Warhammer Online Basic Careers Information

[Arthur_Parker]

Page is due live outday, couple of pics on it not finished yet.  Here's the link cut and pasted below incase the page is taken offline.  

Not a lot of information but shows the careers very similar to WHFRP, will check for exact matches when I get home.

Thug - “You beg for mercy? Oh no, I don’t think so my friend, the time for mercy passed when you hid your purse. By my reckoning the clock’s just chimed the start of the beating hour!” – Anonymous thug

The Thug is the basic young hard-case of the Reikland. Out to make their name and fortune as a skilled and vicious fighter they care little for the weak or timid. These swordsmen often progress into Brigand warbands and dream of the day that they themselves are a notorious and powerful Bandit Chief or Warlord.

Thugs wear scruffy, sombre coloured clothes and arm themselves with cheap but effective weapons such as short swords or clubs.





Novice - “It’s my job to crush the fragile flower of enthusiasm and youth in you before it grows into the rank weed of heresy.” – Lecturer at the Fraternia Scriptorium

Novices are devout individuals who have taken holy orders and are being indoctrinated into their cult. They usually join a temple at an early age, where they receive an education and immerse themselves in ancient manuscripts of a generally religious nature. There are various cults that the novice can follow and these depend on race and religion, from human gods (such as Sigmar, the patron of the Empire and Taal, the god of nature and wild places) to more specialised religions like the High Elves’ Phoenix King Asuryan or the Ogre’s Great Maw.

Novice dress varies wildly for the different religions. Ulric features wolf skin cloaks, Shallya simple white robes, Taal wear skins and headdresses and so on. Novices will always wear the most basic garb of their order.




Sell Sword - “The most just cause is the one with the largest coffers behind it!” – Anonymous Sell Sword

Sell Swords are likely young fighters, keen to learn their trade and enjoy the tangible benefits that come with it. Despite their dangerous and bloody business a Sell Sword sees no profit or honour in hurting unarmed civilians. Instead these roving soldiers earn a fair crust selling their sword arm to the highest bidder and, should they live long enough, can look forward to a prosperous and adventure packed life as a Freebooter or Mercenary Captain.

Like the richer and more experienced Mercenaries, Sell Swords dress in the most lavish clothes they can afford, from dapper jackets to jaunty plumed hats. They often use both a sword and dagger in combat.




Scout - “It’s not that I don’t like people, I just find plants and animals easier to talk to…” – Ereboor Beck, Elven scout

Scouts usually hail from the rural areas of the Reikland, where their fledgling skills at hunting and tracking and extensive local knowledge often see them hired as adjuncts to the militia. Despite this (and due to the vastness of the Reikland’s cities) there is also such a thing as an urban Scout, knowledgeable of the alleys and backways of the cities and towns.

Scouts wear dull weather-stained clothes and a long cloak or overcoat. They carry a hunting knife (primarily for use as a tool) and a hand axe or basic sword for protection.




Rascal - “What’s the point in victory if your skill and style doesn’t win the hearts of a few fine ladies at the same time?” – Lysander Ulliot, self crowned Hero of the Pottermerites

A born opportunist, the Rascal’s philosophy is that it’s a tough world out there, so grab what you can and never rely on anyone else. Living by their wits they navigate their lives via a series of blags and coups. The ultimate aim? Riches and glory.

Despite limited resources the Rascal is very much the lad about town, bedecked in the most dapper and charming clothing available. For personal protection on the mean streets of the Reikland Rascals will carry a dagger or short sword.




Petty Crook - “Alright lads, I’ve got the carrots hidden up me shirt. I think we’re going to get away with this you know, just stay calm… Why’s he looking at me like that? Damn, they’re onto us, they know, I’m telling you they know! LEG IT!” – Hugo Underhill, Halfling crook

Petty Crooks actively seek a life of crime, hoping to become rich at the expense of others. Relying on a quick getaway and lightening fast fingers these rogues dream of becoming a Racketeer or Gangland boss as they swipe purses and loaves from the unfortunate people of the Reikland.

Dressed in threadbare, stolen clothing the Petty Crook is often a sorry sight. Armed with nothing but a knife (used for cutting purses far more than throats) running, rather than bloodying their blade, is their preferred option.




Militia - “Calm down ladies and gents, this situation’s under the militia’s control now. If you’ll all just lower your weapons I’m sure we can talk about this in a civil and…” – Last recorded words of Karl Schreffer, Altdorf Militia Man

Militia are young fighters with a strong spirit of community service. They are dependable, strong and protectors of their families and the ordinary folk (or so they like to think!) and are certainly tough enough to deal with local disturbances. Although they are at the lowest rung, Militia aspire to rise in rank to join the Watch or Guard, perhaps even becoming an officer.

Despite their position as peacekeepers the Militia’s look is rather reminiscent of a common civilian, with threadbare clothing and little to mark them out. The clubs, cudgels or other blunt and painful instruments they carry are the only symbol of authority they need.




