War - Press Event Week

[tazelbain]

Hoax: One of the previews said they are going to debuff high players going into the starting areas.  And Battlefields are the things you fight over in overland RvR.  Sounds like a more varied version of keeps to me.

Buffers and Support classes.
The problem is the tank/healer/mage trinty.  If don't design your game based on it, than it doesn't matter who does what.  Buffers can be great.  I play one as my main in GW. Buffs need to be a) powerful but narrow b) limited(time or distance) c) removable d) expensive(can't mindlessly spam). Something like "For the next 10 seconds, all elemental damage to taget is reduced 40 points.  Each time this happens, you gain 1 mana."  To be usefull you have to be paying attention and be invloved with the fight.

[eldaec]

But I am worried about how this fits together with the fact that some people like to play pure support (people who don't like playing a cleric *really* need to accept this and get over it). I see the attraction of the whole smite cleric thing - but it does tend to lead to tears before bedtime if developers work out that support classes of any sort can compete with non-support classes.

That thought had occured to me. My big fear is that Mythic will bow to some kind of pressure and make some classes pure support to fit that playstyle. I hope it doesn't happen though as nothing annoyed me more in WoW than becoming a heal/buffbot in high end raids. (something I should have seen coming honestly but managed to delude myself about.)

How much would you like to wager that the WAR healer classes will be doing anything other than 100% support in high end group pvp? They'll just have to work out how to get through a token amount of offensive activity to build their power.

This isn't about caving to pressure, it's about recognising that if a player has a relative advantage in one sphere (eg healing) over other players, then the most effective strategy will always be to have that player concentrate wherever they have the relative advantage. WAR hybrid healers will always be the best support characters in a group. That will always be their relative advantage - so almost whenever your group is stretched to it's limit, support classes will be supporting.

Adam Smith baby.

So in the current design, if you play a shaman, and if you play at a competitive rvr level or in whatever passes for endgame pve, almost the only reason you will ever cast a DD spell is to gain support power.

If this were made clear at the point of class selection, at least you'd be able to switch to a Wizard up front.



This doesn't mean support can't be made fun (see CoH defenders), most support-mindset players are just as happy using buffs and debuffs as they are healing.

Seriously go read the class press releases given to tentonhammer (and probably others) for the orcs and dwarves.  Sounds pretty fucking awesome when you figure out what they are trying to do.

There's a 15 page thread somewhere on this forum that covers Orc and Dwarf classes already.

They are...

Dwarf Tank
Dwarf melee dps
Dwarf nuker
Dwarf buff/debuff

Orc Tank
Orc melee dps
Goblin nuker/dps-pets
Goblin nuker/healer

Now, I don't have any particular problem with these classes, but I'm not sure what is so awesome?

Open areas:  What we know so far is every "zone" has some pvp component in it.  How does this work with the whole, no high level ganking allowed at all?  I mean I'm trying to imagine a zone structure where you could have a low level zone that both sides lowbies could access but it wouldn't hinder the movement of vet players.  Anyone figured that one out yet?  I would love to see the white board that shows how they are planning to lay the world out.

A better description would be that at each level range there are 3 zones per level tier per battlefront. One pve zone for each race and one rvr zone in between the pve zones (though you can also pve in the rvr zone if you really must - just like daoc). There has been a lot of confusion about this because Mythic insist on refering to each group of three as a single zone. From the perspective of a player used to MMOGs, it'll look like 3 zones.

Someone posted a better diagram in a previous thread - but it works something like this...

Dwarf PvE L1-10 zone   //         Dwarf/Orc RvR L1-10      //         Orc PvE L1-10 zone

// represents an barrier only passable by the appropriate realm.
The PvE zones also allow access up to the higher/lower tier zones.


This is repeated up to the top level tier (lvl 30-40), where it's more like this....

D  //  DC  // DvO // DvO // DvO // OC // O

D : Dwarf PvE
DC : Dwarf City
DvO : Dwarf v Orc Campaign zone
OC : Orc City
O : Orc PvE

Realms push the battle front back and forth through the DvO zones and can sack the cities - but once that is done NPC uber guards zerg you back to the centre zone.

[Arthur_Parker]

The newsletter is out today, not received mine as yet, so I can't link to the whole thing, here's some of the content.  The last Chaos class is revealed as the Marauder, Melee damage dealer.

concept art1

concept art2

Marauder explained video

Video of RVR

[Arthur_Parker]

Yanking out enchanters and shaman (I'm useing EQ1 terms here) and giving their spells to other classes is not revolutionary.  It's like you guys never played a MMORPG before.  FAQ's and previews are intentionally vauge and deceiving to make the game appear to be something besides the same old shit re-hashed.

