Dalmar
07-27-2007, 09:07 PM
Warhammer Online: MMORPG.com Starting Area Descriptions
"A while back, MMORPG.com ran the first part of an interview with Mark Davis and Steve Perlins from EA Mythic. Yesterday, MMORPG.com presented you with an overview of your first few hours as a Dwarf. Today, we bring you the conclusion of the interview where Mark brings us up to speed on the first few starting hours in the life of a Greenskin."
GREENSKINS
"When you start off, you start in a Greenskin war-camp. Who's the first guy you meet? You meet Skarzag, and he's on this vicious Wyvern. Now the Wyvern is just standing there and he's hungrily looking around."
As you might imagine, from this point, Skarzag tells you that the Stunties are invading. Stunties is the name that the Greenskins have given to their Dwarf counterparts. Get it? They're short! Hey, no one said the Greenskins were clever.
"So you've got Skarzag on your right, and below you, you have this massive war camp. Towering above you is this ancient, Dwarf lock. The lock is really, really old and hasn't been used in centuries, the Dwarfs closed it down, but ever since Eight Peaks has fallen, Dwarfs aren't taking it anymore, so they're re-opening all of these mines and ancient strongholds that were previously shut down. They're here to basically stop the Greenskin encroachment into their area of the mountains."
Greenskins, Mark tells us, are all about getting the Stunties to fight. They like nothing better than to provoke the Dwarfs and work them up until they're attacking stupidly. Unfortunately for them though, the Dwarfs in this case are being smart and attacking from behind their lock, using cannons for long range. This leaves the Greenskins in this particular scenario in a bit of a bind. If the Dwarfs won't come down to fight, the Greenskins have to take the fight to them. So, logically, the Greenskins decide that the best course of action is to load their comrades into catapults to be fired into combat.
"One of the first things that you get to do, is you get to fling yourself up in an orc-a-pult all the way to the top of that lock. When you get up there, you find plenty of Dwarfs to fight. In addition to that, you find a Dwarf Ironclad. The top of the lock is full of water, so you get to go aboard that and kill a bunch of ironclad sailors."
Once you've completed your task at the top, you need to get back down. Now, according to mark, you can either climb your way back down, or you can fling yourself back down. The choice is yours. When you get to the bottom, there are other Greenskin quests. It's the next part of what mark said that really made me laugh and consider Greenskin as my race of choice:
"When you get down there, there's lots of other great Greenskin quests, like the Dwarfs have statues around this lock area, and nothing makes Dwrafs angrier than when you desecrate their ancestors," he said. To my mind, there's nothing quite like the anticipation of waiting to see how you can desecrate someone's ancestors in an MMO, "so you can throw mud at the statues and really pile it on. You can stuff Dwarfs into Barrels and knock them over the lock."
This brings us to the Public Quest portion of the first few hours of Greenskin play. Now, Mark has already told us that Greenskins are always trying to get the Dwarfs to fight.
"In this particular Public Quest, you've got this big Giant. Now, Giants to the Greenskins are basically weapons of mass destruction. You've just got to get them motivated correctly. They like to drink a lot of beer. This particular Giant is being harassed by 20 or 30 Squigs... There's a Goblin Shaman that's got it all figured out. He's figured that if you can get that giant drunk enough, you can convince him to pick up a Dwarf water mine that's painted up like a Squig and throw it up against the door to the lock. If the giant can do that, the Dwarfs will come out... But he needs some help, and that's where the players come in."
"So your first stage of this quest is to kill a bunch of Squigs and they're just hopping around mad all over the place. So once you've killed your 20 or 30 of those, and the Giant is basically exhausted he plops down on the ground and tells you that he needs some beer before he's going to move another step."
Fortunately for the players, Mark tells us that there are conveniently placed barrels of Dwarf beer here, it just those crafty Squig that are getting in the way. They have hidden some of the barrels underground. This way, Squig can pop up at you as you try to get the barrels (otherwise it's just getting barrels... how much fun is that?).
"So you get your Giant nice and drunk," Mark continued. I couldn't help but laugh at the utterly ridiculous turn this conversation had taken (in a good way). "The Goblin Shaman walks up and slaps him on the foot. The Giant Stands up, looks at what the Shaman is pointing at and promptly squashes him. He walks over and picks up what he thinks is a giant Squig, which is really just a water mine. He walks over the Lock door and then BOOM, he blows himself up. He gets himself killed, but he does his job and gets the Dwarfs to come out of the lock."