Scribe - “Out of bed at midday, ethics lecture at two, hit the tavern at four thirty… it’s a hard life!” – Unnamed student of the Altdorf College

Scribes usually hail from privileged classes, their superior education allowing them to take jobs writing reports or translating musty old tomes in the Empire’s vast libraries. In the most adventurous of these young intelligentsia the arcane literature they are exposed to fires a desire for the mystical and supernatural.

Scribes typically wear light, fashionable, good quality clothes. They carry writing gear such as blank parchment scrolls, quills and ink and also a dagger or slender sword for protection.

[schild]

Nice flare text. Game still look like shit?

Wake me when that new Warhammer 40k RTS is released.

EDIT: In order not to just spam (it's VERY EARLY)...

What's the gameplay difference between a thug, a petty crook, and a rascal? Sell Sword and Militia? One career leads to all the magic advanced trees?

Hrmm. Why not have 3 basic classes and have the rest be advanced? Are some of these trees going to merge later? Egah. I don't know what their trying to do. I really, really don't want the first Warhammer MMO (hopefully not the last) to be utter shite.

[Soukyan]

I was not terribly impressed with the E3 trailer as it mixed a lot of cinematic in with some panoramics of the game world. I hope they are further along than it appears because the graphics are going to be dated like SB and that's getting off to a bad start. Even though graphics aren't everything, you have to have damn fine gameplay in order to justify dated graphics and well, see SB for reference on what happens when your graphics are lousy and then you have oodles of technical issues.

I have high expectations for Warhammer Online, but it's not looking very good at the moment. Thanks for the post also as it appears I cannot load that page.

[Arthur_Parker]

Well this is a description of careers from WHFRP that I found on the web.

Careers and Advancement

All adventurers begin with an initial career or profession. In time, they may take on other careers as they grow in experience. Each career brings with it a unique set of skills and attribute advancements. Warhammer careers are divided into the four career classes; Warrior, Ranger, Academic, and Rogue.

Careers in the Warrior class all involve physical combat and their skills and advancements are all geared to produce fighting men. Warriors form the backbone of the Empire's armies. Veteran warriors are respected for their military prowess and are often found leading units or regiments either in the Emperor's service or in the many mercenary bands that roam the Empire.

Ranger careers also produce fighting men. However, rangers are also skilled at woodcraft and survival in the wilds. In the Old World, rangers are employed as explorers, scouts, and outriders. Their skills and abilities make them uniquely suited for expeditions or campaigns in the more remote regions of the Empire.

Careers in the Academic class all involve the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge and the skills that contribute to it. While often unsuited for hand to hand combat due to the lack of skills and physical prowess, academics can study magic which is a great equalizer in any combat. Academics provide the bulk of the spellcasters in the Old World.

Rogue careers involve trickery, deception, and the acquisition of profit through possibly illegal means. Thus, the skills and abilities that they acquire are all aligned towards these areas. While frowned upon by the Imperial authorities, rogues provide stealth and cunning to any adventuring group.

Once a career class has been chosen, there are no restrictions with regard to the type of profession an individual may take up, given enough experience and a suitable tutor. However, it usually costs less experience to follow a career in the same career class as the original career. Nothing prohibits a Wizard's Apprentice from taking up arms and armour as a Mercenary, although it would cost him a lot of experience to train. Cross-training is recommended for long campaigns with plenty of time for characters to hone their skills. There are few sweeter surprises than footpads attempting to waylay an academic only to find out that the "victim" had previously served many years as a hardened mercenary.

Similarly, most skills can be learnt by all career classes if a suitable tutor can be found. For the adventurer, useful skills include Dodge Blow, Disarm, Silent Move - Rural and Urban, Swimming, all weapon skills, all language skills, Ride - Horse, and all lore skills. Many skills can be learnt with enough practice and experience. For certain skills, the attention of a knowledgable tutor is required as well. For this service, tutors often expect some form of service or payment in return. Skill in magic as arguably the most difficult to acquire if one is not already apprenticed to a wizard. While the Royal Colleges of Magic in Altdorf offers such training, its graduates are required to serve the Empire for a number of years in return.

Dunno if that explains it any better, warhammer online is trying to be different from other mmorpg's.  They have a lot of very good idea's.  There is no beta as yet so I don't know if it will be shit or not to answer schild's question.

It's meant to be a skill based system, with no camping of spawns and pvp built in as part of the system.  It's also meant  to have a unique magic system as seen below.

An in-depth look at magic in the Warhammer World
Amidst the host of questions, comments and queries we receive regarding how Warhammer Online will play, how it will differ from other current online games, and why its going to be really cool ;-) there are one or two areas of gameplay that keep coming up. Combat is an obvious one, as are the travel and transport systems, but right at the top of the list is the Magic system.

It seems everyone wants to know how difficult and dangerous it will be to learn how to cast spells and so Clint asked me to write a new overview of the way in which we see the Magic system working. For those of you who are not that familiar with the Warhammer background, I've taken the liberty of cheerfully stealing from a document that Rick Priestley wrote for the dev team to help them understand the nature and role of magic in Warhammer, so over to Professor Rick…

"According to our 'cosmic background' there is a single source of all magical or psychic energy - this is a coexistent dimension formed of pure energy. This is variously named and conceived by different races in the Warhammer world - but for convenience we call it the Realm of Chaos (the Warp in 40K). There is no other source of magic or psychic energy- even Orc magic is from this source though strained through the remarkable Orc consciousness without them realising it!

