Questions by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

Answers by: Mark Jacobs, General Manager of EA Mythic

In Part 1 of our interview with EA Mythic's General Manager Mark Jacobs, we learned quite a bit about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's crafting system. Mark covered how they would likely scale it up later on, how it will be different from anything else we've seen in an MMO game, and how such skills will advance. In this segment he covers the impact of the crafting system to the game and how it will affect players game play.

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Tony Jones: What is the game impact of the crafting system? Are these items something that will affect the overall battle or just primarily benefit the individual?

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Mushroom! Mushroom!

Mark Jacobs: Well of course. It has to have an impact of there is no point in having the system. You want something that can impact a battle. Can it turn the tide of battle? No, it shouldn't’t. But will it affect it? Of course. It is no different than buying potions that will affect your character. Is it that you have to stock up on your 500 "Potions of Power" and the other guys have to have all his stuff to fight you? No we’re not doing that. The fact that we don’t have armor and weapon crafting in the game right now should show that we don’t want it to impact the game in that heavy sort of way.

You can make a wonderful argument that those systems can affect combat as much if not more than anything like potions, lotions and powders can. We really wanted to get the basic stuff done first, and then worry about the other stuff. I am a firm believer that we need to lay the foundations before we start to work on the penthouse. I mean right now we’ve got Cultivation, Apothecary, and Butchering. You’ve got different things that don’t impact the game as much as other system do. You want to make sure you get this stuff right. We could have come out with another couple of systems but they would have come out rushed. Those may have had a greater impact on RvR than we had anticipated. That’s bad. I’d rather have fewer things out there now, and add more, than have more things and have to take them away. Like many other MMO developers, we have been charged in Camelot with cycles of nerfing and fixing. We did not want to be in that position when we launch in the fall. We wanted to have fewer rather than more. If you have fewer things in that are great, you are better off than having more in that are not.

Once you start taking things away from players, and start telling them you can have all this cool stuff for the first couple of weeks? And yeah you had fun, but whoops here come the major balance nerfing changes? The players will be justifiably pissed off. You can avoid some of that pain by being a little more circumspect on what you chose to put in your game at launch.

Tony Jones: How will crafting impact players on a personal level? For instance, can you use items in a Public Quest?

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Can this Guy be Trusted with
a Potion?

Mark Jacobs: You can certainly use them in a PQ. If there is a potion that can help you of course you can use it in PvE. We want the sort of stuff that is very balanced. We do not want players saying that if you go out and get that potion you are going to beat me every time. That is not good in RvR especially. We are staying away from that. At least we’re trying too. We don’t want people to feel that if you don’t immediately gear up on potions you won’t have a chance. That would be bad for the players.

Tony Jones: Are there going to be any restriction points on crafting like tables and machinery?

Mark Jacobs: Other than NPCs being around that can fight me, there might be, but that is not the core of the system. We wanted to do something really cool that you don’t have to go to different places to do. You don’t have to go to the forge or the fields. You are doing it all yourself. There has to be a bit of suspension of disbelief here. We’re going to stick with that idea.

Thanks again to Mark Jacobs for taking the time to answer all of my questions regarding crafting. Check back with us tomorrow as Garrett Fuller throws in questions of his own regarding this interesting game mechanic.