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

Ten Ton Hammer: Tell us a little about the patch overall. What else besides the classes is coming with this patch?

This Choppa definitely wants a piece of you.

Jeff Hickman: Right now the biggest thing we are seeing at work is our Zone Domination system. This is that supplemental system that gives you an alternative way to capture a zone. I think the thing that is important, and a message that I would love to get out to the players is that it is a supplemental system. It is there to help if you cannot achieve zone control through the normal mechanisms. So sometimes it is not the right way to go. Zone Domination is not always the right way to go. Zone Control through victory points is actually the preferred method and is actually faster. The Zone Domination way purposefully takes two hours in a perfect world, where capturing a zone through victory points, you can do that in an hour sometimes.

We want to give the players choices and different ways to achieve the goals they are trying to achieve. The Zone Domination system, well, I was in a great fight last night where we capped a zone, got to the fortress, all through Zone Domination, and we actually ended up beating the fortress lord and capturing the campaign. That piece is so important in giving the players choice in the important things that they do. If you look at the patch notes that we just put out, there are probably thirty to forty pages of bug fixes and class balance fixes and it really shows our dedication to continuing to improve the game. Beyond that, leading up to the next patch, the Tomb Kings patch, we have another really cool event called Beyond the Sands and then that leads into the Tomb Kings Land of the Dead dungeon. Man, I got a walk through of it yesterday, it is unbelievable! I cannot wait to play it. The players are going to dig it!

Ten Ton Hammer:  With RvR being such a great part of Warhammer Online, have you seen a drop off in players willing to take part in PvE?

Jeff Hickman: I can answer that easily. We pull metrics every single day, they come across my desk every morning at 9 am. They show where players are PvEing, where players are PvPing, what are they doing, what is the mix, what are the rewards and all that stuff. We definitely see a trend, but not in the way you asked the question. It’s not PvP players who are looking at the PvE game and going I don’t have to do that anymore and go and PvP instead, it is actually a more continuous choice.

There are three types of players, there are some players who simply will not PvP, they just won’t, so we give them an opportunity through our high level dungeons to play in our game, in an end game situation without having to PvP.

Then there is the player on the completely opposite side who won’t PvE, they will only PvP and we give that person a more in depth experience, actually because that is what our game is about. It really is about PvP. They have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of great things in PvP.

Then there is probably the majority of our players that lie in between those too. Tonight I am going to go RvR, tomorrow night I am going to go PvE. That is actually me. I am a massive RvR player, but one or two nights a week I go do a city dungeon or run Lost Vale. So when we talk about RvR people often misunderstand the reason we call RvR what it is and set it aside from PvP. It’s not just realm vs. realm two sides, three sides, it is the integration of PvP and PvE into an all encompassing game. The Tomb Kings dungeon is actually the culmination of that. This is a dungeon that is part PvE, part RvR and has everything. Whoever you are you can go and enjoy this dungeon. I don’t think we see a falling off, I think we see a wide spread and a lot of differences each night. It all comes down to who you are and what you like to play.