Duck and Cover

Mythic Entertainment boss Mark Jacobs has revealed that the EA studio is axing large chunks of content from the launch version of its upcoming MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The number of capital cities in the game is being reduced from six (one for each race) to two (one for each faction).

In addition, Mythic is leaving out four of the game's planned 24 careers, or character classes, from the final version of the game.

Jacobs broke the news to gamers in an exclusive interview with MMORPG.com.

The two cities that remain will be the Empire capital Altdorf, and the Inevitable City, the Chaos captial. These will now serve as the catch-all capitals for Order and Destruction respectively.

Mythic's plans for Warhammer Online's cities are ambitious - they will change dynamically according to the fortunes of their faction, and can be sieged and ransacked by the opposing side. The developers felt they could not do justice to this plan for all six races, Jacobs said.

"We wanted to make our capital cities the best cities in any MMO," he explained. "We think we're doing that, but it came at a price and that price is that the other cities aren't going in the game right now."

He also argued that narrowing the power struggle down to a war between two cities would focus the community in the early days of the game.

The four careers that are being cut are the Choppa (a Greenskin berserker type), the Hammerer (its Dwarven opposite number), the Black Guard (a Dark Elf warrior), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (an Empire warrior).

Jacobs simply admitted that the four careers, as they stood, weren't good enough to go in.

"This isn't something that I can say that it is really a good thing for the player," he confessed. "I can say that we are doing this for quality, absolutely... We looked at them and we said these careers are just not great - and we tried, and they weren't coming out well."

Jacobs said that Mythic did plan to include the four racial captials in later updates to the game, but he did not confirm whether the axed character classes would ever be reinstated.

He also denied that Mythic's owner, Electronic Arts, had been involved in the decision to axe the features. "This has nothing to do with EA ... they had zero input in this ... They don't even know about it. It's not a discussion we would have with them," he said.

Warhammer Online is due out for PC in the autumn.

Frater Perdurabo wrote: Are you intending to try it, Smiley?

S4ur0n27 wrote: They were developping this neato looking Roman empire inspired game, which never happened?

S4ur0n27 wrote:Mythic will do a good job, no doubt. DAoC was awesome.

They were developping this neato looking Roman empire inspired game, which never happened?

rabidpeanut wrote:wots wotlok?

jetbaby wrote:

S4ur0n27 wrote:Mythic will do a good job, no doubt. DAoC was awesome.

They were developping this neato looking Roman empire inspired game, which never happened?

Imperator. Was absurdly amazing and blew my fucking mind. And no, it was not axed. It was placed on "indefinite hold." So it was stealth axed with the (im)possibility of being continued.