WAR: A Look at Living Guilds with EA Mythic's Josh Drescher and Christian Bales, Finale


It's been an all week thing here at Ten Ton Hammer, but we're finally coming to the end of a great interview with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's Josh Drescher and Christian Bales, who talk to us about guilds and what sort of things we can expect to see in WAR. With the guild beta coming up soon, there's a lot of talk and a lot of questions being asked. We asked a few of our own and here's what we were told!


border="1"
style="margin: 10px; float: right; ">

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34228/preview"
width="347" height="182" border="0">

Ok, where's that standard bearer?!

Ten Ton Hammer: When you are out of the battlefield, one of the options is to plant the Standard and fight. If the Standard Bearer is defeated, can other guild members pick up the Standard to save it from falling into enemy hands?

Christian: The way that works is, if I am defeated as the Standard Bearer, while I have the standard out the enemies automatically capture that Standard. However, if I have it planted in the ground and I'm killed or I run a long distance from the Standard and it's in danger, my party or guild mates can save it.

Ten Ton Hammer: We know Heraldry will be one of the rewards for a guild leveling up. What other types of guild rewards can we expect to see?

Christian: One thing we have planned is the Guild Vault. You have Standards and as well as Keep claiming. Keep claiming is actually one of the rewards you unlock as well. Then you have "battlefield objective claiming" and also unlock different abilities for your Standard through the reward system, such as additional Tactic points to add tactics to your standard, etc.

Some other things outside of the guild Standard include an unlock for a communal guild tavern inside the cities that all guilds can access at a certain rank. They can use that to form Alliances, socialize, and talk about strategy. Inside that tavern is a Guild Store and we're going to make certain items available like there might be a guild recall scroll that guild members can use to recall back to the tavern. We're also going to offer some special crafting items to guilds. We have a lot planned and are still fleshing the system out.

Josh: The caveat we have to offer is that until the guild beta gets underway we won't be able to test a lot of these options. As we've said in the past, we treat beta like part of the development process so until something has passed through that gauntlet, we don't commit completely to it.

The options you can get in the reward system are being fleshed out over the next couple of months as we run through that guild beta. We'll see what the players who live and breathe this stuff think about it.

Christian: Yeah we really like to hear the thoughts of the guilds in regards to this system and we like to make changes based on their feedback.

Ten Ton Hammer: Could we go back a second and explain a little more about Battlefield Objectives?

Christian: Basically, they are in the game right now in the Skirmish areas. So, guilds can send out their Standard Bearers, once they have this option unlocked through guild level, and they can claim the Battlefield Objective for their guild. What type of benefits that will bring guilds is still under discussion.

border="1"
style="margin: 10px; float: left; ">

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34231/preview"
width="347" height="182" border="0">

We'd like to join the Alliance. Rumor has it you have cookies?

Ten Ton Hammer: We know Guild Alliances are going to play a large role in the bigger conflicts. What benefits do the Guild Alliances bring players?

Josh: The first thing to remember is there are a couple of driving forces that you'll find throughout the game in terms of categories. Some of them are hard numerical values like "You get a percentage based bonus for doing the following things." Some of them are strategic benefits and while they don't provide you with any visible, noticeable benefit they are actually a core component of how you have to interact with the game.

Due to the RvR campaign and the number of players that are going to be involved with it, even your really organized sort of top level super guilds are going to have a hard time being independently successful in the game. There comes a point when you can only absorb so many players in your guild, you can only control so much of the game by yourself, before you have to reach out to some of the other entities that are out there within your realm.

One of the reasons is that we are trying to create the sense that, on a macro level, the guilds are very cooperative. You may not be members of the same guild, but you have shared objectives as a realm and as a result, the primary benefit of alliances is organizational and strategic. If you are going to go into a capital city and you want to have any chance of pressing your way to the palace and fight the king, you need to have the organization in place necessary to go target all of the sub bosses, all of the lesser targets in the city, to grant access to that final content.

Generally we believe that is going to be an alliance type of thing where you organize as a larger group, agree on responsibilities within the city siege, and then you try and execute on that as effectively as possible.


Ten Ton Hammer would like to thank Christian and Josh for taking the time to talk us about living guilds.



href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/37574">Article Home

<<< href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/37868">Back to Part 3


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

Comments