WAR- Computer Games Magazine - May

[Telemediocrity]

Planetside was pointed out since it's already there. It's also not worth playing if you live outside of the US

And as for your experiences working just fine, that's because of your geographical location, if you'd have read my point, you'd have seen that I specifically pointed out the issue being with players from all over the world. I live in NotAmerica, and I'm pretty experienced with lag effects in MMOGs by now including regular (EQ/WOW) and twitch. I briefly played PS and the game had severe, severe lag issues of the kind that I suppose you might be able to compare by playing on a CS server in Australia, or Germany or something. You know, shoot at some guy dead on, except you missed. Shame bout 'dat.  

As someone who's going to be internetting from Japan next year, you have my sympathy. Nonetheless: A game not working well outside of America is not gamebreaking to those of us who live in America.  Sorry to say it, man, but it's the truth.  Also, ping was never a walk in the park in the MMOs here, either - in AC1, I was usually PvPing with 200ms lag or so (Though compared to what you experience abroad, that might be miniscule).  Nonetheless, we had really good guilds of Danes and Frenchmen and whatnot in AC1 DT and they weren't half bad at PvP.  So while I sympathize, I have a hard time believing it's impossible or not worth doing just because Euros may have a hard time playing on American servers.

If you're wanting to play a peristant online Soul Calibur, (which is not a bad idea) it's still quite a different proposition and would require some fucking amazing netcode beyond whatever say, XBox DOA Ultimate Online uses since you've got (way) more than 2 fighters, interactive scenery, a huge world, etc etc...

All I'm asking for is the same level of twitch seen in Neocron or AC1.

As for the "If it's DAoC2" route...  Ugh.  I spent about a year and a half on DAoC's private tester boards post release, trying in vain to point them in the direction they needed to make DAoC a decent PvP MMO.  I always found their PvP to be joyless, soulless, and unnaturally linked to the PvP grind.  The PvE was about the only thing I found less than abominable in that game.  As such, the less like DAoC it is, the more likely I am to play.

Of course, that probably means I'm not the target audience.  But if the target audience is people who enjoyed DAoC... well, I hope that doesn't mean too much cannibalization of their base.

[HaemishM]

All I'm asking for is the same level of twitch seen in Neocron or AC1.

Sony Online Entertainment has just the game for you! You can even be a Jedi!

[Telemediocrity]

All I'm asking for is the same level of twitch seen in Neocron or AC1.

Sony Online Entertainment has just the game for you! You can even be a Jedi!

Assuming that they add in some serious GCW features, collision detection, and keep the quests going up to 90, I actually do want to play the new SWG.  I tried the NGE demo up to level 10 and came away impressed - it's not that great yet, but it's a good start.

[Johny Cee]

As to lag.....

The problem with a RPG Fantasy MMO, I think, is that your talking about so much more detail then your typical FPS.  In DAoC,  I precache armor skins on a fairly decent comp but still stutter if I'm in a fight with albs and a zerg of mids rolls up.  You're talking about 5 or 6 different base character models (races), with some different features,  in a variety of armor skins,  a multitude of different glowy/shiny/sparky weapons,  and hundreds of different spell effects.

Character customization is the accepted standard, though,  and I'm not sure any MMO can balk that.

The whole FPS thing skill versus stats....

DAoC now has a fair amount of twitchy mechanics built in, and quite alot of skill play.  No, you can't aim.  But you still have to pick out the right target in a limited amount of time from usually at least 8.  What that means,  is on incoming,  you have to ID and select the right class to target and immobilize or interrupt.  When inc albs,  I need to pick out their sorc and drop a nearsight or mezz/stun on him.

No you can't dodge.  Good riddance,  if it would lead to the retarded monkey behavior of sprinting-super-speed-while jumping like an ass while hoping to line up the perfect headshot.  Instead you have to play with ranges and decide what measures or countermeasures to deploy,  use your abilities as the situation warrants.

For example:

A popular 8 v 8 setup now is the "caster extend group".  Drop a speed warp,  back out of DD range,  have your CCers and nearsighters go to town.  Pull the enemy group into your zone and /assist nuke them down in the face of enemy heals.  Sic pets on healers for interrupts.  Drop a Static Tempest or Thornweed Field on bunches.

If targeted, get out of range,  hope your healers can keep you up.  On the healer side,  establish Power Fonts at a safe base.  Heal, rezz and rebuff the fallen.  Battle through attrition.

There IS player skill involved,  it's just not FPS type skill.

I'm not denigrating FPSers, even if I have some distaste for the genre.  I flat out know I don't have the reflexes or the state of mind for it,  especiallly after working.  It's just a different skill set.

Just like fighting games have different skill sets,  or Magic has a completely different set.

[Telemediocrity]

As to lag.....