Thanks to the presence of various dimensional breaches in the Warhammer World - raw magical essence flows into the world. This blows about much like air or weather systems, stronger in some places than others and liable to periods of high and low intensity. Amongst the High Elves and their Human protégées this flow is known as the Winds of Magic.

As the Winds of Magic blow over the material world they are refracted into eight parts, much as light is refracted by a prism. Elven Lore assigns a name and colour to each of these parts. That is why the cross of Chaos has eight points.

All living creatures have some minor ability to draw upon the Winds of Magic, often unconsciously and unwittingly. This gives rise to poltergeists, déjà vu, spontaneous mind reading, prognostication, amazing instances of luck, and all that sort of stuff. When people do this, whether knowingly or not, they draw upon whatever magical energy of whatever parts happens to be about.

A trained practitioner of magic balances the different parts as he channels them - thus diverting all of the magical energy into his spell. This is High Magic as practised by the High Elves - the most potent form of magic. As all the parts are consumed in balance with the spell so there is no 'fall-out' - you get a lean burn and clean magical exhaust!

An untrained, unknowing or uncaring practitioner channels all the surrounding power into his magic - regardless of the proportionate balance of the different parts in the surrounding atmosphere. This is called Dark Magic. This is very potent because it burns the most magical energy the fastest - but it also releases a lot of magical or psychic energy into the material world. This undirected energy manifests itself as side effects, minor summonations, physical mutations, and - of course - a propensity towards madness, addiction and incoherent cackling in the practitioner!

 Prior to the creation of the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf, magic was entirely illegal in the Empire - it was witchcraft! The Colleges in Altdorf were created during the Great War against Chaos because the Elves perceived the need for human battle wizards. The Elves rightly feared that humans were incapable of using High Magic - and so they trained human wizards to focus their minds upon only a single part of the eight parts of magic. Thus - an Amethyst Wizard studies necromancy - a Grey wizard studies illusion - a Jade Wizard studies earth and water elementalism - a Gold Wizard studies alchemy - but only within the safe confines of the teachings of the colleges. So long as a human wizard follows the teaching of a College he can use magic safely - otherwise - he has become a Dark Wizard. By using only sanctioned collegiate magic a wizard can channel magical energy safely - without activating unused magical power and causing dangerous side effects… or hardly any!"

The real boogie men in this are Dark Wizards - the generic title for all magic users who draw upon the raw Winds of Chaos - which is a bit like tinkering with a nuclear reactor! Dark Wizards are often natural talents, or Wizards gone bad and they can be Necromancers, Daemonologists, or just plain Sorcerers.

Magic performed by clerics or the faithful is simply magic channelled with the mental discipline afforded by religious belief. As with any form of magic, mages, liturgy, and ceremony all help to provide a focus. The centuries of tradition act as a kind of channelling discipline much like the Colleges of Magic and are more or less 'clean' depending on the religious tradition in question. So - the evolved ritual of the Sigmarite church is safe but relatively weak - the heinous sacrifices of the Chaos Cultists are anything but safe but boy do they get results!

As well as the Winds of Magic there is warpstone - literally bits of raw Chaos stuff that got showered over the whole planet when the warp-gates went up ten thousand years ago. This is like nuclear fall out - and there are some big chunks of it around. Even a tiny amount is enough to cause spontaneous magical disruption - mutation, walking dead, ghosts, poltergeists, plagues of frogs, blood raining from sky, milk curdling, cows talking, and so on and so forth. Warp stone can be used to fuel magic - but this is the raw stuff of Chaos - don't expect anything good to come of it. During their occupation of the Old World the High Elves destroyed a lot of this stuff - and what they couldn't destroy they sealed and planted obelisks to warn others. The Skaven spend much of their time hunting for it… they really don't care!

When we created Mordheim we called Warpstone Weirdstone - it is the same thing.

I know this is all hippy nonsense - but it is coherent and consistent and comprises the major theme of the Warhammer World - namely that it is a world polluted by magic as our world might have been polluted by radiation in an apocalyptic war. The results of that pollution are mutants and madmen and traitors and misguided crazies - and they're all playing with nuclear weapons!"


So there you have it…

Now the question that the dev team have been wrestling with is how do we take this background and realise it as part of a game design.

First of all, as you know, Warhammer Online is being developed as a skill-based system. This means that if your character wants to learn to cast magic they will be able to do so by travelling to the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf and - subject to racial and other tests - become an impoverished, beer-drinking student and commence their studies.

The second design element is that rather than magicians walking around with a personal 'manna battery' they will cast their spells by drawing directly from the Winds of Magic. For all areas of the map, we'll keep track of several different values in order to simulate the flow of these winds. We'll record both the maximum amount of magic an area can contain, and the rate by which it refills. By manipulating those values we're able to create areas where there is a lot of magic but the field refills slowly or zones where the maximum amount of magic is quite small but where it quickly refreshes - and everything in between. In addition there are several other elements, which affect the magical flux such as temples, shrines and standing stones, and of course the Chaos moons which cause the magical field strength to vary with each lunar cycle.

