There are four kinds of conversation in MMOs: terrifyingly complicated strategising, endless moaning about imbalances, enthusiastic but awkward roleplaying and total silence. That latter is surprisingly common, a vast number of players choosing to get on with things in their own time rather than acknowledge the existence of anyone else. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning respects that. In fact, it#DY#s quite a quiet game throughout, as it#DY#s so focused on constant conflict and activity that there just isn#DY#t time to hang about complaining that the Shaman is overpowered. Crucially though, it#DY#s found a way to merge that total silence with group play.
There#DY#s a lot of talk about how WAR is a player-versus-player game. Certainly that#DY#s going to be the case in the long run for most of its players, but nonetheless an enormous part of the game revolves around traditional questing and looting, which is what quieter players are likely to stick to.
There#DY#s been this problem in other MMOs that a fair old whack of players are, for one reason or another, anti-social. They want to keep their heads down and crack on with tasks under their own steam. The trouble is that this way they miss out on the bigger baddies and bigger rewards of group quests. Public Quests are an answer to that: they#DY#re mass-scale group quests in which you don#DY#t have to share a single word with anyone if you don#DY#t want to. Just within the space of WAR#DY#s first few days they#DY#ve proven one of its biggest draws.
