Urgat
Part of the furniture
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2003
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Allready posted in the other warhammer thread, but worth a thread of its own IMO.
Read it and drool.
If mythic delivers what it is talking about, (and there is no reason it shouldn't... since much of what they have discussed is allready in the alpha version) then W.A.R. is going to be one of the strongest MMO's out there.
But first, a Dark Age of Camelot Update
A note for Camelot fans who cringe at having to read all this: Dark Age of Camelot is great, doing fine, they’re working on an expansion, and they plan on working with you to keep making the game better, more exciting, and more fun to play. There’s a new quest system in the works, a new race and class coming, and most importantly, a new form of RvR gameplay. And their producer said outright, flat out, that Camelot is their flagship product and they plan to keep improving it for years. You guys will have plenty to play for years to come.
Now, “Warhammer Is Batman…”
“Hello,” says the man at the front of the room in a cheerful voice. “I’m from England, where we don’t have technology.” Paul Barnett, Design Manager on Mythic’s upcoming MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, doesn’t speak traditional MMO-jargon.. The way he talks is very different from what we’re used to, but then, Warhammer Online is going to be very different, and much better, than what we’re used to.
I went to Fairfax as an admitted, even gleeful, skeptic. On the one hand, I played Dark Age of Camelot from the beta well into…let’s just say somewhere between 3 and 4 years are tied up in my account. I know Mythic. I like Mythic. On the other hand, saying the massively multiplayer genre is busy devouring itself like the metaphorical serpent is like saying the sky is blue. Expecting anything new at the moment is just setting yourself up for a Christmas morning-type disappointment, when the big box under the tree turns out to be a sweater. However, on this occasion, I’m willing to make a leap of faith. I think they’ve got what it takes, and I think Warhammer Online is going to be an awesome, amazing product.
So I’m sitting in a conference room with a bunch of other writers, watching as the Design Manager declares, “Warhammer is…Batman!” when something begins to dawn on me. When he makes the Warhammer=Batman analogy make sense (see, there are many different aspects and versions of Batman, but there are still fundamental, basic Tenants of Batman, a spirit of Batman), though, that’s when I realized what it was. This game is fundamentally not like other games, because this team is not like other teams, and their vision is not a The Vision—a club wielded to beat players into submission--no, their vision is a game that is really, really fun to play.
Warhammer Online’s design philosophy is “War is everywhere” and everything you do should help contribute towards the war effort. Warhammer is all about big, sweeping themes. It’s an epic, heroic struggle, perpetual struggle and eternal war, order versus destruction. Consider it a fantasy version of World War II. Even if you’re not out fighting the other side, you’re doing things on the homefront that, ultimately, help contribute to your side’s eventual victory. They’ve built the game around a different mindset. Paul and his team don’t see MMOs as a “game” experience. They see a regular computer game as a packaged experience, i.e., you pick up the box, you play it for 40 or 50 hours, and you put it back on a shelf. The Warhammer team sees their game as more of a hobby experience, built to reward 3 core ideas: Skill, commitment, and imagination.
They see commitment as everything, and not in a time sense—I asked the content team, and there’ll be plenty to do even if you don’t have 8 hours a day to play—but more in a “I’m committed to playing the game and getting better at it” sense. Basically, they want it to be *possible* to play the game eating breakfast, talking on the phone, and shouting to your friend across the room, but it will be much, much more fun to get really into it, learn how to play your character, learn how the skills work, and get really into it. It’s not rewarding based simply on you hanging around for 15 hours a day, it’s rewarding based on how well you learn the game.
Moving down from the higher-level design, we got into the meat of the game itself. Mythic thinks of RvR as the real crown jewel of Camelot, and the RvR system is in full effect in Warhammer, which they think of as the “spiritual sequel” to Camelot. There are 6 sides (elf, dark elf, dwarf, greenskins—orcs and goblins, humans, and Chaos) that are locked in constant battle, and you’re thrown into the conflict from Day 1.
When you’re not running quests to contribute to the war effort, you’re actually out in it killing people. The RvR model from Camelot has been refined and perfected. The six sides are locked into 2 loose alliances of three sides each (elf, dwarf, Empire/humans and dark elf, greenskins, and Chaos), but in the starting areas, you’re going to be facing off against one foe most of the time. For example, we were shown an early version of the orc starting area, where new players would attempt to fend off dwarvish invaders—NPCs and get familiar with the world.
That doesn’t mean that it’s PvE all the time, though, far from it…which isn’t to say there ISN’T PvE. They plan enough content to go from 1 all the way to the max entirely by PvEing…AND enough content to RvR all the way to the top. They’re planning to have 33 playable zones at launch, with 1800 quests scattered across the two alliances (900 each), all of them hand-built from scratch, according Destin Bales, their Content Director. In this case, it didn’t seem like the usual vanity promises of every developer ever. They have those quests (maybe not all 1800 of them) on paper, in big binders, with all the dialogue and stuff detailed. They exist. They showed them to me.
