Thursday, January 7, 2016

Well, That Was Unexpected! : Warhammer Online

Thanks, Smed!  Tweeting your respect for the EMU folks who bring dead MMOs back to life gave Massively OP the opportunity to start a conversation in their comment section, which, of course, like most sane people, I never read.

Only, for some inexplicable reason, this time I did.

And thanks, also and more so, to BritoBruno, Massively OP commenter, who popped in near the top of the thread (just as well because I didn't get much further) to mention the existence of Return of Reckoning, a Warhammer Online private server running under an ongoing WO emu project.

As BritoBruno says, "It's an alpha, so, a lot of broken things", but it works!  Registration is minimal, the files all download and unzip properly, the Launcher opens the game and there you are. Back.

I made a Squigg Herder, one of my top five all-time favorite MMO classes. I fiddled with the UI a bit and then wandered out and started plinking. The place was heaving. The server holds a thousand players and I was in the mid 900s when I logged in.

All the RvR action is in T3 if the lively global chat is anything to go by. Be a while before I get anywhere near that. I managed Level 2 in about twenty minutes. I was rewarded with a Pack Mule, possibly so-called because he was already in my pack when I opened it.

Really, all I want to do is work out how to do Scenarios so I can Squigg Herd in Nordenwatch again. That was the best instanced PvP ever, pranging Order off the walls into the sea.

Never say never again.

6 comments:

  1. Wow, that's something I also didn't expect to see! Thanks for blogging it! I might have to kick around in it and relive life as a witch hunter. I did love the original public quests in that game something fierce.

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    1. So many good classes in WAR. If I get time I'd like to try a few of the ones I missed last time around.

      PQs seem to be working but the rewards aren't. I could see the chest but not open it. It's a work in progress though so it'll come, I'm sure. I loved a good PQ too.

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  2. I actually did a blog post about this in May of last year... but pretty much forgot about it afterwards. Interesting to see that it has come this far. Do you have to have the client already? I fear my original WAR client is likely long gone at this point.

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    1. (And, looking at it, you commented on that post, so we're just all in the absent minded club together.)

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    2. Lol! Not the first time that's happened either!

      The original CDs won't work, as usual in EMUs. You'd have to have the final patched version from when Live closed down. Fortunately, you can download the client you need from their website, either directly in 10 1gbish sections or as a torrent. I did the direct version and it was relatively painless although there's a limit to the number of connections so I did have to wait occasionally.

      Games Workshop are famously less sanguine, shall we say, than Smed about this kind of thing so who knows how long it will last? Once the genie's out of the bottle, though...

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    3. Yeah, I think that was one of my points along the way, Games Workshop having tried to sue at one point to stop people from using the term "space marine" or some such, despite the term being somewhat generic and heavily used in prior art. They were very coy about not actually using the term "Warhammer" on their site, but still one has to wonder how long it will last.

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