Beta Update 2 is out at the Warhammer Herald this week and it’s terrific.  It’s packed with information on some of the changes that are currently happening with the game and I found them to be pretty exciting.  Here are some of what I found to be the highlights and things that interested me the most:

1.  Itemization.  How many times have we all been frustrated with getting a quest (or completing one), only to find out that the item rewards are things your class can’t use?  It takes a bit of the wind out of your sails and at times you can feel cheated.  Or what about the situation where you kill a rabbit and it drops an epic Sword of Doom out of thin air?  Or have you ever killed someone in PvP and wished you could be rewarded for that in a tangible way beyond a few more points?  Well, Warhammer is aiming to have loot make sense in all of these areas:

What does itemizing a chapter entail?

Well we go through every quest that gives rewards and create 24 quest items for it. Every quest in WAR gives you a choice of reward when you complete it, and those rewards are filtered to only show items that are specific to your career. Then we do the same thing for influence rewards — influence rewards are also filtered in a career-specific way.

Then we figure out all the monsters in that chapter and make sure that they drop loot, and that the loot is level appropriate for that monster. We also make sure that players will also drop loot when killed in RvR when we do this. Then we hook up all the stores in that chapter, including the renown stores – where all the great RvR items can be found.

Afterwards we create all the loot for the three PQs in that chapter. Each PQ boss can drop some very-rare unique items, and some rare and uncommon stuff too. PQ bosses also drop most of the armor-set pieces. If there’s a set piece noted for a PQ in this chapter, we add those items to loot that can appear in the chest. We’ve also been looking at how we give out loot in PQs this week – But that will be in an Update later on by the PQ Team.

OMG!  You man I don’t have to worry about meaningless quest rewards??  The career-centric loot rewards for quests and influence rewards is definitely a huge step in the right direction.  Now I know going in that every quest  is going to yield something relevant and beneficial for my class.  It’s no longer the pot-luck, mystery-meatloaf approach to loot rewards.

2.  UI and the Map.  As you know, I’ve been playing EQ2 lately and one of the “must have” mods that I use there is a great map mod called EQ2 Map.  I also used a nice map mod in WoW, the name of which escapes me at the moment since it’s been a few months.  But the point is, a good map system can really help you in the game.  It is your main source of direction, of quests locations, points of interest, etc.  A good map can help you enjoy the game more, while a bad map (the original VG “google earth” map) can really hinder you, or at best is just irrelevant to gameplay. 

At GenCon earlier this year I had the chance to have some keyboard time with Warhammer, and one of the things I looked at was the map as I did RvR and PvE.  My initial impression was that the maps were decent, but honestly a bit confusing (of course I was playing in 5 minute chunks so that didn’t help).  So it was with great interest that I read in the update this week that the team is actually modifying and changing the look, feel, and functionality of this important tool:

Most recently we just overhauled the main map from the ground up. Until this point, we had only zone level maps and then a long list of names of all the zones. Now we have a World map and a Pairing level map, as well as the Zone maps, and a method of navigating between them that should feel very intuitive.

These changes to the system has allowed us to integrate many things into the maps that weren’t there previously, such as the quest tracker (allowing for more fluid waypoint toggling), filters to turn on and off various pieces of information, and by far my favorite, map coordinates. Hooray! Coordinates have actually been very useful to the development process though they were originally designed only for player use, so it just goes to show you how good designs can be pervasively beneficial.

Oh, the maps are now larger so that you can get a much clearer visual picture of what you’re doing, and where you need to go at any time.

Overall the maps are very indicative of the style that we’re going to be using in all of the UI, in particular the parchment graphics, and we’re using the maps in other places that they can help to provide more information to the player. In fact, we’ve just begun integrating the map system into the Tome of Knowledge, so you’ll be able to see a visual representation of your Main map in special key locations in the Tome as well.

As someone who spends a lot of time looking to tweak my UI setup to be the most functional and efficient possible, this is good news to me.  The Tome of Knowledge has been one of the features of Warhammer that I think is most unique and will really be cool to see in action.  I like the fact that they are tying it in with other core UI elements, and the map certainly makes sense.  Some of the functionality they mention seems to be standard these days which is fine, but I’m glad to see that they are taking this downtime to not only add new things to the game, but also improve existing systems and UI elements.

