New In-Game Live Event Introduces Two New Careers to WAR!
The war has begun, and you’ve joined the forces of Order or Destruction, taking up arms with your realm-mates on the field of battle. You’ve conquered your foes in scenarios, stormed enemy-held keeps, raised your banners over battlefield objectives and banded together to thwart your enemies in public quests.
This November, we’re bringing you a new challenge in the form of WAR’s upcoming live event: Heavy Metal!

The Age of Reckoning has dawned
Across the Old World and on the island home of the High Elves, bitter enemies clash in bloody skirmishes and mighty battles. For the soldiers of Order and Destruction, there is no respite and no mercy. Now, the warring factions will gain new allies in the form of the fearsome Black Guard and the cunning Knight of the Blazing Sun. These heavily-armored soldiers race to the battlefront to anchor their realms’ defenses and ensure that for every inch of ground given, the enemy pays in bitter blood.
With a thunderous war-cry and the ringing of steel on steel, the battle begins anew, with neither side willing to retreat or surrender.

The Age of Reckoning is about to get even deadlier as the noble and cunning Knights of the Blazing Sun and the deadly Black Guard join the fight for domination of the Warhammer world.
Get a head start on the new WAR careers!
We will also be adding a new scenario, Reikland Factory, for Heavy Metal that will only be available to players for the duration of this live event. This scenario will take place in a steam tank factory in the Empire Tier 4 zone of Reikland and see players battling for control of different areas of the factory. This new scenario will be available for players of all levels, on all tiers, but will not contribute to the campaign. Participation in this scenario will give players an extra 10% bonus to their Renown point gain.

When the Heavy Metal live event begins on November 18th, players who log into WAR will see a new tab in the Tome of Knowledge. Clicking on this tab will open the Live Events page, where each day we’ll place a new daily task. Completing these daily tasks earns influence, just like you’d earn in a public quest. There are rewards for Basic, Advanced and Elite influence, culminating in the ultimate prize: the chance to play WAR’s new classes a full week before they’re released to the public! This last reward won’t be easy to earn, and players who want to get to the Elite level will need to log in each day and complete on the daily event.
Exclusive Scenario

Violent and apocalyptic energies were unleashed, tearing the northern lands of Ulthuan apart. A wall of seawater a thousand feet high crashed into Nagarythe and drowned countless thousands. At the last moment, Malekith and the other surviving Sorcerers chanted spells to preserve their greatest fortresses, transforming them into floating Black Arks. These sailed westward, eventually coming to rest in the north of the New World. Malekith named this land Naggaroth and his exiled people, now called Dark Elves, made a new civilization for themselves.
What little remains of Nagarythe is a tortured and twisted land, blasted by fire and seared by destructive magical energies. Strange, mutated creatures stalk this gloomy, barren wasteland of gray earth and black stone. The High Elves named this cursed place the Shadowlands, for it seemed always to be in darkness.
It was not long before the Dark Elves returned to claim their ancestral land, and the two sides have fought ceaselessly for control of the region ever since.
Following the death of Aenarion, first Phoenix King of Ulthuan, the Elves faced a difficult choice. Some argued that Malekith, Aenarion’s lone surviving son, should succeed his father. Others, however, feared what Aenarion had become after he drew the Sword of Khaine and worried that the dread sword’s curse had been passed on to Malekith. In the end, it was Bel-Shannar who was chosen to lead the Elves, and not Aenarion’s heir. Read the rest of this entry »

Update - 1:45PM EDT: The Realm Population Bonus only applies to North American Core Ruleset servers at this time. Players on select servers can transfer their characters via the Mythic Account Center.

Warhammer Online has announced that players can make free character transfers from servers to help balance the population on each server.  The following information you need to pay attention to.

When the service is enabled in the coming days, players will see a Character Transfer button below “Activate a Key” and “Validate your Email Address.” Players should take it serious to make a decision on transfering your character. You need to read all of the information very carefully.

That’s not to say that Blizzard doesn’t want to borrow the best things from Warhammer and other popular games out there, but to claim Wintergrasp is an attempt to emulate Warhammer’s PvP is just plain reaching. And leveling through PvP? Considering you need a flying mount to get to Wintergrasp and you can’t actually get that until three levels left in the game, it’s as stretchy as it gets to claim that’s Blizzard’s attempt at emulating WAR. If Blizzard really did want to rip off WAR, they’d do it better than that, no?