The problem with a RPG Fantasy MMO, I think, is that your talking about so much more detail then your typical FPS.  In DAoC,  I precache armor skins on a fairly decent comp but still stutter if I'm in a fight with albs and a zerg of mids rolls up.  You're talking about 5 or 6 different base character models (races), with some different features,  in a variety of armor skins,  a multitude of different glowy/shiny/sparky weapons,  and hundreds of different spell effects.

A game built for PvP should have PvP optimization graphics checkboxes in the main menu.

-A checkbox to view all players as the same character model, perhaps with size scaling to indicate race if it's one of those games where race is really important (I don't think race should be really important in a PvP-oriented game, but that's separate)
-A checkbox to simplify all player skins to a single, low-res one per each class.  We essentially used to do this back in AC to hit 60FPS or so even in big battles.
-A checkbox to make spell effects and sparky weapons highly simplified, with color differentiating between effects.

Character customization is the accepted standard, though,  and I'm not sure any MMO can balk that.

No reason it has to, if you can disable the customization for PvP.

DAoC now has a fair amount of twitchy mechanics built in, and quite alot of skill play.  No, you can't aim.  But you still have to pick out the right target in a limited amount of time from usually at least 8.  What that means,  is on incoming,  you have to ID and select the right class to target and immobilize or interrupt.  When inc albs,  I need to pick out their sorc and drop a nearsight or mezz/stun on him.

You just fingered the number one problem with DAoC's PvP - no good PvP game should have mez/stuns.

[Johny Cee]

You just fingered the number one problem with DAoC's PvP - no good PvP game should have mez/stuns.

In a good group set up,  mezz and stun aren't really an issue at all.  A couple weeks of solid playing nets you a decent Realm Rank,  and between that and ToA arties you have lots of protection.  They're used to give your group a few seconds breathing space to set up, or stall the opponent before a rush.

Tank groups are pretty much (casted) cc immune anyway.

Interrupts on casters,  and nearsight,  are king now.

[Arthur_Parker]

Info from Garthilk here

More info and crazy number of new screenshots.

IGN Screenshots

IGN Preview

GamePro Preview

GamePro screenshots

Screenshots showing real improvement, couple of orcs, real nice goblin.

[eldaec]

each member of the alliances in Warhammer finds itself paired up against one enemy on the opposing side. The Dwarves fight against the Greenskins (comprised of orcs and goblins), the Elves fight against the Dark Elves, and the human Empire fights against the forces of Chaos.

I hope that is more than just flavour, and has a real home in the mechanics. It almost implies 6 realms with alliances only forming in specific pvp locations.

That way I don't have to fight alongside chaos idiots and the system sticks closer to warhammer lore.

I don't have high hopes that this will be the case however.

The third type of PVE quest, the branching quest, involves a more individual form of achievement. You'll be running errands and deliveries in these quests, but you'll have the choice of a few different outcomes that give you the choice of being rewarded either with experience or money. One quest has the player stealing battle plans for the opposing army. He can either deliver them to the general to gain XP or sell them to a rival spy for cash.

The lack of this has irritated me for a while in MMOGs. So hurrah for this.

For one thing, the PVP zones aren't separate. There are large PVP areas in every area of the world. Before you worry that you'll accidentally stumble into danger, the limits of each area are clearly marked. Sometimes a PVP zone may be located on an island accessible only by a bridge. Others times they'll simply be battlefields that are marked off by highly visible signs. The interface itself will also tell you when you're entering a PVP area.

You'll still need to be careful, however; the PVP flag for your character will persist for a short while after you leave the PVP area. This is to prevent long-range attackers from peppering enemies from the fringe and stepping back into safety whenever danger appears. [/qiuote]

Hmm, this implies that the pve areas are shared. I'm not a fan of that idea. At all.

I don't really mind pve areas being copied and pasted from the other realms, but I sure as hell don't want to start down the road that inevitably leads to a common con-competitive pve community with no interaction barriers between realms.

[Arthur_Parker]

I hope that is more than just flavour, and has a real home in the mechanics. It almost implies 6 realms with alliances only forming in specific pvp locations.

That way I don't have to fight alongside chaos idiots and the system sticks closer to warhammer lore.

I don't have high hopes that this will be the case however.

I agree it's unlikely that they would go with 6 realms, but watch me now quickly switch from wishing for 2 sides to 3 to 6  :-D

If each race has their own starter area it would give more of a unique feel and add to replay value.

If it's 3 separate battle fields with opposing races then they only need to balance a race to the opposite race.  But I really like the idea of deciding if you want to defend your own capital city or going to help an ally.  If they change the standard mmorpg guild structure to encourage pure race guilds (give exp bonus, item bonus, repair bonus or something), they could call the pure race guilds regiments, provide a standard and you have a real warhammer feel.  It even opens up the option of language skills to communicate with the other races on your own side as actually being a nice addition to fit in with the IP.