3.  Numbers in Tooltips.  I thought this final piece was noteworthy due to the discussions you see on message boards and the blogosphere concerning numbers in MMOs.  I’m squarely a schizo when it comes to numbers in MMOs.  On the one hand, I hate that I have to play the numbers game to try and maximize everything about my character, playing the game with a calculator in one hand the entire time.  On the other side, because these games are so number centric and that’s been the modus operandi for so many years, I’ve gotten used to having all of that specific information at my fingertips to know exactly how my character measures up.

So it was interesting to see that Warhammer is apparently moving from the vague to the more specific.  Numbers will be in the tooltips when it comes to player abilities:

Some upcoming changes will finally allow us to show you some more of the actual numbers that drive your abilities. For example, a Bright Wizard’s “Sear” will no longer simply say “A basic magical attack“, but will instead say “Deals 18 Elemental damage to your target“, and you’ll be able to see the automatic upgrades that are inherent in your abilities when it says “Deals 47 Elemental damage to your target” a couple of ranks later. Additionally, we’ll have far-more-detailed ability data, including build time, cooldown time, cost, range, requirements, and so on, for every ability.

What that tells me is that this particular beta community was clamoring for more specifics - more data, more numbers.  Again, I think people have gotten used to seeing this type of information over the years and they rely on it to benchmark themselves against the game and other players, and to gauge their own sense of progression within the game (whether it be stats, dps, etc.).

Overall, I thought it was a nice beta update, and hopefully one that will cause far less ruckus than the previous update.  Go give it a read because one thing I didn’t mention here is how cool the Marauder career sounds with it’s morphing weapon-limbs. 

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So I caught a certain nugget from MMO-Gamer.com’s recent interview with Josh Drescher that really caught my attention and eased a concern I’d had about the direction RvR had been headed in.  As you may recall, the Warhammer team had been going more towards the instanced route when it came to RvR.  That was really going to be the main vehicle for RvR.  Which for a DAoC lover like me, was a bit depressing.  I really loved the open world RvR with objectives out in the world.  Instanced RvR smacked too much of WoW battlegrounds to me, and although I had a bit of fun in those, they really aren’t my favorite way to pvp.

So it was great to hear Josh say the following about RvR, and how they’ve been spending some of their beta-downtime to focus on that aspect of the game:

A good example would be persistent world RvR, where we really had initially focused very, very heavily on the instanced scenario RvR combat, and players enjoyed the scenarios, they’re really well-balanced, and they’re all cool and full of vistas and interesting stuff like that, but at the end of the day there’s something really strong to be said for moving through the persistent world and not knowing if I run through this occupied city, are there five guys in there that are going to try and kill me, or are there fifty guys in there that are going to try and kill me?

There’s something exciting and engaging about that, and as a result we’re really going to try and emphasize that side of the game a lot more, kind of bring in a little bit more of the Camelot feel, where in the open world RvR there are actual places that you can take and hold, things that have more meat to them, instead of just, “Congratulations! You’ve run through the city and touched three points, and now you control the city for five minutes.”

Awesome.  I think this is totally the right way to go with RvR.  Should there be some instances?  Absolutely.  It’s fun to have a balanced setting with a limit to team size and a timed objective.  But for me, world RvR is where the fun is really at.  No worries about queues, no worries about cross-server nonsense (which in my opinion destroys the community of the server).  I’m very, very glad to see them setting a reverse course on this and going back the other way a bit more.  Again, they listened to their beta community and I think the community got this one right.  Can’t wait to try it! 

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The Warhammer beta closes for two months.  *cue despair and mayhem*

EA does what many businesses in this country (and others) do every year (and for decades) - layoff people, consolidate operations, and look to their bottom line to re-focus their business.  *cue despair and mayhem*

So surely Warhammer is doomed and EA is going to screw up this MMO property, right?  The sky has to be falling or we won’t have anything to blog about.  Well, the sky is NOT falling when it comes to Warhammer and I don’t think I’m going out on even a tiny limb to say that.  Especially after reading the most recent interview with Josh Drescher over at MMO-Gamer.com. 

So first up, the beta closing spelled “doom” for Warhammer, right?

This is actually the second time we’ve done this, people weren’t aware of the first one because it was an internal beta for about a year. Partially it comes down to a matter of there’s a point where you kind of have to stop putting new things into the test and just decide it’s time to iterate.

We’ve taken all of this feedback in, we’ve gotten some hard answers in a lot of places, things that we put in that we were really curious about how people would react to it, and a lot of the time that’s been very positive, and we’ve gone, alright, we’re going to focus on the things people like.

