by Mortrid, 29 days ago
I know I will either be at Origins in Columbus or Gen Con Indy.
EA Mythic is going on the road this summer and could be stopping by a conference near you! Would you like to meet the developers behind Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and likely see the game in progress? If you are in the New York City area, this Sunday is the first event so make plans to not only meet up with the Warhammer Online team but Ten Ton Hammer as well!
WAR is everywhere at the following shows:
- New York Comic Con: April 18-20, 2008 (New York, NY)
* Catch the WAR stage show extravaganza with Paul and Jeff at 12:00 noon on Sunday, April 20.
* Join Jeff for the MMO discussion panel at 4:00pm on April 20th.
- Origins: June 26-29, 2008 (Columbus, OH)
- Comic Con: July 24-27, 2008 (San Diego, CA)
- Gen Con Indy: August 14-17, 2008 (Indianapolis, IN)
- Penny-Arcade Expo: August 29-31, 2008 (Seattle, WA)
In addition, the developers will be showing WAR at Games Workshop's upcoming Games Days:
- Baltimore, MD: June 14, 2008
- Toronto, ON: June 21, 2008
- Chicago, IL: July 26, 2008
- Los Angeles, CA: August 23, 2008
by Demoroth, 62 days ago
source: http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/previews/131473.Warhammer-Online-Age-of-Reckoning/
AT THE ELECTRONIC ARTS developers conference in Singapore, we were given the opportunity to see Warhammer Online in action. Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer, was kind enough to fire up the game, set it to "God Mode", and fly us around the world he's created.
Hickman: Warhammer has been around for 25 years now. It's in paperback books, fantasy role-playing, comics, miniature role-playing, you name it. So, what I want to do today is talk a little bit about from what you would expect from an MMO, what you would expect from a game like ours.
We have all that stuff you would expect - great quests, great adventures you can go on, wonderful locations to be seen in, and to go and see. We have grouping, guilds, all of the stuff that an MMO of this generation is expected to have. It's expected, it's the stuff that everybody has. I want to talk about the stuff that sets us apart, the stuff that makes us unique, and the things that really make us great.
The first thing I want to talk about is what we call "public quests". Public quests are story-driven, area-based, social quests in our game. Simply by entering an area, we pick up a quest - indicated in the top right hand corner of the screen. These are quests that tell part of the story of Warhammer Online. Simply by being in the area you automatically get these quests, and they help you promote social networking within the game. Everybody who is in this area gets this quest automatically, and they participate in it together. So as we are doing some of the quests, everyone else is.
These quests are multi-phased, so as you move through different phases of these quests, as you move through the story, it changes. Each quest takes anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes each, and when you're done with it, it actually starts over again. So you can participate in these quests as many times as you want.
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There are over 300 of these in the games, so as you move through the game, doing all your other types of adventuring, your personal quests, your monster hunting - the other things that you would do - you're encountering these public quests, and getting a chance to build friends and guilds within the game, fairly quickly. Our beta tests that we've been in have shown Public Quests to be an absolutely foundational part of the game. The players absolutely love them.
So we'll move on to another thing. The Tome of Knowledge. The Tome of Knowledge is really something that nobody is doing like we're doing, and in most cases not at all. The Tome of Knowledge started out as a quest log, where we would track our quests in the game. Then we said, "you know what? There's so much more we can do with this."
The Tome of Knowledge has become where everything that you do within the game is tracked. Every monster that you kill, every player that you meet, every player enemy that you fight, every place that you explore, every item you find is tracked within the Tome of Knowledge.
But the Tome is even more than that - the Tome is an unlock and achievement system - similar to the Xbox 360 achievements. So as you're exploring the world, as you're exploring new and interesting things, you're getting these unlocks. Be it XP, titles, new abilities - things to increase your power within the game. Even new items. All of these things can come from the Tome - it's a scrapbook of your life in the game.
So, the next thing I want to talk about is what we call "living cities". We're going to jump over to the Human capital city. Cities are social and economic hubs within our game, it's a place to come and meet other players, it's a place to come and buy and sell items, gold and trade with players, and make guilds, and socialise.
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But cities within our game are actually alive, in other words, they grow and age with the game. When you and your realm (the side you have chosen to play) get stronger and are successful in the game, your city actually grows and is successful also. So, you might start the game and your city is a four, but as you succeed within the game it grows, and becomes prosperous, it unlocks areas that you haven't been able to get to before. New dungeons, new adventures, new quests, new monsters to see, new places to go.
The thing you have to be aware of though is, as your city grows and becomes more prosperous, your enemy can see this also. So players on the other side can see how great your city has become, and they'll want it for themselves. And in our game, they can actually go and get it.
Our cities have grand monuments, these are actually adventure areas that you can unlock, you can go in and participate in quests, and a whole lot of different things.
