An MMO designed to defeat the Top Five List of things you hate about MMO's. Read my Week One review.
(Disclaimer - Anyone who thinks that my review sounds biased towards EA should take a moment to glance over my Mercs 2 review.)
Five ways that WAR redefines MMOs:
1) I spent six hours on that one run and I didn't get a damn thing.
The first and most popular complaint I hear from gamers about MMO's is the time it takes to log in, find or build a group that works, travel out to the site and begin to game, replace people who drop out, strategize and get along and negotiate until six hours later, they finally finish to discover that it's 5am and all they got was a costly repair bill. Screw that!
WAR fixes all this by downplaying the importance of material rewards. Any player can get in on Public Quests and PvP on the battlegrounds with a moment of preparation, no searching for groups, and know that what little treasure drops won't be nearly as good as the influence rewards given to everyone who participates in Public Quests and the Renown rewards sold to players who participate in PvP. With one master stroke, WAR makes the game instantly accessible and equally rewarding.
2) The box says it's an MMO, but everyone plays alone.
Seriously, what's more contradictory than soloing an MMO? An MMO that creates solo classes and nerfs teamwork, that's what! Solo play in WAR is a hard road to walk, discouraged with instantly-accessible public groups and abilities that become more powerful as the number of allies rises. Warriors have abilities to grant protective bonuses, and spellcasters can even give allies the ability to cast spells of their own. What looks impossible for a dozen individuals is no match for a single team of six strangers. That's exactly what MMO's are supposed to do!
3) The ad said I can play a bad guy, but it only lets me choose between a good guy or an ugly good guy.
Too many games out there are marketed as a chance to enjoy the voyeuristic thrill of playing the villain, and the disappointment comes when we find out that our villainous characters aren't really that evil, and they only get to fight other villains. "Overlord", "Blood Omen II", "City of Villains"... They all participated in this deceitful and disappointing shell game. Even in World of Warcraft, the Axis of Evil that opposes the Alliance of humans, elves and dwarves consists of orcs who have turned away from their demonic heritage to pursue peaceful shamanism, minotaurs who live on idyllic mesas and worship nature, trolls that have abandoned cannibalism in favor of capoeria, elves recovering from magic addiction to rebuild their shattered capital, and the undead who have escaped the control of their Lich King to lament their lost lives. This isn't Good vs. Bad - It's Good vs. Emo, and the conflict between the two factions is never as well-rewarded as the battles in which both factions fight against the computer-generated enemies they share. In WAR, the Good Guys are really good, the Bad Guys are really bad, and the two are constantly being thrown into confrontation.
4) Every time I start to have fun, some high-level bully ganks me and camps my corpse for no reason but to ruin the game for me.
Even though players are encouraged to PvP combat, the game is carefully designed to provide balance. Low-level characters are boosted slightly when they take to the PvP battlefields, high-level characters are punished for stepping onto low-level battlefields, and even when the numbers are noticeably slanted, there's always two other battlefields in the same level range to move on to. Character death has a fair penalty that doesn't discourage PvP or encourage suicidal tactics, and defeated characters respawn in the middle of heavily-guarded camps.
PvP is also blessed with all the small and easy fixes that other MMOs have so stubbornly resisted. Characters in PvP turn solid, preventing enemies from simply walking through the metal armor of the front ranks to approach the vulnerable priests and wizards unchallenged. Characters automatically turn to face targets when they attack, defeating the retarded and unrealistic "circle of death" that's frustrated gamers for years. The knights can protect the lighter ranks, the mages do more than shoot the same ol' monotonous ray of death, and the healers get to do more than mash one hotkey over and over... It's actually fun!
5) I beat it in three weeks, saw everything and now it's boring.
From Day One, it's clear to players that their cities and societies will be continually growing. WAR honors it's RTS history by establishing guilds that "level" like characters, granting members new abilities and privileges as they grow their guilds. Even the capitol cities level through the efforts of the inhabitants, promising a steady stream of surprises hidden behind locked doors that quietly advise players that "this city needs a high level".
Like all games, WAR has improvements to make in performance and technology, but what improvement has been made in just this first week indicates a bright and enjoyable future. This game is an evolution in the right direction, designed for players who have been looking for improvement.