I know that there is a bunch of you around here eagerly awaiting Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. As many of you would know not all news is good news. Today - we've got some news which may disappoint Warhammer fans.

In order to reach their target release date, Mythic Entertainment have announced that several features will be culled from the retail release of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The cull is drastic - including the removal of four character classes and four capital cities. The cuts will severely impact the original focus of realm vs realm combat, of which capital cities were to be an important part.


This information was revealed by Mark Jacobs, Vice President and General Manager of Mythic Entertainment. In a recent interview, Jacobs explains why gamers will not see the inclusion of a capital city for each race.

There was something missing. It wasn't enough fun, it wasn't interesting enough, it wasn't "alive" enough. From there, the team was faced with a choice. They could either keep going down that path, working on all six cities and trying to get them finished before launch or make the hard decision to shelve four of the cities until post-launch and make sure that Altdorf and Inevitable were as full and rich as their design had intended. Mythic chose the latter.

Instead, Mythic Entertainment will focus on two capital cities. One for the Order - 'Altdorf', and the other for Destruction - 'Inevitable', promising to make them 'fabulous'. Six cities were originally intended for launch, but gamers will now see two - with capital cities for each race to come later.

The second bunch of cuts come with the exclusion of four character classes for launch. Jacobs states:

We looked at them and we said these careers are just not great ... and we tried to see if we could make them better and we just couldn't make them great. So we had a choice. Do we put in some non-great careers just because they are iconic, or we cut them out and put them in post-launch if we can get them right, or do we not put them in at all?

While it hasn't been noted whether these classes will be added later, or excluded all together, their removal is still a pretty major piece of news. The four classes removed are the Choppa (Greenskin), the Hammerer (Dwarf), the Blackguard (Dark Elf), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire). Each of these classes were melee based.


It is a pity that several character classes were excluded, as all the concept art is of a high quality.
While it is sure to disappoint those who were looking forward to these specific features or classes, it would appear that Jacobs and his team are focusing on quality and not quantity. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is an ambitious title, and these feature cuts for the retail release in order to meet a release target could be met with a mixed reception by fans.

With the MMO market already flooded with titles, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will need to compete against titles such as Age of Conan, Everquest, Guild Wars and of course World of Warcraft in order to make any sort of impact.

If the release is perceived as 'botched' by fans - this could impinge on later support and updates for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I hope that for sake of the fans it isn't overly harmful, but these sort of sweeping exlusions are bound to hurt.