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/

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