On Call With Warhammer Online

The devs from EA Mythic wax enthusiastic about their new project via conference call.
5/2/2008 3:05 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 5

Despite the fact that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has seen its release date pushed back twice, the development team remains in high spirits, as was evident in our recent conference call with some of the folks at EA Mythic. In fact, they sound downright giddy as feedback continues to pour in from the closed beta test, where select (read: lucky) gamers are hammering away at specific areas of the game -- and they love what they are hearing from the testers. They're also more than a bit mental, so perhaps the giddiness is a result of that; it's hard to tell.

Turns out, the beta test is going well and the feedback has been essential. Senior Producer Jeff Hickman rustled through a stack of papers, looking for a sample of the feedback he received the previous night.

"The terrain is incredible, guys, great work," said an anonymous Level 40 Dark Elf/Witch Elf. "The art looks exactly how I would have expected. RvR is amazing!" We can only assume that the negative bits were not brought to the meeting.

This call served a few purposes. First, it was to dispel any rumors that the game will suffer from another delay, as the entire team emphatically stated (loudly and in unison) that the date was a firm "fall 2008." The second reason was to give the media a general state of the game -- where it is in its development, what has changed, and to reemphasize what will make Warhammer stand out from a bloated MMO landscape.

The Camelot Difference

One of the fears is that the game will be basically a rehash of Dark Age of Camelot, only with Warhammer window dressing. When this was brought up, Creative Director and Town Crier Paul Barnett chimed in. "We know what we're doing! We understand how RvR works!" Laughter ensued.

Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, as usual, offered more detail:

"We learned a lot from Dark Age of Camelot as far as how to balance out realms, how to balance out population, how to balance out classes, what's fun and what's not, what players enjoy doing in short bursts and in long bursts. A lot of the stuff we are doing with Warhammer is derived from what we did with Camelot -- a lot of things we would have liked to do when we were making Camelot, but couldn't. Warhammer really builds upon that great foundation that Camelot put in place for us, but it differs greatly.

"Where Camelot was one frontier, Warhammer is three different battlefronts, battles raging across the world; not only in open-world realm-vs.-realm where you can fight your enemy in unmatched combat, never knowing exactly what you are getting into, but also in 'scenarios,' which are evenly matched instanced combat -- there are over 30 of these in the game. So you have all of these ways to play the RvR game, and it culminates in these great city sieges where you literally can attack your enemy's capital city, ransacking and looting, going for the ultimate prize."

"The Squig Herder was never in Camelot!" yelled Barnett. "The Witch Hunter has never been in Camelot!"

Hickman continued, "We had a very sound design in place for RvR when we started making Warhammer, and we drove for probably two years with that design. As we put it into beta the players really liked it but they wanted more, they were looking back at Dark Age of Camelot and they were saying 'Where are our keeps and where are our sieges?' This is the middle of last year ... We had great open-world warfare and great battlefield objectives in the open world but we didn't have keep siege, and when the players went in they pretty much demanded it, we listened to them. The sieges fit really well with what we are doing, and it's awesome."