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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning: Land of the Dead Launch Interview
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood caught up with Warhammer Online developers Jeff Skalski and Gabe Amantangelo to talk a little bit about what The Land of the Dead update has to offer as well as future plans for the game.
Interviews By Jon Wood on June 24, 2009
advertisement Today, Mythic launched the Land of the Dead update for their MMORPG Warhammer Online. Earlier in the week, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to talk to the team about it.
The launch of The Land of the Dead marks the closing of the long-lasting Call to Arms event that started with the addition of two new careers, and moved on to reveal more and more of the backstory of the Tomb Kings through live events and such. This all culminates with its launch.
;)
In story terms, the Land of the Dead, different Tomb Kings ran a huge necromantic empire. There, they had a powerful artefact known as the Casket of Souls. In the Age of Reckoning, Destruction decided to send an expedition to the Land of the Dead to find it. Doing so woke up the Tomb King, also known as the Vulture Lord, invoking his wrath. Order got involved by sending a group down to prevent Destruction from getting the Casket.
Long story short: Destruction searches fro a powerful artefact. Order seeks to destroy the same artefact. Undead try to kill everyone.
This new update brings with it a lot of new content for players from mid tier three to tier four, including what Designer Gabe Amantangelo described as a two part dungeon. The first part is The Necropolis of Zandri, "a big sort of open field PQ and lair kind of loose dungeon crawl system and then there's the Tomb of the Lich Lord which is a traditional six man instance that has a lot of non-traditional things including traps and the ability for players to invade each other inside of instances.
Access to the dungeon zone is controlled through what Mythic is calling the Expedition Resource system. Players will earn resources via T4 zone control and player kills. Once they have enough, flight paths will open up (closing the opposition's paths).
;)
To keep things moving, the team has built in a bit of a handicap safeguard. After about 18 hours of one team not gaining access to the zone, resources increase in value making it easier for the opposing team to gain access. They don't often expect to see this handicap brought into play, however, because a team's resources don't reset when the other side gains control meaning that no one has to start from scratch after the prize is claimed.
When possession of the zone changes hands, opposing players currently active in the zone will remain so, allowing them to reset traps and lay ambushes for their opposition. So long as characters don't respawn (meaning that if they are rezzed after death), they can stay in enemy territory indefinitely.
Traps add a new element to Warhammer Online dungeons. At least three of your group mates must make it through any given trap alive in order to disable them on the other side via three switches. These traps can then be re-enabled when an opposing expedition hits the dungeon, causing any number of headaches for the opposition.
With the full lore introduction of the land of the dead, speculation has surfaced that Mythic is working on the popular Undead army as a next possible playable race.
According to Jeff Skalski, Mythic plans to spend its next cycle of development improving on systems that are already in the game: City RvR endgame, second ramps for keeps and the like.
"We're definitely going to be stepping up some more information about what the roadmap is for the next couple of months as we get closer to our one month anniversary," answered Skalski.
;)
Speaking specifically to the issue of the Undead as a race, Skalski was non-commital although he did say that adding a new race is something that would take a lot of effort on the part of the team, but that it isn't something they are ruling out. Quite the contrary in fact as we were told that it was something that they have talked about.
"I think," He said, "that if we were going to do additional races I don't think we'd do it like we did the Slayer and the Choppa where we just put them out there for free. I think we would tie them to maybe an expansion down the road or something like that."
So while land of the Dead has plenty of new content for T3.5 - T4 players, what does the update bring in for lower level players?
"In 1.3, we did some massive changes to the dungeon, Gunbad... it's basically a three man dungeon crawl," said Gabe. "Basically, the difficulty has drastically dropped so that the risk vs. reward is a lot better in there now and the rewards have all been adjusted in there as well."
All in all, the launch of the Land of the Dead adds just one more layer of activity to Warhammer's endgame, giving order and Destruction just one more thing to fight over.
On most servers RvR has been killed off with this patch.
Now one side are all in LOTD and the other side outside. The side inside are PvEing the PQs/instances. The side outside are PvEing the keeps/forts. Once the side outside has done enough PvE to get the resources they need the zone flips. There is about 10-15 min of great RvR in LOTD and then most of the original side in there is dead and things inside settle down to a PvE grind with the odd gank. The people outside now start the keep/fort PvE to get back in .
This wont get better in the future.
Even in a few months time, many of the players on the side with access will be in LOTD. This means the players from their side outside of LOTD will be heavily out numbered in RvR. As we all know when one side is heavily out numbered they tend to leave.
Its sad but Mythic could just have killed RvR in Warhammer.
The concept worked in DAOC because there were 3 factions so there were always two factions outside that could fight each other.
Although I see your point, it's not entirely accurate, atleast on my server (I say 'my server' because I own it). Last night, on the first day of Land of the Dead debut, yes, a lot of Order were in the LOTD zone, but the implemented mechanic has it so that the opposing force, Destruction, has to gain enough Expedition Resources through RvR (T4 and Player kills) to gain access to the LOTD. Destruction was almost at the point of sacking Altdorf because not a lot of people were protecting it. That's just it though, if they WANT to keep access to the LOTD, Order will rush back to the main lands and fight to keep it. You know, even wars have intermissions.
