It’s rare, but every so often, an established developer walks into what should otherwise be just another press demo and surprises everyone in the room. Mythic Entertainment did just that this weekend when they unveiled Land of the Dead to a group of journalists at Baltimore Games Day.

The goal, according to Creative Director Paul Barnett, was simply to “add more game to the game.” From the presentation and hands-on demo they provided, they definitely succeeded, at least with the new content.

Land of the Dead is a free upgrade to Warhammer Online, due in early July. It adds an entirely new area to the game, modeled on the gameplay found in Dark Age of Camelot’s Darkness Falls dungeon. It’s a new high level PvE area that is contested between the two realms, who must fight for control and then within the zone in order to enjoy its content and harvest the rewards.

To enter the Land of the Dead, the realm must win a tug-o-war with their opponent. This is decided through RvR, most specifically zone conquest and individual kills. Mythic hopes to see the zone swap control a couple times a night. Once it’s changed, the controlling realm gains the sole ability to enter the zone and respawn if killed within it. Naturally, when it flips, the people already inside won’t just be booted out. Instead, the invading realm will need to purge them through a series of missions.

More Game In The Game

What makes Land of the Dead new and fun, though, is not this concept. It’s the way Mythic ingeniously tweaked each of the quests and missions within the zone.

The vast desert/Egyptian inspired area is littered with 18 Public Quests, combinations of which must be completed by groups of players in order to gain access to a final epic pyramid.

In a move that is likely to thrill some, and exasperate others, each of these quests is not just the typical staged open kill quest from the regular lands of Warhammer Online. Each has its own unique “console-like” element to it. That’s not to say WAR has become an FPS game, but clearly the designers have done their homework and crafted challenges that test not only the level of the character, but also the abilities of the person behind the keyboard.

Here are a few examples of this new take on public quests:

• Carrion Eggs: It begins like any other. Players must smash a few eggs of Carrion birds. But, as players run in to begin attacking the birds, they’re lifted off the ground and dropped up at the top of a large cliff face full of nests. To complete the quest, the player must strategically hop from ledge to ledge down the mountain and plan their descent to maximize the number of ledges they land on (and thus eggs they smash). Players cannot climb the mountain and the quest is on a timer, so while the birds happily bring players who fall off back to the top to try again, time is of the essence. Sound familiar? It should, this harkens back to classic platformer games like Mario.
• Sealed Tombs: In another PQ, players begin again with a typical kill quest. After the first stage though, players must run into a series of tombs. At the top, they take on a blessing and then must quickly fight their way to the bottom of the mini dungeon to close off a sarcophagus. The blessing they take at the top has a shelf life, so to be successful each player better hurry. In order to do it with a reasonable group before the timer expires, it’s also important to spread out and do multiple tombs at once. Then, as monsters pour into the area, a series of skeletons wanders in to unlock the tombs. Again, players must intercept these skeletons before they can unlatch their hard work. Finally, once defended, there is a final epic mob fight… with a twist. This time, in between each stage as the monster is beaten down, he turns into a of couple fast moving clouds that, if they touch the player, teleports them to the bottom of one of the tombs. If a group isn’t careful and the wrong guy gets sent downstairs, the results can be disastrous.



• Defend The Docks: In a moment straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean or The Mummy, this PQ integrates siege equipment right into the game. Players must defend the docks against first an onslaught of ships from the sea and then a hoard of skeletons shuffle over land and the rolling dunes, just begging to be mowed down. The PQ culminates with a fight against a rather piratey Ship Captain.
• Dig For The Door: The final of the 18 PQs asks players to play some combination of Minesweeper and Simon Says to open up the final door and unseal the pyramid for the entire zone for 15 minutes. Inspired by actual historical accounts, where the Egyptians would slaughter the workers and architects of the pyramids and bury them outside, this mission asks players to dig up architects, each of whom will give a clue to how to unlock the door. Players must hit a dig button to try and with each attempt, they get on screen feedback about how close they were to an architect (“a few steps,” “a few feet,” or “a few yards”). If the player doesn’t get an architect, they get a worker, who they must kill. To effectively find architects, players must spread out and coordinate their messages to find them. After they get enough architects, each of whom has illuminated a symbol on the wall of the cave, the group must then carefully spread out and stand on the matching symbols carved into stones on the walkway. Be careful though, if even one member jumps on the wrong stone during this phase, not only does the door not open, but they’re instantly struck down. Once players coordinate and stand in the right spots, the door is unlocked.

