Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (War)

E for All 2007 Preview

Recently, the closed public beta, er, closed for Warhammer Online temporarily while the developers tweak some of the game’s performance aspects. In the meantime, the team from EA Mythic was on hand at this year’s E For All event held in Los Angeles to show off the game beta version, as well as some new careers that gamers could partake in. Overall, the Warhammer team has been adding many new elements, and the game should be a worthy quest for MMO gamers in the post-World of Warcraft gaming world.

Among the new careers that will be available in the game when the beta relaunches in December are the Chosen, who are your typical tank character for the Empire faction, the Witch Elf and Blackguard Elf for the Black Elf race, the Arch-mage and Swordmaster classes for the High Elf race.

One pretty cool class in the game that was revealed will be the Witch Hunter career. These rogue-like characters are anti-magical assassins that roam the countryside ferreting out chaos and corruption through whatever means necessary. However, these means are often torturous, as they use a variety of inquisitorial tactics to get their unfortunate suspects to confess and repent. And taking a cue from the Witch trials of the late 1600’s and the Spanish Inquisition, the only way that you could truly repent was to die. In the words of a member of the EA Mythic development team, “He’s kinda like Van Helsing if he didn’t suck.”

Witch Hunter = Devil May Cry meets the Allman Brothers

We also got a look at one of the Capital Cities in the game, the Germanic medieval city of Altdorf. The town has a lot of nuances to make it seem like an authentic European city from hundreds of years ago, with elements like narrow cobblestone streets and marketplaces giving it a truly organic feeling. Each of the races will have their own home city and an end city, where they’ll have to go for end game activities to take down their rival race once and for all. The opposite city of the organized structure of Altdorf is the Orcish city called “The Inevitable City”, a Lovecraftian city that works in true Euclidean fashion as an organization of chaos, with no true buildings but various natural occurrences that somewhat compose a city.

One interesting element in the game allows for home cities to give players bonuses due to a lack of invasions. If a city gets sacked, it will lose a fair amount of its infrastructure and will be forced to rebuild economically. However the longer a city keeps from getting attacked, the stronger it will be, giving an added incentive for players to protect their home.

Where the hell did I park my car?

While the beta has currently closed for the game, it will reopen again in December and continue until the game’s release in early 2008. Among other new tweaks and additions, guilds will be available to players at the re-opening, so mark your calendars, Warhammer fans, for this Christmas.