I'm a big fan of Mythic. I literally have over two years of /played time in its other MMORPG – Dark Age of Camelot. Sadly, I can't get that time back, but on the bright side – I probably saved a ton of money by not doing crazy stuff like going out and having a life for so long (that's what I tell myself at least). I have sampled other massively multi-player games like World of WarCraft and Age of Conan, but never really got hooked on them for more than a month or two. Will Warhammer Online put me back in the gaming rehab clinic? Time will tell; here's my review of the first 20 levels.


As you might have guessed from the name of the game, Warhammer Online is based on the storied fantasy franchise from Games Workshop. I never got into Warhammer other than collecting some of the figurines, but after scoping out a few of the books at the local pen-n-paper gamer geek shop, it's obvious that the setting is a gold mine of raw material for an MMORPG.


In Warhammer Online, players choose between Order and Chaos. Order includes your standard human and 'good' races like dwarves and elves, while Chaos sports darker choices such as orcs, goblins and dark elves. The classes for both factions are mostly comparable, although the Chaos characters look a little cooler (which is why I rolled a dark elf sorcerer). Each faction has a main tank, high-dps (damage-per-second) tank, hybrid, a couple different types of healers, casters and rogue. Yep, pretty standard stuff. The only big thing missing is a speed class (for DaoC players that would include your skald, bard, or minstrel) but Mythic did cut a bunch out before launch. Maybe we'll see one later.


My only huge complaint with Warhammer Online so far is that it feels slow. The combat is slow, the movement is slow, and the leveling is even slower. I realize that when the level cap is 40 that you have to snare the pace so players don't max out in the first month, but the quest experience does not scale very well and neither does grinding out against monsters (especially in groups). The only way to level quickly seems to be to play in prime time and stay queued up for the Battlegrounds. What else? The server populations seem set a little low. I'm all down for the 'less lag' thing, but the zones feel barren half of the time even on 'high population' ones


While you can fight opposing players in just about every zone, the Battlegrounds is where the instant gratification is at. I'm sure the 'realm vs realm' aspect of the game will pick up once folks hit the higher levels, but right now – the fastest experience is in the BG's. The way the battlegrounds are handled is that any member of the group can travel to a different zone and queue the party up to join. There are restrictions like level caps, but if you're industrious, you can get into a few different queues at once. The group queues are a little fickle, like having to redo them if someone joins late or goes link dead, but overall its a nice system. What else I like is the fact that you don't have to travel anywhere to participate, it just teleports you in and back once the battle is over. Right now, at level 20, you can earn upwards of 15,000 exp per round assuming you win. That sure beats getting 3-5k XP for a quest that takes longer to finish, huh?


The experience you get questing does leave much to be desired, but for the most part, they are fun. Especially the public quests. No longer do you need to wrangle up a raid leader, set up groups, record rolls for loot, blah, blah, blah, in public quests all of that takes care of itself. All you need to do is be in the general area to get credit for the different chapter quests. Once you chapter quest bars fill up, you can cash in on them by choosing different rewards (potions, then two tiers of items, depending).


Visually, the game looks a lot like World of WarCraft. I know, I know, Blizzard nicked the look off of Warhammer in the first place, but it's hard not to notice some of the similarities. Performance-wise, the game is rock steady. I haven't had any in-game crashes yet (although it does like to lock up after I go link dead). Warhammer isn't as sexy as Age of Conan in the eye candy department, but it does look a couple generations ahead of WoW. The texture work isn't as great (I hate golf course lawn patterns) but overall does the job considering how smoothly it plays.