So, as a sort of desultory gesture, I started pawing through Massive Online Gamer Issue 6. I paid for it, after all, might as well read it. It’s got that Blood Elf Paladin chick on the cover, and I figured it was going to be another clusterfuck of mediocre WoW-based articles. Sure enough, the thing is chock full of gold farming tips, suggestions on how to play a mage, dungeon clearing strats, and a pair of one-page faction-specific quest guides. It’s all very meh. However! On the front cover of the mag it does say ‘Warhammer Exclusive’, and (much to my surprise) they weren’t kidding.

Around page 12, they’ve got the start of a six-page spread on the game primarily consisting of interviews with Jeff Hickman and Paul Barnett. Paul’s interview is, as far as I can tell, the first info of substance they’ve released about the Dark Elf/High Elf pairing in Warhammer Online. Even then, it’s mostly background stuff. No design info was yet ready for print during the interview.

• High Elves (HE) are very posh, Dark Elves (DE) are posh drug users. HEs tend to take the longer view, while DEs have a lot of immediate gratification issues.
• Repetition of the goal for every class/race combination to be a unique experience. A high degree of replayability.
• Discussion again of the ‘every character will look different’ mantra, with emphasis that a class’s armor is themed to that character. IE: As Black Orcs level they’ll look ‘more and more armored and more and more blacky.’
• Best quote from the interview, esp. considering MOG’s ‘Skittle of the Month at the back of the magazine: “You’ll be wearing stuff that’s appropriate to what you do. We don’t like rainbow coloured characters … that’s rubbish.”
• The statement again that players will able to do all-PVP if they want, or all-PVE if they want. The assumption is that somewhere in the middle will be where most folks end up.
• Reconfirmation that NPCs will fill out PvP events if there aren’t enough player characters, though it’s obvious they’re still tweaking things.
• Great statement on the Public Quest system: “The public quests are one of those things that passes my genius test. My genius test is simple: if you see something, and upon seeing it you go ‘my god, that’s blindingly obvious,’ and yet you had never seen it up until that moment, then whatever it is that you’ve just seen was probably genius. Public quests will change the face of MMOs forever.

The interview with Jeff Hickman rehashes some older stuff, with the emphasis of the discussion on the previously-discussed Empire/Chaos conflict. He does clarify what Public Quests are, and that’s really interesting to hear about.

• Chaos Theme: Crazy Nutters. Empire Theme: Medieval Germany hanging on by its fingernails as it declines.
• Jeff’s preferred class will probably either be the pirate-y Witch Hunter, or one of the as-yet-unannounced Dark Elf classes.
• An interesting comment on the challenge of building classes. He cites the Goblin Shaman as a tough nut to crack, because it was their first healer. Their emphasis is going to be on healers, up in front, slogging away with the lads rather than in the back out of the line of fire. There was a lot of balance to get there, and they’ve found it to be easier with every healer since then. The Goblin Shaman is likely to be my first-rolled character, so that’s really interesting to hear.
• They had to cut waaay back on classes; their initial plan was for like 72. So, in comparison, the 24 they’re going to have seems quite reasonable.
• Not much on the Maruaders, other than they’re the mutate-y combat monsters of Chaos horde. Still a work in progress.
• The Guild system gets touched on briefly: the short of it is, ‘just like Dark Age of Camelot, but better.’ There’s some talk of veteran players leaving a guild having a negative impact on the guild as a whole. The implication is that keeping people in your guild long-term is a priority. Five bucks says that doesn’t make it in for launch.
• Public Quests: Quests that everyone in a given area is working on at the same time. A low level one mentioned is ‘kill 25 mercs’; when there are 25 people in the area that’s only one a piece. Makes for group bonding over a larger area. Eventually intended to last about half an hour to an hour, and could have massive end-goals. Something like ‘kill 100 orcs’ or ‘collect 300 barrels’. Good way to simulate a war, with every one just throwing themselves at the baddies to stem the tide.
• Some more clarification about collision. Only happens in RvR. If a baddie is hedging you out, whack em’. If a friend is, you can ’squirt’ past them. Mostly, though, Jeff recommends killing the offender. This is WAR!
• Crafting will ‘not be about orcs picking daisies.’ No details, sounds like it’s still a WIP.
• Death penalty is not going to involve a lot of money; from comments it sounds like the goal is actually to downplay the role of cash money in the economy. This may be one of the elements mentioned in the press phone call about inhibiting RMT. If money isn’t that important the market will be less lucrative on third-party sites.
• “When is Beta?” Jeff says late spring or summer, and they’re hoping to release this winter. My money is on Beta this fall, launch early next year. They’ve got too much still in the ‘we don’t know what is going on’ phase for launch to be that soon.

The final page of the spread is a discussion of the scenarios the article author was able to check out at an event this past January, with a bunch of other press types. (sniffle) First-person and a little flighty, suffice it to say the author had a good time.

Other than the reinforcement that I don’t think they’re going to make it out this year, it was actually six pages of interesting information. Really looking forward to this game. Like, a lot.

Update: WAR launch officially moved back. Nice to be right about something for once. ;)