Games Day '09: Our impressions of Warhammer's Land of the Dead
Filed under: Fantasy, Events, real-world, Expansions, New titles, Patches, PvP, Warhammer Online, PvE, Opinion, Massively Hands-on, Massively Event Coverage
So we've been over the cold, unfeeling facts about Land of the Dead. It's big, it's a throwback zone to action RPGs, it has RvR and PvE, and it's filled with mummies. But you don't want the facts, right? You want to know how it plays and you want to know if it's worth your time to pick up Warhammer or resubscribe to the game.
During my time at Games Day, I got the chance to participate in a bunch of the PQs in the new zone and try out a few areas of the Tomb of the Vulture Lord, the capstone dungeon of the whole experience. I got to be shanked by swinging blades, pierced by surprise dart traps, and I even got to wear the Sovereign armor set, the pinnacle armor of the game. (Yes, it looks completely badass.)
But just wearing the best armor in the game doesn't qualify you to automatically destroy people in the Land of the Dead. Even with wearing Sovereign armor and playing a class that I'm semi-familiar with (the Bright Wizard, all of the press took Order classes), I was probably the one who died the most. These encounters are exciting, action packed, and certainly not entirely based on having great stats. Land of the Dead proves that there will be two things that keep parties alive -- their knowledge of their class roles, and knowledge of the battles at hand.
I got around to a bunch of different PQs and saw first hand that they weren't kidding, all of these PQs are very different beasts indeed. One had me avoiding laser beams from an obelisk while another had me flying up to cliffs and destroy undead bird eggs while still another had me doing mini-dungeon crawls to close various sarcophagi that were down in the bottom of tombs.
My favorite PQ out of the ones I played had to have been the mini-dungeon crawl one. You have an area filled with tombs, and the first objective is to close the eight sarcophagi that lie at the bottom of these buildings. There's a catch to this, past the monsters that roam the area, the tombs are cursed and will deal damage as you stand inside them. You can, however, grab a blessing that lies in an urn just inside of the tomb doors to protect yourself from the damage. This makes these quick-crawls into timed affairs, forcing you to run in, close the sarcophagus, and run back out.
When all eight are closed, the PQ enters phase two, where necrotic priests begin to summon skeletal servants to reopen the sarcophagi. These servants are completely mindless -- ignoring any damage you deal to them as they march into the tombs to do their one task in life, open the sarcophagi. The four priests, each a champion class monster, on the outskirts will continually summon these skeletons until killed. Keep the sarcophagi closed and kill the priests, and you'll be on your way to phase 3.
Phase three summons a nasty tomb lord whom you've just angered by closing all of the sarcophagi. He's a hero class monster, making him into a group battle affair that really cannot be soloed. While engaging him, monsters still continue to spawn all around, leaving solo players the ability to keep getting tokens while a group deals with the boss. His one trick, and it's a doozie, is to roar and split apart into black dust clouds that begin to roam the area.
During my time at Games Day, I got the chance to participate in a bunch of the PQs in the new zone and try out a few areas of the Tomb of the Vulture Lord, the capstone dungeon of the whole experience. I got to be shanked by swinging blades, pierced by surprise dart traps, and I even got to wear the Sovereign armor set, the pinnacle armor of the game. (Yes, it looks completely badass.)
But just wearing the best armor in the game doesn't qualify you to automatically destroy people in the Land of the Dead. Even with wearing Sovereign armor and playing a class that I'm semi-familiar with (the Bright Wizard, all of the press took Order classes), I was probably the one who died the most. These encounters are exciting, action packed, and certainly not entirely based on having great stats. Land of the Dead proves that there will be two things that keep parties alive -- their knowledge of their class roles, and knowledge of the battles at hand.
