Putting the Mech in the Warrior

So MechWarrior:Online…  I have been holding off talking about this game even if it is my “main” game right now as far as online play goes. The reason is that the game launched as what is called “minimum viable product” and is a way for the developer to say that they ran out of time but will finish that game as you play it. To make a comparison it would be like buying car and getting all the essential bits but things like A/C, a stereo, maybe some of the less important gauges and this or that bit and bob would be missing. It is still a very drivable car. It just feels a bit raw.

The same thing can be said for MechWarrior:Online. As it stands it is a fun death match game with big stompy mechs and a surprising amount of tactical options. But that is also all it is for now compared to the living galactic warfare that was promised back when the game began taking pre-orders (darling enough called Founders). The reason I am talking about this game now is that we (and by “we” I mean the developers =P) finally are moving in to the home stretch of what have become dubbed Community Warfare, the galactic spanning war that will be the beating heart of the product.

So what the heck is MechWarrior online? Well it all began in the 80´s with a miniature wargame called Battletech that took place in a fictional universe based on a “what if” scenario of human space colonization where we in fact where alone and we create something called the inner sphere, its borders being the edge of the practical reach of space travel. Within this sphere humanity spread out and began colonizing planets. Cultures became more polarized as distances grew and the old countries dissolved. Any way somewhere along the line someone had a rule of cool moment and decided that giant walking tanks was the next hot thing.

Line art... always line art.

Now ruling this huge space empire was not easy and soon a lot of people had some very diverse and strong ideas on how to do it… This ended up about as well as one can expect as before anyone knew it we had nuked our self back to the early age of space exploration. So a large part of the military arm of in essence space UN said “fuck this” and left the inner sphere. On their way out they left this message (turns out that sub-light transmissions are really bad as it was found about 400 years later… Still en-route towards Terra).

The people left behind did not learn to live in peace… In fact they continued to fight. The five major powers in the inner sphere are as follow

Draconis Combine. Ruled by house Kurita these are your typical stereotypical space samurai.

Capellan confederation: Ruled by house Liao these are your very politically incorrect space Asians that are not space samurai. Mostly Chinese.

Free World League: Ruled by house Marik (in essence) this is space-murica and try to function as a democracy but is not doing a very good job at it.

Federated Suns; Ruled by house Davion these are your space Britts. But with less tea and more guns… way way more guns… Colonial era amount of guns.

Lyran Commonwealth: Ruled by house Steiner. Space French and German. The trade powerhouse to the Fed Suns military might.

Then we have the sixth “power” Free Rasalhauge republic: Ruled by house Magnussen as the elected prince these are your happy go lucky space Vikings. Also a democracy but doing a lot better then the free world league.  

There are also a tangled mess of minor powers but to list them all would take all day. If you want a extensive wiki on all things Battletech I direct you towards sarna.net. 

Any way these people all kicked each other’s arse back and forth over the galaxy. Now remember those angry people that left in a huff… Well it turns out they built a communist-ish warrior cast society that think they are prophecies to return to the inner sphere and save them from them self. So one day they got tired of waiting and decided that now would be a good way to wreck the face of the IS. Being known as the clans they cut a neat slice out of the IS and made them self at home.

The battles in the real world represented by small metal miniatures made by people who believed that scale was something that other people suffered under. Battletech was filled with 80´s sci-fi magic and casual racism but also pretty fun

Anyway at one point Microsoft said “let´s make a computer game of that.” And the Mechwarrior franchise was born (ok not entirely how it happened, Activision was the forst butthat game never really took off). This is how the intro locked and it sort of set the tone for the entire series.

In November 2000 MechWarrior 4 was released and signaled the end of the franchise. Beyond an expansion and a few fan projects and mods Mechwarrior was a dead license.

Until… roughly 10 years later the behemoth stirs again. First a teaser trailer pops up

And later the very game MechWarriro Online. An online successor to the beloved MechWarrior franchise the promised all that we had been missing over the years. Now in hindsight Piranha games did pretty much everything connected to marketing wrong. They set the expectations so high that not even if they had managed to deliver on them would it have been enough. And delayed things where for a bunch of reasons, not only a lack of communication with the playerbase but also with the publisher IGP. Conflicting visions and priorities lead to a community afraid to trust the developers and many of the forum going people where split in to either defending Piranha tooth and claw or paint everything they did with a tar brush.

While this was going on slowly but surely a game was taking shape that actually delivered on much of what was promised, it just took a lot longer than expected. So as we stand today MW:O is a 12vs12 PvP death match game. With a selection of 10 maps currently with a 11th coming this month and two more in production. As a player you pilot a battlemech, 25-100 tons of sci.fi magic and enough weapons to level a city block. The general rule of thumb goes, the smaller the mech the faster and less armed/armored it is. And in reverse the biggest mechs sometimes carry a weapon load that weights more than the lightest mechs. But they are also much slower and much less agile so they can be out-flanked by smaller faster mechs. This is something that PGi have worked very hard on. That every mech should have a place on the battlefield no matter size or weight. In previous Mechwarrior games it was pretty much a linear advancement. You began in a light mech and then moved on to a medium, then a heavy and finally an assault.

So each mech can be modified by changing weapons, engine, armor and something that is called heatsinks. They keep your mech from melting… Literally.

Due to the wide range of mechs and weapons combined with the fact that there are no respawns at this time the potential for nuanced tactics are great and even a single death at the wrong time can fold a solid battle line. Now this game have a steep learning curve and it is easy to make rather devastating mistakes, especially financially as mechs are expensive and money can be slow. So always ask if you feel even the slightest unsure. The MW:O community is… Well… Helpful as long as you do not give people attitude… Let us call it prison rules simply. Know your place and respect your elders and things will work out just fine. I would suggest joining a company (Don´t call them clans… As I pointed out before clans have a very specific meaning in this game) and seeing as I am not a shy one I would suggest the Skjaldborg Sheildwall of Rasalhauge. We have mead and cookies…

The game is free to play without any paywall. You can buy premium time that let you earn XP and money faster or you can buy the mechs, paints and camo schemes you like.  There are also a special type of mech called a “Hero mech” these are mechs that have a special weapon loadout and a paintjob unique to them but are not more powerful than regular mechs. Their weapons do not do more damage and they are not more resilient. Apart from the premium time and the hero mechs anything that you can buy for ream money can be bought with in-game money.

So strap in and kick some mech arse.