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2.) Why not a tabletop port? by randalx (659791)
When I first heard of Warhammer Online I had a slight hope that the designers were going to create an online version of the table top game, something akin to what Wizards of the Coast did with Magic The Gathering Online. That doesn't seem to be the case. Just the same, judging by the people I've talked to, this game would be of great interest to current and former battlegamers. I'd like to know, besides the Warhammer universe, why should this game appeal to a Warhammer battlegamer?
Steve Marvin, Senior Design: Why didn't we do a straight port? Well, as Paul (Paul Barnett, our Design Manager) likes to say, it's kind of like Batman. Batman comes in a multitude of flavors, from big screen to books, cartoons to games, action figures to a million other successful (and unsuccessful) incarnations. Each modifies the base concept to suit the market in which it will be operating, so as to appeal to the current fans, but just as important, to create new fans in a medium in which there were few or none previously. With luck, the new aspect will be a big success, and those new fans will go looking for the other flavors. We really like the folks at Games Workshop (they've been fantastic to work with), and we love the Warhammer universe, and so we hope our game can help expand interest in both.
But we work in the MMO medium. More specifically, MMORPG's. That means that a dominant characteristic of the tabletop experience has already been set aside: the impersonal aspect. Tabletop Warhammer is about the control of lots of individuals at a time by a single person. MMORPG's are about lots of individuals controlling one character at a time.
A better comparison would probably be to compare us to the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing Game. There you do carry an individual through the Warhammer universe, acquiring power, wealth and experience. The unit types found on the tabletop are recreated in WFRP careers where possible, and new but IP-consistent careers are created to fill out the expectations of a robust FRP game. Of course, WFRP doesn't let you play the "bad guys", and we do.
But even that comparison breaks down, since we aren't a paper and dice game any more than we are a miniatures game. The fact is that we have taken everything that we liked best about the IP, combined it with what we like best about MMO's, and created something we think plays to the strengths of the IP, the genre, and our own strengths as a developer, especially player versus player (PvP) combat and its larger counterpart, Realm versus Realm (RvR). At its heart, RvR online play is the obvious and perfect way to recreate Warhammer as an MMORPG. War on a grand scale, carried out on the personal level.
And coming full circle, that's what the Warhammer tabletop player will enjoy about WAR. We have been working with the folks at GW not so much to make an MMO based on Warhammer, as to translate the core concepts of Warhammer into an MMO. Not as the trappings of it, but the essence of it. Certainly we have Ironbreakers and Squigs and Warrior Priests and Bright Wizards and runes and banners and choppas and Dwarfs and Orcs and Dark Elves and the Empire and Karaz-a-Karak and thousands of other things lifted directly from the source material. But that's the easy bit. We want fans of Warhammer to recognize the kinds of choices we've made as Warhammer choices. Epic, heroic conflict. The same principles of number and mood. The sense of endless struggle against (or for!) the encroaching darkness. Perhaps most of all, the humor and the sense of fun. When you get into WAR, you will recognize it as Warhammer. We're working very hard to get that right, and we hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do.
Rest of it here.
http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/11/27/1752236.shtml
If they do this right, bye bye Wow
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