Then, to be honest, there were things people didn’t like, or they just felt weren’t implemented well, or they didn’t feel quite right. As a result, Mark Jacobs, the GM of the studio, really wanted to make sure that built-in to our plan for development was going to be time to go back and iterate over everything that we’d already put out in public.

So, a great deal of the beta closure has basically revolved around taking positive and negative feedback, and making tough choices based upon that feedback to make sure that we’re not just belligerently running ahead with what we believe is right when we’re sometimes getting feedback saying, “We’d like it a little more if it was like this.”

*blink*  O.k….so unless Josh and Mark are both liars and are willing to feed the public any line of bull, they actually closed the beta to make changes brought about by listening to their beta community.  And they needed time to do it.  Sounds like a pretty simple explanation to me.  Oftentimes the truth is very straightforward - there is no conspiracy.

“O.k. O.k….so maybe the beta closing wasn’t the end of the world.  But surely EA is going to screw it all up - there’s no debating that!!”.   I know some people think that.  To be honest, I’ve never worked for EA and don’t know anyone who does, so maybe that will turn out to be correct.  But if that’s the case, they sure seem to have Josh fooled and he has never struck me as an idiot. 

The MMO Gamer: Another subject there’s been a lot of talk about—I’m sure you’ve read a lot of it yourself—the EA deal.

Set the record straight for us: Has your day-to-day routine changed at all since the EA purchase? Have they altered production?

Josh Drescher: They’ve done nothing to alter anything about the make-up of the studio, how we do our development, or anything of the sort, other than to basically say, “Here are resources that are available to you to use as you see fit.”

So, for example, we can now draw on other studios for tech and wisdom. We can send our guys out to EARS—Redwood Shores outside of San Francisco—and say, “Alright engineers, go learn from these guys who have been doing different things, things that you haven’t experienced, and bring that back.”

So it’s meant more money, more time, more people, and more resources. Obviously that has significantly impacted production, but in a positive way.

It was absolutely not something like where they pulled the mothership up over the building, ripped the roof off, and went, “One out of ten of you must now be killed at Bing Gordon’s feet!”

Bing Gordon’s actually a really nice guy, he shows up at the studio every now and then, plays the game, hangs out with some of the devs, gives us his feedback, which is always an interesting combination of wisdom and creative genius stuff where you don’t even know where it comes from. So we certainly integrate that kind of feedback, but we definitely haven’t run afoul of the mythical evil EA machine. I’m not entirely sure it’s out there.

So…let me get this straight.  There was NO MOTHERSHIP??  The “evil EA machine” is mythical??  Wow…either Josh is brainwashed, he’s lying (again!), or things are not quite as bad as the interwebs would lead you to believe. 

But hey, I get it.  Sensationalism and headlines sell papers, they sell news shows.  People want to see the trainwreck.  It’s edgy (I guess?) to be the one to say “the sky is falling - I told you sooooo!1!!!1!”.  And to be honest, I have to point the finger at myself because I’m sure at times I’ve fallen into the trap of doing that.  But I hate what I think of as the “Evil SOE EMPIRE” syndrome.  Good grief.  These companies aren’t there to ruin our lives.  If you are genuinely concerned for people who lose their jobs, and the impact that will have on their lives - that’s entirely appropriate and I applaud you.  I’ve seen that firsthand and it’s a huge deal. 

Is this my first official “rant”?  Maybe so.  But when you see the reactions out there on fansite, message boards, blogs, etc., it’s really quite amazing.  It reminds me of the “War of the Worlds” show when everyone thought it was real.  People started jumping out of windows and fleeing their cities.  But at the end of the day, it wasn’t reality at all.  Is it because people are passionate?  Zealous?  Reactionary?  Whatever the reason, it just seems like the “mmo community” is quick to react, and react vehemently, without knowing all the facts.

I have no high horse.  I’m not speaking from a high hill of righteousness.  I may have an old, beat up soapbox at best.  I’m just trying to sound the bell of sanity in my own small way.  I’m like everyone else - just a normal, everyday guy writing my opinion.  And that’s fine.  But everything I’ve seen (just so happens to be in regards to Warhammer) has been rubbing me the wrong way and I thought I’d turn it into a blog post of my own. 

Is the sky falling for Warhammer?  Absolutely not.  And it’s probably not falling in a lot of other areas if we’re willing to take a moment and think about it.

