Just as a prenote to folk: I apologize for the delay, the whole having to fly back took awhile and kept me from doing much.. But here you go. As for the people involved in the interview, I give a HUGE thank you to Jeff Hickman and Paul Barnett. I was able to steal them after their presentation when they were already behind schedule. So if eaither of you stop by War-RvR, heres yet another personal thank you - and hopefully some thank you's from forum members.
Look forward to seeing you guys elsewhere!
GamesDay Baltimore Interview:
First of all huge thanks to you guys because I know you two are definitly busy today! But, to get on with the questions quickly, will it be possible to make guild alliances similar to what we saw in Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC)?
Jeff: Still under discussion
Guild halls have been discussed in the past, any updates on these?
Paul: They are great, and they are in the podcast, and marketing will kill you. *laughs*
Jeff: Yeah, theres alot of stuff with guilds we can talk about right now. Guilds are a hell of alot more to us then just a chat channel, and a place to have a list of names of people who you talk to... Guilds are living entities, they grow, they give back to the players that are in them if they do the right things... Sorry for being vague but were just keeping that "hush hush" right now.
Paul: Its pretty cool!
On the character screen we've seen a slot for a banner, are these guild related? Can you provide any examples of how they work in-game?
Jeff: It is guild related, if you go and look at the way Dark Age of Camelot banners worked - its an evolution of DAoC banners, so these are banners you can pull out in the battlefield to give enhancements to your guild and realm potentially. You can plant them on the ground, or you can carry them into combat with you.
Paul: Evolutionary is basically the mantra of what were doing. Mark had a vision for DAoC, delivered on that, and then he designed this as an evolution.
Okay, what do you feel is key to a competitive PvP environment inside of Warhammer?
Jeff: Realm pride. We will make you care!
Will it be possible to claim entire areas just by doing scenarios?
Paul: No.
Jeff: Never!
Paul: I knew that one!
Since it is often harder to find opponents in open World PvP than in PvP instances, is there anything in the game that will encourage and push people towards doing it also?
Jeff: There are objectives in the open world areas; objectives being a "thing"-
Paul: Windmills you burn down!
Jeff: Yeah whether a windmill you burn down or whatever, its one "thing" (objectives are what we call them) that draw you into the open world RvR areas that upon capturing them give you a big chunk of victory in that zone immediatly, where most victory comes very slowly as your killing people, capture an objective and you see a *boom sound* big hit!
Paul: Very big *makes several boom sounds*
We've heard bonuses for capturing objectives, is that for the entire zone, or entire realm?
Jeff: Entire zone for that realm.
What kind of bonuses should we expect to see?
Jeff: Most of the objective bonuses are exp or renown bonuses.
What is preventing the "trading" of capital cities and other RvR targets? For example: If the best rewards come from sacking the cities, players might forego defending their cities, and simply attack somewhere else. Will there be incentives reward those that choose to defend?
Jeff: You mean "I dont want to defend my own capital"?
Paul: *Laughs loudly*
Jeff: Thats not going to happen.
Paul: Better not.
Jeff: Definitly not. You dont want to lose your own capital city, you get hurt when you lose your capital city. Its bad.
Paul: Your life will suck!
Will the difficulty of public quests scale depending on the number of players physically in that zone or will it be a flat value?
Jeff: No, its a flat value. Thats kind of a tricky question, because public quests are kind of multi-staged, each stage has a different difficulity. So the first stage is built for "solo-players", not that solo players can nescessarily do the first stage alone because they are BIG, but they can go in there and participate solo; do things solo inside of it.
Yeah.. I tried them in the beta clients at the two gamesdays.. And they are really hard to do by yourself!
Jeff: Exactly. You do not need to do them solo, they are not meant to be done solo - you can do them solo, you can participate in them solo... But they are made to be: "First phase, go through alone, second phase: go through with a group, third phase or fourth phase: go through with multi-groups".
Will high level characters be able to help on the end stages?
Jeff: Were in discussion on that right now, yes, you will be able to help - but there are things we need to do to prevent griefing type behaviors, but absolutly, you will be able to help. Its all about fun, we dont want to block people from having fun with their friends.
Alot of the public quests are based around kill counts, anything to balance out the lower damage classes vs higher damage classes with that? Like a Black Orc and a Squig-hunter doing the same quests?
Jeff: Yes there is, thats the thing with contribution - its kind of behind the scenes. The biggest rewards from doing public quests are on the stage quests, you get bigger rewards for doing everything in it - but with the stage steps you get big bonuses for xp and influence in that area... And by completing the public quest totally you get big rewards, and dependant on how much you've get different kind of bonuses for the contribution you've put in.
Paul: Example is in this one public quest where you have to light these torches; you have to light six torches, and you got people attacking you all the time. You get contribution for killing the things that are attacking you, not just lighting the torches. If your a fast guy who doesnt take much damage, and just go around lighting the torches. You get contribution, and the guys fighting off the Orcs and Goblins also get contribution. You want to get contribution by sticking around.
We have seen players swim across the surface of water, can you dive at all?
Jeff: No.
Paul: No. Its crap. No-one wants to do it. Concepts like fighting Orcs with "aqua-lungs" quickly lose their appeal. No-one wants to fight underwater, its dull. *mimics swimming fight motions, very slowly*. Then people go "Why do we go slower~, why do we have trails~, why dont we have bubbles~".
Jeff: Its all about fun, and while some people would argue you can have fun underwater... Its not worth it.
Paul: It could be if you built an entire underwater game I suppose. But the trouble is as soon as you let people go underwater, they want to do stuff underwater. Can I open chests underwater? Can I go on quests underwater? Can I find treasure underwater?
Are there any plans for time-of-day dependent content?
Jeff: Yes.
Paul: Absolutly.
Will there be any type of Auction House in the game? How will they function?
Jeff: Yes. Auction house is not quite the way to put it.. But there will be something like that.
Paul: Mark has very definite views on that.
Will there be 'Neutral' cities?
Paul: No
Will there be capture any cities outside the six capitals?
Paul: No.
Jeff: Six isnt enough?
Paul: Yeah! How many do you want?!
We have seen concept art and models for a dwarf train, chaos teleport and gyrocopters will these feature as a means of player fast transport?
Jeff: ..Maybe.
Paul: Yeah. Well. What do you think? We bothered to sketch it! Who knows! Join the dots. I would tell you, but marketing will kill you.
Will there be some kind of PvP rankings on the servers? Will this information be available via the tome or will we have to head to Warherald site?
Jeff: Internal and external to the game.
Will players be able to inspect other players Tomes?
Jeff: Maybe. There will be certain things in the tome of knowledge you can share, and there will also be guild tomes you can share with your guild.
Last question for you since you have to go, but will players be able to have a first and last name?
Jeff: Absolutly!
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