Warhammer - Xbox 360 + Squigs + Video Interview

[Morfiend]

Jumping in WoW gets you nowhere. People who jump have no more advantage than people who don't. It's a eflex move and it keeps their fingers active.

Actually, this is not true. If you notice hunters jump a lot. The reason for this is that you can move faster by jumping than walking backwards. So to keep distance a hunter will jump away from some one, and spin 180 degrees in the air, so they are moving away from their target but can still use special moves.

The same goes for my rogue, I will jump through some one, and spin in the air so that i am still attacking them before I land.

[Righ]

STOP IT.

Needs more knives. And cowbell.

[eldaec]

Watching the e3 videos, one thing I did note is that so far Mythic haven't carried over the interrupt mechanic from daoc, the principle in daoc was that if you had an enemy sneeze in your general direction from 600 yards away you'd immeadiately be interrupted and unable to cast for several seconds.

The videos have casting in melee.

That could all be subject to change ofc, but the interupt rules were always something I found throughly irritating in daoc.

Needs more knives.

More knives, bigger knives, it's all good.

[stray]

STOP IT.

I'm going to have to say that a discussion about jumping (RPG or not) is actually more substantive than.....Screenshots.

[Morfiend]

Can anyone find any good screan shots of Chaos guys? While the Greenskins look cool, I want to see my chaos people.

[eldaec]

Can anyone find any good screan shots of Chaos guys? While the Greenskins look cool, I want to see my chaos people.

I gather they haven't been drawn yet.

Mythic started with Green, currently doing Dwarfs, they claim to be moving through the races one at a time doing the zone and model art as they go.

[Miasma]

Meaning the chaos models and zones will be buggy, boring and empty as they start cutting corners to meet the release deadline right?

[Chenghiz]

Jumping in WoW gets you nowhere. People who jump have no more advantage than people who don't. It's a eflex move and it keeps their fingers active.

Actually, this is not true. If you notice hunters jump a lot. The reason for this is that you can move faster by jumping than walking backwards. So to keep distance a hunter will jump away from some one, and spin 180 degrees in the air, so they are moving away from their target but can still use special moves.

The same goes for my rogue, I will jump through some one, and spin in the air so that i am still attacking them before I land.

Hah my bad, I didn't think of that - and my main is a hunter.

[HRose]

Yep, doing one race at a time is a big mistake in mmorpg development.

Everyone knows that the best way to get it right is about quickly building proofs of concept and then reiterate as much as you can. Progressively adding detail and polish.

Doing one thing at a time will lead to realms rushed out and bland or even the content added later being much better than the content added earlier as the team gets more experienced.

But what is indispensable is really trying to have the whole game roughly put in place and then slowly sort out the details. Reiterating every part many times.

[Arthur_Parker]

So because they are developing the races in pairs, instead of doing all six at once, then WAR isn't going to be as perfect as previous mmorpg games?

If the game is going to play as 3 seperate battlefields, I can see the logic of designing them seperately.

[Falconeer]

Everyone knows that the best way to get it right is about quickly building proofs of concept and then reiterate as much as you can. Progressively adding detail and polish.

Yes, everyone knows. And that led in the past to lots of great MMORPG like.... uh...

[Trippy]

So because they are developing the races in pairs, instead of doing all six at once, then WAR isn't going to be as perfect as previous mmorpg games?

If the game is going to play as 3 seperate battlefields, I can see the logic of designing them seperately.

Yes the logic makes sense. Unfortunately the ones that are developed first usually have more content and polish than the later ones -- see Horde in WoW and !Albion in DAoC.

[HRose]

It's just a matter of which method leads to the best result.

[eldaec]

Meaning the chaos models and zones will be buggy, boring and empty ... right?

One could argue that this matches the WFRP and WFB canon.

;)

[Arthur_Parker]

It's certainly possible that the later races will not be as polished as the first two, however I would expect that the the later stages of development would include a final polish.  The later races will also benefit from more refined content creation tools, so I think the only conclusion we could draw at this stage is that normally mmo's are released unfinished.

I'm hoping that GW have a new focus on computer games in general, anyone know what Dawn of War was like at release?  Mark of Chaos might give some clues as to what GW find acceptable in 2006 after the fairly recent Fire Warrior which didn't get great reviews.

