They had better know what they are doing.
So I was reading this preview of Mythic’s upcoming Warhammer online and loving it. It sounded fun and exciting and the like. Then I read the following:
it became very clear that a very key part of Warhammer Online’s PVP strategy will be about jockeying for position. This is because the game actually models geometric collision, which is a fancy way of saying that characters can’t walk through each other. Therefore, PVP battles seem to share something in common with tackle football (the American kind): In order to get at the vulnerable quarterback, you need to get past a couple of big, thick-necked linemen. So, smart dwarf ironbreakers will insert themselves within chokepoints as a buffer between the enemy and their weaker allies,
That’s crazy talk. At least to my mind. It opens up a whole host of problems. From simple things such as powerleveling having just got a lot easy, to using geometery to defeat NPCs you shouldn’t be able to, to the big problem of players griefing each other. Not only do the NPCs have to be properly programmed to deal with it, but the game had to have been planned from the beginning to handle it. And players…players are going to exploit anything they can. I’m not sure what to do about that.
That being said, it’s Mythic. They’ve got some experience with PvP. Just a little bit. And does the idea excite me as a fun game mechanic? Oh yes. It could solve a lot of problems with faked hate lists that you find in most other games. It would be horribly fun to from a wall of melee types to protect the mages and healers. It would make combat a ton more tactical and fun.
I just hope they know what they are doing.
All of that aside? It sounds more fun and the screenshots look better everytime I hear about it. I’m really looking forward to it.
What Would Matt Do: Well, I wouldn’t bet on geometric collision making it past beta. I can hope, but I won’t bet.