General Discussion

In Part Two of his interview with Adam Gershowitz from EA Mythic on the subject of career design, Managing Editor Jon Wood discusses the issues of balance and how the company plans to keep 24 different careers running smoothly an faily against one another.

Greetings and welcome to part two of our interview with Adam Gershowitz, the Combat and Careers Strike Team Lead on EA Mythic’s highly anticipated upcoming MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

In last week’s part one, we discussed the fact that Warhammer Online is taking a unique approach to class design for an MMORPG, choosing to create four unique classes (called careers) for each race rather than using a fixed set of classes that can be applied to multiple races. We also talked about the three major ideas behind EA Mythic’s career design.

Today, we’re going to expand beyond the ideas behind the design and look a little bit at the results of the design and what it takes to balance the game. To start with, I asked Gershowitz why EA Mythic decided to create race specific classes for their MMO.

Read the whole interview here.

Firstly, let me state outright that I'm actually a big fan of this game.  That said these interviews, both part 1 and 2 didn't really do much for me.  I suppose that if I really had to give a one line opinion, I'd state that "this seems to be similar to everything else."  I'm not saying it's a bad thing.  Perhaps it may be that I've even missed the mark all together, but as excited as I am about this game - this didn't really make me any more or less giddy about having it.

To the writer's credit I did find myself questioning....myself many times as to whether or not these differences were actually "revolutionary."  All and all a good interview, but one I feel doesn't really tell the average WAR fan something he/she doesn't already know.  (That too is an opinion people put the flame starters down!)  For the clueless passer-by this should be extremely informative.

While good information, it is mostly things that have been said before; but mostly splintered.  It is a good collection of various things already said, and as said previously a good article to read if you have just started researching the game/classes.

Interviews are always good though, keep them coming! 

The big challenge for Mythic is to avoid the classes that achieve fotm status.  Because they always over react and nerf the daylights out of such classes. 

Hopefully they have learned from their mistakes in DAoC and put out an excellent game. 

Of course it does not hurt that Funcom missed the boat on their design.  People are chaffing at the bit for any decent new MMO. 

I expect War to do really well.

At least it sounds as if Mythic are still one of those rare companies that actually design there games core mechanics rather than implement a bunch of neat ideas and try (usually with limited success) to sort it all out after release.

Having the game balanced around the RvR 1st and PvE second is interesting!  Hopefully WAR will be exceptionally balanced from launch onward and there will be minimal nerfs and changes!

Glad to know that PvP balance comes before PvE and that they're balancing monsters against players not the other way around.  It's also great that they're not trying to make all classes equal.  It's futile.  All classes have their strengths and weaknesses.

Originally posted by Gorilla

At least it sounds as if Mythic are still one of those rare companies that actually design there games core mechanics rather than implement a bunch of neat ideas and try (usually with limited success) to sort it all out after release.

In this day and age, I really hope most game developers would do that.

Thanks Stradden, for part 2. It may not be new info to most of us,but I believe it is giving us a good look into the way the game is going to play out. At least to me.

While I liked the first part of this better than the second, the real question I want answered above all questions, is HOW MANY CHARACTERS CAN I CREATE?

I am an alt junky, I want the choice of being able to log in a different class any time I want for a different style of play. I want what WoW has, unlimited characters(not per server, I realize this). Please, Please, Please! don't do what EQ2 and AoC have done and limit me to only 8 to 10 forever.