Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Neues Interview

2007-12-19T00:19:50Z

Auf der englischsprachigen Website von Warcry.com standen erneut Associate Producer Josh Drescher und Senior Designer Justin Webb Rede und Antwort. Unter anderem sprechen sie über die weitere Verzögerung der Veröffentlichung und warum dies nur zum Vorteil für den Spieler werden kann sowie die Wichtigkeit von Individualität in einem Onlinespiel.

Hier ein kurzer Auszug aus dem Interview:

Warcry wrote:

WarCry: Your big headline recently was the decision to push back launch. This is not the first time WAR has been delayed. Why do you believe this release date is one players can expect you to meet?

EA Mythic: MMORPG fans have come to expect top tier titles to launch smoothly with finished, highly polished content across the board. This second adjustment of the launch date is intended to give us the time we need to make sure we deliver a product that meets those expectations. We're all but finished with feature and system integration right now, but Mark Jacobs (Lead Designer and GM of our studio) wanted to give us months, rather than weeks, to polish, balance and tighten things up prior to launch. As a result, between the December relaunch of the WAR Beta and the second quarter launch of the game, we're going to be able to focus the entire team on making sure everything feels perfect, looks perfect and plays in a way that will blow gamers away.

Hier gehts zum vollständigen Interview.

Interview mit Games Workshop

2007-11-29T22:10:49Z

Die englische Seite Tentonhammer hat ein Interview mit Erik Mogensen von Games Workshop veröffenlticht, in dem er darüber spricht, wie die Warhammer Marke ins Spiel übertrage wird, inwiefern Games Workshop als Inhaber der Marke Einfluss auf EA Mythic nimmt und welche Anpassungen für ein MMORPG vorgenommen werden müssen.

Hier das vollständige Interview.

Neues Interview

2007-11-14T01:08:47Z

Auf computerandvideogames.com wurde ein Interview mit Attaba Rahim, dem Produktmanager von Warhammer Online, veröffentlicht. Hierbei geht er auf grundlegende Fragen ein und stellt auch richtig, das Warhammer es nicht darum gehe WoW vom Thron zu stoßen sondern ein wirklich gutes MMORPG abzuliefern.

Das englischsprachige Interview könnt ihr hier nachlesen.

Interview mit Mark Jacobs

2007-11-02T17:05:39Z

Kurz nach der Veröffentlichung der Verzögerungsankündigung war Mark Jacobs so freundlich unseren Kollegen der Warhammeralliance ein kurzes Telefoninterview zu geben. Das englischsprachige Interview könnt ihr entweder in voller Länge hier nachlesen oder im folgenden Auszug:

Warhammeralliance wrote:

WA: With the latest release of information it's obvious to anyone following the game the folks at Mythic are pushing for some revamped RvR. I got curious when Mark mentioned a couple of possible server rule-sets in one of his posts posts, I asked him to explain the rule sets that they're tinkering around with.

Mark: The first one we're calling just Open RvR. In that ruleset, other than killing newbies, if you can see an enemy, you can kill an enemy. It is not consentual. They do not have to flag themselves. They do not have to do anything other than sit there and be a target for you. You can go out and happily slaughter Stunties wherever you can find them. Disembowel Dark Elfs, and do other nasty things to Greenskins. So that's number one.

Mark: Number 2. Right now called the Core Ruleset. That one is the rule-set where similar to the open ruleset, you cannot kill newbies, cause that's just wrong. Then within the PvE protected zones, or areas, or chapters, we're going to use different things to describe them. The moment an enemy enters into them, that enemy is flagged for RvR. You cannot unflag yourself. The moment you cross into the PvE zone you become a target for anything that is attuned to that realm. If you want to engage in PvP you can with other players, but there it does have to be consentual. Within the RvR areas you cannot unflag yourself, you are always flagged. Within the neutral area, we're talking about that. Will it be safe, will it not be safe. That's one the things we've got to look at. The thing is when you are PvEing in a protected zone, it is always consentual. A neutral area for example might be when you have to cross to a PvE area but both sides use it. It's not for hunting, maybe it's a bridge, maybe it's a road. But that's what we're looking at. it might be consentual it might not. The takeaway is, safe PvE, consentual PvP, and no flagging in RvR areas.

