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Josh Drescher Interview - Page Two of Two
TTH:
Are there any plans to use Daemons in the Chaos forces? People who love
Chaos armies love their Daemons.
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: Definitely as
NPCs. We have a couple of ideas that we're batting around in the career
system at the moment, and we have yet to finalize whether or not we'll
put them in. I'm skirting around something very particular here. We
will probably implement them in in some way; we have to be very careful
how we do it.
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style="font-style: italic;">Chaoes forces will employ
Daemons, but the actual use has yet to be pinned down.
TTH:
From the January event, it seemed that Paul Barnett was very anxious
about getting us to think of Chaos as random and purely, well, chaotic
rather than purely evil. Is there a danger that Daemons would take it
over the top towards evil?
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: Yes, but I'd
say it's more of an aesthetic issue though. If we do our jobs well and
we make it clear that you'd be attracted to Chaos not just because your
some sort of sociopath, but because it's an appeal to human frailty, to
fear, to lust, to a longing for power and status.
In
many ways the Empire is driven by the same sorts of things. Fear is
absolutely a motivating factor for the day to day lives of the Empire.
The witch hunter is a guy who, when he comes into your town, you're
really happy because he's here to root out Chaos and corruption from
society. On the other hand, the methods used to carry this out tend to
kill lots of innocent people. One of the ways to find out if you aren't
in the grasp of Chaos is to hold you in boiling oil, and if you die,
you weren't Chaos because your gods would have saved you. All the
creepy sort of Salem witch hunt things, that's how life is in the Empire
TTH:
Can you talk about how development progress on the Chaos home city, the
Inevitable City?
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: Unfortunately
that's another one of those things we're not saying anything beyond the
baseline sort-of background things. Chaos, it's so chaotic that a group
of people that you can never imagine building anything builds a city.
It's basically a mad gag. We really can't say anything beyond that; I
know I'm giving you very satisfying answers!
TTH:
That's perfectly ok, we understand especially in light of the recent
announcement that Warhammer Online would be delayed until first quarter
2008. Would you talk a little bit about why that decision was made?
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: Because Mark
[Jacobs] wants us to make the absolute best game possible and EA
agrees. It really was one of those things that 'wouldn't it be great to
hit the ground running and start doing your absolute best from day one'
- you learn things that work and things that don't work.
There's just been a vetting process where we've learned that some
things weren't good.
It
would be a disservice to a full third of the game if we didn't go back
and make sure to implement things that draws from the last things that
we've learned. It was absolutely a directive that we were given Mark
Jacobs and Jeff Hickman and Linus Robertson; they wanted us to go back
to the Dwarf and Greenskin areas and make sure that they get
all the love that they deserve. That people that play in those areas
will absolutely have as great a time as the people that play the last
two pairings are going to get. Honestly it sounds like a line, but that
is the only reason there was a delay.
TTH:
And the battlefield is certainly littered with MMOs that released early
and haven't done so well...
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: I don't know
what you're talking about!
TTH:
The Warhammer universe is obviously very dark. What are the kinds of
things you do to lighten things up? I noticed there was a lot of humor
in the NPC voiceovers.
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style="font-style: italic;">
style="font-style: italic;">While there is humor in WAR, the
dark tone and setting of the game are what draw people in.
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: Obviously when
you're telling a relentlessly dark story, you want to give your
audience a moment to breathe. Even sometimes throw in a weird
gag character. You go through a Shakepearian tragedy, there's almost
always some sort of weird character that pops up, tells you some sort
of bawdy joke, and runs off.
Humor
is absolutely the way to bring a little bit of light into the darkness.
But there's also something to be said for the aesthetic of darkness.
You look at something like a Tim Burton movie. Even when they're trying
to tell you a upbeat, happy story, you're mostly watching to see the
creepy trees.
Humor
is how you lighten the mood, but the mood is what people are coming for.
TTH:
Regarding the recent announcement that Warhammer Online would be
releasing in Asia as well, what kinds of things are you doing now to
put yourself in the mindset for localization? I know other MMOs have
gone so far as to create a second set of character models for
international release.
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: At the moment
we're not doing anything with the main project to accomodate global
markets. We have whole teams of people that work on localization. I
don't speak any of their languages, so God only knows what they're
doing with our content. Obviously you want to make sure that you're not
running afoul of some obscure law that says, 'You can never have a
shield in the left hand in Japan.' But it's not something we burden the
team with day to day.
TTH:
What more can you tell us about Warhammer Online at its current state
of development?
style="font-weight: bold;">Josh: We're very
excited about the revamped dwarf and greenskin areas that the entire
team has going full bore for the last month and a half or so. This is
going to be kind-of a 'Yay team!' moment for the troops here but
everybody on the team from content to art to programmers to production
staff to the people from EA, it's been total focus and total energy.
The result has been really great and we're absolutely looking forward
to getting that out there for people to see later this year. We're
absolutely confident that people are going to go bananas once they get
a chance to see it.
And
also the ork-a-pult! If you've seen the trailer cinematic, it's now in
the game!
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