Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Game Info

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Mythic Entertainment

Genre(s): Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

Players: Thousands

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Release Date: September 16, 2008

Summary

It is a desperate time for the Emperor. A terrible Chaos Plague defiles his lands, ravaging the populace and weakening his armies. Meanwhile, the Dwarf holds in the nearby World's Edge Mountains have come under siege by a massive greenskin horde. Honor-bound by an ancient oath, the ruler of the greatest nation of men in the Old World has dispatched several regiments to assist the embattled Dwarfs, further depleting the Empire's already thin defenses. In this dark hour, a new threat appears. Under a sky darkened by a crimson eclipse, a great warhost erupts from the wastelands of the north. Bearing the banner of Tzeentch, Changer of the Ways, the army of Chaos marches south for the borders of the Empire, crushing everything in its path. With the Dwarfs fighting desperately to slow the ferocious greenskin "Waaagh!", the Emperor realizes that his only hope of defeating the encroaching legions of Chaos lies with the High Elves of Ulthuan. Upon receiving the Emperor's dire plea for help, Finubar, Phoenix King of the High Elves, sets sail at the head of a mighty fleet of warships laden with battalions of High Elf warriors. [Mythic Entertainment]

Also On Metacritic

GAMES: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault

Cheat Codes & Hints: Cheat Code Central

Also On The Web: Official Website

What The Critics Said

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What Our Users Said

Vote Now! The average user rating for this game is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 295 User Votes