Which brings me to casting… Each spell in Warhammer Online will take a specific amount of magical energy to cast. For example a 'fireball' spell might take 100 units of magical energy and that amount remains constant not matter who is trying to summon the spell. What does change is the speed at which players are able to tap into Winds of Magic from that flows the game-play.

For example, a novice magician might only be able to channel five points of magical power per second, whereas a highly experienced caster might be able to channel at fifty points per second. This means that the magic user will take 20 seconds to cast that 'fireball' whilst the experienced mage will only take 2 seconds to deliver the very same spell. Either way 100 points will have been removed from the local field and that magic will only be replenished over time.

However, the problem for all casters is that channelling the raw magical energy of Chaos through your body is not a very smart thing to do and whilst you are channelling magic you'll actually take physical damage! This means there's nothing to stop a player with the appropriate skills from learning any spell they come across, but novice spell casters who attempt to cast very powerful spells probably won't survive the experience! Going back to our example…our newbie wizard can channel magic at roughly five points per second and is able to cheerfully survive the twenty seconds of discomfort it takes him to loose a 'fireball'. He then picks up a 'lava storm' spell and decides to have a go! This is a 1000 point spell that will take him approximately 200 seconds to channel. After twenty seconds his fingertips start to smoke… at thirty he feels pain…at forty his endurance hits zero…and at fifty, before he can complete the spell he passes out and falls to the floor! You can see where this is going… even an experienced mage is going to need to be very careful casting some of the more powerful spells and nothing is a sure thing!

Even so, we wanted to ensure that there were ways in which players could cast these more powerful spells and make the experience slightly less terminal! To this end, we've created ritual magic, where wizards can team up in order to channel the winds of magic together. In a ritual, one player casts the spell while other magicians in the party help channel the winds to provide the power. More power means faster casting, which means less damage and that's a good thing!

There might also be some malicious game-play elements here where you cast a spell by channelling through someone or something else - you get to do magic and they take the heat - the sort of thing that Chaos Cultist and Sorcerers would do.

There is one other thing I need to add to this round up on magic. No matter how good you are at focusing the magical energies, and drawing on the winds of Magic, that process is never perfect. When any spell caster attempts to cast a spell they actually draw in slightly more magic then they needed to cast that spell. This extra magical energy - the dirty exhaust so to speak - doesn't just disappear we track it as 'wild' or 'chaos' magic and once it builds up to certain pre-set levels interesting and unusual events will occur. I'll leave you to decide what 'interesting' means in the Warhammer World…

Finally…I have to mention Warpstone. As Rick has said, this stuff is actually pieces of condensed Chaos that emanate power a bit like radioactivity. This makes Warpstone charms particularly valuable to certain types of Sorcerer. So if you're feeling reckless and don't mind walking about with a piece of Uranium round your neck, you can tap into this energy without relying on the local magical field strength - never mind the second head…I hear they do good cosmetic surgery in Nuln!

[Sky]

Thug life, yo. Represent.

[Arthur_Parker]

I was not terribly impressed with the E3 trailer as it mixed a lot of cinematic in with some panoramics of the game world. I hope they are further along than it appears because the graphics are going to be dated like SB and that's getting off to a bad start. Even though graphics aren't everything, you have to have damn fine gameplay in order to justify dated graphics and well, see SB for reference on what happens when your graphics are lousy and then you have oodles of technical issues.

I have high expectations for Warhammer Online, but it's not looking very good at the moment. Thanks for the post also as it appears I cannot load that page.

The page isn't loading for me anymore.  I felt the same way about the E3 trailer, though to be fair don't think they had the engine in a playable state and shadows were not implemented.

Also read some interesting comments (well of interest to me anyway) about the preparation these companies do for E3 that seem have a negative impact on the game itself.  

From MEO

Christopher Taylor
Producer, Middle-Earth Online

Last year's E3 version was a special demo version. Several months work went into creating it and we ended up not being able to use most of it in the actual game. To be quite honest, the amount of work we spent last year on a demo was one of the contributing reasons on deciding to pass on this year's E3.

Also found the website of someone who worked at Climax in Nottingham where they are designing Warhammer online, he's bound by a NDA but this is a quote from his diary.

16/04/2003

Back to work, and things are heating up for E3. We've been given the option of working through the easter bank holidays and having the time off somewhere else insead, but I think I need the rest - and at the moment there's a tricky problem to do with a database schema that I could do with thinking on anyway.

The same guy's CV lists the following for skills so maybe somebody could comment on how Warhammer online is being constructed.

