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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.

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.

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?

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?

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?

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...

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.

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.

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?

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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