What is the current support for guilds and large battles?

The largest battle we can do right now is in the fortress zone where we have the population capped out so that around 300 people can be fighting each other in a fortress zone. We're trying to increase that as much as possible because open-world Realm vs. Realm is what our game's all about. So we're trying to always streamline our code and make the server handle more players. We're always trying to help that number. Right now you though you can look to around 200 to 300 people hammering on each other in a fortress zone. It's crazy how many people we can pack in there.

How does Warhammer differentiate itself from its competitors - quite simply, why should people be playing Warhammer instead of World of Warcraft?

The biggest difference with our game is Advanced Player Quests (or Public Quests we call them), and the Realm vs. Realm combat. Those are the two major, major key differences. Besides, our lore is... better. The public quests are very different from any other MMO we've had out there. So normally when you get a quest from an NPC he says go kill ten dues, come back to me and then go kill twenty of some of his friends, and then come back to me and go kill this general. So those quests are still in the game - but we also did a Public Quest thing where if you go to an area and there're squigs running all over the place, there's probably a Public Quest that says kill thirty of those things. And you don't have to group up with anybody for this, you just have to be there and and I can be there and some other friends and others who aren't even in a group with us could all be doing this together.

After we kill thirty of these squigs or 100 or whatever the first stage is, it goes through another stage, and instead of having to go to an NPC to step into the next stage, it just goes right to it. So you do the next stage of that, and then you do the last stage which is some end boss. Then at the end of that, there's a loot drop that's a big glowing treasure chest. And then this scoreboard comes up that says how well you did in this Public Quest so you know exactly where you're going to place. Depending on how well you do you get items depending on how much damage you did or how much healing you did – your total contribution toward beating that Public Quest. That's one big thing and that's where you get a lot of items in PVE system – the Public Quest system.

In RvR, that is the open-world fighting, and our scenarios, which are the instance fighting, the major difference between us and... them is that they have 5 battlegrounds, we have 30 instances, and you can start RvR-ing right from the start. At level 1, if you hit the "scenario join" button right when you join, you can go right into a scenario immediately upon logging in if you want. You can level up your characters from PvP, we give you experience [and] items. You also get RvR Influence, back to the Public Quest system. Besides the item you get from DOING the Public Quest, you acquire "Influence." Around this hub of NPCs or "Chapters" we call them, there's 3 Public Quests associated with each one, and as you're doing this Public Quest, you build influence, which is like another way of leveling up your character just for that Chapter.

Sort of like Renown from Fable?

Yeah, sort of like Renown, or kind of like Faction, but not. As you level up your influence with those people, you can select items from that as well, so there's the items from Public Quests, there's items from regular quests, there's items from influence, and there's rewards and items from RvR. Again the big thing about RvR is as you're progressing your character through RvR you're unlocking really really good items. And our endgame content is based around how high of a renown rank you are. That's what our Player vs. Player level is – experience for that.

So you're gaining your PvP levels and you're gaining your RvR levels, all en route to fighting the King, and the King drops the ultimate gear. Nobody's beaten the King – yet. He's a tough cookie to crack, but that guy drops the ultimate gear. If you're walking around with King gear, you'll also see somebody walking around [with the gear] and you'll go "Oh my God, they beat the King," because that gear is entirely unique looking. It's like the difference between walking around in greens and walking around in purples and golds. You say, "Oh my God, he did some work to get that." So it's very rewarding in our game to do, whether you want to do [Player vs. Environment] or whether you want to do Player vs. Player. You get rewarded no matter what you do in our game, and actually if you do a mix of both, you tend to enjoy the game a lot more than just focusing purely on one thing. So we have a lot to offer depending on what kind of a player you are.

So in terms of Public Quests, they reset after someone does them, correct?

