Yesterday, Garrett Fuller attended a telephone press conference with EA Mythic about their upcoming MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

We have heard a lot out of the Warhammer camp lately, with the press event last month and a conference call this month the crew over at EA Mythic is doing their best to give potential players the information they want to hear. Last night on the press call, the guys gave away some great new bits of information for both the Empire and Chaos. The usual suspects of Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett, and Josh Drescher were on the phone to answer a ton of questions from the media. Let me start by saying that these guys have enthusiasm, and a lot of it.

Looking at the Empire first, in case you do not know the concept the guys summed things up quickly. It is the human race on the brink of destruction. With Chaos, Orcs, and Dark Elves closing in from all sides, the Empire reaches to extremes to survive. Magic, warriors, faith, and technology are all tested to the limit in order for the humans to survive. The Empire also mirrors a medieval Germanic setting with the look and feel of armor, weapons, and housing. Here is a quick breakdown of the classes: Knight of the Blazing Sun (tanker), Bright Wizard (Nuker), Warrior Priest (fighter, healer), and Witch Hunter (DPS, faith, light melee fighter).

You can read the whole article here.

Thank God for collision detection! So many pvp games lacked this, and i sure know when i played camelot @ the Alb wall in Emain, Collision detection could have played a good role in holding people off.  With this implemented guilds may just actually go ahead and use battle tactics such as formations, etc.

The idea of a non-loot driven game, and loot and coin dropping off of player kills is huge too. No more grinding predictable AI anymore, now we can just go out and grind each other. (woah that sounded gay)

-Drizz

Originally posted by Thedrizzle

Thank God for collision detection! So many pvp games lacked this, and i sure know when i played camelot @ the Alb wall in Emain, Collision detection could have played a good role in holding people off.  With this implemented guilds may just actually go ahead and use battle tactics such as formations, etc.

The idea of a non-loot driven game, and loot and coin dropping off of player kills is huge too. No more grinding predictable AI anymore, now we can just go out and grind each other. (woah that sounded gay)

-Drizz

I've played every big name on the list and some of the littler ones. I will draw upon my experience with WoW, DAoC, and SOE games when commenting on this article and game.

As simple as WoW is, the game is well polished in the way of minute details; think of the dressing rooms, being able to click on names in chat to send a /whisper and so on. We have seen companies trying to mimic WoW's success by adopting their model, but not quite getting it right. Make note that I do know that WoW took parts of previous games to make theirs. Anyways, if there is a game that can top WoW, whether or not that is WARs goal is irrelevent, it would be WAR.

WAR seems to be similar to WoW in art, some game play mechanics, and this is not a bad thing either. WAR seems to be taking what worked well in WOW and other games and incorporating it into a game that is built for PvP from the ground up. This gives the crowd that liked WoW, but wanted more PvP a game to call home.

I played DAoC for 4+ years and I can honestly say I feel confident in Mythics ability to create an awsome game. We all know that there are mixed feelings for Mythic; considering ToA and the different nerfs and introduction of super powered classes, but Mythic in my experience has learned to listen and communicate with its playerbase. It remains one of the best MMORPG companies out there. I can see EA-Mythic as being a good alternate to Blizzard for those looking for a quality game.

*Lifts mug of ale* So here's to WAR and the endless possibilities that it may offer us. *cheers*

I too am more and more intrigued every time I see something new about this game...

Warhammer universe is very old and very rich, if they can pull of they game mechanics as well as I think we all HOPE they will, this one might just live up to the hype

but, I guess we'll never know until Beta/release

Oh yeah, this game is from the company that effectively destroyed a great MMO named DAOC with the Trials of Atlantis (ToA) expansion that turned the game into a loot arms-race from hell.

I'm sure Mythic will do the same thing in Warhammer.  After ToA, i'll never buy anything from these clowns ever again.

Originally posted by SBE1

Oh yeah, this game is from the company that effectively destroyed a great MMO named DAOC with the Trials of Atlantis (ToA) expansion that turned the game into a loot arms-race from hell.

I'm sure Mythic will do the same thing in Warhammer.  After ToA, i'll never buy anything from these clowns ever again.

So you've ran a multi-million dollar mmo game developing company before?

I love these statements, they merely show the posters ignorance rather than any snippet of wisdom.  The MMO market is fairly new,(still) and companys make mistakes.  One cannot discount a company for a simple mistake, if this was the case none of the greatest companies in world history would have made past their infantile stage. 

The same people who make such half-assed comments about Sony repeatedly due to its follies with SWG are foolish as well.

Must.  Play. This. Game.

WAR certainly seems to be one of the games leading the new generation of MMORPGs.   It's great to see the genre finally evolving into something more than a niche market overlooked by the rest of the gaming industry.   2007 is going to be an exciting year for MMORPGs.

Originally posted by SBE1

Oh yeah, this game is from the company that effectively destroyed a great MMO named DAOC with the Trials of Atlantis (ToA) expansion that turned the game into a loot arms-race from hell.

