Warhammer Online E3 Preview

Caster's Realm has put together a preview of Warhammer Online, based upon what they saw of Games Workshop's upcoming MMORPG at this year's E3. A snippet, as usual:
Towns are not just areas of respite, in fact they're the opposite. You can think of them as urban dungeons. A great profession to take would be that of Town Guard - you'd never run out of things to do. But, say there simply aren't enough town guards and you've left that mob unchecked. It's going to walk into your town and overrun it. Your NPCs will fight to save the town but should they lose they will stop working. Players will have to take the town back and place a predetermined number of guards in position before the city will be considered cleansed again. And this would be with non-chaos aligned monsters. A city that falls to Chaos has even more to contend with.

Combat could be more complex, but not by much. This is no "whack-a-mole" game. First off, until you've fought a monster you'll not know anything about it. You can't ID it, won't know its agro style, tactics or even class. Once you have done so (and died) you'll get an entry in your bestiary that will indicate its agro style and tactics but not its level or comparison to your own. Until you beat it, you'll not know that you've outgrown it. And perhaps then you won't have, for creatures can decide and change their own tactics. A lone wolf may run away until it finds a group to attack you with; a goblin will just charge in; while a Beastman will lure you to a chaos stone to gather friends and ensure you're in an area of peril.