Warhammer is PvP first and foremost - Mythic
Monsters and PvE designed around PvP.
Warhammer: Age of Reckoning producter Jeff Hickman has laid out Mythic's intent with the game pretty clearly in a new interview, explaining that everything in the game is designed with PvP in mind.
"We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content," he told Big Download. "When we balance our careers, we balance the content around player versus player, not fighting monsters."
"We balance the classes against each other," he continued, "then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it."
It's a pretty lengthy interview, and goes into a lot of depth about the balancing of the factions and Mythic's speciality, Realm vs Realm battles - well worth a read if Warhammer is sitting near the top of your wishlist.
However, for those of us who happily identify as carebears and don't generally enjoy PvP in massively multiplayer games, Jeff is keen to emphasise that Warhammer's approach is different - and you might find it to your tastes.
"There's no danger when you first enter our game," he explains. "There's no RvR unless you choose to enter those areas. It's purely up to you to play through the game how you want to play through it."
"I can tell you that my wife, who used to not be a PvP player, came into our game and enjoyed the crafting and questing. But because of how our game is designed, she was led near an RvR area, and she could look down into the battlefield and see what was going on."
"This kind of demystified it for her," Jeff claims, "and she decided to try the RvR. She then spend the next two hours on the keep pouring boiling oil on people and having a great time. There's no fear in it... It's the easiest PvP you'll ever play, and it's so much fun."