We talk with Mythic Entertainment Community Manager, James Nichols about what might have hindered the MMO's long-term success. Was WAR released too early? Find out in our exclusive interview.

Last week we featured an editorial about Warhammer Online, speculating about the ways in which the game's developer, Mythic Entertainment, might have hindered the MMO's long-term success. Was WAR released too early? Was it the endless gameplay and client bugs that drove subscribers away, or the fact that WoW's Wrath of the Lich King dominated the market last winter? What could Mythic have done differently? More importantly, what is the company doing today in order to retain current subscribers and lure back old ones?

As fate would have it, the timing couldn't have been any better. This week, at Comic Con in San Diego, CA, ZAM had the chance to sit down with James Nichols, Community Manager for Mythic Entertainment and talk about WAR. We brought up many of the player issues and concerns circulating the community forums these days, including the lag in large-scale battles and the fundamental design problems facing ORvR. We're also interested about the hotly-debated combat and career issues brought up by the community, as well as the lifespan of the Land of the Dead event, and the future of WAR in general.

Make sure to read the interview transcription after the jump!

ZAM: Despite the recent 1.x patches, players still seem to be facing problems with lag in large-scale sieges and ORvR battles. Producer Jeff Skalski said "There is no uber solution, just a whole bunch of little things we can do that will, in time, add up to something bigger." Why isn't there an "uber" solution?

James Nichols: The reason there really isn't an "uber" solution is that we can't really control how many players come into a battle. We can to a degree, but one of the [biggest] aspects of Warhammer is large-scale RvR. So from a technical aspect, we want to support as large a battle as possible, but there are also technical limitations to that.

We've made really huge improvements over time; at least a couple times per month we [release] an update that improves [the game] immensely, so it still remains a priority. With server stability, we've really cracked down on it—we hardly ever see server crashes anymore. The overall, large-scale issues that we see on certain servers; we're going to continue to focus on that and improve it as we can.

ZAM: What about WAR's collision mechanics, which reportedly accounts for a substantial amount of the lag? Will they ever be re-coded? Or just removed?

James: Collision is important. Imagine fighting someone and [being able] to walk straight through them. That's more of a technical question for our senior programmers, but [collision] is an important and integral part of the game that's an original feature. We're going to try to do what we can to improve performance without impacting the actual gameplay.

ZAM: In an RvR-centric MMO like WAR, the game becomes more enjoyable when more people are playing. But the XP and gold gains don't seem to be enough incentive. How do you get those players back into ORvR, especially when it comes to defending Keeps or Objectives?

James: I'd say that ORvR and PvP aren't [necessarily] for everyone, but for those people who really enjoy it, we've made a ton of improvements. Part of the whole "Call to Arms" event that culminated with patch 1.3—"Land of the Dead"—gave players the chance to reactivate their accounts back in March; to come back [free] for two weeks to see what we've done. We've really stepped up how you get into the game. We have the "Rally Call"—which is just a small part—[but] every hour or so you can jump right into a War Camp and join in on the battle. On top of that, we made it a bigger deal when you get a Keep by having "Keep Upgrades," so that when you get a Keep, you can purchase more powerful guards. You can also get more powerful guards by keeping Battlefield Objectives. We really made ORvR a lot more interactive—rather than just the back-and-forth, "musical chairs" aspect—and make it important for players to come together and fight. That's also tied in with increased XP bonuses around Keeps and in Battlefield Objectives.

ZAM: Players commonly describe Keep sieges as basically "funneling into the Lord's room." How can the experience be improved?

James: Actually, in [patch] 1.3.1, we should be introducing second ramps to Keeps. That's going give two options; you'll have to defend two entry points to the Keep Lord room. So while the objective is to still get to the Keep Lord room obviously, it's going to be a little different—you'll have to work with a lot more strategy. You can't just hold a single point and focus-fire down on it.

ZAM: Is Mythic satisfied with the way the city-siege "lockout" mechanic is working right now?

James: Actually, in a "Producer's Letter" that came out about a month ago, we mentioned that city sieges will be undergoing a lot of changes. The biggest change is the fact that enemies will not be locked out during the city siege. We are introducing enemies to be a part of [all points] of the city siege. The game's about RvR—we want the RvR. The attackers will still get all the benefits of doing the city siege, but we're going to make it a lot more RvR-focused.

ZAM: Many players feel like certain careers are under-represented and have been "abandoned" by the C&C team. Does Mythic recognize this problem, whether it's perceived or not?

