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Warhammer Online's ongoing series of production videos are almost too informative sometimes. For the bloggers at Massively, they pretty much do our job for us. Not that we don't mind taking it easy, but as you've probably gathered right now we really enjoy talking about MMOs. Thankfully, some topics are complicated enough that they warrant a second look. Warhammer's Living Guilds system, for example, was the subject of a great video just a few weeks back. And yet, there are still a number of questions you can walk away with.

Where can you use the guild banner (now called a standard)? What kind of tools will guilds have for coordinating events? What about the big picture? How to alliances work? And, perhaps most importantly, where can guildies get drunk together? All of these questions and much, much more are explored in the latest of our ongoing series of articles about Warhammer Online.

If you're so inclined, you can jump straight to to part 2 or part 3, or join us below as we chat with Mr. Drescher and Ms. Christian Bales.

<-- Jump back to part 1

We note there is a website and an email address down there at the bottom of the tab? What are those?

Christian Bales: That's just my web, that's test for now, but that's when the guild leader wants to set the actual guild's email address and the guild website.)

Josh Drescher: You can set that to be whatever you want, so ... Obviously, one of the cool things that you really want from a guild is a sense of belonging, the team jersey, you go and dress up in your Redskins jerseys or wherever you're from. It'll have the guild heraldry. The heraldry is a customized, unique sort of heraldry for your specific guild. So a symbol on it, specific color scheme, shape, patterns and so forth that's applicable only to your guild, that your guild will have the ability to place on various things.

Christian: On your standards and on your guild cloaks.

<-- Jump back to part 2

Is there a formal in-game mechanic for alliances?

Christian: There certainly is. We do allow formal alliances in the game, you can form an alliance with up to ten guilds, and you can assign officers within that alliance structure, though that is very limited. We actually have a roster for the alliances, you form it just from this window, and then it populates with your alliance roster. Note that every member from your alliance is not displayed in this roster, only your guild, the alliance leaders and the officers, because that would be - if you had ten guilds in your alliance, that would be a lot of people.

Thursday afternoon Christian Bales and Josh Drescher sat down with us to discuss the Living Guild system in Warhammer Online. We did, at length, and you'll see the results of that discussion on the site later today. In the midst of all that information, though, we got to talking about their early days at Mythic Entertainment. Unlike many of the AAA MMO developers today, Mythic originally started out as a 'garage-style' development house.

It's hard to imagine today, walking the halls of EA Mythic's corporate office space, but the duo's tales of antenna-based internet service, hallway offices, and legacy code make for a great reality check on the modern MMO marketplace. Read on below the cut for stories that will make you very glad to be working in a cubicle ...