WAR - Warhammer Online - Jan Newsletter

[Arthur_Parker]

Warning - I'm a fanboi for Warhammer and have been for 20 odd years.

How did you get into game development?
I'm color blind and dyslexic, and though some people say I may be smart, the examination boards think I am as thick as a plank. So I'm one of those people who left school early to go and earn money for my family.

I started with all the terrible jobs in the world - working in a sewer, garbage collector, bill poster sticker, bartender, and car wash attendant. I decided out of the blue to design computer games and set up my own company. I started designing massively multiplayer games when the internet was young. My games became the biggest MUD's in Europe for five years straight. I was so happy I bothered to get an education at my own expense; I know in the USA paying for your education is the norm but in the UK it's still looked at as rather odd. We managed a million game hours a month (back when that number was considered impressive). I was so happy I quit computer games and went into business consulting for several companies including, so far, a ten year creative consultancy with Games Workshop.

Like everything, the industry moved on and before you could blink game budgets soared and the numbers went crazy. I still have my games up and running, though now as nostalgia, and they are still available on the web. Try www.legendsofterris.com to see how the oldies used to do it. 

Small section quoted below, you are automatically entered for the Beta draw just by signing up for the newsletter.

Latest Newsletter

In the Warhammer world, conflict is an inevitable fact of life as hated enemies clash on the field of battle, unleashing awesome magic, fearsome creatures and devastating engines of war. All the while, sinister agents of Destruction plot the demise of the allied forces of Order. It is into this land of conflict and strife that you will be cast, in an age when a great and terrible war consumes the whole world.  It is a time of epic heroes and ferocious battles that will shape the fate of nations, and it is called the Age of Reckoning.

When the first reports of the Chaos Plague begin to appear in the fringe settlements of the Empire, they are dismissed as fanciful tales conjured to frighten away unwanted visitors. When the plague appears in the streets of Altdorf, however, the situation changes completely. By the time the Emperor issues his first quarantine order, the vile disease has already spread across most of his lands. The Empire's doctors work day and night to combat the sickness, but the plague defies all efforts at a cure.

Victims of the Chaos Plague first experience tiredness, aching and soreness and extreme thirst. Bouts of nausea follow, but it takes nearly a month to reach the final stages of the disease. It is only then that the horrific nature of the plague is made clear; those unfortunate souls who have experienced plague symptoms for three to four weeks begin to change, transforming into fiendish Chaos mutants that savagely attack any living creature that they see. Those lucky enough to avoid contracting the plague are often killed by the savage monsters spawned from it.

With each passing month, the death toll mounts. Quarantines and martial law fail to slow the spread of the disease, and paranoid fear grips every village and town within the Empire’s borders. Militiamen in plague-wracked cities are forced to combat the hordes of Chaos mutants roaming their streets, leaving their walls undefended against threats from without. Emboldened gangs of brigands roam the countryside, looting, burning and killing at will. The scope of the tragedy is almost unparalleled in the history of the Empire, but the Chaos Plague is merely a precursor to a much greater evil yet to come.

Meanwhile, in the Dark Elf kingdom of Naggaroth, the Seers of Ghrond continue their unceasing study of the distant Chaos Maelstrom. Suddenly, there is a marked shift in the nebulous swirls of color and shape. The Seers watch intently, studying the ominous new patterns. When they are confident of their readings, the Seers dispatch a messenger south to Naggarond aboard a swift Black Pegasus. Great events are about to unfold in the world, and the Witch King must be informed.

Days later, Malekith, Lord of the Dark Elves, reads the dispatch from Ghrond. The Chaos god Tzeentch has found himself a new Champion. The followers of the Changer of Ways have assembled a great warhost for his herald and are preparing to launch a massive incursion into the lands of men, the Empire his likely target.

Malekith ponders the message. He is well aware of the terrible plague sweeping through the Old World. If the forces of Chaos launch an attack while the Empire is weakened by the plague, the Emperor will have no choice but to call upon the nearby Dwarfs for reinforcement. With the aid of the Dwarfs, it is possible the Chaos host might be turned back. If, however, the folk of the mountains are unable to come to the Empire’s defense, Emperor Karl Franz will be forced to turn to the High Elves of Ulthuan. Malekith is doubtful that his kinsmen will abandon the great nation of men in its hour of need, for doing so might deprive the High Elves of a valuable ally. No… the High Elves will respond, and will likely send several legions of warriors to repulse the Chaos attack, leaving Ulthuan vulnerable.

When the Chaos moon eclipses the light of the sun, the dispatch concludes, the forces of Chaos will begin their march southward. Time is short, and there is much to do.

The Witch King commands that every forge and furnace in the realm be brought to bear in the crafting of weapons, armor and siege machines. The Beastmasters of Karond Kar are ordered to select the strongest and most ferocious creatures in their pens and ready them for battle. The fierce Witch Elves of Khaine prepare for bloody sacrifice to the Lord of Murder. Morathi, the Hag Queen, summons forth the most powerful Sorceresses from the Convents and trains them to lead the armies of the Dark Elves. As his people prepare for the coming war, Malekith draws up his plans against the Dwarfs.

A party of the finest hunters and warriors in Naggaroth are dispatched to the lands of the greenskins with a single directive: bring back the most powerful Orc Warboss that can be found.

When the hunting party returns with both an Orc and a Goblin, Malekith is surprised. It seems the two are inseparable, jointly leading a powerful new tribe calling themselves the “Bloody Sun Boyz”. The goblin shaman, Gazbag, provides the brains while the towering brute of an Orc, Grumlok, supplies the muscle. For each, Malekith forges a magical amulet that greatly amplifies the wearer’s abilities. In addition, the Witch King secretly includes a spell of command that will compel the two leaders to gather their tribe and march east into the World’s Edge Mountains. There, they will capture the fortress at Eight Peaks and build a mighty Waaagh! to eradicate the Dwarfs. This being done, he commands his warriors to return the captive greenskins to their home.