[angry.bob]

I'm hoping that GW have a new focus on computer games in general

I'm hoping so too. I have a feeling that they will due to a couple of things. They've been reluctant to make computer games to close to their miniatures games for fear of cutting into their miniatures sales, or at least it's been reported that was the reason they've ignored asstons of requests from players. But their sales have to be waning as a result of their rules are total shit now for anyone but a 12 year old or a fucking retard. No self-respecting person above 16 in "the hobby" would be caught dead playing 40K now. The problem is, a preteen or retard can't afford $15 for a single plastic marine commander, $50 for 5 plastic terminators, or the $500 cost for an army that lets you do more than field the most basic selection of troops. I haven't seen any actual sales figures, but I'd bet that the nosedive their stock took a while back was about the time their prices reached the breaking point for most people. I mean, a drop from 900 pounds a share to 280 pounds a share in a year and a half is a murderous drop. I don't know too many investors that would be happy with losses like that.

I'd really like to see them release an online version of their games along the same lines as MTG online. I'd gladly subscribe and pay extra to buy "miniatures" to get out of cleaning the flash, assembling, and painting real ones, not to mention an online matching service, tourneys, ranking, not having to deal with vague rules, etc. I don't think they're ready to take that plunge yet, but the MoC looks like a real time WFB, so it wouldn't be that far of a leap. I think if they see decent numbers from that combined with DoW, they might be more receptive to the idea. The only thing they'd like better than selling little lead and plastic guys at tremendous profit would be selling thin air for an even bigger profit. Also, watching WoW make more money than Blizzard can spend with a cartoony derivative of their own IP must have really lit a fire under their asses.

[eldaec]

It would be nice if GW were capable of that switch. But unfortunately they really aren't.

Too many years of too much focus on making pewter look expensive and not enough focus on the making playable or fun games, leaves them without much of a base to work from. I can imagine a more liberal approach to games companies interested in coming in and taking product off their hands, but I honestly don't believe they have the imagination or capability to drive their IP into PC games.

[Arthur_Parker]

May Newsletter

Lots of new video diaries

New Screenshots

Somebody buy that guy a better camera phone.


Edit - Awesome video that Sairon posted in the E3 forum.

Watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWvAznIRVLA

[HRose]

Epic, heroic, pe-petuual struggle...

Now I know who Paul Barnett sounds like. Ramus from Lunar: Silver Star Story!

Three reasons why Warhammer is a great licence for a MMO:

1- Iconic look
2- An excuse to smash the living crap out of each other
3- A-pe-pe-cciual work with no ending from where to draw from

Three devices:

1- Zone story arcs - With the theme that defines a contested zone
2- Racial story arcs - Race vs Race
3- World story arcs - Between the races, plots, "convoluted excuses" to fight etc..

"Everybody fights everybody, for-ever! That's all we are interested in."

Race cliches:

"The greenskin are soccer hooligans. All they do is wander around, pick up sticks and try to hit other people. There are no long term plans, no long term concepts. There's a group of soccer thugs, on the march to glory."

"The dwarfs are the northern(?) working class of England. They live down mines, all they want to do is get drunk. They just want to fight people who call them "short". They have no money, they are very proud of their holes in the ground."

"The high-elves are British posh people. Never done a day working in their lives. Don't understand about "doing the washing". Have had too much time in the da, so they read the lody-dody(?) books, get really good with the swords and doing special magic."

"The dark-elves are English posh people who have taken drugs. Basically Lord Byron. They've got money coming out their ears. They don't take lot of hope into deciding [...] goddamn world [...] any way they want."

"The humans. The empire is basically humans. You know, wonderful dreams, terrible nightmares. They don't really pay attention, build huge amount of technology. They like to explode and destroy the world. Cut down all the forest, they don't really understand it."

"The Chaos is humans that have been toughly(?) corrupted, tentacles, crab close, extra eyes, horns. Some people get confuse and think Chaos is like the devil. No, no, no. It's not fire and brimstone, it's chaos. It's castles falling from the sky. It's an arm that turns into a sword. It's the ability to cut open your arm and mice(?) pour out rather then blood. It's chaos, it's corruption."

"It's not a computer game. It's a total hobby experience. We want you to buy this game, and never buy another one."

"We want you to spend all your time playing it. We want it to involve: skill, commitment and imagination.

- The more skill you put in, the better the game is, the better you feel.
- More commitment you put in, you got piles of money, you got a great(?) of played, the more the game rewards you.
- Imagination. Over in America they call it "immersion". It's not immersion. Immersion is playing Half-Life and not realizng the house is burning down. And your wife's left you. And you haven't slept for weeks. Imagination is: I played the game and then I want to talk about it, go to the websites, draw pictures about it, have t-shirts, I wanna think about what I'm going to do when I play next week, I talk to all my friends about it.