Yeah, there's three stages to every Public Quest - you can go through stage one and then you might not pass stage two. And then in a couple minutes it'll go back to stage one so you can try it again. If you get all the way through it, it takes about three to five minutes for the Public Quest to reset, and then it goes back to stage one. So if you really like the Public Quest or you just missed it, you can hang around and then do it again. A lot of times when I'm playing I'll use the Open Party system, which is a button you can click to see what groups are in your area. In that window, you can just hit the "join" button, and you can go right into somebody's group, and go run over to the PQ and join them. Sometimes when that happens you run in the tail end of a Public Quest. They're just on stage three, the last boss is at 50%, and you're like, "Ah, I just missed it." But then it resets in a couple of minutes, so you can start from scratch and go at it again.

Are there any plans to add quests that are one-of-a-kind, where if somebody kills a guy, he's gone forever?

We thought about doing "permadeath" quests I guess, but we would rather invest time in the repeatable content than the one-offs. The other thing about the one-offs is that you feel like you might have missed something. We do have our events that occur almost monthly now. We have the "Night of Murder" going on right now, which is in respect to the American holiday of Valentine's Day. We did "Keg's End" which was sort of like the New Year's Eve/Christmas Party thing, and we did our Halloween event, "Hallow's End." But we do events all the time, which are sort of like the one-shots, every year they come up. So those are sort of like the temporary you-can-do-those-for-a-little-bit quests.

And of course, Vigil Games is developing an MMO based on Warhammer 40K, which leads many gamers to question what the differences are between Warhammer Online and the Warhammer 40K Online franchises. So, first off, what is the reason for that difference, where one half of the Warhammer franchise belongs to a different company?

It's just licensing. We made an agreement with Games Workshop four years ago to do the fantasy side, which is just straight, regular old Warhammer. but other companies already had the rights to the 40K, so if you don't have the rights for it, you simply can't publish it. It's like somebody else trying to draw Spiderman, and Marvel going no no no, you can't draw that. It's kind of the same thing in video games. That's why you see that EA has The Lord of the Rings, and nobody else can do a single-player Lord of the Rings, but Turbine has The Lord of the Rings multiplayer license.

Do you see 40K as a direct competitor? How do you hope to differentiate your game?

It's gonna be a different type of game. I don't know, we haven't seen much from them yet, so we're not exactly sure. Obviously it's gonna be sci-fi, and we're fantasy. I'm hoping that we'll actually feed off of each other to a degree. People will wanna play our fantasy game and then they will probably wanna play the sci-fi 40K game, so I'm hoping, you know, everybody hopes that they subscribe to both of them. We wish everybody the best of luck on both sides.

Finally, what kinds of updates lie in Warhammer Online's future? Are there any particular areas that you'd like to improve upon?

We're always looking at improving performance. Me personally, I'm in charge of making RvR and open field more enjoyable. We're looking at adding more depth to our keeps and battlefield objectives systems. We just announced our Tomb Kings expansion, which is sort of like a free expansion. It's gonna be a huge dungeon that gonna be sort of reminiscent of Darkness Falls if you ever played [Dark Age of] Camelot. So the way it'll work is that there will be something that one Realm does to get access to the dungeon and something another realm does to get access to the dungeon taken away from them. So it'll be what we call "the purge" to a degree, if the Order had the dungeon for a while and they're all in there doing their quest and killing the monsters and doing all that stuff in there, Destruction can go ahead and do the trigger to let them get in. Then Destruction floods into the dungeon and wipes out all of the Order players and is like, "Get out of here, we own it now." So it was really cool and we're trying to redo that spirit of Darkness Falls from Dark Age, in that same vein. When you get to the dungeon you're like, "sweet let's rush in and kill everybody!" You don't think, "let's go do the monsters and let's go do the quest." It's like, "anybody that's in there, I wanna kill em to get em out." It's really really cool that we're gonna try to reproduce that. And that's what some of the players have been asking for. We read the forums, we give feedback all the time, so we're always doing improvements to the game.

The other big thing coming up are the Slayer and the Choppa. They are two new classes that are coming out that are melee DPS guys. if you're familiar with the lore at all, they're pretty much like Berserkers to a degree - they just run up and wail on people with axes. They are gonna be coming out in a couple of months, and they're shaping up to be pretty badass.

Well that's all I've got. Nice meeting you, thanks for the interview.

Nice meeting you too. You're welcome.

