What is it that makes Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning exciting to the people who are following it?
Most features of the game are familiar to MMOG veterans. Other games are looking to revolutionize combat mechanics - the paired combat graphics of G&H are an amazing undertaking, the directed-attacks of AoC an interesting effort. Both will contribute something of value to the next generation of MMOs. While WAR is adding features to the combat mechanics that I find exciting (the tactics pre-battle prep, the morale system, the way healers have to operate, collision detection, movement momentum), the underlying system is still the classic hot-bar actions and timers typically found in the MMO genre. Similarly, the Tome of Knowledge has its basis in the familiar Quest Journal, but then includes more (creature lore, kill board, rewards & awards records, famous encounters, all shareable with friends for bragging rights). A quick glance at the game will show you systems that you're familiar with, without really highlighting the evolutions that make those features exciting.
The place to look for the real exciting development in WAR is RvR. Mythic isn't looking to revolutionize individual mechanics, they're looking to revolutionize the underlying game design. The actions you take in most games are meaningless, they have no impact. That lack of meaningful activity is what WAR is tackling.
At its highest level the RvR design is all about creating a meaningful conflict in the game - when questing you're not wondering around doing quests for little people, fetching their mail and delivering their grain; your fighting an enemy, delivering necessary supplies and critical dispatches - all of which sounds the same until you realize that every successful mission actually helps your side conquer territory and push the enemy forces back - it actually means something, has a real impact.
Another meaning of RvR (the meaning that DAOK players would recognize) - and the reason you may have heard the term substituted for PvP on occasion - is large group conflict. RvR isn't about me versus you, its about my squad or my regiment versus yours, battling for something important. We have no reason to go hunting each other individually; our targets are the contested objectives, and killing each other is just a happy byproduct. PvP happens, but it's meaningful, not random - whether you're challenging an enemy, ganking someone who just finished off a giant in the skirmish area, fighting in a scenario or over a battlefield, the deed is being done to earn victory points for your faction and conquer territory.
And that means that we're actually involved in a contest, a massive game of full-contact pwnage, not a series of random scuffles. We aren't competing for points on a ladder, we're competing for a grand-scale win. The PvE quests, the individual victories in lonely skirmishes, in squad-level scenarios and in regiment-sized battles all bring us to the biggest struggle of all, the game-winning point, crushing the enemy at their own capital city.
Its like the difference between keeping stats and actually playing a season. How fun would basketball, football or baseball be if their were no seasons, just individual games and player stats? In the past PvP has been an afterthought in most games, a system of keeping stats. WAR is developing the big contest, the meaningful context for the action, and a setting that changes based on the action.
Its not a permanent impact - its not a world where we can completely alter everything with a grand win or where every quest is individual and gone when we finish it. But it is a step in that direction, a game with changeable world and a living, breathing campaign that can be won or lost based on what we do. That's what's exciting about WAR.
(Written in response to a question posed in a forum thread).