Mark goes on to describe the Dwarf regiment that comes out of the lock, and makes a point of telling me that if a player was here by themselves, they would be in serious trouble. You fight wave after wave of Dwarf, and if you defeat them all, then the commander comes out.
That, my friends, is the end of our tour of our first hours of life as a Greenskin. I want to thank Mark and Steve very much for their time in talking to me for this interview. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing these quests with my own eyes.
More... (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/1363/gameID/239)
__________________
DWARFS
"As you start," he described with relish, "there's a Dwarf Hammerer in front of you and he tells you basically that you have to get up there and help with the battle. Right across the chasm (where the Dwarfs are mining), you can see the entrance, and there are Greenskins everywhere! There's a cannon right there, conveniently located, and the Dwarfs are just blasting these Greekskins away, and they just keep coming and coming.
He went on to tell me that you can get quests to: blow away Greenskins, to go further into the mine, to blow up sections of the mine where Goblins and Squig Herders are coming out, and more.
With the brief description of these quests out of the way, Mark went on to tell me about what he called a central plot; Helga. Helga was the wife of a Dwarf Engineer who was killed in a Greenskin attack.
"...and the Engineer was very, very saddened by the loss of his wife, so he would go and develop the biggest cannon you've ever seen. If you can imagine a cannon and multiply that by ten, you might be getting close to how big Helga is. So, he named the cannon after his wife and he figured that with a cannon that big, not knowing what Greenskin it was that killed his wife, if he fired this cannon enough times, he was bound to hit that Greenskin eventually."
I suppose if I were going to build an enormous death-flinging monstrosity, I'd want to have the same kind of foggy logic on my side. That being said, it's exactly this type of situation that highlights the grandiose nature of the Warhammer franchise, and one of the reasons that so many people are looking forward to this game.
"So, the whole time you're doing quests in this area, you will hear Helga fire. It rumbles the whole cave and the Dwarfs cheer for Helga, every time that cannon fires. Eventually, you make your way outside, and you're on this Dwarf rampart. You're looking out over this amazing abyss as it goes way down the mountain and this giant sky bridge at the far end that you know you need to get to."
This is the point where he gets really animated and excited, as his voice even picks up in speed.
"You're battling Greenskins who are just launching themselves over by catapult. You eventually work your way down there and there's a Dwarf Engineer there. She's dropping barrels of TnT over the side and she asks you to help, so you get to drop these barrels of TnT as they spiral down to a ledge, on the side of a mountain. You watch Greenskins get blown to bits... I can't do that quest enough times, lemme tell ya."
That, I am told, is about the first hour of gameplay that can be expected if you choose to play a Dwarf when Warhammer releases.
"The whole first chapter... we knew we had to teach you about Dwarfs. We had to teach you about Ancestry and why it's so important to them, we had to teach you about grudges, about their mortal enemy, the Greenskins."
He went on to tell me about Eight Peaks, a Dwarf stronghold which has fallen to the Greenskins. Now, the Dwarfs, being... well... Dwarfs, can hardly believe that their stronghold has fallen. With that success, the Greenskins have set their sights on Ever Peak, the Dwarf capital city (which has never fallen). All of this, you learn in your first hour of game play.
It just wouldn't be Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning if we didn't talk about Public Quests. Fortunately for me, Mark's story continued in that area, describing a Dwarf's very first public quest: Apparently, as you move down through the mountains, you find a Greenskin fortress (where they are attacking from).
"When you first step into this fortress you see this War Boss. He's so high in level, so big, that if he were to come down to your level and start fighting you, it would take a hundred or more of you to take him out. He's impossibly powerful, and there's no practical way you're going to take him out. Thankfully, Dwarfs have engineering and ingenuity on their side."
As readers probably already know, Public Quests are often done in stages. In the first stage of this quest, your job is just to thin the herd of Greenskins around you. In the next step, you're helping another engineer who needs gun powder for his mortar cannon. That mortar cannon is going to be use to fire a "Rune of Accuracy" basically, think of it as "tagging" the monster so that our old friend Helga can get a clear and accurate shot. While the engineer is busy getting everything ready, you're kept busy fighting a pair of mini-bosses.
Once you've defeated the mini-bosses, the big baddy yells threats to you, but as he's threatening, Helga fires, causes an avalanche that buries the War Boss, right in mid-sentence.
Well, there you have it guys and gals. That's the introduction to the life of a Dwarf. Originally, I had intended to give you the Greenskin info along with the Dwarf info, but there was just so much there that we're going to break it into two. Stay tuned tomorrow for the other side of the coin as Mark tells us about the Greenskin starting area.