On that note, Comic Con is littered with lots of geeks. I mean lots of them. The attendance was around 77,000, and it was clear from standing in the sea of people that the New York Comic Con was the largest convention I had ever been to. There were people like Ani-Gamers' own Karl Custer who were at the convention, but who I never ran into for all three days.

The convention center is luckily large enough to handle such a huge number of people, but sometimes navigating it was a little difficult. The exhibitor's hall was the centerpiece, and there were various entrances into it from different floors. However, the panel rooms were off in a corner, down a flight of steps, and the press room was completely on the opposite side of the convention center from the panel rooms. Exacerbating the situation, the press room was nudged against the "IGN Theatre," meaning that we had to push through a massive line almost any time we tried to get in.

Most of the panels that I went to (predominantly industry ones) were well-run, and the Comic Con staff did a good job of keeping things orderly, setting up tech, and transitioning between different panels. For example, a con staffer was on-hand during the Yen Press giveaway, and she nobly kept the crazy forces of teenage anime fandom at bay by making sure that they lined up in a mature, orderly fashion.

The feeling that I got from the anime and manga industries at their panels was that, while the economy is in shambles right now, the companies will move along with their normal plans with only minor setbacks. Some excessive programs are being cut back, such as FUNimation's podcast, but in general the strategy seems to be the same as last year, with niche titles still getting licenses alongside more mainstream ones. On the mainstream front, Yen Press seems to be picking up some real money-makers, including the new shonen posterboy Soul Eater and the long-awaited Yotsuba&! (which was announced at NYCC). I am of the opinion that over the course of the next year, Yen Press will rise to be as big as Tokyopop once was, and will be Viz's primary challenger in the shonen arena. (Think Naruto vs. Soul Eater)

The anime industry, on the other hand, didn't announce any new licenses, but FUNimation, Bandai and Viz focused heavily on their new online streaming services. This is going to be the future of the anime industry, so it's great to finally see the distributors giving up on single-volume releases and moving to boxsets and streaming video.

The New York Comic Con was also my first time attending a con as video game press. I checked out games like Velvet Assassin, X-Blades, Prototype, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, The Conduit, MadWorld, and Red Faction: Guerrilla, most of which should have hands-on coverage on the site soon. I must say that at some of the gaming booths, I didn't receive very much help from the reps, but the SouthPeak Games booth was really fun and inviting. I received some very informative walkthroughs from developers and representatives for Velvet Assassin and X-Blades, as well as a great interview with the voice actor starring in Velvet Assassin.

Outside of scheduled convention programming, I also got to hang out with some really awesome people throughout the weekend. On Friday afternoon, I stopped by the "Versus Mode Live" panel, featuring Bioshock director Ken Levine and Fallout 3 producer Todd Howard, and moderated by legendary gaming journalists N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo. After the panel, I chatted for a bit with the four of them, and they even recorded openers for the Ani-Gamers Podcast. Both on Friday (when the Vertical panel ended early) and on Saturday (when the same happened for CMX), I had a fun chance to meet a bunch of fellow anime/manga bloggers, journalists, and industry professionals – including Brigid Alverson, Deb Aoki, Casey Brienza, Ed Chavez, Erica Friedman, and Michael Pinto.

One of the highlights of my personal con experience was a "blogger dinner" on Saturday night, wherein fifteen or so other bloggers and I headed down to the Tick Tock Diner on 34 St. and 8th Ave. In attendance were friends like Gia Manry, Scott VonSchilling, Hisui, and KuronoK, as well as new acquaintances like Michael Pinto and John Martone. My table was particularly fun, as I sat with Narutaki and Kohaku (from Reverse Thieves), Dave (from Subatomic Brainfreeze), and Carl (from Ogiue Maniax). We discussed ninja self-destruction, Segata Sanshiro, and pedo high school teachers, but quickly noticed that the other tables were all talking about actual anime stuff. (Hah, silly them!) The other highlight was, of course, on Sunday, when I sat down with Brigid, Scott, Hisui, and Narutaki for Ani-Gamers Podcast #012.

