Warhammer Online Returns

Mythic Studios, developers of Dark Age of Camelot and Imperator, has announced that Warhammer Online will resume development under their auspices. The deceased massive game was supposed to be back in production at independent studio Climax, but from the announcement on the official Warhammer site it seems clear that Mythic is now running the show. From the article: "Mythic Entertainment, developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online role-playing games including Dark Age of Camelot and the upcoming Imperator today announced that they have secured the exclusive worldwide, rights to create massively multiplayer online games for PC and console set in the fantasy world of Warhammer created by Nottingham, UK-based Games Workshop Group PLC. The first game based upon the dark, medieval world of Warhammer will be released on PC in 2007." No word yet on a title, or whether this new game will be using any of the concepts, art, or code from the original development cycle.

Comments

The first?

[Mr.crius]

How is it the first? What about Dark Omen, and Shadow of the horned rat?

It's a New Game

[ApacheVE]

From what I understand Mythic will be making a new game from scratch, not taking over Warhammer Online as we know it from Climax.

Re:It's a New Game

[L7_]

You mean they are going to re-license a copy of NDL's GameBryo engine and skin it for Necrons and Eldar instead of Tir Na Nog, Miggard and Camelot.

I don't expect any revolutions in game playability from Mythic with this release.

Re:It's a New Game

[ApacheVE]

If it was DAoC in the Warhammer universe I wouldn't mind to be honest if it included the same rvr style combat. But who knows about the engine. Unreal 3 seems popular these days. :)

Choice of Poisons?

[NBarnes]

I wonder if they're doing Warhammer Fantasy or 40k. The heroic fantasy subgenre of MMORPG seems pretty swamped right now, both in terms of volume as well as having WoW sucking all the oxygen out of the room right now. War40k, though, if they could make it work as an MMORPG somehow, would face less stiff competition....

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[ApacheVE]

Im 99.9% sure its for fantasy.

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[Samrobb]

I've been geeking out on Warhammer 40K books laterly, and was just thinking last night that a WH40K MMORPG would be a whole heck of a lot of fun. You could start players as legion troops - expendables for the Emperor. Who cares if you die? You're just replaced by another Roane Deeper trooper like yourself... respawn in the battle fleet, draw from stores and re-deploy yourself back to the mission. Staging areas would be Navy vessels orbiting a planet overrun by tyranids, chaos, orks or the like. That would keep things fresh - the battle fleets as a whole might have a mission ("exsanguinate Ropar V"), and when that mission was met, they'd get reassigned to a new front.

On the individual level, once a player accumulated enough experience as a trooper, they could move into command, or become an arbites, or train as a bounty hunter, or discover you're a latent psyker, or develop special skills and join an inquisitor's retinue... once you became a "character" as opposed to a random trooper, you'd unlock new areas with different missions. Those missions might have an impact on battle group missions as well.

Sigh. It could be a whole lot of fun. Unlikely to ever happen, though, unless someone decides to pitch it as "EverQuest - in SPACE!"

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[Shadow Wrought]

That was my same thought when I read this. If you're going to do a MMPORPG in the in one of the Games Workshop universes, than you really ought to set it in 40k. Just the sheer number of planets and constant conflicts could keep the game fresh for years.

The cynical side of me thinks that this makes far too much sense and they'll go with a straight Warhammer Universe; using logic like, "Look at how successful WoW and Everquest are! People want another fantasy setting."

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[Samrobb]

...using logic like, "Look at how successful WoW and Everquest are! People want another fantasy setting."

Unfortunately, I think you're right.

Bah! EverQuest? No thanks. WoW? Eh, maybe. Star Wars? Give me a break.

Chainsword and bolter, slaughtering chaos filth in the name of the Emperor? Sign me up!

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[Samrobb]

Just had a thought... heh! Once a player reaches a certain level of competence, offer them the chance to create an "enemy" account on another server. When they play an enemy, they don't get any experience... but they do get credit for kills that counts towards their other account for online play time. This would get the best players to spend at least some time playing tyranids, genestealers, chaos marines, cult leaders and the like... and doing their best to be viscious, ruthless killers, because if they're good enough at the task, then they get to play their "real" account for free.

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[patio11]

No, wait! Make it so that they get even more playtime when cause the permadeath of someone's character! Its double the griefing fun!

Oh, that wasn't the design goal? Could have fooled me... Of course, some of the griefers will be doing farming, instead. Imagine two players sitting next to each other in a stock American dormroom or Chinese baang, with one of them suddenly given control over a decent-sized mob or group of mobs on planet X. He can completely nerf that encounter for his farming friends if he wants to. And the mobs you make "real" would have to be decently uber on the reward scale or no one would ever go to the trouble (and your human AIs would spend the entire time stuck at their spawn zone).