Mark:The third one we're going to do, is an RP server. We had them in Camelot and we'll have them here. This will be a standard ruleset for now. However during the during beta we will be doing more polls, more posting and take the temperature of the players and if there is a lot of support for an Open RvR RP rule-set or there isn't as much support for core rule-set RP server, we'll make the appropriate changes. We want to give the players what they want, not what they all want. There are some players as you know who want an FFA server. Right now that's not in our plans. But maybe a year down the road, if players really wanted it, if there was support there and we could make ruleset adjustments to make it work, we would consider it.

WA: Now I just have to point out that during the games development there has been be a change from a single server ruleset way of thinking, to the current varied server ruleset plan. So I asked about what brought the change about.

Mark: When we looked at the ruleset and we look at the core rule-set and we looked at the feedback from the beta players, we had a choice. We want open field RvR, we want people to feel that they can PvE in this game, but we also did not want to remove the immersiveness. We didn't want people who play Greenskins to walk into High Elf areas, or fart around the opposing realm and have situations where nothing could be done about that. So we look at the way areas are designed and we looked at the ruleset and said, boy, how can we do this. This is not going to be as much fun for me, this is not what I wanted to see, we looked and looked and said this is the best thing we can do and that's what we did.

WA: Now with the October newsletter came a small little video that talked a little about City Siege. In the video it had a sign-up list for a 50 verses 50 City Siege. This video unfortunately left people wondering if that was instanced scenarios that was being discussed, was it open RvR limited to 50, so I asked mark about City siege and what it's going to mean in WAR.

Mark: City Sieges is going to be a mixture of live non-instanced and instanced. There will only be one version of the city that you'll be able to attack. So that isn't going to be instanced in that sense. There will only be one. Sorta like highlander.

Mark: Now in terms of a cap for scenarios, what we're constantly looking at, is improving the framerate of the game. One of the things we don't want to have happen, is have terrible framerate. So that's not a thing with 25v25, but in terms of 100vs100, or 500vs500 that is a cap. In terms of some of the scenarios, part of the problems we've seen with Camelot and other games, if you make the requirements for scenarios, or anything, battlegrounds, battlefield, too great. What happens? Well obviously it's harder to get together. It's harder to get it all organized and we don't want that either. So we have a couple things going on. What we want to make sure is that the player shave the best experience. That they're not sitting in queues all night or that they're waiting for 100 people to show up, cause if they don't get that 100 the thing can't launch.

WA: Cross server Queuing was discussed last August and in the community it was a hotly debated topic. The answer at the time was that it was under discussion still with no real answer. Here we are now a few months later I thought to bring up the topic again and see if anything had changed.

Mark: Originally, we had thought we'd be able to get cross server queuing in for release, then it kind of got pushed back. It's something that with the extra time, I don't want to promise that we're going to do. It's something that we're going to look at. Cross server queuing has advantages obviously. We did it before. But whether it's the best way to go at launch, or whether we'll have time to get it done at launch, I don't know. I haven't even gone down that path yet. We have to make sure that we have everything in that we planned to have in before release before we start including things we didn't plan to have in.

WA: Speaking of things that are planned, crafting was a topic that till now really hasn't been talked about at all. Now I didn't get the details that we all wanted but I did get Mark to budge on the topic and tell us his vision for crafting.

Mark: Here is my thinking on crafting. I don't like recipe based systems. If it's just pure recipes, it usually means a lot of hunting and pecking for the player, or it means a lot of confusion. I wanted in this crafting system to design something that was more imaginative, more interesting for the player. Was absolutely geared to WAR, So that's what we've done. And that's what we're working on. This is going to be a more open ended crafting system than other games. It's going to allow for more experimentation by the player than other games. And it's going to allow for more interesting results.

Interview mit Missy Hatch

2007-10-30T20:26:39Z

Die englischsprachige Communityseite Warhammer Conflict, hat ein Interview mit Missy Hatch, die Community Coordinator für Warhammer Online ist, veröffentlicht.

Missy geht hier auf Fragen zu ihrer Aufgabe und der Community von Warhammer ein.