The current quest model is a three tier system. “Green” quests will be PvE only. “Yellow” quests will take place in PvP areas or require you to cross PvP areas, but you don’t have to kill any other players. “Red” quests occur across all levels, take place in PvP areas, and require you to kill other players. All good so far, but the best part is, all PvE quests and all RvR/PvP quests will award players money, items, and experience, making it possible for players to advance however they want. While it is *possible* to do one particular style and never, ever do anything else, the WAR team envisions an 80-20 split in favor of PvE in the early game, slowly shifting to a 20-80 split in favor of PvP in the late game.
Types of quest vary and, again, the theme of conflict prevails. Public Quests are realm wide collaborative efforts, automatically assigned to players, and even though you may not know most of the people in your realm, you’ll be working with them along the way. Conflict Quests put people in a competitive PvE effort, where players from each faction compete to kill the most monsters. In Branching-type quests, players will be able to control their quest reward, choosing an ending that nets them more money or an ending that earns them more experience. And the “Christmas” quests, sure to be a favorite, are designed to encourage exploration because, waiting off the beaten path, are large monetary rewards for what is comparatively little effort.
PvP combat, as I said above, will have quests and content devoted to support it, too. They see skirmish-type gameplay (coming across a guy from the other side and killing him) as a major focus of it, and the “zones” of both sides are designed to encourage this, with lots of areas of overlap and potential PvP—though, notably, there are safe areas for those choosing to opt out—and lots of incentive to get out there and fight. They also plan a number of Battlefield-type quests, which are objective-based battles along the lines of Battlefield 1942. Scenarios are—gasp—instanced scenarios, point-based (like Warhammer itself) objective-based battles with NPCs. Basically, they gave the example of Counterstrike for this, short, fast, team-based scenarios, although critically, teams will be balanced with a Warhammer-style point system, where a Level 50 costs a certain amount of points, and there’s only X number of points allowed in each battle.
Now, the goal of all this is the ongoing war between the factions and, to this end, PvP actually has a purpose. Winning all these quests and battles and scenarios influences who controls each zone and locking down a series of zones enables you to take the enemy’s capitol. The absolute coolest part of this is they plan to let you actually sack the capitol, actually go in, rampage through the streets, kill merchants, and otherwise raise hell. They envision this working like relic raids (if you’re familiar with Camelot), where it’s a big, cooperative push, locking down zone after zone, then charging into the capitol and smashing things up. And the “defending” players will have incentives, besides pride, to push the opposing side out and retake their city. Intense street to street PvP combat for fortune, glory, experience, loot, and money? The description of it sounded like a fantastically good time and I particularly liked that your involvement is very, very important. If they can pull it off the way they describe it, it always feels like you’re doing something meaningful, even if it’s the absolute lowest level quests, which is the kind of thing that could shake the industry. You’re not just killing 27 goblins because that guy over there wants you to, you’re killing 27 goblins because it helps your side gain control of the zone and rampage like a Viking through the streets of the city. Also of interest, every single zone has a backstory, a history behind it, and a reason for existing.
This point in the presentation is when I began to have some problems. I mean, I want to be skeptical. They check your cloak of cynicism at the door to the office, you know, and if you don’t have it, you don’t get into the Writer’s Club. But this sounds so very, very cool that for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to the game. It sounds incredible but, you know, I think they can pull it off. Mythic doesn’t talk like other developers, promising the moon and delivering a Moon Pie. Stuff they talked about, I saw in the game when we had some hands-on time.
Now, I don’t know if they can pull it off. Paul Barnett, freelance genius, might be a madman or he might have such a grasp of the systems that he operates on an entirely different level—he was picked by Games Workshop, by the way, to oversee the design, and knows his British miniature games--and I don’t know which level it is. I know this, though: I agreed with just about everything he said, to the point it frightened me, and if he IS the mad Colonel Kurtz in the jungle, then you may officially consider me Dennis Hopper. He’s a poet-warrior in the classic sense, and has fantastic taste in games. Also, I’d like to assure Paul’s mother that he has a job. You can trust me, I’m a writer on the Internet. (Aside to readers: Mothers don’t understand the industry).
Moving on to the class system, Paul and his team are almost throwbacks to another time, sticking to a very simple formula. A guy with a long beard carrying a stick and wearing a pointy hat is probably a wizard. Each race has 4 archetypical classes. He gave the example of dwarves. The dwarves have two fighter classes: Ironbreakers (Defensive fighters) and Hammerers (Offensive fighters), one magic-type class called a Runepriest (Offensive Healer), and an Engineer (likes crazy machines). Each class blend depends on each individual race—like 3 magic users and 1 fighter for more magical races and 3 fighters and 1 magic user for the “soccer hooligan” orcs—but you know your role from day one…however, the career system will allow you to define your character a bit more. You’ll have choices that enhance your effectiveness in the role. Fighters, for example, might pick something to let them fight longer or harder. But you’ll basically be always a fighter (or a magic-user or a healer).
