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WAR Interviews in MOG #15 - Sneak Peek
Sep 30 2008 3:41PM


-By Rebecca Bundy

Issue 15 of MOG (you should be able to find it on the newsstands starting the week of September 29th) will feature four incredible interviews with some of the crew that worked on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The downfall of print is that longer interviews won't fit onto the pages in their entirety. And with about five hours worth of interviews, something obviously had to get cut. Below is an exclusive look at a few of the questions that, sadly, didn't make it to the final version. If you want to see what did make it, make sure to pick up a copy of MOG issue 15 (with the Warhammer cover) and score a great Warhammer in-game item within!



Q&A - Mark Jacobs

Rebecca: How have you been enjoying the beta?

Mark: Ah, it's been filled with thrills and chills. It's like a rollercoaster ride. Some days you're at the top and you think that things couldn't be going better because you've got this great view. And the next thing you know, you're screaming out of sheer terror. Now, I happen to love rollercoasters, but that's truly what a beta is like. When you put out something that you've been working on for a while, it's really great. Sometimes players come back and go, "This rocks!" When we announced the combat responsiveness code, which we were saving for the last minute, we were hoping it would have a big impact, and that's what happened. 99.9% of the people who commented on it loved it. This was our response to years of comments about how the combat felt sluggish.

But that's the catch with rollercoasters. When we put up a patch saying, "This will help reduce crashes…"

Rebecca: It crashes more.

Mark: Exactly; that's the bottom of your rollercoaster. And that's beta, in a microcosm. In both cases, the same people worked on it, but that doesn't guarantee the same results.



Q&A - Carrie Gouskos

Rebecca: Will any of the achievements be limited by side, or will anyone literally be able to complete every achievement in the game?

Carrie: Quite a few of them will be limited by side. For starters, there are a few achievements in safe areas for lower level players. We did not want to encourage people from the opposite realm to go into the first realm to complete these. So there are definitely ones that are limited by side. There are also some monsters that one side fights but not the other, as well as the player unlocks that involve killing, say, a certain number of Bright Wizards, that will only be achievable by Destruction.

The tome isn't wholly reproducible though. The bulk of the achievements happen while you're exploring through the lands, so if you stick to playing in only your own land, you'll end up with six completely different tomes if you play one of each of the six races. But a good portion of them are shared between the races.



Q&A - Adam Gershowitz

Rebecca: Which classes do you think will require the most skill from the player initially?

Adam: I'd say the hardest classes initially to learn will be the tank careers because our tanks are a little different from the tanks in other MMOs. They are much more defensive and are built more around group play than solo play, so that's going to make them a little harder to figure out. The premise is pretty easy… you find something and bash it over the head with a stick! But when you start playing as a group, it's going to take a little while for people to find their place and learn their role in a group.

After that, I'd say the White Lion is a challenge to play. Overall though, all of the careers are approachable. When it comes down to it though, the more group-dependent careers like the tanks and the healers are going to be a little more difficult initially.

Rebecca: And what about mastering?

Adam: I would say that the hardest careers, the ones I have a hard time mastering, are the Magus and the Engineer, mainly because they're all about setting up an area and luring people into them, which is not the easiest thing to do. Following from there, I think the Chosen can be pretty complex, because you're doing multiple things at once, the Shadow Warrior and, believe it or not, the Bright Wizard and Sorceress, because to master their play takes a lot of thought on the player's side. It's very easy to do lots of damage and then blow your own head off, but it takes a really skilled player to kind of duck in and out of there, keep their damage really high, and avoid attention while keeping the damage they do to themselves minimal.



Q&A - Jeff Skalski

Rebecca: How long will the sub-boss PQs (within the cities) stay open once they're unlocked?

Jeff: We're still tweaking that number, but right now it's actually two hours from when the attackers capture a city.

Now to unlock the king of the city, only ONE instance needs to defeat both sub-bosses.

Rebecca: So it only takes one group to unlock the king for every group?

Jeff: Yup. One group in one instance must complete both PQs to unlock the king, so if you're in one instance and I'm in another, and you defeat one sub-boss and I defeat the other, it won't unlock the king. In addition, even if the king is unlocked, the sub-boss PQs will stay open so people can still attempt to defeat them if they want to. But once the king is unlocked and new city instances open up, these instances won't have the city PQs and sub-bosses. We don't want people to exploit and farm out the armor set that drops from those two sub-bosses.

Rebecca: Is there any concern that it might be tough for a group to spend four hours straight to complete everything (the estimated time it'll take to complete all main parts of the city siege), considering a lot of people can't dedicate that type of time to the game (due to jobs, etc.)?

Jeff: Yup, we've taken that into consideration as well. Once the king is unlocked, the king is unlocked for a set amount of time as well, but it's a lot longer. Right now it's a full day, so anyone who misses the initial push into the city can log in the next night and have a crack at the king, and as well they can still do the city quests. So the only things players could possibly miss would be the sub-boss PQs, because those will only be active in those instances that are opened up before the king is unlocked. After that, no more city-wide sub-boss PQs will open.