Warhammer completely replaced DAoC at this E3. While an expansion for this other game is planned for the end of this year, Mythic decided to not present it and instead focus their efforts to hype Warhammer.

One of the comments to the preview of “The Escapist” tells a lot about Mythic’s general approach and stategy:

it’s surprising to me that you’d expect anything “revolutionary” or “innovative” from MJacobs and co. I believe Mythic to be the most professional and among the most talented outfits out there but if you now anything about Mark you understand that Mythic is a business first and foremost and the corporate mantra is “follow the leader”

you’re looking at the wrong company to take gambles or innovate. Mark’s proudly modelled his games after whichever game is leading the genre at the time. for DAOC he loudly “borrowed” from UO (then EQ). Imperator was a developed (then dropped) modelled on the SWG (which was SOE’s flagship until it sunk). With 6 million subscibers, obviously WAR follows WOW.

Mark’s clearly stated his preference over the years to follow “established leaders” and to only base games on widely recognized realms and franchises (such as Arthurian legend, Classical Rome and now Warhammer). Mark is a great businessman and his companies make fun, solid games but you ARE expecting too much if you expect them to take risks and break the mold. In fact you’re looking at the wrong bunch of folks entirely

I think this also helps to frame Warhammer and the realistic expectations about this game. Mythic has always tried to occupy a market space by reacting to other mainstream mmorpgs and then refining and specializing one one part that is usually neglected, like the PvP.

As a company they are non belligerent and aim more to preserve their space more than imposing themselves, but with a more competitive market their efforts weren’t anymore enough. While WoW doesn’t offer a good PvP system, the game still stepped on Mythic’s plate and this, as expected, caused a reaction.

The Warhammer licence was for them a perfect occasion to leave the weight of DAoC behind and reach out for WoW, another game that created demand and interest for PvP. It’s also probable that if the fantasy Warhammer will work then they’ll move to the 40k version as an ideal way to revive Imperator.

This is still a defensive move. With Warhammer they are trying to reach again the space that DAoC lost with the time and lack of initiative. It’s a nudge to WoW, with a so similar setting and a focus on the PvP. Even here Mythic expects to leech enough players to keep the game successful while not disturbing too much the daddy.

The first relevant news from the E3 is the possibility for the game to be released both on the PC and XBOX360. There haven’t been official announces but Gamespot wrote that Mythic managed to port it and demonstrate it. This is probably just an experiment. Launching the game for the console is an easy way to expand the user base significantly. Along with their plans to support voice chat this could be a big occasion for them.

As for DAoC, Warhammer’s client is built on non-proprietary middleware (Gamebryo, like Civ4 and Oblivion) and this middleware should be already portable. So I think they decided to make an experiment to see if it could have been a viable option and considering the results it seems that it was.

Through various previews is now easier to figure out the overall structure of the game even if some parts are still quite unclear. The game will have 40 levels and branching classes. Every 10 levels your character will be able to further specialize and there will be four different careers/classes for each race.

There will be six different races at release. Greenskin (orcs + goblins), Dark Elf, Chaos, Dwarf, High Elf and Empire.

So a total of 24 classes (with further specialization paths) probably reduced to 12 “unique” if you consider that they’ll need to mirror them between the two factions if they don’t want to have huge balance issues.

At the base of the PvP system there are two opposite factions. Order and Destruction, each clumping together its three races Vs the other three races. While the single zones should be broken up between three different “fronts”: (Greenskin Vs Dwarf) (Dark Elf Vs High Elf) and (Chaos Vs Empire). We’ll see if this will lead to population imbalance problems. For now Mythic hasn’t revealed any plan to address this problem, even if it’s a fundamental one for this kind of games.

The PvP model they are going to follow is much better then the one proposed in DAoC. This is probably the best choice they made with this title. Instead of separating PvE and PvP like two independent games crippling each other, this time they are trying for a more coesive approach where PvE flows into PvP naturally. Molding together.

The newbie starting zones (three in total, one for each “front”) have already PvP-enabled parts, as I already explained. While I hope the zone design is flexible, the zone general scheme has two opposite entry points, one for each faction. The player can then start questing and killing PvE creatures in this “safe zone” as in every other mmorpg but then the quests will also lead toward a central, contested zone where the PvP will be enabled. This transition should be smooth, so you won’t need to “zone in”. It should be more like walking through an invisible line with a voice announcing that you are entering a zone of conflict.

