I can see the eyes rolling already not another MMO news-bit, but please bear with it. Mythic Entrtainment annouces that Warhammer Online is now shutdown, and gives a link for refunds.

Warhammer® Online Shutdown – 6pm Eastern December 18th, 2013 (UTC -05:00)

On December 18th, 2013 the Warhammer Online servers will be shutdown at 6pm Eastern Time (UTC -05:00).  We wish to thank all the loyal players throughout the years for their patronage.

For information on refunds: http://www.warhammeronline.com/article/Warhammer-Online-Refund-FAQ

Mythic announces that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is free until shutdown as a gift to all past, and present players.

A Parting Gift

Greetings Warhammer players, 

Effective immediately we will be turning off the ability to apply one month subscriptions and game time codes to Warhammer Online accounts and removing the ability to open new Warhammer Online accounts. 

To give Warhammer Online a proper sendoff we are opening the game to anyone free of charge that has or had an account in good standing starting October 31st, 2013.  We will be adding new NPC’s to the game in order to power up your characters as well as other unique experiences for everyone to enjoy as we say goodbye to Warhammer Online over the next few weeks.  So please join us and help say goodbye to Warhammer Online in one last big WAAAGH!

See you soon!

Warhammer Team

Mythic Entertainment announces that the MMO will be shut down on December 18th.

We here at Mythic have built an amazing relationship working with Games Workshop creating and running Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning over the last 8 years. Unfortunately, as with all licensing deals they do eventually  come to end and on December 18th, 2013 we will no longer be operating Warhammer Online. As such we will no longer be selling 3 month game time codes or have the ability to auto renew your accounts for 3 months as of September 18th, 2013. If you would like to read some additional thoughts from one of WAR’s Producer please check out http://www.warhammeronline.com/.  From all of us here at Mythic we thank you again for your dedication and support over the last five years.

Associate Producer Josh Drescher talks about the the past and future of Warhammer Online in an interview with WarCry.

What would you say have been the five most significant changes in the last year? Why those?

• Server stability improvements - We've managed to improve server stability my whole orders of magnitude over the past year and we're continuing to improve it as we move forward.
• Client performance improvements - Especially in terms of large-scale battles, we've been unhappy with client performance since launch. Our client programmers have made some serious improvements, but there's still work to be done.
• RvR changes (many of which are still ongoing) - We've taken a hard look at the RvR experience (particularly in the 4th tier of the game) over the past four months and have found it unsatisfactory. We've made changes to encourage open field keep sieges (and defense) by enhancing rewards and adding things like a second set of ramps in keeps. We've made major changes to the campaign - like pulling out the need to take fortresses - to improve the flow and performance of end-game RvR. We've got a lot more in store - especially for cities - in the coming months.
• Addition of new careers - The Choppa and Slayer have become two of the most popular careers in the game.

Land of the Dead - What can I say? I love RvR dungeons.

Blue's News has word to expect an expansion from WAR in the near future and eudaimonia, for some surely, of an Origin games revival.

Mythic On The Future of Ultima Online, Warhammer and Working with BioWare on IndustryGamers is an interview with Josh Drescher and Calvin Crowner about those topics. One note of interest is word to expect an expansion for Warhammer Online in the near future: "Ray Muzyka from BioWare has a very long term plan for the future and we've had to think further into the future because of that. Most of existence, our studio has been on a shoestring budget so we couldn't think far ahead, but we just finished up a major patch for Warhammer Online and there's a lot of stuff we're thinking about improving and enhancing the gameplay experience and guaranteeing that product lives up to the legacy of the Warhammer franchise. You should expect an expansion in the near future." They also highlight a quote offering vague hopes for revival of some Origin Systems IP: "There are some folks that feel exactly as you do about Origin Systems," Crowner tells them. "I have Crusader: No Remorse on a shelf on my desk and there's tons of stuff that could be done with it; we have some people that are very passionate about these games." It's not much, but we are still happy that Wing Commander was recently re-Trademarked.

The escapist have an article from a former employee of Mythic Entertainment, Jeremy Monken, who writes about how he found his job in the MMO industry, the days leading up to the release of Warhammer Online, its decline in subscriber numbers and how he lost his job again. It is a very good read so don't hesitate to read it.

MMORPG points out that Land of the Dead is live, and also points to patch notes.

The Call to Arms! campaign culminates today with the opening of the Land of the Dead. The Land of the Dead is a large RvR gated zone taking inspiration from Dark Age of Camelot's "Darkness Falls".

The zone features a new dungeon, several instances, and tons of new items, including the all new Tyrant armor set.

In addition to the included content, Patch 1.3 features countless bug fixes, new quality of life features, such as the ability to pass on Keep or Public Quest loot rolls, improvements to crafting, including a new crafting inventory bag, and more.

Unfortunately, for those who were expecting the big balance changes in Patch 1.3, those were pushed off to a later date so that they would have more time to be tested and iterated.

For the full patch notes, go here.

Accompanying todays launch MMORPG brings us more information from Warhammer Online developers Jeff Skalski and Gabe Amantangelo.

This new update brings with it a lot of new content for players from mid tier three to tier four, including what Designer Gabe Amantangelo described as a two part dungeon. The first part is The Necropolis of Zandri, "a big sort of open field PQ and lair kind of loose dungeon crawl system and then there's the Tomb of the Lich Lord which is a traditional six man instance that has a lot of non-traditional things including traps and the ability for players to invade each other inside of instances.

Access to the dungeon zone is controlled through what Mythic is calling the Expedition Resource system. Players will earn resources via T4 zone control and player kills. Once they have enough, flight paths will open up (closing the opposition's paths).

To keep things moving, the team has built in a bit of a handicap safeguard. After about 18 hours of one team not gaining access to the zone, resources increase in value making it easier for the opposing team to gain access. They don't often expect to see this handicap brought into play, however, because a team's resources don't reset when the other side gains control meaning that no one has to start from scratch after the prize is claimed.

June 16th say Blue's.

Mythic Entertainment announces the Rise of the Tomb Kings will launch on June 16, beginning the third and final chapter in the Call to Arms! story arc for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, leading up to the release of the new Land of the Dead dungeon later this month. The event will include competitions, exclusive titles, and rare item drops. There is an associated online puzzle that will unfold over the coming weeks; more details on this can be found in this blog post.

Alec Meer's hands on article on WAR's incoming content is up.

Approaching the Tomb of the Vulture King from the desert is easily the most impressive sight in the entire game: sand swirls in front of you, eventually parting to reveal a giant pyramid, looming unnervingly. Again - this is an expansion that turns WAR into an adventure. It's Indiana Jones with orcs. This extends to the challenges and well as the aesthetics - in some of the new mini-dungeons (lairs, as they're known), you'll find yourself jumping between ruined pillars to progress, side-stepping blades that pop from the walls, or dodging giant laser beams fired from on high. A Public Quest sees you teleported inside a series of history books (kind of like that rubbish Macaulay Culkin Pagemaster film), temporarily replacing the endless desert with murky Skaven lairs or lush fields, and only restoring you to the real world once you find and retrieve the lost book. A book within a book? Best not to question how, really.

This lengthy two-part Paul Barnett interview at MMOGamer is ostensibly about WAR but takes a right turn and meanders all over the place.  Here's a snip on his view of the future from Part 2:

The MMO Gamer: So then you’re the sort of person who believes that the industry is becoming more bite-sized, casual game focused, as opposed to hardcore AAA title focused?

Paul Barnett: We’re getting more casual players, and wider audiences who are less obsessed with the old-school. You’ve got people who want to have their gaming time defined. “I’ve got half an hour before I’m going out. I know playing this game will only take half an hour,” or “I’ve got to put the kids to bed. I know that if I let them play this game, I can say ‘you’ve got one more level’,” knowing that one more level means 30 minutes and you can get them to bed.

The “I want to do stuff before I go shopping, or before the football’s on.” The “I want to be able to share that information, I want it to be viral. I want to turn up at work and be like ‘Hey, man, I’ve been playing this crazy game. Here, I can beam it straight to your mobile.’”

You know, people who generally don’t have a hardcore computer room can get interested in this idea and understand what it is.

I look at all sorts of interesting things. My boy and girl are currently playing with UBFunkeys, which are these USB connection toys. I look at that and go, “Wow, that’s really interesting.”

It’s a physical product that’s cute and interesting, that connects through a computer, which allows me access to a virtual world. Almost unheard of in game design.

It’s made by Hasbro, it’s available in all the main shops, and it’s selling really, really well.

And you go, “That’s where the future’s going to come.”

Part 1 and Part 2.  Thanks, Hishadow!

On the Warhammer Online site an article can be found from German community manager, Hadi Al-Begami who dabbles in all things supernatural, focusing on what the men of the Empire call Winds (or Lores) of Magic.

While other races of the Old World, notably the Slann and Elves, are able to control the entirety of the Winds of Magic, human spellcasters, for various reasons such as a short lifespan as well as a lack of natural connection to the fabric of magic, can only focus on one of the Winds of Magic, called Lores. The High Elf mage, Teclis, helped Magnus the Pious to found the now famous Colleges of Magic in Altdorf, each one specializing in one of the Lores.

The Wind of Aqshy
Also called the Lore of Fire, the followers of this path are known as Pyromancers or Bright Wizards. They utilize the destructive and cleansing nature of fire to bring annihilation to the foes of the Empire, so it is no wonder that they make up the bulk of the Empire’s battle mages.

As is always the case for those that dabble in the arcane arts, this power comes at a price – and in particular, their physical appearance will change, beginning with reddish hair and a faint scent of brimstone or sulphur, and ending with brightly glowing eyes and tattoo-like glowing markings on their arms.

The Wind of Chamon
Those who utilise the powers of Chamon, or the Lore of Metal, are referred to as Alchemists or Gold Wizards. They are the masters of transmutation, capable of rearranging the elements of any given body and even replacing certain elements by another for a while.

So, while the Bright Wizards are capable of flinging a red-hot fireball at a foe, Gold Wizards will simply turn an armoured knight into a pile of red-hot molten steel.

Mark Jabobs writes a lengthy SotG for WAR.

Folks,

    It’s only March and it’s been a very hectic year already for us here at Mythic.  The last six months have seen an awful lot of excitement and change here at the studio.  We’ve launched another successful MMORPG but this time in the face of the worst economic conditions that most of us have ever seen.  We’ve done some things that we are very proud of, some things we regret, and some things that we are very excited about going forward.  As I’ve said about Mythic throughout the years, we are not perfect but we will always try our best to create great games.  So, without further preamble (or simply ramble), here’s my Winter’s End State of the Game with a quick peek at the past, the present, and a much deeper gaze into the near future.

    Right now we're in the middle of our first LIVE expansion for WAR.  As part of that, we have just released our biggest patch yet for WAR.  While I am a long-standing member of “There is no such thing as a miracle patch” club, this patch cycle (1.2) and the one that will follow it (1.3) represent a huge number of changes, bug fixes, and additions to our game.  Given the proximity of these two releases, I think it is pretty safe to say that these represent one of the largest (if not the largest) amount of new content, tweaks, adjustments, etc. to any MMO over the course of several months.

Mythic has announced a 10 Day Free Trial for Warhammer Online.  The trial is only for NA and Asia Pacific and covers "Tier 1 and Capital City game zones only".  You can check out the Free Trial FAQ for more info.

Warhammer's big Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals event and the accompanying v1.2 game update are due to go live any time now.  Here's a summary of v1.2:

Tomorrow we will be bringing you the massive and long-anticipated Patch 1.2, which heralds the arrival of the Choppa and Slayer careers, kicks off the the Bitter Rivals live event content (March 3 - 10), new items, over 500 bug fixes, extensive career balancing, and much more!

1.2 will be going live Tuesday, 3/3. All North American servers will be brought down at 7:00 AM EST with Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00 AM EST. We expect all servers to be back up and running by 1:00 PM EST.

Bill Roper airs his view on MMO subscription numbers.

"It's so funny, I hear half the people are saying, 'Oh gosh, Warhammer looks like it isn't doing so great,' because they said they had 300,000 subscribers," he said, adding: "Those are not bad numbers."

Speaking to MTV, Roper explained how comparing every MMO to World of Warcraft was an error, and that Blizzard's title was more of an "aberration" than a standard.

"I think people look at it and go, 'Well, WoW has got 11 million and your game only has 300,000, your game must not be doing good'," Roper said. "You have to throw the aberration out."

He continued: "...you can have a few hundred thousand subscribers, do great, keep the company alive, grow it over time, and keep it moving."

"I know many games out there that would love to have 300,000 subscribers," he said, explaining that Mythic could still grow its subscriber base when it launches in new territories. "[Warhammer has] not launched everywhere either. I don't think they're in Asia yet. There's a lot of room to still be able to grow their numbers."

Gamespy & IGN do a crossover of articles for Warhammer Online's new classes.

The Choppa, of course, is returning to Warhammer Online with an Order counterpart, the Dwarf Slayer (check out IGN's take on the Slayer). That seems to have put extra incentive on the developers at Mythic to make the Orc career just as entertaining and attractive for players. When I logged in to my Orc Choppa ("Ginsu") on the game's test server, I jumped right into some of the initial area quests and leaped into a few PvP scenarios and tried to get a handle on how the class plays. That meant learning how to go berserk in a calm and reasonable fashion.

As with the rest of the classes in Warhammer Online, the Choppa is built around a combat-driven mechanic that is used to both fuel special powers and impart special bonuses to the player. This is partly to encourage players to get in and mix it up with opponents, an understandable dynamic in a game built around a PvP core. Mostly though it's a way to mix up the classic turn-based/cooldown MMO combat system and make it feel less stately and more dynamic.

In the Choppa's case, this mechanic is called "Berserk," and is a running meter that slowly fills up as the player fights. When the meter is about 50% full, the Choppa is considered "furious," and it imparts a significant bonus to the damage output of the Orc and fuels low-level special abilities. Should the Berserk meter get all the way up into the red zone, however, the Orc is now considered "fully berserk," and gets a significant damage bonus along with an equally impressive debuff to defense.

Game Trailers have a couple of NYCC demos vids of the upcoming WAR classes: the Slayer and the Choppa.

According to EA's financial report about the last quarter of 2008, Warhammer Online ended the year with 300K active subscribers. However according to the website of Warhammer Online there are 750K registered players. Then again as EA lists it as a highlight, the difference probably was expected.

Thanks Hedek for the info.

Rob Purchese says that GOA  have announced a large update for WAR called "Call to Arms". This includes: those rumoured classes, a new zone (Land of the Dead), and offical forums for the game.

Top of the bill are re-instated classes Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer. Both are mirrors of one another: berserk, up-close brawlers with little regard for their own safety.

These will be introduced properly in March, but players can get a head start with the new classes by completing a live Bitter Rivals event slightly earlier. This event opens a Chaos-themed Twisting Tower RvR battleground, too.

The other big feature will be a Land of the Dead zone, home to an enormous new Tomb Kings dungeon that Mythic claims to be the spiritual successor to Darkness Falls from previous MMO Dark Age of Camelot. Here, remember, all factions fought openly - albeit after starting from separate corners of the immense underground chasm.

Edit: You can check out the offical info here.

Inc Gamer's MMO weekly article hints at two new classes coming to WAR, and also covers some Josh Drescher vommiting incident.

Beyond all that, there is a Warhammer mystery brewing.  Venerable Warhammer blog The Greenskin received another of those oh-so-mysterious packages from Mythic this week.  You'll probably remember that Keen and Graev had received a similar package last week.  The Keen and Graev package contained a package of hair dye (orange) some hair clippers, and a promise that more would be revealed at the end of January.  After a bit of research, Keen and Graev determined that the package was hinting that the Dwarf Slayer (They're offensive warriors that don orange Mohawks.  Get it?) would be introduced into Warhammer late in January.

Oil Welsh informs that WAR is just recieveing it's first major update.

Update 1.1a marks the official debut of the game's two new careers, the Knight of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard - although these were made available to some players last week, and to everyone else a couple of days ago.

Of more significance to all WAR players is the introduction of an "influence" system to open-world realm-versus-realm warfare. Working similarly to the loot system for the game's Public Quests, it's intended to add extra incentives to battle other players in the game's open-conflict zones, which tend to be on the quiet side at present.

Alec Meer in praise of WAR's cities.

It's reflected in the nature of the city. You can easily get over to it as early as level 10 or so, only to find yourself assaulted and almost instantly killed in a corridor by an escaped level 30 Chaos Spawn. Your initial reaction will likely be outrage: “it's not fair!” It's really not. And this never claimed to be a fair place. Capering, deadly horrors suit it utterly. You can hang out with other players in The Inevitable City, but until you're high level the place is so risky that you're better off doing it in Khorne's perpetual war room than in alleyways and dark corners.

The Order Capital, the human Empire's Germanic city of Altdorf, is a very different place. It's just as big and, like everything in WAR, lacks some of the gloss and charm of WOW or Lord of the Rings Online, but it's recognisably a fantasy city. Cobbled streets, chunky stone buildings - very European. This is what Order are fighting for. Well, except it's really dirty. Altdorf is not a picture postcard - it's grim and crumbling, full of squalor and fear - as much because of the ongoing war as because of the despotism and aggression of the Empire's rulers.

The Warhammer Online blog Wizards & Wenches have an article that seems to be spreading around the internet, I think I saw it mentioned at Massively first,  it seems to question the contribution system on the MMO.

Now we know how contribution is calculated. It’s so shockingly simple, so obvious we wonder why we didn’t figure it out a long time ago. It isn’t.

See, instead of actually measuring all the data players do during Public Quests to find out who contributes the most every player is making a roll when they enter a zone, and that roll is your contribution that appear. It doesn’t weight all your healing, all your damage, all your buffing, or everything that make you more worthy of a reward than a player standing AFK in a corner. It’s just random. The roll remains until you zone so you will get the same contribution in both Keeps unless you relog or someone with higher roll enters the PQ area. 

It has been discussed in threads on Warhammer Alliance and VN Boards, with screenshots to show how someone getting #1 contribution in one Keep will get #1 in the second Keep in the same zone, despite not doing anything. Enough people have tested and confirmed it to make it more than plausible.

Ten Ton Hammer does a review of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning awarding it 4/5 hammers:

Overall the sieges could use more diversity. Mythic should use a variety of mechanics, such as ladders to scale the walls, but they could also be destroyed or knocked down by defenders. More intelligent AI would be a welcome addition because an undefended keep can fall within minutes of the first attack, often motivating enemy warbands (raid groups) to move from unguarded keep to unguarded keep for quick renown experience. Other, more trite requests, would include the ability to launch goblins with catapults, x-ray glasses to see through walls (and witch elf "armor"), air raids, and the entire cast of Apocalypse Now singing "We Are the Champions" upon victory.

