Warhammer Online breaks from the old mould and sets itself
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

Simply questing on your own wouldn’t make for much of a multiplayer game, now would it .Firstly, WAR features public quests. PQs are special quest-like scenarios in which players can participate without having to get a quest, do a pre-requisite, or even join a party. All players that participate get a chance to roll on the loot at the end, with the greater participants getting a bonus to their roll. You even get a bonus if you don’t get any loot, for the next time you do that PQ.

PQs usually have a number of stages: the first stage, which has no time limit, usually involves killing a large number of fairly simple foes. This lets players gather together in the public quest without having to sit around and spam chat asking for a party. You just go and start killing things, and as more people get there the killing goes faster and soon you’ll be done with stage one. The following stages are usually more difficult and require cooperation between the players, and they have a time limit. If players cannot work together within the time limit, the public quest resets and goes back to stage one, for players to gather together again.

We found the public quests to be an absolutely wonderful mechanic.People often wonder by one, see some players working on it, and join in. We don’t have to make a party, we don’t even have to talk to one another, but the healers heal the people taking damage, the tanks tank the monsters, and everyone just knows how to work together. Usually. It’s not that hard, really, with the archetypes directing the way characters are played.