They are planning for 33 zones. So 11 for each “front”. The players can freely move to other fronts and help allies. For example a dwarf character could decide to play in its default zone and fight against goblins and orcs or move to the Empire zone and fight against Chaos. The biggest problem Mythic may encounter here is again about the population imbalance.

Since they decided to go with a system based on levels, they’ll need to lock players out of the zone when past the appropriate level range, or one high level character could go sit on a noob zone and disrupt the game for everyone else. This will effectively segment the game world since as your character grows you won’t be able to go back to the zones you have already visited (if they don’t add a “level downgrade” like EQ2’s mentoring system). Here the game mechanics are extremely important because if they divide the zones accessibility in four (as the four tiers of ten ranks, for a total of forty levels) the PvP could become just a matter of who’s closer to the zone level cap. It’s important here that each new rank isn’t a huge leap over the other, but at the same time this would make the character advancement rather bland, so they’ll have to reach a compromise. Which is also why I believe that it would have been much better to go with an open skill system with a flat power growth.

Instead if they use shorter level ranges (like setting the zone caps every five levels) then the world would really feel too linear and encapsuled.

Actually I wonder if they have even considered the problem of zone level caps or if they just overlooked it completely.

This still leaves the eleven zones to be used and distributed. My hope is that they keep the early and mid game as focused as possible so that there will be PvP activity even months after the game is released. There’s always the problem of the desertifications of the newbie zones and it’s crucial for a PvP mmorpg to keep the starting zones always active and well populated. I also hope they achieve a better balance between the experience gained through PvP and PvE, in particular when it comes to the shared objectives that in DAoC are ridiculous.

If they can screw up one element is by imitating DAoC and reward elitist gank groups that systematically avoid any shared goal. If the “open PvP” doesn’t pivot around precise objectives instead of just consecutive player kills, the whole model will crumble. Thinking about this, beside the level ranks they still haven’t revealed any detail about the PvP “carrot”. What will make you continue to fight beside the hopefully fun gameplay? How you’ll keep improving your character after you reached the last rank? This is another problematic core concept of PvP games, along with the population imbalances, that Mythic hasn’t answered yet.

The same for the character growth. In WoW you can reach level 10 rather quickly, we don’t know yet how the progression will be in Warhammer and whether they decided to speed it up to focus on the endgame. As we know from the standard population trends they are going to waste a lot of content if they reserve too many zones for the mid levels. I wonder if they could develop a dynamic system that reserves and flags the level range for the zone on the fly, based on population requirements. While doable for PvP, the PvE portion would be much harder to adapt and it would also become a design limit, so I’m not sure how good this idea could be. Still, they need an answer to that problem or the mid game risks to become frustratingly desolated. And it’s also why I want to know more about how they are going to distribute the zones before I can figure out if it could work or not.

From the various press releases and previews there are more precise informations about the PvP “models” supported, even if my early guesses were already quite precise.
Officially there are four different modes: Skirmishes – Battlefields – Scenarios – Campaigns.

We can forget the first since it’s just Mythic’s fancy definition for a random PvP encounter, while the other three should be more “structured”. The confusion here is more about the interaction between battlefields and Scenarios. The risk is that Mythic is trying to overdo and that they’ll finish to support too much “PvP space” that will be directly mudflated by the players as it happened with DAoC. As for the general population trends, in the PvP the players need to converge (and spontaneously do so). So a bunch of zones and PvP modes supported aren’t an advantage, but quite the opposite. They cripple down the PvP activity.

The Battlefields should be a concept similar to my hotspot idea. The players concentrate around a “shared objective”, like fighting for the control of a resource, or a tower or whatever. Again, I hope that, contrarily to DAoC, the PvP objectives are worthwhile instead of openly ignored by the players. This is another significant design issue since if you reward for a goal then the players could learn to avoid each other to reach for the carrot (WoW), or, even worst, ignore the objectives and just gank each other if that’s a more rewarding path (DAoC). It’s also possible that the best path will be grinding PvE quests and in this last case the PvP will get completely ignored till the endgame (where you hit the level cap and so don’t get anymore exp). As you can imagine this is another MAJOR point that needs an answer. My “hotspot” idea addressed this, we’ll see what will be Mythic’s answer even if in this case they have NOT learnt from past experiences. This is still one major, unaddressed problem in DAoC. Changing the name of the game won’t be an effective response on its own.