If you get skill, commitment and imagination, you get a hobby experience. And a hobby experience should grab you to the core of your being and be the only thing you want to do.

That's the game we're making."

Someone could translate to me that last line of the dark elves description?

[stray]

Wow, even when you transcribe someone else's words, I still can't read your posts.

[Arthur_Parker]

"The dark-elves are English posh people who have taken drugs. Basically Lord Byron. They've got money coming out their ears. They don't take lot of hope into deciding [...] goddamn world [...] any way they want."
................
Someone could translate to me that last line of the dark elves description?

"The dark-elves are English posh people who have taken drugs. Basically Lord Byron. They've got money coming out their ears. They have then taken a load of opium and have decided that they run the goddamn world and can have it any way they want."

[Falconeer]

Edit - Awesome video that Sairon posted in the E3 forum.

Watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWvAznIRVLA

Paul Barnett looks and speaks like an EQ2 NPC.
Emotes included.

I am expecting him to give me a quest any moment.

[eldaec]

Everybone fights everybody. For. Ever.

No.

That would be Warhammer. You've put some bizarre alliance between Orcs, Chaos, and Dark Elves together for no reason.

[Arthur_Parker]

Linky

Mythic Entertainment, a leading developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG's), today announced Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) will be published and operated across Europe by GOA, the France Telecom-owned publisher of online games. GOA has successfully operated Dark Age of Camelot in Europe with Mythic since 2001. WAR is based on Games Workshop's popular Warhammer fantasy war game and features next generation Realm vs. Realm (RvR) game play that will immerse players in a world of perpetual conflict. WAR will arrive on the PC simultaneously in the US and Europe in the fall of 2007.

"The initial partnership between Mythic and GOA resulted in 'Dark Age of Camelot' being the number one MMORPG in Europe for many years," said Mark Jacobs, CEO and President of Mythic Entertainment. "With WAR our goal is nothing less than to take Europe by storm and regain that leadership position in the European market."

It's nice that Europe will be treated the same for a change, aiming for WoW figures is a bit of a stretch though.

[eldaec]

Ok, that's it, I just lost any interest I had in this game.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) will be published and operated across Europe by GOA

No thankyou, tried that with daoc. Didn't work. I'm not going there again.

I'm irritated that this means they'll be running seperate EU and US servers with a seperate account structure once again. But I flat out refuse to get involved in another GOA fiasco.

To forestall the next question, yes, you are entirely welcome to my stuff.

[Arthur_Parker]

In this thread Mark has posted a few times that they will take steps to ensure WAR has a better release and support in Europe than DAoC.  There's some kind of backbone issue in France isn't there?

I like the increased focus on Europe but I'm probably going to get a US import copy of WAR anyway.  The only European release mmorpg I have played is WoW and I really didn't like the language barriers.  I think I ended up on the unofficial Finnish server, barrens chat generally drifted towards a reenactment of World War II.

[stray]

What in the world do the Finnish have to do with WWII?

[Arthur_Parker]

Quite a bit.

The Military history of Finland during World War II covers the history of Finland from 1939 to 1944. During the World War II the fate of Finland was unique among the belligerent nations. Finland fought three wars: Winter War alone against Soviet Union, Continuation War with Germany against Soviet Union, and Lapland War alone against Germany. In the end, Finland had managed, against all odds, to defend its independence and democratic constitution while suffering relatively minor territorial losses.

Barrens chat generally went.

Muppet1 Were u frm?>
Muppet2 Finland.
Muppet1 Lol Natzi.

[eldaec]

There's some kind of backbone issue in France isn't there?

This is a massive understatement.

France has huge internet infrastructural problems borne out of historic cultural protectionism and Minitel.

It is quite literally the stupidest possible place in western Europe to put online game servers.

Also nobody in GOA can speak english. Translate a patch in < 3 months. Or operate a server that doesn't crash during relic raids. The last point is espeicially important, the primary method of relic defence in EUDAOC was to get around 60 to 100 people in to the relic site and wait for the "server" to crash so that purple guards could do the rest.

[eldaec]

In this thread Mark has posted a few times that they will take steps to ensure WAR has a better release and support in Europe than DAoC.  There's some kind of backbone issue in France isn't there?

I like the increased focus on Europe but I'm probably going to get a US import copy of WAR anyway.  The only European release mmorpg I have played is WoW and I really didn't like the language barriers.  I think I ended up on the unofficial Finnish server, barrens chat generally drifted towards a reenactment of World War II.

