Enthusiasm

It’s come to my attention, most people don’t understand that the WoW formula of MMO’s is certainly not the ONLY way to make an MMO with good endgame. Furthermore, people don’t REALLY understand what the endgame in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is all about. I want to make sure that going into WAR people understand what they’re in for. There is 6-man grouped instancing with several tiers of progression, but there will NOT be the “WoW style” raiding that you might be used to. There are THREE exceptions which are the enemy kings which are a instanced 24 man raids. Now that’s out of the way, let me explain what WAR’s engame really is about.

WAR has added something new and interesting into the genre called “Public Quests” which are scripted multi-stage event driven quests which for those who are familiar with EQ are much like the 10th Coldain War or the 8th Coldain Shawl. I guess if I wanted to compare it to WoW, you could say that PQ’s are much like the opening of the gates AQ in WoW, except the opening of the gates of AQ really only focused around the FIRST person to complete the quest and it was only completable once per server. Imagine if that same quest line EVERYONE contributed and the whole event reset after it was completed. On top of that while there are many stages to the quest chain, anyone can join in on the quest at any point. Think about the quests of Alterac Vallery, where everyone is contributing toward the same goal progressing the “game” forward. The more you contribute the better you loot will be at the end, but if you want to you can repeat the PQ if you didn’t experience it from the beginning or repeat it for the fun factor. Usually at the end of the entire thing there is a BIG huge boss that can sometimes take “a huge amount of people” to take down. Along the way there will even be mini-bosses depending on the public quest. Some public quests have required trade skill components, while others will involve mass slaughter. Some public quests are only unlocked as part of the RvR campaign. Some are only unlocked as your city moves to prosperity level 5. Some public quests can only be done while you take over an enemy capital city (a 12 hour period).

The cool thing is that these public quests are very story driven, have excellent, appropriate rewards for everyone who contributes and most of all they start at low levels and progress throughout the game. But PQ’s are the age old solution to the problem of “casual” raiding guilds. Instead of having to organize to get 40 people together for a guild raid in an instance, once the PQ gets to the final stage of the PQ, many PQ’s involve a big fight with an end boss that’s “raid” level in difficulty. So you get that “raid-like” experience, without having to wait around for a raid. That doesn’t say you can’t organize the guild to complete a PQ together and defeat the final step/boss together. The BIG HUGE part of PQ’s is that let’s say you have 20 people, you can’t say “sorry guys” we only have 20 people and need 25, we can’t raid tonight. If we organize 20 people and need 25 for the encounter, you can grantee that since it’s an open world kind of fight, there will be 5 random people who will join in on the fight.

In the end after you’ve done all the PQ’s (all 300+ of them) and done all the stages of instances and are wearing the most bad ass gear you can get (at this point who knows maybe the first expansion will be coming), the TRUE endgame of WAR all focuses around the campaign. Realm vs Realm, holding a Tier 4 keep in the name of our guild, defending our realm, and pushing toward the enemy city to be able to unlock their city’s public quests, do them, defeat their king and place their king in our city to be tortured and have rotten tomatoes thrown at him. All this while leveling up our guild, maxing out your own influence, renown, tome unlocks, gear acquisition, trade skills, keep control, banner collection and retention, guild achievements, and much, much more. Also everything you do, even PVE and trade skills, adds to the overall campaign, adding victory points toward the appropriate tier of battle. Yes you can add to the campaign through PVE activity.

The fact is that WAR’s endgame is the first MMO that is not one dimensional. EQ’s endgame was all about PVE. DAoC’s endgame was all about Realm vs Realm. WoW’s engame was all about PVE OR I guess now arenas if you’re into that OR Token Grinds OR Honor Grinds. I guess WoW did try to do what WAR is doing but the important thing is that while WoW has options, they are not in any way directly linked and require FOCUSED attention to one thing to really progress in any of them. AoC’s endgame is focused around PVE (just like WoW) and PVP which is a little more meaningful, but again not directly linked like WoW.

WAR’s endgame is focused around a mix of PVE intertwined with PQ’s intertwined with RvR. It’s a tri-force of content that is VERY tightly woven together in a meaningful way in such a way that no other MMO has done before.

Just a short list here of what WAR will offer at level 40
1. City sieges.
1a. King fight.
2. Scenarios.
3. Open world RvR keeps and objectives.
4. Public Quests.
5. 6-man dungeons.
6. Lairs.
7. Renown levels.
8. Tome of Knowledge unlocks.
9. Living guild.
10. Living cities.