I said it before and I'll say it again, everyone is going to "clone" the good parts from WoW, personally I don't have a problem with it, as WoW is a massive step forward in terms of being an enjoyable game to play (pre cap anyway). 

However if you do get the chance to view a couple of the videos, some of the comments are not vague at all and they just do not fit with the game being just a clone of WoW. Take the video interview on this page as an example

When you are designing games, particularly when you are designing mmo's you have to pick what your flavour and what your theme is.

Ours is a game that's all about WAR, it's about fighting, it's about survival, it's about picking up a weapon and counting for something. 

Therefore when you look at the standard ways of putting a design together, certain ideas have to be challenged, if you don't use that as the central reason for your mmo then you can have characters, I suppose you would consider them support characters, characters at the back, characters who have passive engagement with the game.

We don't have that, ours is all about aggressive engagement with the game. 

So we had to look at like things like healing classes and buffing classes and say to our self, well how can they play a relevant part in the gameworld.  We then looked at the warhammer world and their history and they really don't have any concept of passive play and so what we did is we combined our two necessities, so when we took healer classes we wanted to make them aggressive, capable of doing damage, capable of standing up for themselves but also capable of healing, we wanted to make sure every person can fight. 

And so the sort of attitude we took was, a ton of barbarians have turned up into your village and they are going to burn it to the ground and slaughter every one of you.  So, if you don't pick up a weapon and you don't fight, then you will die.  Once we decided that was the core of what we were doing, then all the design flows through that and it's represented in every class we have done and it's represented in every race we have done and it's represented in all the imagery, the scenarios, everything, you will be an active participant.

Now you could say that won't work or you won't like it but you certainly can't call it vague.

[Fargull]

How much would you like to wager that the WAR healer classes will be doing anything other than 100% support in high end group pvp? They'll just have to work out how to get through a token amount of offensive activity to build their power.

This isn't about caving to pressure, it's about recognising that if a player has a relative advantage in one sphere (eg healing) over other players, then the most effective strategy will always be to have that player concentrate wherever they have the relative advantage. WAR hybrid healers will always be the best support characters in a group. That will always be their relative advantage - so almost whenever your group is stretched to it's limit, support classes will be supporting.

Adam Smith baby.

What if you look outside the box?  What if say, they took the buff style from DAOC, and allowed the Healer class to apply seals to characters that they will provide their mana toward healing (using the concentration model).  The healer can chose which active spell to place upon the character in question.  The spell will fire when the character in question takes x % of damage and then reset itself at whatever mana cost it takes to fire that spell.  The spell will not clense poison or disease, but just heal damage (and will thus drain the mana from the healer class).  Make healing non direction and must be precast.  Will free up that character to swing that hammer, or cast that direct damage, but they had better keep track of where their mana is and whom is actually in the fight.

Why does it have to limit iself to a directional antinuke?

[eldaec]

How much would you like to wager that the WAR healer classes will be doing anything other than 100% support in high end group pvp? They'll just have to work out how to get through a token amount of offensive activity to build their power.

This isn't about caving to pressure, it's about recognising that if a player has a relative advantage in one sphere (eg healing) over other players, then the most effective strategy will always be to have that player concentrate wherever they have the relative advantage. WAR hybrid healers will always be the best support characters in a group. That will always be their relative advantage - so almost whenever your group is stretched to it's limit, support classes will be supporting.

Adam Smith baby.

What if you look outside the box?  What if say, they took the buff style from DAOC, and allowed the Healer class to apply seals to characters that they will provide their mana toward healing (using the concentration model).  The healer can chose which active spell to place upon the character in question.  The spell will fire when the character in question takes x % of damage and then reset itself at whatever mana cost it takes to fire that spell.  The spell will not clense poison or disease, but just heal damage (and will thus drain the mana from the healer class).  Make healing non direction and must be precast.  Will free up that character to swing that hammer, or cast that direct damage, but they had better keep track of where their mana is and whom is actually in the fight.

Why does it have to limit iself to a directional antinuke?

It doesn't have to limit itself to a directional antinuke, and it doesn't limit itself to a directional antinuke in most recent games barring WoW and (presumably) Vanguard. There are lots of things support players can do that would feel active, the CoH short-term-buff/debuff model is the most obvious standout support success of recent years.

I could also see the sort of model you describe working ok if support abilities were spread across all classes, though I'm not sure it would be worth the reduction in class variety. And to be honest, most mmog dps classes are so goddamn boring to play that I'm not sure I'd want every class to be like that anyway. Why would you want to set up support classes so they play the same as wizards or tanks? One of the big reasons people play support is to get out of that tiresome assist and attack chain. As I mentioned above, some people really do want to play cleric, by all means make them more involved and active (though even a straightforward healer is a metric fucktonne more active to play than a sodding wizard), but don't stop them playing support.

