyes. Regardless, great game!

To each his own,

-xWhackoJacko

A+

Warhammer = awesome game without all wow-retards.