Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
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ESRB:
Blood,Suggestive Themes,Use of Alcohol,Use of Tobacco,Violence
Publisher: Electronic Arts Genre(s): MMORPG Home Page: http://www.warhammeronline.com/
The Annoying BitsAs is customary at YouGamers, we're going to dissect everything - and considering how good Warhammer Online feels overall, there is a surprisingly long laundry list of things to talk about. Combat and Animation ProblemsWhat already bugged me in the preview is still the most annoying technical bit of Warhammer Online. The combat and character animation is, for the lack of a better word, "sticky". Big part of this is the horrible pathing of monsters. When you cast your first spell, they often stay in place for a moment, then suddenly teleport next to you, or skate around obstacles unconvincingly. Spell and ability animations also are often delayed, do not sync with the cast time or fail react to any pushback due to damage. It's hard to tell from the animation when a spell or an ability actually fires off - sometimes you get no animation, sometimes you get multiple bolts flying off. You can also encounter cases where a spell fires off, yet you are later told that your target was not attackable (no line of sight, out of range, not flagged for RvR combat). Only reliable indicator is the combat log, or the related floating combat numbers. Part of the issue is the poorly implemented animation system. In That Other Game, all non-instant spells and abilities have a three-part animation that blends seamlessly - so when you start casting, short initial bit plays out, then a middle-part "weaving" animation is replayed over and over again until the spell is actually cast with the final part that fires off any spell effect. Any interrupts or delays to casting trigger a reaction animation that seamlessly delays the weaving part with a reaction. If you end up being interrupted or stunned it breaks you out of the cast. None of this "amazing technology" from 2004 is present in Warhammer Online, and spellcasts are simple single-part animations that do not appear react to the changing situation during cast - they just get delayed or overwritten by other animations. All this leads to visual problems that make the combat just look odd and unresponsive. It's also an issue that is not easily fixable. Realm Population Balance Open RvR can be fun - at least if you are on the winning side. Another major issue is realm population and the general hostility towards soloing. Open field RvR is fun only if both sides are equally matched. Any imbalance, even just a perceived imbalance, can cause one of the sides to go home rather than act as punching bags for the winning side. Right now Destruction outnumbers Order on just about every server, sometimes more than 2 to 1. Individual server caps also appear fairly low and with the population spread to three racial pairings, It's already hard to find players for the public quests, and they appear to become harder and harder to do with a small team as you level up. While you could complete a PQ with 2-3 players in Tier 1 (level 1-10), at Tier 3 (20-30) there are PQs where you have absolutely no chance without at least 6-8 players. Population issues also dry up Scenarios - if there are not enough people in the queue, a scenario may never start. Due to the experience curve, lack of people in your level-specific area may effectively force you to just grind monsters mindlessly as no other avenue to gain experience is available. So far Mythic has actively done nothing to balance the realms. The only visible feature is when you first log in and the game suggests you a server and a side that needs help. It is early days, and it's impossible to say how players themselves handle the situation, but having played DAOC years ago as Midgard (the universal underdog punching bag realm of that game), I have my doubts. Chat, Social AspectsI'm slightly puzzled by it, but the feel of a community is also missing. Nobody talks. I've tried to figure out exactly why this is happening, and my hypothesis is that it's a combination of many small things that together result in a very quiet MMO. Main culprit is the default chat window. While the chat is fairly flexible, by default everything is piled to a single window, and any messages to public channels or group chat are insta-buried by endless spam related to combat, loot and NPC chatter. The window even auto-fades, so even if someone might say something, if you don't instantly notice it, it fades away. Yes, it's all configurable and you can fix things by splitting things up to multiple tabs and disabling the fade, but by default, WAR chat interface is anti-social - and it shows. PvE quest helper, showing everything on a map with the red blob is also a problem - you have no need to ask for help, as the game points you to the right direction every time. WAR is also very fast-paced. There is zero downtime, very little camping for spawns and no need to ask around for groups - public groups may sound like a great idea, but as you can just join to a group without saying anything, there is little incentive to say anything while in the group either, and little incentive to be loyal to the group. Finally, the optimal leveling style - do PvE while constantly queuing Scenarios for PvP experience - constantly breaks up groups. Sure, you can set the local scenario queue "as group", but almost always you have people who have already queued to scenarios in other areas, and when the scenario opens up, they often leave the group without saying anything - and why wouldn't they? There's always bound to be another public group somewhere nearby to tag with once the scenario is over. I'm sure communities form over time even in WAR, but the game is riddled with small design decisions that actively work against socializing in the game.
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