Its just a bad, bad idea to let PCs play mobs.

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[Samrobb]

Nope, that wasn't the design goal :-) The player-as-foe concept was contingent on the idea that low-level characters can die and respawn without penalty - that the initial stages of the game were less RPG-like, and more FPS-oriented. No real opportunities for farming; you're a soldier of the Empire, and the Empire will supply your needs for the mission, thank you very much. Draw your armor and your weapon from the quartermaster before proceeding to the drop capsule...

Think of a set of scenarios more like a team fortress match. A group of players would receive a mission - capture a fortress, clean out a section of the underhive, locate and destroy a purestrain genestealer. With no penalties for dying - the Emperor's legions are more numerous than the stars! - and no items or loot to gain that will last longer than the mission at hand, the idea would be to recreate the atmosphere of WH40K: a wave of humanity, throwing themselves into the breach, winning against a terrible enemy by overwhelming them with numbers instead of heroes.

This is the where I think player-as-foe fits in. In WH40K, the idea is that a company of the legion will win by sheer numbers and tenacity if they throw themselves into battle against a single purestrain genestealer, a chaos marine, an orkish warlord. The player-as-foe would fit in as the "main" enemy in a misssion - the boss, if you will. They will loose, eventually; the players effectively have infinite lives and ammo, while the enemy-as-foes doesn't. The focus is the experience of the fight, not the reward at the end of it. Let the rest of the enemies in a mission be controlled by the game AI, but give the players the chance to face at least one real opponent that they can fight, outwit and overcome as part of the mission.

Yah, I know. This doesn't entirely eliminate the scenario you described. The problem is that nothing will. If you allow higher-level characters to interact with lower level in any way, you open yourself up to favoritism and twinking. The scenario I'm proposing eliminates twinking (since there's no permanent items to be gained from the mission), and if the players-as-foe get don't get to choose which missions they play opposition on, there's less of a chance that favoritism will play a role. If it's the idea of players-as-foe earning something for their activities that you object to, then eliminate it - for a lot of players, the opportunity to be the big boss on the other side will be enough to encourage them to participate in something like this, I think.

Once players advanced out of this particular arena, the player-as-foe concept wouldn't work, for the reasons you described. Once there are penalties for dying, and in-game rewards other than experience for finishing a mission, there's too much at stake for the players to risk introducing a scenario like you described; you'd have to limit PK opportunities to specific scenarios where all those involved knew ahead of time that they'd be playing out that kind of scenario. But while the players are "doing time" as grunts, getting a feel for the game and figuring out what path they eventually want to pursue as a character? Sure. Every game has some sort of early-on, newbie area with easy missions that allows a new player to come up to speed and get acquainted with the game. This is an idea to make those early missions challenging and fun in their own right, and maybe even make it attractive enough that even experienced players will occaisionally want to "dress down" and play a random grunt again.

Re:Choice of Poisons?

[Zap-Robo]

Actually, creating a W40K MMORPG would step on the toes of Mythic's current project "Imperator Online". Check out http://www.imperatoronline.com/ and the fansite http://www.voxplebis.com/ for details.

Imperator is a science-fiction based MMORPG set in a world where the Roman Republic has survived into the post-modern era. Rome is one of the hyper-powers in the world (but it is not the only one) and it is now leading the defense of the Terran civilizations against the enemies that seek to destroy everything that they hold dear - the Mayan Empire.

The fansite has an unofficial FAQ, a good collection of screenshots and concept art. Plus, a video (of medium quality) of some of the game footage put out at this years E3 (more due out soon).

Re:With GW, assume the LCD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's about money; they're a business. Surely you don't expect them to go bankrupt just so that you can play a game?

Skaven

[TelevisioSledgicus]

Well, I hope they don't pull the tard move the previous developers were and restrict the Skaven race to GM's only. If I can't play a Skaven I'm not interested, I can play dwarves, elves, humans, etc. in any of the other crappy MMO's out there already.

Re:Skaven

[faloi]

You can play Skaven in EQ2... They call 'em "Rotongas" or something like that. But they're a mysterious rodent race predisposed to spell casting that are evil only. Smells like Skaven to me.

Re:Skaven

[ameoba]

To hell with the Skaven, this is the only race I'm really concerned about.

Re:Skaven

[TelevisioSledgicus]

Those are Stewart Little mice, not filthy corrupted rats :) Already saw those and took a pass.

I hope it works out.

[faloi]

I'm a huge fan of the Warhammer universe, both 40k and Fantasy. I hope they actually get this out there, and do it well. From a personal standpoint, I'd probably prefer a 40k based game. But Fantasy already has an official RPG ruleset out there. And seeing people yelling "4 teh 3mp3r0x0r!" as they try to shoot things with their las-cannons just seems...wrong.