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As we found out yesterday, Warhammer Online has been pushed back to Q2 2008.  In his “State of the Game” letter, Mark Jacobs made mention of server rule sets, the first time I’ve seen the company officially acknowledge that they may, in fact, use them.  Up until this point there had been a question of if they would, and what they might be, but there weren’t any hard facts. 

Well that’s all changed as of today.  Garthilk over at Warhammer Alliance had the opportunity to visit with Mark Jacobs by phone today for a brief, follow up interview relating to that letter  During the interview Garthilk touched on several different topics, but the majority of it focused on the server rulesets and what they will be.

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.

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.

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.

So will having multiple options satisfy the fanbase?  Usually more choice is a better thing, but we’ll have to see how the War community reacts.  I’d personally be fine playing on either option 1 or 2 above.  Number one is great because you can kill your enemies anytime you see them.  Nothing is required.  I think a lot of folks will want to play on the Open RvR servers because it stays more true to the spirit and mythos of the Warhammer world.  There will be no worries about seeing an enemy and not being able to attack them.  This server will appeal more to players who want to crush their enemies at all times - people who are prone to always be up for a pvp fight, regardless of whether that fight happens to commence in the midst of mob grinding or questing.

The second option I could live with as well.  The only thing that changes here is that you get to choose, in your own “safe” PvE area, whether or not you want to flag and fight an enemy who is already flagged.  In other words, the enemy doesn’t have a choice - the game auto-flags them when they come into your realm’s territory.  The difference is, you aren’t flagged to them automatically - you have to consent to fight them and manually flag yourself.  Thus, if you wanted to PvE in peace you could.  Or, you could choose to flag and attack.  So this might be the server for people who don’t want to worry about an enemy coming into your pvp area and ganking you, who really want to keep pve and pvp more separate. 

But you may be saying, “Wait, wait, wait!  I thought Warhammer wasn’t going to have different server rulesets.”  Well, up until this point the community had been asking about it, but there had never been any firm indication that Mythic was heading in that direction.  Luckily, Garthilk asked Mark that very question to see why the company had changed directions on this:

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.

From that last sentence, it’s pretty apparent that Mark himself is not a big fan of the solution they’ve come up with.  For those who thought or wanted completely safe pve areas, where the enemy couldn’t even come to your realm’s domain, sorry!  The core ruleset will at least allow for the possibily of pvp, and it’s the closest to “safe” pve you will get I think.  I do agree with Mark - and the community seems to echo this - that I didn’t want to see mortal enemies wandering around side by side with no way to fight each other.  Yes, it could still happen on the core set servers - you choose not to flag and wander around with your flagged enemy to kill mobs together.  Honestly, I don’t know how often that will happen, but I do grant that it’s a possibility.

Overall, this news makes no impact on me as to whether I will play the game, nor my enthusiasm for it.  I will most likely play on whatever server type my friends want to play on, but option 1 is the ruleset that appeals the most to me.

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Although I haven’t received it yet, the October issue of the Warhammer Online newsletter has hit the stands.  You can find links to its contents over at Warhammer Alliance.  Mark Jacobs took some time as part of this newsletter to give us an overview of why WAR is now targetted for Q2 of next year, a bit about the layoffs and their impact, and Mythic’s continued commitment to building a great MMO. 

 In addition to Octobers Newsletter, below is the State of the Game from Mark Jacobs, VP and General Manager for the Studio. You can also find the state of the game in the October Newsletter which has just started to go out, please note it may take a couple of days to get all of them to your in-boxes.

In 2005, when Mythic signed the licensing agreement for Warhammer, I promised Games Workshop that we would create a great and glorious game. When Electronic Arts acquired us a year later, I told them the same thing. Now, a year after that acquisition, nothing has changed: we still intend to deliver the next great MMORPG. As many of you may have heard, we have extended WAR’s development cycle until the 2nd quarter of 2008. The reason is simple; we will not release Warhammer Online until it is the game we set out to create two years ago.

Our goals for Warhammer Online are not easily met. The game includes many new and innovative ideas, a feature set that is going to blow players away, and, most importantly, the best RvR system in MMORPG gaming. These things take time to implement and test properly. During the last phase of beta testing, we received valuable feedback from our testers that will help make these features even better. When we looked at our options, two paths lay before us: 1) Ship the game on time with fewer features and less polish, or 2) Extend the development cycle and spend the needed time and money to make WAR great. We chose the latter path - to invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great. Fortunately, we have the resources and support of EA behind us to extend our development cycle; time that will be used to make sure the game is everything we want it to be. WAR is coming, and it will be glorious.

