Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Review
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In Warhammer Online this sense that "war is everywhere" comes through in myriad ways. The graphics do a great job bringing the world of Warhammer to life in ways both gross and subtle. The game's opening zones, for example, are filled with atmospheric details that throw you into the Warhammer mindset immediately. The Empire opening area takes place during a full-fledged Chaos assault on a small town filled with explosions and cannon fire. As the player works his or her way through the world, there's always something beyond just NPC mobs to indicate the war, whether it be as big as a burning windmill or the old bone fragments that litter the ground.
The frenzied and chaotic atmosphere is enhanced by some exceptional landscape design. The game's zones are a riot of broken terrain, unscalable ridges and dangerous drops. While the actual land area is fairly small as MMOs go, every inch of it is stuffed with mobs, towns, public quests, RvR zones, points of interest and visual obstructions that block line-of-sight. This makes travelling anyplace without getting attacked by mobs or other players very difficult and pulls players in a dozen different directions at once because there's always something interesting to do or somewhere interesting to explore. It also ensures that when players do fight, it's always on a landscape that adds to the excitement of the battle.
