For the Writing Team, that phrase isn't just a destination, but also a point of departure that leads us to many questions. Why is war everywhere? How did it get there? What objectives are the armies of Order and Destruction fighting over? What effect will those battles have on the larger war? Providing the answers is the job of WAR's writers and Content Designers, and the first place we go to get them is the game's backstory.

Ten thousand pages. That's my best guess at the amount of finalized documentation that our content team will produce before the launch of WAR. We should start an office pool, or a printing press. Ten thousand pages for a game based on an existing property rich with detail. I can only imagine the number of pages we'd be writing if we were coming up with a world of our own!

In any game, but especially in a large MMO, the numbers can get crazy if you don't keep them on a tight leash. It's a delicate balancing act between making character abilities exciting and cool (which to most players means they look great, feel unique and do lots of damage or other useful effects) and keeping everything scaled appropriately in relation to everything else. To accomplish this, everything must be built around a framework of numbers.

For WAR, I want characters to really feel like they know how to use their weapons. The one thing I don’t want is for everyone to idle, fidget, flinch, and run around with a weapon in their hand in the same manner they would do when unarmed. People just run differently holding an axe than they do with a sword. It's an attention to detail issue.

Fact: "Alpha" is one of those key points in a game's development that is specifically designed to torture the fans. It lets them know that the game (which is awesome and life-affirming and worth canceling all of your plans, dreams and birthday parties for) is playable... yet out of reach.

If you’re like me, you’ve been playing games for as long as you can remember... You’ve played terrible games and wondered how on earth they got made. And you've played decent, imperfect games and thought of a million little ways that YOU could’ve done things better.

I say this with every ounce of humility, it has little to do with the fact that I’m working on it. I say this because, not a conversation about the Tome goes by where I don’t end up leaving, pad of paper and pen in hand, rushing back to my desk to take notes about new Tome ideas. Every presentation I’ve ever given has begun with me suggesting some of the ways in which we use the Tome, and the recipients giving me fifty of their own ideas. My mother tells me what she’d like to see in the Tome. The press tells us what to put in the Tome. People at conventions tell us what should go in the Tome. And above all, every person working on Warhammer Online has an impact on what goes into the Tome.

So I click to attack? Who should I click? This one is blinking red. Does that mean I should attack it? How do I use this piece of artillery? Am I supposed to click that too? Won’t I swing my sword at it if I click it? I don’t want to swing my sword at a piece of artillery. It might break, right? Are the short, stout people on my side?

These are some of the questions that a player new to MMOs might have the first time they play Warhammer Online. As developers who are also avid gamers it can sometimes be quite the challenge to take a step back from your own experiences and put yourself in the shoes of someone logging into an MMO for the first time. However, it is a necessary exercise when approaching the design of the starting player experience.

With 25 years of experience to draw on, the Warhammer IP is a rich, luscious world full of a wide variety of diverse content. Each race is visually distinct -- from the lewd and crude Orcs to the proud, lofty High Elves. Even the careers within each race are uniquely different – no one would ever mistake a spanner-totin’ Engineer for an in-your-face Ironbreaker. So, one of the great design challenges in WAR is to provide players with as much opportunity to customize the look of their characters as possible, while also protecting the silhouette of each race and career. It’s really important in WAR to be able to identify a player’s career with a simple glance – orangey robes, big staff, and hair on fire, that’s a Bright Wizard!

Most MMO players understand how armor works visually – when you wear it, it changes the appearance of your avatar. Everyone loves that moment when you try on some new armor loot for the first time and see how different it makes your character look. That’s cool, but we wanted to take this kind of customization to the next level!

Renown is the system which measures Realm vs. Realm (RvR) participation by a player. It functions as an experience system for RvR and players can “level up” to earn Renown ranks that show their proficiency at fighting the opposing Realm. Renown gain is also capped based on a character’s level so a player can’t be Renown rank 50 and player rank 5.

The Renown system dictates the rewards made available to a player (items, abilities, titles, or otherwise). Renown is gained through many actions in WAR - killing other players, taking or defending battlefield objectives or keeps, participating in scenarios, and zone control.

What would a city built by Chaos look like? That’s a pretty tough question, just to set the record straight. Building a city is tough enough as it is. It’s one of those game development back-breakers where there is so much work involved and expectations are so high that even creating a more traditional fantasy city causes much gnashing of teeth and lost sleep. Take Altdorf, for example. First off, it rocks! We have a gallows in the town square, a wizard’s tower that belches fire, and a tavern themed after a Mastiff’s buttock. It’s all great, Warhammer IP goodness hand-crafted with love and a lot of polygons.