Hasselhoff with laser eye beams
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Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:54 am :: silex
Posts: 873 • Guild: Pirate Ghost Cows • Class: Zealot • Joined: 17 Feb 2006
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Some great info in this one. I especially love the question about what happens when you log out in places that then switch control while you are logged out. I was hoping for this type of setup!
From:
http://war.mondespersistants.com/?article=332&page_art=2
Soon we'll see the next phase of the Closed Beta of Warhammer Online, for which more than 500.000 players have already applied. Do you further plan on a Beta for all Preorder-Players or can you even imagine an Open Beta?
Our most recent phase of beta focused on testing the Dark Elf starter area and Dark Elf careers – including the Disciple. The results are in and the test was incredibly successful, equipping our development team with bountiful amounts of data and feedback to pore over. The plan moving forward is to continue these focused beta tests, putting up and taking down the beta as necessary, to gain invaluable insight from our dedicated testers.
More to your question in terms of the pre-order and open beta, details about these programs are coming soon – stay tuned!
What endgame content do you keep in readiness for diligent players to spend time on when they've reached the levelcap?
The Campaign system in WAR really does make the level cap less of an issue. Players who reach level 40 have really just reached the crowning jewel of the game – city capture. Being able to join forces with other allied players and fight your way to the enemy’s capital city, then lay siege to it, break down the walls, rush in and invade, loot and pillage, fight the King – these are all elements of the game that are aimed directly at high-level players.
Aside from that, there are tons of public quests, dungeons, scenarios, etc. that are all designed specifically for high-level players.
How many employees at EA Mythic play the Warhammer Fantasy Wars tabletop? Do you play - and if so - which army do you command in battle?
We have quite a few people who have been fans of the tabletop game for years. We have weekly sessions that usually feature between ten and twenty players at a time (which is only a fraction of the overall players on the staff) and people are always fighting to get one of the spots demonstrating WAR at one of Games Workshop’s Games Day events.
As for myself, I’ve gotten lucky because I’ve always loved the Dark Elves and I was EXTREMELY pleased when it was decided that we’d be putting them into WAR.
What will happen when a player logs out in a zone, which is afterwards being conquered by the hostile faction? Will I wake up amongst a wild horde of bloodthirsty Orcs and get my (..pardon me..) ass violently beaten up?
Depending on the situation, that’s certainly possible – though it won’t happen in things like Scenarios.
Our Community has an important question on their mind for a really long time now. The time has finally come to ask you: just why are there Sigmarpriests with Hair? (on their head, you know..)
When you’re on battlefield, you need to keep your blade sharp for killing the enemy – not grooming yourself.
Also, this was an area where the Games Workshop didn’t demand that we restrict players out of respect for the IP, so we chose to give players more options as a result. Games Workshop has consistently supported us when we’ve asked to make small changes to the “standard” vision of Warhammer in order to make the experience of WAR as an MMORPG more enjoyable for players.
One fundamental difference between WAR and older MMORPGs is the Collisionsystem. Will players be able to use this system to strategically place objects? (e.g. a Blackorc chops a tree to create a blockade)
In terms of things players can control, collision only applies to players themselves. The risk of exploitation and abuse is simply too great if we give players control over the whole environment. Also, collision is intended to make fighting more immersive, coherent and strategic. It’s NOT intended to make it harder to get into a fair fight.
You have a very "special" system which protects players from griefplay - unfair players will be turned into a chicken! Who the hell came up with this hillarous idea? And why don’t you tar and feather them?
That idea was straight from the fevered brain of Paul Barnett. We’d been banging our heads against the wall trying to find a perfect, totally effective solution to griefing and Paul basically just suggested that we embarrass the griefers and show them as the chickens they really are. We all loved the idea and it was rolled into WAR just a few days later.
Do you regret dropping housing and mounted fights?
Well, we never actually dropped them since we never planned to implement them in the initial release of WAR. There are features that are critical to an RvR game being successful and we’ve focused 100% of our attention on those. Housing and mounted fights were not deemed critical. We also have no intention of adding features to the game that cause the RvR experience to suffer or that have to be implemented in a very awkward or limited way to maintain balance and fairness.
We may decide to implement things like housing and mounted combat at some point, but we’ve never seriously considered them for the initial release of WAR and we’ll ONLY consider putting them in if they can be developed in a way that doesn’t harm the existing game.
What changes can we expect with all the feedback from the last Betaphase?
The primary changes revolve around the RvR experience. Our testers told us that, while they enjoyed scenarios, they were really missing the large-scale, open-world RvR that they’d come to love from Dark Age of Camelot. As a result, we went back in and really reworked everything about the open-world RvR experience. We expanded its importance in the overall campaign, we added NPC guards that will help to defend battlefield objectives that have been controlled by players, we added siege weaponry to help players attack enemy strongholds and we added keeps, towers and other fortifications that players can claim and use strategically.
We also continued to overhaul the combat experience – we made major changes to many existing careers, as well as added the new Dark Elf careers. Most importantly, we rolled out the new Career Mastery system. This adds a HUGE amount of customization and personalization to the career system so that players really can specialize their characters and feel like they have a unique, interesting role to play in WAR. |
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