Product Mini Profile Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in: Massively Multiplayer RPG (PC) links » p/reviews

Once it launches, Warhammer Online is expected to be one of the more visible contenders for the MMORPG throne currently occupied by World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, some of the more touted features previously expounded upon will definitely be postponed before the game finally goes live.

Speaking to MMORPG.com, developer Mythic's VP and General Manager Mark Jacobs confirms that players will no longer start at a Capital City specific to their race, but rather their chosen "faction". The number of Capital Cities available at launch has been reduced from a potential six to just two; Altdorf for the forces of "order", and the Inevitable City for the forces of "destruction". Order and destruction are the two sides in the greater conflict which all the current races will roughly belong to, whether they be human, greenskin, elf or just plain ol' possessed by Chaos. According to Jacobs:

"By only starting with two, we can really focus the community, focus the player base, focus the guilds, the teams, that are all working to sack the city.

"We’re trying to put things in there to make all of the races happy when they get there, but that’s a little tougher to do. I think the biggest reason for attachment is that it will be to your benefit to be attached. One of the things we said from the beginning is that when you look at any other game that has RvR or something like RvR in it, players need to feel not just attached to whatever the target is, but it also has to be of benefit to them to defend it."

Previously each of the current races would feature their own Capital City. However, Mythic did not want to spread its resources thin in attempting to do justice for a larger number of cities in time for Warhammer Online's launch. Instead, Mythic would rather redirect their efforts to polish two major cities to better realize their promises to players, which include cities gaining or losing status from the "Realm vs. Realm" (RvR) conflict. The additional cities will come later and should hopefully benefit from the experience earned from which Mythic hopefully earned the first time around.

In addition to the starting number of cities, the number of career options which some of the races can explore has been trimmed down as well. While Jacobs himself had plenty of reservations with the career cuts, apparently they didn't prove to be all they could be over the long run in-game during testing. The four careers that will be ditched before final release are as follows:

Dark Elf - Blackguard
Dwarf - Hammerer
Empire - Knight of the Blazing Sun
Greenskin - Choppa

To be sure, Jacobs explains that parent company EA had no part in the decision to cut content before WAR's release.  In other words, they were not pressured from above to drop features before the game's release should be game be behind schedule.

In related news, Jacobs also confirms that his company will now be known as just plain "Mythic Entertainment", meaning the company is back to what it used to be called before being acquired by mega-publisher Electronic Arts back in June 2006. However, Jacobs stresses that Mythic has not broken away from EA as a result; instead, the name change simply makes Mythic akin to a subsidiary under different branding. It reportedly reflects a "more open attitude" being adopted at EA concerning its acquired developers, fashioning them after city-states under the banner of a larger empire. EA, an empire? Now where have we heard that one before?

"I think that this is a wonderful example of how things at EA are changing... both EA CEO John Riccitiello] and [EA's Frank Gibeau] have spoken multiple times about city states, more freedom, that sort of thing and I think this is an obvious example.

"We’re still part of EA... this is a name change and both Mythic Entertainment and EA are well represented in the game, on the box, etc. but the developer is going to be officially Mythic Entertainment."