Too bad it’s straight out nonsense — we were at the PvP panel at last year’s BlizzCon, where Blizzard explained all of the experiments they’d made with world PvP, from the very sad Silithus, to the more successful Halaa and Auchindoun, and how they’d landed on the concept for Lake Wintergrasp — the worldwide buff, the raid boss, the persistent rewards, and so on — from all of the world PvP that had come before.

We’ll admit that WoW’s achievements system is Blizzard’s reaction to Warhammer Online’s Tome of Knowledge system, and sure, we’ll even go so far as to say that the PvE to PvP transfers are a shot off the bow of WAR, but claiming that WoW’s Lake Wintergrasp is a straight rip from Warhammer? We’d think not. Still, that won’t keep Mythic’s CEO Mark Jacobs from claiming exactly that — the outspoken developer says he’s “flattered” by what he calls Blizzard’s attempts at open world PvP.

At around level 22-23 is kind of boring, Leveling in Warhammer is a major grind. The exp bar keeps getting longer and longer but the quest rewards, for the most part, stay about the same. Thankfully, last week Mythic speed up the way the queues in the battleground scenarios work so you can get the lion’s share of your experience by killing players, rather than monsters. The Tier 3 scenarios are a lot of fun. The only problem is that only one of them is widely played (at least on my server). Tor Anroc is set inside of an active volcano and the goal is to kill as many players you can while your side controls the “bauble” which ticks off points as long as you control it. The only downside is that as it ticks off points, it also pulsates increasing amounts of damage into the person holding it. Controlling the bauble isn’t required to win, but it makes things a little easier. Each kill counts for 10 points, and the bauble is worth a point every few seconds. The first squad to 500 wins. The only thing you need to worry about now is finding better gear.

Mount Gunbad, WAR’s lowest level [full-fledged] dungeon, is an ideal place to go to deck yourself out in level 20-30 blue and grape con drops. Pretty much all of the mobs are either champion or hero caliber, so you need at least a full group to take on the more interesting challenges inside. There are a bunch of higher-than-normal exp quests for Gunbad as well, so as long as your healers aren’t busy picking mushrooms when they should be keeping people alive, it’s a great place to take a break from the everyday grind. The dungeon looting system is the same as public quests, so it’s in your best interest to do your best if you want a bigger roll modifier (and a better chance to win something tasty from the golden chest at the end of each stage). Another little twist is that Mt. Gunbad is open to all of the realms, so besides encountering harder than usual monsters, you might run across better built groups of enemy characters also.

Players more or less found that that game is just the same as other MMOs, questing, joining  team and grinding. But after getting some experinence, we can see something exciting, lets take a look at what levels 21-30 had to offer…

Long ago, the tall spires of Caledor were ablaze. Fiery volcanoes dominated the skyline, spewing great plumes of ash-grey smoke high into the air. The skies of ancient Caledor were filled with mighty dragons, and it is these magnificent and terrifying beasts that made Caledor the powerful kingdom that it once was.
When the High Elves of old marched to war, the Dragon Princes of Caledor were among their deadliest instruments. The proud warrior-nobles swooped into the fray astride the backs of their great dragons, laying waste to all in their path. Though few in number, the Dragon Princes wrought terrible destruction on the enemies of Ulthuan.
The origins of the Dragon Princes and their unique bond with the great winged beasts of their homeland lie even further in the past. It was the legendary High Elf Mage Caledor Dragontamer who, using his arcane craft to enchant harnesses forged in the heart of nearby Vaul’s Anvil, brought the majestic beasts to heel. Indeed, the province derives its name from this figure of legend.
The Dark Elves have many reasons to despise Caledor. They have suffered the fiery wrath of the dragons in battle, and known defeat at the hands of more than one of the province’s heirs. The Witch King greatly desires to see Caledor crushed and its defenders slain to the last. To carry out this task, he has appointed the merciless Beastlord Rakarth, greatest among the Beastmasters of the Druchii.
With an army of fearsome manticores, hydras and black dragons at his command, Rakarth launches a ferocious assault on Caledor, his mind bent on bloody vengeance and conquest.
Elsewhere, battles rage around the Shrines of the Phoenix Kings, great monuments erected long ago to honor those rulers of antiquity who hailed from Caledor. The spiteful Witch King has ordered these statues wrecked to the ground, for these Phoenix Kings of old slew many Dark Elves in ancient wars that neither side has forgotten. For the High Elves, it a point of great honor to protect the shrines and the legacy that they represent.
The din of battle now echoes from every high mountain peak and in every shadow-filled crag in Caledor. The war has come perilously close to the High Elves’ capital city of Lothern, and the fighting has intensified on both sides. Though their glory is now long past and their dragons lay in slumber beneath the long-dormant mountains, the warriors of Caledor are still a force to be reckoned with. Under the command of Prince Imrik, leader of the Dragon Princes, the High Elves have marshaled their strength at the fortress of Tor Sethai. The Dark Elves have set their sights on the ancient citadel, and a great battle looms for control of this vital stronghold.