My point was primarily about the model chosen for WAR though, where support classes are identified and it appears that they have their support abilities as 'Morale' abilities - which is mythic code for abilities that get stronger as you attack the enemy. It's hard to imagine that support abilities in general will be not be important in WAR, and so it is hard to imagine that the only classes that have those abilities will not be strongest when they are focussing on them.

The upside I do see from Mythic's approach is that support players will have the option to play about with different abilities when the group is not being stretched. Times when your group is easily in control of a battle can be rather dull when playing support, I can see the attraction of doing something different when you are not on the bleeding edge.

[Arthur_Parker]

I didn't know about these podcasts before but the latest two are well worth a watch.

Right click and save as, then unzip

Podcast 2 all about music.

Podcast 3 shows zone control, pve areas, pvp areas and how it all fits together, very well explained and illustrated.


or go here to watch online

[eldaec]

Tweety's grab bag highlights.

Q: What happens when the capital cities fall to the invading armies?

A: The city falls, and the winner is declared as the losers are humbled forever... on a webpage. Loot is taken, NPC merchants are slaughtered.......

Here's what will happen, according to our design. The game will wait a decent interval for the dancing in the streets to subside, and begin to spawn guards. The players whose city was just destroyed will find themselves a tiny bit stronger, as they come back into their ruined city still bristling with invaders and looters. The defending players will grow ever stronger, with more NPCs and automatic buffs and hit points, over an as-yet-undetermined period of time. Once the invaders are all driven out, the zones reset....

Notice I have given absolutely no hard numbers at all. I assure you, this was intentional.

Q: Will there be bonuses for racial grouping, e.g. Orcs fighting in a group of Orcs rather than mixed with Chaos & Dark Elfs?

A: ...no....

Q: I'm interested if the game will have a 64-bit client side executable, to take advantage of the next generation of CPU bit levels....

A: .....We have no firm plan for a 64bit version."....


Q: .....<crazy babblings of someone who paid too much attention to cgi trailers>.....

A: : "Every career will have the ability to fulfill their primary role at 100% effectiveness (and no more, there will be no super-anythings). You won't be able to make a tanker the best DPS fighter in the game. That does not mean that a shield tanker could not equip himself with a great weapon and load a bunch of tactics that would make him more effective as a fighter... this is a critical element if only for good solo play. But there will be no "best" or "worst" careers of any kind."

[slog]

Yanking out enchanters and shaman (I'm useing EQ1 terms here) and giving their spells to other classes is not revolutionary.  It's like you guys never played a MMORPG before.  FAQ's and previews are intentionally vauge and deceiving to make the game appear to be something besides the same old shit re-hashed.

I said it before and I'll say it again, everyone is going to "clone" the good parts from WoW, personally I don't have a problem with it, as WoW is a massive step forward in terms of being an enjoyable game to play (pre cap anyway). 

However if you do get the chance to view a couple of the videos, some of the comments are not vague at all and they just do not fit with the game being just a clone of WoW. Take the video interview on this page as an example

When you are designing games, particularly when you are designing mmo's you have to pick what your flavour and what your theme is.

Ours is a game that's all about WAR, it's about fighting, it's about survival, it's about picking up a weapon and counting for something. 

Therefore when you look at the standard ways of putting a design together, certain ideas have to be challenged, if you don't use that as the central reason for your mmo then you can have characters, I suppose you would consider them support characters, characters at the back, characters who have passive engagement with the game.

We don't have that, ours is all about aggressive engagement with the game. 

So we had to look at like things like healing classes and buffing classes and say to our self, well how can they play a relevant part in the gameworld.  We then looked at the warhammer world and their history and they really don't have any concept of passive play and so what we did is we combined our two necessities, so when we took healer classes we wanted to make them aggressive, capable of doing damage, capable of standing up for themselves but also capable of healing, we wanted to make sure every person can fight. 

And so the sort of attitude we took was, a ton of barbarians have turned up into your village and they are going to burn it to the ground and slaughter every one of you.  So, if you don't pick up a weapon and you don't fight, then you will die.  Once we decided that was the core of what we were doing, then all the design flows through that and it's represented in every class we have done and it's represented in every race we have done and it's represented in all the imagery, the scenarios, everything, you will be an active participant.

Now you could say that won't work or you won't like it but you certainly can't call it vague.

Don't get me wrong.  I hope this game rocks.  But at 6:30 into the same interview, the other guys talks about collision detection and how the tanks can protect the healers that are hiding in the back...

[Hoax]

How much would you like to wager that the WAR healer classes will be doing anything other than 100% support in high end group pvp? They'll just have to work out how to get through a token amount of offensive activity to build their power.

