GDC09: Paul Barnett and Jeff Skalski interview (part 3)
Massively's very own Shawn Schuster had a chance to catch up with Warhammer Online Creative Director Paul Barnett and RvR Producer Jeff Skalski at GDC 2009. They chatted about the recent player (re)acquisition campaign, server merges, Land of the Dead, and much more.
What can we expect to see with the new Tomb Kings content?
Barnett: Crazy egyptians Warhammer style! It's like the Powerslave album cover by Iron Maiden has come to life in the Warhammer world. Tomb Kings are the dry undead, unlike the wet undead you get in the Empire like ghouls, zombies, and vampires. These are the dry undead, like mummies, skeletons, dusty bone giants, and liches. They're bringing their casket of souls and lots of sand with them. Players will see new developments on how PQs are done and an excellent system for how you get armor sets. We will have phenominal big dungeons in the same vein of Lost Vale (same team). End-level baddies like you wouldn't believe. They're doing things people haven't seen in these sort of games. Sequences where you go down corridors and encounter traps you will have to disable. You can then re-enable them to work against your enemies.
Skalski: This is our successor to Darkness Falls. We're pretty excited about it.
You really seem to support your fansites by interacting with them in interesting ways (e.g., sending them exclusive images on memory sticks or DVDs with cryptic timestamps). How did this idea come about and will it continue?
Barnett: There's definitely more to come and it has nothing to do with evil marketing either. All the efforts have been self-generated by our production team coming up with cooky and crazy ideas all by themselves. That said, marketing is great at knowing a good thing when they see it. They have jumped in on the new one we're about to do. It's an example of our internal love affair with the game and showing that to the players. What we're doing for Land of the Dead is going to be just as fun and silly. It one might have a bit of a marketing flavor because we've been given more leeway and support from them, but it's still coming from fanatical people in the company who are huge fans of the game.