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John F. gave it an8:
My review of Warhammer Online is based on experiences from 2 open RvR servers, Dark Crag and Pragg. On Dark Crag, I played a White Lion, a High Elf character that I leveled to rank 28. This character has a pet that accompanies the White Lion throughout his or her travels and is called a War Lion. The War Lion grows as you level up your White Lion and by rank 28, it is quite large and fearsome. However, by rank 40 your War Lion will be a formidable beast and will be equivalent in size to a 550 pound male, African Lion standing next to a person. Of course, a War Lion is your pet and it will never harm you. You can even name your pet with a name of your choosing. Otherwise, the default name will be displayed, “War Lion,” above its head. The White Lion also has a neat ability called Fetch. Prior to patch 1.2, Fetch seemed to pull enemies as far away as 150 feet. I never attained this ability, but experienced its power with my Squig Herder. What happens is that the White Lion orders the War Lion to fetch an enemy by targeting the player. The War Lion responds by charging its enemy, closing in on them, then punting them to the White Lion. The White Lion then inflicts massive melee damage and the victim usually dies, especially when fetched into a crowd of Order of players. This ability is attained at rank 40. On Pragg, I played a Squig Herder, a Greenskin character that I leveled to rank 40 and I almost achieved renown of forty-four. First, the Squig Herder is a funny character. When jumping with its wolf, which is its mount, the Squig Herder will cover its eyes. I found that to be hilarious. In my opinion, though, the Squig Herder may be the most punishing character in the game. It has the ability to command 4 pets, each of which takes 2 seconds to build. The 5th pet, or Squig Armor, transforms the little Squig Herder into a 2-legged beast increasing toughness, strength, and wounds by as much as 90, I believe, by rank 40. Additionally, with the release of patch 1.2, the build-time for Squig Armor is instant and cool down time is now 10 seconds. Previous to patch 1.2, the cool down was either like 30 seconds or 60 seconds. Now the Squig Herder can summon his armor more rapidly and frequently and as such, is more a formidable character in close combat. Interestingly, the Squig Herder is mainly a Ranged DPS class. The Spiked Squig and Gas Squig are ranged squigs to assist the Herder with long-range damage. The Gas Squig doubles the total armor of the Squig Herder as long as the Gas Squig remains alive. The Spiked Squig improves your critical hit percentage and is more damaging than the Gas Squig, but can target only single enemies whereas the Gas Squig multiple enemies at one time. How could the Squig Herder be so dangerous a character when it only has low armor? The secret to this is the Gas Squig which multiplies your total armor by two. Then there is this tactic that you will receive, I believe by rank 35, called “I Got Lots” which reduces the cool down times of Squigs from 30 seconds to 0 seconds. Now, you can summon Gas Squigs one after another, even when one dies, you can summon another, making you vulnerable only for the 2 seconds it takes to build a Gas Squig. I just described two characters in WAR: one of which I leveled to rank 28, the other, to rank 40 to give readers an idea of a few characters in the game. Furthermore, I created a rank 20 Black Orc as well, which is a Tank. The Black Orc is a punishing character in the game and can take a massive amount of damage. Still, why did I stop playing this game? I stopped playing WAR for the following reasons: I beat the game. Really though, there is no ending to WAR. It is an endless battle between Order and Destruction on which side controls zones. In Tier 4, once a certain number of zones are captured, they become locked. As one side pushes forward, the other is forced to defend their fortress. If that is captured, then the war is moves to another storyline wherein the zones are sought to be captured, such as the Greenskin vs. Dwarves storyline. If two fortresses are captured, the winning side gets to invade the enemy’s city, for Destruction they would invade Altdorf and for Order they would invade the Inevitable City. The invaders will try to reach the point to kill the city’s lord but I never saw this happen, both on the offense and defense side when fighting for Destruction. There really is no beneficial PvE after ranks 28-30 because if you have full Devastator gear by rank 30, after that rank, all PQ or public quest gear is substandard to what you earned in PvP environments in Tier 3. By rank 30, you will be more focused on earning influence in Tier 4 to unlock Tier 4 gear than focusing on public quests or Chapters 14-22 that do not offer as good gear than Tier 4 RvR. Another complaint would be the Blue Screen of Death, an unfortunate time for a gamer wherein his or her computer screen turns black, remains that way, and then a blue screen appears with a message about recently installed software being the problem. The computer resets itself, restarts, and then starts as normal. However, during this time, you have been kicked from the game, so you have to reload the game all over. This is catastrophic if you were about to pick up loot from a keep raid or were part of a warband on their way to attack a keep. From what I have read in regional chat, this has happened to a lot of gamers of WAR. Prior to patch 1.2, there were many bugs in the game. I once used the flight master to get from point A to point B, but never got to point B because I got stuck in the cut scene. I have gotten stuck in places even when a keep raid was going on, both when offending and defending a keep. Sometimes there were character issues like I noticed my squigs not behaving normally, or that build times felt like they were taking longer than 2 seconds. I even noticed that my squigs were dying upon my death, contrary to what I read on Warhammeronline.com that Squigs continue to live or fight after their master’s death. At certain points in the game, I could have sworn that I saw Engineer’s turrets live on even after the Engineer died. After patch 1.2, there were so many complaints about the game. So I reach end-game, was loving it, then a flood of rants about their characters getting nerfed found their way into regional chat. Supposedly, according to forums as well, people were leaving the game. For example, complaints about the Witch Elf getting nerfed and the Witch Hunter getting buffed is a famous rant that I read often. Another would be the Black Orc on it losing some points with its self-heal ability. Another would be the limitation on the White Lion’s Fetch, that I read from the forums, which is now only able to fetch an enemy from 65 feet away from the White Lion. Prior to 1.2, it felt more like 150 feet and there were so many Destro players complaining about it, especially from Tier 3 when lower levels encountered a rank 40 White Lion for the first time. Ever read spam? You will be asked to join guilds from time to time, hopefully a good one, that can either help you on your journey or flood your chat window with the most ridiculous, immature conversations in gaming. Even in regional chat, expect people with problems to vent often. The F bomb will be dropped, Mythic’s name will be blamed, a racial slant will be used, a player will insult another player, the list of annoyances goes on but I will end here. The amount of time to invest in a character of WAR may be small in comparision to other popular MMOs on the market. However, do not be fooled by claims that anyone can get to rank 40 in WAR. The amount of game time to get my Squig Herder to Rank 40 / 44 was close to 20 days or 480 hours. Those 480 hours include working on apothecary skill as well, which I never took that seriously as others. I created my squig herder after my rank 28 White Lion which had like another X amount of hours, additionally, my rank 20 Black Orc had another X amount of hours. So my total game time is unknown to me at the moment, since I just sold my account but I do remember well my Squig Herder’s total playing time. Should you invest in something if it provides little or no return on your investment? Today, I only made $71 with my account, which is less in value compared to the 6-month subscription and the amount of gold that I bought with real money (at the time, unknowingly, about Mythic’s harsh, gold policy which is more geared toward sellers). Sadly, $71 is small in value compared to the time I invested to level up my main character and others. Regardless, I will still take the money rather than delete my character(s). Do not invest in this game if you are trying to create characters and then sell them, which I believe is legal with Mythic / EA, for there is a very small return on your investment. Do not invest time in this game to farm gold and then sell to the public for real cash. You will be permanently banned per Mythic / EA policy. Instead, invest time in this game for the entertainment factor, which the game does provide well. You will get fun out of this game, but not forever. And if you choose to pass this game up, you will save yourself a lot of time. Overall, Warhammer Online is an exciting MMO and is presently the most intense PvP game on the market. I mean massive PvP. The perspective is somewhat distant or third-person, but the battles feel close and personal. You will be tested as a gamer and as a moral person. On a single server, you can either choose to fight for Order or you can choose to fight for Destruction, the choice is yours. Or you can play on 2 separate servers, one for Order, the other, Destruction. Remember that both sides of the fight are equally entertaining. Best of luck to you and your in-game choices!