Relevant Skills
Programming Languages C, C++, Java, perl, Tcl, Bash
Technologies XML (DOM + SAX), KDE/QT, Swing, libSDL, DirectX, Flex & Bison, WIN32 API
Website Development HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP, JSP
Database SQL, Postgresql
Operating Systems Windows 9x/2k/XP, Linux( Redhat, Mandrake ), Solaris
Development MS Visual C++ 6/.NET, cvs, gcc, KDevelop
Office MS Word, Open Office, MS Powerpoint
Multimedia Adobe Premier, Cool Edit 2000/Pro, Gimp, Photoshop, Sound Forge, Blender

[Daeven]

Based on that CV, I'd guess C family server and client, xml as the data exchange and Tcl as a scripting language.

Of course, you really can't make any assumptions about implementation based on a CV. What that alphabet soup really says is 'Hey, I program. Yo!'. Other than the win32 based GUI stuff, it could be my resume.

*shrug*

Oh, and you all griping about the graphics, you do realize that in a robust system the client should be interchangeable with another client that uses better rendering technology locally, right?

[Soukyan]

Oh, and you all griping about the graphics, you do realize that in a robust system the client should be interchangeable with another client that uses better rendering technology locally, right?

Sure. And I'll believe it when I see it. :)

But as I said, not a huge deal if they do it right and if the gameplay is good. I just hope they can do a good job of translating the PnP game into an online one. It's a daunting task to be sure.

[Arthur_Parker]

On the subject of graphics, I agree the flat screenshots look a bit strange but some of the moving short sequences look ok to me.

Like this one

[daveNYC]

...robust system...

That's the problem.

I'd love to know why they're building their own graphics engine.  These developer types are all about reinventing the wheel.

[Murgos]

I'm sure it comes down to economics.  Buy an out-of-the box solution (i.e. netimmerse) for a coupla mil and spend time and money tweaking it to a reasonable compromise of what you want it to do, OR save a few bucks but spend more time in development by rolling your own.

I imagine you roll your own if your either a) Broke or b) Trying to do something very different.

Lets hope in this case it's b.

[HaemishM]

You forgot c) Developer has an ego that tells him whatever he could cook up on his own would be better than anything else commercially available.

[Soukyan]

I'm sure it comes down to economics.  Buy an out-of-the box solution (i.e. netimmerse) for a coupla mil and spend time and money tweaking it to a reasonable compromise of what you want it to do, OR save a few bucks but spend more time in development by rolling your own.

I imagine you roll your own if your either a) Broke or b) Trying to do something very different.

Lets hope in this case it's b.

Mythic didn't have a huge amount of investment capital, but they went with the NI engine and it worked out damn well for them. From the looks of it, it doesn't appear that much is graphically different in terms of what other MMOGs have done before. And most of their screenshots appear to be renders anyhow, so actual engine graphics will be scaled down from that.

[Rasix]

I wouldn't say it's too worked well for them.  It still has problems dealing with the major selling point of it's game; massive battles from all indications still tend to become slideshows.   Engine seems to work just spiffy for small group encounters though.

/shrug

[Stormwaltz]

The second design element is that rather than magicians walking around with a personal 'manna battery' they will cast their spells by drawing directly from the Winds of Magic. For all areas of the map, we'll keep track of several different values in order to simulate the flow of these winds. We'll record both the maximum amount of magic an area can contain, and the rate by which it refills. By manipulating those values we're able to create areas where there is a lot of magic but the field refills slowly or zones where the maximum amount of magic is quite small but where it quickly refreshes - and everything in between. In addition there are several other elements, which affect the magical flux such as temples, shrines and standing stones, and of course the Chaos moons which cause the magical field strength to vary with each lunar cycle.

Is it just me, or did WHOL just reinvent AC1's failed "magic economy?"

While this is very interesting in theory, I can't help but expect the reaction will be similar to that of the spell economy. I.e., players will be unable to cast, and report the system as broken or bugged. If they do know otherwise, they'll just be pissed off. "WTF... my wizard can't do anything if we fight here, guys, we'll have to come back to the quest later." I can't see how subjecting a character class to unpredictable but routine nerfs is a good idea.

And that sets aside the issue that this sounds like a system players will be generally unable to predict the results of (field + holy grounds + moon cycles = "???").

I like the principle of character advancement being measured in casting time rather than spell power, but I don't think it's a good idea to allow players to kill themselves if they try something too large for them. Unless you're familiar with the safe tolerances for your level, you could blow yourself up? That's quite a learning curve.

This is a game that's not going to gain an audience beyond the top 5% hardcore RPG players. I think that's fine... so long as they understand that and haven't written their business plan expecting to break 100K subscriptions.

[daveNYC]

From what I've read they're aiming the game at people who are already into the whole Warhammer thing.  That group, plus the normal number of 'new shiney' people could give them good box sales.

Assuming that the game isn't turned into some Shadowbanesque pile of spaghetti code after two plus years of development (including a custom engine).

I want this game to succeed, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of progress.

[kaid]

The magic stuff may or may not work well in a MMRPG but it is consistant with the background. Magic is a channeled chaos in the Warhammer universe and it is only marginally under any mortals control. As long as the magic is really potent when it works and not be totally useless in melee combat if it dosn't people who want this game would not mind.


