Warhammer Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

By Justin Webb, Senior Designer

As a big thank-you for everyone’s hard work, Mythic puts on a spread of food every night up on the eighth floor. When the ceremonial act of laying out all the nosh is complete, an email is sent out to the whole company. This email has a Pavlovian effect. Devs pile into the elevators and head for the eighth floor. It’s here, shortly after dusk, that the pack finally comes together after a long hard day. Devs jostle for the best position; some challenges are made and answered; and pecking rules as old as time itself are re-established. Pack members who try to jump the line are beaten with sporks and sent packing with their tails between there legs. It is here that we truly see Survival of the Fittest in action.

Justin Webb, WAR Blogger on the Prowl

Like any pack of wild animals, there is a distinct pecking order. The larger, more dominant animals get to feed first. When they are sated, the weaker members of the pack get to fight over the scraps. Scavengers trawl through aluminum tubs, hoping, sometimes praying, that a juicy chunk of chicken (or beef) has been overlooked by one of the dominant alphas.

Latecomers often have to pick over the remains. Some especially tardy devs are forced to consist on gravy and condiments alone.

I tried to get some photos of last night’s feed at the waterhole, but I made the schoolboy error of leaving the flash on on my camera. This agitated the pack and I was forced to flee empty-handed. Tonight, in an attempt to avoid the any conflict I photographed the feast before the pack arrived.

I took Paul to the airport on Friday. On the way, we talked about everything that has been going on this week. The transcription of that tape is very long – too long for a single blog. So, I’ve carved it up into smaller pieces.

Let the feast begin!

Here’s what some of the other chunks are about:

Going to Europe; Underpants; Girl signatures; Nurgle trophy miniatures; Embroidered Badges; Colin Shannon; Togglett; Spyke Hallucinating.

Leave me a comment if you want to hear about any of these later today.

Here’s today’s chunk:

Hamtouchers!

PB: We’ve been going through the crazy “How would we expand the game if we weren’t being normal” and we had that meeting -- ooh, and you were in that meeting -- were we talked about lunacy we’re not allowed to discuss in this blog, but I can tell you that it was Damn Exciting! Darn Exciting! The people at P.F. Chang’s kept dropping plates, they were that excited by what we said. We’ve also been looking at the expansion pack. I was having a look at the new folders with all the concept art and the idea art.

JW: Yup, Ted’s done some lovely things in that.

PB: He has yes, about things we’re not allowed to mention. Imagine that at this moment we were talking lovingly about his concept art. In fact the only thing I can tell you, a bit of an exclusive, is that we went with …

JW: Be careful, BE CAREFUL …

PB: More Blue than Orange! That was the latest breakthrough on the sampling of the concept art for the expansion. So, make of that what you will.

JW: What would Bing say?

PB: Oh yeah, cos he likes orange. What else have I been up to? I’ve been trying to explain how we need to stop messing around with the client. And I really don’t want to hear any more great ideas. We’re trying to get it out the door. Could you just save that for the patch please?

OOOH! We recorded the rock song with Brad

JW: I’m going to see Brad when I get back, I was hoping you were leaving a little bit later today so that you could “get the band back together” for a one-off performance I could capture on video.

PB: The Hamtouchers!

JW: Because I don’t fancy trawling through the eight hours of footage you recorded.

PB: We’ve been asked if we would like to do a cover version of the Mirror’s Edge song, which, another exclusive for your blog which will probably get Lincoln fired. He allowed me to listen to, under pain of death, [the Mirror’s Edge song] and we’ve told him we are prepared to do it, but we’re not too into the style that they’ve gone for. We’d like to do a heavy rock version. For people who don’t know , Mirror’s Edge is a sort of first-person Parkour street-running game -- you run around on roofs. It’s very clean … white … Ikea.

Sort of new futuristic. And it’s got an asian lady with tattoos who jumps around everywhere and the song is very nice, very fitting for the game. And they’ve done the variants and remixes of it … and they’re very, very exciting. Trust me, it’s going to be awesome. But we don’t want to do that. We want to do a Punk Rock version. Brad was suggesting we should just call our version “Jump Bitch!”, which part of me quite likes and thinks that it might be for winners, and its at least in the spirit of the Hamtouchers if nothing else … or we might just all be going to hell.

For people who aren’t too sure about why the band is called the Hamtouchers, bear this in mind. Every boy and every man over the age of 16 has touched ham. I think we can all agree on that.

JW: Who are the Hamtouchers?

PB: The Hamtouchers are Brad Derrick, Me, and then we have some supporting “groupeys”: Traugett and the irrepressible Conway. Oh and we were produced by, the George Martin of the Hamtouchers, the fifth Hamtoucher, Magic Blaine, who sits in his little glass box twiddling knobs ... all day. If you can’t make that funny, you’re doomed.

JW: As far as that song goes, if I go to see Brad, can I hear it?

PB: You can have a snippet. You can have a seven-second fair-use policy.

JW: Can I try and get Brad, and Conway of course, to replicate the song and sing it?

PB: I think what you should do is to go to Conway and Brad and you should get them to do a sort of acapella beat-box didgeridoo version of it  for seven seconds of fair use.

JW: In the spirit of Leipzig?

PB: Yeah, you could always ask Brad for his favorite line, which If I’m not mistaken, probably has something to do with PQ loot sacks, but I could have got that wrong.

(Editor's Note: You can hear all about Barnett's "Hairy Sack of Magic" by clicking here and watching the video!)

Walking around

Some stuff I saw.

There are now over 40,000 people working in our Customer Service in the Mythic Dungeon (might be untrue). This picture shows one of the CS rooms. We keep the CS people like troglodytes in darkened rooms. I had to hide when the flash went off, since the only light these guys normally get is from their monitors.


PC Zone previewed WAR. Then some Orks reviewed their preview and published it on a wall.


Kristen is really busy. Don’t talk to her. Actually, don’t even look at her – no direct eye contact. In fact, just go away!


My car kind of broke down on the way to the airport yesterday, so I was unable to try and “borrow a dollar off” anyone – I got back quite late. I’ll try and borrow a dollar today. I’ll keep you posted.

(Editor's Note: If you'd like to read all of Justin's exclusive WAR launch blogs, simply click here!)