Games32 has a four page review of Warhammer Online up with the score of 87/100:

You can tell Mythic has sold its soul to the devil and worked very hard to have a really high quality, high standard product, but that they didn't want to take any risks and deviate too much from the well known fantasy MMORPG formula. Their game also depends a lot on the raw number of players to be fun - a really high population is required, but it seems to me server capacity is rather limited to make things work smoother. Epic scale battles require an epic number of players. I'm not sure they are always there.

That said, the Warhammer brand was always popular, and WAR can proudly join the big family as an integral part of this universe. A must try for Warhammer fans, and a recommended game for anyone else.

Mythic lets its players know that a server transfer system for both players and guilds will go into public testing next week:

Over the last few weeks the team has implementing a transfer system to allow both players and guilds to move between our servers. This technology was not available for WAR at launch and building it has proven to be a little more complex than originally expected. I’m happy to say that starting next week we will begin public testing of the service and if things go well, we will be able to offer it free to our players (for a limited time) either next week or the week after that. I apologize for the delay in making this service available but again, it did take a little longer than we originally expected.

We will be posting details next week about the public test and then the parameters for the free service.

Mark Jacobs on WAR with the good news that (come December) the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR. This and more all written up here.

Let’s start with what we know is some truly exciting news.  I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR.  We have very special plans around their appearance and in our next newsletter we will provide full details about that exciting and rather novel event.  When they were cut from the game launch plans earlier this year, I said that the Black Guard and the Knight would be part of WAR only when they were great and deserved their place alongside all of WAR’s other compelling classes.  I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that’s not how we operate.  We’ve kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer.

News via VoodooExtreme that WAR has surpassed 750k sales:

Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) studio, today announced that 750,000 players have registered for the critically acclaimed fantasy MMORPG, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR) in North America, Europe and the Oceanic territories. WAR topped the PC sales charts around the world at launch, and is on track to be one of the best-selling PC games of 2008.

Alec Meer appears to be spending sometime with WAR and writes his impressions of Scenario play.

It's one of many reasons that Scenarios, WAR's instanced player-versus-player battlegrounds, are proving one of the game's biggest draws. At your own request, you're dropped into an enclosed, evenly-matched conflict free from the usual aimless wandering and killing x of x for x experience points, where the frontline is something real. Or at least it is if the opposing "tank" classes are doing their job: a wall of meat between you and your goal, be that their fragile healers and spellcasters, or one of the Scenario's objectives. You can push through them, but you'll be slowed down by their armoured bulk, making you easy prey for the slings and arrows of your outrageous enemies.

Speaking of those objectives, they're a symptom of what WAR gets both most right and most wrong. Right: always ensuring you've got something fast, satisfying and combat-centric to achieve, with none of the waiting around and grinding of... well, I won't bring up That Other Game here. Wrong: guarding capture points for a set number of seconds, or running a flag to specific spots to score points is so inescapably gamey, so artificial. That's WAR all over, the most instantly gratifying MMO around in its UI-cluttering, clearly-marked maps and objectives - but a less organic world for it. It's a place of inflexible rules.

Rory Manion reviews WAR for 1up, final score B.

Unfortunately for us, the lone fly turned out to be a hornet's nest. A full Destruction war party had organized and decided to wrest the keep (and the valuable trainers and merchants within) from Order's control. We ran back to camp to rally supporters and purchase some equalizers: cannons and oil cauldrons to fend off the surging puddle of red names. For a while, it worked. Our Hellblazer cannons, positioned on predetermined emplacement points on the keep walls, scattered their healers and casters while the oil finished off anyone foolish enough to approach the keep door. But the enemy quickly regrouped and slapped down some of their own siege engines, which demolished our relatively unsupported war machine. With our weapons crumbled and the keep door buckling, we started planning our tactical withdrawal...until a full Order war band charged around the side of the keep, split the enemy force in half, and caused a rout on par with something straight out of the Total War series.

Kevin VanOrd gives his verdict of WAR scoring it 8.5/10.

This isn't the most well-rounded massively multiplayer online game, but Warhammer Online grabs the tuskgor by the horns, delivering the finest PVP content seen in a traditional persistent world RPG. Questers and explorers may not find what they're looking for, and certain gameplay systems don't mesh as well as they should. Nevertheless, there's more than enough exciting PVP content here to keep newcomers and veterans alike immersed in the perpetually violent tug of war between the forces of Order and Destruction. Or as the Orcs say: Waaagh!

They also have a hardware guide for the game here.

Time for a new WAR review.  Here's one from CrispyGamer, with veteran journalist William Abner awarding a "Buy it" recommendation.  On quests:

One devious aspect of the Public Quests is the fact that many are placed where enemy factions are within shouting distance of one another, which provides great fun on "Open RvR" servers where any player is fair game. Even in non-RvR zones, enemy players can whack you, which adds "edge-of-your-seat" gameplay that you just don't get on a Core server.

One last tidbit about the PvE quest design: The quests are grind-free without a "drop quest" in sight, so you will never have to try to gather up five doohickeys by killing 75 creatures. Mythic earns huge points for killing off the most annoying quest system ever created.

WAR is apparently the fasting selling MMO ever, hitting 500k subs in a week.  From VE3D:

The Armies have assembled and the Worldwide WAAAGH! is Underway! Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio, today announced that in the first week since launch over 500,000 new players have registered for fantasy MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR), in North America, Europe and the Oceanic territories. EA's most highly pre-ordered PC title, WAR has now become the fastest-selling new MMO of all time.

"In just one week we have a half a million people playing WAR online, and the ranks of Order and Destruction are growing at a record-breaking pace for a new MMORPG," said Mark Jacobs, co-founder and general manager of Mythic Entertainment. "We spent years working to provide players with the most stable, epic, and polished online world we could, but it is the players that have truly brought the Age of Reckoning to life."

Also, a couple more reviews.

• YouGamers - 4/5
• VoodooExtreme - 4/5

Top marks at Gamespy for Warhammer Online.

In the end, though, all of the problems, even the most serious one of lag in heavy player combat, are ultimately fixable. Warhammer Online has had the smoothest, most complete MMO launch we've ever seen. Game balance and other elements of the game need tweaking but they're all there, they all work and most importantly, they're all fun. This is a game that has 20 separate classes and while some may be overpowered or underpowered, none of them are boring to play. The game comes loaded with PvP and PvE content that -- balance issues notwithstanding -- is as good as or much better than that of any other MMO on the market. Warhammer Online is the next great game of Player vs. Player and Realm vs. Realm content and we have the feeling that somewhere on the other side of reality, the Chaos god Tzeentch is smiling.

Thumbs up thus far for WAR in IGN's One Week In:

So far I've been having a great time with the game. The overall world layout shouldn't be all that surprising. There are NPC towns with skill trainers, vendors, and quest givers. Eventually you exhaust the surrounding area's quests and move to the next, get a quest to talk with a leader in the next town, and so on and so on. The general quests you get aren't anything special at this point, tasking you with kill, scout or fetch objectives for experience, money, and the occasional item.

Mark Jacobs talks to Gamasutra about the road to launching WAR, subscriber numbers, some annecdotes from DAoC, grace periods and more:

Mythic's claim is that Warhammer Online represents "the smoothest MMO launch to date." How do you back that up tangibly?

Mark Jacobs: You can measure a launch in a number of ways. Usually, the first way people measure a launch is, does the game stay up? Since last Sunday, when we began our "head start," which allowed in up to 60,000 of the collector's editions -- because that's how many we sold -- plus a lot of our older players, to Tuesday, not a single crash. Not a crash of the game, not a crash of any of the servers.

Then we started the second phase of the head start, for our standard edition, and that was a little under 48 hours. No crashes of the game; no crashes of the individual servers. [On Thursday,] we started the official opening for everyone. Again, no crashes of the game; no crashes of an individual server. The only time we took it down was [Friday morning] to put up a server patch, and it was actually back up before schedule.

From that metric, I think it's a really safe assumption that we have the smoothest launch. If you've played any of the other MMOs, if you look at downtime due to crashes or maintenance, there's no comparison.

We launched Dark Age of Camelot back in 2001, and it was regarded as one of the most successful launches of all time. We like to think it was the most successful; the guys at Turbine like to think Asheron's [Call] was. I think we were a little bit better than them. The only problem we had that time was when somebody parked a truck on our internet.

Games Radar serves up a lengthy review of WAR, calling it the most significant MMO release since WoW and praising the integration of Realm vs Realm, the Public Quests and polish.  The score is 9/10 and here's a grab:

Its Realm vs Realm aspect is a river that runs deep, not a superficial trickle of extra features. It isn’t MMO v2 by a long shot, but it is a response to rather than simply an imitation of WoW. As well as incorporating Mythic’s own
RvR concepts from Dark Age of Camelot into a current-gen game, it’s identified much of what has and hasn’t proved successful in the last three years of MMOs. As a result, compared to all the other post-WoW MMOs, WAR is both dramatically more ambitious and an odd admission of failure on the entire genre’s part. Where others have tried to set themselves up as huge worlds full of discovery and mystery, a place for adventurers, this is perhaps more cynical.

Mark Jacobs talks with Rob Purchese about WAR's servers, Paul Barnett and solving the Destruction/Order population.

Eurogamer: Excellent. So, er, which side should we join? We were going to be Destruction but everybody seems to be flocking there...

Mark Jacobs: Yeah, there's a lot more going to Destruction, as we knew they would in the beginning. Looking at the Warhammer IP we figured the guys coming in early would be your hardcore guys, the guys that have been following the IP for years, or even decades. We knew they would go to Destruction. But one of the things I've been telling players is, "Look, just wait a bit." My guess is that when we get into the Standard Edition folks, and the folks who don't know as much about Warhammer, then they are going to start to go to the Order side. They have the High Elves and the Dwarfs and the Humans, which for a lot of players are quite comfortable.

And we've already seen that. We tracked it on the servers and they've started with a much larger percentage playing Destruction and then it's already started to ease out on day two, and we expect it to ease out even more on day three, and by launch it will ease out even more.

With the head start rolling and the full launch in 2 days time Paul Barnett talks to Oli Welsh about WAR.

Eurogamer: Even more than many other MMOs, this is a game that's really made by the players, because of its genuinely massively multiplayer, RVR design. Are you nervous about letting go and handing it over to them, and seeing what they do with it?

Paul Barnett: Nah, the player base has basically been playing our game for about two years. What we tried to do is put the massively back into massively multiplayer. The game actively rewards you for grouping, grouping often, grouping with lots of different people, and being in big groups. It's a completely different social experience to some other MMOs, which are really single-player games where every now and then you have to play together to improve your single-player game.

That's the core of our gameplay. So no, we're quite happy about that. What we're looking forward to is people who've been playing other games being able to experience the stuff we're bringing which is either different, new, or - as I like to put it - where we've taken the crap bits and got rid of them.

You know, I quite like the fact that we've don't have item damage, and you won't have to keep spending money to make your sword sharp. That's cool, that is. I like the fact that you don't have to run miles from the graveyard to get back into the action. I like the fact that you don't have to go to someone with a stupid celebrity name to buy a bag to put stuff in. I like the fact that I can move where my map goes and make it different sizes, or just delete it. I think these things are great.

Mythic continue to update on the patces hitting beta at the moment.

Hello Everyone,

It's great to see all of you enjoying Open Beta! The past few days have been exciting and eventful and we couldn’t be happier with the feedback we've been receiving. Even so, it's clear there are still some pesky bugs that need to be exterminated and we will continue working around the clock in order to do so!

Before launch we wanted to get out a final update that cleared up many of the topics we've heard from you about, and put the icing on the cake for many of our features. This update is full of fixes and tweaks that, combined, will make your experience playing WAR even better!

We look forward to your feedback with launch just a few short days away. These are exciting times and we're proud to have you with us.

See you on the battlefield…WAAAGH!!
                    - The Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning Team

Eurogamer have the low down on server name/types.

With its official release looming - next Thursday at retail, pre-order head-starts on Sunday - Mythic and GOA have announced the types and names of the launch servers for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

There are four server types: Core, Open RVR, Roleplay, and Roleplay/Open RVR.

If you want to pick a server name in advance so you can get organised with your friends, you'll find a list of European servers at the GOA Warhammer Online site and of North American and Oceanic servers at Mythic's WAR site.

Oli Welsh reviews WAR, concluding:

Mythic has dutifully done everything it needs to to compete with Blizzard's jack of all trades and master of most. Crafting is weak, and dungeons - the small, instanced experiences that really cement the group dynamics in an MMO - are frustratingly rare, but aside from that WAR does it all, and does it well. That said, you can very easily tell which parts of this grand enterprise Mythic's heart was in, and those parts - RVR and Public Quests - are completely thrilling, and surprisingly accessible.

But they're also fragile. They're at the whim of an unpredictable player base and a hundred other factors besides. They're utterly dependent on en even balance between the two realms on each server - and at beta stage, there's a worrying bias towards Destruction on all servers. That means that, until it's been out in the wild a while, this extremely well-made and highly enjoyable MMO remains unproven. And it remains - until our first re-review, at least - one step short of true greatness.

The WAR team have written an update detailing improvements they're currently working on, such as:

We've got some great plans for improved graphics options as we continue through launch. Our number one priority is player performance. It's important in an RvR game for performance to be smooth and allow the game to be accessible to as many people as possible. In order to achieve our goals, we had to ensure a certain level of compatibility between devices. With all of the combinations and options available, we wanted to keep things simple and accessible to everyone.

With that in mind, we have a fix that may improve the ability of higher end machines to load textures, and we will continue to smooth out the process of the way textures load on your screen. In addition to this, we are exploring other options to add which will further enhance the graphics for mid to high range computers. For now, many users are able to turn on features such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering using their cards drivers.

Open beta sign ups flood the account servers for WAR, GOA CEO apologieses at 3AM, closed beta people playing no problem (well, for me at least). Nicely rounded up at Eurogamer.

GOA, the European publisher and operator of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, has issued a public apology for the false start to its open beta test yesterday.

Although servers have opened, and closed beta testers have been able to enter the new phase without any problems, account registration and authentication for new players is not working.

"I rarely address players directly, but I wanted to write you as too few of you have been able to access the open beta today," said GOA's chief executive, Ghislaine Le Rhun, on the European WAR site.

"We have not yet solved the issue of saturated Open Beta key activations that we're currently experiencing," Le Rhun said. "I am sincerely sorry for this, and I understand all the frustration the situation has spawned.

WoW is a dirty word as the RPS ed's find out.

If you’ve been following the 200+ comments in the thread below our recent discussion of our experiences in the Warhammer Online closed beta, you’ll have spotted that a vocal minority of the WAR community, having made their way here thanks to a link on the warhammeronline.com frontpage, are absolutely furious with us. All those that were simply critical remain, but there were at least another 50 abuse-filled tirades we deleted, consisting of the usual expletives, judgements about our intelligence and sexuality, and a surprising amount of racism towards the British. It’s true: we do drink a lot of tea.

Whether expressed politely or furiously, there were three or four central complaints about what we said - but one stands above them all.

Kieron Gillen & Paul Barnett discuss games (I guess) a lot of people grew up playing. This maybe a bit British but a fun read neithertheless, certainly more conceptual than factual as Paul's favorite MMO's shows.

Barnett: Elite – it’s great. And everyone goes on about it being great. And people keep remaking it, and it’s crap. How can that possibly be? Even the people who made Elite remake it, and it’s crap. And I know they argue it’s to do with bugs and it wasn’t finished, but even if you took Frontier and took every bug out of it then it’ll still be no good. Which is interesting, and you wonder why it is. Why is it fabulous? Well, it’s not fabulous for most of the reasons people think. The Space Trading is almost irrelevant. The difficulty level – everyone forgets how hard Elite was.

KG: The Docking.

Barnett: Grotesquely difficult. And playing the stock market was endlessly boring and trying to buy a docking computer would drive you mad. And the supposed secret missions were nothing of the sort. It was just rubbish. So it’s not that – it’s not space, and it’s not its difficulty level. Now I believe – and I have not proven this – that the reason Elite was marvelous were…

Number one: truly, at the time it came out, there was nothing like it. It was different. And you can’t under-estimate that. The Sims is a great example of something which is tremendously different and capable of being wondrous.

Number two: Elite came out with a fanfare. People don’t remember it, but when it was released, journalists were taken to an underground rollercoaster. And it was shown on big television – which was the equivalent of hiring a cinema. And the Box was enormous which came with a novel and a load of background and load of information about the world which was irrelevant. Like how to understand the bodylanguage of aliens. It came with lots of toys.

[In passing to American readers, the fancy-box full of stuff seemed a lot later coming to UK games than the US. Or, as Walker would put it, you guys got more cloth maps than we did. - KG]

Josh Drescher gives a dev update to TTH.

WAR Associate Producer Josh Drescher is one of our favorite folks to interview, and Ten Ton Hammer's Tony Jones pitches Josh a number of questions straight from our Warhammer Online community. Josh seeks to allay our concerns about server faction imbalances, demos WAR's unique "looking for group" system, convinces us that WAR's RvR combat system may just be the best thing since Paul Barnett bought a pair of Union Jack shoes, and much more in this 12 minute video interview from Leipzig GC!

No explanation needed, so here is the press release in its entirety:

EA and Mythic Entertainment Announce That Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Has Gone Gold

Award-Winning Fantasy MMORPG Marches Toward Sept. 18^th Launch

FAIRFAX, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GET READY FOR THE WORLDWIDE WAAAGH! Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) and Mythic Entertainment today announced that the highly-anticipated MMORPG, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR), has gone gold and will open its servers on September 18, 2008 at an MSRP of $49.99 in North America.

“We’ve done our best to create the next great MMORPG experience, but it’s the fans that will bring our world to life,” said Mark Jacobs, vice president at EA and general manager of Mythic Entertainment. “The Day of Reckoning approaches and it’s going to be glorious! It’s time to go to WAR.”

Based on the popular tabletop game from Games Workshop, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is an epic fantasy MMORPG featuring innovative Realm vs. Realm™ game play that pits the forces of Order and Destruction against one another on the battlefield to determine the fate of nations.

Awarded “Best Online Game” at the recent Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, “Best PC Game” of E3 by G4’s X-Play and “Best MMO” of E3 by IGN, WAR has been well-received by critics and by the gaming community as an accessible and engaging MMO title. Tens of thousands of players have already joined the battle in the closed beta, and soon the time will be at hand for players the world over to pledge their allegiance to the armies of WAR.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is scheduled to launch simultaneously in North America, Europe, and Oceania on September 18, 2008. Available for PC, WAR is rated “T” for Teen by the ESRB. For more information, visit http://www.warhammeronline.com/.

RPS have blogged up on the state of the WAR beta inclusions, adding that there is still no offical monthly sub fees.