His plan set in motion, Malekith waits for news from the World’s Edge Mountains. With the Dwarfs occupied by the fight against the coming greenskin Waaagh!, they will be unable to answer the Emperor’s call for help when the Chaos army reaches his borders. The High Elves will sail east for the Old World, and Malekith will launch his attack. At last, the Witch King will claim the birthright denied him for millennia by his weak-blooded kin. The Throne of Ulthuan will be his.

[Azazel]

I've also played warhammer in its forms for a good 20 years, but as deep as the WFB world is in places, that stuff from ther newsletter is just recycled generic fantasy game background lore. Really really generic...

[angry.bob]

I've also played warhammer in its forms for a good 20 years, but as deep as the WFB world is in places, that stuff from their newsletter is just recycled generic fantasy game background lore. Really really generic...

I agree. I've still got all my White Dwarfs going back to issue 95. Given my recent disenchantment with WoW I've been starting to look at Warhammer Online. Not that I expect it to crap magical ponies w/ rainbows into my life, but I was basically happy with everything in DAoC except the drab, generic, unsexy character skins and the half assed character balance. And TOA. TOA just broke the game for so many people I knew on so many levels...

Anyway, if Mythic learned half of the lessons DAoC had to have taught them over the years (too many classes = impossible to balance correctly, raiding and grinds makes people dread your RvR game, characters enjoy walking faster than mummies thank you, good quest loot drops for everyone in the party), coupled with what WoW demonstrates is love (Fast, fun leveling, interesting quests, stylish art, Night Elves) I'll enjoy the game.

Enough with the shitty fluff we've been reading for 20 years. Start giving out some specifics. At least say what the three sides are going to be and what races are available. Will my Orc character get bigger and darker with levels? He fucking better with todays machines. Will my Witch elf have two pasties, a velvet g-string, fuck-me pumps, and two daggers for gear? She fucking better, leave that bland appearance shit at DAoC. Respect for women is great and all, but if you guys think that 99 slightly different looking versions of leather armor or chainmail that prevents you from knowing a character's gender from more than 5 feet away is going to fly in anything with the word "Warhammer" in it's title, you're dead wrong. The entirety of Games Workshops catalog is built on style, for the rules suck complete ass. Their miniatures games are a masturbatory exercise in shoving around miniatures you've painted better than your friends are.

Oh, and Goblin Fanatics FTW.

[angry.bob]

doh

[Arthur_Parker]

Enough with the shitty fluff we've been reading for 20 years. Start giving out some specifics. At least say what the three sides are going to be and what races are available.

From the back story 3 realms look like.

Empire, Dwarfs & High Elves
 
Dark Elves & Greenskins
 
Chaos

Dunno about races. White Dwarf 75, noober.

[angry.bob]

Enough with the shitty fluff we've been reading for 20 years. Start giving out some specifics. At least say what the three sides are going to be and what races are available.

From the back story 3 realms look like.

Empire, Dwarfs & High Elves
 
Dark Elves & Greenskins
 
Chaos

Dunno about races. White Dwarf 75, noober.

Bah, you use teh geography hax. Getting WD here back then was a pain of special ordering and whatnot. It's way less impressive when you could just walk right into the store and buy 20 of them off the rack.

Dark Elves and greenskins is no good. Dark Elves and chaos, Greenskins on their own team. Though from a team balance standpoint, Greenskins need titty and chaos already has Slaneesh.

[tazelbain]

I hate this fan service bullshit.

Anyway, rehashing the Warhammer lore isn't doing it for me.  Yes, Warhammer lore is pretty good, so fucking what.  The fact that they are doing the 3 realm thing is already a big kick to nads for the lore.  Look at how much lore matters in WoW and DAoC.  It just explains how the game got to its current static state and some filler for quests.  Big Woop!

Where is the inovation? How are you going bring this lore to life?  Tell us something meaningful.  Give us something to believe this isn't going to be a reskin of DAoC/WoW.

[angry.bob]

I hate this fan service bullshit.

I can appreciate that, but I don't think it's possible to do at least 3 of the races/whatever without fanservice and have it be in any way related to Warhammer. And thats leaving out Chaos. What exactly do you think goes on with anything involving Slaneesh when they're not fighting. A slaneesh themed instance would make Second Life Goreans blush. I just don't see being able to do Dark Elves or Wood Elves without Witch Elves or Wardancers. They're elite, signature toops for theri respective armies, cheesecake as all hell, and should be included as "hero classes" or whatever the WAR equivalent is - if there is one, which we don't know cause it's been months and they haven't said shit about design. But anyway I'm not asking for a multiplayer online fantasy version of Lula 3D or anything, but the same level of androgenous blandness that permeated DAoC is simply, flat-out not appropriate for the Warhammer millieu. Plus, nerds like hot elves.

[HaemishM]

Bitch Elves should be a playable class. So should fucking Wardancers, goddamnit. Fuck this hero class prestige elite wankomatic catass cockgobblery. Bitch elves should be drenching themselves in the Cauldron of Blood during downtime while having great dildonic orgies of bloodletting.

But they'll probably just craft grind until their tits fall off. And you know it.

[angry.bob]

Bitch Elves should be a playable class.

Honestly, I don't think there should even be classes in the traditional sense. THey should just go with the old-school Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system of career paths, allowing pretty much infinite character development without any traditional MMORPG crap being neccesary.

But they'll probably just craft grind until their tits fall off. And you know it.

Yeah, I'd be suprised if they do anything out of the current paradigm. THough it is a GW franchise, so you can count on the most powerful items being for sale for real world money only, change weekly, be made of plastic, come 5 to a box, and cost $45.

[Alkiera]

Honestly, I don't think there should even be classes in the traditional sense. THey should just go with the old-school Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system of career paths, allowing pretty much infinite character development without any traditional MMORPG crap being neccesary.

EVE's character/skill system.  In a fantasy setting.  Pls.

Alkiera

[Arthur_Parker]

Honestly, I don't think there should even be classes in the traditional sense. THey should just go with the old-school Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system of career paths, allowing pretty much infinite character development without any traditional MMORPG crap being neccesary.

The below selection of comments are from Mark Jacob's at various times from different places over the last few months, not going to post all the links unless someone questions something.  It's obviously too early to tell much but these seem to be the major design elements revealed so far.