Kaid

[eldaec]

However, the problem for all casters is that channelling the raw magical energy of Chaos through your body is not a very smart thing to do and whilst you are channelling magic you'll actually take physical damage! This means there's nothing to stop a player with the appropriate skills from learning any spell they come across, but novice spell casters who attempt to cast very powerful spells probably won't survive the experience! Going back to our example…our newbie wizard can channel magic at roughly five points per second and is able to cheerfully survive the twenty seconds of discomfort it takes him to loose a 'fireball'. He then picks up a 'lava storm' spell and decides to have a go! This is a 1000 point spell that will take him approximately 200 seconds to channel. After twenty seconds his fingertips start to smoke… at thirty he feels pain…at forty his endurance hits zero…and at fifty, before he can complete the spell he passes out and falls to the floor! You can see where this is going… even an experienced mage is going to need to be very careful casting some of the more powerful spells and nothing is a sure thing!

Oh ffs. Didn't we already establish that special moves that hurt you are a bad idea.

ref: HAM.

Not learning from the mistakes of others is one thing. However, this seems to have regressed to actively copying the worst game mechanic in the history of the genre.

Marvellous.

[Arthur_Parker]

Is it just me, or did WHOL just reinvent AC1's failed "magic economy?"

While this is very interesting in theory, I can't help but expect the reaction will be similar to that of the spell economy. I.e., players will be unable to cast, and report the system as broken or bugged. If they do know otherwise, they'll just be pissed off. "WTF... my wizard can't do anything if we fight here, guys, we'll have to come back to the quest later." I can't see how subjecting a character class to unpredictable but routine nerfs is a good idea.

And that sets aside the issue that this sounds like a system players will be generally unable to predict the results of (field + holy grounds + moon cycles = "???").

I like the principle of character advancement being measured in casting time rather than spell power, but I don't think it's a good idea to allow players to kill themselves if they try something too large for them. Unless you're familiar with the safe tolerances for your level, you could blow yourself up? That's quite a learning curve.

This is a game that's not going to gain an audience beyond the top 5% hardcore RPG players. I think that's fine... so long as they understand that and haven't written their business plan expecting to break 100K subscriptions.

I loved the original AC1 magic system including tapers etc.  You obviously would know a lot more about it than me, however opening myself up to being corrected here....  But I imagine part of the design decisions for making popular spells less powerful and even learning new spells requiring a lot of trail and error in AC1 was to limit the amount of people playing mages.

Mages should be rare and powerful at high levels, that would also fit the warhammer world.  Quoting again from the indepth look at magic.

Prior to the creation of the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf, magic was entirely illegal in the Empire - it was witchcraft!

The skill based system allows them to make mages a difficult and possibly unpopular class to play (Dude making a greater demon appear when we are trying to kill gobo's is most uncool!).  While at the same time allowing the apprentice mage to decide maybe magic isn't for him and with very little penalties decide to switch to being a town guard instead.

It might work if they use a lot of the warhammer dark humour, but as DaveNYC says it all depends on if they can code it properly.

Here's some clarification on the original careers page (it's live again now).

Originally posted by Shadowstrike

Originally posted by Rellen Marn

Hmmm very interesting, I am glad to here there will be more starting careers to come though.

Actually that's about it for the starting careers in the current build and I highly doubt it will change much. Don?t despair though, your initial career is not actually very long, merely a taster of the depths to come, and you will soon find yourself moving on to another.

WO's careers are basically weighted in this kind of way (but imagine the middle bit is about 10 times as wide!).

TOP CAREERS
  / /  /    \    /
 \  /
  \/
BASIC

This means the bulk of your character advancement is in the many intermediate careers. It really helps if you don't focus on C1, C2, C3, those are really just design terms that we've used previously to simplify explaining things - think of it more as many ranks throughout natural 'groups' of careers.

These 8 careers are the start of 8 such groups, and if you want you can work your way up through one of them (eg certain Petty Crook skills reach a sufficient level so he or she moves up to being a Thief.) and continue up to the very top (I won?t spoil the supprise by giving you an example of the top thievery profession!).

On the other hand you can move to a completely different one of the careers shown here after a few hours, if that?s what you fancy, and have a go at working through that group.

The clever bit is that once you have built up several aspects of your character (eg your thievery and stealth skills as a Crook and your tracking as a Scout) you will be of a sufficient level to enter certain other groups in a higher initial rank than the starting one.

This is also how you go about entering other groups of careers (the more meaty stuff like Pit Fighters, Witch Hunters and so on) not initially available to your unskilled character. More recruiters for more interesting groups become available to you the more you build your skills.

In some it will require specialisation to one distinct skill set, in others really diversifying across the board. By the time you reach (or should that be if?) really top draw characters you will have had to have taken a mad criss-cross spiders web path through your progression.

It?s a very deep system and deserves a much closer look, which is why we have further careers to show you and an article or two offering in depth examination of our careers coming in a bit TM[/size=1].

