Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

---

Verdict:
From a very rough start, and good game is starting to emerge...

The wait is over - have the delays been worth it?

So we finally got our copies of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning yesterday. We eagerly rushed home, ripped off the plastic and got the thing to installing. There's always a serious sense of anticipation at this stage of a new MMO, knowing that a whole new world is about to open up...

Assuming everything works.

Which it didn't.

Well, not at first, anyway, and to say that we were a little... miffed is putting it lightly.

The install process runs smoothly enough, but the first sign of a problem was when the desktop shortcut to the file warpatch.exe wasn't the usual fancy icon, but rather a plain old DOS folder. Running it lead to more woe as it merely flashed up a command prompy briefly, and nothing else.

It appears that a lot of people are having this very issue, and that there are a number of workarounds. For some, it comes down to issues with Vista, and the game hiding the correct icon somewhere in the Game folder. I use XP, so that particular gem was not much help.

Further forum searching (which was seriously eating into what I had hoped would be a full night of glorious adventure) revealed one viable fix. If you had the old beta on your system, you could swap out the warpatch.exe file from that, run it, and get the game going. I gave that a try and viola! The patching started. If you don't have the beta install handy, you can still find it for download around the traps, but it's a huge package. Huge. I wouldn't be surprised if warpatch.exe finds its way onto numerous sites and torrents.

The High Elves are all deadly elegance and style.

At launch the game requires a 200MB+ patching process to run, so be warned. It seems a lot faster than patching on World of Warcraft, though, so that's something to smile about while you wait.

Once the patch was done, finally, it was play time, and... what the hell is a modern game using such a lush and artistically dramatic IP doing without any option to set anti-aliasing?!? I mean, come on, that shouldn't be that hard! I could feel the great looking game this wanted to be just dying to get out, but the jaggy monstrosity I was forced to endure sucked all joy from the experience. Shutting the game down, I opened up my NVIDIA options and set about forcing anti-aliasing from the OS.

Which, thankfully, worked. And you know what?

Product Info

Supplier:

Electronic Arts

Price when reviewed:

AUD$99

price check*

$39.99	WarHammer Online: Age of Reckoning 60 Day Timecard Centre Com (VIC)

$39.99

WarHammer Online: Age of Reckoning 60 Day Timecard
Centre Com (VIC)

See more results for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning on staticice.com.au

*Products and prices sourced from staticICE and are in no way associated with Atomic MPC

Want to check out the first Australian review of Final Fantasy XIII? We got in this month's Atomic!

Plus HD projectors, Napoleon: Total War, Intel's new six-core processor, PC upgrading guide, and a whole lot more.

ON SALE NOW!

Ads by Google

16 Comments

Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.

Azawrath Sep 19, 2008 11:52 AM	\o/ swordmasters are great fun hehe but you rolled on the wrong server! Ironclaw is where the cool people are at.
Hawkeye Sep 19, 2008 12:31 PM	But... I'm not there! Your statement makes no sense! - DH
Azawrath Sep 19, 2008 12:45 PM	Just think of how much awesomer ironclaw would be if you did join us there, with our powers combined why would anyone want to play anywhere else? 8^P.
Hawkeye Sep 19, 2008 12:53 PM	Touche, sir. Touche. - DH
ozacube Sep 19, 2008 1:07 PM	/runs to JB to get game... No really, I am going up there today! See you all on Ironclaw.
ArcaneMagik Sep 19, 2008 2:18 PM	I know I will be shot for saying this... but it really looks like WoW. At least it sounds like it doesn't feel that way. Needs more raptors stealing silver.
Hawkeye Sep 19, 2008 2:27 PM	Yeah, that's a tough thing to get away from. Though, truth be said, WoW actually looks a lot like the Warhammer world. It's the Orcs and Dwarves which suffer most, of course. But the elves and other races really are quite different looking. Unless of course you mean the interface... There's not a lot of different ways you can change that. It's like saying all First Person Shooters look alike :) - DH
Ihsan Sep 19, 2008 3:10 PM	Everyone knows Darklands is where it's at ;)
MorricMan Sep 19, 2008 9:30 PM	I reckon the visuals are WAY better then WoW, especially if you see the two in comparison. WoW is a lot more on the 'Cartoony' side, WAR is very realistic looking. Thats not too sayI've ever seen an orc in real life....
lew~ Sep 20, 2008 1:29 PM	Apparently characters don't render properly in WINE, that sucks :(
razalom Sep 21, 2008 8:21 AM	This is an excellent game. Have a level 10 Squig Herder at the moment. Public Quests are excellent and so is the RvR fighting even at low levels. Just a shame the Order players seem to run away from my guild when we appear :D
Kastoli Sep 21, 2008 2:08 PM	I hear the mutulated the shit out of the lore; but i still might look at buying it.
Hawkeye Sep 22, 2008 10:29 AM	Yeah, the lore has kind of fallen to the wayside in some instances. For instances, even though Swordmaster - in the tabletop game - are well known for their vow of silence, in WAR you can talk away to your heart's content. That said, I am on an RP server, so maybe I should just emote everything...
Elfarch Sep 23, 2008 12:50 AM	Only 2 days play so far, started late thanks to postage (so much for prerelease start). Foretunetrly that meant I had no problems getting started thanks to spot patches. Not cannon WH but expected that from watching the forums for the last couple of years. Bit of a pain getting a band together on a lower pop server for group quests but otherwise going nicely.
Hawkeye Sep 23, 2008 9:47 AM	I was really lucky last night and got into my first full public quest run with a group of turn or so people. We did that, then took all the points on Blight Isle, and then got a Guild invite. And you get XP and loot almost right away for RvR content. Win! RvR is really where it's at.
Yolbit Oct 13, 2008 11:50 AM	remember that Warcraft stole most of its ideas for characters and designs from Warhammer in the first place. being an ex WoW devotee and now a WAR player, i can honestly say that WAR takes the cake, the RvR options offer a lot more than the monotonous and familiar grind in WoW, its a lot of fun even at the low levels, and as the servers become more populated, you get a greater feeling of the war between order and destruction, great game, happy i purchased it

Editor's Choice

Area 53

Atomic Magazine

Issue: 111 | April, 2010

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

What's in this issue?