Hier ein Auszug aus dem Interview:

warhammerconflict.org wrote:

Warhammer Conflict: There have been numerous discussions about the lack of an official forum for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I'm not going to beat a dead horse here, but there is one recurring comment that I thought you might want to address. Based on a catastrophic failure of another recent game which had no official forums, some community members take the "no official forums" announcement as a lack of confidence by EA Mythic in its product. So, tell me, how confident are you in your product?

Missy Hatch: Personally, I’m very confident in the success of WAR. I know that our dev team is working incredibly hard to put out what will be the best game in the genre. We are very dedicated to developing a fresh, exciting, and action-packed game and we’re right on track with that. The lack of official forums has nothing to do with our confidence in the game. The truth of the matter is that an official forum would require resources that the community team and developers would rather concentrate elsewhere. It’s much more constructive for us to interact with the community rather than having to police it. With our own boards, too much of our time would be taken up having to do the latter.

Warhammer Conflict: Even though Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is still months from release, all one has to do is visit the various fansites to confirm that the game already has a massive community. These numbers will surely grow by leaps and bounds when the game is released. What's it like working as a Community Coordinator in such a large, active community? What is your biggest challenge right now?

Missy Hatch: Incredibly exciting and sometimes overwhelming. Knowing the following that Warhammer has already, I think I speak for everyone when I say it really inspires us to do the best job we can do. In my case, that means making sure that the doors of communication stay as wide-open as they possibly can between the community and the dev team. My biggest challenge doesn’t necessarily come from the community, but more from the state the game is in now. With the beta still under NDA, it’s really tricky to keep up with what information has been released and what hasn’t and to keep from spilling the beans. I think I’ve done a pretty good job so far, though.

Hier zum vollständigen Interview.

Interview von der E for All

2007-10-23T20:42:23Z

Für alle die immer noch mehr über Warhammer erfahren wollen, haben wir ein englischsprachiges Interview im Angebot. Auf Only-War.com liegt es schriftlich und auf filefront als Video vor. Die Fragen sind wieder quer aus allen Bereichen, also macht euch am besten selber ein Bild.

Neues Videointerview aus Paris

2007-10-04T19:44:16Z

Design Manager Paul Barnett hat auf der Games Convention in Paris ein weiteres Videointerview gegeben. Hierbei geht er auf die Musik ein die in Warhammer vorkommen wird. Led Zeppelin meets Warhammer waren hierbei seine Worte, wobei nicht klar ist worauf das genau hinaus laufen wird. Noch ein paar Worte zum RvR und schon war er wieder weg.

Das Videointerview (in englisch) könnt ihr hier finden.

Warhammer Entwicklerinterview mit Mark Jacobs

2007-09-15T01:42:24Z

Bei den Kollegen von TenTonHammer ist ein Interview mit Mark Jacobs zu lesen. Besonders interessant sind hierbei die Aussagen, dass die Spieler in der Lage sein werden, die Hauptstädte von ihren Feinden einzunehmen. Je länger sie sich dabei gegen die stärker werdenden NPC-Verteidiger und die feindlichen Spieler behaupten, desto mehr profitieren sie davon.

Wie die Entwickler von Dark Age of Camelot, dass bis heute eins der besten PvP Systeme vorweisen kann, dies umgesetzt haben, wird die hoffentlich nahe Zukunft zeigen. Wir können auf jeden Fall gespannt sein.

Das ganze Interview ist hier in englisch nachzulesen.

GC2007: Interview mit Mark Davis und Josh Dreschner

2007-09-06T17:26:46Z

Während der Games Convention in Leipzig hatten wir die Gelegenheit mit Mark Davis und Josh Dreschner, zwei verrückten Leuten, die an Warhammer Online mitarbeiten, zu reden. Die Fragen des Interviews wurden uns zu großem Teil von unseren Freunden der Warhammer Alliance zur Verfügung gestellt, also werden hoffentlich auch einige eurer Fragen beantwortet!

Zusätzlich teilen Josh und Mark einige witzige Geschichten, von der Zeit, die sie bei EA/Mythic an Warhammer gearbeitet haben, mit uns. Ihr könnt euch das Interview unten anschauen:

GC2007: Warhammer Interview with Josh and Mark

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