Warhammer PvP

Slashdot has an article covering an interview with Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer for Warhammer Online (LINK). The post references the interview at BigDownload.com.

A promising quote from the article:

We generally start everything in our game with a thought toward PvP. PvP isn't the first thing we think of, but it's one of the first things. We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content. So, when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it. We know how much damage each class can do and take, plus all the utility each class can provide. So, instead of balancing each ability, we just need to modify the overall damage output and absorption of each career.

One of the big gripes of many PvP players is that there’s too much balancing classes between PvE and PvP which sacrifices one or the other. From his PvP first mentality, Jeff sounds like a man who gets it. I don’t mind the balancing act, but in a PvP game, balancing the classes for PvP should always precede PvE considerations.

PvE in service of PvP aims (like troop movements in the World of Warcraft's Alterac Valley) suit me fine. Some PvE elements enhance the appearance of epic battles. Other PvE aspects though (like Korrak the Bloodrager, also in WoW's Alterac Valley) detract from the experience by being nuisances at best and a raid-squashing distraction at worst.

The interview is an interesting read for those contemplating a jump to Warhammer.

In other news, some kinship mates and I in LotRO that had also played EQ2 have been thinking of taking them up on their recent offer of checking them out again. We're not thinking of a game switch, just to poke our heads in and see what's going on. Our discussions turned to why EQ2 didn't do as well as WoW did and what happened to Vanguard (another Sony Online Entertainment endeavor). Genda over at the Grouchy Gamer has a series of posts about what happened to Vanguard. It was interesting to read and rather poignant too. I also had high hopes for the game and wondered just what had happened over there to release such a dud.