Now for a few questions about bringing in gamers without a background in this style of game or MMORPG. How do you teach people the difference between RvR and PvP?

Jeff: I think there's a lot of ways you can teach as far as verbalizing to people. We can talk a lot about the goals behind RvR and the goals behind PvP. But I think that in order to really learn you have to get in and experience it - going "whoa, this really is different." You guys got a taste of PvP last night - getting in and killing each other with really no over-arcing purpose, because we're demoing for you guys. The reality of what's going on, though, is you have a race and a realm behind you, and everything you do when you RvR plays into helping them.

You get personal benefits also, but the real goal is to help your realm. So as you're going out and doing skirmishes and scenarios and battlefields, the benefits to your realm probably outweigh your personal benefits. So we always want to give you personal benefits to encourage people to go out. But there's always this feeling that "I need to defend this land, I need to defend my city, I need to bring this fight to the doorstop of my enemy" - you always have that feeling. And that's the part that's really hard to imagine for people who haven't played Camelot especially, because Camelot's the only one that's been able to do this. The relic system, the feeling of "that's mine, you're trying to take it from me... you can't."

That's the feeling that we're going to have in Warhammer. That feeling that I am loyal to my realm, I almost feel obligated when I see that area is under attack, that's my area, I need to go help my realmmates with that. While you and I in our realm might squabble over a PvE battle, when the call to war comes up, I guarantee you that we're going to both run out side by side and defend the realm. That's the difference. It's easy to verbalize it to you, but you really don't get it until you get out there and play.

Scenarios such as Mourkain Temple (left) and Gates of Ekrund (right)
are a big part of WAR's fully-integrated RvR concept.

Is the public quest a mechanism to teach people that you're in it together as a realm?

Jeff: All of that stuff together is what, you're hitting on it, is what is going to make the game feel like it needs to feel.

One thing that it probably needs to feel like is fairly dark. It's not at all kitchy or light like most MMORPGs. Do you want to attract that set of gamers that's in it for the warm fuzzies?

Jeff: Sure, we want everyone to come play! If you look at the different races, Warhammer is going to be dark and gritty, but some races capture that much more than others. If you look at Chaos, within the first three quests you gather body parts to fire out of a Hellcannon, that's dark! That's gritty. The next quest you go down in the village and slay the helpless villagers. That's what you're doing, and it's super dark. We have a good time with it, we laugh at it. The first public quest is a dark ritual summoning the power of a demon. We really push it over the edge with Chaos, and it's fan-freakin'-tastic.

But if you go back and look at the high elves, or even the humans or dwarves... a lot of the Order side are a little bit less dark, definitely less gritty. I think there's definitely going to be room for that kind of player. I know my wife, when I talk to her about what we're doing, she says "Ok, I'll play an elf."

When you're going through you're abilities list, you have more than one good choice for, say, a morale ability slot. In the demo we were playing, every class seemed to have a good mix of abilities Obviously this kind of situation where you consistently seem to have more than one good choice is one of the holy grails of gaming and games development...

Jeff: Absolutely. Because we do the classes in foursomes in the race, the classes play off each other, all of that stuff is planned out very carefully.

I kind of got the impression during yesterday's presentation that you want to do away with the three archetypes - the tank, the healer, the DPS / stealth - or at least do away with that mindset?

Jeff: I don't know if we're trying to do away with it. We developed everything for RvR. There's certain things that work really well in RvR, and some things that don't. We're trying to make sure that everyone has a place in the fight. Don't think that by choosing a tanker that you're not going to be shoe-horned into the Tanker fighting style. We do it on purpose. As a tanker you'll be fighting as a tanker, as a magic user you'll be fighting as a magic user. I don't want to call those roles secondary, because it's not. Things like the healer; you're a fighter - somehow you're going to be in combat, but you also need to heal. As a tanker, you're there to tank. We're not going to have buffing classes. You can buff, but it won't be like there's one guy who stands around and throws buffs at people. We want everyone to feel like they have a place in the fight.


Return to Page One...  

Many thanks to Jeff Hickman and the folks at EA Mythic for taking time to talk to us and putting on such a great event!

 

 


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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