By Alec Meer on July 16th, 2008 at 8:11 am.
Siege battles in Mythic’s upcoming MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning -
Crikey, what a pile-on. These climatic PvP tussles will be quite the thing to witness.
There is of course an elephant in the room, and I’m not going to be the one to mention it. Play nice when it inevitably comes up in comments though, gentlemen – you can’t fight in here, this is the WAR thread.
16/07/2008 at 08:17 Theory says:
Good grief, is it 2001 again? I don’t ask for top of the line visuals, but when it gets as low as that…
16/07/2008 at 08:50 Mungrul says:
Looks very messy. And I was expecting a somewhat darker atmosphere what with it being a Warhammer game.
16/07/2008 at 08:51 spirit7 says:
You’re not wrong – visuals are terrible. They remind me of a slightly less cartoony WoW, but worse. Hmmm.
Why am I meh-d out by all these new MMOs? Ultimately I wish they’d just do something totally original. Or remake Planetside.
16/07/2008 at 08:57 mike says:
Being not too familiar with the state of current PC gaming (or MMOs, for that matter), I’m somewhat happy and sad that this looks as crappy to you as it does to me. Shame.
16/07/2008 at 08:59 Ubernutz says:
The graphics aren’t that bad, some of the spell animations are a bit off though.
16/07/2008 at 09:11 Zeno says:
Terrible graphics are terrible.
16/07/2008 at 09:39 mandrill says:
Meh. I’ll leave it at that.
16/07/2008 at 10:10 unwise says:
More advanced lighting effects and higher resolution textures can be expected to be available in the retail client. That is one of the things Mythic are still working on in advance of launch.
Also, check out the ongoing client performance issues that Age of Conan is having with their siege warfare. Pretty graphics are all well and good until you throw 50 other avatars on screen, each potentially sporting unique armour textures and firing off all manner of pretty particle effects.
Mythic have very deliberately aimed their client at low spec PCs so that as many people as possible will be able to play it at satisfactory performance. It didn’t do WoW any harm, after all.
16/07/2008 at 10:23 Dan (WR) says:
It looks a great deal like DAoC, and not just in terms of its graphics. In particular, the first couple of minutes where players are charging up towards a keep and then battling it out a in a drab room was like a flashback to many boring sieges that I participated in. Although I suppose much MMORPG PvP looks similiar anyway.
If players have to carry siege parts to build things like battering rams and catapults I’m not fricking buying it.
I was kind of hoping that PvP might be a bit more structured. I seem to remember reading that players wouldn’t be able to run straight through each other like they usually can in MMORPGs. Is that not the case?
16/07/2008 at 10:27 Erinan says:
Holy cow, that’s a very ugly game. For a beautiful-looking game targeting low specs machines, look at Aion. And it will have massive battles as well in the “Abyss” (think RvR in DAoC). Ok, it’s Asian fantasy but it looks good at least.
WAR is just… ugly and looks worse than WoW, technically speaking.
16/07/2008 at 10:41 NuZZ says:
Hmmm I have to agree, the graphics ARE bad. However, not that bad. With the better lighting + textures, it should look decent, at least better then WoW.
Still, when I see this and look at AoC, I really feel pleased I bought the game. AoC, while buggy, repetative, etc. is still quite fun even though the level of content is pretty bad.
I killed my subscription, and I will come back in a few months or less to play again. Currently have a level 72/80 hox.
Looking forward to some performance inscreases, balance and content. Don’t wanna touch WAR.
BTW, Erinan, have you played asian games before? MMOs I mean… I have to say that they can all be shuffled into a pile and burnt. I have looked at Aion and there is NOTHING there that is even worth bothering with… The whole asian culture is just so unappealing to me after playing free mmos :(.
16/07/2008 at 10:51 Erinan says:
Well, Aion wants to be different and appeal to both the Asian and Western markets, i.e. not have a leveling phase exclusively based on (very painful) grinding. Aion will (and already has, the game doesn’t have any NDA so it’s easy to check :)) have many quests and allow you to level up without having to grind, in theory. Plus, its PvP will be very DAoC-like, with forts and castles to take, etc.
I’m keeping an eye on (see what I did there?) it, because I hated AoC (and the game won’t have much of a suscribers base in a few months) and WAR is looking more and more disappointing.
Aion looks like a “good old” MMO, with massive battles, organised PvP, original IP (finally!) and gorgeous graphics.
