By
Justin Webb, Senior Designer




As a big thank-you for everyone’s hard work, Mythic puts on a
spread of food every night up on the eighth floor. When the ceremonial
act of laying out all the nosh is complete, an email is sent out to the
whole company. This email has a Pavlovian effect. Devs pile into the
elevators and head for the eighth floor. It’s here, shortly
after dusk, that the pack finally comes together after a long hard day.
Devs jostle for the best position; some challenges are made and
answered; and pecking rules as old as time itself are re-established.
Pack members who try to jump the line are beaten with sporks and sent
packing with their tails between there legs. It is here that we truly
see Survival of the Fittest in action.


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Justin Webb,
WAR Blogger on the Prowl

Like any pack of wild animals, there is a distinct pecking order. The
larger, more dominant animals get to feed first. When they are sated,
the weaker members of the pack get to fight over the scraps. Scavengers
trawl through aluminum tubs, hoping, sometimes praying, that a juicy
chunk of chicken (or beef) has been overlooked by one of the dominant
alphas.



Latecomers often have to pick over the remains. Some especially tardy
devs are forced to consist on gravy and condiments alone.



I tried to get some photos of last night’s feed at the
waterhole, but I made the schoolboy error of leaving the flash on on my
camera. This agitated the pack and I was forced to flee empty-handed.
Tonight, in an attempt to avoid the any conflict I photographed the
feast before the pack arrived.



I took Paul to the airport on Friday. On the way, we talked about
everything that has been going on this week. The transcription of that
tape is very long – too long for a single blog. So,
I’ve carved it up into smaller pieces.


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Let the
feast begin!

Here’s what some of the other chunks are about:



Going to Europe; Underpants; Girl signatures; Nurgle trophy miniatures;
Embroidered Badges; Colin Shannon; Togglett; Spyke Hallucinating.



target="_blank">Leave me a comment if you want to hear about
any of these later today.



Here’s today’s chunk:



Hamtouchers!



PB:
We’ve been going through the crazy “How would we
expand the game if we weren’t being normal” and we
had that meeting -- ooh, and you were in that meeting -- were we talked
about lunacy we’re not allowed to discuss in this blog, but I
can tell you that it was Damn Exciting! Darn Exciting! The people at
P.F. Chang’s kept dropping plates, they were that excited by
what we said. We’ve also been looking at the expansion pack.
I was having a look at the new folders with all the concept art and the
idea art.



JW: Yup,
Ted’s done some lovely things in that.



PB: He has
yes, about things we’re not allowed to mention. Imagine that
at this moment we were talking lovingly about his concept art. In fact
the only thing I can tell you, a bit of an exclusive, is that we went
with …



JW: Be
careful, BE CAREFUL …



PB: More
Blue than Orange! That was the latest breakthrough on the sampling of
the concept art for the expansion. So, make of that what you will.



JW: What
would Bing say?



PB: Oh yeah,
cos he likes orange. What else have I been up to? I’ve been
trying to explain how we need to stop messing around with the client.
And I really don’t want to hear any more great ideas.
We’re trying to get it out the door. Could you just save that
for the patch please?



OOOH! We recorded the rock song with Brad



JW:
I’m going to see Brad when I get back, I was hoping you were
leaving a little bit later today so that you could “get the
band back together” for a one-off performance I could capture
on video.



PB: The
Hamtouchers!



JW: Because
I don’t fancy trawling through the eight hours of footage you
recorded.



PB:
We’ve been asked if we would like to do a cover version of
the Mirror’s Edge song, which, another exclusive for your
blog which will probably get Lincoln fired. He allowed me to listen to,
under pain of death, [the Mirror’s Edge song] and
we’ve told him we are prepared to do it, but we’re
not too into the style that they’ve gone for. We’d
like to do a heavy rock version. For people who don’t know ,
Mirror’s Edge is a sort of first-person Parkour
street-running game -- you run around on roofs. It’s very
clean … white … Ikea.



Sort of new futuristic. And it’s got an asian lady with
tattoos who jumps around everywhere and the song is very nice, very
fitting for the game. And they’ve done the variants and
remixes of it … and they’re very, very exciting.
Trust me, it’s going to be awesome. But we don’t
want to do that. We want to do a Punk Rock version. Brad was suggesting
we should just call our version “Jump Bitch!”,
which part of me quite likes and thinks that it might be for winners,
and its at least in the spirit of the Hamtouchers if nothing else
… or we might just all be going to hell.



For people who aren’t too sure about why the band is called
the Hamtouchers, bear this in mind. Every boy and every man over the
age of 16 has touched ham. I think we can all agree on that.



JW: Who are
the Hamtouchers?



PB: The
Hamtouchers are Brad Derrick, Me, and then we have some supporting
“groupeys”: Traugett and the irrepressible Conway.
Oh and we were produced by, the George Martin of the Hamtouchers, the
fifth Hamtoucher, Magic Blaine, who sits in his little glass box
twiddling knobs ... all day. If you can’t make that funny,
you’re doomed.



JW: As far
as that song goes, if I go to see Brad, can I hear it?



PB: You can
have a snippet. You can have a seven-second fair-use policy.



JW: Can I
try and get Brad, and Conway of course, to replicate the song and sing
it?



PB: I think
what you should do is to go to Conway and Brad and you should get them
to do a sort of acapella beat-box didgeridoo version of it 
for seven seconds of fair use.



JW: In the
spirit of Leipzig?



PB: Yeah,
you could always ask Brad for his favorite line, which If I’m
not mistaken, probably has something to do with PQ loot sacks, but I
could have got that wrong.



(Editor's
Note: You can hear all about Barnett's "Hairy Sack of Magic" by clicking here and watching the video!)




Walking
around




Some stuff I saw.



There are now over 40,000 people working in our Customer Service in the
Mythic Dungeon (might be untrue). This picture shows one of the CS
rooms. We keep the CS people like troglodytes in darkened rooms. I had
to hide when the flash went off, since the only light these guys
normally get is from their monitors.


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PC Zone previewed WAR. Then some Orks reviewed their preview and
published it on a wall.


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Kristen is really busy. Don’t talk to her. Actually,
don’t even look at her – no direct eye contact. In
fact, just go away!


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My car kind of broke down on the way to the airport yesterday, so I was
unable to try and “borrow a dollar off” anyone
– I got back quite late. I’ll try and borrow a
dollar today. I’ll keep you posted.



href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/war/launch" target="_blank">(Editor's
Note: If you'd like to read all of
Justin's exclusive WAR launch blogs, simply click here!)


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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