Some One gave it a3:
I have tried this game on two occasions for a 30 day subscription each time. The first time was roughly 15 days after it's release, and I had beta tested it a bit before it went live. My first 30 days were fun at first. A few of the races are quite fun the first time around especially the greenskins. However some of the other races quests are setup in probably the most annoying way possible, requiring you to run to the same general location time after time and giving you items in your inventory you must click to continue but only in certain spots under certain conditions, etc. As I stated my first week or so was fairly enjoyable. Tier 1 (levels 1 to 11) is not too bad in scenarios. Tier 2 builds on Tier 1 but not favorably towards the up end of T2 because of knockbacks beginning to appear and everyone spamming them. I couldn't play much into Tier 3, the scenarios were horrible, the knockbacks were plentiful, and it was generally just a really un-fun way to play. So I made a lot of new guys during my first 30 days, and I became really tired of the quests overall. And PQ quests were nothing special when you had to have people to finish them in most cases. It got really tedious. And on top of this, the performance of the game was dismal. It had a "memory leak" like problem where after you played for an hour or two the game animations would start freezing up, the bar icons would become lagged, and lots of really quirky things would begin happening like the minimap going black or not being able to zone. Which forced you to reload your game (exit completely and restart) as soon as a symptom began because within 30 minutes the game would become unplayable either due to FPS or because you couldn't tell what was happening since the UI was glitching out. I didn't subscribe past my initial 30 days until Late January of 2009 when a friend of mine wanted to try the game. I was skeptical but had heard a lot of good things about their patches and how much better it was performance wise, etc. So I risked the monthly and was quite thoroughly punished for it. First, the good. The game performed better, not a lot better..but better. It took longer for the quirks to show up..maybe 4 hours instead of 1-2..and didn't make the game completely unplayable like it used to. And their CSR response times were much improved, however their ability to due anything useful has not. You'll get "We'll investigate further into this." a lot from them.... Now the bad. And there's a lot of it. Generally my first week was similar to my initial first week on my first month. Since I had to move to another server due to severe lack of players on my original server. Low/Low population every time I bothered to check it, and it was considered a "high population" server on their server move list...so I couldn't not salvage my characters to use on a non-ghost town server. So I spent my first week trying the one new class on each side (unimpressed with both) and doing the same old quests yet again. It seemed I got stuck a lot more often than I used to, I'd get stuck on anything I tried to jump over sometimes so bad I couldn't free myself without using /stuck. Very annoying. I mainly play Destro, and it was VERY common to be up against teams of Warrior Priests, Engineers, Rune Priests, IBs with a peppering of Bright Wizards. It was seldom to see anything else. So WP is basically a healing tank, Engineer is a high DPS range, RP is a mega healer, and IB is the tank to end all tanks. Got pretty dull with all the tankage and healing going on. On top of the very predictable team layout, you'd get bots playing. Mostly you'll notice shamans who are bots because they tend to get very low scores and spam their green beam attack (very visible), but I ran into other people botting. Or just people doing a little damage, then laying dead for the rest of the round, or going AFK in a corner of the map. CSRs would reply quickly and promptly do nothing about these worthless team members. So you'd spend hours getting queued with these guys. After my first week back in the game, I had a "naming policy violation" on my account. When i did a search for my character name on their website, I found a lot of names just like mine on other servers. AND the name found in violation was one of my non-played characters on the ghost town server. So I tried to dispute the violation, and found out you can't because their email system is misconfigured and bounces back with errors when you send emails to the addresses they give you for disputes. At this point, I called their support line, which is not toll free, complained and told them if they can't get someone on the phone to talk to me about it that I want my monthly fee back and they can just cancel my account. They refunded my monthly sub, and my account was still active for the rest of the 30 days. So I played a little, got a guy to Tier 2...was in no hurry to get to Tier 3 and Tier 4 because Tier 3 was such a drag..and nothing I was hearing from current players was changing my mind. And Tier 4...it seemed everyone in T1 and T2 was rerolling because Tier 4 was either bugged and/or pointless and they just generally preferred the T1 and T2 PVP gameplay. Take note that WAR Online has lost about half of it's subscriber base since launch, and I would say it's safe to say that they have lost more due to very spread out player base. They need to force merge a few servers together and work on clearing out the bots that infest the scenarios screwing up the team balance. But I believe by the time they react the damage will probably already be done...the game probably will go the route of Tabula Rasa with all the staff cuts they've had in the last 2 months. So, I'd suggest waiting or finding another game because this one needs a lot of work on the mechanics and general gameplay as most current subscribers seem to spend their time making alts instead of participating in the "end game" (which there really isn't much end game just a lot of repeated town raids).