Wait & see!
16/07/2008 at 11:04 Riotpoll says:
Well, at least the elves look suitably poncy. I just wish people would make some decent pvp again, I miss Guild Wars (when it launched and up until Nightfall). Random brawls just don’t do it for me.
And the game seems to look worse now than in did months ago. Meh.
16/07/2008 at 11:17 Koopa says:
Dan, I believe the collision detection only applies to enemy players.
16/07/2008 at 11:24 Juleske says:
That looks just like WOW to me! Thought the visuals would be more in their own style..
16/07/2008 at 12:00 Mark Stephenson says:
Oh Dear!
16/07/2008 at 12:09 Jamie says:
The game looks terrible atm, why release a video like this?
16/07/2008 at 12:16 Seb Potter says:
Sure looks awful without any proper lighting, but that’s not half the problem. There seem to be enough house-sized particle effects in those fights to completely obscure the battle half the time, and it’s utterly incomprehensible as to who is fighting whom. That looks less like pvp and more like an exercise in random button mashing.
16/07/2008 at 12:29 Alex says:
Man, I´m glad that 100% of the posters share my thoughts when watching that trailer. Anyone noticed that music? Damn ugly as well. ;) I fear that WAR will fail big time. No innovation, no proper port the WH World to the PC… fans of the franchise will turn in grief and cry for the good old days of pen and paper.
16/07/2008 at 12:37 garren says:
Random beta screenies, certainly looks better:
http://savepic.ru/241666.jpg
http://savepic.ru/230402.jpg
http://savepic.ru/234498.jpg
http://savepic.ru/222210.jpg
http://savepic.ru/196668.jpg
http://savepic.ru/197692.jpg
But yea the trailer was crap
16/07/2008 at 12:43 Jamie says:
Just found a better trailer, it gets all Rainbow Online near the end but whatever
http://www.ea.com/theater?mediaType=video&itemId=Warhammer%20Online-20080712123228449
16/07/2008 at 13:09 Bursar says:
The pic at http://savepic.ru/196668.jpg does look eerily similar to the Gnome/Dwarf start area in WoW.
16/07/2008 at 13:55 DragonSix says:
Underwhelming
16/07/2008 at 14:19 Noc says:
I was thinking, yesterday, about why all the MMOs I’ve seen seem to have not so much bad graphics, but just really choppy animation. And it occurred to me that when you’re playing an MMO, you aren’t looking at the character. You’re looking at the health bars on the top of the screen.
16/07/2008 at 14:36 cyrenic says:
All these different trailers with vastly different graphical quality are starting to get confusing. That trailer Jamie linked shows a good contrast between the two graphic settings or clients or whatever. I imagine it will look decent on release, and hopefully it runs decently as well. But these DAoC looking trailers aren’t helping them any.
16/07/2008 at 15:12 rei says:
80% of the people on the screen at any one time aren’t either stunlocked or feared or both, so it’s likely that the PvP will at least be better than in WoW. I never really doubted that anyway. It’s just about everything else that I’m worried about. It’d be nice to see more about the environments and quests and such.
Getting a bit redundant at this point, but yeah, the graphics aren’t so pretty.
16/07/2008 at 15:33 Jamie says:
Yeah cyrenic supposedly they’ve been working on a lighting system and it looks real lovely, but they don’t want to fully integrate it into an E3 trailer because I don’t know
16/07/2008 at 16:15 18Rabbit says:
I had a pretty severe DaoC flashback watching that. The RvR looks hectic and random.
16/07/2008 at 16:20 kalain says:
The RvR looks… very very dated. It doesn’t seem fluid to me. Its like a turn based game changed into real time, a bit like how DAoC was. I don’t really think that they have learnt anything from DAoC or even WoW. At least in WoW you can run around your opponent, in this its like you have to stand still.
Not impressed. Lets hope they can do something otherwise I’ll just be sticking with WoW until someone comes along and fixes Planetside.
16/07/2008 at 16:21 marmite says:
When I was younger I never really imagined battles in Warhammer to just be a random clusterfuck with hundreds of flashy neon effects shooting all over the place. I was kind of looking forward to a more gritty, dark MMO but this looks like WoW (i’ve never played an MMO, so it might be quite different to WoW but to my untrained eye it’s almost indistinguishable)
16/07/2008 at 16:22 mike says:
@ Noc
Sometimes I feel like in terms of animation, nothing much has improved since the original Prince of Persia came out using CGI-graphics (on my PC anyway :P). I still think back to the fluidity of the motions, the way he climbs back up a ledge… since then, only the ragdoll-behaviour in HL2 really captivated me.
