Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning : faq

WAR Pre-Order FAQ

Zyuu — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:03:24 GMT

Mythic Entertainment / Electronic Arts has posted a FAQ which covers most questions that people might have regarding pre-ordering Warhammer Online.

I live in Canada how can I pre-order?

You can pre-order your copy of WAR from FutureShop, EB Games Canada, the EA Store and other fine game retailers.

Where are my codes when I pre-order online?

Each retailer may do it differently, we have no control over the distribution of their codes to pre-order customers. However, you will generally receive a separate email specifically containing your codes (in some cases I've seen it take a few days). Please do not contact EA Mythic Customer Support concerning this - you must contact your retailer as we will be unable to assist you further.

What is the difference between Closed Beta and Open Beta?

The Closed Beta Test is an invite-only program protected by a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in which a select portion of the community is chosen to test the beta version of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and offer feedback directly to the development team via in-game tools and private message boards. During our Open Beta, we open testing up to a much larger audience. However, unlike many traditional "Open Betas," WAR will only be available to a limited number of players (including pre-order customers). Stay tuned for more details concerning the WAR Open Beta and ways in which you can get in.

Do I need my CE Product Key the day the game launches?

While we encourage you to get your WAR product key as soon as possible, we will provide a reasonable grace period for players to get a hold of their copies and have uninterrupted service following the Live Game Head Start.

What if I already pre-ordered?

Prior to March 26, 2008 no pre-order programs have been supported by EA Mythic. Please check with your retailers for full details. Current pre-order offers are only valid with the Collectors Edition.

Mythic/EA is stating that the FAQ will be updated regulary, check it out in all its glory here.

Removed Careers FAQ

Zyuu — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:08:55 GMT

With the recent news of axing four cities and classes when Warhammer Online goes live, Mythic Entertainment recently posted a Capital Cities FAQ and there's also a FAQ available which answer most questions (or all, depending on who you are!) as to why they chose to remove several careers.

What was the reason behind your final career choices?

It wasn't an easy decision, all of the careers in WAR are very dear to us. They all have the potential to be interesting and exciting and we invested a lot of work in creating them. However when it comes down to it we weren’t happy with the quality level across all twenty-four; some of the careers were good, but not as good as we wanted them to be. Because we were spreading our focus across so many places, we found that there were a lot more rough edges then we’d like, and our beta testers supported this observation.

We looked hard at the issue and decided it was best to focus on the best of the best and work on improving all aspects of the careers that remained. This included generating more abilities, art, and better user interface polish etc.

When did you realize you had to make this decision?

The decision to drop careers was not one we made lightly. Over the course of beta, we sat down and gathered all of the feedback and took a long hard look at how we could turn great feedback into great careers. One of the differences between our development process for WAR versus DAoC is the amount and quality of the tools we have to gather feedback from our Beta community. Whether it was reading the feedback on our internal forums, from player surveys or the amount of time people played these careers, we had a plethora of data at our disposal.

We realized that pulling a career is risky business so we wanted to be sure that we were yanking them for the right reason and the game balance did not suffer for it. In addition we need to know whether the careers we focused on were better received then their counterparts. We did not want to finalize the decision until we were confident in the results of the initial focus period.

After that, we worked hard on polishing the remaining careers and working closely with our testers. We found that focusing down on a smaller set of careers was the correct choice because players really enjoyed the updates and improvements to the careers that we focused on.

What did you gain by reducing the number of careers available?

We gained a lot more time to polish and expand the remaining careers in the game. In short, we were able to go back and add in many of the types of things that our beta players enjoyed and asked for more of, such as:

Larger amounts of career-specific items and equipment with unique artwork
Increasing the number and depth of abilities per career

We also targeted our polish efforts on some of our weaker areas, such as:

Smoother, more engaging animations
Greater variety of visual effects.

In addition, it allowed us to spend even more time fine tuning the gameplay mechanics of the existing careers.

How did you choose the final careers to be released?