I'm sure Mythic will do the same thing in Warhammer.  After ToA, i'll never buy anything from these clowns ever again.

I for one think that Mythic have indeed learnt every lesson going from their biggest MMO, DAoC.  Let's not forget that they had a massive task to try and balance 3 very seperate realms with quite different classes.  I defy any of the Mythic bashers to do any better.  Yes ToA broke the game for me as I was unable to devote the time necessary to farm and level the artifacts.  But as a previous poster said, Mythic actually listened to the customer base and while they were still trying to iron the kinks out of ToA they brought out the non ToA servers and brought a lot of us back.

They have taken on another huge project here and they have a wealth of IP with the GW material, so they have a huge responsibility not to mess things up.  I have faith that the 150 people working on this game are as rabid about it as I am and with a nut case like Paul barnett at the creative helm it will be great and loads of fun.

Fun, we remember fun, don't we?

Originally posted by silkensmooth
Mythic did a lot of stupid things, and they continue doing stupid things.

Toa.

New Frontiers.

Constantly overpowered expansion classes.

Battlegrounds that diluted the endgame playerbase.

On top of that they keep everything a big secret, and dont even bother to take a stance on things. Like telling the playerbase what their design intent is for each class in a definitive way.

If history is any indicator, this game will start out good, and mythic will run it into the ground.

They listen too much to the vocal minority, and dont seem to have a clear vision of where the game should go.

You cant balance a game based on player feedback the way mythic does, because the players aren't objective.

Lets also not forget that mythic doesnt  test anything, they make the players do it, on a server no one uses, and then they release things to live servers, and make you test them some more, and then they fix them after months or years of brokeness.

Still if this game does start out as good as daoc did, then it will be worth playing at least until they start mucking it up.

If I remember correctly Mythic outright said that TOA was a mistake. As for overpowered classes? Well guess what there is always an "overpowered" class because they can do something another class can't. Mythic learned all about the problems with gear based games that make people overpowered, they have made gear accessible through multiple sources to make RvR fair so I doubt you will see that mistake again. 

What has been a big secret about WAR until now? They aren't sure on decisions yet so they don't post information on it. They are constantly putting out new information on WAR classes, game progression, doing press events, etc.  They answer any questions they can when the idea is fleshed out and gets approval for release. No other game company that I have seen have put out as much information, videos, insights into what is going on with the game than EA Mythic.

DAoC was mythics own design, they now work with GW on the Warhammer IP so GW has to approve everything that goes into the game. So your not gonna see M1A1 Battle tanks get into the game because someone wants it. You might see numbers looked at because of player outcry but you wont see major things implemented. As for Player testing? Who hasn't used player testing? WoW Does, EQ2 does, SWG Does, etc. All the companies do it. Mythic was a smaller company so it wasn't like they could hire a bunch of QA testers. Guess what? Now they are with EA and guess what EA is? HUGE. They now have EA for internal testing and a budget for QA testing(EA probably already has QA testers that do multiple games). The main reason that they use player base for testing is because all people do different things in the game. You can never hire enough people to cover all your bases on play style. One person likes to run around to all areas to see the scenery, some like to try and get into places your not supposed it, some like to play the game straight and do the content.

Anyways that is just your opinion and this is mine. I believe that EA Mythic will do an awesome job at producing a PvP mmo. They have experiance with their own MMO's and now they also have seen what works and what doesn't with WoW, D&D, Vangaurd, etc. They have a good game plan so far and I have yet to see something that I hate. They are going for RvR and thats what they are basing everything around. I cannot see another company doing better than EA Mythic at the moment that is out there that will produce a PvP game. Everything that has been announced so far that we have seen has been spot on. They have yet to lie but we will see when it gets released. It could be another WoW which hyped PvP, siege weapons, player housing, and hero classes. WAR won't be the end all super MMO but it will definetly be good.

On another note. If they magus gets a disk for traveling and can cast spells from it does that mean that other classes can get mounts that they can cast from? Or from what I saw in another interview maybe that is just the magus's way of getting around and they get a special disk for mount speed? Mount combat would be fun though .

This game is making headway. I like the direction its going as usual.  For the naysayers that simply put down an entire project because of expansions of its other games, my response is simply : What game is perfect?

If I were establish credibility on these forums I would cite an example of a game that I think the subject would emulate after I criticize the subject post. For example:  I am never going to buy WAR because Mythic screwed up TOA. Unlike my favorite company SOE which has not messed anything up, expansions included.

Now, at least we know where you are coming from on what you perceive is a good company. You may be ignorant, but at least we know where you stand.

Bottom line is for these broad criticisms on companies, simply compare what companies are great in your eyes so we know where you are coming from.

As for my opinion, (I know you all been waiting for it), WAR is shaping up to be fantastic. A MMO that will not focus on grind for gear, public quests, PvP with purpose, and a theme of a game which is greater than the individual. It will be a blast.