Checking in with the Warhammer Online Beta - Part II

Warhammer is synonymous with delay. Look up delay in the dictionary and there you'll see it, next to Duke Nukem Forever is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Nothing but delays, all the time -- delay, delay, delayed again. Would you like another delay because we got one for you? Say, Waaaaaagh! If that isn't enough whining; fate has been cruel to those waiting for any new information as the promised weekly Warhammer Beta updates aren't weekly, weak maybe, but not weekly. I'll cut EA Mythic some slack given the rocky climate surrounding EA's conglomeration over the past month. So, let's see how far the different development teams are progressing since the last time they checked in. You can skip ahead and read the direct transcript from the Warhammer Herald, or feel free to continue after the jump and check-out my fabulous rehash. I added a few crappy dick jokes at the end, because well, I'm crazy.

The RvR team, that's short for realm versus realm, checks in and reports that the elf scenarios are well under way with the first seven in various levels of polish. ("Put a lens flare on his armpit man, not enough shine there and we can turn it into a special armpit blind ability against the snobby elves.") Three of the seven scenarios are looking good, along with some new scenarios for the Empire and Chaos zones. The team is using the feedback from beta and equalizing run times between the realms. This week the team is focusing on ways to make the access to scenario queues accessible and user-friendly, while still keeping it immersive. How should they accomplish this task? I'm thinking a PvP button, or maybe a slot machine in the game to see who gets in faster. I won, I won! I can actually play RvR!

The Item Team has been busy, and let me say, you got to be a huge lewt whore (all-in-good-fun) to make it on this team. They are doing what an itemization team does, itemizing new content. Normally, this is what itemization entails, but providing so many rewards is a huge undertaking. While it might be frustrating to keep hearing, "we're busy making items" every update; the team does dig-deeper into how their itemization process works to help give everyone a better idea of the process.

Every quest that gives a reward has 24 different items developed for each one. This doesn't mean players will have 24 rewards to pick from, but that every quest in WAR will be tailored to your career. So, players will have some optional rewards, and, hopefully, they won't all be junk. This same creation process is also done with influence rewards. The item team goes on to explain that monsters are dropping appropirate loot and not cloth pig-hats, because cloth pig-hats don't have enough armor class. The other thing that is discussed is loot for the Public Quests, remember these rewards were getting overhauled as the public quest rewards were sucking according to early reports from some beta testers. The real brand-spanking new information the team has to reprt is that the first iteration of the Trophy system is finally in testing.

The Cities Team is still living inside Altdorf. What's going on in the Empire's home city? One of their biggest tasks is working on pubs. One developer-favorite pub is located on the docks, and is tentatively called "The Blow Hole." Once an Empire Galleon, the remains of this old ship have been salvaged to form the entrance. Getting the setting down-pat is crucial to the developers, it must be recognizable from a distance. It actually sounds like a lot of fun, I love the name. The other massive undertaking the team is slaving away on is content creation deep beneath the Temple of Sigmar. Content developers are busy implementing engaging encounters with all sorts of nasty undead, spirits, and deranged monks. This will be a difficult dungeon for even the most hardcore adventures. We'll see, about that. *starts polishing his axe*

The User Interface team checks back in with all sorts of updates to WAR's mapping system. They overhauled the main-map from the ground up. Until this point, the team only had zone level maps and then a long list of names of all the zones. There is actually a World Map implemented, and a pairing level map, as well as the zone maps, and navigating between them is said to be very intuitive. I'm glad because the early beta shots I saw from the user interface was like looking at a flaming pile of you know what, but that's what betas are for, to make that flaming goop tasty and delicious. The changes to the system has allowed the UI team to integrate many things into the maps that weren't there previously, such as the quest trigger (allowing for more fluid way-point toggling), filter to turn off various data, and the UI team's favorite, map coordinates. Figures, map freaks. In the meantime, the main priority is all about making the map functionality work with the Tome of Knowledge.

Still there? Two more updates to go. This time from the Combat and Careers Team. Last update introduced the Marauder class and everyone freaked out salivating for more information. Instead of recapping this segment, see the quote:

"We had so much feedback from the Marauder peek last week that we thought we'd get a little more into detail! The Marauder is "dual wielding" in the sense that they have a weapon in their right hand, and a mutated...thing...in what was formerly their left hand, and they're beating you over the head with both hands at the same time. Whenever they're mutated, they'll get the same combat benefits that someone dual-wielding weapons would get, and their mutated limb is considered to be a rare-quality weapon as far as DPS goes.

As far as the mutations themselves, the Marauder will have several different mutated forms which each provide different benefits and unlock different abilities: a claw-like arm will increase their Weapon Skill and its attacks will be suitable for taking down heavily-armored targets (e.g. Rend, a shredding attack which causes damage over time and increases each time you apply it), while a bone-bladed forearm will increase their Strength and provide strong positional attacks (e.g. Impale, which does heavy damage but can only be used from the victim's back), and a crushing club-like appendage will increase their Toughness and grant attacks which sweep larger areas at a time (e.g. Demolition, which hits all enemies in a cone in front of you and knocks them down).

Additionally, there will be some special abilities which are usable in any mutated form (such as Uncontrollable Warping, which makes your mutated arm explode right off of your body, damaging everything nearby...and you, too!)."

The Marauder sounds great, chaotic mutated ilk and the like. Personally, I'm more into the Green Skins. The other big thing going on deals with tool-tips, you know those tip popup tool things that display information. The problem the developer team had before is the combat abilities are always increasing in rank, wreaking havoc on the tool-tips. Huh? Yea, I guess it makes more sense if you are in the beta. Further clarification:

"Some upcoming changes will finally allow us to show you some more of the actual numbers that drive your abilities. For example, a Bright Wizard's "Sear" will no longer simply say "A basic magical attack", but will instead say "Deals 18 Elemental damage to your target", and you'll be able to see the automatic upgrades that are inherent in your abilities when it says "Deals 47 Elemental damage to your target" a couple of ranks later. Additionally, we'll have far-more-detailed ability data, including build time, cooldown time, cost, range, requirements, and so on, for every ability."

Much better, I'm full. There's a lot of information to mull over, and I'm quite content with what the developers had to report. That's the end of this edition with checking in with the Warhammer Online beta. Check out now, go post in the comments on how much you miss Warhammer or how much you think it will suck. Yea, I want to know. I actually read the comments on the posts I write. It sounds like the folks in beta will have a lot to look forward to once the beta cranks up again in December. The rest of us, people like me with no beta invite, will get to go back to feverishly checking our e-mail every 30 seconds, hoping, waiting, and crying when nothing but that wang spam greets us. Curse you, phallus enhancer overlords!