Warhammer VS TenTonHammer

Page Two

The first real piece of content that was shown to us was the starter zone for the Orcs, a zone that had one of the more disturbingly awesome introductions ever. As an Orc in Warhammer Online, you will find yourself in the middle of an Orc camp surrounded by the corpses of dead Dwarves (referred to from here on as Stunties) and the first enemies of the zone are the vultures pecking away at their corpses. This enforced the WAR mentality of “War is everywhere”.

Ratboy playing

The Realm VS Realm style of Player VS Player was next on the list of things for us to discuss. The idea that the game will begin with thirty-three separate zones; eleven of which will be used for each racial combat (Greenskins VS Dwarves, Dark Elves VS High Elves, & Chaos VS Empire) was truly impressive since even the starting newbie zone that was on demo was really interesting and seemingly large for a starting zone.

When it came to breaking down the zones into specific information, we discovered that the majority of the demo zone was PvE, with a small section dedicated to being a PvP oriented zone. Players will have the option of going PvP if they enter into the PvP zone (they will be flagged on entrance) and as such, it complements the division of quests that Mythic has setup with Green/Yellow/Red (each indicating their level of safety in terms of PvP). Green quests are PvP free, Yellow quests take you through PvP zones but do not require PvP and red quests are geared towards PvP.

Opening Game

As Messiah and I continued in our efforts to derail what would normally be a productive interview by asking “Cake or Pie”, Sanya moved on to further discussing the quest portion of the game (by the way, they cheated and answered with “cheesecake”). The quest system of Warhammer Online also has four different types of quests, including Public Quests that are the “standard” do-them-once quests, with the interesting twist that everyone in that area contributes to their completion. A Public Quest will appear once you have entered a specific area where that quest is active. Conflict Quests are quests where the factions of the zone compete against one another in different styles to complete the quest (see-saw, tug-of-war, etc, etc). “Christmas” Quests are quests that you can find off-the-beaten-road, where you would not ordinarily be brought. Of course you also have your standard Single Player Quests to complete the mix. The example given to us by Sanya was meeting a goblin who would “give his right arm to get his wolf to listen to him”, so you kill the goblin and feed his right arm to the wolf. Sounds like a blast!

Getting back to the RvR we actually got a bit of already-known information detailing the different types of combat levels; skirmishes, scenarios and battlefields. What was new to us was to see a view of the actual game, and how combat worked in game. The morale system seemed a lot clearer once we saw it; the example of an orc gaining morale as he attacked things, and then using his morale to beat things even better than before, was hilarious in concept, and even in-game it had a good feel to it. The big new piece of information to follow with a view of the moral system was the list of Greenskin classes:

• Warboss (Arm / Tanker)
• Shaman (Magic / Healer)
• Squig Herder (Arms / Melee)
• Battle (Arms / Range)