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

By Cody "Micajah" Bye, Managing Editor

Like a solid kick in the pants, Mythic Entertainment's creative director Paul Barnett comes to all his interviews - even those on the phone - with more witty remarks and creative comments than most individuals can come up with in a month. The release of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning marked a significant drop in Paul's public appearances (except for his online videos that can be seen on YouTube) but after a bit of legwork Ten Ton Hammer's staff tracked Paul down and got him on the phone for a quick thirty minute interview.

After exchanging a few pleasantries and some stories about Halloween, candy versus sweets, and developers in non-costume, we dove into the pool of Paul Barnett hilarity and fired a number of questions his way.

Paul Barnett, Creative Director from Mythic Entertainment

To start, we had heard a number of rumors about Paul volunteering for an interesting task in the development of Warhammer Online, which revolved around setting a number of "gags" and "secret items" around the world for players to find.

"I was in charge of hiding all the crazy things around the world for people to find," Paul confirmed. "I can safely say that no one has come anywhere near finding even two percent of them. There are years and years of finding all the nonsensical gags that are hidden within the game!"

Of course, Paul had his own favorite gag, which apparently is easy to see yet has yet to truly be seen.

"My all time favorite is one that takes place in the early part of Tier 1 of the Greenskins," Paul said. "There isn't a single person that's come close to it. My view is that the gag is so obvious and so big that people just can't see it."

It seems like humor - at least in the recent batch of post-WoW games - has been sorely missed by gamers, and it's safe to say that Paul's sense of humor will certainly be visible in many, many aspects of the game. For those of you that have played through the Greenskin starting area, you'll certainly know what I'm blabbering about. A Dwarf bursting out of a barrel in nothing but his skid-marked stained tightey whiteys never gets old.

Although the laughs in Warhammer Online come early and often (like election day voters), there's more to an online game than giggles. With population balancing such a critical issue for Warhammer Online in these post-launch weeks, we thought we'd pose a question about the situation to Paul.

"Very clever people have been given more abacuses and told to look at things very closely," Paul explained. "Mythic has a horde of metrics and a rash of people that are very smart and have done this before, so after the initial surprise they are very good at pulling all the necessary levers to make the game work better."

On a similar vein, we asked Paul what a Creative Director is in charge now that the game has officially launched. Does he simply create more ideas and concepts to use in upcoming patches and/or expansions? Here's how Paul responded:

"Designers, concepters and world creators are - on the whole - pretty competent. They pretty much know how to make MMO stuff. They don't need me to go "I think we need a mail system!" They don't need me to go "I think we should have chat!"

"They do need me when they try to do something like throw in pop culture references to holidays. A group of people may say that we should mirror real life holidays in our game and give them silly names. Then I stand up and say that we don't want anything to do with that and why don't we just use one of the crazy festivals that exist in Warhammer anyway? Instead of creating a Warhammer word for Christmas, why don't we just have the Festival of the Pie?"

"I always try to think of a creative way to do it without making something like Sigmar Eggs for Easter."