After astonishing amounts of confusion, GOA has finally made what appears to be the definitive statement regarding Open Beta access for those who pre-order Warhammer Online from the EA Store, and Direct2Drive.

It seems their plan was to not announce which of their partners would be offering customers OB access until the day the game becomes officially available for pre-order sale - this Thursday. However, EA and D2D, who it turns out will be amongst those partners, put the information up early. GOA then responded to this by, er, denying it. Now they have said they intended Open Beta to be available via certain pre-order outlets all along.

Despite GOA’s Community Manager, MagnusK, rather unambiguously responding to the question, “Will EU SE pre-order customers get into WAR Open Beta?” with, “No,” it seems the answer was rather, “Yes.”

Gamespy have a hands on beta preview of WAR.

The development team at Mythic took as their goal to build a game around the Realm vs. Realm combat that marked the best part of their previous game, Dark Age of Camelot. Rather than forcing players to go through a PvE leveling process that ultimately ends up being meaningless as everyone rushes toward the endgame, they wanted to create an MMO that was essentially "all endgame." Taking as their guide the Warhammer mantra that "War is everywhere," one of the biggest innovations in Warhammer Online is simply the level of integration between the various gameplay systems. PvE, PvP, RvR -- they all contribute to the ultimate end game of raiding and looting the enemy cities.

Everything begins as soon as players logs in to his or her level 1 character. The level 1-2 experience is the now-common 10-minute World of Warcraft-style tutorial in which the player is given a simple quest to kill some nearby mobs. Once players hit level 2, though, things start to change. Rather than being guided on a strictly linear path through a PvE the newbie zone, level two suddenly offers the player a half-dozen quests to perform in a much wider area. Some are indoors and some outdoors. Some require the player to utilize stand-alone gun emplacements, some require the player to explore and others are simply fast moving killing quests. The key is that the Warhammer Online experience almost immediately gets broader, not deeper. From their first few levels, players are educated in the fact that there's always somewhere to go and something interesting to do, no matter where they are.

This is reinforced through the rapid introduction of three more gameplay elements -- the Tome of Knowledge, Public Quests and Scenario RvR. The player first becomes aware of the Tome when he or she approached the first quest giver. In addition to getting a quest, there's always something in the area that gives players their first Tome unlock. The Empire starting area, for example, gives players entries on "The Empire," "The Plague," and "The Griffin Legion" along with entries on "Chaos," "Chaos Marauders" and several other creatures in the immediate area. Getting a message about them on the screen and seeing the glowing book at the top of the screens encourages the player to explore this vital part of the game.

The RPS guys chat about their impressions of the WAR beta.

Alec: my concern with the PQs and the RvR both is that it really messes up the game’s geography. It’s not a world filled with events - it’s more like wandering around a science museum, and stopping off at the exhibits that have pushy-buttons and flickering lights. It’s really unconvincing as a place - it’s these pockets of activities within their own weird, insular bubbles, but far too close too each other. There’s really no sense that you can explore.
John: I didn’t find that at all. I found the PQs occuring naturally between towns, or in contested zones.
Kieron: I disagree too actually, though I know what Alec gets at. Thing is, for me, it’s not meant to be a world. It’s meant to be a warzone. Those pockets of areas on the maps are individual skirmishes going on, and in terms of giving character to individual conflicts - at least for the Dark Elf stuff - it does it well.
John: There’s these old ruins at the bottom of a hill, near a town in the Greenskin area, and on the border of a RvR zone. It has an epic PvE PQ going on, occasionally with enemy players getting mixed up in. It’s an awesome site, and feels like it makes sense to be there.
Alec: That’s the thing - you can’t wander anywhere without some message popping up on screen. It feels artificial to that extent. I want to feel like I’ve found this stuff, not that it’s dropped in my lap.
Kieron: Like - say - this whole forest area off the main path where the elves are counterattacking via these traps, and there’s a low level skirmish going on between the two. perpetually, as it’s a standard PvE MMO, but decently enough.
Alec: It’s not a critical failing, but it’s made it hard for me to get a sense of place.
Kieron: I’ll give you that those messages can be intrusive. But I think the alternative is worse. “Where’s the public quest again?”
Alec: I’d make them further apart and shown on the map, or shown on a map once you speak to an obvious NPC in town
Kieron: Wow - lots more walking. That’s the thing - I like its tightness. I like things like not having to kneel and eat food to recover health.
John: All praise the super-fast healing!
Alec: No, not lots more walking, just a bit more breathing space
Kieron: Stuff like that absolutely stopped me playing WoW. I have a very low threshold for boredom.

WAR has a new lenghty cinematic opening that can be viewed at Gametrailers.

Shack News report that EA have announced Sept 7th for Open Beta.

"For three years we have been saying that 'WAR is coming' and the team has been working hard to deliver on this promise," explained Mythic general manager Mark Jacobs. "In just a few weeks, we are going to throw open our doors and invite more players into the game than ever before. They will have a chance to delve into the open beta and see for themselves that WAR has arrived and it is glorious!"

Gamespot have some updated impressions and info on Warhammer.

We also had a chance to take a peek at some of the lair areas that will be hidden throughout the game. These will be out-of-the-way areas where exceptionally powerful and rare foes hide out of plain sight and guard exceptionally powerful loot. We had a chance to see two such lairs; the first was hidden on the border of a competitive realm-versus-realm zone (where players from different factions can freely clash with each other) and was locked away behind a stone gate, outside of which were various shaped stones embedded into the earth just in front of the entrance. The door itself will be locked, and the flat, ground-level stones arranged in a ring around the entrance apparently represent a puzzle that you will need to solve to open the gate. Another lair was hidden in a remote corner of a misty river basin that seemed mostly deserted and was separated by a small set of foothills. However, persistent players who explore every inch of the area may discover the means to climb up the first set of foothills to discover that a set of fallen logs lead the way to a row of shattered tree stumps that can be crossed with well-placed jumps that lead to a final hidden path to the lair of a mighty and ancient foe who summons backup to defend its treasure. Yes, Warhammer Online will have a jumping puzzle.

Oli Welsh writes up his experience in the WAR beta.

Open-world player-versus-player - always a failing of WOW's - works well enough, when we finally encounter it in Nordland. The tightly limited size of the RVR areas in the game does help focus the action on a single battlefront, even when there are multiple bases to capture; with this, as in Public Quests, Mythic's world designers deserve a lot of credit for their carefully funnelling players into the action through the landscape design.

WAR's dense and linear nature does mean that simple exploration isn't the unalloyed joy it can be in the best MMOs. This is a game for fighters, not adventurers. The game world is a good deal more handsome than we first thought, but even a bit of flight-hopping around later levels reveals that it's not particularly varied. The Elven areas have some startlingly beautiful architecture and lush meadows, but overall are the most boring of the three.

The Dwarfs and Greenskins make their way through craggy mountains littered with ancient relics and siege engines; dramatic and well-executed, but rather clichéd. Once again, Empire and Chaos come off the best by far, making excellent use of the less familiar reference points of the Warhammer licence in their vision of a 17th-century pastoral idyll gone horribly wrong, a sort of occult English Civil War.

On going commentry on beta at Gamespy from a group of editors.

Fargo: One of my goals with the beta was to really delve into what separates Warhammer from other games. And one thing is blatantly obvious from the moment you start speaking with another character. The world here has so much color to it! Quest text is presented to you in-character, which in the case of the greenskins means that it's spat at you with ridiculous dialect. In fact, it's borderline unreadable at first -- you almost have to read the quests aloud to yourself in order to hear it properly. Even the quest names are colorful: "Sumfink in da water." After a little while, once you get a feel for the way greenskins talk, and you catch on to all the slang they use when putting down the other races, you can't help but get into it.

The ridiculousness of the speech is carried over into the over-the-top quests. "Why are these barrels stuffed with dizzy, half-naked dwarves?" you might ask yourself. A little later you find the answer: it's because you and the other greenskins are stuffing them in the barrels and throwing them off the top of the fortress -- For fun! The game is filled with hysterical anarchy, punctuated by belching and slop and needless comic violence.

Personally I love it. So many other games in the market are played "straight..." But Warhammer isn't afraid to pull its pants down. That's something that helps to set the game apart, and I think it's going to win over a lot of fans.

1:45PM

Delsyn: Just read through Fargo's entry and while I agree in principle about the style in which the game is presented, it's important to point out that Warhammer Online isn't played for laughs. The Greenskins definitely have a slapsticky element to them (there's one quest where the player is loaded onto a catapult and shot into the enemy fort), but if the other Destruction races are funny at all, it's a much more subtle and blacker form of comedy.

There's at least one really long series of quests where the Chaos player has to actually corrupt an Empire city from the inside that involves actually getting the captain of the militia removed from office on ground of moral turpitude. Part of that is altering Church of Sigmar records to prove that the captain is skimming from the collection plate. That involves getting the records in the first place which meant hunting down and murdering a church accountant in the middle of a war zone!

Good times. 

WAR goes live 18th September says Oli Welsh.

EA has announced that its MMO contender, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, will launch on 18th September. That's just six weeks away.

North American, European and Oceanic (that's Asia, Australia and New Zealand) servers will all go live at the same time.

American pre-order customers will enjoy open beta admission, and a head-start on those live game servers.

One-month, three-month and six-month subscriptions will be available at USD 14.99, USD 41.97, and USD 77.94 respectively, as well as 30 and 60-day prepaid game cards.

GamesRadar has previewed the dungeons of Warhammer Online, though the "late-breaking news" at the end of the preview is perhaps of more interest:

Late-Breaking News!

Four of WAR’s initially planned 24 classes (and four of its six planned cities) have been nixed from the game. The Choppa (Greenskin), the Hammerer (Dwarf), the Blackguard (Dark Elf), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire) are all out. Asked to comment, Executive Producer Jeff Hickman says, "We'd rather make the 20 [that will be in the game] rock solid and really great." Rock solid and really great, as opposed to rushed and half-realized due to time constraints? Sounds good to us.

Mythic have announced the min specs for WAR.

PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

For Windows XP

·  2.5 GHz P4 (single core) processor or equivalent
·  1 Gigabyte RAM
·  A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
·  At least 15 GB of hard drive space

For Windows VISTA

·  2.5 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
·  2 Gigabyte RAM
·  A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
·  At least 15 GB of hard drive space

All the info, like supported video cards, can be seen here.

Recent hands on preview by Oli Welsh.

When we last played Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning a few months back, we came away impressed by the Mythic MMO's ideas, but concerned about its look, its basic combat mechanics and its feel. Like it or not, this is a game aimed at World of Warcraft's heartlands - a colourful, traditional, grind-happy, high-fantasy RPG romp. That means it's bound to be judged by the highest standards of quality and polish in the MMO world. If it's found wanting, the battle could be over before it's begun, and the announcement of feature cuts didn't do anything to assuage fears.

Back then, producer Jeff Hickman promised us that the game's delay to autumn this year would be used to address those areas. After a hands-on bash at E3 in the company of Hickman and his colleague Josh Drescher - playing the game on a busy live beta server - we've got to admit that Mythic's developers are getting there. In fact, they're nailing it.

There's a gorgeously slick new interface for character selection and creation, with a camera that glides between character line-ups - of race, and faction, and your own roster - that recall the Warhammer licence's roots in table-top miniatures. It's as inviting and pretty as an MMO front-end could be. The only disappointment is the basic character-customisation options - they're no more limited than WOW's in theory, but the identikit hordes charging around the game world suggest it's unduly hard to imbue characters with individuality.

Mythic are displaying what is to be a series of guild information on it's Hearld news site.

Over the next few weeks and leading up to launch, we plan on bringing you a new feature: Guild Highlights! To coincide with the beginning of Guild Beta, we’ll plunge you into an in-depth description of our Living Guilds system and everything that promises to make the guild experience stand far above any you’ve had so far. This week we start at the beginning with Living Guild introduction and Guild Creation.

 Guilds in WAR provide an easy way for players to socialize as well as to organize themselves together to engage in large scale battles and activities.  They also provide another vehicle for player and group advancement and pride.

• A Living Guild progresses in rank though the activities and exploits of its members.
• WAR provides above-and-beyond standard features like guild vaults, cloaks, and guild merchants to fulfill much more than just your run-of-the-mill communication and grouping needs.
  • Guilds gain experience and ranks just like players do. At each guild rank, guilds gain rewards that benefit the individual guild members as well as the guild as a whole.
  • Guilds unlock Standards, Vaults, abilities, etc. for their members as they gain ranks.
  • 10 unique titles (most of which can be customized to meet the needs of the guild) to offer ease in guild management.
  • Integrated guild interface where you can set up guild meetings or activities, perform guild management tasks, customize guild Standards, and choose guild rewards.

In the coming weeks, we’ll go into more detail about each of these exciting features, so be sure to check the Herald often for your sneak peek into the inner workings of the Living Guild system.

 Offical FAQ on those city cuts.

 So you cut 4 of the 6 cities, does this mean I will be enjoying WAR with only 1/3 of its original content?

We did not cut 2/3 of our content; far from it.  Before, when our goal was to do six of them, WAR cities were the typical places to go for player services and to just hang out.  By focusing all of our energy and effort into two capitals, we have managed to add so much more content than we would have if we had continued pushing to launch all six.  Our capital cities are now packed with content and places to explore including:  Guild taverns, dungeons, quests, PQs, King encounters, player services, and the most exciting thing of all--now they act as battlegrounds to fight over and protect when under attack. Beyond this, the list goes on and on.  WAR now has more content than ever before, and by focusing our efforts we have been able to create a unique experience far beyond our plans when we first set out to make a great game.

 Punkbuster to be used in WAR.

 First, Mark Jacobs, the VP and General Manager of Mythic Entertainment, announced to MMORPG.com that the studio has partnered with well-known anti-cheat company Punkbuster in an effort to make sure that their upcoming RvR game (Warhammer Online) is as free from cheaters, hacks and the like as possible.

“As you know,” said Jacobs in an interview, “we have fought a long battle against hackers, cheaters and other assorted slimeballs who think that it’s both fun and fair for them to have an advantage over other players.”

“We obviously did a lot of things in Dark Age of Camelot that worked,” he continued. “ We banned cheaters whenever we found them. We made a tremendous effort to sort out and deal with hackers and companies or individuals who promote this sort of stuff. Did we do a perfect job? Absolutely not, nobody does, but we did a pretty good job.”

In 2008 though, he said, Warhammer is seeing a much wider distribution than its earlier counterpart and the landscape of MMOs has changed, leading to more and more people who look to cheat. Rather than facing down these cheaters and hackers on their own, Mythic is taking on a partner in Punkbuster, a company with a strong reputation in the online gaming world.

 Community Manager David Petit talks Guilds.

Together, players will be able to advance their guild, and just like a character, a guild can advance up to level 40, giving new bonuses to its members. Moreover, some game content will only be accessible to guild members, at the heart of RvR! For example, only the guilds may claim ownership of a keep or battlefield objective. Just imagine, after hours and hours of fierce fighting, hoisting up your colours on one of the keeps in front of everyone! And imagine yourself showing off the enemy guild's banners that you have just captured during the heat of battle.

 EA Mythic not the right name for the game it seems.

Mythic Entertainment. It’s a name that we haven’t really heard much of since June 20th, 2006 when the company known best for their Realm vs. Realm style MMORPG Dark Age of Comelot and their upcoming MMORPG Warhammer Online announced that it had been acquired by publishing giant Electronic Arts (EA). After the announcement the company went through a name change and a re-branding, including a new logo, that saw the studio re-named “EA Mythic”.

Today, MMORPG.com learned that EA Mythic will be going through another transition as the company reclaims the Mythic Entertainment name.

“We are going back to Mythic Entertainment,” said Mark Jacobs, the VP and General Manager of EA Mythic. “I’ve always been a believer of separate branding,” he continued, going on to cite a number of successful companies like Disney and GE that operate subsidiary companies under separate and distinct brands.

“I think that this is a wonderful example of how things at EA are changing,” he continued, “both John (Riccitiello, CEO of EA) and Frank (Gibeau, EA) have spoken multiple times about city states, more freedom, that sort of thing and I think this is an obvious example.”

With that quote, Jacobs is referring to statements that Riccitellio made published in a February 10th article from Gamasutra essentially stating that EA subsidiaries are like city-states [of the larger EA empire]:

Á short interview on betas with EA Mythic's Paul Barnett is up at CVG:

We've thrown away some of our most darling ideas because they turned out to be crap...

Oh yeah, like what?

Barnett: We weren't going to have levelling. We had a different progression system. But people want to know, "How powerful am I and how powerful is he?" So we just gave players levels - clearly that is the answer, and it's what they want.

We stayed away from quite a few of the mechanics of Dark Age of Camelot too - boiling oil that you can pour on people's heads, battering rams that can smash your army to pieces, ballistae, trebuchets - but people went, "What are you doing? That's some of the best stuff in Dark Age!"

Now we've got orcapults and cannons blowing the crap out of things. Those are examples of when we've gone, "We know best! Oh hang on, no we don't..."

 Richard Bartle starts some bitching and gets a write up by Alec Meer at RPS. The sentence “I’ve already played Warhammer [Online]. It was called World of Warcraft" seems to be the starting point of heated debate.

Ooh, get you. Over the months, we’ve had a couple of Angry Internet Men turn up in comments here to yell at other readers for drawing comparisons between WAR and WOW, but poor Bartle’s really getting a roasting from the WAR and wider MMO community. Here, here and here, for instance. He’s “stupid”, he’s “crazy” and he’s “senile”, apparently. Strong arguments from the WAR defence there, then. I can’t work out whether the key problem for the Angries is that he’s dissing WAR specifically, or that the guy who essentially created the MMO as we know it said something that suggests he could be out of touch with the MMO as we know it. Plus, of course, someone observing that two games share a similar art style and theme and so they’d rather play something entirely different is, of course, the worst of hate crimes.

So I don’t think he’s crazy, stupid, or senile - I just think he’s made an unwise snap judgement, as every gamer in the world has done at some point, and unfortunately it’s within the context of a public interview. I feel for the guy. It was a hasty comment to make, and phrasing it as a complete dismissal rather than a genuine argument was never going to go well, but he’s got a right to say to say he hasn’t seen anything about the game to enrapture him yet.

He’s since been defending himself at length all over the shop - key to his argument is the claim that “I wasn’t saying that WAR was just a knock-off of WoW, I was saying that the Warcraft universe was a knock-off of the Warhammer universe.”

 Jon Wood discusses careers with Adam Gershowitz.

The Warhammer Online careers system has gone through an evolution since the game was announced, moving from an extremely complex system when the game was first announced, to the complex and interesting but ultimately more understandable system that we have today and will see at launch.

