http://maestro2.mythicentertainment.com ... 0405160213
some beef:
Public Quests: Occasionally during gameplay, a player will enter an area and be met with a UI display letting them know a public quest is going on. These are open to everyone and have larger goal. For example, the dwarves may need to feed a giant beer so that he’ll go on a rampage against the orcs. Everyone can contribute and everyone who does gets a reward.
Conflict Quests: These are like public quests, save the other side has an opposing goal. For example, the dwarves have found a battlefield full of injured. Their public quest is to save all the dwarves, while the orcs must kill them all. It is either a race to victory (kill X dwarves before they save X dwarves) or a tug-of-war scenario.
Branching Quests: They’ve also made it a goal to ensure that a quest is not always the same. One way is branching quests where players can make a choice that alters the outcome. For example, you can decide to deliver the item for experience or steal it for gold.
“Christmas Quests”: These quests are hidden, large reward quests that are very easy. The goal is to encourage players to explore and find these gifts. The example Paul gave is a lost ranger with a starving wolf who needs to be fed. He asks you to find the wolf food. You simple kill the ranger and feed him to the wolf. Boom! Experience!
RvR: The War
PvP in Warhammer Online is all about the war. There are PvP areas you can enter and battle the enemy. When you leave, your character is given a decaying PvP flag. Not until this flag decays are you safe from PvP. They did this to prevent old-UO border jumping.
There are three major types of PvP situations in WAR:
Skirmishes: These are incidental fights that happen when you enter a PvP area. From them you get money, experience and items. Although, while you can loot the enemy, you’re not actually looting their real items.
Battlefields: These are objective based battles, such as capture the tower.
Scenarios: These are point based instanced battle areas. Each player is assigned a point value they are worth and the game matches them together. To avoid queuing, they’ve added in “Dogs of War”, which are NPCs who join one side or the other to balance things out. Scenarios are intended to be quick action.
Campaign: This is the end game. In the high level areas are five zones. At the extreme ends of each land-area are the capital cities for each race. Players wage war to push each other back and forth. The goal is to lock down a zone and advance closer to the enemy’s capital city. Once there, you can sack the city for great rewards. The campaign system uses the above three to allow advancement. You cannot cut around your enemy and skip a zone, the front is the front.
Each race has unique customization elements. Orcs can gain items – purely aesthetic – and tack them onto their character. Kill a dwarf? Why not put his head on a spike on your shoulder. Each race has different bling that can be tacked on in this way. These items are earned through RvR.
Players will also notice that their characters change as they grow stronger. This is all part of their silhouetting quest at Mythic. Orcs actually get bigger, stronger and more muscley as they reach higher levels. The goal is that in RvR, players will recognize instantly without using a con system the strength and class of their enemy. If you’re new to RvR, you may want to avoid the massive orc with dwarf heads hanging off his body.
I'm looking forward to this game. I think they have a good block of marble to work with and I cant wait to see what the end result is.
The combat system does have me worried, though. Its way too bland.. uniformity is bad.