Warhammer Online has a more realistic and gritty feel than some of its counterparts
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

The Green Skins' area has the muddied feel of a war camp, while the Elven area has that ethereal, tree-hugger feel to it. The environments are well thought out, and have themed music that manages to capture the underlying story well. Each of the questing hubs is pretty much fully featured with the trainers you need to progress. There is no need to make your way to a capital city to train or up-skill your profession. It's early days yet, however this decision may be one the designers will regret.In other MMOs, hanging around the capital city, chewing the fat with your mates, forming guilds, showing off gear and so forth has been fundamental in creating a game community. Dispensing with the need to congregate in one spot will make this community building so much harder. We're not sure if the lack of in-game chatter may be a product of this as well.

Early quests are pretty much what you would expect (go there, kill this and gather that) but what we particularly liked is how intuitive the quest tracking is. On the larger map, quest areas are surrounded in red so you have a fair idea of where you need to go to complete your quests, and the quest tracker on the right hand side of the UI gives you immediate access to what you need to do when you get there. There is a helpful sound when you have completed the quest as well.The UI will be familiar to a lot of MMO players, and this can be readily adjusted without too much effort. Bags can be viewed as icons or in list format, and the casting bars give you a good description of the ability and a cool down time once used.