Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Q&A, Part Two

WarCry has kicked up the second installment to their Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Q&A with senior producer Jeff Hickman and design manager Paul Barnett.
Paul: Tome of Knowledge unlocks!

"The Hickman": Ya, Tome of Knowledge unlocks is another thing that, going out and RvRing especially in the open world gives you the possibility of getting lots of Tome of Knowledge unlocks. So the Tome of Knowledge is something that I think a lot of people gloss over. It's an area that we haven't exposed fully in our game yet. So the Tome of Knowledge is a system of collection and scrapbooking, and this is your life. It's truly a way of achieving other things in the game. So the Tome of Knowledge can actually unlock new Abilities, and new Tactics, and new Morale abilities for you. So as you are going through and exploring the world doing stuff, you are actually pushing your character. So it's not, "Hey you found a new "blah"", its, "Hey, you found all of the "blahs" in the entire Dwarven realm, here is a new Tactic for you." The Explorer Tactic, it makes you move 5% faster. So that's character based advancement from RvR. Other types of rewards for going out and playing in RvR, specifically in open world RvR. There are a bunch of different ways you can earn victory points in RvR within a given zone to help capture the zone. This is a big deal. You can earn them through quests, you can earn them through Public Quests, you can earn them in scenarios, you can earn them killing any enemy player. And a BIG way of earning victory points is by going out and capturing objective points, which are only in open world RvR. Scenarios are different things, that generate victory points in a different way. By going out and simply taking control of any given objective, my victory point meter will jump 5 to 10% BAM, right away! There is literally a meter on your screen that you can watch your sides victory points. So it's a very binary way of going out and saying, "you know what, we are 15% away from earning control of this zone, all we need to do is go capture those 4 objectives." You cannot capture a zone by just doing scenarios. You just can't do it. You have to participate in all areas of the game in order to earn victory in the game.

I like the whole "Tome of Knowledge" concept. I think something similar should be incorporated into single player RPGs, too.