Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Mythic Entertainment has reportedly suffered through yet another massive amount of layoffs as part of the plan by its owner Electronic Arts to cut its work force by another 1,500 team members. Fans have already express their worries that Mythic will no longer actively support their MMO game projects, particularly their most recent game Warhammer Online.

Not so, according to Mythic's executive producer Jeff Hickman. In a post on the official Warhammer Online web site he states that the game and the two others under Mythic's wing (Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot) are still alive and well and that Mythic will "continue to improve our games with an exciting schedule of patches, live events and new content." In particular, Hickman states that Warhammer Online's recent "Endless Trial" program has brought in "a flood of new players" to the game. The big question? Will those efforts be enough to get people to sign up for the game?

Warhammer Online has been live to the public for over a year now but developer Mythic Entertainment is still refining the fantasy MMO's marketing in terms of bringing new people to the game. Today they announced that they are dumping their 10 day free trial of the game in favor of an "endless" free trial.

What does this mean, exactly? Well instead of having the game not be playable any longer after 10 days without paying for it you can continue to play Warhammer Online in a limited fashioned for as long as you want with the new trial version. You can play a character with any of the careers and take that character up to level 10. You are also limited to some of the tier one locations in the game. It also has the newly launched New User Journey that gives new players more extensive tutorials on how to play the game. Finally the new free trial allows people to start playing after a certain amount is downloaded; the rest of the game's content is streamed in while you play.

After a few months of beta testing, Macintosh owners now officially have another MMO to play. Electronic Arts announced that the Mythic Entertainment-developed fantasy MMO Warhammer Online is now officially released.

The Mac version is free to download for any current player of the PC port from the official Warhammer Online web site. However if you are an all new player it will cost you $19.95 to get the new Mac version from the GameTreeOnline site. That price includes 30 days of free online game time; after that it will be time to break out the monthly fees. The Mac is gaining more and more MMOs; NCsoft recently ported City of Heroes to the Mac as well.

Electronic Arts has now nailed down an exact release date for the Macintosh version of their fantasy MMO Warhammer Online. The Mythic Entertainment-developed game will be released as a native Mac product on October 28 for $19.95. That includes 30 days of free game time on their servers.

EA announced their plans to make a Mac version of the game some time ago and there's still time for folks to check out a beta version of the Mac port that can be played for free for 10 days. If you want our opinions on the Mac conversion based on playing the beta client check out our recent Mac Monday column on the subject.

It's not too often that games show up on a cable TV network devoted to food. Yet that's just what's going to happen tonight as the Food Network's Ace of Cakes puts the spotlight on making a cake based on one of Warhammer Online's monsters, the Squig.

Yep, that's the elaborate cake creation in the picture above which was made earlier this year for the Baltimore Games Day Warhammer Online booth by Ace of Cakes' leading man Chef Duff. He's already calling the creation the best cake he has ever made for the show. You can check out the episode tonight at 10 pm ET.

[via email press release]

Welcome to a special Mac Monday, as this time around I take a look at the new-to-the-Mac Warhammer Online. Now, there are a few ways to go about this. I could write this up for people who have never played an MMO before, but it's likely that if you're reading this blog, you're probably well-versed in the genre. I could write it for people who haven't played World of Warcraft yet, but again, if you care at all about Warhammer Online, it's going to be because you want to know how it stacks up against the reigning champion.

Then you have my particular point of view, which is as someone who's played WoW a bit, but not to the point of intimate familiarity with all mechanics -- I've done no PvP, I don't raid, and I've never made it past Level 30 wtih any of the numerous characters I've rolled. So this article will assume enough familiarity with the competing titles -- and make no mistake, they are in competition -- to make certain comparisons, which is at this point an inevitability.

Macintosh gamers have yet another MMO that will soon run natively on their platforms. Mythic Entertainment announcement this morning that a Mac version of their fantasy MMO Warhammer Online will be released for that platform sometime this fall, allowing Mac owners to play the game on the same servers as their PC counterparts.

The Mac port of the game is being handled by TransGaming using their Cider technology to put a "wrapper" around the code so it can run on Intel-based Mac computers. A beta version of the Mac client is already available to download. Current Warhammer Online players will be able to check out the Mac beta client in full but new players are limited to a 10 day free trial.

Many players of Warhammer Online were shocked to hear of the departure of the MMO's lead designer and Mythic Entertainment co-founder Mark Jacobs depart the development team he helped to create. Now Jacobs is updating his personal blog site with a little more info about what happened. He states, "Early in May, Electronic Arts let me know that they wanted to make some changes within the Games Label and as a result of those changes I have been out of the office (and out of touch with the team, game, etc.) since that day." His departure was made public on Wednesday.