There are 24 careers in total: four for each of the six races in the game. This in and of itself is a unique decision. More traditional MMOs like World of Warcraft don’t tie their classes to their races. A Paladin, for example, is a Paladin regardless of what race he / she may belong to. Not that there’s anything wrong with that system, but Warhammer takes careers in the opposite direction. If you’re a Bright Wizard, you’re Empire. If you’re an Ironbreaker, you’re a Dwarf.

IGN previews Warhammer Online in an updated hands-on and talks about trolls:

The demo let us play as the forces of destruction as we rampaged in an area called Troll Country, mainly because it was infested by dozens of trolls. Stopping by a destruction camp and talking to various NPCs, not surprisingly, gives you quests, and one of the nice things about the map system is that it highlights the quest range in red. So if you're told to find the grave of some long lost hero, the map will give you a general area of where to search. Or if you have to kill X number of a certain creature and you can't find the last one to kill, you'll at least know the range of its boundaries, so you won't go too far astray in search for it.

Since this was troll country, a lot of the quests involved killing trolls. One required our four-member party to knock off 12 trolls on a hill, but in the process of pursuing it we discovered a boss troll and a public quest, basically a way for different groups of strangers to join together in a cooperative battle. In this case, the public quest required killing 75 trolls to be able to engage the boss troll, a very dangerous and difficult high-level opponent. Inflict enough damage on him and he'll pull back and call in some mid-level henchmen that you must defeat in order to engage the boss troll in a final battle. Take him down and the loot system basically ranks participants in order of contribution, and rewards are customized for each character class. For instance, you can get an option of loot drops, but everything you can select is something that your character can actually use; if you're a spellcaster you won't pick between warrior armor and weapons.

Mark Jacobs elaborates on crafting in these Q&As part 1 & part 2.

Once you get these items you can immediately begin experimenting with them. And that is a fun thing. I got this for the first time; let me see what I can do with it? What happens if I plug it into my formula? If I get another item, what can I do with it? This allows players to experiment. There is no requirement that you must make a certain number of items before you can progress. That is not how it is going to work.

That is not to say that if you make one potion you'll become the master Alchemist. It is an RPG after all. There has to be some amount of things you have to accomplish. There has to be some kind of progression system. We do not want the progression system to be a big time sink. With the Cultivating system, you can put your stuff in the back pack to grow and go out to do other things. That shows how dedicated we are to not forcing the player to sit down and grind out one thousand plants. They can go do other things.

So when you look at all that and go, "This is a different mechanic," and then I think you can avoid a lot of the grinding feel to crafting. If you get a little down time to play with crafting you can certainly do that. Or, you can start things growing and go off to do what you have to do. That will certainly feel like less of a grind. Also the fact that you don't have to spend days searching for a recipe and then try to find items. So I think everything we're doing will make it feel less grinding, and is a different system than you see in say Dark Age of Camelot. This is only the first stage.

Massivley concludes their week coverage with their concerns.

City Spectacular: Altdorf is far and away the most complete of the six Capital Cities. It was my impression that the Inevitable City is the second-most complete of these zones. The other four are in various stages of less-completeness. Given the sheer ambition of these areas, that may be cause for some concern. Make no mistake: Altdorf may be the most impressive NPC city in an MMO to date. Performing bards, dungeons, drunks, bar fights, etc ... the sheer variety of background life and 'stuff to do' puts it heads and shoulders above even World of Warcraft's expertly crafted capitals. That said, they aren't done with Altdorf yet and they still have five more to finish. Here's hoping their eyes aren't bigger than their stomachs.

Michael Zenke takes a look at RvR in WAR.

Over the course of our two days with Warhammer Online, we were given the opportunity to participate in a generous amount of Scenario play. Scenarios are EA Mythic's answer to the instanced PvP mini-game popularized by World of Warcraft and (more recently) Age of Conan. Each is an enclosed, objective-based event that a player can opt into or out of at any time. Because of WAR's focus on RvR gameplay they're an integral part of the game's epic "realm control system", as important as sacking a Capital City. They're playable at level 1, right off the bat, dropping you directly into the war.

We had the chance to hack and slash across four maps during our time in Virginia, each with a very different feel. Howling Gorge, for example, sets players against each other on "bomb runs" towards the opposing side's camp. Khaine's Embrace offers an explosive twist on capturing and holding territory, a style of gameplay honed to a point in the Gates of Ekrund encounter. Details on these events, firsthand impressions of Doomfist Crater, and some thoughts on the role that war will play in Warhammer can all be found below the cut.

Latest article in Massively's Warhammer coverage.

The question people have is: Is there a PvE endgame? You've made that deliberate choice not to engage in RvR, but you're max-level. What is there for you to do?

Jeff Skalski: Well, I can't speak about some of our more epic dungeons like Lost Vale, high-level dungeons, which is plenty of high-level dungeon content. Really the last PvE encounters, the highest level in the game, are the King encounters. That's gated by very epic RvR encounters all the way up; that said, once those encounters are unlocked there's nothing stopping a player who prefers PvE from queuing up, entering a contested city (because he'll be safe in the contested city) and taking on the King encounter with his buddies.

Players can definitely experience the best part of the capital city content without doing RvR ... you'll just have to wait. You'll have to cross your fingers and hope that your RvR factional companions will unlock it for you.

Once it's unlocked, we open it up to that winning realm for a set amount of time so they can experience it. They can only do it once; they have more than one shot at it, we're not going to penalize you if you fail on the first try, but once you kill the King you can't do it again until the next city sacking. You can't farm the King.

Another sound article on Warhammer this time on PQs.

When we spoke to Jeff Hickman last week, he cut to the heart of the issue. Jeff said, "I truly feel that Public Quests are absolutely revolutionary in the industry. Again, a hard thing to show because ... it's not that they're hard to get into, but they feel best as you progress through the game. As you're doing your quests and unlocking your tome, doing some crafting, doing your thing ... then boom you step into your first Public Quest and it's like 'oh!'"

While we're not sure the word revolutionary is rightly applied here, PQs are easily one of the most compelling things about Warhammer Online. The reason? Quite simply, Public Quests are raids without the bullcrap. They're getting together with other people to do something epic, having fun as a big bunch of people, and not having to wait on one guy for you to have fun. That seems to be the implicit question Public Quests throw out: "Why can't we have fun as a group without fear of jerks?"

The result, in our admittedly limited experience, is amazingly well realized. PQs combine the best parts of raids, reputation grinds, lore quests, scripted encounters, and human behavior into one wholesome experience. There are apparently over 300 of them in the game, and our hope is that significant resources will be spent after launch to keep new Public Quests coming in our direction. In this blogger's opinion, they represent everything great about the MMO genre. PQs, alone, are going to be worth checking out WAR when it drops this fall.

Another article on crafting here.

There is a bit of crossover, if you do Scavenging there are some things you use in apothecary that aren't available elsewhere, aren't as easily available elsewhere. The same thing with the other two resource skills. Cultivating is growing stuff, and stuff you grow in Cultivating generally ties in to apothecary too. Salvaging - that stuff generally ties in to Talisman-making. So we give players a choice, they can have one gathering, one crafting. At very low levels there's enough to just get started at your local crafting vendor. Once you get above that, you need to go and do stuff on your own. With your one gathering skill you can pretty much get just about everything you need, but there are going to be some times where you need to trade with other players.

 Tome of Knowledge details here.

In the same way that everyone on the Warhammer team seems to be suffused with passion for the game, Tome of Knowledge lead Carrie Gouskos couldn't help but pass on information about one of the game's most innovative features. Equal parts achievement system, quest log, faction-tracker and storybook, the Tome of Knowledge is unlike anything seen in other MMO titles but will be immediately familiar to players of games like Lord of the Rings Online ... or even Xbox Live fans.

If you're unfamiliar with the Tome, Carrie has a lengthy explanation on the official website. We also discussed, just about two months back, a fantastic writeup on the book by Syp of the Waagh blog. Those resources should be able to fill in your need for information and (of course) we'll have more context for you on the concept later. For today, Carrie offers up a fascinating insight into the emotional connection that the Tome can create between player and avatar. She also explains (vociferously) why Xbox Live achievements lead directly into the Tome's development. Gamerscore junkies and lore hounds, read on for your fix.

With another article to come tomorrow. 

All the classes explained with a few questions thrown in.

That, then, are all of the classes in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. At least, all of the classes that will be out at launch. We had to ask Adam and Josh, while we had the chance: out of all the IP material that isn't in the game yet, do you have a sense of what fans are missing most?

Josh: Obviously there are going to be vocal factions for whatever we don't have in the game. The minute we announced what races we are doing, we started getting petitioned by the Britonnian faction. The Skaven people have always been very vocal, and if you play a Lizardman army you're a Lizardman through and through. Anybody who has ever had an affection for the IP is going to have a core opinion of what needs to be there. We tried to target the races that we thought were most appropriate for the type of game that we're making. They help to establish a core element of the world, forming a coherent view.

We wanted to choose careers that built on that legitimate view of "this vs. that." There are a couple of places throughout the IP that have a tradition, a coherent sense of conflict. We picked three of them. There really is a traditional foe for these guys, there really is a sense of why they'd be doing this. There are plenty of races and classes we could have chosen, the Skaven are an obvious example. But they don't really make as much sense from the point of view of Realm vs. Realm. They're more like an infestation. A lot of those choices were made for practical reasons, some were made for aesthetic reasons.

We do have preferences, Mark definitely had preferences. But we had to pick, in the end. And we hear you guys every day, we hear you.

Just to fully cover that newsletter & White Lion announcement  with appropriate links. There is also going to a fan Q&A at Freddyshouse forums.

No doubt you've already read the details on the exciting new White Lion class in the latest newsletter - if you haven't yet then you can catch up on the careers page.

No doubt you still have many questions about this last High Elf career so head on over to the Freddyshouse forums where you can ask your questions. All the best ones will be put to the EA Mythic developers and you'll see the answers in the June edition of the newsletter!

We just started to send out the May newsletter and you should be able to find it in your inbox very soon.

This month's newsletter finally reveals the last class of the High Elves, a melee damage dealer called … well, find out yourself.

Additionally you will find information about:

-A new zone: Dragonwake
-More scenarios in Scenario 101, Part 5
-A players journal about the raid on Altdorf in the Beta journal
-Two new profiles in the “Meet the team” section:  Brian Jaudette  and Corrie Treadway
-Information about the Inevitable City in this month’s Grab Bag
-More videos in Paul’s Video Phone Blog

And much more …

Jeff Hickman talks about balancing PvE for PvP in this interview.

In developing Warhammer Online, do keep an eye on what others are doing for PvP? For example, Age of Conan has mounted combat.

Jeff: There's a baseline that everyone expects from any MMO. They include crafting, quests, etc. We provide that baseline experience, but we're also looking for areas where we can innovate and improve on weaknesses found in MMO's. Only one game has mounted combat, so it's not part of the baseline. That's the area they're innovating in. We've chosen to innovate on our Realm-vs.-Realm system. It makes our game all about PvP, skirmish PvP, instance scenario combat and castle sieges. Players will be able to grab hold of their enemies' lands by laying siege to their capital cities, fighting within the capital city itself, and conquering by taking away everything the enemy holds dear.

We also have a bunch of unique defining features like Public Quests, which nobody even comes close to doing. Our Living Guild System and Tome of Knowledge are also unique. So, we've chosen four or five iconic things to innovate on that nobody else does, and that's how we raise the bar

What are some of the biggest challenges to balancing PvP with PvE gameplay?

Jeff: It's all a big challenge, but one of the biggest is making both of them feel and flow right. I know that sounds simple, but it's a huge challenge to just get the tactile feel of combat right across both game types. You want the amount of time it takes to kill any given enemy, in any given level, to feel good - not too long or too short, especially in PvP. The challenge is in making abilities that work both in PvP and PvE, making sure they take the right amount of time to kill things, then creating monsters that feel almost as good as fighting a human enemy. The problem is, human enemies can think, so they'll present a much bigger challenge than a monster.

Further details on Warhammer Online's crafting system have been released in an annoucement sent out by EA Mythic. The game will in addition to the four already known gathering skills contain two crafting skills, Apothecary and Talisman Making:

FAIRFAX, Va. EA Mythic, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), unveiled new details for the crafting system in Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR). With two crafting abilities (Apothecary and Talisman Making) and four supporting gathering skills (Cultivating, Magical Salvaging, Scavenging and Butchering), the MMORPG incorporates an innovative crafting system to aid players in their fights on the battlefield’s of WAR.

“Crafting is a beloved MMORPG element for many players, however, it can often feel like an unnecessary addition to the game,” said Mark Jacobs, general manager of EA Mythic and WAR’s lead game designer. “The crafting system I’ve envisioned for WAR is innovative, fun and doesn’t require hours and hours of grinding materials, items or recipes in order to succeed. It is a system that is tied directly to your Realm’s ongoing war effort whether you are a player who loves PvE, RvR or simply crafting in general.”

The Apothecary crafting ability allows players to create all manner of useful potions, lotions and powders to heal, enhance stats, or cause damage to others. By combining various ingredients, players will even have the opportunity to “design” their own potions according to their needs. The second crafting ability, Talisman Making, will allow players to make useful items imbued with magic powers to be worn by a character.

WAR’s gathering skills produce the raw materials required for Apothecary and Talisman Making:

• Players can train themselves in Cultivating, and plant seeds and spores in order to harvest weeds and fungi, components frequently used in Apothecary creations.
• Magical Salvaging lets players break down magical items, converting them into fragments and essences that can be used in the crafting of Talismans.
• Scavenging and Butchering are used to collect unseen resources off of the corpses of slain creatures – Scavenging allows players to recover hidden items from more intelligent creatures, while Butchering allows players to collect meat, skin and bones from non-sentient beasts.

Crafting in WAR is not about grinding for raw materials to create beneficial items, but about using developmental processes that don’t interfere with the Realm vs. Realm™ battles that are central to WAR. For example, a character with Cultivating training can continue to grow weeds and fungi even while laying siege to the enemy’s city.

The press release also mentions a video podcast, that describes the crafting system more detailed.

New class, new to the Warhammer IP, revealed on Gamespot.

Amid the death and destruction that will befall the high elf land of Ulthuan when Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning releases later this year, there is a little bit of love. Hailing from the land of Chrace, the newly revealed white lion class will raise a war lion from a baby cub to a valiant beast of war. Players will be able to name their pet, choose distinctive fur patterns, and train it in the art of battle. Eventually, the war lion will grow into a loyal companion on the battlefield, elf's best friend. We sat down with Adam Gershowitz, associate art director and lead of combat and careers on Warhammer Online, to get the skinny on the new white lion class.

Class info on the offical site (Euro) is here. 

EA Mythic to be sending out next round of beta invites.

With the closed beta testing of Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ marching onwards, we are pleased to announce that we are stepping up the pace; within days the largest beta invitation wave yet seen will be sent out to hungry testers-to-be all over Europe! In other words, keep an eye at your inbox in the near future.

We wish you all good luck, and further wish to extend our gratitude to our current testers for creating such a positive community and we are confident the lucky new testers will feel welcome!

Naturally, we will update you when the invitations are sent out. See you all on the battlefield!

Dedicated servers heading Australia's way(ish) from Gamespot.

GameSpot AU: You've decided to set up an Australian server for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, is that right?

Josh Drescher: This is something that we've wanted to do basically from the beginning of the project. We wanted to make sure that in terms of localisation and offering support for players around the world, that we try and give as many people as possible home turf servers to use. And the Australian fans were actually extremely vocal early on in the process. It's been something we've wanted to do for quite some time, and when we were bought by EA it became something that was a lot more viable for us, so we're very excited to get some dedicated servers over there.

GS AU: So it will be locally hosted?

JD: I don't know the exact location, but we'll be hosting the server somewhere in East Asia, so it will be in the correct time zone. At the moment we are targeting it squarely at Australia and New Zealand. Once you get outside of those two territories you run into linguistic problems, which will need independent servers elsewhere.

Josh Drescher (EA Mythic Senior Designer) talks about releasing after WoW, working with EA and MMO subscription numbers.

Q: How is working with EA compared to being independent?

Josh Drescher: Compared to being an independent developer it's awesome. When we made Camelot in 2001, we knew we had a great product and it was really difficult to get attention from the media. There's a tendency to want to focus on proven quantities in the industry and as a result when you're kind of alone in the wilderness and no matter how good your product is it's really tough to get time and attention - so first and foremost it's a lot easier to be visible.

Second, they've given us the resources to dramatically expand what we're doing with the game. When we were an independent studio we had a very rigid schedule of when we had to be out the door and it really didn't matter how far along we were, like the lights were going to be turned off if we didn't have the title out by a very certain point.

The first thing they did when they came to us was they said: "Have some more money, have some more time, have more resources, have a larger staff and do everything that you want to do in the game," - and they've been very supportive.

Short preview at Gamespy.

To its credit, the early quests in WAR seem to impart a definite sense of "place." Think about how the early quests in WoW make you feel as if you're "clocking in" to quest-givers, subsequently running out into the field a few yards to fulfill objectives, and returning to clock out by delivering your quests and collecting rewards. There doesn't seem to be as much of that in WAR; rather, the early environments seem to be designed around highly-visible events, the consequences of which are evident all around you. In the Dwarf areas, the context is a Greenskin invasion, with the tunneling goblins and squigs and the orc-manned artillery beyond the ramparts. For the Dark Elves, it takes the form of an invasion mounted from enormous naval structures called "arks" -- think a floating city the size of an island.

Quest areas don't seem to be places that wandering monsters simply arbitrarily inhabit; at least in the two areas we checked out, there was a definite rhyme and reason for mob X to be patrolling site Y. The effort to build the environments like this go a long way toward negating one of the most common criticisms levied against MMOs: that they feel like static wax museums inhabited by staid 3D models which, at best, represent nothing more than statistics in the form of gold, experience, and levels to be transferred to your character.

Interview of Josh Drescher at bit-tech.net.

 JD: I think that in other genres, yes. Luckily, as an MMO we’re largely insulated from all that because of our model. It’s impossible for a player to pirate our game and, even if they did, then it’d be them alone in their basement. For our game to make sense you need thousands of players all playing together on a massive architecture.

As a result, we’re very attracted to Asian markets along with Russia and China – places where piracy is everywhere. Piracy is just a pandemic there. So, while we’re very worried about it, it doesn’t really affect us as much.

Obviously, I can’t speak for other developers like Iron Lore. But, y’know I had friends who worked there and we tried to bring a load of them over to us when they closed. If they say piracy was a problem for them then I absolutely believe them. Piracy is why we see so many samey shooters.

I've decided just to repost this one from Blue's News. A grand day for Warhammer Online previews:

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning on ActionTrip, GameShark, Killer Betties, and MMO Gamer.