The game will be heavily-Warhammer. Not heavily-influenced by WH, not flavored with juicy bits of WH, but heavily-Warhammer. We are drawing on all the WH fantasy material no matter whether it comes from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, etc. We will be pulling in as much material as we can in order not only to create a great game but to create a great WH game. An example of this would be our implementation of the Career System from the WFRP or using a particularly iconic High Elf unit within the game as something the player can aspire to become.

The game will take place 'out-of-time' with all the current GW material. With GW's help, Mythic will sketch out a new time period for the game's setting. This will allow the teams more freedom in creating content that is tailor-made for this game without worrying about contradicting existing GW material.

The game will be RvR-centric, focused on the ongoing battles between three separate groups

The playable races that will be represented in the game are Humans (Empire), High Elves, Dwarves, Dark Elves, Chaos (more to come on this, sorry for being vague), Orcs and Goblins. .... .We plan on, of course, expansion packs that will bring the other races into the mix down the road. Not having Skaven, Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, etc. in right from the beginning was not an easy decision but the important thing is to bring in enough races to make it fun but to do so in a way that allows us to more easily balance the game and create specific content for the races that is both fun and true to WH.

Magic will play a large role in the game. We are taking all the material contained in the IP and expanding on it while maintaining the core WH magic system. I know that some people here are hoping that magic would be less of a role in this MMORPG than other MMORPGs but as GW would tell you, magic is everywhere in the world of Warhammer. Make no mistake about it, magic will play a great role in the game but it will be WH magic, not D&D magic.

The RvR and combat systems in this game will not be DAoC2. While I don't want to go into details now (for competitive reasons), what we are creating for this game is tailored to this game, to the IP and to make this a next-generation game.

With the postponement of Imperator and the fact that DAoC's next expansion in coming out soon, we will be able to almost fully staff the WH team ahead of schedule. What this means is that we will be able to make a big splash at E3 2006.

For what it's worth, this game will not be WoW-lite, WoW 1.5, WoW-Mythic, etc. I mean no offence to Blizzard, WoW is the number one success story in this generation of online game (and I'm friends with a bunch of Blizzard and ex-Blizzard guys) but we are not trying to re-create it. Warhammer incorporated Orcs and Goblins before Warcraft was created and we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we eliminated a potentially interesting realm just because somebody else is using them. I know this doesn't make you feel any better but I hope you will trust GW, even if you don't trust us, to ensure that what we do will be in the best tradition of WH.

As to whatever happened to good and evil, they are still in there. And in terms of the heroic good races fighting back the hordes of evil, they are still in there. Don't think in terms of DAoC where we have three realms all fighting each other at all times. This is not DAoC. If you look carefully at the races chosen and then remember your WH history you should get an idea of what we are trying to do. Remember, this is not DAoC...

Realm imbalance in this game is a primary concern of ours. We have some rather unique and interesting ways of dealing with it which, I'm sorry to say, I won't talk about it now. However, please keep in mind that it is our #1 concern in both the short and the long term. It doesn't do us any good to design a great game that two months out is so imbalanced that our playerbase drops to nothing. We have learned a lot from DAoC (as well as other games) and we expect to use that knowledge to all of our advantages.

We are not targetting this game at WoW's audience or WoW's numbers. To do so would require us to create a PvE-centric game and not an RvR-centric game. While we would love to get WoW's numbers (who wouldn't right?) that is not our focus for this game.

----------------
Crafting will be an important part of this game but keep in mind the following core principles:

1) All major crafting skills (leaving room just in case we want to do some pure "fluff" ones in the future) are geared to the waging of battles both on the large and small scale.

2) The crafting system will not require you to create 100s of items to advance a level, rank, etc.

3) The crafting system must be enjoyable, otherwise why bother?

4) The system will not encourage farming, whether for loot or through the crafting system.

5) They will be a wide range of items available for creation and use. WH is full of great and glorious items and so will our game.

6) The game will not be all about the Phat Loot though.

------------------

it would be a foolish move on our part to design a game with all these races to choose from but not allow any of them to actually work together.

We love 40K and we would love to see what we could do with that down the road as well.

With WAR, we knew, right from the start that there would be a lot of races that we wanted to add to the game and that by adding them we could do things like we did in DAoC. Thus, we had to come up with a solution that allowed us to add races for the packs without mucking up the works. And we did.

I really liked the career system in WHFRP  However, keep in mind that we don't want to clone that system for two reasons:
1) It would be impossible to make all the careers fun
2) It would take at least 3 times the alloted development time to get them right for all the races in the game.

As of now, I see this game being a level-based game that utilizes a robust skill system as part of an over-arching career system. I also want Mythic to create a game that you can play as an individual or as part of a group. Obviously, the WHFB system is geared to armies and the WHF ruleset is geared to small groups. What I can tell you now is that the RvR scheme that we are looking at would involve things that you can do a) solo; b) with a small group; c) with a large group and in big-hunking battles. The game will also include lots of things you can do without having to go into battle against other people.

[schild]

Wake me up when there are screenshots of the UI, maps of conflict lands, an in-game minigame of Warhammer involving toys you get in game from random drops, and a chart with the exp needed for each level.

[Rasix]

and a chart with the exp needed for each level.

y=x^2

Done.

[Arthur_Parker]

Wake me up when there are screenshots of the UI, maps of conflict lands, an in-game minigame of Warhammer involving toys you get in game from random drops, and a chart with the exp needed for each level.

Somebody liked the band of brothers box set.

Warhammer Video Diaries

Icon's from UI shown, map plus lots of toys.

Will update you when have info on drops and exp chart.

[Lt.Dan]

Wake me up when there are screenshots of the UI, maps of conflict lands, an in-game minigame of Warhammer involving toys you get in game from random drops, and a chart with the exp needed for each level.

Since no one else has said it...

You already can....it's called DAoC.  I'm going anti-fanboi here.  No offense to those of you who are interested but the more I read about this game, the more it sounds like DAoC2.  That and that bland "catch all" PR leaves very little to be interested in.  And please, appeal for solo and groups without being WoW1.5 - YOU CAN'T MAKE THAT SHIT UP!