Speaking of fighting, their combat system is remarkably intricate, without being a pain in the backside. They’ve built it around 3 specific phases—as you might expect from complicated turn-based war games—of combat. In the Tactics phase, you pick your tactics. These might be things that help one type of damage, make you move faster, and so on, and different races and classes and levels can do all sorts of different things with tactics and strategies, and learning that seems to make up a big part of the game. The third phase is actual combat, and the skills and combat abilities you can use actually depend on your tactics, rather than being a series of buttons you click on and sigh about, because it’s the same old thing. We played a hands-on of the combat system and it was an absolute blast. PvP was fun and exciting, drawing lots of swearing and cursing from the assembled writers, as orcs and dwarves battled it out. And it’s going to get better.
Finally, there’s Morale, the really interesting part of the combat system. Morale builds as you fight. The more people in your group, and the more enemies you fight, the faster it builds. The more you win, the faster it builds. Morale skills are really cool things that happen, dramatic, game-changing combat moments that give the game’s battles a real jolt, and the more you build up, the more cool stuff you can do. As you progress through the career system, you may be able to unlock morale skills. Details are hazy at the moment—as you might be able to tell—but it’s based on a very cool old game that I swore I wouldn’t name. Old arcade hands such as myself, though, would be quite pleased to hear it. The design’s influences are some of the best games of all time.
Moving on to the art and graphics, my first impressions were: amazing. The game looks like an epic fantasy game. It feels epic, like you’re taking part in a major story. Now, the obvious comparison is going to be made to World of Warcraft (check who came first, dorks), but Warhammer’s style is entirely different. Yes, orcs are big and green, but they look menacing. They get bigger and stronger as they level. There are an abundance of customization options—for every race, not just orcs—and all sorts of little doodads to put on yourself. We looked at orcs and dwarves, so I’ll use those for examples. Orcs get spikes and blades and skulls of their enemy, all to decorate and distinguish themselves. Dwarves get longer beards and medals and all sorts of things. Basically, the effect is two-fold. On the one hand, your character doesn’t look like every other level 49 your class here out there and on the other hand, it’s possible to tell how powerful someone is simply by glancing at them, without referring to numbers or letters floating over their head or knowing what all the uber gear looks like. If you’re fresh out of the newbie area and see a seven foot orc with skulls dripping off him charging towards you, he’s probably going to kill you in horrible ways. Again, simple, but at the same time, very powerful.
Other graphical firsts include facial animations. Characters now have personality beyond staring blankly ahead and, most importantly, so do enemies and NPCs. There’s a little face-meter at the bottom of your HUD, much like the Doom Marine, and he grimaces and looks excited and otherwise changes expression as you do things. More importantly, so does your avatar. So not only does your character have a personality to you, everyone else sees his or her mood settings and it gives them another element of realism. Overall, their art style tends to favor personality and exaggeration versus realism, but at the same time, none of the art should ever be boring. Their artist even said “You should always have something interesting to look at” and it really showed in the game itself. We were cut loose in the dwarf-orc area, and came across floating ironclad ships, an aerodrome of some kind, orc hovels, spooky old towers, ruins, statues, little castles and towns, and just like they’d said, we had lots of fun exploring. Someone would find something interesting and we’d all scurry over and look at it, then wander off our own separate ways until we found something else. Even at this very early stage, those two zones felt very organic and alive and, just as they said, something new and interesting was just over the horizon. And they haven’t unveiled most of their races or zones. Chaos’ lands are going to be amazing, and I say that without seeing them at all.
Now you see my dilemma. So much is under wraps—a lot of the game—that I don’t really want to make a proclamation….but on the other hand, I believe in this team and I think they can deliver something amazing. So, time for a leap of faith, based on what I know about Mythic and what I saw last week. Warhammer Online is definitely one to put on your watch list, and if the game is as amazing as they make it sound, we’ve got an early contender for game of the year. Personally, I love the design principles behind it—making a game fun, making PvP meaningful, making you feel like you’re part of a much larger whole—so much that I’m going to buy it simply because more games should be made by teams this good, with this kind of focus on meaningful player experience.
Read it and drool.
If mythic delivers what it is talking about, (and there is no reason it shouldn't... since much of what they have discussed is allready in the alpha version) then W.A.R. is going to be one of the strongest MMO's out there.
but random headless bg tends to be somewhat like what you described.