The war between the High Elves and their dark kin rages on many fronts, but the invaders are slowly gaining ground in their relentless march toward Lothern. Now, the battle lines have been redrawn yet again, as Prince Tyrion’s forces fall back to Eataine to regroup and take on reinforcements. Where they expected to find respite, however, they instead find a very unexpected battle.
While the bulk of his armies engage the High Elves, Malekith strikes a sinister bargain. He invites the marauding hordes of Orcs and Goblins that infest the Old World to join in the conquest of the High Elves’ island home. Working in concert with small bands of Dark Elves, the greenskins have cut lumber from the forest of Avelorn and built ramshackle wooden barges to transport their warriors across the Inner Sea to the coast of Eataine, well behind the High Elf positions.

An idyllic and pastoral province of villas, vineyards, and rolling green hills, Eataine is the kingdom to which the nobles of Ulthuan retire to spend their summers. The opulence of Eataine’s great manors is unsurpassed in the lands of the High Elves, for Eataine is not only home to some of the greatest poets, scholars and warriors of the Asur, but also to the Phoenix King himself.

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Some of you may be expecting me to tell you that Warhammer Online was just that sort of title. Other editors from various media sites have pushed hordes of flowered prose down the throats of their readers telling the various wonders and enjoyable encounters they’d been a part of during their short stints in WAR. Since I’ve been fairly positive with other titles in the past in my first impressions, it could be assumed that Warhammer Online deserved a heaping pile of praise right from the start.As a long time reviewer of both online and offline games, there’s usually a point in the process of the game review where the game reaches above the below average status and begins to earn its stripes as a high quality game. Sometimes a game never reaches that average status, either because of nagging bugs or just a thoroughly unimpressive presentation and gameplay experience. Other titles take a few days to really sink in, with the depth of the control mechanics or competitive playstyles helping push the game into the average or above average status.

But then there are games that instantly appeal to a player. These games - and they are few and far between - come out with all of their guns cocked and loaded, and the player merely has to pull the trigger to be totally enthralled and immersed in a flood of gaming enjoyment.

Frankly, Warhammer Online didn’t instantly win my heart. But - and that’s an enormous “but” - Warhammer Online has gradually shown me what a studio focused on giving MMO gamers a cooperative *and* competitive experience can really accomplish when both elements of their game are full of novel elements and quality moments. Throughout the rest of my first impressions article, I will attempt to outline how Warhammer Online won me over. Along with that, I’ll give some of my favorite elements, some areas that still need improvement, and the bits that still require a bit of exploration on my part before I dole out a full review.

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There’s also a host of smaller problems, though none of them rise to more than a small level of annoyance. Players in scenarios can “AFK” their way through, stealing experience and renown points they don’t deserve. There’s a weird graphic bug that will lock an avatar into one animation cycle (though you can still play the game). The crafting is confusing and feels like an afterthought. The UI, while quite good, could use a few now-common elements like the ability to hot-link items and abilities in chat. Considering how important player coordination is in higher-level PvP, the game could really use some type of built-in voice chat system. Some of the terrain in the scenarios and the PvP lakes could use some tweaking, as their proximity to spawn points sometimes gives an advantage to one side while the other faction faces an incredibly long post-death trek.

In the end, though, all of the problems, even the most serious one of lag in heavy player combat, are ultimately fixable. Warhammer Online has had the smoothest, most complete MMO launch we’ve ever seen. Game balance and other elements of the game need tweaking but they’re all there, they all work and most importantly, they’re all fun. This is a game that has 20 separate classes and while some may be overpowered or underpowered, none of them are boring to play. The game comes loaded with PvP and PvE content that — balance issues notwithstanding — is as good as or much better than that of any other MMO on the market. Warhammer Online is the next great game of Player vs. Player and Realm vs. Realm content and we have the feeling that somewhere on the other side of reality, the Chaos god Tzeentch is smiling.

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