This isn't about caving to pressure, it's about recognising that if a player has a relative advantage in one sphere (eg healing) over other players, then the most effective strategy will always be to have that player concentrate wherever they have the relative advantage. WAR hybrid healers will always be the best support characters in a group. That will always be their relative advantage - so almost whenever your group is stretched to it's limit, support classes will be supporting.

Adam Smith baby.

So in the current design, if you play a shaman, and if you play at a competitive rvr level or in whatever passes for endgame pve, almost the only reason you will ever cast a DD spell is to gain support power.

If this were made clear at the point of class selection, at least you'd be able to switch to a Wizard up front.

QFT


The Runepriest gets away from it because they do all their casting pre-combat.  Lets face it in pvp unless this is wildly different from every other DIKU pvp game ever there is no way combat will last long enough for the Runepriest will to recast runes during the fight itself, unless they have insta cast runes of healing or something.  In which case nothing has changed, sky still blue, how dissapointing.  If that isn't the case I like it as a pretty elegant support+ design.  You are right though, if the system is standard DIKU healing spells + you get a +healing bonus for swinging your hammer.  Then you've called it above with how that will actually play in pvp.

[eldaec]

In the RvR videos, the runepriest has been shown casting runes throughout the battle, in practice it looks like he spends the battle casting short term buffs and debuffs, plus I'd guess he also ends up refreshing wards often.

[tazelbain]

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Guardian
I am not sure what you are saying Hoax, I cast buffs in combat all the time.  The above spell I cast repeatedly in combat, on which ever ally is in melee at the time.

[Evangolis]

Having read/watched that glut of PR, I'm left with conflicting messages.  They say no stealth or crowd control, but the Squig Herder has a bow shot that has a short term root.  Which will bear out in the actual game?  Details.

Podcast 3 shows zone control, pve areas, pvp areas and how it all fits together, very well explained and illustrated.

This was very interesting, looks like 'Battlegrounds' are more flexible than keeps, being more like sites in diferent zones which activate when the frontline reaches them.  However, from what I saw, it looks like the sides are more fixed, with Dwarves and Greenskins always facing each other, Empire always vs Chaos, and the Elves always facing off.  That seems problematic, and perhaps I misunderstand.

[tazelbain]

Ya, it's fixed. I don't see how else they could do it with their goals of teired RvR and intergated RvR/PvE barring re-mapping world when the match ups change.

My only reget is that you have to be an elf to have an elf as you arch-enemy. That's just not fair.

[LC]

The whole battlegrounds thing is a turnoff. They couldn't have picked anything worse to steal from WoW.

[pxib]

Though the lowest tiers are probably strictly (for example) Dwarves vs. Greenskins, I imagine that at higher tiers other players on the side of Order could join up with the dwarves to help defend their city or reclaim the one the Orcs have. So a dwarf could have a dark elf archenemy who just keeps showing up every time he goes to PvP, because that guy always seems to be there even when he's fighting with the humans.

[Margalis]

Battlegrounds, AKA "competitive structured PVP", are an awesome idea if done correctly. You can draw the line pretty much straight from Combat to Street Fighter to CounterStrike to battlegrounds.

Doing them correctly is not hard, if you think about it a little.

[eldaec]

Though the lowest tiers are probably strictly (for example) Dwarves vs. Greenskins, I imagine that at higher tiers other players on the side of Order could join up with the dwarves to help defend their city or reclaim the one the Orcs have. So a dwarf could have a dark elf archenemy who just keeps showing up every time he goes to PvP, because that guy always seems to be there even when he's fighting with the humans.

Everyone in your realm has access to zones belonging to every race in your realm. Dwarfs, Humans, and Elves fight alongside each other in all Dwarf, Human, Elf zones.

All of order has access to all the Dwarf zones, and can rvr in all DvO tiers. Same goes for the destruction realm.

When you consider that Guilds are realm wide - this was pretty much unavoidable. Obviously this is an unmitigated disaster from a lore point of view, but if you start from Mythic's assumption that 2 is the right number of realms, then this is the only route you can take.



The only reason you see Dwarfs v Green in videos, rather than mixed Order vs mixed Destruction is that Dwarfs and Orcs are the only two races that have been completed.

[Arthur_Parker]

GameTrailers has an interview up

GameTrailers gameplay footage

Don't get me wrong.  I hope this game rocks.  But at 6:30 into the same interview, the other guys talks about collision detection and how the tanks can protect the healers that are hiding in the back...

That's not the first time that the Mythic guys and Paul seem to be presenting the game differently, there's another example in the video above where Paul states that you won't play WAR to grow wheat or to make pants.  That's a bit close to Shadowbane marketing of old and I can't imagine Mythic expressing it like that, especially as it has already been said that WAR will have a crafting system . 