The other nice feature of 6 realms is the ability to bolt on extra races in pairs without throwing realm balance out of whack, over time I reckon they would need joint server battlegrounds unless they have a higher than usual population limit on the servers.

Edit :-
Another preview with a lot of detail they even list a release date of Q1 2007

On the way to previewing Mythic Entertainment's upcoming title Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, there was plenty of time to think about it. Is it just going to be an attempt at using a popular license that looks like "that WoW game" to cash in on the MMORPG market? If it isn't, then how could someone who's oblivious to the Warhammer world possibly be drawn into such a deep and well-grounded IP? With an unpredictable mix of surprise and delight, it turns out both of those thoughts are without merit. Warhammer Online is not only a title that is very much its own direction, but it also brings a few new ideas to a largely copycat genre while being accessible to someone as Warhammer-ignorant as myself who doesn't know his greenskins from his stunties.

For those who are in that category, Warhammer began life around 24 years ago as a tabletop game produced by Games Workshop. By all accounts, the game quickly gained and maintained its popularity, and over the years, the Warhammer universe has seen expansions, spin-offs, books, and games, the last of which has been probably the most varying in terms of quality and authenticity. Climax Entertainment was originally the developer behind Warhammer Online until Mythic Entertainment took over the helm, and it's pretty easy to say that the decision was a good one. Mythic has firmly based the title on the existing universe while also adding to its tapestry, and it's clear that they know what they're doing.

So, Warhammer Online. Firstly, in order to appreciate things to the fullest extent, get World of Warcraft out of your head. Rinse. The similarities between the two titles end right about the point where they both have orcs, dwarves, and elves. The Warhammer universe is gritty and violent, interspersed with bits of humor and a heaping helping of surrealism. Orcs are all green, and there's no such thing as a female orc; it's just how the Warhammer universe is. (How are orcs spawned? Something about mushrooms and outer space. See why I told you to rinse?)

Above all, the Warhammer universe used in game is not directly pulled from any one source but woven out of all of them. When elements needed to be created that had no precedent, such as the interior of Dwarven houses, Mythic created them, and Games Workshop approved them to ensure their authenticity. This leads to Warhammer Online being very faithful to the existing Warhammer universe, but it also adds authentic bits to the universe of its own creation. For instance, fans of the universe will pick up on the fact that the Morcane tower is now fully represented in-game, or how flags, while pretty and waving to the layman, use authentic icons, colors, and markers.

Initially, there will be six playable races to choose from: humans, chaos, orcs, dwarves, high elves, and dark elves. This is further split up into the pairings of human versus chaos, orcs versus dwarves, and high elves versus dark elves, with each pairing waging war in a different but connected section of the same planet. There will be 33 individual zones, with each pair waging war over their set of 11. That's not to say that the orcs can't decimate eight or nine of their zones and then hop over and help out the dark elves. It's still one big war with two sides; it's just a layered war with individual hatred between pairs of races.

Every race has between three and five career paths, and they adhere to the three rules that Mythic has for each race. For starters, every race has some sort of healer class. Additionally, every race has classes that love to hit stuff really, really hard (fighters, etc.) and classes that are more academic (mages, engineers, etc.). Each class in turn allows the player to create his own career path, such as picking up the ability to use pistols, deal more damage, be a better spellcaster, or simply blow stuff up in a more awe-inspiring fashion.

If Warhammer Online sounds like a title that contains a large amount of PvP, well, it does. In fact, the game is such that a player could foreseeably play the entire game in a PvP fashion while still gaining a respectable amount of money, items, and experience. PvP is based on the epicenter system, where players actually have to be in a specific area to engage or be engaged in PvP combat. On the other hand, to wash away those who are already thinking that PvP is limited to out-of-the-way areas, every city in the game will be mostly PvP areas.

Indeed, in the overall scheme of things, it is the goal to take over the enemy capital city, so cities are definitely not the safe zones to which MMORPG players may be accustomed. Quest givers cannot die, so the most basic operation of a city will still function for those players who are PvP-averse, but past that, expect to see a sizable war party at the city gates on occasion, in addition to your fellow players asking for your help in thwarting them.

Transport between zones hasn't been nailed down yet, and the presenter was threatened with throat-slitting motions before an exact answer could be extracted about it. While instant teleportation has been ruled out to get you from zone to zone, some sort of fast transport will undoubtedly be available. For instance, orcs might simply catapult themselves across the land, while dwarves might utilize gyrocopters.

