Knowledge and achievements
One of the features that EA Mythic were keen to talk about is the Tome of Knowledge. Having had the chance to rifle through its many pages and witness how it impacts the whole game, we're pretty excited by itAs the creator, Carrie Goustos told us, The Tome of Knowledge has three functions: Information and reference, tracking your game-play experience and as a meta-game.
We feel sorry for the poor guy who had to write this mammoth book. It covers every possible thing you'd ever want to know about every character, including every quest, every conversation, every beast you've encountered and the back story to everything in the game. It's an unfolding story of your character, a humongous reference guide and quite possibly your best friend in the game.
We are first and foremost fans of the action rather than the story when it comes to playing MMOs so we thought the Tome of Knowledge wouldn't really appeal to us. However, this is different. Even from our afternoon of playing WAR, we found ourselves, more often than not, heads buried in the Tome of Knowledge , intuitively clicking on the links that flow seamlessly between the pages, unraveling information, showing side-objectives and cleverly encouraging you to explore areas that you may not have done if you were merely ploughing through the main quest.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageFor example, you kill a Dark Elf Infiltrator and the book icon relating to the Tome of Knowledge flashes at the top of the screen indicating there is something to read. You open it up and you're told all of the back-story and a description of the Elf itself, including how many you've killed so far. Click on the Elf and you're shown an achievement's page with a small number of achievements you can unlock. This can be killing 100 dwarfs, finding a rare artifact, even dying 10 times in the game; you're awarded lore points for hundreds of things, including things that you'll only get through exploration.
As you complete these mini-quests further ones unlock. It's a game within a game. If you're a fan of collecting stuff, it's an endless secondary game that ties in perfectly with the main game. It's addictive, it's fun to tick off the boxes and it adds so much more value of the game. EA Mythic tell us they'll be approximately 12,000 achievements!
The Tome of Knowledge is more than a complete history of everything you do in the game and it's far from being boring. Visually, it's well laid out, easy to read, beautifully illustrated and simple to navigate with tabs allowing you to flick between the various categories.
Of course the Tome of Knowledge isn't going to appeal to everyone, but we think it's a great addition, and offers something extra to those who want a break to the core Realm vs. Realm gameplay.
WAR is a heavy-weight in MMO calendar this year. We've got our open beta placed secured and we're looking forward to seeing how sieges and the PvP play pans outs. If they can make these huge battles as much fun as they sound, then we're in for a treat this Autumn. On thing is for sure, we're confident the guys at EA Mythic will be trying their dammed hardest.
Check out our Warhammer Online interview if you haven't already or you can turn overleaf for the back story to WAR.