16/07/2008 at 16:54 PleasingFungus says:
I liked the cannon.
16/07/2008 at 18:02 heartless_ says:
[You do not share my opinions]. You watch a LOW RES movie and go “OMFG the graphics suck”. This graphics debate will never end, regardless of how many billion dollar studios collapse because of it.
Find a HD trailer for the game, like the ones at Gamespot, and then tell me WAR’s graphics are subpar for a game coming out these days.
16/07/2008 at 18:23 JM says:
Not sure it’s smart to comment on RVR on a few scenes taken to show the most spell effects possible on the low-res client…
16/07/2008 at 18:37 Hmm-hmm. says:
When I was younger I never really imagined battles in Warhammer to just be a random clusterfuck with hundreds of flashy neon effects shooting all over the place. I was kind of looking forward to a more gritty, dark MMO but this looks like WoW (i’ve never played an MMO, so it might be quite different to WoW but to my untrained eye it’s almost indistinguishable)
Indeed. The character models look nice enough.. one can hope these effects are placeholder art. As for gameplay.. I hope it’ll be good.. but it won’t be like the tabletop game, I’m sure.
In fact, WoW’s ability effects look a lot better. And, of course, WoW isn’t meant to be dark and gritty.
16/07/2008 at 19:34 Gorgeras says:
Almost the entire video is placeholder. Other videos have demonstrated the lighting system and high-res textures that will be in the final thing, but aren’t featured in beta footage. The beta videos contain none of the shiny shader effects we have become used to yet.
16/07/2008 at 19:49 harrumph says:
god forbid somebody should release an MMO that’ll actually run on the average person’s PC!
16/07/2008 at 20:11 Dexton says:
Please please say that the graphics are better on release. I know that that levels of graphics works for wow, but that game is 4 years old.
I don’t want to have to endure dated graphics just so some people with crappy 4 year old computers from PC world can play. It doesn’t need to be Crysis, but at it could at least look good.
16/07/2008 at 20:49 Pus Filled Sac says:
I’d say WoW fits that bill, harrumph.
The dodgy looking gameplay is what puts me off this game rather than the graphics, lighting system implemented or not. The gameplay hasn’t changed since the original footage I watched in 2006: choppy and paceless.
16/07/2008 at 21:17 Ryan says:
My God… say goodbye to your hype Warhammer Online
16/07/2008 at 22:05 alphaxion says:
am I the only one left with an impression of the movement and interaction/animation that the game is like a fantasy themed section of Second Life?
It’s just missing the flying penis attack!
16/07/2008 at 22:21 Edward Diego says:
DAOC2, but rather what worries me is that I for one was expecting dark & grim, grimdark even as the general look of the armour and effects. Now it seems that the characters shop at a local clown outlet hoping to find new and vibrant colours for the next summer fad.
16/07/2008 at 22:55 StarmanCyrus says:
All I could really think while watching this video was “MY GOD PEOPLE! FIGHT AT THE NODES! THE NODES!”
17/07/2008 at 00:23 Orange says:
Very disappointing just how similar it looks to WoW. I can understand not having high end graphics in order to keep the specs down and make it easier on mass pvp, but having it so bright and cartoonish is just not a good move.
17/07/2008 at 00:50 luminosity says:
My biggest problem isn’t the level of graphics, but the utter lack of any… artistry to them. Where’s the style? If you’re gonna have poor graphics, at least make them nice poor graphics.
17/07/2008 at 14:19 MaxMcG says:
It looks like wow v.1.5
I hope it plays better than it looks because AoC is a disappointment.
17/07/2008 at 18:03 Diziet says:
You know what, if it plays anything like DAoC in it’s who day, I couldn’t give a toss. I’ll be happy with it.
18/07/2008 at 02:35 Tholal says:
I sincerely hope that none of you graphics cry-babies play this game.
Hell, one of the best games I played last year was Dwarf Fortress… and guess what?! It has ASCII graphics!
19/07/2008 at 00:10 Gaffer says:
I swear there was none of this non-stop bubblegum blowing when I played woof-rup. Whatever happened to a beard full of ale and a dagger up the chuff?