(Edit: I changed the subject line in the hope it might get a little more interest. Though pretty clearly AoR doesn't have many fans amongst the WHFRP community. Which is understandable. It wasn't a bad MMO but it arguably was a bad attempt at adapting the WHF setting.)
I'm curious if anyone played the MMO and what people's views were for content for WHFRP based on the 'stories' in the game.
I'd guess most would be of the opinion that it was not canon, not grimdark enough, not really WHFRP at all and more WHFB and the stories weren't really stories anyway, just a succession of kill quests. Which I agree are all valid points.
The Empire and Dwarf stories had a bit more going on then just invading/fighting off an invasion. The Empire players would be hunting a doctor spreading a plague throughout the Empire. The dwarfs helping to acquire the materials to build magical uber weapons. But that doesnt change any of the other things I'd expect people to have issues with.
As far as canon is concerened my take would be that it could be a precursor to the Storm of Chaos. Kind of a test run. Using easily replacable norse tribes, easily replacable Druchii houses and easily replacable orc tribes. In all cases, plenty more where they came from. The aim to test 'Order's' defences, soften everyone up a bit and possibly geta few pieces moved to other places on the board.
As for not grimdark/or too over powered. Well the WFB world does exist in the WHFRP one to some extent. There have been great heroes and mighty battles etc. Just the PCs aren't them and don't usually get involved. The loser wizard in the party group is part of a college that has proper battle mages, that actually go and battle, as an example.
However the stories are quite combat heavy, and outside of Empire/Dwarf would need a lot of creative thinking to be more than a skirmish game with some roleplaying. Which makes them possibly not so suited to WHFRP. They might work well with something like Massive Darkness and I'm looking at that as the 'vehicle' to realise this, so in effect Massive (Grim)Darkness. My focus as the starting point is the Orc storyline as I think my group would have a blast RPing as orcs. The working title: Massiv' Orcness.
MD also makes converting the character classes into a tabletop version easier as they're basicaly just a selection of attack/defence abilities. Nothing that's actually RP.
So, do I have something here or is this just a big waste of time? Would love to hear thoughts and suggestions.
Adapting Age of Reckoning to WHFRP
the story, while not great, was never the main stumbling block. AoR's class balance is- at best, mind- terrible and openly against how many of the mentioned classes work in canon. if you discard the nonsense around classes and the MMO weapon stuff, it shouldn't be a problem to adapt the lesser quests and maybe use the game story as an alternate timeline setting in warhammer.