Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Interview

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Written by BuckGB on March 25th, 2008

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TGG: You guys have over a half million beta applications so far. Is that number surprising to you?

James: Honestly, in this industry I wouldn't call anything surprising. We're still a young genre and in this post-World of Warcraft world we have to be ready for anything. But you better believe we were excited to see that number. It personally gave me an overwhelming sense of responsibility. There are a lot of people looking at our game who want to play it and immerse themselves in our world for good-long while. We're striving to deliver that experience to them.

The higher that ticker rises the more and more encouragement it gives to us. When someone asks me: (How awesome is your game?) I just want to be able to reply (So awesome!) I think we're getting there, haha.

TGG: What's the biggest challenge you have as a community leader at EAMythic regarding the community's expectations?

James: WAR has a lot of great features; however, over the years of development like any game those features will change over time. It can be challenging sometimes to help the community understand why those changes need to be made.

It's important to realize that what we do is always done in the benefit of the game. We don't want to have a feature heavy game if only 20% of those features work correctly. It's important players feel like they're playing a finished product and not a (work in progress.) We're at the point now where critical decisions are made every day, production is running a tight ship in the scheduling department and greasing the wheels to make sure we're running like clockwork as much as possible.

Reality for any game is though that change happens - and so really the most challenging part of my job is to make sure that those changes, large or small, are clearly understood and the reasons behind them defined. I never expect everyone to agree with the change, but I always make it my goal to ensure everyone understands why we made it.

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