More... (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/1360/gameID/239)
"A while back, MMORPG.com ran the first part of an interview with Mark Davis and Steve Perlins from EA Mythic. Yesterday, MMORPG.com presented you with an overview of your first few hours as a Dwarf. Today, we bring you the conclusion of the interview where Mark brings us up to speed on the first few starting hours in the life of a Greenskin."
GREENSKINS
"When you start off, you start in a Greenskin war-camp. Who's the first guy you meet? You meet Skarzag, and he's on this vicious Wyvern. Now the Wyvern is just standing there and he's hungrily looking around."
As you might imagine, from this point, Skarzag tells you that the Stunties are invading. Stunties is the name that the Greenskins have given to their Dwarf counterparts. Get it? They're short! Hey, no one said the Greenskins were clever.
"So you've got Skarzag on your right, and below you, you have this massive war camp. Towering above you is this ancient, Dwarf lock. The lock is really, really old and hasn't been used in centuries, the Dwarfs closed it down, but ever since Eight Peaks has fallen, Dwarfs aren't taking it anymore, so they're re-opening all of these mines and ancient strongholds that were previously shut down. They're here to basically stop the Greenskin encroachment into their area of the mountains."
Greenskins, Mark tells us, are all about getting the Stunties to fight. They like nothing better than to provoke the Dwarfs and work them up until they're attacking stupidly. Unfortunately for them though, the Dwarfs in this case are being smart and attacking from behind their lock, using cannons for long range. This leaves the Greenskins in this particular scenario in a bit of a bind. If the Dwarfs won't come down to fight, the Greenskins have to take the fight to them. So, logically, the Greenskins decide that the best course of action is to load their comrades into catapults to be fired into combat.
"One of the first things that you get to do, is you get to fling yourself up in an orc-a-pult all the way to the top of that lock. When you get up there, you find plenty of Dwarfs to fight. In addition to that, you find a Dwarf Ironclad. The top of the lock is full of water, so you get to go aboard that and kill a bunch of ironclad sailors."
Once you've completed your task at the top, you need to get back down. Now, according to mark, you can either climb your way back down, or you can fling yourself back down. The choice is yours. When you get to the bottom, there are other Greenskin quests. It's the next part of what mark said that really made me laugh and consider Greenskin as my race of choice:
"When you get down there, there's lots of other great Greenskin quests, like the Dwarfs have statues around this lock area, and nothing makes Dwrafs angrier than when you desecrate their ancestors," he said. To my mind, there's nothing quite like the anticipation of waiting to see how you can desecrate someone's ancestors in an MMO, "so you can throw mud at the statues and really pile it on. You can stuff Dwarfs into Barrels and knock them over the lock."
This brings us to the Public Quest portion of the first few hours of Greenskin play. Now, Mark has already told us that Greenskins are always trying to get the Dwarfs to fight.
"In this particular Public Quest, you've got this big Giant. Now, Giants to the Greenskins are basically weapons of mass destruction. You've just got to get them motivated correctly. They like to drink a lot of beer. This particular Giant is being harassed by 20 or 30 Squigs... There's a Goblin Shaman that's got it all figured out. He's figured that if you can get that giant drunk enough, you can convince him to pick up a Dwarf water mine that's painted up like a Squig and throw it up against the door to the lock. If the giant can do that, the Dwarfs will come out... But he needs some help, and that's where the players come in."
"So your first stage of this quest is to kill a bunch of Squigs and they're just hopping around mad all over the place. So once you've killed your 20 or 30 of those, and the Giant is basically exhausted he plops down on the ground and tells you that he needs some beer before he's going to move another step."
Fortunately for the players, Mark tells us that there are conveniently placed barrels of Dwarf beer here, it just those crafty Squig that are getting in the way. They have hidden some of the barrels underground. This way, Squig can pop up at you as you try to get the barrels (otherwise it's just getting barrels... how much fun is that?).
"So you get your Giant nice and drunk," Mark continued. I couldn't help but laugh at the utterly ridiculous turn this conversation had taken (in a good way). "The Goblin Shaman walks up and slaps him on the foot. The Giant Stands up, looks at what the Shaman is pointing at and promptly squashes him. He walks over and picks up what he thinks is a giant Squig, which is really just a water mine. He walks over the Lock door and then BOOM, he blows himself up. He gets himself killed, but he does his job and gets the Dwarfs to come out of the lock."
Mark goes on to describe the Dwarf regiment that comes out of the lock, and makes a point of telling me that if a player was here by themselves, they would be in serious trouble. You fight wave after wave of Dwarf, and if you defeat them all, then the commander comes out.