I really enjoyed the New York Comic Con, despite my general preference for small, anime-centric cons. I would without question recommend it to any geek with an interest in anime, manga, games, or (naturally) comics – as long as they are okay with large conventions. It's big, it's crazy, and it's hectic, but dammit if the New York Comic Con's not fun as hell.

Click for our New York Comic Con 2009 coverage

How does voice acting differ from traditional acting?

I mean, voice acting is different because you have a lot less to work with in order to communicate something that the character is trying to communicate. If it's an emotion or a thought, you have your voice as opposed to using your whole body or your face. So you're in a sound booth and you're just implementing what you can do with your voice to emit those feelings.

You've been playing some of the early builds of Velvet Assassin here at Comic Con. How does it feel to play as yourself in a video game?

It's really strange actually, because I'll hear myself and for some reason it doesn't sound like me. I mean first off, it's a British accent and I'm American, so I obviously had to put some work into being able to do that properly. And since I haven't spoken in a British accent in so many months since I've done the recording, it seems almost like its someone else, but at the same time it's me. It's all very strange – but kind of cool, too, and I really like playing the game. I just wish I was better at it.

Do you play video games at all yourself, or is it strictly business?

Honestly, I used to play video games when I was a teenager, but I don't play as much now - it's mainly a time thing. But it's been really cool being involved with Velvet Assassin. It's rekindled my interest in the gaming world.

Do you have any plans for more video game roles in the future?

Yeah, I mean, whatever comes along. I think it's definitely a market that's going to be huge. It's up and coming and people are using video games as a medium in a lot of different ways. I think it's extremely fascinating to be involved in that.

On that note, right now video game acting isn't really its own distinct profession, and often gaming roles are filled by stage and film actors. Do you think that as video games struggle to be accepted as an art form, video game acting can separate itself from stage and film as a distinct art?

Yeah, I mean it's very different. Obviously, video games are animated, so as an actor, there aren't really that many things you can do besides doing voice work and motion capture work and that kind of stuff. I think it's really cool when they mix live-action stuff with parts from the game, so you can get a little bit of both. But I feel that a lot of hardcore gamers don't like that. They like it to be purely animated, purely video game.

What has been your favorite experience in working on Velvet Assassin?

Well, the traveling has been great. I was fortunate enough to go to Germany with Velvet Assassin for a convention in Germany and to Seattle and now obviously to Comic Con. So that's been really exciting, just meeting all these people. It's this enthusiasm about games and people showing up in these crazy costumes. I'm not generally exposed to that world at all.

For the benefit of the readers: She showed up in a crazy costume too, but then again that's her job.

Yeah, that's right. It's funny because when I walk to the convention, I wear the costume, and I know that people are looking at me and thinking, "Oh God she's one of those gaming people!" [laughs]

And finally, what tips would you give to aspiring video game voice actors?

Oh, what tips would I give? Don't give up, in anything you do really. And yeah, if you want to do it, then stick to it, and it'll happen sooner or later.

Thank you very much for your time Ms. Cohen. Best of luck with the release of Velvet Assassin this April.

Thank you very much.

EDIT: I accidentally wrote March as the game's release date instead of April. Sorry.

While Velvet Assassin might be classified as a stealth action title, it is all about stealth over action. According to SouthPeak rep Aubrey Norris, the two things to remember while playing the game are "kill everybody, and don't get seen." She wasn't kidding either – Most of the game is spent crouching in the shadows, waiting for a soldier to walk past so that you can kill him. Much like Metal Gear Solid, every area is a puzzle, with soldiers walking along set patrols and obstacles set up to hamper your ability to get past. It makes for some really interesting gameplay as Violette shuts off lights, hides behind cover, and attempts to creep silently over floors coated with broken glass.

When Violette finally stands behind an enemy, you can kill him with a single button press, which will generate one of thirty-six distinct assassination animations. The one that gets used is determined by what weapon Violette is carrying, where she is standing relative to the enemy, and a variety of other factors. The screen turns red as Violette is about to kill her victims, adding an even greater level of tension to the already nail-bitingly tense assassination scenes. Violette's missions range from assassinating Nazi leaders to blowing up bunkers to killing Allied spies before they can give away information, but a lot of what I played was simple room-by-room assassinations. (Think Metal Gear Solid) I could see Velvet Assassin facing the same problem as Assassin's Creed, wherein there are so many assassinations that they become tedious chores, despite how well-designed they are.