Feature by William Abner on a EA Mythic conference call.

 This call served a few purposes. First, it was to dispel any rumors that the game will suffer from another delay, as the entire team emphatically stated (loudly and in unison) that the date was a firm "fall 2008." The second reason was to give the media a general state of the game -- where it is in its development, what has changed, and to reemphasize what will make Warhammer stand out from a bloated MMO landscape.

State of the game at Game Zone.

Everyone knows that RvR will immerse players in the world, what about PvE?

Public quests are dynamic, they change with the environment. PvE will be in close proximity to RvR. We have RvR quests.

Every system in the game are intertwined. … everything you do in the game contributes to the war effort, it contributes to the zone control. Everything you will do helps that RvR at the highest level. The RvR players get a benefit from the PvE players.

The way you immerse people in the PvE is making it a dynamic world. Everything in the world is focused on that war effort. You talked about sieges in RvR, but it is available in PvE as well.

What can you tell us about guilds?

Guilds are critical to the overall success that a player is going to achieve in the game. A couple of the goals is that the guilds can’t be a static thing; they have to be an organic, living part of the world. Everything you do in the world helps your guild to advance. There is always something for you to work toward, not only as a solo player, but as a guild.

How viable is solo play?

Very viable. As a solo player you are not going to be able to walk to an enemy city, knock down the wall, walk around the city and kill the king. You are going to get a different experience playing solo than you would with a group. You can play the solo game and experience almost all the content.

We want you to run out and have fun instantly.

GameInfoWire has a batch of new Warhammer Online screenshots at their website.

Warhammer Online receives another preview. This time by Computer and Video Games:

EA Mythic are ensuring players won't be forced to spend months getting the best gear before they join the war. They want to pull together the disparate worlds of PvE and PvP into one game.

From the start you're introduced to Scenarios, AOR's battlegrounds, which are bracketed into smaller level groups than MMO players are used to. This way AOR gives all players a chance to play a key role in the PvP missions. Even Public Quests (see Public questing), can have PvE and PvP objectives. And unlike WOW, killing another player grants run-of-the-mill experience, as well as AOR's second levelling commodity, renown.

GameSpot does one too. The Skaven race has been excluded as a playable race, but this preview speculates that it might be added later, or so they hope:

The Warhammer universe is so rich that the development team had too much source material to include in the game. They were forced to pick the races that made the most sense for launch, so even though some of the team loved the Skaven race, they aren't featured as a playable race. The beauty of creating a persistent online world means that other races may be added postrelease, and the team is intent on supporting Warhammer Online in this way, but the subject isn't something that they're prepared to talk about at this stage. With the game only now approaching open beta, the team is currently focusing on tweaking the content that is already in place. The closed beta programme, which is currently ongoing, has apparently produced a lot of suggestions for changes. The last few months have been spent reacting to these suggestions, and if you preorder the special edition of the game, then you'll be able to enter the open beta later in the year.

Guy Cocker gets some hands-on with WAR.

The Warhammer universe is so rich that the development team had too much source material to include in the game. They were forced to pick the races that made the most sense for launch, so even though some of the team loved the Skaven race, they aren't featured as a playable race. The beauty of creating a persistent online world means that other races may be added postrelease, and the team is intent on supporting Warhammer Online in this way, but the subject isn't something that they're prepared to talk about at this stage. With the game only now approaching open beta, the team is currently focusing on tweaking the content that is already in place. The closed beta programme, which is currently ongoing, has apparently produced a lot of suggestions for changes. The last few months have been spent reacting to these suggestions, and if you preorder the special edition of the game, then you'll be able to enter the open beta later in the year.

Preview by Ed Zitron on how WAR is making PvP accessible.

War never changes. Literally in MMOs, as regardless of how bitter a conflict is it all whittles down to a few games of Capture the Flag with the eventual putting aside of differences to save the world. However, in the gritty Warhammer World, everything is to play for - every zone, every territory -as from Rank 1 onwards, you're very much at war, the enemy is near you, and you've got the chance to fight for your realm.

While on paper it sounds like AOR will be a horrible gankfest, allow me to put your fears to rest - I am a die-hard PvP hater, and Warhammer Online has revved my siege engine.

Editorial @ TTH asking the question - do we need Lore in MMOs?

Along with the upsides always comes a few downsides the first of which is, many people don't read the lore. How many people do you know in games like EverQuest 2 or Lord of the Rings Online that just click right through quest dialog? How many of you became ecstatic the first time you figured out how to make the quest instantly display instead of scroll in World of Warcraft? If you are mainly motivated by achievements such as levels, skills, or gear then extensive lore actually becomes a hindrance to playing and causes dissatisfaction.

EA Mythic will be taking Warhammer Online on tour in the US this summer. It will be possible for interested to get hands-on time with the game at the following events:

WAR is everywhere at the following shows:

• New York Comic Con: April 18-20, 2008 (New York, NY)
  • Catch the WAR stage show extravaganza with Paul and Jeff at 12:00 noon on Sunday, April 20.
  • Join Jeff for the MMO discussion panel at 4:00pm on April 20th.
• Origins: June 26-29, 2008 (Columbus, OH)
• Comic Con: July 24-27, 2008 (San Diego, CA)
• Gen Con Indy: August 14-17, 2008 (Indianapolis, IN)
• Penny-Arcade Expo: August 29-31, 2008 (Seattle, WA)

In addition, the developers will be showing WAR at Games Workshop's upcoming Games Days:

• Baltimore, MD: June 14, 2008
• Toronto, ON: June 21, 2008
• Chicago, IL: July 26, 2008
• Los Angeles, CA: August 23, 2008

MMORPG.com has four screenshots of Inevitable City, the capital of chaos.

Almost 80mins of presentation video of the recent Paris show.

 Unlike the recent 10/10 master-piece WoW review Eurogamer has a not so impressed (though not totally negative) WAR preview.

Even more worrying is the feeling that, unless you're a Warhammer fan steeped in the lore, WAR's world isn't really somewhere you'll want to be. The graphics are sharp and well-finished, but the artwork is quite plain and characterless, and the animation isn't fluid enough. There's nothing to surprise and delight in the visual cues, and the effects are weak.

There's definitely a sense of humour present, but it doesn't seem to have seeped into the detail and atmosphere of the world, and Mythic will end up ruing the day it decided to exclude dancing from the range of emotes. It's as if someone has taken WOW's world and drained half the colour, atmosphere and liveliness from it.

If Warhammer Online is lacking one thing, it's "feel". Improving that "feel" is exactly what Hickman says the recent delay of the game's release to the end of 2008 is about. We'd say Mythic, EA and GOA made absolutely the right decision, Lich King or no Lich King. Warhammer Online deserves that extra level of polish and as clever as it is, the game needs it. Until then, those big ideas are enough - just - to make it worth keeping the faith.

A new preview of Warhammer Online is up at HEXUS.gaming:

Before we even set foot in Paris, we knew a lot about WAR already. The marketing push has been hard to ignore and alongside screenshots, trailers, feature sheets and zone guides, we’ve been spoon-fed developer diaries fairly regularly since the game was announced in 2005. Make no mistake about it; the creators really, really want this game to succeed. The passion displayed by the EA Mythic staff for their game was infectious, if not a little predictable at times (we’ve never heard the word ‘awesome’ hollered so many times in one day), but after sitting through hours of energetic explanations of WAR’s main features and having actually played the game ourselves, we’ve have to admit it, we don’t think they’re just ‘talking-the-talk’ when they say that WAR “promises to be a game unlike any other.”

WarCry also features a new preview. Here's something on crafting:

Mythic is still developing WAR's crafting system, and they were only ready to show a few aspects of the system. I learned about three gathering professions: butchering, scavenging and cultivating. Butchering allows players to cut up dead animals for components. Scavenging allows you to cut up dead humanoids for components ... or maybe just rifle through their pockets. I like the cutting up version better. Cultivating allows you to grow seeds - found as loot drops or from other gathering professions - into useful items for the apothecary. The apothecary lets players make potions. Starting from a base ingredient that determines the effect, players can then add other items that change the duration or potency. You can make a highly potent but short-duration buff potion, perfectly suited for RvR, or you could make a long-lasting, moderately potent buff for questing or raiding.

One thing about crafting that appealed to me was the removal of the mechanic requiring you to be near a specific crafting station (a forge, anvil, loom, etc.) in order to create an item. Allowing players to make potions on the fly or craft a new weapon or piece of armor in the field removes a large part of the hassle and tedium involved. I'm glad that someone remembered that these games are supposed to be fun and not a second job.

New screenshots of Warhammer Online has been released on GameInfoWire.com.

The previously covered GameSpy preview told us that Realm versus Realm gameplay was the main aspect of Warhammer Online. This interview with Roland Cox, Product Manager, tells us that it is in fact social networking that is "at the heart of WAR":

HEXUS: In the presentation EA Mythic talked about ‘Public Quests’ being one of WAR’s redeeming features, what are they and what makes them so special and unique to MMOs?

Roland: Public Quests basically expand on the PvE solo-playing experience, turning them into communal experiences where realm pride is really at stake. There are 300 public quests in the game, most of which consist of multiple stages. The first stage is generally solo-able, though they do take some time if you go down this route, and the other stages require participation from other realm players and they all generally culminate in disposing of a big boss.

It's hard to convey what's really great about public quests, until you actually experience it. It’s a fantastic social hub in the game. I was in the beta the other week playing in the Dark Elf Zone 1 and I was just having a look around, watching what other players were up to and I was right next to the citadel, which has public quest where you need to kill a Hydra. There were 7 or 8 people around contributing to the public quest and intuitively I thought I might as well join in. I grouped up, did the public quest and then added two of the guys as friends. The public quests are good fun, but what really makes them great is that they are intuitive social networking hubs. You don’t have that problem where you gather a group together and then wonder what to do. People will probably be in the middle of doing a public quest, so you can just join them, or not, the choice is yours.

GameSpy has a three page preview of the Realm versus Realm gameplay in Warhammer Online. During the preview they describe an entire playthrough of a Realm capture: 

As we recently found out on a visit to developer Mythic's Fairfax, Virginia headquarters, Warhammer Online is not about leveling up. This isn't really a secret; the basic design of the game has been public knowledge for a while. Player characters top out at level 40 and can hit that point relatively quickly (at least in MMO terms) because the emphasis is on so-called "Fourth Tier" gameplay -- the Realm-vs.-Realm struggle in which the six races will attempt to push the borders of their war back to the enemy's capital city in order to burn it to the ground. However, the full implications of that design would change during our largest presentation of the day -- a grand tour through the whole "Fourth Tier," from playing in the Inevitable City to the eventual fall of Altdorf. We would follow the liberators of the Lord of Change as they moved south against the tyrannical Empire.

Mark Jacobs has been interviewed by WarCry about the delay, that was announced a couple of days ago. He talks about the reason for it and what it will mean for the future of the game:

This is not the first delay for Warhammer Online and given the checkered history of Electronic Arts with MMOs, one wonders whether their owners were growing impatient.

"EA's behind us and not being us with pitch forks, thank god," Jacobs said. He explained how he believes that Mythic and EA as a whole have had a good open line of communication throughout the process. They have been sure to have EA people in the Beta so they can see the progress and know that when Jacobs asks for a delay, he's doing it because the game really needs it.

Jacobs also noted that since the change in hierarchy over at EA, new CEO John Riccitiello has been a huge proponent of increased polish on all their games, or "raising the Metacritic", as Jacobs called it. As such, when a game says they need time to achieve that polish, they have been supportive.

"They're not happy, we're not happy, no one here is happy that we're not going to make our initial date, but they understand why."

WarCry also does a preview of the city siege and keeps gameplay in Warhammer Online:

The first time players will encounter a keep will be in the Tier 2 (mid-level) Realm vs. Realm (RvR) zones; tier 1 (low level) currently only consists of control points that do not require heavy artillery to take over. In the Tier 2 areas there is one keep for each side and they will be styled in the manner of the races that are connected to the zone. High Elves have gleaming walls and spires, while the Chaos keep is more jagged and foreboding. Tier 2 Keeps each have a single point of entry that must be destroyed in order to gain access to the interior. Using siege weapons makes that much easier. Each keep has static points where these siege weapons may be placed, both for the attackers and the defenders. These points can be targeted and attacked and if they are destroyed may not be used until they respawn after a set time.

As a last breath in their Warhammer Online coverage WarCry offer two exclusive screenshots.

WarCry has a preview of the recently announced Collector's Edition for Warhammer Online. The preview also show images of the box art and content:

Packed inside will be an all-original graphic novel, a full-color art book, a miniature and access to exclusive in game content. The art book will be 224 pages, hardbound and will showcase the concept art that has been produced over the course of the development cycle. Concept art sometimes never makes it into the final product and this was just a way to celebrate and share the hard work of the artists with the players and fans of Warhammer.

More news from EuroGamer and Paris; it's the contents of the WAR collector's edition.

It'll include an exclusive Games Workshop miniature depicting Greenskin warboss Grumlok and shaman Gazbag.

Then there's a 128-page hardback graphic novel titled WAR: Prelude to War. It's been written by Graham McNeill and illustrated by Chad Hardin, Joe Abraham, Rahsan Ekedal, Tony Parker and Kevin Hopgood. Each of the six chapters in the book will tell a story about the armies in the game.

You also get a 224-page art book, stuffed with making of info and concept drawings. Plus the European version of the Collector's Edition will include an exclusive mousepad.

The offical site has now been updated with all the collector's edition info and retailers that will have it in stock. 

EuroGamers new MMO page is stating that Jeff Hickman has announced another release date delay for WAR.

Electronic Arts has announced that PC MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning won't be released until the autumn.

News of the delay was revealed this morning by producer Jeff Hickman. He was speaking at a press conference in Paris attended by the editor of Eurogamer's brand new MMO channel.

Lead Writer on Warhammer Online, Mark Daniels, has written a developer diary entry on the official site:

War is everywhere! 

Here in the halls of EA Mythic, that phrase has become something of a motto. It's also a kind of goal, too; by the time we launch this game and you, the players, get to step into the world we've created, we hope you'll agree that war really is everywhere.

For the Writing Team, that phrase isn't just a destination, but also a point of departure that leads us to many questions. Why is war everywhere? How did it get there? What objectives are the armies of Order and Destruction fighting over? What effect will those battles have on the larger war? Providing the answers is the job of WAR's writers and Content Designers, and the first place we go to get them is the game's backstory.

No idea what this is counting down to - new beta phase? Web-site? Trailer? All I know is that some kind of announcement is on the way from Mythic.

Mark Jacobs has posted on the forums of the Warhammer Online fansite Warhammer Alliance, that the announcement won't be revealing an open beta:

Folks,

I've pretty much said what will be happening on the 26th and it won't be open beta. I can't imagine why anyone would think that quite frankly. Some real simple clues guys:

1) The countdown clock is on GOA's site only

2) There was a leak/multiple threads about possible contents of our CE from a European site

3) In one of the other threads, multiple posters (including a board mod) talked about the contents of the CE being revealed next week in Paris.

So, anyone really want a shot at the title and guess what they are going to be talking about?

I really wish I could say that the date of open beta was going to be talked about but that isn't the case. There will a bunch of things at the GOA event but the date of open beta will not be one of those things. And I can't tell you exactly what we are going to talk about there either for obvious reasons.

Also, as I've said before, don't preorder the CE until you are exactly sure what's the complete story on it unless you were going to order it no matter what. It's only a few more days and everything will be revealed.

Mark

A video developer interview in two parts have been uploaded at IGN.

The Dark Elves of Warhammer Online are covered in this preview by GameSpy:

In Warhammer lore, the Dark Elves are the renegade faction of the Elvish race. Thousands of years ago Malekith, the son of the Elvish king Aenarion, was deemed unsuitable for the Phoenix Throne because of his unstable and warlike nature. Outraged at such a nonsensical charge, the peace-loving prince responded by engineering a bloody civil war that nearly exterminated the elves as a race and resulted in the permanent division of the Elves into two mutually hostile camps. In Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Malekith learns of an impending invasion of the human Empire by Chaos and uses that to kick off a cunning plan that will finally result in the Dark Elf conquest of their homeland of Ulthuan and his ascension to the throne.

Last but not least is a preview for Warhammer Online. As opposed to IncGamers' short preview of Age of Conan this preview by IGN is a four-page article:

While at Mythic, we were also introduced to the game's new Mastery system. Previous play sessions had shown us the game's creative use of flexible tactics and moral abilities to help differentiate who your character is and what he or she can do from battle to battle. Mastery paths are a more permanent identifier of who your character is and determine what he or she can do over the course of an entire lifetime. They might best be likened to sub-classes in other RPGs or like the skill trees in World of Warcraft. It's up to you to decide if you'd rather focus on a single mastery path or simply spread your ranks among different paths to create a more flexible character.

GameSpy have 2 days of exclusive details on WAR - the details:

(Today!) Warhammer Online -- Hands-on with the Dark Elves
We plumb the depths of depravity to sample the twisted humor of the Dark Elves of Warhammer Online.

(Today!) Warhammer Online -- The Littlest Things
We talk with Mythic Entertainment about small details and the "Plungers of the World." 

(Tomorrow) Warhammer Online -- Career Opportunities
We talk with Mythic Entertainment about its approach to player classes.

(Tomorrow) Ramblin' on with Paul and Jeff
Check out our extended (and insane) video interview with Creative Director Paul Barnett and Producer Jeff Hickman! 

We haven't covered this yet, but EA Mythic have decided to forgo official forums in favor of 3rd party communities and forums. EA Mythic employee Mark "Mbj" Jacobs answers to why they have chosen as they have:

The age we are living in is definitely a different one. I've gone from moderating forums with hundreds of people to seeing forums that are supposed to support games with millions of people. I wish it was as simple as set a few rules, apply them fairly, be honest with the players and then everything will be all right. It just isn't that way, no matter how much we would like it to be. Heck, even on our own beta forums we have people who refuse the follow the rules, break NDAs, ignore stickies, etc. and we do all the right things. No matter how well-intentioned the mods, unless a company is ready, willing and able to devote a ton of staff to the forums (24x7 mods, ruthless enforcement, limited topic creation ability, large staff), there are simply too many people to handle unless you have either an incredibly thick skin or so few available posting venues (as opposed to reading venues) to make it less than worthwhile. Scale is a wonderful and terrible thing and I'm sorry but you can't compare a game(s) that are small to games like WoW or even what we hope WAR will be in terms of number of subscribers. Also, the type of game has a direct effect on the style of the community. Let's face it, in a game like WAR or DAoC in which conflict between the races, sides, etc. is a main selling point, the forums for these games will be rather, hmm, enthusiastic. Lots of screaming and yelling, lots of false reports and tons of exaggeration. Whether it is WAR, WoW, DAoC or any other game in which RvR or PvP plays a major role, all these games share a very similar community. And I've seen more than enough from DAoC and WoW alone, to tell me that I am indeed right in my assessment. And I am happy to make a prediction here, when AoC launches, if they have official forums (I don't know their stance on it), they will have the same kind of behavior that the aforementioned games have had, count on it. If I'm wrong, I'll be also happy to admit it.