Baz m. gave it a0:
This game is a piece of over hyped garbage that should have never been released even after push backs. Jon S you are completely retarded, collision system rules? From what I see warhammer online has the most horrible collision system in game existence. Getting stuck on 90% of inanimate objects is the least bit "ruling". I for one wanted to see the game crush WoW, hoping for some skill based rvr, and all I got was the /stuck command and skill spamming pvp. Where is the fun in that? MMO's have failed.

Matt L gave it a7:
As of Jan 13, 2009: Technical Graphics: 7.5 Art Style: 8 Audio: 6.5 PvP Dynamics: 8.5 Instances and Raiding: 5.5 Questing: 6 Crafting: 3 Character Differentiation: 4 Exploration: 5 Combat Feel: 8 UI Customization: 8.5 Lore and storyline: 8 Class skills and abilities: 8 Long-term enjoyment: 6 Mod support: 9 Revolutions: public quest system, next gen PvP implementation, tome of knowledge. Flaws: requires populated servers to work, lack of diversity in things to do outside of keep sieges - which can become uninspiring after you've been there and done it many times.

Travis B. gave it a9:
I first came across Warhammer online as an attempt to fill the void that had been caused by one betrayal after another from World of Warcraft. And I have to say it did that and then some. Warhammer Is the underdog and for the same price as World of Warcraft you get so much more. This is a game I would recommend to any one who needs a good MMORPG.

Aunt Flow gave it a9:
The character graphics are some of the finest in any MMO I've ever played. The worlds are, as many have noted, ugly. Dark. Dreary. But that's the idea. It imbues the game with the true feeling of unrest and war that is portrayed in the Warhammer universe. The race's design and personality are very vibrant, with the typical Dwarvish hardiness being portrayed in the fullest, the dim-witted Greenskins adding infinite amounts of humor into the game, the elves adequately portraying the immense beauty and pride of their race(s), and the humans displaying the gritty struggle against evil and corruption that rings so true even when used in a Medieval analogy. I'd also like to point out that, as I see a few of you are confused with, Warhammer is NOT copying World of Warcraft. In fact, it's much the opposite, as they are both directly and indirectly mimicking and making variations on Tolkein's legendarium. The RvR has a very, very solid design which is certain to ensure the game's success in the long run. However, as with any newly released MMO, there are problems that inhibit experiencing this aspect to the fullest. Fortunately, Mythic is an immensely attentive and fast-acting company. Hotfixes fly by quickly, and the first patch made a huge step toward solving the population and oRvR imbalances, with Keep sieges constantly occurring. The classes are very, very well designed and diverse, with each staying true to it's archetype, but never straying too far from it. The Tanks are tactical forces of nature on the battlefield, and the healers, if adeptly used, equally powerful, as is not the case with many (in fact, most) MMOs. However, there are many things that need fixing, of course. Lack of item diversity is a problem. Heck, Order's mounts are two horses and a hovering gyro copter (which ALMOST makes up for the lack of mount diversity). The crafting system is very unique, but there are many (initially) overlooked problems. I have very high hopes for this game, with fixes and new content being released regularly. The game grows on me more and more as it grows better and better.

Cody F. gave it a10:
The best MMO I have ever played and I have gone through them all. It is very easy to start and those people who are saying it is not look at WoW and tell me that is easy compared to this. And if you do your head is full of mushrooms. It plays very smoothly but is not compleatly exempt from the universal laws of lag. I give it a 10 out of 10 due to the fact that it has a diversity as soon as it comes out, its story is amazingly briliant, bright and neerly botomlessly deep, its carrers are fun and unique, it is fun destroying your enemys capital city and taking it, the world is exreamly vast and is equally handed out large sums of detail and you can see all the hard work that was put into this game.

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