Witches, Gods, and More!

An Interview with Josh Drescher, Senior Designer for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has been on the MMO community's "top games to watch" list since Mythic announced it was going to be developing the decades old property a few years ago. When it became public knowledge that they game would be delayed until 2008, the collective outcry of thousands of Warhammer fans resonated throughout the world. However, the team at EA Mythic hasn't lost a step, and they believe the extra months they have received to polish WAR will be time well spent, in the end.

In response to the delay and to check in with the crew at EA Mythic, Ten Ton Hammer sent the intrepid Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle to uncover the latest news on the game and where the team is headed over the next few months. Jeff tracked down Josh Drescher, Senior Designer for EA Mythic, and asked him the questions that are perched on everyone's mind. Enjoy the interview!

TTH: Let's start with Empire. One of the classes we really wanted to see more of was the witch hunter. Other than Paul Barnett going a little crazy about the pointy hats, could you talk a little bit about their role and what kind of tools they'll have at hand?

Josh Drescher: The witch hunter is actually the next class on the menu for really detailed treatment in an upcoming newsletter. I can't get into absolute, total detail... I can give you a slightly more involved explanation of his general strategic role. I had lunch yesterday with Eric Mogensen of Games Workshop and he gave us his very definitive opinion on what a witch hunter should be and how he should interact with the world. If you remember the concept art, he's got a big blunderbuss / pistol thing and a rapier. His boring sort-of MMORPG role is the melee / DPS class. Strategically his role is debuffing / damage-over-time stuff. He's going to do things that make it hard to stay close to him and then he'll finish you off with a pistol in the side of the head. Beyond that, we're tripping on ground that we'll be covering in the newsletter.

TTH: We'll look forward to the newsletter, then! Another thing about the Empire in the tabletop game is their reliance on technology - the cannon, the steamtank, and so on. We've gotten a few small details on crafting, can you tell us anything more about crafting or whether the Empire might be heavier into crafting than maybe Chaos?

Josh: There's certainly not going to be any intention to make them imbalanced. For aesthetic reasons, I understand what you're asking: is there ever a time when a Chaos citizen would aesthetically want to sit down and knit a woolen hat? There are times when you have to error on the side of playability, and it would be pretty difficult to include a crafting system and then predominantly grant it to one side. I can't give you any details on any crafting system, but I can tell you that any crafting system would be fair and balanced between the races.

TTH: I hate to use the typical MMORPG archetypes, but the two tanking classes for the Chaos and the Empire: the Chaos Chosen and the Knights of the Blazing Sun. Could you kind of compare and contrast these two classes?

Josh: There's a very specific reason why we chose the Knights of the Blazing Sun. If you look at their background, they are sort of the most underhanded, I don't want to say conniving, but they're goal-oriented. They're far more interested in beating you to death than beating you to death barely.

And if your familiar with the lore around Tzeentch at all, he's the great schemer. Everything that he does is part of some horribly Byzantine plot; humans are just a cog in his evil machinery. The Chaos Chosen represent the class that is most intimately connected to that side of the mythos.

So, from a sort of standard combat standpoint, these are the battlefield commanders. These are the guys that are going to be out there, doing what they need to do to succeed. There's different way ways we're going to do this aesthetically, but in addition to being strong defensively, these guys are going to be of significant tactical value to their group on the battlefield.

Again, returning to the IP a moment, the Knights of the Blazing Sun, the period in their lifespan that we're trying to capture is the time after they've kind of come into their own; their sort-of Roman period, proving themselves to the Empire in an effectively mercenary command role. People would see a Knight of the Blazing Sun come into the area and obviously want them to hire them into their ragtag band of religious fanatics to battle the forces of Chaos.

TTH: Returning to Tzeentch, he is I guess you would say offensively he's a more magically-oriented character, while Chaos is typically a more physical / melee, win-by-attrition sort of army. Does my impression of the IP hold up in WAR?

Josh: Yes and no. You get the more physicality-oriented stuff from Korn, there's a little more subtlety to the other 3 Chaos gods. Korn disdains magic in every way, which is one of the reasons that he would have been a poor fit for the game we're trying to make. Tzeentch is all about the scheming and plotting. If you're familiar with the IP, there are these inscrutable periods of time for reasons hard for humans to understand, the forces of Chaos come together for some unholy alliance to do something terrible. Typically Tzeentch is the one driving that; trying to bring these not necessarily warring, but not necessarily complimentary factions together for a greater goal.

Attrition certainly plays a part. The Empire especially. The overall strategy for victory is constant breeding; having the most people that you possibly can so they can grow up, go out, and die. There's a meat-grinder / atrrition mentality on both sides there, which is why they make such a complimentary pairing.

But Tzeentch is certainly more attractive to moral humans. There are things he can grant: arcane knowledge, strange powers. He's a figure politicians would be attracted to. All the people that you would probably not be particularly fond of spending a lot of time with, those are Tzeentch people. Turn on C-SPAN, those are Tzeentch people!