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

Ten Ton Hammer: In a few of the reviews of Warhammer Online, you've been criticized for the crafting system that's in place in the game. And I'll even say that it does seem a bit over-the-top to "watch grass grow." Are you planning on doing any sort of work on the crafting system in the near future? Maybe make it a bit less complicated and more intuitive?

The crafting system in WAR is designed to allow players the freedom to do other activities besides just crafting.

Mark: First of all, anything different is usually met with criticism by some people. If you go to the reviews, you'll see some people saying that it's innovative and it's great. Others say "Oh my god! Why'd they do it this way? Why not do it like every other game?"

We didn't want to do it that way! Yes, we could have done the recipe system. Yes, we could have done what Camelot did. But it's been done before. It's so funny; while we were developing Warhammer, people would say "Oh please, don't make it like WoW! Make it different!" And when we put in something that is really different than WoW, people go "Wait a second, why didn't they just make it like WoW?"

That's the first thing. Second thing, it's your choice. That's the beauty of it. You don't have to just sit there. In the video - in the podcast and interviews I've given - I said look, we didn't want a system like we had in Camelot. We don't want people to sit there doing crafting, crafting, crafting and not enjoy anything else. With cultivating, all you have to do is plant a seed and go. Go do something else, if you want. Or, if you're someone that really enjoys doing that and adding the things, you can do that as well.

It's really up to you, whether you want to take advantage of a system that can be used to while away some time, or that you can can enjoy in the background while you go do other things. As a crafter in Warhammer, you can go do other things at the same time. If you're a crafter in most other games, you can't. You just have to sit there and go "Ok, here's my 500th arrow. Wow. That was exciting."

Is our crafting system the most magnificent achievement ever in the history of MMOs? Of course not. But it's not just the same crafting system that you've seen in MMO after MMO after MMO. We hoped that you'd then take that idea and use it as a foundation for the whole crafting system and expand it even more with other crafting careers as well as making a lot of the tweaks that we need to do to the system so it's not too complicated and continues to be easy and see where it takes us.

Mark Jacobs is certain that WAR could not have released without crafting.

Ten Ton Hammer: Since WAR is so action-packed, do you think you could've released the game without a crafting system?

Mark: "Oh my god, they don't have a crafting system?! What were you doing with those three years?!"

That's what the reaction would have been. Again, you go back to what we've been doing over the last three years and talking to the players. They didn't want the game to be "Crafthammer". This game should be about war. We don't want what's in these other games. We want it to be different. So we tried to make it that way. I guarantee you that if we didn't have a crafting system, almost every reviewer would have marked us down.

We actually went through all the reviews, and there are a few of them that ask the question - "Is this all there is to the crafting system?" You've gotta figure that if they're asking whether that's all there is, you need to release with something or there'd be even more criticism.   

From what we've seen so far, people are loving it. Not everyone, of course, but not everyone loves everything in any MMO. If you look at the MMOs that have come out, the vast majority of them - frankly I can't think of a single one - where everyone loved the crafting system. If you go back to the old school MMOs, where crafting was so complicated and complex and involved so many things - you can go back to EQ, Camelot, and even Vanguard - I guarantee you that not everyone that played those games crafted.

The vast majority of the people that played those games didn't craft because they were so time consuming. WoW changed the paradigm on that. It's one of the things that they did very well for some people. But they made it very easy. I call it "popcorn crafting." We wanted to do something that was a little more than that but certainly not crazy like some of the older games.

Ten Ton Hammer: As you said in your "State of the Game" letter, it seems like RvR itemization needs a bit of tweaking. How will the new RvR influence system work?

Mark: No details yet.

Ten Ton Hammer: You're killing me, Mark. *laughs*

Mark: I know... If I was ready to talk about it, I would've written more about it in the State of the Game. It's something that we're definitely working on and we really want to get it right. I know for sure that it's not going to be designed to encourage people to play scenarios.

Our game is about RvR and Open RvR is supposed to be a significant piece of that. We already have a good group of people that love the scenarios and have a great time leveling up, but there are people that want open RvR. In some of the notes, I've said that we need to do more to encourage people to get out into Open RvR, so if we made a system that simply allowed people to go into more scenario based RvR that wouldn't be achieving our goals.

RvR itemization will be seeing some changes in the coming months.

Ten Ton Hammer: Along those lines, will we still need to go to Keeps to get our RvR gear and training? What about those folks that are on a server where their faction never actually captures a Keep?

Mark: Players are always going to look for the quickest way to level. That's true for any MMO. Any developer that doesn't see that hasn't been paying enough attention. Right now, the fastest way to level is through scenarios. I don't want to nerf scenarios; I'd much rather improve Open RvR. Now some people will think we're nerfing scenarios simply because we're adding more to Open RvR, but that's just how it's going to be.

People are having a great time in scenarios, but we're also trying to get people into Open RvR. Even if some of the population from scenarios goes into Open RvR, there will still be a large amount of the population running through scenarios. Those people may not want to go into Open RvR. I'm not the least bit concerned about that. We just need to keep upping the rewards for Open RvR until people decide that is absolutely worth it.

Part of the problem is that we have some many people coming from WoW and they're not used to Open RvR. The Dark Age of Camelot guys, they know what Open RvR is, but the WoW guys don't, because they're not used to that.

Make sure you check with Ten Ton Hammer tomorrow for Part Two of the Mark Jacobs interview!