It's logical for some magic/ranged classes to live longer at range, collision detection should be a good thing as it should add a tactical element to positional play but it doesn't always follow that the classes hiding behind the front line are purely support.

I have concerns myself, as Penfold said earlier, if you just want to explore the warhammer world then all this RVR content might just get in your way.  If every zone is structured as part of an ongoing battle then it might feel very rigid and you might feel closed in, compared to an open world game like AC.  Also, if WAR is all based on RVR and we get to stress test and find out that their PVP is a boring grind, then they are totally shafted.

[Strazos]

Hmm. I just had to turn my Hype dial down by 50%.


That was Not a video of WoW, correct? 

[Arthur_Parker]

My newsletter arrived this morning so the last couple of previews appear to be.

Worthplaying preview (bland)

Gamers info which is a lot better, so I'm going to quote it, just because everyone likes massive blocks of text.

Warhammer, as a fantasy milieu, is to Americans much like a British candy bar. (Trust me; it's not my metaphor, but I'm going somewhere with this.) You see it, you think you know what it is, but until you taste it, you actually don't know what it is.

See? That makes perfect sense.

It made even more sense after I ate the Cadbury Crunchies bar that Paul Barnett, the creative director at EA Mythic (via Games Workshop, owner of the Warhammer IP, and publisher of such great games as Warhammer Fantasy Battles and the ever-popular Warhammer 40,000), gave me. I said "my, this has a much different texture and taste than I expected. Yet it is still quite very much good, and I would like to enjoy some more."

I guess British candies - errr, sweets - make me talk funny.

We had two presenters for the show. The previously-mentioned Paul Barnett (who, if you've been keeping up with WAR, you may recognize, such as from my con call article about WAR), who is the custard, and Jeff Hickman, senior producer, and, according to the slides, dry but factual.

In addition, Lance Robertson, a producer, played tour guide, showing us around the lands of WAR, and Destin Bales, content director, was there, too.

But back to custard. Custard is used, according to Paul, to make something barely edible into something more edible. That's the creative and imaginative side of Warhammer, with its British stylings of fantasy, humor, and horror. It's also what Paul considers the forces of Chaos - you take something normal, and add the "custard" (i.e. Chaos), and you've got something great.

I am getting a bit ahead of myself here. First, a status update.

WAR is deep into production. They have a team of 150 people working on it right now. The orks and dwarves have been deployed - if you remember from our E3 coverage, the orks were playable there. Today (actually, for the purposes of this article, "today" = "Thursday, January 25th, 2007") was the first day people got to play the Empire (aka Humans) and Chaos.

Humanity, in the world of Warhammer, is facing the end of days (at least, in the terms of the Middle Ages). They're constantly on the brink of extinction in a brutal world, forced to expand or die, to breed and fight. Humanity in Warhammer is all about the strengths and weaknesses of people, how they can do something, then completely over-do it, and how they are steeled against corruption.

Humanity is trapped - Chaos lurks in the hearts of men, orks threaten to wipe out entire countries, and other enemies lurk both inside and outside. Technology is improving - the Warhammer world is up to crude firearms - but it may not be enough to save the world.

As mentioned before, each race in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning will have four classes. These basically break down into "tanker, healer, melee DPS, and ranged DPS". Of course, each class can do more than just that - for example, the Dwarven rune priest that I played also had the ability to put a healthy smack down with both her staff and spells, as well as be the primary healer. But we'll get into dwarves in a bit, when I talk about PvP.

The four classes of humans (specifically, as mentioned before, the Empire, for you aficionados of the Warhammer mythos) break down as follows:
Knights of the Blazing Sun. These guys are the melee/tanker types, and show a combination of sun imagery with the skulls, knowing that they inevitably face death. Paul described them as "King Arthur meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail with more violence".
Witch Hunter. This is the melee DPS class. He's all about the hat - Paul thinks he has the greatest hat (I think) in the history of computer games. Coupled with a good coat, "kickass" boots, a flintlock and a rapier, he looks flat-out deadly. They definitely expect the Witch Hunter to be a popular class.
Warrior Priest. You may have seen this guy in the theatrical trailer for WAR. EA Mythic thinks just plain "healers" are dull. Thus, you have this guy - two hammers, and as he hits his enemies, he builds faith, which he can use to heal his compatriots. Bright Wizard. He's "buckets of instant sunshine". He explodes when he dies. He's not just a fire mage, he's a nuclear weapon. Even his skin is on fire. His outfit has torches built into it.
We got a chance to play a bright wizard for a while and explore the beginnings of the humans. You start off in a village that's under siege by Chaos. Immediately, you're put to the task - go and get the farmers rallied. As you talk to them, you realize some are Chaos marauders, and they attack you. Soon you've done that, and it's off to help heal the wounded. While running to do that, you realize that there's a public quest going on.