It wasn't easy, let me tell you. We put a lot of time and effort into all of our careers and many of those that didn’t make the grade had spent a good amount of time in production already. However, when push came to shove, we evaluated each career based on the following criteria:

Beta feedback on the career & how it played
How anticipated the career was by the community
How removing certain careers would impact the game balance
Quality and quantity of artwork remaining to be created
Parity between races

We worked diligently to retain those careers that our beta testers said that they enjoyed the most first and that would be most important to retaining the balance of the game. That is why you see fewer melee careers (Tanks/DPS) remaining, since some of their skills were more interchangeable than those between healers and ranged careers. It’s also why careers such as the Magus, who needed a redesign and lots of new art, managed to hang on. He was just much too popular, and was a necessary career on the Destruction side to balance against the Engineer's deployable pets.

How does this affect the balance of the game?

The balance of the game is not dramatically affected by the loss of the four careers. The Choppa and Hammerer were two sides of the same coin, and since their role and play style was similar, cutting them both at the same time ensured that the balance issues from having one and not the other were resolved.

The decision to drop the Knight (Order’s Aura Tank) and the Blackguard (Destruction’s Hatred Tank) was trickier. In the end, we wound up redistributing certain abilities to other careers in order to create the balance that had originally been provided by these tanks. The one downside is the fact that this play style only exists in one of the three pairings.

In the end, we wound up with the following overall distribution:

10 close combat careers
10 ranged careers

In addition, we worked hard to ensure neither side was missing a major career type, such as a pet career for example. Both sides have the same number of tanks, MDPS, RDPS, and healer careers to choose from. Fortunately, only the play style balance suffered.

Since you cut some careers that share a "play style" with the launch careers does this mean the ones you’re releasing will be less polished?

Absolutely not! The Ironbreaker and Chosen will not suffer from losing their "play style" equivalents. Remember, "gameplay" was only one of the major factors we used to decide what should stay and what should go.

Both the Knight and the Black Guard played fairly well, and were anticipated by the community. However, they still needed a tremendous amount of production, iteration and polish time with no guarantee that in the end, they would come out exactly the way we hoped. By removing them, along with the Choppa and the Hammerer we were better able to polish the remaining careers.

I loved career XXXX! Now it’s gone, QQ!?

We understand that many players were excited about these careers, but our dedication to do what was right for the product and ensure that we were shipping a great game won out. As developers, sometimes we have to make difficult calls in order to make WAR the best RvR MMO on the market.

Are these careers gone forever? Will you be releasing them later?

Right now the team is 100% focused on the final goal of shipping WAR with the twenty balanced careers so that they are all fun, balanced and interesting to play at launch. That is the most important thing that we can focus on now. With twenty careers and our mastery system, players of WAR will have more career and customisation options than just about any other MMO in the market today. We will continue to evaluate the careers and what they can add to the game post launch. Nothing is set in stone as they say.

Smart move to reduce the amount of careers available, especially since having twenty to choose from is plenty already. 24 were almost too much. This is of course my opinion -- what is yours?

Capital Cities FAQ

Zyuu — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:11:51 GMT

With the recent news of axing four cities and classes when Warhammer Online goes live, Mythic Entertainment has posted a Capital Cities FAQ where they answer most common questions about their recent announcement.

How will the RvR endgame work now with only 2 capital cities?

Actually, it works out even better than we had originally designed. Our game still has complete tier 4 RvR content for all three racial themed pairings. At the end of each of these tiers is a heavily fortified fortress for that race, which must be taken in order for one realm to claim victory for that pairing. Imagine a giant wall cutting across the horizon line that separates you from you enemies and their fortress. Players prepare their siege weapons, casters and archers line up on the ramparts and hill sides, as your realm clashes against the foreboding gates wielding a mighty battering ram and dodge scalding oil spilling from the turrets above.

