- gamezone -

“You can eventually, if you're good enough, fight and capture the enemy's king and take him back to your own capital city.”

Deeper Into The Realm

Realm vs. Realm sounds good, but how far does it go? What are the four levels? How much longevity does it contain? Senior Producer Jeff Hickman provides answers.

“There is three different types of RvR that play into the fourth type, which is the campaign,” Jeff informed us. “[First] there’s what we call skirmish RvR. Understand that, in every single area of the game – what we call zones, so think of zones as a stage or a land – within each one are places where you can RvR (fight other players), and places you can hunt monsters and do quests.

“The RvR places that are in these areas are called skirmish areas. This is a place within the real world that you can go to and, simply by entering the area, you’re able to fight other players from any of the realms. When you enter these areas, your goal is to find the bad guy, hit ‘em with your stick until he dies, and avoid dying yourself. That’s RvR. It’s very basic – it’s a foundational type of system.

“The second type is what we call battlefields. Battlefields are objectives within the skirmish areas that are intended to provide a focal point for combat. For example, I might enter a skirmish area, and in the distance I might see a large tower. I know that by going to that tower from my realm, I can gain bonuses for my entire realm. So I go to that tower, capture it for myself and gain those bonuses. The enemy wants the same thing. So the enemy’s going to come and fight with me over this.

“The third type for RvR, and it’s the type we focus a lot in, is what we call scenarios. Scenarios are just that – they’re scenarios, story points within the RvR skirmish areas that you can enter. They’re instanced, so they’re not actually within the static world. They’re evenly matched, point-based matches. This is a place where you run through the skirmish area, you enter the scenario’s lobby, and you get matched up with friendly people to help you fight the enemy in the scenario.

“You’re told what the objectives of the scenario are, [which] are all about killing each other. This is Warhammer after all, so it’s very important for us to encourage player versus player combat, not go out and pick up a flag, or go out and capture that object. It’s all about kill each other. There are a lot of things that can happen within the scenarios that can enhance that experience, and there are a massive amount of these. But what it comes down to is: are you a better fighter than the other guy? Can you take on the bad guy and win?

“When you play in scenario, there’s always one side that wins and one side that loses. The points that you gain by playing in scenarios and battlefields and even skirmish RvR all play into the overarching campaign of RvR. The campaign is really the high level, strategic battlefield that happens within Warhammer. This is a battle that happens between the capital cities of each one of the races. They’re paired up against each other – for example, the dwarves and the Greenskins. There’s a massive amount of land between the dwarves’ and Greenskins’ capital cities. The campaign game is all about fighting over pieces of this land using skirmish, battlefields, and scenarios.

“Winning piece by piece, fighting your way forward as a Greenskin toward the dwarf capital city as the dwarves try to push toward your capital city. By owning these zones, you’re able to push the battle forward all the way to the dwarven capital city. By that point you can actually fight for and capture the dwarf capital city, and that’s where all the big rewards are. At that point you can ransack and pillage the capital’s city, fight all of the citizens that are there.

“You can eventually, if you’re good enough, fight and capture the enemy’s king and take him back to your own capital city. You can buy rotten tomatoes, throw them at your enemy’s king, take photos and send the shots to your enemy to laugh at them. This becomes the overarching, continuous struggle of the game. This is something people can do every night, any time they want. It’s always ongoing – it’s never-ending. It’s a massive, realm vs. realm warfare. The way you choose to play the game – you can choose that or PvE. That’s what our goal was for the game – that you can do things that are different on any given night.

Infrequently Obsessed

Most MMO players are diligent to the point where uninformed outsiders might think they’re obsessed. But what if you are the outsider – or just a causal player who doesn’t want to game that often?

Jeff assures us that you can still get a lot out of this game regardless of how much you play. “The game was built from the ground up to be accessible for both PvE and RvR,” he says. “This is a game that, due to the way we put together public quests, due to the way we put together scenarios for RvR, due to the way that the advancement system works, simply coming in once or twice a week and playing for an hour two is extremely rewarding. You can get in for fast action whether it’s RvR or PvE. You can get in for fast action as a sole player even in RvR. And you can feel like you’re advancing and doing something with your character in a very short amount of time.”

Hair Club For…Dwarves

Two of the coolest elements regarding Warhammer Online’s aesthetics are the character customization features and the evolutionary changes. The former lets you don trophies to rub your success in enemies’ faces, while the latter leads to bigger, uglier creatures whose scars and body hair may increase over time.

“Every race starts out by having that differentiation,” said Jeff. “Once you get your character, you’re going to have a customization for the body, especially on the face, that will set your character apart. You can change their features a bit as they progress through the game. For example, as the dwarf progresses, he’ll get to certain points in the progression system where he will change. In the dwarf’s example, his beard will get longer. There are probably about four or five of these change points where you’ll be able to look at a dwarf with no armor on and be able to tell that he’s a higher-level dwarf because his beard will be longer. We’re looking at similar types of changes for every single race in the game.

“Along with the visual change, there are 24 classes in the game. That’s four classes per race. These classes are all very visually distinct. Something that is critical to the IP, and RvR to us, the way that each class looks is very definable to the eye. When I see someone in the distance, if I can see his silhouette, I can [identify the character]. So whichever class you choose [such as a witch hunter], you’ll always have that look in the game. But that look will change as you progress. That’s another part of it – each class changes throughout a multitude of armor pieces that you can mix and match.

“Finally we have a system of trophies within the game where, through a multitude of trophies from killing other players or doing certain quests… Or other achievements in the game, these are actual trophies you can add to your character that might hang from your belt or sit on your shoulder, or hang from your hat. These trophies kind of put the finalizing touches on looking different from everybody else.

Customization and Evolution – Paul’s Take:

Paul Barnett, Creative Director: “It’d be kind of like going to fight in the middle of the town center. If someone is really tall, and really muscular and covered in scars, and has blood dripping from their hands, they’re probably an awful lot more dangerous than someone who is three-foot-five, weighs about 10 pounds and is cuddling a teddy bear.”

Tank Smart

“When you look at fighters, there aren’t many opportunities for things to be different,” Paul comments, explaining the importance of tanks. “They stand next to something and they hit something, generally with a big lot of metal. What we’ve got to do is make the experience of how you do that that matters. Although you have two tanks – one of them uses combination attacks, the other one uses strategic tactics. One relies heavily on the realm. The other one uses a system of beating down your opponents’ defenses. The other one uses a concept of attacking a lot of people at once.

“If you say, ‘There are tanks in every race,’ you’re sort of miss-selling it. You should be saying, ‘There are interesting fighting experiences for each race.’ We don’t replicate. Once you know how to be great in one does not mean you know how to be great in another. You’ll be able to go and play the game again and say, ‘Hey, even though this is fundamentally the same thing, it actually plays and feels differently.’ That’s what we’ve been doing.”

Thanks to everyone at EA Mythic and Kohnke Communications for having a wonderful conference call.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Interview Part 1