There will be four main types of PvP combat in Warhammer Online. Incidental combat is when two or more players on opposing sides incidentally find themselves in a PvP zone and duke it out. Battlefield combat is objective-based, where each side is engaged in a big tug-of-war battle, trying to take over points on the map. Scenario-based is instanced combat between the two sides so the number of participants will remain the same and unaffected by others, and can be either point or objective based. Additionally, if one side outnumbers the other, AI combatants, known as Dogs of War, will join you to make up the difference.

It is unknown, however, if you can give any sort of rudimentary orders to these AI units, such as to defending an objective or trying to take another. Finally, the largest in scope of the PvP types is the campaign mode, which literally takes place among the entire world. The goal is to take over the enemy capital city, and to do that, you must first leapfrog from zone to zone, taking one over before moving on to the next, constantly pushing the other side back. The zones are split up so that starting players fight over just a couple of zones, as do the two higher tiers of players, while the top tier wages war across five zones.

Being an MMORPG, there are obviously still regular PvE quests that don't involve PvP combat, though the line can blur somewhat between the two, and a few new ideas have been introduced. In addition to the regular type of quest which consists of you having to meet some sort of goal, whether it be killing a monster or collecting a certain amount of items, Mythic has shaken up things a bit with a few new interesting additions to the genre. For instance, there are now public PvE quests which are automatically granted to any player who enters a specific zone, such as someone needing a few hundred of a particular item. Anyone who contributes to the goal gains experience, so instead of situations like in other MMOs where players are fighting with one another to collect six tusks or whatnot all from one area, that same group of players is now working together, knowing that it's all the same as to who turns in the tusk, since they will all get the proper experience for the quest.

There are also quests where you may indirectly compete against the other faction. In one example, imagine a large amount of dwarves lay injured and immobile on the battlefield. The dwarves will try to heal other dwarves by giving them beer, while the orcs will be trying to kill them and take their beards. "Christmas" quests are small, easy quests that yield a large amount of experience or money but are unmarked and can only be found by wandering far off the beaten path. Finally, another new quest type is the branching quests, such as if you were to get into a situation where you steal the enemy war plans. Do you give them to your general for a good amount of experience but not much money, or do you give them to the shadowy goblin who pays exceedingly well but grants you very little experience?

Meanwhile, the graphics engine (and the rest of the game, really) was totally scrapped when it changed hands to Mythic. Warhammer Online now boasts great looking fire, smoke, haze, water, grass, and shadows to show off the detailed and exaggerated personality of the Warhammer license. Thanks to the game's large draw distance, you will get into situations where you will see the silhouette of a huge tower in the distance, while in the foreground, you may see a crow pecking at the body of a dead dwarf. Look over a little to the left, you may see a goblin sawmill's blade slicing up and down, sending bits of wood everywhere, while you watch the odd goblin or two having an industrial accident. It all blends together to form an almost charming representation of the Warhammer world that you can't help but be pulled into.

One of the most notable aspects of the Warhammer tabletop game is that the players would paint and customize their miniatures, and Mythic has definitely made a note of it somewhere. Characters in the game are customizable in the expected facets, such as faces, scars, and hair, but also in more advanced areas, such as armor coloring schemes. Even past that, players can choose to tack little items onto their character that show off their might and accomplishments. For instance, orcs can impale skulls on the spikes of their armor, hang dwarven beards on their belts, and other such items. Characters will actually get larger and more muscular as they gain levels, or dwarves will get longer and more elaborate beards. It makes it easy to see who's the top dog in a churning battlefield, a point that Mythic aimed to complete.

In an unprecedented advancement for the genre, all avatars, NPCs, and monsters have full facial animation, breathing a little more life into your standard animated quest giver. Players can set their mood, so if they want to spend their in-game time smiling and happy or brooding, they have the option to do either and more. All characters in the game are well detailed, thanks to the high-resolution textures, and even without the specular lighting that is promised to be implemented in a later build, they look pretty good.

A unique feature of Warhammer Online is the morale system, which deepens combat significantly. More morale is generated if you have more players in your group or fight for longer periods of time, which in turn enables five successive levels of morale actions. The first tier might be something like a cannon going off in the distance for a dwarf and taking out a small group of the enemy, while a fifth level morale action might be something more along the lines of Armageddon. Players can gain additional morale actions for each tier as they progress down their career paths. Of course, losing a fight or taking a large amount of damage will lower morale, making it more of a coup-de-grace than something that you can use as a last-ditch effort.

Another interesting feature is the tactics bar, which a player can use to tailor his abilities to a certain extent. A player's tactic bar is composed of a set number of slots, and you can fill up this bar with tactics that may take anywhere between one and all of your slots. These tactics range from adding fire damage or frost defense, to increasing your ranged abilities or shortening your spell recovery time. This is useful in that you can strengthen yourself towards a particular enemy or just tailor your abilities to your own play style. Tactics may be shrunken down so that they take up less space on the bar, but by and large, it's a matter of fitting the right tactics for the right situation.