For the packrat gamers, there are "collectibles" scattered throughout all of the levels, but instead of being meaningless trinkets, each and every one is an object based directly off of artifacts from Nazi-era Germany. These include things like medals and even letters from German soldiers to their families. Nearly everything in this game, from the weapons to the hairstyles, was heavily researched by the developers at Replay Studios.

One of the more unusual additions to the game is something called morphine. Violette has the ability to use it while telling her story, causing the game world to turn into a psychedelic, flowery dream, slowing everything down so that the now-nightgown-clad Violette can sneak past enemies. This powerful ability can be recharged with morphine syringes found around the levels, and it sometimes must be used to pass obstacles. The morphine is the only part that diminishes the game's realism, since the weird dream sequences are actually a fully-required gameplay element, rather than an optional crutch for players in need of help.

All in all, though, Velvet Assassin is shaping up to be an interesting game. Its take on World War II is quite unique, as it is simultaneously tackling the idea of a female main character and the concept of the battle "behind the front lines." The game looks beautiful, and the stealth gameplay has its share of nerve-wracking moments. Fans of Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear Solid who are looking for a title a little bit more grounded in reality: Don't let Velvet Assassin sneak under your radar.

• YuGiOh! R by Akina Ito - Oct. 2009
• Boys Over Flowers: Jewelry Box by Yoko Kamio - Oct. 2009 (It's actually just another volume of the manga, but they're releasing it as a sort of sequel/epilogue)
• The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross Artbook by Arina Tanemura - Nov. 2009
• Beast Master by Kyousuke Motomi - Nov. 2009
• Butterflies, Flowers by Yuki Yoshihara - Dec. 2009 (an M-rated josei title)
• Jormungand by Koitaro Takahashi - Nov. 2009
• What a Wonderful World! by Inio Asano - Oct. 2009
• GoGo Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto - Nov. 2009 (from the creator of Tekkon Kinkreet)
• All My Darling Daughters by Fumi Yoshinaga - Jan. 2010
• not simple by Natsume Ono - Jan. 2010
• Natsume Yuujinchou by Yuki Midorikawa - Jan. 2010

FUNimation
FUNimation also only felt the need to send one representative, the ever-charismatic Adam Sheehan. He began his presentation by showing some charts to illustrate FUNi's growth in a bad economy, hoping to reassure anime fans who fear that our little niche will be crushed under a failing global economy. (I don't blame them, we're all scared.)

Other than that, Sheehan just went over FUNi's new releases and answered some questions. Among his answers to those questions was word that the FUNimation podcast has been put on hiatus until "things get better," Baccano will probably be released in a 13-episode boxset, and FUNimation hasn't licensed Hellsing Ultimate yet because it quite simply "hasn't been offered to us."

What really struck me about both of these panels was a single quote, spoken word for word by both Adam and Robert: "Single-volume releases have gone the way of the dodo." Hearing this exact same sentiment said in the exact same way from the two biggest names in anime got me thinking about what that says about the anime industry. Dare I say it?: the New York Comic Con 2009 was the site of the official death of the single-volume release. And you know what?

Good riddance.

The single-volume release has always been one of my biggest problems with anime releases. Yes, I understand that people want their anime quickly, but even if you released DVD Volume 1 of some show on the same day as it was released on Japanese television, what are the odds that the average otaku will buy that $20 DVD instead of watching an HD-quality fansub? Exactly.

The box set release is where the real purchases come in. If anime companies like FUNimation released shows in cheap boxsets and scrapped the single-volume releases entirely, they would save quite a lot of money on DVDs that are probably not selling very quickly during their first few runs. Luckily, this seems to be happening, so hopefully FUNi and Bandai should see the improvements immediately – Bandai especially, since the combination of Code Geass on TV and boxsets in stores is exactly the kind of model that has worked for American television for so long.