[Big Gulp]

I just don't see being able to do Dark Elves or Wood Elves without Witch Elves or Wardancers.

I always penalized the players who chose "cool" professions like Troll Slayer, Wardancer, etc.  In my campaigns a rat catcher or a pimp was capable of mighty feats, and dwarves with pink mohawks took a quick dirtnap.

[Llava]

Mark Jacobs sounding as enthused and persuasive as ever.  It sounds good on paper.  Without having read all the stuff about DAoC and then playing it for 2 years, I'd be totally hyped.

As it is, the semi-annual mention of "player owned horses coming soon!" just keeps replaying in my mind.

So, you know, we'll see.

I have abolutely no familiarity with Warhammer, though.

[Margalis]

This ties in nicely with some of the discussions we've had recently about story and why nobody cares.

It's all boring, cliche, meaningless exposition.

Meanwhile, in the Dark Elf kingdom of Naggaroth, the Seers of Ghrond continue their unceasing study of the distant Chaos Maelstrom.

Really! Wow, tell me more, please! I'm enthralled!

I couldn't even read half of it, it was so boring.

[Arthur_Parker]

This ties in nicely with some of the discussions we've had recently about story and why nobody cares.

It's all boring, cliche, meaningless exposition.

Meanwhile, in the Dark Elf kingdom of Naggaroth, the Seers of Ghrond continue their unceasing study of the distant Chaos Maelstrom.

Really! Wow, tell me more, please! I'm enthralled!

I couldn't even read half of it, it was so boring.

I really don't want to disagree with anyone about Warhammer Online being released as a good game or not, past experience has constantly shown that a low expectation for future mmorpg games is the safe and sensible bet.

However you do address one of the issues I see with WAR, will they dumb down a complex adult IP in the belief that doing so means it will appeal to a wider market?  I really hope they don't dumb it down at all, GW's target audience is early teenage boys, adult fantasy material seems to have successfully drawn them in for years.

This newsletter isn't a very good introduction to the Warhammer IP, but I don't think that was it's main purpose, it trying to sketch the back story for the 7 races to be included in the game.  If you use the newsletter as an introduction to Warhammer IP, well it's like trying to fit 7500 years of our Human history onto a page of A4, it just wouldn't turn out too well and Rome wouldn't really sound that impressive.

I don't actually remember much about Dark Elves (never was that keen on them) so did a google and found the below, if this small section on Dark Elves sounds boring as well, fine no worries, but I would like some fantasy book recommendations from you.  I'm currently out of reading material and could do with something good.

Dark Elves (Druchii) are the "lost brethren" to the Wood Elves and High Elves, dwelling in the frigid northern realms of Naggaroth. Long ago, their ancestors pledged fealty to the Chaos Gods, and their long association with the forces of Chaos has warped them in body and spirit. Outwardly, this is evident in their pale, sallow complexions, and their bleached hair -- though many times they hide this by dying their hair and tattooing their skin in strange colors and patterns.
Most Dark Elves are cold and calculating, cool in their tenuous relationship with the forces of Chaos. They do not revel in evil as a rule -- they simply live in a society so tainted by Chaos that actions that would be considered evil (and rightly so) by the forces of Order are of no concern to them. From birth, the "weak" and overly conscientious are "culled" -- or, to put it bluntly, murdered -- by their elders, so that only the strong and ruthless remain, driven by a witch's brew of emotions: anger, bitterness, lust, and -- though none would likely admit it -- terror.

Amongst the Dark Elves, there is a warrior sisterhood known as the Witch Elves, and they are the most cruel and bloodthirsty of their people. They are all pledged as mistresses to Khaine, Lord of Murder -- their name for the Chaos God, Khorne. After each battle, they choose victims to sacrifice to Khaine, and bathe in their blood, renewing their pact with the Lord of Murder.

The Witch Elves in the temples of Khaine, presided over by the extremely ancient Hag Queens. Once a year, they have riotous celebrations during what is known as Death Night. They prowl the streets and steal away any Dark Elves they find -- sometimes breaking into houses to steal away the inhabitants, if they cannot find enough unwary souls in the streets. The fate of most of these unfortunates is to be sacrificed to Khaine, their blood poured into boiling cauldrons, which the Hag Queens bathe in to restore themselves. The Hag Queens are magically restored, attaining an unearthly and certainly unholy cadaverous beauty that slowly withers away over the year, as they revert into the crones they truly are ... until the next Death Night.

Whereas most Dark Elves might regard their lot in life with some solemnity, Witch Elves throw themselves into the open maw of death and destruction with wild abandon. They eschew the "false comforts" of armor, and drink hallucinogenic potions that send them into wild frenzies. Those inducted into their number are stolen as infants and raised either to join the number of the Witch Elves, or to die in failure as victims of their bloodlust.

In short, Witch Elves are among the most vile of mortals in the Warhammer World.

WITCH ELF HEROINE
If the GM should be so inclined as to let his players put together a party of Chaotic characters, the inclusion of a Witch Elf Heroine is no difficult matter. However, if a Witch Elf is to be included into a regular group of Heroes, then it is to be assumed that either the Witch Elf is prudently keeping her true origins a secret, or else she has turned away from the bogglingly wicked excesses of her former "sisters", and is seeking redemption by performing heroic deeds.

In any case, Dark Elves have a much easier time of blending in than most creatures of Chaos, so long as they don't go about human settlements wearing emblems of Khaine/Khorne in plain view. 

[schild]

I think any future game with elves should not be allowed to generate hype. All gamers should all turn and look at it and say "No, I will not play this trash." I don't even care if the game is good. I'm tired of generic fantasy trappings. You see, it's not that I specifically want dystopian or post-apocalyptic or future/steam punk settings - it's that I simply want an out-there alternative. Something without a Sword of Whateverness or Elves from the Land of Consecutive Vowels. Everyone should be tired of the same shit. But for some reason, they keep lapping it up.