James: There's not as much disparity between careers as you might think. But we do hear the feedback from a lot of the careers that feel they're under-represented within the game. Career balance is an ongoing thing. First of all, we're addressing some of the more global issues that face the game, like area-of-effect abilities and crowd control. Once we get those toned down to where we want them—to a less impacting level in the game—we're going to take a look at careers as we move forward. Whether that's [via] single career fixes—similar to how other MMOs focus-fire on careers—that's kind of a long-term thing that we're going to have to talk with players [about], and see what they want to do.

ZAM: Class balance is one of the biggest issues that players bring up. Is there a difference between what players expect and what Mythic intended when it comes to class mechanics? Many of the class changes throughout the past six months have struck players as blatantly counter-intuitive.

James: There's perception, and then there's the actual reality of things…

ZAM: Tell us the actual reality.

James: Like I said, career balance is an ongoing thing. There's definitely room for improvement in a lot of areas—we're aware of that. But we're also working on helping players to understand how their class actually is effective. One of the ways [we're] doing that is through toning down the over-burdening effects of AoE and crowd control, like I mentioned. What this really shows is that there are careers that have pretty strong single-target abilities that were kind of overshadowed, but there are other careers that do need additional adjustments, besides that. There's no real simple answer to it. We listen to the feedback, we analyze it and we see what we can do to best affect the game in the amount of time we have.

There's the constant question of, 'Why can't you do this now?' But we can't do everything now—it's impossible. We don't have the time or the manpower to do that. So what we do is look at what would be most beneficial to help the most people, without negatively impacting others. It's always hard to take power away from people; there are several classes that players think we've toned down too much—and we do look at feedback and try to analyze that. But when you're on top, it feels good to be king—you know? When you come back down, it's always hard to accept the fact that you're not as powerful as you once were. We try to avoid "flavor of the months," but in any MMO, career balance is probably the most controversial and complicated thing you can have.

ZAM: Is the "Land of the Dead" event coming to an end now? If so, what's next?

James: Land of the Dead was a big content update that culminated [in the most recent patches]. So that story line is tapering off. But we have a very large live event coming in August; it's really awesome—I wish I could talk about it right now, but I can't. All I can say is that maybe by the time this interview comes out, you'll have more information on it. The newsletter comes out Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

ZAM: Will the same "free content update" model be used for future content, or will we be seeing an actual retail expansion pack eventually?

James: All I can say right now is that we're looking at all our options, and how we want to do things. We've got a lot of great ideas for the months and years ahead, and it's all about how that fits in [with WAR] and the best way to get a quality product to the players.

ZAM: Obviously EA/Mythic (and players) would love to see 1 million subscribers, but what's the most realistic scenario if subscriber numbers continue dropping?

James: I'm not going to talk subscriber numbers because it's out of my realm, but Warhammer is successful; we've got a great player base. We're really focused on maintaining RvR as what we do best. We feel it's important that the people who play our game every day are the people who love RvR, killing each other and all the general mayhem that comes with PvP.

ZAM: If you could wave a magic wand, go back in time and change one or two things about WAR's development or launch period, what would they be?

James: Extra time would always be nice. More beta testing time would always [have been] great. If the proverbial "magic wand" existed and there were no such thing as budgets and schedules…absolutely. More time would probably be it.

ZAM: What happened to the capital cities that didn't end up making it into the game? Have they been pushed back even further now because of population balance issues?

James: Like we said when we originally announced that we were taking them away; it took us about 18 months per city to make each of those cities. You're looking at a significant amount of time per city; that's a lot of things to schedule—it's a lot of content. In order to make that work in the live environment…we don't really want to disturb the current campaign. It's not good to dramatically change the game, post-launch. So hypothetically, if we were to introduce capital cities—or even large, endgame content—we'd have to do it in a way in which in augments the current play style and adds a new, entertaining way for players to enjoy the content we provide.

ZAM: We remember reading about how long it took to implement capitals. Why did it take so long to design those cities?

James: Hundreds of quests, hundreds of NPCs—a lot of mechanics, artwork; there's just so much that goes into capital cities. Not to mention that after you finish all the design, you have to go back and test it all, go through the bug fixes—these things are basically giant areas condensed into smaller areas, and it's a lot of work. We're still improving the [existing cities] today.

ZAM: What are the next two careers we'll be seeing? Any hints?

James: As far as I'm aware, there's are no new careers on the horizon right now.

ZAM: James thank you so much for making the time to talk with us. We're looking forward to see what you guys put out in the future.

James: No problem. My pleasure!

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
ZAM.com