Finally, there are many things that were impressive over the course of the press event. Borrowing a page from another successful MMO, Warhammer Online's UI will not only be fully customizable, but to some extent, it will also be configurable from within the game, eliminating a Cosmos-style add-on for the most basic functions. The game will sport a day and night cycle, though it is unknown if there will be any sort of weather effects. Instead of a static image that represents your character, you see an animated portrait of the character's face, which reacts accordingly to in-game events. There is collision detection between members of opposing sides, making combat a little less of the, "Hey, let's jump right through the other player to get behind them, even though I'm wearing 200 pounds of armor," and more of a tactical affair. Mythic also had the foresight to eliminate the drudgery that plague a lot of MMOs; at the outset, you won't be merely fighting rats and fish. As the orcs, you can expect to be repelling a beach landing of dwarves who are coming over a nearby waterfall using barrels.

Essentially, Mythic not only managed to only make Warhammer Online faithful to the existing universe and very, very deep in relation to players who know the material, but they also made it interesting enough to welcome newbies. As if to punctuate the point, a series of slides taped to Paul Barnett's door detail quite rigidly the "anvil that all aspects of the game are broken upon." A lot of effort has been put forth to make sure that Warhammer Online isn't just another cookie-cutter MMO title, and the game is really turning out to be what you would expect from an experienced MMO developer wielding a license that has over 24 years of rich content to pull from. Suffice it to say that even as a complete newcomer to the Warhammer license and a jaded MMOer almost by profession, I found Warhammer Online to be pretty impressive, and it's easy to look forward to more information on Warhammer Online as it continues along its development cycle.

[tazelbain]

Hmmm.  This seems more PvP geared than I expected.  I like it.  Now all they have to do is say no uber loot and I'll be sold.

[Nebu]

If the box said: DAoC without the shitty PvE, I'd buy it.  Of course, anything exceeding that will blow me away.

[HRose]

The game will sport a day and night cycle

Ohhhhhhhhhhh!

I'm impressed.

Btw, the goblin and orc seem to use the exact same animations. It's just the same model made more fat and with a different head.

[Telemediocrity]

I want to see their policy on expansion packs / content additions - something along the lines of "We'll never add anything that makes you spend more than X hours to be PvP competitive once again."

I spent about five fucking years dreading patch days, where no content was good content because that way at least nothing would be broken or fucked up from the previous balance.  I don't want to have to do that again.

[Trippy]

Initially, there will be six playable races to choose from: humans, chaos, orcs, dwarves, high elves, and dark elves.

If you want the fanboys to take you seriously it's best to spell things correctly -- i.e. it's "dwarfs" not "dwarves" in WH.

Indeed, in the overall scheme of things, it is the goal to take over the enemy capital city, so cities are definitely not the safe zones to which MMORPG players may be accustomed. Quest givers cannot die, so the most basic operation of a city will still function for those players who are PvP-averse, but past that, expect to see a sizable war party at the city gates on occasion, in addition to your fellow players asking for your help in thwarting them.

I'm confused. If cities aren't safe why does it matter that quest givers can not die? Or are the cities safe to those that aren't flagged for RvR? What's the point of capturing cities if the city still functions?

Transport between zones hasn't been nailed down yet, and the presenter was threatened with throat-slitting motions before an exact answer could be extracted about it. While instant teleportation has been ruled out to get you from zone to zone, some sort of fast transport will undoubtedly be available. For instance, orcs might simply catapult themselves across the land, while dwarves might utilize gyrocopters.

I'd buy the game (though not necessarily subscribe) if I got to glide around as a Doom Diver for transportation.

For instance, there are now public PvE quests which are automatically granted to any player who enters a specific zone, such as someone needing a few hundred of a particular item. Anyone who contributes to the goal gains experience, so instead of situations like in other MMOs where players are fighting with one another to collect six tusks or whatnot all from one area, that same group of players is now working together, knowing that it's all the same as to who turns in the tusk, since they will all get the proper experience for the quest.

Oh yeah like this system ain't going to be ripe for abuse.

A unique feature of Warhammer Online is the morale system, which deepens combat significantly. More morale is generated if you have more players in your group or fight for longer periods of time, which in turn enables five successive levels of morale actions. The first tier might be something like a cannon going off in the distance for a dwarf and taking out a small group of the enemy, while a fifth level morale action might be something more along the lines of Armageddon. Players can gain additional morale actions for each tier as they progress down their career paths. Of course, losing a fight or taking a large amount of damage will lower morale, making it more of a coup-de-grace than something that you can use as a last-ditch effort.

Great another rich get richer game mechanic.