Jacobs takes time to thank the team at Mythic for all their work over the years but added, "if you are looking or expecting me to damn EA or anyone there, you will be sorely disappointed. Over my 23 years of making games professionally I have refrained from attacking the competition, former and/or current partners, other game developers, etc. except on a few very rare instances. I have no intention of breaking with tradition at the present time and I hope my track record in this regard remains unchanged for the rest of my career." So far he has not yet stated what he plans to to next.

[Via Massively]

One of the two major news items from Wednesday (the other being the whole id Software-ZeniMax Media dealie) was the revelation that Mythic Entertainment and BioWare would now be part of a new RPG/MMO division at Electronic Arts. The heads of BioWare are the new heads of the game division while Mythic co-founder Mark Jacobs decided to either leave or got kicked out the door (depending on what theory you believe).

Today the official community site for Mythic's MMO Warhammer Onine has a post from the game's producer Jeff Hickman. While most of the post deals with upcoming updates to the game he did address the changes that were announced Wednesday.

Hickman states, "We are committed to Warhammer, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot, and have solid plans for each game. I look forward to discussing our plans for of all of these games with you in the near future." At the end of his post he added, "The Winds of Change are upon us, but the ship and crew remain the same. As I've said before and I'll say it again, from myself and everyone at Mythic: Thank you for your continued passion and support. We look forward to the many months and years ahead...WAAAGH!"

Holy crap. Today is the day for major PC gaming news it seems. Electronic Arts has just announced that they are making some changes in their Mythic development studio. EA is putting their MMO and RPG operations under one division. The press release states that BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka will be in charge of the new division.

The press release also announces the departure of Mark Jacobs, one of the founders of the original Mythic Entertainment and one of the main people responsible for the development of Mythic's most recent game Warhammer Online along with its previous MMO Dark Age of Camelot. Mythic's other co-founder Rob Denton will remain will Mythic and will become the studio's new general manger, reporting to Muzyka.

Update: Our sister site Massively has got some more info on today's announcement as anonymous staffers at Mythic expressed surprise at Jacobs' departure even though he apparently had been on sabbatical from the company for over a month. There are no plans for any layoffs at Mythic, according to the article.

It only launched last September but Mythic Entertainment is already trying to get back players who subscribed to Warhammer Online only to leave it behind. A few days ago Mythic launched its Call to Arms "re-enlistment" drive which gives former players who have accounts of good standing a way to reactivate their accounts for 10 days of free play.

Those players will get some extra bonuses including all the rested experience for their characters since they stopped playing Warhammer Online. The developer is trying to emphasize the fact that the game has added quite a lot of content since the September launch and plans to add lots more via their current Bitter Rivals live event. Still there's been some concern about the game's future but Mythic's general manager Mark Jacobs, in his State of the Game article on the game's community site, gave some details about Warhammer Online's future. He stated, '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."

Warhammer Online started out like gangbusters when it was first launched last September. Now developer Mythic Entertainment is working its subscribers to get their family and friends to try out the fantasy MMO title. If you are a subscriber to the game and manage to get one of those kinds of folks to subscribe as well you will get 30 more days of free play in the game.

That's not all, though. If you get two subscribers to join you can also get an in-game pet lilke the Warlord's Fell Hound above. Four new recruits nets you an in-game magic item (The Rod of Service of The Collar of Servitude). Yes it's pretty mercenary but we don't think most will hold it against you.

Last week we reported that Fileplanet was offering folks a way to download and play a 10 day free trial version of Warhammer Online. Today developer Mythic Entertainment decided to take over the process and offer up those 10-day free trials via the game's official web site.

There are separate trial versions for North America/Asia and Europe. As before this trial version does not give you full access to all of the game's features and content (you can check out the restrictions in the trial version FAQ) but 10 days should be plenty of time to see if you like battling in the Games Workshop created universe. You can upgrade to the full version if you wish; that will also give you access to the just launched Bitter Rivals live event.

Mythic Entertainment has been preparing its Warhammer Online players for its Bitter Rivals live event and today that in-game event began with the new 1.2 patch to the fantasy MMO. The patch adds the promised two new careers to the game (the Orc Choppa and the Dwarf Slayer) along with a host of new content, features and bug fixes.

Other additions include a new Twisted Tower scenario, new treasures, new Realm vs Realm gameplay features and lots more. You can check out the entire patch notes on the game's official community site and our sister site Massively has details looks at the new Choppa and Slayer careers.

GamersGate continues to add new titles and publishers to its lineup and today the company announced that it will be providing a number of Electronic Arts titles to its library of titles. Games like Spore, Command and Conquer: Red Alerrt 3, Warhammer Online and Lord of the Rings Conquest are now available to download.

In fact, Gamersgate currently has a special deal on Lord of the Rings Conquest, The fantasy action game from developer Pandemic can be downloaded and purchased from GamersGate for just $31.99 for this weekend only. Also on sale this weekend is the historical strategy-sim game Anno 1701 which has a 50 percent price cut this weekend to just $14.99.