Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Progress Report Part 1

Paul wanted to add: "People always say things like 'but what if everyone decides to play one side?!' and so far in every trial we've done, it's balanced out. It's absolutely frightening. It's almost as though we've made both sides compelling and both sides interesting and we've made the combat and RvR so good and so balanced that people have gone 'it doesn't really matter, I'm a great time whichever way, burn a city here, kill a king there, slaughter people, get a new hat, get a pig hat, ride around on my Wolf..."

"There's a variety of both indirect and direct fire siege equipment. The indirect fire types are catapults and mortars, generally used to target large groups of enemies and blow them up at a great distance. Then there's the direct type like Hell Cannons, Ballistas, Dark Elf Reapers, etc."

Target Audience

So, who are they targeting? The top 10% or the average gamer? They replied:

"We're targeting everybody. It's not about what you can get, it's how long it takes you to get it. So, if you persevere as a player in our game, and I really hate to make it sound like you're struggling because it's not about that, it's about being skillful at playing the game. Everybody has access to the end game content, everybody has access to the items. City sieges are about a lot of people, but not about big, giant raids. You can walk into a city alone because there will be other people there for you to fight along side. Because it's a Realm vs. Realm game, you always have friends, there's thousands of people on your side. It really is accessible to everybody."

"There's an obsession with designers to build for the top 10% because they're very loud and they're very successful. And that actually leads you to doom and destruction. When you build say, like a Golf Course. You can build a Golf Course so that only Tiger Woods can actually get to par, but that would be madness. What you do is you actually build a good Golf Course, and if Tiger Woods decides to go and shoot something, you know what? He's going to score huge. But everyone else is going to have a damn good game, and they're going to understand and have things to aim for. It's the same sort of logic. We've built our end game so that it is fun and compelling and attractive and a great hobby. And if you're in the top 10% and you're one of those people who is incredibly clever and quick and obsessively brilliant you're probably going to excel at it, and that's ok because everyone else treats it like a jolly good time."

Read the second part of this article.