E3 2005 News
Announcement
Mythic Entertainment and Games Workshop Partner to bring Warhammer MMORPG to
PC and Console
by Matt Eberle
It’s official:
Warhammer Online has a home. After nearly a year the team from Games Workshop
has announced that they have a partner in bringing the hugely successful
table-top and computer real-time-strategy game to the online world.
Mythic
Entertainment and Games Workshop announced Wednesday that they will be
collaborating on a massively multiplayer online adaptation of the extremely
popular Warhammer game system. The collaboration by Mythic Entertainment,
developers of the widely successful Dark Age of Camelot, and Games Workshop was
greeted with enthusiasm by fans in the audience after the announcement. The
initial release date estimate was 2007.
The staff from
Games Workshop, on hand for the announcement and the formal signing of the
agreement, was available to answer questions regarding the newly announced
title. I had a chance to talk with one of the representatives from Games
Workshop. He expressed a strong desire to keep the Warhammer mythos and history
strong.
“I mean, it will
be different but they’re going to do a good job, these guys. You know, they
know what they’re doing. They’ve done this before, they’ve done this very
successfully before. We’re very excited.”
The combined
Mythic / Games Workshop version of Warhammer online is not the same game that
was shown at E3 a year ago. Games Workshop will completely revamp the game in
collaboration with Mythic Entertainment. Since it is still in the early stages
of the development process many aspects of the game have yet to be worked out.
In spite of this all parties were very optimistic about the game. The
development staff on both sides of the new partnership avoided commenting on the
structure and design elements of the game.
The sheer volume
of reference material available from Games Workshop can only prove to be
invaluable to the development team at Mythic. The Warhammer universe has
thousands of years of history and dozens of reference books available to the
development team. We can only hope that this will help the creative geniuses at
Mythic Entertainment capture the look and feel of the Warhammer world.
Speculation
regarding a possible Warhammer online release has swirled around the internet
for years. Fans will be delighted to hear that their waiting will finally pay
off. The team at Mythic is excited by the expanding potential for their
company. Releasing their upcoming title, Imperator, along with Warhammer Online
will position Mythic to take an even greater position in the competitive world
of massively multiplayer online games.
For more
information –
http://www.warhammeronline.co.uk/
