Warhammer Online is a well-made, deeply entertaining game
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

Warhammer Online is a well-made, deeply entertaining game that may provide an unparalleled experience for years to come – for a small subset of hardcore player-versus-player gamers in good guilds on balanced servers. For most everyone else, Warhammer will be a reasonably fun time for a month or two before it’s time to move on. The game does one thing better than anyone else: open, non-instanced, public realm-versus-realm combat.

When Warhammer works as it’s intended, though, it’s amazing. Keep sieges and battles for control of objectives in non-instanced combat is an absolute riot when the factions are evenly represented. Thematically, Warhammer’s dark aesthetic will appeal to people turned off by World of Warcraft’s cartoony style. Mechanically, the game works nearly identically to WoW, with the exceptions that tanks have an extremely fun role in PvP and the player-versus-environment content is boring.

Standard MMO review caveats apply here ，and Mythic is aware of the problems Warhammer is encountering. It is clearly designed with endgame play as the primary focus — that’s where you’ll find the best public RvR content, like city sieges — so hopefully these issues will dissolve as the game matures. Unfortunately, with slow leveling between the teens and a level cap of 40, a lot of players will burn out long before the endgame. The foundation is very strong, though, so hopefully Warhammer Online can someday reach its potential for everyone, rather than the lucky few.