EDIT - that failed asci mess is meant to be a diamond. I've given up after my fourth attemt! [:I]

[HaemishM]

The one thing to remember about the Warhammer world (at least from the miniatures game), mages weren't pussies in combat. A mage character on the Warhammer battlefield is one that can generally hold his/her own in melee combat. They just happened to have some extra oomph with the magic bit. AC1 may not be an applicable comparison, because WH mages may not be tossing spells as their primary forms of attack.

But not having played the Warhammer RPG, I can't say that for sure.

[Arthur_Parker]

Also if anyone is really interested there is a thread here on the offical forums created by Robin Dews that explains some of their intentions regarding the game, first post quoted below.  

They took a lot of flack in this thread and ended up locking it, those pushing for the game to be released early or more information were basically told to go elsewhere.

I?ve been reading through the forums over the last couple of weeks, and have seen a number of posts about what the team were showing at E3, how the game is generally shaping up, and the quality of the footage that appeared on GameSpot.

Let?s start with E3. What we set out to do this year was show the current development of the game to as many journalists as possible. To this end, we booked a meeting space at the show as far as we could get from the sonic tumultuous monkey assault of the main arenas, where we could sit down with people in relative calm and quiet, talk through where we are with the game, show them the latest version of the client/server software, and answer their questions. Given that the game is still in development and we didn?t have the final art for the user interface, we didn?t want to place an unfinished game on the main floors. Journalists appreciated the honesty of this approach and over the three days we saw over 100 of them from the US, UK and Europe. The proof of this approach will be an increase in coverage in various print and online media over the coming weeks and months.

Lots of you that have been following the development of the game are feeling frustrated about a lack of hard information about the game, and in particular that we don?t have a hard date for the beta yet. This is a frustration that we all share, but I promised long ago that:

??our goal for Warhammer Online is to create an MMORPG that is ambitious, gorgeous and enormous and that fully lives up to its illustrious heritage. The development team and everyone else involved in the project are committed to delivering this fantastic realisation of the Warhammer world and so if it takes us a little longer to get that vision out into the hands of our fans then so be it.?

I am absolutely determined not to make promises that I cannot keep. As soon as we have hard information (dates, machine specifications, selection criteria, etc), you?ll get it here first.

Many years ago when I was editing White Dwarf magazine, I realised with some humility that everything that you put in print represents a contract. That contract is between the fans and enthusiasts who play Warhammer and make it the game it is, and the fans and enthusiasts fortunate enough to earn their living by working for Games Workshop. I simply will not betray the trust in that contract. Massively multiplayer online games are complex, difficult slow moving projects that require the most intricate blend of creative, technical and operational skills to deliver. I make no bones about this - it?s just the way it is. We set ourselves the task of realising the Warhammer world as an MMORPG and everyone on the project is utterly committed to achieving that goal.

After ?When is the game coming out?? the next most asked question is ?When will the beta start?? The only honest answer I can give is ?I can?t give to you an answer right now.? We are still currently in alpha, which means that the code is still subject to occasional category ?A? bugs, the GUI is not finished and we have to complete the stress testing of the server code (amongst a thousand other tasks?). We then have to move the servers out of our offices and into a secure co-location facility with enough bandwidth to deliver the game and run all of our security checks. Only then can we start to allow external log-ins.
I know that this is frustrating, but there is no hurrying this process. Each phase of the development has stage gates attached to it that need to be ticked off before we can move to the next phase. My giving a date for the start of the beta would simply be irresponsible. Only when all of the alpha stage gates are closed can we move into beta and that won?t happen for some time yet.

The GameSpot footage was captured on day two of the show during an interview with a couple of their journalists. They asked whether they could do a capture while Blair (one of our US staff), was walking a character around the game world and I chatted about the various features of the game. The thing is?most of the footage you see from a game still in development is carefully selected by their marketing people to show the product in the best possible light. That?s not what?s being shown in this footage. There was no sound, there were no special effects and it pretty much was the equivalent of a screen grab from an average gamer playing DAoC or EQ at home on a Friday evening. Rather than inundate you with screenshots that don?t highlight the features and unique aspects of the game, we are actually pretty selective about the ones we release. As the game continues to move forwards, we?ll be happy to reveal more and more of the game through screenshots and in-game movie footage.

That?s pretty much it for now. As I said in one of the diaries, putting the game out there in front of some pretty tough journalists makes me feel very proud of what we creating. I also feel but no less proud of the thousands of fans and enthusiasts who post on these boards and regularly visit the site. You do it because it matters to you and you care? we are taking the time to do it right because we care and it matters to us too.

Best wishes

Robin

[daveNYC]

PR flak BS.  Nothing that hasn't been said about every other game that has ever (or never) been released.

I'll look forward to the Warhammer take on magic.  Who cares if casting spells can kill you, from what I remember of the RPG, some of those spells had crazy-ass power.  If they can come up with a magic-user class that isn't the genre standard 'glass cannon' I'll count the game as a borderline success.

[Jain Zar]

This game is doomed to failure.  Nothing about the Warhammer world is particularly original, and its in a market packed with generic fantasy worlds.  

Some of the generic fantasy worlds have thong clad dark elves running with their behinds in the air, others have a little Cthulhu in em.  This doesnt exactly make it stand out.  They should have done the original concept of running mass armies.

