Hands On: WAR - Land of the Dead [PC]

21 May 2009 at 17:59:34 by Tim McDonald

Nothing ever stays dead in videogames. Villains pop back up multiple times in some games, and frequently in sequels. Fallen heroes mysteriously turn up later. And you never, ever, ever want to go into a graveyard or tomb, because the dead there are usually suffixed with “un.” All of this said, you can imagine my trepidation when I booted up Warhammer Online to check out the Land of the Dead area which will soon be added to the game.

Added to the game for free, no less, and it's a sizeable chunk of content. I can happily reel off the numbers – you've got 18 new Public Quests (four easy, and 14 normal), four instanced Lairs, a whole host of enemies, quests, and gameplay elements, and the gigantic Tomb of the Vulture Lord dungeon, which contains eight PQs on its own, along with multiple paths, timing and puzzle-based traps, and at least nine bosses.

It's the gameplay elements that are the intriguing part, though, with a fair few borrowed from Dark Age of Camelot's Darkness Falls expansion. For starters, there's a bit of an open progression system, and reason to repeat the new PQs. Rather than just providing you with items or a bit of equipment, you're generally rewarded with glyphs and tokens. The tokens are traded in to vendors in exchange for bits of equipment, while the glyphs are one-use items that provide access to the Lairs.

Each Lair requires a specific set of three glyphs to enter, but in a nice touch, the glyphs aren't removed from your inventory until the Lair's end boss has been defeated, so going in with the wrong group or having people leave doesn't spell disaster. While we didn't get a chance to see any of these in action, we're promised that each will have a proper end boss encounter, with some interesting mechanics in play – mechanics which, I can happily state, we did see.

Before we get onto those, though, there's one huge element that really needs to be addressed, and that's the Purge system. The Land of the Dead area can only be accessed by one faction at a time, with the control shifted by murdering players, capturing keeps, and generally taking part in RvR back in the original areas of the game. It's when control shifts that things get really interesting, though.

If you happen to be in the Land of the Dead when control shifts to the other side, then you're given a warning, and shortly thereafter, enemy players will begin entering the area. At this stage, respawning won't take you back to your camp - you're kicked out of the zone; you have to respawn in your capital city and recapture the Land of the Dead before you can get back in. That's interesting enough, but the best idea is with regards to instances.

If you happen to be in an instance when control of the zone shifts, then an enemy team can head into your instance. When they do, a 30 minute timer starts, and you need to survive; if you die, you're back at the capital city, so keeping healers and classes with the ability to resurrect alive is vital. If you survive for the 30 minutes, you can carry on with the instance unmolested. If you fall, then they can take over the instance from where you left off – and the winner of these little in-instance Purges is rewarded with an additional chest. Things will be balanced due to the added mechanics for dungeons and boss fights, with traps and the like on full display. Trying to kill an enemy team while avoiding swinging axes is complex enough; throw in a group of mobs and we're really interested.

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