If nothing else makes Warhammer: Age of Reckoning a serious contender for the top-spot, then at the very least you can't ignore its queue. At time of writing the counter had hit 616 thousand, 616 thousand distinct entries (624 thousand now) begging and pleading to be let in. The game design team is inundated with everything from monogrammed chocolates to t-shirts to naked pictures of the people pounding to get in to the precious Beta servers. The eventually publicly available characters of chaos marauders and dark elf killers will, in all likelihood, be less fanatical and determined in their siegecraft than the legions already circling.

However, it's not all just nerdlings and the socially maladapted being whipped into a clumsy, greasy fury. Normal, healthy, robust and handsome people are looking forward to this release just as much. And by that, I mean me. The current undisputed king of the MMO genre might finally have itself some genuine completion.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning certainly isn't radical in any particular way. Elves, dwarves, orks, humans, chaos, order, loot, instances, PvP, etc. - the standard menagerie with the usual associated characteristics. None of the essential themes will take anyone even passingly familiar with swords and sorcery style fantasy by surprise, nor anyone familiar with an MMO. However, looks to take every single element, character archetype, MMO convention and expectation and go at least one better, and prove once again its better to make something well than to make something new.

Old school pen & paper mainstay Games Workshop produced two main franchises, traditional Warhammer full of the usual goblins and elves, and Warhammer 40K, a bleak far future version where there is only war. Both have produced some excellent computer games over the last few years, but with 40K taking the lead with the underappreciated Fire Warrior and the excellent Dawn of War series. The recent Mark of Chaos that was hoped to do for Warhammer what Dawn of War had done for 40K was a disappointment, with none of the pyrotechnic crunchy so well done by and THQ.

But with an absolute library of books and comics to flesh out the characterisation of the Warhammer universe, and decades of paper based fine tweaking of rules and stats, the Warhammer game is absolutely ripe for a MMO version. The arch and high-falutin' world of made for a perfectly respectable few titles, but was never built from conception to be so entirely playable and for gamers. Not a hairy foot or a singing Vigo Mortensen in sight.

From the videos, concept art and press releases, it quickly becomes clear that Warhammer is going for a more adult iteration of the fantasy world. The monsters are more monstrous, the weapons far more jagged and intimidating, and even the 'good' cities don't look like good places to hang out after the taverns close. As yet unfinished designs of chaos blighted wastes and tainted locations like The Inevitable City look like they have more in common with Clive Barkers' Jericho than they do with Ogrimaar. That and the evil elves are wearing far smaller, albeit spikier, bikinis than ever before.

Location, location, location. Thanks to the strength of already having had decades of artists sketching key locations for magazines and comic books, there is a great sense of individuality in every district of every city and every zone of each map. In inhabited areas, different quarters will have pronouncedly different feels. The noble district will be completely different from the dockside or the slums. The sense of scale and population is more in-keeping with the best parts of Oblivion than the static and abandoned feel that MMO cities are often afflicted with.

These cities are more than just shopping and quest hubs thanks to the ongoing conflict mechanic of the game, but still the bulk of your game time is likely to be spent out in the wilds making with the slaying and the chopping and the questing. Your chosen purveyor of slicing and dicing or hocus-pocus will be from one of the two factions essentially representing order or chaos. In the white corner is The comprised of humans and dwarves and the predictably snooty High Elves. In the red and black and slimy corner are the Orks, the Dark Elves (still snooty, but more likely to put out on a first date) and the proper scary forces of Chaos. Let your mood and sociopathic leanings guide you in your choice, although each race comes with what boils down to their version of tank, melee, ranger and caster.

Whilst each of the races and classes or 'professions' is not particularly radical, the bad boys look to have enjoyed the most innovation. The Chaos Chosen is nearly certainly the most intimidating looking tank and damage dealer I have ever seen, and even at low levels looks like the sort of thing you'd find guarding the big pile of loot at the end of a high level dungeon. The Chaos Marauder, whilst smaller, is not a jot less scary - as he progressively levels up he has the ability to warp and mutate his own body. Apparently it takes a few moments to warm up and undergo the mutations, but the result is what Paul Barnett, creative director, described as the Incredible Hulk with crab-claws for hands and steel-scaled skin. I am sure the elves in their ludicrously shiny pointy hats are all very fine and impressive, but I know whose pint I'm going to extra lengths not to spill.

That said, the infectiously enthusiastic Mr Barnett recently released a going into some detail about the latest class to be fleshed out - the High Elf Shadow Warrior. These individuals, rather than platting each others hair and singing about every damn thing that comes into their field of vision, have something of a chip on their shoulder about their Dark cousins, and are itching for a scrap. Although ostensibly being bow-based fighters, Paul went on to point out that 'these aren't scouts like the ones that will sell you cookies - these are guys that only want to sell you death!'

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  1. shubham punekar Unregistered 1 year ago

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