Mythic also had the foresight to eliminate the drudgery that plague a lot of MMOs; at the outset, you won't be merely fighting rats and fish. As the orcs, you can expect to be repelling a beach landing of dwarves who are coming over a nearby waterfall using barrels.

The drudgery isn't that you have to kill itsy-bitsy creatures at the beginning -- it's that you have to level up before you can contribute to the RvR effort. Mythic is obviously borrowing their tiered battlegrounds setup from DAoC so hopefully that won't be a problem, though with the way they are handling advancement it's possible you won't have enough skills to be useful in RvR until you've played for a bit.

Edit: fixed typo

[Johny Cee]

I have to say, as someone who still enjoys DAoC rvr....  Looks surprisingly good, at this point.  Especially with the trends Mythic has been taking with DAoC pvp (reducing the importance of CC, eliminating radar, reducing the pve grind for levels/items/abilities while boosting the amount of lower end rvr/pvp).

I'd love to start fresh playing with the few DAoC folks kicking around here (Nebu, eldaec, Hrose, et al).

[Trippy]

Another preview (from GameSpot). Looks like Mythic gave the same preview to a bunch of media people.

[Arthur_Parker]

Allakhazam Preview

You can go through the entire game on only PvP, only PvE, or (as they're hoping most folks do), a mix of both. The game starts 80% PvE 20% PvP, and they're planning on having it end up with the opposite ratio. There will be PvE raids for those that get bored of RvR, but RvR is the major focus of the game. You can RvR from day 1 of playing, there's no initial time where all you do is kill bats and rats.
..........
They're planning on having NO Bind on Pickup, and only maybe having Bind on Equip. They want a robust economy, and they're considering adding some sort of item decay to balance it out.

MMORPG Preview

In Warhammer’s fiction, the races are all distinct personalities. Mythic set out to ensure that their difference are reflected in the way they built missions for each group.

To illustrate, Paul Barnett made two examples. In the first, he made a simple quest where someone asks a character from each race: “Would you please get a pie for me from the old lady down the road kind sir?” In short, a FedEx quest. In every MMORPG, the player would simply get the pie. In Warhammer, they set out to make sure that each race can do it in a unique way. Here is how Paul’s chart had each race react:

Empire: Gets the pie and returns it like a good little altar boy…the pats himself on the back for a job well done.
OR
Evil Empire: Gets the pie, wraps it up in a box with skulls and pseudo-latin phrases on it, and returns it like a good little altar boy…then adjusts his eye-patch and pats himself on the back for a job well done.
Dwarf: Gets the pie and checks it for gold… finding none he sells it for some ale.
Greenskin: Defecates in the pie… then eats it… then defecates some more… then decides to kill the person who asked him to get the pie.
Chaos: Kills the old lady, violates the pie, then wears it as a hat… then the pie grows an arm.
Elf: Too good for such a lowly errand.
Dark Elf: Betrays the pie then whines that he is the rightful owner of the pan the pie was cooked in.

He continued to demonstrate the difference through a second chart. In this he took the stock phrase “hello would you like to look at my sword” and translated it how each race would say it.

Orc: Oi Git, get a load of me choppa before I guts ya!
Elf: Remember the songs this blade has song for our family.
Human: (brandishes sword) What are you looking at stranger?
Dark Elf: (stabs person) You appear to have got your blood on my blade.
Dwarf: Sword, sword. Axe’s lad, we use axes!
Chaos: Blood for the blood god. Any ones blood will do, even yours.
This does not mean you can actually defecate as an Orc – I hope – but these two templates are the actual examples provided to the quest teams as they crafted content for each race in the world.

[schild]

Ooooh no bind on pickup. That's a secondary market euphanism for erection.

[Trippy]

They're planning on having NO Bind on Pickup, and only maybe having Bind on Equip. They want a robust economy, and they're considering adding some sort of item decay to balance it out.

If this is going to be your typical item-centric MMORPG item decay is going to cause lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[Arthur_Parker]

RPG Vault Preview

1UP Preview

Some marketing guy at Mythic must be on something, that's an awful lot of previews in such a short space of time.


Funny stuff from the mmorpg preview above.

What is Warhammer?

“No one at Games Workshop understands Warhammer, so this is not an easy thing to do,” said Barnett as he attempted to explain to us what Warhammer is.

Paul sees Warhammer as a concept, “a cauldron of ideas”.

He then hit us with an analogy; one of his favorite things to do.

“Warhammer is Batman,” he said flatly.

Seeing confusion in the eyes of a group of American, Canadian and Japanese press, he sprung into action on his whiteboard – he insists Britain does not have technology and thus he must use a whiteboard – to drive this point home.

