Rewards, Public Quests and Casters

An important part of any MMO's early-game is a system that frequently rewards the players, and Warhammer handles this very well. There are three distinct progress bars on the screen at all times: one for "Experience" that is gained for kills and completing quests, one for "Renown" that comes from engaging in PvP battles and one for "Influence" that you get for taking part in Public Quests (PQs). The hook is that since the three bars are always visible, you're close to getting a reward from at least one of them at any given time. You may find yourself saying, "Just one more PQ and I'll log out," only to soon follow it with "Just one more quest to rank up and I'll log out." Before you know it, it's morning and time to head to work. No doubt the progression slows down later in the game but by then Warhammer will have you or it won't.

As I mentioned earlier, Warhammer Online has "Public Quests" in addition to the regular quests offered by NPCs. Public Quests are timed, scripted, multi-stage encounters that are designed to be tackled by groups, but the groups don't have to be formal parties. Just by being in the area of a Public Quest, players will get the current objectives and can jump in or out at anytime. At the completion of a Public Quest, every participating player is ranked by his or her contribution to the quest goals. That rank acts as a modifier -- the higher the rank the higher the bonus -- to a random number roll to see who wins a reward.

The reward is a bag of loot of varying quality that contains several items from which to choose: gear, crafting materials or money. The gear is always appropriate to the career so there's no chance of getting something useless. The Public Quests are a great addition to the standard quest grind and some of the scripted events -- a towering ogre kicking trees down as it wades into the battle or blasting the door to a Dwarven keep open with a giant explosive ball -- are great. When a PQ completes there's a brief two minute break before the whole scene resets and starts all over again. Completing PQ objectives rewards the player with Influence points that accrue over Chapters. Each chapter has three levels that, once attained, grant the player the chance to buy a piece of equipment. Warhammer continuously rewards players to keep them playing.

WAR's Open Party system is what makes the PQs work so well. Any player can flag him or herself as an Open Party allowing other players to join the party uninvited. Open Parties are listed in a browser that shows where each party is and approximately how far away it is, meaning if you wander into a PQ that's underway you can quickly see if there's an Open Party working on it and jump right in without any interaction with the other players. This works the same way in the RvR areas where Open Parties quickly become Warbands (raids).

The Armies of Destruction include the Greenskins, Followers of Chaos and the Dark Elves (not pictured).

Downtime is an MMO pet peeve of mine. It doesn't matter if it's 30 seconds or two minutes, I don't want to be forced to sit and wait for my character to recover from anything. This is what usually keeps me away from casters in these games. Since Warhammer Online uses Action Points instead of Mana or Energy, there is no downtime between battles. I've played two different casters so far and I've never been forced to wait even for a second between fights. Once you're out of combat, the Action Points regenerate almost instantly meaning even if you run completely dry in a fight you'll probably be back to full before you can walk within range of something else to attack. I expect this to change as my characters rank up and the number of Action Points increase, but right now it's a refreshing change to fight, rest, fight, fight, rest, fight, rest, fight, rest.

The other important note about casters, specifically the healing careers, is that they can target both an enemy and an ally at the same time. There's no need to change targets in order to cast a healing spell; you can just click an ailing, friendly player and cast without losing your original combat target. It makes healing in the thick of PvP combat much easier and, one would hope, will encourage healers to do just that rather than constantly fending for themselves.

The last topics I'll mention before wrapping up are the server and client stability. Obviously, I can only write from my own personal experience, but so far the game has never crashed and I've never experienced any lag. I did encounter one mild hiccup just a few days ago when I was told my server was full. I was put into a queue to log-in but the wait time was no longer than six minutes. Regardless, full servers could be a sign of trouble down the road if the subscriber numbers take off.

Mythic is one week into a great launch. Warhammer Online's early game is fun and engaging with frequent rewards; the client is stable and the servers aren't overwhelmed... yet. Some gamers may initially be turned off by WAR's visuals -- I found them to be somewhat underwhelming at first -- but I would urge them to keep playing for a few days before judging too harshly. Graphics enthusiasts, however, may never be satisfied by the game's look.

We'll keep playing Warhammer Online as much as possible over the next three months so look for our full review around Christmas time or the first of the year.

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