Other innovations include roaming PQs that literally wander around the zone and can be activated wherever they’re met and much more. Each of the 18 PQs outside of the pyramid has a distinct mini-game tied to it.

Mythic also said that they worked hard to make sure that players wouldn’t get frozen out of the public quest once it reached a certain level if they were in too small of a group or even alone. The quests definitely seemed to be more friendly to small groups, but many still had an epic encounter at the end that required a large and well coordinated party to have any hope against.

Nonetheless, even if the contribution is not huge, each person who participates unlocks a symbol. These symbols must be collected to finally enter the pyramid at the end, so theoretically, even with a modest contribution, a single player could unlock all he or she needs to go into the last stage. That said, once inside, they best not be alone. Some baddies await.

The non-traditional content didn’t stop once the pyramid door came down. This large dungeon not only has monsters to fight, but traps and puzzles to figure out. Very early on, players must navigate a hallway full of swinging pendulums. Take a step too far? Death. Take a step too fast? Death. To disable it, three players must make it through and flick switches so the rest can pass.

Later on, in an Indian Jones moment, a giant swarm of locust will chase players rapidly down some narrow hallways. As if that wasn’t bad enough, as the players run, skeletons reach up from the ground and grab at feet. This isn’t a root though. The only way to save the player is for a group mate to go back and help them, in a mechanic not unlike what players must do in Left 4 Dead.

Even the final encounter of the Land of the Dead feels far more like something out of God of War than an MMO. A giant statue of the undead ruler of the realm comes alive as a weary group leaves the pyramid conquered and comes down, fists a flailing, to smash the party below. It requires a War Band to complete, but players must quick run to avoid getting smashed by the fists as they wail away at the ground below, and then dive in to get some hits in quickly, before the statue raises them out of reach. After enough damage is done, the players can then run right up the arm and slay the statue by attacking a soft spot on the back of his neck.

For purists, there is good news and bad news. This content is really only in the Land of the Dead, which is ultimately an entirely optional experience for players. However, according to the team, this is entirely representative of how they plan to do content in the future.

For those into something new that requires players to be a bit more on their toes, this content should be a breath of fresh air, but will have to tide you over for a while yet, as there is no practical way to retrofit this style of content into the core game. It’ll come, eventually, but naturally that depends on fan response and development schedules.

Purge Mode

While much of this is PvE content, it wouldn’t be Warhammer if RvR didn’t have a hand in it. As mentioned before, when the zone first flips, the invading realm enters what they’re calling a Purge.

This is a series of missions to rid the Land of the Dead of anyone from the enemy realm. Among other things, they can destroy the opposing NPC base and any players in it, shoot down the giant airships that brought the opposition there in the first place, and slaughter players as they go about their PQs and more.

But it really doesn’t get super interesting until the pyramid itself comes into play.

Naturally, at the time of any switch, players are likely to be in the middle of an instance. They’re told that their realm has lost control, but they are not booted out. Instead, it just means that if anyone hits the respawn button, they must start back in their own realm, although resurrection is still allowed.

Now, they must make a decision. They can either give up and go home (not likely, eh?), dig in and defend, or try and get through to the end of the pyramid before anyone catches up to them. See, while this was previously a private instance, invading groups are allowed to either enter the pyramid in regular PvE fashion, or invade someone else’s instance. This means a new group, a group that can respawn, comes in the front door and is hot on the heels of the original group.

Remember those traps from earlier? Well, a smart group uses this to their advantage. They’ve spent the time to get through them all, so they can now go back and reset them all so that the invaders are delayed. Beyond knowing that the enemy is present, the groups know nothing.

A coordinated and efficient group can make life miserable for the attacking hoard and with a bit of skill complete the pyramid and kill lots of enemies as they do it.