Interestingly, in the thread linked above, Mark shows how much he cares about the issue of OpenTransit and the general shittiness of hosting in France by 'raising it with GOA'. GOA responded 'oui, zat iz ze fixed now' (apologies to any French people reading). And Mark said 'k'.

So APPARENTLY Goa just single handedly fixed all the issues with the French internet. Go France.

 

They'd be better off just hosting the damn things in the US and putting a sticker on them that says 'european'. We'd get a better connection. Seriously.

[HRose]

I'm irritated that this means they'll be running seperate EU and US servers with a seperate account structure once again.

Yeah, I'm with you on this point. It's really a very bad decision on all fronts.

By the way, I don't really think they will regain "leadership position". WoW has nearly 1.5M on Europe, for the first time the european market became bigger than the US. DAoC, when Mythic considered itself "number one" in Europe, topped in EU at around 150k or so. Come on, it's not even on the same scale.

Let's make some predictions about the numbers Warhammer will get in EU and US. Let's see who will go closer. My idea is that the reasonable goal that Mythic should take nearly as an imperative (meaning that it won't be a "success" and that they should start dancing if they reach it, but that the devs should work *hard* to reach it) is the 250-280k EU+US that DAoC had at its peak. Anything less would be a delusion (in particular with the silly claims above) and I don't think that the game will move too far away from that number (meaning that I don't expect them going far above either).

I have this theory that sequels or semi-sequels like this one are never able even to top the original chapter when it was at its peak. I always criticized "sequels" in the mmorpg genre and I think they are a total waste of money when much better *commercial* results could be obtained by truly supporting the main title (meaning giving it more and more resources, instead of less and less), like CCP is doing with Eve (which grows constantly despite being three years old and recently reached more than 100 developers involved full time with it), instead of cutting progressively the resources from the game to migrate them somewhere else and then see an obvious decline as the direct result.

So my idea is: Warhammer won't top DAoC when it was at its peak. They could go slightly above or slightly below depending on the quality of what they are doing (and I think some ideas are promising if they don't cripple them with the usual bad execution), but that's what I'd take as a reasonable goal. That's what I'd tell my devs if I was Mark Jacobs. Go for that. That's our goal.

"Regain that leadership position in the European market" is laughable. PR or not they should have never said something like that.

Maybe after launch, if they hit that 250k mark, then they could start to work *hard* to solidify and INCREASE the market share (you know, the mythical positive trends that seem a chimera for a mmorpg). Like the hard work EQ2 is doing despite being a retarded sequel. But then there's always this stupid risk that the resources will be moved on yet another stupid new project, instead of supporting the development to make the first title more solid. And just watch it passively declining and fade into oblivion (also because it HAS to be killed, as the interest and hype MUST be shifted to fed the "new").

Which was DAoC's own destiny with that foolish "Imperator" mmorpg first and Warhammer now.

[HRose]

Btw, "France" is not the problem. WoW's servers are also hosted in France and I don't think they have all these problems.

[Righ]

Yes, but its de rigeur to say that France has backbone issues, whether talking about networks or armies. Blame it on that short tosser with his hand in his jacket. People have been keen to piss on them ever since.

[Arthur_Parker]

Let's make some predictions about the numbers Warhammer will get in EU and US. Let's see who will go closer. My idea is that the reasonable goal that Mythic should take nearly as an imperative (meaning that it won't be a "success" and that they should start dancing if they reach it, but that the devs should work *hard* to reach it) is the 250-280k EU+US that DAoC had at its peak. Anything less would be a delusion (in particular with the silly claims above) and I don't think that the game will move too far away from that number (meaning that I don't expect them going far above either).

If it's stable and polished at release, if the starter areas are newb friendly and if the high end game is feature complete I'll stick my neck out for 500k EU+US at release.  That's a lot of if's though.  Post WoW with a license so similar but with greater depth, I can't imagine them aiming for less.

[HaemishM]

Let's make some predictions about the numbers Warhammer will get in EU and US. Let's see who will go closer. My idea is that the reasonable goal that Mythic should take nearly as an imperative (meaning that it won't be a "success" and that they should start dancing if they reach it, but that the devs should work *hard* to reach it) is the 250-280k EU+US that DAoC had at its peak. Anything less would be a delusion (in particular with the silly claims above) and I don't think that the game will move too far away from that number (meaning that I don't expect them going far above either).

Except that the game is probably structured so that 150k subs is enough to turn a decent profit. Everything else is gravy.