As I said the relationship between battlefields and scenarios is still confused. The raw difference is that the battlefields are static zones, while the scenarios are instanced and balanced as in WoW, with the addition of NPCs (dogs of war). This idea leaves me rather doubtful. It’s already extremely hard to balance the game between the characters, I think it would be nearly impossible if you have to factor even these NPCs. Also considering that Mythic’s AI for the mobs hasn’t shined in these years. WoW had similar plans when it was still in development and they also decided to scrap it. We’ll see if Mythic will go further than that or not. I don’t think it’s a really good idea and the whole concept of WoW-inspired battlefields isn’t convincing. I don’t think it is going to fit well with the rest of the game and it’s an added layer that I find superfluous and complicated.

I also need to know more. It looks like the scenarios are just instanced battlefields. I wonder if these are separated zones (I mean with unique level design) or just mirrors. It’s not clear when a scenario will trigger. Even if the choice is left to the players there’s still the need to define different *roles* in the game for these two modes. For now all I know is that the “campaign” layer spawns from here. Winning scenarios or accomplishing PvP objectives will probably flag the zone as “captured”. As the players gain control over more and more zones, they could finally unlock enemy lands and pillage the capital cities, similarly to what happens in DAoC with the relic raids. Just with a more dramatic approach since it’s an invasion of PvE-flagged areas.

By the way, the capital cities aren’t in the noob zones, so it’s probable you arrive there after the first 10 levels. Mid to high level zones, I guess. In this case I wonder how they are built. They cannot put a capital in a contested zone or the “conquest” system wouldn’t make sense. At the same time they need to put some content around the capital or noone will use it. Even here Mythic hasn’t explained much.

I stop here my considerations. I have more to say but it will fit better a stand-alone post (later).

I haven’t commented here the classes in detail nor the quest systems. Both of these seem to have been the major focus of the previews but from my point of view they can only be examined and evaluated when the whole structure of the game is complete. Sparse examples of quests could be good for some hype but they really don’t tell anything about how those ideas will work and fit in the game. That all depends on the game balance and it’s something that cannot be abstractly designed, but that instead needs to go through extensive, practical testing. So it’s not something that it’s worth discussing without having played the game in the first place, nor I believe it’s something to be excited about.

Instead it’s interesting the idea of the “tome of knowledge”:

(source)
First on the list is the game’s new journal. Warhammer Online players will benefit from the incredibly useful Tome of Knowledge. It stores information on all of your quests, letting you see at a glance the area it takes place in, how far you’ve progressed towards each goal, the rewards for completing it and, wonder of wonders, the actual dialogue from the person who gave you the mission. The quest journal also activates the appropriate quests as you move from area to area.

The Tome of Knowledge also contains a comprehensive bestiary. As you encounter and fight monsters, their entry will grow more and more detailed, even to the point of offering advice on how to defeat them. You’ll also get a look at the concept art and see a tally of how many of that beastie you’ve killed.

I always had the idea to bring to a mmorpg the RPG-style Pokedex (Pokemon) where you can “collect” monsters, quests and all sort of statistics. It should be easy to implement and it would be a simple way to appeal both achiever (completists) and explorer types. It would be also a possibility to bring in the game all that kind of interesting material that is usually reserved for the third-party guides or that is just left unused. Zone guides, monster strategies, concept art. It could become an ongoing project that continues to be supported and that gathers all the game sources available.

To conclude, the various previews I’ve read still leave many doubts and don’t provide answers to some basic and general problems that always come with PvP games. The design of Warhammer hasn’t revealed anything particularly significative beside the attempt to bring together PvP and PvE.

This is a quick list of things that are still unclear or problematic and to which Mythic will have to provide an answer, sooner or later:

– Population and class imbalances
– Power growth between ranks
– Level-based lock (caps) for the zones
– Zones distribution
– PvP rewards
– PvP activity convergence
– PvP persistence (results)
– Empowering players and guilds in the PvP persistence
– Balance between PvE, gank groups and shared PvP objectives
– Role of capital cities
– Itemization
– PvE endgame (if any)
– Crafting (if any)

The success and viability of this game depend on the answers to those points.