warhammer-online posts

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.

If you have been waiting to experience Mythic's recent fantasy MMO Warhammer Online but have been hesitant to begin playing, you don't have much of an excuse anymore. Mythic has now launched a 10 day free trial version of the game which can be downloaded via FilePlanet.

The game's community site has an FAQ about the trial version and its many limitations compared to the full version (you can only play on certain servers for example) but it should give you enough of a taste of the game to help you decide if you want the full version. Mythic is prepping a series of major live events starting next month that will, among other things, serve as a way to release new content. This new trial version is likely being released to tempt new subscribers to play Warhammer Online before the live events begin.

[Via Massively]

We are already thinking about the weekend (which for some people will be a three day weekend due to President's Day) and GoGamer.com has once again given out some special sales on a number of their PC retail games for their regular 48 Hours Madness sale.

This weekend you can get a number of PC titles for less at the site. These include Fallout 3 for $32.90 and the Collector's Edition of the game for $49.90. The Collector's Editions for Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are also on sale for $19.90 and $39.90, respectively. Again these prices are for this weekend only.

Boy, it must be hard to be a gamer in Australia. The country's government won't allow certain games to be sold because it doesn't have the equivalent of the US's own "M" game rating. Now word comes out that many MMOs sold in the country are going unrated and that may get them in trouble with local attorney generals.

The issue was first raised last week in a feature article at our sister site Massively who noticed that most MMO games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online don't have any ratings on their retail boxes in that country. Apparently many publishers didn't submit these games to the country's ratings board because they didn't think they were required to do so. Some industry insiders still may have that idea. The Sydney Morning Herald has a statement from Ron Curry, the chief executive of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia, who says, "If such a game is hosted locally it falls under the jurisdiction of the Broadcasting Services Act, but if it is hosted internationally, it's classified in the country that hosts the game, rather than in Australia."

That rationalization isn't cutting it with local Attorney-General John Hatzistergos who told the Herald, "The NSW legislation covers computer games bought online as well as those bought in stores, and treats single, multi-player and online games the same way." He states that anyone buying unclassified games could face penalties. There could also be jail terms of up to 12 months. Companies that sell such games could face double the fine amount. For its part, a Blizzard rep made a statement on the World of Warcraft message board stating, "...we will always respect the laws of the countries in which we operate."