[Azazel]

I agree that these are good reasons while turn based tabletop games are limited to two sides, but it's worth reminding everyone that these problems vanish in a real-time MMOG.
----
On the subject of PS it plays ok in Europe (even on US servers), can't speak for anywhere else.

Sure. I was replying to 5150's post about not having seen any display games of Warhamster in GW stores that weren't 2-sided affairs. In the WFB background though, the strongest alliances between "races" would probably be Dwarfs-Empire-Kislevites. Everyone else pretty much tolerates each other at best and hates each other at worst. Or usual. Maybe Nurgle-Skaven, though I couldn't see their leaders getting along anyway.

Um, so my point was that 3 sides (at minimum) would be the best idea for the game. You can have High and/or Wood elf boobies on the good side, along with hot French chicks. The bad side gets your Dark elf bondage babes (though Warhammer DE have pale skin a la Lady Death or the chick on the Guildwars box instead of dark blue), and chaos gets viking wimmenz with tattoos (Marauders/Norscans) and Slaanesh bondage babes.

So, you know, they can still have 3 realms and boobies available to all involved...

more later. time for work.

[tazelbain]

It would be pretty sweet if WAR has the same turn around time as DAoC.  I hope they do the same this time, but when the game is done hold off an extra six-monthes and polish it 'til it blinds and run super stress tests( a ton of people in a small area).

[Nebu]

It would be pretty sweet in WAR has the same turn around time as DAoC.  I hope they do the same this time, but when the game is done hold off an extra six-monthes and polish it 'til blinds and run super stress tests( a ton of people in a small area).

This makes an excellent point that I've neglected.  One of the things that has troubled me about DAoC is not only the lag effects on PvP, but the way that players are able to use lag to their advantage (lag jumping, circle strafing, window dragging, etc.).  I'm wondering what Mythic is doing to decrease the impact that these things have on gameplay. 

[Morfiend]

Chaos: Kills the old lady, violates the pie, then wears it as a hat… then the pie grows an arm.

I love Chaos. I cant wait to kill old ladies and fuck pies. I AM PIEFUCKER HEAR ME ROAR!

[Telemediocrity]

Ooooh no bind on pickup. That's a secondary market euphanism for erection.

What does bind on pickup / bind on equip mean, exactly?

In AC1 we had "bonded" (cannot be dropped on death) and "attuned" (cannot be given to others while alive).  Is bind something different, or same name for different thing?

[Modern Angel]

Can I say that the media blitz is working on me?

Please don't fuck this up. I mean, you will and I'll buy it and kvetch after I do but a boy can hope, right?

[Driakos]

What does bind on pickup / bind on equip mean, exactly?

In AC1 we had "bonded" (cannot be dropped on death) and "attuned" (cannot be given to others while alive).  Is bind something different, or same name for different thing?

Bind on Pickup stuff, can only be NPC vendored, destroyed, or disenchanted for materials (aside from using it of course).  You cannot mule it or trade it.

Bind on Equip stuff can be traded, Auction-Housed, mailed, whatever.  Until it is equipped by someone.  Then see above.

[Trippy]

What does bind on pickup / bind on equip mean, exactly?

In AC1 we had "bonded" (cannot be dropped on death) and "attuned" (cannot be given to others while alive).  Is bind something different, or same name for different thing?

Wait a minute you've been trying to convince people that DDO is a better game than WoW and you've never even played WoW?

[Telemediocrity]

What does bind on pickup / bind on equip mean, exactly?

In AC1 we had "bonded" (cannot be dropped on death) and "attuned" (cannot be given to others while alive).  Is bind something different, or same name for different thing?

Wait a minute you've been trying to convince people that DDO is a better game than WoW and you've never even played WoW?

I played WoW up to level 8 or so, and quit because it sucked and at that point I had invested at least 5 hours - which is far too long to play for a game that's not offering you any fun and doesn't appear to offer anything else fun in the future.  Most of WoW's featureset appears similar (i.e. Diku w/ PvP) to DAoC and AO, which I invested about 100 hours in each, 100 hours utterly wasted.

[eldaec]

Ooooh no bind on pickup. That's a secondary market euphanism for erection.

I never understood the value of having bind on anything.

Hand-me-downs are a valid expression of community.

If a game needs bind on anything to maintain its integrity then your item design process is broken.

DAoC had items about right until they introduced ToA artifacts, which you knew were broken straight away because they had bind on activation (as well because they were, you know, batshit insane)

[Azazel]

As someone who's going to be internetting from Japan next year, you have my sympathy. Nonetheless: A game not working well outside of America is not gamebreaking to those of us who live in America.  Sorry to say it, man, but it's the truth.  Also, ping was never a walk in the park in the MMOs here, either - in AC1, I was usually PvPing with 200ms lag or so (Though compared to what you experience abroad, that might be miniscule).  Nonetheless, we had really good guilds of Danes and Frenchmen and whatnot in AC1 DT and they weren't half bad at PvP.  So while I sympathize, I have a hard time believing it's impossible or not worth doing just because Euros may have a hard time playing on American servers.