So let me talk next about the thing that really makes us really different. The thing that no-one else does anywhere like we do, and that's realm vs. realm. Realm vs. realm is our take on player vs. player combat. So, realm vs. realm, when you start a game, you choose a side. You choose either the Ream of Order, or the Ream of Destruction. The good guys vs. the bad guys, if you will. You can choose between the High Elves, or the Dark Elves. The Green Skins or the Dwarves.
Each side is a fundamental choice - once you choose, you cannot change during your game experience. Realm vs. realm becomes the ultimate form of PVP, the ultimate thing that you do within our game.
Six years ago, we brought out a game called Dark Age of Camelot where we invented realm vs. realm. In Dark Age of Camelot we did a lot of great things, a lot of siege, and a lot of land capture, and some very fundamental, cool stuff. With Warhammer Online, we're going to take that way to the next level and beyond.
So realm vs. realm is a feeling of camaraderie, of realm pride. Pride in your cities, pride in the lands that you own, pride in the things that you do with you and your realm. You've always got someone behind you, supporting you in realm vs. realm. There's always a built-in group of friends, if you will.
So there's a lot of different types of RVR in our game, and they're all built one upon each other. Every place you go, every land you enter in Warhammer Online has a place to do RVR in. Simply by entering the RVR area you can participate in RVR.
Now, one of the first things that players will encounter are what we call "scenarios". Scenarios are instanced, schematically based arena combat, if you will. They are places that you can go to participate in RVR in an evenly matched scenario. So this is where you might find ten-on-ten, twenty-on-twenty, forty on forty - but always in a fairly evenly matched manner. There are over thirty of these in our game, at least one in every land that you go to, and in some lands, two or three, depending on the state of the realm war. So these are quick - they last for fifteen minutes. Simply by entering the game is a quick and easy way to get in. It's almost like a mid-session game for us.
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So, open-world RVR takes place in every land. It encompasses skirmishes, battlefield objectives, and "keep" and "siege capture". So, it's persistent and ever-present. You can run out on to the battlefield, see your enemy over the hill, charge him and give battle - this is not necessarily evenly matched, which makes it a little more exciting, to some people at least. So skirmishes take place everywhere - battlefield objectives focus the skirmish. They're things you fight over in the skirmish area. Things that you want to fight and capture.
"Keeps" are massive battlefield objectives, literally castles that you can lay siege to, and capture for your realm, take for your own and help dominate the land. How does all this tie together? It ties together in the campaign game. The overarching game of land capture, taking from your enemy what is his and making it yours, the ultimate game of world domination.
The campaign takes all of the things I've talked about, questing and adventuring, Tome of Knowledge unlocks, all of the RVR we've talked about, skirmishes, scenarios, battlefield objectives, keep captures, it takes all of these different pieces and combines them together in what we call "victory points". So as you are victorious within the world, you're actually able to capture different lands, and push the battlefront back.
So, where this takes you is, towards that ultimate goal I talked about earlier - your enemy's capital city. As you are playing through the game, you can see your enemy's capital in the distance, you can open up a map and see how well he's doing. See what types of rewards are available for him within the city. And then by driving him back, you can literally lay siege to his capital city, attacking it, knocking down his gates, and getting the biggest rewards from the game.
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Let me talk about City Siege. So again, your city is levelling up. It's getting really cool new areas. It's getting all of these rewards, the things you've strived for throughout the game experience. Your enemy sees that, and pushes you back to the gates of your own capital city. He can literally pull out his siege engines, his catapults, his ballistas, his trebuchets, and lay siege to the city itself.
So imagine, if you will, attacking a city. Pulling all of your friends together from your realm, the hordes of your friends, picking up a torch, fighting your enemy within the very streets he loves so much. Running through the streets, torch in hand, kicking down the doors to his houses, running inside, setting fire to them, looting and pillaging everything he holds dear. Breaking into his businesses, robbing his banks, desecrating the temples.
All of the things your enemy has strived so hard to unlock, all of those new areas, all the wonderful quests that he now has access to - well you have access to them now. You can now partake in all of the things he's spent so much time gaining for himself. So within the cities, literally you fight street to street, door to door, pushing your enemy back, and there's a massive amount of things to do in the cities.
Within the city there is a palace, and each realm has a king. You can, if you're good enough, pull the king out of his palace, fight him, hopefully defeat him, then you can take him back to your capital city and lock him in the stocks, and literally throw rotten tomatoes at him. Take pictures of him and put them on the web. Make fun of your enemies.
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So that becomes the never-ending struggle within Warhammer Online. It becomes the thing that players play forever, back and forward push between capital cities. Capturing, and recapturing, going for your enemies city, building your city up and watching it get torn down. That's the thing that makes Warhammer great.
So, all these things I talked about, public quests, Tome of Knowledge, living cities, and most especially RVR, those are the things that set Warhammer Online apart. Those are the things that people really haven't had experience with in any MMO out there. Those are the things that really make us special.
