It's natural to have an aversion to toy soldiers, especially if you're over the age of, say, 14. That being the case, it's understandable to exhibit feelings of bafflement when you observe a roomful of adult men and women hovering over elaborately-built dioramas, tape-measures in hand and dice in fist, doting over the minutest actions of their painstakingly painted little pewter men. You know what I'm talking about -- you see it in the Games Workshop retail stores that have been popping up all over the country, or the independently-owned hobby-shops located off the main strips. It's the most sophisticated manifestation of a phenomenon that's been around probably as long as humans have: simulated warfare. And for those who prefer orcs and demons to Unions and Confederates, Warhammer is unarguably the premier tabletop wargame.

The game of Warhammer is over 20 years old, and has seen numerous incarnations in all areas of gaming, including the interactive realm. The game that will emerge from Games Workshop's partnering with Mythic Entertainment, however, could very well be the most ambitious. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the game in question, will very much be a continuation of Mythic's tradition: it will be an MMORPG with a strong focus on PvP. Specifically, the form of PvP it will highlight will be very familiar to Dark Age of Camelot's players: it's what Mythic calls "Realm versus Realm" (or RvR for short). It's a natural fit for Warhammer. The world in which the tabletop game is set is, logically, beset by war; alliances only emerge out of convenience, and even then, the truces are often uneasy.


A war-torn world lends itself perfectly to Mythic's patented brand of RvR gameplay, and much of Mythic's design is based around these very kinds of elements. As such, if things go right, Warhammer Online might just be the premier PvP MMO.

Hard-to-Imagine World Peace

At the forefront of Warhammer Online are two opposing factions: the forces of Order, and the forces of Chaos. Disparate (and self-contained) armies comprise these two factions, and while they've been known to hate (and thus, kill) each other in the Warhammer universe, they're allied, for all intents and purposes, as far as the MMO goes. On the side of Order, you have the Empire (think of them as Germanic humans with fairly advanced technologies); the High Elves (haughty, refined, and very proficient with magic); and the Dwarves (who are tough as nails, though crafty with the gadgets). On the Chaos side, you have, well, the legions of Chaos (basically they're crazed, demon-worshipping Norsemen with really cool armor); Greenskins (consisting of both orcs and goblins); and Dark Elves (less noble than their brethren, but no less magically-inclined).

Each of the six races will have their own unique adventuring zones, which will run in a parallel path with one of the opposition armies'. The pairings will go as follows: Empire versus Chaos, High Elves versus Dark Elves, and Dwarves versus Greenskins. Each of these pairings will consist of 11 zones, four of which will run parallel to their counterparts on the opposition's side. This will guarantee that players will encounter their enemies with great frequency on the field. Before you begin to imagine scenarios involving merciless ganking, rest assured that Mythic intends to apply some order to the game's PvP encounters. In any case, after players work their way through these four zones, they'll enter a fifth zone, one which borders both races' capital cities, and is thus, by nature, heavily contested. The point of all this progression is, of course, to attack, and eventually raze, the enemy's city. This sort of city siege is what will comprise much of the end-game experience, though according to Mythic, PvE content will be in no short supply.