Look at the fantasy book market. There's maybe what, 5 or so series WORTH reading? And among those five there are at least 2 that could be easily argued as being total trash? I think most people should read Dragonlance. But really, it's typical shit. But I loved it. A lot of people think Lord of the Rings is necessary reading. But it's really not. In a world before editors, that shit should have been knocked in half. Don't even get me started on the Simarilion (spelling, wrong, I know). Booooooooooooooooring. And yet it's probably the most overused setting in the history of video games. Well, besides Fantasy In Space, but we can thank fucking George Lucas and his Twi'lek Lightsaber destroyed brain for inflicting that upon us.

I'm just tired of all the same old shit rewashed and sold to me again. I've found the only reason I play MMORPGs anymore is that I can play them with friends. THAT'S the appeal. None of them have a good story. NONE of them. Sure, there might be a few good quests here and there, but setting has little to do with that. So, now that we know the big reason people play is that it's a world with other people to escape into - what's the next move?

Sell us more fantasy games? No. Be original, different, whatever. Just be something else. Why hasn't someone made an alternate Earth game yet? Mother Online anyone? I mean what's the goddamn appeal of elves, swords, spears, armor, and shit anyway? Is it just easy to apply stats to a Flaming Broadsword of the Wolf? Is applying stats to a baton or handgun or lead pipe really that hard? Even RF Online fucked it up, and I don't even have to play it to know that. That game is just elves in giant suits of armor. Warhammer Online? Elves in elaborate suits of armor. This isn't Mythic's fault mind you - it's just the general state of the industry. Fantasy is easy to make. The bar really isn't set very high in literature and you can count on both your hands the fantasy movies worth watching. So a mediocre fantasy game is surely easy to achieve par for the course in development.

But obviously I'm insane. A quick glance at MMORPG.com shows about 100 games in development or beta testing. A grand total of 18 of them are Sci-Fi. Unfortunately among those are at least 5 Eve/Earth and Beyond ripoffs, 7 of them are from independent companies which will probably never make it to release, and one of them is Auto Assault. On the entire list, 4 are listed as "real life" but we know what those are - player created furrydomes. One of them is horror, god bless them despite their game being a wretched piece of shit. ...And 8 are listed as historical - a list that includes Puzzle Pirates and ATiTD. Historical my ass.

I see one Sports title on that list - Shot Online. Which means the list is missing UBO. Also, it ignores Korea.

I can only hope the 360 and PS3 will bring me new online game experiences because the ones I'm having are stale. Yes, I want to play with my friends, you got that part right. Unfortunately I also want to play a good game with a compelling storyline and tight gameplay. But I guess that's out of the question since online game developers seem to live on Least Resistance Ave about 364 days a year.

[Arthur_Parker]

Schild, I couldn't decide if I should give you a book suggestion or recommend a game for you.  It's probably best if you try the book first as I'm starting to have real doubts about your ability to enjoy the game.

[Sky]

That might be schild's longest post...and I have to agree with it. Prepare for global destruction, bitches. The end is nigh.

I want the online gang simulator of the first part of GTASA. It fits a lot of the player mentality, since a whole lot of people think they're 'gangsta' and whatnot. Open pvp, take over territory. Not a blip on the horizon, and if it were, Hillary and Joe would jump on it like that tick on Hat's dog.

[HaemishM]

However you do address one of the issues I see with WAR, will they dumb down a complex adult IP in the belief that doing so means it will appeal to a wider market?  I really hope they don't dumb it down at all, GW's target audience is early teenage boys, adult fantasy material seems to have successfully drawn them in for years.

Warhammer's lore is not a complex, adult IP. It's juvenile. It's adult in the same way Scary Movie is adult, in that it appeals to what you said, early teen boys who like fart jokes, angsty goth-y armor and death evil chaos.

And yes, expect it to be tamed.

[Arthur_Parker]

Warhammer's lore is not a complex, adult IP. It's juvenile. It's adult in the same way Scary Movie is adult, in that it appeals to what you said, early teen boys who like fart jokes, angsty goth-y armor and death evil chaos.

Haemish, Haemish 

Well I'm quite content at this point to let this thread die, sadly I think you are missing out on a wonderfully complex IP, fart jokes aside.

I'm guessing you have not read any of Kim Newman's Warhammer work, or maybe you have and just prefer Schild's DragonLance.  One last quote and that's me done on the subject for now.

http://www.johnnyalucard.com/introgen.html

'Guaranteed royalties,' said David Garnett (David Ferring), eyes shining like a prospector in a Gold Rush movie as dust glitters in the pan, 'guaranteed royalties … We'll be rich, d'you hear – b'wah hah hah – rich! Beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, we'll be able to buy and sell publishers like goats, we'll convert our advances into Spanish doubloons and bury them on desert islands, d'you hear? Rich!'

Well, maybe it wasn't quite like that - but you get the picture.

In December, 1988, I spent an hour and a half stamping my feet in sub-zero temperatures outside Pinewood Studios because the publisher who wanted to sign me to write a making-of book about Tim Burton's Batman was late and had forgotten to arrange with security to let me on the lot. The offer was low, the hours were going to be wretched and I would quite probably have to forego Christmas to get the job done. I didn't actually have anything else coming up, though, and a freelance never likes to turn down work. So it was that hour and a half that tipped me against it – if this was how the publisher was going to treat authors, I could probably live without it. I also gathered from my morning at Pinewood that none of the big personalities on the film would be easy to deal with, or necessarily even reachable. So John Marriott wrote that book (a decade and a half on, you can probably find it in most Oxfam shops) and I went back to polishing my as-yet-unsold first novel. I thought I'd probably made a mistake.

Then 1989 was a good year for me: I landed a TV gig reviewing films for Channel 4's pre-Big Breakfast stab at an early morning show, Empire magazine (which I still work for) began publishing and signed me up from issue one, that novel (The Night Mayor) sold, and David Pringle – editor of Interzone, where my first professionally published fiction appeared – got in touch to say he had been hired to edit a line of novels and anthologies for Games Workshop. Though I was at school with Cheryl Morgan, who turned out to have done a lot of creative work in the early days of Warhammer and the Dark Future gameworlds, I didn't know anything about GW or their franchises. I'd been aware of role-playing games in the 1970s through Cheryl and had other friends who'd been into tabletop campaigning (Eugene Byrne, my collaborator on some things, still has boxes full of painted soldiers somewhere); I'd also been involved in a quite elaborate freeform roleplay game in the late '70s, which ran on for years among a network of people from around the town where I went to school, taking in students at the universities where the core group fetched up after leaving. Therefore, this wasn't a completely foreign world to me.

