Fresh out of their recent presentation at the New York Comic Con 2008, EA Mythic's Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, Creative Director Paul Barnett, and Associate Producer Josh Drescher took the time to explain the different roles they had in the development team of Warhammer Onine: Age of Reckoning. You can read all about their responses by clicking on the "read more" link below.

If you wish to promote your MMORPG, one of the best ways to do so is to take your game with you on a road show. That's precisely what EA Mythic will be doing for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in the next few months. If this sounds like something you'd like to attend, turn to the full article after the jump for more road show details.

With the Leipzig convention well underway, the 2007 Games Convention Developers Conference began discussion panels for each segment in the game industry. And one of the first GCDC-related news, as you dear readers can plainly see, was the topic of four online game developers in a panel tackling Life After World of Warcraft.

 

"There's plenty of life after WOW," said Jeffery Steefel of Turbine Inc. (Lord of the Rings Online). Jeff Hickman of EA Mythic (Dark Age of Camelot), Robert Westmoreland of independent Cryptic Studios (Marvel Universe Online), and Matt Firor of Zenimax Online Studios (under Bethesda) agreed with Steefel.

World of Warcraft, recently hitting the nine million subscriber mark, has become the MMORPG to beat. Game developer studios have vowed to create their own WoW-killers before, but Blizzard's cash cow continues to reap success, even as it nears its third year. "They had an established franchise, a frantic customer base, and they executed extremely well," said Westmoreland, pinning down the the prime strengths of the game.

But Westmoreland believes that it was a one time fluke - "an anomaly" - that allowed Blizzard to catapult to the top. The panel was sure that even when while WoW rolls on, there was still a place for newer games, such as NCSoft's Tabula Rasa, to carve its way into the market. "The market will segment and diversify, and that's beginning to happen. That's why all these games can exist at the same time," Steefel said earlier.

But Westmoreland warns against tracing World of Warcraft's footsteps, saying, "I think it's an anomaly, and you can't just focus on that because you'll get yourself into trouble." Instead, the panel encourages the age old way of finding that suitable formula. Westmoreland says that if a game is fun, it will take care of itself.

 

Clipsco Ocspilc of The Game Musketeer summarized details of the sides of the Empire and Chaos in a conference with Executive Producer Jeff Hickman and Creative Director Paul Bartnett of Mythic Entertainment. The conference also included Josh Dresher, World Aspiring Genius. The conference was called to differentiate the two sides and give details of each.

Just like the tabletop, conflict in the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning universe is a battle between good and evil split among realms. There are elven, dwarven and human realms, each having two sides. The Chaos and Empire are two sides of the human realm.

 

The Empire represents the side of humanity that is struggling to survive in the Warhammer world, beset by conflict, darkness and evil. They are a society reminiscent of Medieval Germanic-slash-European appearances and style.

 

Chaos, in contrast, are the side of humanity already affected by the growing evil in the land. They have been twisted by Chaos itself, and in their insanity and blindness, they strike terror into anyone who has yet to be afflicted by the evil within them.

The Empire career path give you special characters to handle, including the Witch Hunter, Bright Wizards of Fire Magic, Warrior Priest of Sigmar of healing and faith, and Knights of the Blazing Sun. The path to Chaos allows you to be a Marauder, a heavily armored Chaos Knight, healing and light weapon-wielding Zealots, and Magus Sorcerers, masters of Chaotic magicks.

Click on the "Read" link below to view the rest of the details from the conference.

Much has been said about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, majority of which are about the highly-hyped Realm versus Realm (RvR) gameplay. We are not saying though, that this is the only thing the EA Mythic MMO has to offer. Senior Producer Jeff Hickman recently granted an interview and unwittingly talked about the said feature. He explained:

It's set in the rich Warhammer universe that's been around for almost about 25 years now. It’s a war between two realms: the realm between destruction and the realm between order. In these two realms are six races, which we've broken up into three racial pairings. These races are pitted against their racial enemies.

Despite that being said, the senior officer reiterated that WAR, as they fondly call their pet project, also offers players choices and variety. Hickman also mentioned that players will feel a great deal of realm pride while inside WAR's fictitious universe that is based on another MMO, Dark Age of Camelot. According to him, players belonging to the same realm as yours would almost feel like a kindred:

This can happen from the moment you enter the game, it can happen all the time. You can participate any time you want or it can happen as little as you want. It's your choice how you want to play the game. You have a realm of friends behind you. They’re always your realm of friends, they're always there to help you.

As mentioned earlier, WAR takes off from DAoC. Interestingly, EA Mythic is not at all hushed about the similarities of both game. If anything, it felt like they are banking a bit on the success of the latter. The guild management for WAR, for example, was likened to that of  DAoC. Hickman then added:

The other thing that is kind of a little bit nebulous that we brought from DAoC is the diversity in Warhammer Online's character classes. I think we have like 44 or 45 unique classes in Dark Age of Camelot. In Warhammer, we have 24 unique classes. Every class is different. Every class has some defining and unique mechanic that makes it different from the other classes.

Warhammer Online is expected to come out Fall of 2007.