Seems like EA timed the release of LOTD to try to overshadow the real news of Jacobs getting canned.
That's not how the system works I believe. While the winning side is in the LOTD, the opposite side will be gathering resources to gain access by capturing the undefended zones. Even if the winning side goes back to defend the zones, th other side already has a head start because the winning sides resources are reset. And as long as the winning side is wasting their time defending the zones, they can't take part in the actual LOTD content. The system is *designed* to flip ownership of the LOTD.
herald.warhammeronline.com/patchnotes/index.php
It's easy to understand why you didn't follow this, it's not a very clear system.
I have to agree RVR is dead and this patch killed it. I do however think it was by design though. Mythic just could not fix RVR, and they had a lot of people asking for more PVE...so we have LOD. The content is incredibly fun, but I can see it getting old fast. There are no easy answers to what is going to happen in the future, but I can pretty much promise it will be PVE centric.
How did this kill RvR? Honestly asking as I'm unfamiliar with what is going on. I enjoyed the PQ and PvE and the way that PvP was mixed in but didn't stay with it for long mainly for the lack of other things to do like crafting.
It's pretty short sighted to say RvR was 'killed'. Of course everyone is concentrating on LotD now. It has been out like two days. When the shinies wear off people will be doing both. Mythic already stated that it was put in to give players choices and that's what it does.
Having played for 5 months, this patch made me cancel my sub.
Dont like the direction of the game anymore. I pay to PvP on a massive scale. Not more content for PvE (Mostly), while Tier 4 is still laggy as hell with a 5-10 sec delay in Forts.
Had great fun while I was there, but untill something changes for T4 RvR Ill speak with my wallet :)
Yeah, it seems like they're trying to implement Darkness Falls (which was one of the best areas in DAoC) in WAR. Except they're missing one integral piece - the other faction. For Darkness Falls to work, one faction would be reaping the rewards (watching their backs for nightshades/infiltrators/shadowblades of course) while the other two factions warred it out for control.
The problem here is that it will be back and forth until LoTD is sapped dry. Then, it will be back to the same, it seems.
I think it just appeared this patch killed oRvR because Mythic allowed only one side access to the zone yesterday when it was released. That resulted in the winning side all rushing into the LOTD last night and ignoring as the losing side waltzed through all the undefended oRVR zones.
Tonight I played again and there was some oRvR (actually in the LOTD zone) as well as Scenarios popping again. I have no idea how there were enemy players the LOTD zone because my side was still in control of it. The whole system seems overly compllcated but it did allow for some oRVR fighting tonight at least.
Lower tiers were bumping last night on my server. (Iron Rock)
Good 100-150 people battling it out in ORvR in Empire/Chaos Tier 1.
Scenarios popped quick and got some good PQ groups rolling.
If anything this patch has breathed new life into WAR for those of us coming back.
Or maybe, just maybe, they timed the canning of Jacobs to the release of LOTD? Which one seems easier to coordinate?
Also, 99% of the resources gained are tied to zone flips. I think 2 T4 zone flips will flip LOTD. By preventing the zone flip, you keep it longer. I haven't seen either realm score more than a few points off the looted resources. Yes, whoever is out there doing it isn't going to be in LOTD, obviously. It's great if you want to farm the other realm at your keep though.
You really screwed up, because you're looking at it completely backwards. Last night I saw some of the best RvR I've seen since the game launched. If you want PvP on a massive scale, look no farther than LOTD when one realm takes control. When Order on Iron Rock lost control last night around 11 central we grouped up in our war camp(well over 100 of us) and headed out to crush Destruction. We pushed them back fighting from the quay all the way up the trail until we could push any farther due to the warcamp guards. More Destruction poured in and they finally broke through and beat us down, but it was well over an hour after they gained control. The horde of destro that ran over my corpse was simply massive by normal RvR standards, easily 140+. The crazy part? Until the 200+ people bottled together right by the Destruction war camp I was not lagging at all. The zone can take a ton of people fighting in it in close quarters without being effected, and I have no doubt that with the same numbers but spread farther around the zone or farther from the warcamps what little lag there was would have been gone.
I spent a good 8 hours in LOTD yesterday and half of that was out in RvR. Even getting wiped out is a blast if you do it right. For example, there's a boat by the river that you can jump on that has a large area of LOS blocked, it makes a fantastic last stand for a group or warband to face down the zerg and see how many you can take out. There's also the tunnel system in the Necropolis and tons of little hidey holes scattered for your group to harrass from and retreat to.
Compare that with a typical night of RvEing BOs, camping/being camped at your warcamp, and lagging to hell while 100 of you try to kill a warband holding a rank 7 keep. That's a normal night of RvR. I'm in this game for the fight, and before LOTD there was no fight, just a bunch of people with walls between them lagging to hell while everyone else plays muscial BOs.
That sounds interesting.
Wow! What will they talk about ? I 'm eager to know it !