I'd also seen stacks of Dungeons & Dragons tie-in books in shops and, without deigning ever to open one, assumed they were rubbish. My first guess was that GW wanted stuff like that, but David assured me they'd hired him to make sure the books had some real qualities. He also mentioned the guaranteed royalties thing – and quick calculations showed that if a book could be written quickly enough, it'd be more than worth my while. One of the clever things David did was to solicit short stories before dishing out novel commissions, to test the waters. I received the pile of GW rule-books and histories and campaign materials, which proved baffling (and, since the games were always evolving, interestingly contradictory) and daunting. I knew other authors who were in the same business – David, Brian Stableford (Brian Craig). We worked out which pages of which manuals were essentials: mostly the time-lines and the maps. And which things we didn't want to think about: those ten-day weeks made for neat campaign calendars but would have been too much of a break with our accepted reality to work in a novel (everyone would have to be significantly older in our terms than their calendar age in the Warhammer world, unless they aged and matured at a different rate). All the rules about what monsters could and couldn't do were handy, but malleable (we noticed the rules changed, and GW's Bryan Ansell indicated that if something worked for a story they'd change the rules to fit – which opened up a can of worms re: vampires that no one ever screwed the lid back on again tightly enough).

Everyone else on the line was using a pseudonym, so I did too; later, Ian Watson put his own name on Warhammer 40,000 novels and if I were doing it over again I would have also. I first intended to use 'John Yeovil', the name of a character in my first published story 'Dreamers', but on the line-up was Paul Barnett, who writes under the name 'John Grant' (and, in the end, only did some short stories) so I went with 'Jack'. It's been useful having a secondary writing name: outside GW, Jack's byline has appeared on film reviews for Empire and other publications, the story 'Pitbull Brittan' in Alex Stewart and Neil Gaiman's Temps and a sleazy paperback horror novel written as Bloody Students but published as Orgy of the Blood Parasites. The critic John Clute once deconstructed the name Yeovil as evidence of a hard-working peasant ethos – which suggests he's never visited the rather genteel West Country town of that name. I grew up in Somerset, and knew Yeovil pretty well – but when I was writing 'Dreamers', I used the name as a homage to a favourite writer, Alfred Bester. I later learned that Bester, in writing The Demolished Man (which features a character called Yeovil), took his character names from a map of England. Since, as Kim, I'd got a lot less out there in 1989, and it all differed from the style of the Yeovil books; now, with more varied material around from me under both the names, I can't tell one output from the other and it all feeds into itself somewhere.

Like Michael Moorcock, a big influence on the Warhammer world, I think I create a multiverse in my fiction, and all the worlds of my books overlap in an infinity of possible realities – which is why Genevieve, of the Yeovil books, has an equivalent (several, in fact) as Geneviève in the Kim Newman Anno Dracula novels and some other stories (most included in the collection Seven Stars). Incidentally, the reason she doesn't have an accent on her name in GW books is that word-processing/printing techniques were so primitive back then that putting in accents was a major pain and used only on special occasions, like when listing her last name, Dieudonné. There was a vampire Genevieve in a Paul Naschy film called Shadow of the Werewolf which I'd seen but completely forgotten; I think now I took the name either from the old song or a girl I'd been in a Bridgwater Youth Theatre Production of The Dragon by Yevgeny Schwartz with in 1975 (she signed my program 'Gené', which is what Genevieve's friends call her); Dieundonné comes from Albert Dieudonné, the stone-faced Frenchman who plays the adult Napoleon in Abel Gance's epic silent film.

As is obvious, I seeded my version of the Warhammer world with riffs on other genres and pop culture. Even though much generic fantasy fiction boiled down to a barbarian and a princess going on a quest to fight a Dark Lord, it struck me that there was no reason not to do different things. I saw the GW world as a setting, like the Wild West or Victorian London, that could be used for many types of stories and ticked them off one by one: horror, farce, detective, cop thriller, mystery, action, backstage musical, romantic comedy, western, samurai. 'The Ignorant Armies', my first essay at the form, borrows a lot from the John Ford classic The Searchers, with a sprinkling of the Japanese horror movie Onibaba, and I enjoyed putting in elements from famous and obscure sources to dress up the stories. Drachenfels, the first novel, actually begins with a barbarian and a princess on a quest to fight a Dark Lord, then jumps ahead twenty-five years to see what happened to everyone after their regular fantasy adventure was over. I often worked by thinking what didn't happen in other fantasy novels and exploring that. I was particularly struck by an incidental character in Drachenfels who was a dwarf – as far as I know, no author had ever dealt with what it was like being a General Tom Thumb or Kenny Baker-type little person in our world in a world where there are races of Tolkeinesque separate-from-humanity dwarves. As firsts go, it's a modest one – but there you are. Sometimes, I just stole: the clue about a number written inside a coffin-lid by a dying man in Beasts in Velvet is copped outright from a Spanish horror movie released here as Brackula: Terror of the Living Dead.

The books found a few friends, were nicely-reviewed, seeped out across the world in foreign editions and have been brought back into print several times. I've even started running into grown-ups who tell me that they were the books they loved most as kids – which is at once wonderful and depressing. The stereotype, often justified, of the GW gamer-reader is a boy in his early teens, but I've discovered a lot of girls were taken with Genevieve as an unusual, non-princessy identification figure (all the Jack Yeovil books have action heroines with Marvel Comics-style 'problems' beyond beating up the next bad guy). For the first incarnation of GW Books, I did Drachenfels, Beasts in Velvet and the initial Dark Future novels; I also completed the fix-up that became Genevieve Undead, but that didn't actually appear until GW Books emerged from a temporary eclipse a few years later. That incarnation (with Boxtree) came and went, and GW began its Black Library imprint: in hand was a never-published novella 'Warhawk' and it became obvious that with one more substantial piece there'd be enough to issue a rest-of-Jack collection alongside the two novels and one fix-up. I'd floated the title 'Silver and Iron' for the story that came out as 'Red Thirst' (the expression is from George R.R. Martin's Fevre Dream) but David Pringle nixed it because someone else was doing something with a similar title ('Wood and Iron'?); so here was my chance to use that title at last – only someone else was doing something with a similar title ('Blood and Iron'?) and it got canned again. I settled finally on another title, Silver Needles, only that got mistaken in the bureaucracy, perhaps mixed up with Robert E. Howard's 'Red Nails', and came out as Silver Nails. Fair enough.

