Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Beta Log
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To answer Fargo regarding RvR, I can only speak from my own experience last night when I got involved in a seriously spectacular scrum in the Tier Two Chaos/Empire and High Elf/Dark Elf zones. The whole thing got started while I was just exploring the area because I honestly thought it was empty. Tier Two is where players first get a chance to fight for full-blown keeps. The one I was heading for was currently under the control of Destruction and imagine my surprise when I found that keeps actually have equipment vendors inside that offer pretty decent PvP gear! (You can tell it's PvP gear because it requires a certain amount of Reknown as well as Rank to wear). Having just hit seven reknown thanks to spending a lot of time in scenarios, I was able to upgrade almost everything I was wearing, including that damned blue belt with the graphic bug.
After I bought my stuff, I casually floated downstairs only to find the place swarming with Order players who had set up a battering ram, knocked down the door and were killing all the NPCs on the bottom floor. I actually impressed myself by throwing out a root, fleeing upstairs and over the side of the keep only to land in the midst of a pack of Destruction players coming to defend the keep. I hit the "Open parties" button and just joined this tribe of righteous avengers (no muss, no fuss, no need to beg for an invite!) and swarmed back into the keep, murder on my mind.
What followed was a glorious orgy of slaughter and destruction. More than that, though, it was a fascinating dance of constant evaluation and group strategizing as people came and left the party on both sides. Sometimes we'd outnumber the Order players and hunt them down or take out objectives. Other times we weren't sure and had to make a group decision about whether it was worth committing resources to fighting powerful NPCs when we might get stabbed in the back. The key element in making this so exciting is simply the collision system. Terrain blocking and line-of-sight plays a key role in RvR combat and many objectives have choke points where tanks can easily hold off larger forces while ranged classes shoot them down.