One of the “popular” topics of discussion regarding EA Mythic this past week has been the subject of layoffs within the studio. While we did let several people go from the Warhammer Online team, the number was *quite* small and their loss had no impact on our development schedule. These layoffs were part of our normal studio operations and a necessary step for EA Mythic to ensure that we have a focused and committed team working on WAR going forward.

On the Beta front, we will begin a new phase of testing in December, and we look forward to getting even more people involved in WAR by the end of the year. We are approaching a half a million registrants, and, to my knowledge, this could be the most ever signups for a Western MMORPG beta. I am very proud of this as it is a testament to the strength of the community, the popularity of the Warhammer license, and the outstanding work the team at EA Mythic is doing on the game. When we open the beta in Asia, we expect the numbers to continue to climb as we’d like to see one million players signed up to test the game. At that point, we will be well on our way to bringing about the second part of the double entendre of our motto as WAR really will be everywhere.

Over the next few months in Beta, our players will find all-new content to experience, careers to play and cities to siege. Our Capital City team continues to push the envelope by creating the next generation of living cities in MMORPGs and Altdorf is simply breathtaking. New Community systems will be in place and we look forward to getting many existing guilds into the beta to try them out.

In addition, we’ll be making changes to the RvR (open field RvR FTW!) and Server Rule Set Systems. These changes bring WAR a step closer to fulfilling the promise that “War is Everywhere” while ensuring a great play experience for those that do not choose to engage in RvR 24×7. This is another example of how EA Mythic talks to the community, listens to what they have to say, and takes action. We will continue this process over the next three quarters as we continue to develop, expand and improve WAR.

As I often quote from movies, one line particularly leaps to mind right now: “Creation is an act of sheer will,” said John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Unlike his creation in that film, however, what EA Mythic creates will be great and glorious, and nobody will get eaten by giant reptiles. That is, until we get bring Lustria to life and then all bets are off.

As always, we thank you for your patronage, support and interest.
Mark Jacobs
VP and General Manager, EA Mythic

That’s the first I’ve seen about the layoffs directly affecting Mythic’s WAR team, and to what extent.  I’m glad to know the impact was very small, and I’ve been through and participated in enough layoffs at this point to understand why and how that’s done.  He also makes it plain that they didn’t feel the game was ready to ship, although from what I saw in mid-August at GenCon, the game already looked quite polished.  However, I’m glad they have the support and commitment from EA to extend the timeframe and get the game right.  You really can do no less in the post-WoW era. And official confirmation of Server Rule-sets?  I like the fact that he emphasizes open world RvR.  I had (and somewhat have) a real concern about all the “real” RvR action happening in instances. 

I don’t have time to look at the rest of the newsletter contents atm, but I’m sure they’re great, so go take a look.  Hope everyone has a good MMO or book to read over the next few months - you’re gonna need it (unless we get in beta! *hint*).

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Just spotted this over at our friendly neighborhood MMORPG.com.  Here’s the gist of what we know so far:

It was announced today in the EA Earnings Call that Warhammer Online has pushed back its launch date from Q1 2008 to Q2 2008. Mark Jacobs, the VP of EA Mythic, spoke with MMORPG.com and told us that this decision was made in order to deliver a polished product at launch, and does not threaten the game’s production.

A complete article concerning this announcement and the conversation with Mark Jacobs will be available at MMORPG.com at midnight server time.

For some this will only heighten “doom and gloom” talk, despite what the quote above says.  For others they will say “I knew this was going to happen!”.  In fact, if I recall correctly, Keen called this one and said he thought it very likely that WAR would get pushed to Q2 2008. 

I’m going to guess though that they will now be making an early Q2 2008 release - May sounds good.

With the recent acquisition of Bioware by EA, and the announced restructing and layoffs that we know are happening with EA, I’m betting it’s all impacted the dev cycle here.  I’m sure assets, people, and timelines for all product are being heavily evaluated.  I honestly don’t mind waiting and if it helps them to make the game that much better, I’m all for it.

More to come on this as I spot it at MMORPG or elsewhere.  Stay tuned true believers!

