Mythic gives the latest on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Mythic Entertainment updates GamePro.com on the latest details concerning the development of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

GamePro.com recently got a chance to catch up with Mythic Entertainment team members Steve Perkins (Director of Marketing), and Greg Grimsby (Art Director) who're busy working on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC) for the latest alterations in the ever evolving Warhammer MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Both Steve and Greg threw us a few nuggets of information regarding the new career system, and the latest info on the RVR (Realm vs. Realm) capital city campaigns.

Contrary to previous reports, which illustrated a multi-tiered career system which allowed players to jump from career to career and covet a menagerie of skills, the new revamped career system will feature a very straight forward career system, featuring four career options for each race/realm.

Steve Perkins stated, "The first Dwarf career is the Iron Breaker. He's tough as nails, armored from head to toe, and looks like he can take an insane amount of damage --because he can, he's basically a Tanker who sits there and performs the role of tanking ( taking tons of damage, and manipulating combat by protecting other guys)."

"The second career is the Hammerer. The Hammerer does damage. He tends to fight with a weapon in each hand. He's very offensive; tends to wear sheet mail, but is a little less armored than the Iron Breakers. Engineers have ranged combat abilities and attack from a distance."

"The last career is the Rune Priests. Dwarfs don't use magic in the sense of Elves or humans use magic. Dwarf's use Rune icons, which are mystic icons that have inherent magical powers. The Rune Priests tapes into the magic of the runes and performs the role of the healer, and deal damage."

"What we want to accomplish with these careers besides performing these tactical roles, and supporting the intellectual property, is to give players careers that they think are cool, as well as, help identify these guys on the battlefield. If you look across and see four different Dwarfs you'll know which role they're each performing. You can take a look at the engineer and you can see he's got crazy gear, gadgets coming out of his back, a wrench on his hip, and you'll just know he's an engineer and you can make that tactical decision. You'll know he has some crazy grenades so you'll try to fight him in a certain way as opposed to an Iron Breaker. It's all about tactical context when you're fighting."

With that statement we found it uniquely puzzling that Dwarf Slayers were not included in as a career option. Steve responded, "Troll Slayers will be playable in the game. They just may not be a starting career, but they absolutely will be playable in the game. The Slayers themselves are disgraced Dwarfs. They've been around and something bad happened (to them) and they've shaved their beards, sport Mohawks, and dyed their hair orange. The thing about being a Slayer is, from a character standpoint, they have a death wish. All they want to do is go into combat and die. That's not real motivation to play a character in the game. (Insane laughter) If you have about two hours to play a MMO, maybe you'd want to be a Slayer. But for everyone else, it's kind of hard to do a whole career around a Slayer."

Steve went on to illustrate the Green Skins careers by stating, "The Green Skins are called Green Skins because they're green and are actually comprised of two sub races --the Orc race and the Goblin race. The reason there are two races inside one army is because there are no male or female Orcs or Goblins because Green Skins basically come from mushrooms from outer space --they're fungal. (More Insane Laughter) In order to give players a choice, since they don't have male or female, we give them big hulking Orcs to choose or smaller diminutive mischievous colorful Goblins."

Greg Grimsby states, " The Goblins rock, they're really fun."

Steve continues, "Black Orcs fulfill the role of the Tanker with lots and lots of armor. Then there's the Berserker Orc who is the damage guy --the analogy to the Hammerer for the Dwarfs. They're not carbon copies with different skins. They have their own very unique abilities but they are the counterparts for the armies."

Greg adds, "The technical term is asymmetrical design."

Steve continues, "While there are certain archetypes that we reference for each of these races, each of these archetypes is completely customized for there race so that the Green Skin tanker and the Black Orc will be very different than the Dwarf Tanker and the Iron Breaker. The reason for that is that they have different backgrounds, different history, and they are different characters and personas. It just doesn't make sense to give a Warhammer game to make carbon copy guys. We took great care to put in appropriate abilities to tie to these careers."

"For the Goblins, we have the Shaman, which has the ability to heal, and do damage from a distance. The Goblins also have the ability to become a Squig Herder which is a tech class, but they're not dull because a Squig Herder deals with Squigs. The Squig Herder is controlling these guys. He pulls them out of different equipment, grows them, and does different things with these Squigs. There are also different kinds of Squigs that do different things."

"The one thing we really are excited about is Squig Battle Armor. A Squig herder summons his Squig, grows to be larger than him and east the Squig herder, and then the Squig herder can yank on the intestines and guts of the Squig to control the Squig. It's all a very fun way of allowing the Squig herder to become the Squig and stomp around the battlefield and attack and fight. Then when the Squig takes too much damage, and actually dies, he belches out the Goblin and the Squig herder can continue on his way. And of course the (Squig Herder) is a tech class and will have the ability to do damage from afar."

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