Warhammer Online PVP

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a huge PVP person. This is probably why I don't much care for FPS games or the multi-player elements of them. Its also why I wasn't very interested in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning the first time I heard about it.

However, in recent months and, especially, since the NDA was lifted last week, I hear more and more that is getting me interested in at least trying it out. I've been keeping a close eye on Tolbold's blog, since he is in the beta and has done quite a bit of extensive testing. His recent post detailing how PVE and PVP work together in WAR was quite informative. Some excerpts:

"I'm supposed to do a scenario, which is the same as a WoW battleground. Do, that is see it through until completion, not win. Now that is brilliant! In WoW there are far too many people leaving battlegrounds if they see they can't win. In WAR it is in your interest to stay until the end for the quest reward."

In real life its often times more important that you tried and failed, instead of beating yourself up for never trying at all. In WoW, its all about winning battlegrounds, you rarely get a quest completion for losing. They're mixing that formula up a bit in WAR. Sounds good to me.

"More nice surprises as soon as the scenario starts. The moment I move away from the spawn point my level is automatically adjusted to 8. Which means I still have the same sucky gear and selection of spells as a level 4 character, but my health and stats increased to that of a level 8, and I don't have the WoW problem that my spells are resisted by my enemies because they are of higher level. This means that while in WoW you can only realistically do battlegrounds at level 19, 29, etc., in WAR you can do scenarios at any level."

Level adjusted "battlegrounds"? Nice.

"MMORPG players are notorious sufferers from attention deficit disorder, and nobody takes the time to defend."

Truer words have never been spoken.

"So with me testing all this PvP, the rewards come rolling in. The first thing to get used to is that PvP kills and taking objectives gives PvE experience as well."

Sweet.

"In parallel to the regular xp, you get renown points, which level up your renown rank, aka PvP level. Every renown rank gives you one point to buy permanent stat increases with at the renown trainer."

Rad.

"So I participated in that keep battle, and it was a lot of fun! Both sides can bring various siege engines into play, which you can buy for 20 silver and install at specific points. For example as keep defender I had the choice of burning oil, a ballista, or a hellblaster. Burning oil was very effective, but limited to the immediate area in front of the door. The hellblaster was easiest to use, shooting several enemies if they stood close to each other, but for not so much damage. The ballista was best against single targets, but difficult to use if those targets were moving."

Groovy?

"Because you get nice stat and gear rewards for PvP, it is well worth doing, and helpful for PvE later. The system is cleverly done so that neither pure PvP nor pure PvE gives maximum rewards, but you're best served by doing a variety of different things, which is ultimately most fun anyway."

This is a pretty nice perspective on things. Instead of like WoW, which forces you to devote maximum time to either PVP or PVE, not both, WAR seems to want you to spend time doing both to get the maximum benefit from the game.

I think WAR is definitely worth checking out, at least for the free month. I might have to give it a go sometime in the near future.