I will admit that I don't have the sales numbers for any of these companies, so I don't know how single-volume releases sold when they used to be all over the market. Still, I can say from personal experience that the average 15-year-old otaku will not buy six $20 DVDs, so the strategy is inherently flawed.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, and this recession just might be the very necessity to spur the kind of invention that our industry needs right now.

Yen Press
Yen Press President Kurt Hassler and the other folks from the manga publisher showed up at their panel room today to provide us with some sweet, sweet new licensing announcements and (as most of the packed room was hoping for) some sweet, sweet giveaways. The new licenses are listed below.

• Time and Again (by Jiun Yun) - Yen will be giving a graphic novel release to this title, already running in Yen+
• Spice and Wolf manga (story by Isuna Hasekura, art by Keito Koume) - A release date is "soon to be disclosed"
• Raiders (by JinJun Park) - Described by the folks from Yen as "early Obata, sort of," referring of course to the distinctive art style of Death Note manga artist.
• Laon (story by Hyum You, art by YoungBin Kim)
• The Crescent Moon Story (by Hyouta Fujiyama) - Releasing in September 2009
• Yotsuba&! Volume 6 (by Kiyohiko Azuma)!!!

Naturally, the talk of the room was the licensing of Yotsuba&!, which was originally owned by ADV Manga until their company went under, effectively ceasing the publication of the manga. In an epic Powerpoint mistake, the folks from Yen accidentally revealed the license of Yotsuba&! a few slides early, resulting is such a deafening roar from the crowd that Kurt's microphone shorted out. (At least I like to think that that's the reason.)

When asked about the translator selected to work on the new release of the manga, Yen told us that they selected a translator who had done some work on the ADV release, so they had some familiarity with the title. Additionally, the manga will not be published in Yen+, but Yen Press is currently looking at republishing ADV's first five volumes of the title

Finally, Kurt pulled out boxes upon boxes of Higurashi and Soul Eater manga and merchandise, which he was giving away... for free. Described by many as a "feeding frenzy" or quite simply "Animal House," the panel room was filled to bursting with gleeful fangirls (and fanboys) entering, exiting, and re-entering the line to pick up more and more manga, while the manga press corps watched in awe.

CMX Manga
DC Comics were firing on all cylinders at the new York Comic Con, with not only representation for their Western comics and DC Universe Online video game, but also a panel run by their manga division, CMX.

The panel was unfortunately nothing more than a simple list of the latest titles coming out from CMX, all of which I've listed below:

• The Name of the Flower (by Ken Saito • Jan 09
• Fire Investigator Nanase (story by Izo Hashimoto, art by Tomoshige Ichikawa • Jan 09
• Jihai (by Toshimi Ningoshi • Feb 09)
• March on Earth (by Mikase Hayashi • Mar 09
• Venus Capriccio (by Mai Nishikata • Apr 09)
• Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (art by Nakaba Higurashi, original story by Seiichi Morimura • Apr 09) - FLEX
• The King of Debris (by Yusuke Aso • May 09)
• The Lapis Lazuli Crown (by Natsuna Kawase, who worked on Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne • May 09)
• Ballad of a Shinigami (story by S-she Hasegawa, art by Asuka Izumi • June 09)
• Broken Blade (by Yunosuke Yoshinaga • Jul 09)

Regarding the CMX Mobile service's possible expansion to American cell phones, the division is "discussing a variety of options for a variety of devices." Of particular note is that they are looking at devices other than cell phones as well. (DS makes sense, since there are a lot of Japanese companies trying to pull that off.) And that's a wrap for the manga panels of NYCC09 day two!

• Akita Publishing Co., Ltd.
• Chuokoron Shinsha
• Enterbrain
• Fujimi Shobo
• Fusosha
• Futabasha
• Gentosha
• Hakusensha
• Hayakawa Publishing
• Kadokawa Shoten
• Kobunsha
• Mag Garden
• MediaWorks
• Shinchosha
• Shinshokan
• Shodensha
• Shonen Gahosha
• Tokuma Shoten
• Wani Books