Obviously, attrition is an issue and eventually the invaders are likely to chase off their opponents, but players don’t seem likely to make it easy on each other. Although, players are also fully allowed to log off and on, regardless of who controls an area. Many of the assembled press already had plans to hide stealth classes near the switches to various traps so that they could login and flick them at just the right moment to wipe out entire groups.

With the zone intended to flip roughly twice a night (every four hours or so), it is entirely possible (and likely) that well run group could fight off enemies and survive until their realm takes it back. In an instant, the hunted can become the hunters.

To Control The Land of the Dead

Mythic has gone to great lengths to ensure that neither side dominates the zone and the rewards within. To make sure there is a good back and forth, even on the most lopsided servers, they’ve done a few things.

At its core, this is a race. Whichever team reaches the number of points required to flip the zone first wins the round and gets the zone. However, they’ve set it up so that while the winning team’s score resets once they’ve taken on the quest to the Land of the Dead, the losing team doesn’t suffer any such reset. In short, the more times in a row one side wins, the harder it is for them to keep it up.

There is also a natural balance at play here. If one side is winning the Tier 4 land war and controls the Land of the Dead, more of their top players are likely to bleed off into the sands. That means more opportunities for the opposition on the ground to not only flip the land, but turn the tide of the war.

They’ve also made the contributors to those score amplified the longer a side fails, as a handicap of sorts. The want to make sure both sides get to experience the content and have a regular stream or purge scenarios, which is one of the things they are most excited about.

Unlocking the Land of the Dead

Finally, Mark Davis from the Live Event team dropped in to explain how they’re going to unveil the Land of the Dead.

Too many games just patch the servers and say “go,” which is a lesson too few MMOs learned from EverQuest, which has generally done a great job of introducing new content through epic Live Events. Warhammer has had some success with Live Events and plans a doozy to open the doors to Patch 1.3.

When the patch goes live, the Land of the Dead will not be available instantly. The two sides will take part in the culmination of the Call to Arms story arc over a full week. The winning realm receives 24 hours of unfettered access to the new area.

The Call to Arms story arc began back in February with Bitter Rivals and has teased this update, even before the wraps came off what it was all about. Now with Rise of the Tomb Kings, players can duke it out, not just in the traditional RvR-focused meters, but through quests and other content that will only be available that week.

Davis noted that the previous legs of the story arc were very individual in nature, with players conscious of their contribution. This arc is far more realm driven, and the Live Event page will even keep track of who is in the lead as the week goes on.

Players can, of course, jump into this Live Event at any time or hour. It is not an event where GMs roleplay out characters on a Live Server, but content that is activated and available around the clock. It doesn’t require that the player was around for Chapters One and Two, either, but Davis did hint that those who were will be happy.

“There’s a reward from Beyond the Sands (Chapter Two) that is useful in the Land of the Dead,” he teased cryptically.

Davis has been thrilled with fan feedback on their Live Events to date and emphasized that this is something else Mythic has a renewed commitment to. While the timing will vary for a range of reasons, they hope to do a Live Event every couple months for the rest of the year. And for players overseas, don’t fret. All content, even Live Events, filters out to the partner servers (regardless of language) within a day of going live in the US.

Final Thoughts

This is undoubtedly going to be a big moment for Mythic and the future of Warhammer Online. The content itself is a departure from the core game, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It remains to be seen, though, if some fresh new content in one zone, no matter how epic, will be enough to entice a large number of players back into the world and whether it’s worth the risk of alienating players who liked their PQs the way they were.

Nonetheless, it’s a risk worth taking. These quests are fun, no doubt about it. They were a joy to play and Mythic seems to have done a good job of balancing the new ideas with the realities of an MMORPG. Although the lack of console staples like ragdoll death are emphasized when a Witch Hunter gets smashed with a giant pendulum, only to crumple to the ground in a stock death animation. Still, these details aside, the content stimulates parts of the brain that few MMOs bother with and that alone represents a huge jump forward that Mythic hopes will reinvigorate and expand their community.

The Land of the Dead is available to any player in the controlling realm over the level of 25 (it automatically scales people to the mid 30s) and should roll out free of charge in early June.