Platform: PC
Developer: Mythic Entertainment
Publisher: EA Games

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a decent sized MMORPG with a lot of possibilities for fans in all categories. Whether it’s grinding solo quests, dungeon camping with friends, taking on opposing keeps in raids across four tiers, or just looking for some good old fashioned pvp, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has something to offer.

Like many MMORPGs of its ilk, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is comprised of two factions. The Realm of Order and The Realm of Destruction each have three distinct races to choose from, whether it be mighty Dwarves on the Order side or feminine Dark Elves on the Destruction side, the choice is yours. Other races include Empire (human) and High Elf on the side of Order, leaving Greenskins (orcs and goblins) and Chaos (human) on the Destruction side.

Once you’ve chosen your race, you’ll have the option to select a career type. The standard types of careers are present here ranging from tank, melee DPS, ranged DPS, or the healer type. Like any other MMORPG, each career has a wide array of skills that allow for customization of different play styles for each, with mastery skill trees to further enhance a different style of play. These mastery skill trees will differ for each individual career type respectively. You can either stick to one mastery, or you have the option to mix it up and pick and choose between the three trees. The amount of points to put in however is limited so some thought and revision will be necessary in specializing your own build.

The world of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has three distinct campaigns of war, all active at the same time. Your selection of a race will place your starting point in the world on one of the three campaigns. Each campaign has its own wide area of exploration which is broken down into four tiers. You are not limited to participating in the campaign in which you start in, however. For example if you start as a Dwarf and currently play in the campaign against the Greenskins, you have the option to travel to other campaign areas as well. This gives your character more of a choice when debating where to do personal quests and raids. Certain quests do, however, require that you travel to different areas in different campaigns which isn’t all that bad.

Getting out and exploring in the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning world isn’t without its advantages. Players will receive experience points just the same and will be able to obtain items and equipment unique to the quests available in those campaigns.

Player vs. player or realm vs. realm content on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is above par with some room for improvement. It may seem a bit slow when you first start however it does pick up when you have some experience on the books. Each tier has a set number of instanced realm vs. realm battles called scenarios that players can participate in. These battles sometimes have objectives such as ‘capture the flag’ or ‘first to 500 points’ to keep it more than just mindless killing on both factions. As with area tiers, scenarios have a level range which limits and balances the battle. This feature eliminates higher level people from “noob bashing” or “noob farming,” which can be a pain when having to deal with a player thats 20 levels higher than you.

Area tiers 2 – 4 offer keeps and battlefield objectives, often called skirmishes, which give players another way for realm vs. realm combat. Keeps can be found in open realm vs. realm areas on the corresponding tiers. Players have the option to defend keeps they already own, or raid an the keep of an opposing faction. Players that reach tier 4 can participate in city raids. City raids, in a nut shell, are when your faction goes to claim total dominance in the corresponding campaign, by taking over the major city belonging to the other faction. Looting and plundering someone else’s city, what more can you ask for?

Public quests are pretty cool. These are essentially quests that people can all participate in and contribute to even if they aren’t grouped together. Once you walk into the boundaries of one of these areas, you’ll be told what needs to be done to clear the current objective. The progress towards clearing this objective will take into account what everyone else is doing as well. These public quests are easy to get into, they all have phases that you wouldn’t be able to complete alone, yet you don’t need to wait to join a group just to jump in and start playing.

Speaking of groups, one of the main features that sets Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning apart from the competition is open groups. Open groups allow you to see all the groups in your area, see what they’re doing, see how far they are from you and join them. Regardless of if they’re doing PvE, public quests, RvR or raiding, you’ll be able to see where the action is and jump in with the click of a button.

With the first several weeks of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning up and active, it continues to hold a decent amount of audience attraction and enjoyment. While hardcore World of Warcraft players may or may not find enough different here to warrant abandoning all the years of work they’ve done there, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is definitely worth a look.