“What's a public quest?”, you may ask.

In WAR, occasionally something bigger than just you needs a-doin'. For instance, in this case, we need to kill marauders so that the militia can get its act together. Once we do that, we fight off another wave of the invasion, and then try to stop a huge Chaos giant from splattering us across the landscape.

"Who's this 'us', buddy?" you ask. "I like to solo."

I hear you brother! And I was solo, too - but it was still us. Everyone in the zone automatically has the same quest! The group objectives are up on the screen, and it keeps track as you do your part (or not - you don't have to help!). After the public quest finishes, you can go over to the "leader" of the area, and he'll reward you for helping out. A couple of minutes later, the public quest starts over again.

You can do the same one over and over to build your reputation with the leader, or you can follow them as you go up in levels and get new, cooler stuff - stuff that's tailored to you and your class.

(The big guys, such as the Chaos giant, will hold some "good loot" - that'll be randomly assigned dependent on how much contribution people made to the public quest. But that's just icing on the cake - the real rewards are the ones you get from the leader.)

After running around blowing stuff up as bright wizards, it was time to look at the Army of Destruction's racial enemy for humans – Chaos.

(Quick reminder time: Humans, dwarves, and elves make up the Armies of Order. Each race has a racial enemy that they start off in close, loving combat with. Respectively, according to enemy, these Armies of Destruction are Chaos, orks, and dark elves.)

Remember - Chaos is custard. It makes things better. It mutates them. It's daemon lords. It's a will to power - the fact that your will can influence the world. It's corruption, as the Chaos infects your form and mind.

There are four Chaos gods. Khorne is the blood god, the god of battle. You don't play as one of his guys, all they do is kill stuff and each other. Slaanesh is the pleasure god. You don't play as one of her people, 'cause there's too much nudity and crab claws and we don't want Chaos to have its own cyber-haven (think of Goldshire in most World of Warcraft servers, and make it Chaos. Yeah. Creepy.) Nurgle is the god of corruption, and he's fat and bloated and nasty and slow, so he doesn't work too well. Which means that you get to play as a priest of the bird god, Tzeentch - which means you get sorcerers on disks, casting lightning bolts.

Like all races, Chaos has four classes. Unfortunately, only three were revealed:
Chosen. He's the melee tanker. Big, huge armor. Big, huge weapons. Very scary. Probably has poor people skills, that is, poor skills that don't involve dismembering people.
Zealot. He's the magic healer - all about the scarecrows and totems. He's got a magic utility belt, making him the Chaos equivalent of Batman.
- HA! They didn't announce the melee DPS guy. Got an idea who it might be? Post it in the forums, remember, he has to follow Tzeentch.
Magus. The ranged magic DPS guy, he always, always, always flies on a disk. And casts lightning. And mutates and changes as he levels up. He has a big staff.
One thing to remember in WAR - if they have a staff, they cast spells. It's about silhouetting - in other words, it's about being able to see an outline of an enemy, and who know what kind of enemy he is. But don't think "staff = weenie" in melee - even casters get melee attacks. I was right in the middle of things a lot of the time. (Note: I never said I was a good caster.)

One other thing about Chaos is that it's all about an invasion. Chaos doesn't have cities (well, it does, sort of, in WAR - the Inevitable City, because it was inevitable that Chaos would need a city). Thus, you start off invading a human village, corrupting it, taking it over for your gods.

So those are the new races. After seeing them, and playing as both a bright wizard and a magus, it was time for the true test of WAR: realm versus realm combat!

It's not just Player Versus Player - it's your whole Realm, your race, your alliance, against the enemy! Remember the motto of WAR:

WAR is everywhere!

If you want, you can start in RvR from the very beginning!

Each racial pairing has five zones - one capital zone each, one allied zone each, and a neutral, contested zone in the middle. As you follow one of the four types of RvR, you gain points for your side. Those points let the front lines move back and forth, and if you're better than your racial enemy, you might even take his capital city, loot it, capture his king, put him in prison, and then move on to the next enemy race's capital.

It's about gloating. It's about winning. It's about saying "HA HA we're better than you!" It's the reason why the British have museums - to show off the stuff they won! (At least, according to Paul.)