GamePlanet have a preview of WAR with Jeff Hickman who talks about: public quests, the tome of knowledge, and RvR here.

TTH editorial about Siege Warfare. 

Warhammer Online's Siege warfare promises to provide an exciting enhancement to Realm vs Realm combat that every player can enjoy. Whether combating enemies on the walls or flinging death with a Trebuchet, expect fast paced player verses player combat wherever a Keep stands. Join Ten Ton Hammer as we look at siege mechanics and why you should be excited about them.

A zone overview from the Warhammer Online February newsletter has been made available to MMORPG.com by EA Mythic. The zone is called "Saphery":

 Mostly concept art added to their rather large collection of screens.

Rpgvault have a piece by Matt Daniels on storytelling in MMOs.

I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of new innovations the industry comes up with in the years ahead. Perhaps we'll see more cinematic storytelling techniques, such as in-game cutscenes or more extensive use of voiceover dialogue for both players and NPCs. The holy grail of MMO storytelling has always been to allow players to change the course of a game's story permanently, perhaps by slaying a key NPC, winning a major battle or claiming a powerful relic that shifts the balance of power in the world.

Big preview @ WarhammerHerald. 

An article about the scenario battles in WAR.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Scenarios 101! Hopefully everyone knows that WAR will have Scenarios, but many of you many not know the full details of how they work and what exactly you do in them just yet. Well, that’s what I’m here to fix! I’m not here to explain the stories or fancy backgrounds, or talk about the art... I’m here to tell you how these Scenarios work and, more importantly, how you can win them!

MMORPG.com reports that subscribers to the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter (delivered via email) should be recieving the February newsletter.

EA Mythic has published their Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter for February, which explains keeps and sieges, looks at the Warhammer: Condemned by Fire comic and beta opportunities, scenario and zone overviews, army leader profiles, and more.

WarCry has alerted us to a preview video hosted by JeuxVideo.tv showcasing the combat animations of the Sword Master and Witch Elf classes.

As reluctant as a I am to give coverage to anything touted as "kickin' it old-school", here's a link to the lastest WAR podcast.

This month, Paul and Josh are kickin' it old-school around the kitchen table talking about the latest and greatest in WAR. From armor dies to siege equipment, from the campaign map to city siege testing, this podcast is packed full of golden nuggets of information. Don't miss it!

EA Mythic has revealed more about the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning trophy system.

In most MMOs, once you've decided on the armor you're going to wear, you've pretty much exhausted all the options for your avatar's look. The idea behind trophies is to create an additional level of visual customization for your character. For example, let's say you kill a badass dragon. Some MMOs will make sure the dragon drops some great loot (we'll do that, too). In WAR, if you kill the dragon, we'll give you a trophy you can wear that shows you killed the dragon!

EA Mythic has posted a new video of the month featuring RvR combat at the official Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning site.

What’s it like on the battlefields of WAR? Well, it might very well look something like this new video we have to share with you. These RvR battles were filmed for an internal presentation so you’ll see lots of people standing around beating on each others (we needed them to remain relatively still to capture the footage we needed!). Those of you that have experienced real RvR before know that battles are a lot more fluid and that no one ever stays stationary for long. Enjoy!

MMORPG.com presents an overview of the Disciple of Khaine class from Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

For those out there who might not be following Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the Disciple of Khaine is a class available only to the Dark Elves that fills the healer role in a unique way.

Typically, healer classes cast from the same pool of magical energy as everyone else. You can only cast so many spells before that blue bar is empty and you have to wait until it re-fills enough to cast your next heal. It’s pretty standard practice. Still though, they wouldn’t be making Warhammer Online if they didn’t take that convention and twist it to fit the original Warhammer lore more closely.

WarCry catches up with EA Mythic to talk about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WarCry: As you prepared the latest Beta for release back to the testers, how would you rate your progress towards your stated goals at the time of the pause?

EA Mythic: The two month polish phase has been an overwhelming success. The challenges that were placed in front of the team were, to be frank, extremely daunting and everyone across the board stepped up and delivered on all of them. The improvements to the RvR and Career systems, in particular, have been extremely impressive.

CVG's preview of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning examines the always difficult question of how to get PvE fans involved in PvP.

Other quest chains enable players to dip their toes into hostile territory. 'Yellow quests' require a short hop into enemy lands, while 'red quests' put a bounty on an enemy player's head, and ask you to go claim it.

As he explains this, Josh laughs: "It's not like your typical MMO experience where for some reason you're able to safely walk around as long as you're, y'know, 50 feet away from an enemy. There's just an amazing sense of risk and reward. Will there be other players there who are waiting to kill you, or will the zone be controlled by your allies? Our hope is that as players experience some of that they'll be organically drawn to the realm vs realm experience."

WarCry chats to Joshua Drescher, Adam Gershowitz and James Nichols of  EA Mythic about progress on Warhammer Online.

WarCry: Since you will always have more of each than you can use at any given time, have any decisions been made regarding respecs of tactics and morale abilities?

EA Mythic: Players will be able to re-spec their Mastery, which means they will be able to re-spec any of the tactics & morale abilities purchased in that system.

Core tactics and morale abilities, along with those received from the Tome, are automatically granted via unlocks (gain a level, gain an ability). As a result, the major player choice is whether or not to slot them, not which tactics or morale abilities to purchase.

Keep in mind the new Mastery system replaces the old point system for buying tactics & morale. We didn't get remove the choice; we just moved it to another location.

For those of you who don't receive the Warhammer Online newsletter, MMORPG.com has kindly reposted the Ellyrion zone overview from the latest edition.

The vast, rolling plains and mild climate of Ellyrion make this inner kingdom the perfect breeding ground for the finest Elven steeds in all of Ulthuan. Great herds of these amazingly swift and graceful creatures roam the grasslands throughout the year, and are prized among the noble lords of the Phoenix King’s court for their magnificent quality and majestic beauty.

Head over to MMORPG.com to catch a further glimpse of the Dark Elf Sorceress (and Sorcerer) from Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Like their High Elf kin, the Dark Elves are innately magical creatures. However, Dark Elf magic users do not commune with the magical energies of the Winds of Chaos and attempt to use them in harmony. Instead they use sheer force of will to bend the Winds to their dark intentions. This form of magic is known as Dhar, or Dark Magic. Dark Magic spells are incredibly destructive and capable of shattering almost any defense. However, this power does not come without a price. If the Sorceress's will falters even a little the unstable power of Dark Magic will turn back upon the caster with a powerful backlash.

EA Mythic has decided on a different tactic for its Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning grab bags.

We're mixing things up in the new year with how we do grab bags. Each month we'll post on a random, active fansite asking for questions on specific topics to be featured in the Grab Bag: Q&A section of the January newsletter.

This month's topic? Previously announced High Elf careers! This includes the Swordmaster, Archmage, and Shadow Warrior.

To make sure your question is heard stop by www.WAR-RvR.net and visit the thread:

WAR Grab Bag Call For Questions - January

Be quick about it though - You only have until Thursday, January 10th, 2008 to do it!

We look forward to seeing your questions in this months newsletter and hanging out with you on www.WAR-RvR.net.

You can catch a glimpse of the Disciple of Khaine class in a new video released by EA Mythic.  It's being hosted all over, but this link comes courtesy of WarCry.

A new video in which Paul Barnett, Creative Director of Warhammer Online, and Josh Drescher, the Associate Producer discuss recent changes to RvR is available at WarCry.

The December Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter is hitting inboxes as we speak.  For those that don't subscribe, MMORPG.com has mirrored the section on the Archmage class.

An Archmage is a powerful caster both offensively and defensively. However they must strive to keep a balance between the powers they manipulate. Weaving only powerful healing or destructive spells will leave the Archmage tired and unable to assist his allies in their darkest hour. However by carefully applying force in critical places the Archmage can reserve a wellspring of magical energy that allows him to aid his allies when a normal mage would be all but spent.

The WAR Herald is sporting a new beta update featuring information on city and UI design and this piece about RvR.

The Blighted Isles hold many ancient treasures and ritual grounds upon their broken lands.  Within the shadows of the Shrine of Khaine, the ancient grounds known as Khaine’s Embrace has long held dark secrets of rituals performed to the god of murder.  Some think there is great power still held in Khaine’s Embrace, and were it to be used, the power of a god could be harnessed.  Others insist that the land is full of nothing more then malevolent evil ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

The scenario has two shrines that serve as capture locations.  Once either realm controls both capture areas for ten seconds, a glowing orb will appear above the High Elf altar found in the center area.  Both of the shrines will also begin to glow brightly with a large pillar of white light shooting directly upwards. Players have 10 seconds to get out of the area of the shrines and altar before a massive point blank area of effect (PBAE) spell goes off. Once the 10 seconds expires, the PBAE will fire, killing anyone from either realm who is left in the area. Then, both shrines can be captured once more.

WarCry chats to EA Mythic about the ongoing development of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WarCry: Your big headline recently was the decision to push back launch. This is not the first time WAR has been delayed. Why do you believe this release date is one players can expect you to meet?

EA Mythic: MMORPG fans have come to expect top tier titles to launch smoothly with finished, highly polished content across the board. This second adjustment of the launch date is intended to give us the time we need to make sure we deliver a product that meets those expectations. We're all but finished with feature and system integration right now, but Mark Jacobs (Lead Designer and GM of our studio) wanted to give us months, rather than weeks, to polish, balance and tighten things up prior to launch. As a result, between the December relaunch of the WAR Beta and the second quarter launch of the game, we're going to be able to focus the entire team on making sure everything feels perfect, looks perfect and plays in a way that will blow gamers away.

EA Mythic has posted a new beta update at the WAR Herald.

This week has been a bit Chaotic. Literally! We’ve been delving into the twisted and disturbing halls of the Inevitable City. One of the items we’ve been forging out of cold warpstone is the “Feast Hall” interior.Here players can find or offload the latest plunder taken from the enemy, brag about new mutations, or just simply relax with a few lashings.

Robert Mull, the new Community Relations Director for EA Mythic, has introduced himself at the WAR Herald.

I’m Robert Mull, the new Community Relations Director for EA Mythic.  I oversee the work our team of Community Coordinators do for Warhammer Online (James Nichols), Dark Age of Camelot (Missy Hatch and Joanne Laroche) and Ultima Online (Jeremy Dalberg).  They are a great team and I am lucky to have inherited them.

Just in case you missed out on the November Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter, here's a link to the online version at the official site.

WarCry plays host to a new podcast from EA Mythic's Associate Producer, Josh Drescher in which he discusses WAR's career system, RVR combat and the recent addition of keeps, forts and seige weapons to the game.

EA Mythic has released a new introduction video for the Sorceress class.  It's available all over the web, but this link comes to us courtesy of WarCry.

Head over to the WAR Herald for the latest Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta update.

This week some truly exciting work is being done. As you walk through the streets of Altdorf or the Inevitable City, there are HUGE buildings that dominate the sky; think “Big Ben” or the “Eiffel Tower”. We call these structures “Marvels”. Marvels help us provide the iconic look and feel of a city and make them immediately recognizable. But as amazing as they are to look at, until this week you couldn’t actually enter inside.

It was a major let down and, many of us wept. But now we are rejoicing as we are building the interior structure of the Bright Wizard College, the grand hall and throne room of Emperor Karl Franz, and the terrifying Magus tower of the Inevitable City.

Community Co-ordinator James Nichols talks to WarCry about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WarCry: Public quests have always been one of the most unique aspects of the game. How have they panned out in the Beta?

James Nichols: People LOVE them. In addition to being a great way to earn XP and loot, and getting to run through cool narrative content, they've wound up acting as an organic "looking for group" system in the world. Folks run out into a PQ, join in with whoever's already there, and in a matter of moments you can see if there is someone around you'd like to group with. They're like a singles bar for war parties.

MMORPG.com talks to designer Brian Wheeler about putting the war in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

MMORPG.com: Can you elaborate further on balancing RvR Scenarios, in particular in reference to balancing the use of NPC Dogs of War: Are they employed anywhere else besides in the Focused Instanced Scenarios?

Brian Wheeler: RvR Scenario balance is simply a matter of making sure that both sides have equal opportunities to win. This involves equalizing run times from starter areas to key locations, as well as providing access to choke points and ways around those choke points. Whether that's a super secret ninja path around the backside of an island (cough, Nordenwatch, cough) or simply stepped vs. ramped terrain depends on each Scenario. All players will also be within a set level range for each Scenario and each side will have roughly the same number of combatants. Though we envision Scenarios as instanced combat between players, if necessary, we will introduce NPC Dogs of War to speed up the queue so players from both sides won't have to wait forever and a day to get into a fight. We're looking at other methods of getting players into Scenarios quickly as well, but we can't let the cat out the bag on them yet.

The WAR Herald has a new beta update with screenshots, information on the trophy system featuring the Witch Hunter, a new movie and more.

MMORPG.com has updated its Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning gallery with 30 new pieces of concept art. 

MMORPG.com has a preview of the Witch Elf class and two new Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning videos.

Witch Elves are the maiden-elves who are wedded to Khaine, the Lord of Murder, in midnight rites of blood sacrifice and magic. The decadent fragile looks of the maidens of Ulthuan are nothing compared to the intoxicating beauty of the Witch Elves. Witch Elves go to war alongside the Dark Elf armies, eager to prove themselves in the eyes of their god. For them the battlefield is just another temple of Khaine, and the screams of the dying are praises sung in honor of the bloody-handed god.

For those of us that missed the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter earlier in the month, MMORPG.com kindly recaps the overview of the High and Dark Elf armies.

The Shining Guard is the elite band of warriors charged with the defense of Ulthuan when the Phoenix King takes the armies of the High Elves west to aid the Empire. Led by the renowned warrior Prince Tyrion, the Guard is a small but highly skillful fighting force. Prince Tyrion personally selects the High Elves who are elevated to the ranks of the Shining Guard from among the best and bravest of the citizen militia. These prestigious warriors stand as an example of the highest honor that a High Elf in the militia can hope to achieve.

EA Mythic has updated the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Herald (and that's the last time I type that out in full) with a new beta report.

First off we’ll go with the RvR Team. Since last we spoke they’ve been working on… Well I’ll just let them answer themselves:

The construction of the Elf scenarios is well under way with the first seven in various levels of polish. We should have three of those seven , along with some new scenarios for the Empire and Chaos zones. We have also been making changes to existing scenarios across all pairings. These changes have been focused on equalizing run times between the realms and adjusting the game play based on the feedback we have received. This week we’re going to evaluate ways to make access to scenario queues easier, while still keeping an immersive feel.

EA Mythic has released a new Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter.  Head on over to the official site for details.

MMORPG.com catches up with Mark Jacobs to discuss the recent changes at EA Mythic and the recently announced delay in the release of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Earlier in the day, EA announced that they would be undertaking a re-structuring plan that would see what CEO John Riccitiello described as, “head-count reductions and facility closures”. Roughly translated, this means that EA will be closing some of their studios and laying off some of their employees.

“This was a difficult decision,” he continued in the call, “because it impacts the careers of some very talented people.”

While this may have piqued the interest and curiosity of many in the industry including the folks at EA Mythic, later on in the call, when he was addressing the subject of Warhammer Online, Riccitiello went out of his way to assuage any fears that Mythic may have had on the subject, and to shed some light on the situation:

“Frankly, this is a pretty straightforward situation, and I want to emphasize to the team at Mythic: No, we are not having you be part of our re-structuring. That's not the plan. We are investing in the growth of that studio. Warhammer's [push-back story] is a simple one: they missed part of a milestone. Mark [Jacobs, EA Mythic VP] came forward and said that it would affect quality if he held the March date. We made the decision with the big investment we've got behind it and frankly the talent and inspiration of the team to invest behind quality. We gave them a little bit more time, a little bit more money and we think we're going to have a little bit more of a hit on our hands. So… simple. So, you're safe Mark.”

The remarks seem genuine in the context of the overall call. While praise and high expectations were heaped on some of the other games that EA will be releasing in ’08, I don’t recall another studio being so singled out for praise with such attention given to the team.

GameSpot is reporting that Warhammer won't be released until at least mid 2008:

In a conference call following Electronic Arts' second-quarter earnings report, executives revealed that one of its major games has been delayed yet again. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the tabletop-inspired massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now expected in the first half of EA's 2009 fiscal year, which begins on April 1, 2008. The game was previously slated for a March 2008 release, and now could come as late as September of that year.

WanderingGoblin offers some hands-on impressions of EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The classes are interesting. While our staffers weren't able to play every class in the game -- there are a lot of them -- we were able to sample a few. Each is interesting, and they are all distinct. The warrior priest, for example, is an interesting take on the old idea of a cleric. In fact, the WP is a plate-wearing healer, but not in the traditional sense. His melee attacks are formidible, for one thing. He's an offensive force to be reckoned with on the battle field, but he's spewing out area-effect heals as he fights. I suppose it could be called a pulsating aura, one that heals both the priest and his group mates as the fight progresses. This fighting aspect of the WP an important thing to note, as he isn't standing in the back healing the main tank. He's an in-your-grill face-smashing badass. We're not sure where, exactly, the goody-goody support aspects of this "priest" comes into play, if at all. The WP we played was a front-line soldier, and this alone made us sit up and take notice.

The transcript of MMORPG.com's recent chat session with the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning team is now available.

MMORPG.com: malfeasin :asks: Are instances only going to be used in RVR, or are there PVE instances as well, and more importantly, will there be an emphasis on open world dungeon adventuring in PVE? Yay open world dungeons!

[WAR]EAMythic_Josh: The VAST majority of instances will be RvR-related. However, in dungeons you'll have single-group boss encounters as well as "final" multi-group instances to tackle.

[WAR]EAMythic_Josh: but those are limited to the bosses

Warhammer Alliance chats to Missy Hatch and James Nichols about their role on the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning team.

First, tell us a bit about yourself!

Missy: Well, I started working at Mythic three years ago as a Community Coordinator for Dark Age of Camelot. I had been playing DAOC since launch and loved the game, and I couldn’t believe my luck when I moved to the area and they had a job opening. Since then I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the community of gamers out there on the net. Every day is entertaining, to say the least!

James: Previously I was the Community Manager for Vanguard at Sigil Games in San Diego (Some may know me as Elrar). I started off working on fansites before entering the industry. I'm a movie enthusiast (especially bad B movies), love Tolkien, cooking, and most of all playing MMO's.

