Tonight at midnight players can create characters and begin playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the newest MMORPG, a fantasy multiplayer game in the vein of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. This game looks very cool visually and many gamers are planning to start playing or switch from WoW.
But Warhammer poses some marketing problems. The first is about the world of the game itself. Warhammer is a collectible game played on tables with figurines produced by Games Workshop. The world is generic fantasy with heavy Tolkien influences. Maybe more darker than most fantasy worlds, but it’s traditional fantasy at its core. The same can be said of Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering and many fantasy properties. The reason these properties can coexist is due to their different mediums. Warcraft has always been video games, Warhammer as tabletop games, Magic as a card game, and so forth. But these properties are essentially the same sort of world, only riffed slightly for copyright issues. Warhammer is fresh and unique because it’s a tabletop game, not because its story is so badass it transcends mediums. There is a reason WoW shouldn’t have been made a card game, and why Magic’s video games never really caught on. To each his own.
But the biggest drawback to Warhammer is its presentation. Yes, if you are a PC gamer with all the right cards and hardware you can play the game. Everyone else is out. Warcraft can be played on PC or Mac, and while lower graphics, playable on most recent computers, including my 5-year-old iBook, which is saying something. Blizzard has the right attitude towards this sort of gaming, trying to get a multitude of customers. Maybe Warhammer will be this way, but so far all that game has done is alienate me from playing with its hardware restrictions and unimaginative premise.
Now, Warhammer 40K would be an amazing game…
Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.
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Matt Knicl
My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.