Josh Drescher was recently interviewed by Orlock and Wrenn on Warhammer Geek’s Podcast of Reckoning episode #4! If you haven’t tuned in yet, you absolutely MUST because the amount of sweet info he delivered is siiiiiick!  I bolded my personal top 10 favorites!
The second part of this podcast’s 1-2 punch of aweseomeness is Beibhinn’s community interview. Her smooth-as-Guinness Irish accent will have the gents stampeding over to the VN boards before they even know what sort of mind-scorcery overtook them!
Here’s a breakdown of what Josh had to offer us ravenous fans:
- Guild beta will continue the tradition of focus tests
- It will help beta because off the enhanced cooperation that will be present compared to the previous individual beta phases
- It will be critical to high end RvR testing (keeps, city siege, etc.)
- They are accepting guilds of all stripes and sizes
- Looking for established guilds, power and non-power guilds
- They want guilds that are definitively enthusiastic and excited to test
- Beta is not a free trial or head start, it is an active development tool that serves an extremely important role pre-release
- EA Mythic takes beta very seriously and its testers are an integral part of the team
- WAR beta testers are the top tier, most enthusiastic, most interested, most organized players that are dedicated to the MMO genre
- WAR beta testers are not indicative of the wider audience they expect will play their game at launch
- They assume the kinds of people that were interested enough to get organized and go through the steps of applying for guild beta will be these kinds of testers
- There will be a balance that prevents larger guilds from outlevelling smaller guilds based solely on size
- They embrace the idea that the guild system will not be one thing for all players
- They want to give players the tools that allow it to be your guild, your way
- Because WAR will have so much to offer in PvE and PvP, guilds of all flavours will really be able to find the experiences they’re looking for
- A very small guild (6-12 players) will be able to stick together in everything in the game because the content scales to such a small size (group, scenario, etc.)
- On the flip side, very large guilds (300) won’t be able to bring everyone along to do every task in the game
- However, an example of where you could would be keeps siege/defense because a group of players at that size would be very advantageous
- There will be ways to manage larger guilds into smaller sub groups (kind of like 10-man raiding groups in WoW I guess?)
- The average expected size at launch is about 50 members, where they feel the guild system won’t become difficult to manage - but they do have tools in place for the larger guilds as well
- Josh personally thinks the ideal guild size is 30-50 players
- Guilds that have certain playtime windows (e.g., 6-10pm) will be at a disadvantage because they may not be around to defend their keeps but there are systems in place (e.g., significant NPC defense) that won’t make taking “undefended” keeps a cakewalk
- However, guilds with more presence will always have an advantage
- Players familiar with DAOC will find correlation between the way guilds should conduct themselves in WAR (the DAOC system was a paradigm shift)
- The Camelot Herald (DAOC) realm status updates were created because people who were out of the game were interested to find out how things were faring in game - we can expect to see this for WAR
- Taking your time to explore and participate in a wider variety of experiences throughout the chapters and tiers will give you a more expansive toolbox (greater utility, crafting, renown, gear, knowledge, etc.) to work with compared to single-minded powerlevellers
- If your sole goal is RvR (completely ignore PvE) - You’ll have a lot of renown and renown-specific rewards but you may not be as well-suited for PvE at the end-game (city siege) because you lack (for example) PvE-focused tactics that primarily come from ToK unlocks.
- This doesn’t mean the character with more tools will always win in an RvR duel, but he’ll have more options
- It’s not all about killing Hickman in RvR… it’s mainly about killing Hickman! Josh will have to roll Destruction because Hickman is 100% committed to the Witch Hunter.
- Josh loves the Black Orc because one of his abilities, in defense of his protected counterpart, is to whack him in the face, knocking him 20 feet back out of harms way (or into it)!
- When developing their wishlist for guild tools, they asked some hardcore, internal EA Mythic guild leaders which tools and features they felt were missing in the industry
- One tool: Automatic guild news feed aggregator (members joining, leaving, keeps captured, lost, etc.) - This is a quick way to catch up on what’s been happening in your guild when you log in
- Another tool: Calendar - This will internally help to plan and communicate major upcoming events - and you can set auto-reminders for all members
- Some features will be present right away, core tools will be achieved earlier on in Guild Level, and other cool features must be earned at the higher levels
- Message for people who don’t want to be tied down to a guild (Josh is one of these kinds of players): They want to make the transition from anti-social to social play as painless as possible. PQs are intended to trick people like Josh into interacting with other people. Once they eliminate the barriers to social interaction, you’re left with only the positives. Compare it to a home team sporting event in a stadium - even if you don’t know the people around you, you’re all sharing the same goals and interests. It worked for Josh… it can work for you!
- None of the guilds in beta know this, but the devs have joined quite a number of them anonymously!
- This is a great way to get true and honest feedback - lots of beta feedback have been blunt criticisms which is good for EA Mythic to hear
- Without fail, everything significant that beta testers have brought up, has actually needed changing and made the game better
- At this point, Josh is picking destruction because they stand out, are distinct, evocative, flavourful, unique, and interesting and he thinks many more people will be attracted to it as opposed MMOs that are traditionally made up entirely of knights in shining armour
- Jeff HIckman actually went back in time to the 80’s and posed for the Witch Hunter TT model - take that Chrono Chaos!
- For every single class in the game, they have a unique and awesome standout feature or mechanic that makes you really have to think hard about what you want to play - you’re never playing the same thing twice by making an alt
- “When people first see a lion go out, grab an enemy by the throat and drag him back to be stabbed in the head… people will like the White Lion.”
- Is it feasilbe to have a race-restricted guild? Absolutely.
- Will there be drawbacks?
- People need to step back from the idea that there is only one way to go out an play a game. If you look at a game basically as a spreadsheet full of numbers and ask what combination of numbers will generate the best result, you have basically stripped all of the joy and affection out of a game. You’ve now said “There is only one way to play the game.”
- There’s something to be said for playing the game in different ways that mean different things to different people. Like RP-servers.
- A dwarven guild isn’t necessarily going to be the most numerically efficient way of churning through the game content, leaving a rapidly expanding wake of devestation behind you, but running around with a bunch of your drunk dwarven friends, having fun - that’s value you can’t get from min-maxing.
- Josh’s wedding will be May of next year - the date was in place to make sure the game was ready to go, out the door, and problem free - talk about dedication!
- The Hickman will be at the wedding to “bounce suckas” who decide to rudely crash it! He can actually break boards with his kicks. Lookout Chuck Norris!
- MAKE SURE YOU LISTEN FOR YOURSELF!
* Top 50 Tidbit lists are not a trademark of the Waaagh! Blog but I must thank Syp’s Baltimore Gamesday Top 50 Tidbits for inspiring this format! |
