The first ten levels from Warhammer: Odyssey
Before I begin this piece I’d like to note that I have in the past played a few mobile games because the developer shoved it in front of my face and asked. That isn’t the case here. Nobody from *checks paperwork* Virtual Realms asked me to play Warhammer: Odyssey. I’m not even on their radar given I wouldn’t know about the game’s launch were it not for our infinitely more influential and embedded friends at MassivelyOP.
So I approached Warhammer: Odyssey with the same attitude I do most mobile MMOs; caution and contempt. Note to self, publicizing these feelings might be why I don’t get emails from mobile devs.
After playing Warhammer: Odyssey through the first ten levels I can decidedly say so far that the game is not crap. And if you know my general feelings toward mobile games coming from the wealth of titles I have to play, you know that “not crap” is among the highest praise I can give a mobile MMO. It’s right up there with “edible” as my high standard for Little Caesars pizza.
But the big question now is “how is Warhammer: Odyssey not crap?” My first indication came around the fifteen minute mark when I realized that there was no auto-play button on the screen. No autoplay? In a mobile MMO? You’re telling me Virtual Realms built the game to be played and not to play itself? There are a lot of reasons that developers put auto-play in mobile games, and you are never going to convince me that a major one isn’t because they know the game is of poor quality and without it nobody would play long enough to spend oodles of moolah on a game they technically don’t play most of the time.
Warhammer: Odyssey is a calm reminder that mobile games are at least fifteen years behind standard gaming in terms of capability. Here is Warhammer Odyssey:
And here is Warhammer Online circa 2008.
And for no particular reason here is Morrowind circa 2002 on Xbox. My fifteen year timeline might be gracious.
It feels stereotypical to say “this is like [insert game] on the go” when referring to a mobile game of a popular IP, but this feels like Warhammer Online on the go. A heavily stripped down version of Warhammer Online with most of its features and complexities removed and no controller support. What remains is a rather barebones game that wears the Warhammer aesthetic quite well.
Your character can be one of several pre-made race and class combinations like the dwarven engineer or elf shadow warrior. There are six classes divided two to each race (elf, dwarf, human) with no opportunity to play as chaos. You have two character slots that can be increased with premium currency. More on the premium currency later.
The interface is nothing shocking if you’ve played any mobile MMO. You have the virtual thumbstick and a few buttons for actions. Combat is about as simple as you can get, there are no strategies here other than kill the other guy to death before they kill you to death. Controls in combat are passable, although the game occasionally tries to auto-target someone three miles in the opposite direction.
Enemies so far are a generic assortment of humanoids for the most part. The game tosses a wrench into the mix by giving enemies a skull rating, fancy talk for artificially inflating the “difficulty” by turning them into bigger HP sponges. For a normal game it would just be lazy but here it’s par for the course.
If you’re expecting a Warhammer game where enemies require movement to beat or have attacks that can be dodged, toss those dreams out the window right now. This is as barebones as it gets.
Now let’s talk the cash shop. Since this is a soft launch everything I say about the cash shop should be prefaced with “right now.” There is the obligatory $99.99 bundle of 3900 Sovereigns, the premium currency. The base value is $1 per 30 Sovereign, or roughly three cents per Sovereign.
At least right now it looks like Warhammer: Odyssey is making its money through character slots and expansion purchases. Expanding to all six character slots will cost you 149 Sovereign per slot, or 596 Sovereign total, or just under $20. Backpack expansions cost 82 cents per five slots as do 10 bank slots and each additional auction house slot. There are also experience boosters sold for a few cents.
One thing you’ll notice is that Sovereign items are sold at odd values (149, 99, etc) where the bundles are sold in even values. This is a popular style of psychological manipulation so the player always has slightly too many or slightly too few Sovereigns in their bank, and to compel more purchases. There are also clearly placeholder menus in for Odyssey to sell cosmetic overrides at some point.
There does appear to be a memory leak problem causing the game to crash at various points. Didn’t I premise this whole article on Warhammer: Odyssey being not crap? I’m really not selling this well.
I guess my original point comes from the fact that Warhammer: Odyssey is in day one of what is basically early access on mobile so part of me sees this like a puppy with three legs at the first day of training for the three legged puppy races. It doesn’t have the malicious undertones that you normally get with mobile games where the gameplay isn’t so much the selling point but an obnoxious middleman the developer contemptuously adds in to let the 98% of freeloaders know that the 2% of whales are making the kind of down payments you’d put in on a car on something other than flashy waifus.
Warhammer: Odyssey doesn’t feel evil. Yet. It just feels barebones and inept. Outside of the day one technical issues the worst you can say is that it is boring and shoddily built.
I guess I don’t feel too strongly one way or another.
MMO Fallout 