Warhammer Online Interview
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Q: Many of us are aware of how solid and rich the Warhammer license is and we've heard that Mythic and Games Workshop have a great working relationship. But, (there's always a big (but) isn't there?) if you had to pick one thing that's been difficult about working with an established license, rather than a concept with more leeway (like Dark Age of Camelot), what would it be?
A: I know you're not going to believe this, but there have not been any difficulties for months. It took us all a bit to get the hang of the approval process itself, since we're used to going our own way. But there's nothing really difficult about the whole thing. Let me borrow an analogy from the classic L'Engle book, A Wrinkle In Time. The form of poetry called a sonnet is very strict. You must have a certain meter, a particular rhyme scheme, and have a certain number of lines to the poem or it's just not a sonnet. Within those limits, you have complete freedom to say whatever you want.
Well, with Warhammer, we must operate within certain guidelines. An orc must behave in a certain way, a dark elf must have certain motivations, and things must look the way they were meant to look. It sounds very restrictive, but think about it we can focus all of our creative energy on the stories we want to tell, and on the actual game mechanics. And that is a LOT of creative energy.
Heck, in some ways it's easier than Camelot was. In Camelot, trolls look a certain way, and elves speak a certain way but we had to do development AND keep ourselves within the parameters.