GamersInfo.net speaks to the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning team about their upcoming MMO.

What other use is there for this Tome beyond tracking achievements? "It's also your quest journal," replied Carrie. "It looks like a book and you fill the pages as you progress along your career in Warhammer. For example, if you are working on the bestiary part, after you've killed a Squig, it will show a picture of a Squig. It will give you hints about some things as you progress." Carrie stressed that it was not a "book of spoilers" but a helper. For some quest lines, after you attain one objective, it will tell you what the next is. For others, only hints may be provided.

GameZone previews EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The main feature on display at the press event was the public quests. Public quests are a way for users to interact with other players in the game without actually teaming up on the same quest. Players will be able to provide assists if they’re in the same area of the game, helping to complete a mission by adding to your kill quota. They’ll also get some kickbacks for their assistance, but only based on their level of involvement in the quest. For example, if it’s a dwarf killing contest and you sweep in and kill one at the end of the quest, you’re not likely to get as much of a reward as someone who’s killed a lot more.

MMORPG.com has posted three new Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning videos featuring elves, lightning and scenes of WAR. 

GameSpy takes a closer look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and finds much to like in the game's PvP model.

Part of that is making the big PvP scenarios quickly accessible. If you run through an area and see that your faction is in any given step of say, building and firing a giant cannon at an enemy's walls, it'll be easy to get involved at any step in the process. If you see that your side needs materials, you can grab some -- or you can just run through the zone, and maybe plan on coming back later to defend the cannon.

Lastly, when you reach the peak of the realm-versus-realm play and are sacking enemy capital cities, there's more to it than just "sack the city." There will be the ruler to defeat, but also his lieutenants and important city residents. There are walls to crash down, shops to loot, and in general, more than you can do in one sacking. In addition, the ferocity of your occupation will leave a city in various states of disrepair, leaving the returning original occupants to fix the mess.

WarCry and The MMO Gamer talk with members of the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning team about the upcoming MMO.

WarCry

WarCry: We hear a lot about these great public quests. Is there only one per zone, or many in each area?

Warhammer PAX: The first chapter of the game there is one public quest, each chapter after that there are 3 public quests. So there are over three hundred public quests in the game. That equals quite a few per zone. You will find public quest pretty much everywhere as you go through. You will stumble upon them everywhere, and you can then choose to participate in the public quest, or choose not to. Its not one of those things that you have to do, but it's nice to be able to stumble upon them and decide, "ahh maybe ill kill one of these guys as I pass through", and that single contribution helps the group doing the quest. You can also reap the benefits by helping in any part of the public quests.

The MMO Gamer

The MMO Gamer: RvR, just for the sake of it, doesn’t seem to be much of a carrot in many other games. In World of Warcraft, for instance, until they patched in the epic rewards, I don’t know of a lot of people who actually engaged in PvP. But, even after the epic rewards, many people only seemed interested in the purples they got, rather than the fighting it took to get them.

So, my question is, what carrots are you going to implement to ensure that people are actively engaged in the war portion of Warhammer?

Adam Gershowitz: That’s a tough question to answer, and really not one that’s my area of focus. So, I’ll answer it to the best of my abilities.

The carrot for RvR in our game is, honestly, you can go one to forty doing RvR. There’s some pretense of player population problems, and stuff like that, that if you want to do a certain type of RvR, you may be a little bit more at the mercy of who else is playing with you. However, we’re doing our best to balance the world in such a way that the RvR is engaging from levels one to forty, that you can get similar types of rewards from RvRing that you can get from PvE. So you don’t have to PvE to RvR, you don’t have to RvR to PvE.

MMORPG.com chats to Jeff Hickman and Paul Barnett of EA Mythic about their upcoming MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WarCry chats to Richard Duffek about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WarCry: Group sizes seem to be set to 6. For raids, or large encounters, how many groups do you need to take on things like the Bloodthirster, or other epic mobs?

Richard Duffek: We will have a system in place similar to DAoC's Battlegroups, where you basically have a "group of groups" taking on large encounters. Different encounters will be geared to different sized BGs, but that's something we'll be tweaking through beta as more and more testers throw themselves onto the giant pile of corpses surrounding the Bloodthirster's feet.

MMORPG.com has kindly rounded up the latest Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning releases from EA Mythic. 

Part two of MMORPG.com's interview with Mark Davis and Steve Perlins of EA Mythic is now available. In this installment they discuss the Greenskin starting area.

"When you start off, you start in a Greenskin war-camp. Who's the first guy you meet? You meet Skarzag, and he's on this vicious Wyvern. Now the Wyvern is just standing there and he's hungrily looking around."

As you might imagine, from this point, Skarzag tells you that the Stunties are invading. Stunties is the name that the Greenskins have given to their Dwarf counterparts. Get it? They're short! Hey, no one said the Greenskins were clever.

Murgash the Choppa, ably assisted by Garret Fuller, provides a preview of the questing system in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Editor’s Note: As Murgash and Gut continued to stuff the sleeping dwarves into the barrels and kick them off the wall in glorious laughter. We watched the boss giving orders to yet another new Orc that had just joined the Bloody Sun Boyz. The boss seemed to be yelling something and pointing down to the moat. We saw the orc scratch his green head and look at the funny barrels floating over to the shore. It was then we realized not only was the Orc Boss sending his orcs to investigate the barrels, but also catapulting them onto the wall to join his goblin shaman Gutsticka’s new found fun. Perhaps one day the boss would put two and two together. Until then, Murgash said goodbye and went off to other adventures. While we’ll miss his charm, we still have much more to see at the San Diego Comic Con.

While at E3 Ten Ton Hammer caught up with Lance Robertson, the Producer for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

We all love realm versus realm combat, but I wanted to go beyond RvR combat when discussing some of the elements that Mythic brought from DAoC to WAR. When I proposed this question to Lance here’s what he had to say:

“One of the main things we learned about in Dark Age was character class balancing and the speed of combat. For instance, we know how long combat should be in an open arena compared to an eight versus eight area. We have a lot of experience now, and I think the fans are going to be pleasantly surprised with some of the subtle changes we’ve made to some of the concepts we first came up with in DAoC.”

The fourth in a series of exclusive Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning interviews is available at WarCry.

WarCry: Instancing is supposed to be quite limited in WAR. As more and more MMOs continue to add more instancing to their games, can you explain why WAR is going the other way?

Richard Duffek: While instancing can be very beneficial to a game if done the right way, overall it still takes away from what makes a game a MMO. The first word there is massive... There really isn't anything all that massive about being in an instanced zone with five other people and some mobs. WAR is all about the war, being out there with the rest of your army, capturing zones, and beating down your hated enemy's capital city gates.

Having said that, though, we'll definitely use instancing where appropriate, especially with boss encounters and other areas where we want to focus on a single-player's (or small group's) action.

Mark Davis (Deputy Content Director) and Steve Perkins (Director) talk to MMORPG.com about EA Mythic's upcoming title, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

"It's kind of like Batman..." said Mark, and you know that any answer that starts with a phrase like, 'it's kind of like Batman' is going to be good, "You know there was Batman the Animated Series, there was Batman the movie, there was a Batman comic book, and all of those different versions kind of had the same kind of core thing. There's always the butler, there's always the batmobile... Each version is slightly different, kind of tailored to your needs. The TV version was comical, while the movie version was very dark, so what we're doing with the Warhammer IP is we're tailoring it specifically for an MMO, so there will be aspects that will be just like you might remember in the pen and paper IP, but really what we've done is we've adapted the IP to fit an MMO." Essentially what Mark as saying, albeit more colorfully that this, is that the team at EA mythic is drawing from all of the various incarnations of Warhammer, which, in the end, totals up to over 25 years worth of material.

StrategyInformer has a fine selection of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning screenshots on offer. 

Part two of MMORPG.com's interview with Jeff Hickman and Paul Barnett covers aspects of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning such as public quests and the player journal, The Tome of Knowledge.

Paul: It's an evolution of the questing system. It's saying what about MMOs do people really love? It's doing a quest that means something. I like having a lot of fun, they like doing big things and the way it's been done in the past, you forced people to group. What we've done is given people the ability to just go in and say, "My God, there's a giant over there and he's smashed the hell out of that wall, and I'm gonna go help." That's why you can join up at anytime, you join at any stage, there are three hundred of them (public quests) across the land. They're all epic, we just saw one recently that ends with a dwarven train...

Ten Ton Hammer chats to Marc Jacobs, General Manager/Vice President at EA Mythic, about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Following the questions concerning the beta test, I asked Mark about the launch of the game and when can we expect to see full release of WAR. “It will be in 2008, earlier rather than later.” This kind of vague response is no surprise, as it is very tough to pin down a launch date. Thankfully EA Mythic has been very up front about changes they have made and have been forthcoming to the players about why they pushed the schedule back. With most MMOGs, the bottom line any push back is that the companies simply want to make the game to live up to the standards of the development team.

GamersInfo.net previews EA Mythic's upcoming release, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

There are two things that stick out as different when it comes to the initial levels of WAR versus other MMORPGs. The first is the fact that you're immediately thrown into the battles between your race and their racial enemies. (Each race is paired with an "enemy race" – Humans vs. Chaos, Dwarves vs. Greenskins, Elves vs. Dark Elves.) The second is that you're so busy doing stuff that you're not looking at how fast you're leveling or whatever – you're just having fun!

Ten Ton Hammer catches up with the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning team at the recent EA Mythic Games Day.

Both RvR and the city campaigns play a huge part in Warhammer and also came up as we were talking about the feeling behind the game. In regards to RvR, Jeff mentioned that “RvR is accessible by anyone; it’s interesting and engaging,” but he also noted that “the capital city campaigns are freaking amazing.” The folks at EA Mythic are not just trying to make the city campaigns work; they are trying to make them an amazing experience for the player.

Erik Mogensen, the Licensing Manager for Games Worksho, talks to Ten Ton Hammer about his involvement with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Ten Ton Hammer: Games Workshop has a lot on its plate this summer, how have things been going on your end with Warhammer Online as we near the Beta phase of the game?

Erik: ‘Very well’ is the short answer!  I suppose it might be a bit boring to hear by now, but the approvals process continues to run as smoothly as ever.  EA Mythic and GW continue to work closely together on every aspect of the game and I still say ‘yes’ to vastly more material than I have to turn away.  The dev team have truly ‘gotten’ Warhammer and have become experts in their own right.  It certainly makes my life easier!

Gameplay Monthly has a fine selection of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning screenshots available for viewing. 

MMORPG.com has added 14 new images to its Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning gallery. 

The official European Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning site is now live.

Paris, France, 31st May 2007 - GOA, the France Telecom-owned publisher of online games, announces that the European website for Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ is now open and invites gamers to sign up for the massively anticipated WAR closed beta test, at www.WAR-europe.com.

Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ launches in early 2008 and selected gamers can gain access to the must-have MMORPG many months before release by registering at the European site. Successful applicants will be able to sample the brutal pleasures of a persistent online world populated by the internationally beloved characters and races of the epic Warhammer universe.

“We can’t wait to embark on WAR’s adventures with players from across Europe,” commented Ghislaine Le Rhun, Senior Vice President of GOA. “Opening subscription applications for the closed beta test today is the first step on the road to uniting the whole of Europe in battle. Those fortunate enough to be selected also have the hugely important role of being able to shape the WAR world by offering essential feedback on their experiences to the development team at EA Mythic.”

Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ launches simultaneously in the US and across Europe early in 2008 and is based on Games Workshop’s popular Warhammer fantasy world. The game features next generation Realm vs. Realm™ (RvR) gameplay that integrates Player vs. Player (PvP) and Player vs. Environment (PvE) combat into a seamless, cutting edge, massively multiplayer online experience.

Register at www.WAR-europe.com for the chance to join the closed beta test and for more information and regular updates.

Warhammer Senior Designer Josh Drescher has been interviewed at Ten Ton Hammer.  Here's a snip:

TTH: Let's start with Empire. One of the classes we really wanted to see more of was the witch hunter. Other than Paul Barnett going a little crazy about the pointy hats, could you talk a little bit about their role and what kind of tools they'll have at hand?

Josh Drescher: The witch hunter is actually the next class on the menu for really detailed treatment in an upcoming newsletter. I can't get into absolute, total detail... I can give you a slightly more involved explanation of his general strategic role. I had lunch yesterday with Eric Mogensen of Games Workshop and he gave us his very definitive opinion on what a witch hunter should be and how he should interact with the world. If you remember the concept art, he's got a big blunderbuss / pistol thing and a rapier. His boring sort-of MMORPG role is the melee / DPS class. Strategically his role is debuffing / damage-over-time stuff. He's going to do things that make it hard to stay close to him and then he'll finish you off with a pistol in the side of the head. Beyond that, we're tripping on ground that we'll be covering in the newsletter.

WarCry kicks off a series of interviews with the Warhammer: Age of Reckoning team by speaking with Community Manager Richard Duffek.

WarCry: Every company who has ever delayed a game says it is a good thing. Why did you push back Warhammer and why is it really a good thing for Warhammer and EA Mythic?

Richard Duffek: We decided to move the release date to early 2008 to invest more time in creating the best game possible. This means taking a few extra months to make sure the final product is polished and brilliant. The team has learned a lot since starting on WAR and the initial work on the Dwarf and Greenskin pairing was not as glorious as they believed it could be. So, they went back to this pairing, conducted an intense review of their work, and implemented new ideas and content. What has emerged is nothing short of spectacular. In the Dwarf and Greenskin zones there is now more war, more Warhammer, and more of what makes WAR glorious.

GameSpy talks to Mark Jacobs about the decision to push the release of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning back until 2008.

GameSpy: Let's start with the obvious question. Why was Warhammer Online pushed back to the first quarter of 2008?

Mark Jacobs: The simple answer is that we have decided to invest more time in development to create the best game possible. In the past we've talked about launching in the fall of 2007 -- now we're targeting early 2008. We have decided to take a few additional months to make sure the game is polished, unforgettable and glorious. That was my promise to Games Workshop when I signed the deal and I intend to keep it. 

MMORPG.com has a few new Warhammer: Age of Reckoning screenshots available for viewing. 

MMORPG.com talks to Erik Mogensen and Jon Gillard from Games Workshop about EA Mythic's Warhmmer Online: Age of Reckoning and the newly announced Warhammer 40K MMORPG.

Erik and Jon also spoke about the Warhammer Fantasy MMO being developed by EA Mythic. W.A.R. is much further along in their development lifecycle than the 40K version. We have already seen the Greenskins, Dwarves, Chaos, and Empire armies being showcased. So we wanted to ask about the High Elf and Dark Elf races that we have yet to see. Erik said that the work on the Elves continues along but expects it will be a little while before we see a lot from that race. He expects more Empire and Chaos features to be shown first. One of the things that he was looking forward to is the landscape in which the High and Dark Elves inhabit and how that will be presented on screen.

A ComicCon preview of Warhammer Online can be found at MMORPG.com - here's a snibblet:

The playable demo at the NY ComicCon was set up for a four on four PvP match between the Dwarfs and the Greenskins. By the way, Warhammer was also one of the first companies to coin the term "Greenskins" for their orcs. There have been a lot comments throughout the forums out there accusing EA Mythic of stealing ideas from World of Warcraft. I can tell you from personal experience that the Greenskins have been around since well before the original Warcraft was even on the scene. How can I be so sure? Well, Warcraft, and subsequently Warcraft 2 and Diablo began at the end of my table top gaming experience. While table top gaming I had more than my fair of share of losses to the Orks, which for those of you who know them, is pretty lame on my part. It is true people, before MMOs, we had to get out there and table top game. We sat with two liters of Mountain Dew, Doritos, and whatever place would deliver, but enough reminiscing, back to WAR. I had secretly hoped for a glimpse of the elves, but was denied. Chaos and the Empire weren't available for play, but both sides look promising. The one thing I have learned through my gaming career is to make a well informed pick on your primary character. That decision can haunt you with the wrong choice. That troll savage seemed like such a good idea at the time...

Also at Games Radar is an article-format interview with Mythic's Creative Director Paul Barnett to talk about Warhammer Online:

There's more: "We now have people obsessed with getting to the endgame, not realizing that the greatness is in going on that journey. It's like Final Fantasy: you play one and it's basically random monster encounters... I'm a big proponent that if you can get people to engage their mind and give them things that give them wonder and awe and engage their imagination, you will have a better game than one which is perfect in its number crunching, but is soulless."

A quick preview of Warhammer Online can be found at Games Radar:

That so many areas are on the brink of collapse isn’t just hollow, scene-setting drama. As EA Mythic’s Steve Perkins says: “In our game, you’re joining an ARMY.” His capitals - he totally means it. Mythic invented realm vs realm (RvR) combat with Dark Age of Camelot, and have had years to develop and refine the experience. The battlefields of World of Warcraft, for all their frantic point-capturing, feel like little more than a distracting side-game in areas kept artificially on the brink. In WO:AOR (or WO to its friends) you’ll capture whole areas, plunder cities - even capital cities - for loot uniquely available to the RvR players. You can play old-fashioned player vs environment (PvE) if you like, but the war will find you in the end.

Another preview of Warhammer Online courtesy of EA Mythic's recent conference call is up at Game Musketeers in a sort of point format:

Careers for the Empire include Witch Hunter, Bright Wizards who specialize in Fire Magic, Warrior Priest of Sigmar whose healing and "faith" are enhanced on the battlefield and Knights of the Blazing Sun. These classes fulfill the Tanker, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Healing/Fighter , and Nuke/Fighter Roles of the Empire Army.

Chaos is Humanity gone bad and corrupted by Chaos. Chaos has Marauders, huge vikings types whose bodies and arms are living weapons twisted by Chaos energy. Claws, Hammers and TENTACLES!!! are theres to command in melee combat. The Chosen, armored behemoth Chaos Knights. Zealots, using light weapons and enchantments who act as healers for the Chaos army and lastly the Magus Sorcerers, who hovers on a floating disc of Chaos hurling lightning and other Chaotic magicks upon their foes.

MMORPG.com has a preview of Warhammer Online based on a 'phone hookup with EA Mythic:

We have heard a lot out of the Warhammer camp lately, with the press event last month and a conference call this month the crew over at EA Mythic is doing their best to give potential players the information they want to hear. Last night on the press call, the guys gave away some great new bits of information for both the Empire and Chaos. The usual suspects of Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett, and Josh Drescher were on the phone to answer a ton of questions from the media. Let me start by saying that these guys have enthusiasm, and a lot of it.