Well seeing that WOW has raised the bar bigtime in what developers can hope for (realistic or not) it really depends on how niche they're prepared to be with their games.
As of last week, WoW is still the 3rd-best selling PC game overall in Australia more than a full 2 years aftyer release (source: http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=4130) and so while I can't find hard numbers I think that Australian/NZ numbers alone must be higher than the 66k total we were tossing around for DDO in the other thread. Not to mention that every "Aussie" server gets clusterfucked pretty damn hard by overwhelming numbers of users. If game devs want to ignore the international market and those potential subs/numbers, then hey, their funeral.

And as an aside, I think the fact that WoW is still selling like hotcakes 2 years on pretty much puts to rest Schild's regular argument that WoW's numbers are made up of Blizzard fanbois who won't play anything else.. I'd guess most of the Blizz fanbois bought their WoW accounts a year or more ago by this pont. Regardless of anything else, it's bringing a lot of fresh players to the genre who are all potential customers for Warhammer, a decent sci-fi MMOG, or even catass-heaven Vanguard. Imagine the numbers a properly-made SWG could do!

A game built for PvP should have PvP optimization graphics checkboxes in the main menu.
-A checkbox to view all players as the same character model, perhaps with size scaling to indicate race if it's one of those games where race is really important (I don't think race should be really important in a PvP-oriented game, but that's separate)
-A checkbox to simplify all player skins to a single, low-res one per each class.  We essentially used to do this back in AC to hit 60FPS or so even in big battles.
-A checkbox to make spell effects and sparky weapons highly simplified, with color differentiating between effects.

Wow. That sounds so uninteresting I have to wonder if you're beginning to troll in this thread as well.

I played WoW up to level 8 or so, and quit because it sucked and at that point I had invested at least 5 hours - which is far too long to <blah blah blah>

*cough*

It's one thing to say you found it to be shitty. Fair enough. But it's not enough experience to talk about the game's ups and downs very much at all.

I got to level 14 in DAOC before quitting due to lack of interest. Doesn't mean I know shit about that game though.

 

[eldaec]

Empire: Gets the pie and returns it like a good little altar boy…the pats himself on the back for a job well done.
OR
Evil Empire: Gets the pie, wraps it up in a box with skulls and pseudo-latin phrases on it, and returns it like a good little altar boy…then adjusts his eye-patch and pats himself on the back for a job well done.
Dwarf: Gets the pie and checks it for gold… finding none he sells it for some ale.
Greenskin: Defecates in the pie… then eats it… then defecates some more… then decides to kill the person who asked him to get the pie.
Chaos: Kills the old lady, violates the pie, then wears it as a hat… then the pie grows an arm.
Elf: Too good for such a lowly errand.
Dark Elf: Betrays the pie then whines that he is the rightful owner of the pan the pie was cooked in.

This I like. Espeicially the Dark Elf entry.

Though the greenskin one should read...

Greenskin: Eats the pie. Forgets what he was doing.

Warhammer Orcs work better when they aren't actually evil, just overemotional, suffering from ADD, and possibly in possession of two Y chromosomes.

Which is another reason they shouldn't be on the same side as Chaos Humies.

[Azazel]

Warhammer Orcs work better when they aren't actually evil, just overemotional, suffering from ADD, and possibly in possession of two Y chromosomes.
Which is another reason they shouldn't be on the same side as Chaos Humies.

Well, I wouldn't even call it overemotional. They're amoral. Not WoW's "blood and honor" even, just pure, distilled Darwinism. Survival of the fittest, strongest and most brutal.

They just like to 'ave sum fun. an' fun iz 'ittin fings. Da boyz jus' want a good 'ard fight!

They're essentially violent, tribal 'ooligans. And they've got no love for Chaos at all.

In one of my Warhammer books years ago they summed up the Orc/k's philosophy of warfare. Went something like:

If we win, we win.
If we lose, we is dead, so it doesn't count.

[eldaec]

^^ what he said, Azrael put it better than I did.

Crucially...

no love for Chaos at all.

[Arthur_Parker]

On greenskin's, one of the Mythic devs recently had this to say on Tattoo's and Piercing.

"Tat's are good, Warpaint is Gud, bones shoved through skin are bettah."

So I like the style so far.  Mythic have mentioned different ruleset servers but not seen any details on them yet.

Bit concerned about lag like Nebu mentioned, the justification for everyone looking the same in Lineage 2 was to cut down lag, from what I'm reading in the previews everyone in Warhammer is going to look slightly different....