I got around to a bunch of different PQs and saw first hand that they weren't kidding, all of these PQs are very different beasts indeed. One had me avoiding laser beams from an obelisk while another had me flying up to cliffs and destroy undead bird eggs while still another had me doing mini-dungeon crawls to close various sarcophagi that were down in the bottom of tombs.My favorite PQ out of the ones I played had to have been the mini-dungeon crawl one. You have an area filled with tombs, and the first objective is to close the eight sarcophagi that lie at the bottom of these buildings. There's a catch to this, past the monsters that roam the area, the tombs are cursed and will deal damage as you stand inside them. You can, however, grab a blessing that lies in an urn just inside of the tomb doors to protect yourself from the damage. This makes these quick-crawls into timed affairs, forcing you to run in, close the sarcophagus, and run back out.
When all eight are closed, the PQ enters phase two, where necrotic priests begin to summon skeletal servants to reopen the sarcophagi. These servants are completely mindless -- ignoring any damage you deal to them as they march into the tombs to do their one task in life, open the sarcophagi. The four priests, each a champion class monster, on the outskirts will continually summon these skeletons until killed. Keep the sarcophagi closed and kill the priests, and you'll be on your way to phase 3.
Phase three summons a nasty tomb lord whom you've just angered by closing all of the sarcophagi. He's a hero class monster, making him into a group battle affair that really cannot be soloed. While engaging him, monsters still continue to spawn all around, leaving solo players the ability to keep getting tokens while a group deals with the boss. His one trick, and it's a doozie, is to roar and split apart into black dust clouds that begin to roam the area.


















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gwyd said on 5:11PM 5-11-2009
Well it's nice to see all the press coverage over the Land of the Dead up date, meanwhile we have no update on any solution to the game braking Lag, horrendous codeing and horrible class balance in t4 which reduces the game to a CC and aoe spam fest.
Reply
Anticrawl said on 6:28PM 5-11-2009
Game breaking lag? I don't think I have ever experienced lag in the wonderful world of Warhammer. Not an ounce of lag and never once has my FPS dropped below 60 on max settings in the most populated of areas.
Abriael said on 7:02PM 5-11-2009
Oops, someone is angry that the game is getting good press. I'm sure you're such a sad panda now...
dantevengence said on 7:19PM 5-11-2009
@Anticrawl
Stop drinking the kool aid... are you serious? Have you ever played the game?
No? Thought so Mr. Fanboy...
The game is full of lag and has terrible FPS in RVR...
shinobichocobo said on 7:46PM 5-11-2009
He is right, lag is game braking during massive RVR and capital seiges. If you are melee, specialy melee that concentrate on single target attacks, you are screwed 8/10 you'll get the dreaded target out of range. Range needs to be fixed to like 7-9 feet range for attacks not 5 feet, either that, or fix the damn lag.
Fix our WE please, give relevancy to Zealots and RP, if you nerf a characters only good skill, then fix his other ones so they are actually useful and not bugged.
Run more tests with classes with different armors sets and combinations, a lot of classes "suck" unless you get a whole lot of top tier equips while other classes are gods with sub par equips.
Anticrawl said on 8:29PM 5-11-2009
Not a fanboy at all, Warhammer is one of the few MMOs I've liked in a while is all. I've never had an issue with lag at all in RvR, perhaps you should upgrade your bandwith or stop with all the torrenting. Never had an issue with performance in Warhammer.
Anticrawl said on 8:30PM 5-11-2009
Also: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/brake.html
Merckx said on 9:39AM 5-12-2009
@Anticrawl
What kind of magical machine are you running to be the only one not effected by lag? Are you on a dead server and you are the only player left?
MCRaider said on 5:29PM 5-11-2009
Thats just Mythic's way of trying to sweep the problem under the rug...or sands.
Reply
crsh said on 11:30PM 5-11-2009
Lots of whining "I can't win them all, thus the other side is unbalanced!"... yeah, we don't hear that every single time.
Reply
Hardy said on 11:54PM 5-11-2009
You know.. Blizzard is far far worse had not dealing with issues directly then any other MMO maker I know....cept maybe Sony...
Reply
bilbo said on 10:41AM 5-12-2009
People still play this game? lol
Reply
MF said on 3:12PM 5-12-2009
Looks interesting.
Also, what lag? Please, don't try to play MMOs with dial-up.
Reply
MF said on 3:13PM 5-12-2009
I play on Iron Rock and Dark Crag, btw.