Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

WAR successfully transformed PvP from a presumptive, often frustrating experience aimed only at relatively hardcore gamers into an open-to-all-comers fairgound. It deserves respect for that, and with a big crowd it would function perfectly as a game you drop into for a month or so here and there, one in which you can find an honestly satisfying fight at any time of day. Without a big crowd, though, that fairground's ferris wheels are left to wobble in the wind, and the bumper cars stand rusting. Then you realise that there isn't even anywhere to go sit and have a drink and a chat whenever the rides aren't working. So you just go punch someone you don't like the look of, because there's nothing else to do.

Still: getting towards a year on from launch, there are just enough players to ensure most of the game's systems do work, and those systems certainly offer a good time, even if they don't allow you to stamp any meaningful imprint of your own upon them. It's not beyond imagination that a patch or expansion can lure some of the crowds back, and watching that ferris wheel start to spin again, the lights on those dodgems flicker back into life, would be a marvellous, thrilling time.

For sure, Warhammer Online remains an incredibly accessible MMO - there's no fear of getting lost, little worry about getting stranded on the other side of the continent to your chums, and you're not rendered useless because you're not clad in ultra-loot you spent 400 hours grinding for. It wants anyone and everyone to come right on in and have fun with the minimum of effort. Big guilds take it that much more seriously, and are those chiefly responsible for the tug-of-war zone ownership, but at the same time my housemate plays the game almost like Diablo - flailing and clicking wildly at anything in sight, and getting away it often enough to feel he's some sort of powerhouse.

What I'm trying to say, but pussyfooting around for fear he'll read this, is that he's a bit rubbish at games. To WAR's eternal credit, this doesn't matter. Other MMOs seem to do anything they can to make you feel humble and puny, but WAR never fails to make you feel like a warrior.

Such a shame, then, that the game's sense of place and atmosphere doesn't extend beyond some impressive vistas. Players are never more than templates, and the hugely welcome addition of four extra classes since launch hasn't reduced the dread sense of seeing the same faces again and again and again. Oh, hey, it's Dwarf With A Shield again, and there goes Chaos Bloke With The Funny Arm. Again.

When you don't feel as though you're in the shoes of anyone in particular, this in turn affects the ultimate purpose, the endless realm-versus-realm conflict that WAR is built upon. There isn't much sense of fighting for anything but better statistics, and so people will continue to drift away. If the crowds were to dwindle any further, so would the score below, however strong the design, or consistent the updates.