These fortresses can only be assaulted once a realm has pushed their enemies’ resistance back to the fortress itself. This requires them to capture two zones in the Tier 4 Campaign for that pairing. Players must then capture the fortress to lock down the pairing and seize control. Once one realm claims victory over any two of the three pairings, their enemy’s capital city becomes vulnerable to attack. Players can then rally and unite to focus their efforts on taking their enemy’s city. This keeps the action intense and helps funnel the players together for the “battle of all battles” as players clash in the streets of the capital cities to claim victory for their Realm.

Does Empire vs Chaos have an advantage because the 2 capital cities fall in their pairing?

Not at all. Like I mentioned above, you must capture two pairings first before gaining access to the capital city. This means that each Tier 4 RvR territory is just as valuable as the next to the culmination of the final battle. For example, as a destruction player, capturing both the Dwarven fortress Stonewatch and the High Elf fortress Shining Way will open the opportunity to knock down the gates of Altdorf.

So you cut 4 of the 6 cities, does this mean I will be enjoying WAR with only 1/3 of its original content?

We did not cut 2/3 of our content; far from it. Before, when our goal was to do six of them, WAR cities were the typical places to go for player services and to just hang out. By focusing all of our energy and effort into two capitals, we have managed to add so much more content than we would have if we had continued pushing to launch all six. Our capital cities are now packed with content and places to explore including: Guild taverns, dungeons, quests, PQs, King encounters, player services, and the most exciting thing of all--now they act as battlegrounds to fight over and protect when under attack. Beyond this, the list goes on and on. WAR now has more content than ever before, and by focusing our efforts we have been able to create a unique experience far beyond our plans when we first set out to make a great game.

Won’t I get tired of the RvR endgame by fighting over the same city every time?

If pushing through 3 separate dynamic campaigns scattered across 3 racially themed pairings, capturing battlefield objectives, claiming keeps for your guild, slaughtering your enemies in an open field, making a name for yourself by dominating in any one of our many scenarios, or helping to take a fortress for your realm to only then flood into the streets of your enemies’ city is your definition of getting tired, then maybe.

Once you get access to each city, so many new challenges await. The RvR game doesn’t end at the city gates, it really just begins. Outsmart your enemies as you take the fight to the streets, capture battlefield objectives within the city, partake in invader or defender-based quests, challenge any of the 3 massive city dungeons, join in on the city scenario and finally burn and pillage through a city wide PQ event.

After all of that, should you capture the city (remember--you can get kicked out!), then prepare yourself for two of the most challenging PQs yet! Conquering them will lead you to your enemy’s throne room itself, and their king within!

How often are you planning for a capital city to be under attack?

That’s completely in the hands of the players and how well they unite and work together with their realm. We expect that as players get used to the game and their careers, we’ll see a city coming under siege every two weeks with a capture maybe once a month.

Do you think you’ll ever revisit the other four capital cities?

Of course! One of the most exciting things about WAR is that while creating a great game for launch, we have also built a solid foundation to expand on for years to come. This foundation has provided us with a perfect canvas for future live content and expansions just as we did for Dark Age of Camelot. We want to see how players handle our first two capital cities worth of content and iterate on that feedback for future cities.

What about my king?

Your king has not been lost. You can visit him in your Realm’s capital city within the war planning room, strategizing the next plan of attack on the battlefield. New opportunities arise to crush your enemies once you gain his respect and attention.

What was gained by making this decision?

By having the development team focus on 2 capital cities we were able to grow them into something so much more than a transportation hub with an auction house. These cities are what we call Living Cities. Cities will prosper and flourish from actions you and your Realm-mates accomplish. Each city has 5 Ranks and at each Rank the cities economy changes. Not only does the economy adjust, but also various quests, events and PQs become available. Each city now has almost 100 quests tied to it, 3 massive dungeons, 12 unique PQs and a scenario to challenge you unlike any other. And the fun thing is we’re just getting started. There are plenty of other surprises waiting for you to unfold!

I love cities in MMORPGs, so to me it's a big disappointment that they had to do this. I see where they are coming from though. It's good that they have the courage to announce their plans and make it very clear. We'll be seeing more of the four "lost" cities in the future according to Mythic so all is not lost.