The four types of RvR are:

Skirmish: This is "incidental" RvR - you walk into an area that you know has realm versus realm combat (you won't do it by accident), you fight with your enemies.
Battlefields: Now you've got a specific objective. If skirmish combat is like getting drunk in Nottingham and finding the fans of an opposing football team to fight with, battlefields are finding those fans' tour bus and taking it over. (Obviously, again, those are Paul's examples, so if you don't root for Nottingham or whoever, it's not my fault!)
Scenarios: These are instanced, point based, objective-led combat scenarios that use NPCs to flesh out the weaker player side.
All of these lead to the Campaign, which is the before-mentioned hope and dream of every little human, elf, or dwarf kid - and whatever the heck a young Chaos or ork is - which is to sack, pillage, and burn your enemy's cities.
There are 40+ scenarios you might participate in. From the standard "capture the flag", to Murder Ball, to Domination, to Death Match, they range in size from 6 on 6 to 36 on 36. We played two different ones: Mourkain Temple, where you strive for control of an ancient artifact and to kill your enemies, and the Gates of Ekrund, where you tried to control geographic parts of the wall. In both cases, it was orks versus dwarves.

Around Mourkain Temple, I played a dwarven rune priest - a healer type. One thing to remember - in RvR, there IS collision detection. So I'd try to buff my friends, heal them, and cast cleaving damage spells on my enemies. Then, they learned who I was, and when I'd walk around a corner, squigs ran at me, and all I could see where huge orks fighting for the chance to pummel me into the ground. I could blind them, I could fight them - but if my buddies were behind me, I was stuck! Then dead.

I was dead a lot.

Note: keep your rune priest in the back. Have your dwarves physically keep the orks away from them!

In the Gates of Ekrund, we played the orks. Here I was a Choppa - a big ole ork with two big ole axes. We fought and fought, sliced and diced, and had a heck of a lot of fun.

A note on death penalties: there isn't one, except time.

"Wha?!" I can hear some people (at least one of my guildies, I know) say.

You see, there's more to it than that.

Okay, say, you die. Don't worry, it happens to all of us, and some of us more than others. A box pops up. Click the box to respawn five seconds later, or wait and you'll automatically respawn in 45 seconds or so. Let's say you died in pitched battle, and now you're back at the starting point.

Okay. Now what? Well, you've got to run back to the battle! You better hope you've got friends around, and you don't run into the enemies - or you're dead.

One person can make a difference, but not that much of a difference!

So what's stopping you from suiciding?

Why would you?

You can't kill the enemy fast enough to get free kills from it. You'll just be pummeled down.

So? Maybe I'm wounded, and just want to get the "free" health upgrade.

Uh uh. You see, you regenerate health and action points so fast, you don't need to do that! You'll be healthy, on your own, without potions, in no time!

All you do if you suicide is inconvenience yourself and hurt your team. There are exceptions: for instance, in the Gates of Ekrund, you don't gain control of an area if enemies are around. So it makes sense, at times, to jump into a group of enemies to try to hold them off until your friends can show up.

But heck - I can't wait to launch myself out of a catapult. Yes, you can do that.

Well - that's about it for this write-up of WAR. We'll be patiently waiting to see what more news comes out of EA Mythic on this game as time goes on, but the more I see, the more excited I get about it.

[Evangolis]

But heck - I can't wait to launch myself out of a catapult. Yes, you can do that.

The fetapult lives!  Hurray!

[eldaec]

Collision detection between allies is a surprise to me. I'd always assumed collision detection would only work between enemies.

It introduces the possibility of collision detection griefing. It'll be interesting to see if Dwarf on Dwarf collision detection makes it through beta.

[eldaec]

Hmm. I just had to turn my Hype dial down by 50%.


That was Not a video of WoW, correct? 

The UI looks the same in every fanatasy dikumud - there will be hotbars, there will be a minimap, there will be floaty names, HP bars, XP bars, and Mana bars. The art direction was explictly based on the same IP that WoW is implictly based on. Where else is there to go? Given that both this and WoW are Dikumuds with content and lore based on the Warhammer fantasy vision, and neither is shooting for an M rating, why in the name of all that is holy would you expect the art direction and look & feel to be something other than similar?

[Riggswolfe]

From that video it was hard to get a real feel for the look of the game (it was zoomed to far back for my tastes.) Though the WoW comparisons are definitely there. Then again, Eldeac already covered that.

Combat looked fast to me, but only time will tell. I noticed the hot bar flashing alot which I assume was abilities resetting. I'm going to watch this one, so far it looks good. Not revolutionary but good and just different enough I'll give it a try if they don't screw things up. I'm relatively confident they won't since they have some decent experience and so far I like what they're doing.

As for collision detection griefing, that does sound like a potential problem. I can definitely see your point about them taking out ally collision detection. I can already see some kind of FOH-like guild using collision detection to physically block other guilds from content.

I also would like to hear more about the non-combat parts of the game. Crafting, mounts, and housing especially. Though I suspect that third one will be in an expansion down the road much like it was with DAOC.

