Ninja Baseball Batman - Angry Video Game Nerd

Warhammer and SEGA Status Update: In a Relationship

Warhammer Online. I could go on and on about this game and many others can as well. Whether or not people want to give it credit, it served its purpose as a staple game in player versus player online gaming. But I do not want to talk about Warhammer Online as a game that released in 2008, or even as a game that was developed by Mythic, then EA Mythic, then Bioware Mythic. We can easily discuss the EA Louse incident of disgruntled employees and the believe that the former Mythic head was forced to step down and not just leaving out of good decency as well as the belief by fans that Paul Barnett is nothing but a dirty English two-faced liar. I want to go back before all of this. Back to 2001. Yes, 2001...

The MMORPG world looked a lot different in 2001. RuneScape Classic (though known just as RuneScape until RS2 released in 2004) was opened to the world and Mythic released their first game, Dark Age of Camelot. Somewhere in that mix of a market just beginning to bloom as the internet became more readily available and online gaming began making its way into the hands of preteens (such as myself), Games Workshop saw an opportunity to enter into the market. So they snagged the title "Warhammer Online" in 2001 and held onto it. This is interesting because so many people complained about the tag of "online" and even laughed Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning being acronym'd to "WAR", but really they had no choice to not include the "Online" title.

So who did they turn to in order to license their world and create this online game? Well, they got a developer called Climax studios who started work on it. Games Workshop then went to work on finding a producer for the game. And can you guess who they got? Nope, not Electronic Arts. SEGA got the call, if you can believe it. Now what is more interesting is the fact that this wasn't just something that was formed and then we never heard about it again. No, in fact there screenshots released in 2003. Even more interesting is that a trailer for the game was shown at E3 in 2004. A legitimate trailer. Everyone can say that Warhammer copied Warcraft (ignoring the longstanding history of Games Workshop since the 80s) and was trying to cash in on the online department, but this game was thought of and created before the titan of online gaming that is World of Warcraft was released, or even announced. This is what is so astounding to me, though, is that the game SEGA was creating was by far superior in design and idea than what turned out to be a 4-year-too-late release that couldn't live up to its promises.

It's a tall claim to say that a game that never saw the light of day was superior to a game that received rave critical reception and sold 1.2 million copies within the first month of release. To that point, I will agree. But as a Warhammer fan, It's hard to agree with what the game turned into. What makes it even harder is watching this video below. It truly will bring bewilderment to anyone who loves the Warhammer universe that it never had chance:

Are you fucking kidding me? This shows you so many fucking armies from Warhammer that never got their moment in a Warhammer Online game that died within one year. And seriously, these are some quotes of articles regarding the SEGA UK publishing decision allude to more questions than answers. And I'm not talking about bad questions about the game, but seriously what happened that this didn't release in 2004 when it was slated to be released? Yes, you read that right: slated for released in 2004!

"The combining of Games Workshop's Warhammer universe and Climax's cutting-edge technology and game design is proving to be something genuinely breathtaking. Watching this game in development has been enthralling. Sega is delighted to be involved in this project and we're genuinely looking forward to a ground-breaking game."

That's Matthew Woodley, the European Marketing Director from SEGA Europe commenting on the game. Seriously, with that amount of praise what happened? And what about features within game? What can the players do? I found this snippet from a long dead article from Gamershell.com:

"Warhammer Online is a new massively multiplayer online computer game that allows players to take on the role of outlaws and mercenary adventurers within the grim and gritty realisation of Games Workshop's dark, gothic fantasy world of Warhammer. At the heart of the game is a combination of fantastic new technologies coupled with the deep and atmospheric Warhammer background and some of the most innovative player and character development within an online RPG. "

 So it begs the question, what really did happen? Well, this may be surprising, but it became evident that the cost to actually make the Warhammer world a reality was not within reach. This led to Games Workshop and developer Climax to cancelling the project and going their separate ways. SEGA and Games Workshop then also had to part ways as well since without a game, there was no need for a publisher. What happened was that the joint development between Games Workshop and Climax ceased, which meant Games Workshop was no longer contributing any funds to the project, but Climax pressed on. The amount of effort and time they had put into the game made it seem logical to keep on going. In fact, an interview with IGN in October of 2004 made the development seem positive, despite the loss of the join agreement with Games Workshop. Climax was still looking for a new investment partner to help overcome the obstacle of launch costs that games like Star Wars Galaxies had seen in the $30 million range.

