Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Review
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This is genuinely not a game for crafters; the crafting aspects are heavily diluted when compared to any other game on the market. Some are certainly useful the potions made through the Apothecary type are helpful enough but they're not as amazing as you would find in other games. Another point is the lack of cohesion in the world, which is slightly odd, considering the wealth of background detail available for the world, both in the game and outside of it, through rulebooks for the tabletop games. While WoW takes you across the entirety of Azeroth and beyond, WAR is focused on smaller areas, and it feels that way. There's still plenty to see and do, but the lack of variety means that things can get a bit onerous, depending on where you spend your time.
Lastly is one slightly worrying point, and this is the population of the servers. Some are heavily populated, with queues to enter, but others are nearly desolate. It's particularly noticeable in the early game, where few people are around to partake in the Public Quests, which tend to require groups, but the variety of classes involved, as well as the recent addition of two new classes, do mean that it's alleviated somewhat, and server merges are also assisting.
Despite all of this, it's perhaps telling that most of the negative points have been shunted into the last few paragraphs. As major as some sound, the superb RvR makes up for it. It's difficult to recommend Warhammer Online to anyone who isn't into player vs. player, as that's the real focus of the game, but for those who do, it's definitely an interesting take. The PvP is more accomplished than in any other standard MMO I've seen and keeps pulling me back into the game again and again. WAR is a genuine triumph and one of the best MMOs on the market at the moment, and although it's limited by the RvR focus, small world scale, and a little emptiness brought about by the weak crafting, it regularly brings about tight and thrilling engagements and reminds you, with its streamlining and different focus, of the improvements that can still be made to MMOs and the niches still available.