[tazelbain]

When you join a scenario's queue, your battle points are added to the team's total, and the game tries its best to balance out the two sides in terms of similar battle point totals. One team might have eight level-12 players with really good gear and 12 level-nine players with lower-quality gear. The end result is a system that is far more balanced than relying on simply classifying scenarios based on level groupings alone.

That's new.

WAR looks less cartoony and more comic booky to me.

[Evangolis]

Given the divergence of the three base areas for each side, I would say that some form of housing would be vital to guild cohesion in the long run.

[slog]

Hmm. I just had to turn my Hype dial down by 50%.


That was Not a video of WoW, correct? 

The UI looks the same in every fanatasy dikumud - there will be hotbars, there will be a minimap, there will be floaty names, HP bars, XP bars, and Mana bars. The art direction was explictly based on the same IP that WoW is implictly based on. Where else is there to go? Given that both this and WoW are Dikumuds with content and lore based on the Warhammer fantasy vision, and neither is shooting for an M rating, why in the name of all that is holy would you expect the art direction and look & feel to be something other than similar?

So this doesn't seem like a WoW clone to you?

http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/media/video/files/VotM_Press-RvR.html

[Arthur_Parker]

It does for me but it's a bit zoomed out for my taste.

Separated at birth?

Twin 1

Twin 2

The first few seconds of this video look a bit different to WoW, that's before all the pretty icons start flashing.

Also this one of the Bright Wizard in close up, not sure if it's been posted before.

I'm pretty sure the Chaos lands are going to be unlike anything in WoW but the whole debate is a bit silly.  I'd prefer a darker style but I guess we will have to see how it goes, I'm not sure looking like WoW will put many people off, maybe the opposite.

[eldaec]

So this doesn't seem like a WoW clone to you?

Someone help me out here. What the fuck do you mean by 'a WoW clone'?

Firstly WoW brought precisely jack and shit to the genre beyond 'a shorter grind' and 'playable at launch'. It also brought nothing new to the pre-existing Warhammer fantasy vision.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of 'a shorter grind' or 'playable at launch', but I don't see 'a shorter grind' or 'playable at launch' in that video, so no, it doesn't look like a WoW clone.

Yes, gameplay looks like a MMO dikumud, which is not an entirely new genre (gosh). Feel free to post that gem of wisdom on the 27 Vanguard launch threads as well. People posting there are operating without this startling insight. Sometimes I wonder how we managed to discuss WoW prior to it's launch without geniuses reminding us that it looks exactly like an EQ clone every third post.

[Hoax]

Bunch of stuff here..

re: Runepriests and combat casting

I am not sure what you are saying Hoax, I cast buffs in combat all the time.  The above spell I cast repeatedly in combat, on which ever ally is in melee at the time.

You all are probably right the runepriest will play effectively the same as other healers just with a nifty pre-cast and activate method instead of the standard cast then effect.  Which should really make their heals much more effective in pvp.  After all winning the initial engagement in diku-pvp usually wins you the battle.  We'll see if they play differently at all from any other Diku-caster.

I think I overreacted to the idea of a healing/buffing class that didn't actually have to deal with that during combat.  I still think that would be a more interesting idea personally but you're right that isn't where they are taking it..


Everyone should watch that podcast, it cleared the zone layout questions right up.


It is scary that the guy from GW (Paul) and the guys  from Mythic are already speaking out about two different games.  With of course GW's version being "there is only war" and Mythic's being "like WoW w/ a little bit of extra blood and a more complex BG system and for realz we learned something from DAOC!".


About WoW's BG's and if they are a system worthy of being adopted into different games.  I think Blizzard's system is getting there.  Once they have actual rankings of servers and even beyond that guilds for BG combat they will have gotten somewhere.  When they start to have tournaments between the servers it will finally be a system worth praising. 

While I see the advantage of BG's for creating "true" competition compared to chaotic open uneven world pvp it still doesn't sit right with me that it has become the chosen type of pvp for MMO's.  More  games that go the EvE/SB route and leave the structure of the war to the players would make me happier.  That really seems like a topic unto itself so I'll leave that for now.

[Soln]

anything about pets yet?  And -- dare I ask -- turrets  :-(

[tazelbain]

> it still doesn't sit right with me that it has become the chosen type of pvp for MMO's.
MMOG PvP has to learn how to walk before it can run.

[stray]

MMOG PvP has to learn how to walk before it can run.

It's been over 10 years now, and we're still standing around with our dicks in our hands. The time for learning was yesterday.

[Rasix]

MMOG PvP has to learn how to walk before it can run.

It's been over 10 years now, and we're still standing around with our dicks in our hands. The time for learning was yesterday.

The average development cycle is what? 5 years or more for a MMO? Budget for a major is now around 50 mil or so?  There haven't even been that many major release MMOs.

This industry is still very much in its beginning stages, especially for design concepts.