[Arthur_Parker]

I don't agree it's doomed to failure, going to be hard to code and might never be released but they have their own audience of hundreds of thousands of players who have never played a mmorpg game before.

As for being unoriginal as a fantasy setting, that's just daft.  Warhammer has stolen everything original from everything from other sf/fantasy world.  Vampires, werewolves, Arabian cultures, Norse, Space lizzards (yes even in the fantasy world).  A secret rat sub culture that manipulates everything from behind the scenes for the glory of the horned one.  Added in your standard mix of Elves, Goblins (with goblin fantics), Orcs, Undead, French Knights etc.

Plus added their own ideas such as Chaos which is pretty unique by itself and infects the very bones of the empire meaning the corruption runs deep and everyone is doomed (tm).  The 4 chaos gods themselves Nurgle (death decay), Slaanesh (The god of Sexual depavity), Tzeentch (randomness and Magic) and Khorne (the Blood God) provide plenty of scope for original material.

If warhammer is not unique then someone should tell blizzard who have ripped off countless ideas over the years like the empire steam engines, dwarf gyrocopters etc from GW.

[daveNYC]

If warhammer is not unique then someone should tell blizzard who have ripped off countless ideas over the years like the empire steam engines, dwarf gyrocopters etc from GW.

I don't think anyone has any delusions about Blizzard's originality.

[HaemishM]

Blizzard ripped off Warhammer to make Warcraft and make no bones about it. They are GW fanbois.

No, the setting is not original, but then, neither was EQ and for that matter UO didn't exactly start from scratch now did it? The setting will sell the game to some of those outside of the MMOG genre, just like SWG did. Granted, the Warhammer license isn't quite the draw that the Star Wars license is(was), but it's got as big a fanbase as Warcraft would, IMO. It has more of a chance to succeed based on the franchise than say Dark and Light which has nothing going for it in the brand recognition arena.

And if it blows monkeys, I'm sure it'll still have its adherents.

[schild]

I don't think it can be applied to Warhammer quite as easily as SWG. The tabletop people who may buy it for the first month will soon disappear when they realize it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the tabletop game. I think Dawn of War may be the first and only Warhammer game to break the curse of crappy adaptations.

A lot of people talk about the potential SWG had, and I tend to disagree - Star Wars has been downhill since Episode V and the world has gotten more and more diluted since the late 70s. It's all just utter crap now. I don't blame SOE as much as I blame Lucas.

There are only two worlds I think that could REALLY translate to an MMO: Pokémon and Fallout. Other than those 2, I'm getting really tired of seeing adaptations. That may be in part why I'm more inclined to jump on board Tabula Rasa than many of the other games. From the combat video, it looks as though they've got some geniuinely innovative shit going on. Of course, that doesn't mean it won't horribly suck. But at least they can say they were original. I for one, am willing to play a harp carrying nancy-boy if it means breaking out of the mold MMO's inflict on me.

[Sky]

There are only two worlds I think that could REALLY translate to an MMO: Pokémon and Fallout.

I'm telling you all: Grandma's Kaffee Klatch is the most profitable setting for a mmog. Granted, few here would play it, but hundreds of thousands of old ladies would love playing bridge with their friends in florida.

[schild]

Kaffee Klatch

Coffee Klotsch. Yes, today is going that slow.

[daveNYC]

...Pokémon...

If they make this, I'm blaming you.

[Rasix]

...Pokémon...

If they make this, I'm blaming you.

It'd be hella fun.  

I know the concept is strange, the anime influence is disturbing, and the fanboi, fad aspect are cringeworthy, but the Gameboy games are actually pretty well done and plenty fun.

[schild]

Quick Question: Wouldn't you rather have a game where you wanna catch them all or farm krayt tissue?

See, Pokémon would be fun.

[geldonyetich]

I'd play Pokemon Online.

(It'd be fun to watch Pikachu suffer from treadmill burnout.)

On another note, I'm just not seeing the innovation in the Tabula Rosa video.   Interesting setting, but the gameplay remains somewhat standardized.

Really though, that's the story for all MMORPGs: It's not the setting, it's the gameplay.

[daveNYC]

Quick Question: Wouldn't you rather have a game where you wanna catch them all or farm krayt tissue?

See, Pokémon would be fun.

That's like asking if I'd rather have my right or left testicle cut off and served to me raw.

And now I have that fucking song stuck in my head.  Thank you.

[schild]

Heh, if you know the song, you know more about Pokemon than me. I have no clue what you're talking about. But seriously, it'd be the equivilent of a treasure hunting game, everyone would control cute to evil looking animals, you could pick light and dark sides, have group battles, make your own guilds where you could interbreed your pokemon. I think it could all be really really neat. Except that last part, that may be sick.

Of course Nintendo owns the rights to all things Pokemon and the day they make an MMO and have the foresight to bring out a keyboard and mouse (logical innovations to consoles) instead of shit like a dual screen gameboy and game connectivity between a console and a $60-$100 controller, is the same day I can properly digest curdled milk and shit flavored oatmeal.