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Not much to preface here, but another post was put up by Mark Jacobs on the Warhammer Alliance boards concerning the “ruckus” that came from the beta update about 10 days ago (on pvp flagging).  Here’s what Mark has to say:

Folks,

Me annoyed by what is said here? LOL, not likely. I find it really kinda humorous actually at this point. I’ve been very clear about the fact that no final decision has been made regarding the RvR/PvP/PvE/RP/etc. servers/rulesets for WAR and since I am the one who makes that decision, there is nothing else to say at this point. If that isn’t a good enough answer, well, I’m sorry but I can’t talk about what I haven’t decided on yet. More meetings will occur next week and I may have more to say about it then. However, the only thing that does distress me is when people get so worked up over it and all sorts of stuff starts getting slung around.

As to updates to the non-beta community, well, it’s a safe bet that after this first update we will not be releasing anything that is the least bit controversial and unfinished from the future beta updates to non-beta testers. We’ll continue with our planned updates, newsletter, shows, etc., but I won’t let out any other information unless I’m sure that it is either something that is finalized or that is not likely to cause a ruckus. To do otherwise, especially in light of this past release, would be silly. We wanted to give the non-beta community some additional information and well, it’s apparent we should have waited until we finalized things a bit more. Everything that has been said here and at other sites as been said by our beta testers so it’s not like we didn’t get plenty of feedback. As I’ve said here for the last two years, we know that we will not make everybody happy with our game, that is both not our job and an impossibility. No game, no film, etc. will ever make everyone happy and we won’t pretend to even try to do that. Our job is to make a great game and if some people don’t like it or like what we do with it, well, there are lots of other options.

As I also said, back when I first started posting here, as we got closer to release, more trolls would appear, tempers would flare and the entire tenor of many of the conversations here would change. This thread, full of personal attacks, accusations, etc. is a perfect example of it.

As we announced when we shut down the beta, we plan on reopening it in December and nothing has changed in that forecast in the last few weeks. Work progresses well, lots of new stuff going in, new additions to the WAR team heading our way and overall, things moving along just fine. I look forward to hitting 500K beta signups before the end of the year and the numbers will go through the roof once we take WAR into Asia.

As always, your mileage may vary and remember, please don’t feed the trolls, they just leave a mess wherever they go and then the poor Mods have to clean up after them.

Have a good weekend everyone, I’m heading off to sleep.

Mark

So there you have it.  We’re all still in “wait and see” mode, but I do think War will end up being a great game.  There are obviously still a lot of things under discussion and decisions to be made.  O.k…well I’m not heading off to sleep, I’m headed back into my EQ2 session. 

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For those hungering for any scrap of WAR news, Warcry posted their latest Q&A yesterday.  Nothing particularly earth-shattering or new here, but hey it’s War related so it gets a few brownie points anyhow. 

WarCry Q&A: Warhammer Online
Answers by the WAR Community Team
Questions by Matt Lowery

WarCry: In the recent combat podcast we were told that you can switch out Tactics between fights, and that you can have seven active at one time, how many will you have to switch between once you are level 40?

WAR Community Team: As a refresher:

You have seven Tactics slots. Four hold Tactics you earn through career advancement, two hold Tactics you earn via Renown (RvR) and one holds a Tactic you earn from quests (PvE).

For Career Tactics, the total available will vary by career, but is generally between 15 and 20 (out of 30 to 40 available). The other systems are still being tweaked, but the numbers will be comparable when scaled for the available slots.

WarCry: Are their any speed buff, or classes that increase speed like the Minstrel in DAOC?

WAR Community Team: All players have a default sprint ability which allows a short period of increased speed at the expense of your action points, in addition several classes also get an enhanced sprint which uses fewer action points and allows you to run faster than the standard sprint.

WarCry: What options will players have to store their excess equipment? Will we have bank boxes, extra back packs we can carry?

WAR Community Team: Vaults, banks, bags, etc. All of these mechanisms will all be available.

WarCry: We have been told that new Tactics open up at each new Tier. So at level 11, I will have access to Tactics I didn’t have access to at level 5. Can I not buy any Tactics till level 11 then, or must you spend them when you get them?

WAR Community Team: Yes, you can save tactic points for later use.

WarCry: How can players complete a Public Quest if there aren’t other players around to help? If a public quest gets progressively harder, how does it reset if no one is there to complete it?

WAR Community Team: Public Quests are intended to be completed by more than one player. Each stage is on a timer, if the players cannot complete a stage before the timer runs out the entire Public Quest will restart from stage one after a few minutes.