Likewise, Warhammer Alliance also has coverage of the same event:

As described by Paul the Empire and Chaos are essentially humanity in its two forms. The Empire is struggling to survive as their once unstoppable reign over the land now crumbles. The Empire is of personification of medieval Germanic Europe on the edge of extinction and many believe it is the end times. Chaos is of course intruding on the Empires very existence. Chaos is humanity that has become totally perverted and corrupted by Chaos. Chaos is tentacles, huge armored knights, and floating wizards on disks.

Also at Games Radar is a preview of Warhammer.  This article is a little meatier and here's a snip:

The war in World of Warcraft is so… ornamental and sedate, the PvP an afterthought. By contrast, this Warhammer lives up to its name. This is Mythic after all, whose last two flagship MMOs, Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot, were both influential PvP milestones. Impish creative director Paul Barnett rattles off Warhammer's litany of methods for stomping strangers into the ground with the delirious abandon of a kid in a candy store (even waving a Crunchie bar around as he talks): Capture the Flag variants, murderball, domination, over 40 point-based, geography-specific, instanced, objective-driven battleground scenarios for up to 36 players a side, capital city assaults, and a ranking system that assigns NPC allies as necessary to keep teams balanced.

Garrett Fuller takes a closer look at the Public Quest System in EA Mythics forthcoming MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Many of the next generation MMOs have brought out some unique gameplay features for players to experience. One of the big titles that people have their eye on is Warhammer Online. I know there are many areas to talk about with this column; however, I chose to look at the Public Quest System in W.A.R.. Granted, this is primarily because I had experienced it last week at the EA Mythic Press Event. Please understand the following write-up is based on what I have personally seen so far. Do not take this as being written in stone, Warhammer Online is still in development and anything we have seen may change in the near future. For now, I am writing this based on personal experience and opinion. Yours may differ drastically.

IGN joins the rush of other sites with some hands-on impressions of Warhammer:

We had the chance to play through a few hours with each side's wizard characters. On the Empire side, we were asked to fight back an invading Chaos army. On the Chaos side, we actually got to be the invading army. In both cases, the quests and tasks followed the traditional MMO format: kill stuff, steal stuff, deliver stuff, etc. In one hilarious instance, we actually had to rescue people from burning buildings by simply telling them to get out.

Titled Ten Minutes with Jeff Hickman is an interview with the Mythic Senior Producer at Ten Ton Hammer on Warhammer:

Ten Ton Hammer: Speaking of "working for the game," What kind of resources are you devoting to Warhammer Online?

Jeff: We have about 150 people working on the project, which is massive, especially for us. I think when we launched Camelot we had 28 people, I think I was employee number 27 or something like that when we launched Camelot. So we're way above and beyond. Warhammer is such an effort for us. It's a game completely different from what we do with Camelot as far as the level of depth that we're putting into everything we do. The amount of detail in the world, the amount of immersive stuff, just stuff, that's happening environmentally, that is amazingly difficult to do. So we took a lot of time just making sure the game feels like it should.

GameSpy has a preview of Warhammer from the recent EA Mythic press event:

The first thing that causes a stir in the crowd is the announcement that we were going to be playing as the Empire and Chaos. Previous demonstrations of the game have always focused on the Greenskins (Orcs and Goblins) and the Dwarves. The Empire is the pseudo-German kingdom of the humans while their mortal foes are a tribe of Norsemen who have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the forces of Chaos. Both sides are introduced by Paul Barnett, the game's highly excitable Design Manager who himself gives off the impression of being slightly touched by Chaos.

MMORPG.com has three Warhammer: Age of Reckoning gameplay videos available for your viewing pleasure. 

GamersInfo.net shares some impressions of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning as seen at the recent EA Mythic Media Event.

Humanity, in the world of Warhammer, is facing the end of days (at least, in the terms of the Middle Ages). They're constantly on the brink of extinction in a brutal world, forced to expand or die, to breed and fight. Humanity in Warhammer is all about the strengths and weaknesses of people, how they can do something, then completely over-do it, and how they are steeled against corruption.

Warhammer has been previewed at Eurogamer in an article laced with liberal quotes from "Mythic's eccentric and excitable British-imported creative director, Paul Barnett" among others:

Written on the whiteboard in executive producer Jeff Hickman's office is the legend, "Fun, you f***ers." It was scrawled there - unsanitised, we might add - as a reminder by Mythic's eccentric and excitable British-imported creative director, Paul Barnett. Jeff and Paul, along with the more sedate and composed producer, Lance Robertson, present a force to be reckoned with. They intend to make an MMO that won't get crushed under Blizzard's might, instead helping the genre take an evolutionary step forward. Their emphasis, driven by the long-established character of the Warhammer licence, is on brutal fun.

Stratics has launched a new Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning portal in the form of Warhammer Stratics.  Head on over and check it out for all your WAR needs. 

Erik Morgensen of Games Workshop talks to Warhammer Alliance about the work being done on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

WHA : It has been nearly a year since we talked with you last, what have you been up to? How is Games Workshop’s Licensing Manager being kept busy?

Erik : A year? Already? Well, in the last 12 months THQ released Dark Crusade, the second expansion to Dawn of War. Namco Bandai Games released Mark of Chaos for PC and The Battle for Atluma (based on our Collectible Card Game WarCry) on the PSP. Mythic became EA Mythic, while turning out an awesome amount of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning content preparing for launch later this year. There are also a couple of interactive projects that are as yet unannounced, and seeing as I work on all of them it’s been a busy year! 2007 looks set to be just as busy for me, even though we don’t have as many releases slated as in 2006. My personal area of focus will continue to be WAR through to its launch. In terms of content WAR is far and away the biggest game I’ve ever worked on, so it needs my full attention.

GameZone has a two-part interview with Warhammer senior producer Jeff Hickman.  Here's an excerpt:

Battles will end up looking something like this: 

Greenskins Vs. Dwarves
Humans Vs. Chaos Forces of Destruction
High Elves Vs. Dark Elves 

“That’s six races that you have the opportunity to [control],” Jeff continues, “[creating] a never-ending struggle between order and destruction in the universe. The game is a mix of monster-hunting, questing, realm versus realm warfare (where the two realms are able to fight against each other – player versus player). It’s a struggle between the two realms for land conquest. For the conquest of the enemy’s capital cities, and for the utter destruction and pillaging of the enemy realms.” 

Part 1 and Part 2.

GamersInfo has an article from a Conference Call with Mythic and Games Workshop, which offers a presentation on Warhammer followed by a Q&A session:

A quick First View of Warhammer Online is up at RPG Vault, offering a handful of introductory paragraph's to Mythic EA's game.  Here's their "Reservations" part:

While it's understandable given the target launch date is 2007, there's still a good deal we don't know. For example, what we've seen to date has basically been limited to the Dwarves and Greenskins, meaning little or nothing about the other four playable options. The competitive environment is tougher than ever, and rates to be even more so by the time the title goes live.

GameSpot has an updated Q&A on Warhammer Online with EA Mythic's content design lead Doug Woolsey, designer Brian Wheeler, and senior designer Steve Marvin discussing the Human faction:

GameSpot: We understand that EA Mythic is ready to reveal more information about the human Empire. Tell us about this faction and how Warhammer lore helped inform the way the studio designed the way the faction looks and feels in the game.

Doug Woolsey: We really wanted the Empire quests and encounters to tell the story of humanity pushed to its absolute limit. It's all about survival in the face of seemingly inevitable destruction. For the people of the Empire, the Age of Reckoning is the "end times." Chaos is encroaching from all sides, the moon itself has turned blood red, and once-great cities are now smoking ruins, laid waste by slavering hordes. The Empire is hanging on by its fingernails, dangling over the abyss. Against this backdrop of certain doom, humanity fights corruption from within. Corruption is the ultimate weakness of humanity. It's the promise of great wealth, the lust for power. This balance of the need to survive against all odds and the ever-present danger of corruption from within makes our Empire content among the most compelling in the game. We were able to focus our quests and encounters in ways that other races don't allow and explore elements of the human spirit that we found evocative or moving.

In the third part of RPG Vault's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning video Q&A series Paul Barnett, the project's Design Manager, talks about art direction.

The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning team take some time out to answer questions put to them by the readers of Slashdot.

2.) Why not a tabletop port? by randalx (659791)
When I first heard of Warhammer Online I had a slight hope that the designers were going to create an online version of the table top game, something akin to what Wizards of the Coast did with Magic The Gathering Online. That doesn't seem to be the case. Just the same, judging by the people I've talked to, this game would be of great interest to current and former battlegamers. I'd like to know, besides the Warhammer universe, why should this game appeal to a Warhammer battlegamer?

Steve Marvin, Senior Design: Why didn't we do a straight port? Well, as Paul (Paul Barnett, our Design Manager) likes to say, it's kind of like Batman. Batman comes in a multitude of flavors, from big screen to books, cartoons to games, action figures to a million other successful (and unsuccessful) incarnations. Each modifies the base concept to suit the market in which it will be operating, so as to appeal to the current fans, but just as important, to create new fans in a medium in which there were few or none previously. With luck, the new aspect will be a big success, and those new fans will go looking for the other flavors. We really like the folks at Games Workshop (they've been fantastic to work with), and we love the Warhammer universe, and so we hope our game can help expand interest in both.

MMORPG.com speaks with Mythic Entertainment's Director of Community Relations, Sanya Thomas, about the company's work on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

MMORPG.com: When Warhammer was announced, it immediately became the most anticipated game on our list by a country mile. The EA deal obviously somewhat deepened enthusiasm. What has the deal meant to the development of Warhammer Online so far?

Sanya Thomas: To be perfectly honest, not much has changed. We are still working hand in glove with the great people at Games Workshop. We are still completely responsible for development, testing, and making good progress. We're still exactly on track. We're still partnered with GOA for the European launch. 

RPG Vault has kicked up the second part of their video interview with Mythic's Paul Barnett on Warhammer's character system.

GameSpy introduces the Hordes of Chaos faction for Warhammer:

 Last month, we had the rare honor to debut the Empire faction as it's represented in Age of Reckoning. In this grand tradition, we bring you the first details on the Chaos faction, a group that (and this is saying quite a bit) makes the Empire seem docile and peace loving. The Chaos hordes are comprised of men who have willingly bartered their very souls to dark gods in exchange for power and the chance to indulge their deepest desires for carnage. To quote EA Mythic's Paul Barnett, "Chaos is the dark, unsettling stuff. It is the corruption that is prevalent everywhere. It is the worst of what happens to people when they are consumed by power, by greed, by energy, by lies, disruptions and distortions -- by promises of eternal struggle and eternal success."

Garthilk from Warhammer Alliance has kicked up some first-hand impressions of Warhammer from Gencon SoCal:

So I started. The UI was easily digestible and intuitive. The UI consisted of an ability bar across the bottom left. Simple drag and drop interface to add abilities and when clicked on, each ability had a small cooldown timer. Each ability consumed some action points. The small yellowish bar right above the ability bar represented my action point pool. While out of combat the AP (action points) refilled extremely quickly, but while in combat, they were regained at a slightly slower speed. This prevented me from spamming my most powerful abilities all the time during combat. It served to give some strategy to the encounters. You could easily open with your most powerful attacks, however depending on what I was fighting, and opening with a weaker attack, debuff, or other ability seemed more useful. Right below the AP bar was the experience bar. This very large bar tracked my advancement.

They also have some in-game video footage.

Head to Mythic's Warhammer site for some new official screens.

Paul Barnett, Design Manager for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, talks about the human Empire faction in a video interview at RPG Vault.

GameSpot speaks with lead designer Steve Marvin about Mythic Entertainment's upcoming MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning .

GameSpot: Could you give us a brief update on the status of Warhammer Online in development? What aspects of the game is the team working on now?

Steve Marvin: Warhammer Online has just begun its internal alpha test, giving individuals within the EA family access to the game, and the response has already been gratifying. With a year still to go in development, we're excited both at how well it's being received and at how much more we're going to be able to do with it.

 More...

Mythic Entertainment has updated the Legends and Lore section of the official Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning site with some new fan fiction. 

GameSpy has revealed a new faction from Warhammer, rolling out a detailed article on The Empire:

It would be difficult to find someone who will speak on the topic of Warhammer with more impassioned fervor than Mythic's Paul Barnett. The man seems to channel the spirits of the orcs, dwarves, and Chaos Marauders that populate the brutal world that he's helping to bring to life. As such, we could not think of anyone better to talk with us about the latest in-game faction for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning that Mythic has decided to unveil: the Empire. As you'd expect from the Warhammer universe, this human nation, to paraphrase Mr. Barnett, is teetering on the edge of annihilation at the hands of a multitude of assailants, not the least of which is humanity's own tendency to take the violent measures necessary for survival to wild extremes.

Viewing the maps, it can be seen that every map has an open RvR area and when asked, John described the RvR system as a system of moving front lines and control of zones. Control of zones will be based on control of resource points and winning scenarios in the RvR areas. Some of this is only symbolic. For example a Dwarven flag may be raised over a Goblin area, but the area will not be affected if it is not an RvR area. So apart from the annoyance of seeing a Dwarven flag over your beloved goblin village when you view the map, your game play is not affected otherwise.

World of Warcraft has done some very good things for the MMO. It's brought so many people into the genre that there is a whole host of companies building non-fantasy MMOs to lure players in as they tire of WoW and look for new games. The problem, however, is that WoW makes it awfully difficult to even consider another fantasy-themed MMO. Any MMO with orcs and elves will find itself being compared to Blizzard's juggernaut, so it had better have one hell of a hook if it hopes to survive. After playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning at Gen Con 2006, it's clear the game has more than a hook, and should be an MMO that gamers will want to take a look at.

Stood in a large hall, surrounded by empty tables where hundreds of undersized battles have been decided with hundreds of handfuls of dice, I ask Games Workshop's licensing manager Erik Mogensen a question that I know is a stupid one, but I feel I should ask. Is the Warhammer Online game in any way an attempt to be a translation of the table-top war game?

"Not at all. It's not about the table-top game, it's about the IP". Such easy use of legal abbreviations for 'intellectual property' could seem off-putting, but Mogensen isn't being evil and lawyerly. The 'IP' at Games Workshop isn't something as scabby as the Coca-Cola's Dynamic Ribbon Device, or the words 'I'm Lovin' It'. It's Warhammer, in all its fluid, high concept glory. This IP isn't just a jealously maintained business asset - although it obviously is that, as copyright infringers will discover - it's the reason there's such a low turnover of staff, and why so many employees have been there close to 20 years. Paul Barnett, Mythic's lead designer and cheerful gushing man from the lobby, gives an insight. "There was a job application from a guy and he gave a web address on his CV. There were space marines all over his site, so that was a good start."

The Dwarfs are an ancient and industrious race that is long past its prime. Their once-great empire of Karak Ankor now lies in ruins and many of the Dwarfs' mighty mountain holds have been abandoned or conquered by Orcs and Goblins, with whom the Dwarfs have warred for centuries. It is not uncommon to hear a Dwarf wistfully recall the great glories of the past, observing bitterly that nothing the Dwarfs do in this day and age can compare to the majesty of what once was.

What's going to distinguish this from other MMOGs?

Eugene Evans: Age Of Reckoning is all about the PvP. Dark Age Of Camelot was the leader when it came to implementing PvP play. After most people have completed other MMOGs like World Of Warcraft, they stop playing. But with Camelot, after you'd finished playing the quests, you'd still keep playing, as there were always new players to compete with. We're going to be expanding on that idea in Age of Reckoning.

According to Mythic's Jeff Hickman, much of the content for the game's first "racial pairing," the dwarves versus the "greenskins" (a faction of orks and goblins), is complete, including many of the lower-level areas and items. In addition, though we were unable to see it in action, Mythic has begun production on the game's high-level player-versus-player content, such as capital city raids, which will offer multiple types of treasures (including open, undefended loot and special items that can be obtained only by defeating specific enemy characters, such as merchants, barkeeps, and kings). These raids will let you capture enemy dignitaries and hold them hostage (and for some cheap humor) until they can be rescued by players from the opposing side.

Mythic dropped us into the starting area for the Dwarves, where we could run around and attack some Greenskins but, luckily, they wouldn't attack us. A representative told us they're just starting to implement the AI in this area. Battle was pretty rudimentary. You can press the Tab button to highlight enemies on screen. Then you simply approach them and press a hotkey to begin a specific attack. We did get a good sense of how expansive the environments are. For the most part, areas are inspired by the Warhammer universe. The developers are trying to bring to life areas that are only hinted at or vaguely described in literature from the game. This opening sequence took place in a mountainous area, where tunnels would lead us from one side of a mountain to another.

Just throwing an even casual glance at the game reveals that WAR (Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning) looks indisputably similar to WOW. Much like in WOW, the cartoonish look and feel of the characters and the violence ties in to the game's 'T' rating; the environments, as well as the characters' armor and their very anatomy strive to achieve the same visual effect as WOW. If you would ask Games Workshop or Mythic, however, they'd tell you that Blizzard actually ripped *them* off. In a sense, they would be right to say that, but the question still remains whether the art style would be so similar to Blizzard's game if WOW had failed by any chance.

PARIS, France, 6th of June 2006 - GOA, the France Telecom-owned publisher of online games, is extremely proud to announce that it has secured exclusive publishing and online operational rights for the massively anticipated MMORPG, WarhammerA Online: Age of ReckoningTM from Mythic Entertainment.

Launching for the PC simultaneously in the US and Europe during fall 2007, WarhammerA Online: Age of ReckoningTM is based on Games Workshop's popular WarhammerA fantasy world and features next generation Realm vs. RealmTM (RvR) game play that integrates Player vs. Player (PvP) and Player vs. Environment (PvE) combat into a seamless, cutting edge, massively multiplayer online experience.

"We are thrilled to be partners with Mythic again and build on the five-year relationship and experience that we've been enjoying with their team," commented Ghislaine Le Rhun, Senior Vice President of GOA.

"WarhammerA Online: Age of ReckoningTM has tremendous potential and we intend to treat the game with all the care it deserves. Mythic's expertise in building deep PvP features - which guarantee long-term fun - will make WAR a unique game. Add to this the amazingly rich Warhammer universe, epic adventures, humour, and a very intuitive user experience, and you end up with a future blockbuster. We look forward to showing the game to European players."

"The initial partnership between Mythic and GOA resulted in Dark Age of CamelotA being the number one MMORPG in Europe for many years." said Mark Jacobs, CEO and President of Mythic Entertainment, "With WAR our goal is nothing less than to take Europe by storm and regain that leadership position in the European market."

Already gathering a staggering amount of 'word of mouth' momentum, WAR was especially well received at this year's E3, with wide press coverage and very positive feedback across the globe.

WarhammerA Online: Age of ReckoningTM launches on PC in fall 2007. To learn more about WAR, visit the dedicated European website at www.war-europe.com.