Warhammer Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

So, here I am, back from my first day at PAX.  It is 9:30 pm in Seattle, which is 6:30 am in Germany.  This is important because I just left Germany three days ago, and my body insists that I am still there.  

Hundreds of fans piled into the WAR booth at PAX to play and demo the game, much like what's going on here.

It was a great day overall; the booth was packed and the fans were very excited to see all of us.  We consistently heard “I am in beta, and damn is it awesome!”  It was really great to see and talk to each one of you!  Our team at the booth is really excellent at giving interviews and demoing the game, so come down and see us!  We opened at noon and closed down at 7 pm, with the booth overflowing with fans the entire time.  As expected, this is a great show for us.

I am craving cherry pie right now, and being especially annoyed by my really uncomfortable mattress.  Therefore, for this next bit, I am going to use Cherry Pie for all things good, and My Mattress for all things crappy:


I really appreciate all of the questions that you guys have posed to me and will endeavor to answer what I can for you here.  I apologize for these being short and to the point, it is late, I am tired, and I want to go to bed. *winks*

QUESTION FOR JEFF: Are the Living Cities filled with back-alleys and streets that makes you loose track of where you are --i.e, do the Capitol Cities have more space than what it looks like on the maps?

ANSWER:  The Capitals are pretty damn big.  There are back alleys and places that you can get turned around in.  We tried to get a good balance between ease of use and this type of thing though, so you will have to check them out for yourself and see what you think.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Would you consider revealing all of the PQs for a Chapter on the map once you get to that Chapter? I hated stumbling upon a PQ after my bar was filled because it was out of the way. You guys reveal BO's, so I figure why not PQ's.

ANSWER:  We have talked about this and for now the answer is no.  Once you have discovered a PQ, it will reveal on the map but not before.  It is not out of the question though, and I am sure we will be talking about this again in the upcoming months.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  A question I had that has only been gently touched upon is about Mythic and stopping gold sellers and hackers/exploiters. Will Mythic use the credit card numbers for players found violating the EULA in prior games like DAoC and use that banned list in WAR? You are in the position to do so with a popular MMO prior to this one and records from your Mythic Account Manager could curb know offenders from the past.

ANSWER:  I am not at liberty to talk about all of the methods we are planning to help combat this, but we are definitely against this type of behavior in WAR.  Mythic has always taken a strong stance against this and we have never changed our policy on it.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  I just imagine secret places like, as example, a hidden grove or cave only accessible if several environment variables are fulfilled...like a specific day/night time (in game) or race depending like the long lost grave of King Bazong the Stinker a former dwarven Hero...accessible only to dwarves ..with lots of graves to rob and plunder *dreams*

Any chance we will have something like this ?

ANSWER:  Lairs are definitely the answer.  There are all sorts of different lairs with very interesting access methods, including many that you have mentioned above.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Can you pretty please with sugar on top tell me if there will be a way to change our face/hair in game after the initial character creation? Or if there may be plans for it at some time in the future?

ANSWER:  At this point in time, we do not have plans for allowing you to change your face or hair once you have created your character.  It is not out of the questions however, and is something that I am sure we will be talking about in the future.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Are the lairs solo or grouped and do they work like public quests?

ANSWER:  Most of the lairs involve fighting the monster who inhabits it (it is a “lair” after all).  These monsters are generally very high level and very difficult to kill.  With this in mind, it is probably a good idea to bring a trustworthy group of friends with you when you go exploring for them.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  So these "city sets" you so sneakily slid into your blog... When will you elaborate on those?

ANSWER:  Tomorrow. *winks*

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Question, are there lairs in every zone, just s few, or only the two you mentioned?

ANSWER:  There are lairs in almost every outdoor zone in the game.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Any chance of some sort of damp and dark playhouse in the Inevitable City that shows the banned plays of Detlef Sierck or something such as the controversial "Strange Flower" by Manfred von Diehl? Or perhaps when Altdorf falls...and it will, that there will be some grotesque mockery of performance going on at the stage? I'm imagining Zealots acting with the corpses of Imperial citizens.

ANSWER:  These are interesting ideas.  I will pass them on to our cities team.  We do have crazy stuff in IC, but not what you specifically point out.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Any chance the Greenskins will receive their own capitol city in the future?

ANSWER:  We have special plans for the Greenskin capital and I think you will all get a kick out of what we will be doing.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Cake or death?

(And in all seriousness though there isn't any, will my Goblin Squig Herder ever be able to name his Squig?)

ANSWER:  Pie.  And maybe…

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Is there any plans to let you have multiple looks/sets of armor you can switch on the fly out of combat? And to set up situations that trigger it?

ANSWER:  This is something else that we have talked about and is one of the designs that is currently on the shelf.  I am sure that we will revisit it again in the upcoming months.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Can we have a way to fully disable the UI (names, titles etc) for nice clean screenshots?  

ANSWER:  Shift-z takes off the UI, and you can turn off names, titles, etc from the user settings menu.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Will empire players be able to be "converted" into destruction in some way at all? I know it is a stupid question, but it would be pretty cool if they could.

ANSWER:  No.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Are the Collector's Edition exclusive PvP quests Tier 1 bound? (As in you need to kill players in Tier 1 PvP zones for them, like the Spoils Of War preview on the main-website suggests.)

ANSWER:  Lord.  I have no idea :P  I will try to get the answer to this one posted in a future grab bag on the Herald.

QUESTION FOR JEFF:  Will some of the Tome of Knowledge be bound to your account. That is not bound only to your character but to all your characters?

ANSWER:  Currently the Tome information is bound specifically to each character, though we have talked about certain things being unlocked at the account level.  We will see what the future brings.


Is that it?  Don’t you guys have more for me?!?  How many chances are you going to get to have direct access to “the source of all answers”™?  Use it while you can and I will talk to you all again tomorrow.

-Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer

(Editor's Note: If you enjoyed this blog, make sure you check out all of Jeff Hickman's PAX blogs by clicking here!)

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