WarCry: Can you explain how stuns and mezzes will work in game? Are they AOE, single target, or ground target?

WAR Community Team: They’re not limited to one application, so you’ll see some of each of those. There is, however, a system of diminishing returns built into ANY movement-affecting abilities that leads to (short term) immunity to further stuns, roots or mezzes for a given target.

I guess I didn’t realize that each stage of the PQs would be on a timer, and that if you didn’t complete it by the end of the timer, the entire PQ would reset.  And I’m really glad (again) to see the final answer there related to movement-affecting abilities.  In DAoC, AE mez/root was king, and woe unto you if you got stuck in it, because you were about to get pwnd if that was the case.  I’m really glad we won’t have the constant frustration of being chain mass mezzed/rooted for minutes at a time.  I like the diminishing returns on a given target within a given timeframe.

I am a little sad that there won’t be more movement enhancing abilties.  I really liked the minstrel in DAoC - definitely gave you a competitive advantage if you have a class within your group that could speed you around.  I guess I’ll have to see it in action, and how fast you can go, with this sprint and enhanced-sprint stuff.  But it strikes me as “meh” at the moment, especially since you expend action points.

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Josh stopped by the Warhammer Alliance forums and had a little to say about the Presenations that Paul Barnett mentioned in his blog:

As a note, these aren’t being done for the newsletter. They’re internal presentations we sometimes do to keep everyone abreast of how things are progressing on the project. Marketing has nothing at all to do with them (aside from bringing cameras to film them).

To avoid SHATTERED DREAMS, there is effectively ZERO chance of you seeing them this month. I realize that every month we release a newsletter that DOESN’T divulge every remaining secret and plan is an exercise in crushing hopes and killing dreams, but it’s important to remain realistic about when and how we’re going to unveil critical outstanding features and announcements. Much like Cylons, Marketing has a plan.

Paul’s post, if you reread it, indicates his hope to sneak these presentations out publicly some time in the future - most likely in the COLLECTORS EDITION of the game. A newsletter release somewhere down the line is POSSIBLE, but they’re not part of any currently planned newsletter feature, marketing push, etc. - they’re 100% aimed at an internal audience and are full of information we have not released yet and will not be releasing for some time. Just bear that in mind when you ponder the possibility of their imminent release.

So it definitely looks like you’ll need to snag the Collector’s Edition to watch these, unless they decide closer to release that they can open the floodgates of information a bit more.  No worries.  Good things come to those who wait….o.k. so I really want to see them NOW, but I’ll wait if I have to. 

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As I was looking around this evening, I stumbled across one of Paul Barnett’s recent blog entries concerning Warhammer Online.

Presentations

So on Thursday we have a team meeting and all our strike team leads have to put together presenatations about what they are doing, the problems, the solutions, the new stuff, the cool and all that.

I sat through them all yesterday, the guild one is funky, the PQ one is clever, team badass was just that badass! RVR was very detailed with loads of new ideas and great thinking. Careers was so good its being made into two presentations (one overview and one big hairy here it is!). Tome of knowledge was great as usual and Jeff’s leadership one is a class act.

So I went to talk to marketing, and now we will be filming them and hopefully we will be able to relase them to you good people, worse case scenario we will ship them in the collectors edition, best case we can roll them out in the news letter. And thats fabbo news because the talks really help explain and show you what we are doing and WHY!

Best of all I don’t have to give a talk so I guess I get to heckle from the back.

Hmm.  Interesting take on the different teams we saw in the first beta update.  He certainly seems excited about what the RvR team is doing and that’s a good thing given the whole pvp flagging issue.  New ideas and great thinking - coming from Paul I’m not sure how to take that. 

I like that Careers is so meaty that it’s getting made into two distinct presentations.  That’s easily one of the most interesting parts of War and I’m always anxious to hear more information about the careers.

Kind of interesting that they’ll include these “behind the scenes” presenations with the collector’s edition, but I hope we can also see them now as part of the future newsletters. 

I continue to be impressed with the amount of information that’s shared with the fanbase, whether it be website updates, hands-on at various Cons, podcasts, interviews or their newsletter.  There are a lot of games that will leave you hanging for weeks and months without anything new, while War has seemed to provide a pretty steady diet of info (with occasional quiet periods).  It sounds like these presentations will be quite informative, so I’m hoping we get to see them in the next few weeks.

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