They never succeeded...Climax and SEGA officially put the demon to rest in 2005, where Mythic Entertainment then purchased the newly available license for the Warhammer Fantasy universe. An article that took a look back by Massively I think really sums up the "what could have been" for this game. Enjoy the read and may your imagination forever be let down by the "what ifs" it presents:

Playable races announced included Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, Halflings and Ogres. Four starting classes were also released: Warrior, Academic, Rogue and Adventurer. Guilds would be called "Warrior Companies," and clothing and armor would be independent graphical layers that would go on top of your character's model versus the standard "reskinning" the basic character model that was standard at the time.

It was stated that the large game world (set in the Reikland) would take around 12 to 14 hours to walk its seamless 400 kilometers end-to-end. Along the way, players would find three cities, 12 towns, 30 villages, 30 farmsteads, 18 coaching inns, 15 dungeons and other various landmarks to explore. The game world's look skewed to the more realistic than stylistic, saturated with dark and muted tones. Weather effects were planned along with seasons, including snowfall that would actually accumulate over time and other effects that would affect combat.

This world wouldn't be predictable, either. Enemies would roam randomly, and if left unchecked, would start to congregate in even greater numbers and potentially build NPC camps.

Noise was made by Climax about getting away from level-based advancement toward a more skill-based system. The idea here was that you would earn reputation with a certain group and then join them to learn what career skills they could teach (including non-combat abilities). Careers were lumped into various tiers that represented the power and difficulty level of the skills. You could easily learn Career 1 skills, but you had to jump through a lot of hoops to access Career 2, and so on.

Once you accumulated a certain set of skills, you would find yourself fitting into a class of sorts. A Master Assassin required beggar, ruffian and herbalist skills, among others. The higher you went in the career tiers, the more you became flagged for PvP to members of opposing career sets. As far as I can tell, this type of PvP flagging would not be optional but integrated.

The debate could go on for which Warhammer Online truly had the better idea. WAR on paper was a monster of a game that was hampered by scaled back content and bugs, which is exactly what Climax was hoping to avoid to the extent of not releasing a broken product. Mythic and EA did not follow these sentiments and the Warhammer Online we know today was spawned.

But what do we have now? Well, if you know anything about the video game industry, THQ, a long standing publisher of many great games and a ton of shitty movie-licensed games, has been going through financial problems for some time now. THQ's assets are being auctioned off as we speak and it will be no more. So everyone knows and loves the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War games developed by Relic. Well, Relic was bought. By whom you may ask? SEGA! What's even more important is that this means SEGA has a unique position to possibly hold the 40k license, but that's assuming Games Workshop sticks with Relic and continues to support them, which apparently reports say they will. On the grander scale, however, is SEGA and their power with the Warhammer licence that they actually do have.

Yeah, SEGA has the Warhammer Fantasy license now. In December 2012, just over a month ago, they granted developer Creative Assembly the licence. Electronic Arts, on the other hand, no longer has their licence. That licence belongs to SEGA now, and graciously given to Creative Assembly.

So does this mean a new online Warhammer game will appear in the future? Maybe, but its unlikely from my perspective. If Vigil studios (also form developer under THQ and creators of Darksiders and Darksiders II) truly turned the 40k: Dark Millennium title into a single player game, then it seems not likely that a new online warhammer game will appear anytime soon. It's not even clear of Vigil has the rights to make the game anymore since it was a joint effort with Relic. With WAR dying out and Wrath of Heroes not taking off in the online competitive PvP market, I wouldn't even bank on a new fantasy based Warhammer game being released for a couple of years, and certainly not online.

But a boy can dream...and maybe one day, in the not too distant future, there is only WAR...