The story I wrote to fill out the book, composed over ten years after the previous batch, was 'The Ibby the Fish Factor'. I had undeveloped Warhammer ideas lying around: a Dirty Dozen-style bunch-of-guys-on-an-impossible-mission tale called Vastarien's Vanquishers (taking up from things mentioned in the story 'Warhawk'), a centuries-spanning Dynasty-type soap opera about the vampire Czarina Kattarin called Bitch Vampire or The Scarlet Empress, a payoff to all the conspiracy theory villainies in the series using a title for a book Dashiell Hammett never got round to writing The Invisible Empire (some of the villains established in earlier stories, like Dien Ch'ing and Yefimovich, would have finally got their come-uppance). Any of these might have served to complete Silver Nails, but when I reread all the Jack Yeovil Warhammer stories, I realised that the big, heroic issues and the tides of history were less important to me than the character stuff. Of course, the earlier titles were written during the reign of Thatcher, which informed some of the baddies – especially of Beasts in Velvet; with Tony Blair and New Labour, I wanted to go back and show an Empire with a different, but perhaps equally tyrannical tendency. More specifically, I had to bring Genevieve out of the forest and catch up with her on-and-off love affair – so that's where the Jack Yeovil-Warhammer Saga ends, not with Dark Lords and barbarian quests but extraordinary folk coping with lives that seem ordinary to them.

I still like them, and I hope you will too.

[Margalis]

I don't have a problem with backstory or whatever. My problem is presenting the world in a very expository, boring manner. That type of writing can make ANYTHING sound dull and cliche.

If people want to present backstory what they should do is present about one paragraph and then write short story that works in some of the key themes.

It's the different between The Hobbit and the Simarilon. (Or whatever it's called) The Simarilon is unreadable. It's all lore - it's a history book. I've never met anyone who made it more than halfway through. All these backstories read like a basic synopsis you see in a local newspaper. They pay people for this? And so the high elves of ThanDorak defeatred the Bile Orcs at the battle of Grul'Thakt...yes how exciting!

[Megrim]

Wordzzz

Now see, that's wonderful. I really enjoyed reading that. This however, does nothing to say that i won't be killing 57 'chaos rats' in-game, to achieve my next 'level'.

[HaemishM]

Warhammer's lore is not a complex, adult IP. It's juvenile. It's adult in the same way Scary Movie is adult, in that it appeals to what you said, early teen boys who like fart jokes, angsty goth-y armor and death evil chaos.

Haemish, Haemish 

Well I'm quite content at this point to let this thread die, sadly I think you are missing out on a wonderfully complex IP, fart jokes aside.

I didn't read all your quoted stuff. I like Kim Newman's vampire books.

But really, I've read Warhammer lore, old skool (2nd edition 40k, 5 and 6th WFB). It's derivative drivel. Sure, some actual authors have been able to make decent stories out of them, so what? The base material is really juvenile. It's ok, I like some of that too. Matter of fact, when I finish the book I'm on, I'm probably reading the first in the Caiphus Cain (?) Warhammer 40k books on the recommendation of a friend.

But that doesn't mean it isn't candy. That doesn't mean Bitch Elves exist for any reason other than skimpily clad models and OMGWTFZORTITS on the Dark Elf codex cover. The art style is reminiscent of the stuff I might have done in 7th grade. It's not adult or complex.

I actually finished the Silmarillion. It wasn't bad, but you have to remember it was written as NOTES for Tolkien to keep track of stuff for LOTR. It wasn't really meant to be read as fun fiction. It IS history.

[Modern Angel]

I think that when most people remember Warhammer lore fondly it's Rogue Trader 40K and WFB 3rd. The world stopped being gritty and fun at about the time they became a publicly traded company; that was about 1991.

[Arthur_Parker]

I think that when most people remember Warhammer lore fondly it's Rogue Trader 40K and WFB 3rd. The world stopped being gritty and fun at about the time they became a publicly traded company; that was about 1991.

I'm surprised by that, I pretty much lost touch with what happened after 1993 when I stopped working for GW, only recently got interested again with the Climax then Mythic projects.  I never met Bryan Ansell but there was a clear change of direction at the top after Tom Kirby took over from him in 92 (I think), much more profit focused. I also didn't see the logic in totally giving up on WHFRP and the lack of support for the older books.  I have been assuming the direction of the company changed recently with WHFRP being released as a 2nd edition and with the Black library publishing arm.

[Hoax]

WFB has never been that interesting, but the WH40k Lore is pretty fucking great if you ask me.

This game will suck, because somebody told Mythic DAOC was a good game, it wasn't. 

This game will suck, because somebody at Mythic thinks "ArrVeeArr" is the most brilliant pvp system ever made (what the fuck does RvR mean anyways?) it isn't even a system.  PvP with teams?

This game will suck, hopefully GW maintains their image and cans this shitty project before it even makes it to launch, but that was the old GW the new one that makes plastic terminators that cost as much as fucking 10 pewter tactical marines used to cost is a cockgobbling money grubbing, "opps time to remake the codex again" style company.  Fuck them.

Shadow of the Horned Rat was a fun game, it had something to do with Warhammer.  Dawn of War has gotten some pretty good reviews.  This game will abso-fucking-lutely be DAOCv2 re-skinned with some Warhammer looking art (I doubt it will even look good) if you think otherwise your out of your fucking mind or a newb to this genre.

Someone wake me up when they make a Battletech MMO, they would be pretty fucking hard pressed to find a way to stick a grind in that one.  Until then I'm staying the fuck away from established IP's as much as possible.

