This article is Originally from http://www.curse-gaming.com/

Curse-Gaming here with Paul Barnett, Design manager of Warhammer Online. And he’s going to attempt to answer some questions about the game for us today.

I’ve already been warned that your website is what referred to as hardcore. That you’re the sort of people that take this really seriously. That you’re not interested in namby pamby lite matter of fact questions. You want the truth, that you’re the sort of people who are deeply suspicious that every single game’s producer is actually rubbish. And is purposely trying to thwart everything you ever stood for. I already know that the man asking me these questions only gives a dam about ultima online. And doesn’t really care about any other games. Whereas the guy looking after the video camera, he’s only interested in dark age of Camelot and has already said at great length that whatever game I’m making is just a cut and paste of dark age of Camelot, so if that’s the level of questions that were going to be getting, that’s fine.

At least I know where I stand. At least I know the audience I’m aiming at. And that I can only be thankful.

Alright so, we got a bunch of questions here about the different elements of the game. A lot of things are the general concerns of the players, like. Mostly transportation in the game, It’s a big issue what is Warhammer online going to do for Transportation methods?

Transportation is a very important question in MMO’s and the following holds true. I don’t wanna have to be bothered having to work hard getting to the places where I can enjoy my game. How I get where I wanna go. I want it to be fast. I wanna be enjoyable. And I wanna get on with the thing I’m really interested in. I’ll give you a good example, let’s say you got transport, let’s say its fast transport. Something that flies through the air. Now modern MMO’s come up with the following idea. And what we’re gonna do is use a metaphoric analogy. So hang with me. If you were to go to the Charles de Gaulle Airport in modern MMO’s and you said I want to fly to new York, the current way it works is they say well you better walk to New York. Once you walked to New York you can come back to the Charles de Gaulle Airport and fly to New York. That’s Insane!

The way we work is every piece of transport works like it was an airport. You go to it you say, where can I go. And they go you can fly to New York. You go I’ll fly to New York and you go to New York. You don’t have to walk there 1st, that’s rubbish.

Another big thing is the leveling system. Every game almost just has your straight forward grinding speed, quest and you just level up as normal. Is that how Warhammer is going to call it?

I’d like to tell all the hardcore players out there that we have thought long and hard and we have come up with a revolutionary leveling system. I’d like to tell you that but we haven’t and let me explain why before you start sending in your hate mails and your flames on the forums. If you’re trying to balance a game. If you’re trying to make a game so that you can figure out who should fight who, you have to have a baseline. You have to have something you can measure against and until somebody comes up with a better system than a numerical leveling system were stuck with what we got. And Ill tell you another thing, if you got a better system and you think we should have used it. Then all you have to do is do the following. Get 15 million U.S Dollars, and then spend it on a game using your clever system and then when you proved it. I will personally write a letter to you saying well done, you’re better than us. Meanwhile we have share holders we got to make a game and were going to be using a leveling system. That said our leveling system isn’t crap. Our leveling system has some grind, unfortunately it’s an inevitability of these games, but whenever possible were trying to reduce the grind. We’ve tried to reduce it from just endless body killing, endless boring content, we’ve tried to make it interesting, we’ve tried to make it fun. We’ve tried to make it not rubbish. I don’t think we’ve done a perfect job, but it’s not a bad job. I wish I could give you better news. I wish I had a better answer but I don’t.

And Warhammer being based on perpetual war, one big factor is player vs player combat will it be reward advancement of some sort, like rankings.

Absolutely, were taking all the best bits from Dark Age of Camelot’s realm vs. realm system and making them even better. Jeoff Hingman. Executive producer on this product. Producer of Camelot for five golden years is the man that is championing our RvR system. Mark Jacobs CEO, Lead designer is adamant and has, on the design he wants. And the vision he has. I can assure you that our PvP system will be fun. It’ll be fast, it’ll be flexible, it’ll be enjoyable. And the best thing of all. If you’re really good, you’ll do really well. And if you’re crap you’re gonna get Pwned!

One other big thing is crafting and its very big part in MMO’s and a lot of the games they don’t, once you get to a high level crafting somewhat becomes useless. Warhammer Online doing anything specific with the crafting system making it so it stays beneficial end game?

Mark had got very very particular ideas, visions and goals on crafting. I can’t explain all of them to you today, I’m not allowed too, but I can tell you bits and pieces about it that I do know off. One of the things were focusing on all our crafting is the enhancement and improving of weapons and armor. That’s one of the main focuses, why? Because were a game about war. Were all about beating the living snot out of each other so that one of the big focuses of crafting will be making your weapons better, Making your armor better. And where does that matter most? It matters most in player vs. player . It matters most in realm vs. realm and it matters most in the end game. So one thing we can say with clarity and honesty is that our end game is going to have crafting that is useful for player vs. player, RvR.

Another big feature, especially with World of Warcraft is the user interface customization. Is there going to be any kind of like they use the Lua language to allow players to create their own modifications?

I’m a design manager, as a result I know lots about managing and I know a fair bit about design the question you just asked me is one of those we file under technical. I haven’t a Skippy Scooby Doo!

However I do know that we have got Jeoff Goldstene, one of our geniuses working on UI. He knows all about it and he is possessed with the idea of allowing it to be customized and allowing it to be given to the players to make benefit off so they can do really great things does that mean it uses the language you talked about, I don’t know! Does it mean it be available at launch, I don’t know, but I can tell you this we’ve got the best guy in the company looking into it. So it will rock!

Another big thing in MMO’s is loading times. And will it be seamless, or will there be loading times when you go into towns or different zones.

That’s what’s referred to as contiguous loading. That’s another tech issue. I haven’t got a Scooby Doo about that either. What I can tell you is that is as long as I move through the land and don’t mass teleport it never puts up a loading screen. When I try to do clever game thing and instantly teleport, there is a loading screen. The coders assure me that whatever this contiguous loading thing is, It does that. And that’s good enough for me. That said there might be some loading time with instances. And there might be some loading time with some of the dungeons but I think that’s just an inevitability of these very very technical programs.

One other major thing, with player vs player combat. With it being realm vs. realm and unlike dark age of Camelot there’s only two major factions in this. How are they going to keep the game balanced if one faction becomes stronger than the other? If you have three factions both factions could ally against the 3rd but just two becomes a little more difficult.

Well that’s true, but we actually do have three battlefronts. So the balancing is upon the three battlefronts. If the forces of destruction get together and decide to try and crush the humans then they become weaker on their own home front. Chaos gets stronger but the Dark Elves and the Orks by their very nature become weaker. And the game is balanced in such a way that the forces of destruction are incapable of assaulting on three fronts at once. It’s the old World War Two analogy, you can’t win a war if you fighting two fronts. But that’s also one of those. R Jacobs, Geoff Hingman issues. They know all about that, they’re going to make it great.

We have to ask, can you tell us anything about the beta test, when it might be.

Yes the absolutely best way of getting into the beta test is to go to Warhammer Online dot com. Sign up for the news letter and every month when they newsletter comes out they pick people from the newsletter list and put them into the beta test. That’s the absolute best way of getting in there. Beta test itself will begin open beta I believe at the start of 2007 so that’s your best chance, go to the website signup to the newsletter.