That, my friends, is the end of our tour of our first hours of life as a Greenskin. I want to thank Mark and Steve very much for their time in talking to me for this interview. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing these quests with my own eyes.
More... (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/1363/gameID/239)
__________________
DWARFS
"As you start," he described with relish, "there's a Dwarf Hammerer in front of you and he tells you basically that you have to get up there and help with the battle. Right across the chasm (where the Dwarfs are mining), you can see the entrance, and there are Greenskins everywhere! There's a cannon right there, conveniently located, and the Dwarfs are just blasting these Greekskins away, and they just keep coming and coming.
He went on to tell me that you can get quests to: blow away Greenskins, to go further into the mine, to blow up sections of the mine where Goblins and Squig Herders are coming out, and more.
With the brief description of these quests out of the way, Mark went on to tell me about what he called a central plot; Helga. Helga was the wife of a Dwarf Engineer who was killed in a Greenskin attack.
"...and the Engineer was very, very saddened by the loss of his wife, so he would go and develop the biggest cannon you've ever seen. If you can imagine a cannon and multiply that by ten, you might be getting close to how big Helga is. So, he named the cannon after his wife and he figured that with a cannon that big, not knowing what Greenskin it was that killed his wife, if he fired this cannon enough times, he was bound to hit that Greenskin eventually."
I suppose if I were going to build an enormous death-flinging monstrosity, I'd want to have the same kind of foggy logic on my side. That being said, it's exactly this type of situation that highlights the grandiose nature of the Warhammer franchise, and one of the reasons that so many people are looking forward to this game.
"So, the whole time you're doing quests in this area, you will hear Helga fire. It rumbles the whole cave and the Dwarfs cheer for Helga, every time that cannon fires. Eventually, you make your way outside, and you're on this Dwarf rampart. You're looking out over this amazing abyss as it goes way down the mountain and this giant sky bridge at the far end that you know you need to get to."
This is the point where he gets really animated and excited, as his voice even picks up in speed.
"You're battling Greenskins who are just launching themselves over by catapult. You eventually work your way down there and there's a Dwarf Engineer there. She's dropping barrels of TnT over the side and she asks you to help, so you get to drop these barrels of TnT as they spiral down to a ledge, on the side of a mountain. You watch Greenskins get blown to bits... I can't do that quest enough times, lemme tell ya."
That, I am told, is about the first hour of gameplay that can be expected if you choose to play a Dwarf when Warhammer releases.
"The whole first chapter... we knew we had to teach you about Dwarfs. We had to teach you about Ancestry and why it's so important to them, we had to teach you about grudges, about their mortal enemy, the Greenskins."
He went on to tell me about Eight Peaks, a Dwarf stronghold which has fallen to the Greenskins. Now, the Dwarfs, being... well... Dwarfs, can hardly believe that their stronghold has fallen. With that success, the Greenskins have set their sights on Ever Peak, the Dwarf capital city (which has never fallen). All of this, you learn in your first hour of game play.
It just wouldn't be Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning if we didn't talk about Public Quests. Fortunately for me, Mark's story continued in that area, describing a Dwarf's very first public quest: Apparently, as you move down through the mountains, you find a Greenskin fortress (where they are attacking from).
"When you first step into this fortress you see this War Boss. He's so high in level, so big, that if he were to come down to your level and start fighting you, it would take a hundred or more of you to take him out. He's impossibly powerful, and there's no practical way you're going to take him out. Thankfully, Dwarfs have engineering and ingenuity on their side."
As readers probably already know, Public Quests are often done in stages. In the first stage of this quest, your job is just to thin the herd of Greenskins around you. In the next step, you're helping another engineer who needs gun powder for his mortar cannon. That mortar cannon is going to be use to fire a "Rune of Accuracy" basically, think of it as "tagging" the monster so that our old friend Helga can get a clear and accurate shot. While the engineer is busy getting everything ready, you're kept busy fighting a pair of mini-bosses.
Once you've defeated the mini-bosses, the big baddy yells threats to you, but as he's threatening, Helga fires, causes an avalanche that buries the War Boss, right in mid-sentence.
Well, there you have it guys and gals. That's the introduction to the life of a Dwarf. Originally, I had intended to give you the Greenskin info along with the Dwarf info, but there was just so much there that we're going to break it into two. Stay tuned tomorrow for the other side of the coin as Mark tells us about the Greenskin starting area.
More... (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/1360/gameID/239)