[Modern Angel]

I think that when most people remember Warhammer lore fondly it's Rogue Trader 40K and WFB 3rd. The world stopped being gritty and fun at about the time they became a publicly traded company; that was about 1991.

I'm surprised by that, I pretty much lost touch with what happened after 1993 when I stopped working for GW, only recently got interested again with the Climax then Mythic projects.  I never met Bryan Ansell but there was a clear change of direction at the top after Tom Kirby took over from him in 92 (I think), much more profit focused. I also didn't see the logic in totally giving up on WHFRP and the lack of support for the older books.  I have been assuming the direction of the company changed recently with WHFRP being released as a 2nd edition and with the Black library publishing arm.

I was, until quite recently, a huge GW fanboy. Their prices have simply driven me away. Fity dollars for a box of five PLASTIC Terminators? No thank you. I also don't have the space for my own table in my current apartment and I will be fucked by donkeys before I set foot in a gaming store to play witht he standard 12 year old GW kids. Never again.

I, too, worked for them back in 1999 at the retail level. They were without a doubt one of the best companies I've ever worked for. 60% discount on miniatures plus good health care plus eight or nine bucks an hour for retail? Sold. But they were also ruthless, don't take no for an answer salespeople. Their priorities now aren't what they were when they were going in different directions than most gaming companies back in the day. Hopefully their stock losing nearly half its value last year serves as some sort of a wakeup call though I tend to doubt it.

With that out of the way I have very little faith in this game. The more they harp on RvR the less it sounds like Warhammer and more DAoC part two (as has been stated numerous times) I want gritty and humerous. I want worshippers of a disease god who throw carnivals and demagogue to be a career choice. My Guild Wars guild (who were Shadowbane long ago; no pvp equals no game for them) desperately wants this to be good. Or Darkfall or Conan. I'm thinking not likely.

Part of it is just GW. They've stopped developmenton their secondary games, which were always the best stuff they did, and pretend WFRP 2nd ed (which is really and truly awesome) doesn't exist. They'll have Mythic churn out the current watered down flavor of Warhammer and not the awesome "Plague Daemon" era Warhammer.

[Hoax]

Yeah what a bunch of fucking morons, a Necromunda MMO practically writes itself...  best game they ever made (except Inquisitor which is the best PnP system ever made).

[Modern Angel]

While I loved Necromunda and probably played it more than any game of that sort in my nearly twenty years of tabletopping I was partial to Mordheim. It oozed flavor.

[Johny Cee]

I think any future game with elves should not be allowed to generate hype. All gamers should all turn and look at it and say "No, I will not play this trash." I don't even care if the game is good. I'm tired of generic fantasy trappings. You see, it's not that I specifically want dystopian or post-apocalyptic or future/steam punk settings - it's that I simply want an out-there alternative. Something without a Sword of Whateverness or Elves from the Land of Consecutive Vowels. Everyone should be tired of the same shit. But for some reason, they keep lapping it up.

Look at the fantasy book market. There's maybe what, 5 or so series WORTH reading? And among those five there are at least 2 that could be easily argued as being total trash? I think most people should read Dragonlance. But really, it's typical shit. But I loved it. A lot of people think Lord of the Rings is necessary reading. But it's really not. In a world before editors, that shit should have been knocked in half. Don't even get me started on the Simarilion (spelling, wrong, I know). Booooooooooooooooring. And yet it's probably the most overused setting in the history of video games. Well, besides Fantasy In Space, but we can thank fucking George Lucas and his Twi'lek Lightsaber destroyed brain for inflicting that upon us.

There are many, many more than five even if we eliminate the elves and ren fair stuff.  Zelazny's Amber, Mieville's Steampunk, Gaiman's American Gods/Anansi's Boys and any of the better alternative history/modern era authors.  (De Lint, Crowley, etc)  King's Gunslinger (though some of the books are of less quality than others).  That's off of the top of my head and cutting out questionable entries (alot of Gene Wolfes stuff is either fantasy or high science or both, thrown together;  Peak is.... odd.  I don't enjoy long-winded post-modernism.)

It has been a common trend in literature to adopt decent fantasy authors out of the "fantasy" niche when they gain popularity or critical acclaim,  and then never bother to admit it was ever fantasy in the first place.  This leaves the cash-grab pulp paperbacks filling in shelf space,  and damn you TSR!

Just like Sci Fi is actually a discussion on sociology leavened with technobabble,   fantasy literature is actually a discussion on morality and belief with swords or magic as background.  Even the most hack writing generally revolves around good and evil.  In the best stuff,  you get situations and worlds where nihilism, paranoia, the various shades of religious or political idealism, and amorality can be examined with less subjective bias.  (Cook, Martin, Brust, Erikson, Mieville, Moorcock, etc.)

The props of Fantasy (elves or monsters or magic swords) are necessary features.  Since the reader is obviously reading something divorced from reality,  the natural tendencies of thought and censors society has instilled in us stay asleep and allow the reader to actually think about moral vs. immoral or amoral behavior or what belief actually means without our natural kneejerk reactions,  in a harsh and cruel world.

Good example:

Check out the reviews on Amazon for the Black Company.  Most of the 1 or 2 star reviews are due sololy to one scene:  The narrator makes excuses for his fellow soldiers who wander buy in the act of leading women to a rape.  The kneejerk reaction is to stop reading in disgust.

On the other hand,  you can examine the understated conscience pangs when a bond of friendship/brotherhood/social activity is clearly confronted with actions condemned by accepted morality.

In the second case,  it becomes easier to understand why sometimes people in real life don't report sometimes monstrous acts:  the honest policeman covering for the corrupt cop,  or the way family members are protected from the law.  The way that humanity has of rationalizing and glossing over dispicable acts committed by those we love or trust.


Okay, my point is:

Fantasy MMOs are difficult because you are stripping the very structure of successful Fantasy literature out in order to make your product.

The exception being games that actively encourage player conflict,  in which case the new battleground is the metagaming of accepted mores of the players, and actions taken both in game and on messageboards towards abherrant behavior.

Which is fought out on messageboards as much as in game.