A couple of months ago, around the same time Havenhold caught my attention, another game also began to ping on my radar: Warborne Above Ashes. Both games hit a lot of the main sweet spots for my MMO gaming life, and I was glad to see new games catch my interest as much as these were. Judging purely by the feature lists, I think I might have been on the fence between the two, but Havenhold’s preview access dropped first, so that was the one that took priority. Even taking a closer look at their gameplay previews, I was certain that Havenhold was going to win me over.
Of course, it didn’t quite play out that way. Now that Havenhold’s preview has completed, I’ve got the time slot available to dig into Warborne Above Ashes. Let’s call it WAA, not to be confused with “waaah!” or the sound many players make when thinking about a hardcore PvP MMO. I have to be really honest with this one, though: I lost about three hours in my first session because I was having so much fun. It really caught me off-guard in the best way possible. A game really hasn’t done that for me in quite a while, so I’m excited to share my thoughts on this one.
The game’s Steam page describes WAA as an MMO featuring 100 vs. 100 team battles, six-faction warfare, and both solo and team play. Developer Pumpkin Studio goes as far to describe the number of different classes and weapon combinations that you can explore as well as some of the different activities players can get involved in, as the game has different methods for managing the war and participating in it. I haven’t experienced all of that content myself yet, but the sound of it reminds me of the experience of playing Foxhole, where I was able to be as helpful for my faction in the war by building and taking supplies to the front lines as I was by actually fighting myself.
While WAA ticks off all the right boxes for me, Steam doesn’t really explain what the gameplay is really like. So I want to start at a high level here: WAA actually does a great job of blending in gameplay elements from Albion Online and possibly games like League of Legends. It’s isometric with a click-to-move and attack system rather than the more common MMO third-person POV.
Honestly, in my mind, this game is really akin to Albion Online, but rather than being a purely fantasy world, it’s got steampunk and post-apocalyptic themes and an even more structured PvP system. Even so, those themes don’t fully replace the fantasy elements because some of the hero skills are still very much high fantasy. Hell, I began the game with a bow and arrow and my next weapon was a sword with whirlwind skills. That’s kind of bread-and-butter fantasy.
Albion Online’s PvP is heavily a freeform guild-based structure; if you want to really participate in the later stages of PvP content, you kind of need to be in a guild. But in WAA, you begin by choosing a faction, which leads to a much more structured RvR-style system. There are six different factions to choose from, and each one provides some small bonus.
With all its harvesting, crafting, and farming, Albion Online is also truly a sandbox. WAA, on the other hand, is really focused on the faction war. Don’t get me wrong; WAA has plenty of traditional MMO and sandbox elements too. There are quests, crafting, and gathering tasks as well, but they aren’t as free-form.
Quests at my stage of the game have been simply following a series of prompts rather than get-and-fetch ones from NPCs. The crafting has amounted largely to creating simple consumables and leveling up so that I can purchase higher-tiered gear. Gathering reminded me more of a traditional RTS like Warcraft too. Rather than running around to nodes and mining or harvesting the mats directly, I moved my house and set it down by a nearby node, and a little bot came out to do the time-based harvesting for me.
Another feature that really brought me back to Albion Online was the leveling and gearing system. This is another one of those MMOs where your skills are derived largely from your equipment, so a recurve bow might have a knockback, a rapid shot, and a heavy shot, but if I equip the curved sword, then I instead have the whirlwind attack and other skills. Again, as in Albion Online, higher-tiered gear offers more and more customization too. Similarly, different armors also bring with them different skills. There’s even a full skill tree (more like a web) of ever expanding possibilities and routes to focus on – also just like Albion’s, though not as pretty.
Now, your options for customizing your build don’t end at your choice of gear, either. When I began the game, the tutorial started right away with the quest prompts I mentioned above. I didn’t really think much about how I wasn’t able to create my character at all, but that’s because WAA uses heroes, which the devs call Drifters.
That’s typically a problem for me, but maybe I just don’t see a game like this in the same light as I do a normal MMO, so the hero system isn’t as grating as I’d expect. Additionally, the game started me off with a very pretty hero, and by using some currency I was able to recruit additional ones. Each comes with some base stats that lean in different directions, but they also have some unique powers as well. That first one had a knockback, while this big red boy offered a jumping smash.
Despite being in playtest format, WAA played surprisingly smoothly – and I don’t just mean performance-wise. It’s really playable as a game right now too, with tons of activities and content available already. Obviously, there’s the primary game loop of exploring the world, leveling up, unlocking new heroes and gear, and participating in your factions open world content. But there’s also instanced PvE content for solo and groups, plus something called rifts, which are apparently instanced PvP fights over an objective. They require another kind of currency that I haven’t earned enough of yet, so I wasn’t able to try it out, but I’m hopeful it’ll be soon.
I’m really looking forward to playing Warborne Above Ashes more over the playtest period and hopefully even beyond! The playtest should still be ongoing for another week when you read this, so if you’re interested in playing, you can use the Steam button to request access and hop on in – in fact, the Ironcreed demand it!
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
