Warhammer Online Conference Call Previews

Three more previews of EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning have surfaced, all of which are based on a recent developer conference call. The first is at MMORPG.com:
Scenarios are story points that match up teams in an instance and allow them to go fight it out. Each scenario has an objective, but that objective always has to do with fighting and killing other players, not capturing and carrying a flag or picking up and moving something through the zone. Much of this has all been heard before but they did say that all three of these would lead up to a campaign to take the opponent realm's capitol city. That was defined as one of the main high level RvR encounters. Also, once attacked, the city can be looted by players to get some great gear. Even more so, the enemy king can be captured and taken home to be put in shackles. All well and good right, how about buying rotten tomatoes to throw at the enemy king while in chains and then posting the screen shot on the forum! Yes, Paul was happy to tell us about that part of the RvR game play. Jeff did mention that, (Capitals will be very difficult to keep for a long time), so the realm that loses will eventually come back into balance.

The second is at GameZone:
Guild management, as it turns out, was another area to consider. (We look at the current crop of MMOs today and know that there are things that we did really, really great in Dark Age of Camelot that just doesn't seem like people picked up on. Guild management is a good example of that. We are looking at Dark Age of Camelot's guild management at how we're going to take WAR online guild management, or community management systems.

And the third is at Killer Betties:
Gameplay and the unique things within Warhammer that sets it apart from other MMORPGs, include things like Realm versus Realm warfare, where throughout your game experience as a player, you can choose to either fight monsters and do quests or you can choose to go out and participate in player hunting and warfare against the other realm. This can happen from the moment you enter the game, it can happen all the time so you can participate whenever you want, or it can happen as little as you want. It is your choice as a player how you want to play the game. RvR really sets the game apart as it truly goes beyond a normal PvP where you always have a realm of friends behind you and they are always your realm of friends and there to help you. We invest in the game a sense of realm pride, where you are really encouraged to defend your realm, defend your lands, to defend the capital cities from the incursions and invaders always coming your way. So Realm versus Realm is a very unique feature that was implemented in a very deep way from the beginning to every other area of the game, and another thing that sets us apart is some unique PvE or monster hunting mechanisms like Public Quests. So the Public Quest system is a system of quests that are pretty much unlike anything you've seen in a MMORPG today. It is a quest, where instead of going to a NPC or person within the world and asking them to give you a task, you actually, as you are playing through the game entering specific areas, there are quests that are automatically given to you and anyone else in the area. By entering the area, there are quests that are staged, so as you come into the Public Quest area, you are automatically given the quest, it is shared with everyone in the area, and as you participate with those people, everybody is participating on the same quest at the same time. When you finish one phase of the quest, it steps to a new phase, so the first phase might be invade the forest to pickup wood for the lumber mill which is going to make lobbers for the Orcs, so you'll have to make your way through the forest to get these resources for the lumber mill, and after you collect a 100 of those the quest might step to a new phase, where the spirits of the woods come out to protect the forest, and then everyone is encouraged to fight the spirits of the woods. Each phase is a little bit different and walks you through a story of the area you are in. These Public Quests are scattered throughout the world.so you will be running into these public quests wherever you go, so there is always something interesting to do that is related to the story of the world and the overarching world.