Welcome to the Warhammer Online Grab Bag, where your friendly neighborhood community manager will answer the most popular, and most interesting, questions in a new regular feature. Many things aren't yet certain, so try to be patient with us. Trust me - we're as eager as you are to see the features finalized, so that we can hear what you've got to say.
A: But you didn't see what happened AFTER the priest got up again.
A: Wow, I'm surprised, too. I've said it so many times in so many demos that I had to search for awhile to prove to myself we’d skipped putting this on the website. Then I made Richard, the WAR minion, double check. Wacky. At present, we’re looking at forty, divided into four tiers of ten for the purposes of combat limitations and zone content division.
A: If it's the name of a god, I'm very sorry, but we will be unlikely to allow it as a character name once we launch.
Once we do launch, names will be first come, first serve, as they always are in MMOs. I know how attached I am to my character's name - I've had it since I was twelve and playing D&D; for the first time. But I also know that other people are just as capable of putting together these two sounds as I am, so I usually just dive in on day one and hope to grab it on my server. I also know I can’t do anything about other people taking it on other servers, so I tend to log in everywhere I can to "save" it. Hey, obsessive-compulsive helps in this job, what can I tell you.
I can’t help you with the whole message board thing. If I had a nickel for everyone who has logged into a message board posing as me or one of the devs, I would have retired in a frenzy of slushie drinking.
A: If you keep zooming in (via mouse wheel, usually), you will move to first person view.
A: It's really too soon to say too much about siege weapons, other that they will be built into each specific scenario as opposed to things with which an individual could lug around.
But we can reassure you on the race-specific score. Warhammer is a very adjustable universe with the ability to do what's most fun for each game format, and in the MMO, Designer Steve says: "All races will be on equal footing, regardless of whether or not they are equal on the tabletop."
A: It's waaaaaay too early to get into specifics, and indeed, our boy Steve is too clever to get into trouble: "The specifics of the question I won't answer, but I will say that there are indeed non-game-impacting paraphernalia available to the player for fun and prestige. ;-)"
A: A regular, standard-issue goblin. Matt Daniels, Content Lord, says that "Night Goblins will be in the game, but not as a playable race."
A: Well, it's still early and we're still ironing out the economy. But Steve tells me "At present, we are utilizing the WHRP version, or a close facsimile." He added, however, that we are likely to do a little streamlining and simplifying.
Lots of people have been sending us links for websites. As I said in Grab Bag #6, the newsletter doesn't link to all websites. Most of the ones that we’ve received but not linked to were very new sites, still putting themselves together. Webmasters, you need to get things established before we can send people to you as a resource. Before you start a website, ask what it is that you can provide that isn’t being offered by other web pages. Do you have features, a new voice, more frequent updates? What kind of people will feel comfortable at your site? Who do you write for? Don’t just slap up a web page. The internet is littered with broken dreams and abandoned blogs. I should know, I’ve got four.
That’s it for me this month. Keep sending your questions, everyone, and stay tuned to the Warhammer Herald for more events and contests.