Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Interview

Ten Ton Hammer had the chance to sit down with EA Mythic’s Jeff Hickman for a two-page Q&A about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Q: How do you teach people the difference between RvR and PvP?

A: I think there’s a lot of ways you can teach as far as verbalizing to people. We can talk a lot about the goals behind RvR and the goals behind PvP. But I think that in order to really learn you have to get in and experience it – going “whoa, this really is different.” You guys got a taste of PvP last night – getting in and killing each other with really no over-arcing purpose, because we’re demoing for you guys. The reality of what’s going on, though, is you have a race and a realm behind you, and everything you do when you RvR plays into helping them.

You get personal benefits also, but the real goal is to help your realm. So as you’re going out and doing skirmishes and scenarios and battlefields, the benefits to your realm probably outweigh your personal benefits. So we always want to give you personal benefits to encourage people to go out. But there’s always this feeling that “I need to defend this land, I need to defend my city, I need to bring this fight to the doorstop of my enemy” – you always have that feeling. And that’s the part that’s really hard to imagine for people who haven’t played Camelot especially, because Camelot’s the only one that’s been able to do this. The relic system, the feeling of “that’s mine, you’re trying to take it from me… you can’t.”

That’s the feeling that we’re going to have in Warhammer. That feeling that I am loyal to my realm, I almost feel obligated when I see that area is under attack, that’s my area, I need to go help my realmmates with that. While you and I in our realm might squabble over a PvE battle, when the call to war comes up, I guarantee you that we’re going to both run out side by side and defend the realm. That’s the difference. It’s easy to verbalize it to you, but you really don’t get it until you get out there and play.