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Dev Diary - The Realm War Site

Discussion in 'MMORPG' started by Aaddron, Nov 23, 2008.

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  1. Aaddron

    Aaddron Moderator Staff Member GameOgre Moderator

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    Today, Scott Stricklin takes us through the new addition to the realm War site, and gives us a taste of what else is to come!

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    As you can imagine there is always a long list of features we’d like to make available on the web site. There is no shortage of input from the rest of the studio, and the web team itself has plans both big and small for bringing compelling content to our players. Still, some things stand out as necessities in the catalog of features we want to surface to the web. Podcasts and Community news? Sure. Character and Guild profiles? All the cool kids are doing it. But for a game with RvR as its bread and butter… its defining feature… its schwerpunkt, as it were, the presentation of RvR data to the web is close to the top of the list.

    It hasn’t been an easy process, as the game code itself is a moving target. But finally I believe we’ve delivered on an old promise to bring the WAR to the web.

    Choosing Your Battle

    The first step in the Realm War redesign was to do away with the placeholder text that’s been the home page for that part of the site for months on end. A smaller title, a bit of flavor text, and a big list of servers was the way to go as it offered up fewer clicks to reach the data any visitor was likely to be seeking. Select a racial pairing on your server of choice and go.

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    The State of Your War

    The main server page is the real meat of the Realm War site. Here you’ve got a snapshot of the overall campaign, with the level and status of each capital city. We’ve made a condensed version of that information and dropped it into a pop-up window that automatically updates itself, should you need a friendly reminder that your enemies are making their move. Also, the appearance of each capital city changes as they gain levels and change their status from peaceful to besieged. Sadly, all cities seem to be rank five at this point, and none of them are on fire. Can someone please sack Altdorf for me? Ok, thanks.

    Below the campaign box are three selectors, each representing a racial pairing for the selected server. Here you get a quick look at what’s going on in each Tier in terms of zone control. Each Tier is also a link to the maps for each zone.

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    A Conspiracy of Cartographers

    I love maps, particularly the old crumbly kind with tattered edges and suspiciously vague coastal outlines. Dangerous for navigation, but fun to look at, and a fine basis for showing the status of the many RvR objectives in Warhammer Online. Click on any Tier on the server RvR page and you’ll be whisked away to a distant battlefield. If you listen closely you can hear the distant screams of the dying.

    Jason, our web designer, took great pains to collect all maps of all the RvR lakes, strip out all the extraneous icons, and place web-friendly objective and keep images in just the right locations. It all turned out quite nice I think.

    Furthermore, you can mouse over any keep and see when it was last captured, and which guild, if any, has taken ownership. Oh, and you can see what it looks like too, just in case you get lost looking for it, ya crazy tourist.

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    Marching to the Sound of the Guns

    Returning to the beginning of this diary, there are obviously many features that the web team intends to add to the Realm War web site. Spend five minutes there and I’m sure you can come up with a few. Have patience, for there are great things on the horizon.
     
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